Communication Ethics in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt's Rhetoric of Warning and Hope

16. Countering the Magic of Modernity: Meeting Darkness and Rejecting Artificial Light

242 16 Countering the Magic of Modernity Meeting Darkness and Rejecting Artificial Light Heidegger described with uncanny precision in . . . Being and Time . . . “the they,” their “mere talk,” and, generally, . . . everything that, unhidden and unprotected by the privacy of the self, appears in public. . . . [E]verything that is real or authentic is assaulted by the overwhelming power of “mere talk.” —Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times Arendt deconstructs a world of mere talk and impatience; she unmasks the modernist euphemism—optimism. She reminds us that conversation must be content-filled. Communicative substance drives the reality of change when it meets and addresses the temporal demands of existential life. Communicative content puts ground—more appropriately , mud—under the feet of a communicator and deconstructs a modernist sensibility that ground can be dismissed for unreflective reliance upon artificial hope and a routine sense of optimism.1 Communication ethics in dark times understands humanness as largely defined by a background of darkness that, when disregarded, makes recognition of authentic light impossible. Modernity’s desire to escape darkness makes us vulnerable to seduction from artificial light, in whatever form it emerges. 243 Countering the Magic of Modernity The Animism of Modernity Arendt deconstructed modernity as a false caretaker of existential light; she sought to disrupt the hegemony of modernity. Arendt understood that no matter how dark the moment, there are caretakers of light with the courage to forgo the temptation of social begging associated with the parvenu, who wants desperately to join those in power. Those offering a false welcome consistently deny the parvenu; they never intend to permit admission into their select group, inclusion within their privileged stratum of power. Arendt’s hope for change in the public domain rested with the pariah, one accepting outsider status, unwilling to conform to the demands of a modern world. The pariah walks in darkness, attending to the possibility of discerning authentic light when it emerges. Such persons give direction and hope; they are not taken in by the modern commitment to the myth of progress. Arendt critiqued this pervasive understanding of progress as a toxic dream that finds modernity worshiping at the altar of animism. Pejoratively speaking, modernity requires us to worship an abstract and mutated form of animism—in this case, an animistic spirit that attempts to infuse unreflective action with meaning covered in the saccharine of undue optimism, a product of the modern malnourishment of progress. This conventionally negative assessment of animism is used to illustrate the primitive assessment Arendt attributed to modernity. I contend that modernity is a primitive form of animism. I use this term with knowing irony that out of the nineteenth century, the term was used in a pejorative fashion to dismiss cultural insights that did not abide with the presuppositions of modern countries obsessed with domination, war, and colonial expansion. Sir Edward Tylor brought the notion of animism to the English world in 1871. The English use of this term emerged out of the nineteenth century and is traced to Georg Ernst Stahl, a German scientist, who used the term animismus in 1720 based on his concept of “anima mundi.” Tylor’s definition of animism stressed that the world is innately alive; this assumption was a dismissive reading of differently developed societies than those within the insular paradigmatic arrogance of modernity. I suggest that the true primitive understanding rests at the feet of the attributor, a modern world infatuated with progress. Today, the notion of animism meets a contentious response as people unmask its obvious cultural elitism . Communication Ethics in Dark Times concurs with those who reject the culturally restrictive use of animism when it is used against cultures working from assumptions different from those of modernism. However, in this same critical vein and with intentional irony, this final chapter connects the term “animism” with modernity—stressing the primitive 244 Countering the Magic of Modernity assumptions that led modernity to reject dark times and manufacture artificial light that leads to a darkness incapable of functioning as a backdrop for the recognition of genuine light.2 This work on communication ethics in dark times contends that animism is alive in modernity as we imbue actions with the spirit of progress and undue optimism. The animistic spirit that we witness within progress is, however, at odds with Kant’s view of progress as species-driven; yet in our everyday lives within modernity, progress is the supposed motivating assumption of...