Crossover Queries: Dwelling with Negatives, Embodying Philosophy's Others

Chapter 13: The Semantic Spaces of Terror

13 The Semantic Spaces of Terror A Theological Response The future is always unpredictable. Ideals . . . must themselves be framed out of the possibilities of existing conditions, even if these be the conditions that constitute a corporate and industrial age. The ideals take shape and gain a content as they operate in remaking conditions. . . . A program of ends and ideals if kept apart from sensible and flexible method becomes an encumbrance. . . . For its hard and rigid character assumes a fixed world and a static individual; and neither of these things exists. —John Dewey, Individualism Old and New Information at one and the same time means the appraisal that as quickly, comprehensively, and unequivocally and profitably as possible acquaints contemporary humanity with the securing of its necessities , its requirements and their satisfaction. . . . Information is also the arrangement that places all objects and stuffs in a form for humans that suffices to securely establish human domination over the whole earth and even over what lies beyond this planet. —Martin Heidegger, The Principle of Reason Modern business organizations are emergent—they reside in a state of continual process of change. Globalization, deregulation, increased competition, mergers and acquisitions, and the like all reveal organizations in transition. . . . Agile development emphasizes the human or 207 crafted aspects of software development over the engineering aspects —individuals and interactions over processing and tools . . . responding to change over following a plan. Mark Lycett, Robert D. Macredie, Chaitali Patel, and Ray J. Paul, Computer, June 2003 It would seem that Terror and violence stand together, inhabiting the same semantic space.1 The extraordinary ambiguities that attach to the term Terror require multiple approaches, interpretations both deconstructive and additive, which constitute a space whose boundaries are in constant and uneasy flux. Here, I shall successively undertake readings of Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, Dominique Janicaud , and software developers, the proponents of so-called agile thought. Each will be seen as a critic who both undermines and supports specific positions of the preceding thinker. Thus, my interest is in creating a conversation, a semantic space in which both convergence and dissension constitute an ever-expanding, provocative discourse of Terror. Does the difficulty in finding and identifying the terrorist and in assessing the extent of the danger she or he poses point to a radically new mode of violence? How do war and the violence intrinsic to existing political, social, and economic relations differ from the violence of Terror? What role do the beliefs and practices of the world’s religions play in configuring this space? Heidegger and the Violence of Reason Does the term Terror refer to a fundamentally new species of violence , or does it derive from ontotheological thought, thought for which the meaning of Being is grounded in the principle of reason? Is Terror a consequence of thought’s failure to take account of the contingency and facticity presupposed by thinking? Is the culprit as Heidegger thinks, the principle of reason, nihil est sine ratione (‘‘nothing is without reason’’), an assertion that culminates in the way in which modern science interrogates that which is? In sum, if at this moment the language of the being of beings is that of the principle of reason, as Heidegger maintains, is Terror (whose most recent manifestations were, of course, unknown to him) the inevitable outcome? Heidegger invokes the principle of reason not as an explanatory principle—to do so would be to endorse the efficacy of explanation itself—but rather as grounding the meaning of being in the present epoch. The principle functions as a demand requiring that the knowledge of objects be self-grounded so that the object itself is securely 208 Nihilation and the Ethics of Alterity founded. The omnipresence of the demand to give reasons is taken for granted, rendering one oblivious to the meaning of being intrinsic to the language of the demand itself. For Heidegger, the modus operandi of the principle lies in the discernment and elimination of contradictions among competing facts and theories. Information provided by technological instruments under the sway of the principle is heeded, but no attention is paid to the demand itself. The primrose path down which the principle of reason leads terminates in the atomic age: ‘‘Its historical spiritual existence [is characterized as] the rapacity for and availability of natural energy,’’ in sum, ‘‘an epoch molded by the atom.’’2 In the light of this rapacity, Heidegger sees...