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Aleksandr Rodchenko Public Mourning at the Funeral for Vladimir Mayakovski 1930
“She loves me…she loves me not.
I tear my hands, scatter the broken fingers…loves me not
As we scatter the random riddling heads of daisies
Tumbling through summer.
Though I adopt the smooth chin and greying hair,
The silver, tinkling out the change of years,
I hope, I know that age will never bring
The final shame of prudent commonsense.
It’s after one and you must be asleep.
The milky way is like a silver river.
I’m in no hurry. There’s no need
To wake you or disturb you with telegrams or thunder…
See how much peace the world can give.
The sky is wrapped in stars, the gift of night.
At such a time you rise, and find you speak
To all the years, the future, and the world.
It’s after one and you must be asleep.
Or maybe you can feel the night as well.
I’m in no hurry. There’s no need
To wake you or disturb you with telegrams or thunder.”
From the Suicide Note of Vladimir Mayakovsky 1930
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Neither gnosis nor dialectical materialism believes in humanity’s capacity to arrive at true insight into the nature of the world through tradition, contemplation, science, art, morality, or by any other means, since people’s positions in this world determine and thus relativize all their insights. The critique of this world is therefore only possible as its transformation, as an action in which all partial forms of wisdom and partial insights can and must play only an instrumental role. Their own claim to truth is understood as “metaphysical” or “idealistic” and rejected. The supreme wisdom of gnosis is precisely this insight into the impossibility of all insight, which legitimates the claim of Gnostic doctrines to absolute power.
The difficulty with this turn to “apophatic materialism” is clearly that, while the belief in the determination of human thought by its positioning in the world (by its “individuality”) is retained, the possibility of describing the corresponding world structure scientifically (or in any other way) is denied. That means the recognition of human freedom—however, the nature of this freedom remains unspecified, as does the corresponding dialectical-materialist-alchemical formula for changing the world. If “discovering their individuality” for human beings means determining their position in the world, in “apophatic materialism” this ceases to be possible. However, radical skepticism in the spirit of the cogito ergo sum also ceases to be possible, because if the cogito is determined by the sum, but the sum remains indeterminate, then the cogito as well as its radicalization in critical action remain indeterminate as well.
When skepticism loses its radicality, it no longer represents a total distancing from the world, tradition, everyday life, etc., but only a partial distancing in certain respects, and as a result the world-changing action becomes merely partial as well. Even more importantly, however, this action can no longer be “individual” or “original” (either in the sense of being “new” or “unusual” or in that of “proceeding from the origin”), that is, “productive,” but only reproductive. This means, however—and the consequence is observable—that the “negative,” “mystical” radicalization of dialectical materialism which opens a specific path to postmodernity is accompanied by a cynical realism in the sense of a total simulation of the “ideological superstructure.” This is a self-reflection, however, that lies far beyond the reach of Soviet dialectical materialism.
Boris Groys
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/127/464111/elements-of-gnosticism-in-dialectical-materialism-soviet-marxism/
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Solomon Nikritin, Oval Composition (Study for a Self-Portrait), 1920s.
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/127/464111/elements-of-gnosticism-in-dialectical-materialism-soviet-marxism/
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Bataille’s analysis takes a very interesting turn when he then continues:
Thus it appears—all things considered—that Gnosticism, in its psychological process, is not so different from present-day [dialectical] materialism … For it is a question above all of not submitting oneself, and with oneself one’s reason, to whatever is more elevated, to whatever can give a borrowed authority to the being that I am, and to the reason that arms this being. This being and its reason can in fact only submit to what is lower, to what can never serve in any case to ape a given authority. I therefore submit entirely to what must be called matter, since that exists outside of myself and the idea, and I do not admit that my reason becomes the limit of what I have said, for if I proceeded in that way matter limited by my reason would soon take on the value of a superior principle.11
Thus, Gnostics are proud of submitting to what is lower than themselves and hence does not command the allegiance of their reason. In this way, they become the “toys” of a process that, because it is absurd, does not wound their pride. Thus, they also cease to have any actual need for salvation and thus do not call the Gnostic promise into question or measure it against the possibility of its fulfillment. In this way, gnosis becomes perfect and irrefutable. Bataille discovers the symptoms of this consciousness in modern art: “The interest of this juxtaposition is augmented by the fact that the specific reactions of Gnosticism led to the representation of forms radically contrary to the ancient academic style, to the representation of forms in which it is possible to see the image of this base matter.”
Boris Groys
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/127/464111/elements-of-gnosticism-in-dialectical-materialism-soviet-marxism/
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