La freccia e il cerchio
anno 8, numero 8, 2021
pp. 189-190

4.
Salvatore Ritrovato
From Antigone to Sophie and Agnes. The Times of Choice

«Woman’s influence is felt, above all, in the mood and,
therefore, is ubiquitous and invisible. There is no way to
either forestall it or avoid it; it penetrates the interstices of
caution and acts on the beloved man similarly to the climate
on plants. Her radical ways of perceiving existence sweetly
and constantly stifle our soul and wind up transmitting
their particular inclination to it.»
(José Ortega y Gasset, La elección en amor)

   Together with Hegel’s more well-known prediction, Jean Baudrillard’s The Disappearance of Art and Politics is one of the most troubling books about the end of art, on account of its pervasive hyper-aestheticization of the world; this doesn’t occur only in places devoted to art’s conservation, like museums and galleries, but also in private and public sites, as well as in things, and in objects commonly referred to as gadgets. When reading this particular work by the French philosopher, I have always suspected that we’re dealing with a much more complex phenomenon: one involving a number of disintegrative features of the cultural superstructures we’ve inherited from history, including the irreversible advance of a global bureaucratic totalitarianism. In this regard Baudrillard himself references, in the field of human relations, some loathsome outcomes represented not only by the technological filter of fears From Antigone to Sophie and Agnes. and desires (ranging from property – currently delegated to online sales – to sexuality – as sublimated via mediatic consumerism), but also by the dematerialisation of education and job-training (as can be seen in the now-mainstream courses of e-learning as well as the automation of competitive exams).
We might be moved to consider such phenomena as an effect of the drift away from the responsibility of knowledge; such a distancing concerns not only the engineer’s know-how of genetics (should it be used to cure disease or to build a new race of post-human beings?) or of materials’ structures (should nuclear energy be placed at the service of humanity or should it build more powerful weapons?), but also the airier and more elusive forms of knowledge employed by humanities scholars. Ever more frequently the humanist finds himself working under the auspices of an institution, a body, an elite, and not primarily according to his conscience; he’s tasked with transmitting “competencies” – an aseptic term that, most unfortunately, has been employed by certain modern pedagogical theories – and not critical sense. This occurs where the intellectual’s mission – whether he deals with science or letters – should be exactly that of declaring himself “incompetent”, meaning – paradoxically (in the words of a philosopher who paid dearly for it) – to “not know”.
   Why do I think we must turn attention to how so much disappearance of art corresponds to the bureaucracy’s increasingly damaging assault, and why does all this concern the very question of “choice”, and therefore, by inference, that of the “enemy” (who is probably hidden deep inside us)? The reason requires a network of concepts revolving around “responsibility”; an ethic which will allow us, here, to open a window onto understanding the reasons of those who withdraw from making decisions, preferring to rely on procedures passed down from on high. Also such a consideration of responsibility will allow us to more fully appreciate those who, faced with what appears to be the objectivity and transparency of every codified regulation, feel obliged to deeply reflect on the meaning of what they’re doing or writing or teaching.
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