根据马尔科姆·恩默瑞(Malcolm Imrie)的英译本录入
However desperate the situation and circumstances, do not despair.
When there is everything to fear, be unafraid.
When surrounded by dangers, fear none of them.
When without resources, depend on resourcefulness.
When surprised, take the enemy itself by surprise.——SUN TZU, The Art of War
兵士甚陷则不惧,
无所往则固,
深入则拘,
不得已则斗。——孙子,《孙子兵法》
为纪念1984年3月5日在巴黎被至今不明之人刺杀的杰勒德·莱伯维希(Gerard Lebovici)而作。
1
THESE Comments are sure to be welcomed by fifty or sixty people; a large number given the times in which we live and the gravity of the matters under discussion. But then, of course, in some circles I am considered to be an authority. It must also be borne in mind that a good half of this interested elite will consist of people who devote themselves to maintaining the spectacular system of domination, and the other half of people who persist in doing quite the opposite. Having, then, to take account of readers who are both attentive and diversely influential, I obviously cannot speak with complete freedom. Above all, I must take care not to give too much information to just anybody.
这些评论肯定会被五六十人欢迎; 而考虑到我们生活的特定时代和所讨论事件的严肃性, 这大概也算是很多人了。但是另一方面, 在某一些圈子里我当然还被认为是一个权威。必须牢记在心的是, 一半有利害关系的精英分子献身于维持景观体系的统治, 另一半人则坚持反对景观体系的统治。因此, 考虑到读者不仅是非常关心的也是有各种各样影响的, 我显然不能完全自由地发表意见。最重要的, 我一定要小心不能对任何人给出太多的信息。
Our unfortunate times thus compel me, once again, to write in a new way. Some elements will be intentionally omitted; and the plan will have to remain rather unclear. Readers will encounter certain decoys, like the very hallmark of the era. As long as certain pages are interpolated here and there, the overall meaning may appear. just as secret clauses have very often been added to whatever treaties may openly stipulate; just as some chemical agents only reveal their hidden properties when they are combined with others. However, in this brief work there will be only too many things which are, alas, easy to understand.
因此, 我们这个不幸的时代再次强迫我以新的方式写作。一些成分将有意被疏漏, 计划不得不保待更加不清楚的状态。像这一时代的真正特点一样, 读者将遭遇特定的圈套。只要将定的页码到处被窜改, 就像暗藏的句子经常被加在什么条约的也许是公开的条款中一样; 也像一些化学制剂只有当它们与其他试剂化合时才能显露其特性一样, 总体的意义也许就能显现。然而, 哎! 在这一简短的著作中绝大多数的东西非常容易理解。
2
IN 1967, in a book entitled The Society of the Spectacle, I showed what the modem spectacle was already in essence: the autocratic reign of the market economy which had acceded to an irresponsible sovereignty, and the totality of new techniques of government which accompanied this reign. The disturbances of 1968, which in several countries lasted into the following years, having nowhere overthrown the existing organisation of the society from which it springs apparendy spontaneously, the spectacle has thus continued to gather strength; that is, to spread to the furthest limits on all sides, while increasing its density in the centre. It has even learnt new defensive techniques, as powers under attack always do. When I began the critique of spectacular society, what was particularly noticed – given the period – was the revolutionary content that could be discovered in that critique; and it was naturally felt to be its most troublesome element. As to the spectacle itself, I was sometimes accused of having invented it out of thin air, and was always accused of indulging myself to excess in my evaluation of its depth and unity, and its real workings. I must admit that others who later published new books on the same subject demonstrated that it was quite possible to say less. All they had to do was to replace the totality and its movement by a single static detail on the surface of the phenomenon, with each author demonstrating his originality by choosing a different and all the less disturbing one. No one wanted to taint the scientific modesty of his personal interpretation by interposing reckless historical judgements.
在1967年的《景观社会》中, 我说明了现代景观本质上已是: 一种继承了无责任感之君权的市场经济的独裁统治及与这一独裁统治相伴随的政治新方法的总体。1968年的造反在少数几个国家持续到了第二年, 但显然, 在任何地方也没有推翻自发产生的现存社会组织, 这说明景观继续在聚集其力量, 换言之, 当景观的密度在社会中心日益增加时, 它又最大限度将其边界扩散至社会的所有方面。它甚至已学会了一种新的防卫技巧, 作为受到攻击时总是能够运用它的这一能力的一种技巧。当我开始景观社会批判时, 在特定时期特别注意的是这一批判中可能被发现的革命的内容; 作为最棘手的因素它自然也会被觉察到。至于景观自身, 我有时因发明这一概念受到无中生有的控告, 有时又因自己被指责为总是沉迷于景观的深度、统一及运行方式的评价而被控告。我必须承认其他后来发表的同一主题的著作, 很可能说出的东西更少。他们所做的不过是用表面现象单一静态的细节代替了整体及其运动, 每一个作者都通过选择不同来展示自己的原创性, 但较少扰乱这一主题。没有一个人通过提出轻率的历史判断去败坏他个人解释的科学之谦逊。
Nonetheless, the society of the spectacle has continued to advance. It moves quickly for in 1967 it had barely forty years behind it; though it had used them to the full. And by its own development, which no one took the trouble to investigate, it has since shown with some astonishing achievements that it was effectively just what I said it was. Proving this point has more than academic value, because it is undoubtedly indispensable to have understood the spectacle’s unity and articulation as an active force in order to examine the directions in which this force has since been able to travel. These questions are of great interest, for it is under such conditions that the next stage of social conflict will necessarily be played out. Since the spectacle today is certainly more powerful than it was before, what is it doing with this additional power? What point has it reached, that it had not reached previously? What, in short, are its present lines of advance? The vague feeling that there has been a rapid invasion which has forced people to lead their lives in an entirely different way is now widespread; but this is experienced rather like some inexplicable change in the climate, or in some other natural equilibrium, a change faced with which ignorance knows only that it has nothing to say. What is more, many see it as a civilising invasion, as something inevitable, and even want to collaborate. Such people would rather not know the precise purpose of this conquest, and how it is advancing.
尽管如此, 景观社会继续前进。到1967年敏锐地提到它时, 已差不多落后于事实四十年, 人们已十分习惯于这一社会。虽然没有人不怕麻烦去研究, 通过它自身的发展, 如我所言, 景观社会如今已显示出它已取得了显著的令人惊诧的成就。证明这一点的更多的是学术评价, 因为为了检查这一力量以后前进的方向, 这的确也是理解景观的统一性及它作为行动力量的环节所不可避免的。这些问题十分令人感兴趣, 因为在这样的情形下, 下一阶段的社会冲突将必然被终结。既然今天景观比以前无疑更强大有力, 那么, 它正在利用的这一新增加的力量是什么? 它已达到了哪一点? 以前它为什么没有达到? 简而言之, 目前它前进的航向是什么? 快速侵入的, 强迫人们将其生活引向完全不同道路的暧昧不明的感情现已广为传播; 这有点像在气候中或在某些其他自然平衡中人们经历的无法说明的变化, 对这一变化入们除了知道无话可说外, 什么也不知道。更有甚者, 许多人将其视为一种文明的入侵, 视为不可避免的, 并自愿与其合作。这样的人无论如何也不了解这一征服的准确意图, 以及它如何前进。
I am going to outline certain practical consequences, still little known, of the spectacle’s rapid extension over the last twenty years. I have no intention of entering into polemics on any aspect of this question; these are now too easy, and too useless. Nor will I try to convince. The present comments are not concerned with moralising. They do not propose what is desirable, or merely preferable. They simply record what is.
尽管对最后二十年来景观快速扩张知之甚少, 我还是将对其确定的实际的结果做出一个粗略的描述。在这一问题的任何方面我都没有讨论辩论术的意图; 这太简单也没有任何意义, 我也不设法使人信服。现在的评论与道德教化无关。它们不提议什么是最合意的或什么是更好的。它们只不过记录了它们之所是。
3
No ONE today can reasonably doubt the existence or the power of the spectacle; on the contrary, one might doubt whether it is reasonable to add anything on a question which experience has already settled in such draconian fashion. Le Monde of 19 September 1987 offered a felicitous illustration of the saying, ‘If it exists, there’s no need to talk about it’, a fundamental law in these spectacular times which, at least in this respect, ensure there is no such thing as a backward country:
今天没有人再怀疑景观的力量和存在; 相反, 人们可能怀疑将一切事情都加到了这一问题上是否是合理的——人们的感受和体验已固定在一种严格的样式中。1987年9月19日的《人世间》对此提供了一个谚语式的巧妙说明: “如果它已存在, 就没有必要再去议论它”, 在这些景观时代, 至少在这一方面, 一个基本原则是确保像一个落后国家那样不存在那种事情:
That modern society is a society of the spectacle now goes without saying. Indeed people will soon only be conspicuous by their reticence. One loses count of all the books describing a phenomenon which now marks all the industrialised nations yet equally spares none of the countries which has still to catch up. What is so droll, however, is that all the books which do analyse this phenomenon, usually to deplore it, cannot but join the spectacle if they’re to get attention.
不言而喻，现代社会是一个景观社会。确实, 人们宁愿通过他们的缄默而引人注意。不可胜数的书籍描绘了这一种现象, 即现在所有工业化的国家对仍然没有业化的国家同等宽恕的现象。然而, 如此滑稽的是所有这些书籍都分析了这一现象, 并总是对这一现象表示痛惜, 但又不能不加入景观中, 如果他们要赢得足够的关注的话。
It is true that this spectacular critique of the spectacle, which is not only late but, even worse, seeks ‘attention’ on the same level, inevitably sticks to vain generalities or hypocritical regrets; just as futile as the clowns who parade their well-mannered disillusion in newspapers.
这就是真正景观的景观式批判, 这一新的、更糟的批判寻求同样水平的”注目”, 并不可避免地坚持毫无意义的普遍性或虚伪的歉意, 正像小丑在报纸上炫耀他们的有礼貌的觉醒一样没有出息。
The empty debate on the spectacle – that is, on the activities of the world’s owners – is thus organised by the spectacle itself: everything is said about the extensive means at its disposal, to ensure that nothing is said about their extensive deployment. Rather than talk of the spectacle, people often prefer to use the term ‘media’. And by this they mean to describe a mere instrument, a kind of public service which with impartial ‘professionalism’ would facilitate the new wealth of mass communication through mass media – a form of communication which has at last attained a unilateral purity, whereby decisions already taken are presented for passive admiration. For what is communicated are orders; and with perfect harmony, those who give them are also those who tell us what they think of them.
关于景观的毫无意义的辩论——更确切地说, 关于世界拥有者的活动的辩论就这样被景观自身组织起来: 说尽了由景观随意支配的广泛手段以确保一点也没有提到的这些手段的广泛利用。人们宁愿使用”媒体”这个术语而不喜欢谈论景观。通过这一术语人们意欲描述一种纯粹的工具, 一种公共设施, 一种通过最终达到绝对单面性信息交流形式的大众传播媒体, 来促进新的大量大众传播工具的不偏不倚的职业化的公共设施, 藉此, 已做出的决定被显现为消极赞美。因为交流的东西是命令; 并且与完美的和谐相一致, 那些下命令的人也是那些告诉我们他们思考他们是什么的人。
Spectacular power, which is so fundamentally unitary, so concentrated by the very weight of things, and entirely despotic in spirit, frequently rails at the appearance in its realm of a spectacular politics, a spectacular justice, a spectacular medicine and all the other similarly surprising examples of ‘media excess’. Thus the spectacle would be merely the excesses of the media, whose nature, unquestionably good since it facilitates communication, is sometimes driven to extremes.
如此根本一元的、借助于事态的重压如此集中的、完全在精神上专制的景观力量, 在它自己的景观政治学、景观审判、景观医学的领域和所有其他相似的”媒体过剩”(media excess)的例子中, 常常责骂表象。因此, 景观只不过是媒体的过剩, 它的无可非议的良好天性因其促进了交流有时被推至极端。
Often enough society’s bosses declare themselves ill-served by their media employees: more often they blame the spectators for the common, almost bestial manner in which they indulge in the media’s delights. A virtually infinite number of supposed differences within the media thus serve to screen what is in fact the result of a spectacular convergence, pursued with remarkable tenacity. Just as the logic of the commodity reigns over capitalists’ competing ambitions, and the logic of war always dominates the frequent modifications in weaponry, so the harsh logic of the spectacle controls the abundant diversity of media extravagances.
社会统治者经常宣称媒体员工对他们的糟糕服务: 但他们更经常地指责观众的庸俗, 指责观众几乎非理性地沉湎于媒体的快乐。这样一来, 一种实质上在媒体内部无数想像的差异, 将有助于掩蔽景观以非凡坚韧去追求的、事实上是景观集中结果的东西。正像商品的逻辑支配着资本主义竞争的雄心, 战争的逻辑支配着频繁的武器改进一样, 景观的无情逻辑也控制着媒体奢侈的丰富多样性。
In all that has happened in the last twenty years, the most important change lies in the very continuity of the spectacle. This has nothing to do with the perfecting of its media instruments, which had already reached a highly advanced stage of development it means quite simply that the spectacle’s domination has succeeded in raising a whole generation moulded to its laws. The extraordinary new conditions in which this entire generation has effectively lived constitute a precise and comprehensive summary of all that, henceforth, the spectacle will forbid; and also all that it will permit.
最近二十年发生的所有这些, 最重要的在于景观的真正连续性。这与大众传播媒介手段的改进没有一点关系, 尽管这一手段已达到了一个非常先进的发展阶段; 它只不过意味着景观已成功培养了适合它自己法则的整个一代人。这整个一代人深刻经历的特别新的环境构成了上述全部一切的精确而广泛的基础, 从此以后, 景观禁止它要禁止的; 同样, 它允许它要允许的。
4
ON a theoretical level I only need add a single detail to my earlier formulations, albeit one which has far-reaching consequences. In 1967 I distinguished two rival and successive forms of spectacular power, the concentrated and the diffuse. Both of them floated above real society, as its goal and its lie. The former, favouring the ideology condensed around a dictatorial personality, had accomplished the totalitarian counter-revolution. fascist as well as Stalinist. The latter, driving wage-earners to apply their freedom of choice to the vast range of new commodities now on offer, had represented the Americanisation of the world, a process which in some respects frightened but also successfully seduced those countries where it had been possible to maintain traditional forms of bourgeois democracy. Since then a third form has been established, through the rational combination of these two, and on the basis of a general victory of the form which had showed itself stronger: the diffuse. This is the integrated spectacle, which has since tended to impose itself globally.
在理论水平上我还需要对我早期的规划加上一个细节,纵使人们已取得了影响深远的成果。在1967年我区别了景观力量的两个对手和两种连续形式, 即集中的景观和弥散的景观。作为社会的目标和谎言, 他们均在真实的社会之上散播。前者支持意识形态围绕着独裁人格凝聚, 并成功完成了极权主义反革命的行程, 如法西斯主义和斯大林主义。后者操纵工薪族将其选择的自由运用到正在出售中的大量新商品的领域, 并表现了世界的美国化, 这一过程不但在某些方面令人惧怕, 而且还成功地引诱了那些国家, 那些有可能坚持资产阶级民主传统形式的国家。自那时以来, 通过理性地结合二者, 第三种形式又立建立起来, 以这一形式的普遍胜利为基础, 它越来越展示出自己强壮: 扩散。这就是综合的景观(integrated spectacle), 自此以后它将自己强加于全球。
Whereas Russia and Germany were largely responsible for the formation of the concentrated spectacle, and the United States for the diffuse form, the integrated spectacle has been pioneered by France and Italy. The emergence of this new form is attributable to a number of shared historical features, namely, the important role of the Stalinist party and unions in political and intellectual life, a weak democratic tradition, the long monopoly of power enjoyed by a single party of government, and the need to eliminate an unexpected upsurge in revolutionary activity.
尽管苏联和德国很大程度上要对集中景观的形式负责, 美国要对弥散景观的形式负责, 但综合的最观还是以法国和意大利为先锋。这一新形式的出现可归因于大量共享的历史特征, 即斯大林主义政党和联盟在政治和智力生活中的重要作用、民主传统的虚弱、被单一政治政党享用的长期垄断权力和在革命行动中排除难以预料的高潮的要求等等。
The integrated spectacle shows itself to be simultaneously concentrated and diffuse, and ever since the fruitful union of the two has learnt to employ both these qualities on a grander scale. Their former mode of application has changed considerably. As regards concentration, the controlling centre has now become occult never to be occupied by a known leader, or clear ideology. And on the diffuse side, the spectacle has never before put its mark to such a degree on almost the full range of socially produced behaviour and objects. For the final sense of the integrated spectacle is this – that it has integrated itself into reality to the same extent as it was describing it, and that it was reconstructing it as it was describing it. As a result, this reality no longer confronts the integrated spectacle as something alien. When the spectacle was concentrated, the greater part of surrounding society escaped it; when diffuse, a small part; today, no part. The spectacle has spread itself to the point where it now permeates all reality. It was easy to predict in theory what has been quickly and universally demonstrated by practical experience of economic reason’s relentless accomplishments: that the globalisation of the false was also the falsification of the globe. Beyond a legacy of old books and old buildings. still of some significance but destined to continual reduction and, moreover, increasingly highlighted and classified to suit the spectacle’s requirements, there remains nothing, in culture or in nature, which has not been transformed; and polluted, according to the means and interests of modem industry. Even genetics has become readily accessible to the dominant social forces.
综合的景观显示自己的集中和弥散是同时并存的, 自那时到现在, 富有成效的二者的结合学会了最大规模地使用二者的这些特性。他们以前的适用模式已相当大程度地改变了。至于控制中心的集中景观现在已变得很神秘, 并不再被知名的领导者或明确的意识形态所占有。而在弥散的景观方面, 景观也不再将其标志置于在社会中产生的行为和对象的几乎全部领域这样的程度。因为综合景观的最后的意义是——它将自己整合进现实到如此程度, 以致其实它正是在记录这一现实, 而且它对它的重建实际上也正是在记录它。结果, 这一现实就不再对抗好像有点异化的综合景观了。当景观集中的时候, 周围社会环境的越来越大的部分就从它逃离; 当景观弥散的时候, 周围社会环境的较少的部分就从它逃离; 今天, 周围社会环境已没有任何一个部分可以从它逃离。综合景观已将自己伸展到这样的程度——现在已渗透进全部实在。在理论上, 通过经济理性不屈不挠成功的实际经验, 快速和普遍展示的东西是很容易颈言的: 那就是, 虚假的全球化也就是全球的虚假化。除古书、老建筑和有价值的照片的遗赠之外, 适应景观需求的、日益地被突出和分类的那些注定会持续减少的传统东西, 根据现代工业的利益, 在其本性和文化方面已被完全变形和污染, 即使遗传学已能够很容易地接近支配性的社会力量。
Spectacular government, which now possesses all the means necessary to falsify the whole of production and perception, is the absolute master of memories just as it is the unfettered master of plans which will shape the most distant future. It reigns unchecked; it executes its summary judgements.
正像它是塑造最遥远未来设想的无拘无束的主人一样, 现在, 拥有伪造生产和感觉整体所有必需手段的景观政府也是记忆的绝对主人。它的统治不受检查; 它执行它自己的总结判决。
It is in these conditions that a parodic end of the division of labour suddenly appears, with carnivalesque gaiety; all the more welcome because it coincides with the generalised disappearance of all real ability. A financier can be a singer, a lawyer a police spy, a baker can parade his literary tastes, an actor can be president, a chef can philosophise on cookery techniques as if they were landmarks in universal history. Anyone can join the spectacle, in order publicly to adopt, or sometimes secretly practise, an entirely different activity from whatever specialism first made their name. Where ‘media status’ has acquired infinitely more importance than the value of anything one might actually be capable of doing. it is normal for this status to be readily transferable; for anyone, anywhere, to have the same right to the same kind of stardom. Most often these accelerated media particles pursue their own careers in the glow of statutorily guaranteed admiration. But it sometimes happens that the transition to the media provides the cover for several different enterprises, officially independent but in fact secredy linked by various ad hoc networks. With the result that occasionally the social division of labour, along with the readily foreseeable unity of its application, reappears in quite new forms: for example, one can now publish a novel in order to arrange an assassination. Such picturesque examples also go to show that one should never trust someone because of their job.
正是在这些条件下, 与好像过节一样的快乐气氛相一致, 一种拙劣模仿的劳动分工的终结突然出现了, 这是因为它与更加可喜的所有真实才能的普遍化消失相一致。一个金融家可以是一个歌手; 一个律师、一个警探、一个面包师可以炫耀他的文学品味; 一个男演员可以是一个总统; 一个厨师可以哲学化地探讨烹饪技术, 好像他们是世界历史的里程碑一样。为了公开采用或者有时秘密的实践, 任何人都可以加入景观, 完全不同的行为来自不管什么专业领域第一次给他们的命名。在”媒体身份”(media status)获得了比人们所做任何事情的价值都重要的地方, 媒体身份的迅速转换是正常的; 对任何人、任何地方来说, 同一类型的明星都享有同样的权利。那些绝大多数增加着媒体粒子(media particles)的明星在法定保证的赞美光环中追求他们自己的事业。但不时发生的是, 为各种各样企业摆供掩护的媒体转换, 形式上看来这些媒体似乎是独立的, 但事实上它总是秘密地与各种各样特殊的网络系统相联系。由于这一结果, 有时社会劳动分工与可预见的它的应用一致, 又以一种新形式重新显现出来: 例如人们为了整理一次暗杀就可能写一部小说。这样特殊的例子也开始表明没有人再会因为他们的工作去相信某人。
Yet the highest ambition of the integrated spectacle is still to tum secret agents into revolutionaries, and revolutionaries into secret agents.
但是, 综合景观的最高野心仍然是把间谍(secret agents)变成革命家, 把革命家变成间谍。
5
THE society whose modernisation has reached the stage of the integrated spectacle is characterised by the combined effect of five principal features: incessant technological renewal; integration of state and economy; generalised secrecy; unanswerable lies; an eternal present.
现代化达到综合景观阶段的社会是以五个主要特征联合作用为特色的社会: 不间断的科学技术的更新; 国家和经济的一体化(integration); 普遍化的秘密; 无可置辩的谎言; 永恒在场。
Technological innovation has a long history. and is an essential component of capitalist society. sometimes described as industrial or post-industrial. But since its most recent acceleration (in the aftermath of the Second World War) it has greatly reinforced spectacular authority. by surrendering everybody to the mercy of specialists. to their calculations and to the judgements which always depend on them. The integration of state and economy is the most evident trend of the century; it is at the very least the motor of all recent economic developments. The defensive and offensive pact concluded between these two powers, economy and state, has provided them with the greatest common advantages in every field: each may be said to own the other; at any rate. it is absurd to oppose them, or to distinguish between their reasons and follies. This union, too, has proved to be highly favourable to the development of spectacular domination – indeed, the two have been indistinguishable from the very start. The other three features are direct effects of this domination, in its integrated stage.
科技创新已有很长的历史, 它也是资本主义社会的基本构成成分, 并不时被称为工业的或后工业的。但由于它最近一个时期以来(第二次世界大战以后的时期)的加速发展, 通过使每一个人向专家的恩惠, 向他们计算和判断的屈服(因为每一个人都要依赖他们), 科技创新已极大强化了景观的权威。国家和经济的一体化是这一世纪最明显的潮流; 它至少是每一次新近经济发展的发动机。国家和经济两大力量之间防卫和进攻条约的缔结, 对每一个领域提供了最大的共同利益: 每一方都承认对方, 至少, 彼此相互反对或者区别他们的动机和罪恶是可笑的。现已充分证明这一联合非常有利于景观统治的发展——确实, 已无法再辨别二者真正的优先地位。在其综合阶段, 其他三个特点是这一景观统治的直接效应。
Generalised secrecy stands behind the spectacle, as the decisive complement of all it displays and, in the last analysis. as its most vital operation.
普遍化的秘密, 作为景观的后援, 被看作是它全部展示的决定性补充, 归根到底被看作景观的最至关重要的活动。
The simple fact of being unanswerable has given what is false an entirely new quality. At a stroke it is truth which has almost everywhere ceased to exist or, at best, has been reduced to the status of pure hypothesis. Unanswerable lies have succeeded in eliminating public opinion, which first lost the ability to make itself heard and then very quickly dissolved altogether. This evidently has significant consequences for politics, the applied sciences, the legal system and the arts.
既定的无法回答的简单事实是: 虚假已完全成为新的品质。那些几乎到处停止存在或至多被变为纯粹假设情形的东西一举成为真理。无可置辩的谎言成功排除了公众舆论, 使公众舆论第一次失去了把自己的意见说给别人听的能力, 并迅速完全的被消解掉了。这对政治学、应用科学、法律体系和文艺都有明显的重大的价值。
The manufacture of a present where fashion itself, from clothes to music, has come to a halt, which wants to forget the past and no longer seems to believe in a future, is achieved by the ceaseless circularity of information, always returning to the same short list of trivialities, passionately proclaimed as major discoveries. Meanwhile news of what is genuinely important, of what is actually changing, comes rarely. and then in fits and starts. It always concerns this world’s apparent condemnation of its own existence, the stages in its programmed self-destruction.
那种要忘掉过去似乎也不再相信未来的现在的生产(在那里从服装到音乐, 流行时尚自身己归于停止), 已被信息的永不间断的迂回所完成——那种总是返回到同样平凡琐事的最后候选名单, 并热烈地将其宣布为主要发现的永不间断的信息的迂回。与此同时, 什么是真正重要的消息, 什么是真实的变化信息却几乎不出现, 或只是间断地出现。它始终关心的是这个世界自身存在的表面谴责, 并上演它自己编排好了的自我毁灭的节目。
6
SPECTACULAR domination’s first priority was to eradicate historical knowledge in general; beginning with just about all rational information and commentary on the most recent past. The evidence for this is so glaring it hardly needs further explanation. With consummate skill the spectacle organises ignorance of what is about to happen and, immediately afterwards, the forgetting of whatever has nonetheless’ been understood. The more important something is, the more it is hidden. Nothing in the last twenty years has been so thoroughly coated in obedient lies as the history of May 1968. Some useful lessons have indeed been learnt from certain demystifying studies of those days; these, however, remain state secrets.
一般而言, 景观统治的绝对优先权就是根除历史知识, 首先根除的正是全部理性信息相关于最近之过去的评论。关于这一点的证据是如此明显几乎用不着进一步的说明。伴随着完美的技巧, 景观组织安排了对什么将要发生的无知, 及紧随其后的对如何理解的忘记。某事越是重要, 它就越是被隐藏起来。像1968年5月的历史一样, 最近二十年没有什么事情是如此彻底地涂上了一层顺从的谎言的。一些真正有益的教训就学自那些日子将定的非神圣化研究; 可是, 所有这些仍然残留着国家的秘密。
In France, it is some ten years now since a president of the republic, long ago forgotten but at the time still basking on the spectacle’s surface, naively expressed his delight at ‘knowing that henceforth we will live in a world without memory, where images flow and merge, like reflections on the water’. Convenient indeed for those in business, and who know how to stay there. The end of history gives power a welcome break. Success is guaranteed in all its undertakings, or at least the rumour of success.
在法国, 自共和国总统长久被遗忘以来至今已有若干个十年, 也正是在那个时候它却沐浴在景观外观的温暖里, 并天真地表达了它对”今后我们将住进没有记忆的也界, 在那里影像像水面倒影一样涌流又消失”的喜悦。那些确实适宜于开始工作的人也是知道如何等待的人。历史的终结提供了受欢迎的断裂的力量。成功在其全部的承诺中被保证, 或者至少是保证了成功的传闻。
How drastically any absolute power will suppress history depends on the extent of its imperious interests or obligations, and especially on its practical capacity to execute its aims. Ts’in Che Hoang Ti had books burned, but he never managed to get rid of all. of them. In our own century Stalin went further, yet despite the various accomplices he managed to find outside his empire’s borders, there remained a vast area of the world beyond the reach of his police, where his schemes could be ridiculed. With its new techniques now adopted globally, the integrated spectacle has done much better. Ineptitude compels universal respect; it is no longer permitted to laugh at it. In any case, it has become impossible to show that one is laughing.
不管压仰历史的权力是一种怎样绝对的权力, 一定程度上它都依赖其迫切的利益和职责, 特别是要依赖于它完成自己目标的实际能力。中国古代的秦始皇焚书又坑儒, 但他绝不是要废除全部书籍。在我们这一世纪, 斯大林走得更远, 然而, 尽管有如此多的各种各样的同谋者、帮凶设法帮助他发现他的帝国的外部疆界, 这一世界的巨大地区仍然在其警察统治之外, 在那里, 他的安排只会受到嘲笑。随着景观新技术全球性的新采用, 综合的景观做得比以前更好。无能强迫要求一种普遍的恭敬; 它不再允许嘲笑它。无论如何, 展示景观的可笑已成为不可能。
History’s domain was the memorable, the totality of events whose consequences would be lastingly apparent. And thus, inseparably, history was knowledge that should endure and aid in understanding, at least in part, what was to come: ‘an everlasting possession’, according to Thucydides. In this way history was the measure of genuine novelty. It is in the interests of those who sell novelty at any price to eradicate the means of measuring it. When social significance is attributed only to what is immediate, and to what will be immediate immediately afterwards, always replacing another, identical, immediacy, it can be seen that the uses of the media guarantee a kind of eternity of noisy insignificance.
历史的领域是结局最终会真相大白的特殊的事件整体的领域。因此, 历史是与支持和帮助人们的理解力不能分离的知识, 依照修昔底德的观点, 至少部分地是与将要出现的”一种永恒的占有”不可分离的知识。这样, 历史就是真正新奇事物的尺度。历史只是为那些人而打算——只是为那些为根除测量历史的手段无论如何也要贩卖新奇事物的人而打算。当社会意义仅仅被认为是: 什么是直接的, 什么是紧接着将要到来的直接的, 并总是取代另一个同样的直接性时, 那么社会意义就可能会在媒体效用所保证的一种喧闹的无意义的永恒中被发现。
The precious advantage which the spectacle has acquired through the outlawing of history, from having driven the recent past into hiding, and from having made everyone forget the spirit of history within society. is above all the ability to cover its own tracks – to conceal the very progress of its recent world conquest. Its power already seems familiar, as if it had always been there. All usurpers have shared this aim: to make us forget that they have only just arrived.
通过将新近的过去驱赶进隐匿之所, 使每一个人在社会内忘掉历史精神这一对历史的放逐, 景观所赢得的珍贵的优势首先是遮蔽它自己踪迹的能力——遮蔽它最近的世界性征服的真实过程。它的力量似乎早已常见, 就像它总是在那里一样。所有的篡位者都分享这一目标: 使我们忘记他们仅是刚刚到达。
7
WITH the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning. For every imbecility presented by the spectacle, there are only the media’s professionals to give an answer, with a few respectful rectifications or remonstrations. And they are hardly extravagant, even with these, for besides their extreme ignorance, their personal and professional solidarity with the spectacle’s overall authority and the society it expresses makes it their duty, and their pleasure, never to diverge from that authority whose majesty must not be threatened. It must not be forgotten that every media professional is bound by wages and other rewards and recompenses to a master, and sometimes to several; and that every one of them knows he is dispensable.
随着历史的毁灭, 当代事件自身退隐进一种遥远的寓言般的无法证实的故事领域、未经检查的统计学、靠不住的解释和站不住脚的推理之中。对于每一次由景观所显现的低能, 只有大众传播媒介的专业人员, 伴随着少许殷勤, 给出一种净化过的或抗辩式的回答。即使这些, 也不能算过分, 因为除了他们极端的无知, 他们个人和专业的休戚相关与景观总体权威, 与景观表达的产生他们的职责、他们欢乐的社会的一致之外, 他们从不与不会受威胁的神圣权威不一致。景观不许忘记每一个媒体专业人员都是被工资、奖金, 对一个有时是几个老板的回报所制约的; 而且, 他们中的每一人都知道他是可有可无的。
All experts serve the state and the media and only in that way do they achieve their status. Every expert follows his master, for all former possibilities for independence have been gradually reduced to nil by present society’s mode of organisation. The most useful expert, of course, is the one who can lie. With their different motives, those who need experts are falsifiers and fools. Whenever individuals lose the capacity to see things for themselves, the expert is there to offer an absolute reassurance. Once there were experts in Etruscan art, and competent ones, for Etruscan art was not for sale. But a period which, for example, finds it profitable to fake by chemical means various famous wines, can only sell them if it has created wine experts able to con connoisseurs into admiring their new, more distinctive, flavours. Cervantes remarks that ‘under a poor cloak you commonly find a good drinker’. Someone who knows his wine may often understand nothing about the rules of the nuclear industry; but spectacular power calculates that if one expert can make a fool of him with nuclear energy, another can easily do the same with wine. And it is well known, for example, that media meteorologists, forecasting temperature or rainfall for the next forty-eight hours, are severely limited in what they say by the obligation to maintain certain economic, touristic and regional balances, when so many people make so many journeys on so many roads, between so many equally desolate places; thus they can only try to make their names as entertainers.
所有服务于国家和媒体的专家, 只有这样做时他们才这到了他们的地位, 即每一个专家都必须追随他的主人, 因为所有以前适于独立的可能性, 通过现代社会的组织模式都已逐渐减少为零。当然最有用的专家是那些是能撒谎的人。和他们的各种动机相一致, 他们也需要专家是弄虚作假者和白痴。什么时候个体失去了依靠自己的力量了解事物的能力, 什么时候专家就提供了绝对的保证。从前存在从事伊特鲁里亚艺术并胜任这一艺术的专家, 那是因为伊特鲁里亚艺术是非卖品。但现在则相反, 举例来说, 一个时期人们发现通过化学方法仿冒各种各样名葡萄酒有利可图, 因为如果它制造出来的所谓葡萄酒专家能够欺骗酒类品鉴家, 使他们赞美他们的假酒具有新的更有特色的风味的话, 那么这些假酒就能很好地销售出去。塞万提斯说过: “在一件穷斗篷之下你通常会发现一个好酒鬼。”了解自己酒的人也许常常对原子能工业的规则一点也不懂, 但是景观力量认为如果一个专家可以用核能嘲弄他的话, 那么另一专家也能很容易地用葡萄酒来愚弄他。例如, 众所周知, 影视媒体气象预报员预报下48小时的温度和降雨量时, 他们所说的一切是严格受维持特定的经济、旅游和地区平衡的职责所限制的, 因为当时在如此多的同样荒凉地点之间, 正有如此多的人在如此多的路上进行如此多的旅游; 因此, 影视媒体气象预报员所做的只不过是努力使他们的名声像演艺人员一样响。
One aspect of the disappearance of all objective historical knowledge can be seen in the way that individual reputations have become malleable and alterable at will by those who control all information: information which is gathered and also – an entirely different matter – information which is broadcast. Their ability to falsify is thus unlimited. Historical evidence which the spectacle does not need to know ceases to be evidence. When the only fame is that bestowed by the grace and favour of a spectacular Court, disgrace may swiftly follow. An anti-spectacular notoriety has become something extremely rare. I myself am one of the last people to retain one, having never had any other. But it has also become extraordinarily suspect. Society has officially declared itself to be spectacular. To be known outside spectacular relations is already to be known as an enemy of society.
所有客观历史知识消失的一个方面, 只有在个人名声被那些控制全部信息的人任意延展和改变的方式中才能看到: 这一信息是被集中起来的, 并且还具有一种完全不同的内容——这个信息就是广播。他们的伪造能力因此是无限的。景观不需要了解的历史证据就不再是证据。当唯一的声誉是被优雅美好的景观法庭授予的时, 耻辱也许很快就来到。反对景观的恶名越来越稀少。我自己就是保持自己的个性至最后的人, 从未成为其他任何人, 但因此也变得格外的令人生疑。社会已正式宣布自己是景观的。人人所知的外在景观的关系已被熟知为一种社会的敌人
A person’s past can be entirely rewritten, radically altered, recreated in the manner of the Moscow trials and without even having to bother with anything as clumsy as a trial. Killing comes cheaper these days. Those who run the spectacle, or their friends, surely have no lack of false witnesses, though they may be unskilled – and how could the spectators who witness the exploits of these false witnesses ever recognise their blunders? – or false documents, which are always highly effective. Thus it is no longer possible to believe anything about anyone that you have not learned for yourself, directly. But in fact false accusations are rarely necessary. Once one controls the mechanism which operates the only form of social verification to be fully and universally recognised, one can say what one likes. The spectacle proves its arguments simply by going round in circles: by coming back to the start, by repetition, by constant reaffirmation in the only space left where anything can be publicly affirmed, and believed, precisely because that is the only thing to which everyone is witness. Spectacular power can similarly deny whatever it likes, once, or three times over, and change the subject; knowing full well there is no danger of any riposte, in its own space or any other.
一个人的过去能够被完全的改写, 根本地改变, 以莫斯科审讯的方式被重新创造——没有任何审讯的烦恼。目前杀人变得越来越容易。这些控制景观的人或者他们的朋友们, 肯定不缺乏虚假的证据, 尽管他们也许是不熟练的——证明了虚假证据使用的观众如何不断地认识他们的失误? ——他们肯定也不缺乏虚假的文献——这些伪文献总是给人以深刻印象。所以不假思索地相信任何一个你不亲自直接了解的人的事情不再可能发生了。但实际上, 诬告极少是必需的。一旦人们控制了普通公认的操纵社会取证的唯一的形式机制, 人们就可以说他喜欢说的东西。通过简单地来回循环, 景观证明了它自己的论据: 通过回到起点、重复、持续地再确认所离开的唯一地方, 在那里的每一件事情都被公开的确认、信奉, 因为这正好是每一个人都是证人(目击者)这件事。景观力量能够同样一次或多次地否定它喜欢的一切, 改变主题, 并完全消除在它自己的空间和其他任何空间都不存在任何反驳的危险。
For the agora, the general community, has gone, along with communities restricted to intermediary bodies or to independent institutions, to salons or cafes, or to workers in a single company. There is no place left where people can discuss the realities which concern them, because they can never lastingly free themselves from the crushing presence of media discourse and of the various forces organised to relay it. Nothing remains of the relatively independent judgement of those who once made up the world of learning; of those, for example, who used to base their self-respect on their ability to verify, to come close to an impartial history of facts, or at least to believe that such a history deserved to be known. There is no longer even any incontestable bibliographical truth, and the computerised catalogues of national libraries are well-equipped to remove any residual traces. It is disorienting to consider what it meant to be a judge, a doctor or a historian not so long ago, and to recall the obligations and imperatives they often accepted, within the limits of their competence: men resemble their times more than their fathers.
集市、普遍政治共同体连同局限于媒介团体、独立社团、沙龙、咖啡馆或单一公司工人的共同体一起, 都一去不复返了。人们讨论关于他们自己现实的任何空间都没有被留下, 因为他们绝不可能从媒体布道的决定性存在, 从组织传播它的各种各样的力量决定性在场中解放他们自己。那些从前制造这一知识世界的人, 没有留下他们相对独立的判断; 例如, 为了接近不偏不倚的事实的历史, 或至少相信那种值得了解的历史, 这些人习惯于将他们的自尊建立于有待证实的他们的能力之上。不再有任何无可置疑的文献学的真理, 国立图书馆计算机化的目录, 装备完善以削除掉一切残余的踪迹。不久以前, 思考成为一名法官、一位医生和一个历史学家意味着什么是令人困惑的, 在他们权能的限度内, 取消他们常常认可的职责和规则也是令人困惑的: 与他们的父辈相比, 人更加酷似他们的时代。
When the spectacle stops talking about something for three days, it is as if it did not exist. For it has then gone on to talk about something else, and it is that which henceforth, in short, exists. The practical consequences, as we see, are enormous.
当景观有三天停止谈论某事时, 好像这事就已不存在了。因为那时景观在继续议论别的事, 总之, 自此以后别的事又存在了。如我们所见, 景观这一作用的实际意义是巨大的。
We believe we know that in Greece history and democracy entered the world at the same rime. We can prove that their disappearances have also been simultaneous.
我们相信我们知道, 在希腊, 历史和民主是同时进入世界的, 我们能够证明他们也是同时消失的。
To this list of the triumphs of power we should, however, add one result which has proved negative: once the running of a state involves a permanent and massive shortage of historical knowledge, that state can no longer be led strategically.
然而, 对这一力量胜利的目录, 我们应该加上一个已证实的消极性的结果: 一旦国家的运转陷入持续的和巨大的历史知识的匮乏之中, 这一国家就不再被战略性所引导。
8
ONCE it attains the stage of the integrated spectacle, self-proclaimed democratic society seems to be generally accepted as the realisation of a fragile perfection. So that it must no longer be exposed to attacks, being fragile; and indeed is no longer open to attack, being perfect as no other society before it. It is a fragile society because it has great difficulty managing its dangerous technological expansion. But it is a perfect society for governing; and the proof is that all those who aspire to govern want to govern this one, in the same way, changing hardly a thing. For the first time in contemporary Europe no party or fraction of a party even tries to pretend that they wish to change anything significant. The commodity is beyond criticism: as a general system and even as the particular forms of junk which heads of industry choose to put on the market at any given time.
一旦社会达到综合景观的阶段, 自称民主的社会作为脆弱完美的实现, 好像就被普遍接受了。所以, 因其脆弱, 它不再受到攻击; 确实, 不像以前其他的社会, 因其完美它也不再向攻击敞开。因为控制其危险的科学技术的扩张有着巨大的困难, 这一社会也是一个脆弱的社会。但是, 因其统治, 它也是一个完美的社会; 证据是所有热望统治的人都同样要去统治这个社会, 可几乎没有一件事情发生变化。今天, 在当代欧洲第一次没有政党或一个政党的分支哪怕是设法假装他们希望去改变任何何意义的事情。商品作为一种普遍的体系, 甚至作为工业巨头们愿意随时投放市场的特殊形式的废弃物, 超出了批判的范围。
Wherever the spectacle has its dominion the only organised forces are those which want the spectacle. Thus no one can be the enemy of what exists, nor transgress the omertà which applies to everything. We have dispensed with that disturbing conception, which was dominant for over two hundred years, in which a society was open to criticism or transformation, reform or revolution. Not thanks to any new arguments, but quite simply because all argument has become useless. From this result we can estimate not universal happiness, but the redoubtable strength of tyranny’s tentacles.
无论在哪里景观使其统治仅仅成为一种组织力量, 哪里就需要景观。 因此, 没有人能够成为本质存在的敌人, 也没有人违反那适用于一切事情的拒绝作证。我们已无需那种统治我们这二百年之久的令人烦扰的观念, 在这种观念中社会应对批判或改革, 改良或革命开放。这并不是由于出现了任何新的论据导致的结果, 非常简单, 而是因为所有的论据都变得的无效。从这个结果我们能够判断的不是普遍的幸福, 而是可怕的暴政魔爪的力量。
Never before has censorship been so perfect. Never before have those who are still led to believe, in a few countries, that they remain free citizens, been less entitled to make their opinions heard, wherever it is a matter of choices affecting their real lives. Never before has it been possible to lie to them so brazenly. The spectator is simply supposed to know nothing, and deserve nothing. Those who are always watching to see what happens next will never act: such must be the spectator’s condition. People often cite the United States as an exception because there Nixon eventually came to grief with a series of denials whose clumsiness was too cynical: but this entirely local exception, for which there were some old historical causes, clearly no longer holds true, since Reagan has recently been able to do the same thing with impunity. Many things. may be unauthorised; everything is permitted. Talk of scandal is thus archaic. The most profound summing-up of the period which the whole world entered shortly after Italy and the United States, can be found in the words of a senior Italian statesman, a member, simultaneously, of both the official government and the parallel government, P2, Potere Due: ‘Once there were scandals, but not any more.’
以前从来没有如此完美的审查制度。以前在少许国家, 无论影响他们真实生活的选择是怎样的, 从来没有那些一直坚信自己保留了自由公民身份的人却几乎没有资格表这自己观点这样的事情。以前从来没有如此厚脸皮地向他们撒谎的可能性。观众简直被期望一无所知, 一文不值。那种总是注视着观察下一步将发生什么的人从来不行动: 这肯定是观众的情形。人们经常引用美国作为一个例外, 因为, 在那里伴随着一系列笨拙地冷嘲热讽的否定, 尼克松最终走向失败: 但这只是完全局部的例外, 因为正是由于一些陈旧的明显已不再适用历史理由, 里根最近才可以不受任何惩罚的做同样的事情。许多事情也许是未被授权的; 但一切都是允许的。谈论丑闻是古风。对在意大利和美国之后整个世界立即进入的这一阶段的意义深远的总结, 在既是意大利政府的老政治家, 同时又是英国会议员的包特瑞·杜的这样一句话中体现出来: “一旦有了丑闻, 便不再有别的东西。”
In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx described the state’s encroachment upon Second Empire France, then blessed with half a million bureaucrats: ‘[Everything was] made a subject for governmental activity, whether it was a bridge, a schoolhouse, the communal property of a village community, or the railways, the national wealth and the national university of France.’ The famous question of the funding of political parties was already being posed, for Marx noted that, ‘The parties that strove in turn for mastery regarded possession of this immense state edifice as the main booty for the victor.’ Yet this may nonetheless sound somewhat bucolic and out of date, at a time when the state’s speculations involve new towns and motorways, channel tunnels and nuclear energy, oil wells and computers, the administration of banks and cultural centres, the modification of the ‘audiovisual landscape’ and secret arms exports, property speculation and pharmaceuticals, agribusiness and hospitals, military credits and the secret funds of the ever-expanding departments charged with running society’S numerous defence services. But Marx unfortunately remains all too up to date when in the same book he describes this government, which ‘rather than deciding by night and striking by day, decides by day and strikes by night’.
在《路易波拿巴的雾月十八日》中, 马克思描述了关于法兰西第二帝国的国家侵占及五十万官僚主义者对它的颂扬: “每一件成功的事情都起因于政府的行为, 无论它是一座桥梁、一座校舍、一个农村公社的公共财产, 还是一条铁路、国家的财富和法国国立大学”。著名的政治政党的基金问题已经开始被提出, 马克思写道: “那些相继争夺统治权的政党, 都把这个庞大的国家建筑物的夺得视为胜利者的主要战利品。”然而, 虽然如此, 这也许听起来还是有些田园牧歌的味道, 有些过时, 国家的投机买卖一度包括新城镇和公路, 海底隧道和核能, 油井和计算机, 银行管理和文化中心, “视听风景”更改和秘密武器出口, 财产投机和药物、农工联合企业及医院, 军队信用和负责控制国家大量防卫服务永不公开部门的秘密资金等等。但不幸的是, 当马克思在同一本书中描述这一政府时, 他保留至今的是: 这一政府”不是夜里决定, 白天罢工, 而是白天决定, 夜里罢工”。
9
SUCH a perfect democracy constructs its own inconceivable foe, terrorism. Its wish is to be judged by its enemies rather than by its results. The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive. The spectators must certainly never know everything about terrorism, but they must always know enough to convince them that, compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic.
这样完美的民主, 建构了它自己难以想象的敌人——恐怖主义。它的愿望不是被自己的成败所裁决而是被它的敌人所裁决。恐怖主义的故事由国家所写就, 因而它具有非常大的教育意义。观众的确不一定了解有关恐怖主义的所有事情, 但他们了解的总是足以说服他们, 与恐怖主义相比, 别的所有事情一定可以接受, 或者无论如何, 别的所有事情是更加理性的和民主的。
The modernisation of repression has succeeded in perfecting – first in the Italian pilot-project under the name of pentiti – sworn professional accusers; a phenomenon first seen in the seventeenth century after the Fronde, when such people were called ‘certificated witnesses’. This spectacular judicial progress has filled Italy’s prisons with thousands of people condemned to do penance for a civil war which did not take place, a kind of mass armed insurrection which, by chance, never actually happened, a putsch woven of such stuff as dreams are made on.
现代化的压抑取得了完美的成功——首先是在pentiti名义之下的意大利人的示范计划中——在彻头彻尾的职业原告的宣誓中; 这一现象在弗罗德战争以后的17世纪首次被看到, 当时, 这样的人被称为”有资格的证人”。这一壮观的司法进步使成千上万的被判苦役的人塞满了意大利的监狱, 这些人被判刑是由于一场没有发生的内战, 一次碰巧没有实际爆发的民众武装起义, 一次像梦一样被编织进某一资料素材以获利的暴乱。
lt can be seen that interpretations of terrorism’s mysteries appear to have brought about a symmetry between contradictory views, rather like two schools of philosophy adhering to absolutely incompatible metaphysical systems. Some would see terrorism as simply a number of acts of blatant manipulation on the part of the secret services; others would reproach the terrorists for their total lack of historical understanding. But a little historical logic should rapidly convince us that there is nothing contradictory in recognising that people who understand nothing of history can readily be manipulated; even more so than others. And it is much easier to lead someone to ‘repent’ when it can be shown that everything he thought he did freely was actually known in advance. It is an inevitable consequence of clandestine, military forms of organisation that a few infiltrators can activate, and eliminate, a lot of people. Criticism, when evaluating armed struggles, must sometimes analyse particular operations without being led astray by the general resemblance that will finally be imposed on all of them. We should expect, as a logical possibility, that the state’s security services intend to use all the advantages they find in the realm of the spectacle, which has indeed been organised with that in mind for some considerable rime: on the contrary, it is a difficulty in perceiving this which is astonishing, and rings false.
能够看得比较清楚的是, 关于恐怖主义的神秘性的解释似乎导致了两种矛盾观点之间的平衡, 这有点像两个哲学流派坚持两种绝对的不可调和的形而上学的体系。一些人只是简单地把恐怖主义看作对部分特务部门的一些炫耀性操纵活动; 其他人则因恐怖主义者完全缺乏历史理解力而谴责他们。但历史的逻辑将迅速说服我们认识那些对历史一点也不理解人是很容易被操纵的, 这没有任何矛盾; 更不用说其他的了。当能够显示他所想所做的一切实际上预先已被知晓时, 使一个人”后悔”是比较容易的事。这也是秘密的军事组织形式的不可避免的结果, 在这种军事组织形式中少数渗透者能够行动起来, 并消灭许多人。当评估武装斗争时, 批判一定要不时分析没有被普遍相似性引向歧途的特殊军事行动, 这种普遍相似性最终都会强加于他们身上。作为一种逻辑可能性, 我们期望国家的安全服务在景观领域将会使用他们所发现的一切优势, 实际上在一些重要的时间内, 景观在精神上能随即被组织起来: 相反, 感觉到这令人惊异的一点是很困难的, 似乎也是不确实的。
Judicial repression’s present objective here, of course, is to generalise matters as fast as possible. What is important in this commodity is the packing, or the labelling: the price codes. One enemy of spectacular democracy is the same as another, just like spectacular democracies themselves. Thus there must be no right of asylum for terrorists, and even those who have not yet been accused of being terrorists can certainly become them, with extradition swiftly following. In November 1978, dealing with the case of a young print worker, Gabor Winter, wanted by the West German government mainly for having printed certain revolutionary leaflets, MIle Nicole Pradain, acting on behalf of the Department of Public Prosecution in the Appeal Court of Paris, quickly showed that the ‘political motives’ which could be the only grounds for refusing extradition under the Franco-German agreement of 29 November 1951, could not be invoked:
当然, 在这里公平压抑的现代目标是尽可能快的将问题普遍化。在这一商品中最重要是包装或商标: 价格代码。正像景观民主政治自身一样, 一个景观民主政治的敌人与另一个也是同样的。所以, 对恐怖主义者肯定不存在庇护权, 甚至那些至今还没有被作为恐怖主义被告的人, 也一定会伴随着迅速而来的引渡而变成被告。在1987年11月处理被西德政府因印刷特定革命传单所通缉的年青印刷工人格保尔·文特一案中, 尼科尔·普拉顿小姐代表公共检察机关在巴黎的上诉法庭代理了此案, 这一起诉很快就显示出”政治动机”, 在1951年ll月29日法国-德国协议框架内, 拒绝引渡政治犯是其唯一的基础, 但这一协议没有被引用:
Gabor Winter is a social criminal, not a political one. He refuses to accept social constraints. A true political criminal doesn’t reject society. He attacks political structures and not, like Gabor Winter, social structures.
“格保尔·文特是社会罪犯, 不是政治犯。他拒绝接受社会规范。一个真正的政治犯并不拒绝接受社会规范, 他攻击政治结构而不是像格保尔·文特一样攻击社会结构。”
The notion of acceptable political crime only became recognised in Europe once the bourgeoisie had successfully attacked previous social structures. The nature of political crime could not be separated from the varied objectives of social critique. This was true for Blanqui, Varlin, Durruti. Nowadays there is a pretence of wishing to preserve a purely political crime, like some inexpensive luxury, a crime which doubtless no one will ever have the occasion to commit again, since no one is interested in the subject any more; except for the professional politicians themselves, whose crimes are rarely pursued, nor for that matter called political. All crimes and offences are effectively social. But of all social crimes, none must be seen as worse than the impertinent claim to still want to change something in a society which has so far been only too kind and patient; but has had enough of being blamed.
一旦资产阶级成功地抨击以前的社会结构, 政治犯罪概念就变得在欧洲被认可。政治犯罪的本性不可能从社会批判的各种各样的目标中分离出去。对于布兰奎, 沃林、达如特这是真实的。今天那种希望保持纯粹政治犯的主张, 像某些便宜的乐趣一样, 肯定没有人再重试, 因为没有人再对这些主题感兴趣; 除了那些职业政治家们以外, 他们的罪行很少被注意, 这些问题也不会总被称为政治罪恶。全部罪恶和过错实际上都是社会的。但没有一个人认为所有这些社会罪恶比粗鲁地宣布继续要在这个社会改变什么更坏, 这个社会迄今为止本当是友爱的相宽容的, 但它受够了指责。
10
ACCORDING to the basic interests of the new system of domination, the dissolution of logic has been pursued by different, but mutually supportive, means. Some of these means involve the technology which the spectacle has tested and popularised; others are more linked to the mass psychology of submission.
根据新统治体系的基本利益, 逻辑的分解已被彼此不同但相互支持的手段所实施。其中一些手段包括景观试验和普及的技术; 其他的则更多地与顺从的大众心理学相联系。
At the technological level, when images chosen and constructed by someone else have everywhere become the individual’s principal connection to the world he formerly observed for himself, it has certainly not been forgotten that these images can tolerate anything and everything; because within the same image all things can be juxtaposed without contradiction. The flow of images carries everything before it, and it is similarly someone else who controls at will this simplified summary of the sensible world; who decides where the flow will lead as well as the rhythm of what should be shown, like some perpetual, arbitrary surprise, leaving no time for reflection, and entirely independent of what the spectator might understand or think of it. In this concrete experience of permanent submission lies the psychological origin of such general acceptance of what is; an acceptance which comes to find in it, ipso facto, a sufficient value. Beyond what is strictly secret, spectacular discourse obviously silences anything it finds inconvenient. It isolates all it shows from its context, its past, its intentions and its consequences. It is thus completely illogical. Since no one may contradict it, it has the right to contradict itself, to correct its own past. The arrogant intention of its servants, when they have to put forward some new, and perhaps still more dishonest version of certain facts, is to harshly correct the ignorance and misinterpretations they attribute to their public, while the day before they themselves were busily disseminating the error, with their habitual assurance. Thus the spectacle’s instruction and the spectators’ ignorance are wrongly seen as antagonistic factors when in fact they give birth to each other. In the same way, the computer’s binary language is an irresistible inducement to the continual and unreserved acceptance of what has been programmed according to the wishes of someone else and passes for the timeless source of a superior, impartial and total logic. Such progress, such speed, such breadth of vocabulary! Political? Social? Make your choice. You cannot have both. My own choice is inescapable. They are jeering at us, and we know whom these programs are for. Thus it is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are still unable to read, for reading demands making judgements at every line; and is the only access to the wealth of pre-spectacular human experience. Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak.
在技术的层面上, 当被他人选择和建构的影像到处变成个体与以前他依靠自己力量观察的世界的主要联系时, 这些能够默许任何事情, 默许一切事情的影像一定不会被忘记; 因为在同一影像中的所有事情都能被无矛盾地并置。影像的流动势如破竹, 这一流动的影像类似于随意控制这个可感觉的世界的单一化内涵的他者; 他决定影像流动的地点和它应该如何显示的节奏, 像不断的而又任意的奇袭一样, 他不留时间给反思, 并完全独立于观众可能对他的理解或思考。在这个永久顺从的具体经历中存在着普遍接受的心理根源; 这一最终在心理中发现的接受, 根据事实, 具有充分的价值。在严格的秘密之外, 景观布道(spectacular discourse)明显使引起它不便的事情安静下来。景观布道隔离了来自于它的语境、它的过去、它的意图和它的结果的所有展示。它是完全不合逻辑的。因为没有什么东西同它相矛盾, 它有权与自己相抵触, 并修改自己的过去。当他们提出一些新的多半是不诚实的关于特定事实的见解时, 景观公仆的自大计划将严厉地纠正他们认为是他们公众的无知和误解, 而在前一天伴随着他们自己习惯住地厚颜, 他们还很忙碌地散布这些错误。所以, 景观教育和观众的无知错误地被作为相敌对的因素来认识, 其实他们彼此共生。同样, 计算机二进制的语言对于持续的、无限的、依据他人的愿望编程的接受是一种不可抵抗的诱惑, 并被视为一种更广泛的、公正的、总体逻辑的永恒源泉。这样的进步, 这样的速度, 这样广博的词汇量! 是政治的? 还是社会的? 做出你的选择吧。你不能同时占有两者, 自我选择是不可避免的。他们在嘲笑我们, 我们知道这些程序是他们所拥护的。因此, 孩子们在很早阶段就狂热地开始他们计算机科学知识的教育这没有什么值得惊诧的; 虽然他们还没有能力阅读, 因为阅读要求对每一行字都要做出判断; 并且这也是唯一通向前景观人类经验财富的入口。对话差不多已死亡, 而知道如何去说的人又将如此迅速地出现了。
The primary cause of the decadence of contemporary thought evidently lies in the fact that spectacular discourse leaves no room for any reply; while logic was only socially constructed through dialogue: Furthermore, when respect for those who speak through the spectacle is so widespread, when they are held to be rich, important, prestigious, to be authority itself, the spectators tend to want to be just as illogical as the spectacle, thereby proudly displaying an individual reflection of this authority. And finally, logic is not easy, and no one has tried to teach it. Drug addicts do not study logic; they no longer need it, nor are they capable of it. The spectator’s laziness is shared by all intellectual functionaries and overnight specialists, all of whom do their best to conceal the narrow limits of their knowledge by the dogmatic repetition of arguments with illogical authority.
当代思想颓废的主要原因明显在于景观布道没有为任何答辩留下的余地; 同时逻辑只是通过对话在全社会中被建钩。另外, 什么时候从头到尾谈论景观的人如此普遍受到尊重, 什么时候也是他们保持富裕、重要、有声望, 保持自我权威的时候, 正像景观是非理性的一样, 观众需要的是傲慢地展示这一权威的个人反思。最后, 逻辑并不易懂, 并且没人试图去讲讲授它。瘾君子不研究逻辑; 他们不再需要它, 他们也没有这种逻辑能力。观众的怠情被职员式的知识分子和熬夜专家所分享, 通过非理性权威的论证的教条式循环, 他们做的最好的事情就是努力掩盖他们自己知识的狭隘。
11
IT IS generally believed that those who have displayed the greatest incapacity in matters of logic are self-proclaimed revolutionaries. This unjustified reproach dates from an age when almost everyone thought with some minimum of logic, with the striking exception of cretins and militants; and in the case of the latter bad faith played its part, intentionally, because it was held to be effective. But today there is no escaping the fact that intense absorption of the spectacle has, as we should have expected, turned most of our contemporaries into ideologues, if only in fits and starts, bits and pieces. Absence of logic, that is to say loss of the ability immediately to perceive what is significant and what is insignificant or irrelevant; what is incompatible or what could well be complementary; all that a particular consequence implies and at the same time all that it excludes – high doses of this disease have been intentionally injected into the population by the spectacle’s anaesthetists / resuscitators. Rebels have certainly not been any more illogical than passive victims. It is simply that the fonner display a more intense manifestation of the generalised irrationality, because while parading their aims and programmes they have actually tried to carry out practical projects – even if it is only to read certain texts and show that they know what they mean. They have committed themselves to overcoming logic, even at the level of strategy, which is precisely the entire operational field of the dialectical logic of conflicts; but, like everyone else, they lack the basic ability to orient themselves by the old, imperfect tools of formal logic. No one worries about them; and hardly anyone thinks about the others.
人们一般相信, 那些在逻辑问题上显示最大无能的人总自称为革命家。这个未被证明为正确的指责起始于这样一个时期, 那时几乎每一个入的思想和逻辑的最小化一致, 除明显的白痴和斗士之外, 每一个人都同他人的意见一致; 在后一种情形下不诚实故意发挥着重要作用, 因为不诚实被坚持为有效的方法。但像我们所期望的, 今天没有什么能避开这一事实——景观的剧烈吞并已将绝大部分我们的同时代人变成了空想家, 只不过是以间歇的和零碎的形式。逻辑的缺席, 焕句话说, 就是直接感知什么是有意义的, 什么是无意义的或不相关的, 什么是矛盾的或什么可能是相互补充的等等能力的丧失, 所有这些, 作为一个特殊后果都包含同时又排斥了治疗这一疾病的昂贵药物, 这一疾病是通过景观麻醉师/复活器故意注射进所有人的。反叛者肯定不比被动受害人更不合逻辑。前者显示了一种普遍化的非理性的强烈袭表现, 因为, 当炫耀他们的目的和编程时, 他们实际上正在努力推行他们实际的计划——即使它只是阅读特定的文本, 并显示他们已知道这意味着什么。即使在战略的层面上, 他们也专心致力于克服逻辑, 这正好是冲突的辩证逻辑斗争的整个运作领域; 但像他人一样, 他们缺乏通过古老的不完善的形式逻辑定位自己方向的基本能力。没有一个人为此感到焦虑; 几乎任何人都不考虑其他人。
The individual who has been more deeply marked by this impoverished spectacular thought than by any other aspect of his experience puts himself at the service of the established order right from the start, even though subjectively he may have had quite the opposite intention. He will essentially follow the language of the spectacle, for it is the only one he is familiar with; the one in which he learned to speak. No doubt he would like to be regarded as an enemy of its rhetoric; but he will use its syntax. This is one of the most important aspects of spectacular domination’s success.
那些与他自己经历的任何万面相比, 都被贫乏的景观思想打下深深标志的个人, 一开始就把自己置于对既定秩序权力的效力中, 尽管主观上他也许早有完全不同的意图。他根本上追随着景观的语言, 因为这是他唯一熟悉的语言; 在这一语言中他学会了言说。无疑他喜欢被认作是这一语言修辞的敌人; 但他愿意运用这一语言的句法。这是景观统治成功的最重要的方面之一。
The swift disappearance of our former vocabulary is merely one moment in this process. It helps it along.
快速消失的先前的词汇只不过是这一过程的一个瞬间。景观语言帮助它前行。
12
THE erasure of the personality is the fatal accompaniment to an existence which is concretely submissive to the spectacle’s rules, ever more removed from the possibility of authentic experience and thus from the discovery of individual preferences. Paradoxically, permanent self-denial is the price the individual pays for the tiniest bit of social status. Such an existence demands a fluid fidelity, a succession of continually disappointing commitments to false products. It is a matter of running hard to keep up with the inflation of devalued signs of life. Drugs help one to come to terms with this state of affairs, while madness allows one to escape from it.
个性的消除是具体屈从于景观规则存在的不幸附属物, 这一存在甚至还在不断地除去真实经历的可能性, 并从而除去了个人选择的发现。自相矛盾的是, 永久的自我否定是个人为补偿最微小的社会地位而付出的代价。这样的存在要求一种流动的忠诚, 要求一连串对伪产品的持续的令人失望的承诺。追赶贬值的生命时尚的通货膨胀是一种很困难的问题。麻醉药能够帮助人们慢慢习惯于这一状态, 虽然疯狂能使人从麻醉中逃离。
In all sorts of business in this society, where the distribution of goods is centralised in such a way that it determines – both notoriously and secredy – the very definition of what could be desirable, it sometimes happens that certain people are attributed with knowledge, qualities, or even vices, all entirely imaginary, in order to explain the satisfactory development of particular enterprises. The only aim is to hide, or at least to disguise as far as possible, the working of various agreements which decide everything.
在这一社会各种各样的交易中, 商品的分配以这样一种方式被集中, 它既声名狼藉又秘密地决定了什么是真正可人心意的真实定义, 为了解释特定企业的令人满意的发展, 不时发生事情的是特定人们被认为与知识、品质或者恶行及全部完全虚构的东西的相一致。唯一的目标是隐藏, 或者至少是尽可能久远地掩饰决定一切事情的多方面一致的活动。
Yet despite its frequent intentions, and the redoubtable means at its disposal, to highlight the full stature of supposedly remarkable personalities, present society more often only succeeds in demonstrating quite the opposite, and not merely in what has today replaced the arts, or discussion of the arts. One total incompetent will collide with another; panic ensues and it is then simply a matter of who will fall apart first. A lawyer, for example, forgetting that he is supposed to represent one side in a trial, will be genuinely swayed by the arguments of his opposite number, even when these arguments are as hollow as his own. It can also happen that an innocent suspect temporarily confesses to a crime he did not commit simply because he is impressed by the logic of an informer who wants him to believe he is guilty (see the case of Dr Archambeau in Poi tiers, in 1984).
然而不管它经常性的意图如何, 可怕的任意处置手段如何, 为了提高想象的引人注目的个性境界, 现代社会更常常地只是证明了完全相反的东西, 而不仅仅是今天如何取代了艺术, 或者如何取代了艺术的讨论等。一个人总体的无能将和另一个人相冲突; 恐慌接着发生, 然后就是他的土崩瓦解。例如, 一个在审理中忘记了自己假定代理方的律师, 他可能就会真的被对手的论据所动摇, 即使那些论据和他自己的一样空洞。这也是时常发生的, 清白的嫌疑犯暂时承认自己是罪犯, 尽管他并没有犯罪, 他之所以被起诉只是因为他给希望相信他是罪犯的控告者留下了他是罪犯的深刻印象(见1984年普瓦特医院阿根波医生的案子)。
MacLuhan himself, the spectacle’s first apologist, who had seemed to be the most convinced imbecile of the century, changed his mind when he finally discovered in 1976 that ‘the pressure of the mass media leads to irrationality’, and that it was becoming urgent to modify their usage. The sage of Toronto had formerly spent several decades marvelling at the numerous freedoms created by a ‘global village’ instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity, in which it has become impossible to distinguish the Grimaldi-Monaco or Bourbon-Franco dynasties from those who succeeded the Stuarts. However, MacLuhan’s ungrateful modem disciples are now trying to make people forget him, hoping to establish their own careers in media celebration of all these new freedoms to ‘choose’ at random from ephemera. And no doubt they will retract their claims even faster than the man who inspired them.
麦克卢汉本人, 景观的第一个护教论者, 似乎是深信这个世纪低能的人, 当他在1976年终于发现”大众传播媒体的压力导致非理性”, 并且修改大众传媒的用法正变得十分紧迫时, 就改变了自己的思想。这位多伦多的圣哲以前花费了几十年的时间, 对毫不费力地即刻达到的”地球村”所全部创造的无数的自由感到惊奇。乡村不同于城市, 它总是被因循守旧、与世隔绝、卑鄙的监视, 关于家庭的无聊重复和恶毒的流言蜚语所统治。这是全球景观现代粗俗行为的一个精确充足的描写, 在这里区分摩纳哥的格力马迪王朝或法国的波旁王朝与成功的斯图亚特王室的区别已变得不可能。但是, 麦克卢汉忘恩负义的现代信徒现在正试图让人们忘记他, 并希望从转瞬即失的随意”选择”的这些全部新自由的媒体庆典中, 建立他们自己的事业。无疑他们将比那个激发他们的灵感的人更快地收回他们的声明。
13
THE spectacle makes no secret of the fact that certain dangers surround the wonderful order it has established. Ocean pollution and the destruction of equatorial forests threaten oxygen renewal; the earth’s ozone layer is menaced by industrial growth; nuclear radiation accumulates irreversibly. It merely concludes that none of these things matter. It will only talk about dates and measures. And on these alone, it is successfully reassuring – something which a pre-spectacular mind would have thought impossible.
景观社会没有隐瞒这样的事实: 在自己确立的美妙秩序中还存在着特定的威胁。海洋污染和热带森林的毁灭威胁着氧气再生; 地球的臭氧层被工业的高速增长所破坏, 核扩散的积聚已不可逆转。景观仅仅结论性地说这些事情没有一件要紧。它只愿意讨论日期和措施。并且据此竟然成功地使人们对某些事情消除了疑虑——而这对前景观精神是不可想象的。
Spectacular democracy approaches matters With great subtlety, very different from the straightforward brutality of the totalitarian diktat It can keep the original name for something secretly changed (beer, beef or philosophers). And it can just as easily change the name when the thing itself has been secretly maintained. In England, for example, the nuclear waste reprocessing plant at Windscale was renamed Sellafield in order to allay the suspicions which were aroused by a disastrous fire in 1957, though this toponymic reprocessing did nothing to limit the rise in local mortality rates from cancer and leukaemia. The British government, as the population democratically learned thirty years later, had decided to suppress a report on the catastrophe which it judged, reasonably enough, would probably shake public confidence in nuclear power.
景观民主以大写的精明处理问题, 完全不同于极权主义绝对命令的赤裸裸的残忍。为了某物(啤酒、牛肉或哲学家)秘密的改变, 它可以保持原初的名称。但当事情自身被秘密地维持时, 它也会毫不费力地改变名称。例如, 在英国为了减少对1957年引起的灾难性火灾的猜疑, 在文德斯高尔(Windscale)的核废料再生工厂就被改名为桑雷费沃德(Sellafield), 尽管这一地名的再加工一点也没有限制当地癌症和白血病死亡率的上升。当人们民主地学习了三十年以后, 英国政府决定禁止发表它合理断定的关于大灾难的报告, 因为这有可能动摇公众对核力量的信赖度。
The nuclear industry, both military and civil, demands a far higher dose of secrecy than in other fields – which already have plenty, as we know. To make life – that is to say, lying – easier for the sages chosen by the system’s masters, it has been found useful also to change measurements, to vary them according to a large number of criteria, and refine them, so as to be able to juggle as necessary with a range of figures which are hard to convert. Hence, to measure radioactivity levels, one can choose from a range of units of measurement: curies, becquerels, roentgens, rads alias centigrays, and rems, not forgetting the humble millirads, and sieverts which are worth 100 rems. It reminds one of the old subdivisions of British currency which foreigners found so confusing, back in the days when sellafield was still
called Windscale.
核工业无论是军用的还是民用的, 都要求比其他领域更多的机密——本来这些领域如我们所知已有很多的秘密。安排生活——换句话说——说谎——对被这一制度的统治者选中的圣哲来说很容易, 说谎也被发现对改变测量方法, 根据大量标准变更他们和精炼他们是非常有用的, 以致能够将很难改变信仰的一系列名人歪曲为必需的。从此, 为了测量放射能的水平, 人们可以挑选一系列的度量单位, 居里、贝克勒尔、伦琴、拉德又名厘戈瑞和雷姆, 不要忘记微小的毫拉德, 并且一剂量的西韦特等值于100雷姆。它使人想起了那种让外国人感觉困惑的英国货币的陈旧划分, 又后退到那种桑雷费沃德还称文德斯高尔的日子。
One can imagine the rigour and precision which would have been achieved in the nineteenth century by military history, and thus by theorists of strategy, if, so as not to give too much confidential information to neutral commentators or enemy historians, campaigns were invariably described in the following manner:
人们能够想象在19世纪通过军事历史, 并从而通过战略理论家所达到的严格精确度, 如果没有对中立的评论家或者敌人的历史学家给出太多秘密信息的话, 战役总是以以下方式被描述:
The preliminary phase involved a series of engagements in which, from our side, a strong advance force made up of four generals and the units under their command, met an enemy force of 13,000 bayonets. In the subsequent phase a fiercely disputed pitched battle developed, in which our entire army advanced, with 290 canons and a heavy cavalry of 18,000 sabres; the confronting enemy alignment comprised no less than 3,600 infantry lieutenants, 40 captains of hussars and 24 of cuirassiers. Following alternate advances and retreats on both sides, the battle can finally be seen as inconclusive. Our losses, somewhat lower than the average figure normally expected in combat of similar duration and intensity, were appreciably superior to those of the Greeks at Marathon, but remained inferior to those of the Prussians at Jena.
在初期阶段包括一系列交战, 在这一阶段是由我方四个将军统率的强大先进的武装力量部队对敌方13000步兵。在后来阶段, 猛烈的争夺战进一步发展, 在这一阶段我们全部军队仍然是先进的, 有290名教士, 18000人的重骑兵, 对敌人由3600名步兵中尉, 40名轻骑兵上尉和24名重装甲骑兵上尉组成的队列。紧接着相互表示友好, 双方互相撤兵, 战争最终被认为是非决定性的。我们的损失略低于正常预想的类似持续时期和强度的战斗兵力损失的平均数, 略高于古希腊在马拉松对波斯之战, 但又不如普鲁士在耶拿的普法激战。
In this example, it is not impossible for a specialist to gather some vague idea of the forces engaged. But the conduct of operations remains securely concealed.
在这个例子中, 一个专家收集关于交战力量的一些模糊的思想是可能的, 但军事行动的实施要保持安全隐蔽。
In June 1987, Pierre Bacher, deputy director of installations at Electricité de France, revealed the latest safety doctrine for nuclear power stations. By installing valves and filters it becomes much easier to avoid major catastrophes, like cracks or explosions in the reactors, which would affect a whole ‘region’. Such catastrophes are produced by excessive containment. Whenever the plant looks like blowing, it is better to decompress gently, showering only a restricted area of a few kilometres, an area which on each occasion will be differently and haphazardly extended depending on the wind. He discloses that in the past two years discreet experiments carried out at Cadarache, in the Drôme, ‘clearly showed that waste – essentially gas – is infinitesimal, representing at worst one per cent of the radioactivity in the power station itself’ Thus a very moderate worst case: one percent. Formerly, we were assured there was no risk at all, except in the case of accidents, which were logically impossible. The experience of the first few years changed this reasoning as follows: since accidents can always happen, what must be avoided is their reaching a catastrophic threshold, and that is easy. All that is necessary is to contaminate little by little, in moderation. Who would not agree that it is infinitely healthier to limit yourself to an intake of 140 centilitres of vodka per day for several years, rather than getting drunk right away like the Poles?
1987年6月法国电力安装主管皮埃尔·巴赫解释了关于核电站的最新安全学说。通过安装阀门和过滤器避免反应堆的裂变和爆炸这样的影响到整个”地区”大灾难已非常容易, 这样的大灾难是由过度的围堵政策引起的。无论何时核工厂看起来要爆裂了, 这也是最好的逐渐形成减压的时机, 将其大量地散发到严格控制的几公里的地区, 这个地区核废气在每一种场合下都将是不同地、偶然地依赖风向而伸展。他还透露在过去两年里这一谨慎的实验在都姆的凯德让师已进行了。”非常清楚地显示出这些废气本质上是无限少的, 在最坏的情况下也只代表了电站本身放射能的百分之一。”所以真正适度的最坏案例就是百分之一。从前除非在有事故的情况下, 我们都要确保不存在一点冒险, 这在理论上其实是不可能的。这几年的经历将这一推理改变如下: 既然事故总要发生, 我们一定要避免的是他们所这到的灾难的极限, 而这是较容易的。既然如此, 那么必要的事情就只能是适度的渐渐的污染。谁也不同意与像波兰人一下子喝醉相比, 使自己每天最多喝140厘升伏特加若干年, 这样会使人更健康。
It is indeed unfortunate that human society should encounter such burning problems just when it has become materially impossible to make heard the least objection to the language of the commodity; just when power – quite rightly because it is shielded by the spectacle from any response to its piecemeal and delirious decisions and justifications – believes that it no longer needs to think; and indeed can no longer think. Would not even the staunchest democrat have preferred to have been given more intelligent masters?
正当使人们听到最小的反对商品的语言本质上变得不可能, 正当权力——十分公正的权力——相信它不再需要去思考; 也确实不能再思考时(因为这一权力已被景观所保护, 使它免于对它的片断的、发狂的决定和辩护做出任何答), 人类社会遭遇这样棘手的问题确实不幸。即使最坚定的民主党人不也是宁愿献出更多聪明的统治者吗?
At the international conference of experts held in Geneva in December 1986 the question was quite simply whether to introduce a worldwide ban on the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the gases which have recendy and rapidly started to destroy the thin layer of ozone which – as will be recalled – protects this planet against the harmful effects of solar rays. Daniel Verilhe, representing Elf-Aquitaine’s chemicals subsidiary, and in this capacity part of a French delegation firmly opposed to any ban, made a sensible point ‘It will take at least three years to develop substitutes and the costs will be quadrupled.’ As we know, this fugitive ozone layer, so high up. belongs to no one and has no market value. This industrial strategist could thus show his opponents the extent of their inexplicable disregard for economics: ‘It is highly dangerous to base an industrial strategy on environmental imperatives.’
1986年12月在日内瓦举行的国际专家会议的一个简单议题就是——是否提出关于氟氯化碳生产的全世界禁令, 这一气体最近已开始较快地破坏薄薄的臭氧层, 而臭氧层是保护地球反对太阳射线之危害性反应的。丹居尔·瓦瑞代表Elf-Aquitaine’s的化学子公司, 以部分法国代表团成员的身份坚决反对任何禁令, 并出了一个要点, “这一禁令将导致至少花费三年的时间去发展替代品, 而成本是原来的四倍”。如我们所知, 这种易变的臭氧层如此之高, 不属于任何人, 没有市场价值。这一工业战略家因而展示他的反对者对经济学已达到完全难以理解的冷漠的程度: “把工业战略建立在环境的需要之上是非常危险的。”
Those who long ago had embarked on a critique of political economy by defining it as ‘the final denial of humanity’ were not mistaken. This will be seen as its defining characteristic.
那些很久以前通过将经济学定义为”对人性的最后否定”的从事政治经济学批判的人是没错的。这种”对人性的最后的否定”被理解为经济学的决定性特征。
14
IT IS sometimes said that science today is subservient to the imperatives of profit, but that is nothing new. What is new is the way the economy has now come to declare open war on humanity, attacking not only our possibilities for living, but our chances of survival. It is here that science – renouncing the opposition to slavery that formed a significant part of its own history – has chosen to put itself at the service of spectacular domination. Until it got to this point, science possessed a relative autonomy. It knew how to understand its own portion of reality; and in this has made an immense contribution to increasing economic resources. When an all-powerful economy lost its reason – and that is precisely what defines these spectacular times – it suppressed the last vestiges of scientific autonomy, both in methodology and, by the same token, in the practical working conditions of its ‘researchers’. No longer is science asked to understand the world, or to improve any part of it. It is asked instead to immediately justify everything that happens. As stupid in this field, which it exploits with the most ruinous disregard, as it is everywhere else, spectacular domination has cut down the vast tree of scientific knowledge in order to make itself a truncheon. To obey this ultimate social demand for a manifestly impossible justification, it is better not to be able to think at all, but rather to be well trained in the conveniences of spectacular language. And it is in such a career that the prostituted science of our despicable times has found its latest specialisation, with goodwill and alacrity.
有时人们说今天的科学是屈从利润的, 这并不是什么新发现。真正的新发现是这样一种情形, 现在经济已开始宣布向人类(性)开战, 它不仅攻击人们生活的可能性, 而且也攻击人类生存的机会。恰值此时, 宣布放弃反对奴隶身份的科学——这一奴隶身份曾构成它自己历史的重要部分——却选择将自己置于景观统治的服务之中。直到它达到这点为止, 即它知道如何理解它自己的现实部分, 并在这一过程中对增加经济资源做出了巨大贡献, 科学才拥有了相对自主。当全能的经济失去其理智——这正好是定义这些景观时代的时刻——全能的经济不但在方法论上而且出于同样的原因在它的”研究者”的实际工作环境中, 都抑制了科学自主的最后痕迹。科学不再被要求去理解世界或者改进世界的任何部分, 它只被要求直接证明发生的一切都是正当的。正像这一领域已经麻木, 科学领域已为最具破坏性的冷漠所利用, 其实, 在其他任何地方也是一样, 景观统治为了挥舞自己的权杖而消减了科学知识的大树。为了明显不可能的理由服从最后的社会需求, 最好的不是去进行根本的思考, 而是在景观语言的便利中获得较好的训练。伴随着善意和爽快, 我们这一卑劣时代堕落的科学发现了自己最新的专门化, 这就是它的事业。
The science of lying justifications naturally appeared with the first symptoms of bourgeois society’s decadence, with the cancerous proliferation of those pseudo-sciences known as ‘human’; yet modern medicine, for example, had once been able to pass as useful, and those who eradicated smallpox or leprosy were very different from those who contemptibly capitulated in the face of nuclear radiation or chemical farming. It can readily be seen, of course, that medicine today no longer has the right to defend public health against a pathogenic environment, for that would be to challenge the state, or at least the pharmaceuticals industry. But it is not only by its obligation to keep quiet that contemporary science acknowledges what it has become. It is also by its frequent and artless outbursts. In November 1985, professors Even and Andrieu at Laënnec hospital announced that they had perhaps found an effective cure for Aids, following an experiment on four patients which had lasted a week. Two days later, the patients having died, several other doctors, whose research was not so far advanced, or who were perhaps jealous, expressed certain reservations as to the professors’ precipitate haste in broadcasting what was merely the misleading appearance of victory – a few hours before the patients’ condition finally deteriorateq. Even and Andrieu defended themselves nonchalantly, arguing that ‘after all, false hopes are better than no hope at all.’ Their ignorance was too great for them to recognise this argument as a precise and complete disavowal of the spirit of science; as the one which had historically always served to endorse the profitable daydreams of charlatans and sorcerers, long before such people were put in charge of hospitals.
伴随着资产阶级社会颓废的第一个征兆, 伴随着以”人学”而知名的伪科学的癌变式分蘖繁殖, 认为说谎是正当的科学也本能地出现了; 例如, 至今现代医药还能够被看作有用的, 是因为那些根除了天花或麻风病的人完全不同于在核辐射或化学农业面前可鄙地屈服的人。当然, 今天也非常容易发现, 医学不再有能力通过反对发病的环境来保护公共卫生, 因为这意味着要它挑战国家或至少是挑战制药工业。但现代医学不仅通过它的义务保持了当代科学认可的已生成的安静, 而且它也经常地、自然地爆发。1985年11月, 伊文教授、安德鲁教授在拉内克(Laennec)医院宣布: 通过在四个病人身上持续一周的实验, 他们也许发现了治疗艾滋病的特效药。两天以后病人开始死亡, 在病人的状况决定性地恶化前几个小时, 其他几位医生, 或者他们的研究不是如此先进, 或者也许出于忌妒, 他们就两教授轻率宣布的令人误解的表象的胜利表达了他们特定的疑惑。恩文和安德鲁若无其事地为自己辩护道: “毕竟错误的希望总比没有一点希望好。”他们的无知是如此之大, 以致对他们来说不能认识到这种观点正是对科学精神最精确彻底地否定; 也不能认识到这样的人在历史上总是有助于认可吹牛者和魔术师有利可图的白日梦, 很久以前这样的人就已就职去主管医院了。
When official science has come to such a pass, like all the rest of the social spectacle that for all its materially modernised and enhanced presentation is merely reviving the ancient techniques of fairground mountebanks – illusionists, barkers and stool-pigeons – it is not surprising to see a similar and widespread revival of the authority of seers and sects, of vacuum-packed Zen or Mormon theology. Ignorance, which has always served the authorities well, has also always been exploited by ingenious ventures on the fringes of the law. And what better moment than one where illiteracy has become so widespread? But this reality in its turn is denied by a new display of sorcery. From its inception, Unesco had adopted a very precise scientific definition of the illiteracy which it strove to combat in backward countries. When the same phenomenon was unexpectedly seen to be returning, but this time in the so-called advanced nations, rather in the way that the one who was waiting for Grouchy instead saw Blucher join the battle, it was simply a matter of calling in the Guard of experts; they carried the day with a single, unstoppable assault, replacing the word illiteracy by ‘language difficulties’: just as a ‘false patriot’ can sometimes arrive at an opportune moment to support a good national cause. And to ensure that the pertinence of this neologism was, between pedagogues, carved in stone, a new definition was quickly handed round, as if it had always been accepted – according to which, while the illiterate was, as we know, someone who had never learnt to read, those with language difficulties in the modern sense are on the contrary people who had learnt to read (and had even learnt better than before, coolly proposed the more gifted official theorists and historians of pedagogy), but who had by chance immediately forgotten again. This surprising explanation might have been more disturbing than reassuring, if, by deliberately missing the point, it had not skilfully sidestepped the first consequence which would have come to anyone’s mind in more scientific eras. That is, the recognition that this new phenomenon had itself to be explained and combatted, since it had never been observed or even imagined anywhere before the recent progress of damaged thought, when analytical and practical decadence go hand in hand.
当官方科学这到这样一个关口, 像所有其他社会景观一样, 尽管它大大的现代化和强化了的表演只不过是重新复活了露天市场江湖骗子——魔术师、托和诱鸽的古老骗术——并且如今看到一种相似的、广泛的真空包装的禅宗或摩门教徒神学权威, 幻想家和宗派权威的复活, 这也并没有什么值得惊诧的。总是彻底服务于权威的无知, 在法律的边缘也总是被创选性的投机所利用。与文盲变得如此普遍的地方相比何谓较好的瞬间? 但是这一现实这次却被新魔法的展示所否认。在其起点上, 联合国教科文组织采纳了文盲的一个科学精确的定义, 这种文盲状况正是落后国家努力要克服的。当出乎意料地看到同样文盲现象即将复返的时候, 不过这次是出现在所谓的先进发达国家里, 更确切点说是以意外的方式出现的, 就像拿破仑本是等待格鲁希, 却看到布柳彻参加了战斗一样, 此时所做的事只是召集一下”专家军团”而已。这些专家只用一次滔滔不绝的口头战斗就得胜了, 他们用”语言困难”取代了文盲这个词, 就好像一个虚情假意的爱国者有时也会适逢其时的来支持一下国家的正当事业一样。为确保这一新创语词的相关语义在卖弄学问者之间被牢记, 如我们所知, 依据文盲是那些从来没有学会过阅读的人这一观念——一种新的定义很快被传播开来——正像它总是被接受一样, 相反, 在现代的意义上那些语言表达有困难的人就是学会了阅读(并且甚至比从前学的更好, 并泰然自若向更有才能的官方语言理论家和教育史家提建议), 但又意外地立即忘记了阅读的人。这一令人惊讶的解释也许不是让人打消疑虑, 而是更加令人不安, 假设通过故意错过这一点, 它没有巧妙地回避在科学昌盛时代深入每个人头脑的最初结果的话。换句话说, 当语法及其应用的堕落手拉手前进时, 由于在新近被损坏的思想过程之前, 它还没有在任何地方被观察到或想象到, 对这一新现象的识别必须让其自身去解释和争论。
15
MORE than a century ago, A.-L. Sardou’s Nouveau Dictionnaire des Synonymes français defined the nuances which must be grasped between: fallacious, deceptive, impostrous, inveigling, insidious, captious; and which taken together constitute today a kind of palette of colours with which to paint a portrait of the society of the spectacle. It was beyond the scope of his time, and his specialist experience, to distinguish with equal clarity the related, but very different, meanings of the perils normally expected to be faced by any group which practises subversion, following, for example, this progression: misguided, provoked, infiltrated, manipulated, taken over, subverted. Certainly these important nuances have never been appreciated by the doctrinaires of ‘armed struggle’.
一个多世纪以前,《A.L.萨多的法语最新近义词字典》在谬误的、欺骗的、欺诈的、诱骗的、阴险的、挑剔的等词汇间定义了他们能被领会的细微区别; 它们被集合起来构成了今天描绘景观社会肖像的一种调色板。萨多在有联系的同等明晰性之间做出的区分已超越了他的时代, 超越了他的专家体验, 然而, 通常每一个实际从事颠覆活动的集团认为他们所面对的危险的含义是十分不同的, 如以下这个系列: 误导的、激怒的、渗透的、操纵的、接管的、推翻的。当然, 这些重要的细微区别从没有被”武装斗争”的教条主义者所赏识。
Fallacious [fallacieux], from the Latin fallaciosus, adept at or accustomed to deception, full of deceit: the definition of this adjective is equivalent to the superlative of deceptive [trompeur]. That which deceives or leads into error in any way is deceptive: that which is done in order to deceive, abuse, lead into error by plan intended to deceive with artifice and misleading device most calculated to abuse, is fallacious. Deceptive is a generic and vague word; all forms of uncertain signs and appearance, are deceptive: fallacious denotes duplicity, deceit, studied imposture; sophistic speech, asseveration or reasoning is fallacious. The word has affinities with impostrous [imposteur], inveigling [séducteur], insidious [insidieux] and captious [captieux], but without equivalence. Impostrous denotes all forms of false appearance, or conspiracies to abuse or injure; for example, hypocrisy, calumny, etc. Inveigling expresses action calculated to take possession of someone, to lead them astray by artful and insinuating means. Insidious only indicates the act of placing traps and entrapping. Captious is restricted to the subtle act of taking by surprise and taking in. Fallacious encompasses most of these definitions.
“谬误的”来自拉丁语”荒谬的”, 意指精通或习惯于欺骗, 充满了欺骗; 其形容词的语义等于欺骗性的最高级。行骗或者使人落入错误在任何情况下都是欺骗性的: 为了欺骗、误用或运用技巧有意图欺骗使人陷入错误, 通过精心谋划的滥用迷惑人的信心, 上述所说所做的一切都是谬误的。”欺骗性的”是一般的含糊的词; 所有形式的变幻无常的迹象和表象都是欺骗性的; “谬误的”意味着奸诈、欺骗、故意的欺诈; 诡辩的演说、誓言或推理是谬误的。这个词和欺诈、诱骗, 阴险的和吹毛求疵的有密切关系, 但它们并不对等。”欺诈的”表示着虚假表象或滥用的阴谋或者伤害的全部形式: 如伪善, 诽谤等等。”诱骗的”表达是经过精心策划的占有某人的行动, 通过狡猾的迂回暗示的手段将他们引入歧途。”阴险的”只是表示设置陷阱和诱陷的行为。”挑剔的”只限于出其不意的袭击和欺骗的狡猾行为。”谬误的”包含上述所有这些界定。
16
THE relatively new concept of disinformation was recently imported from Russia, along with a number of other inventions useful in the running of modern states. It is openly employed by particular powers, or, consequently, by people who hold fragments of economic or political authority, in order to maintain what is established; and always in a counter-offensive role. Whatever can oppose a single official truth must necessarily be disinformation emanating from hostile or at least rival powers, and would have been intentionally and malevolently falsified. Disinformation would not be simple negation of a fact which suits the authorities, or the simple affirmation of a fact which does not suit them: that is called psychosis. Unlike the straightforward lie, disinformation must inevitably contain a degree of truth but one deliberately manipulated by an artful enemy. That is what makes it so attractive to the defenders of the dominant society. The power which speaks of disinformation does not believe itself to be absolutely faultless, but knows that it can attribute to any precise criticism the excessive insignificance which characterises disinformation; with the result that it will never have to admit to any particular fault.
关于假情报(disinformation)相对新的概念, 在现代国家竞争中与其他有用的发明一起, 最近由俄国引进。为了维持已确立的一切, 假情报为特定权力公开使用, 或者, 从而为掌握经济要素或掌握政治权威的人所使用; 假情报总是扮演了一种反进攻的角色。不管可以反对的单一的官方真理怎样, 这一真理必然是源自敌方或至少是竞争对手的假情报, 它肯定是有意和恶毒地伪造的。假情报不是对适合于权威的事实的简单否定, 或者对非适合于权威的事实的简单肯定: 那被称为精神病。与简单的谎言不同, 假情报一定不可避免地包含一定程度的事实, 尽管这一事实被狡猾的敌人故意操纵了, 那正是使它对统治社会的捍卫者具有非常大的吸引力的东西。说到假情报的力量, 它不认为它自身是绝对没有缺点的, 但它确信它可以归结为对刻画了假情报过度无意义特征的全部精确批判; 结果是它从未承认任何特殊错误。
In essence, disinformation would be a travesty of the truth. Whoever disseminates it is culpable, whoever believes it is stupid. But who precisely would this artful enemy be? In this case, it cannot be terrorism, which is in no danger of ‘disinforming’ anyone, since it is charged with ontologically representing the grossest and least acceptable error. Thanks to its etymology and to present memories of those limited confrontations which around mid-century briefly opposed East and West, concentrated spectacle and diffuse spectacle, the capitalism of today’s integrated spectacle still pretends to believe that the capitalism of bureaucratic totalitarianism – sometimes even presented as the terrorists’ base camp or inspiration remains its fundamental enemy, despite the innumerable proofs of their profound alliance and solidarity. But actually all established powers, despite certain genuine local rivalries, and without ever wanting to spell it out, never forget what one of the rare German internationalists after the outbreak of the First World War managed to recall (on the side of subversion and without any great immediate success): ‘The main enemy is within.’ In the end, disinformation is the equivalent of what was represented in the nineteenth-century language of social war as ‘dangerous passions’. It is all that is obscure and threatens to oppose the unprecedented happiness which we know this society offers to those who trust it, a happiness which greatly outweighs various insignificant risks and disappointments. And everyone who sees this happiness in the spectacle agrees that we should not grumble about its price; everyone else is a disinformer.
本质上, 假情报是对事实的滑稽模仿。谁散布这一消息谁该受到责备, 谁相信这一消息谁就是傻瓜。但谁恰好是这一狡猾的敌人呢? 假如这样的话, 假情报不是恐怖主义, 向任何人散布假情报也没有危险, 因为它只是在本体论上被控告为代表了最明显的和至少是接受了的错误。由于语源学和20世纪中叶左右东西方的直接对立的那种缺乏创新对质的现代记忆的缘故, 集中的景观和弥散的景观, 资本主义今天综合的景观, 仍然假装相信官僚政治极权主义的资本主义——有时甚至作为恐怖主义的基础营地或灵感出现——尽管有数不清的他们深刻联合和团结的证据, 他们还是保留了他们的基本的敌人。但实际上全部已确立的力量, 不管特定的真实的局部敌对状态如何, 在任何时候都没有想把它详细说明, 也从未忘记最杰出的德国国际法学家之一, 在第一次大战爆发后努力使人们回想的那句话(站在颠覆的一边, 但没有任何巨大的直接胜利): “主要的敌人在内部。”最后, 假情报是在十九世纪社会战争语言中作为”危险激情”来表述的对等物。一切都暧昧不明, 并威胁反对空前的幸福, 我们知道, 这一幸福是这个社会提供给那些相信它的人幸福, 这一幸福远远超过了各种各样无意义的冒险和失望。每一个在景观中经历这一幸福的人, 都承认我们不应该抱怨它的代价; 任何一个他人都是虚假情报提供者。
The other advantage derived from denouncing a particular instance of disinformation in this way is that it wards off any suspicion that the spectacle’s global language might contain the same thing. With the most scientific assurance, the spectacle can identifY the only place where disinformation could be found: in anything which can be said that might displease it.
这样, 另一个来自于谴责假情报的特定例子的优势是, 它防止了任何猜疑, 那种景观全球语言也许包含同样事情的猜疑。由于最科学的担保, 景观能够识别的唯一地方, 就是假情报可能被发现的地方: 那些可能说到的任何事情都可能使它不快。
It is doubtless by mistake – unless it be a deliberate decoy – that a project was recently set in motion in France to place a kind of official label on some parts of the media guaranteeing them ‘free from disinformation’. This wounded certain media professionals. who still believe. or more modestly would still like it to be believed, that until now they had not actually been subject to censorship. But the concept of disinformation must never be used defensively, still less as part of a static defence, building a Great Wall or Maginot Line around an area supposedly out of bounds to disinformation. There must be disinformation, and it must be something fluid and potentially ubiquitous. Where the language of the spectacle is not under attack it would be foolish to defend it; and the concept would wear out very fast indeed if one were to try to defend it against all the evidence on points which ought on the contrary to be kept from public view. Moreover the authorities have no real need to guarantee that any particular information does not contain disinformation. Nor have they the means to do so: they are not respected to that extent, and would only draw down suspicion on the information concerned. The concept of disinformation is only valid for counter-attack. It must be kept in reserve, then rapidly thrown into the fray to drive back any truth which has managed to get through.
这无疑是错误的——除非它是一个深思熟虑的圈套——这个计划是: 最近法国为了保证一部分媒体”没有假情报”, 已着手对他们贴上一种官方的标签。这一饱受创伤的媒体专业人员, 仍然相信或仍然更加谦逊地喜欢去相信, 直到今天他们实际上没有屈从过审查制度。但是假情报的概念肯定从未防御式地使用过, 更何况只是作为静止防御的部分, 围绕一个地区建立什么万里长城和马其诺防线, 对于假情报来说肯定是一种越轨。肯定存在假情报, 它必须是一定程度上流动的并潜在地到处存在着。在那里, 景观语言不受攻击, 假情报将愚蠢地去保护它, 如果人们设法防护景观语言反对的关于这些要点的全部证据, 相反这些卖点一定会阻止公众观点, 那么假情报的概念确实将很快耗尽。另外, 权威没有保证不包含假情报的任何特殊信息的真实需要, 这也不意味着他们将这样做: 他们对这一信息如此不关心, 他们只不过招致关于有关信息的怀疑。假情报概念只是对反进攻有效, 它必须保持备用状态, 然后迅速陷入争吵的混乱状态以击退人们设法达到的任何真理。
If occasionally a kind of unregulated disinformation threatens to appear, in the service of particular interests temporarily in conflict, and threatens to be believed, getting out of control and thus clashing with the concerted work of a less irresponsible disinformation, there is no reason to fear that the former involves other manipulators who are more subtle or more skilled: it is simply because disinformation now spreads in a world where there is no room for verification.
在暂时对立的特殊利益的服务中, 如果一种未受到管理的假情报即将出现, 并且相信摆脱了控制, 并因而与较不可靠的虚假情报协调工作不协调, 那么没有理由担心从前的假情报包含着其他更加狡猾或更加熟练的操纵者: 原因很简单, 虚假情报已在一个世界中伸展, 在那里不存在证明的任何空间。
The confusionist concept of disinformation is pushed into the limelight immediately to refute, by its very name, any criticism that has failed to eliminate the diverse agencies of the organisation of silence. For example it could one day be said, should this seem desirable, that this text was an attempt to disinform about the spectacle; or indeed, since it is the same thing, that it was a piece of disinformation harmful to democracy.
借助于它的真实名称, 假情报的迷惑概念被推进了直接反驳的引人注目的中心, 通过沉默组织的不同的中介, 任何批判都不能被清除。例如, 据说有一天假情报概念好像是合人心意的, 这一本文只是一种提供关于景观假情报的尝试; 或者确实, 因为它是同样的, 它是损害民主的一条假情报。
Contrary to its spectacular definition, the practice of disinformation can only serve the state here and now, under its direct command, or at the initiative of those who uphold the same values. Disinformation is actually inherent in all existing information; and indeed is its main characteristic. It is only named where passivity must be maintained by intimidation. Where disinformation is named, it does not exist. Where it exists, it is not named.
与它的景观式的定义相反, 假情报的实践只能服务于此时此地的国家, 假情报的实践在这一国家直接掌握之下, 或者在那些赞成同样价值的人主动性中。假情报实际上内在于所有现存信息之中; 这也确实是其主要将性。它只是在被动性通过胁迫被维持的地方被命名。在那里假情报被命名但不存在, 在那里它存在但没有被命名。
When there were still conflicting ideologies, which claimed to be for or against some recognised aspect of reality, there were fanatics, and liars, but there were no ‘disinformers’. When respect for the spectacular consensus, or at least a desire for spectacular kudos, prohibits any honest declaration of what someone is against, or equally what he wholeheartedly approves; and when at the same time he needs to disguise a part of what he is supposed to acknowledge because for one reason or another it is considered dangerous, then he employs disinformation; as if by blunder or negligence, or by pretended false reasoning. In political activity after 1968, for example, the incompetent recuperators known as ‘pro-situs’, became the first disinformers because they did their best to hide all practical manifestations which confirmed the critique they claimed to have adopted; and, without the slightest embarrassment at weakening its expression, never referred to anything or anyone, in order to suggest that they themselves had actually discovered something.
当仍然存在着冲突的意识形态, 这些意识形态声称拥护或反对某些现实的被公认的方面时, 那么一定存在狂热者、说谎者但没有”虚假情报制造者”。当尊敬景观舆论, 或至少渴望景观声誉阻止某人反对的, 或者他同样全身心拥护的任何诚实的声明时; 同时当他需要伪装部分他应该认可的东西时(因为为了一个或另一个原因, 这些东西被认为是非常危险的), 那么借助于失误或疏忽, 或者借助于虚假错误的推理等等, 他会使用假情报。例如, 在1968年以后的政治活动中, 以”前情境主义者”(pro-situs)闻名的无能复原者变成了最初的虚假情报制造者, 因为他们尽他们的全力隐藏了全部实际的表现, 这些表现证明了他们要求采纳的批判; 为了暗示他们自己实际上发现了点什么, 他们从未谈及过任何事情或任何人, 在削弱批判的表达方面也没有一点困窘。
17
REVERSING Hegel’s famous maxim, I noted as long ago as 1967 that ‘in a world that has really been turned upside down, truth is a moment of falsehood’. In the intervening years, this principle has encroached upon each specific domain, without exception.
在1967年以前很久, 我所记录的颠倒的黑格尔的著名格言是: “在这一真正颠倒的世界, 真理是谬误的一个瞬间。”在干涉性的年代, 这个原则蚕食了任何一个特定的领域, 没有任何例外。
Thus in an era when contemporary art can no longer exist, it becomes difficult to judge classical art. Here as elsewhere, ignorance is only created in order to be exploited. &3 the meanings of history and taste are lost, networks of falsification are organised. It is only necessary to control the experts and auctioneers, which is easy enough, to arrange everything, since in this kind of business – and at the end of the day in every other kind – it is the sale which authenticates the value. Afterwards it is the collectors and museums, particularly in America, who, gorged on falsehood, will have an interest in upholding its good reputation, just as the International Monetary Fund maintains the fiction of a positive value in the huge debts of dozens of countries.
因此, 在当代艺术不再存在的时代, 判断古典艺术也变得很困难。在这里一如在别处, 无知只是为了被开发而被创造出来。因为历史的意义和体验丧失了, 弄虚作假之网被组织起来。控制专家和拍卖入是唯一必需的, 这样一来, 安排任何事情都非常容易, 因为在这类交易中——在所有其他类交易的一天之结尾——伪艺术就是鉴定其价值的廉价销售。后来, 弄虚作假的是收藏家和博物馆, 特别是在美国, 狼吞虎咽虚假谬误的人有兴趣维护它的好名声, 正如国际货币基金组织在一系列国家的巨大债务中坚持实际价值的虚构一样。
What is false creates taste, and reinforces itself by knowingly eliminating any possible reference to the authentic. And what is genuine is reconstructed as quickly as possible, to resemble the false. Being the richest and the most modern, the Americans have been the main dupes of this traffic in false art. And they are exactly the same people who pay for restoration work at Versailles or in the Sistine Chapel. This is why Michelangelo’s frescoes will acquire the fresh, bright colours of a cartoon strip, and the genuine furniture at Versailles, the sparkling gilt which will make them resemble the fake Louis XIV suites imported by Texans at such great expense.
制造了虚假口味的东西, 通过有意地消除与原物相关的所有可能性, 强化了自身, 并且为了与伪造的东西相似, 真实的东西应尽可能快的被重建。由于最富裕和最现代化, 美国是这一伪艺术交易中的主要受骗者, 他们正好是支付在凡尔赛或在西斯廷教堂复原工作费用的人。这就是为什么米开朗基罗的壁画获得连环漫画式的鲜艳明亮的色彩的原因, 并且这也是闪闪发光的镀金使他们像路易十四家具的仿造品一样的凡尔赛真实家具, 以如此昂贵的价格, 被德克萨斯人进口进来的原因。
Feuerbach’s judgement on the fact that his time preferred ‘the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality’, has been thoroughly vindicated by the century of the spectacle, and in several spheres where the nineteenth century preferred to keep its distance from what was already its fundamental nature: industrial capitalism. Thus it was that the bourgeoisie had widely disseminated the rigorous mentality of the museum, the original object, precise historical criticism, the authentic document. Today, however, the tendency to replace the real with the artificial is ubiquitous. In this regard, it is fortuitous that traffic pollution has necessitated the replacement of the Marly Horses in place de la Concorde, or the Roman statues in the doorway of Saint-Trophime in ArIes, by plastic replicas. Everything will be more beautiful than before, for the tourists’ cameras.
费尔巴哈判断的他那个时代的”符号胜于物体, 副本胜于原本, 幻想胜于现实”的事实, 被这个景观的世纪彻底证实, 并且在若干领域19世纪都宁愿与已是基本自然的东西——工业资本主义保持距离。因此, 工业资本主义是资产阶级广泛传播的精确的智力博物馆, 是原初目标, 是精确的历史批判, 是真实的文献。但是今天用伪造取代真实的趋势普遍存在。在这点上, 非常偶然的是协和广场的交通污染已被水泥地面所置换, 或者阿奥兹的圣查发姆门口的罗马人雕像已被塑胶复制品所替换。对旅游者的照相机来说, 每一件事物都比从前更美丽。
The high point in this process has doubtless been reached by the Chinese bureaucracy’s laughable fake of the vast terracotta industrial army of the First Emperor, which so many visiting statesmen have been taken to admire in situ. A clear demonstration, since it was possible to fool them so cruelly, that in all their hordes of advisors, there is not one single individual who knows about art history in China, or anywhere else – ‘Your Excellency’s computers have no data on this subject.’ Such a confirmation of the fact that for the first time in history it is possible to govern without the slightest understanding of art or of what is authentic and what is impossible, could alone suffice to make us suppose that the credulous fools who run the economy and the administration will probably lead the world to some great catastrophe; if their actual practice had not already made that crystal clear.
这一过程的最高点无疑被中国官僚政治可笑的第一个皇帝的兵马俑的赝品所达到, 如此多朝拜他的政治家都开始羡慕这一皇帝的地位。既然如此无情地愚弄他们是可能的, 一个清楚的证明是: 在所有他们的这群导师中, 不存在一个了解中国艺术历史的人, 或者在任何其他地方——你”阁下”的计算机中也没有关于这一主题的资料。没有对艺术, 或什么是可信的, 什么是不可能的丝毫的理解, 统治一个社会也是可能的, 这样的事实在历史中的第一次被确认, 正是这一事实使我们可以独自有足够的能力, 想象那种控制经济和政治的轻信的白痴将可能把世界引向一些怎样的巨大灾难; 如果他们现实的实践不再业已使那一切都非常透明的话。
18
OUR society is built on secrecy, from the ‘front’ organisations which draw an impenetrable screen over the concentrated wealth of their members, to the ‘official secrets’ which allow the state a vast field of operation free from any legal constraint; from the often frightening secrets of shoddy production hidden by advertising, to the projections of an extrapolated future, in which domination alone reads off the likely progress of things whose existence it denies, calculating the responses it will mysteriously make. Some observations can be made on these matters.
我们的社会建立在秘密之上, 从在他们成员大量集中之上, 升起的难以渗透的铁幕似的”阵线”组织, 到允许国家从法律约束中解放出来的”涉及国家安全秘密”的巨大操纵领域; 从隐藏在广告中经常性假冒生产的令人恐惧的奥秘, 到推测未来的规划, 秘密的统治独自宣读了它拒绝其存在的事物的可能进步, 并考虑了它神秘策划的回答。某些观察可能在这些素材中做出。
There are ever more places in cities and in the countryside which remain inaccessible, that is to say protected and shielded from public gaze; which are out of bounds to the innocently curious, and well guarded against espionage. Without all being strictly military, they follow the military model in preventing any prying incursion by local people or passers-by; or even by the police, whose functions have long been reduced to mere surveillance and repression of the most commonplace forms of delinquency. Thus it was that when AIdo Moro was a prisoner of Potere Due he was held, not in a building which could not be found, but in one which could not be entered.
在城市和乡村中仍然存在着许多难以接近的地方, 也就是说, 他们自我保护远离公众的凝视; 它禁止天真好奇入内, 并很好地防护起来以反对监视。尽管没有完整严格的军队, 他们追随军队的模式, 通过本地居民或旅客或警察预防任何窥探的入侵, 警察的作用长期以来已简化为只是对行为不良的最普通形式的监视和抑制。因此, 当奥尔多·摩洛是他自己建造的包特瑞监狱的囚犯时, 问题不是他没能发现自己在这个建筑中, 而是他不应进入这一建筑。
There are ever more people trained to act in secret; prepared and practised for that alone. There are special units armed with confidential archives, that is to say with secret data and analysis. There are others armed with a range of techniques for the exploitation and manipulation of these secrets. And finally there are the ‘active’ units, equipped with other means to simplify the problems in question.
不断地有许多人接受了训练以参加秘密行动; 准备和实践全是单独进行的。存在着用秘密档案武装起来的特殊单位, 换句话说, 存在着用秘密数据和分析武装起来的特殊单位, 存在着为了利用和控制这些秘密以大量技术武装起来的另外一些单位, 最后, 存在着”机动的”单位, 为了简化被怀疑的问题它们为另外的手段所装备起来。
The resources allocated to these specialists in surveillance and influence continue to increase, while general circumstances favour them more by the year. When, for example, the new conditions of integrated spectacular society have driven its critique into genuine clandestinity, not because it is in hiding but because it is hidden by the ponderous stage-management of diversionary thought, those who are nonetheless responsible for its surveillance, and in the end for its denial, can now employ traditional methods for operations in clandestine milieux: provocation, infiltration, and various forms of elimination of authentic critique in favour of a false one which will have been created for this purpose. When the spectacle’s general imposture is enriched with recourse to a thousand individual impostures, uncertainty grows at every turn. An unexplained crime can also be called suicide, in prison as elsewhere; the collapse of logic allows trials and inquiries which soar into irrationality, and which are frequently falsified right from the start through absurd autopsies, performed by extraordinary experts.
一年中当普遍的环境更多地支持他们时, 在监视和影响持续增加的情况下, 资源就分配给这些专家。例如, 当综合景观社会的新条件将它的批判压入真正的秘密时, 这不是因为批判躲藏着, 而是因为批判被声东击西思想的笨重指挥所隐瞒, 虽然如此, 那些为批判的监督负责, 并最终为批判的否定负责的人, 为了操纵秘密的环境就可能使用传统的方法: 剌激、渗透、各种各样真正批判形式的消除, 这一真正的批判赞同为了这一目的被创造出来的虚假批判。当景观的普遍欺诈以求助于数以千计的个体的欺诈而富足时, 不确定性就处处时时在成长。在监狱一如在其他地方, 一种说不清楚的犯罪也可能破称为自杀; 逻辑的崩溃认可非理性的审判和质询, 这种审判和质询从一开始就通过被多余的专家完成的可笑的尸体解剖, 经常性地伪造权力和正义。
We have long been accustomed to summary executions of all kinds of people. Known terrorists, or those considered as such. are openly fought with terrorist methods. Mossad can arrange the killing of Abou Jihad, the SAS can do the same with Irish people, and the parallel police of GAL with Basques. Those whose killings are arranged by supposed terrorists are not chosen without reason; but it is generally impossible to be sure of understanding these reasons. One can be aware that Bologna railway station was blown up to ensure that Italy continued to be well governed; or of the identity of the ‘death squads’ in Brazil; or that the Mafia can bum down a hotel in the United States to facilitate a racket. But how can we know what purpose was ultimately served by the ‘mad killers of Brabant’? It is hard to apply the principle Cui prodest? where so many active interests are so well concealed. The result is that under the rule of the integrated spectacle, we live and die at the confluence of innumerable mysteries.
长期以来我们已习惯于总结各种各样人们的死刑。知各的恐怖主义者或那些被认为像恐怖主义者的人公开用恐怖主义的方法战斗。马塞德
(Mossad)安排了对埃巴·吉哈德的杀害, 英国空军将别部队对爱尔兰人民做了同样的事情, 反恐怖主义解放组织的准警察对巴斯克人也是同样。所有这些想象由恐怖主义者所安排的屠杀都不是没有选择理由的; 但确信理解了这些理由, 一般是不可能的。人们能够意识到波洛尼亚火车站的大爆炸是为了确保意大利更好地被统治; 或者是对巴西”敢死队”的认同; 或者是黑手党在美国为了促进非法交易活动而将旅馆夷为平地。但是我们怎么能够知道其目的根本是为”布拉巴特(Brabant)的疯狂杀手”服务呢? 运用利益代表原则是很难的, 在那里如此多活跃的利益在如此好地被隐藏起来。结果是在综合景观的统治之下, 我们生死于无数秘密的汇合之处。
Media/police rumours acquire instandy – or at worst after three or four repetitions – the indisputable status of age-old historical evidence. By the legendary authority of the spectacle of the day, odd characters eliminated in silence can reappear as fictive survivors, whose return can always be conjured up or computed, and proved by the mere say-so of specialists. They exist somewhere between the Acheron and the Lethe, these dead whom the spectacle has not properly buried, supposedly slumbering while awaiting the summons which will awake them all: home is the pirate, home from the sea, and the terrorist home from the hill; home, too, the thief who no longer needs to steal.
即使在最坏的情况下, 在三四遍重复以后, 媒体/警察的谣言就立即获得了无可置疑地古老历史证明的地位。通过景观时代的这种非凡权势, 被默默消除的奇特人物可以作为虚构的生还者而再现, 他们的重返总是被专家的纯粹无根据的断言所召回、计算或证明。他们存在于地狱和遗忘河之间的某处, 根据推测, 这些还没有被景观完全埋葬的游魂, 这时都在沉睡以等待醒来被传唤: “家是海盗船, 家来自大海, 恐怖主义者的家在山岗”; 同样, 这样的家, 小偷不会去偷。
Thus is uncertainty organised everywhere. Often domination will protect itself by false attacks, whose media coverage covers up the true operation. Such was the case with the bizarre assault on the Spanish Cortes by Tejero and his civil guards in 1981, whose failure had to hide another more modem, that is to say more disguised pronunciamiento, which succeeded. The equally showy failure of the French secret services’ sabotage attempt in New Zealand in 1985 has sometimes been seen as a stratagem, perhaps designed to divert attention from the numerous new uses of these secret services, by persuading people of their caricatural clumsiness both in their choice of target and in their mode of operation. It has most certainly been almost universally accepted that the geological explorations for oil-beds in the subsoil of the city of Paris, so noisily conducted in the autumn of 1986, had no other serious purpose than to measure the inhabitants’ current level of stupefaction and submission; by showing them supposed research so absolutely devoid
of economic reason.
因此有组织的不确定性到处存在。统治常常通过佯装的攻击保护自己, 它的媒体报道掩盖了真实的运作。这就是这样的例子, 由泰杰罗(Tejero)及其私人卫队在1981年制造的对西班牙国会的奇怪袭击, 他的失败正好掩盖了另一个更现代的东西, 换句话说, 正好掩盖了更好伪装起来的后继宣言。另一个同样有名的失败是法国秘密机关1985年在新西兰策划的阴谋破坏的企图, 它被看作是一个计谋, 通过在他们的目标选择和运转模式方面劝说漫画般笨拙的新西兰人民, 这一计谋多半是为了有意从特务机构的大量新效用中转移注意力。在巴黎城的底层土中进行石油层的地质探测, 这竟然被全巴黎人普遍接受了, 在1986年秋天, 这一如此喧闹的行为没有任何其他目的, 通过显示他们想象的绝对没有任何经济理由的科学研究, 它只不过想测量一下巴黎居民的麻木和服从的普通水平。
So mysterious has power become that after the affair of the illegal arms sales to Iran by the US presidency, one might wonder who was really running the United States, the leading power in the so-called democratic world. And thus who the hell was running the democratic world?
经历了美国总统对伊朗非法出售武器事件之后, 权力变得如此神秘, 人们也许纳闷究竟谁是真正管理着美国这一所谓民主世界的领导力量, 究竟谁在管理着民主世界?
More profoundly, in this world which is officially so respectful of economic necessities, no one ever knows the real cost of anything which is produced. In fact the major part of the real cost is never calculated; and the rest is kept secret.
更深刻的是, 在这个如此正式尊敬经济必要性的社会, 从没有入了解任何一件已生产物品的真正价值。事实上真正价值的主要部分从来没有被计算过; 其余的则保待秘密状态。
19
AT the beginning of 1988, a certain General Noriega suddenly became world famous. He was the unofficial dictator of Panama, a country without an army, where he commanded the National Guard. Panama is not really a sovereign state: it was dug out for its canal, rather than the reverse. Its currency is the dollar, and the army which runs it is similarly foreign. Noriega had thus devoted his entire career – precisely like Jaruzelski in Poland – to serving the occupying power as its chief of police. He imported drugs into the United States, since Panama was not bringing him sufficient revenue, and exported his ‘Panamanian’ capital to Switzerland. He had worked with the CIA against Cuba and, to provide adequate cover for his business activities, had also denounced some of his rivals in the import trade to the US authorities, obsessed as they are with this problem. To the envy of Washington, his chief security advisor was the best on the market: Michael Harari, a former officer with Mossad, the Israeli secret service. When the Americans finally decided to get rid of this character, some of their courts having carelessly condemned him, Noriega proclaimed that he was ready to defend himself for a thousand years – against foreigners, and against his own rebellious people; in the name of anti-imperialism he quickly received public support from the more austere bureaucratic dictators in Cuba and Nicaragua.
1988年之初, 一位不知名的诺里加将军一夜之间闻名于世。他是没有军队的巴拿马国家的非法定的独裁者, 在那里他控制着国民警卫队。巴拿马不是一个真正主权国家: 它因为巴拿马运河被发现, 而不是相反。巴拿马流通的是美元, 其军队的管理类似于外国雇用军。诺里加因而全身心投入自己的事业——正像波兰的贾茹来斯科(Jaruzelski)将军——就像警察头子一样服务于占有权力。因为巴拿马不能给他产生充足的国家收入, 所以, 他向美国输入毒品, 同时又向瑞士输出巴拿马人力资本。为了对他自己的商业活动搜供掩盖, 他与美国中央情报局合作反对古巴, 也指责一些与美国当局开展进口贸易的他的竞争对手, 美国当局常因在这一问题上不同意见而感到烦扰。令华盛顿忌妒的是, 他的首席安全顾问——迈克尔·哈拉尔, 以色列秘密机关马赛德的前官员是在市场上出售的最好的东西。当美国最终决定除去这个人时, 他们的一些法院很粗心地谴责宣判他有罪, 诺里加则宣布他准备保护自己已经一千年了——反对外国人、反对他自己的叛乱的人们; 在反对帝国主义的名义下他很快获得了来自古巴和尼加拉瓜更残酷的官僚政治独裁公众的支持。
Far from being a peculiarly Panamanian phenomenon, this General Noriega, who sells everything and fakes everything, in a world which does precisely the same thing, was altogether a perfect representative of the integrated spectacle, and of the successes it allows the assorted managers of its internal and external politics: a sort of statesman in a sort of state, a sort of general, a capitalist. He is the very model of our modern prince, and of those destined to come to power and stay there, the most able resemble him closely. It is not Panama which produces such marvels, it is our times.
远离作为独特的巴拿马人的现象, 在一个正是做同一样事情的世界上, 这个出售了一切又伪造了一切诺里加将军完全是综合景观的一个完美的代表, 他的成功认可了一种多样混合的国内国外的政治管理人: 可以说是政治家的东西在可以说是一个国家的地方, 可以说是将军的东西以及一个资本家。他是我们现代君主的真正原型——那些注定要掌权并逗留于台上, 最大可能地向他接近的一种类似于他的东西。这不是巴拿马制造的奇迹, 而是我们这个时代制造的奇迹。
20
FOR any intelligence service, following Clausewitz’s accurate theory of war, knowledge must become power. From this these services derive their contemporary prestige, their peculiarly poetic quality. Whilst intelligence itself has been so throughly expelled from the spectacle, which prohibits action and says very little about the actions of others, it seems to have taken refuge with those who analyse certain realities, and act secredy on certain realities. The recent revelations that Margaret Thatcher tried in vain to suppress, and in fact confirmed by the attempt, have shown that in Britain these services have already been capable of bringing down a prime minister whose politics they deemed dangerous. The general contempt created by the spectacle thus, for new reasons, restored the fascination of what in Kipling’s day was called ‘the great game’.
对任何一个情报局来说, 他们都追随克劳塞维茨的正确战争理论, 认为知识必须变为权力。这些情报部门正是自于这一点获得了他们的当代声望, 他们特有的诗一样的品质。同时智力自身如此彻底地被驱赶出景观, 景观阻止行动并几乎一点也不说出关于其他人的行动, 它好像同那些分析和秘密地在将定现实中行动的人一起去避难了。最近披露的玛格里特·撒彻尔徒劳地试图镇压, 而实际上通过这一企图又被证实了的事表明: 在英国, 这些秘密服务已经有能力打倒一个首相, 如果他们认为他的政纲是危险的话。因此, 由景观创造的普遍的蔑视, 为了新的理由, 恢复了在吉卜林日被称作”伟大游戏”的魅力。
‘The conspiracy theory of history’ was in the nineteenth century a reactionary and ridiculous belief, at a time when so many powerful social movements were stirring up the masses. Today’s pseudo-rebels are well aware of this, thanks to hearsay or a few books, and believe that it remains true for eternity. They refuse to recognise the real praxis of their time; it is too sad for their cold hopes. The state notes this fact, and plays on it.
当如此多的、强有力的社会运动同时煽动起人民大众时, “历史的阴谋理论”在19世纪是一种反动的和荒谬可笑的信仰。由于传闻或少许几本书, 今天的假造反者充分意识到了这一点, 并相信它将保留真实到永远。假造反者拒绝认识他们时代的真正实践; 这对于他们的客观希望是如此地沮丧。国家记录了这个事实, 并利用了它。
When almost every aspect of international political life and ever more important aspects of internal politics are conducted and displayed in the style of the secret services, with decoys, disinformation and double explanations (one may conceal another, or may only seem to) the spectacle confines itself to revealing a wearisome world of necessary incomprehensibility. This tedious series of lifeless, inconclusive crime novels has all the dramatic interest of a realistically staged fight between blacks, at night, in a tunnel.
当几乎国际政治生活的每个方面和国内政治生活更重要的方面以特务机关的方式被管理和陈列, 并伴随着诱骗、虚假情报和双重解释(一个可能隐藏另一个, 或者只是似是而非)时, 景观就把自身定位于对必定不可理解的乏味的世界的揭露。这个冗长乏味的、不得要领的、毫无生气的系列犯罪小说, 有着一种在深夜隧道中黑人之间实际上演的战斗般的生动的兴趣。
When television has shown a fine picture and explained it with a brazen lie, idiots believe that everything is clear. The demi-elite is content to know that almost everything is obscure, ambivalent, ‘constructed’ by unknown codes. A more exclusive elite would like to know what is true, hard as it is to distinguish in each particular case despite all their access to special knowledge and confidences. Which is why they would like to get to know the method of truth, though their love usually remains unrequited.
当电视显示出美好的画面, 并辅以厚颜无耻的谎言般的解释时, 傻瓜就相信一切都是很清楚的。半精英分子满足于了解几乎所有的事情都是模糊的、矛盾的, 都被未知的密码所”建构”的。更高级的精英分子则喜欢了解到底什么是真实的, 实际上最难的是在每个特殊案例之间进行辨别, 尽管他们都有通向特殊知识和自信的通道。这就是为什么他们喜欢获得对真理方法了解的原因, 尽管他们的爱好常常得不到回报。
21
SECRECY dominates this world, and first and foremost as the secret of domination. According to the spectacle, secrecy would only be a necessary exception to the rule of freely available, abundant information, just as domination in the integrated spectacle’S ‘free world’ would be restricted to a mere executive body in the service of democracy. But no one really believes the spectacle. How then do spectators accept the existence of secrecy which alone rules out any chance of their running a world of whose principal realities they know nothing, in the unlikely event that they were to be asked how to set about it? The fact is that almost no one sees secrecy in its inaccessible purity and its functional universality. Everyone accepts that there are inevitably little areas of secrecy reserved for specialists; as regards things in general, many believe they are in on the secret.
秘密统治这个位界, 首先是作为统治的奥秘。依据景观, 秘密仅仅是一种自由使用的、无限丰富的情报准则的必然的例外, 正如: 支配综合景观的”自由世界”只不过是服务于民主的一个纯粹的执行人一样。但没有人真正相信景观。那么如何使观众接受秘密的存在呢? 接受这一在他们被要求着手进行的未必存在的事件中, 独自取消了他们一无所知的主要现实的、不断运行的世界的任何机会的秘密存在呢？ 事实是几乎没有人在其难以接近的纯洁性和其功能性的普遍性中看到秘密。每一个人都承认存在着一个保留给专家的不可避免的很小很小的秘密领域; 至于一般而言的事情, 许多人相信他们已处于秘密之中。
In his Discours sur fa servitude volontaire, La Boétie showed how a tyrant’s power will be considerably reinforced by the concentric circles of individuals who believe, rightly or wrongly, that it is in their interests to support it In the same way many politicians and media professionals who are flattered not to be suspected of being irresponsible, learn a lot through their connections and confidences. Someone who is happy to be given confidential information is hardly likely to criticise it; nor to notice that in all that is confided to him, the principal part of reality is invariably hidden. Thanks to the benevolent protection of his deceivers, he sees a few more of the cards, false though they may be; he never learns the rules of the game. Thus he immediately identifies with the manipulators and scorns an ignorance which in fact he shares. For the titbits of information tossed to the familiars of a lying tyranny are usually poisoned with lies, manipulated and uncheckable. Yet they gratify those who get them, for they feel themselves superior to those who know nothing. Their only role is to make domination more respectable, never to make it comprehensible. They are the privilege of front-row spectators who are stupid enough to believe they can understand something, not by making use of what is hidden from them, but by believing what is revealed!
在他《关于自愿奴役的演讲》中, 拉贝特指出了一个暴君的权力怎样在相当大的程度上, 被正确或错误地相信它的个体的同心圆所强化的事实, 他控制他们的利益去支持它。同样, 许多被过分奉承的政治家和媒体专业人员, 并不被怀疑为不负责任, 通过他们的社会关系和秘密可以学习很多东西。快乐地被给予秘密情报的人几乎不可能批判它; 也不注意所有这些是怎样吐露给他的, 现实的主要部分总是被隐瞒起来。由于他的欺骗者仁慈的外表, 他看到很少几张牌, 尽管也许他们都是假的; 他从没有学会游戏的规则。因此, 他立即把自己认同为操纵者并嘲笑实际上也包括他本人在内的人们的无知。因为, 对虚伪统治的常客来说, 掷来掷去的花边新闻总是被谎言所败坏, 总是被操纵并不经审查。然而他们满足于他们已得到了它, 因为他们觉得他们自己优越于那些对此一无所知的人。他们的作用只是使统治更加令人尊敬, 而不是使它更加易于使人理解。前排观众的特权是他们如此愚蠢, 以致相信不是通过充分利用他们背后所隐藏的东西, 而是通过相信显示出的东西, 他们就能理解了什么。
Domination has at least sufficient lucidity to expect that its free and unhindered reign will very shortly lead to a significant number of major catastrophes, both ecological (chemical, for example) and economic (in banking, for example). It has for some time been ensuring it is in a position to deal with these exceptional misfortunes by other means than its usual gentle use of disinformation.
为了预料它自由的和不受阻碍的统治, 将立刻引起真实的大量意义重大的灾难——不仅涉及生态学方面(以化学为例)而且涉及经济学方面(以银行为例), 秘密的统治至少要有足够的洞察力。借助于不同于假情报的通常温和使用的手段, 秘密的统治在一个时期内要确保能够处理这些异常的不幸。
22
AS TO the rising number of assassinations over the last two decades (Kennedy, Aldo Moro, Olaf Palme, ministers and bankers, a pope or two, some others who were worth more than all of them) which have remained completely unsolved – for while the odd supernumerary has been sacrificed there has never been any question of apprehending those who hold the purse strings – their serial character shows a common hallmark: the blatant, and variable, lies of official statements. The syndrome of this newly established social disease has quickly spread, as if, following the first documented cases, it moved down from the summits of the state (the traditional sphere for such crimes) and at the same time moved up from the lower depths, the other traditional locale for trafficking and protection rackets, where this kind of war has always gone on, between professionals. These activities tend to meet up in the middle of social affairs, a place which the state was prepared to frequent and which the Mafia was pleased to reach; thus a kind of confluence begins.
最近的两个十年不断上升着的暗杀(肯尼迪、奥尔多·摩洛、奥拉夫·帕姆、部长和银行家、一两个教皇, 其他那些更多的值得被暗杀的人)还完全没有解决——因为, 当奇特的多余人一直在牺牲时, 理解执掌财政大权的人从来不存在任何问题——这些系列杰出人物有着共同的特点: 好炫耀、捉摸不定、发表官方声明时谎话连篇。这一新近确定的社会疾病综合症在迅速地扩展, 在第一例文献资科案例以后, 好像它开始由国家元首、政府首脑向下移动(这类犯罪的传统领域), 同时它又从较低点向上移动, 其他传统形式的犯罪如非法交易勾当, 保护花天酒地的生活, 在职业犯罪中仍在继续发生。这类犯罪活动倾向于在社会事务中偶然会面, 其地点是商家经常出入的地方, 也是黑手党高兴染指的地方; 因此一种合流开始了。
There has been no shortage of attempts to explain these new mysteries in terms of accidents: police incompetence, stupid magistrates, untimely press revelations, crisis of growth in the secret services, malevolent witnesses, or police spies suddenly deciding to go on strike. But Edgar Allan Poe had already discovered the real path to truth, in a well-known argument in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’:
不存在根据意外事故尝试解释这种新的神秘暗杀的不足: 警察无能、愚蠢的文职官员、不合时宜的新闻彼露、特务机关中不断增长的危机、恶意的目击证人或警察特工突然决定的罢工。但是, 埃德加·艾伦·波”在懊悔的太平间里的谋杀”的众所周知的议论中, 已发现了通向真理的真实小径:
It appears to me that this mystery is considered insoluble, for the very reason which should cause it to be regarded as easy of solution – I mean for the outré character of its features…. In investigations such as we are now pursuing, it should not be so much asked ‘what has occurred’, as ‘what has occurred that has never occurred before’.
“难以理解的、被一再考虑的神秘事物在向我敞开, 因为, 引起这一神秘的真正原因被认为是一个容易的答案——我特指它的显著特征中超出常规的性质……如我们现在正在从事的这种研究, 它不应该如此的被询问——‘发生了什么’, 而应是‘在从未发生什么以前发生了什么。’”
23
IN January 1988 the Colombian drug Mafia issued a communiqué aimed at correcting public opinion about its supposed existence. Now the first requirement of any Mafia, wherever it may be, is naturally to prove that it does not exist, or that it has been the victim of unscientific calumnies; and that is the first thing it has in common with capitalism. But in these particular circumstances, this Mafia was so irritated at being the only one placed under the spotlight that it went so far as to give details of the other groupings who were trying to cover themselves by illegitimately using it as a scapegoat. It declared: ‘We ourselves don’t belong to the Mafia of politicians and bureaucrats, bankers, financiers or millionaires, nor to the Mafia of fraudulent contracts, monopolies or oil, nor to the media Mafia.’
1988年1月哥伦比亚经营毒品的黑手党发表了一个公报, 目的在于纠正公众想象的关于他们存在的舆论。无论在什么地方, 现在任何黑手党的第一个要求都是本能地证明其不存在, 或者证明其是非科学诽谤的牺牲品; 而且首要的是其与资本主义有共同之处。但在这些特殊境况中, 这个黑手党对把自己唯一置于聚光灯之下的做法感到如此恼怒, 以致公开了那些正设法通过非法手段使之做替罪羊, 以掩盖他们自己罪行的组织的细节。其宣称: “我们自己是不属于政治家、官僚主义者、银行家、金融家或百万富翁的黑手党, 也不属于骗取定约、垄断或行贿的黑手党, 也不属于媒体的黑手党。”
We can doubtless assume that the authors of this statement have, like all the rest, an interest in diverting their own activities into that vast river of troubled water whose course irrigates the whole of present society, a river of crime and more banal illegalities. But it is also correct to assume that here we have people who by their very profession know better than most what they are talking about. The Mafia flourishes in the soil of contemporary society. Its expansion is as rapid as that of all the other products of the labour by which integrated spectacular society shapes its world. The Mafia grows along with the swift development of information technology and industrial food processing. along with urban redevelopment and shanty-towns, secret services and illiteracy.
我们无疑可以假定这个声明的作者像所有其他人一样, 对将他们自己的活动转入混乱状态的巨大河流有一种兴趣, 这一河流的流动灌溉着整个现代社会, 灌溉着犯罪和大量陈腐非法行为的小洞。但是在这里其改正了这种假定, 即认为借助于他们真正的表白, 我们有比正在议论什么的人了解得更好的人。黑手党繁荣了当代社会的土壤。其扩张像所有其他通过综合景观社会塑造的这个世界的劳动产品一样迅速。黑手党随着信息技术和工业食品加工的迅速发展一同增长, 随着城市再开发和城市贫民区, 特务机关和文盲的发展一同增长。
24
WHEN it was first brought to the United States by migrant Sicilian workers, the Mafia was nothing but an uprooted archaism; just like the gang wars between Chinese secret societies which appeared at the same time on the West Coast. Born out of obscurantism and poverty, the Mafia at that time was not even able to put down roots in Northern Italy. It seemed condemned to vanish with the progress of the modern state. For it was a form of organised crime which could only prosper through the ‘protection’ of backward minorities, outside the urban world, where the laws of the bourgeoisie and a rational police force could not penetrate. In its defence, the Mafia could only eliminate witnesses, to neutralise the police and judiciary, and to maintain necessary secrecy in its sphere of activity. But subsequently it found fresh scope in the new obscurantism first of diffuse spectacular society, then of its integrated form: with the total victory of secrecy, the general resignation of the populace, the complete loss of logic, the universal progress of venality and cowardice, all the conditions were in place for it to become a modern, and offensive, power.
当第一次被西西里岛移民工人带进美国时, 黑手党不过是一种已根拔除了的古老事物; 正像同时出现在西海岸的中国秘密社团之间的团伙火并一样。产生于蒙昧主义和贫穷的黑手觉, 那时的意大利北部还不可能被根除, 它似乎随着现代国家的进步才宣告已消亡。因为在城市世界之外, 在资产阶级的法律和理性的警察力量不能穿透的地方, 黑手党是唯一通过对落后少数民族的”保护”而繁荣起来的一种有组织的犯罪。在保护手段中, 黑手党可能只是消除证据, 中立化警察和司法审判人员, 在其活动的领域坚持必要的秘密。但是后来在最初弥散景观社会的新蒙昧主义中, 然后是在综合的景观形式中, 黑手党发现了自己的全新天地: 伴随着秘密的整体胜利、大众的普遍顺从、逻辑的完全丧失、贿赂和儒弱的普遍发展, 其变成了一种与所有这些条件响应相称的现代攻击性的力量。
Prohibition in America (one of the finest examples this century of the state’s pretension to be able to exercise authoritarian control over everything, and of the results which ensue) handed over the trade in alcohol to organised crime for more than a decade. From there the Mafia, with its new wealth and experience, moved into electoral politics, commerce, the development of the market in professional killers, and certain aspects of international politics. During the Second world War it received favours from the US government, to help with the invasion of Sicily. Legalised alcohol was replaced by drugs, now the leading commodity in illegal consumption. Next the Mafia became closely involved in property dealing, in banking and in high-level politics and affairs of state, and then in the spectacular industries: television, films and publishing. And already, in the United States at least, it is involved in the music industry, as in every other activity where promotion depends on a relatively concentrated group of people. It is easy to apply pressure to them, with bribes and intimidation, since there is no shortage of capital or of untouchable, anonymous hitmen. By corrupting the disc-jockeys one can choose what will succeed, from equally wretched commodities.
在长达十多年的时间内, 美国的禁酒令(国家自称能够独裁地控制每一件事情的这一世纪最好的例子, 其恶习跟着就发生了)将酒类贸易移交给了有组织的犯罪。从此开始, 黑手党和其新的财富和经验一起进入了选举政治、商业、职业杀手的市场发展和国际政治的特定领域。第二次世界大战期间为了帮助对西西里的进攻, 黑手党得到了美国政府的支持。合法化的酒类贸易被毒品所代替, 现在这一主导商品正在违法消费。下一步, 黑手党一步一步地卷入财产交易、银行业、高层政治和国家事务, 然后是景观产业: 电视、电影和出版业。在美国, 黑手党至少已涉足音乐产业, 因为在所有其他活动领域的商品促销, 都要依靠人口相对集中的群体。伴随着贿赂和胁迫, 对他们来说运用强制手段是非常容易的, 因为不存在资本的不足, 或者贱民、匿名打手的不足等等。通过腐化操盘手人们能够从质量同样差的商品中选择可以成功的东西。
But it is undoubtedly in Italy that the Mafia has acquired the greatest strength, in the wake of its experience and conquests in America. Since the period of its historic compromise with the parallel government it has been able to kill magistrates and police chiefs with impunity – a practice it inaugurated through its participation in the displays of political ‘terrorism’. The similar evolution of the Mafia’s Japanese equivalent, in relatively independent conditions, well illustrates the unity of the epoch.
但是无疑黑手党在意大利获得了巨大的力量, 美国黑手党紧随其后也模仿它的经历和征服过程。自从同准政府的历史妥协以来, 黑手党有能力杀掉文职官员和警察首领而不受惩罚——经由其参与的政治”恐怖主义”的展览开创了一种新的实践。在相对独立的条件下, 黑手党的日本对等物的相同发展也很好地阐明了这一时代的统一。
It is always a mistake to try to explain something by opposing Mafia and state: they are never rivals. Theory easily verifies what all the rumours in practical life have all too easily shown. The Mafia is not an outsider in this world; it is perfectly at home. Indeed, in the integrated spectacle it stands as the model of all advanced commercial enterprises.
通过使国家和黑手党对立, 试图解释某些东西这总是一个错误: 因为他们从不是对手。理论很容易证实在实践生活的全部谣言中毫不费力所揭示的东西。但黑手党不是这世界的局外人; 他们完美地精通这个世界。确实, 在综合景观中, 他们像所有先进商业企业的模范在一样矗立着。
25
WITH the new conditions which now predominate in a society crushed under the spectacle’s iron heel, we know, for example, that a political assassination can be presented in another light, can in a sense be screened. Everywhere the mad are more numerous than before, but what is infinitely more useful is that they can be talked about madly. And it is not some kind of reign of terror which forces such explanations on the media. On the contrary, it is the peaceful existence of such explanations which should cause terror.
如我们所知, 由于现在统治一个社会的新的条件在景观铁蹄之下被碾碎, 一种以另一种见解展现的政治暗杀, 在某种意义上就可能被拍成电影。与以前相比现在到处都是疯子, 但现在更加有用的东西是他们可以被精神失常地当作闲谈的话题。强制在媒体进行这样的解释, 某种程度上不算恐怖统治, 相反, 正是这种解释的平静存在, 却是一种实实在在的恐怖。
When in 1914 with war on the horizon Villain assassinated Jaurès, no one doubted that Villain, though certainly a somewhat unbalanced man, had believed he had to kill Jaurès because in the eyes of the extremists of the patriotic right who had deeply influenced him, Jaurès seemed certain to have a detrimental effect on the country’s defence. These extremists had merely underestimated the tremendous strength of patriotic commitment within the Socialist Party, which would immediately lead them into the union sacrée, whether or not Jaurès was assassinated or allowed to hold to his internationalist position in rejecting war. If such an event happened today, journalists/police and pundits on ‘social issues’ and ‘terrorism’, would quickly explain that Villain was well known for having planned several attempted murders, whose intended victims were always men who, despite the variety of their political opinions, all by chance looked and dressed rather like Jaurès. Psychiatrists would confirm this, and the media, merely confirming in their turn what the psychiatrists had said, would thus confirm their own competence and impartiality as uniquely authoritative experts. The
official police investigation would immediately come up with several reputable people ready to bear witness to the fact that this same Villain, considering he had been rudely served at the ‘Chope du Croissant’, had in their presence loudly threatened to take revenge on its proprietor by publicly murdering on the premises one of his best customers.
1914年随着战争的即将来临, 维林(Villain)刺杀了贾尔斯(Jaures), 尽管有几分神经失常, 但没人怀疑, 维林认为他一定要除掉贾斯, 因为在深深影响他的爱国正义右派的极端主义者心目中, 贾尔斯似乎注定对国家的防卫有危害性影响。这些极端主义者只是低估了在社会主义政党内部的爱国责任的巨大力量, 无论贾尔斯被刺杀或者允许他坚持反对战争的国际主义立场, 这些政党都不得不立即走向神圣的联合。如果这样的事件发生在今天, 研究”社会问题”和”恐怖主义”的新闻记者/警察和博学家, 将由于维林已有的几次未遂暗杀——他选中的牺位品总是男人, 不论他们的政治观点怎样不同, 他们全部偶然地看起来和穿戴得更像贾尔斯——而把维林解释得名闻全球。精神病医师将证实这一点, 媒体在他们的运转中只是证实精神病医师所说的东西, 并因而确认他们自己作为唯一权威专家的公正和能力。考虑到维林在新月啤酒店供职时的无礼, 在所有人在场的情况下, 曾大声威胁要通过在这一酒店公开刺杀其最好的消费者而报复他的老饭, 官方警察调查立即提出了几位名声好的人愿意作证来证明这同一个维林。
This is not to say that in the past truth was revealed often or quickly; for Villain was eventually acquitted by the French courts. He was not shot until 1936, at the start of the Spanish revolution, having been imprudent enough to move to the Balearic Islands.
不用说, 在过去, 真相会经常或很快地被泄露出来, 因为, 维林在法国法院最终被宣告无罪。直到1936年他也没有被枪毙, 西班牙革命之初, 他被轻率地转移到西班牙东部的巴利阿里群岛。
26
THE ubiquitous growth of secret societies and networks of influence answers the imperative demand of the new conditions for profitable management of economic affairs, at a time when the state holds a hegemonic role in the direction of production and when demand for all commodities depends strictly on the centralisation achieved by spectacular information/promotion, to which forms of distribution must also adapt. It is therefore only a natural product of the concentration of capital, production and distribution. Whatever does not grow must disappear; and no business can grow without adopting the values, techniques and methods of today’s industry, spectacle and state. In the final analysis it is the particular form of development chosen by the economy of our epoch which dictates the widespread creation of new personal bonds of dependency and protection.
对于有利可图的经济事务的经营来说, 秘密社团和权力网络无所不在的发展, 符合了新环境的迫切需求, 每次当国家在生产方面保得了霸权地位, 每次当全部商品需求严格依赖通过景观信息/宣传所完成的集中化, 它也要求分配的形式必须与之相适应。因此, 新环境只是资本、生产和分配集中的一种自然产物。无论怎样, 不增长一定会消失; 没有什么交易可以不采用今天的工业、景观和国家的价值、技术和方法而增长。归根到底, 它是被我们时代的经济所选中的发展的特殊形式, 这一时代规定了依从和保护的新的个人枷锁的普遍创造物。
It is precisely here that we can see the profound truth of the Sicilian Mafia’s maxim, so well appreciated throughout Italy: ‘When you’ve got money and friends, you can laugh at the law.’ In the integrated spectacle, the laws are asleep; because they were not made for the new production techniques, and because they are evaded in distribution by new types of agreement. What the public thinks, or prefers, is of no importance. This is what is hidden by the spectacle of all these opinion polls, elections, modernising restructurings. No matter who the winners are, the faithful customers will get the worst of it, because that is exactly what has been produced for them.
正是在这里, 我们能够理解如此彻底地为整个意大利所欣赏的、西西里黑手党格言的深刻真理性: “如果你得到了钱和朋友, 你就可以嘲笑法律。”在综合的景观中法律已沉睡; 因为法律不是为了新的生产技术而创造, 通过新型的协定, 法律在财产的分配中被逃避。公众所思考的或所喜欢的东西是没有价值的。这就是所有这些通过民意测验、选举、现代化重组的景观所隐藏着的东西。不论谁是胜利者, 忠实的消费者将得到最坏的东西, 因为那正是为他们所生产的。
The widespread talk of a ‘legal state’ only dates from the moment when the modern, so-called democratic state generally ceased to be one. The fact that the expression was only popularised shortly after 1970 and, appropriately, in Italy is far from accidental. In many fields, laws are even made precisely so that they may be evaded, by those who have the means to do so. Illegality in some circumstances – for example, around the world trade in all sorts of weaponry, especially the most technologically sophisticated products – is simply a kind of back-up for the economic operation, which will be all the more profitable because of it. Today many business deals are necessarily as dishonest as the century, and not like those once made within a strictly limited range by people who had chosen the paths of dishonesty.
被普遍接受的”法制国家”的话题不过始于这样一个时刻, 即现代的、所谓的民主国家一般不再是唯一的。在1970年之后不久, 这一表达方式的普及化这一事实, 在意大利却远非是偶然的。在很多领域, 法律之所以被确立, 只是为了正好被那些有办法逃避它的人所逃避。在一些特殊情境中的违法行为——如在世界各地贩卖各种各样的军火, 特别是技术最复杂的产品——这简直是经济运行的一种简单备份, 因为它是最有利可图的行业。今天许多商业交易像这个世纪一样, 必然是不诚实的, 但它也不像那些选择不诚实道路的人在严格受限的领域内曾制造出来的东西。
With the growth of promotion/control networks to mark out and maintain exploitable sectors of the market, there is also an increase in the number of personal services which must be provided to those in the know, who have willingly provided their help; and these are not always the police or guardians of the state’s interests and security. Functional complicities operate across time and distance, for their networks command all the means to impose those sentiments of gratitude and fidelity which were unfortunately so rare in the free activity of the bourgeois epoch.
为了规划和维持市场开发领域, 伴随着宣传/控制网络的增长, 也存在着大量私人服务(私家侦探所)的一种增长, 私人服务一定能提供给服务对象一些内幕, 它乐意提供他们的帮助; 但这些人并不总是国家利益和国家安全的警察或保护人。功能性的共谋穿过时间和距离而运行, 因为他们的网络运用全部手段以利用忠诚和感激的感情, 但不幸的是, 在资产阶级时代的自由行动中, 这类感激和忠诚的感情如此罕见。
One always learns something from one’s adversary. We should not doubt that statesmen, too, came to read the young Lukàcs’ remarks on the concepts of legality and illegality, at the time when they had to deal with the brief passage of a new generation of negativity – as Homer said, ‘Men in their generations are like the leaves of the trees.’ Since then statesmen, like us, have ceased to trouble themselves with any kind of ideology on the question; and indeed the practices of spectacular society no longer encourage ideological illusions of this kind. And finally it could be said of all of us that what has stopped us from devoting ourselves to one particular illegal activity is the fact that we have had several.
一个人总是从他的对手那里学会许多东西。当他们当时不得不处理新的否定性的一代人的这一简短的一章时, 我们就不应怀疑政治家们已经开始阅读青年卢卡奇的有关合法和非法概念的评论了——如荷马所说, “人在他们的一代人中就像树叶在树中”。从那时至今, 政治家们像我们一样, 停止了用任何一种有疑问的意识形态去烦扰他们自己; 确实, 景观社会的实践不再鼓励这一类的意识形态幻想。最后可以说, 那种阻止所有的人献身于特定非法活动的是这样一个事实: 我们已有几个人这样做了。
27
IN book VIII, chapter 5 of The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides wrote something about the operations of another oligarchic conspiracy which closely relates to the situation in which we find ourselves:
在《伯罗奔尼撒战争》第八卷第五章中, 修昔底德写下了一些与我们发现的我们自己的情境密切地相关的、有关不同的寡头政治阴谋活动的不少东西:
Nevertheless the Assembly and the Council chosen by lot still continued to hold meetings. However, they took no decisions that were not approved by the party of the revolution; in fact all the speakers were from this party. and what they were going to say had been considered by the party beforehand. People were afraid when they saw their numbers, and no one now dared to speak in opposition to them. If anyone did venture to do so, some appropriate method was soon found for having him killed, and no one tried to investigate such crimes or take action against those suspected of them. Instead the people kept quiet, and were in such a state of terror that they thought themselves lucky enough to be left unmolested even if they had said nothing at all. They imagined that the revolutionary party was much bigger than it really was, and they lost all confidence in themselves, being unable to find out the facts because of the size of the city and because they had insufficient knowledge of each other. For the same reason it was impossible for anyone who felt himself ill-treated to complain of it to someone else so as to take measures in his own defence; he would either have had to speak to someone he did not know or to someone he knew but could not rely upon. Throughout the democratic party people approached each other suspiciously, everyone thinking that the next man had something to do with what was going on. And there were in fact among the revolutionaries some people whom no one could ever have imagined would have joined in an oligarchy. It was these who were mainly responsible for making the general mass of people so mistrustful of each other and who were of the greatest help in keeping the minority safe, since they made mutual suspicion an established thing in the popular assemblies.
“不过, 通过抽签决定的办法形成的议会和委员会仍然持续控制公民大会的运行方式。然而他们不做出任何革命政党认可的决定; 实际上所有的主席都来自这一政党, 并且他们将要说些什么, 也已被这一政党预先考虑过。人民担心当他们看到这一政党的成员时, 马上就没有人再敢说出反对他们的话。如果任何人冒险这么做, 他被杀害的某些合适的办法就会迅速被发现, 并且没有人试图去调查这一犯罪, 或者采取行动反对他们中的这些嫌疑犯。代替人民保持沉默的是这样一种恐怖状态——他们认为自己是如此幸运以致无苦恼地被保留下来, 即使他们一个字也不说。他们想象的革命政党大于真实的革命政党, 他们失去了他们自己的全部信心, 并由于城邦规模的限制和他们相互之间缺乏足够的知识而不能查明真相。处于同样的理由, 任何一个感到自己受到虐待的人向其他人抱怨这一点都是不可能的, 使得人们不得不在他自己的防卫中采取措施; 他可能或者不得不证明他不认识的人, 或者不得不证明他认识但不能信赖的人。遍及整个民主党的一种意识是, 人们都是相互猜疑地接近, 每一个人都在思考下一个大人物与正在发生的事情有什么样的关系。实际上, 革命者中的一些人从不曾设想他们会加入寡头政治中。这正是对发展一般大众相互之间如此不信任主要负责的那些人, 正是对少数派的安全提供最大帮助的那些人, 因为他们在人民议会已确定的事情中制造了相互猜疑。”
If history should return to us after this eclipse, something which depends on factors still in play and thus on an outcome which no one can definitely exclude, these Comments may one day serve in the writing of a history of the spectacle; without any doubt the most important event to have occurred this century. and the one for which the fewest explanations have been ventured. In other circumstances, I think I could have considered myself altogether satisfied with my first work on this subject, and left others to consider future developments. But in the present situation, it seemed unlikely that anyone else would do it.
如果历史在这一黯然失色之后在我们身上重新返回, 某些事情将依赖一些仍然在起作用的要素, 并且在这一结果中, 没有人可以被明确地排除在外, 这些评论总有一天会是适合景观历史的著述; 对这个世纪发生过最重要的事件没有人会怀疑, 但这些评论可能是冒险做出的唯一的最少的解释。在其他情形下, 我相信自己完全满意于我关于这一主题的第一部作品, 而让其他人去思考其未来的发展。但在现在这种情境中, 任何其他人要做到这一点似乎都是不太可能的。
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NETWORKS of promotion/control slide imperceptibly into networks of surveillance/ disinformation. Formerly one only conspired against an established order. Today, conspiring in its favour is a new and flourishing profession. Under spectacular domination people conspire to maintain it, and to guarantee what it alone would call its well-being. This conspiracy is a part of its very functioning.
宣传/控制的网络不知不觉地陷入监视/虚假情报的网络。从前人们仅仅密谋反对既定的秩序, 今天, 密谋策划在宣传/控制网络的支持下已成为一个新的繁荣的职业。在景观统治之下, 人们协力维持这一职业, 共同保证它独自宣布的它的福利安宁。阴谋是这一职业真正发挥作用的一部分。
Provisions for a kind of preventive civil war are already being made, adapted to variously calculated future projections. These are the ‘special squads’ responsible for local interventions according to the needs of the integrated spectacle. Thus, for the worst scenarios, a tactic has been planned under the name ‘Three Cultures’, a witty reference to a square in Mexico City in October 1968 – though this time the gloves would be off and the tactic applied before the revolt occurred. Such extreme cases apart, to be a useful tool of government unexplained assassinations only need to be widely influential or relatively frequent simply knowing that they are possible complicates calculations in many different fields. Nor is there any need to be intelligently selective, ad hominem. The entirely random application of the procedure may well be more productive.
一种预防性内战的准备措施已准备就绪, 以适应事先预料的各种不同未来预案。根据综合景观的需要, 这些就是负责局部调停的”特别分队”。因此, 为了做好最坏的打算, 一种策略在”三文化”的名义下已被计划好, “三文化”是对1968年10月墨西哥城广场事件的诙谐的参照——虽然这一次防护手套被取消, 但战术在起义发生之前已运用。事实既然是这样, 为了成为政府有用的工具, 莫名其妙的暗杀只不过需要普遍的影响力或相对经常地发生, 因为, 简单的认识是, 他们在其他许多领域可能使慎重的计划更加复杂化。不仅仅限于这点, 任何需要都变成了从个人偏好出发的精明的选择。程序的完全随意的使用也许更是生产性的。
The composition of certain fragments of a social critique of rearing has also been arranged, something which is no longer entrusted to academics or media professionals, whom it is now preferable to keep apart from excessively traditional lies in this debate: a new critique is required, advanced and exploited in a new way, controlled by another, better trained, sort of professional. In a relatively confidential manner, lucid texts are beginning to appear, anonymously, or signed by unknown authors – a tactic helped by everyone’s concentration on the downs of the spectacle, which in turn makes unknowns justly seem the most admirable texts not only on subjects never touched on in the spectacle but also containing arguments whose force is made more striking by a calculable originality deriving from the fact that however evident, they are never used. This practice may serve as at least a first stage in initiation to recruit more alert intellects, who will later be told more about the possible consequences, should they seem suitable. What for some will be the first step in a career will be for others – with lower grades – the first step into the trap prepared for them.
一种培育中的社会批判的特定片断的合成物也被安排好, 一些事情不再被托付给学究式的人物或媒体专业人士, 在现在这次争论中, 保持远离大量传统的谎言是更为可取的: 一种新的批判应是必需的、先进的、以新方式被开发的、被另一个人控制的、受到更好训练的和有几分职业化的。以一种相对秘密的形式, 明晰的本文开始匿名地显现, 或由无名的作者签名——策略为每一个人对景观小丑的专心所帮助, 景观依次公正地使每个不知名的人都看似令人钦佩——本文不但在景观中从未提及主题, 而且其包含的争论的力量, 通过来自于十分明显而从未被使用的可预测性的创意变得更加引人注目。为了吸收更多敏捷的知识分子, 这一实践也许至少可以在开始的第一个阶段起作用, 这些知识分子稍后会被告之更多与他们相配的可能结果。为什么一些在职业生涯中迈出第一步的人总是责备比他级别低的人, 他们第一步就踏进了为他们准备好的陷阱。
In some cases, with issues that threaten to become controversial, another pseudo-critique can be created; and between the two opinions which will thus be put forward – both outside the impoverished conventions of the spectacle – unsophisticated judgement can oscillate indefinitely, while discussion around them can be renewed whenever necessary. Most often this concerns a general discussion of what is hidden by the media, and this discussion can be strongly critical, and on some points quite evidently intelligent, yet always curiously decentred. Topics and words have been artificially chosen, with the aid of computers programmed in critical thought. These texts always contain certain gaps, which are quite hard to spot but nonetheless remarkable: the vanishing point of perspective is always abnormally absent. They resemble those facsimiles of famous weapons, which only lack the firing-pin. This is inevitably a lateral critique, which perceives many things with considerable candour and accuracy. but places itself to one side. Not because it affects some sort of impartiality, for on the contrary it must seem to find much fault, yet without ever apparently feeling the need to reveal its cause, to state, even implicitly, where it is coming from and where it wants to go.
在某些情况下, 由于问题即将变成奋争议的, 另一个虚假批判可能会被制造出来: 因此在两种将要提出的意见之间——双方都在景观的贫乏习俗之外——当围绕他们的辩论随时可以更新时, 天真的看法会不确定地来回摇摆。这最常涉及到是被媒体所隐藏的一般讨论, 这一讨论可能是强烈批判性的, 在一些观点上非常明显是明智的, 然而又非常奇特的远离中心。在这些批判思想中借助于计算机编程的帮助, 主题相话语常常是被人为选好的。这些本文总是包含一定的空白, 它很难发现然而又非常明显: 隐匿的观点始终是非正常的缺席。他们像那些著名武器的复制品, 只是缺少撞针。这不可避免的是一种单面批判, 它相当坦率和正确地觉察到许多东西, 但却把自己置于一方。不是因为它影响了某种公正, 相反, 因为它一定发现了更多的过错, 然而似乎在任何时候它也没有感到有揭示它的原因的必要, 甚至是含蓄声明的必要: 诞生它的地方也是它要回去的地方。
To this kind of counter-journalistic false critique can be added the organised practice of rumour which we know to be originally a sort of uncontrollable byproduct of spectacular information, since everyone, however vaguely, perceives something misleading about the latter and trust it as little as it deserves. Rumour began as something superstitious, naive, self-deluding. More recently, however, surveillance has begun introducing into the population people capable of starting rumours which suit it at the very first signal. It has been decided here to apply in practice the observations of a theory formulated some thirty years ago, whose origins lie in American sociology of advertising the theory of individuals known as ‘pacemakers’, that is, those whom others in their milieu come to follow and imitate – but this time moving from spontaneity to control. Budgetary, or extrabudgetary, means have also been released to fund numerous auxiliaries; beside the former specialists of the recent past, academics and media professionals, sociologists and police. To believe in the continuing mechanical application of past models leads to just as many errors as the general ignorance of the past. ‘Rome is no longer in Rome’, and the Mafia are no longer thieves. And the surveillance and disinformation services are as far removed from the police and informers of former times – for example, from the roussins and mouchards of the Second Empire – as the present special services in all countries are from the officers of the army general staff’s Deuxième Bureau in 1914.
这种反新闻事业的虚假批判可能会被添加上有组织谣言的恶习, 我们知道这一恶习起初只是景观信息无法控制的一种副产品, 因为一个人无论怎样糊涂, 他总能认识到关于谣言骗人这些事情, 并相信它很少是值得相信的。谣言在过去只是作为有几分迷信的、无知的和自我蛊惑的东西而开始。然而最近, 监视开始进入全体居民中, 这些人有能力在第一信号时间启动适合于他们的谣言。关于这一点实际上在三十年前已阐明过的理论观察中就被运用过, 其根源在于美国的广告社会学——一种作为”标兵”而闻名的个人理论, 换句话说, 其他人在他们的环镜中开始跟随和模仿——但这次却是从自发走向自觉。除最近的前专家、学者、媒体专业人士、社会学家和警察之外; 预算或预算外财富也被解放出来为志愿性团体提供资助。信仰过去模式的持续机械应用, 会导致和过去的普遍无知一样多的错误。”罗马不再是在罗马了”, 并且黑手党不再是小偷了。监视和假情报服务与以前时代的警察和告密者远远不一样——例如, 从第二帝国时代的密探开始, 作为所有国家的现代特殊服务都源自于1914年陆军总参谋部第二事务局。
Since art is dead, it has evidendy become extremely easy to disguise police as artists. When the latest imitations of a recuperated neo-dadaism are allowed to pontificate proudly in the media, and thus also to tinker with the décor of official palaces, like court jesters to the kings of junk, it is evident that by the same process a cultural cover is guaranteed for every agent or auxiliary of the state’s networks of persuasion. Empty pseudo-museums, or pseudo-research centres on the work of nonexistent personalities, can be opened just as fast as reputations are made for journalist-cops, historian-cops, or novelist-cops. No doubt Arthur Cravan foresaw this world when he wrote in Maintenant: ‘Soon we will only see artists in the streets, and it will take no end of effort to find a single man.’ This is indeed the sense of the revived form of an old quip of Parisian loafers: ‘Hello there, artists! Too bad if I’ve got it wrong.’
由于艺术的死亡, 很明显将警察伪装成艺术家变得非常容易。当最近重新复原的新达达主义的仿制品被允许在媒体上装作教皇一样骄傲地训话时, 像宫廷小丑对愚蠢的皇帝一样, 它也不过被允许笨拙地摆弄了一番官方宫殿的舞台装饰而已。很明显, 通过同样的方法, 一种文化掩护物会被国家说服的网络的每一个代理人和助手所担保。空洞的虚假的博物馆或虚假的关于不存在的人格的行为研究中心, 就像最适宜的新闻警察、历史学家警察或小说家警察名声一样快的被公开。不用怀疑亚瑟·克雷文写《现在》时对这一世界的预见: “不久我们将仅仅在大街上看到艺术家, 发现一个独立的人将花费许多努力。”这确实是巴黎流浪汉古老双关语复活形式的真实意义: “你好, 艺术家! 如果我自己弄错了那真太糟糕啦。”
Things having become what they are, we can now witness the use of collective authorship by the most modern publishing houses, that is to say, the ones with the best commercial distribution. Since their pseudonyms are only authenticated by the newspapers, they can swop them around, collaborate, replace each other, take on new artificial brains. Their task is to express the ideas and lifestyles of the epoch, not because of their personalities, but because they are ordered to. Those who believe that they are truly independent, individual literary entrepreneurs can knowingly vouch for the fact that Ducasse has had a row with the Comte de Lautréamont, that Dumas isn’t Maquet, that we must never confuse Erckmann with Chatrian; that Censier and Daubenton are no longer on speaking terms. It might be best to say that this type of modem author was a follower of Rimbaud, at least in so far as ‘I is someone else.’
物的占有变成他们所是, 通过最现代的出版公司, 我们能够证明集体作者的作用, 换句话说, 这些集体作者总是伴随着最好的商业分配。因为他们的笔名只是被新闻业所鉴别, 他们能够互换、合作、彼此代替, 雇用新的伪造的智力。他们的任务是解释时代的观念和生活风格, 这不是因为他们的人格使然, 而是因为他们被安排这样做。那些相信他们是真正独立自主的、独特的文学主办人可以会意的证明这样一个事实——一个迪卡斯(Ducasse)与洛特阿蒙德(Lautreamont)伯爵争吵的事实, 大仲马不是马奎特(Maquet), 我们从未将埃里克曼(Erckmann)混同为查顿(Chatrian); 森瑟(Censier)和多布顿(Daubenton)不再仅仅是泛泛之交。至少就”我就是他人”而言, 也许最恰当的说法是这一类型的现代作者只是兰波的追随者而已。
The whole history of spectacular society called for the secret services to play the pivotal role; for it is in them that the features and force of such a society are concentrated to the highest degree. Moreover they are always also the arbiters of that society’s general interests, despite their modest title of ‘services’. There is no corruption here, for they faithfully express the common morals of the spectacular century. Thus do watchers and watched sail forth on a boundless ocean. The spectacle has brought the secret to victory, and must be more and more controlled by specialists in secrecy who are certainly not only officials who have to different degrees managed to free themselves from state control; who are not only officials.
景观社会的整个历史要求特务机关扮演一种枢纽作用; 因为, 只有在他们身上这一社会的特征和力量才被浓缩到如此高的程度。而且不管他们”服务”的头衔怎样谦虚, 他们总是这个社会普遍利益的仲裁者。这里没有腐败, 正是他们忠诚表这了景观世纪的共同道德。因为看守人所做的只是在无边无际的大海上守护着前面的航行。景观将秘密引向胜利, 这些秘密一定会被越来越多地专家暗地里控制, 这些专家肯定不再仅仅是在不同程度上设法从国家控制中将自己解放出来的官员; 他们不仅仅是官员。
29
A GENERAL working rule of the integrated spectacle, at least for those who manage its affairs, is that in this framework, everything which can be done, must be done. This means that every new instrument must be employed, whatever the cost. New machinery everywhere becomes the goal and the driving force of the system, and is the only thing which can significantly modify its progress, every time its use is imposed without further reflection. Society’s owners indeed want above all to keep a certain ‘social relation between people’, but they must also maintain continual technological innovation; for that was one of the obligations that came with their inheritance. This law must also thus apply to the services which safeguard domination. When an instrument has been perfected it must be used, and its use will reinforce the very conditions that favour this use. Thus it is that emergency procedures become standard procedures.
综合景观的一般工作原则, 至少对于那些留理其事务的人来说, 那就是在这一框架内能够做的事情一定要做。这意味着不论其代价如何, 每一种新工具都必须被运用。新机器到处变成目标和这一制度的驱动力, 并是能够意味深长地变更其进步的唯一的事情, 它的每一次使用都是没有任何进一步反思地被强加的。社会统治者确实首先在人们之间要维持特定的社会关系, 但他们也必须要保持一种持续的技术创新; 因为, 这是伴随着他们的遗传而来的一种义务。这一法则也一定要运用到保卫统治的服务之中。当一种工具是完美的, 并一定使用着时, 它的使用将增强真正地支持它的效用的环境, 因此, 突发事件的处置就变成了标准。
In a certain sense the coherence of spectacular society proves revolutionaries right, since it is evident that one cannot reform the most trifling detail without taking the whole thing apart. But at the same time this coherence has eliminated every organised revolutionary tendency by eliminating those social terrains where it had more or less effectively been able to find expression: from trade unions to newspapers, towns to books. In a single movement, it has been possible to illuminate the incompetence and thoughtlessness of which this tendency waS quite naturally the bearer. And on an individual level, the reigning coherence is quite capable of eliminating, or buying off such exceptions as may arise.
在特定的意义上, 景观社会的一致性证明了革命者的权利, 因为, 非常明显的是, 没有对整体的拆解, 人们就不能改革最微不足道的细节。但同时通过排除这些社会领域, 这些革命或多或少能够有效发现其表达的领域: 从贸易协会到报纸, 从城镇到书籍, 这种景观社会的一致性也排除每一个有组织的革命趋势。在单一的运动中有可能阐明的这一革命趋势的精心和无能自然就是送信人。在个体的层面上, 统治的一致性完全能够消除或收买可能发生的例外。
30
SURVEILLANCE would be much more dangerous had it not been led by its ambition for absolute control of everything to a point where it encountered difficulties created by its own progress. There is a contradiction between the mass of information collected on a growing number of individuals, and the time and intelligence available to analyse it, not to mention its actual interest. The quantity of data demands constant summarising: much of it will be lost, and what remains is still too long to be read. Management of surveillance and manipulation is uncoordinated. Indeed there is a widespread struggle for a share of the profits, and thus also for favouring the development of this or that potential in the existing society, to the detriment of the other potentials, which nonetheless, so long as they are all tarred with the same brush, are considered equally respectable.
由于绝对控制一切事情达到这样一点, 即它开始遭遇由自己的前进所造成的困难, 因此, 越来越危险的监视不能完全为自己的雄心所引导。在大量成长着的个体集聚的大量信息之间存在着一种矛盾, 时间和智力适用于分析它, 而不必提及它的实际兴趣。大量的资料需要不断地概括: 多数的资科将被舍弃, 而保留下来的东西还是如此之多, 以致不能完全研究。监视的方法和操纵是不对等的。为了一种利润的分享, 从而也为了在现存社会中损害其他可能性而促进这个或那个可能性的发展, 确实存在着广泛的斗争, 虽然如此, 只要他们全是一丘之貉, 这些可能性都被认为是同样体面的。
This struggle is also a game. Each control comes to over-value his agents, as well as his opponents. Each country, not to mention the numerous supranational alliances, currently possesses an indefinite number of police and counter-espionage services, along with secret services, both state and para-state. There are also many private companies dealing in surveillance, security and investigation. The large multinationals naturally have their own services; but so do nationalised companies, even those of modest scale, which will still pursue independent policies at a national and sometimes an international level. A nuclear power group will fight against an oil group, even though both are owned by the same state and what is more are dialectically united by their interest in maintaining high oil prices on the world market. Each particular industry’s security service combats the threat of sabotage, while organising it, when necessary, against their rivals: a company with important interests in undersea tunnels will be favourably disposed to the hazards of ferries and may bribe newspapers in financial trouble to ensure they spot these hazards without delay and without too much reflection; a company competing with Sandoz will be indifferent to underground springs in the Rhine valley. Secrets are subject to secret surveillance. Thus each of these organisations, all subtly united around the executives of raison d’État, aspires to its own private hegemony of meaning. For meaning has been lost along with an identifiable centre.
这一斗争, 同样也是一种竞赛。每一个管理者都会过高估计他的代理人, 同样也过高估计了他的对手。每一个国家, 更不用提众多超国家的联盟, 目前都拥有数不胜数的国家和准国家的警察、反间谍机关和特务机关。有许多私营公司经营着监视、安全和调查事务。最大的跨国公司自然也有他们自己的间谍机关; 但国营公司也是同样, 甚至那些规模适度的国营公司, 他们依然有时在国家层面, 有时在国际的层面上追求独立的政策。核动力集团反对石油集团, 尽管他们都被同一政府所拥有, 在世界市场上, 通过坚持高油价这一他们的共同利益而更加辩证地团结一致。每一特定的工业安全机构都同处于有组织状态的阴谋破坏、消极怠工做斗争, 当有必要时, 他们也必须反对他们的竞争对手: 在海底隧道方面有着重要利益的公司热切盼望渡船业遭遇危险, 并在财政困难时贿赂新闻界, 以确保他们能毫不费力地、没有任何延迟地发现这些危险; 一个与桑多兹(Sandoz)竞争的公司对莱茵河流域的地下温泉毫不关心。秘密服从于秘密的监视。每一个这样的组织都巧妙地团结在极其理性的董事会周围, 追求它自己的重要的私人霸权。因为重要性与可确认的中心一起一同丧失。
Going from success to success, until 1968 modem society was convinced it was loved. It has since had to abandon these dreams; it prefers to be feared. It knows full well that ‘its innocent air has gone forever’.
由于从成功走向成功, 直到1968年现代社会一直坚信它是为人们所深深热爱着的。从那时起它不得不放弃这一梦想: 它情愿被人畏惧。”它的天真无邪的空气已永远不在”已为人们所普遍熟悉。
So it is that thousands of plots in favour of the established order tangle and dash almost everywhere, as the overlap of secret networks and secret issues or activities grows ever more dense along with their rapid integration into every sector of economics, politics and culture. In all areas of social life the degree of intermingling in surveillance, disinformation and security activities gets greater and greater. The plot having thickened to the point where it is almost out in the open, each part of it now starts to interfere with, or worry, the others, for all these professional conspirators are spying on each other without really knowing why, are colliding by chance yet not identifying each other with any certainty. Who is observing whom? On whose behalf, apparently? And actually? The real influences remain hidden, and the ultimate aims can barely be suspected and almost never understood. So that while no one can be sure he is not being tricked or manipulated, it is rare for the string-puller to know he has succeeded. And in any case, to be on the winning side of manipulation does not mean that one has chosen the right strategic perspective. Tactical successes can thus lead great powers down dangerous roads.
因为秘密网络、秘密问题或与他们一起迅速综合进经济学、政治学和文化每一个部门的秘密活动不断密集地增长, 数以千计有利于己确定秩序的秘密计划几乎到处陷于混乱和冲突状态。在社会生活的所有领域, 监视、假情报和安全活动的混合水平变得越来越大。秘密计划变得越来越复杂以致到几乎完全公开的程度, 它的每一部分现在开始彼此干扰, 或者困扰其他, 因为全部职业化的阴谋家在不了解原因的情况下相互侦查, 意外地抵触使他们至今也不能在相互之间认同任何确实性。谁正在观察着谁? 表面上或实际上代表谁的利益? 真正的势力继续隐藏, 最终目的几乎是不可信的, 并从来没有被理解过。所以当没有人能够确定他没有被欺骗或操纵时, 对线人来说知道他已成功是很罕见的。无论如何, 操纵方的成功不意味着他们选择了正确的战略观点。战术上的成功也可以导致通向危险之路的巨大力量。
In the same network and apparently pursuing similar goals, those who are only a part of the network are necessarily ignorant of the hypotheses and conclusions of the other parts, and above all of their controlling nucleus. The reasonably well known fact that all information on whatever subject under observation may well be entirely imaginary, or seriously falsified, or very inadequately interpreted, complicates and undermines to a great degree the calculations of the inquisitors. For what is sufficient to condemn someone is far less sure when it comes to recognising or using him. Since sources of information are in competition, so are falsifications.
在同一网络中明显追求相似目标的那些人只不过是这一网络一部分, 首先, 他们对这一网络的控制核心是无知的, 从而必然对这一网络其他部分的设想与结局也是无知的。一个相当闻名的事实是: 所有处于观察中的无论什么主题的全部信息可能正好是完全虚构的、或认真伪造的、或真正不适当的被说明的, 这一事实非常复杂难解, 并在较大程度上破坏了调查者的预想。因为, 当逐渐认识或利用他时, 才发现对某人看似充足的谴责远没有把握。因为信息的源泉在竞争, 弄虚作假也是如此。
It is in these circumstances that we can speak of domination’s falling rate of profit, as it spreads to almost the whole of social space and consequently increases both its personnel and its means. For now each means aspires, and labours, to become an end. Surveillance spies on itself, and plots against itself.
正是在这些环境中, 我们可以谈及支配性的利润率下降, 因为它几乎扩展到整个社会空间, 并从而既增加了它的员工又增加了它的财富。现今每一种财富都努力渴望成为一种目的。监视在侦查, 秘密在反对它自己。
Its principal present contradiction, finally, is that it is spying on, infiltrating and pressurising an absent entity: that which is supposed to be trying to subvert the social order. But where can it actually be seen at work? Certainly conditions have never been so seriously revolutionary. but it is only governments who think so. Negation has been so thoroughly deprived of its thought that it was dispersed long ago. Because of this it remains only a vague, yet highly disturbing threat, and surveillance in its tum has been deprived of its preferred field of activity. Surveillance and intervention are thus rightly led by the present exigencies determining their terms of engagement to operate on the very terrain of this threat in order to combat it in advance. ‘nlis is why surveillance has an interest in organising poles of negation itself, which it can instruct with more than the discredited means of the spectacle, so as to manipulate, not terrorists this time, but theories.
最后, 它现在的主要矛盾是它正在对不在场的存在进行侦察、渗透和施加压力: 这一不在场的存在就是被认为设法颠覆社会秩序的东西。但是在哪里我们能够看到颠覆实际上在起作用呢? 毫无疑问, 环境从未如此革命过, 但这只是政府这样考虑而已。否定如此彻底地剥夺了长时间以来它广泛播撒的思想。由于这一点, 思想仅仅保留了一种暧昧不明的、至今非常烦扰人的威胁, 监视在其循环中剥夺了思想活动的首选领地。监视和干预因而被当前紧急事件所控制, 为了预先抗击它, 这一决定了他们交战条件的紧急事件对这一真正威胁的领域产生了影响。这就是为什么监视对否定自身组织化的一极感兴趣的原因, 否定自身组织化的一极为景观非常不名誉的手段所指导, 以至操纵, 但这次操纵的不是恐怖分子, 而是理论。
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BALTASAR Gracián, that great authority on historical time, tells us with considerable pertinency in The Courtier: ‘Be it words or action, all must be measured by time. We must choose when we are able; for time and tide wait on no man.’ But Omar Khayyám was less of an optimist:
‘We are the puppets and the firmament is the puppet-master,
In actual fact and not as a metaphor;
For a time we acted on this stage,
We went back one by one into the box of oblivion.’
论述历史时间的大师保塔耶·格律森在《谄媚者》中以相当的针对性告诉我们: “语言或行动, 全部接受时间的检验, 当我们有能力时我们必须选择; 因为时间和潮流不等待任何人。”但奥马尔·卡阿姆, 一个较少乐天派的人则指出:
“我们是木偶, 苍天时木偶的主人,
这是事实, 不是隐喻,
我们一度在这个舞台表演,
我们将一个接一个地走进遗忘之盒。”
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THE French Revolution brought great changes in the art of war. It was from that experience that Clausewitz could draw the distinction between tactics, as the use of forces in batde to obtain victory, and strategy, as the use of victories in ballie to attain the goals of a war. Europe was subjugated, quickly and lastingly, by the results. But the theory was not proven till later, and was developed unevenly. First to be appreciated were the positive features directly brought about by a profound social transformation: the enthusiasm and mobility of a greatly enlarged army which lived off the land and was relatively independent of stores and supply trains. Such useful elements were soon counterbalanced by the appearance on the enemy side of similar elements: in Spain the French armies encountered an equal popular enthusiasm; in the vast spaces of Russia, a land they could not live off; after the rising in Germany, numerically far superior forces. However the effect of a total break, in the new French tactics, which was the simple basis on which Bonaparte founded his strategy – the latter consisting of using victories in advance, as if acquired on credit to understand manoeuvres in all their diverse variants from the start as consequences of a victory which while not yet obtained would certainly be at the first onslaught – derived also from the forced abandonment of false ideas.
法国革命使战争艺术中发生了巨大变化。它来自于一种体验, 克劳塞维茨描绘的为在战斗中获得胜利作为力量运用的战术区别的体验, 和为在战斗中这到战争的目标作为胜利运用的战略区别的体验。欧洲迅速并永久地被这一成果所征服。但这一理论以后才被证明, 其发展也是不平衡的。这一理论中最初被欣赏的是直接被深刻社会改革所引起的有效特点: 以陆地为生, 储备和补给辎重相对独立的极大强化了的军队的积极性和灵活性。这样有用的原理很快被敌人方面相似原理的出现所抵消: 在西班牙, 法国军队遭遇了一种同样流行的狂热; 在地广人稀的俄国, 这种陆地作战的原理就失效了; 后起的德国在数量上有远为出众的军事力量。然而这一新法兰西战术总体突变的作用是波拿巴建立自己战略的基础——后者由预先透支的胜利构成, 好像已习惯了赊账一样; 一开始就在他们所有各种各样的变量中将这一机动性理解为至今还没有获得的胜利的一种结果——无疑是第一次冲击, 这一冲击也源自于对错误观念放弃。
These tactics demanded an abrupt break from these false ideas, and at the same time, by the concomitant play of the other innovations outlined above, found the means to achieve such a break. The newly mustered French soldiers were incapable of fighting in line, that is, of keeping ranks and firing on command. They would thus be deployed in extended order, firing at will as they advanced on the enemy. Now in fact independent fire was shown to be the only effective kind, a genuinely destructive use of musketry which proved the most decisive factor in military engagements of the period. Yet military thinking had universally rejected this conclusion in the century that was ending, and indeed debate on the issue continued through most of the new century, despite constant practical demonstration in batde, and the ceaseless progress in range and rate of fire.
这种新的策略要求与错误观念断然决裂, 同时通过以上描述的其他创新的伴随运动, 发现了达到这一决裂的方法。最近征召的法国士兵没有协调作战的能力, 也就是说, 没有保持队形和听从号令射击的能力。因此, 他们以疏散队形展开, 向敌人进攻时随意开火。实际上, 现在独立射击被证明是一种唯一有效的真正具有破坏力步枪射击的形式, 步枪射击的作用被证明是一个时期军队交战最具决定性因素。然而军事思想在这一世纪即将终结时还拒绝这一结论, 确实, 关于这一问题的争论在新世纪还会将持续, 尽管在战斗中实际的持续证明和射击的射程和速度的不断进步。
Similarly, the establishment of spectacular domination is such a profound social transformation that it has radically altered the art of government. This simplification, which has quickly borne such fruit in practice, has yet to be fully comprehended in theory. Old prejudices everywhere belied, precautions now useless, and even the residues of scruples from an earlier age, still clog up the thinking of quite a number of rulers, preventing them from recognising something which practice demonstrates and proves every single day. Not only are the subjected led to believe that to all intents and purposes they are still living in a world which in fact has been eliminated, but the rulers themselves sometimes suffer from the absurd belief that in some respects they do too. They come to believe in a part of what they have suppressed, as if it remained a reality and had still to be included in their calculations. This backwardness will not last long. Those who have achieved so much so easily must necessarily go further. It should not be thought that those who have been too slow to appreciate the pliability of the new rules of their game and its form of barbaric grandeur, will last forever like some archaism in proximity to real power. It is certainly not the spectacle’s destiny to end up as enlightened despotism.
同样, 景观统治的建立也是这样一个根本上改变了统治艺术的深刻社会改革。这一在实践中很快奏效的简化, 仍然需要在理论上完全被理解。古老的偏见到处给人错觉, 预防措施现在已没有价值, 甚至早年岁月的道德思维的剩余遗产还仍然阻碍着许多管理者的思想, 阻止他们的认识实践在每一天都示范和证明为真的东西。不但人们被屈从去相信那些目的和意图, 那些事实上这一世界已不存在, 而人们仍然认为他们生活于其中的这样一些目的与意图, 而且统治者们自身有时在某些方面也要忍受他们所推行的如此荒谬的信条。他们开始部分地相信他们所禁止的东西, 好像它保留了一种现实并仍然不得不包括在他们的考虑之中一样。这一后进性不会维待太长。那些非常轻松取得成功的人一定会继续前进。那些如此迟钝以致不能意识到他们竞赛新规则可塑性的人不值得相信, 这一竞赛奔放庄严的形式像接近于真实权力的某些古语样一样将持续到永远。像开明的专制统治一样的终结, 这肯定不是景观的命运。
We must conclude that a changeover is imminent and ineluctable in the coopted cast who serve the interests of domination, and above all manage the protection of that domination. In such an affair, innovation will surely not be displayed on the spectacle’s stage. It appears instead like lightning, which we know only when it strikes. This changeover, which will conclude decisively the work of these spectacular times, will occur discreedy, and conspiratorially, even though it concerns those within the inner circles of power. It will select those who will share this central exigency: that they clearly see what obstacles they have overcome, and of what they are capable.
我们可以推断: 在服务于统治利益, 并且最重要的维持统治防护的新增人员中, 一场大变更不可避免地即将来临。在这样的事务中创新肯定不会在景观舞台上被展示, 如我们所知只有当它受到撞击时它才像闪电一样出现。这一断然地决定景观时代运行的大变更将谨慎地密谋地发生, 即使它在内部涉及到那些权力的核心集团。这一大变更将选择那些参与重大紧急事件的人, 在这些紧急事件中他们非常清楚他们已经克服了什么障碍, 他们具有什么能力。
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THE same Sardou also wrote:
同一个萨多还写道:
Vainly relates to the subject; in vain to the object; uselessly simply means with no use for anyone. One has worked vainly when one has done so without success, so that one has wasted one’s time and effort: one has worked in vain when one has done so without achieving the intended result, because of the defectiveness of the work. If I cannot succeed in completing a piece of work, I am working vainly; I am uselessly wasting my time and effort. If the work I have done does not have the result I was expecting, if I have not attained my goal, I have worked in vain; that is to say, I have done something useless….
It is also said that someone has worked vainly when he has not been rewarded for his work, or when this work has not been approved; for in this case the worker has wasted his time and effort, without this prejudicing in any way the value of his work, which indeed may be very good.
徒劳地论及目标, 枉然地论及对象, 简直毫无用处的方法对任何人都没有价值。一个人当他所做的一切没有成功时, 他的工作是徒劳的, 以致他只是浪费了自己的时间和精力; 一个人当他所做的一切没有达到所期望的结果, 他的劳动也是枉然的, 因为他的劳动是有缺陷的。如果我不能成功地完成这一著作, 我从事的便不过是无效的劳动, 并无益地浪费了我的时间和精力。如果我已做过的工作没有我所期望的结果, 如果我没有达到我的目标, 我做过的一切也是枉然; 换句话说, 我已付出的那些没有用处……这也就是说, 当人们不能从他们的工作中获得酬劳或这项工作没有被认可, 人们的劳动是徒劳的; 因为在这种情形下, 劳动者浪费了他的时间和精力, 在任何情况下对他工作的价值都没有偏见, 这可能是最好的了。
Paris, February-April 1988
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