The european public sphere

In recent (and not so recent) debates about the possibility of an European public sphere a very disquieting assumption has become at home in the mind of scholars - namely that national public spheres exist and the only challenge we are facing is internationalizing them on an European level. This leads some researchers to resort to analysis of media content to assess what topics are being reported on and whether we can abduce the internationalisation of national public spheres from the internationalization of content in the media. The problem with this approach is that the non-existence of a public sphere forms a blind spot: media will always report on something, ergo: there will always be a public sphere. The fact that has gone unnoticed is that today media have hardly anything to do with the public sphere at all. As a radical democratic ideal - and that is how in my oppinion the concept should be treated if it is to have any critical potential - the public sphere is not something at home in political institutions, negotiations with interest groups (in fact in his earliest work on the public sphere Jürgen Habermas conceived of this as the very negation of the public sphere, although he later modified this position), and reporting by the national media, the majority of their content consisting of information by institutional sources. The public sphere is at home in the day to day delibeartions of citizens - this is what the positioning of the public sphere in the life-world by Habermas in Theory of communicative action means. If conceived in this way it is questionable whether the media today form an integral part of the public sphere - rather they seem to be affiliated with the other of the public sphere, with political institutions. It is the non-existence of a public sphere at all and forces that hinder its development that should be the basis for reflection.

Critics of Habermas' conceptualization of the public sphere are among those that are to blame for this predicament. Those (among others Nancy Fraser and Negt and Cluge) that have sought to reconcile the lofty nature of the idea with the putrid reality of the world have done so by sacrificing the former to the latter. The fact that the manifestations of the public sphere did not live up to its ideal of universality is undisputable. But this is exactly the very core of the critical potential of the idea: it encompasses a promesse de bonheur, a hope and promise of a better world. The fact that ideological forms of the bourgeoisie, its culture, exhibited universalist tendencies was the soil on which critiques of the actual exlusiveness of bourgeois society caught a foothold. This was the promise of the bourgeoisie that justified its rise to power: that the liberation from aristocratic rule was to be a universal one. When Negt and Cluge talk about a proletarian public sphere they negate the very idea and ideal of the public sphere, namely that it, as Habermas had put it "stands and falls with the principle of universal access." As soon as we can talk about specific public spheres we are already negating the potential for a public sphere to exist at all. When faced with the chasm between the ideal and reality we must not try to fit the ideal onto reality, we must not break the mirror that reminds us of our blemishes - that is the way of the political order the idea of the public sphere was launched against. In fact the mirror that best reflects our blemishes is the one that serves us best: an idea of the public sphere where all citizens might freely engage in debate and form informed opinions on public matters that the state will be obliged to listen to when making decisions. The point of this image is not that it could ever be achieved, it is exactly in the function of a reflection of society on itself by which its faults are revealed that its emancipatory potential is realized.

Understanding the public sphere in this way does not mean that we make it inaccessible to empirical study. If the ideal can not be fully realized - and even this can not be said with certainty as Marcuse teaches us - the extent to which it is can be studied. While universal access might not be possible in its purest form (even in perfect social conditions we would find some individuals who through purely idiosyncratic reasons would not be able to participate - for an Adornian as myself control of idiosyncrasies, or the non-identical, would constitute the very neagation of an emancipated society) the degree to which it is realised can be the object of empirical research. The same applies to quality of deliberation (a recent article by Todd Graham in Javnost - The Public is a very good example) and the impact of deliberation on decision making of the political system. Identifying these emprical criteria of the public sphere is the first step that should be followed by explanation: what factors impact universality of access, quality of deliberation, impact on decision making. Only after this task is completed the question of whether a European public sphere can be formed and under what circumstances can be answered - but this question might as well turn out to be besides the point.

Kafka and the metaphysics of death

I came across an interesting part in Adorno's metaphysics lectures (transcripts from lectures on metaphysics he held in the summer semester of 1965). It reads as follows (first is the original, followed by my translation):

Ich habe seinerzeit in meiner Einleitung zu den "Schriften" Walter Benjamins versucht auszudrücken, daß so etwas wie der Begriff des Lebenswerks heute problematisch ist deshalb, weil unser Dasein längst nicht mehr nach einem ihm immanenten, quasi organischen Gesetz verläuft, sondern derart bestimmt wird von allen möglichen Mächten, die eine soche immanente Entfaltung ihm versagen; daß das Vertrauen auf eine solche Ganzheit des Lebens, der dann als ein Sinnvoles der Tod soll antworten sollen, bereits den charakter der Chimäre hat.

In my introduction to Walter Benjamin's "Writings" I have tried to convey that the concept of the life-work has become problematic because our life does not follow an imminent quasi organic law any more but is subjected to diverse forces that prevent such an imminent development; that the faith in such a totality of life, which is meaningfully concluded by death, is chimeric.

Two associations came to my mind: the one aesthetic the other sociological. Let us venture down the path of art first, since it illuminates the same idea from a different viewpoint, hopefully helping the sociological application to make more sense. Nowhere is the sentiment that Adorno expresses - and it is above all a sentiment, a certain experience of the world - captured so clearly as in Kafkas Prozess. It ends with death, a completely meaningless death: "like a dog!" is the last train of thought going through K.s mind, feeling that "shame was to outlive him." What takes all meaning from death is not the fact that it is beyond our control (it always is, and in the case of suicide it is more than ever) it is the fact that it is not organically attached to the life-course. The total war Adorno witnessed is of course a perfect example: not so much for the people fighting on the front where some delusions of the meaningfulness of sacrificing ones life for the sake of the arian race could still flourish - if for no other reason than that it is hard to come to terms with the meaninglessness of ones death - but for the victims of the death camps, who were faced with completely arbitrary annihilation. In Der Prozess the life of K. takes the form of arbitrary events - as I mentioned in an earlier post, there is nothing to prevent the addition of chapters to the novel ad infinitum since there simply is no organic logic tying the whole of the narrative together.
When we arrive at the last chapter, death is as much a surprise for us as it is for K. Not that we believed the process could end victorious, it is because the narrative form suggested infinite repetition. This is the life that Adorno described in the quote: a series of episodes the "subject" (compare earlier posts on subjectivity for an explanation of the quotation marks) goes through, looking for meaning while being shuffled to and fro like a leaf in the wind, the leaf having no less understanding about the functioning of wind than the "subject" has about the forces that affect his life. A very similar sentiment can be found in Ravel's Bolero (no matter how often one hears it, the silence at the end comes as a shock) and more recently in No country for old men.

The sociological explanation takes us to theories of individuation and the life-course. To put it shortly throughout the period known as modernity we have witnessed the gradual transition of prescribed life-courses, mediated by ritual, upheld by tradition and guarded by authorities, to a self-selected life-course, where individuals have been burdened with the freedom of constructing their own life-course. This has resulted in a feeling of disorientation, some reactionary authors write about the crisis of meaning - fact is that it is harder to make sense of ones life today as it was say a hundred years ago. Since meaning is not given to the individual from above, he is forced to not only negotiate with the outside forces entering his world without the proper information to make an informed decision (market failure in the US, nuclear accident in France, pollution in China, to name but a few extreme hypotehtic examples), he must also make sense of the arbitrary character his life seems to take in these circumstances. When Anthony Giddens talks about self-identity as the narrative of the life-course, he completely feitishizes the phenomenon (the individual must cope with objective forces). If this conservative argument is not acceptable, neither is the reactionary that laments the disorineting loss of perspective, calling for the reinstitution of traditional values. Traditional guardians of the life-course were not emancipatory forces, they just softened the impact an arbitrary world made upon the individual. What individuation has done is break away those barriers and let the world break in, making the individual feel its full impact - if this has traumatizing consequences on the one it also has an emancipatory potential on the other side, since the need for an emancipated society is as strong as it never was. Each individual feels it with unprecedented force, not just intellectually, but in every aspect of his daily routine.

Heidegger as a Nazi ideologue

The ones who would have us believe that Heidegger's philosophy should not be judged on account of him being an active Nazi miss the point that his philosophy is the very ideology of Nazism. When interpreting any philosophy we must avoid two pitfalls: either interpreting it directly through psychological or sociological factors on the one and interpreting it without any reference to the social conditions it was formed in on the other side. Sein und Zeit would not be so problematic had it been written a century earlier, but as it is it is a vile piece of propaganda. First of all the affirmative character of Sein comes to mind, certainly a metaphysical inheritance. For Heidegger being is meaningful in itself - as is revealed of his manipulative reading of truth as a-letheia, as un-concealment (manipulative because there is no eveidence that the ancient greeks understood the word in that way, on the contrary Plato interpreted it as ale theia, as divine frenzy). He opts for a passive stance toward the world, an acceptance of the status quo that is revealed in his idea of Gelassenheit. What might have been interpreted as just a conservative stance towards the world a century earlier now say nothing less than that you should not fight the inevitable (the domination of the world by the Arian race), because it is predestined. The most grotesque part of Sein und Zeit is the one dealing with death - Heidegger interprets is as a meaningful end of life that is organically connected to the life-course. Here is where the morally perverted character of his philosophy is revealed in all its essence: being part of the totalitarian system which created concentration camps, places where physical death was a relief from existence as a living corpse, which stole all meaning not only from death but also from life, he dared write about the meaningfullness of death. The justification of Heidegger and the justification of Nazism are so closely intertwined that it is impossible to separate one from the other. We must never forget the lesson Adorno taught us: thinking - and especially for those that are privileged enough that they may freely use their mind for the pursuit of truth - caries with itself an inextricable moral responsibility.

Foucault and death of the subject

What I find most striking about the greatest apologist of our status quo - Michel Foucault - is how he manages to turn concepts that critical theory has developed to oppose capitalism into their very opposite. A case in point is Adorno's thesis of the death of the subject. For Adorno a tendency of capitalism is that it reduces individuals into quantifiable functions, into mere specimen of a genus. His point is not merely that we are replacable on the market, but that this feature of the market is pervading the whole of modern existence. He believed that when we are made universally equivalent, reduced to functions, when all that is idiosyncratic (or as Adorno would put it: non-identical with the concept) is suppressed, we cease to be individuals, we cease to be subjects. What Foucault did was turn the death of the subject into subjectivity itself, using the term subject to refer to objects of ideology. For him objectification is the measure of subjectivity. For Foucault the ideal subject is the inmate of Ausschwitz, stripped of all humanity, the sheer amount of violence he suffers at the hands of a repressive system the only measure that still manages to diferentiate him from the other victims.

Narrative structures of RPGs III - micro narrative

As I have earlier proposed an analytical distinction between micro and macro narrative I would like to add some observations on micro level narrative in RPGs. In the first post on narrative in RPGs I have proposed that the macro narrative is one of growing up. Now I would like to argue that the micro narrative is supporting this on another level. To support this hypothesis we will first have to take a closer look at gameplay in RPGs.

If we go from macro to micro, most RPG universums are structured hierarchically. On the top level are worlds – they are the chapters of the game, each consisting of a set of places, missions, foes and allies that the player encounters (there is of course continuity – say an ally might follow the player through more worlds, foes might reappear). Some worlds do not have clearly defined worlds and it is hard to make an empirical distinction between them. Sometimes the very opposite is true and they are clearly delineated in the game (most often the player travels to another area that was not accessible before). As a heurestic method the following criteria might be used to distinguishing between worlds:
- an integrated set of tasks is presented to the player, which culminates in either acquiring a special object or battling an important foe or both;
- new foes appear and reappear throughout the world;
- new helpers appear that follow the player throughout the world;

On a lower level we have what I have called »villages« and »dungeons«, friendly places where the macro narrative is developed and places for battle. If we go still deeper into detail we find again two actions: exploration and battle. »Villages« are places that only exceptionally feature battle (Zelda is one example), whereas in dungeons and transportation routes (most places that are neither »village« nor »dungeon« fall into this category – here the player has to battle foes but they are not as numerous as in dungeons plus these places have no specific importance for the macro narrative as the dungeons do) both exploration and battle take place. The majority of games have different interfaces for battle and for exploration (Final fantasy series, Chrono trigger) but a substantial amount of them does not (Zelda series, Terranigma)

This finally brings us to the core of the problem – the structure of micro narrative. Both exploration and battle serve similar purposes (though with different means): 1) acquisition of special objects that enable the player to advance in the game and 2) improvement of the character's skill. Let us turn to the latter first: each character in a RPG game has a quantified amount of different skills: attack and defence strength, amount of health and magic power. These can be further differentiated, for example attack strength can be acquired for different weapons separately. When a player increases his skills the game becomes easier: higher level of attack skill increases the damage he does to enemies, defence reduces the damage he takes etc. This tendency is countervailed by the introduction of ever more powerful enemies. A player can acquire these skills in two basic ways: either through battle (every victorious battle adds some points that are converted to a higher level of skill when they reach a certain threshold) or by acquisition of specific objects (most commonly potions). It is interesting to note that the amount of points commonly varies according to the strenght of the defeated enemy, therefore the player acquires progressively more points per battle as she progresses through the game. On the other hand thresholds for each successive skill level are progressively higher, therefore the increase in skill gained from battles stays roughly the same throughout the game.

The acquisition of special objects most commonly takes place through defeating a special foe (for example the boss of the dungeon) or by exploration (the player has to venture to a special place to acquire the object). These objects enable the player to progress in the game (they might be a key or a special weapon without which a certain foe can not be defeated). Sometimes these objects also add to skill levels of a character. In some games not only the player but also his equipment has a »skill level« so that for example the amount of damage done to an enemy varies according to the level of attack skill of the character and according to the power of the weapon used.

This quick description allows us to make some generalizations from the structure of micro narrative in RPGs. I have noted that throughout the game the player improves certain quantified skills and also accumulates objects of special value. The micro narrative is one of linear progression with quantum leaps. This supports the macro narrative, which is one of growing up. The two extreme states of this process are child (at the beginning of the game) and grown-up (at the end of the game). The micro narrative shows the gradual nature of this transition as a continuous phenomenon. It also illustrates the work the subject has to go through in order to attain autonomy. But there is also an effect on the recipient. As I have noted in an earlier post, interactive media tend to increase the identification of the viewer with the content. The micro narrative draws the player into the macro narrative, he is made to experience the hardships the character has to go through in the process of growing up, so that the macro narrative becomes more captivating.

At this point we might look into the role the RPG narrative plays in contemporary society, or to be more precise: which experiences of the contemporary “subject” correspond to the RPG narrative. The crucial experience is entry into the labour market. In the 18. century the foundations of individuation were possession of capital and citizenship (both one and the same thing if we believe Marx and Engels and their metaphor of the state as a committee of the international bourgeoisie). Today the first foundation of individuation is no longer capital but possession of qualifications that are in demand on the labour market. In a capitalist economy productivity of the individual is quantified to a substantial amount (of course this amount varies: the border case is the manual labourer, whose productivity can be strictly quantified as number of standardized products per hour, while quantification becomes less pronounced with “products” that are not that highly standardized). This process is at work not only on the labour market but also (of not even more) in the educational system, where the acquired knowledge of students is quantified into grades. The experience of the contemporary “subject” is one of quantification – which Adorno interpreted as the very death of the subject since something that is strictly quantified becomes just a specimen of a genus and as such can not be a subject. Lukacs noted in History and class consciousness that reification is expressed on the subjective side in that individuals think of themselves as a set of quantifiable and objectifiable abilities, not as organic entities. This is a precondition for entry on the labour market – to sell ones productivity one must quantify it and be able to expropriate in some way. In the narrative of the RPG we find a mirror of these experiences. The character is thrown into the world and is faced with the challenge of increasing quantifiable skills. In fact there is nothing to him except these quantifiable skills, in this he is the perfect negation of the subject from an Adornian standpoint. As in real life this quantification has quantum leaps (one gets a promotion, passes an exam etc.), but this leap does not lead to anywhere but to more of the same (acquisition of quantifiable skills on a higher level)

What does this mean for a critical theory of society? A look at Marx’ critique of ideology might be in order here. In the preface to his Introduction to a contribution to the critique of Hegel's philosophy of law, he notes that religion has a functional connection with social praxis – it is because existing social circumstances are so unbearable that man projects a utopia into heaven. A common misunderstanding of Marx here states that ideology is a wrong picture of the world which must be contrasted with the true picture. The first problem with such a view is that it does not tell us exactly what truth is or where it is to be found – not to mention the fact that this can lead to an authoritarian position in which a specific subjective truth is hypostasized as the one and only truth. The other problem is that it tackles the problem undialectically and thereby misses the point altogether. A short quote from Marx might help us to understand the dialectics in his approach: “Religion is a warped consciousness of the world, because the world is warped.” It is not the case that religion is wrong and that a correct picture of the world must be substituted in its place. The case is that religion tells a lie and in so doing reveals the truth. The fact that religion has to tell us a comforting lie shows us the truth that existing social circumstances are unbearable – this is the critical potential of ideology, its truth content, if I borrow a phrase from Benjamin.

RPGs are at once a lie, but a lie that in lying reveals the truth. The lie is the affirmative character of the game. Quantification is presented as the ontological structure of the world; it is hypostasized in the tradition of the finest metaphysicians. This is not to say that it is a conspiracy of the creators or of the bourgeois class to infuse false consciousness to the masses – an idea that would be nauseatingly naïve. It is also not to say that it is something that is forced onto consumers by the culture industry. It is rather something that appeals to consumers because it mirrors their own subjective experience. It is a warped picture of the world, because it is a warped world. We must take its lie seriously and through it come to the realization of what is warped in the world. "Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower." (Marx, Introduction to a contribution to the critique of Hegel's philosophy of law)

Narrative structures of RPGs II - the dungeon and the village

I have already written about the common structure of RPGs (role playing games) and interpreted it as a narrative of growing up in an earlier post. As I reflected further on the topic I realized that an analytical distinction between two levels of narrative would be needed:
- The macro level narrative is the one we would normally think of, it is the way the story unfolds during the whole of the game and is composed by notable events. It is analogous to a narrative in a written piece of work and can be analysed in the same way. It is also the narrative to which I have devoted most of my attention in the first post.
- The micro level narrative are the ways the player interacts with the game. I am not referring to the immediate interface like joysticks or keyboards and the way in which they are connected with actions in the game. It would not be appropriate to equate the interface to narrative, this would be analogous to equating the structure of a book (composed of pages that need turning) to narrative structure. What I am referring to with the term micro level narrative are the actions the player is expected to perform to advance in the game. This narrative level differs from the macro in several notable ways:
1) it does not unfold during the whole game, it's units are smaller and are repeated throughout the game. In fact every game has an essentially unfinished character since these smaller units can be added ad infinitum without influencing the macro level narrative (note here the difference with a structuralist theory of language, where smaller units are combined to form larger ones).
2) it is not composed by notable, but by routine events. We learn nothing new from each successive event after we have figured out the pattern (for example: keep shooting/hitting/stabbing the enemy until he/she/it is dead) and it is exactly this pattern that is the bearer of meaning, not each individual event.
3) it has a hierarchical structure. In RPGs on the lowest level there are fights with specific enemies, on a higher level there are dungeons, and even on a higher level there are worlds.

Interesting enough in RPGs these two types of narration are assigned special places. This naturally does not mean that one type of narrative can ever exclude the other, but one can have a stronger role at times. The place for macro level narratives is the village (it can also be some other form of friendly refuge like a house or castle). Here the characters take a break from fighting and talking becomes the dominant action - talk in which crucial elements of the macro narrative are revelaed. This of course does not mean that the micro level narrative is not present - it is just that the content of the interactions with the others becomes far more important (as opposed to the mere act of killing).

Here is an example of a "village" from the game Chrono trigger. We can see the hero and the heroine along with a pendant that will become crucial for the unfolding of the narrative. Singular events and characters have individual meaning for the narrative.

The place of the micro narrative is the dungeon. Here the macro narrative is almost frozen, the heroes continue battling ever same foes, sometimes they encounter a new and stronger opponent (which is then added to the stock of opponents) and in the end they fight the boss of the dungeon (the strongest opponent in the dungeon). Commonly acquisition of special objects is required to navigate the dungeon (most often keys).

Example of a "dungeon" from the same game. The specific foes here do not have any individual significance, they are just specimen of a genus. It is the pattern that is important. Note that the interface has also changed (we can see indicators of health and magic power of our heroes).

The binary opposition between village and dungeon is noticeable, but going further into this topic would transcend the aim of this post and I will let the structuralistically inclined reader continue this train of thought by herself.

The question that needs to be asked is whether this new level of narrative is specific to interactive media. This is not entirely the case and I would like to illustrate the point in the case of Kafkas Process. The novel might be divided into three parts. The first part is the arrest, the third is the execution, everything in between is the unfolding (or rather not unfolding) of the process. Of course the church chapter must be treated separately, I believe it must be interpreted as a lens in which the whole of the novel is condensed - only viewed through this lens does the whole makes sense - but this is also not something that I intend to probe into very deeply. Suffice it to say that the present illustration (and the fact that it is an illustration excuses this omission) will analyze the narrative structure without paying attention to this self-referrentiality. Now we can compare the structure of the core of the novel with the micro level narrative in computer games. They are similar in that they are composed of routine repetitive events that have no individual significance but are rather just manifestations of an imminent pattern and it is only this imminent pattern that is noteworthy. Bureaucrats in the process are always somewhat shabby, they never understand the functioning of the court but are confined to their function, courtrooms are always dirty, dusty and suffocating, K. is always just as much in the dark as he was before, his helpers always seemingly well-meaning but in the end just as clueless as he is. Just as enemies or dungeons and worlds in a video game, chapters in Der Process can be added ad infinitum - the pattern is given and can be weaved without end.

Therefore it seems that the type of micro narrative I have analysed in computer games is not something new and specific to them. This does not mean there is nothing new to this phenomenon. What is noteworthy and specific is the sheer quantity of the phenomenon. While we can find earlier examples of this type of narrative, they are exceptions, while in computer games the presence of the micro narrative is rule. The other specificity is the linking of micro and macro level narrative. We can not find the specific interlinking of micro and macro that is characteristic for video games in Der Process, nor am I aware of any other work of art that would fit this structure.

How do we explain this specific interlinking of micro and macro in computer games? I believe it is strongly connected to the fundamental principles of new media and to what members of the Frankfurt school referred to as the mythical character of modernity. But that is already the topic for another post.

Death of the subject

While watching Marionettes, a short film by Tamás Waliczky, the introduction to Adornos Minima Moralia came to mind:

To speak immediately of what is immediate, is to behave no differently from that novelist, who adorns their marionettes with the imitations of the passions of yesteryear like cheap jewlery, and who sets persons in motion, who are nothing other than inventory-pieces of machinery, as if they could still act as subjects, and as if something really depended on their actions. The gaze at life has passed over into ideology, which conceals the fact, that it no longer exists.
Source: Marxists internet archive

We can interpret the short film as an aesthetization of this phenomenon, or better said an ironic commentary: we see Marionettes being subject to simple simulation of gravity. Even when they act collectively (i.e. they are collectively subjected to the same external force), this can never be social action, since they are isolated, each individually experiencing an objective force, the apparent consensus being only due to the immense uniformity of outside pressure. This is a view of society like the one that Adorno formulated in his darkest works (Minima Moralia surely counting among them): farces of subjects behaving collectively - but never as a collective, since the only binding material that holds them togehther is the oppresive uniformity of social totality.

Cinematic interactivity

Traditionally cinema was one of the least interactive art forms. Not only if we look at interactivity behaviourally (whether a viewer can actually influence the structure of the text), but also psychologically - as Benjamin wrote in his Work of art essay, the cinema was substituting a series of shocks (a surrealist and dadaist technique) for the older contemplative stance that a visitor of a gallery was assumed to take. New media on the other hand enable interactivity even in this traditionally non-interactive art form. One of the simplest ways is by cutting the movie into pieces and allow the viewer to choose different paths, as is the case with the WaxWeb project.

The invisible shapes of things past

An interesting artistic project by the ART+COM collective, called The invisible shapes of things past, aims at moving film away from mimesis by spatializing it. It is certainly refreshing to see such a project in an age in which the culture industry clings ever so tightly to mimesis. when one can hardly imagine movies like The love of zero, Man with a movie camera, or mastarpieces of expressionism like Metropolis being produced. It seems that Adorno was right when he wrote that it is quite possible that a movie that conforms to all standards of the Hayes office would have artistic value - just not in a world in which a Hayes office exists.