THE DIONYSIAN PARADIGM
With an Outline of its Historical Evolution
Note: This is an outline of a paradigm, not a manifesto, it is open to many interpretations
Dionysos Risen
The
Greek deity Dionysos had long survived in Western Art as a Romantic figure.
However it was
not until the 19th Century that Europe saw the return of this archetype in
anything like its original
form. The cultural magician who first reinvoked him was the poet and thinker
Heinrich Heine.
Heine rejected the 'romantised' Bacchus of his time (often seen as an insipid
Christ like figure)
and reaffirmed the Bacchic deity in all his passion, beauty and terror. A
Western Shiva. A true
'revolutionary' archetype he claimed (equating it with the fiery archetypes
of William Blake). His
vision was so inspiring that the Philosopher Nietzsche coined the term Dionysian
for it. Making a
clear distinction between contemporary idealised and romantic forms of artistic
expression and
the new Dionysian form. It would inspire him in fact into creating a whole
new philosophy to fill
the existential vacuum left by religion and theism after the Enlightenment
and the 'Death of God'.
While an enlightened atheist Nietzsche
mourned the loss of a universal horizon after this Theocide.
Dionysiac Art
Nietzsche's
new philosophy began and ended with art. It was, he claimed, an
aesthetic philosophy as opposed to all other modern philosophies which were
ascetic.
But its consequences where far wider and changed the way we now see the world.
According
to Nietzsche, Greek Art sought the perfect synthesis of what he
termed the Dionysian and Apollonian modes of expression. That is, the union
of
Energy and Form. Like Blake, Nietzsche regarded the World as found on Contraries.
early Greek Tragi-Comedy and Pagan Music (repleat with dissonance) were art's
'ideal manifestation' he claimed. But this project failed after the Classical
Greeks
began to fetishize Form, Harmony and Order, and repress the Bacchic element.
The Dionysian was the primal aspect of reality, raw nature, flux, life
and death,
pleasure and pain, desire, passion, sex, aggression, the source of primal
instincts.
In modern Psychological terms - The Libidinal Unconscious / The Id
DIONYSOS
/ BACCHUS - Ancient Deity of Nature, Life, Intoxication and Liberation
(later emasculated by Rome into a trivial minor god of wine and decadence)
The
Apollonian was the humanized aspect of reality, civilization, harmony,
balence,
order, form, stasis, peace, moderation, permanence, symbolism, language, reason.
In modern Psychological terms - The Ego and Superego
APOLLO
- Classical God of Light, Wisdom, Beauty, 'Art', Harmony and Law
Apolline
Art was idealized and static - Sculpture, Painting, Architecture
Dionysiac
Art was realistic dynamic and life-affirming - Music, Drama
"The
Dionysiac with its primal pleasure - experienced even in pain - is the common
womb
of music and tragic myth. . . the Apolline is the realm of dreams and ideal
forms."
The Birth of Tragedy , Nietzsche, 1871.
DIONYSIAN
CULTURE
Soon
Nietzsche extended the concept of the Dionysiac from Art to Culture in general
Three Level Model (of Late Nietzsche, in 'The Will to Power')
Primitive
Dionysian - Tribal, 'Barbarian', Societies. 'Pure' Dionysian.
Dionysian
Culture - Life-Affirming Dynamic Civilization. The Apolline Dionysian.
Apollonian
Civilization - Disciplined Societies. Idealized Lawful Civilizations. 'Pure'
Apolline.
Nietzsche
favoured the middle form, but saw Greek culture as a continual war between
the 1st
and 3rd forms, which only occassionallly achieved the true Dionysian form
for moments in history
When given the choice of these two he tended to opt for the first as the most
life-affirming.
Apollo
was the God of the State, excess Apollinism led to Nationalism, Militarism
& Totalitarianism
Dionysos
was the God of the People, excess Dionysianism led to the rejection of Apolline
values
and allegedly eventually to crazed 'Revolutionary Intoxication' and 'Sexual
Debauchery'!!
European Culture is rooted in Greek Civilization, these categories applied
to us too Nietzsche said.
Claiming contemporary
European society had become pathologically Apolline (or 'decadent') he
called for the reaffirmation of the Dionysian in all its forms, in order to
restore Dionysian Culture.
Dionysian
Metaphysics
Nietzsche's
Philosophy was more than a cultural analysis it always had 'metaphysical'
roots:
The
early Nietzsche saw the World dualistically, divided into a hidden world of
Reality and
perceptual World of Appearance, following Kant. He also took up the idea of
Schopenhauer, that
Reality was ultimately reducible to a panpsychic 'Will to Life', associating
this with his concept
of the Dionysian. Though he modified Schopenhauer's 'Cosmic Will' into a 'Will
to Power', a
striving not just for survival, but for growth and advancement (even at the
cost of survival).
This general 'Will' drove the 'evolving' universe and brought it into existance,
according
to Nietzsche, it was also manifest within (or as) all living things within
it . The Cosmos was thus
divided and at war with itself. Including the human psyche which was he claimed
just a bundle of
seperate desires or little 'wills to power'. The Apollonian mode was the imposition
of order,
stability and unity onto this general state of 'chaos'. A necessary factor
for existance.
The Dionysian was sometimes equated with the Greek idea of Chaos or Nyx by
Nietzsche.
Late Nietzsche (influenced by Hobbes and Darwin) seems to have become a nihilistic
materialist.
Rejecting his earlier 'Dionysian Idealism' he now saw the Dionysian as representing
a 'random'
and purely physical phenomenal chaos. With the Apolline as our conceptual
ordering of that chaos
into lawful scientific models. Psychologically, animals (including humans)
were driven by their
Dionysiac instincts, of biological origin. Humans built Apollonian 'Egos'
on top of this foundation.
The Apollonian drive was the drive to individualise, the Dionysian drive was
the drive to belong
to something greater. The Apollonian was an 'unatural' imposition of abstract
ideals on a
material and biological reality and often repressive. But it was also the
highest aspect of Man,
the creation of an Individual Self from an unconscious fragmentary psychology,
while the
Dionysian could lead to an atavistic reabsorbtion into the 'herd' and a 'mob
psychology'.
Ideally the goal was the fusion of the Dionysian with the Apolline aspects
of our psychology.
In his vision of political society the 'Slave Class' (everyone except the
aristocracy) was ruled by
a Dionysian psychology. While the 'Master Class' (the aristocracy) was ruled
by the Apollonian. Neither were fetishised by Nietzsche, a charge he reserved
for Marxists and Conservatives alone.
He saw virtues and vices in both (though often being biased to the latter
by his upbringing).
However Capitalism was seen as a victory of one section of the 'Slave Class'
(the bourgeois mimics of the aristocracy) over both their former masters and
another section of the 'Slave
Class'. But Nietzsche also denounced Christianity and Socialism as delusory
solutions, based on 'slave morality' and martyr psychology. Politics were
merely a matter of power relations for Nietzsche, not morality, he thus advised
both revolutionaries and dictators on the logic of power.
In practice Nietzsche never achieved a sharp division between these two intepretations
and often
oscillates between them even in his last works. His overall philosophy thus
contained unresolved
contradictions. An oceanic psychic reality with an illusory concrete world,
or a materialistic chaos
with a pan-psychic 'will to power'. It is conceivable that Nietzsche may have
been struggling
towards a
Hegelian resolution of this, that is - that the psychic and physical were
part of one whole.
A
consistent view in both intepretations is of the World as process or flux,
with the 'Dionysian' as
its foundational base and the 'Apolline' as its surface, or superstructure.
Basic ideas he took from
the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. A World based on a process of Becoming rather
than a state
of Being. Though not necessarily an evolving one, as in his late phase, like
Darwin, he held that
change was a mindless random process, subject only to scientific laws (where
not even the 'best'
always survived). Such a process could be progressive OR regressive. He thought
we were now in
an ongoing regressive, decadent Apollonian phase, but comforted himself with
'myths' of cyclic
return. It was this groundless pessimism that prevented Nietzsche from becoming
a revolutionary.
This
Heraclitean process philosophy (claimed by some as also being the original
philosophy of
the Ancient Greek Dionysians) was also independently developed by A.N. Whitehead.
Nietzsche
was ambivalent on the nature of the Apollonian, on the one hand seeing it
as artificial
and illusory, while on the other seeing it as the basis of historical change
and potential 'evolution'.
Nietzsche's ideal human was the 'Higher' or 'Dionysian' Man, who was an authentic,
free spirit, in
touch with their primal nature, who attempted to unify and 'recreate themselves',
by 'overcoming'
and 'sublimating' their various drives into a unified whole of their own aesthetic
choice (true being).
The archetypal successful sublimator, and self-created being, was the (in)famous
'Over-Man'.
This process applied equally to social and cultural evolution, but had to
be driven by conscious human action, there was no deterministic 'historical
process' and all ends were open.
The ethical aspects of Nietzsche's Dionysian philosophy has often been described
as having
the courage to face the most pessimistic possibilities about Life while at
the same time drawing
the most optimistic conclusions from this. A realistic stance for all 'romantic'
eutopians...
So much for history, but Dionysian Philosophy is NOT Nietzschean Philosophy.
Since Nietzsche's
death, Dionysian Philosophy has been adopted and adapted by everyone
from authoritarian fascists to liberatarian anarcho-pacifists, and all points
in between, its most
coherent interpretation is generally regarded by dilligent Nietzsche scholars
as nearer the latter!
The most contemporary 'adaption' of Dionysian Philosophy being more intelligent
examples of
the semantically orientated, anti-foundationalism, lumped together, with other
trends, under the label 'Post-Modernism'. The likes of Foucault, Derrida and
Deleuze being key theorists in this
phase of development. Though it is important to distinguish these from the
'degenerate' Po-Mo
of the 80s, where the linguistic base of the philosophy led to its decline
into a form of 'semantic
Idealism' in which 'hyper-reality' replaced 'reality', in a way analogous
to an ascendency of Apollonian abstraction, which while recognising its unreality,
none the less denied even a
Dionysian foundation and thus became detached from 'embodied reality' and
the 'physical'.
Perhaps
the most significant (post)modern Dionysian perspective is that of Mikhail
Bakhtin. A
Russian Philosopher of the 30s and 40s, who achieved popularity in the Russia
of the 1960's,
best known in the West for his commentary on Rabelais (of 'Do what thou wilt'
fame) in which
he outlines a 'theory of the Carnival'. For Bakhtin (a name some have said
can be derived from 'little Bacchus') the Carnival is an ambivalent autonomous
zone, in which all normal power structures temporarily breakdown and are replaced
by the ludic rules of fun and comedy. It is the festival of the 'Holy Fool'
(an important figure in Russian folklore), and its defining features are ambivalence
and hilarity. Bakhtin regarded the works of Rabelais as the literary representation
of the Carnival. While a Marxist (for which he can perhaps be excused given
his historical location) Bakhtin did not derive the obvious political conclusions
from this (not surprisingly as he was sentenced to six years in exile by the
Communists for mere suspicion of subversion), but others
did. The Post-Feminist Feminist (sic) Julia Kristeva has drawn most extensively
on Bakhtin.
Kristeva emphasised the dynamic, transgressive element of Bakhtin's Carnival,
and declared
more openly its socio-political relevance. Since then the 'carnivalesque revolt'
has become real.
Some
modern writers have sought to use the myth of Orpheus
to attempt to 'resolve' the
Dionysos-Apollo polarity. Orpheus
being the 'great mediator' of Greek myth, who brought
'harmony' between opposing forces (with varying success). In various versions
of his myth he
was said to be the 'son of the god Apollo' by a 'mortal woman', or of a Thracian
King 'of the line
of Dionysos' and a 'living Muse from Lesbos', or even that he was the living
'incarnation' of
the god Dionysos (thus uniting the most basic dualities of Greek culture within
one archetype).
A VERY APOLLINE
TABLE OF DIONYSIAN DUALISM
NOTE OVERLAPS SHOWING DIALECTICAL INTERELATION AND RARITY OF PURE MODES
DIONYSIAN | APOLLONIAN |
NATURE | CIVILIZATION |
CHAOS | ORDER |
PROCESS OF BECOMING | STATE OF BEING |
DYNAMIC / CHANGING / 'ALIVE' | STATIC / FIXED / 'DEAD' |
FORCE | FORM |
ENERGY | MATTER |
FLOW AND EXCHANGE | POOL AND COLLECT |
LIFE - DEATH (Death under Late Orphism) | ETERNAL LIFE (Late Orphist - Life) |
CREATION - DESTRUCTION | PRESERVATION |
CYCLIC TIME | LINEAR TIME |
CONNECTION | INDEPENDENCE |
SPONTANEITY |
ORGANIZATION |
BODY AND EMOTION | MIND AND SOUL |
INSTINCTUAL / NON-RATIONAL | INTELLECTUAL / RATIONAL |
BIAS | BALENCE |
EXCESS | MODERATION |
CONCRETE REALISM | ABSTRACT IDEALISATION |
PLURALITY | SINGULARITY |
DIVERSITY | UNITY |
COOPERATION AND COMPETITION | COMPETITION OR COOPERATION |
OCEAN / SKY / SPACE | LAND / GROUND / TERRESTRIAL |
'RANDOM' CHAOS | PURPOSEFUL INTENTION |
'BOTH ...AND' DIALECTIC | 'EITHER ..OR' LOGIC |
COMEDY AND TRAGIC DRAMA | ROMANTIC LEGEND |
MUSIC (+VIDEO?) | SCULPTURE AND PAINTING |
DANCE | MUSICAL AMBIENCE |
RHYTHM AND DISSONANCE (DRUM) | HARMONY AND MELODY (HARP) |
PRIMITIVE (ANCIENT) | MODERN (NEW) |
BASIC ROOTS | COMPLEX SUPERSTRUCTURE |
POWER | STRUCTURE |
INTIMACY | DISTANCE |
SUBCONSCIOUS | CONSCIOUS |
ANIMAL (Predators under Orphism) | HUMAN |
COLLECTIVE | INDIVIDUAL |
NATURE | NURTURE |
TRANSGRESSION | BOUNDARIES |
LIBERTY | DISCIPLINE AND LAW |
EQUALITY | HIERARCHY |
MALE AND FEMALE (Orphist Feminine) | MALE OR FEMALE (Orphist Masc) |
THE COMMON PEOPLE / SLAVES | THE ARISTOCRACY / MASTERS |
REVOLUTIONARY | CONSERVATIVE |
SENSUAL PLEASURE | ASCETIC |
SEXUAL DESIRE | PLATONIC LOVE |
SADO-MASOCHISM | BONDAGE AND DISCIPLINE |
LIGHT AND DARK (Dark under Orphism) | PURE LIGHT (Orphist Light) |
BLACK AND WHITE (Black under Orphism) | PURE WHITE |
COLOUR (Orphist riot of colour) | GREY (Orphist rainbow) |
'BE THYSELF' | 'KNOW THYSELF' |
'DO WHAT THOU WILL' | 'THOU SHALT NOT...' |
EARTHLY AND CHTHONIC (Orphist Hades) | HEAVENLY (Orphist Olympus) |
SIGNIFICANCE / EXPRESSIVE ART | MEANING / LANGUAGE |
LEFT AND RIGHT (Left under Orphism) | MIDDLE AND CENTRE (or Right) |
Note:
Unlike Nietzsche, ruling class Greeks, who had a less developed version of
this dualism from around 550 BC,
saw both these contraries as real, in conflict, and took sides accordingly
(mostly with the Apolline and Olympian). Later, after 450 BC an attempt at
dualistic harmony was sought by the Dionysian Mysteries, which begat the Orphic
Mysteries which later became dogmatic
Orphism. Late Orphists totally reinterpreted this Dualism around 300BC,
making Dionysos (like Orpheus) the mediator between an enlightened Apolline
and a Bacchic Chthonian
'darkside',
but this was increasingly rejected in favour of a 'New Age' Apolline Orphism
(apparently under the influence of the
usual powers that be and self repression). This process of course eventually
degenerated into ascetic forms of
Gnosticism and finally Christianity
(with Dionysos and Orpheus effectively merging into a new mediator, 'Christos')
Initiates
of the new Dionysian Mysteries are free to inteprete all of the above according
to their
own lights. Dionysianism being a lived experimental philosophy, merely guided
by theory
How this theory evolved further is outlined in the final section of this introduction.
Bacchanalian Art and Romantism
Not a great effect on theory, but a proliferation of interpretations by artists
(see culture section).
Nietzsche was a major influence on the avant garde culture of late 19th Cent
/ early 20th Europe.
His ideas were mostly absorbed into late Romanticism, but sometimes diluted
or tainted with a
Christian influenced Orphist interpretation (Christianity being essentially
Romano-Judaic Orphism)
Though some retained a rawer, iconoclastic vision truer to the original Nietzschean
idea.
The culture also revived and / or absorbed parallel movements such as Shivaic
and Taoist
Orientalism, late Radical Hegelianism and Blakean Mysticism. It reached its
peak in the Fin de
Siecle, with its aesthetic Orphic Symbolists, led by Mallarme, on one hand,
and on the other, their antithesis the 'Nietzschean' Decadents (who had recuperated
Nietzsche's derogatory term into a
description of a 'world weiry' synthesis of Dionysian instincts and Apolline
rational detachment),
an ethos typified by Rimbaud and Verlaine. And an eclectic movement championed
as a mix of
both in Britain, by the likes of Oscar Wilde and Arthur Machen (and later
in America in a somewhat
different, though highly imaginative, form by HP Lovecraft and his many imitators).
Dionysiac
Psychodynamics
The most significant theoretical interpretation of Dionysian Philosophy came
from Sigmund
Freud. While claiming never to have read Nietzsche, Freud never the less 'inherited'
a girlfriend of
his, the nihilistic Russian 'feminist' Lou Salome, who championed Nietzsche's
ideas after his
death. It was probably her influence that led Freud to praise Nietzsche as
a significant forerunner
of Psychoanalysis, though more cynical commentators have called Nietzsche
its 'real founder'!
But one significant difference Freud certainly introduced to the theory was
its universalisation.
Whereas Nietzsche saw the theory as primarily relating to Hellenic culture,
and secondarily
to Modern European culture, Freud saw its insights as applicable to every
mind and culture.
It was a psychological theory not a cultural one from then on. Freud also
assumed the radical
stance of aspect Dualism (seeing matter and mind as different irreducible
aspects of one reality).
Alas Freud was even more conservative than Nietzsche and argued for the limited
repression of
the 'Dionysian' Id to preserve 'Apolline' Civilisation. Thus defusing Nietzschean
radicalism.
Freud's protege Jung was probably more conservative still, but at least he
acknowledged
his debt to Nietzsche, and refered to the 'Dionysian Unconscious', as well
as recognising the
metaphorical and 'archetypal' importance of Mythology and Occultism (though
others such as the brilliant Herbert Silberer got there before him). He is
also remembered as a pioneer of that very
Orphic synthesis of Dionysian 'Randomness' and Apolline 'Meaning' in the intrigueing
and
'magickal' notion he called Synchronicity. An idea that also revolutionised
the concept of Magick.
His mythological thesis was greatly expanded by libertarian psychologist Joseph
Campbell.
But
the real Dionysian Psychologist was the second protege of Freud and colleague
of Jung's,
who helped both men develop their theories, the bohemian German anarchist
Otto Gross. Gross
was a Revolutionary who accepted the full radical Nietzschean implications
of Psychoanalysis,
argueing far from it being destructive, the health of society depended on
the total liberation of the
sublimated Id, full sexual freedom and a 'hedonist' lifestyle. Gross greatly
influenced not only
a few of his fellow Psychoanalysts, and many anarchists, he was also a major
influence in the
first, 'counter cultural' alternative communes in Europe. Introducing drugs
and bohemianism to
the puritan 'New Agers' who founded such communities! In many ways he could
be seen as a
precursor of Wilhelm Reich, R D Laing and Timothy Leary combined (many of
his ideas in fact
prefigure theirs). Not surprisingly he was totally ostracised by the Psychoanalytic
Establishment
and died in the gutter in 1920 at the age of 40. His memory was erased from
the official history of
Psychology (almost), but he was well remembered in artistic and countercultural
spheres and
would be a defining influence on artists as diverse as D H Lawrence and the
Berlin Dadaists. Many
also regard him a father of Surrealism (his influence can certainly be felt
in its political offspring
Situationism). It is only recently that his influence is being acknowleged.
One of his lesser
known ideas was of Patriarchal Religion as a pathological phenomenon in society,
that could
be 'cured' through return to a form of 'Paganism', through the revival of
the Cult of Dionysos,
and eventually a return to Goddess worship. These ideas proved popular in
early counterculture.
Apolline
Anthropology
The
'universal Dionysian' idea soon caught on in other social sciences, notably
Anthropology.
In the mid 1930's (contemporarily with Spengler, see below) Ruth Benedict,
rooted in the school of
cultural Anthropology of Franz Boas, distinguished two basic 'patterns' of
culture, the Apollonian
and Dionysian. Differing somewhat from Nietzsche she did not suggest a simple
Primitive-Modern
dichotomy but rather claimed the dualism was even present in pre-civilized
cultures. For Benedict
the cultural 'pattern' was the template which shaped a monocultural society's
institutions, psycho-
social orientation and personality types. Demonstrated by the patterns of
behaviour, action and
thought in such cultures. She used 'Dionysian' to denote a pattern of culture
engendering and
encouraging emotional freedom in social responses and 'Apollonian' to denote
one producing
emotional restraint, control and order. In her study of the death customs
of American Indians
she identified the restrained grief of the Zuni tribe as Apollonian and the
wailing orgy of the
Kwakiutl as Dionysian. While not without its critics Benedict's theory was
enthusiastically
taken up not only by other Anthropologists but also the supporters of Dionysianism.
The theory works well enough for non-literate 'folk cultures' where the social
heritage - of
institutions, customs, values, skills, arts and modes of living - of a close
knit community is
uniformily passed on by oral traditions, ritual and behavioral habituation.
In pluralistic literate
societies composed of various subcultures this generalised analysis is more
difficult. Some
Sociologists took up the term and began refering to Dionysian and Apollonian
subcultures.
Oswald
Spengler and the Decline of the West
Another major interpreter of Nietzsche's Dionysian paradigm was Oswald Spengler.
Though a deeply conservative (if not fascistic) thinker Spengler produced
a book, 'The Decline
of the West' that contained some of the most incisive criticisms of our times
ever written.
Criticism entwined with an equally insightful vision the Dionysian mode in
modern urban society.
Briefly, Spengler argued that western civilization had degenerated into a
shallow and artificial,
'mass culture', cut off from nature and based on false ideals, narrow rational
utility and
consumerism. A passive, rootless society shaped by illusions generated by
marketeers and the
mass media. An alienating shell of a society with no sense of community, other
than an internally competitive rule of the mob. In contemporary terms, an
atomized chaos of competitive -but low achieving - conformist 'clones', with
no idiosyncrasy or deeper values other than the latest consumer trend. Decrying
'democracy' as the victory of the herd over a higher culture of autonomy,
individualization and meritocracy, and 'equality' as a leveling down to mediocrity,
he called for a return to 'organic' community based equally on biological
reality, human feeling and deeper individual values, that would recreate a
higher culture of aristocratic virtues and produce nobler individuals. Alas
for Spengler this 'organic society' was often quite a traditional and conservative
one, with a taste for 'high culture', but despite this reactionary aspect
his broad criticism won him many supporters. Spengler's critique was entirely
made within the paradigm of the Dionysian and Apollonian, and like Nietzsche
he sought a positive synthesis of the two, rather than the rule of one or
a bad mix. In general Spengler was criticizing the cold and artificial Apolline
hegemony of the modern world, which had been harnessed to a degenerate form
of the Dionysiac (effectively what Leftists would call bourgeois culture),
but his own Apollonianism also inclined him as a critic of the 'Urban Dionysian'
as well. He argued that modern rootlessness, nihilism and conditions of poverty
were a breeding ground for a 'flotsam and jetsam' of new 'barbarians'. He
prophesised the coming of 'New Primitive Men' and 'Intellectual Nomads' living
a 'vagrant existance from shelter to shelter', a new kind of 'hunter-gather'.
Spengler saw this as another cultural plague of modern society and looked
forward to the extinction of such a degenerate breed!
Spengler Inverted: Theo Adorno and William S Burroughs
Spengler's
Decline Critique was well recieved by people from a variety of political backgrounds
and set the script for future critiques of western society, both left and
right, from that time on.
The ideas were not new but had never been set out in such a comprehensive
way before and
so 'in tune' with the spirit of the age. But not all those who were impressed
by it took it at face
value. The founder of Post-Marxism, Theodore Adorno, was among one of the
first to take up
the Spenglerian banner. Adorno agreed with most of Spengler's critique (even
its affirmation
of high culture), but argued that far from the new 'Urban Dionysians' being
a social plague
they were in fact the 'negative' manifestation of the roots of being (or non-being
in Adorno's
complex terms) - in a sense an eruption from the repressed subconcious of
the World into the artificial mass consciousness of society - a phenomena
with the, faint but real, potential to
negate the dehumanising culture of bourgeois consumerism. While couching this
critique in the
over complex terms of his negativist Hegelian Post-Marxism, Adorno is essentially
just repeating
a Nietzschean formula for the undermining of Apollonian civilization through
the invocation of
the forces of Dionysiac rebellion. A civilisation to be replaced by a new
classless high culture.
Adorno's ideas greatly influenced the Frankfurt School and through them Situationist
Theory.
However
it would be an even more radical reworking of Spengler that would have the
greatest
social impact. Like Adorno, William Burroughs saw great potential in the 'Urban
Dionysian',
but unlike him, he did not see it as a purely 'negative' force setting the
stage for the emergence
of a new high culture, but as a positive cultural force in its own right,
and the blueprint for a
new way of life. It wasn't in some newly imagined high culture that salvation
was to be found,
but in an emerging popular culture at the grassroots of society. While a devout
and anarchic
individualist, with a contempt for 'communism' and social collectivism, Burroughs
never the less
despised consumer capitalism and bourgeouis society even more and championed
what would
become known as the 'alternative society'. Burroughs believed that radical
subcultures could
become 'counter-cultures'. Subcultures that rather than just occupying a cultural
niche in a
'superculture' actually sought to oppose it and create an alternative that
would one day replace it.
Such cultures would do this not only by creating insular alternative ways
of life, but also by
infecting mainstream society with 'cultural viruses' (akin to the modern notion
of Memes) that
would undermine and slowly convert, and absorb, the 'superculture' into the
'counterculture'.
Regardless of how successful this has been, or will be, Burroughs' ideas where
not idle
speculation, but based on groundbreaking linguistic theories put forward by
Alfred Korzybski,
which saw culture as a product of language as much as ideas and behaviour,
and sought to
transform it through linguistic change. Many of Korzybski's ideas were inspired
by Nietzsche
and prefigured Post-Structuralism. This cultural change through language dominated
Buroughs'
thinking, but the bearers of the new culture would be Spengler's 'Urban Dionysians'.
With this in
mind he became a mentor to the emerging poets of what would become the first
'counterculture',
Cassidy, Kerouac, Ginsberg and others of the 'Beat Generation', who Burroughs
identified with
Spengler's 'new barbarians'. Burroughs wasted no time in introducing them
to Spengler,
Korzybski, Nietzsche, the Dionysian, and psychedelic drugs, and the counterculture
was born.
Ginsberg's poem Howl being one of the finest works of art produced under Burroughs
influence.
By the sixties Kerouac was describing both the Beats and their 'successors'
the Hippies as an
ongoing 'Dionysian Movement'. More of which can be explored in the Culture
Section.
Post Nietzschean Dionysianism: From Foucault to Hakim Bey
Post-Structuralism
was a parallel development to Burroughsian theory, similarly couched in
language theory and inspired by Nietzchean ideas and sometimes similarly focused
on transforming society (though to a lesser extent). There were differences
of course, principally a focus on 'radical consumption' rather than 'radical
production', and with hindsight these differences can be seen as both strengths
and weaknesses. But the theories produced by the French stars of this new
philosophy were equally Dionysian. Based on the Heraclitean concept of flux
and more specificaly on a radical anti-foundationalism, together with an awareness
of and desire to transcend binary opposition and dualism, it is not hard to
find the Dionysos in the works of Foucault, Derrida and especially the 'Nomadic
Philosophy' of Giles Delueze. One important difference was the Post-Modern
mistrust of anykind of narrative, and particularly religious narratives. While
the latter was commendable it also led to a reluctance to use mythological
metaphor. Lyotard had toyed with calling his post-philosophy 'Paganism', but
shyed
away from it due to feared religious implications. Even so the interest these
writers had in
psycho-analysis meant they could not entirely reject mythic imagery. Another
link was through the
Dionysian surrealist Bataille, who prefigured many of their ideas and linked
them to Nietzsche.
This
was all to change however in the adaption of their philosophy by the post-situationist
Hakim
Bey. Famed for his notion of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (perhaps derived
in part from Bakhtin) , Bey created along with it a philosophy that weaved
the ideas of Burroughs and the Post-Structuralists, particularly Delueze,
into a new eclectic paradigm, though one more poetic and inspiring than philosophically
coherent. Even more significantly he also added to this blend a liberal portion
of pagan (and modern) mythologising, as well as a dose of politised chaos
magick.
A mix that inspired a new generation of Dionysians, a term Bey isn't adverse
to using himself. The link between Bey's philosophy and Chaos magick was made
even more implicit by the man who introduced his ideas to Britain the famed
Chaos magi Joel Birocco. Crucially it is a development that shows that the
Dionysian Paradigm is a continually evolving one which will certainly continue.