Kirjoitin hiljattain tällaisen hätäillyn, omituisen ja vähän huvittavankin vuodatuksen.
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The Toxicity of Obligation
It goes without saying that the debates surrounding the on-going economic crisis must extend beyond the logic of economics and touch upon the ideological and the ethical. The prevailing politico-economic conditions – to which we are, for the time being, forced to adapt – give away the hegemonic ideas of what it means to be human and, specifically, a social subject. These conditions reveal how relationships between the self and the other are normatively perceived and formed, as well as the moral obligations and arbitrarily granted freedoms embedded to those relations. We find ourselves now in an accelerated downward spiral fuelled by panic-stricken self-preservation, intensifying inequity and accumulating debt harnessed for unsustainable production of capital. This is the hierarchical and competitive subject-object dynamic of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic par excellence, upon which our social, political and economic existence is built. There is never one without the exploitation and violent destruction of the other, and this state of affairs is perceived as nothing else but an unfortunate inevitability which can be framed, with some linguistic legerdemain, as morally proper.
This death struggle is exceptionally demonstrated in the relation between the debtor and the creditor; the two interdependent roles which are also conscientiously played outside the financial realm as one of the basic principles of social life. Jacques Derrida argues that the language and culture within which our selves and lives are formulated are ultimately driven by self-interest and the fear of loss. Hence we only know how to enact our sociality within the framework of rivalry and investment-making. One can rarely receive anything – money, favours, presents, kindness or even love – without the expectation of reciprocity (with interest). There is no generosity without the immediate rise of debt, which creates a dangerously hierarchical bond between the self and the other; the debtor is always immediately under a risk of being abused by the creditor. Even when the distress of the exploited debtor is brought to the forefront of public discussion, it can be sidelined with the simplest of moral assumptions: everyone must always pay their debts. While Derrida sees no escape from the economic drive which quantifies and evaluates in the midst of seeking for profit or absolute equivalence and obliges us to always be aware of how much we owe and to whom, Hélène Cixous advocates the notion of the gift as its imaginable and thus attainable antithesis.
The gift stems from love and care for the other and can only exist in a relation which does not seek to overpower, exploit or destroy. Should we be able to imagine the Cixousian abundant gift, which does not expect to take but only gives without the fear of loss, we could mobilise it as a conceptual device through which to envisage a new kind of social life without debt; a newly structured relationship between the self and the other. I would like to join David Graeber in calling for the first revolutionary and most essential practical step towards this ideological shift against the economic drive, which continues to make the debtor increasingly vulnerable to exploitation, particularly after the virtualisation of the global financial system: a Biblical-style Jubilee. This would mean the complete erasure of the existing international and consumer debt. There are already some, who can control the terms of their repayment or, in essence, simply not pay (e.g. the U.S. government) whilst others become slaves to the accumulating public and individual debt. This is enough to show that paying one’s debts is really not the essence of morality, but rather the convenience of making the other submit to toxic obligation. The first gift to the world should be the eradication of this toxicity.
Notes
- Doreen Massey, ‘The political struggle ahead’ in The Neoliberal Crisis. Available at: http://wh.agh.edu.pl/other/materialy/678_2015_04_21_22_04_51_The_Neoliberal_Crisis_Book.pdf
- Hélène Cixous, ‘Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays’ in The Newly Born Woman.
- Jacques Derrida, ‘Given Time: The Time of the King’ in Critical Inquiry, vol. 18, no. 2.
- Hélène Cixous, ‘Castration or Decapitation?’ in Signs, vol. 7, no. 1.
- David Graeber, ‘On the Experience of Moral Confusion’ in Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Available at: https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf
- David Graeber, ‘(1971-The Beginning of Something Yet to Be Determined)’ in Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
- David Graeber, ‘Conclusion: Perhaps the World Really Does Owe You a Living’ in Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
- Slavoj Zizek, ‘This is the chance for Europe to awaken’ in The New Statesman. Available at: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/Slavoj-Zizek-greece-chance-europe-awaken
Published in PIP: Issue 4, October 2015