Peter Sloterdijk

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Peter Sloterdijk


(Picture: youtube.com)

(Picture: youtube.com)

The Auctor absconditus and the Visual Media

It was in 1999 when philosopher/essayist Peter Sloterdijk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sloterdijk), in anger, left a German TV talk show, namely the 46. Baden-Badener Disput, because he found that the intellectual level that one of the other guests brought in, namely Pater Basilius Streithofen (who died in 2006), was intolerable (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOvDs6jx0v0). I remember this well, having it watched then, by accident, on my TV set and having been impressed also by the visual manifesto of the philosopher. By seeing Sloterdijk first wanting to leave the studio, then coming back, and speaking to the group while turning his back to the camera (with the cameramen or -women – shocked and fascinated, as I imagine – still trying to make the best out of the precarious situation). Finally Sloterdijk did turn round again, found his way out and left. In sum: also a visual manifesto by one of the great rhetors of our time, who also – and this is the less obvious and less known point I’m getting at – shows a great deal of interest for visual things, the visual arts, the visual culture of our time. And many an interesting thought, often maliciously spiced, as to this dimension of our present age can be found in his Zeilen und Tage. Notizen 2008-2011 of 2012. On one particular thought that also indirectly bears on to the appearance of Sloterdijk in the 1999 talk show we like to focus here.

Significantly it is about Peter Sloterdijk watching, on his part, TV. And he is watching another philosopher that he seems to know that well that he calls him also by his first name: Slavoj (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_Žižek). And although the film he watches, one evening in summer when being in Vienna, he does not name, it is obviously Slavoj Žižek’s The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pervert%27s_Guide_to_Cinema) of 2006.

(Picture: adarotterdam.nl)

»Significant the film’s central scene: Žižek standing in a motorboat, speeding his vehicule over the water. At the same time speaking, like being possessed, of his subjects, from Hitchcock to Lacan – a Captain Nemo that no more can afford a submarine.
Probably Slavoj does commit the same error, if exposing himself in the media, that I am being suspicious of. But unlike myself he believes that one could continue authorship in the visual dimension. This is pure illusion. The autor [sic] absconditus is being damaged, as soon as the manifest author does show himself in visual media. It depends upon how much self-banalisation an author can survive. This in turn depends upon, if he is assured in his being embedded in his oeuvre. The essential has to remain invisible and may reveal itself only if having become literature.«
(p. 41; my translation from the German)

*

One of the great writers of our time, when being interviewed on camera, was asked, if being interviewed was ›a kind of torture‹. And the writer, J. M. Coetzee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee), replied that »yes, it certainly is«, upon which he was asked immediately by the invisible interviewer ›why?‹. What followed, in this very documentary on Coetzee, can be described as a microdrama, rendered by the reflecting writer’s face, who, it seemed to me, did feel most uneasy, almost panicking, but in some way answered the question by his very play of features, by the seeming panic that seemed to crawl over his face, until he, and finally, after long and embarassing seconds of silence, after repeating the ›why‹ in a musing, wondering tone of voice, said in a low voice: »Because it is without reflection.«

J. M. Coetzee, while reflecting how to explain why being interviewed was a kind of torture (picture: youtube.com)

(Picture: youtube.com)

(Picture: adarotterdam.nl)

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