The “collapse” of real
Preliminary remarks
In this review article, I will examine the modern — postmodern relationship (using the concept of reality as an example) that is characteristic of the main urban culture. In villages, countryside, settlements of aborigines, Bushmen, and similar tribes, such dualism is not observed. It is mainly represented in Western and Central Europe and North America. These relations are manifested in their own particular way in South Korea and Japan. Regarding the countries of Eastern Europe, namely the countries of the former USSR, the relation between modern and postmodern has not yet been fully displayed, nevertheless, it is only a matter of time.
Also in my review, I try to avoid subjective assessing of this or that aspect as much as possible and I try to get closer to the most accurate understanding of the issue.
In this article, the term “reality” does not mean reality in the average sense, but is used as a philosophical concept and its analysis.
Reality in Modernity
Firstly, one needs to define the terms. The word “reality” comes from the Latin res, that is, “a thing”, literally a material thing. This idea of reality was entrenched during the Modern period(modernity) and formed the basis of philosophy, science, art, and everyday life of modernity. Such ideas still underpin our present culture and social life, whereas postmodernity has not yet fully fulfilled itself, particularly in post-Soviet countries.
Hence, reality is must not be understood in classical Platonic or Aristotelian terms, it does not belong to the realm of Plato’s ideas or even to the form (μορφή) of Aristotle. It is exactly the “rigid realness” (perceived by the five senses) of the thing (res) that was the main characteristic of the epoch in Modern period. Starting with René Descartes, the very concept of thinking, reflection, and experiences was perceived in tandem with the very thing — res cogitans — a thinking thing. Another concept was rex extensa — an extended thing — already responsible for introducing this rigid realness, only accessible by the five senses. Decartes’ successor Spinozadeveloped res extensa, so it became causa sui, self-caused matter, generated within itself alone.
But, for man, the root is man himself (Karl Marx “On the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law”, p. 7).
This is how this concept manifested itself in all spheres of human life during the modern period. Civil society, man as the crown of creation, the freedom concept freedom is being free from various forms of collective identities (starting with the separation of church from the state) in politics. The same applied to empiricism, mechanism, verification in science, secularism and sensationalism in literature. All these concepts represent strictly materialistic and modernistic domain. Of course, such concepts were present in previous periods, especially in Antiquity (Democritus, Epicus), but did not find the proper distribution. During modernity, reality became total, all-embracing every other concept, if not was being marginalized, rather wasn’t perceived as fundamental. Simultaneously, the objective reality concept was emerging. It implies that this reality does not depend on the subject, reality that exists only by itself.
It is separated from an individual by a certain impenetrable ontological wall, which is more and more difficult to overcome each time. It seems that all the time it had to be bashed with some kind of gnoseological hammer. Concurrently, the analogy of the horizon comes to mind that permanently is moving away as one tries to approach it. This is precisely one of the core characteristics of modernity and henceforth the Enlightenment in particular. The process of acquiring knowledge in science has turned into a constant fragmentation of matter, whose results are visible now. The ancient Greek atom (translated as “indivisible”) turns out to have become divisible, it turns out that it has a nucleus surrounded by electrons. Nonetheless, the nucleus itself also consists of protons and neutrons. It directs us to the subatomic level, that is again, to the subdivisible. That leads to some kind of semantic dissonance. But this science, which is based on materiality (reality), did not stop there — protons are reduced to quarks (their mass is a thousand times less than protons), connected by gluons, even smaller in size. Thus, the example of modern physics already shows the process of “permanent agnosticism”, which means the more immersion in matter, the less clarity, and knowledge per se. Such definition in fact conveys the word agnosis “denial of knowledge.” Although not everything is that literal, agnosticism refers to the fundamental impossibility of knowing God, gods or the divine. In that case, applying it to the science of modernity is fully justified. The processing of empirical data and the emphasis on reality (purely material) has put science in a difficult position. But if it only was science …
Belief in man as the crown of creation, in a rational being, had already begun to be destroyed by Charles Darwin then undermined by Nietzsche, and finally demolished by Sigmund Freud. The Enlightenment project had not justified itself and continued to collapse rapidly and alongside the idea of reality. The cost was two World Wars that radically turned over the political map of the world.
Reality in postmodernity
After modernity begins the disappointment and rejection of all the ideas and concepts that molded the basis of modernity. Postmodernity is aimed at combating all the modern notions and foundations, it is programmed to nip them in the bud. Such concepts as “reality” and “human” are no exception. Their demolition is the priority. Human, as an individual, an integral and undivided unit in postmodernity is fragmented, divided not only into two, but into three, four, and as many parts as possible. Now it is a posthuman living on a “body without organs.” Gilles Deleuze brilliantly described the space of postmodern society. This body without organs is a kind of perfectly smoothed surface where a ball can roll freely without encountering any obstacles. In this case, organs are objects that have a specific function, which means they restrict the subject's movement (although already a post-subject). Deleuze, like Michel Foucault, mainly proceeded from the critique of fascism in the philosophy, politics and sociology. This is a direct consequence of the World Wars, and the ontological cause of these two conflicts (in addition to the socio-economic and political) is the collapse of the concept of “reality”, “material thing”, gross matter, which, like an atom, is eternally fragmented and disappears into Nothing.
In the second half of the 20th century, the Marxist and near-Marxist environment understood fascism not only as a political regime but also any restriction, any hierarchy in any spheres of culture. So, Roland Barthes comes to the conclusion on the “dictate of the language”:
Some people expect us, intellectuals, to rebel against Power for any reason; however, it is not on this field that we are fighting our real battle; we are waging it against all varieties of power, and this is not an easy battle, because, being multiple in the sphere of social space, power at the same time turns out to be eternal in historical time: expelled, exposed at the door, it appears to you through the window; it never perishes, so make a revolution, destroy power and it will revive, flourish again with a new state of affairs. The reason for this vitality and omnipresence is that power is a parasitic growth on the transsocial organism itself, it is an outgrowth associated with the integral history of mankind and not only with its political, but also historical history. The object in which power has been nesting since the beginning of time is linguistic activity itself, or, more precisely, its obligatory expression that is language (Roland Barthes ”Lecture“).
In other words, language has its own hierarchical structure: subject and predicate, complex sentences, subjunctive mood. Consequently, language should also be abolished as an instrument of opposition. This is where Rolan Barthes’ and Michel Foucault’s “the death of the author” belongs.
Thus, the hierarchy of modernity turned out to be shaken, or even completely demolished into the postmodern horizontal. “Reality” did not go unnoticed. For Jacques Lacan, a psychoanalyst and one of the theorists of postmodernism, this appears in the form of Borromean rings (Real — Symbolic — Imaginary). For Lacan, symbolic is a continuous referral, a reference to another symbol, which refers to another symbol, and that, in turn, to another symbol etc. One must be concerned that Lacan’s Symbolic is not symbolic in the usual sense, in the classical sense, where it refers to something, it cannot be equal to itself, it has a certain teleology, it is functional and ultimately should lead to what refers to an object or subject.
For Lacan, it runs away from itself, because, having come to the Real, it becomes equal to Nothing. Actually Real is Nothing, it is neither matter nor an idea, it is an abyss, a space of universal absorption. In turn, the Imaginary, in its key meaning, prevents from meeting Real by means of its reflection (stage of the mirror) and anchoring Symbolic. For Lacan, it is responsible for the perception of everyday life — going to the store, watching a movie, reading, writing, working. All this is not the “reality” of modernity and not even Lacan’s Real. That is to say, the Imaginary is a psychological dream in which the so-called objective reality ceases to exist. Within Lacan's understanding reality itself evaporates. Real is the hidden Nothing. Collisions with it are protected by Symbolic and Imaginary (static, reflected Symbolic).
So, in postmodernity, there is no reality as a solid matter given to us in the five senses. There is no reality as an objective reality independent of the subject. Res (thing) began to split into electrons, quarks and gluons, matter (material substance) as causa sui no longer exists. There is no human as an individual either. Now it is a posthuman, a set of characteristics that can be hacked and altered. Contemporary medical technologies are capable of penetrating into the human brain directly and change its perception by small touches of certain brain parts. That can drastically change the personality. A person can be modified, especially his free will and choice. Social network algorithms, Big Data, involved in the Trump elections in 2016, any entertainment industry (including commercialized art), the retail industry, banking and services — all this is in one way or another connected with the influence on the human’s choice in his daily life. American singer Lana Del Rey in her song “Gods and Monsters” has this line “life imitates art”. And indeed, having abolished the reality of the New Time, there is nothing left but only imitating it. However, not everything is so flat, plain and unambiguous. Such a verdict handed down to reality does not mean its total death or total annihilation. Reality gradually flows into another realm. To be more precise, now there is a shift of the notion of reality, a shift of its dominant role. Its place is consistently taken by virtuality.
