The other day a friend of mine loaned me a book called
Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium I. And theory it is...of the decidedly postmodern variety. Nary a page goes by without mention of Foucault (quotes are even "Blackened" to fit), Deleuze, Nietzsche...the usual characters one might run into in a course on critical theory/post modernism. While I applaud the effort to pen a philosophy of black metal, it sucks that those seemingly literate enough to write a collection of essays like this are likely privileged, hipster Brooklynites who've stumbled upon their latest big idea, at least in 2009 when the book was published, for making a splash in the irony-soaked world of Williamsburg. This makes me doubt it's sincerity right from he get-go, and it reads like someone who is familiar enough with the terms of "theory" to have a little fun with it. With that in mind I've decided, after a few incredulous head-shakes of irritation, that I"m going to ride this train to the end. And, despite what I think is a lot of bullshitting (and really it's hard to avoid with postmodern theory) there are nuggets of blackened wisdom that I've taken from the book. Probably the biggest take-away so far is learning the word anomie. From
wikipedia:
Anomie (/ˈænəˌmi/) is a "condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals".[1] It is the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community e.g. if under unruly scenarios resulting in fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values.[2] It was popularized by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his influential book Suicide (1897). Durkheim never uses the term normlessness; rather, he describes anomie as "derangement", and "an insatiable will".[3]
For Durkheim, anomie arises more generally from a mismatch between personal or group standards and wider social standards, or from the lack of a social ethic, which produces moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations. This is a nurtured condition:
Most sociologists associate the term with Durkheim, who used the concept to speak of the ways in which an individual's actions are matched, or integrated, with a system of social norms and practices… anomie is a mismatch, not simply the absence of norms. Thus, a society with too much rigidity and little individual discretion could also produce a kind of anomie... Thus, fatalistic suicide arises when a person is too rule-governed...
After reading the above it did not take long to draw a connection between the condition of anomie and our postmodern times - consumer capitalism, internet, technology, yadayadayda...you've heard it all before. And, well, it's a truism at this point. In a sense technology is the ideology that creates this anomie. And still it's not just technology. As long as humans have been around we've made advances in technology that have revolutionized what it means to be human. My contention is that what's different about now is that our technology changes so rapidly that we can't help - without completely going off the grid - but become tools of our tools, lead through our noses by our own creations. The affect - anomie. All of us as individuals with our technology as our security blankets. Yet it's those blankets that have broken down the social bounds that used to connect us with each other. In a sense technology, as wonderful as it is, is the very thing that undisciplines, fragments and destabilizes and at the same time is our safety net. It creates what it saves and we're left nowhere closer to "enlightenment" or the
"omega point" than we were before.
