A Death Cult, Transhumanism, or Plain Ol' Postmodern Cynicism?

What are the librarians thinking, literallly?

Take a look at this rather arresting snap from the central public library of a major British city.

What do we call this? What are the associations that we are supposed to make here? What is the sustained thought behind this arrangement? What is the epistemic common denominator?

Evidently, this is an alcove of sections that are deemed related in some fashion. It is not an accidental disposition of book shelves. The librarian has orchestrated this juxtaposition. We know, because of the proximity of the two sections in the alcove, because there are other similar themed shelves adjacent to them (out of shot, I took the photo), because there is an intuitive plausibility in the placement, and because we have become accustomed to boundary-pushing in all manner of places. In fact, the boundary-pushing has itself established new boundaries that ring-fence a new category with a common denominator. That is why these themes are placed in the same alcove.

There is nothing about the individual elements that especially troubles me. Sexuality, the politics of rights, the bohemian delight in the marginal, the nature of death and its psychosocial place in human anthropology. All these things are fascinating. The problem comes when these elements are assembled together in a particular way, a predictable way that moves forward under its own inertia. It communicates something that lies behind. It is a meta-statement.

What we have to do is interpret this composition, explore what these new coherences might be. We have to get our heads around the meta-statement.

It is also the location, the venue, that bothers me. Public, Educational. A place we have in common for all of us, but which others – those in whom we have entrusted this space – treat as their own personal campaign poster.

There is something goading about it. “Go on. Say it. Expose yourself as a philistine. Show everyone that you can’t handle it, normalo!”. But that is not fair. The hackneyed arrangement is the act of the philistine here. My reaction is not one of moral outrage or bourgeois squeamishness. I actually think my reaction comes out of a greater perspicacity than the librarian that organized this alcove.

I am not triggered or irked. I feel dread. Cold. Depressed.

I'm put in mind of Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages, in which the august Dutch historian paints a vivid picture of life in the High Middle Ages, where plague, war, and prolonged economic and demographic depression have imbued society with a kind of wayward but fateful apathy. However, that reaction is wrong, for those pseudo-postmoderns of the 1400s were actually pre-moderns, who at least understood the value of eating, drinking, and being merry, for tomorrow they die. With no knowledge of the Rebirth just ahead of them, the sense of malaise and death in the 15th century induced the living of life, while here we have the morose embrace of meaningless confusion before death as a release. The queering of everything. Even life.

Then I think of the various Streiten that broke out across Europe toward the end of the 19th century through to the First World War – Methodenstreit, Werturteilsstreit, etc. Controversies that seemed to centre around a disoriented generation’s attempt to deal with the effects of industrialization and its great dislocations. The long mauve decade was fertile soil for Freud to mine the unconscious, maybe because it was a time when the unconscious came to intrude so much on the surface that it could no longer be ignored. This was the cauldron out of which came both the road to world war and the postmodern movement that now bears its fruit. Is our destiny also to be despair, fascism, and war? At that time, the restored sunlight of the second half of the 20th century was a long way off. Is our generation to suffer that long dark night too?

But there is another thought lurking at the back of my mind. Perhaps more disturbing than the predictable death cults that recur periodically in the story arc of civilization. Are these the first public signals of the emerging transhuman movement that has been well-outlined by the journalist Jennifer Bilek? Is this an early nudging of the public toward the post-human nightmare of which some highly influential authoritarian corporatists seem to dream?

Twilight thoughts. But then, this seemingly innocent picture will doubtless be read by transhumanists as a great opportunity for ‘celebration’. I know why they think that, but I do not share their too-easily acquired interpretation.

Maybe the most productive question is the prospective one – where are we going with this? Collectively? Individually? I'll leave you with some of Camilla Paglia's thoughts on the matter…