Mikhail Remizov. National Boredom Day

By the way, old-timers claim that it was precisely on these autumn days that a revolution once took place in our country... “Revolution” is a faded hieroglyph, a wandering light of extinguished lights, a time when not everyone agreed that “a bad peace is better than a good war ". Now everyone agrees, we have a holiday of harmony - and in spite of everything, in spite of the minor procession of November clouds, we put on our solemn white-blue-red bow and wash ourselves with a woman’s tear of tenderness.

National holidays are a ritual through which we repeat history cyclically, allowing it to dwell in us as in the present. This is a certain form of the presence of the “big time” of the nation in the “small time” of the people. With the holidays of “New Russia” the situation is different. They are, rather, a certain form of absence, even a double absence: absence from work, firstly, and the absence of any interest in the matter of this first absence, secondly. I don’t want to say at all that the holidays of “New Russia” are devoid of any consolidating meaning. On the contrary, in their double absence, Russians become completely united. I think this is the deepest subject of that “Concord” and the true basis of that “Reconciliation” that we celebrate on the 7th.

Times have truly changed. Previously, to express our will, we went to take the Winter Palace and fought for five years in the convulsions of civil war. Now we press the buttons, and agreement, according to the principle of mirror projection, appears on both sides of the blue screen. On the 7th, as usual, everyone turned on the TV, and the festive, absent-indifferent consent of the population was winked at by its mirror twin - the peculiar but deep consensus of the political class.

This fact can be mourned, you can enjoy it, but it is obvious: our political elite, despite the whole carousel of its petty ambitions and big stakes, exists in a regime of consensus. She has something to share, but she has nothing to argue about. The political class does not contain an ideological and political matrix of demarcation. It is amorphous and, therefore, substantially unified. In other words, its consensus is determined by a certain unanimity of ideological muteness, the negativity of a comprehensive rejection of the value delimitation of positions. This is the default consensus , this is the mirror twin of our nationwide absent-indifferent consent.

Mirror twins reflect each other, and it doesn't matter who reflected who first. It is important that both exist only as reflections. The population, staring at the boxes, looks at its elite, sees that everything is the same, everything is nothing and, therefore, it doesn’t matter . The pupils flicker meaninglessly with the reflected light of the blue screen, the meaningless pupils of the collective sovereign. On the other hand, the political class peers into these pupils in order to, in turn, reflect the meaninglessness of their reflected light. Of course, blue screens only work in one direction, and are not entirely suitable for mutual viewing, but there are elections, there is pre-election demoscopy ! Its methods make it possible to establish on vast statistical arrays and in different ways that, in principle, people want the same thing - order and security, freedom and spectacle (mainly collectively: as freedom of spectacle ), a little enlightened patriotism, a lot of doctor's sausage... The political class absorbs this dispersed substance of desire like a sponge and focuses it in its gaze - that major gaze with which it likes to look at you from city billboards, from posters clinging to every pillar. Don't be suspicious: this look is without a second thought. He is devoid of the hidden grin of a Machiavellian, devoid of a double bottom, devoid of a bottom at all - he is flat. He reflected what you expected from him, and he promised it to you. There is no need to ask whether what is promised is being fulfilled. Democracy is an exchange of signals. And here everything is fair: the entire signaling system of the political class is, in principle, exhausted by the monotony of election promises and orders (except perhaps translated into jargon of party programs) and is completely isomorphic to the signals of boredom and alienation that the political class receives as feedback.

Yes, if you put two mirrors, two reflections opposite each other, emptiness will immediately reign on both sides. You can call this emptiness consensus. I prefer to call it depoliticization. Isn’t it depoliticization that we honor in these November days under the pseudonym of Concord?

Don’t think, I’m not pushing consent out of the political realm at all, I’m only insisting that political consent is intense . By the way, thanks to this, a certain “against” always sounds in unison with a certain “for”.

So our democratic process is a vicious circle of depoliticization. Alienation and withdrawal into the everyday (depoliticization) takes hold of the masses in the face of the political insignificance of the political class. Leveling and abandoning the intense meaningfulness of the struggle (depoliticization) takes over the political class in the face of the apoliticality of the masses. This is, in its way, a fact, but the facts do not speak for themselves, and you can always object: yes, depoliticization! Yes, we like it...

“Our people are too politicized,” “deputies are involved in politics too much,” “less politics, more action” - who among us has not heeded, or even echoed, these little truths? The streams of walking wisdom are often dirty, their water must be defended. So, first of all, we must subtract from our little truths the semi-conscious outgrowths of all sorts of nonsense that permeate the atmosphere, eliminate the echoes of liberal, Marxist, anarchist aspirations regarding the overcoming of political relations as orders of domination. Eliminate because there is no enthusiasm and, most importantly, no sense in overthrowing them: history will always do it more gracefully, more mockingly, more mercilessly. Minus this chiliastic utopia, in the pores of our little truths there remains another utopia - a technocratic one. What remains is that now venerable view, according to which politics is a type of activity, either simply identical to management, or auxiliary, or redundant in relation to it.

This bureaucratic concept of politics cannot be brushed aside today like a fat fly in autumn. This concept is more worthy of attention the higher the risk of it becoming dominant. And here all the prerequisites are present: as the noisy democracy of the spectacle, which reigned among us until recently and which, of course, pretended to give the impression of a political struggle, is collapsing (see my article in Russian Journal : "Apology for Power: Prologue" ) - as this system of simulation, called politics by a disgusting misunderstanding, discredits itself and becomes a thing of the past, it is the bureaucratic concept that becomes the natural candidate for filling the emerging voids . After the wasteful travesty of the performance, a natural desire arises to simply and without unnecessary words “get down to business.”

Without further ado - yes! - in fact - yes! - but can it be “ simple ”? “Simple” does not mean “easy” - in any case, it is clear that it will not be easy - but in a different sense: somehow unobtrusive, without noise, “technocratically”. You can simply get down to business only when it has already taken place, when “here it is,” just come and do it. Is this what it is now, a state affair in Russia?

Yes, bureaucratic thinking is specific precisely in that it comes into its own only in a normal, constituted, framed situation. Solving problems within a situation can be a “matter of technology” and, therefore, the work of technocrats. But “to create and guarantee the situation as a whole in its totality” (Carl Schmitt) is a matter of politics, in the narrow sense - the mission of the sovereign. The official does not understand this, the supreme power for him is simply the highest administrative authority, and politics is beyond the tactics of life he professes: according to Mannheim, “the official identifies the positive order prescribed by a specific law with order as such and does not understand that any rationalized order is nothing more than a special kind of order, a compromise between metarational forces fighting in a given social space" 1 .

Politics lives in the cracks, fissures, and gaps of the institutional routine of governance. In its essence, politics is extra-routine and unusual. By the way, through the category of “non-everyday” Weber explained the essence of charisma. Politics is charismatic, not bureaucratic.

I find myself thinking: what if the formulation of the question about the essence of politics is speculative, speculative and, therefore, not political? An annoying suspicion... But no, this would be so if I were talking about universals, about any models that existence should , in theory, imitate. Then the conversation about true politics would be reduced to the rigoristic pose of an idealist preaching to a certain existence that it must correspond to its concept - it is not clear by whom and on what rights established. This is indeed highly unpolitical. I, for my part, mean something the opposite and would like to mean not so much the “true meanings of words” as the structures of the facticity to which they relate - since this facticity can be experienced directly , since it can be experienced at all. And the question of real politics - it turns us not to the world of ideas, but to the irreducible reality of certain kinds of situations - situations that require political reaction, non-trivial situations in which the contrast of political and non-political modes of action becomes acute and unambiguous. The smart and bilious Donoso Cortez said that liberalism - that is, a non-political way of thinking and behavior - exists only in that brief moment when the question: “Christ or Barrabas?” - can be answered by establishing a commission of inquiry...

As soon as a political situation arises, that is , an ordinary situation becomes an emergency , the same official only needs to remain an official to draw this line - to prove that politics is not bureaucratic.

Let's say something crazy - for example, a regiment of the Strategic Missile Forces has its electricity cut off for non-payment of debts. What should the colonel do? The colonel becomes a plaintiff, goes to the authorities, goes to court to seek the truth? Waiting for the hearing day, filing a cassation or appeal? This is approximately how a normal “legal entity” should behave; and this is how an official should behave; finally, this is exactly how one should behave in a rule-of-law state with its procedural guarantee of justice, with its rigor: law at any cost. Even at the cost of the Strategic Missile Forces. Do you think our colonel agrees with this?.. I think that the people whose first (documented) experience of theoretical thought was the “Tale of Law and Grace” - these people answer such questions without waiting for question marks. This people is from the inside! - will order the colonel to take control of the electrical substation and hold it for as long as necessary. And the colonel - of course, on his own behalf - will order this to the regimental special forces.

Such situations reveal the existence of the political and confirm the existence of politicians, just as a “borderline situation” reveals “existence”... Our colonel acted politically. The situation went beyond the framework of institutional, normative regulation (compliance with the legal procedure of the claim was essentially meaningless ), that is, it ceased to be normal . He made a meta-legal decision, a decision about the right, that he has the right , he made this decision on his own behalf and used the power to carry it out.

By the way, don’t you think there is some promising duality in the rank itself (“Colonel”...). There is something that, forcing you to be an official, still leaves a chance and even irrationally encourages you to do more - to take risks, to make a political choice: a choice in favor of politics.

I cannot but agree with Sergei Zemlyany that today’s Russia is precisely a “borderline situation.” I would add to this that our historical situation is not only borderline as a whole - it consists of many local points of emergency, it is teeming and ripening with emergency situations that promise to increasingly determine the shape of the future. And this means: politics , politics that transcends the everyday meaning of management, is equally a historiosophical and tactical necessity.

If we look historically , then the borderline nature of our situation means the need, freed from the scabs of everyday life and from any old rags, to feel, standing on the edge, the immutability of our existence, in order to choose ourselves, invent ourselves, design ourselves - ourselves, that is, Russia - again .

If we look at it operationally and tactically, the extreme nature of our situations means the need for strong, creative, risky, controversial, value-based and meta-legal solutions.

Our ability to respond politically to the challenges of emergency is precisely a matter of vitality . The “borderline situation” is a kind of test of whether we are, in an hour, the walking dead, and the whole point of it is quite clear from the words of Ortega y Gasset: “Our problem ,” he told the Spaniards, “ is not that To live in order, it is first of all to live." “To live, ” he continued, “ that is, to engage in life very seriously, consciously...” 2

It’s curious: “politics” in the sketch I made turned out to be akin to the existentialist “authenticity of existence.” That immutable, extraordinary reality of ourselves, which reveals itself to us in “borderline situations” - near death, war, in the nausea of ​​melancholy, in the darkness of horror... This experience of going beyond the boundaries of the everyday (in existentialist language - “the experience of nothingness”) is equally necessary people and people, because both are alienated from themselves in routine, lost in the emptiness of everyday life and forgotten in the emptiness of public holidays.

“Wake up, tram, four hours in an office or factory, dinner, sleep; Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, all in the same rhythm - this is the path that is easy to follow day after day. But one day a question arises “Why?” Everything begins with this boredom tinged with bewilderment. “It begins” - that’s what is important” 3 , - in this fragment Camus speaks of the beginning of the awakening of an alienated person.

Have you heard?.. It can even start from boredom!

Notes:

1 Mannheim Karl. Ideology and utopia. // Mannheim Karl. Diagnosis of our time. - M., 1994.

2 Ortega y Gasset. Old and new politics. // Policy. 1992. #3.

3 Camus Albert. The myth of Sisyphus. An essay on the absurd. // Twilight of the Gods. - M., 1989.