12/30/2002 04:30:00 PM

On September 11, 2002 Verso released three short essay books in response to the events that took place in Manhattan a year earlier. These books are fascinating accounts of a distinctively European reaction to the grand, horrific, symbolic events that took place on that day.

The first and, soon to be, best known of the three books is Jean Baudrillard's, The Spirit of Terrorism. The book itself is an enchantingly small, rectangular package that in form reminds us of the key place architecture held in this drama. The architecture of the global capital embodied in New York, but also the architecture of the Western story. In the slow metamorphosis to and through the ideals of the Socratic West the narrative of inevitable progress has variously waxed and waned through the exuberance and tragedy of humankind's dealings with itself and the existence it has come to speak of.

Baudrillard suggests in the first essay, and namesake, of this book that the events of 9/11 set humanity on the course of the Fourth World War. His fascinating thesis is that World War III took place in the political intrigue and military brinkmanship of the Cold War and that the advent of World War IV on 09/11/01 has humankind thrown headlong into the internal breach within globalization itself--the fissure of the inevitable suicide of any hegemonic world order. WWI saw the demise of European supremacy, WWII the demise of national fascism, WWIII the political end of state communism and WWIV the suicidal tendencies of globalization itself.

"The Fourth World War... haunts every world order, all hegemonic domination--if Islam dominated the world, terrorism would rise against Islam, for it is the world, the globe itself, which resists globalization." (TSoT, 12)

Jean takes us back beyond Good and Evil and suggests that the very notion of Good's triumph over Evil breaks down when taken to the dominating extreme--for only with acts that undermine the very definitive distinction between this pair can Good overcome Evil. The movement of Good and Evil then are in tandem and often times one assumes the character of the other as the balance of power and the historicizing perspective shifts.

"There is," writes Baudrillard, "no remedy to this extreme situation." As a response to it, conventional warfare is a nonstarter, a non-event. It is merely "the continuation of an absence of politics by other means." (34)

The analysis and, sometimes shocking, propositions of this well regarded French writer are something to consider carefully. His wrapping the events of September 11th in the analytical garb of the symbolic, the singular and the suicidal is frightening and enlightening to ponder. The only critique that I will dare level at this time is that the potential despair that one is left in when "no remedy" is one's considered conclusion is not itself a singular event. I realize that this hopelessness is not, necessarily, Baudrillard's per se. That the lack of a solution is the connundrum of all fissured political oligarchies, all inherently disassembling hegemonies. Nevertheless, the interpretive stance that stops at the moment of despair, as this analysis seems prone to, is but one lived credulity among, seemingly, infinite nuanced possibilities.

I would suggest that the very subversion of system by the inner aparatus of system points to something other. Without venturing into the unfortuneate arena of apologetics or the marketing posture of the "god of the gaps" I will suggest that this always already internal subversion, of which the Fourth World War is but one instance, is in fact that which where cannot contain. That haunting presumption of every-where we know through. The very traces of the other kingdom.

The beauty, portability and patronage that buying a book entails should nudge any interested parties to the bookstore to pick this title up. That said, should one desire to read a rough translation it is available here.