From Authoritarianism, by Wendy Brown:
Certainly ressentiment is a vital energy of right- wing populism:
rancor, grudges, barely concealed victimization, and other
affective qualities of reaction are the affective heartbeat of internet
trolling, tweets, and speeches at right- wing rallies, and
a striking feature of Trump’s own demeanor. For philosopher
Hans Sluga, however, Nietzsche’s most important contribution to
theorizing the current conjuncture is his treatment of nihilism.43
Often mischaracterized as a nihilist because he reckoned with the
contingent nature of values and truth, Nietzsche is more properly
appreciated as a philosopher of the age of nihilism, which
he knew to be unfolding in the centuries after science and reason
topple God and shatter the foundations of every moral and ethical
truth. As Sluga reminds us, for Nietzsche the age of nihilism
does not mean the elimination of values but a world in which “the
highest values devaluate themselves” as they become unmoored
from their foundations.44 Western Judeo- Christian values, including
those that secure liberal democracy, lose their depth as
they lose their fundaments; accordingly, they do not vanish but
become fungible and trivial, easily traded, augmented, instrumentalized,
superficialized. These effects further degrade the
value of values, inevitably deepening the nihilism of cultures
and their subjects.
There is ubiquitous evidence of this phenomenon today. It is
quotidian in the instrumentalization of values for commercial
and political gain— “branding”— and in the general lack of umbrage
at this instrumentalization. It is manifest in a US Supreme
Court majority that pretends to “originalism” while stretching
the Constitution to sanction everything from torture to corporate
personhood.45 It is evident in a survey of American voters,
conducted in October 2011 and repeated five years later: in 2011,
during the Obama presidency, only 30 percent of white evangelical
Protestants believed that an elected official who commits an
immoral act in his or her personal life can still behave ethically
in public and professional life; this figure rose to 72 percent in
October 2016, when Trump was a candidate. Similarly, in 2011,
64 percent of white evangelicals considered it very important
for a presidential candidate to have strong religious beliefs, a
figure that dropped to 49 percent during the Trump campaign.46
These changes were surely the effect less of deep ethical reflection
than of shifting political tides. This is how nihilism goes— not the
death of values but their becoming protean, becoming available
for branding projects and covering purposes that manifestly do
not comport with them.
Trumpism embodies another feature of nihilism
as Nietzsche depicts it, one crucial to freedom’s antisocial qualities
today. This is the desublimation of the will to power.48 Both
Freud and Nietzsche understand values and the world built to
comport with them as sublimations of what Freud called the instincts
or drives and Nietzsche termed the will to power. Both
understood the untamed human animal to be freer, in some ways
happier, in the absence of such sublimation, but also at risk of
self- and other- destruction. Above all, both understood civilization
itself to be the product of sublimation. With nihilism’s
devaluation of values, there is, Sluga argues, “a falling back and
collapse of the will to power into its own elementary form. . . .
[E]ven religion and the appeal to religious values become cynical
instruments for the unrestrained use of power.”49 More is at
stake in this collapse than the exercise of power unbridled by
ethics or humility. Rather, Sluga writes, “what goes by the way
in this unrestrained will to power is any concern for others . . . in
particular the compact between generations on which our entire
social order has rested so far.”50 Sluga thus helps us understand
an aspect of right- wing freedom unyoked from conscience, not
just because it is contoured by neoliberal selfishness and critiques
of the social, but because of nihilism’s own radical depression of
conscience.51 Combined with the disparagement and depletion of
the social, freedom becomes doing or saying what one likes without
regard for its effects, freedom to be genuinely without care
for the predicaments, vulnerabilities, or fates of other humans,
other species, or the planet. It is freedom, as Nietzsche puts it, to
“wreak one’s will” for the sheer pleasure of it. And when this will
is wounded and rancorous from social castration or humiliation,
it is, as Elizabeth Anker formulates it, “ugly freedom.”52
------------------
end quote
Here the author is aiming her critique at Trump and the Trump-like, but I think it's obvious in most sections of US society. It's clear that we associate rudeness and vulgarity with honesty these days. We think it's downright bad to hold back from calling someone a fuckwad if we happen to disagree with him about metaphysics. "Desublimation" is a useful word, I think.
Certainly ressentiment is a vital energy of right- wing populism:
rancor, grudges, barely concealed victimization, and other
affective qualities of reaction are the affective heartbeat of internet
trolling, tweets, and speeches at right- wing rallies, and
a striking feature of Trump’s own demeanor. For philosopher
Hans Sluga, however, Nietzsche’s most important contribution to
theorizing the current conjuncture is his treatment of nihilism.43
Often mischaracterized as a nihilist because he reckoned with the
contingent nature of values and truth, Nietzsche is more properly
appreciated as a philosopher of the age of nihilism, which
he knew to be unfolding in the centuries after science and reason
topple God and shatter the foundations of every moral and ethical
truth. As Sluga reminds us, for Nietzsche the age of nihilism
does not mean the elimination of values but a world in which “the
highest values devaluate themselves” as they become unmoored
from their foundations.44 Western Judeo- Christian values, including
those that secure liberal democracy, lose their depth as
they lose their fundaments; accordingly, they do not vanish but
become fungible and trivial, easily traded, augmented, instrumentalized,
superficialized. These effects further degrade the
value of values, inevitably deepening the nihilism of cultures
and their subjects.
There is ubiquitous evidence of this phenomenon today. It is
quotidian in the instrumentalization of values for commercial
and political gain— “branding”— and in the general lack of umbrage
at this instrumentalization. It is manifest in a US Supreme
Court majority that pretends to “originalism” while stretching
the Constitution to sanction everything from torture to corporate
personhood.45 It is evident in a survey of American voters,
conducted in October 2011 and repeated five years later: in 2011,
during the Obama presidency, only 30 percent of white evangelical
Protestants believed that an elected official who commits an
immoral act in his or her personal life can still behave ethically
in public and professional life; this figure rose to 72 percent in
October 2016, when Trump was a candidate. Similarly, in 2011,
64 percent of white evangelicals considered it very important
for a presidential candidate to have strong religious beliefs, a
figure that dropped to 49 percent during the Trump campaign.46
These changes were surely the effect less of deep ethical reflection
than of shifting political tides. This is how nihilism goes— not the
death of values but their becoming protean, becoming available
for branding projects and covering purposes that manifestly do
not comport with them.
Trumpism embodies another feature of nihilism
as Nietzsche depicts it, one crucial to freedom’s antisocial qualities
today. This is the desublimation of the will to power.48 Both
Freud and Nietzsche understand values and the world built to
comport with them as sublimations of what Freud called the instincts
or drives and Nietzsche termed the will to power. Both
understood the untamed human animal to be freer, in some ways
happier, in the absence of such sublimation, but also at risk of
self- and other- destruction. Above all, both understood civilization
itself to be the product of sublimation. With nihilism’s
devaluation of values, there is, Sluga argues, “a falling back and
collapse of the will to power into its own elementary form. . . .
[E]ven religion and the appeal to religious values become cynical
instruments for the unrestrained use of power.”49 More is at
stake in this collapse than the exercise of power unbridled by
ethics or humility. Rather, Sluga writes, “what goes by the way
in this unrestrained will to power is any concern for others . . . in
particular the compact between generations on which our entire
social order has rested so far.”50 Sluga thus helps us understand
an aspect of right- wing freedom unyoked from conscience, not
just because it is contoured by neoliberal selfishness and critiques
of the social, but because of nihilism’s own radical depression of
conscience.51 Combined with the disparagement and depletion of
the social, freedom becomes doing or saying what one likes without
regard for its effects, freedom to be genuinely without care
for the predicaments, vulnerabilities, or fates of other humans,
other species, or the planet. It is freedom, as Nietzsche puts it, to
“wreak one’s will” for the sheer pleasure of it. And when this will
is wounded and rancorous from social castration or humiliation,
it is, as Elizabeth Anker formulates it, “ugly freedom.”52
------------------
end quote
Here the author is aiming her critique at Trump and the Trump-like, but I think it's obvious in most sections of US society. It's clear that we associate rudeness and vulgarity with honesty these days. We think it's downright bad to hold back from calling someone a fuckwad if we happen to disagree with him about metaphysics. "Desublimation" is a useful word, I think.
