<nettime> Yann Moix: A New Era for Humanity

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

A New Era for Humanity

by Yann Moix
Liberation (Paris), September 14, 2001
original in French at
http://www.liberation.com/ny2001/actu/20010914venze.html


Bingo, folks! The World will never go at war again, and yet it will be
at war always, period. War and non-war, there shall be no difference any
more. From the 11th of September 2001, all will be war, even peace.
Peace shall no longer be the opposite of war, but its context, its
natural environment, its ecosystem, its scene, its background, its
screen-saver. War and peace shall no longer be each others contraries
(that was in the good old manichean East vs West times), but they shall
be imbricated the one in the other, like the two connected faces of the
same reality. Peace shall be a kind of specific sub-case of war. War
shall henceforth be everywhere and nowhere. War shall be waged in the
dustbins of the Paris railtermini, war shall be waged above our heads in
the air of the metropolises. War shall be permanent. War shall be open
for business 24/24, 7/7 , just like CNN. There shall be intermissions,
but no reprieve. It shall be a war blind, yet precise, fuzzy, yet
targeted. Because never before has the distortion been so stark between
fuziness of the causes and the acuurateness of the strikes.

The First HyperWorldWar has started. It is a war where all pretenses
will fly, and where acts will be used as statements of purpose
afterwards. Let's call this a hyperwar: a world where the ordinary,
natural context of societies is no longer peace, but war. A hyperwar is
not a classic world war with opposite fighting sides. It is a
'non-Euclydian', non-catalogised war, without rules and principles
others than its own logic. Hyperwar cannot be localised in space. Nor in
time. It is a kind of magnum opus of terrorism,its _best of_ or rather  
its _worst of_: plane hijacks, crashes, bombs, kamikaze operations.

In fact it was the 20th century as a whole that was fast-forwarded in   
just a couple of minutes on the 11th of September, 2001. And that will
be the birth certificate of the 21st Century, like (the 31st of July) 
1914 was it for the 20th. But it are no longer states which are waging
war, but wars that are making states. But then, unheard of sort of
states: non-nation-states, states without teritorry, without citizens or
borders, without (elected) governements, nay, these are virtual states,
scattered war-states, fuzzy, networked octopus-states, community-states
whose only borders are ideological. These states, just like virusses,
evolve, adjust, mutate, invent and reinvent themselves everyday. 
Sometimes, their size is reduced to that of a lone individual who is an
ideology, an army, a clear and present danger all unto himself. And a   
walking bomb. After the era of the statesmen comes the era of the
state-men. The political state has become undistinguishable from the
biological state.

Over these past days, we have been bombarded with the metaphor of Pearl
Harbour: nothing could be further from the truth. Pearl Harbour was an
episode within a war. The 11th of september was the definition of an
other type of war, the starting point for a new era in human history.
The human element is now being affected all over the planet, since
hyperwars feeds itself on the psychoses it creates by the permanent
menace it exerts on all. Psychosis has become the continuation of war by
other means. It gnaws at the individual, it eats up her/his mind, it
shatters her/his rational structure. It is a war on the 'may be/ may be
not' mode, whereby the horror is mainly a potential one. And thus, it is
a war that may have a beginning, but no end. Hyperwar is built for the
long run. It thrives in totality, that of the universe and of eternity.


(Halelujah! - tr -)
(Q&D translation by yours truly)
Reposted without permission whatsoever

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