The Double or No-Thing Social Structuring Rituals and Sacrificial Power

As a theme for this series of seminars, I propose the title “The Double or Nothing.” For some of you this phrase will bring to mind various games of chance and competition. I am thinking here of a form of games—“winner take all” and the like—the appearance of which displaces the more archaic games of simulation and vertigo.2 Today the simulated return of such archaic forms is evident in both science and the popular culture. Indeed, the realization of what’s ultramodern in the guise of what’s primitive is a disturbing element of our current “postmodern scene.” This scene may appear archaic but is in actuality driven by a variety of ultramodern addictions to a competitive technological exteriorization of the mind. Whose mind? The mind of those most compelled by a repetitious desire to control one’s fate and capture “her” every chance. The exteriorization of such a mind parasites upon the enactment of games of simulation and vertigo. As reflexive social forms, these games were once the province of generous gift exchange, festival, and the ecstasy of both pagan and shamanistic rites of healing. Today, they are being telecommunicatively reprocessed and then sold for profit. This gives games of simulation and vertigo a previously unimaginable competitive edge.3 Unlike earlier enactments of such rites, contemporary simulations operate seductively but without reversing the willful compulsions of modern power to competitively master all odds.