ABSTRACT
This is how the devil speaks toward the end of Brothers Karamazov, announcing the ludicrousness of sublimation, of ‘all that is great and beautiful’, in modern times, and demanding moderation. A banal, normalized devil that no longer speaks the language of evil, a devil without evil. This paradoxical, mediocre devil was the nightmare through which the nineteenth century dreamed of the times to come, a future that promotes passivity, a ‘dampening of the feeling of life, mechanical activity, modest pleasures . . .’ (Nietzsche 1996: 114). Fast forward two centuries: are we not caught up in the same nightmare, too? Indeed, ours is a society that has turned moderation into an even more straightforward injunction. Hence our obsession with ‘a whole series of products deprived of their malignant properties: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol . . .’ (Zˇizˇek 2002: 10). We should not, in this context, forget the recent breakthrough in ‘gene silencing’ technology: the tearless onion. Thanks to New Zealand’s crop and food research institute, which
has developed it after six years’ hard work – from now on we won’t be crying on touching an onion! – as a senior scientist from the institute puts it, ‘we’ll have nice, sweet aromas instead of bitter, pungent ones’ (quoted in McMahon 2008). Perhaps one day we can go to saunas without sweating? Make omelets without breaking eggs?
