Christian Marazzi, "Who Killed God Pan?"

sgb writes:

"Who Killed God Pan?"
Christian Marazzi

Pan is a Greek God who lives on the zone between nature and culture, between beasts and humans. He inhabits the space that is neither that of history or community nor that of pure nature: the fields and meadows just outside the city walls are his dominion. He is two-formed and two-natured, human and animal, a man and a goat. When humans live inside the house and beasts in their dens or in their nests, Pan like a herdsman sleeps in a cowshed. And the herdsman is big, tall and a good warrior.

He is a messenger between the city and the fields. Plato equates Pan with language; like Pan, language has a snake’s tongue; it is good both in lying and in saying the truth. Pan declares all things and he is the perpetual mover of all things. Panic and the disorder that leads to panicking are due to the growing distance between the Gods and men. They destroy or deny communication between the Gods and the human community and between men and lead humans back to bestiality.

Pan transforms human being into a gregarious animal and lets the herd instinct proper to humans free so that it is possible to reorganize the community using ‘human nature’ as a tool in the reorganization. Panic, like terror, has been a privileged instrument in modern politics because it spreads fast without discussions and it is impossible to contest or go against it.In his article, ‘Who Killed God Pan?’, Christian Marazzi analyzes the crisis of monetary sovereignty that turns monetary politics into a variable that depends on the stock markets. The new architecture of production and exchange of the riches in the post-fordist economy has constructed in language the space of the multitude. Now the multitude is the figure of money, the form of its sovereignty. And it has the wisdom and the power to kill the God Pan, the herdsman who makes the flock manageable and who has had traditionally the function of hoarding in the exchange process.

[Translated from the Italian by Taina Rajanti. This article first appeared in 'ephemera: theory & politics in organization', Vol. 4, Iss. 3 (Aug 2004). The full-text pdf version can be downloaded at http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal]"