The Crystal Palace* by Peter Sloterdijk * Chapter 33 of 11/1 Weltil1l1el1raul/1 des Kapitals: Ft,r eine philosophisehe Theorie der Globalisiel'lll1g (In the Global Inner Space of Capital: For a Philosophical Theory of Globalization). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005, pg. 265-276. 12 PUBLIC 37 Among the 19th-century authors who, with critical singular concert performances and, with classical music reservation, observed the well-advanced games of programmes in front of huge audiences, anticipated the aggressive global development from the periphery of era ofpop concerts in stadiums.3 "retarded" Eastern Europe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky proved Not long after, Dostoyevsky connected the skeptical to be the nlOst clear-sighted diagnostician. In his story impressions that his London visit had left him to the Notes fr0111 the Underground, published in 1864-which intense aversion he felt after reading Chernyshevsky's not only represents the foundation charter of modern novel What Is To Be Done?, published in 1863, and ressentiment psychology, but also the first expression of developed from this association ofideas the 19th century's opposition to globalization, if the backdating of this most powerful vision ofa critique ofcivilization. Famous expression is legitimate-there is a phrase that summarizes, for its time, (and of a resolutely pro-Western tendency), with unsurpassed metaphorical power, the world's coming and with consequences that would extend all the way to into the world at the beginning ofthe end of the age of Lenin, this book announced the "New Man" who, after globalization: I mean his expression ofWestern civilization accomplishing the technical solution to the social question, as a "crystal palace." During his stay in London in 1862, would live amongst his peers in a communal palace of Dostoyevsky visited the palace of the World Exhibition glass and metal-the archetype ofshared accommodation in South Kensington (which would surpass the scale in the East and the West. Chernyshevsky's culture palace of the Crystal Palace of 1851) and, by intuition, he was conceived as a luxury edifice with an artificial climate, immediately grasped the immeasurable symbolic and in which an eternal spring of consensus would prevail. programmatic dimensions of the hybrid construction. Here, the sun of good intentions would shine day and Since the World Exhibition building did not possess its night, the peaceful coexistence ofeveryone with everyone own name, it seems reasonable to assume that would go without saying. Sentimentality without limits Dostoyevsky applied the term Crystal Palace to it. 1 would determine the interior climate, and an overextended The enormous original, a pre-fabricated building humanitarian house morale would necessarily lead to the design, started to be constructed in the fall of 1850 in spontaneous participation of everyone in the fates of London's Hyde Park according to the plans ofhorticulture everyone else. For Dostoyevsky, the image ofall "society" expert ]oseph Paxton, and was inaugurated on May 1sI, entering the palace of civilization symbolized the will of 1851 in the presence of the young QueenVictoria (only the Western fraction of humanity to conclude, in a to be rebuilt with enlarged proportions in 1854 in the posthistorical detente, the initiative it had launched London suburb of Sydenham). Until its destruction by a towards world happiness and understanding among conflagration in 1936, it counted as a technological peoples. After the writer had, through his deportation to wonder of the world-a triumph of serial fabrication Siberia, become acquainted with existence in a "house of planned with military precision.2 With it, a new aesthetic the dead," the perspective of a closed house of the living ofimmersion began its victory march through modernity. revealed itself now to him: biopolitics begins as an What today we call psychedelic capitalism, was already a enclosed structure. fait accompli in the, as it were, immaterialized and artificially At this point, the motive of the "end of history" temperature-controlled building. Around 17,000 begins its triumphal procession. The visionaries of the exhibitors convened in it during the first World 19th century, like the communists in the 20th century, Exhibition, of which 7,200 alone came from Great had already understood that social life after the end of Britain and its thirty-two colonies.With its construction, combatant history could only play out in an extensive the principle of interiority crossed a critical threshold: interior, an interior space ordered like a house and from then on, it signified neither the bourgeois or endowed with an artificial climate. Whatever one may aristocratic dwelling, nor its projection into the sphere of understand by the term real history, it should, like its urban shopping arcades. Rather, it began to transpose the spearheads, sea voyages and expansionist wars, remain the outside world as a whole into a magical immanence perfect example of undertakings in the open air. But if transfigured by luxury and cosmopolitanism. After it had historical battles should lead to eternal peace, the whole been converted into a giant hothouse and an imperial ofsocial life would have to be integrated into a protective cultural museum, it betrayed the contemporary tendency housing. Under such conditions, no further historical to make nature and culture jointly into indoors affairs. events could occur, at most household accidents. And although the Crystal Palace was not initially conceived Accordingly, there would be no more politics and no for musical performances, it developed into a stage of more voters, but rather only contests for votes between Peter Sloterdijk 13 parties and fluctuations among their consumers. Who evil is unemployed negativity-an unmistakeable product could deny that the Western world-particularly the of the posthistorical situation. Its popular edition is European Union after its relative completion in May and sadomasochism in the middle-class household, where the signing of its constitution in October 2004­ harmless people mutually bind themselves to the bedposts embodies today in its essential characteristics precisely to experience something new; its version of luxury is such a great interior? aesthetic snobbism, which professes the primacy of This gigantic hothouse of detente is dedicated to a accidental preference. In the youth markets, where the cheerful and hectic cult ofBaal, for which the 20th cen­ prb-ii-Y/?volte,s is distributed, this integrated evil appears tury has proposed the term consumerism. The capitalistic cool.Value or non-value---both go by the results of the Baal, which Dostoyevsky thought he had recognized in the roll of the dice. Without a particular reason, in boredom, shocking sight of the World Exhibition Palace and the the one is valued, the other rejected. Whether one, London pleasure-seeking masses, did not take shape any with Kant, calls this evil a radical evil, is objectively less in the building itself than in the hedonistic turbu­ inconsequential. Because its roots cannot reach deeper lence that dominated its interior. Here, a new doctrine than the mood, nothing is gained from the term "radical"­ ofFinal Things is formulated as a dogmatics ofconsump­ it makes an ontological theatrical clap of thunder in tion. Upon the erection of the Crystal Palace, only the order to explain that one does not know, ultimately, "crystallization" of relations in their entirety could fol­ where evil comes from. low-with this fateful term, Arnold Gehlen4 connected Is it still necessary to say that Heidegger's great directly to Dostoyevsky. Crystallization designates the phenomenology ofboredom, of 1929-1930, can only be plan to generalize boredom normatively and to prevent understood as breaking out ofthe crystal palace established the renewed intrusion of"history" into the posthistori­ across all of Europe (although heavily battered by war cal world. To encourage and protect benign paralysis is, damages), whose moral and cognitive interior climate--­ in future, the goal ofall state power. By nature, the bore­ the unavoidable absence of all valid convictions and the dom guaranteed by the Constitution would dress itselfin superfluity of all personal decisions-is more clearly the form ofa project: its psychosocial jingle is the atmos­ grasped here than anywhere else? With his description of phere of renewal, optimism its basic key. In fact, in the inauthentic existence in Being and Time (1927), notably posthistorical world, all the signs must point towards the in the notorious paragraphs on the "one" (which could future because in it lies the only promise that can be have been inspired by Kierkegaard's invectives against the made absolutely to an association of consumers: that "public" in A Literary Review), Heidegger had prepared comfort does not stop flowing and gro\J\ring. Therefore, his investigation into the basic sensibilities of the bored the concept ofhuman rights is inseparable from the great Dasein. It was here that the phenomenological revolt march towards comfort, as long as the freedoms that they against the exigencies ofthe SOjourn in technical housing signify prepare the self-fulfilment of consumers. took shape. What is later called Ge-stell is for the first Consequently, they are on everyone's lips only where the time at this point extensively illuminated-above all institutional, legal and psychodynamic foundation of with respect to the inauthentic existence, deprived of consumerism is to be