Repetition and reversal

For years, I've been fascinated by Marx's offhand remark, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, that

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Marx lifts a phrase from Hegel to mock the newly ascendant Napoleon III, the "farcical" repetition of his late, great uncle. I had never, however, wondered about the context of Hegel's original remark.

Slavoj Žižek expands a little bit. Hegel was the first philosopher to view history as being driven by conflict and collision (a view that Marx later adapted). However, historical results are not always obvious - the "victors" don't always direct history in their chosen direction.

He gives the example of Julius Caesar, who had concentrated political power in his person. Old Julius was a single individual, whose extraordinary grip on power seemed contingent or accidental - a fluke, in short, that would not outlive the man.

So they killed him - with the result that political power remained concentrated in a series of individuals. Caesar Augustus succeeded Julius. Then Caesar Octavius. (Or something like that - Caesar Septembrius?) In short, Caesar had died, and Caesarism was universalized as Rome's political principle.

(Žižek gives a further example: Jesus died, as a concrete individual, on the cross. But the effacement of the individual allowed for the universalization of his religious principles. Christ was then repeated on an eventually global scale, in thousands of icons.)

Hegel's comment, therefore, is that historical repetition enables historical change. Something appears in an isolated, contingent form - a single man preaching in the desert, or a politician with unexpectedly concentrated power - and this form is batted aside by the established powers. After it is defeated in its individual form, however, it recurs as a general tendency - an evangelizing church, or a dangerous absolutist dynasty.

(This bears some resemblance to descriptions of evolution, in which mutations appear in individuals, only to be universalized throughout the species when they prove necessary for survival.)

Marx's glib addition is also pertinent here: The first instance can often be seen as quite tragic - some poor fool marching with a cross, or being stabbed by his friends - due to the empathy we feel for doomed individuals. The second, however, strikes us as a bit of a farce, a fun-house: A plethora of distorted reflections (innumerable wooden figures bleeding on crucifixes, a parade of mediocre successors) taking the place of the original, nobly-defeated instance.

I suppose, however, that Hegel reminds us of the opportunity awaiting us in history. The common phrase, of course, is that the victors write the history books. Or, to cite Walter Benjamin (yes, again), that their triumphal parade constantly steps over the prostrate masses. But, contrary to these commonplaces, one defeat doesn't necessarily stick - a radical new idea may have failed for reasons particular to the specific situation, but it can attain an afterlife of universal triumph.

Of course, the subtext of this is that not all "revolutions" stand for progress. Hegel presents a model for (radical) historical change through the contradiction between two opposition historical forces, but, despite his teleological claims, there is no particular reason why this would give an acceptable result.

Or, to put it another way, there is just as much danger of "Bushism" being repeated and universalized after his removal from office as there is hope of true democratic change occurring.