Symbol (w) Cutting Age

Abstract

With reference to the idea of postmodern culture which uses the episteme of tmesis, I attempt to consider in its context the status of symbol. Even if the Nietzschean programme of suspension of symbolization processes is preached, the desymbolization – forced by the Cutting Age – cannot succeed. By distinguishing various types of symbolization based on the concepts of tekmérion, tekmar and eikos, I show that the postmodern cut makes a paradoxical synthesis of those types and it does not violate the identity of symbol, because symbol as a unit (sym-bállica) implies some dichotomisation. Referring to Carl Gustav Jung, who referred to a ceremony of reconstructing an ape, I find the most spectacular manifestation of this symbolization in the attempts at dehumanization and demonization of Barack Obama's person.