Autophagy

The body can engage in a peculiar mode of self-consumption known as Autophagy. This is a means by which cells recycle themselves. Autophagy has both benevolent and malevolent aspects. When initiated by prolonged hunger, whether voluntary or involuntary, the process of autophagy will begin to clear away damaged cells, lowering metabolism, reducing insulin levels, removing cancer cells. If hunger continues, however, even the healthy cells will be consumed, unto the point of death. Why not apply the processes of autophagy to our society as François Laruelle does? It would appear then that modernity has been engaged in the bad kind of autophagy since its conception 400 years ago, consuming bodies, environments and worlds in an ever accelerating catastrophe; we did not realize that we were consuming our own future. Laruelle calls this the “autophagic enterprise of hallucinated logic.” The system, fallen prey to an hallucinated rational, begins to devour its own continuation. The most recent and local example of our autophagic society—seen in miniature—are the recent campus protests in which tens of thousands of student youth—decrying our complicity in the systematic destruction of a people group—are assaulted and terrorized by the police, called to campus by repressive administrations. Like Saturn devouring his sons, the children must be punished for threatening to overthrow the moral-authority of the oligarchy.