CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - EMILIAN ORTEGA Y FEILI A (Meta-)Dialectical Approach to Apocalypse as an Inherent Structure of Culture
As soon as the activity of the human species becomes universal in its character and its potential to interact with the rest of nature, two principles of totalisation develop on our planet. The dialectic of the matter-totalisation of planet Earth no longer runs only on the side of the interactions of nature in the biomes and ecosystems within the entire planet, but human praxis starts introducing its principle of totalisation upon and within the former principle of totalisation of nature. Not only does one level of organisation of movement, the human praxis, re-qualify and integrate others (biological, mechanical, chemical, quantum, etc.), but these others continue to make their totalisation—sometimes together with, sometimes against, sometimes destroyed by human praxis. A synchronisation of the two principles of totalisation—that of praxis and that of the totality of nature—is needed. Calendars of all civilisations are a compounding document of this strategy of synchronisation. Human time contemplates ends of times, or even an End of Times. This research interrogates Apocalypse, a symbolised revelation of the end of time, as an inherent structure of culture that ciphers and brings to light at once both its internal contradictions as well as the insufficiency of its accordance with the principle of totalisation of nature.