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• 1 2024-07-19T15:45:00+00:00 "The Macedonian Critique of French Philosophy" 45 by Victor Pelevin image_header 2024-08-05T15:21:35+00:00

  “People think that they trade in oil. In reality, they become it.” - Kika

  Summary
  
  “The Macedonian Critique of French Philosophy” by Victor Pelevin is the story of Nasikh “Kika” Nafikov, the son of a Russian oil magnate. He is born in Kazan, but spends most of his time growing up in Europe and attending English-speaking schools, leading to a complex view of his own nationality; however, he refers to himself as a European. Kika first learns about the origin of oil through a children’s encyclopedia, where he is met with the idea that oil comes from dinosaurs.  The image of living organisms being converted into oil plants itself in his mind and prompts him to ask questions such as “how many dinosaurs does our car eat in an hour?” As many children do, he also begins to inquire into other aspects of the world. At one point, he asks his father about what happens when people die. Kika is told that people (more specifically, Soviet workers) live on in the fruits of their labor. While he quickly forgets about these questions, they remain in his mind, and eventually contribute to his later philosophical ideas

  Kika’s father is assassinated around the time of his graduation from a university in France, leaving him with a large sum of money. Kika then moves to his father’s house in Cap-Ferrat, France, where he begins to descend into madness while writing essays on philosophy. These essays primarily focus on his hatred of French philosophy, particularly the philosopher Jean Baudrillard, despite the similarity of French thought and his own ideas. One day, while reading Baudrillard’s “Symbolic Exchange and Death” and watching the German children’s television channel “Kika” (one of his favorite pastimes and the potential origin of his nickname), he has an epiphany about the “secret of money.”  This secret and its subsequent concepts stem from Kika’s understanding of oil and what happens to people when they die. He writes these ideas and his continued arguments against French Philosophy in a work titled “The Macedonian Critique of French Philosophy.”  The essence of this secret is that when a person dies, they become the combined labor that they performed in their lifetime, referred to as “humanoil.” Because labor is transformed into money, money can be defined as the humanoil left behind when people die. Kika also writes that humanoil, or money, retains certain characteristics when it is extracted; thus, the mixing of different kinds of humanoil via the export of capital from Russia to the Western world is problematic. He likens this issue to the problems caused by mixing oil blends that have different sulfur coefficients. Employing a very strange logic, Kika attempts to remedy this by creating a “torture factory,” in which thirty-six Frenchmen and one Belgian are physically hit while being forced to read Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. The goal of this enterprise, as Kika sees it, is to pump humanoil from the West back into Russia. This operation is eventually discovered by the authorities and Kika is forced to release the captives. It is revealed that, in the end, Kika believes he saved Europe from potential disaster, but was ultimately unable to defeat the French philosophers that he despised.
  
  Pelevin and Postmodernism
  
  Pelevin’s “The Macedonian Criticism of French Philosophy” could be seen as a way to satirize postmodernism (Gomel). Kika’s eccentricities are often attributed to his declining mental health; he is referred to as a psychopath and as suffering from schizophrenia on multiple occasions. His most famous work is said to “alternate between childhood memoir, intimate diary, philosophical treatise, and technical manual,” most of these aspects having very little to do with each other. However, the reaction of readers, especially those possessing an academic or suitable background to read philosophical works, do not recognize him as such. Kika’s work is often incomprehensible, but he is accepted by other modern thinkers. He is deemed a “genius simpleton,” “legendary bum,” and other such contradictory terms, giving the impression that, as the narrator puts it, “modern philosophers are a sort of international band of horse-stealing gypsies who take every opportunity to ride away into the night along with the last remnants of clarity and common sense.” While Pelevin himself often writes in a postmodernist style (Khagi), “The Macedonian Critique of French Philosophy” conveys the lack of clarity that can result from taking this style and mode of thinking too far. The confusing layers of reality in Kika’s work and his own criticism of French postmodernism put on full display the issues of delving so far into relativism that theory becomes meaningless. The dichotomy resulting from his self-criticizing views gives Kika a complex relationship with French philosophy, allowing him to explore certain issues in an unusual but important way. 
  
  The Influence of French Thought 
  
  As explained by the narrator of “The Macedonian Critique of French Thought,” Kika has a sort of intellectual Oedipus complex relating to the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. Kika’s father is killed by a man named Alexander Solonik, known for his gun fighting skill and referred to as the “Macedonian Shura.”  The title of Kika’s work references both his own father’s assassination by Solonik and the Macedonian gun fighting style, in which the shooter uses two hands and no aim. Akin to the man who killed his father, Kika attempts to shoot at the father of his ideology, using both hands and without aiming. While he has nothing but criticism for Baudrillard, and particularly his book “Symbolic Exchange and Death,” it is that very book which causes Kika to discover his “secret of money” and the subsequent ideas.   Kika’s philosophy could be considered an extreme interpretation of Baudrillard’s ideas around money and death. Baudrillard argues that the postmodern capitalist world seeks to annihilate death, while previous societies benefited by recognizing a symbolic value of death and the dead (McLaverty-Robinson). Kika differs in that the value he ascribes to a person who has died is not symbolic, but rather an extension of the Marxist idea of abstract labor-time (McLaverty-Robinson). In a sense, this is both diametrical to Baudrillard’s views and supportive of them at the same time. Kika writes that “The person who has the capacity for spiritual insight will see Gulag prisoners in their torn quilted jackets pushing their wheelbarrows down the business districts of world capitals and toothlessly scowling out of the windows of expensive boutiques.” The influence of the dead cannot be removed from a society, but ascribing monetary value to a life after it has passed runs counter to the idea of symbolic exchange.In this way, Kika once again finds his ideas in a complex relationship with postmodern French thought.

  "The echo of the past...catches us on the wasteland of the spirit in the twilight of history. The past remains with us despite attempts to begin anew - and is always stronger. We cannot hide from it or avoid it." -Kika

  
  Humanoil and the Afterlife
  
  In “The Macedonian Critique of French Philosophy,” Kika’s discoveries about the nature of humanoil can represent a postmodern replacement of the spiritual afterlife. Part of the “secret of money,” described in his philosophical work, is that “[T]he circle which manipulates the flow of money controls the souls of the dead.” This is then compared to the Egyptian god Anubis, who serves as a protector of graves and a guide to the underworld. The striking comparison to a religious figure shows how Kika, who later likens himself to a prophet, believes that he has discovered the true nature of the afterlife: a system based on money and oil. This significantly contrasts with the ways that many human cultures and religions have viewed the afterlife. In a way, his description makes sense in our industrialized world. Oil has become a deity of sorts, playing the role of a god to be worshiped by oilmen, requiring the brave sacrifice of the more unfortunate workers. Oil extraction, which, in part, forms the backbone of our societies, is ultimately fueled by human lives and turned into money. It may be only fitting that we become part of this system through death. As Kika says, “The life of the Stakhanovite miner ticks in a diamond watch by Cartier or bubbles in a bottle of Dom Perignon consumed on the Rublevskoye Road.” However, there is another point to the philosophy of humanoil: the life force that is money does not lose its characteristics in its conversion. The evils committed or suffering endured to produce money do not simply go away. Kika uses this idea to explain the issue of Soviet humanoil being transferred to the West, but in a broader sense this concept can apply to actual oil extraction. The effects of money produced through the oil business lay heavy on our world. Climate change, pollution, and the labor that goes into fossil fuel production are inseparable from the profits it generates. While Kika is termed a psychopath (and rightfully so, considering the result of his beliefs), his concept of humanoil poses an interesting view of the extent to which oil and money have become embedded in our societies.
  
  Conclusion
  
  Pelevin’s “The Macedonian Criticism of French Philosophy” provides a deep look into the issues of extreme postmodernism and consumerism in our societies. The satirical nature of Kika’s philosophical works highlights how postmodernism can be at times taken so far as to be incomprehensible. However, his own unique relationship with French philosophy and embodiment of postmodernism allows him to explore issues of money and the afterlife in a particularly striking way. Kika’s understanding of humanoil shows the radical shift in the way value is ascribed to individual people, and how money replaces more traditional religious views of the afterlife. This also relates to the oil industry; the characteristics associated with humanoil confirm the idea that the way money is produced significantly influences a society. While the reality of climate change, the destruction of natural environments, and other effects of oil extraction are not considered in Kika’s view of the world, his method of observing the temporal manifestations of the characteristics of money alludes to the effects of increasing oil reliance in our society.  
  
  Bibliography
  
  Gomel, Elana. “Viktor Pelevin and Literary Postmodernism in Post-Soviet Russia.” Narrative, vol. 21, no. 3, 2013, pp. 309–21. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24615399. Accessed 28 July 2024.
  
  Khagi, Sofya. “From Homo Sovieticus to Homo Zapiens: Viktor Pelevin’s Consumer Dystopia.” The Russian Review, vol. 67, no. 4, 2008, pp. 559–79. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20620866. Accessed 28 July 2024.
  
  “Macedonian Criticism of French Thought.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 6 Mar. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonian_Criticism_of_French_Thought. 
  
  McLaverty-Robinson, Andy. “Jean Baudrillard: Symbolic Exchange.” Ceasefire Magazine, 29 Feb. 2012, ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-baudrillard-1/.
  
  McLaverty-Robinson, Andy. “Jean Baudrillard: The Rise of Capitalism & the Exclusion of Death.” Ceasefire Magazine, 5 Apr. 2012, ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-baudrillard-2/#:~:text=According%20to%20Baudrillard%2C%.
  
  Pelevin, Viktor. "The Macedonian Critique of French Philosophy." Translated by Lev Nikulin.