The Dead Govern the Living

A hundred and fifty years ago, Auguste Comte imagined a utopian project for society which he called Positivism: the past would feed the present to create a future where order and progress reigned.

Comte would say “The dead govern the living”. For him it is the best of the dead that lives on. Society makes progress through the accumulated knowledge of those before us. This quote may seem ambiguous, but it is idealistic in Comte’s mind.

A hundred and fifty years later, we are at a standstill: a post-capitalist society lamenting its inability to imagine a better future. We see history as a never-ending cycle: the rise of fascism, increasing economic inequality and the atomic threat. Our popular culture is filled with dystopias (The Handmaid’s Tale, The Walking Dead, Black Mirror). For iconoclastic contemporary thinkers such as Hito Steyerl and Adam Curtis, our society has become a zombie culture, repeating and feeding on itself without end.

We no longer see “the dead govern the living” as a positive idea. The dead seem to govern us as a past bearing down on the present, preventing us from imagining a better future.

Is Auguste Comte’s vision out of date? Have we proven that the arrow of progress is, in fact, a never-ending circle? Or are we trapped in a cycle because we have abandoned a certain form of idealism? The critique might be directed at our own self-delusion.

The site-specific work created for the Maison Auguste Comte confronts Comte’s idealism with contemporary cynicism: utopia versus dystopia. Found footage of bare-knuckle brawls between politicians is the starting point for this confrontation. The current political dead end appears in a never-ending video loop, a formless, suit-and-tie zombie mass. These governing living dead contrast with and contaminate the philosopher’s preserved apartment, still filled with relics of an idealistic past.

Sound & Music installation: Frédéric D. Oberland. With support from La Galerie Particulière. In collaboration with l’Agence PAM.