Earthly Delights

from White, Allon. "The Dismal Sacred Word"
The social reproduction of seriousness is a fundamental-perhaps the fundamental-hegemonic manoeuvre. Once the high language has attained the commanding position of being able to specify what is and is not to be taken seriously, its control over the language of its society is virtually assured. Bakhtin calls this manoeuvre 'the lie of pathos', which designates the insidious identification of 'important matters' with an idealism centred upon tragedy. There is an ambiguity at the heart of seriousness which all high language takes advantage of: the serious is at once that which excludes pleasurable laughter and that which is felt to be important. In fact of course there is no intrinsic link at all between these two things. Many solemn occasions and activities are utterly trivial, just as many 'laughable' incidents are important. Seriousness as the exclusion of laughter has much more to do with rituals of power and control than with thought intrinsically or essentially important. The compounding of the two is a ruse of reason, or, rather, a ruse of hegemonic language exorcizing threats to its authority. The 'lie of pathos' marks out the false solemnity of all 'official' languages which oppress people in and through their very seriousness.