SUDHIRENDAR SHARMA

is an independent writer, researcher and academic

We are living in anxious times. Much evolved though it may seem, society and systems have instead invoked Nietzsche’s fateful phrase: ‘Nothing is true, everything is allowed’. In this context, Roberto Calasso’s The Unnamable Present is a brutal but meditative enquiry into the indefinable present that urges us to give up courage, make cowardice a virtue, and see that both real and virtual war don’t end. The book examines the ongoing project of dehumanization that has blurred the distinction between the tourists and the terrorists.

Aren’t both out there to destroy the creation of nature, he asks? With algorithmic information eating into human consciousness, mythomania has become the new normal. We only need to plug into it to ensure its constant supply.

I found compelling reasons to agree with Calasso’s proposition that, much like the world that made a partially successful attempt at annihilating itself during the Second World War, our unnamable present too is hurtling down a murderous path.

It is clear that the past continues to haunt us. Things return in a different form. We may have got rid of Hitler and Stalin but not the society that created them. The creation of democracy as an antidote to dictatorship has come to reflect a wishful nothing, extending to everyone the privilege of access to things that are no longer there, which lugs within it the seeds of self-destruction.

The Unnamable Present raises new questions on the transformation happening in our society.