Hegel presents his dialectic as a three-part structure consisting of a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis. In human history, when the status quo (the thesis) is challenged by a new historical development or force (the antithesis), a new form of life emerges out of the synthesis of the two prior stages. The synthesis involves another of Hegel's famous concepts--Aufgehoben, which often gets translated as "sublation." In German, Aufgehoben means both "to cancel out" and "to preserve." In Hegel's synthesis, the old orders of human existence are not destroyed, but neither are they continued in their prior forms. They are aufgehoben, sublated, transformed into something else.
Seyla Benhabib argues, "There is no way to disentangle the march of the dialectic in Hegel’s system from the body of the victims on which it treads." Hegel’s dialectic is a universal cognitive solvent; it licenses epistemological anarchy. If the essence of X is not-X, what then? The philosopher Leszek Kolakowski underscored the sober truth of the matter: "We must finally conclude that in the Hegelian system humanity becomes what it is, or achieves unity with itself, only by ceasing to be humanity."
And who else at the boundary of epistemology can be mentioned but Nietzsche whose Superman is an aufgehoben in process, a transformation that calls for the death of man no less than it calls for the death of god.
Which does or doesn't bring me to Anno Fauve, Aufgehoben's 2004 release: noise with hints of free jazz and krautrock.
No Process
