Phenomenology of memes**

Good morning, I’m really happy to participate in such a meeting of theoreticians and lovers of memes. I’ve been a lover and meme enthusiast before studying philosophy and once studying philosophy I've tried countless times to interpret memes through a philosophical lens. So I’m here today first as a meme lover and then as a meme philosopher; that is, first as a tragedy then as a comedy. 

There are three ways to study or describe memes. First we have the analytical way, which describes the theory that Richard Dawkins built, his legacy and reception, we can call this the history of the form of memes. Then there is another interpretation, born within the Internet, that we can name as the genealogical or continental explanation that analyzes meme’s evolution from the matrix of irony, what Seong Young called the quadrant system for the categorization of Internet memes. From the point of view of dialectics, these two ways are incomplete, both falling short halfway: the first is left only with what Hegel calls the subjective spirit, that is, the journey of individual consciousness, and the second travels through the subjective spirit but gets stuck somehow amidst culture. It's obvious where I'm taking this introduction. There is a third way and obviously it is the good one. This path aims to study the journey of the meme in the style of the bildungsroman, just as the phenomenology of the spirit tells the story of the spirit through all the contradictions it goes through. This way, which I have already discussed before in some talks on the Internet, is the dialectic, the phenomenology of memes, where we tell the history of memes from a certain premise: the meme knowing itself, or knowledge knowing itself. Why? Because, quoting Hegel’s prologue: the thing is not reduced to its end, but is found in its development. 

It is truly incredible that no one has seen this parallelism between the Phenomenology and the history of memes before. In order to know and answer the question “what is a meme”, we will need to walk through all its contradictions. If you join me, I promise that more than a parody of Hegel in meme format it will be a parody of the meme in Hegel format. In the end we will be left with a much wider vision of what is a meme. 

Now, first I need to warn you that I’m not by any means an expert nor an orthodox reader or commentator of Hegel; I have my own way of illuminating problems through hegelian ideas. As an Internet meme enjoyer, I’m obviously more of a zizekian. Thus, we need to define how we read dialectics, reconciliation, recognition, etc. Of course, there are other ways to talk about memes, some opposing the framework I’m going to use now. So by all means my proposal is open to being complemented or refuted by others such as the Deleuzian reading. I did this Hegelian passage a l’acte by pure contingence. Let’s begin. 

Hegelians are aware of how the weight of an event provided by its symbolic inscription sublates (aufhebung) the immediate reality. In Hegel's lecture of philosophy of history, to cut the story short and naive, the Peloponnesian war happened so Tucidides could write its story. From the absolute standpoint, Tucidides' work is the gain. In the same way, Harambe died not only so we could get Harambe memes but to gain certain awakening (aletheia) from the late XXs century consumerist/boomer/npc mentality -all those who cared more for the death of an already-imprisoned gorilla without being aware about the climate change, global crises, palestinian genocide, etc. We should read these events in the purest materialist way. 

We could understand the evolution of memes as a process of overcoming certain content that appears to the subject/community as a foreign, alien, symptomatic form, which the subject has to recognize itself in. This process is the subjective mediation (Vermittlung), through which the alienated content is recognized and reappropriated as one's own content. This is how we could read “Wo Es war, soll Ich werden”, I have to recognize myself in the other. Or, if we say it in lacanese, a troll is simply a normie who thinks he does exist. There’s a problem. We have to be careful and see what we understand here as reconciliation (Versöhnung). Let’s take the example of the “left can’t meme” meme, through which 4chan/Reddit white cis hetero right-winged individuals project their insecurities. Could we say the same about soymilk/liberal western pseudo-leftists, hiding behind political correctness to claim moral superiority? Maybe. But only if we problematize the symmetry in the reconciliation process. Isn’t it obvious that we cannot say that each of the two parties should recognize in its opponent its own truth? Wouldn't it be problematic to say: neither KKK nor black people, neither Nazis nor Jews? We have to understand the radical asymmetry between the two poles: while the chauvinistic figure of the “evil feminist/feminazi” can be conceived as what is wrong or false in patriarchy -the lacanian understanding that the man needs to build the figure of the woman to sustain its own identity or substance-; patriarchy is not in the symmetrical way a symptom of feminism. How obscene would it be to tell a woman: are you aware that in resisting patriarchal mandates you are resisting your own substance and identity. 

For now let’s leave aside the meta-dialectics and turn to the memes. The way memes historically emerged for the first time in this phenomenological timeline is similar to the sensuous-certanity chapter in Hegel's phenomenology, the identification of the “this”. What does it mean? Well, what Dawkins and others wanted to study were the “memes in itself”. Memetics was born as an attempt to understand what is this object that appears in front (or more likely inside) the consciousness, not a, let me be very basic, material object but an idea, what they called a meme. We started sharing and identifying memes without lets say “active consciousness” content: the hamsters dance, all your base belongs to us, peanut butter jelly time, etc.. After a certain time we integrated, those “these” in our minds as “this thing” through perception (Wahrnehmung). We somehow cut what we saw on the screen and named it after the word meme: this meme and that meme. Memes became Memes, with a capital. This, in Hegel, is the moment that goes from the in-itself sensuous-certanity to the for-itself perception. We started `recognizing” different properties in those memes: bad luck Brian, good guy Greg (template reference); up until the point we actually started to understand or represent ourselves through those Memes: we have as an example the memes “me IRL”. The direction changed, from meme→ subject to subject→meme. This moment lasted a second in our universal timeline, and as soon as “The Internet” agreed that we will use memes as the word to describe this thing -we all remember the moment how we found that Internet memes are called memes because of Dawkins- we went from perception to the understanding (Verstand). Consciousness became self-consciousness the moment when we literally stare at memes and shout: OMG this is so me. But, as fast as the subject discovered itself through the Meme, self consciousness recognized itself as desiring for Desire projected onto the outside. This desire of being the truth holder, destroyed the object the moment someone said that: “I am the Trollface and you’re the forever alone”. That is, when people on the Internet started deciding what is and what is not a meme; the self subordinated the meme to itself, appropriating and even consuming them in a master-servant dialectics. 

Original forums and communities that started using memes were, that is not a secret, forums of white-western-masculine-freak-young and marginalized kids; so it’s no secret either that the first memes were misogynistic, racist, shitfart, boys vs girls, stereotyping memes with which those subjects were projecting themselves onto the world. We have to remember that in the master-servant dialectics the desire of recognition means that the value that I am or that I represent is the value desired by others. As Kojeve would say, it’s a battle to the death: I want the other to recognize me. This force of negation means that my memes are telling the truth, that you are a feminazi and that Andrew Tate is cool, therefore I’m cool. You can guess where this is going. The master cannot be master without the servant, so who depends on who? Neither of the two are ultimately independent or dependent: the lord is comfortable but bored and the servant experiences independence in the work but cannot enjoy the results of their work. Which figures will emerge from this contradiction? The withdrawal from the public sphere after the first incursion of memes outside of forum’s hermeticism, showed 4channers and the Reddittors as impotent-castrated masters, which reminds us of the withdrawal of the Stoic into his interiority and selfhood. Contemporary Stoics (the redpilled mansphere, coaches and gurus), think eloquently but their words are empty. Within themselves they forgot the outside, thus they got disconnected from reality: marking as well the comeback and spread of conspiracy theories throughout the Internet. The next figure was the skeptic, after the post-ironic and mostly biased alt right memes, a new wave of skeptic meta memes were born, representing the skeptic pseudo nihilism that claims that all truth is partial. Figures like Jreg brought the doubt about the doubt into a regression they ended up losing themselves in, phrased by i’m under so many layers of irony that I don't know me anymore. Paraphrasing Hegel: in proclaiming the disappearance of absolute statements, they realize this is an absolute statement. The consciousness realizes that the contradiction lies within itself (two wolves, change and stillness), becoming the unhappy consciousness. 

The attempt to reconcile the finite individual with the immutable ideal produces relations with particular figures that we well know in the memesphere: the politigram political compass and the devotion to get under the direction of the caricatures of political movements. From the failure of politigram, the next step will coincide with the next historical figure, the Reason, that is the theorygram. With the Theorygram [catboys, post-left] we experienced the boom of, quoting Urban dictionary a bunch of pseuds on Instagram: memes about physics, memes about ontology, wall-texts about philosophy, etc. etc. The regression went far enough for the meme to think about itself, that is, the reason observing its own thoughts or, memes that talk about how memes work; memes that try to think their own laws. After realizing that theorygrammers were effectively a bunch of pseuds on Instagram, communities realized that memes aren’t atomic things but a social activity, life as a relation, an organic movement. We can see materialized the 3 figures of hegel’s active reason in 3 characters on internet: Sam Hyde (the hedonist that rejects the universal), the white spiritualized western cis women and man (the romantics so embedded in their “law of the heart” failing the attempt to fight world injustice by imposing their own law with the same violence and cynicism), and the “positive” influencer self-made-buisnessman/woman (who in their attempt to make their virtue something universal forget the world behind their abstractions and imperatives). As Hegel said: ideals that collapse like empty words, edifying that doesn’t edify. 

The individuality that is real in and for itself has always been there to some extent. If we look at tiktok and the reels boom; we realize that everyone tries at some point to show the world that the universal gets actualized through their action. In the activity we realize ourselves as individuals and actualize the universal. We all somehow try to express the thing in itself (die sache selbst), let’s say, “when our couple makes us food” (some universal) through partial realities (each tiktok or meme representing that idea) those being also an expression of the universal or the thing in itself. Hegel already thought about that, He talks about these exhibitions of activities as a show, as shadows that want to express the spirit but in fact are merely a call for attention, charlatans: their rush to help was nothing more than a desire to see and show their doing and not the thing in itself. 

How does the consciousness or the meme realize that the thing in itself isn’t the individual’s expression but everyone’s/everything’s activity? By realizing that only the universal can actualize itself. Consciousness, the meme, has to become geist. And geist is always zeitgeist, that is: the unfolding of history's fabric. Consciousness (the meme) advances as it inhabits more aspects of its experience, feeling more and more at home. Memes helped fight the disintegration of narratives of the late XXs century, the postmodern idea of the loss of identity, by bringing back the Sittlichkeit (ethicity), that is, the practices and habits that bind me with my neighbor. This binding happens at the level of religious experience since it implies a “binding again” (religion comes from the latin religae, to bind again). Memes in the form of geist function as a relation, as love in John 14:6: where 2 or more will be united I’ll be there; so when 2 or more share a meme, the binding will happen. Memes became the glue for a lot of communities. We have here in Spain an example of a day in which we share a thousand variations of a meme (Sam va lentin) through which relation and community happens. 

We’re getting close to the end. The problem with what we’ve just said about the binding is that we live in a global society, our numbers make it impossible for a “global binding” -if it’s even something we should aim for, which I don’t think. The individual vs universal clashes like in Antigone are spreading like a plague (let's remember the various raids on state parliaments). Ours is the scenario of the modernist struggle between faith (spiritualized, tarot-horoscope femininity) and reason (tech, crypto, silicon valley AI masculine bros); between religion and enlightenment, where the religious sees the scientist as reductionist and nihilistic and the scientist sees the religious as superstitious. Both ways can lead to extremist forms of alienation: religious fundamentalism and utilitarian technofascism (as Adorno would say apropos enlightenment). This is where absolute knowledge comes to play. We have two ways of conceiving the absolute: on the one hand, the superior triangle of hegel's dialectics is occupied by the triad art-religion-philosophy [tumblr aesthetics, mythogram, philosophicalgram] (all ways of apprehending the absolute that goes from representations Vorstellungen to concepts Begriffe). Within this perception, absolute is conceived not as the knowledge of all reality in detail but as the network of interconnected ideas and forms that constitute the reality. 

Which is the problem? We need to get to the real absolute. The imperfect, not-closed, open absolute. If anything, and that’s something that people somehow don’t get from Hegel, is that his system is open. In the end of his Enciclopedia, Hegel sets 3 syllogisms (logic, nature and spirit), which remain open by virtue of nature; that is, Hegel is fully aware that the concept cannot imprison the changing character of nature. 

The point is that there is no balance or symmetry (there is always a remainder, a not-all, a not-enclosing); but that is precisely where lies the opportunity, something that Zizek calls less than nothing. The important thing is to recognize in an opposite the symptom of the other's failure (man needs a woman to mask their own impossibility, a man is just a woman who thinks he exists, Antigone is a symptom of Kreon). Hegel introduces temporality without balance in the sense that there's no right moment, only failure opens the possibility for aufhebung. As Rosa Luxemburg said, there's the right moment and it has to be taken prematurely. The moments of dialectics are always late, but it's through this failure that we can go on; and there's no cheating (recalling Lacanian maxim: there's no metalanguage). In this second sense, Absolute knowing is not “something more objective than the objective description of the reality” but the “realization that our reaction to the objective state of things happens through subjective illusions''; the necessity is grasped by failure; absolute knowledge is to see how illusion provides access to reality: illusion is immanent to reality. 

Now I would like to end with the meme-event that symptomized all this, what I’ve called the death of meme at the end of the decade. For me this 2019 meme ("Me and the boys at the endo of the decade") represented the unhappy consciousness experiencing the shattering of reality, of what started in 2010, that is, the decade of memes. Beneath all rage comics, top-bottom, green texts and irony; the reality is still out there haunting and threatening us. Realizing that the promises born in the Internet era were just a fraud was somehow equivalent to the second meaning of absolute: that we need to build a fantasy but all fantasies are in the end just that, fantasies. The second after we also realized that it is because of these remains, this object a, that we can keep pushing, trying and failing. The death of the meme, as Zizek's death of Christ, means death of death, negation of the negation; this is what less than nothing means, it means that language (meme) constantly fails but at the same time we can’t function without it. Only through this negativity can we build a positive ground as the condition for our freedom. 

How does this negation of negation work in a meme? Let’s take as an example, hyperpop artist Dorian Electra’s song “My agenda”. This parody of how cultural war is taking place in our times as some post-apocalyptic scenario generates a positive ground of emancipation through an excess of negativity. In that song, Dorian is not claiming that we should make people gay, neither that we shouldn’t, what works behind the subject of statement (the narrated irony) is a very precise message at the level of enunciation: let’s not (not) make people gay, that is, let’s not define people’s identity. This is something found in a lot of post-left memes. A lot of critical memes convey this message in the form of less than nothing. They don’t propose a solution per se, they don't have to do it, it will eventually emerge, for the moment its function is not to be "something" nor "to be nothing" but to be less than nothing, which is already something. 

Thank you very much.

E-Zizekanian (A.K.A. Frvn)

*Las primeras dos imágenes fueron elaboradas por Antimemoria junto a Nikpepsi y la última es de elaboración de Frvn

**Esta es una transcripción de la intervención llevada a cabo el  de marzo de 2024 por Frvn en la Universidad de Bucharest en el contexto de la conferencia Phylosophy of Memes en la cual participaron figuras como Seo Young.