Alceste…and the rest Thomas Tsakalakis* From the vantage point of a relatively erudite citizen of a failed state, and propelled both by the utter socio-economic shambles in which one has subsisted for quite some time and by the ineluctable disaffection with all the so-called “emancipating” ideologies, might one be permitted to contend, with sinister derision, that our species has crossed the boundary of a figurative event horizon, thus entering the region of a cultural black hole? Were we doomed from the get-go? Could misanthropic pessimism serve as a serum for thoseexistentialprisoners who find themselves on acompulsoryintellectual and aesthetic hunger strike? Misanthropy, in all its protean guises, is deemed to bethe ultimate tabooin the realm of political correctness, the most contemptible of all themala in se. Nonetheless, what if one were to aver that a dianoetic —id est unencumbered by illusions— misanthropy, as exemplified by the works of Jonathan Swift, Ambrose Bierce, Emil Cioran or Freud (especially after WWI), in contrast to its romantic variety, to wit that of Rousseau orMolière, may also bethe ultimate Grand Narrative, albeit an ironic one? When, if notnow, should one frame this particular contentious issue and give it a stridently favorable spin, thereby hopefully causing some theoretical creative disruption (or, alas, fomenting discontent)? Misanthropy, in the sense of an elaborateWeltanschauungand not as a psychopathological condition, and especially its interplay with political praxis, has generated meager academic interest. The predominant view is
