A most excellent question Hannah, perhaps touching on one of the fundamental aesthetic problems in modernity. Why are we attracted to the devil? Curiously, the great question of the attraction to the devil starts with modern literature, thus, beginning in the Renaissance, the age which actually signals the demise of God and of theological figures in general, starting perhaps with two of the most famous English writers Marlowe, in his Dr. Faustus and, most importantly perhaps with Milton, in his Paradise Lost. It has been a famous problem for Milton criticism from very early on explaining why it is that a work that is ostensibly about the triumph of God over his opponent Satan is actually much more interested in the figure of Satan, making God a somewhat bland uninteresting presence, while making Satan the most fascinating of characters, thus as if undermining its own moral and theological intentions to glorify God by making Satan, from the literary viewpoint, the one in which we are really interested, thus to whom we are attracted. Why are we attracted to Satan rather then God? It is as if literature, in distinction from theology, is that which is actually interested in portraying Satan, and in the age where literature becomes a discourse that to an extent replaces religion, that the very figure of Satan takes center stage. Melville has even famously said that in Moby-Dick he created a work in the name of the devil.
But what is the devil? why is it that he or perhaps she attracts? The devil is that which is opposed to God, but what does it mean to be thus opposed? If God marks that absolute value of existence that as if directs the entirety of existence from a transcendent above in relation to which it can orient itself, an above that can be named the Good, perhaps even the beautiful, etc, then the devil is that which marks the collapse oof such a transcendent orienting position. The devil is the ironic underminer of God, showing that there is no transcendent position that orients, that every such position that pretends to become absolute can be undermined, leading us to a disorientation. But why is it that we are attracted to such ironic undermining? this has to do with the very mystery of sexuality, or of attraction, as it has slowly developed in modernity. to be attracted, it has been discovered, means actually to be drawn to that which takes us away from ourselves, that which as if activates something in us that we are not in control of, cannot know, undermining any position or identity we thought we had. As such that which attracts is that which blinds us, undermining who we are. To an extent, it has been shown, that even as we supposedly live in a post theological world where ostensibly the figures of God the devils etc, don't have much meaning, the logic of our lives is still very much guided by these theological ideals. For example, psychoanalysis has shown that our construction of identity is still very much guided by a transcendent logic where we have to identify with a stable orienting position counting as good and as absolutely true in order to know who we are. But sexuality, for psychoanalysis, is that which constantly undermines that ideality around which we have constructed our identity. As such, to be attracted is that which undermines our being formed by a still theological model. There is much much more to say on this crucial question, but it is at least a beginning then to indicate that the devil, that which undermines the idealizing absolute position which is the condition of a construction of a specific way of understanding our identity, is that which attracts, and it is to the exploration of its attractions that modern art, that discourse that attempt to undermine religious logic, is dedicated.
I wonder what attracts us to these visual realizations of our demons. Is it the admission that being human means that inside each of us there exists a devil as well as a saint? Are we all just Saint Anthonys constantly embattled with personal demons and monsters?
