Observations concerning patient V. - Part V

I

"220. Sacrifice. - The sacrificial animal does not share the spectators' ideas about sacrifice, but one has never let it have its say".

F. Nietzsche - The Gay Science.


II

Perhaps a Baudrillard-ian retelling of the murder of Black Metal musician Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth by his fellow musician Varg Vikernes, as narrated in 'Lords Of Chaos', would look a little like this:

"So many reasons to kill Euronymous!

- Vikernes himself has said he killed Euronymous in self-defense;
- Vikernes is said to have killed Euronymous out of envy with the latter's leading position within the Norwegian Black Metal Scene;
- Many commentators have pointed towards financial troubles between Euronymous and Vikernes as the motive for the murder: because of mismanagement Euronymous didn't pay royalties to Vikernes;
- An accomplice to the murder points towards envy of Bård Eithun as a motive for the murder. Eithun had murdered a man and thereby gained much prestige within the Norwegian Black Metal scene, and Vikernes coveted that prestige;
- Euronymous's communist convictions clashed with Vikernes's fascism;
- the murder was a 'crime passionel', the result of a soured homo-erotic affair between Euronymous and Vikernes;
- Vikernes was acting out a mythological drama.

In fact, so many motives for Vikernes to kill Euronymous have been identified, that the murder feels hyperdetermined, so saturated with origins and causes that the murder itself is un-motivated, emptied of motives. The motivatedness of the crime has been buried under an surfeit of causalities - an metastasis of motives. In the murder of Euronymous by Vikernes, we witness the redundancy of criminal motivation in the void, the cancer of criminology.

And isn't this icy void of motivation answered by the indifferent, callous, cold reactions of members of the Norwegian Black Metal Inner Circle to Euronymous's death?".