Terror from the Air

According to Peter Sloterdijk, the twentieth century started on aspecific day and place: April 22, 1915, at Ypres in Northern France. That day, theGerman army used a chlorine gas meant to exterminate indiscriminately. Until then, war, as described by Clausewitz and practiced by Napoleon, involved attacking theadversary's vital function first. Using poison gas signaled the passage fromclassical war to terrorism. This terror from the air inaugurated an era in which themain idea was no longer to target the enemy's body, but their environment. From thenon, what would be attacked in wartime as well as in peacetime would be the veryconditions necessary for life. This kind of terrorism became the matrix of modernand postmodern war, from World War I's toxic gas to the Nazi Zyklon B used inAuschwitz, from the bombing of Dresden to the attack on the World Trade Center.Sloterdijk goes on to describe the offensive of modern aesthetics, aestheticterrorism from Surrealism to Malevich--an "atmo-terrorism" in the artsthat parallels the assault on environment that had originated in warfare.