Art – Maktoub

The lunatic, and their discourse

July 4th, 2024

Art is a social activity one can say. For even a canvas in isolation is an intermediary between at least two identities trapped within the singularity of the body behind it: alternating between artist and spectator, synchronously, every time the brush is pushed against the canvas or pulled away; I paint then I am a painter, I spectate them I am a spectator. If we are to say that art is a social activity then it is natural to wonder what is the social labor mediating the activity between artist and spectator? Is it a conversation, or simply, and more generally, a discourse?

Can we say that every conversation is a discourse, but not every discourse is a conversation? A conversation is an act involving the spoken words. But one can abstract “conversation” even further by saying that a conversation adopts a medium: like that between the base, trumpet, drums, and flute in Jazz. A discourse on the other hand can take no medium, like the conversation with oneself. Sure even a mental conversation can adopt, for instance, the spoken language as a medium, but those words need not to conform to the Other’s understanding. In other words, what is language, vocabulary, and grammar in the absence of the Other?

If art reception, the spectator’s end of the discourse, is part of a conversation then it is either that there is no ‘artist’ or that every artist in the past, present, and future has been murdered all at once. For in this conversation the spectator has an advantage, a super-power: always having the last say in the conversation; the same super-power the parasite has over its host. It is easy to judge if you can only be a ‘judge:’ and by ‘judge’ I mean the one not judged. If now we say art is a conversation then the artist is exactly like the slaves of the past except if they had asked for slavery. Or like a refugee: addressed and judged by those who realize very well the absence of means for the refugee to converse back: a unidirectional conversation perhaps.

One can perhaps then liberate art from the restrictions of ‘conversing:’ art is a discourse. But if art is to be a discourse that is not a conversation then it cannot be between the artist and the spectator, rather between the spectator and themselves through the art production as a medium: so will be the case for the artist. The spectator, in pursuit of something, is guided towards that pursuit without having the need to reveal the destination. The artist, in pursuit of something, whatever it is, need not conform to the spectator’s goal and destination. With each emancipated from the Other, the shift is from a world of psychopaths, the one involving lunatics and corpses, to that of lunatics only: equality is lunacy without murder. The dialogue is not unidirectional anymore for a discourse with oneself cannot be linear, but circular, oscillatory: what is inwards is outwards and what is outwards is inwards. In other words, maybe after all there is not escaping the lunatic. But one can very much escape the psychopath. And if you can escape the psychopath why escape the lunatic?

Equality is lunacy without murder. Inequality then is not the absence of lunacy, but lunacy for some but not for others. So is the tale of the proletairian too. What is a proletarian? Who is the proletarian? The question on this particular identity, rarely explored, is ambiguous. Whether it is rarely explored because it is ambiguous or vice versa is rephrasing the same tale.

Death is one answer. For the difference between a proletarian and a pleb is merely a sentiment that gives the egalitarian parasite a sense of redemption against their own-self. If the identity of the proletarian is ambiguous maybe because this very identity does not exist, by-design or otherwise. What is a pleb but a man robbed of identity? A man robbed of identity too can be given any name: slave, criminal, terrorist, revolutionary force, comrade, proletarian, slum-dog. Nothing more appropriate however than ‘a-corpse-with-a-pulse.’ For Karl Marx’s prophecy is this: a pleb that speaks like or in the language of the bourgeoisie is a proletarian. A more genuine prophecy could have been that formalizing the death of the already dead with a verdict does not wake them up. In other words, it does not matter if it is the factory owner, manager, or the ‘labor-force’ speaking: as long as the pleb is not. Silent even if they spoke? It is the Other that is speaking to them or through them.

The tie between the proletarian and the artist here is not based on similarity, between them, however way each are ‘identified’ by themselves or the spectator. For the similarity is only certain elsewhere: in the lack of identity they have in common, as perceived by themselves and the Other. What is the city of artists then? It is equivalently the city of proletarians. Not that which is identified by its struggle, devotion, and self-sacrifice. It is the one of lunatics and lunatics only. A non-conforming sphere where the “masses” have no identity, but the individuals are, to each their own, for where everyone has no identity is also where everyone has an identity. In this non-linearity only one thing can be said for certain: the city of artists lacks corpse-eating parasites.

Lunatic it is. Nine months of genocide can mean too much heartbreak. Conversely too, for a genocide to be ‘on-going’ for nine months can also mean not enough heartbreak. If heartbreak gave birth to theatre, then what is theatre? If it is a conversation mediated through the stage amongst everyone on the stage and in-front of it, then the audience is merely a clique of ‘heartbreak-junkies.’ The problem becomes particularly this: if heartbreak gave birth to theatre, then what else can maintain theatre? If on the first act murder was suffice, on the 270th act ‘murder’ alone will not be enough. To satisfy the thirst of these junkies one must address the aesthetics of murder: How were they murdered? Where were they murdered? Doing what? ‘Murder is murder’ is a false statement. But the problem now is that what differentiates one murder from the other is the aesthetics of murder: what is another child bombed with 50 other individuals at once in a genocide compared to a woman sentenced to death by dog-bites? Aesthetics, for these junkies, is the harvest of the labor of “tolerance.” Tolerance for its part is the harvest of a different labor: the one designed to ease and numb the pain, but not remedy the wound: mourning.
On the city of artists

November 10th, 2023

In the context of society, it is the notion of the collective that is of concern. So when addressing society, one must first ask “what is the collective?” and “why the collective?”. We can define ‘the collective’ as a consensus between two or more individuals. But for it to materialize, it must first be realized.

We can conceptualize ‘existence’ as the struggle to resolve the contradiction between human finitude within the sensible, and the whole beyond it (humanity). Consequently, in the world of the primitive man, the world of individuals, existence, as a shared struggle, is a unifying factor that would incentivize and engender the realization of the notion of ‘the collective.’ Within such realization then, equality is implicit. From a material point of view for instance, this struggle manifests itself as the struggle for survival: in food, shelter, and safety.

Then, with consciousness of equality as a prerequisite, the collective can be conceptualized in turn as an insurgency of the individual against their own finitude, in order to approach the whole, the infinite. Such a notion now appears as a revolution upon its realization. Equality implicit in the collective now, imposes itself, and manifests itself in the form of social interactions within it. Particularly through equality, the individual within the collective now rises to the infinite: each individual within the collective is the collective; each individual in the collective is the negation of all other individuals within the same collective; from one, to that who is not anyone else.

If society then rose from such conceptualization of the collective, equality is in the definition, with unity as a feature, and the realization of the collective within it becomes an act of finding the right division to pursue the struggle of existence: to live. By induction then, the struggle of existence lies in the persistent correction for inequality within the sensible to approach equality beyond it. In the absence of this persistent approach towards equality, and, by induction, acceptance of human finitude within the sensible and abolishing what is beyond it (humanity), the individual is dead.

So what if we decided instead to surrender to the rotten corpses of humanity, where there is only room for parasitism, and define “the collective” from without equality. Then a forcing term, also from without, must incentivize and engender the consensus implicit in the collective. Let us call that term, privilege. Now the driving force enforcing and governing the collective is the perpetuation of privilege: for parasites, to spread, is to live, “like worms in a corpse.” But inequality is implicit in privilege, and now we start naming the dead corpses in pairs to distinguish between the privileged and underprivileged: superior-inferior, master-slave, civilized-barbaric, lord-serf, king-citizen, genius-dunce, leader-follower, teacher-student, and so on. Now society, based on such “collective,” is not a human construct, but a social one.

The essence of this construct lies in the conflation of the intelligence of the underprivileged with the will of the privileged for that latter now can be considered as the social machinery or mechanism. In contrast with the former definition of society, thought is now perverted, and order, implicit in the collective, ceases to be a tool. In this definition, order is the end and existence is originating from without, the struggle to conform. And now it becomes that within such society, order is menaced whenever nonconformity is manifested.

Then the return from the latter to the former starts with a massacre, the murder of the privileged and the under-privileged (in all fairness one of them maybe suicidal anyway). The residual is a pile of labels, existing in pairs, that rise from the sensible back to the infinite: as concepts. And everyone is now a process, everyone is now an artist in the city of artists.

Consider the teacher-student interaction, where the teacher is an intermediary between the book and the student. Additionally, consider a superior-inferior dynamics in this interaction. We can assume that the superiority of the teacher originates from long experience in teaching, theorizing and critical thinking, against the inferiority of the raw human manifested in the student. Implicit in the superior-inferior dynamics here, the intelligence of the student is serving the will of the teacher, for the student, under such dynamics, is only receiving the teacher’s outlook on the book.

Consequently, a gap is maintained, for the teacher will always have a head start, within the sensible in terms of experience, and depth on the outlook itself (their own). Thus, the superior-inferior dynamics is perpetuated, and knowledge, as a process, becomes a decaying one. The unconscious hope within the student is in a stroke of luck, imposed by circumstances externally, and inwards, that would allow them to break free back to their own will, their own humanity: let’s call it a stroke of genius.

If instead the interaction is governed by the struggle for knowledge shared by the teacher and the student, then the superior-inferior dynamics is replaced by a theatrical display. In this display, the book is the script and the student is the audience. But it is in the teacher where we need to pay close attention. There is no doubt, within the material scope, there is inequality between the teacher and the student. But through a duality within the teacher it is corrected and resolved.

First, in this theatrical display, the teacher takes the role of the performer to communicate the book to the student through drama: thereby opening a dialogue between the student and the author. Second, in the struggle of teaching, implicit in the struggle for knowledge, the teacher also takes the role of the audience, opening a dialogue within the audience in understanding the script and the author behind it: a dialogue between the teacher and student, leveling between both of them. Through such mechanism, not only is the intelligence of the student liberated from the will of the teacher, but now also serving only the student’s own will. Now, everyone is a teacher, everyone is a student, or no one is either.
On the art of boycotting

October 31st, 2023

Let’s start with a definition, not in reference to an absolute truth but simply to preserve the consistency of logic in the script and what transcends passed it. Art is the struggle to communicate, or deliver, what is otherwise difficult or impossible to communicate through conventional means. Consequently, we can think of art production as the abstraction of an experience, emotion, or idea to the sensible. Criticism in art then becomes the struggle of the receptor of art production to approach the whole of humanity, the totality, manifested in the artist behind the production, beyond the sensible.

In the painting for instance, the artist manifests the whole across several levels, in an infinite network of processes, persistently evolving, such as the poetic process, and the aesthetic process. With the impossibility of addressing the infinitude of art, the receptor of art production surrenders to their human finitude. Consequently, with their consciousness of this finitude and surrendering they seek refuge in aesthetics, the science of the sensible, in their struggle to approach the artist. But this limitation and acknowledgement, particularly, engenders a new form of art: the art of criticism. The critic now, through addressing the whole of humanity manifested in the artist behind the production, are in fact now approaching that same whole within themselves.

However the absence of such consciousness breeds confusion between art and aesthetics, and results in the abolition of art and replacing it with aesthetics: replacing the end with the mean. Now aesthetics is considered to be art itself. It follows then that the definition of aesthetic imperialism in art is the abstraction of the whole to the partial whole. In the context of the painting, it is the abstraction of the artist (whole) to the painter (partial): contrary to the painter that is defined and labeled based on the medium, painting, the artist is defined independent of the medium.

In this vein, we can represent society as a painting, manifesting the whole of humanity starting from its first artist, the primitive man, as an infinite network of processes, under persistent evolution, such as the economic, political, cultural, natural, and historic processes to name a few. Consequently, we define the capitalistic methodology in society as the abstraction of the whole to the economic process (the sensible) where materialistic privileges become the drive and machinery behind the development in society. This machinery particularly takes on different forms and manifestations at different stages in its development: colonialism and settler-colonialism being instances of such development. Eventually reaching its climax when “economic feasibility” becomes the common denominator as the dominant factor in the evolution of all processes within society: rot. Within this climax, the whole in society descends to an economic unit that feeds off “economic feasibility”: parasitism. Within this rot-parasite interplay particularly we can declare the definition of imperialism in this capitalistic machinery.

The notion of boycott must then emerge from this rot in order to counteract it. For boycotting is an art, it is the struggle to counteract against imperialist methodologies that cannot be otherwise achieved through conventional means (such as the armed struggle) due to lack of sufficient social maturity. By this token, it acts as a catalyst in order to reach sufficient social maturity. Boycotting is not only about banning consumer goods and products outputted by the imperialist machinery, for within this limited scope it is in-line with the machinery itself: abstracting the whole of society to the economic process. The art of boycotting takes this struggle against all manifestations across all processes, cleansing the rot wherever it appears.

In the context of interest, Arab society, with reservations on labeling this society as such, Western imperialism, naturally, is of concern: particularly Israel and the West (with the US being the lead force in the imperialistic machinery today). Some take the initiative of boycotting Israeli products and consumer goods. Others take even a step further and boycott such goods produced or supplied by the US. While such acts are essential, yet their ceiling is low as they abide by the definition of imperialism, and capitalism by scoping the struggle to the economic process. While in reality any struggle for liberation should be a return to the whole. I will present next how such imperialistic methodology and machinery penetrates to the cultural process, as an example, to highlight the depth along and across several dimensions if the act of boycotting ascends to become an act of struggle: to a form of art.

Some of us, for instance, still seek refuge in the West and its institutions during times of turmoil and crises, even when such circumstances are imposed by the West itself and its imperialist machinery. In the current aggression on Gaza for instance, you can still hear some folks appealing to the United Nations and internationally renowned ‘human rights’ organizations for refuge and support. Some even show more alarming signs of such perversion by appealing to Western corporations and CEOs for this purpose: such as the current trending request and appeal to Elon Musk for Starlink service in Gaza. With such appeal, double standards may appear to be the accurate description when contrasting the tendency of such institutions, organizations, and corporations in the Palestinian struggle with that of the Ukrainian struggle for instance. In reality however it is nothing but conformity and consistency in standards from a Western-capitalistic outlook. Contrary to the Ukrainian cause that screams ‘economic feasibility’,the Palestinian cause, in its essence, aims at the abolition of the Zionist state, and consequently the abolition of the current geographic and demographic decree in the region which is no more than a manifestation of the penetration of Western imperialism in the region.

We can elaborate even further in the context of current events. The United Nations and human rights organizations were quick, ‘continental drift’ quick, to condemn the Israeli occupation army’s killing of civilians in Gaza, of course after emphasizing the condemnation of the Palestinian resistance and, by this token, leveling between the oppressor and the oppressed (rot!). A small minority even went so far into turning that condemnation into accusation of terrorism against the occupying army, completely discarding the fact that these acts are byproducts of Israeli terrorism and not the essence of it. But this rot, in both cases, that lies in the bias towards retribution and punishment over thought and understanding is in the essence of parasitic morality within capitalism through all its stages.

Particularly in the aftermath of the second World War, the Western bloc invested in this ‘retribution over thought’ methodology against the Nazis: the bias towards ‘Who is a Nazi?’ rather than ‘What made this sickness an epidemic in Germany and other parts of Europe?’. If we break down this tendency from a capitalistic outlook, it is easy to see the economic feasibility in the first question versus the economic infeasibility in the latter. Addressing the latter question would shed-light on the conformity of Nazi Germany with Western standards, morality, and ideals, with the sole difference of applying such standards, morality, and ideals in Europe instead of the colonies.

In the case of Israel, however, that ‘difference’ does not exist. Israel is abiding by the Western, originally European, morality in a colony, similar to the application of the same ‘morality’ on indigenous people in the Americas (a model that very much appealed to Hitler himself), and Australia, for instance. To support Israel, regardless of the extent of its atrocities, was and will always be economically feasible. The same economical feasibility that led the West to exporting the ‘Jewish question’ (a loose end in Europe after the rise of the ‘nation-state’ during the renaissance) outside Europe even after putting Nazism into an end. The irony.

ٍStill along the same lines, we can find traces of such rot outside political culture. In the context of social culture, more dangerous residuals of imperialism appear. Going back to the embodiment of Western imperialism in the current geographical and demographical setting in the region, it is not a coincidence or a surprise that the elites in the region, among states and also amongst the people, play a key role in the penetration of this machinery. For such elites were either maintained, or even labeled as elites by the Western-imperial machinery itself after the First World War, leveraging material and social privileges.

The role of these elites is not limited to adopting Western ideals and standards (the Western definition and outlook on liberation, prosperity, civility, peace, justice, and terrorism, to name a few). For such elite class is also a key factor in the penetration of the Western machinery into social culture: socialization of the means of production. This is manifested in academic/educational curriculums, such as in the outlook on the Great Arab Revolt, and the rise of nationalist tendency that were purely Western-induced, in the social infrastructure governed by economic treaties that either preserves the West the sufficient ‘cut’ of national resources or by forging a necessary dependency on Western resources, and in the descent of art to aesthetic appeal (notable in music, for instance, in the stagnation of, rather transformation from, Tarab), to name a few examples.

I can go on and on, providing further examples and elaboration on the spread of this rot all across the region. But I do believe at this point a more fundamental question must be addressed. Why have boycotting campaigns been limited to the economic process in the region, while the manifestations of the penetration of Western imperialism clearly transcends past that particular process? Perhaps overlooking stimulates the ease of boycotting, as a ‘position’, limited to recreational and consumer goods, compared to the sacrifice when accompanied with the social, cultural and political boycott with which the act elevates from a ‘position’ to a decolonial ‘struggle’: to a form of art. So long as boycotting campaigns stick to its narrow scope, it will only engender the spread of the rot rather than contribute to eliminating and abolishing it.

The lunatic, and their discourse

On the city of artists

On the art of boycotting