Some final comments on the Egyptian revolution, and then I'll get back to blogging about what really matters:
First, much has been made of Egypt's plugging up of the intertubes, especially considering certain WikiLeaked cables that turned up on the brink of the uprising which documented the U.S.'s seemingly contradictory investments in the region. It would appear that blacking out the net is a fool's errand as it only made the revolt more visible on the global stage. The hundreds of thousands of protesters on the streets of Cairo hardly needed a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing, and the seeming impossibility of shutting down the single site, WikiLeaks, casts serious doubt upon the capacity to enact any substantial web-based censorship on a global scale.
Now, about those contradictory investments of the U.S. WikiLeaks released two sets of cables which depict the U.S. in a somewhat non-monogamous relationship with the Mubarak regime. The first cables seemed to indicate that Mubarak and Obama were bffs, but a subsequent document suggested that the U.S. actually provided assistance to rebel forces. So what's the deal, Obama. As Randall once advised Dante, "Don't pine for one and fuck the other." Actually, I'm guessing the U.S. was probably playing the old game of "subversion and containment," attempting to "destabilize and reform" the Egyptian government in the grand tradition of shock doctrine capitalism. But the stammering and stuttering of Gibbs and Clinton suggest that the U.S. is feeling every bit the melancholic and anxious Dr. Frankenstein, regarding with great apprehension the "monster" he had deluded himself into thinking he's created and can now control.
Or perhaps a better analogy is Wale's The Bride of Frankenstein since, in allegedly backing certain rebel forces, the U.S. seems to have wanted to create a softer, kinder monster, to befriend the lumbering oaf of a dictator that was Mubarak. And we all know how that plan played out:
A successful revolution in Egypt will be properly monstrous, and it will reject its marriage, arranged by the West, with that other 30-year-old monster that is neoliberal Egypt. This new monstrous bride upon the streets of Cairo -her fidelity will lie elsewhere, in an out-place that has yet to be named. It will exist as long as it issues its impossible demand and as long as it refuses any pre-engineered fate in the shape of "reform."
Secretary of State, Clinton has said, "We want to see an orderly transition so that no one fills a void, that there not be a void, that there be a well-thought-out plan that will bring about a democratic participatory government." It is precisely the void that terrifies the West, the void, perhaps, of an open mouth emitting a scream of protest.
Like many of you, I've been watching the events in Cairo unfold with great enthusiasm, and given the usual negative tone to these blog posts, I thought the uprising in Egypt would provide an excellent opportunity to affirm something for a change. So, in an attempt at optimism, let's admit to ourselves the high probability that what's happening in Egypt will fail!
Let's admit that the remarkable courage of the Egyptian people, many of whom have staked their bodies and their lives upon reclaiming the Commons, will most likely not shatter the order of global capitalism. But, let us also, and in the same breath, celebrate this glorious failure. Let us recognize that each failure - the UC protests, the London protests, the Egyptian uprising, the Tunisian revolt and so on and so forth - contains a kernel of the possible. In each of these instances, we glimpse a possible body which is almost visible amidst the dazzling spectacle of the hypervisible.
The greatest mistake with respect to this almost inevitable failure is to fall into a Thermidorean pattern of thought. That is to say, the greatest error, and the error which neoliberalism demands that we make, is to equate the final result of Egypt (which could very well be disappointing for any communist aspirations) with the spirit of the revolt as such. Perhaps the most crucial aspect of this spirit, which has been noted numerous times, is that it wasn't fueled by any single group. This movement of the youth seems to have erupted spontaneously. And, in this sense, this movement lacks a telos; in fact, this lack of a telos seems to propel this movement to generate their extraordinary demands and refusals in the face of hegemony machine consisting of the Mubarak regime, the Western media, the Obama administration and Israel -i.e. the usual suspects.
A couple of notes on these suspects. 1) Note how often even the otherwise commendable Aljazeera was asking "who will replace Mubarak?" 2) Note the insistence of Press Secretary Gibbs and Secretary of State Clinton that Egypt "not slide into chaos" and 3) that the Mubarak regime should "address the legitimate grievances" of the people. 4) Note the preoccupation with whether or not the freedom fighters of Egypt are "looting." This is all precisely the Thermindorean discourse of neoliberalism.
1) The demand to know "who will replace Mubarak" attempts to contain the movement in the streets by quite literally capping this rupture with another figurehead, and almost certainly one supported by U.S. led Empire.
2) The "concern" that the country will "slide into chaos" implies that "order" should be restored, and the only order that now exists and can thus be restored is that of neoliberalism. (But of course, the people of Egypt have announced a new order. This order has formed upon the street; this body-of-truth appears in its disappearance as fragments of the army coalesce with fragments of protesters, as the Muslim Brotherhood is enveloped in the movement, as the poor and the students stand together. . . this body-of-truth only appears to be a slide toward chaos when viewed through the lens of the restorative or rather reactionary order of neoliberalism.)
3) The grievances that we see issued from the people of Egypt are precisely illegitimate; they cannot be legitimated by the current Mubarak government because they are first and foremost based upon the dissolution of this government.
4) Finally, in Egypt, something like 50% of the population lives below the poverty line and wealth is anything but evenly distributed. In the context of global capitalist domination, can anyone imagine a revolution that would not feature some attack upon private property and commodities. I would say no, and when this economic offensive happens, it will almost surely be called "looting" by the mainstream media again as a way to demonize revolutionary forces and champion liberal values.
One final point. As has been noted on Aljazeera, prior to this almost certainly unsuccessful revolution, the subjective orientation of the Egyptian people was apparently quite apathetic. That a seemingly spontaneous revolt sprang from an otherwise quite apathetic population is remarkable. We might say that, in this respect, Egypt provides the most hopeful evidence for what Badiou calls an "active nihilism." Unlike the steadfastly Thermidorean "passive nihilists" who "wish to convey to the young the idea that the essence of discordance consists in the defeat of beliefs, the crisis of ideologies, the crash of Marxism" the "active nihilist" "has never believed" but is nevertheless "in search of a form of confidence." For the active nihilist, the "only future is courage, and it is toward this courage that his anxiety guides him by the sureness of the real" (Theory of the Subject 329). If it is indeed possible for the great nihilism of postmodernity to be swept up in confidence and courage, then it must look something like the streets of Egypt do at this hour. And if it is possible in Egypt, then it is possible in all the other outposts of nihilism around the globe. In the end, what Egypt will have not failed to do is give us a glimpse of this Subject of courage and confidence, and it is our duty to not fail in our recognition of this Subject, this incredible body-of-truth.
Mark said there wasn't any other kind of war cause war breeds war like lovebirds.
-Kathy Acker, Empire of the Senseless
Could there be a better definition of a non-coincidence than the recent convergence of NewSouths Books's plan to release a "non-offensive" edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the media self-flagellation resulting from the Arizona shooting spree?
As we all know, not unlike Tom Sawyer's Aunt Polly, NewSouth Books plans to sanitize Huck, removing all usage of the n-word from the text. Because, you know, that makes the text totally tolerant of racial difference. Like Tom, you can let black dudes linger in jail cells and otherwise use them for your own entertainment as long as you don't call them the n-word. Hey, come to think of it, isn't that precisely what we do now in our post-racial America?
Jim pleads with Huck to not use the n-word
On the heels of this soaping of Twain's mouth, Jared Lee Loughner went on a shooting spree in a supermarket parking lot in Tuscan where U.S. Representative, Gabrielle Giffords was meeting with her constituency. Loughner wounded fourteen people, killed six and became something of a political hot potato being thrown back and fourth between liberal and conservative pundits. As liberals would have it, Loughner was a product of the "violent" political rhetoric being propagated by right wing windbags such as Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party. Always the voice of self-righteous indignation, that shameless simulacra of Edward R. Murrow, Keith Olbermann led the offensive against being offensive:
The right wingers promptly responded by accusing liberals of "politicizing" the shooting, and in the midst of the ensuing dogfight - you know, the usual one that passes for "political" debate - Giffords became one of those blonde, white, female martyrs, beloved by American popular culture.
So what do these two (non)events have in common? In both cases, a story of structural and bodily violence enacted upon people of color is overshadowed by a story about mostly-white people saying and doing violent things to each other. In the case of Huck, the extensive and often quite casual violence enacted upon the character of Jim, not to mention his stereotypical characterization as such, is completely overshadowed by a single word and by concerns over offending readers. NewSouth censored the book not because of a concern over racism but because they wanted the precious canonical text to be read in schools. So the real victim in need of saving isn't Jim or any other black subject, fictional or otherwise. To the contrary, the real victim in need of saving is apparently Twain! Our precious white male canonical author, god save him from himself!
In the case of the Arizona shooting and the media (non)event that it has become, the structural and bodily violence enacted upon undocumented workers daily in Arizona becomes overshadowed by the melodramatic narrative of Giffords, the white woman in peril. The fact is, each month hundreds of undocumented workers are murdered, either directly or indirectly, while attempting to cross the US/Mexico border, and groups like No More Deaths have been told that is illegal to leave water in the desert for these workers due to littering laws! But, it would seem that some bodies (i.e. the white blonde ones) are visible while others (un-papered brown ones) are not. The media's self-condemnation regarding an isolated killing spree continues to efface a perpetual, State-sanctioned killing spree. In related news, playing Call of Duty 4 has been proven to turn kids into terrorists:
That liberals would lead this movement for censorship is nothing new. Throughout the 80s, Tipper Gore waged war against heavy metal and any manner of popular music that supposedly turned teens into satanic perverts. What strikes me as particularly ironic in the present case is that some of the same liberals who are now ever-so-gleeful to deride Sarah Palin's use of crosshairs are the same liberals who jumped for joy when Robert Rodriguez used his trailer for Machete to comment on Arizona's SB1017:
I think it's fairly obvious that this brilliant movie trailer uses violence in order to make a political statement. Indeed, the entirety of the film, which I'd suggest is Rodrigeuz's masterpiece, deploys hyper-violent imagery to comment upon the subjugation of undocumented workers.
This hysteria over "media violence" and the "n-word" is a sort of PTA brand of pseudo-politics which amounts to nothing more than bourgeois navel gazing. Political discourse has always been, is, and will always be violent, and bully for it. We should not cede violent rhetoric to liberal narcissists who would censor it anymore than we should cede violent rhetoric to right wing juggalos like Limbaugh and Palin because no substantial political change has ever been properly non-violent. And, Gandhi and King are not exceptions to this rule. As Zizek suggests, sometimes the most violent thing one can do is to do nothing apparently violent. In this sense, the "non-violence" practiced by King and Gandhi was indeed quite violent insofar as it struck at the heart of the State.
We should read Huckleberry Finn and watch Machete in their original racist and gut-splattered forms because these texts develop complicated arguments about the intersection of race, racism, nation and violence, and if that means letting Palin have her crosshairs, so be it. The real insidious motherfuckers here, aside from the obvious right wing Juggalos, are the Olbermanns of the mainstream media who reduce the political to some wishy-washy brand of rhetorical etiquette. Beware of any instance where the media decides that what they have to say about the world is more important than the world itself. You can be sure that this is also an instance of the West insinuating its own cultural supremacy.
Let's face it, hip hop is undead. Long ago, in that multicultural utopia of Native Tongue, The Beastie Boys and nostalgic backpacks rattling with spraypaint canisters (i.e. the 90s), Method Man warned us, "cash moves everything thing around me," and he meant it. Hip hop has always known precisely what sarcophagus it was sleeping in. From RUN DMC's odes to Adidas to Erik B and Rakim getting "paid in full" to EPMD's endless discussion of their "business," rap has always purported to be about the real which, in this galaxy, means the reality of capitalism, or what blogger K-Punk (aka Mark Fisher) has called capitalist realism.
Sure, we liberals love to clamor about "real" hip hop. We love to roll down the windows of our Subarus and blast The Roots, Mos Def or Common. We can wax academic about the "underground" aesthetic of MF Doom or the lyrical wizardry of Aesop Rock or Sage Francis. We can play the most obscure dubstep at our next wine and cheese party. But, really, to paraphrase Das Racist, this is all a little like going to see DJ Spooky mix beats on his Ipad at the MoMA:
But fuck all that clever shit. If you want to get the vitals on hip hop and on America in general, take a real close look at the most important rap video in years, Kanye's "Monster":
The rapper as aristocratic vampire/serial killer, secluded away in a narcissistic bubble of luxury and "conspicuous consumption," being cannibalized by the very fans he's cannibalizing; the rapper as both hyper-consumer and racialized commodity. We gaze into Jay-Z's shades and see only ourselves gazing back.
Both the song and the video "Monster" are an apocalypse. They should shatter any liberal delusions about the "soul" of hip hop saving us from the woes of late capitalism. They should expose the not-so-hidden truth of the pervasive bling aesthetic: the "tip drill" is a driller killer.
With "Monster," Amercian rap emerges from the tomb of the last decade - from 9/11, the "war on terror," Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Katrina, the Haitian earthquake and the resounding non-event of the Obama presidency - and now recognizes itself as an agent of oppression rather than a voice of the oppressed. Kanye and Jay-Z are slick American Psychos -à la Patrick Bateman: suit by Logsdail, sunglasses by Luis Vuitton, shoes by Dolce. The rapper has reached the pinnacle of elitist Western postmodernity where, as Fukuyama has argued, history is finished or as Kanya raps, "I'm living the future so my present is the past/ My presence is the present. Kiss my ass." The rapper as sovereign power, he "does whatever he wants" and "whatever he wants" is a "cool" a priori.
Of course, this position of supreme and absolute power is a curious one for black musicians. When Kanye or Jay-Z play at the Patrick Bateman bloodsport of killing white women they simultaneously embody that age old stereotype of the black male rapist, an image conjured up most acutely when Kanye toys with Kate Moss-looking corpses like so many marionettes. But, at the very outset, the video seems to flip the script on this stereotype, giving us an image of a "lynched" Vogue model, swinging from a chain. Like so much gonzo pornography, then, "Monster" resurrects racist sexual stereotypes but only to suggest the ultimate interchangeability of roles within these scenarios.
With this superficiality in mind, we can safely say that the "monster" being reanimated here is precisely that of multiculturalism. "Monster" is Mr. Hyde to the Dr. Jekyll of diversity. What we see here is the other face of that Janus head that is tolerance chic. This is the negative print of that happy "post-racial" circle jerk we all had a couple of years ago when for a brief moment we allowed ourselves to forget (and what a privilege it is to be forgetful) that we ARE global fascism. You see, for this video, race indeed doesn't matter, but then again, nothing matters except for the "profits." Indeed, Kanye's first verse here intentionally teeters on complete incoherence precisely because he needn't be bothered to make sense. Whatever he does is cool regardless of content. And what's cooler than ice cold? Undead. He has become production/consumption machine, which, as Rob Latham suggests, is quite often both cyborg and vampire, and thus as Kayne tells us "I'm a motherfucking monster" his voice goes robotic.
For that very reason, however, the real star of this video is neither Kanye nor Jay-Z, but Nicki Minaj who, much like this video, is a high water mark for contemporary, late capitalist hip hop. It's no mistake that the "bad bitch from Sri Lanka" sitting in the "Tonka" with Minaj is probably M.I.A. If M.I.A. rejects the hypersexualized image of the female hip hop artist, if she "don't want to be that fake, but you can do it" then Minaj has indeed gone ahead done it:
Global Hip Hop BFFs
Let's strike right at that romantic liberal love affair with M.I.A and just fucking say it: while M.I.A. turns revolution into fashion, perhaps Minaj turns fashion into revolution. More troubling than M.I.A.'s sexy, but at times quite vacuous, appropriation of the Tamil Tigers is Minaj's full-on embrace of Barbie-Land objectification. To hijack some critical race theory from Fred Moten, Minaj is precisely the commodity that speaks. Like that doll of E.T.A. Hoffman's "The Sandman," Minaj's delivery both here and in her other performances evokes the unsettling uncanniness of an inanimate object come to life (skip to 2:40 to save yourself the true horrors of the rest of the track):
Her delivery is schizoid, a sort of controlled and cacophonous madness, a disciplined artificiality completely captured in the "Monster" video by the S/M scenario in which she disciplines her "self."
So, like Jay-Z and Kanye, Minaj is selling herself. She "starves her Barbie" to "feed her pockets cheesecake." However, Minaj surpasses Jay-Z and Kanye in this respect because there is no Dr. Jekyll to her Ms. Hyde. That is to say, there is no "human being" who transforms into the "monster" who is Minaj. The Minaj here who tortures "Barbie" is herself a monster. Note that Minaj raps in two different voices - her signature Barbie squeak and a sort of ODB-meets-Lon Chaney growl - both of which evoke an artifice. And I'll let you, dear reader, make the connections here regarding race and gender. The point is that Minaj isn't merely fake. She is fakeness personified. Which is something very different something perhaps slightly more subversive. She is to hip hop misogyny what Liabach was to liberal fascism:
Like so much else, it all comes down to the political potentials of nihilism. Personally, I'm skeptical of the realism at work in "Monster," and for all its creepy crawlies, this video is still, ultimately, capitalist realism. If the penultimate nihilist, Minaj, and the penultimate optimist, M.I.A., are riding in the same fantastical Willy Wonka Tonka truck, where exactly is said truck heading? Is it just circling the same block located in some metropolitan global north, bumping the same Diplo beat until the gas runs out and maybe dropping just enough references to "third world issues" to satisfy our liberal appetite and distract us from the monotony of bloodshed?
