“The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world.”
Pound, Pisan Cantos, 1948
The artists who made the monuments of modernism, Adorno noted deflatingly, were “not demigods, but persons,” fallible, entangled, damaged. Ditto of course for those lesser parodic moles who now, like Jehan Alonzo, snipe at pyramids or scratch splenetically at their bases.
Those who put other persons in camps and cages are also persons (fallible, etcetera), but constitute an altogether different functional category.
Camps and cages belong to a whole apparatus of state terror, a complex set of mobilized and managed processes, behind which are more than executive orders and exceptional empowerments.
Also required, to launch a “war on terror,” were the spectacles of fear and fury demanding action, the conditioned-reflexive flag-waving and chanting for vengeance, the deep enjoyment of a war machine on the move.
What keeps this dirty war going now, beyond its infamous exposures? Distractions, other cares, attention tiring into indifference.
This war goes on, today, scandalously, by occupation, assassination and torture by proxy, all at absurd public expense, because the massive, continuing, determined protest that could stop it is absent. In its place, the silences and passivities that translate into tacit consent.
No dialogue with the fraudulent arguments of global enforcement. Immediate end to occupations, close the bases and camps, open the cages, without conditions: such are the actual conditions of a global dialogue free of domination. Not likely, but anything less concedes too much.
Not forgetting this, the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo in Havana is a wound that should hurt, let it be said. The death of any caged dissident on hunger strike is a wound to all, felt or not, acknowledged in truth or veiled in lies.
Camps and cages: the naked apparatus of domination, of states aimed at individuals. Tear them all down, let them all out: right now, without conditions. Not likely, but anything less concedes too much.
Pound, Pisan Cantos, 1948
The artists who made the monuments of modernism, Adorno noted deflatingly, were “not demigods, but persons,” fallible, entangled, damaged. Ditto of course for those lesser parodic moles who now, like Jehan Alonzo, snipe at pyramids or scratch splenetically at their bases.
Those who put other persons in camps and cages are also persons (fallible, etcetera), but constitute an altogether different functional category.
Camps and cages belong to a whole apparatus of state terror, a complex set of mobilized and managed processes, behind which are more than executive orders and exceptional empowerments.
Also required, to launch a “war on terror,” were the spectacles of fear and fury demanding action, the conditioned-reflexive flag-waving and chanting for vengeance, the deep enjoyment of a war machine on the move.
What keeps this dirty war going now, beyond its infamous exposures? Distractions, other cares, attention tiring into indifference.
This war goes on, today, scandalously, by occupation, assassination and torture by proxy, all at absurd public expense, because the massive, continuing, determined protest that could stop it is absent. In its place, the silences and passivities that translate into tacit consent.
No dialogue with the fraudulent arguments of global enforcement. Immediate end to occupations, close the bases and camps, open the cages, without conditions: such are the actual conditions of a global dialogue free of domination. Not likely, but anything less concedes too much.
Not forgetting this, the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo in Havana is a wound that should hurt, let it be said. The death of any caged dissident on hunger strike is a wound to all, felt or not, acknowledged in truth or veiled in lies.
Camps and cages: the naked apparatus of domination, of states aimed at individuals. Tear them all down, let them all out: right now, without conditions. Not likely, but anything less concedes too much.
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