Shakespeare and the Justice of the Oppressed

23.04.2018 –

Abstract: Violence and justice are linked. Our culture teaches oppressed groups in our society that violence is the only viable means available to them to resist injustice. These lessons are evident in Shakespeare’s plays in which oppressed characters always demand justice in bodily terms and in horrific acts against the bodies of oppressors. Hamlet is just one example.

Keywords: Violence, Justice, Law, Shakespeare, Hamlet, Nasim Aghdam, Cultural Brainwashing

A recent news item that caught my eye was the case of the YouTube Killer, Nasim Aghdam. The woman in question, now known as a killer, was someone that cared passionately about justice. As the Guardian stated, she “used social media to fight for justice on a planet ‘full of diseases’” (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/04/youtube-shooting-suspect-nasim-aghdam-profile). Nasim had been a gentle person from her childhood. In an interview, her father reflected on how out of character her crime was. He told the Bay Area News Group that “his daughter was a vegan activist and animal lover who as a youngster would not even kill ants in the family home, instead using paper to move them to the back yard” (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/04/youtube-shooting-suspect-nasim-aghdam-profile). What led a gentle woman that was committed to justice to such a violent conclusion?

Violence and justice. Violence and justice. Are these two things intimately connected? Or was Nasim’s final act just a random event? For the armchair theorist, a theorist who moreover has no time to pursue his many and diverse interests, everything has to remain at the level of speculation. My speculation is that Nasim was one of the oppressed. She was an Iranian immigrant in a country that is thoroughly and systematically afflicted with racism. She had seen how the human race treated our animal brothers and sisters who she felt an honest kinship with. What the immigrant suffers, what the lover of nature must suffer in this world of iniquity and injustice. Have you ever stayed up all night wondering where your justice is? Have you ever cried in your heart of hearts for justice, knowing that it will never come? As Nasim wrote, “I live on a planet that is full of injustice”. The justice that she was led to, in the form of violence, was the justice of the oppressed. Already, the reader is enraged. How can one call a random killing an act of justice, like the killer framed it? How can one speak of the justice of the oppressed as a form of justice, hence giving it some sort of validity and legitimacy? What evidence do I base this seemingly bizarre and arbitrary claim upon, that Nasim’s act was an act of the justice of the oppressed? The evidence is in Shakespeare’s plays.

There is a stock type character in the Shakespeare play, a Nasim, one of the oppressed that demands justice in the form of terrible violence. In the Merchant of Venice, the stock type is a Jew called Shylock. Because of the indignities and hate he has to face in a Christian country, Shylock demands his pound of flesh from one of his oppressors. Shylock is not alone. Tamora, the Queen of the Goths, who is captured in war as a trophy, also demands justice and exacts a systematic plan of revenge against her oppressors. Her wrath is terrible indeed and involves murder, rape and mutilation. This stock type, the immigrant, the oppressed that is out for a violent justice exists in the Western imagination even today. I have written at length about one such character in the recent Black Panther movie, who is called “Killmonger’ to emphasise his link with violence. The Killmonger, an immigrant, wishes to arm the oppressed against the oppressors and is therefore treated like a supervillain.

Why does the oppressed victim pursue a campaign of horrific violence against their oppressors? It may seem natural to link violence and revenge in ideas about “instincts” and “natural aggression” but this would be to obscure the cultural link of meaning between them. Moreover, such ideas obscure the fact that the oppressed have had to endure horrific suffering themselves to become what they have become. The reader of this piece has never seen the illusion of justice torn to pieces before their eyes and realized their awful impotency in this world of injustice. That illusion of justice, which gives meaning to the life of those that live in a thoroughly unjust world is what makes life bearable. When it is gone and replaced by harsh and punishing truth, how does one bear life? What illusion can give meaning and value to life again?

What gives meaning and value to the life of the oppressed is to be revenged. The brutal mental wounds that they have to bear are to be resolved in an act against the body of the oppressor. The oppressed know that they cannot attack the mind of the oppressor. The mind of the oppressor is blind to the justice of the oppressed and to their fury. This mind, the mind of the oppressor, is moreover, a mind shared by the entirety of culture and society. It sits there like an all-powerful Christian god at the heart of everything. It is in the so-called laws and justice of the time, the art of the time, in the literature of the time, in the music of the time, in the commercial transactions and economy of the time, in the international relations of the time and in every act and thought in this culture and society. For the oppressed, there is only one method to attack the oppressor. It is the body. And this is why the justice of the oppressed is inextricably tied to the body.

The greatest play of Shakespeare is about this same idea. Hamlet is one of the oppressed. He has to live as subject to someone who has killed his father. Hamlet knows that the only way that he can achieve justice is to kill his oppressor in a violent act. There is no other alternative. Hamlet doesn’t use poison or any subtle method against his oppressor, although he thinks of it. He doesn’t raise a revolution against Claudius, his uncle and usurper. The justice of the oppressed can only be expressed in violent form against the body of the oppressed. This is the ultimate lesson and finale of the play. Shakespeare has taught us that the justice of the oppressed can only take a certain form which allows no exceptions.

When the people judge someone like Nasim then, a woman who loved justice, and write their biased accounts about what led her to her act, when the culture that claims that Shakespeare is some sort of human god, I will always say the same thing. The oppressed have only acted according to the rules which this culture and society has put in place. They have aimed for the only justice which we have accorded them, which is the justice of the oppressed. These people are acting in a framework of thought and action which this culture and society have given them, a framework which is specially intended for them and which has been taught to them even before they were born. As immigrants and oppressed people, they have been taught that they can only express their rage in terms of the body and against bodies. They have not been allowed into the rules that govern thought, only the rules that govern the body and violence. It is this culture and this society that is ultimately at fault. It is Shakespeare that it is at fault. It is the oppressor that is at fault, not the oppressed. A woman that could not hurt an ant can become a cold blooded murderer because of a lifetime of suggestion and brainwashing in Western culture. And then, this victim, this same woman, can be shown as an example of what immigrants are like in this same culture, as just another example of the same thing. Such is the hypocrisy, malice and deviousness of the culture that we live in, and its ultimate injustice.

The Artistic Failures of a Mr. Nobody

02.02.2018

A little while back, I read an article in a newspaper, possibly the Guardian, about a writer who had never made it and had never been published. The novels that this man had dedicated his life to, forgoing employment and the material things of life, were described as “execrable”, or some such choice word. Here was a Mr. Nobody who produced “artistic failures”. No one wanted to publish his writing. No one wanted to read his writing. Yet, day after day, Mr. Nobody sat at his desk and pushed out the words.

Mr. Nobody could be anyone. There are thousands of people in the same position: writers, poets, artists, singers and musicians. Certainly, Mr. Nobody is myself. One wonders, though, how Mr. Nobody can bear his numerous disappointments and the miscarriages of his babies in the world. Today I want to write a little piece about this artistic failure and disappointment. I regard artistic failure as a lack of recognition. The reader will forgive this narcissistic exploration. Chekov wrote that it is only a mediocre novelist that goes on and on about writing a novel, not the successful writer. So be it, yet even the mediocre novelist must have an opinion and reflect upon his or her failures and successes.

The story is a common one. After years of publishing creative work in student newspapers and magazines as a young man, I thought, optimistically, that the next step would surely be publication with a serious publisher. I expected the wider world to take note of what I had published in the student publications. I sent off my poetry to magazines and publishing houses like Faber and Faber. I tried to get my short stories published in American magazines. I applied for book reviewing and journalistic positions. The result? Rejection after rejection. Gradually, I stopped sending my stuff out to companies and applying for work. I published online, thus cutting off any potential revenue from my work. Now, my poetry was up on my blog and I found out that poetry publishers wouldn’t publish work that had already featured online. The amount of readers that I had could be counted on one hand. It was the same thing with my short stories and book reviews. I put the music that I had composed and sang to online. When it was my own original music, perhaps twenty people would listen to my songs at most. I took up art about two years ago and post work on my Instagram account. The work has generated zero income and I have never managed to go over seventy likes on a picture.

Having reached middle age, it is clear that I am an artistic failure. Like Mr. Nobody, my creative work has never been published, has never generated any revenue and is read, listened to and seen by only a small handful of people. I have not received real recognition for my work. Producing this creative work, which costs money and takes up time when I could be earning money is therefore something of Sisyphean enterprise. Like the Ancient Greek character, I push the boulder up the mountain every time I sit at my desk to produce anything and it never gets anywhere. How does a person bear the constant disappointment and frustration? How does he or she bear the indifference and apathy of the general public which would tend to suggest that these cultural productions are worthless?

These questions have been considered by creative thinkers in the past. I recently read a short story about the issue called “Enoch Soames” by Max Beerbohm which was first published in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (May 1916). Enoch is a poet who does not get the attention that he feels he deserves. His belief in his work, however, is undying. He therefore makes a pact with the devil to travel into the future because he is convinced that his work is ahead of its time and will be revered by future readers. He thus stakes his soul on his belief in his work since this is the devil’s fee. However, on arriving into the future, Enoch finds that he is still a Mr. Nobody. Beerbohm’s story reflects a somewhat delusional belief which keeps a Mr. Nobody going. Mr. Nobody believes that, if not today, then maybe tomorrow there will be the attention and the notice. Mr. Nobody lives in a strange world of time, chance and happening, much like the lottery ticket buyer. After all, Mr. Nobody has read the rubbish which is published everywhere and which is popular. He’s seen the hacks claiming the prime place in the affections of people. Mr. Nobody knows that it is a just a question of luck and the capricious and fickle whims of the public. It is not what is of value that is valued. What is of value is frequently discarded to the rubbish pile of history while that which is worthless is heralded as brilliant and daring. The darlings of the public are not infrequently mountebanks and monsters. Mr. Nobody therefore, irresistibly, inevitably, sets himself at defiance to the world. He stands in contempt of this world. This contempt hardens Mr. Nobody’s strict belief in himself. Mr. Nobody says to himself each and every morning “It does not matter if none believe in me. For I am only to believe in myself and everything will follow”.

After all, Mr. Nobody does not just model himself on Sisyphus, but also models himself on Cassandra. Cassandra was cursed to speak words of truth that none would believe. If her words of prophecy had been listened to and followed, Troy would not have fallen to the Greeks. Mr. Nobody believes in the value of what he expresses. If, one day, Mr. Nobody is to be recognised as someone who was saying something of value, then he believes it is the misfortune of others not to have heard his voice. Mr. Nobody believes that in frustrating his expression and his voice, which is only fully expressed in the presence of an audience, the public is hurting itself.

Such is the ego and the arrogance of a Mr. Nobody. Ego is the apt word because one thinks of how Sigmund Freud divided up the work of the different components of subjectivity. Ego would produce and produce. It had a limitless creativity and spontaneity. However, the superego guarded the gates of expression. It would sit in judgement of what ego had written and censor the material, not allowing certain things past the gate. Mr. Nobody is the ultimate version of the ego while the public, as ever, is the superego. Mr. Nobody wants ego to prevail and burst through every attempt at resistance. Mr. Nobody does not believe in “compromise”, the word that Sigmund Freud picked out for the repressive mechanism of the superego. And, one wonders, without the arrogance of the ego, would creative work be possible? In the creative work, the human being says “I am and I am beautiful”. The creative human being is not just arrogant but a narcissist. And where the creative being does not assert that claim, then, says Mr. Nobody, that creative being has failed. If creative work is not the expression of self, it is nothing. But what of it? For, of course, Mr. Nobody is neither published, read, or listened to. Where Mr. Nobody is concerned, the world blind and deaf. And these are the artistic failures of a Mr. Nobody.

The Consolations of Being Single

25.06.17

In one of the pages of Mrs. Oliphant’s long and incredibly boring novel, Miss Marjoribanks, the unlikeable heroine consoles herself. She is astonished that she has not received many offers for engagement. As a result, she dwells on the stupidity of men and their lack of discernment. It is a commonplace of the singleton to console themselves in such a manner. There is the narcissistic contempt of members of the preferred sex which validates one’s own existence. Can these people not see that I, too, am worthy of love? They are blind and ignorant.

I want to update the narcissistic contempt of the singleton for our own times in my own words as a singleton. It has been many years since that rambling Victorian novel has been written. How do singletons console themselves now? Here is a little list of arguments.

1. I’m happy that I didn’t settle.

As I watch the couples around me, I am often amazed at how they can be attracted to one another. Not only do I find the females unattractive, but I also can’t understand what the women see in the men. To my mind, these people have settled. Clearly, my assessments are based on physical beauty, and so what? I don’t believe this is superficial. The same people that prefer shared interests in a partner are more superficial with their blind conformism. Those who talk about “personality” and the cult of the individual also avoid the reality that most people in our society are fundamentally the same underneath everything. I, the singleton, can still pursue beauty and the dream of beauty. Although I have forgiven women in the past for not being what I have dreamed of them, I can, as a singleton, worship the goddess without any guilt or pangs of conscience.

2. I’m happy that I didn’t have to change myself for somebody and I don’t have to do what I don’t want to do.

One watches the slow tussle for control in the relationships around oneself. The woman has to change herself for the man and the man has to change himself for the woman. This is despite the fact that the change that is being asked for is completely unreasonable. In putting themselves into the shackles of a monogamous relationship, the people in a relationship have to become different people. Thus they have to do what they don’t want to do almost all of the time. An obvious example yesterday was in the shopping centre and seeing the bored look on the faces of the men while the women looked through handbags and shoes. In a relationship, you have to talk about things that you don’t want to talk about and feign interest in them. You have to go places you don’t want to go and eat food that you don’t want to eat. You have to spend money on things that you don’t want. The singleton has something which someone doesn’t have in a relationship: independence and freedom. No relationship responsibilities outside of the family. You don’t have to pretend to be someone else.

3. I don’t have to put up with the family (and friends) of the woman.

When one has been in a family one’s whole life and has never had a break from being in a family, the one thing that one doesn’t want is another larger family. Especially one composed of older people telling one what to do all the time. One also doesn’t have to make friends with a bunch of strangers that one’s partner knows, even if one secretly dislikes them.

4. I don’t have the burden of keeping secrets from the other person.

In life, one learns very early on that you cannot tell other people everything that you think. It can be very destructive to say what one’s honest opinion is in our society as people hate the truth. Being out of a relationship, one doesn’t have to incessantly lie all the time to the other person. The stress of lying is therefore avoided, as is the responsibility to be always cheerful.

5. I keep my personal space.

I don’t have to share activities with someone all the time and can pursue my activities in solitude without any disturbance.

6. I don’t have to feel the hurt in a relationship.

The less said about how painful a relationship can be with arguments and suchlike, the better. It is a horrible experience.

There are possibly other arguments. The general drift of my arguments obeys the rules of narcissistic contempt for others that do not give me love. Only so much has changed from the days of the Victorians.

Music and Patriarchy: The Gendered Opposition of Bodily Performance and Bodily Abstraction

11.05.2018 –

Abstract: Women are seen as bodies, not minds. As such, they are seen as suitable for bodily performance in a patriarchal society rather than for composing music which is perceived as a non-bodily and abstract form of representation. This division between body and mind underpins the division between the private and the public sphere.
Keywords: Music, Feminism, Patriarchy, Body, Mind, Secret Superstar, Public, Private

Knowledge of the history of women’s musical practices is aided by a concept which I call ‘musical patriarchy’. The division of musical work into a largely male public sphere and a largely female private sphere is a trait of Western music history and also of many musical cultures from all around the world.
Lucy Green, Music, Gender, Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 15.

I was listening to some songs by Vidya Vox, the famous YouTuber recently. I had downloaded them for free off of her website. Vidya sings in a combination of Hindi and English, as well as other languages. She does cover versions of songs and mash-ups. I grew curious about the singer and her music, so I put her name into a search engine. It turned out that the music behind Vidya’s songs comes from her white husband. Here was yet another female singer that didn’t produce her own music and that traded on her Indian ethnicity and sex to entice audiences while relying on a masculine, Western sound and mind.

Racial dimensions aside for the time being, the question was, why were there so few famous female music producers both in India and the West? Personal experience, as usual, prompted the question. One of my amateur pursuits is singing and song-writing. I also compose the music for my songs and make the music myself. Although my musical education in England was peculiarly lamentable, I went ahead and learned how to do everything myself. Is my music perfect? Of course not. It doesn’t have a professional sound and even my singing is just recorded on the computer using the free and in-built software. However, the point is, that I can sit down and compose my own music and, if I had enough free time and money, I could produce my own tracks to a good standard. I could even lay down tracks for the melodies and sounds that I can invent in my head but am currently unable to represent in concrete musical form due to my lack of ability and skill in playing music. Why can’t more women do the same thing successfully?

One could gather various ideas to answer the question. I have put the quote at the top of this piece to show one possible interpretation. The argument is that women’s music is regarded as private, rather than public. It is men’s music that is regarded as public. However, what I want to argue in this short piece is that women are not admitted to the masculine sphere of music because it is a form of representation that is regarded as abstract, invisible and bodiless, qualities associated with men and not women. It is my contention that in a patriarchal society, women are regarded as incapable of mastering the abstract discipline of music and of transcending their bodily form to enter into the realms of thought and meaning. This is why there are so few famous female musical composers and why the ones that do exist are not rewarded and recognized for their efforts. https://www.billboard.com/…/female-music-producers-industry…

I want to start, as I often do, with a Hindi film which I watched. I am talking about the huge international success which was recently released, Secret Superstar (2017). I will not go into the story too much, nor criticise the type of feminism which was portrayed in the film. Instead, I will concentrate on the relationship between femininity, the body and music in the film. There is a young girl in the film that becomes famous on YouTube for singing in burqa which covers her whole body, including her face. The burqa makes her “bodiless” and as invisible as it is possible to be without advanced technology. At this stage of her career, the girl is capable of composing her own music and songs. She doesn’t need any man to guide her voice. She is both singer and songwriter, player and composer. However, the girl doesn’t want to be bodiless and invisible, because that would mean that she remains anonymous. She wants to be known. This desire to be recognised as a person, as a singer, to enter the public stage and leave behind the private sphere of the domestic, leads the girl to a famous male composer. It also leads her to abandon the role of music composer, a being that is invisible and bodiless because he, and it is usually a he, usually stays behind the scenes. She then becomes the voice for the male music composer’s music and finds success. The girl is therefore led into the patriarchal music establishment and away from composing her own music because of her desire to become a body with a recognisable face, to be seen as a woman with a woman’s body. She leaves the realm of abstraction, invisibility and thought to become a performing body, the face of music rather than its “soul”. Such is the brand of “feminism” in Secret Superstar: a female’s desire can only be to perform as a body, to become a voice. She cannot become one with abstract thought, invisibility and the abstract and non-bodily representation of music.

In fact, if you watch Secret Superstar closely enough, you will find that the girl rebels against all forms of abstract thought. Her rebellion is chiefly conducted against her father, who is an engineer and relies on the abstract disciplines of maths. She also rebels against her education in maths and science. The young girl supports her uneducated mother over her educated father and leaves education to do so, running away from school secretly. She even effects a separation between her uneducated mother and her educated father (in the film’s defence, he is depicted as an abusive father and husband). Clearly, the girl does not wish to remain within the realm of thought. She wants blissful ignorance and to be seen as nothing more than a body, to be accepted in the realm of the body.

My speculation is that Secret Superstar reflects the existing reality of music in a patriarchal society; that there is a gendered play between the bodily performance of voice and the abstract and non-bodily performance of music. To enter onto the public stage in musical performance, the rules dictate that women have to be seen as bodies, not as minds. It is men that are celebrated as being of the mind and having rational “souls”. It is men that can give birth to music, which is, of course, related to maths (look up Pythagoras and his ideas about maths and music if you don’t believe me). Thus we have an explanation of why there are so few successful music composers in both India and the West. I have argued at length about the relationship between the body and non-bodily abstraction and their relationship to the private and public spheres throughout my writing and I believe it informs most aspects of the society that we live in. The body is therefore supremely important as a site from which to make the resistance against the forms that constrain us and the female body is, I think, the supreme form which can fight against the forces of concealment, invisibility, pretended abstraction and universality. There is a further speculation: that the music that we all listen to and enjoy is founded in a masculine mind set and worldview. The very nature of our listening and auditory enjoyment is founded in patriarchy and its conditions. Films like Secret Superstar can reveal exactly what the nature of that patriarchal sound is and how it operates, if only we watch carefully and learn. One thing is clear: such a sound hates synaesthesia since it separates listening and sight, music and the body.

The Mask of the Superhero and the Nakedness of Kali

08.03.17

On this International Woman’s Day, I, a bad person, will talk about a woman that has inspired me. To me, she is a fictional woman, although Hindus revere her as a real person. I want to contrast her with the masked superhero. I want to show how she is both more valiant and powerful than the masked superhero. I will first set out my ideas about the mask of the superhero. I will then talk about Kali and her wonderful nakedness. I want to contrast two forms of power. The first power is masculine. In this power, identity is concealed. That is the strength of this power. The second power, that of Kali, is feminine. In this power, identity and the body are apparent. That is the strength of this power.

Let us start with the superhero. The superhero is typically male and typically masked. One notes the pattern not just in comics, but also in the recent superhero films which have been made and which have been popular. Why is the superhero masked? The mask conceals the identity of a man and the concealment of identity protects the superhero. The mask allows the superhero to live a “normal” life outside of the battlefield in incognito. The mask of the superhero is also said to protect his loved ones. The mask is therefore related to the making of the normal and normalcy. The mask is said to protect love and loved ones. It is presented as social rather than anti-social. The mask as seen as necessary in the make-up of society and social organisation. The mask separates the field of action from the field of normalcy.

The mask is also associated with law and the separation of the public sphere and the private sphere. The mask allows the superhero to move out of the identity of a single man and fight for a supposedly abstract and universal justice. The mask and the concealment of identity is the way that the individual man can move out of his own limited perspective and life into a field of battle which is much bigger than himself. The mask allows a man to fight as the champion of justice against injustice and evil.

The mask is therefore crucial to the concealment of identity and the fight for justice. It enables the fight for justice as it conceals identity and only as it conceals identity. It is only then that the hero can become an abstract and supposedly universal figure outside the limitations of what is human. If the mask is a symbol of power, it is of a power which attempts to divest itself of identity. If the power of the mask is associated with anything, it is associated with the justice of the West.

The mask of the superhero can be contrasted with the nakedness of Kali. Kali is the supreme Woman and the supreme Warrior. She is the Mother of the whole Universe and the supreme form of power. She is also the destroyer of evil. She is the protector and the liberator. Kali stands for a justice envisioned as female, not male. Her female body is emphasised, as is her nakedness. As Wikipedia states, Kali “is often shown naked or just wearing a skirt made of human arms and a garland of human heads”. Kali wears no disguise when she steps into battle, nor any armour. She is fearless. She assumes no other identity than her own. Indeed, it is not even possible for Kali to be clothed. As Wikipedia states, “[s]he is often depicted naked which symbolizes her being beyond the covering of Maya since she is pure (nirguna) being-consciousness-bliss and far above prakriti.” The explanation of a Hindu is more telling: “She is shown nude because no finite clothes can cover the infinite” (http://hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/3412/why-is-goddess-kali-shown-topless).

If the bloodthirsty and invincible Kali is a fighter for justice, then she never stoops to conceal her identity. She betrays no weakness. She does not fear that others will know her or her loved ones. She does not need a mask to give her power. She is power herself. Her power is naked. Her power derives from her femininity and her association with nature. For where the male superhero needs clothes which are produced by humans, Kali stands at one with nature in her nakedness. She is nature herself and the mother of all. She is the supreme power of femininity and the female form. She is the beauty of the body.

These are the two opposed forms of the fighters for justice. The masked superhero and the naked Kali. The mask of the superhero hides his face, his features, his human expressions and his eyes. He stays in a state of calm repose, as no one can see or feel his emotions. He acts outside of vision and the limits of vision. The nakedness of Kali is an assault on the senses. She is a vision herself. One sees emotion and anger in her face. One feels her through sight as total fury and devastation. As Wikipedia states, “[h]er eyes are described as red with intoxication, and in absolute rage, her hair is shown disheveled, small fangs sometimes protrude out of her mouth, and her tongue is lolling.” Emotion, femininity, animalism, nature. These are all attributes of the vision of Kali. Her body highlights the bodily senses which are attuned to the material world: her eyes which see are red and more evidently visible and her tongue also to be seen, that tongue which tastes food and which is out to taste blood. Kali is beautiful because she is aggression and anger itself. Her hair is disordered and she is outside of any conventional depictions of beauty. Her power is her beauty, the power of fury unleashed.

Such is the mask of the superhero and the nakedness of Kali. This is the character of two fighters for justice. The masked superhero is Western and male. The naked Kali is from an ancient India and she is the supreme embodiment of Woman as the Mother of us all. The masked superhero hides his face and his emotions and expressions. He wears what is really a uniform for one person. Kali wears nothing. She is without shame and supremely confident in herself and her body. The masked superhero has a split personality: the unlimited fighter for a seemingly abstract and universal justice and the limited man. The masked superhero is a recent invention. Kali is beyond splitting. Kali is beyond the contemporary. Kali is beyond the limits of all: she is infinite. She is supreme form. She never dies. She comes in every age. She fights for justice in every historical period. This is why Kali is inspiration and the masked superhero is contemptible.

What would a place without relationships of power look like?

I look aghast at the world around myself, the outside to my being. The outside is structured by relationships of power. There is the exploiter-exploited relationship. There is the ruler-subject relationship. There is the majority-minority relationship. Every relationship is one of power.

Throughout life, I have been involved in each of these relationships. I have also been systematically corrupted by power and its effects on my mind and body. I have been the most horrible of villains. In each case, context coerced a state of being.

As I sit here with a fresh page before me and a flight into anonymity, I wonder to myself if there could ever be a place without power relationships. What would such a place look like, where there was perfect equality? Where each had all the power and none the power? Can such a place exist?

In the Sikh religion, Sikhs all sit on the floor to promote an ideal of equality when they attend a place of worship. However, even there, power relationships must exist. Some have more wealth, some more influence.

One thinks of a picture where there is no power. All that I can think of is a place without any relationships. One man as an island. And even then, power will already have corrupted the individual.

We cannot live our life without power. There is no freedom from power. You wish to escape from politics? Perspectives collide everywhere. One form of seeing, reading, being clashes with all others. Without the clash, could there ever be anything?