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theoreticallysensible · 2 years ago

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The Hell Without Poetry

I started reading Proletarian Nights by Jacques Rancière, about contradictory aspirations held by artisanal workers in early 19th century France. One of the most interesting points so far are the fact that some workers had a culture of emulating bourgeoise fashion and not saving money, both to differentiate themselves from the domestic servants they felt they were superior to, and to signal that they deserved the same privileges as the bourgeoisie but rejected capitalist ethics of accumulating in order to exploit others.

I’ve just gotten into the famous Gauny section, where Rancière goes off an a tangent about this philosophical joiner (someone who makes wooden building components). The first of his books I read was The Ignorant Schoolmaster, which similarly takes up a single historical figure in order to develop their ideas into a universal, ahistorical frame by blending his voice with theirs. I find the idea really interesting, and it makes me wonder if I could do the same for the people I interviewed for my dissertation. I like how it deconstructs the boundary between historical actor and theorist, emphasising that all people are both, but it only works of course if the people you’re quoting are doing a substantial amount of philosophising. I also don’t want to lose marks for a stylistic gambit.

One of Gauny’s ideas is that work is work, always demeaning no matter what its content is. Rancière points out that this is similar to the philosophy of a preacher at the time, who valorised work for its essential self-sacrifice (Max Weber pricks up his ears), because it allows our body to fulfil its debt created by the wage given by the employer. This is obviously ideologically beneficial to the status quo because valuing just particular aspects of work rather than work it and of itself would suggest that those parts should be expanded i.e. that work can be better or worse and might be improved.

However, Gauny twists the message by separating the effect it has on the body from the effect on the soul. He admits that there is a pleasure to physical self-sacrifice - even though hard work of the sort he was doing can have awful long-term consequences, there’s pleasure in the oblivion you can reach in the arduous routine of it - but he emphasises that it kills the soul by not giving you breathing time to sit and contemplate, discuss ideas, and make art. There’s a beautiful section where Gauny says

“Ah, Dante, you old devil, you never traveled to the real hell, the hell without poetry!”

This speaks to the ideas at the heart of Rancière’s entire project: that everyone aspires to critically engage in the arts, and that the extent to which do is not overdetermined by class position. His project in this book in particular is to demonstrate that there is no pure working class - there is frequent infighting within and between professions and genders, and their morality is often inspired by the bourgeoisie.

In fact, one of the most interesting parts is that many of the workers start seriously questioning the status quo only after they’re visited by bourgeois do-gooders, but rather than take on the ideas of these champagne socialists uncritically, they use them to inspire new ideas. Rather than expecting a new world to come from one place, we should recognise that novelty is always a result of the melding of difference. It actually makes me think of the fact that so many of the progressive ideas developed in Europe, from Rousseau to Marx, were inspired by Native American philosophies (David Graeber & David Wengrow’s book, The Dawn of Everything, has a great section on the possible influence on Rousseau).

The aspirations of people like Gauny to write poetry, to come up with new ideas based on a variety of sources, was largely unrecognised or dismissed when Rancière wrote this in the ‘80s. He was frustrated that not only did capitalists view working people as beneath of that sort of thought, but Marxists saw it as counter-revolutionary and therefore unbecoming. Rancière was disillusioned with Althusser, who’s structuralist Marxism he saw as not leaving any space for people to resist their circumstances, instead being overdetermined by class. I don’t know Rancière’s stance on free will, but as a rather dogmatic determinist even I find that frustrating, as if we aren’t influenced by so much else which can give rise to disruptive convergences. Basically, people are more complicated than that! Any supposedly emancipatory philosophy with a single vision of what the working-class should be is doomed to failure, as Rancière well knew from witnessing the dismissal of the student protests of ‘68 be dismissed as “not real revolution”.

Rancière saw in Gauny a way out of this structuralist trap, where by taking on the high-minded ideas of the more romantic bourgeoisie and reinterpreting them with a personal need to act against the system, new ideas could be created and used to disrupt the distribution of the sensible, or the matrix of acceptable ideas - most important of which was the idea of who is capable of having such ideas. This concept is actually where my name comes from!

I wonder if we’re losing this time to contemplate even more today, with the spectacle invading so much of our lives - social media being the quintessential example. This is not such a danger if we’re using it to chat to people, but if we’re just scrolling… there’s not much thinking going on there. 😅 Guy Debord, in the ‘50s, was already talking about capital colonising our everyday life, and this stealing of attention, our time to think and talk and create and have ideas, seems to be the worst consequence of it.

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daeluin · 1 year ago

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you know i hate this whole "in an ideal world" discussion, and this may be my marxism framework speaking, but who gives a fuck about this "ideal" work. who cares!!!!!!!

the basis of marxism-leninism/communism/leftism/whatever the fuck you wanna call it is dialectical materialism. it's the importance of the real world relationships. who gives a fuck about ideal conditions, the ones that matter are the real materials conditions we are living in today and how we navigate through them and what we can do. you do what you can in your material framework to the betterment of your community and you fight within your power to change your material conditions.

you don't sit around and bemoan about some "ideal world" that doesn't exist where everything is "good" and get disillusioned when it doesn't work like that in the real world. you get off your ass and you do what you can to shape the world around for better within the structures of power and you fight to change those structures that impede the betterment of your class.

stop crying about an ideal world and go do something for the real one!!!!! that's what matters

#and see this is why people can't understand Marx without reading Hegel first #bc marxism is a theory of awakening. of realization. it's about stopping looking at the world of the ideas and focusing on the material #on reality. about stop waxing poetics about the meaning of things and shift the focus to their effect on the world #it's about realizing that the world isn't like it is bc of whatever ideal concept you have but it was shaped like that #and you collectively have the power to shape it different. be it inside the structures or outside them #they were made by men they can be destroyed by men. nothing is ideal it's all the result of material acts #and like 'leftists' have this passion of talking about the ideal world while doing fuck all for reality #like sis we had this conversation before. go read Sartre im begging. why are we fighting over some ideal when people are hungry #anyways this is how you alienate yourself. from your fellow humans and from yourself. and this is what the class in power wants #stop talking about an ideal world and arguing about semantics and do something #who gives a fuck about the ideal world!!!!! we don't live there. care about the real world with the real people in it #sorry i got triggered i promise i will go back to talking about those gringos

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francesbeau · 2 years ago

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ALIENATION; RAHEL JAEGGI

So Incredibly dense but really interesting, some parts I enjoyed:

PART ONE THE RELATION OF RELATIONLESSNESS:

RECONSTRUCTING A CONCEPT OF SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

Alienation means indifference and internal division, but also powerlessness and relationlessness with respect to oneself and to a world experienced as indifferent and alien. Alienation is the inability to establish a relation to other human beings, to things, to social institutions and thereby also—so the fundamental intuition of the theory of alienation—to oneself. (ch.1. pp2)

“Alienated” describes relations that are not entered into for their own sake, as well as activities with which one cannot “identify.” (ch.1. pp2)

An alienated relation is a deficient relation one has to oneself, to the world, and to others. Indifference, instrumentalization, reification, absurdity, artificiality, isolation, meaninglessness, impotence (ch1.pp.5)

A distinctive feature of the concept of alienation is that it refers not only to powerlessness and a lack of freedom but also to a characteristic impoverishment of the relation to self and world (ch1.pp.6)

Diagnoses of alienation in their modern form always concerns (for example) freedom and self-determination and the failure to realize them. Understood in this way, alienation is not simply a problem of modernity but also a modern problem. (ch1. pp.6)

Rousseau represents the continually recurring form of alienation critique that turns away from the “universal” and, embracing an ideal of unfalsified nature or primitive self-sufficiency, regards sociality and social institutions as inherently alienated. On the other hand, he is the inspiration not only for the Kantian idea of autonomy but also for Hegel’s conception of the social character of freedom. (pp.8)

In the “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts” of 1844 Marx distinguishes four results of the “national-economic fact” of alienated labor: alienated labor alienates the worker, first, from the product of his labor; second, from his own activity; third, from what Marx, following Feuerbach, calls species-being; and fourth, from other human beings. Alienation, then, can be understood as a disturbance of the relations one has, or should have, to oneself and to the world (whether the social or natural world). (pp.12)

Alienation also means that the object must appear to her as fragmented : laboring under conditions of specialization and the division of labor, the worker has no relation to the product of her work as a whole (pp.12)

The same pairing of powerlessness and loss of meaning (or impoverishment) marks the worker’s alienation from her own activity. Alienated labor is, on the one hand, unfree activity, labor in which and into which one is forced. In her labor the alienated worker is not the master of what she does. (pp.13)

Of great importance for the concept of alienation is the following twist: if a successful relation to self and world, via labor, is viewed as a process of the externalization, objectification, and appropriation of these essential human powers—as an appropriative relation to one’s own objectified labor power— then alienation can be seen as a failure of this process, as an impeded return out of this externalization (pp.15)

Marx’s analysis of capitalism—concerns itself with subtle forms of structural heteronomy or with the anonymous, dominating character of objectified relationships that appear to take on a life of their own over and against individual agents. Formulated differently, the concept of alienation posits a connection between indifference and domination that calls for interpretation. (pp. 23)

1. Alienation is tied to the problem of a loss of meaning ; an alienated life is one that has become impoverished or meaningless, but it is a meaninglessness that is intertwined with powerlessness and impotence. 2. Alienation is (therefore) a relation of domination , but of a kind that is not captured by standard descriptions of unfreedom and heteronomy. 3 .Alienation means disconnectedness or alienness , but an alienness that differs from simple relationlessness. (pp.22)

CRITIQUE OF THE CRITIQUE OF ALIENATION

If, beginning with Rousseau, alienation is conceived of as a mismatch between the nature of human beings and their social life, then the return from an alienated condition back to an unalienated one obviously means a return to this essence, to the human being’s purpose or nature. In this case the critique of alienation would always presuppose an (objectively grounded) shape or purpose of true human existence from which one has become distanced in the alienated condition. (pp.27)

PART THREE ALIENATION AS A DISTURBED APPROPRIATION OF SELF AND WORLD

self-alienation as an inadequate power and a lack of presence in what one does, a failure to identify with one’s own actions and desires and to take part in one’s own life. (pp.155)

Works Cited with particularly interesting ideas:

E. Fromm (2004) ‘Marx’s Concept of Man.’ London:Continuum

[The bourgeois human being] produces a world of the greatest and most wonderful things; but these, his own creations, confront him as alien and threatening; although they have been created, he no longer feels himself to be their master but their servant. The whole material world becomes the monstrosity of a giant machine that prescribes the direction and tempo of his life. The work of his hands, intended to serve him and make him happy, becomes a world he is alienated from, a world he humbly and impotently obeys.

Tugendhat, E (1986) ‘Antike und Modern Ethik’ In Probleme der Ethik

‘self-alienation can be understood as a way of not having oneself at one’s command . Being alienated from oneself means, in other words, being inaccessible to oneself in what one wants and does.’

Phrase I liked:

It was this diagnosis that Marx captured in his theory of alienation and put to work in his critique of capitalism

Alienation: interpretive schema, a concept with whose help one understands and articulates one’s relation to oneself and to the world.

The depersonalization and reification of relations among humans

the concept of alienation is bound to an entire bundle of intertwined topics.

Chapter 9 systematizes the conception of the self that has been implicit in my analysis up to now into an “appropriative model” of the self and defends it against various objections. I will show that alienation critique can dispense with essentialist presuppositions without thereby becoming arbitrary

#philosophy #alienation #political theory #marxism #marx

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eldritch-bf · 2 years ago

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Now every time I see a specialized machine making something humans used to make with their own hands all I can hear is Marx talking about the alienation of labor

#karl marx #we are alienated from nature ourselves and others #marxist theory #marxism

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mesetacadre · 10 months ago

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(sorry in advance for the more personal ask, you're the most intelligent person i know of when it comes to these things)

genuinely, how are we supposed to find the strength to go on? it feels like capitalism has won. only a few decades ago my country was openly and proudly socialist, and now we're nothing but an american military base with an economy. everything's been privatised, the unions are broken, the people are starving, and we keep voting for more of this! people are gleefully begging for yet more exploitation! sometimes it feels there's not a drop of class consciousness to be found in the entire country, and that it's pointless to even hope for change. how can i stay sane?

The class struggle is not a team sport which either side can win or lose. It is a historical and economic process, one that's inevitable. As long as capitalism exists, there will be a social majority of workers it must exploit, alienation will still happen, and a portion of these workers will be aware of this fact. The class struggle is also a long process, one that, most of the time, is imperceptible to the individual in physical and time scale. Only sometimes, it accelerates to dizzying speeds and the conditions necessary for taking power are met. We can talk about victories and defeats, but we can't lose sight of the fact that those "only" are points in time, momentaneous advances or retreats in the process that is the class struggle, but they never mean the paralization of this process.

We can only really talk about the bourgeoisie taking power and creating the first properly capitalist states in the late 18th century and early 19th, but the bourgeoisie had lead or taken part in attempts at or glimpes of revolution as far back as the early 16th century. The bourgeoisie never really had an unifying theory of the class struggle, most were never really fully conscious of it. But they still eventually took power, once the development of the national economies advanced so far that it forced the replacement of the feudal mode of production, the bourgeois revolutions became inevitable. Marx and Engels only ever saw one real attempt at the proletariat taking power, in the Paris Commune of 1871, but it only ever lasted a few months. They both were long dead when the first actually (relatively) long-lasting instance of the proletariat in power broke the oppressor classes' veneer of invincibility.

When Marxists talk of inevitability it is not in a conspiratorial manner, or an expression of satisfied optimism, we never mean that "one day the capitalists will get what's coming to them", in a vague way. We mean that, only if communists continue to work towards the revolutionary organization of our class, is a complete overthrow of capitalism inevitable. We should all do an exercise is historical perspective when it comes to analyzing progress, take the Marx and Engels example from the previous paragraph, they never got to see an effective application of their theories. Class consciousness will fluctuate continuously, it always has. The bolshevik party in 1913 had nothing to do with the party that lead the October Revolution, and 8 years after the defeat of the 1905 revolution, I bet many felt like their work was hopeless. My point is that, while the borders of the Communist Party may shrink, grow, or even disappear, and while we might be savagely oppressed, no system of oppression has ever lasted forever.

When it comes to revolutions, there are objective and subjective conditions. The objective we can never control; it's the stability of capitalism, the characteristics of its suprastructure, if there is a crisis or not. The subjective is what's under our control; our own work as communists, the state of the revolutionary party, the degree of influence of communists at the core of the working class. These two sets of conditions interact with one another, with the objective conditions influencing the possibility of development of the subjective conditions much more than the reverse. What makes you hopeless is in part the objective conditions. Capitalism is quite stable right now (though not as much as it ever seems), and, for now, we can't do much about it, because the subjective conditions, the other part of your homelessness, are also very delayed. But these we do have control over, at first very little, but as they improve, the control we have over them also increases. Essentially, friend, all we can do is prepare our class, do our best to gain more workers to our cause, bit by bit, so that once capitalism shows one of its cracks, we can be ready to pry those cracks open and bust the whole system. The Russian soldiers in WW1 were already discontent when the bolsheviks began to agitate up to the trenches, Mao's guerrillas grew to an army taking advantage of the deep fragmentation China suffered throughout the first half of the century, etc.

Once again, class struggle is not a straight line that we move in two directions. It is a complex space. The overthrow of the USSR was a very profound blow to revolutionary organizations all around the world, of course, but the state of communism in general in 1995 was still in a much better position than it was merely 90 years prior. Every defeat also sharpens the tactics and strategies we use. Eastern Europe (where I assume you're from) did use to be socialist, and those worker's states were overthrown. But you are still in a better position than a communist in the interwar period, facing borderline fascistic dictatorship and a future of Nazi-Fascist occupation. They did not have any precedent or much practical experience to learn from, but you do. Every day that we delay work, even in the most hopeless of contexts, is a day more that our grandchildren will have to bear in capitalism, and a day more they're deprived of true freedom and self-government

#ask #anon #seriousposting

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hellsitegenetics · 1 year ago

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Marxism, Ideology and socioeconomic theory developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The fundamental ideology of communism, it holds that all people are entitled to enjoy the fruits of their labour but are prevented from doing so in a capitalist economic system, which divides society into two classes: nonowning workers and nonworking owners. Marx called the resulting situation “alienation,” and he said that when the workers repossessed the fruits of their labour, alienation would be overcome and class divisions would cease. The Marxist theory of history posits class struggle as history’s driving force, and it sees capitalism as the most recent and most critical historical stage—most critical because at this stage the proletariat will at last arise united.

String identified: a, g a ccc t a a a c g. T ata g c, t tat a a tt t t t t a t a t g a catat cc t, c ct t t ca: g a g . a ca t tg tat “aat,” a a tat t t t t a, aat c a ca ca. T at t t t ca tgg a t’ g c, a t cata a t t ct a t ctca tca tag—t ctca ca at t tag t taat at at a t.

Closest match: Thelaira solivaga genome assembly, chromosome: 2 Common name: Fly

#tumblr genetics #genetics #asks #sent to me #requests #fly #marxism #insects #bugs

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rooksamoris · 1 day ago

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this is an analysis of jamil's solo song snippet!! im going by the fan translation of the wonderful @winterspellsfrozenkit who has provided fan translations of the other snippets as well!! without further ado, here is a copy of their translation followed by the analysis.

蛇と瞬き-JAMIL:

Jewels and magic cannot Fulfill the wishes in me Knowing no end To days filled with misery. Gasping as I just try to breathe Desires creeping out, trying to leave The more that I desire, The more narrow this place is The light will never fade in me My anger will never cease to be If only I could expose it all Ah ah ah! A shadow is dancing Listen to the insatiable voice Freedom’s in my hand, Like I’m cursing and To the end I’ll FLY-yah-yah Ah ah… Not enough to get by-ah-ah The Snake and Blink

let's do a line by line analysis of the song and then i'll share my thoughts!!

"jewels and magic cannot/fulfill the wishes in me" immediately what comes to mind is marx's theory of commodity fetishism which he writes about in capital volume one.

"A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labour" Karl Marx, Das Kapital

basically, commodity fetishism is what happens when we value commodities outside of the labor that goes into creating them. it is most blatant with things like designer items because we are so separated from the labor and yet put some idealist value onto the product for the label. commodity fetishism begins in the supply chain when the capitalist, who owns the means of production, separates the commodity from the laborers who make it. it happens when you purchase clothes and don't acknowledge the labor and raw material extraction that went through making those clothes.

in this case, jamil is acknowledging that commodities are not what he wants, even though in his book seven dream we see that he merely replaces his hierarchical position with that of the al-asim family, whom he is loyal to through the caste system. deep down, jamil knows that it is not what will fulfill him which is why in the wish event all he asks for is one trip where he can go some place where no one knows him and the curse of his caste lineage cannot oppress him. what jamil wants is freedom, not wealth and power.

jamil himself deals with commodity fetishism, in which his labor/labor power is the commodity. his time, effort and his very life are commodities, and because of this, he is heavily alienated from his work and others. jamil's position in society allows for him to be dehumanized and that is an alienating experience. he is nothing more than what he can bring kalim.

"Presupposing private property, my work is an alienation of life, for I work in order to live, in order to obtain for myself the means of life. My work is not my life. Secondly, the specific nature of my individuality, therefore, would be affirmed in my labour, since the latter would be an affirmation of my individual life. Labour therefore would be true, active property. Presupposing private property, my individuality is alienated to such a degree that this activity is instead hateful to me, a torment, and rather the semblance of an activity. Hence, too, it is only a forced activity and one imposed on me only through an external fortuitous need, not through an inner, essential one. My labour can appear in my object only as what it is. It cannot appear as something which by its nature it is not. Hence it appears only as the expression of my loss of self and of my powerlessness that is objective, sensuously perceptible, obvious and therefore put beyond all doubt" Karl Marx, Comment on James Mill

the last line heavily applies to jamil since his work, serving the al-asim family, is a loss of himself. he lowers himself, his intelligence, his abilities, and his strength for the sake of kalim. he is powerless in this situation, as he has stated previously, since upsetting kalim's father could drag his entire family into the streets or worse. his work is not something he does because he sees value in it for the betterment of society or for personal enlightenment, but because he is forced to.

a lot of this can be attributed to the english translation being so bad and censoring so much?? here's some examples that come to mind!!

chalking things up to just "im loyal to kalim" really lowers the stakes and it blurs how bad things truly are for jamil.

"Knowing no end/To days filled with misery" i find this issue comes a lot with the fandom, but we forget that jamil born into an unfair caste system and has no real way out of it. his suffering is endless and if he marries and has children, he will just be dragging them down with him.

unlike a wage laborer, jamil is stuck working for the al-asim family because of his lower caste. we don't know if he earns money at all, but i highly doubt it. his situation is like other caste situations in which he and his family have their home tied to the al-asim's. jamil is doing "well" but at the price that his family serves kalim's. sure, he is housed and fed, but at the cost that his life be at risk to save kalim's. since caste is tied to lineage and tradition, there really is no escape for jamil from this.

also, reminder that if jamil literally dies taste-tasting something for kalim, there will be no consequences. imagine being a child and learning that another kid's life is more sacred than yours because of your unlucky birth?

"When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains." Conditions of the Working Class in England, Friedrich Engels

i share this quote with you guys because i want to remind you all, if jamil dies in service of kalim, it is murder since people knew it was possible that he would die. i remind you of this argument because further lyrics have a more revolutionary spirit to them. what jamil did was wrong, but violence only creates more violence, and violence against one's oppressor and oppressive state is a reaction, not unwarranted. poverty and caste are violent. it is my belief that if someone dies in poverty because of the state's refusal to provide these people with healthcare, housing, or food, it is murder with the blood being on the hands of the state.

in this case, the violence done to jamil is due to caste. there is a constant threat of his family being thrown to the streets if he dares to rebel. jamil has been doing an adult's work since before he could properly even reach over the stove. what jamil did was cruel, knowing that kalim trusted him, he betrayed him, but that betrayal did not come from a place of pure malice. as a child, he knew kalim was deemed more important than him and was stripped of his autonomy because of it.

"Gasping as I just try to breathe/Desires creeping out, trying to leave/The more that I desire,/The more narrow this place is" here, jamil is restarting his desires and depicting his life experience as suffocating. he desires just as anyone else does, but he has no means of reaching these desires.

marx writes a lot on the way "want" is a motivation which keeps the workers alienated and working for the possibility of earning enough to enjoy the things that bring true fulfillment in life.

"Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything ||XVI| which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power – all this it can appropriate for you – it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have that." Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Karl Marx

ultimately, these wants further push us into positions of submission to capitalism and labor. it is like the concept of working to live. you do labor, have your surplus value extracted, and maybe eventually you'll get the chance to take your family on a nice vacation. since jamil is not a wage laborer, and instead a member of a servant caste, this manifests a bit differently in his case, but marx's point of self-renunciation still applies. jamil is a creative person, like we know he is good at dancing and cooking, but the latter is in service of kalim and the former he tries to lower to not outshine kalim. he has the ladder to reach for the stars but he isn't allowed to.

he is alienated from himself in this way. i don't think anyone just performs their creative arts for the sake of praise, but praise is nice. artists post their art, writers post their writings, dancers and actors and singers perform, because art is something to be shared. art is also something which is infamously bought and gate-kept by the wealthy.

how much has jamil really been able to explore his creative passions? every waking hour is spent making sure kalim is alive and satisfied. kalim can dance and make music because he has the time and resources to, jamil has much less of that since his existence is tied to the well-being of kalim. his "passions are submerged in avarice" because it is through wealth and visibility that kalim get the time for his art, which is exactly what jamil does not have. it makes the point of his book seven dream so much more interesting, because even though he truly does not wish for wealth, but instead freedom, subconsciously, he acknowledges the power and blessing that is great wealth.

what jamil is saying here is that the more that he wants, the more that he yearns and longs for things, such as freedom, the more suffocated he becomes. capitalism creates the disparities for this want to exist, waves possibilities around, and then pulls the goal post further and further from us. jamil sees the freedom of others every day, he sees the privilege of kalim all the time, and the finish line just gets farther and farther away from him. "this place" becomes more and more narrow the bigger he dreams, so he may as well make himself and his ambitions as small as possible to fit into his caste.

"The light will never fade in me/My anger will never cease to be/If only I could expose it all" here jamil acknowledges that despite his attempts to not want, to make himself smaller for the sake of kalim, his desires will truly never cease, nor will his anger.

"if only i could expose it all" is a rebellious cry and it makes me wonder if the caste system is deemed unacceptable by others. is this, like in our world, an archaic form of oppression that people deem barbaric? or is he talking about exposing his resentment and finally taking back his autonomy by violent means?

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels

marx is not saying that revolution is inevitable, but that it is always a possibility, and if revolution does not happen, the oppressed class will just be further oppressed. jamil is the oppressed and the al-asim family are the oppressors. as we see, he is fearful of what could happen of kalim's father got wind of him rebelling. jamil's overblot was the manifestation of all the violence done to him, releasing in a violent revolutionary act. what he did was cruel, but i would argue it is even more cruel to let a child believe that his life is lesser than that of his peer.

now im gonna get into frantz fanon and the wretched of the earth, i couldn't help myself </3

"And it is clear that in the colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system, is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays...The exploited man sees that his liberation implies the use of all means, and that of force first and foremost... non-violence. In its simplest form this non-violence signifies to the intellectual and economic elite of the colonized country that the bourgeoisie has the same interests as they and that it is therefore urgent and indispensable to come to terms for the public good." The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon

these lines read to me like a cry for freedom. it is the young revolutionary raising his gun in the face of his oppressor, it is the peasants arming burning down the manor, the villagers destroying the basileos's estate and taking the economy and politics in their own hands. his anger will never be satisfied until he gets what he is owed, his very own life. all those years spent taking care of kalim have just been years of the constant reminder of his status.

under a caste system, your lineage is what decides your fate, and for jamil that means he will serve the al-asim's till he dies. he cannot escape this. many caste systems, such as the one in yemen, make it so that you cannot even marry out of your caste, and no matter how much wealth you accumulate, you will still be considered a member of the servant caste. while it is fun to imagine jamil marrying out of his caste and moving away somewhere, the reality is that it is most likely not plausible. his parents probably married because they were both in the same servant caste, and if he ever ended up married, it would probably be to someone in his same caste.

i've repeated it a million times, but there is no escape. he is suffocating and violence is the only way out, it seems.

"A shadow is dancing/Listen to the insatiable voice/Freedom’s in my hand, /Like I’m cursing and/To the end I’ll FLY-yah-yah/Ah ah… Not enough to get by-ah-ah" for the sake of time, i'm going to analyze this all together since i feel like i've been writing this since the release of those snippets.

now, the shadow can be many things. im most convinced it is referring to the manifestation of his resentment, the overblot phantom. @estcaligo has this post discussing blot as a physical manifestation and the cultural depictions of negative emotions as something physical. and i reblogged it with this post adding onto the islamic/sufi depiction of nafs and how it relates to overblot.

here's what i said on the topic and i will relate it back to these last few lines of the fan translation:

"the word nafs is derived from nafas which means breathing. nafs, colloquially means self/person. for example, in my dialect of arabic, we say "nafsi" to mean "myself" since the "ee" sound makes a phrase possessive. theologically, nafs is most often referring to the soul. i think the idea of nafs coming from the word nafas/breathing is important in this case. you breath in and out. you take in and then you release. in islam, nafs is cannot be bad or good or beautiful and so on, but it is more like your health, something you nurture. you feed your nafs bad things, it will have a bad reaction and release bad into the world. when it comes to the blot and overblot in twst, we can imagine the blot accumulation is their nafs being corrupted and their overblot is the release of their tainted nafs. the whole idea of the phantoms being created from the blot, and the characters having to fight them off (like jamil arguing with his phantom that he is not imprisoned like a genie). this concept exists within the quran, the idea of battling that which corrupts your nafs through jihad. and no, not jihad like the crusades, but general struggle. jihad just means struggle... ultimately, this struggle is what helps clear the nafs of corruption, and when we battle the mages who have overblotted, we are faced with the negative emotions which led them there, and they struggle against them to survive."

the blot is fed by external experiences that deepen the negative feelings of the mages, which corrupts their magic. for example, leona has a scene of blot accumulation when jack says something that reminds him of his elder brother, who he resents.

right after this, the ink spills.

like leona and the others, jamil's blot has been fed by all sorts of negative experiences which nurtured the seeds of his resentment until it grew too much to be held within the confines of his soul, and so it burst and released into the form of the phantom. this is exactly the way nafs is depicted in islam. to counteract it, you try to feed your nafs good things.

the negative voices in jamil's head, the voices of his parents and the figures of authority who keep stacking heavier things onto the boulder he's rolling up the mountain fighting against his reason. the "insatiable voice" is the urge to just say 'fuck it' and go wild. to attack those who oppress him, to hurt kalim, the symbol of his disenfranchisement, and forget about his responsibilities to his family. it's tragic. "freedom's in my hand" at the cost of so much, but he has been pushed to the point where it seems worth it to just release it all. he wants to drop the boulder and let it crush whoever was climbing the mountain behind him. "cursing" may refer to the cost of his freedom.

like he says, he cannot just drag his family into the streets for his own freedom. imagine the devastation of his family, of his sister if he decided to defect. they would face the consequences of his actions, cursed by his need for freedom, while he was off away doing whatever it is that he wanted. the cost is a curse, and it is too great.

of course, "fly" is commonly used to depict a state of transcendence and escape, so i won't stick too long on it. the next part, "not enough to get by" reminds me a lot of the story of icarus. it seems like that despite his desire for freedom, jamil subconsciously sees it as a doomed ambition. even if he does fly, his wings will melt. something will pull the ladder out from under him as he reaches to grasp the stars, something will grab him by his hair and drag him back down the hellish life he's been living.

i've been wracking my brain for a while about "the snake and blink" part of the song and here's the ideas i've got so far before i conclude:

a) the usual christian symbolism of snakes being the temptation of knowledge, corruption--you guys know the garden of eden story. john milton's paradise lost snake.

this analysis suggests that the snake is some sort of temptation, and the moment jamil blinks, it disappears.

b) other cultures don't view snakes in a negative light. i talk about it more here, but in islamic culture, snake iconography is used in hospitals and some art depicts snakes stinging away evil spirits. the islamic story of adam and eve does not feature a snake and instead the whispers of iblis/satan.

there's the middle eastern folktale of shahmaran, queen of snakes. she is a half snake half woman creature who is never portrayed as good or bad. sometimes she is an oracle and other times she is respected or tricked into being killed. kurds specifically have her symbolize good luck and many depictions of her death regard her sympathetically.

in ancient egypt, wadjet, the cobra goddess is a protective goddess who was the nurse to the infant horus, and protected isis. in many iterations, she symbolizes greenery and fertility. the aztec deity quetzalcoatl is a "feathered snake" whose domain is rain, wind, learning and agriculture. he brings life and had a role in bringing about the world. the naga is a half-human half-cobra who is often depicted as the protector of siddhartha gautama and the buddha. they are powerful and dangerous when angered, and protective.

im gonna make a full post about snake symbolism and jamil some other day, but for now, these interpretations of the snake make things seem less sinister and more hopeful.

these snakes are instead symbolizing life, protection, and the possibility of a future, but these hopes are gone away in a blink "snake and blink" as he says at the end of the snippet.

for just a quick conclusion of my overall thoughts. i think the rest of this song will further play on this idea of freedom and desire. i like it a lot. no, i LOVEEEE it omg the vocal performance??? that high note is constantly replaying in my mind like jeez the rent was due. the themes are loyal to jamil's character and i wonder how the song will end, yk?? will any of these songs have a positive/hopeful conclusion? personally, i think i prefer the ideas of all the threads not being completely tied. as much as i felt sad during the kalim and jamil interactions in book five, i felt like it was best that it ended that way. i agreed with silver's "let them fight it out" sentiment during book seven as well because i dont think anything can truly fix the issues between them.

IM DONE!! hope you guys enjoyed this long ass analysis of that like less than two minutes snippet of jamil viper's solo song!! idk if i have the energy to do the other ones as well, but malleus' and leona's brought some interesting eco-criticism stuff to mind.

#💝 — lore and theories #twisted wonderland #jamil viper #twst analysis #twst jamil #leona kingscholar #twst spoilers #jamil solo song #malleus draconia #mythology #culture #karl marx #friedrich engels #frantz fanon #twst x reader #jamil viper x reader

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