Opinion - Infoshop News
Monday, May 29 2006
In accordance with the Poststructuralist theories espoused a philosopher in some book, interprets that “if power creates its own resistance, then the liberation from specific forms of power must take into account of the kind of resistance that is being engaged in, on pain of repeating that which one is trying to escape”.
Therefore, if as I believe that the genealogy of Eurocentric Classical philosophies has propelled itself solely to the forefront downplaying, in the meanwhile, the importance and agency of, as an example, the Non-Eurocentric, then the introduction of Islamic philosophies and an examination of their genealogy are necessary in Eurocentric academia as is vice versa.
“To take Islam(s) as an example – the ‘hyper-orthodox’ & the ulemocracy cannot so easily reduce it”, as had been done historically with regards to “religion” through Christianity by Nietzsche.
It becomes necessary therefore to abstain from “a hegemonistic/universalistic ideology as to rule out divergent forms of ‘sacred politics’ informed by Sufism [e.g. the Naqshabandis], ‘radical’ Shia-ism [e.g. Ali Shariati], Isamilism, Islamic Humanism, Sunni-ism, the ‘Green Path’ of Col. Qadafi (part neo-Sufism, part anarcho-syndicalism), or even the ‘cosmopolitan Islam of Bosnia”.
Henceforth to comprehend and indicate that there is and will not be a single “monolith” of Islam let alone Islamic fundamentalism, is more than just a slanting ray of the setting sun, an odor, a flavor, a draft, an ephemeral qualitative complex that owes its value to the “subjective aspect” which is never the last word of the search, but merely a “truth”.
These variant and divergent traditions in Islam(s) could permit the creation of a new open, un-holistic constellation whose contours are defined, just as Poststructuralist philosophy(s) is, through the specific theoretical and theological interventions that characterize them and are committed to their creativity. In treading this ground it becomes important to tread cautiously, not solely to avoid the pitfalls due to generalizations which may not be true, and not hegemonic-ally exploiting a tradition of Islam(s) as the only “green shade”, as there will never be one so quite claiming, voluntarily and involuntarily, that your foliage is superior to another.
Ibn Khaldun, acclaimed by some as the forerunner of modern, historiography, sociology and economics, wrote Al-Muqqadimah- Prolegomena to History in the 14th century in Tunis. Ibn Khaldun’s grasp of the various branches, at the time, of Islam(s) theological and sociological models and practices of agency, identity, power, authority and the state, along with the influence of his writing(s) upon other Muslim scholars, has led to an engagement with the creativity of Islam(s).
These Islam(s), in my opinion, retain the project of social justice, in the broadest sense, without necessarily having to rely on a theory of law based on a homogeneous collective identity and thus embrace the Poststructuralist philosophical concept of multiplicity.
The phantasmal lure of Ibn Khaldun prevails in his ability to fashion and engage with theoretical paradigms a priori to the philosophers Hegel and Nietzsche. Ibn Khaldun perceives “the state” as a natural goal of Asabiyah. Asabiyah is derived from the Arabic root asab (to bind); that is to bind the individuals into asabtun (a social group). Asabiyah is also derived from asaba, which designates the concept that is etymologically abstracted from the concrete form. Amongst the translations in which Asabiyah had been translated to are “spirit de corps”, “tribal spirit or loyalty” and “collective consciousness”.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
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Saturday, November 04, 2006
Islams & Anarchisms: al-Muqaddimah
Opinion - Infoshop News
Monday, May 29 2006
In accordance with the Poststructuralist theories espoused a philosopher in some book, interprets that “if power creates its own resistance, then the liberation from specific forms of power must take into account of the kind of resistance that is being engaged in, on pain of repeating that which one is trying to escape”.
Therefore, if as I believe that the genealogy of Eurocentric Classical philosophies has propelled itself solely to the forefront downplaying, in the meanwhile, the importance and agency of, as an example, the Non-Eurocentric, then the introduction of Islamic philosophies and an examination of their genealogy are necessary in Eurocentric academia as is vice versa.
“To take Islam(s) as an example – the ‘hyper-orthodox’ & the ulemocracy cannot so easily reduce it”, as had been done historically with regards to “religion” through Christianity by Nietzsche.
It becomes necessary therefore to abstain from “a hegemonistic/universalistic ideology as to rule out divergent forms of ‘sacred politics’ informed by Sufism [e.g. the Naqshabandis], ‘radical’ Shia-ism [e.g. Ali Shariati], Isamilism, Islamic Humanism, Sunni-ism, the ‘Green Path’ of Col. Qadafi (part neo-Sufism, part anarcho-syndicalism), or even the ‘cosmopolitan Islam of Bosnia”.
Henceforth to comprehend and indicate that there is and will not be a single “monolith” of Islam let alone Islamic fundamentalism, is more than just a slanting ray of the setting sun, an odor, a flavor, a draft, an ephemeral qualitative complex that owes its value to the “subjective aspect” which is never the last word of the search, but merely a “truth”.
These variant and divergent traditions in Islam(s) could permit the creation of a new open, un-holistic constellation whose contours are defined, just as Poststructuralist philosophy(s) is, through the specific theoretical and theological interventions that characterize them and are committed to their creativity. In treading this ground it becomes important to tread cautiously, not solely to avoid the pitfalls due to generalizations which may not be true, and not hegemonic-ally exploiting a tradition of Islam(s) as the only “green shade”, as there will never be one so quite claiming, voluntarily and involuntarily, that your foliage is superior to another.
Ibn Khaldun, acclaimed by some as the forerunner of modern, historiography, sociology and economics, wrote Al-Muqqadimah- Prolegomena to History in the 14th century in Tunis. Ibn Khaldun’s grasp of the various branches, at the time, of Islam(s) theological and sociological models and practices of agency, identity, power, authority and the state, along with the influence of his writing(s) upon other Muslim scholars, has led to an engagement with the creativity of Islam(s).
These Islam(s), in my opinion, retain the project of social justice, in the broadest sense, without necessarily having to rely on a theory of law based on a homogeneous collective identity and thus embrace the Poststructuralist philosophical concept of multiplicity.
The phantasmal lure of Ibn Khaldun prevails in his ability to fashion and engage with theoretical paradigms a priori to the philosophers Hegel and Nietzsche. Ibn Khaldun perceives “the state” as a natural goal of Asabiyah. Asabiyah is derived from the Arabic root asab (to bind); that is to bind the individuals into asabtun (a social group). Asabiyah is also derived from asaba, which designates the concept that is etymologically abstracted from the concrete form. Amongst the translations in which Asabiyah had been translated to are “spirit de corps”, “tribal spirit or loyalty” and “collective consciousness”.
Monday, May 29 2006
In accordance with the Poststructuralist theories espoused a philosopher in some book, interprets that “if power creates its own resistance, then the liberation from specific forms of power must take into account of the kind of resistance that is being engaged in, on pain of repeating that which one is trying to escape”.
Therefore, if as I believe that the genealogy of Eurocentric Classical philosophies has propelled itself solely to the forefront downplaying, in the meanwhile, the importance and agency of, as an example, the Non-Eurocentric, then the introduction of Islamic philosophies and an examination of their genealogy are necessary in Eurocentric academia as is vice versa.
“To take Islam(s) as an example – the ‘hyper-orthodox’ & the ulemocracy cannot so easily reduce it”, as had been done historically with regards to “religion” through Christianity by Nietzsche.
It becomes necessary therefore to abstain from “a hegemonistic/universalistic ideology as to rule out divergent forms of ‘sacred politics’ informed by Sufism [e.g. the Naqshabandis], ‘radical’ Shia-ism [e.g. Ali Shariati], Isamilism, Islamic Humanism, Sunni-ism, the ‘Green Path’ of Col. Qadafi (part neo-Sufism, part anarcho-syndicalism), or even the ‘cosmopolitan Islam of Bosnia”.
Henceforth to comprehend and indicate that there is and will not be a single “monolith” of Islam let alone Islamic fundamentalism, is more than just a slanting ray of the setting sun, an odor, a flavor, a draft, an ephemeral qualitative complex that owes its value to the “subjective aspect” which is never the last word of the search, but merely a “truth”.
These variant and divergent traditions in Islam(s) could permit the creation of a new open, un-holistic constellation whose contours are defined, just as Poststructuralist philosophy(s) is, through the specific theoretical and theological interventions that characterize them and are committed to their creativity. In treading this ground it becomes important to tread cautiously, not solely to avoid the pitfalls due to generalizations which may not be true, and not hegemonic-ally exploiting a tradition of Islam(s) as the only “green shade”, as there will never be one so quite claiming, voluntarily and involuntarily, that your foliage is superior to another.
Ibn Khaldun, acclaimed by some as the forerunner of modern, historiography, sociology and economics, wrote Al-Muqqadimah- Prolegomena to History in the 14th century in Tunis. Ibn Khaldun’s grasp of the various branches, at the time, of Islam(s) theological and sociological models and practices of agency, identity, power, authority and the state, along with the influence of his writing(s) upon other Muslim scholars, has led to an engagement with the creativity of Islam(s).
These Islam(s), in my opinion, retain the project of social justice, in the broadest sense, without necessarily having to rely on a theory of law based on a homogeneous collective identity and thus embrace the Poststructuralist philosophical concept of multiplicity.
The phantasmal lure of Ibn Khaldun prevails in his ability to fashion and engage with theoretical paradigms a priori to the philosophers Hegel and Nietzsche. Ibn Khaldun perceives “the state” as a natural goal of Asabiyah. Asabiyah is derived from the Arabic root asab (to bind); that is to bind the individuals into asabtun (a social group). Asabiyah is also derived from asaba, which designates the concept that is etymologically abstracted from the concrete form. Amongst the translations in which Asabiyah had been translated to are “spirit de corps”, “tribal spirit or loyalty” and “collective consciousness”.
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War of Dreams: Becoming(s) of a Redeemed Circle A with an Eye and a Redeemed Eye with a Circle A
You will permit me for I am more than revolted…more than outraged…
For I
wanted fresh work
One that would make contact with certain
Organic points of life,
a work in which one feels one’s whole
illuminated as if by a miner’s cap-lamp
with vibrations…
But that is only possible if nothing in the spoken text
happens to shock,
happens to damage this desire for glory
And so this
Might infringe on taste, morals, good manners, honorable intentions
or furthermore that might exude boredom,
familiarity and routine
But
The duty of the writer, of the poet is not shut himself and/or
herself up like a coward in a text, a book, a magazine
from which he and/or she never comes out but on the contrary
to go into the world to jolt, to attack the mind of the
public, otherwise what use is he and/or she ?
And why was he and/or she born?
Thus
I had a vision of this in the afternoon…
There are some who eat too much, words…
Others whom never eat, words, at all,
and others…who can no longer eat words
without spitting; parts of themselves betray themselves…
Antonin Artaud & I
Pre-Preface
An Abode & The Three Witnesses
I am dead. Yes you are alive. I just narrated. I created a colloquium of seemingly two witnesses, a dialogue, something like Islams, whose witnesses, The Holy Koran and The Sunnah (Prophetic narrations) are supposedly the same but not the same; distanced yet more strikingly testifying to one another’s existence. Someone, a witness, the Sunnah, proclaims: “I am dead”. Another, The Holy Koran, dares reply, “Yes, you are alive” (Derrida, 1998: 96). Attente, there remains, demueurait, there is someone else, a third; a third witness. Patienter, I will return to this witness, lower and on the same page.
Some witnesses whom choose to testify to Islams, Muslims/Muslimas, claim or allege that The Sunnah or varying texts of The Sunnah is/are dead. Others, Muslims/Muslimas as well, have spoken distinguishing themselves, complaining that The Sunnah or varying texts of it, is/are both in the past time and through endless eternity, remain(s) alive. I am not interested here in becoming consumed with exactly the reasons behind such ‘talk’, such an allegiance, the lack of it or even an abidance to varying degrees of it, The Sunnah, or not. Why would I? Why should I, as some Muslims/Muslimas believe it to be necessary, desire to put to end to such variations, I ask? And for what purpose would an engagement in a discussion of such ‘talk’ carry in weight, importance, to the discussion here? I answer. Abstractly nothing, for such ‘talk’ to I here would merely signify a reflection, a testimony whose testimony testifies to the absence of attestation, a lack of consensus as to the Authenticity throughout Islams of The Sunnah. Nonetheless such talk attains to I a degree of pure testimony. There is a Pure Testimony namely to the triumphant spirit and fanatical jubilation of such differing testimonies. As for our ‘living’ witness, The Holy Koran, Islams repeat not the same verdict of it as those upon The Sunnah; The Holy Koran remains consensually Authentic; The Holy Koran protected by the third Witness-Author: “Verily We [God] ourselves have sent down this exhortation [The Holy Koran], and most surely will be its Guardian” (Koran, 15:10).
Associate then what I address and proclaim here, in this economy of a paper, to belong to and through The Holy Koran and interpretations longing and belonging to its verses as I put away The Sunnah without delay, obligations to it or talks of it here.
Around her: Between Our Vows of Abstinence & Transgression
When I address you, when I speak to you here, each time, twice, through two narratives it will be to make a point. You need not consent.
A transgressing narrative wrapped around and engaging with an idea signified as becomings, touches, divides, shares and co-appears with, yet is distanced from, an abstaining narrative, a body of thought addressing both Muslims and those Anarchists, Classical before becoming Post, lusting yet and still before essentialist identity politiks.
There isn’t exactly transgression here, coming across these two narratives, in this economy of paper, “if this term [transgression] designates the violation of a prohibition, and the crossing of an un-crossable limit, and penetration into a sacred space” (Derrida, 2005, 295). For rather what becomes, in the instances of my transgressions, and the violations accompanying such transgressions, is something ‘other’ that posits itself as a prohibition while ridiculing and breaking such a prohibition (Derrida, 2005: 295).
This economy of a paper henceforth here is of supposedly a sacred event that becomes transgressed upon, through another narrative, resulting instead in, not transgressive acts, but rather something else. You may refer to the ‘something else’ as sacrificial impurities. Sacrificial impurities, subject certainly not to a due apology from my part and I to You for such ‘transgressive’ acts. But rather sacrificial impurities subject to works of redemption that neither transgress nor preserve this supposed Mecca of a space.
As the end becomes the beginning becoming an End (Chapter Four), these heavy, twisted and morbid thoughts, just expressed, will touch You and You inevitably will feel embarrassed that, the touch, transgressed your body’s sacred space, brushed against it, without your knowing, without You noticing.
They’ve Made me an organism! They’ve wrongfully folded me! They’ve
Stolen my body!
I believe and testify that Islam betrays itself. It bears a signature without which it remains inaudible or weakly perceptible; a signature begetting permanent difference; interpretations where one is ahead of another, advancing upon another, towards one another, away from one another and such.
Islam is a memory of beatitude and in its memory I begin speaking of Islams or Islam(s), as I deem appropriate and will not neglect to tell You along the way why; never more Islam. Islams or Islam(s) then scurry like a vermin, grope like a blind person, or run like a lunatic: desert travelers and nomads (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 150). In other words, they are fixated upon a moving instant, as a Bedouin upon a camel, experiencing movement, but un-experienced in movement. ‘Islam’ has through an incessant process of renewal succeeded in taking the structured organized organism that is itself as an enemy, its undying desire belongs to its encounter with temples of interpretive difference; its organs; Islams. “The organs are not its enemies” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 158). What it has it in for “is the organism” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 158). Islam is a Body Without Organs (BWO) (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980: 158). Islam if there is such an idea, such a thought, such a way of life, does not permit itself to experiment in peace, it won’t allow itself to ‘be’; Islam at war with Islams; with its own selves
I ask for your pardon for having things go on so long. Let You and I now go a little further…
Preface
Question of l’ Étranger
I am in mourning of all my tears. I am unable to participate in performing the rites of my mourning. I admit without self-delusion that speaking to God appears still an impossibility. A God whose absence remains for me, I am certain, forever unthinkable. Yet I am at a loss, unable to find public words for what is happening to us. I desire interrupting moments of my impossibility to break the silence of my absence from Nous. I desire to participate in the rites of my mourning. I am about to shift tone.
May I ask you something out of curiosity? Who do you think you are? When was the last time you became something else, someone else, real or not, I care not? Do you fantasize much? Are your senses becoming as my mourning institutionalized by mourning(s)? Do you confess to confusion now? You would like me to sit down and explain it all to you right now. Even had I much to say, you refuse to understand that I may not desire the heart for it today. Nonetheless you insist and persist in your demands. A menace you are. You desire a clarification and then a justification of what I am attempting, albeit failing miserably, at least in your opinion, in articulating eloquently and adequately to suite your comprehension thus far, in this economy of a paper.
I am now shifting tone. This is “Pigshit! All writing is Pigshit! No more masterpieces, no more masters (forget Hegel!)…Why? Because our innermost feelings are untranslatable and linguistically inexpressible”(Perez, 1990: 42). Would you like another reason? Proposed “literary masterpieces are established by repetition. That is to say, it is the repetition of reading and performance that establishes the Text as a fixed expression...So why repeat what has already been said as though one could recapture the freshness of the initial expression? An expression does not have the same value twice; does not live two lives” (Perez, 1990: 45). This paper, this scene of writing and its body of letters, words, sentences and phrases has but one life and is paralyzed by its own economy. Respectively, it is my intention that the specificities entailed in the discussion of this economy of a paper are to be expressed through writing once. For now and at this moment, sitting down, I tell you of a few matters.
As Antonin Artaud, I am insurrectionally in opposition to the rhetoric of written texts. A rhetoric soldered in repetitive asylums engaged in the betrayal of creativity and any possibilities of involution. Written texts whose bodies of paper have a bodily hold on you and I, confiscating our every sense and their every fantasy. Written texts whose failure in capturing the freshness of spontaneous expressions cuts across and violently replaces your non-coded gestures, as well as mine, with those “meaningless repetitions of the Text” (Perez, 1990: 46). I have to say this too swiftly but venture to maintain this firmly: “Texts [at best] are to be read or performed once and then burnt [including this one]” (Perez, 1990: 45).
Answer me you menace. In this economy of a paper you desire to subject me to your standards do you not? Why deny it? You desire, through this economy of a paper, that I come out of hiding, you desire to see of my depth upon the surface, so I may tell you something of myself and its depth. This is an economy of a paper that repetitively surges till it overspills with supplied citations of proposed ideas and their interrelated summarized complementary thoughts that are merely spent to accommodate all gaps in between the former and the latter. An economy of paper, whose exterior you supposedly desire if not vehemently demand to have bound in accordance to particular specifications in an attempt at pleasuring your satisfaction some more. What is it that you desire of me? Really what is it that you desire of me? You really desire that I take time, comfort you, showing you the equilibrium, “the truth”, somewhere along the way, here, as if in an attempt at convincing you that this maybe is what you are looking for? My apologies for disappointing you, if such were your expectations. I do not know what you are looking for in this economy of a paper. Find that somewhere else. Respectfully past this line your demands mean nothing. This is the hegemony of my economy of a paper. I did not come here to worship you. What did you think this is? And who do you think you are? Do not pretend to become a spectator in anticipation for a spectacle to commence. I am not getting ready to greet you, as this is not a theatre. Here, I do not “speak”. Here, lies the waking stench of the just recent deaths of both the spectator and the spectacle. As for practical ways of living, you find no answer to them here. Create your own. Take your next breath, engage me with your cordial gestures, dawn a smirk and even a smile. For a smile is an act of charity. In truth, do you think me naïve to your attempts at proving to me that you are sincere, courteous and not out to fetishicize my crucifiction? I owe you nothing. You owe me nothing. I neither own you nor am I bound to you, certainly not before death. I am not in search of your charity in you supposedly taking the time to read this. I point this to you. You offer an interrogative hospitality. You desire that I justify for you why I chose to write what it is I am about to write and why I believe in what I believe in. You offer an interrogative hospitality. You desire more. Wretchedly filled with greed you are. Yes I said. Greed. You ask why, as if somehow audaciously justifying an absurdity? You ask, why? You desire from me to justify why I choose to live the way I choose to live and not any other way, and more so perhaps why I choose not to live your way. I am not finished with you yet. You desire to interrogate and evaluate my existence upon your supposedly hearing of my justifiable reasoning(s). Reasoning(s) that lie within the purview and in accordance with your cordoned linear criteria(s) and preconceptions, criteria(s) and preconception(s) you have established as a priori(s).
You desire of me to, now that I am about to begin to surface and appear to you in what you believe to be all the spectrums of my subjectivity, devise a means to calculate the benefits of assimilating onto your stage, whatever that stage maybe. You desire me to engage in cheating myself and you desire to become a God. You drown in an abyss of arrogance. I owe you nothing. You pretend to desire in exploring where I come from and where I intend on migrating to. Who do you intend on mutilating here, me? You? The both of us, I say. In a wish and if I could fulfill a waking dream of making this page a theatrical scene for my voice and my body, I would respond to Artaud’s calling here for my replacement, the author-creator, with myself as director. Matters would be different. You would bear witness my unsympathetic wrath in response to your interrogative hospitality. A disorderly wrath, belonging to an intuitive theatre, for you to see without any hesitation, that “all creation comes from the stage, finds its expression and its origin in [speech] before words” (Perez, 1990: 36). My senses, fantasies and body would come alive in your midst and no longer become mourned. We would welcome my becoming as director and not an author/creator. A “director who has become a kind of manager of magic, a master of sacred ceremonies. And the material on which [I] work, the themes [I] bring to throbbing life are derived not from [me] but from” God (Perez, 1990: 36). I would be a shaman, not a Creator or hierarchal figure-but merely the mediator of magic. That said. Forget the theatre. You here have a factory and its economy in its stead. From now on you only know what I am about tell you, this is my hegemony, my resistance in response to your interrogative hospitality, unless you choose to engage in creativity for yourself. Create if you desire. Here there are no mediators between you and I. Here you have consciously greeted my threatening alienation in response to your desire to expose my paper and belittle the power of this factory; this economy of a paper. You may have your moment(s) of victory, but they are merely moments and a moment is never infinite though temporally at times it may seem to us as such. You come here as a psychologist imposter, and mind you so did I, though not to interrogate my factory, the factory that is my unconscious and the factory that is this economy of paper. You are mistaken. Here you cannot win. Why? For while we are both imposters you and I, you encounter here something else of me. I speak not of an encounter with me as a director. There is no encounter of that nature to speak of here. Need I remind you this is not a theatre? I speak of another encounter. Two factories: this economy of a paper and an “other”. The “other”, I mentioned above while you weren’t paying attention to the written words; the factory of me, my unconscious. It is a factory that carries meanings that neither you nor I can decipher or call to question as it is undiscovered and in response, it is to be feared. It threatens you constantly because it protects itself, without my consciousness of it. And like the economy of my paper it is always producing and reproducing, in between your pauses and mine, sounds and thoughts, between the gaps that filter all the unspoken words and all the forever non-coded gestures. The spectacle you thought would exist here does not. You may try and scrutinize what happens here, analyze it, diagnose it with all its symptoms, but it still stands, always has and always will, and is not in need of a second coming. Why? It is endless becoming(s).
Here, lies an ushering instead and the offering of an interpretation…
Introduction: The Rhizome, Processes of Becoming(s) and Faith
I think she moved away, still with the feeling of lightness
So begins in this economy of a paper neither an alliance nor a contract, neither a familiarity nor a fictional friendship but rather an abrupt collusion or in some sense none other than the arrival of an interpretation. I ‘speak’ here and now and at this instant say its character, the interpretation’s character, is signified as Islamic Anarchistic Becomings. I ‘speak’ of an interpretation whose essence is drawn from infinite separations of thoughts whose belongings testify to my conscious and unconscious factorial experiences themselves, here and now in this economy of a paper. Until…
She found herself in a distant forest, named Bois des Bruyères
Here, obviously, is where we, You and I, must have a debate. In Classical Anarchism’s insurrection against ‘the’ theological authority, God, You a former Classical Anarchist and now a self-proclaimed Post-Anarchist became, through mere processes of re-inscription, God’s replacement, a demagogue, a master and a new form of authority. You forgot and forget: In engaging in an un-statutory process, You claimed to have murdered God, but You left the actual place of the divine intact (Newman, 2001: 119). Your deliberate outbursts now proclaim Conventional Classical Anarchism(s) to have exhibited fragility. A fragility emanating from them laying hostage, You say, as they are linked and attached to and emerge from Euro-centric metaphysics. Euro-centric metaphysics whose conceptions and “concepts of human subjectivity and human rationality…are implicitly bourgeois and statist; it is [rightly noted, as You have,] therefore [that it is] extremely difficult, if not theoretically impossible, for such [Classical] Anarchism[s] to transcend the sociopolitical order” which they purported to challenge (Call, 2002: 33). You announced, created and invited Post-Anarchism as a substitute. More easily than such substitution, You utter that Post-Anarchism affirms the importance of difference. You deliberately bless yourself by complementing yourself on Post-Anarchism’s understanding of “the need to draw together different strands of radical thinking-anarchist, feminist, postcolonial, and so on- into provisional tactical alliances” (Call, 2002: 42-43). You lie. The ‘dead’ Classical Anarchism(s) still belong(s) to You and the ‘newly born’ Post-Anarchism is still deprived from offering hospitality, distancing itself and hence yourself yet from Religion. There is not and there must not be any inheritance or filiation from Classical Anarchism(s), worthy of your appellations upon Religions. Yes, You lied to ever yourself, never I. You are far beyond and without good reason engaged in your own praises under the rubric that Post-Anarchism is distinct from Classical Anarchism(s) as they bury Classical Anarchisms’ placed vision(s) of a return to an authentic human condition (Call, 2002: 42- 43). You sigh secretly that ‘the’ Post-modern Anarchist finds their dwelling place not in the past but rather in the future (Call, 2002: 42-43). You are yet, still trying to escape a selective past, performing a partial excavation, as fast as possible, rather than returning faithfully to the past in order to move forward; Sankofa. Your decree upon Religions ceases not. Religion(s) continue(s) to be exiled, deported, expelled and deprived from your excavation(s). Religion(s) always equated with the manipulative and parasitic. Hence, You resort to blackmail. Your blackmail wants still to keep “God [and God’s fettered religion]…nonexistent; their promises…still [perceived to be] null and void, since they can only be fulfilled by ‘man’s’ subordination” (Goldman, 1969: 5-7). Thus, your former Classical Anarchism(s) and your present and future Post-Anarchism remain(s) deprived and uncommitted to disarming “centuries of engrained Euro-centrism” that have yet to acquire and require overcoming(s) (Adams, 2003: 1). In principle it certainly seems that “the importance of [your] Anarchism[s] …[lies] in its exposing the authoritarianism[s] within [Classical] Marxism[s], and the unmasking of the place of power within the state” (Newman, 2001: 159). But in paying attention and combating another, Classical Marxism(s), it, Anarchism(s), and You neglected itself and yourself and You both became ‘blind’, consciously and unconsciously, to the “authoritarian tendencies” through your exclusion of ‘the non-Eurocentric other, Islam(s)’ (Newman, 2001: 159). Your “[Classical] Anarchism’s pure place of resistance against power, its uncontaminated point of departure…was [and remains yet with Post-Anarchism and You, un-strangely] somewhat impure, and contaminated with power” (Newman, 2001: 159). You mistake and confuse yourself to be taken for someone else, for something else unless you confront that Anarchism(s) [Classical and Post] and hence the “the identity of the anarchist subject [your identity] is actually constituted through its subordinated other- the power that it claims to eschew” over me (Newman, 2001: 119). You and “Anarchism(s) [, Classical and Post, ought to be]…forced to reflect on the authoritarian possibilities within [your] own discourses, and develop appropriate strategies of resistance” to your Micro-fascism(s) (Newman, 2001: 119). In contesting and disarming such authority, your authority, rather than submitting to its basic and limited jurisdiction, I engage in ‘super-seeing’; seeing in the ‘blind’ place of the ‘blind’ Anarchism(s) [Classical, Post] and the ‘blind’ You. Where…
She remained sheltered by trees she never knew well
Your avowed treatise on an absolute disarmament of your abstractions and your commitments to draw together different strands are respectively infinitely vulnerable.
You serve to classify heterogeneous religions under the same name. Your farce remains, it just changed sides; from Classical to Post and back again to Classical. You a Post-Anarchist have followed and still follow Classical Anarchism’s trajectory towards religion. You have yet to come to realize that in choosing such a re-inscription and the political representation that accompanies it that You have delegated “our” supposedly deceased God’s power to yourself. Respectively You run the risk of exploiting, if you have not do so already, and perpetuating that oppression [formerly a type of theological oppression, now a Post-Anarchistic oppression] onto other groups or individuals, I (May, 1994: 47).
“How [do You, a self-proclaimed Post-Anarchist] talk religion, talk Islam? Of religion, of Islams? Singularity of religion, singularity of Islams today? How dare [You] speak of [them] in the singular without fear and trembling, this very day? And so briefly and so quickly?” (Derrida, 1996: 1). Islams are not Islamism and You should not forget that the latter operates in the name of the former and thus emerges the grave question of the names of Islam(s). As for I, a mute witness, such names of Islam(s) emerge out of recognizing that “the ‘hyper-orthodox’ & the ulemocracy cannot...reduce it [Islam(s)] to a hegemonistic/universalistic ideology…to rule out divergent forms of ‘sacred politics’ informed by Sufism [e.g. the Naqshabandis], ‘radical’ Shia-ism [e.g. Ali Shariati], Ismailism, Islamic Humanism, Sunni-ism, the ‘Green Path’ of Col. Qadafi (part neo-Sufism, part anarcho-syndicalism)…the ‘cosmopolitan Islam of Bosnia…there is and will not be a single “monolith” of Islam” (Bey, 1996: 7). As for I, “The Qur’an by means of its pulverization of human language, is…Avant-garde...Post-modern…In its structure, its allusiveness, its ambiguities, its imagery, and its poetry” (Cheethan, 2005: 122). You know not Islams. As for I, “the Qurran reveals human language crushed by the power of the divine word; God’s word unmakes all human meanings, all the proud constructions of civilization, of high culture, and returns all the luxuriant cosmic, imagery back to the lowly and the oppressed, so that in their imaginations it can be made anew” (Cheethan, 2005: 122). Made anew through Ijtihad. As for I, Islam(s) offers me this Ijtihad, a kind of wandering in the vertigo of the past, present and future. As for I, Ijtihad translates to an Islamic right and duty to track, identify, intercept, pick up, translate, interpret and re-interpret Islamic principles and values to meet the social conditions of the past, present and future (Esposito, 2002: 159). As for I “the Islamic imagination, [as] Massignon has written, should be seen as a desperate regression back to the primitive, the eternal pagan substrate of all religions-that proteiform cubehouse, the Ka’ba- as well as to a primitive pre-Mosaic monotheism of Abraham… The Dome is built upon the Rock’” (Cheethan, 2005: 122). As for I, I hold “that, whatever our relation to religion may be, and to this or that religion, we are not priests bound by a ministry, nor theologians, nor qualified, competent representatives of religion…as such, in the sense the certain so called Enlightenment philosophers are thought to have been” and which You continue to strive to be (Derrida: 1996: 7). As for I, the world must be imaginalized, must be interpreted along with the soul. As for I, if the balance between the visible and invisible worlds and if the balance between the material and the spiritual is tragically lost, caught in an instant of death, creativity dies. As for I, religion is a spiritual bond, “a reflecting faith…[and] opposed to dogmatic faith…in so far as the latter claims to know and thereby ignores the difference between faith and knowledge” (Derrida, 1996: 10). As for I, I deny that “there is any a priori reality to the signifier: words, and specifically certain words, are nothing more than elements within an established semiotic field, and thus we repeat” (Perez, 1990: 116). As for I, “there is no universal structure of the mind, of relationships, of sexuality, etc. any more than there is an eternal essence of Woman-or Man. In the end we together say: we are becoming…Woman…Man…Animal…all.” (Perez, 1990: 119). Henceforth…
She was never bound to death by my surreptitious friendship
You have not come here to become friends. My friendship does not belong to your intention or your espoused ubiquitous and ambiguous ‘solidarity’. You, now a Post-Anarchist, have not come here to become friends and You have not given me infinitely respectful attention. Even if your friendship and attention came here, they are merely premised on the intention that we may hypothetically have the same enemies. You ask of my friendship? My friendship came here in the knowing that the differences between us would never leave anything else for us but friendship. My friendship further differs in that it is premised in infidelities that occurred prior to us trying to relate here, if that is at all a possibility. My infidelities, despite being each unique, were with other friends and strangers, whom I have met, not met and will never meet. Or do you think yourself my only friend? These friendships, my friendships, which forever lie in my possession were and are not premised on, as yours, an intent whose belonging is premised upon launched interrogations upon my factory; this economy of a paper. These friendships sought not to interrogate like You my factory here. How could they, for if they did they would no longer be my friendships? Rather they were and are premised on open theatres outside this economy of a paper. You desire to know open theatres? Listen to Antonin Artaud. It is where the written text is replaced with the body and the theater. After all is the theater not “the only place in the world where a gesture, once made, can never be made the same way twice?” The theater is the only place where one can escape the violence of inscription which kills the human spirit” (Perez, 1990: 47). Thus my desire here, instead of an unattainable theatre, as a gift of my consciousness to You, becomes a belonging to Gilles Deleuze’s expression. Deleuze’s expression becomes that “You can always replace one word with another. If You don’t like that one, if it doesn’t suit You, take another and put another in its place…Let us create extraordinary words on condition that they be put to the most ordinary us and that the entity they designate be made to exist in the same way as the most common object” (2001: 193).
I am going to listen to Deleuze. Now if I indulge in the luxury of replacing a word, a written word, with another, substitute it with another, layer it with another, can I replace You with another? What and who are You? Do you know? Unlike you I am not going to pretend to know. I informed You that my friendship here began with infidelity. What I propose to know about You becomes this though. You are a Post-Anarchist and a Muslim. You are both? Yes you. Why? You know neither. Even had You ascertained knowledge of both You forget that “any claim to a universal structure of the mind stems from the reactive desire to make life mathematical, calculable and simple, as in a story with a necessary beginning and a necessary end” (Perez, 1990: 112). However, relationships between human beings are a lot richer than that. “There are as many kinds of relationships as there are individuals.” (Perez, 1990:112). Henceforth if you seek not richness and its prose You do not belong here. And…
At the moment when the shooting was no longer, but to come…
Respectively and in response to your authority, expressed in many paragraphs above, I offer a resistance. This economy of a paper and its language(s) are a form of resistance that ought to be accounted for and in accordance with your analysis. This economy of a paper is my interception, an injunction of language. A language whose “essence is friendship and hospitality” (Derrida, 2000: 98) A language that “is political, and while it can participate in political domination, it can also be used as a tool against it”, against your jurisdiction(s) upon my religion(s), my faith(s), my Islam(s) (Newman, 2001: 106). “Your linguistics [of the ‘past’ and the ‘future’ by excluding Islam(s)] participates in authoritarian or state thought…practices of domination…by establishing a rational truth or essence…prevalent in thought, in images of thought…in words themselves” (Newman, 2001: 106). Respectively I resist here. Respectively I create here. Again I tell You, I perform Ijtihad. Do You require reminding? “Power creates its own resistance” (May, 2004: 73). Your liberation from your own self-subscribed authority, from your own Micro-fascism(s), and hence power must respectively take into account the kind of resistance that is being engaged in [here, in my economy of a paper], on pain of repeating that which You are trying to escape; Classical Conventional Anarchism(s) and your Post-Anarchistic authority (May, 2004: 73). And…
In the dense forest, suddenly, after how much time, she and I rediscovered a
Sense of the real
I tell You again I take it upon myself, here in this economy of a paper, to invoke and draw new contours of what You perceive as illicit and impossible; Islamic Anarchistic Becomings. Three nodes of congruence and, respectively, three plateaus or chapters are unveiled here. I speak of plateaus that unfold here all three reasoning(s) one might insist upon Anti-Capitalist Islamic Anarchistic Becomings, Anti-Authoritarian Islamic Anarchistic Becomings and Islamic Anarchistic Becomings of Nous. These plateaus of which I speak are particularly oriented and address remnants of Classical and Post-Anarchism’s merciless antagonism(s) against religion(s). Here, with instances of every plateau, I open and teach You of my Islam(s). The first two plateaus are nocturnal moments of movement, if You will, constituted of two sacred enemies we, You and I, are a versed to. Here I testify to Anti-Capitalist Islamic Anarchistic Becomings and acquire a gift for You along the way; I write you an alternative way of economically living through Islams.
The first enemy then, your enemy and my enemy, takes the form of fluid circular economism or monetarism; Eurocentric Capitalism (Chapter One). I unravel the lines of force shared between You and I that semantically traverse the idea of Anti-Capitalism and recreate such a signifier as an Islamic Anarchistic reply to Eurocentric Capitalism. A Eurocentric Capitalism whose strength resides in the fact that its axiomatic is never saturated (Perez, 1990: 56). A Eurocentric Capitalism whose capability belongs to its residual strength, in that it is always adding a new axiom to the previous ones as it appropriates whatever it finds to be a threat (Perez, 1990: 56). A Eurocentric Capitalism that always works and makes others work “by inscribing, coding and re-directing the flow of desire so that they may correspond with the flows of capital at the stock market” (Perez, 1990: 56). A Eurocentric Capitalism that seeks to establish an arborescent hierarchical structure, coding our every socious, our every relationship and our every desire into relationships and desires with a material essence, through processes of “de-territorialization (degrounding) and territorialization (grounding)” (Perez, 1990: 56). A Eurocentric Capitalism that makes repetition, a simulacrum, if You will, its end, such that every other someone or something is merely a copy of a copy, as this economy of a paper is to every other paper. I speak here of a Eurocentric Capitalism that desires the destruction of meanings by and through its insatiable appetite for repetitions. A Eurocentric Capitalism known for its creation of myths “to make people dependent on those myths…[to make] people feel that they lack, and of course, desire something” (Perez, 1990: 113). A Eurocentric Capitalism engaged in promoting its culture that basks in the greed and egoism of money and profits to eclipse and render idolatrous more authentic concerns, namely, ‘us’ and everything else on earth (Call, 2003: 46). I speak here of a Eurocentric Capitalism that Islams harmoniously beside Post-Anarchism believes is a cause and not an effect, not a disease but rather a symptom (Call, 2003: 127).
The second enemy represents itself primarily through worldwide pedagogical aerial juridical orders; Eurocentric Authority (Chapter Two). Here I testify to Anti-Authoritarian Islamic Anarchistic Becomings. Here I testify in truth to the truth and for truth, as Islams are not only capable of, but rather they do in fact espouse Anti-Authoritarian testimonies going hand in hand with Post-Anarchism and their despising of Eurocentric and Non-Eurocentric Authority. A Eurocentric and Non-Eurocentric Authority whose essence is abstractly simply authority and that takes Tactical forms, hence is micro-political and Micro-fascist, like You paragraphs upon paragraphs above, as well as Strategic forms, hence the macro-political is Macro-fascist like the Eurocentric-ally conceived State. I speak of a Micro-political authority whose power finds its site in the “observation that power does not operate, as many people believe from the top down” (Call, 2003, 66). It is a power whose form is “capillary: it is everywhere, it flows through every social relation” (Call, 2003: 66). I speak here of a Micro-political power whose means and presence is in everyone and everything and not solely constrained, confined, or shackled to oppressors but those who suffer under oppressions as well (Call, 2003: 66) I speak of a Micro-political power that passes through the hands of the mastered no less than through the hands of the masters. I speak here of a Micro-political power that is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another (Call, 2003: 66). I speak of a Micro-political power that is intimate and is divulged in private like secret events. I speak of a Micro-political power that is within You and within I. I speak here of a Micro-political power that I use here and now in resistance to You, as your eyes foreshadow my text, trying to catch up merely with some of the resistances contained through it. Resistances amplified in my every word, the spaces in between what is said and unsaid and which represent an infinite collection of spontaneous, calculated and uncalculated micro-revolts that are savage, rampant, violent and center-less, tactical, upon You. I speak of a Micro-political power that is not utopian or dialectical in its pursuit(s), as it is always becoming something else, and neither is it confined or locked in definite relationships or Micro-Fascisms, but rather is spiraling as it creates and re-creates itself. I speak here of Micro-fascisms that operate on a cellular degree. I speak of Micro-Fascisms that grow “not, perhaps out of the fact that…[they] can seize power at the macro-political level; any state can do that…[but rather horrific fascisms that penetrate] the smallest nooks and crannies of the social organism” (Call, 2003: 52). I speak of a “rural [Micro] fascism and city or neighborhood [Micro] fascism, [Micro] fascism of the Left and [Micro] fascism of the Right, [Micro] fascism of the couple, family, school and office” (Call, 2003: 52). I speak of Micro-fascism(s) that require overcoming(s) through becoming(s) and whose presence provides the necessary breeding ground for the germination and conditions of thinking which makes the state possible in the first place (Call, 2003: 51). I speak of becoming(s) which connote a “kind of radical personal responsibility” and permanent revolutions against our own selves with every waking moment of every day in retaliations to these Micro-fascism(s). After all “organizing signifies first, work on oneself, in as much as one is a collective ‘singularity’” (Guattari and Negri, 1985: 116). I speak of Micro-fascism(s) that stand on their own, then “communicate with other [Micro-fascisms] before resonating in a great, generalized central black hole” (Call, 2003: 52). The central black hole, I speak of here, that I had not lost sight of and that I mentioned formerly, Eurocentric Capitalism, is a Macro-fascism, and intertwined with it, the Eurocentric-ally conceived State, another form of authority, another Macro-fascism, albeit an abstract authority. The authority subsumed by and through the modern Eurocentric State, takes on an abstract and generic form, that is strategic and centered as it is “a prudent institution [that proclaims that it is for] the protection of individuals against one another” but at any rate invites the dissolution and enfeebling of the individuals within it; that is its function (Call, 2003: 50). It is a Macro-Fascist institution, an organized bureaucracy, whose desire is to enforce the creation of a homogeneous political culture, eradicating difference as opposed to liberating it and repeating everything as opposed to creating anything (Call, 2003: 46). It is a Macro-fascist institution that is hierarchical and whose eco-political frameworks are set up, put into place and protected by those whom cannot lead or obey it themselves (Perez, 1990: 20). A Macro-fascism, the modern state, that “is infinitely bound up with [Eurocentric] Capitalism…as part of the [Eurocentric] Capitalist machine: capital and the [Eurocetnric] state…[are] a system of signifiers within individuals as infinite debt” (Newman, 2001: 99). Macro-fascistic ‘structures’, in the most fluid of senses, that refuse to be addressed in any names but ’the holy State’ and ‘God-Capital’, till these names, these signifiers become, if not almost become, “religious signifiers which individuals are subordinated to” (Newman, 2001: 99).
The third plateau anticipates the Islamic Anarchistic Becomings of a multiplicitous, non-fictional and plural Nous, as a form of resistance to our two former featured enemies. I bear witness that Islams commits no shirk, testifies not, to its responsibilities towards declaring its desire for ‘the other’, any ‘other’, to live. It, at least theoretically, longs not to render ineffective any beauty belonging to ‘the other’ and accepts for ‘the other’ to declare itself as it desires to be, never insisting, never camouflaging, never masking the rights of ‘the other’, within and without itself to such an extent that it strives, as Post-Anarchism, at least in theory, for Nous. Nous denotes becomings of a fluid “us” between these two ways of living, Islams and Post-Anarchism (Chapter Three). Nous, a rhizomatic “us” that is unlike trees or their roots. A rhizomatic “us” that connects any point from You to any other point with I and any point from I to another point with You (May, 1994: 53). Nous whose attributes are traits not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature, attesting to difference. I speak of Nous that brings to play not units but dimensions, discovered and undiscovered, or rather directions of motions, of the You and the I, and hence always resigned to fluxes of difference. A Nous speaking volumes as it has neither beginnings nor ends, but always a middle from which it grows and which it overspills (May: 1994: 53). A Nous that indicates, albeit even if but temporally, that You and I, have disappeared. Disappeared not into a colorless and puritanical “one”, rather a hospitable and friendly multiple. A Nous “characterized by a radical openness to an outside…[as it] embraces four characteristics: connection, heterogeneity, multiplicity, and rupture…[and whose] purpose…is to allow thought ‘to shake off its model, makes its grass grow-even locally at the margins, imperceptibly’” (Newman, 2001: 105). A Nous, like the thousand flowers left to blossom and bloom, without organizational slogans and even less an enlightened prediction, on the terrains of undermined capitalist and authoritarian disciplinarian regimes of madness and their machines (Guattari and Negri, 1985: 132). A Nous composed and always “recomposed and [that] will multiply as a subversive and innovative presence” (Guattari and Negri, 1985: 132). A Nous, a war-machine, that “constitutes an outside to the state…characterized by an absolute exteriority…[and that is] purely conceptual: it is an image of thought, an idea without an object…a non-place, a space characterized by pluralities, multiplicities, difference, and becoming…an assault of the physical place”, the Eurocentric State (Newman, 2001: 108-109). A Nous whose invention becomes a ‘system’, not built upon abstract unifications, but rather new lines of alliances, new lines of co-operations and new ways of living (Guattari and Negri, 1985: 127). A Nous, a way of living, “that rejects binary divisions and hierarchies, does not privilege one thing over another, [You over I, I over You] and is not governed by a single unfolding [governing] logic [but rather innocent becoming(s)” (Newman, 2001: 105-106). Been through Times Square on a Saturday night? Did You disappear or were You re-born? Me? A polygamous both.
Chapter One: Kapital’s Wet Dream: Islams & Post-Anarchisms
No Hospitality
Has it become that easy for you to proclaim that you are just a Post-Anarchist? Has it become easy for me to admit that I am just a Muslim? What do you and I know about either? I admit. You proclaim otherwise. You deceive yourself, not me. Are you about to accuse me of fascism? Fascism begins when you insult an animal, including the animal in “man” (Derrida, 2005:181). I did not insult you. Then your accusation is for? For imposing labels on you? You picked the label of fascism in your mind and uttered it out loud, thinking that I have lost my hearing, not I. Who is the imposer of labels now? Tell me then and I shall listen, what and who is a Post-Anarchist? What and who is a Muslim? What “is”? If you are proposing that these signifiers are something to be taught and just “are”, think again. You are assuming they can be. Taught by whom, you and I? Defined by whom, You and I for everyone else? It now seems that you are interested in the same fascism I am? I tell you this. These signifiers do not signify theories, they are ways of living, ways of being in the world; attitudes (Perez, 1990: 67). “Sylvere Lotringer is an an(archist). The Italian ‘autonomists’ are an(archists). And the Rastafarians, with their own language (patios) and lifestyle, are also an(archsits). An(archy) takes as many forms as there are individuals” (Perez, 1990: 67). But and without being chauvinistic; in their own language and lifestyles they are all Muslims as well. Theatre and factory, your desire yearns for the solitary. Your desire traverses few lives. I? I desire a taste for the grandeur, a desire for addressing those whom have come before I, those who will come after I, or are already after I, a desire of promises interrupted, broken all of a sudden, and yet still indestructible. A desire where the subjectivities of a “we”, Nous”, the You, the “tu”, and the I, transgress the “is” and race instead, in haste, with, through, in and out of un-despairing fluxes. Un-despairing fluxes? Yes, un-despairing fluxes of becoming(s). My movements of speaking are speaking…
The only other thing is the opening attack on Eurocentric Capitalism
I do not welcome a stranger here. The stranger here becomes Eurocentric Capitalism. A Eurocentric Capitalism whom is understood and judged through Post-Anarchism as entailing a certain mode or “a ‘method’ of Capital...specific procedure[s] of valorization of commodities…goods, activities…services”, subjects and objects (Alliez, 1996: 233). Listen. A Eurocentric Capitalism whom is determined through Post-Anarchism and its inherited Classical Anarchism(s) as positing a generation “of a particular type of social relation; here, regulation[s], laws, usages and practices [that] come to the fore” (Alliez, 1996: 233). A Eurocentric Capitalism whom offends Post-Anarchism and its inherited Classical Anarchism(s) as it is constituted merely by “process[es] of production…material forces, human labor, social relations… investments of desire” (Alliez, 1996: 234).
Now and first, I work, I write, and consider Content, Expression and the Components of Expression, the cruelly arranged nervous system, if You will, belonging to it, Eurocentric Capitalism. Here, I will teach You of Islams’ Property, define for You caretaker(s). I will ‘speak’ of “the principle of social control of production” by caretakers. I tell You and discuss with You “[Useful] Profit-sharing as…[a] basis…[for] distributing equally the resources and output of production, [and that are] activated in” Islams through particular principles (Choudhury, 1997: 107). I will ‘speak’ and You will ‘hear’ that “[Useful] Profit-sharing is implicit in the Koran…[through an] instrument known as Mudarabah or Musharakah…the principal alternative to interest-bearing transactions” (Choudhury, 1997: 110). I will ‘speak’ of other principles attained through Islams, “the joint role of profit-sharing and equity participation under economic profit-cooperation/equity-sharing (Muddarabah/Musharakah), [the] abolition of interest (Riba), [the] institution of Wealth tax for specific targets of spending, and the abolition of economic waste in consumption and production (Israf)” (Choudhury, 1997: 108). I will ‘speak’ of how “the elimination [if not minimization] of Israf links…to the efficiency of Mudarabah, which then provides the impetus to eliminate Riba…itself…considered a form of Israf...[and] since Zakat, disbursement, is a positive function of absolute poverty…[there] will be an enhancing effect…to combat poverty and generate more distribution” in a community Choudhury, 1997: 111). All these violent reactions, all these ‘I speaks’, against your Eurocentric language like your Eurocentric Capitalism are not to merely commercially invite You into my world. Rather I write, I ‘speak’ to introduce to You that Islams, as an invention, as Post-Anarchism, notices the vampirish activity of Eurocentric Capitalism and offers an alternative. Islams spoke and continues to speak loud to hear only its own scream and which has met no answer nor anything that draws its force away from such a scream until it found you, Post-Anarchism and your inherited Classical Anarchism(s) (Deleuze & Guattari, 1975: 92). Listen and You will hear Islams are Anti-Capitalist.
I warn you of your limits. So I tell you that you will have just begun to comprehend what this chapter is pursing by the end. But in order to comprehend it, it will become necessary for you to pass through its nets, its ‘new’, at least to you, visible creations, concepts and languages. I will clear a path for you but first you will have done well to admit that you are in a foreign country, about to experience a foreign language and foreign concepts, which you cannot speak for yourself but that will be addressed to you into a language, your language, and that indeed you do speak (Deleuze & Guattari, 1975: 94).
Content, Expression and Components of Expression
For this section it, Eurocentric Capitalism, becomes a god. How do I ‘speak’ of the Content, the being, of such a god? I ‘speak’ of such a god as a being whose essence is parasitic never symbiotic. A god whose expression and whose signification with such an expression are announced as Rhizomatic Ecumenical Capitalism. How do we speak of this signification, this Expression, Rhizomatic Ecumenical Capitalism? And how do we speak of the Expressive Components of this god? The god, this Rhizomatic Ecumenical Capitalism, offers hospitality to Components, Capitalist Machines, and which are spoken of here through the two ‘head types’ it possesses. I ‘speak’ of two head types, their respective apparatuses of capture and processes, decoding and de-territorialization. I would have longed a collapse of distinction between them, head types, decoding and deterritorialization, seeing them as always referring to the other-seeing a transformation in one area as always having implications in others (Newman, 2001: 98). But I choose and I ‘speak’ then of these head types, apparatuses of capture and processes, that return upon each other, double for each other, only to unfold and explain for You, to You, Eurocentric Capitalisms’ depth.
First, a head, a machine, desiring Wealth and which offers hospitality to or is comprised of Four Apparatuses of Capture: Ground Rent, Surplus Profit, Inheritance & Taxes, all premised upon Eurocentric conceptions rises. This first ‘head’ named Wealth belonging to this god is “no longer…determined as money dealing, merchant’s or landed wealth, but must become pure homogeneous and independent capital”; a free flow of capital (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 452). So I now speak here and in depth of this head, of god’s first head, Wealth. Wealth through Eurocentric Capitalism becomes “a right, or, to be more precise, a relation of production that is manifested as a right, and as such it is independent of the concrete form that it cloaks at each moment of its productive function” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 453). Wealth becomes a private appropriation of the public (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 451). And this Wealth becomes hospitable to? Private Property. Private Property that expresses the independence of a Master or Owner, or a group of Masters or Owners (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 453). A Master or Owner here is “not the one who achieves [the] recognition of the slave, but the one who dismisses the project of recognition altogether, in order to create something new…what characterizes the slave [here], then, is not the failure to obtain recognition, but the attempt to elicit it” (May, 1994: 134). Rather than the expression of a bond of personal dependences, Public Property, there is sole bond, Private Property (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 453). I tell You, Private Property through Eurocentric Capitalism is in itself a right, an active right and presupposes Public Property (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 427-453).
The second head, another head, a machine, takes place, desiring and lusting before Involuntary Relations again premised upon a Eurocentric conception of Labor. Then I say to You, these two heads, these two machines, belonging to this one god, to this Rhizomatic Ecumenical Capitalism, are not to presume and dismiss that there are not other discovered or undiscovered heads to which this god of a capitalist machine(s) offers hospitality to. “It is their abstract conjunction [that of the two heads chosen here that] in a single stroke constitutes [Eurocentric] Capitalism, providing a universal subject and an object in general for one another” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 453). And what becomes of the second ‘head’? The second ‘head’ named Involuntary Relations, connotes associations between ‘owners’ and ‘owned’ guided though “the flow[s] of labor…no longer…determined as slavery or serfdom but...naked and free labor” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 452). Here I will ‘break’ abruptly and temporarily from un-deciphering Involuntary Relations only to return to it further and later in And the Store at the level of the Maids and the Employees. Instead I turn to the question below.
Is it useless to ask in what sense is Rhizomatic Ecumenical Capitalism’s depth decipherable-undecipherable? What is being explained here through this question? What is being explained is a pondering as to what are the conditions both of possibility and impossibility for Eurocentric Capitalism to hide at depth, always through its collectivities, its components of expression, its two head types, even when it seems or appears upon the surface to be emitted as a solitary singularity? And so…
It is Essential here that You and I should not banish from mind the idea of god’s guilt
In the depth, these heads, these collectivities, are rhizomatic like the rhizomatic ‘us’ I spoke of formerly in the Introduction. A rhizomatic ‘us’, a model that defies the very idea of a model as it is an endless, haphazard multiplicity of connections not dominated by a single site, center or place, but that is rather decentralized and plural, inter-being, intermezzo (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 25). Its plurality, that belonging to the rhizomatic ‘us’, permits it to move “between things…going from one thing [subject and/or object] to the other and back again…a transversal movement that sweeps one and the other way, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 25). Its fabric is then that of “conjunction, ‘and…and…and’” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 25). The middle from which it operates is by no means an average of all of god’s heads but rather quite the contrary it is where things pick up speed and its effects become intensified (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 25). After all how can there be an average, if there are undiscovered heads to this god that are not accounted for here? I ‘speak’ then of two heads whom at depth are engaging in what is referred to as decoding and de-territorialization. I ‘speak’ of ‘two heads’ belonging to a god, Eurocentric Capitalism; an apparatus of capture through these two processes of decoding and de-territorialization. Now I explain for you decoding and de-territorializaiton and remember, I tell You, remember, that I longed for their collapse.
Decoding, is linked to axiomization. Axiomization, a process of strategic value to Eurocentric Capitalism, whose streams of quantified factors of production, raw materials, skills and knowledge are conjoined with desires to extract a differential surplus from any subject and any object (Holland, 1996: 241). Decoding is always a positive movement, supporting and yet given birth to by axiomization. Decoding, a transformation of all that is meaningful to You and I, including the You and I, subjects, and the ‘this’ and ‘that’, objects, into a calculable quantity (Holland, 1996: 241). Decoding signifies the means and impetus for an act of de-territorialization. De-territorialization of what and whom, as You beg for a response? De-territorialization of every social You and I, ‘he’ and ‘she’, ‘this’ and ‘that’ and ‘that’ and ‘that’ and ‘them’ and ‘them’; every subject and every object. Yes You? Why? Remember ‘it’, Eurocentric Capitalism, of which I ‘speak’ of, is a parasite. A parasite that desires the disconnection, unplugging, and the reconnection, plugging, of the You and I, the ‘this’ and ‘that’ into either of its two heads. I tell You though that there is a differential difference between de-territoriralization and decoding that ought to be noted. De-territorialization functions or acts upon the physical. I ‘speak’ of physical bodies acted upon, without the permission or consent of either the subject or object, and which de-territorialization demands material investments and energy from, through acts of production or consumption (Holland, 1996: 242). Decoding, functions upon that which carries symbolic representations and again without permission or consent, demands investments, energy, of the mental type as in cognition and fantasy (Holland, 1996: 242). Decoding I say then is an ushering in of a symbolic order. A symbolic order always operating on all that is quantitative and whose objects are insignificant or strictly meaningless within the cash nexus of the market. I explain further through an offering of an example. Do you think it matters? What matters? Nothing! Precisely! It matters not, of whatever gender workers are. To this decoding process, machine, all that is solid is melted into air and what becomes of importance is that subjects, labor, and/or objects, land, are equated to calculable amounts, in the example, of surplus labor-power or surplus land-power. It, decoding, functions between, through, within and without the You and I, ‘this’ and ‘that’, and converts all social relations to desiring machines that become subject to subsumption under markets and exchange values (Holland, 1996: 244). I ‘speak’, through Post-Anarchism and its inherited Classical Anarchism(s), then of markets and exchange values that mobilize desire, by “freeing it from capture by any stable, all-embracing code-only to recapture it, it must be said, via the recoding of advertising, for example, which re-territorializes it onto the objects of the latest administered consumer fad” (Holland, 1996: 244). I ‘speak’, through Post-Anarchism and its inherited Classical Anarchism(s), then of markets that seek to de-territorialize and decode everything organically pre-programmed into re-programmed “objects [and subjects] of investment such as the [, Your,] mother’s breast…so that investments can be made elsewhere” (Holland, 1996: 242). You and I, ‘her’ and ‘his’, ‘this’ and ‘that’, like your mother’s breasts and breast milk, become subjects and objects of economic value and the productivity of these underlying subjects and objects constitute an essence to both Wealth and Involuntary Relations, god’s two heads.
I am becoming vulgar and so I now insist then and remind you that god has two heads offering hospitality to decoding and de-territorializing, two heads that are neither exiled from nor radiating from one another but are rather, more clearly, rhizomatic heads, delocalized, decentralized but connected, in ‘affinity’, in ‘solidarity but without solidity’, for lack of a better word, in ‘Fluidarity’ (Guattari, 1989: 15). I ‘speak’ and tell You, through Post-Anarchism and its inherited Classical Anarchism(s), that these two heads seldom functioning separately, each exhibiting the possibility of being identified and thereby associated with certain differential mode(s) of domination. I ‘speak’ again, again and again, and tell You, here and now of the associations amidst, through, within, without and which these two heads and their respective ‘techniques’ of domination and their associated powers operate. More particularly I tell You of the types of forces they utilize, oppressive, yes, but, and, that give birth to, resistance.
Types of forces then and here that are not premised upon master - slave dialectical oppositions, a top-down model of power, or a bottom-up model of power as Classical Anarchism(s) had thought and spoke, and which now Post-Anarchism only now admits was invalid on behalf of its former self: They, Classical Anarchism(s), were mislead and hence without humiliation Post-Anarchism corrects such a former self. Rather I ‘speak’ of forces whose essence now becomes in that they are rhizomatic, ever present anywhere and everywhere and represent power. These types of forces, oppression and resistance, here bear together instead a conscious desire to pledge allegiance to one another, the unconscious desire to co-exist together. These types of forces are un-premised upon dialectical oppositions, as I wrote earlier, and cannot exist without one another, with one dominating and the other resisting instantaneously and always. I ‘speak’ then and tell You that these types of forces, powers, interplay alongside with, against, for and through one another and cause the oppression or occupation and liberation of their host, You and I, subject, or ‘this’ and ‘that’, object, for they are born together (May, 1994: 70). Again, I re-iterate. I pronounce these force types to be simultaneously varying in their degrees, intensities and without a threshold, a strategic messianic revolutionary point, to attain; they are endless. Rather they, these forces types, are contractually bound together and obligated upon their birth and their founding to becoming a creative liberator and a destructive oppressor at once within all the social relationships and associations they exhibit (May 1994: 70). Power is everywhere and its other half, resistance, anywhere. Now I tell You of Islams’ Property.
A Reprisal
Islams interpret, instead of Eurocentric Capitalism, that “everything [subject and object] ultimately belongs to God…Human beings are simply caretakers, or vicegerents, for God’s property [subject and object]” (Esposito, 2002: 165). You and every other subject are caretakers of ‘yourselves’, You and every other subject are caretakers of one another and You are all equally caretakers of all of God’s objects. But for the sake of simplicity in this chapter I discuss here Property to objects, respectively discussing God’s objects themselves and the association between caretakers of God’s objects. As for the association between caretakers of God’s subjects and God’s subjects themselves I discuss them solely in their relevance to Involuntary Labor. But I shall address these caretakers and their association with one another more abstractly in the third and final chapter titled Nous.
A Koranic verse emerges to respectively iterate and remind us, You and I, that everything object ultimately belongs to God: “O believers, expend of the good things you have earned, and of what We have produced for you from the earth; and intend not the corruption of it for your expending, for you would never take it yourselves…Those who expend…night and day, secretly and in public, their wage awaits them with their Lord, and no fear shall be on them; neither shall they sorrow” (Surat II, Verse: 269). God creates God’s Property, the object, and all objects of which are of this world, with abundance and with an intention that such Property, such objects, become shared in equity (Esposito, 1980: 37). Property signifies abstractly through Islams, unlike through Eurocentric Capitalism, bonds that are communal, Public, rather than personal, Private. I tell You this, You and I through Islams, have claims to at least that which suffices in creating a decent ‘quality of life’ rather than just a ‘standard of living’ (Esposito, 1980: 37).
Attente! Idealism however has no place here. Differences in Mal, money, rise to the surface amongst caretakers and whose essence is composed differently than what is Eurocentrically referred to, as I defined earlier and above, as that which is constituent of Wealth. Differences in Mal arise in Islam(s) through “differences in human…[, individualized desires,] for work and not…[through] individual claims on natural resources”, as Property, object, is Public and if You recall belongs solely to God (Esposito, 1980, 32). Differences in Mal evolve, evolved and shall always remain evolving (Esposito, 1980: 32). You enquire why? I respond why not? Do you anticipate desires belonging to subjects, conscious and unconscious, to ‘be’ centered, fixed, in ‘states’ of stagnation or have they, are they and will they not always occupy varying intensities and ‘states’ of flux? I affirm and demand that you tell me of a desire centralized. There are none. Thus we say together: desires are infinitely in flux and endlessly becoming. Endlessly becoming something ‘other’ than what they were and what they supposedly are. I ‘speak’ of desire(s) pertaining to one matter over another matter or even desire(s) that are in varying degrees of intensity to the same matter. The consequence remains the same: Desires are always changing; Desires always becoming. I illustrate then through an example: I may till a land hard one day upon sunrise and till sunset, only to wake during dawn the following day to find myself bathing till sunset, all day. One day I work, the following day I ‘play’ and though ‘play’ could be regarded as a form of ‘work’ by some it gives not a living sustenance. Respectively Islams desire and adopt overriding tactics paralleling such desires and that actively denounce disparaging differences of Mal aroused through these fluctuating desires. I ‘speak’ then of desires belonging to fluctuating individualized and communal subjectivities that give birth and are given birth to through communities. I ‘speak’ then, through Islams, of desires centered upon economic and social cooperation or associations, giving birth to the communal. But I ‘speak’ simultaneously then, through Islams, of individualized desires that despite the communal, are recognized, adorned and relished in their very essence as they connote possibilities of what is multiple and plural in the individualized singular itself. I ‘speak’ then of recognitions, adorations and a relishing of practical practices through de-centralized decision-making processes and which, as I intend to ‘speak’ later, are premised upon consultation, Shura. Shura, never derived from secondary sources of literature but a fact emanating from the fundamental source of knowledge, namely the Koran (Choudhury, 1997: 107).
I tell You for I warned You of your limits, that Public Objects, through Islams, belonging to God’s Property become a collective and communal right and access to such fruits of such objects are to be divided ‘equally’ (Esposito, 1980: 32). I ‘speak’ then, complement myself and say that “the public sphere [here and through Islam(s)]…characterizes the objective nature of Property” as opposed to a private appropriation of Property (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 451). Again this god, a Eurocentric Capitalist of a god, is a god whose regards, interests and desires belong to a Master’s, a capitalist’s intentions. Intentions that are in a continual quest and thirst for the maximization, hence quantification, of surplus objects and subjects, and which will be discussed in more detail further on in the subsections Rejoice and And the Store at the level of the Maids and the Employees (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 17). But for now I tell You that, Islams and I ‘speak’ then of these intentions as having been given birth to through ideas bred out of “selfishness, cruel individualism, and greed…[and always] bound to create an environment of loneliness and isolation” (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 17). I ‘speak’ of a god, Eurocentric Capitalism without regard for the homogenous, for the collective and the communal, unlike Islam(s).
To become done with the Judgments of gods: A kind of deliverance
I announce again for perhaps I have school sickness like others have seasickness, but after all this is the hegemony of my economy of a paper: Eurocentric Capitalism, always “a decentralized system that provides individuals with…[an] atmosphere of severe competitiveness [through private appropriations, unlike Islams, and which [is]…bound to lead to deep tension[s] and depression[s]…[bound to lead to acts of] criminality, corruption on a large scale and a [birth of a] deep fear of insecurity since there can be no limit” of an individual’s discard of the communal (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 17). I ‘speak’ then and say that “it frequently happens- as much in Arab, Slavic, Latin American as in Anglo-Saxon countries- that this experimentation with new forms of organization [that signify resistance(s) to Eurocentric Capitalism] develops from within a religious imaginary…[and] one [, You,] must distinguish between religious motivations which attach to an act of liberation and those which are re-territorialized, around theological alienation[s]” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 116). There lies then an alternative to a god, this Eurocentric Capitalist of a god, which surfaces and resists at least theoretically and throughout a rhizomatic history of pasts, presents and futures, practically, and is revived in this interpretation here through Islam(s).
I seek here, through Islams, then to territorialize what Eurocentric Capitalism has de-territorialized and continues to de-territorialize and recode what Eurocentric Capitalism has and continues to decode. However and I am compelled to address first that to this god, a Eurocentric Capitalist god, lays another dialectically opposed god, Eurocentric Socialism. I ‘speak’ then and iterate what has been already said: “[Eurocentric] Capitalism and [Eurocentric] Socialisms [represent two extremes and they] have only succeeded in…[subjugating] work to a social mechanism which is logo-centric or paranoid, authoritarian [through their differential means and in their own ways]…and destructive” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 14). Islams and I ‘speak’ then of an unbridled Eurocentric Socialism whose conceptions of the communal has no limit in its disregard for the individual and that respectively signifies a forbiddance of desires. A forbiddance born through the complete impossibility of becoming a ‘borrower or caretaker’ of any kind, ushering instead centralizing and regulating mechanisms and machines where infinite desire(s) is/are controlled, kept in line and bound to nepotism (Abdul-Raud, 1978: 18-19). Islams and I ‘speak’ then of a nepotism that signifies a usurpation of an individual’s autonomy, agency, liberties of economic action(s), desensitizing any potential desires in the process to innovate, to create, to work all of which could be done in moderation and without depriving subjectivities of their dignity, through a deprivation of their multiple desires. Islams and I ‘speak’ then in defense of these necessary desires, that in fact and reality are not in need of defense and which are associated with ‘productions’ and ‘consumptions’, both of which could be left to flourish whilst yet preserving and without sacrificing a communal, as they give rise to the communal and the communal gives rise to them (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 18-19). Again I ‘speak’ it more clearly, through Islams, there lays neither the necessity for excesses, surplus of subjects and objects, as in Eurocentric Capitalism, nor the necessity for scarcities, rationing of subjects and objects, as in Eurocentric Socialism and which I have and will continue to illustrate (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 18-19). Islams admit and insist that “the most important lesson: the construction of healthy communities begins and ends with unique personalities, that the collective potential is realized only when a singular is free”, but again never at the expense of the communal, and without being oblivious, the opposite becomes required for it stands erect as well and no doubt is necessary (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 17). Returning once more, there lies the necessity to undermine further this despotic Eurocentric Socialism that forgets the singular, the unique, the always differential and the always ‘other’ in favor of the artificial homogeneous pack of ‘oneness’ in the communal. I ‘speak’ of a nepotistic god, Eurocentric Socialism, then whose purpose is to engage in the polar opposite view to Eurocentric Capitalism through its seeking to idealize and homogenize an un-homogenizable and always differential desire belonging to the particularity of individualized subjects within the communal. Eurocentric Socialism, a desire for a forced homogeneity in the proposed singularity of a community and with a disregard for everything subjective. Eurocentric Socialism fails save in a community comprised of ‘one’ subject. Eurocentric Socialism explains Eurocentric Capitalism, its lifestyle and “all [that lays in between, in terms of] commodities [consumed and produced, primarily through the] labor [power] necessary to produce” objects, discounting thus Eurocentric Capitalism’s first head (Esposito, 1980: 42). Eurocentric Capitalism however, though Eurocentric Socialism fails on this count, neglects not, abandons nor prioritizes less the first head, Wealth, over the second head, Involuntary Relations premised upon Eurocentric conceptions of labor. Eurocentric Capitalist Wealth and Involuntary Relations, dependents on supposedly rational relations between productive inputs, labor, subjects, capital and raw materials, objects, utilized under proclamations of such a rationality. This dependency and this proclamation ritualizes markets over-spilling with surplus subjects and objects, and whose characterization or attribute becomes complemented at times when interrogated by Anti-Capitalists, through an offering of an explanation or a justification. They, the capitalists say, ‘it is desires that appropriate the market value’ (Esposito, 1980: 42). Alternatively there comes Islams with an alternative and resistive offering to both Eurocentric Socialism and even more so to Eurocentric Capitalism. But to conceptualize what Islams offer in response to Eurocentric Socialism and Capitalism, there lies the necessity of creating new Non-Eurocentric concepts, ‘Islamicized’ concepts.
Through an Innocent Child Sentenced to death by drowning
I create ‘new’ concept(s), through Islams therein: A first, a caretaker, a mere temporary ‘beneficiary’, a ‘trustee’, a mere ‘borrower’. Such a caretaker once more as I iterated before is a ‘borrower’ and not the ‘absolute owner’; that position of the ‘absolute owner’ is left to God (Esposito, 1980: 36). I ‘speak’ here then and now, in depth, of a community of caretakers, a non-Eurocentric conception and that comprises but a portion of a new language, and a new way of relating, a new way of associating and a new way of living and which is created here. I ‘speak’ then of caretakers whom are symbolically and practically, in accordance with the interpretation I provide here, ‘bound’ by new forms of relations, amongst You and I, subjects, and with ‘this’ and ‘that’, objects. I then ‘speak’ here not of a detached prisoner, a proletariat, concepts and signifiers, Eurocentrically conceived and premised upon and in accordance with Eurocentric models. Eurocentric Capitalism and Eurocentric Socialism become something else here: something ‘other’. An ‘other’, that necessitates further commentary and hence in part further interpretation and clarification.
Recall, in Islams, all Property belongs to God. But this requires an in-depth discussion. A dual ownership or partnership emerges if You will: It, this dual ownership, is a hybrid, and though seemingly complex is quite simple. It becomes an ‘in between state’ that is comprised and takes shape or form between two parties. A party comprised either of an individual, an individualized caretaker, or a community, communal caretakers, and the second party, God, whose ownership precludes everything. In this ‘in between state’ a new non-Euro-centric meaning of Property emerges as a result of its, Property, Eurocentric definition now becoming de-centered. Property, through Islams and with this new conception, is absolutely owned by God and with it a new type of economic relationship: God-Caretaker(s). This relationship is unlike the egoistic decentralized Eurocentric Capitalist’s Property and unlike the centralized despotic Eurocentric Socialist Property. This relationship’s essence belongs to and is derived from the recognition of the plurality or multiplicity of individualized subjects and their respective individualized desires and yet the necessity for collective un-totalizing social associations and their respective communal desires. These ‘new associations’, this ‘new economy’, ensured through this interpretation of Islams proposes an alternative to Eurocentric Capitalism and Eurocentric Socialism in its becoming comprised or composed of “a large number of small [borrowed] ‘firms’ [through borrowed Property from God]” (Awan, 1983: 30). These creations, at least with respect to Eurocentric conceptions call to shore associations under ‘small borrowed firms’ that utterly “differ from a traditional [Eurocentric] sense of Ownership” (Awan, 1983: 30). “What becomes then of the difference(s) between these ‘small borrowed firms’ and “self-managed [Monopolistic and Oligopolistic] firms and cooperatives in [Eurocentrically] Capitalist and [Eurocentrically] Socialist economies [respectively]” (Awan, 1983: 31)?
Unlike Islams’ creation of ‘small borrowed firms’, “self-managed [Monopolistic and Oligopolistic] firms and cooperatives in [Eurocentrically] Capitalist or [Eurocentrically] Socialist economies remain financially dependent [up]on owners of capital or state bureaucracies” (Awan, 1983: 31). A resultant “undue influence on the decision-making process [through the ‘state’, through ‘capitalists’ or a hybrid of both] arises” (Awan, 1983: 31). Patience, as I shall speak of this Coercion in depth and of Islams’ addressing of it soon enough in the next chapter Pedagogical Juridical Orders: Decentralized & Anti-Authoritarian. Associations within these ‘small borrowed firms’ become related not to ‘Eurocentric ownership’, but a ‘dual ownership’, again where individuals and the communal are in continual processes or ‘states’ of temporary borrowing(s) of Property; Property that belongs and to be more precise Owned solely by God. I ‘speak’ of associations and bonds within these ‘small borrowed firms,’ through Islams, premised upon acts of participation, involvement, and more importantly characterized in their never excluding desire to becoming radically open to everyone occupying and occupied by the communal (Awan, 1983: 31). I ‘speak’ here of participatory acts of a Voluntary essence unlike Involuntary Relations, the second head, born out of the gods of Eurocentric Capitalism and Eurocentric Socialism. Thus I ‘speak’ of a radical openness, through Islam(s), whose presence is to the extent or is conditional upon that a/the individualized subject(s) desiring inclusion, through participatory acts within ‘small borrowed firms’, recognize(s) two matters: First, the importance and necessity of all that is communal, unlike Eurocentric Capitalism, through an appreciation of all associations with other caregivers; Secondly, that a/the individualized subject(s) recognize the participatory commitments through a becoming ‘borrower’, a caretaker, never absolute owner themselves and hence like all other and any other caretaker(s) are equal and never privileged over others. Ownership is correlated, through Islams solely with God. As for a caretaker, a caretaker belongs not to a master – slave, owner - owned or bourgeoisie – proletariat, hence Eurocentric Capitalist, Socialist and Classical Anarchist dialectics and axioms.
A Caretakers’ Face wears it emptiness openly
I ‘spoke’ and uttered formerly that idealism however has no place here. I ‘spoke’ and uttered that Islam(s) embraces the collective potential, but that such a realization is born when the singular is free. I ‘spoke’ of Eurocentric Socialisms’ desires for absolute homogeneity and Eurocentric Capitalisms’ desires for absolute heterogeneity. I ‘spoke’ of something else, Fluidarity, ‘solidarity without solidity’. Now I speak further of the individualized caretaker, the singular, not communal caretakers, not the plural and multiple.
I learned yesterday. I learned today. One must find a major field of action for human inertia. So I said, a subject may seek to become through radical openness a borrowing partner, a communal caretaker, never absolute owner of Property through ‘small borrowed firms’, thus engaging in being involved communally. All this is very well, but there is always a subject whom desires to create something a new, which others belonging to the communal are not necessarily inclined or interested in. Or have desires stopped turning and have we all chosen to live the same way? Such a subject then may become an individualized caretaker, a ‘small borrowed firm’ themselves, albeit whose essence becomes of a different character again than that belonging to capitalist entrepreneurs.
After all “in order to have shit that is, meat, where there was only blood and a junkyard of bones…[‘man’] learned himself [or/and herself] to act like an animal and to eat rat daintily” (Artaud, 1976: 560-561). Again I really feel that you are trying to break up the atmosphere around what I am clearing the way for, respectively I am allowing myself room to advance here, to provide room for a seemingly impossible space as I germinate virtually and so I often repeat: Such essence alternates upon degrees of difference neither premised on Eurocentricity or the rise of Neo-mercantilism (Choudhury, 1997: 144).
So You strike me and enquire as to what becomes then and respectively of Islams and their supposed individualized caretaker? I inexhaustibly strike back with a blow and I tell you this: “communal caretakers” are preferred (Esposito, 1980: 42). But I ‘speak’ and iterate that Islams seeks that the singular also be free, that desires become affirmed rather than negated and dismissed, that desires be left to flourish only up until they override the rights of the communal. An individualized caretaker is bound solely by a personal borrowing, I tell You, of specific types of property as the remaining necessities, the remaining properties must be strictly communal properties for they are for the larger community’s interests (Ahmad, 1991: 34). This is not an illusion for I to think of this here, trying to fix arbitrary states of things in order to think, in order to ‘speak’ but I am creating spaces for life, spaces which do not exist and which do not seem to belong to your place of thinking now. Look here, I not only imagine, I know that if an individualized caretaker is using or going to use certain resources over which they may claim ‘priority’, they are required to “give it up to another member of society [if it is unused] and should not claim ultimate [absolute] ownership over the…[Mal] produced by that resource” (Esposito, 1980: 31). I tell You this and that is that a caretaker, whose use of a Property “in a manner which damages…[communal] others is disallowed” (Ahmad, 1991: 33). An individualized caretaker is not a creator, but whose position is necessary to rightly maintain the conditions for the creativity belonging to the individualized caretaker’s autonomy and desires. Instead of seeing this caretaker as a capitalist, You need to understanding the desires belonging to the former are ignited and subtly controlled by Islams. You need to rightly comprehend that extra Mal beyond the caretaker’s equal share and “which is due to productivity of those natural resources that are used” and which does not belong to the individualized caretaker to begin with, are all to be given up, detached and uprooted from a caretakers’ lust for such Mal (Esposito, 1980: 31). I tell You this and that is an individualized caretaker and communal caretaker for that matter is/are never required to be rooted and fixated in materialism. That is faith and this is the Islams I speak of here. “If a segment of society is without [a reasonable quality of life which includes] shelter, clothing, food, and adequate economic opportunity, then societal needs [the communal]…take[s] priority over” these ‘small borrowed firm’ inhabited by an individualized caretaker’s desires. It is time for You to think in reverse and to suddenly revile your thoughts.
Almost all the witnesses had a different opinion
So I am continuing to think without the slightest breaking off and I tell You that ‘Small borrowed firms’ under a caretaker or caretakers could be conceived of as undergoing dual ownership exhibiting states of becoming as they are always repeating. Repeating though always with some of its fragments always repeating with a difference, different caretakers, hence taking pleasure in forms of communal circulatory resistance against entrepreneurial authority, authority in the commercial abstract sense. As for absolute authority it belongs, through Islams, to God and can be resisted but I recommend that it not be contested. I ‘speak’ then of dual ownerships that, through Islams, “guarantee equal [indiscriminate] division of initial…[Mal and Public Property] among all members” of a community (Awan, 1983: 32). A community that Islams signifies with and through a new signifier and a new conceptual creation ‘outside’ your Eurocentric vocabulary; a community referred to as an Ummah.
Islams and I preside and ‘speak’ then of ‘small borrowed firms’ occupying and occupied with an Ummah, constituted by continual temporal ‘states’ of abductions and transformations in which the individualized caretaker and/or communal caretakers are always becoming. Communal Caretakers transmit an essence: Shirakah, partnership in everything, particularly that which subscribes to the economic, and whom “decide freely [Ikhtiy’ar]…[to participate or not] without outside influence…[unlike those un-consented to and influential visitations by] capitalist suppliers [in Eurocentric Capitalist Economies and similarly] planning authorities [in Eurocentric Socialist Economies]” (Awan, 1983: 32). This participation that Islam(s) ‘speaks’ of is guided upon the ‘basis of equality’ and a collective obligation, Fardh, towards a shared communal responsibility through what is referred to as Tawheed. Tawheed, is anything but a limit, for it is a private recognition and a public declaration that “once the Sovereignty of God is recognized, the ‘authority’ for [a small borrowed firms’] establishment is vested in the whole Ummah (Community) and is to be exercised in the light of the Koran through the ‘democratic’ process of [partial or full] consultation with[in] the Ummah” (Awan, 1983: 32). A Koranic verse illustrates further: “And they conduct their affairs by mutual consultation”, again and again Shura (Surat 42, Verse 38).
But what becomes of Islams position with respect to individualized or communal caretaker(s) whom may attempt to accumulate Mal or appropriate Public Property? The individualized caretaker and communal caretakers is/are always overridden as to their desire to such a claim to natural resources through the principle of absolute ownership; the principle of Tawheed and which is limited to God (Esposito, 1980: 41). Such a caretaker’s, individualized or communal, economic power is always symbolically contained, kept in check through Tawheed, and which was always accounted for here but is being addressed more specifically now. Furthermore economic power is practically contained as I intend to address shortly through Zakat and Haqq.
Tawheed, again is a coin with two faces: one implying that God is the creator, and the other that individuals are equal partners or that each individual is brother and sister to another (Esposito, 1980: 31). Pertaining to Mal and Public Property, this Tawheed’s implication is that the Ummah becomes built upon equality and cooperation, as divinity belongs solely to God (Esposito, 1978: 31). “Natural resources [objects] in the universe, such as land, capital, general circumstances such as shortages for reasons of war or disasters as well as laws of nature, all these ‘belong’ to the whole of society, and all its members have equal shares and rights of access to them” (Esposito, 1978: 31). No individualized or collective caretaker has the right of claiming a bigger share (Esposito, 1980: 31). This is the dialogue in Islams’ thoughts.
Again I aspire to think in reverse and so I ask: And who ‘supplies’ the initial capital for these ‘small borrowed firms’, individualized or communal? “The answer to this is fairly obvious if one understands” Islams, as “the availability of [communal] capital at zero interest rate [since interest is forbidden in Islams]…guarantees that an individual or community would be better off by providing ‘their’ monetary assets for investment, rather than keeping them in the…banks and paying costs on these assets” (Awan, 1983: 32). Furthermore and now that You are beginning to contend, You ask, why would the communal be inclined to do this? I answer absurdly: To prevent a Monopoly and an Oligopoly. There is/are no monopolies and oligopolies permitted, at least theoretically, in Islams as the growth of these ‘small borrowed firms’ cannot lead to a monopolistic control of caretaker(s) (Choudhury, 1997: 108). I will amuse you further and tell you that if Property is temporally used and if its availability is through God first and whose priority belongs to the communal, then “no artificial obstacles prevent new [small borrowed] firms from entering or existing [small borrowed] firms from leaving” (Awan, 1983: 33). You desire a further form of resistance to Eurocentric Capitalism’s Monopolies and Oligopoies?
Mudarabah/Musharakah an external financial structure, completely devoid of Interest; joint ventures, if You will. It calls forth for an extension and the creation of new caretakers and further commence, or at the very least provide the potential for such commencing of ‘new borrowed small firms’, raising them to the surface as independent offshoots of existing ‘small borrowed firms’ (Choudhury, 1997: 110).
There are obviously two positive effects of such an impetus, Mudarabah/Musharakah. The first pertains to a greater number of ‘small borrowed firms’, more diversified ‘small borrowed firms’, and subsequently greater effective complementary inter-linkages appearing and hence more adequate resource allocation amongst these ‘small borrowed firms’ occupying and occupied by an Ummah; a minimization of Israf (Choudhury, 1997: 110). I shall return to posit the second effect further down for I wish to address the first more adequately, more justly.
When I ‘speak’ here then of Mudarabah/Musharakah’s more adequate resource allocation, I find myself yet again critiquing Eurocentric Capitalism in particular and Socialism as You and I begin to witness an alternative to them. An alternative, as a gift to You, and that minimizes waste in production, consumption and commodity exchange value, Israf. Let me ‘speak’.
“According to intrinsic value embedded in market exchangeables, neither labor nor capital can solely capitalize on…[an intrinsic] value for the their own prices” at least in accordance with Eurocentric Capitalist and Socialist principles and analysis (Choudhury, 1997: 66). Clarifying further I tell You that according to their principles and analysis, “the price of a factor cannot include this [intrinsic] value in its asking price for the sole worth of labor or capital” (Choudhury, 1997: 66). “There is neither exchange value nor use value but rather an evaluation…[and] an calculation of risk…an anticipation-evaluation that takes into account the ritual character as well as well as the utilitarian, the serial character as well as the exchangist” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 439). Respectively both the pricing of Eurocentric Capitalism and Socialism “taken up in terms of use-value or exchange value, become excess prices [Surplus Profits] of such factors” (Choudhury, 1997: 66). Suddenly You and I are confronted with that, through this analysis, there is an alternative that remains and appears. An alternative, appearing through Islam(s), whose “intrinsic value of exchangeables in an ethicized market is revealed through the pricing process by making consumers and suppliers cooperate with each other to sacrifice some of the consumer and supplier surpluses, [and whose]…process becomes increasingly diversified in every round of interaction-integration-evolution” (Choudhury, 1997: 67). In this sacrificing of surplus, this stock piling, lies the key. Attente! “Exchange does not assume a preexistent stock…stockpiling begins only once exchange has lost its interest, its desirability for both parties [consumer and producer]” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1997: 440). Islams though desire that the exchange not loose interest in such commercial transactions, quite the contrary, so they speak out and express that their desire becomes that they advocate for cooperation between consumer and producer. More plainly, without You wondering, their desire is to minimize the gap of stockpiling, the surplus of object and subject; to prevent unnecessary depletion or destruction once a threshold, the threshold in which stock begins to pile, is reached (Deleuze & Guattari, 1997: 440). This is very significant. It is significant that You comprehend that this limit is the exchange limit, in which exchange is of interest to both parties, consumer and producer; whose “law is one of temporal succession because…[it, exchange limit] preserves itself [from Israf]…by switching territories [of what is produced and what is consumed in a joint collaboration by both parties] at the conclusion of each period (itinerancy, itineration)…this iteration will govern the apparent exchange” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1997: 440). Conversely as I have communicated to You, Eurocentric Capitalism desires such stockpiling to occur and whose law and concern is that of the simultaneous exploitation of different territories; or, when the exploitation is successive, the succession of operation periods bears on one and the same territory” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 440).
There is something left of Mudarabah/Musharakah. I counted two positive effects of such an impetus. Now I return and tell you of the second. The second positive effect of the impetus behind Mudarabah/Musharakah becomes four-pieced intertwined desires. A desire, that belongs to Ehsan, kindness and generosity to another subject, a member of the communal. A desire, that belongs to Huquq al-Ibadah, duties to another subject, a member of the communal. A desire, that belongs to Huquq al-Allah, duties to God (The absolute owner of Property which You and I have temporarily borrowed) through a fulfillment of God’s request of preserving Huquq al-Ibadah. Finally, a desire, that belongs to an active minimization of any risings of income disparities and differentials, Mal, amongst subjects occupied by and occupying the communal. This is part of the whole campaign of Mudarabah/Musharakah.
The accuser even pretended that it wasn’t the accused but someone else who had sung
I wanted to try, outside the stylistic limitations that are necessarily imposed by Eurocentrism, to describe for you, with an intense feeling of intellectual sympathy this world.
So I ‘spoke’ and uttered that differences in Mal, through Islams, are faced through “differences in human…[desire] for work and not…[through] individual claims on natural resources” and which evolve, evolved and shall remain evolving with desires (Esposito, 1980: 32). Desires and in particular those desires constituting work are in flux and respectively circulate into a translated reciprocated monetary value, following an initial division of wealth that was and is indiscriminate. I repeat but always with a difference.
To put an end, to indicate, to express what I wandered here to do I am left with this. I am about to ‘speak’ of Eurocentric Capitalist Wealth and Islams tactical resistances, practical re-territorializations and symbolic recodings, towards such Wealth. I now ‘speak’ of Wealth hospitable to four outsides, four types belonging to this apparatus of capture: Interest, Surplus Profits not Profit, Ground Rent, Inheritance and Taxation.
Rejoice
Interest, Riba, belonging to Wealth’s hospitality, becomes referred to through Islam(s) as Usury and Riba. It, Riba, is forbidden thrice, at least, throughout verses, Koranic. First verse: “And for their taking interest even though it as forbidden for them, and their wrongful appropriation of the other peoples’ property, We have prepared for those among them who reject faith a grievous punishment” (Surat Al-Nisa, Verse 161). Second verse: “O believers, take not doubled and redoubled interest, and fear God so that you may prosper…and obey God and the Prophet so that you may receive mercy” (Surat Al-Imran, Verse 130-132). Third verse: “Those who benefit from interest shall be raised like those who have been driven to madness by the touch of the Devil; this is because they say: ‘Trade is like interest’ while God has permitted trade and forbidden interest…If the debtor is in difficulty, let him [/her] respite until it is easier, but if you forego out of charity, it is better for you if you realize” (Surat Al-Baqarah, Verse 275-281).
Riba, and its “collection…was and is forbidden because it served [and serves] as a means of exploiting” all whom bare poverty (Esposito, 2002: 163). It, Riba, takes advantage of an individual’s weak economic position and is repugnant of the spirit of Islam(s) whose underlying philosophies are one of al-‘adl wa’l-ihasan, justice and benevolence (Ahmad, 1991: 36). Riba is an apparatus of capture. It, Riba, whose essence is anticipation-evaluation-calculation, offers “an unfair gain to the lender [of a loan, Qard-e-Hasanah], [and] whom receives money without working for it, and imposes an unfair burden on the borrower, who must repay the loan and a finance charge regardless of whether his [or her] money grows or he [or she] suffers a monetary loss” (Esposito, 2002: 166).
I ‘speak’ then of Riba, Interest, as that associated with conventional saving accounts, though not constrained to its association with such accounts, and upon which Eurocentric Capitalism is premised and continues to hoard. I ‘speak’ then of Riba whose fluctuations perpetuate monetary disequilibrium and a randomness causing the exchange value itself of money to neither reflect the properties of store of value in money or stable valuation of Property (Choudhury, 1998: 170). I ‘speak’ then of Riba resulting in “monetary aggregates [that] fail to satisfy the essential conditions of stability, exchange and convertibility of monetary numeraire” (Choudhury, 1998: 170). I beg You and so I ‘speak’ to You then of Riba whose hoarding is equated with praying to Wealth with the undoubted expectation of a predictive and predetermined return of that Wealth and moreover at no risk to a Capitalist (Esposito, 2002: 166). Riba, Interest, created, hegemonically determined and imposed by a Capitalist, a self-declared Master of Wealth, as the condition of economic ‘normalcy’ upon which the Slave and temporary recipient of but a portion of that Wealth, a loaned wealth, must subscribe. Riba, Interest, a Capitalist’s, a Master’s selfless motive, with no hospitality for a Slaves’ tears, sweat (Esposito, 1980: 32). Riba, always has been and always will be a form of guaranteed Wealth power and privilege for a Capitalist, a Master. Riba, Interest, a guaranteed like, though not identical or the same, to ‘Surplus Profit’, for it is never subject to loss (Esposito, 1980: 32). Riba, “the payment of something definite in return for something uncertain militates” and is differentially distanced from Islams and ‘Useful Profit/Mal,’ whose essence is Haq Al-Mal, the right to earn a living, is not Surplus Profit, but ‘Useful Profit/Mal’ whose earning is required to be lawful and carries with it due obligations that ought to be duly discharged to the community (Ahmad, 1991: 39).
Again and again I find that I am tormented repeating my original intentions and desires, as I point to You with the hope that You shall listen, with the sensibility that I may create for you a new impression of a work, of a world, that is disconnected from you yet attainable by you. I desire to nail you through the heart, in the place where I love you best. So I tell you that Wealth circulates with desires and Mal is always becoming something other than what it initially began as. I ‘speak’ then to address what becomes of additional Mal, Useful Profit/Mal. Useful Profit/Mal, that is accumulated individually and collectively over and above the initial communal Mal. Mal that was divided equally amongst a community and which is in accordance with the varying fluxes of desiring subjects that constitute the communal and thus varies. I iterate prior to ‘speaking’ of such Useful Profit/Mal: Desires as I iterated always are and occupy ‘states of flux and become subject to varying degrees of intensities, not just amongst varying individualized subjects, but amongst the individualized subject themselves. I ‘spoke’ before and said that one day I work, the following day I bathe all day.
‘Useful Profit/Mal’, never constitutes the whole, Wealth, generated by individualized and/or communal caretakers “through work that should be just, but it need not be strictly [though Islams always strives for them to be] egalitarian…skill[s]…responsibilities…[and desires] of work, the share of the residual” always have and always will be different (Awan, 1983: 31). Surplus profit is an apparatus of capture. Surplus profit accrues exploitation of a subject or/and an object and premised on comparisons of the ‘two equal’ subjects, ‘two equal’ objects and their appropriation for the sole monopoly or oligopoly of an owner or owners respectively (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 441). Surplus Profit is excessively constitutive of, over and above‘ Useful Profit/Mal’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 446). It, ‘Useful Profit/Mal’, unlike Riba “is uncertain and [respectively its] actual quantum, positive or negative” is not predetermined and yet limited within “reasonable bounds in the ‘interest’ of an equitable distribution of income and wealth” (Ahmad, 1991: 39). ‘Useful Profit/Mal’, through Islams always has been and always will be a never guaranteed Wealth taking the form of Surplus Profit or Riba due to radical openness, a reciprocated privilege for all caretakers, individualized and/or communal, as well as the forbiddance of Riba/Interest respectively through Islams. I explain further, Wealth is never guaranteed with ‘Useful Profit/Mal’, but rather guaranteed with Riba/Interest and Surplus Profit. “The principle of social control of production” by caretakers, individualized and communal, “profit-sharing act as the basis of distributing equally the resources and output of production and are activated in” Islam(s) through these principles and obligations (Choudhury, 1997: 107).
From discussing Riba/Interest and Surplus Profit to a repeated though appreciated difference, when discussing Ground Rent and Inheritance. To discuss Ground Rent and Inheritance, there is a becoming of importance to re-iterate, albeit briefly in a single sentence, Property further underneath dual ownership.
An Exodus without Enunciations
Property always un-appropriated through Islam(s) and belongs to neither the ‘I’ nor the ‘us’. The ‘I’ and the ‘us’ are borrowers. “Ground rent, in its abstract model, appears precisely when a comparison is drawn between different simultaneously exploited territories, or between successive exploitations of the same territory” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 440). “The earth…the lands has two potentialities of deterritorialization: (1) its differences in quality are comparable to one another, from the standpoint of a quantity establishing a correspondence between them and exploitable pieces of land; (2) the set of exploited lands is appropriable, as opposed to exterior unclaimed land, from the standpoint of a monopoly that fixes the landowner or –owners” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 441). The second postulate here is the necessary condition for the first. “The worst land (or the poorest exploitation) bears no rent, but it makes it so that the other soils do bear rent, ‘produce’ it in a comparative way” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 441).
Islams say then “to receive rent on [God’s property as] virgin land or resources is prohibited” (Esposito, 1980: 34). No individualized caretaker or communal caretakers within Islams may lay claim(s) to virgin resources if they do not put them to use for the community (Esposito, 1978: 36). Put them to use for the whole community I said. Contrarily, “ground [absolute] rent homogenizes, equalizes different conditions of productivity by linking the excess of the highest conditions of productivity over the lowest to a landowner [not a caretaker]” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 441). However, “if [through Islams and baring in mind that] the… [caretaker(s), are never absolute owners but rather borrowers] of such a property, [that it happens that] God’s property, has ‘improved’ the land or resources, through labor or other resources, ‘rent’ [never ‘absolute’, never ground rent] can be levied [only] in proportion with such ‘improvements’”; not in proportion and through association-comparison apparatuses of capture to other territories (Esposito, 1989: 34). Furthermore it, ‘rent’ is subject to a conditional ‘if’ and a conditional ‘can’ as opposed to a ‘must’. Hence there is never absolute ground rent through Islams, rather ‘a possible rent’, as opposed to ‘a must and absolute ground rent’ through Eurocentric Capitalisms. Respectively and even in such a case of a caretaker’s desire to touch, to request ‘rent’, never absolute ground rent, a caretaker receives two conditionals: an ‘if’ and a ‘can’ to which obligations arise, as the caretaker owns not property. A/The caretaker(s) is/are bound and obligated by Islams whom interpret that “many individual ‘needs’ and…any excess…[were and are] not permissible” (Esposito, 1980: 37). A/The caretaker(s) is/are bound and obligated as I asserted formerly in the use of such Property through the requirement that such Property be borrowed for the benefit of the communal. A/The caretaker(s) whose desires remain always on par with the desires of the communal, never above them. Islams explode everything because their body can’t be touched, as it remains dedicated and appreciative of the singular and the communal.
Class Struggle already permeates the family
And what becomes of the third subcategory, Inheritance, an apparatus of capture of the head, Wealth? “Islamic inheritance laws are aimed at achieving a wide distribution of wealth amongst the close relatives of the deceased; at the same time the laws are geared to avoid hoarding and individualistic discrimination and squabbling within the family unit” (Esposito, 1978: 35). No, this is not something bizarre. Its, Inheritance laws, essence desires an emission, a de-centering of the deceased individual, displacing them, for the fabric of a community is placed “ahead [and above] of the emotional whims of the deceased” (Esposito, 1978: 35). Again I iterate, its principle, its essence is something, a thing I say, that centers upon the principle of distribution. I speak of a principle that is concerned with a “dispersal of wealth from one to many, rather than its channeling from many to one” as Eurocentric Capitalism (Esposito, 1978: 35). Koranic verse: “Those who devour the property of orphans unjustly, devour fire in their bellies, and shall assuredly roast in a Blaze” (Koran, Surat IV: Verse 11).
I sacrificed my nights to your business
Now I ‘speak’ of the last apparatus of capture, Taxation, and of an injunction, Zakat through Haqq, a new concept, a new idea, a new thought, that is both symbolic and practical, an act of resistance through Islams towards an enemy Eurocentric Capitalism. It is an act for You here and that ‘works’ against any further potential hoarding desires seeking to worship Wealth: Zakat through Haqq. Zakat, the third pillar in Islam, and there are five (Esposito, 1990: 26). Zakat, a “divinely revealed requirement for those who wish to believe [in] eternal salvation (Esposito, 1980: 26-27). I ‘speak’ of Zakat, an endogenous money multiplier. Zakat, “the annual payment of alms [a principled tax] in income and savings, in trade commodities, in crops, and in certain other properties” is an obligation to the needy. I ‘speak’ of Zakat, an anti-thesis to Taxation.
“Taxation...creates money…and it corresponds with services and goods in the current of that [Economic] circulation…[in it] the state finds the means for foreign trade, insofar as it appropriates that trade…and which makes Monopolistic appropriation of outside exchange” possible (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 443). Zakat, is not merely a conventional source of ‘nourishment supposedly for the poor’, like that associated with governmental revenue and taxation (Esposito, 1980: 27). Zakat, is not used for the appropriation of an outside exchange as a means for foreign trade nor could and should it be a source for Monopolizaiton. It, Zakat, is not to be collected by the state, unlike Taxation. I ‘speak’ of Zakat, an obligation to the community as a whole, to be made specifically and directly to those in more need of it, never paid to an impersonalized government nor to it a revenue-collecting agency (Esposito, 1980: 27). It, Zakat, and I know well, is a resistance to Eurocentric Capitalism’s without the envisaging of poverty as an act of normalcy in and through economic associations and its distortion as some sort of free generosity of some towards others in the hope that wealth of the rich and the destitution of the poor may somehow miraculously find a point of balance (Ramadan, 2004: 178). I ‘speak’ of Zakat, a disassociation of a ‘being’ from its ‘Wealth’ hoarding self, a full and ethical conception of human relations (Ramadan, 2004: 178). I ‘speak’ of Zakat, for “those in whose ‘Wealth’ is a right known for the beggar and the outcast” (Esposito, 1980: 27). I ‘speak’ of Zakat, given willingly, not to be paid begrudgingly, if the divine law [associated with it] is to be fulfilled” (Esposito, 1980: 27). Zakat, a means of reducing selfishness and expiation for past selfishness and a tomorrow filled with the incentive of having improved oneself, having conquered the Micro-fascist within even if but temporally, until the next time it is paid again and again (Esposito, 1980: 27). I ‘speak’ of Zakat, a guaranteed act of giving the poor and needy, the orphaned, the elderly and the like, at least, what is necessary for their qualities of life (Esposito, 1980: 27). A Koranic Verse: “The free will offerings are for the poor and needy, those who work to collect them, those whose hearts are brought together the ransoming of slaves, debtors, in God’s way, and the traveler; so God ordains” (Surat IX, Verse 60). Zakat, if not sufficient to restore equality is ‘repeated’ until the sufficient qualities of life of those who claim assistance are met (Esposito, 1980: 28). Zakat, is not “just a widow’s mite to be paid out of duty and distributed as charity…anything but that…woven into the very fabric of society, that aims at freeing the poor from their dependence so that eventually they themselves will pay Zakat [to help others]” (Ramadan, 2004: 189). Zakat, demands…knowledge of the environment, the community, and the social and economic situation” of that community (Ramadan, 2004: 193). Zakat, premised upon Haqq, “the right of the poor to receive charity” and never regarded as a bestowal or privilege that a caretaker offers to those in need (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 19). A caretaker, whose property does not and will never belong absolutely to them.
And the Store at the level of the Maids and the Employees
And what remains for You and I here is this: the second head. The second head, belonging to Eurocentric Capitalism, reduced to the signifier Involuntary Relations. There is “not only the land, from the double point of view of the comparison of lands and the Monopolistic appropriation of land; it has work as another correlate, from the double point of view of the comparison of activities and the monopolistic appropriation of labor (surplus labor)” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 441). I ‘speak’ then of Eurocentric Capitalism’s labor and surplus labor that are “strictly the same thing: the first term is applied to the quantitative comparison of activities, the second to the monopolistic appropriation of labor by the entrepreneur (and no longer the landowner)” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 442). I contrast this with Islams.
I find myself compelled to posit this: If “human…[desire] for work and not…[through] individual claims on natural resources” evolve, evolved and shall remain evolving with desires, then there will become an ‘other’ that emerges (Esposito, 1980: 32). This ‘other’ is not laborer and owner: These Eurocentric conceptualizations are given birth to through Eurocentric Capitalism. This ‘other’ is the voluntary worker born out of Ikhtiy’ar, the voluntary relations and associations (Wilson, 1997: 134), I discussed formerly and whose essence is something else, something ‘other’. If You wish You and I may call the voluntary worker a voluntary laborer. Why? Again my response remains: Desires. If desires are in flux then there proceeds the birth of some, the ‘other’, the worker whom desires not, the necessary responsibility, Fardh, of becoming a caretaker, in as much as there is radical openness through Islams and in as much as there is a guaranteed degree and expected quality of life. I speak then of a new type of social interrelationship that neither Eurocentric Socialist or Capitalist believers can deliver or associate to (Choudhrury, 1998: 40). What then becomes through Islams of this relationship between caretaker and this supposed worker?
Governing the relationship, the association, the ‘new bond’ if You will, amidst a caretaker and voluntary laborer becomes an ethical conduct. A conduct that neither perceives a caretaker or voluntary worker to become in a position of enjoying any innate moral superiority though Islams affirm that there are greater temptations faced by the caretaker to hoard (Esposito, 1980: 44). The voluntary worker respectively is “accorded a dignity in keeping with …[their] status as a vicegerent of God on earth…[whose] return can take the form of wages or a share in the ‘Useful Profit’ of enterprise [hence becoming caretakers IF they desire” (Ahmad, 1991: 37). I speak then of Islams “strongly opposed to exploitation of [voluntary labor] and [that] seeks to promote the greatest amity between” caretakers and such voluntary workers, as it respects their desires not to be caretakers (Ahamd, 1991: 41). A Koranic verse: “Withhold not things justly due to others” (Surat 29, Verse: 183).
Islams ward off what Eurocentric Capitalism appropriate, to preserve, safeguard this voluntary worker and resists Eurocentric Capitalist actions that suffocate the Involuntary worker, further by decreeing that “wages [to the Voluntary worker are not] to be determined exclusively by the free play of market forces” (Ahmad, 1991: 41). Hence I ‘speak’ and say that respectively this does not belong to the same essence or the circumstances that give rise to a Eurocentric Conception of labor. I ‘speak’ then of a “wage…not related to the marginal productivity of the worker but to the cost of” a quality of living (Ahmad, 1991: 42). I ‘speak’ of a wage, a compensation that Islams requires to be paid to a worker before sweat dries and hence does not await for market forces to determine the cost or ‘profit’. (Ahmad, 1991: 42). I ‘speak not of Real wage that is a portion of Nominal wage, and which is not converted by correspondence and comparison and hence exacerbates the difference between the two sets, owner and owned (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 446). I ‘speak’ of a Nominal wage that includes everything, but the wage-earners income siphoned off and captured by enterprises (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 441). I ‘speak’ then of something ‘other’ unfamiliar to you. This ‘other’, as every ‘other’ I have gifted You through acts of hospitality, is an interpretation; an interpretation of Anti-Capitalist Islamic Anarchistic Becomings.
Here you are starting to comprehend what this chapter is pursuing in my place
I do not know but I know that there remain three more injunctions, practical, three acts of resistance through Islams towards an enemy Eurocentric Capitalism, for You here, and that ‘work’ against any further potential hoarding desires of Wealth.
A Wealth, whose transfer from poor to rich, promotes selfishness, and weakens community bonds” (Esposito, 2002: 166). But “The believers feed the poor, the orphan, the captive for the love of God, saying: ‘We feed you to please God alone…we do not expect any recompense or gratitude from you’” (Koran, Surat 76, Verse 8-9). “The parable of those who spend their possessions out of a longing to please God, and out of their own inner certainty, is that of a garden on high fertile ground: a rainstorm smites it, and thereupon it brings forth its fruit; and if no rainstorm smites it, soft rain [falls upon it]” (Koran, Surat 2, Verse 265).
Infaq, voluntary spending, un-obligated as Zakat, to the welfare of those in more need; Sadaqah, voluntary charity, again un-obligated as Zakat; It’am, voluntary feeding, again un-obligated as Zakat; forces of resistance launched towards Eurocentric Capitalism (Ahmad, 1991: 42). If You need more of a clarification, more of a stance, more a vengeful act to illustrate the points I raised regarding Wealth. I through the Koran offer you this verse: “As for all who lay up treasures of gold and silver and do not spend them for the sake of God- give them the tiding of grievous suffering [in the life to come]: on the Day when that [hoarded wealth] shall be heated in the fire of hell and their foreheads and their sides and their backs branded therewith, [those sinners shall be told] ‘these are the treasures which you have laird up for yourselves! Taste, then, [the evil of] your hoarded treasures!” (My Holy Koran, Surat 9, Verse 34-35). You demand another do You? Koranic verse: “as does he [and she] who spends his [and her] wealth only to be seen and praised by others…for his [and her] parable is that of a smooth rock with [a little] earth upon it-and then a rainstorm smites it and leaves it hard and bare” (Koran, Surat 2, Verse 264).
Without menacing, this last verse wants to get something out; something of vital importance. This attitude, this duty to be discreet is more important than it appears: “it bears the mark of respect for and individual’s dignity in all circumstances, even the most intimate…to give before the poor who need to beg...to avoid being seen by anyone so that no one has to be embarrassed…[to give members of a community what they] are entitled to have” (Ramadan, 2004: 181). “To bare faith is to bare responsibility for social commitment at every moment…to possess is to have the duty [and obligation] to share” (Ramadan, 2004: 182). Conversely this god, Eurocentric Capitalism, my enemy, your enemy, is one for whom Islams offers no hospitality or any dwelling place for, symbolically or practically. This god whose duties comprise an inhumane economy that organizes, produces, and structures injustice, discrimination, exploitation and famine” and is a jungle and “no jungle on earth is [ought to be] home to such horror” (Ramadan, 2004: 182). It is a god that idealizes the individual (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 17). It is a god that regards an individual’s possession as sacred. A contradiction, for Islams pledge the roots that everything on earth belongs to God alone, and people are only merely entrusted with managing these belongings amongst themselves. As a further gift, an offering of a hospitality Islam(s) and I offer and give You two more injunctions, Ramadan and Islamic Banks, two acts of resistance that belong to Islams and against our enemy, Eurocentric Capitalism. There is nothing left for I here but these further two acts of resistance.
It is calculation, rationalization, that causes you to fall with open eyes into
other relations instead of reaching a turning moment in my foreign thought
Ramadan, a fast, a Sawm, from dusk till dawn for a month, adopts a symbolic and a practical element. Ramadan, a symbolic, “an act of worship in itself…leads Muslims to perceive, and to feel inwardly, the need to eat and drink and, by extension, to ensure that every human being has the means to subsist” (Ramadan, 2004: 89). Ramadan, a fast whose end commences with Sadaqat Al-Fitr, “another charity [in addition to Zakat and all others I mentioned above]…imposed on every Muslim/Muslima who has the means for themselves and their dependents…[and] related to Property and is obligatory on every Muslim/Muslima that possesses more than the prescribed amount of provisions after giving the charity…to be given in person into the hands of those who are eligible to receive…[not] the wealthy” (Budak, 2005:93-96). Ramadan, practical, as it reduces consumption and respectively production, discourages the extravagant spending and wasteful use of resources even if but temporal. I ‘speak’ of Ramadan, a disruptive resistance to a god, Eurocentric Capitalism. A god whose banking systems extends financial facilities only to the rich and propertied classes, leading to their further hoarding and the accentuation of further economic inequalities.
Now, lastly, seriously, Islamic banking, a resistance, allows not unrestricted access and use of the financial resources of the banking system primarily with reference to the criterion of ‘creditworthiness’ (Ahmad, 1991: 46). A resistance that rose to Eurocentric Capitalist banking institutions, “established in the mid-nineteenth century…end of the twentieth century…funding trading activities…saving accounts with no interest…whose patrons [credit worthy or not] participate in investments and either earn a share of the profit on the return or suffer a portion of the losses sustained by the bank” (Esposito, 2002: 168). Islamic banks aim at “[socially] empowering grass-root levels by extending their social funds towards developing a diversity” of ‘small firms’ to generate a rhizome, inter-linkages, to benefit and uplift the grassroots; to bring forth about inter-communal economic cooperation, participation and restoring agencies back to whom these agencies belong to, You and I (Choudhury, 1997: 178). Transactions involving risk, the use of equity sharing, rather than debt financing…a [new un-colonial] means” of offering hospitality, a way out to impoverished communities (Esposito, 2002: 168). The rise of alternatives to a god’s whose Inflations and deflations militate against Islams ideals of giving fair measure of value in all transactions (Ahmad, 1991: 46).
The Other Trial
I tell you this I deny altars. “The disinherited (and the rest) will not be mobilized by just any form of Islams; what above all needs to be offered to them, with or without Islams, is a future prospect that means progress in the conditions under which they live” (Rodison, 1973: 230). I tell you this I deny altars. There needs to be a mobilization of Islams under the conditions and concepts proposed above. These Islams would operate where the above links, ideas, become forces, where a new zeal to mobilize commences once more, making Islams ready to sacrifice immediate interest, individual interests, to the collective once more. I ‘speak’ of a psychologically individualized ‘agenda’ armed with steel and borrowed from if not enforced by a god, Eurocentric Capitalism, and whose values and injunctions offer powerful corruptive forces of possessiveness and love for Wealth, particularly along the ruling and influential classes in Islams. I ‘speak’ of a psychologically individualized agenda, starting with the introduction of the dynastic concepts in Islams, “concentrated power and corruptive influences among certain families and their entourages” and now inherited by succeeding generations after generation (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 13). I ‘speak’ of a psychologically individualized agenda brought forth by Mongol wars and the Crusades (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 13). I ‘speak’ of a psychologically individualized agenda brought forth by European Colonialism causing the fragmentation of Islams, the abandonment of traditions in favor of European institutions and a gradual transition towards nationalism (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 13). The former two are not justifications worthy of attention any more for Islams, for they have been used as excuses for far too long, a blaming game, a sobbing game and a tautological game. The sacrifices required of these Islams require neither an evasion of nor a profiting from the sacrifices made, neither a boasting nor a glorification of such a virtue or piety when made. For Islams to ‘return’ to its lost yet not forgotten essence, for Islams to confront reality, rather than a mere augmented past, that neither could return nor become redrawn. There needs to be something new that is translatable into specific, clear and combative slogans and actions. “Through these slogans, each individual would have to see himself [and herself] confronted with an immediate duty to perform, each in his [and her] place…all this might be associated with a denunciation of the privileges of wealth and power identified with those who had distorted Islams” (Rodison, 1972: 230). “This revolt and these micro-revolts against the current shapes of Islams have to be linked with the proclamation of new Islams…in which the enemy of this construction can be denounced as an adversary of the highest values to which these ideologies appeal” (Rodison, 1973: 231). Even if this adversary becomes the ‘clergy’ themselves. I ‘speak’ of ‘clergy’ who and whom Muslims and Muslimas who supposedly choose Islams and supposedly follow one form of it or another, have become too reliant on, too attached to, and worshipping of. I’ speak’ of ‘clergy’ who “with the coming of [nationalist] independence…gradually…[rose] on the social scale...[alongside] the (more or less exploiting) upper strata [and who] increasingly proclaim their ‘attachment to Islam[s], in a frenzied search for an ideological guarantee for their social and material advantages” (Rodinson, 1973: 226). “The more successful the ‘clergy’ become in raising their standard of living, or even merely in becoming integrated in the nation, the less will Islam[s] serve as...[a] slogan for the disinherited” (Rodinson, 1973: 226). For now, despite a few, Islams’ ‘clergy’, the meek, have inherited Islams and I offer them like the god I ‘spoke’ of here, Eurocentric Capitalism, no hospitality. Now I speak of authority and now I am becoming Anti-authoritarian.
Chapter Two: Pedagogical Juridical Orders: Decentralized & Anti-Authoritarian
Movements of Speaking
Pleading with you, I ask you once more, tell me what “is”? “Is” signifies what you are? “Is”, present indicative and singular. “Is” this, not that. “Is” not that, “is” this? “Is”, an un-litigated totality. “Is”, the presumption of a firm metaphysical ground, an essence. “Is”, the presumption of a fixed being, and center, where the meaning of your life remains constantly unchanged. “Is”, an oppression (Call, 2003: 50). “Is”, exclusionary of everything outside it. “Is”, a negation unparalleled to affirmation. “Is”, a propositioned mandatory un-porous membrane, a way of life that permits no movement(s). “Is”, a solitary haven from “Nous”, “us”, everything and everyone dispersed. Dispersed from that which we do not know and have not experienced, would not like to know and experience and that which we refuse to know and experience. “Is”, a demarcation of a You and an I. “Is”, a “state” between the You and I and any potential propositions towards becoming(s) of “Nous”. “Nous”, a symbiosis, an alliance that brings to play parts of a you and a me, varying in degrees and intensities, and void of accompanying possibilities for filiations. Look for a ‘Nous’, a “third party”, here, in this factory of a paper, and in the theater (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 238). I am not suspending my demystifying of “Nous” yet. Deleuze and Guattari propose that “tu”, you, have two axes within a social space, significance (surface) and subjectification (depth). You, “tu”, have very different semiotic systems (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 167). What does this imply for “Nous”? Picture your face no longer an “is” but exhibiting possibilities of becoming(s) part(s) of something and someone “other”. Your self- proclaimed beautiful face, mine, infinitely wretched. Our skin, a canvas, a surface but really maps comprised of colors, facial traits, wrinkles, lines, different shapes, fonts and sizes. Any scars? Forgive my indecency. No scars. Recall now your face “is” a self-proclaimed beautiful. I ask you. Has your face not become an “other” between today and yesterday? Or have you witnessed no signs of aging yet? Or have you achieved immunity? You resist, I know. You desire your face to always remain an “is”, for temporarily your “is” is most beautiful. It protects you. I? Wretched, yes, but never mourned my face. I, unlike you, never greeted farewell what I saw in the mirror. I felt no despair. Instead I wrote its eulogy and buried it. I, unlike you, embrace my distance from your beautiful face. I unlike you bask in the difference of my ugliness. I unlike you bask in difference, period. I, unlike you, bask in organic deepening separations, through my facial maps and coordinates. I, unlike you, value my face in its incompleteness even more than for its fragmentations, and even more for its pronounced incompleteness, for its punctuated yet open interruptions. I desire my face to always remain as becoming(s). You propose a singular. Absurd. Singular implies ‘is’. I propose multiple upon multiple. I propose ‘Nous’ in steps of hospitality…
History of the Lie: Prolegomena
“If you were to obey a human being like yourselves, then verily you indeed
would be losers”
Holy Qur'an, Surah 23 Al-Mu'minun: Ayat 34
“The reverse side of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and no limits” (Derrida, 2000: 36). I ‘speak’ and say then that You and I conduct our selves here through bonds built upon our principled conception of words. I ‘speak’ of words that signify a medium for us to communicate our wishes and that experience ‘states’ of becoming something else from what they were initially intended. This ‘event’ frankly commences as our intentions and thoughts attempt to correspond to one another, pitied and always becoming pursued through words. I ‘speak’ then here and now of words pleading to signify such thoughts belonging to our soul’s interpretations (Derrida, 2000: 290). I ‘speak’ then of words that can be falsified as they could be interpreted in ways and to no ends, becoming betrayed when falsified. Why You ask? Why?! At the instant when falsification of words commences their center, what they originally were thought to signify, while they waited for thoughts and intentions to correspond, becomes deceived. I ‘speak’ then of words deceived because they can no longer hold a center; the center can no longer hold the position of Authority it direly desires.
I ‘speak’ then here and now, again and again, of an Authoritarian god. Here I will not feign, according to the ‘code’, a single thematic nucleus belonging to a merely abstract signifier ‘Islams’, as I justly, rightly and explicitly enacted in Kapital’s Wet Dream: Islams & Post-Anarchism. I tell You, I am about to announce here something else: ‘Islam(s)’. I believe this to be an essential and ludicrous operation because pointing a single guiding thesis precisely premised upon the signifier ‘Islams’ would be strange, misleading and unjust to the viewpoints surrounding Authority here in this economy of a paper. I will not resort to reducing the impossibility of a single signifier, even if such a signifiers’ appearance remains abstract, plural and multiple. Such a verdict here would cancel itself out, for I would be presenting along the way a representation of ‘Islams’ that is Anti-authoritarian, when certain representations destroy politically such a declaration. Destroy it politically for a reason that let me say in advance offers a few supplementary complications to be found in Without an Alibi. I only and solely testify respectively to the pluralities of these interpretations and point that subsequently such interpretations will present themselves before your eyes. I see them as truths never ‘the truth’. I pledge no allegiance to them and hence I provide another interpretation a more comprehensive Anti-Authoritarian Islamic Anarchistic Becoming. Still less, despite appearances of these seemingly politically authoritarian Islam(s) which I will shed light on further, the route here towards Anti-authoritarian Islam(s) will be visible and oblige itself to speak, ‘canceling’ subtractions; what may appear contradictory and at the same time have some value of truth; Islam(s) that espouse a particular form, and I will be very clear, of political authority.
I must proceed and testify that despite subtractions, the Islam(s) that I conceive of here were, are and shall continue to remain determinate like Post-Anarchism to “undermine structures of [Eurocentric conceptions of] authority and [Eurocentric conceptions of] hierarchy…[through the employment of] a war model of writing to expose the suppressed antagonisms and differences within…[Eurocentric] discourse whose claims to universality, wholeness and lucid self-reflection have been sounded since the time of Plato” (Newman, 2001: 115). What I intend then lays in the here and now, so I deny altars and want to give You something more.
Posed in these terms, the question ‘What ‘is’ Authority?’ would already be caught up in a series of presuppositions that demand dismantling. This proposed oneness, this inaccessible ‘is’, envelops a web, as there is always a surprise in store for the anatomy or physiology of any signifier [, here, Authority,] that thinks that it mastered ‘the game’, deluding itself, creating its own myth, wanting you to look at it without touching it (Derrida, 1972: 63). I first touch it in the subsection Searching the ‘States’ of Authority Soul. It appears to have two souls a tactical politik, a Micro-political, a Micro-fascism and a strategic politik, a Macro-political, a Macro-fascism. At the Macro-political it takes a turn and there is where it becomes visible at it smashes You and I into little pieces. I will repeat this statement soon enough, and said it once prior: You and I owe our Micro-fascism to the Eurocentric State, but the Eurocentric State owes its inception from our thought. In a sense it doubles itself as a collective, a rhizomatic ‘us’ composed of dual Macro-Fascisms, a hybrid, dubbing itself as a union, a masochistic combative relation: ‘God-Capital’ conceived of as the Eurocentric State and Eurocentric Capitalism. From this point on and for an instant Authority becomes The Other Trial.
Searching the ‘States’ of Authority’s Soul
I begin to ‘speak’ then and say this To You, so listen: the logic of Post-Anarchism proclaims to become one whose essence necessitates the disruption of “the unity of political thought [pursued primarily and as offered formerly through Eurocentric word(s)] by freeing it [and them respectively] from ‘essentialist’ foundations, and thereby opening it [and them] to contingency and multiple interpretations” (Newman, 2001: 173). Post-Anarchism becomes an alibi then for what I intended above and what I do throughout this economy of a paper and below, the obsessive quest to create and bring to the surface Non-Eurocentric language. A Post-Anarchism whose desire becomes to disseminate “[Eurocentric conceptions of] authority and domination [that] exist not only in the apparatus of the state and centralized political institutions; they are also prevalent …in linguistic structures, in words themselves…language, then is political, and while it can participate in political domination, it can also be used against it” (Newman, 2001: 106). A Post-Anarchism still yet shouldering the weight of Classical Anarchism(s) in its desires that attempt to undo the Eurocentric (Newman, 2001: 158). I ‘speak’ of a desire leading “to [the] rejection of [a Eurocentric conception of] authority and domination” (Newman, 2001: 158). I ‘speak’ then of a rejected [Eurocentric conception of] authority “that constitutes “the very basis of Anarchism, and the destruction of [such an] authority…is its ultimate goal” (Newman, 2001: 158). This is Authority in its most abstract of senses, and which I clarified enough and I am uninterested in addressing it here any further as an abstraction.
Rather the Authority of which I desire to search for and ‘speak’ of here and whose depth I seek, occupies two souls; two souls of Fascism: A Micro, inside all subjects, the You and the I, the he and the she, the us and the them alongside with your dear mother’s breasts, and A Macro the origins of which are thoughts. I ‘speak’ of two rhizomatic Fascisms, whose belongings beckon always for ‘is’; ‘is’, the proclamation and imposition of ‘the truth’; “a tautological or fictitious proliferation, a multiplication by subtraction” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 463). I ‘speak’ of two Fascisms though I would have longed again and again, as pronounced ample times formerly, if You would only listen, for a “collapse of distinction between the Micro and Macro-political spheres, seeing one as always referring to the other-seeing a transformation in one area as always having implications in others” (Newman, 2001: 98). I ‘speak’ then of two, two cruel Authorities, one Micro-fascist, comprised of secret events and whose essence neither necessitates its becoming conceived of Eurocentrically or non-Eurocentrically and another Macro-Fascist, comprised of public events and is Eurocentric, as it is the Eurocentric that has given birth to it.
Secret Events
So I ‘speak’ first then of Micro-fascisms and the Micro-fascist, comprised of secret events. I ‘speak’ of secret events that I posit and believe rhizomatically emit two radiations through two significations, though not necessarily constrained to such radiations, as I will show You further below: A first radiation, a first signification, a being’s, the You and the I as well as any other subject, interest(s) translated into intent(s) of worshiping ones own self, commencing forth the birth of Micro-fascisms. These Micro-fascisms take on dramatic form(s) in egoisms struggling with one another and which are at war with one another, each against all. They, these Micro-fascisms whose multiplicity is comprised of all allergic egoisms, are at war with one another, but are also however ‘together’, and individually call for the birth of a subject’s paranoia and the subject’s, through the becoming Micro-fascist, subjugation of others (Levinas, 1987: 4). I ‘speak’ of a Micro-fascism exhibiting always the resurrection of itself. I ‘speak’ then of “the very egoism of the ego that posits itself”, unconfined, unconstrained to the radiations I began to present above and have yet to continue below (Levinas, 1987: 137-138). I ‘speak’ of egoism desiring its ego becoming an “uncreated, sovereign principle, a prince” (Levinas, 1987, 136). A second radiation emerges, a second signification, a being’s interest, longings and desires become “preceded by pure passivity that is responsibility…[a] responsibility for the freedom of others” (Levinas, 1987: 136). A radiation shouting cries of the necessity for a responsibility that is “far from being a limitation or negation of…[a being’s] freedom, [as] the freedom of [a being’s] neighbor is instead its precondition and confirmation” (Guerin: 151). I ‘speak’ of then of another radiation, a responsibility, a resistance even if but temporally to the becoming Micro-fascist and their respective Micro-fascisms. I ‘speak’ of Micro-fascisms signifying first, “the difference between active and reactive forces, and…[whose] complex [rhizomatic] organization…results-where the weak have conquered, where the strong are contaminated, where the slave who has not appeared prevails over the master who has stopped being one: the reign of law and virtue”; the birth of Micro-hierarchy, a genesis and rule; Micro-fascisms of Micro-hierarchies (Perez, 1990: 17).
I ‘speak’ of secret events then to You, a Prince, constituted by acts of territorialization and de-territorializaiton, acts of resistance and oppressions and acts of decoding and recoding.
Possible Beyond of Public Events
You need reminding and I let it all out as there exists another Fascism. I ‘speak’ of a guilty ‘other’; a more often fetishicized and prioritized ‘other’; an ‘other’ signifying a particular type of Authority; Macro-fascisms afflicting public and secret events; moderated through dual Macro-fascists, whose associations are again rhizomatic. All relations and associations are Rhizomatic lest You have forgotten. Macro-fascisms, dual, marking, evoking and commencing a second hierarchy the reverse of the above and first hierarchy, Micro-hierarchy. And we, You and I, are given, gifted with a Meta-hierarchy built upon making the “Church, morality and the State the masters and keepers of all hierarchy” (Perez, 1990: 18). Such a hierarchy, Meta-hierarchy, which I ‘speak’ of here, is that “hier(archy) of institutions and eco-political frameworks set up by those who cannot lead or obey themselves: of the weak and the slaves and of those who need an outside hier(archical) authority in order to act” (Perez, 1990: 18).
Dual Macro-fascists open to play here. One a former god, discussed during Chapter One in this economy of a paper, Eurocentric Capitalism. A former god preoccupied with axiomization, and whose tendencies become opposite though no less effective than that of the ‘new’ Macro-fascist of a god, the Eurocentric State/Eco-Political Institutions. You, the reader, a Post-Anarchist, demand an explanation and I comply, for such declare the tenants of my hospitality.
The first Macro-fascist of a god, Eurocentric Capitalism, “tends to fall back on a very small number of axioms [through de-territorializaiton] regulating the dominant flows, while the other flows are given a derivative, consequential status…or are left in an untamed state that does not preclude the brutal intervention of State power” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 462). I remind You, a Post-Anarchist, once more. I ‘spoke’ of it, this Macro-fascist of a god and of its depth formerly. I ‘spoke’ of its authoritarian tactics and laws. It seems to me significant, in this ‘place’, and for countless reasons that I will not develop it further and though discussions of it to You may never suffice or become adequate in your expectations, I informed You that your expectations matter not here. I am merely here only paying You due respect, something You never gave me. Remember that. Respectively I intend only to situate Eurocentric Capitalism’s Authoritarian role with respect to the ‘new’ Macro-Fascist of a god. Thus, before I leave it, I tell You this though of it: Our former god, Eurocentric Capitalism “ is not short on war cries against the State, not only in the name of the market, but by virtue of its superior deterritorializaiton” as it desires and develops “an economic order that could do without the [Eurocentric] state” for it possesses no laws but immanent ones (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 454). Now I tell You of the ‘other’ Macro-Fascist Authority; the ‘other’ god; The Eurocentric State.
The Eurocentric State, preoccupied with “the multiplication of axioms [always varying through axiomization but becomes] most notably [preoccupied with such mutliplciation] when an integrated domestic market is being organized to meet the requirements of a foreign market…Axioms for the young, for the old, for women, etc” (Deleue & Guattari, 1980: 462). What makes axioms vary You ask? Absurd, but I tell You. They vary in degrees and intensities with respect to the distinctions between foreign and domestic markets (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 462). Now Your questioning of this Macro-fascist of a god’s Authority ought not to pertain “to that of freedom [from] and constraint [of the Eurocentric State] nor of [its] centralism and [its] de-centralization, but of the manner in which” it masters these flows through “a multiplication of directing axioms” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 462). I clarify. It, the Eurocentric State, in its “abstract form [is an abstract machine]…[giving] rise to minor dominations, giving them meaning and form…[as it] provides ‘general models of realizaiton’ for the various dominations within society” (Newman, 2001: 98). We, You and I, ‘speak’ of a Eurocentric State whose apparatus “is a concrete assemblage which [desires,] realizes [and adopts] the machine of overcoding” (Newman, 2001: 98). I tell You that this overcoding is a stamp, an imprint of systemic and overt domination repeated yet never without a difference, seeking that which is yet un-dominated, un-territorialized and territorializing it, subject and object, seeking that which becomes temporarily liberated and recoding it once more. We, You and I, ‘speak’ then of a Eurocentric State in its generic form as it is devoid of an essence. A Eurocentric State, an archaic state, an oppressive apparatus “imposed from without by a ‘master race’ who ‘appear as lightning appears, too terrible, too sudden, too convincing too ‘different’ to be hated” (Newman, 2001: 98). A Eurocentric State “infinitely bound up with [Eurocentric Capitalism]…[as it] provides the models of realization for the [Eurocentric] capitalist axiomatic, reterritorializing decoded flows released by capitalism” (Newman, 2001: 99). Eurocentric Capitalism whose axiomatics deterritorialize desires by overthrowing traditional state-coded structures as they simultaneously re-territorialize “through the Eurocentric State, these flows of desire which, if unrestricted, present a threat to it” (Newman, 2001: 99). The Eurocentric State, a part of the Eurocentric Capitalist machine. I ‘speak’ then of axiomatics that become internalized within You and I, and every other subject, as infinite debt (Newman, 2001: 99). Again. You and I owe our Micro-fascism to the Eurocentric State, but the Eurocentric State owes its inception from our thought. As it is only thought that is “capable of inventing the fiction of a [Eurocentric] State that it is universal by right, of elevating the [Eurocentric] State to de jure universality” (Newman, 2001: 99).
Wailkum Assalam unto & Salut to you!
Your thoughts, your way of living, as it stands safely here and now, Post-Anarchism, becomes complicit in state domination, as it, Post-Anarchism, remains state philosophy. Shocked and choking You ask me why? How could I refrain from presenting such a claim: ‘Post-Anarchism as State Philosophy’ when you, a Post-Anarchist, and Post-Anarchism have become blind to religions, particularly Islams, as they face obscurity in your inventions, vanishing them from all the schemas that constitute your Post-Anarchism. The annals of State philosophy signify a way of thought characterized by and through Western metaphysics: a rational, calculable foundation of order premised on identity, truth, justice and negation (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994: 99). ). “The [Eurocentric] State is immanent in thought, giving it ground, logos, providing it with a model that defines ‘goals, paths, conduits, channels, organs’,” Eurocentric State Philosophy (Newman, 2001: 99).
Post-Anarchism never greeted Islams, as it dwelt and continues to reside in Classical Anarchisms’ favorite theme: religion is possessed by possibilities of domination. Post-Anarchism continues to conceal Islams, though it claims to dismantle Eurocentric metaphysics. However strange this priority may appear, the first aim of your audacious ‘re-interpretation’ of Classical Anarchisms to Post, I had thought, for You, was to posit even if but by expression and make necessary, through any means necessary, contact with Islams with the intention towards it, facing any pleasures from it, through your appreciation of différance. What I thought You desired was to become in continual movement, prepared to co-exist along with multiple ideological dimensions, all the mean while developing an analysis and a confrontation which, without trying to overcome specific differences, nevertheless tries to prevent them from degenerating into passive and mute divisions” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 111). Once more I ponder how such an arrangement may commence subsequently if Post-Anarchism and you have not killed, or at least sought or had the intent to kill, your inner fascists regarding both of your presumptions, expressed or unexpressed, regarding religions, particularly Islams, and without any delay and whose single minimal limit has not yet opened up incomprehensibly vast vistas of becoming. The nerve of my argument becomes that there are surely a billion ways to fulfill this prescription; a prescription of comprehending, thinking of, and resisting Hegemonic Authority, Micro and Macro-Fascisms that impose upon individuals limits and constraints. But reciprocally You need to once more comprehend your limits which I seem to remind You of quite often. Authority is not plainly as I shall illustrate absolutely Hegemonic, even when discussing it in its political, Macro-fascist forms as I shall illustrate through what subtracting Islam(s) refer to as the Khilafat. These subtracting Islam(s) present it, the signifier Khilafat in its most traditional of senses, as ‘the truth’, and though I disagree with the presentation of what it, the Khilafat, signifies through subtracting Islam(s), I recognize such a signifier as a form of truth: Political Authority, that was, and to I only ‘was’, previously distanced, to varying degrees, from being absolutely Hegemonic, absolutely fascist and which I intend on addressing shortly through Without an Alibi (Call, 2003: 53). Consequently You, a Post-Anarchist, have not acknowledged nor given respect to singularity: “a respect for what is different [with respect to conceptualizations, interpretation of what constitutes Khilafat as opposed to Hegemonic Authority], for what is singular” (Newman, 2001: 170) and it implies that you have not risen alongside, let alone greeted with the slightest gesture, a kindness, a hand lifted or laid on shoulders or foreheads of Islams (Derrida, 2004: 313).
You, a Post-Anarchist, have placed Anti-Authoritarianism, at the centre of a politics aiming to eliminate the concept of religion instead of presenting a greeting to Islams, to You an ‘other’, or is it impossible You think to find presentable points upon which relationships with Islams could be formulated? In according to this necessity to draw contact, to converse with someone who to You remains an ‘other’, your Post-Anarchism becomes a rational thought, becomes a coded thought, and becomes penetrated by state thought and whose “dependency [lies] upon rational discourses for its legitimization and functioning, while, in turn, making these discourses possible”, is what provides its thought with life; even if such a life is generic and abstract (Newman, 2001: 99). Here I wish to segment albeit briefly and characterize a distinction, for it is a thing with value, as You will undoubtedly see. I wish to clarify something for You. Here and throughout thus far, I ‘spoke’ here of Fascism not Totalitarianism. Why the departure? Though you are and so you may exercise your autonomy, your valued freedom, I caution You and advise You that ’Why the departure?’ is not the question You ought to posit. Rather think, but think with a difference: ‘Where is the departure’?
Corpus: Another Departure
This, Totalitarianism is something ‘other’; signifying a pole of the Eurocentric State whose desires belong to a restriction of the “number of axioms and operates by the exclusive promotion of the foreign sector…the collapse of the domestic market” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 462). This totalitarian pole, which I call forth, finds itself in a “collapse of the domestic market and the reduction of axioms…the promotion of the foreign sector does not at all take place through an appeal to foreign sources of capital and through export industries” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 463). Rather it takes place “through a war economy, which entails an expansionism foreign to totalitarianism and an autonomous fabrication of capital” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 463). I tell You this. The Totalitarian Eurocentric State [unlike] the Macro-Fascist Eurocentric State overcodes, though it desires to localize all that bares in its path, subjects and objects, whereas Macro-Fascism is constructed on an intense line of flight, and desires the transformation of that line of flight into a line of pure destruction and abolition. The ‘thing’ of value that I wished to clarify, for You, has been paid attention to and so Wailkum Assalam unto and Salut to you.
I ‘spoke’ of Macro-fascism’s lines of flight; lines of flight that do not belong explicitly to the Macro-fascist god of a Eurocentric State but to, by substitution, its resistance, Post-Anarchism. Lines of flight that Post-Anarchism “must invent [along] new lines of political action…lines of flight that do not allow themselves to be reterritorialized by rationality” and lines of flight that if reterritoiralized”, You create them anew (Newman, 2001: 99). Lines of flight signifying, an always tangential catapulting that flings ‘us’, You and I, out of the spiral of domination. Lines of flight that create always opportunities upon a particular stratum that affords You a means out of your debt and mine, a partial undoing of Your hyper-organized State and mine. Lines of Flight, a way for You and I to dodge subjectification but in a way that still lets You and I remain as subjects of domination without bringing the weight of power down upon You and I even harder. The weight brought upon ‘us’ through the Macro-fascisms of A Eurocentric State or a Eurocentric Capitalist apparatus. Lines of Flight, like that which Islams and I created through Kapitalism’s Wet Dream.
And so they say “everything changes with [the] State…[and] it is often said that the territorial [stratified, organized, signified, attributed etc] principle becomes dominant…to gain mastery over matter, to control its variation and movements, in other words, to submit them to the spatio-temporal framework of the State- either the imperial spatium, or the modern extensio” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 388-389).
I agree with what they said above, the last quote, but if I agree then it becomes a duty for me to seek a different way of living that merely becomes a way and never the shortest way. A necessity arises then for me to discover the answer to these series of questions: Am I to become content with a single line of flight, an Interpretation here in this economy of a paper towards an Islamic Anarchistic Becoming premised in its singularity to Resisting through the interpretation offered in becoming and acting as Kapitalism’s Wet Dream? Should I be content with that line of flight as the only maxim of importance or relevance here? Ought this maxim become where I want to ‘be’, because I can’t fly anymore? Is it deceitful to say that there is no appeal to claim an Anti-Authoritarian Islamic Anarchistic Becomings before trying? It would become a crime I say to extricate myself from difficulty now, for my maxims here throughout this economy of a paper and which I never could or would expect to be complete nor be held as a universal law as that would necessitate them destroying themselves, would become made in bad faith; without the intention to fulfill promises. I could proclaim that I did not lie but that instead my promises were misstatements. But such a claim would be taking refuge in the shorter path to your house, the shorter way to a potential hospitable host, Post-Anarchism, and an equally hospitable host, Islam(s), and in due my initial promises would become deceitful. So I proceed without an alibi.
Without an Alibi, sans délai
Here I ‘speak’ no longer of two Fascisms as I “collapse… distinction[s] between the Micro and Macro-political spheres”. (Newman, 2001: 98). I told You, I desire and I see “one as always referring to the other-seeing a transformation in one area as always having implications in others” and hence believe I can no longer be imprisoned without such a desire, my desire, never belonging to your order (Newman, 2001: 98).
I had my fill with order; I desire less of it; more circulation by free wandering; a ‘kind of wandering in the vertigo of the past, present and future’, Ijithad. Ijtihad, never stationary processes but rather a signifier for a polyvocality of directions accompanied by “different interpretations [even] during the lifetime of [Prophet] Muhammed [SAW]” (Esposito, 1996: 45). A polyvocality whose rise comes in the realization that “Ahkam [judgments] of Al-Shariah [religious jurisprudence,]…are not permanent, and therefore, different interpretations can be permitted [and are encouraged]…disagreement based on…Ijtihad [, informed, independent judgment]…is a blessing on the Ummah, and demonstrates plurality” (Esposito, 1996: 45). It is not chaos I seek it is Anarchy. You ask of here and now? I tell You “here [and now] people [, those whom ascribe to Islam(s),] not only assume that they know the whole truth and all answers, but also try and coerce other people to follow them…tend[ing] to forget that their own understanding and interpretation of the texts [including this] are not more than hypotheses which may be right or wrong...no human i.e. no Alim [, Scholar,], is infallible” and such says Islams (Esposito, 1996: 45). Any human becomes beyond measure a Alim but not every Alim can become human.
I called upon it, Ijtihad, once through this economy of a paper’s Introduction. I intend not to limit its body by discussing it further. In its stead I desire to offer and I beg your pardon for doing what I am about to do, to address Islam(s) directly, momentarily and temporarily, instead of You, a Classical turned Post-Anarchist, through a sign: God will not retract knowledge by suddenly withdrawing it from people’s hearts, but God will retract knowledge by retracting scholars, until, when God has left no scholar, people will take ignorant leaders, who will be asked, and will pronounce verdicts without knowledge, thus going astray and leading others astray” (Esposito, 1996: X). A sign, that now says: ‘Let us stop here’. Oh dearest Islam(s) do you wish not to reclaim your faith and your communities? You, Islam(s), appear appeased in “giving lip-service to dogmas [given by Authority]” instead of scrambling their codes, taking strolls with Ijithad such that you may go places, wander about and dissonantly disturb Authority, Micro and Macro (Rodinson, 1973: 236). You, Islam(s) have forgotten that it was, is and always will become possible “to proclaim adversaries of God those Ulemas [, those Authoritarian Scholars,] who looked too tolerantly upon the veneration of saints.” (Rodinson, 1973: 214-236). You, Islam(s), have forgotten that the “Ulemas (Clergy) are naturally tempted to play upon the moralistic string that is always ready to vibrate in favor of a resigned attitude…” (Rodinson, 1973: 214-236).
As for You, a Post-Anarchist, I tell You this: Regard “Islam(s) as a human construction, and like all other such constructions, subject to change and evolution”, it undergoes an always becoming[s] of something else “if the conditions are ripe for them…Islam(s) of today are [not and cannot be] the Islam(s) of yesterday, and the Islam(s) of tomorrow will be probably be even more different” (Mozaffari, 1987: 98). I tell You this, You Classical Anarchist becoming Post, “the existence of a legion of Islam(s) today, each of which holds itself supposedly to be the one and true authentic Islam, is sufficient evidence the Islam(s) is neither a unified bloc, nor an edifice that will weather all eternity without change” (Mozaffari, 1987: 99). This always becoming of ‘incompleteness’ becomes the essence of “Islam(s)’ relationship to civil society and the [Eurocentric] Nation-State” (Mozaffari, 1987: 99). I desire then to castrate and attack such ‘incompleteness’; I ‘speak’ of ‘incompleteness’ whose inscriptions “contains a number of notions that can be construed as obstacles to the establishment of civil society” (Mozaffari, 1987: 99). “There is no place for the status of ‘citizen’ in the Koran”, that is clear (Mozzaffari, 1987: 99). I ‘speak’ of a citizen who within Eurocentric traditions “form[s] a pact” with the Eurocentric State (Day, 2003). A pact, I say that is of the type of “an ‘agreeing’ to become a citizen of a particular state/Empire…limit[ing] one’s difference so as not to exceed the boundaries of the triangle to which one has been assigned…[agreeing] to respect the regularities and disciplines associated with capitalism, racism, heterosexism, the domination of nature, and so on” (Day, 2003). A citizen whom is “at home in the striated space of the state form” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 474); A citizen oriented and hegemonically coerced and forced to ‘staying on the road’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 403) upon “striated spaces [, as opposed to smooth spaces,] signifying the divided grid-like structure”, territorialized by the Eurocentric State, “fenced off against errant flows of flora, fauna, and indigenous peoples” (Day, 2003). A smooth space, in the other hand, “using a maritime model, [becomes as] the ocean prior to the invention of latitude and longitude…extremely smooth, that is one navigated according to ‘wind and noise, colors and sounds of seas’”; an ‘unmarked territory’ (Day, 2003). If Islam(s) have no reason to theologically believe in Eurocentric conceptions of the Citizen, as that contradicts Tawheed, and that Eurocentrism has posited in the past that: “human beings can supposedly only have vertical relationships, in terms of power…another myth of the [Eurocentric] tradition” then what lurks in their stead. What residues become of subsiding Eurocentric Civil Societies and the Citizen? I ‘spoke’ of an Ummah; a community; an Ummah made of ‘believers’ not citizens (Mozaffari, 1987: 99). ‘Believers’ whom are comprised of ‘states’ of “symbiosis between the temporal and the spiritual” (Mozaffari, 1987: 99). These ‘states’ of symbiosis are premised again upon Tawheed and which serves as a “barrier to the construction of [a Eurocentric] civil society (Mozaffari, 1987: 99). I tell You in depth of the ‘state’ of what I mean by ‘temporal’. This ‘temporal’, of which I ‘speak’, finds its essence in that it belongs to conceptual and theological findings which become that “once the Sovereignty of God is recognized…‘authority’…is vested in the whole Ummah (Community) [the all matters communal are] to be exercised in the light of the Koran through…[mutual] consultation with [in] the Ummah” (Awan, 1983: 32). Tawheed bestows upon beings, individualized and collective, independence and dignity, and is a form of submission for those whom choose Islam(s) where submission belongs to God solely thereby compelling beings, You, if You wish, and I, to revolt against all earthly powers, for beings are answerable only before God (Esposito, 1996: 25). There is not Authority but Gods’.
I am about to add something to the mix. A mutual consultation rose earlier in Chapter Two as I called upon it, signified it, prior as Shura. Shura cannot be merely a signifier but occupies an entire Chapter, Surat Al-Shura, in the Koran. Shura counterattacks authority and hierarchy, if they exist, and which both have been historically condemned in Islam(s) (Esposito, 1996: 25). Shura is a process comprised of mutual consultation complemented with two new creations and significations: Ijma, community consensus, and Maslaha, public interest (Esposito, 2002: 159-160). There You begin to see, that there is a temporal ‘state’ of a being, a Muslim and an Ummah, whom, at least theoretically, in this world as if they are strangers or are traveler(s) and whose decisions alternate, with degrees of difference, always in flux, dependent upon the community’s circumstances and environmental conditions. A temporal ‘state’ then of Islam(s) and Muslim(s) bound by principles of Tawheed, Ijma, Maslaha, an always required Ijtihad comes about, remaining unbound by territories, unbound and ignorant of assembly points that are only signifying of the presence of the Eurocentric Nation-State. Need I remind You with two Koranic verses: “Not all of them [beings] are alike” (Koran, 4: 113) and “Unto every one of you We [God] have appointed a different law and way of life and if God had pleased, God would have made you in a single Ummah [community], but that God might try You in what God gave you. So vie with one another in virtuous deeds. To God you will all return, so that God will inform you of that wherein you differed” (Koran, 5: 48). I tell You Islam(s) occupy temporary ‘states’ of traveling as Muslims/Muslimas exhibit traits of the nomad and the migrant. I ‘speak’ of the nomad who enjoys both autonomy and a path of their own, as every point is a relay and exists only as a relay (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 380). Every being voluntarily choosing to follow Islam(s) adopts, on the surface, a seemingly contradictory identity that “cannot…belong to one person alone, and no one belongs to a single unity…every identity comprise[s] a multiplicity of elements” (Day, 2003). Every identity in part a nomadic identity as barbarians who ‘sow not, nor have any tillage…[are] without habitation, having no dwellings but caves and hollow trees” (Day, 2003). A nomadic identity whose trajectory is that “it distributes people (or animals) in an open space” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980: 380); or even to distribute Divine attributes as viceroys opposed to Fasasd-Al-Ard, the blasphemous act against God by destroying God’s creation, cutting “asunder what God has bidden to be joined” (Koran, 2: 26-27). “But every [nomadic] identity [is also] a migrant identity that goes from one point to another, even if the second point is uncertain, unforeseen or not well localized” as they those Muslims/Muslimas rely solely, first and foremost, upon God (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 380). “Nomads and migrants can mix in many ways, or form a common aggregate; their case and conditions are no less distinct for example, from those who joined [Prophet] Mohammed [, SAW,] at Medina, those who had a choice between a nomadic pledge, and a pledge of Hegira [, migration,] or emigration” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 380).
A choice always with Islam(s), at least theoretically, and whose Koran “envisages the…[Ummah] as a perfectly egalitarian, open society based on good will and cooperation” and whose Koran furthermore “laid down the principle of Shura to guide the community’s decision-making process” (Esposito, 1996: 28). I do not ‘speak’ of a “classical doctrine of Shura, as it developed, [and that] was in error…[as] it viewed consultation as the process of one person, the Khalifah, asking other people for advice, whereas the Koranic understanding of Shura does not mean that one person ask others advice, but rather mutual advice through mutual consultation” (Esposito, 1996: 28). Now before You begin your passing judgment(s) on the signifier, Khalifah, I tell You this.
The signifier Khalifah, a Non-Eurocentric signifier, historically underwent “traditional and modern debates, over the [its nature and its viewing] in monarchical terms” and which is now becoming an ‘other’ (Esposito, 1996: 26).
This ‘other’ of whom I ‘speak’ “is [of] a profoundly different meaning of the term [, and what that terms signified and now signifies, as it has] received [and continues to receive] increasing attention [during] the second half of the twentieth century (Esposito, 1996: 26). “In addition to the connotations of ‘successor’ that the Arabic term Khalifah involves there is also a sense in which a Khalifah is a deputy [or] representative” (Esposito, 1996: 26). The Khalifah is no Malik, no king, but one whom is supposedly chosen [, and here I understand your skepticism, but ask for your patience,]” (Ramadan, 2001: 148). The choosing may occur “by means of elections, a representative system or any other original ideas…[provided that] all the conditions that allow one the opportunity to choose with full knowledge of the facts [are present] …[and where] any pressure or attempt at Coercion, to influence public opinion, [becomes principled and conditioned upon and] the subject of strict participation of the people…as is the care…with ignorance, illiteracy and misery which are many social phenomena [that are Islamically regarded as now] obstructing the real participation of the grassroots” (Ramadan, 2001: 148). Listen for I have more to say. “In Islam(s) general principles were given in the field of politics and social affairs…but the Koran does not mention details and particulars which have been left for the Ummah to formulate to the needs of the time and space” (Ramadan, 2001: 148). But if as I illustrated and proved formerly that the Koran perceives all beings of the Ummah as bearers of God’s trust whether pertaining to God’s Property or the Ummah’s associations, caretakers on of one another; God’s vicegerents. If such is the presupposition proved fact, at least here, then “it is possible to interpret…sections of the Koran as identifying human beings [, the Ummah,] in general as God’s vicegerents [Khalifahs, multiple, as opposed to its singular form, Khalifah,] on earth and human stewardship over God’s creations” (Esposito, 1996: 26). So I expand further and further and say this: If the conditions pertaining to the ‘choosing’ of the Khilafah fail, as they do in contemporary society, and the fields pertaining to the political are unspecified, as I proclaimed above, then the political “can be an autocracy or bureaucracy, a monarchy or republic, a dictatorship or constitutional or consultative government; it can be democratic, socialist or Bolshevik” (Abd Al-Razeq, X, X). What then becomes of the Ummah if I here and now proclaim its, Islam(s), politik to become empty of all such containers? For why not? Are Islam(s) as I have illustrated not nomadic-migrants, and are they, Muslims/Muslimas, not all Khalifahs, and is there any proof of the necessity for a Eurocentric Civil Society in Islams? Is God not the sole Authority based on Tawheed? Yes, Yes and No respectively. I tell You more for “let us now consider [further] ‘Khalifah’, which according to the Arabic lexicon, means ‘representation’…the representation of God on earth…required to exercise divine authority in this world within the limits prescribed by God (Esposito, 1996: 26). “The implications of this for the group of people [Muslims/Muslimas], the community [Ummah] as a whole, when [it] is ready to fulfill the condition[s] [above pertaining to Tawheed is that it] carries the responsibility of representation after subscribing to the principles of Tawheed (Esposito, 1996: 26). “Such an…Ummah…carries the responsibility of the Khilafah...each one of its individual[s] shares the divine Khilafah…every person in an Ummah enjoys the rights and powers of the Khilafah and in the respect all individuals are equal” (Esposito, 1996: 26). I am not done with You yet so I tell You that the identification of Khilafah with humanity as a whole, rather than with a single Khalifah or political institution, is affirmed in Islam(s)’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “A document [, this declaration, whose]…second phase is to ‘reach the level of self-governance’, [and thus] this perception of ‘Khilafahs’ becomes a foundation for concepts of human responsibility and of opposition of systems of domination…[providing along the way] also a basis for distinguishing between democracy in Eurocentric and through Islam(s)” (Esposito, 1996: 26). I do not desire chaos I desire Anarchy. The obligations of bearing the communal right to self-govern and which “do[es] not fit into the limits of Eurocentrically based definition[s]…[is premised in]…consultation (Shurah), consensus (Ijma) and independent interpretative judgments (Ijtihad)” (Esposito, 1996: 26). I am not, myself, satisfied so I provide You with more ‘proof’ and say that “the growth of …and the gradual formation of legislative assemblies in Islam(s) constitutes a…step…the transfer of power of Ijtihad from individual representatives of schools [of thought] to Muslim legislative assembly which in view of the growth of ‘opposing’ sects, is the only form of Ijma…[that] will secure contributions to…discussion[s] from [lay individuals]” who desire keen participation and which is necessary in Islam(s) (Esposito, 1996: 27). As illustrated with Inheritance there is always the desire within Islams whether be it regarding Wealth or even power to become dissipated from the singular to the plural.
I ‘speak’ then and say to You that Islam(s) are not willing to adopt Eurocentric models whether pertaining to the civil society, hierarchy or authority. “There are significant problems with Eurocentric-style democracy…as every Muslim [is required, in accordance with their individualized abilities]…to give a sound opinion on matters [pertaining to Islam(s)], is entitled to interpret the law of God” (Esposito, 1996: 25). “The theory that the influential persons could represent the general public was [and still is] operative in [Islam(s)]…in a particular period of history…but in view of changed circumstances and in consideration of the principles of consultation…it is essential that this theory should give place to the formation of an assembly…real [representation] of the people” (Esposito, 1996: 25). “People are the rightful bearers of the trust…within this framework…the absolute sovereignty of God makes any human hierarchy [theoretically] impossible, since before God all humans are equal…A hierarchal, dictatorial system has been condemned as non-Islamic…[and] the label ‘king’ (Malik) was a negative term for arbitrary personal domination” (Esposito, 1996: 25). Islam(s) are en route to becoming Anti-Authoritarian or perhaps it already was ever present.
I tell You of two more matters pertaining to Islam(s) route to Anti-Authoritarianism. You may approve of what was and has been claimed above but call to question Prophet Mohammad’s (SAW), my Prophet’s ‘Authority’. I tell You without hesitation that a prophet signifies prophecy, neither a Malik nor God, as opposed to what exists with Isa, Jesus, ‘The King of all Kings’, in at least the majority of forms of contemporary Christianities, and this signification which You ‘speak’ of does not necessitate its association with your Eurocentrically conceived Authority. You merely seek once more to apply residual Eurocentric criteria upon Islam(s). But and at the risk of sounding defensive I tell You further that a prophet through Islam(s), is “nothing but a Rasul, a messenger, for a religious call, purely for the sake of religion, unblemished by any [necessary] tendency to rule or call for the formation of a nation [or state]” (Abdul-Al-Razeq, 1978: 44). The further proof You and I have here, belongs to this Koranic Verse: “And our [Messenger of God’s] duty is only to deliver the clear Message” (Koran, Chapter 36, 13-29). The key here if You still wish to remain blind is ‘only’. Again, You may proclaim endlessly that “al-risalah [, the message of my Prophet] required the prophet to capture some power over the Ummah” (Abdul-Al-Razeq, 1978: 44). I proclaim that You are hypocrite and reply and say that indeed that maybe true but this does not imply that the prophet’s intent belonged to power, or that power belonged to his intent and thus I ask You to tell me which individualized being is free of power? Again need I remind You of your own postulate that power is everywhere and anywhere, within You and I and everyone else, now, yesterday, tomorrow, the day before and the day after and though its varying is in degrees, intensities and its types “one [and particularly You] must not confuse…al-Risalah [and al-Rasool’s, Messenger’s, power …with that of a Malik…it is [and could be] untainted by the urge to rule “ (Abdul-Al-Razaq, 1978: 44). Unless You possess the ability and the will to resurrect the deceased, unless You possess the ability and the will to resurrect my prophet, in an attempt to enquire of whether his intentions had been tainted with a lust for authority I have nothing more to ‘speak’ to You further of here.
As in regards to the second matter, I tell You this for I know that You contest and detest God’s Authority but I seek not your pleasure here, as I have not come here to worship You nor for You to worship I. More critically You need to comprehend through Islam(s) that there is la ikrah Fi’d-din; “there is no compulsion in religion” and so I have no desire for You to occupy my dwelling Islam(s) (Koran, 2: 26). But You must realize, that God is not deceased as You joyously and formerly proclaimed and that “God has not been completely usurped…as has always been claimed [in your discourses]…God [to You] has only been reinvented in the form of essence” (Newman, 2001: 6). Just because you claimed that God is dead does not imply that you have annulated God or that ‘that’ God exists not any longer, as you have no proof as such to your claim. “As long as [You] continue to believe absolutely in grammar, in essence, in the metaphysical presuppositions of language…You continue to believe in God” (Newman, 2001: 6). I told You before in the beginning and in the Introduction that You “have not ousted God …the place of authority of the category of the divine remains intact, only re-inscribed in the demand for presence…Atheism changes nothing in this fundamental structure” (Newman, 2001: 6). You, a Classical Anarchist turned Post, are a re-inscription of God and Your authoritarianism still inhabits structures of thought, leaving You still, perhaps thinking that You will always and You are the only form of alleviation and means of rescuing all else, subjects and objects, save yourself from domination (Newman, 2001: 6).
So I tell you this: If it had not been found in one way or another that You, a Post-Anarchist, are justified in certain matters then your existence to me would have been nothing more than an abject drifting. But all of those who know You including I during the course of the years would agree with the assertion in mind. When I began to know of You, You Classical Anarchist becoming Post, I learned about the unbelievable difficulties in which you found yourself and which finally caught up with you, that no one would have wanted to be in your place I thought of myself and I too felt the same of Islams. In a sense I felt pitiless. I had wanted to see both our existence, even though and let me be frank I knew You to be guilty of certain charges and perhaps you felt the same regarding I, though not having ever justly justified such charges. I did not feel pity because like you I continue to find you and I very ‘strong’, always up to the ordeal, without wondering to much where we both found our strength but a quick look into your resolved eyes, with the quick assurance of what was needed from us both, any doubts that I had were put to stop though the curiosity remains forever to everlastingly and strangely wander about for our Nous…
Chapter Three: Nous
Step of Hospitality
An “us”, “Nous”, is unavoidable. The passion, the endurance, the patience of work towards an emanation of a referent, “Nous” is recorded here. Together forever. You are a Post-Anarchist and a Muslim. Contrary to your wishes, our faces, “Nous”, the You and the I, are not “states” confined solely to difference. Let us assume an open theatre. You walk past me and I past you. You merely capture a surface me. If you believe in chance, and I decide to stand still, you may watch me, as the spectacle you seek. If not by chance then you are blessed. Your captured image of a surface I, begs me to think that you think me, hideous, indecent and wretched? But you are the starting point for such a reflection and judgment upon me. You recognize me as an infidelity and betrayal of you. Here you opened, naively, the prospect for an “us”, “Nous”. On the other front, I am too wretched for you so I blind you. There remains a discreet means for you to interrupt my radiations or ugliness. My eyes. My eyes are hollow black holes. My eyes are doctrines that testify to something beyond my surface and stand for depth. A depth inaugurated by interpretations without beginnings and without ends. A depth that irrupts with unconditional hospitality. A depth that desires an “us”. An unconditional hospitality that consists of welcomes without reservations and calculations to all new arrivals. You picked me out. You singled me out. You think me an anomaly in your equation for believing in religion? You have not come here to be friends. You know nothing of my depth. You know nothing of Islam(s). You know nothing of Post-Anarchism. You only know what I am about to tell you and have told you and now I refer to you as a seductive horror of a fascist. You, a becoming Post-Anarchist, have treated me, a becoming Muslim, as a receptacle and allowed me to be treated as a receptacle for others through your prescriptive merely surfacing and cryptic, at best, reservations on Islams (Perez, 1990: 63). You see no “Nous”, no us. Now I tell you of my discovered depth and “Nous”, an “us”.
A Different kind of Friday Morning
From the beginning of this economy of a paper and throughout this text I reminded You that if anyone including You insisted on replying to the subject matter ransacked here, that it ought to be taken into consideration more or less that “there are friends to whom one abandons the ‘empirical’ and friends to whom one confides the essential” (Blanchot & Derrida, 2000: 84).
You need to account for any mute witnesses in your Post-Anarchism without speaking for them, in place of them or drawing all sorts of consequences in truth from an abandoned or inadequate search of them. As for I, I ‘speak’ with the pretext of sparing You this former complaint of You upon I. Let us not forget what I had come to do, as our invincible desires for one another are linked to this expectation as opposed to not wanting to hear something discussed; something that You may want to be rid of. The testimonies here addressed, make clear an essential belonging to your initial allusion: your complaint that Islam(s) confines, binds, unceasingly torments the ‘other’, as You tormented ‘I’. Incidentally I am going far to understand one, You, a Post-Anarchist, whom I can associate with. I am bound to You. Unlike your excommunication of I, either as an intentional activity of your Micro-fascist ego or your unintentional and somehow involuntary calculation that your castle of a dwelling place could be and is vulnerable in your eyes at the instant when You are and ought to be I might add inspired through Islam(s). In Islam(s) and I, You have not benefited from knowing Islam(s) and I, but instead placed Islam(s) and I at fault and expect an impossible redemption of what in your eyes connotes a sin and an illegitimate temptation because of my passion for God. You have condemned Islams and I for not being yours, belonging to the necessities of your traditions. But such a passion, that I espouse here and now, would not exist nonetheless without You, for the stronger You attempt to drive me from a dwelling place that is a non-dwelling place, as I and Islam(s) are wanders, the greater, no doubt my passion to supposedly ‘impossibly’ relate to You through some of You. The greater, no doubt, my passion to not be ‘passive’ to your transgressions and assassinations of I, as You seem to believe yourself to belong to a self-righteous noble class, that rejects both Eurocentric Authority and Eurocentric Capitalism. In the same sentence I seek to have Islam(s) with your name, not before and not after your name, as that would suggest a privileged order, a prioritizing, of either your rejection towards Eurocentric Authority and Eurocentric Capitalism over I and Islam(s), or I and Islam(s) claiming a privileged order and hence a priority over you. Here, then I transgress out of passion for You, for us, Nous, to clarify Islam(s) position of You, as a plural non-essentialist ‘other’, as any mutations of any lifestyle, any thought, also varying in interpretations as Islam(s). Islam(s) are not interested in attaching a stigma of verdicts, for how could they strive to live their own plurality, a plurality within, without enigmatically witnessing themselves the living of another’s multiplicity without themselves.
It would be difficult for Islam(s) to free themselves, to regard themselves as wanderers, without formally recognizing the possibility that others, choosing to remain as non-Islam(s), ought to reserve the right, as they have, to translate the world in their own ways. Henceforth starting from this point I am a witness translating the untranslatable weight of describing Islam(s) verdicts on plurality without and their associations, elective affinities, with a plurality without, in so much as it relates to the logical and contextual practical corpus or voice of Nous; Coming Communities.
When my gaze meets you
At the beginning and in the instant Nous’ voice becomes ensued, there comes a cataclysmic intuitive understanding that permeates what may appear to be a hegemonizing vacuum or ‘space’. This vacuum or space is alive, between ‘us’ is alive I tell you, hence its ability to distance You and I or any strangers and wanders fearing speech, making clear that which is unclear, living up to their own pretensions as they, consciously or unconsciously incubate or foster egoism, vanity as they presume to know everything when they know nothing. The permeation of this and that space, through Islam(s), in a sense is preordained to a re-ceding reagent or preceded by acts not necessarily accommodating despair and that arise due to what may appear as radical separations between You and I. Rather the act that Islam(s) demands here is an affirmative desire to characterize, to examine in depth the mysterious You such that an instance is born, where the act becomes subsumed into what is intuitively understood or signified as an association, a friendship. I will turn to this radical separation as it is a separation signifying differing worlds belonging to strangers and wanders. Koranic verse: “We have created you tribes and nations so that you may know one another. In the eyes of God, the noblest among you is the one whose is the most virtuous” (Koran, 49:13). I return to the instance.
Bodies are in touch on this page
You would be neglecting plenty if You choose to not relate here or there in the open theater. I tell You as well that the instance of ‘knowing one another’ is not an instance unless an instance implies that which is infinite. Furthermore ‘knowing one another’ is not an instance of elective affinity, finite. You may relate elective affinity’s occurrence to a consciously or unconsciously motivated relation or connection that You and I share and whose instance is again subsumed in a portal, a window or a opportunity, a node belonging to Nous and becomes where the rhizomatic You intersects and is capable of accommodating the rhizomatic I or vice versa. Elective affinity is ‘elective’ as it is selective of the traces, the points of relation that it desires and consciously chooses though not necessarily rational in such a choice or its choosing of such a choice, to see a theme reflected from You in I, or I a theme in You. It forms therefore a hierarchy if You will as it seeks the acknowledgment that ‘I have something common’ or ‘of interest to You’ and that You and I share. You endow upon I the privilege of ‘knowing’ something of You or I endow upon You such a ‘privilege’. But this might lead one to think that what You know, what I know belongs to either You and/or I. What You do not see coming is this: Everything upholds its testimony to God, Tawheed, material property or otherwise to the extent You and I are ‘caretakers’ occupying places of autonomy, of choice, of a will if such a will exists and God opens and binds our hearts together, towards us knowing one another. Koranic verse: “And if God had pleased, God would have made you in a single Ummah [community], but that God might try you in what God gave you. So vie with one another in virtuous deeds. Too God you will all return, so that God will inform you of that wherein you differed” (Koran 5: 48).
In the end, your gaze touches upon the same character tracings that mine are
touching now and you are reading me, and I am writing you
Elective affinity then is where your eyes and mine meet. Elective affinity is where you and I differ. Elective affinity carries with it the advent, if the individual, You or I, or both parties desire, You and I, at least the discovery and perhaps the partial emergence of a line of flight towards a fictional friendship. A fictional friendship that is not yet a Nous and which requires a never exhausted yet always exhausting line of flight or processes of always getting to know one another for it to become Nous as the Koran testified above. Thus fictional friendship does not go far enough to give it the status of Nous. Nous is not selective. Nous is not elective. Nous requires the lengthening, prolonging and relaying of its line of flight. Nous is not aggravated solely upon lines of alliance between You and I, as that denotes You and I becoming selective or elective of what You and I specifically desire from one another. Nous is not built solely upon an intent, for You and I, to ‘meet and greet’, supposedly uniting in ‘solidarity [in] every struggle against [Eurocentric] Capitalist/and or [Nepotistic] Socialist [or even Eurocentric Authoritarian] orders” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 19). Nous, from a “molecular point of view [is not premised upon places where] each attempt [becomes] at [achieving] ideological unification” for such a desire “is an absurd and reactionary operation” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 108-109). Why? “Desire, on a social terrain, refuses to allow itself to be confined to zones of consensus…why ask a feminist movement to come to a doctrinal or pragmatic accord with ecological movement groups or with a communitarian experiment by people of color or with a worker’s movement, etc…?” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 108-109). Why ask? And so the Koran testifies: “If your Lord had willed, all those on earth would have believed together. Would you then compel people to become believers?” (Koran, 10:99). And so “ideology shatters; it only unifies on the level of appearance [as fictional friendship]…what is essential [conversely] is that each movement shows itself to be capable of unleashing irreversible molecular revolutions” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 108-109). Perhaps I should insist on this difficult and decisive point: These molecular revolutions are not described and defended as testifying purely to all that is irreversible, as they undeniably request to all that abides and all that believes in and appreciates infinitely the plural and multiple.
In a silent instant…the touch of a promise
Through and through Nous becomes a pluralistic form of affinity occupied by exponentially decaying degrees and intensities of fear, egoism and vanity within You and towards I and the opposite. Nous becomes through and through a demand of You to live to your own pretensions, and to turn your abstract love for humanity into a concrete act directed toward a flesh and blood individual, I (Dostoevsky, 1989: 224). Nous’ act is void of any intents to coerce or compel another belonging to Nous or those whom have not yet produced or recognized a Nous. Over and over again debasing, degrading, coercion and conversion exemplify compulsion so I everlastingly repeat “the Koran…does not look at faith in terms of what divides and disperses, ignoring the wisdom of diversity and objectives of having faith to begin with” (Esack, 1997: 171). “Righteous deeds… recognized [in Islams] are not the monopoly of any single competitor…as the judge God, has to be above the narrow [and divergent] interest of participants…claims of familiarity with the [sole] judge [God] with any particular ‘team’ will not avail the participants” (Esack, 1997: 175). Koranic verses: “Unto us our works and unto you your works; let there be no dispute between you and us. God will bring us together and to God we shall return” (Koran, 42: 15 and 2: 139). To exist, to indulge upon such an existence through not yielding and proclaiming the right of way to other dignitaries of God, dignitaries belonging to Islam(s) or not, denies God’s, the sole Authority. Islam(s) summoned the courage even if but theoretically to pronounce long before our Nous here existed that “no Authority, no leader, no government, no assembly can restrict, abrogate or violate in any way these rights”; rights ordained, asserted and which belong solely to God not demagogues (Arkoun, 1994: 106).
“Contempt for [the] other, the Koran suggests, was [, is and continues to become] rooted in notions of being the chosen [ones] of God” (Esack, 1997: 158). But Islam(s) claims not that Muslims/Muslimas are the chosen ones, at least theoretically. “Nay, but it is God who causes whomsoever God wills to grow in purity; and none shall be wronged by even a hair’s breadth” (Koran, 5: 49). A new creation, Al-Haqq, just, “applies to God as a transcendent being to whom one as being has not a privilege of accessing but rather a right to” (Esack, 1997: 158). This creation “takes on the movement from the singular transcendental form to a pluralistic one on this earth through its multiplicitous form; Huquq. Islams cannot as a social entity display superiority to “the other” for the other and You bear Huquq granted only by God, and such an obsessive superiority complex associated with having such an inflated self-image summons Islam(s) if they proclaim otherwise and their parochial God above “the other” (Esack, 1994: 175). Such a claim, if it were to occur by Islam(s), would place Islam(s) as hegemonic “others” encountered historically, whom have monstrously exaggerated their crimes of vanity in the name of their God; those whom plunge in a savage and solitary desire to appropriate and negate God all together for their individual or communitarian indulgence (Esack, 1994: 175).
Inclusiveness becomes superior to exclusiveness, plural desires through Islam(s) revolt over the singular and expressions belonging to the “other” are always expected to be left filled, displayed, occupied by the ‘other’ and blessed at this point no less than those who desire or proclaim to desire, that which was always for God to keep. Like an indestructible reminder, I tell You, the Koran from the beginning became aware of residences of ‘the other’ and the monumental nobility of the notion of ‘the other’, a testimony before God of le differénd, the legitimacy and right to uphold castles in the world and to ‘coexist’ with Islams, who itself at an instant occupied a space of ‘the other’. The proof that I have here lays with the Koranic verse: “Freedom from (all) obligations (is declared) from God and God’s Messenger (SAW) to those of the Mushrikûn (polytheists, pagans, idolaters, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allâh), with whom you made a treaty” (Koran, 9: 1).
An echo of my Incarnation
Islam(s)’ in so far as abstractions as justice and injustice suffers no allusion and although it desires it is not naïve to request the “[dissolving of all] power relations in the utopia of perfectly transparent communication…but to give one’s self the rules of law…the ethos, the practice of self, which would allow these games of power to be played with a minimum of domination” (Foucault, 1987: 129 cited in Day, 2001: 30). You saw and I testified to this certainly here, in this economy of a paper, during our attending to the encounter with Micro-fascisms; Chapter Two, as Islams sought the preservation of the plural and the singular. Islam(s)’ role becomes the cultivation of a spirit in respecting ‘the others’’ customs and practices as it accepts that the faithful adherents of all traditions will also attain salvation and that “no fear shall come upon them neither will they grieve” (Koran, 2: 262). Conversely an unjust desire on part of Islam(s) would be for them to strike fear upon and thus transgress ‘the other’s’ house because ‘the other’ supposedly did not testify to or pledge allegiance to Islam(s) is an absolute brevity upon Tawheed; upon God. So I haunt You with these Koranic Verses: “O you who believe! Let not a group of you be-little [and hegemonize] another; it may be that the latter are better than the former…Nor let some women belittle other women; it may be that the latter are better than the former… Nor defame one another, nor insult one another with nicknames… How bad it is to charge someone with iniquity after they have believed… And whosoever does not repent, such are indeed transgressors… O you who believe, avoid much suspicion; indeed some suspicions are sins. And spy not, nor backbite one another” (Koran, 49: 11). The root is here made clear, a root of tireless responsibility for ‘the other’; a “‘responsibility without limits’ in the face of the other” (Derrida, 1992: 22 cited in Day, 2001: 27). “The infinity of this demand means that, justice cannot be reduced to any particular system of injunction –it remains always to come (à venir)” (Derrida, 1992: 26-27 cited in Day, 2001: 27). Look for it here in a Koranic Verse: “And if two parties or groups among the fall to fighting, then make peace between them both, but if one of them rebels against the other, then fight you (all) against the that which rebels till it complies with God’s command for justice; then if it complies, then make reconciliation between them justly, and be equitable. Verily! God loves those who are equitable”(Koran, 49: 9)
Without an interest but to attest to God’s creativity, the Koran invents and does not prevent Islam(s) from engaging if not competing with ‘the other’ in the spirit of that which is just and that which recognizes the mutual benefit of neighboring communities (Esack, 1997: 179-203). Nous for Islams “is not based on a vague and undefined desire for peace and quiet…rather it is based on a struggle against injustice and for the creation of a world wherein it is safe to be human and people are freed from enslavement” (Esack, 1994: 179-203). Such non-elective affinity with the “oppressed, furthermore, implies the recognition of them as agents of their liberation with their own resources to draw own” (Esack, 1994: 179-203).
If one day I dared
Nous is then where not You and I ‘fictionally’ conform in and through abstract associations but where everything is and always continues to be done, lived according to the principal of desiring ‘to know’ one other with each episode we become drawn closer to one other. This ‘knowing’ ought to be complemented un-regrettably with the conscious impossibility that we shall never be one another and accordingly this ‘knowing’ becomes turned inside out; an ever present thought always in a decaying vacuum that reduces the distance between us and does not exacerbate further the separation between You and I, but rather that affirms the desire never to conform but instead to create and discover. What becomes commonplace in a terrain belonging to Nous is for You to indulge underground in a soul belonging to I, in the depth of my eyes, breaking yourself, breaking yourself from yourself, from solitude and I along the way in search for Nous.
Nous, You and I, are tormented in our passion or longing for the “creation of a ‘community with neither presuppositions nor a State’” (Agamben, 1993: 82 cited in Day, 2001: 35). Through these coming communities, comprised of Nous, there comes a challenge to “the false dichotomy between ‘ineffability of the individual and the intelligibility of the universal’ by appealing to singular rather than mass poles of identification” (Agamben, 1993: 81 cited in Day, 2001: 35). Mass poles as those infinite thoughts whose end becomes a beginning becoming an end…
Chapter Four: Infinite Thoughts as The End becomes a Beginning becoming an
End
Mourn Nous, not these words whose analytic show that both Your understandings and imaginations have entered into a contractual agreement constituting your judgment and taste regarding this economy of a paper? A ‘beautiful exposition’ is here, certainly not for “I” but perhaps for You, and that you insist in destroying through this infinite hold on its language and which is always retractable. You leave no imagination on the other hand for the extraordinary violence not of language, not of the word, words, striated segments, but rather for any flights of thought that accompany this economy of paper. I could take leave forever from that which has been ‘spoken’ here; what you think to be and believe is my voice. But that which has been thought can never be said again (Agamben, 1982: 108). Language was never my voice here, rather my voice here accompanies my thoughts and that belongs to an “I”. An “I” that is neither fascist nor paranoiac; an “I” that is rhizomatic and anarchical; an “I” that requires… no… no…it creates without even needing to demand Nous; a rhizomatic ‘us’. You came as close as possible to language, but never to “I”, though you almost brushed against it, encountered it but turned back. You could though reach the ‘depth’ of “I” as opposed to merely trying to correspond with the ‘surface’. In a further move undeniably You could alternatively take the shortest way, walk away towards your home untroubled. That would become pity and an act of terror, but I desire that you flap your wings and think like a pheasant lifting off and then disappears instantly among the trees, as a porcupine buries in the thick underbrush, and dry leaves crackle as a snake slithers away (Agamben, 1982: 108). There is something that is ‘said’ here in your flapping, as it does not communicate through language with the porcupine or the snake that slithers away yet somehow has a voice. A voice that is something else, not language for that “is not my voice”, but rather infinite thoughts and which are here, and that require you to go beyond your limits, to think beyond, to over-think (Agamben, 1982: 108). You need to understand why you and I came here and why I rose from depth only to surface to tell you of my depth. You need to think why it was “I” whom initiated this and what “I” initiated here. Was there a distant proximity occupying the spaces between You and I, that I was not aware of, or was there a negative secret animosity, upon unfounded foundations, that made you remain in your infantile dwelling place while “I” became and am still becoming a you and “I”; Nous? This is not mysterious and sacrificial wisdom that I am trying to make you conceive of here and bestow upon myself. “I” initiated this. “I” initiated this noise, I chose and choose noise oriented towards and for you to reflect upon, while you remain in your ever yet infantile dwelling, your looking glass; glace. It is worth being reminded that again a noise, a noise I say, castrated your glace while you covered your ears. Now you are delirious and for a start you recognize that to this debate there is no side to take, but the declaration of Nous, everything else becomes cinder.
Keep it in the family
Formally speaking I am not an assassinating imposter transformed “into [an] incendiary projectile”; I am not a neo-pilot (Badiou, 141). When the Towering cements temporarily departed a movement became realized; an overcoming, an always becoming, became initiated, conjured up from its depth.
One might say a former having been terror, became hidden, absolved, removed, betrayed, reproduced and once more presupposed; again overlapping itself. ‘Yesterday’ terror, having been terror, “qualified a particular figure of the exercise of State power” (Badiou, 144). Now, its expressions belong to always becoming terror, at least unconsciously and just for now. An always becoming terror is not a co-belonging or interweaved terror, for such terror would somehow suggest it being constituted by both a having been and always becoming. For now instead, a thought followed by an act gave birth to a relentless faceless invisible enemy. The Towering cements departed and terror now always becoming terror signifying exactly that which is contrary to yesterday’s Terror (Badiou, 144). Now this always becoming terror has come to “designate…from the position of the dominant, [the State,] all those who engage in a combat [militant or any other] using whatever means at hand, against a given order which is judged to be unacceptable” (Badiou, 144). “Anti-Nazi resistors for Pétain and his militia”; “Algerian patriots of the NLF for every French government without exception between 1954 and 1962”; “Chechens for Putin and his clique”; an always becoming terror (Badiou, 145). Terror now a spectacular performance; a play whose predicate and habitual dwelling place has become, at least for now, Islam(s); Terror whose “point[s] of departure…[are a rhizomatic set] of extraordinary complex maneuvers in relation to…[a] manna of…[black gold]” in a Monarchy of Meccan Kingdoms of Sheikhs (Badiou, 149). Always becoming terror whose motif announces for I never again an always becoming excluded, but rather an always emancipated name. “’Excluded’…[was] the sole name [given to I and to which I was supposedly imprisoned with yesterday’s terror]…just as ‘market’ is the name of a world which is not a world” (Badiou, 162).
Now, I am not accumulating a second name Terror over another, Excluded. Terror never substituted Excluded, rather Terror is synonymous and preordains every other signifier to follow. I have come to realize this though. If I whose signification is abstractly denoted with a give name, my name, that I ‘carry’ and which can always become replaced with another name by imperial machines, Eurocentric Capitalism and State, when they don’t like it, doesn’t suit them, then what holds the space of my name intact? If these imperial machines dare to take another name and place another in its place then the space occupied by first Excluded, and now Terror, was always inhabited by symbolic positions determined by supposedly imperial machines. But then where is my name??? Has it, my name, been kept by these imperial machines in the attic. Has my name resigned to these imperial machines on pain of returning to its habitual dwelling place or has it become indifferent to such a return? Surely, if my name chose to hide then I would not hold its choice as being far from being innocent. Quite the contrary I believe that my name that now signifies an always becoming terror, has never and could never become threatened as it remains anonymous to these imperial machines. Never has anyone ever asked me of what this anonymous name of mine signifies in the open theater; certainly not You. Perhaps everyone already knows or presupposes that they know. I am skeptical of this. My name without a disregard to such skepticism though, I say, was always an emancipated name. It was free to be what it desired to be in all its ferocity, in all its Terror from itself and to itself.
A Testimony Already Forgotten: Invading Oceans by Becoming Planters
We, You and I, are becoming acquainted and I feel there is a need for Nous to take action, to grow roots, not for fun but to incapacitate two guests, Eurocentric Authority and Capitalism, to whom we never offered hospitality towards. Nous remains to come following this preposition: Our practices, Ourselves require that we surface, discuss our depths, to accept, to receive, to invite Nous, if it can be supposed that we understand each other when we ‘speak’ and make ourselves understood on the basis of the roots spoken of many lines and ample times above. One might as well say that I came here not to assimilate but to alienate yourself from yourself, for You to lament back at Your beginning, Classical Anarchism(s), to respond to Islam(s). I came here for You to think that such a reply through my correspondence has ended here, only for I to inherit deliberately the act, the exercise of conducting symphonic ally demoniac scissions upon Your Post-Anarchism; The End becomes the Beginning becoming an End. I would say that in this economy of a paper and following this, the next, and every other I write, that throwing Your head first, like your former Classical Anarchism(s), is very, very near alienating and offer instead that You always remain immediately conscious; for you to be light on your feet; for these blows here to create us both. I without question came here, instead of staying with my secret, to this supposedly inaccessible place; War of Dreams: Becoming(s) of a Redeemed Circle A with an Eye and a Redeemed Eye with a Circle A. I belong not here in this economy of a paper nor am I interested in worshiping the boundaries of its supposed nodes of affinity. Like you, I am engaged both individually and collectively, both in theory and praxis, in re-creating myself like when I was first born, becoming human; fitra.
In this re-creation I believe that I am becoming what we call and without settling in them individually or collectively, Muslim and Post-Anarchist. I have tried to elaborate non-figuratively and literally giving Nous a way, a practice, an alternative, another painting, a clarification and explanation, with rigorous points of relating to one another; giving myself a new way to living. I have tried to remind You that every day on any street corner we suffer as prisoners to imperial machines; Eurocentric Capitalism and Authority. I told You of matters partially belonging to my depth instead of merely giving You a surface effect. I have tried to bring You to admit that You yesterday, a Classical Anarchist, have historically and politically exiled, sometimes an inner type of exile like those belonging to Micro-fascists, all religions, here, particularly Islam(s) and whose testimonies are absent from your Post-Anarchism of today. Each time throughout, I taught You that “in order to think religion abstractly, we [You and I collectively] will [have to] take these powers of abstraction as our point of departure, in order to risk eventually, the following hypothesis: with respect to all these forces of abstraction and of dissociation, ‘religion’ is at the same time [always] involved in reacting antagonistically and re-affirmatively [always thus] outbidding itself” (Derrida, 1996: 2).
I told You that it does not serve You or I right to classify religions under the same name because there is no right, no concept, nor even a word corresponding to perhaps the last two monotheisms, Islam(s) and Judaism(s), that “ revolt against everything that in the Christianizing of our world, signifies the death of God, death in God, two non-pagan monotheisms that do not accept death any more than multiplicity in God…two monotheisms alien enough at the heart of Greco-Christian, Pagan-Christian Europe” (Derrida, 1996: 12).
But I also admitted that the “surge of Islam(s) will be neither understood nor answered as long as the exterior and interior place…have not been called into question [, and this is my life long promise to conduct such questioning that is,]…as long as one does not define the passageway between this interior and all the apparently exterior dimensions” (Derrida, 1996: 20). This passageway would require ‘an other’ already absent here, in this economy of a paper, the interior, and out there, in the open theater, an exterior. I will remind You as I have shown You that this ‘other’, is personal, involves an establishment of social connections through our commitments to values towards obstructing two imperial machines. Correspondingly I have tried to interest and tempt You to looking for Nous. I tried to give these thoughts and their bodies some flesh. I tried to show You that Nous seldom if at all could be taught and seldom has to do with just cooperation (May, 2001: 194-199). “Our values, our inferential structures, and our daily engagements” have to arise not solely from attentive ears quietly grasping that there exist overarching imperial machines desiring to acquire each Nous You and I create (May, 2001: 194-199). Just for one day, just for one day I said and say, even if in passing, Nous needs to awaken its desire for becoming human.
In a step beyond me now, these are the discovered and surfacing becoming(s) I testify to thus far. But it is, as often the case is, that there is no prohibition against me copulating like animals thereby recognizing that these are merely discovered becomings. So I remind myself before You that “animal copulation leaves behind itself no monument, no burial place, no institution, no law that opens and assures any history” (Derrida, 1974: 12). Respectively I am not naive to think that I am passively confined to these discoveries and therefore, as I must, I attest to ‘being’ associated with all that resides yet undiscovered, impatient to be discovered and all that is beyond discovery. Furthermore, I am not passive to associate any becoming without it always fluctuating; becomings associated with flux; a flux testifying to its own variation in degrees and intensities.
I possess no abode to hide now I tell You, so as to remain a secret or in a secret, nor would I desire for such an abode’s possibility. Such a wish corresponds to an avowed desire to distance Nous, to attest to all the manufactured oppressions that I feel I detest. Such a wish, even if but for an instant, in principal renders that I possibly belong to imperial machines. On the contrary, my name and I believe I myself am free. I believe only in God, and for one and I to testify to an order there must be an indivisible instant at the divisible moment of testifying, in which one, and I, believes that there is ‘something’ truly belonging to that someone, myself, that could be lost and that the something has a value of truth.
That however would contradict, for I, Tawheed; I am left with mourning solely God’s absence from our, God’s and mine, Nous. And so the End becomes the beginning becoming an End.
As for You, a Post-Anarchist, and I, not to mention, our Nous? I attest not to imperial machines that bare not, recognize not, understand not, comprehend not and witness not even my name. Imperial machines to whose constituents are constituted and testify solely through the rubric of their saturated rationalizations. To what exemplary competence will they, these imperial machines, and without difficulty sustain such a will over Nous; my moves towards Post-Anarchism; Your moves towards Islams. It is a unique place, at the indivisible instant when Nous is brought to an imperial machines’ attention in so far as their, the Imperial machines’, difficulty in territorializing, de-territorializing and capturing Nous increases. A Nous which can be understood through becoming human, Post-Anarchist and Muslim presupposing throughout itself an alternative, a ‘detachment’ of itself from language, symbolizations and lives predetermined by imperial machines. Nous is manifested in Nous, inscribed within itself from itself, and whose birth brings with it a thought by imperial machines whose only insight regarding Nous upon seeing it is that ‘there is something more to them [Nous] than what is seen’. Nous’ carries with it two affirmations; simultaneously it plays two sides. An affirmed offering in that it, Nous, can only be understood from within, by those whom choose to circulate ‘through’ it; I could be saying that I relate to You here ‘through’ You, to be more precise, a part of You for You are becoming You and I becoming I. You and I, our individualized always becoming and are always released in an affirmation of differences, a separation, belonging to You and I; a resistance to assimilation.
The other affirmed offering could be conceived of as a protection against the danger of incorporation whereby our Nous is never identical to another Nous elsewhere, due to the formers affirmation of individualized always becoming hence beginning the realization that Nous becomes a Collective always becoming. Nous, encrypts itself from itself and others, amounting to a fusion of ties within itself haunting any instants for introjections made by imperial machines. Nous is a relationship of clinging detachments.
To a blind ‘we’ that ‘we’ become
Contrary to your expectations this body of text has taken time, shuttling between thoughts and now that I am nearing ‘the end’ I utter that all this creation, this interpretation from origin to its in between, is but a stray hair denoting a line of flight for Nous if You will and desire. You may contest and ridicule the bodies enclosed within those boundaries, and You may detest its themes, its glossaries and spectacles that desire to overcome what seem to be produced distances foreclosed before Islam(s) and Post-Anarchism, but You already forgot its founding achievement.
Your eyes have been, are and will always be fixated about it like a tourist in a text that has always been open to Nous, even if in order to illustrate to You all the necessities of what I really wanted to show You and that took place, even if but carelessly. By fate or luck it is bound to create an effect. Not an effect whose intent belongs to your belief that You may be more self-righteous over I, or I over You and not an effect whose intent belongs to your proclamation that You know the course that ought or should be taken towards liberation, as that is an old trick that characterized Classical Anarachism(s) and neither belongs to You or I, but to Prophets and God.
This disturbance that took place in both traditions, in these ways of living here began at the instant in which both these traditions were born from thoughts that work; working thoughts. Thoughts un-appropriated by claims like that associated with property and thoughts that do not take up residence in neither You or I, but rather in instances of Nous. You, like I, are merely introduced here as a stranger and wanderer, always legible, always there. But You and I can open Nous, something creative, something formerly unheard of. Without such a recognition You maintain yourself, You oppress yourself by yourself, becoming a fascist through yourself, and more precisely a Micro-fascist, a stranger as I continue to wander finding anything and nothing but and except what I desire; a Nous; a wandering stranger in your world and You in mine.
“Geographers say there are two kinds of Islands”; Continental and Oceanic (Deleuze, 2002: 9). “Continental islands are accidental, derived islands…separated from a continent, born of disarticulation, erosion, fracture; they survive the absorption of what once contained them” and “serve as a reminder that the sea is on top of the earth, taking advantage of the slightest sagging in the highest structures” (Deleuze, 2002: 9). The other, Oceanic islands “are originary, essential islands” some of which form of from coral reefs, “some rise slowly; some disappear and then return, leaving us no time annex them”, acting as a reminder that the earth under the sea remains yet alive (Deleuze, 2002: 9). Continental islands are a resultant of a betrayal of the sea passing over and attempting to exceed the limits of the earth in their every movement territorializing, deterritorializing, negotiating with winds as the Eurocentric State and Eurocentric Capitalisms negotiate. Oceanic Islands alternatively choose to become Nous; becoming wandering strangers in each others worlds, gathering their strength getting ready to punch through the surface. By fate or luck, You desire Nous as parts of yourself betray yourself.
Here lies only the thought of Nous, not its act. You want me to reveal who I am. But who I am and who You are is not something for Nous to so arrogantly proclaim in this factory; in this Economy of a Paper. Who I am and who You are is for Nous to discover and that is designated somewhere else. Nous desires an open theatre where the body takes preface over the written word and thus where supposed masterpieces will be minimized and reduced such that they can no longer occupy the monitored and censored space of a supposed masterpiece. Rather what transpires instead are mandates of Infinite Thought never doubled, replicated, and accompanied with always differentials, remainders; degrees of difference. Can there be or can you recall an instance occupied by the same words You speak ‘openly’ and the same way twice, thrice? Do you recall such an instance, your body’s movements, interventions, your body’s language or is it and are they already dead, created anew, in their instants of birth. Look for an open theater where You will encounter parts of I and I parts of You as You and I privilege one another, as You and I create Nous. The encounter will throughout no doubt expose moments occupied by silent words signifying but a portion of Infinite Thought as Nous allows itself to negotiate itself till The End becomes the Beginning becoming an End.
As such the taste of the lemon and the words have coursed my veins…As such I ate the words and lemon and spat the seeds…for when yesterday I supposedly ‘woke’ up I found myself sucking what you and they might call a ‘lemon’…now a dried ‘lemon’…whose seeds are like these words which I just spat…perhaps now they, the seeds and their company of words may sprout into inverted trees of half red half green apples…As such my duty for now, but for now, becomes fulfilled…As such my infringement upon good tastes comes to a temporal beginning of something new…As such was my vision this afternoon…call it poetic terrorism if you like….all I propose to know is that it was but a war-like portrait of two dreams, redeeming one another…so now I have but two more matters…the first matter becomes the second of two promises I made you in this economy of a paper…Either way I expect that you read the second matter, yes the second matter, before the first…As for the second matter, it is a request also found below…
Juste en face de la rue…Pas jojo familier…Juste au coin del la rue, Regarder dans lex yeux…En paix, salve and peace be unto you…
If you don’t admire something, if you don’t love it, you have no reason to write about it. But there are No castles on the Rhine to be enshrined here. Read this once. Read this once. Read this once, burn it, tempt Nous and cry Brûle. -
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War of Dreams: Becoming(s) of a Redeemed Circle A with an Eye and a Redeemed Eye with a Circle A
You will permit me for I am more than revolted…more than outraged…
For I
wanted fresh work
One that would make contact with certain
Organic points of life,
a work in which one feels one’s whole
illuminated as if by a miner’s cap-lamp
with vibrations…
But that is only possible if nothing in the spoken text
happens to shock,
happens to damage this desire for glory
And so this
Might infringe on taste, morals, good manners, honorable intentions
or furthermore that might exude boredom,
familiarity and routine
But
The duty of the writer, of the poet is not shut himself and/or
herself up like a coward in a text, a book, a magazine
from which he and/or she never comes out but on the contrary
to go into the world to jolt, to attack the mind of the
public, otherwise what use is he and/or she ?
And why was he and/or she born?
Thus
I had a vision of this in the afternoon…
There are some who eat too much, words…
Others whom never eat, words, at all,
and others…who can no longer eat words
without spitting; parts of themselves betray themselves…
Antonin Artaud & I
Pre-Preface
An Abode & The Three Witnesses
I am dead. Yes you are alive. I just narrated. I created a colloquium of seemingly two witnesses, a dialogue, something like Islams, whose witnesses, The Holy Koran and The Sunnah (Prophetic narrations) are supposedly the same but not the same; distanced yet more strikingly testifying to one another’s existence. Someone, a witness, the Sunnah, proclaims: “I am dead”. Another, The Holy Koran, dares reply, “Yes, you are alive” (Derrida, 1998: 96). Attente, there remains, demueurait, there is someone else, a third; a third witness. Patienter, I will return to this witness, lower and on the same page.
Some witnesses whom choose to testify to Islams, Muslims/Muslimas, claim or allege that The Sunnah or varying texts of The Sunnah is/are dead. Others, Muslims/Muslimas as well, have spoken distinguishing themselves, complaining that The Sunnah or varying texts of it, is/are both in the past time and through endless eternity, remain(s) alive. I am not interested here in becoming consumed with exactly the reasons behind such ‘talk’, such an allegiance, the lack of it or even an abidance to varying degrees of it, The Sunnah, or not. Why would I? Why should I, as some Muslims/Muslimas believe it to be necessary, desire to put to end to such variations, I ask? And for what purpose would an engagement in a discussion of such ‘talk’ carry in weight, importance, to the discussion here? I answer. Abstractly nothing, for such ‘talk’ to I here would merely signify a reflection, a testimony whose testimony testifies to the absence of attestation, a lack of consensus as to the Authenticity throughout Islams of The Sunnah. Nonetheless such talk attains to I a degree of pure testimony. There is a Pure Testimony namely to the triumphant spirit and fanatical jubilation of such differing testimonies. As for our ‘living’ witness, The Holy Koran, Islams repeat not the same verdict of it as those upon The Sunnah; The Holy Koran remains consensually Authentic; The Holy Koran protected by the third Witness-Author: “Verily We [God] ourselves have sent down this exhortation [The Holy Koran], and most surely will be its Guardian” (Koran, 15:10).
Associate then what I address and proclaim here, in this economy of a paper, to belong to and through The Holy Koran and interpretations longing and belonging to its verses as I put away The Sunnah without delay, obligations to it or talks of it here.
Around her: Between Our Vows of Abstinence & Transgression
When I address you, when I speak to you here, each time, twice, through two narratives it will be to make a point. You need not consent.
A transgressing narrative wrapped around and engaging with an idea signified as becomings, touches, divides, shares and co-appears with, yet is distanced from, an abstaining narrative, a body of thought addressing both Muslims and those Anarchists, Classical before becoming Post, lusting yet and still before essentialist identity politiks.
There isn’t exactly transgression here, coming across these two narratives, in this economy of paper, “if this term [transgression] designates the violation of a prohibition, and the crossing of an un-crossable limit, and penetration into a sacred space” (Derrida, 2005, 295). For rather what becomes, in the instances of my transgressions, and the violations accompanying such transgressions, is something ‘other’ that posits itself as a prohibition while ridiculing and breaking such a prohibition (Derrida, 2005: 295).
This economy of a paper henceforth here is of supposedly a sacred event that becomes transgressed upon, through another narrative, resulting instead in, not transgressive acts, but rather something else. You may refer to the ‘something else’ as sacrificial impurities. Sacrificial impurities, subject certainly not to a due apology from my part and I to You for such ‘transgressive’ acts. But rather sacrificial impurities subject to works of redemption that neither transgress nor preserve this supposed Mecca of a space.
As the end becomes the beginning becoming an End (Chapter Four), these heavy, twisted and morbid thoughts, just expressed, will touch You and You inevitably will feel embarrassed that, the touch, transgressed your body’s sacred space, brushed against it, without your knowing, without You noticing.
They’ve Made me an organism! They’ve wrongfully folded me! They’ve
Stolen my body!
I believe and testify that Islam betrays itself. It bears a signature without which it remains inaudible or weakly perceptible; a signature begetting permanent difference; interpretations where one is ahead of another, advancing upon another, towards one another, away from one another and such.
Islam is a memory of beatitude and in its memory I begin speaking of Islams or Islam(s), as I deem appropriate and will not neglect to tell You along the way why; never more Islam. Islams or Islam(s) then scurry like a vermin, grope like a blind person, or run like a lunatic: desert travelers and nomads (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 150). In other words, they are fixated upon a moving instant, as a Bedouin upon a camel, experiencing movement, but un-experienced in movement. ‘Islam’ has through an incessant process of renewal succeeded in taking the structured organized organism that is itself as an enemy, its undying desire belongs to its encounter with temples of interpretive difference; its organs; Islams. “The organs are not its enemies” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 158). What it has it in for “is the organism” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 158). Islam is a Body Without Organs (BWO) (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980: 158). Islam if there is such an idea, such a thought, such a way of life, does not permit itself to experiment in peace, it won’t allow itself to ‘be’; Islam at war with Islams; with its own selves
I ask for your pardon for having things go on so long. Let You and I now go a little further…
Preface
Question of l’ Étranger
I am in mourning of all my tears. I am unable to participate in performing the rites of my mourning. I admit without self-delusion that speaking to God appears still an impossibility. A God whose absence remains for me, I am certain, forever unthinkable. Yet I am at a loss, unable to find public words for what is happening to us. I desire interrupting moments of my impossibility to break the silence of my absence from Nous. I desire to participate in the rites of my mourning. I am about to shift tone.
May I ask you something out of curiosity? Who do you think you are? When was the last time you became something else, someone else, real or not, I care not? Do you fantasize much? Are your senses becoming as my mourning institutionalized by mourning(s)? Do you confess to confusion now? You would like me to sit down and explain it all to you right now. Even had I much to say, you refuse to understand that I may not desire the heart for it today. Nonetheless you insist and persist in your demands. A menace you are. You desire a clarification and then a justification of what I am attempting, albeit failing miserably, at least in your opinion, in articulating eloquently and adequately to suite your comprehension thus far, in this economy of a paper.
I am now shifting tone. This is “Pigshit! All writing is Pigshit! No more masterpieces, no more masters (forget Hegel!)…Why? Because our innermost feelings are untranslatable and linguistically inexpressible”(Perez, 1990: 42). Would you like another reason? Proposed “literary masterpieces are established by repetition. That is to say, it is the repetition of reading and performance that establishes the Text as a fixed expression...So why repeat what has already been said as though one could recapture the freshness of the initial expression? An expression does not have the same value twice; does not live two lives” (Perez, 1990: 45). This paper, this scene of writing and its body of letters, words, sentences and phrases has but one life and is paralyzed by its own economy. Respectively, it is my intention that the specificities entailed in the discussion of this economy of a paper are to be expressed through writing once. For now and at this moment, sitting down, I tell you of a few matters.
As Antonin Artaud, I am insurrectionally in opposition to the rhetoric of written texts. A rhetoric soldered in repetitive asylums engaged in the betrayal of creativity and any possibilities of involution. Written texts whose bodies of paper have a bodily hold on you and I, confiscating our every sense and their every fantasy. Written texts whose failure in capturing the freshness of spontaneous expressions cuts across and violently replaces your non-coded gestures, as well as mine, with those “meaningless repetitions of the Text” (Perez, 1990: 46). I have to say this too swiftly but venture to maintain this firmly: “Texts [at best] are to be read or performed once and then burnt [including this one]” (Perez, 1990: 45).
Answer me you menace. In this economy of a paper you desire to subject me to your standards do you not? Why deny it? You desire, through this economy of a paper, that I come out of hiding, you desire to see of my depth upon the surface, so I may tell you something of myself and its depth. This is an economy of a paper that repetitively surges till it overspills with supplied citations of proposed ideas and their interrelated summarized complementary thoughts that are merely spent to accommodate all gaps in between the former and the latter. An economy of paper, whose exterior you supposedly desire if not vehemently demand to have bound in accordance to particular specifications in an attempt at pleasuring your satisfaction some more. What is it that you desire of me? Really what is it that you desire of me? You really desire that I take time, comfort you, showing you the equilibrium, “the truth”, somewhere along the way, here, as if in an attempt at convincing you that this maybe is what you are looking for? My apologies for disappointing you, if such were your expectations. I do not know what you are looking for in this economy of a paper. Find that somewhere else. Respectfully past this line your demands mean nothing. This is the hegemony of my economy of a paper. I did not come here to worship you. What did you think this is? And who do you think you are? Do not pretend to become a spectator in anticipation for a spectacle to commence. I am not getting ready to greet you, as this is not a theatre. Here, I do not “speak”. Here, lies the waking stench of the just recent deaths of both the spectator and the spectacle. As for practical ways of living, you find no answer to them here. Create your own. Take your next breath, engage me with your cordial gestures, dawn a smirk and even a smile. For a smile is an act of charity. In truth, do you think me naïve to your attempts at proving to me that you are sincere, courteous and not out to fetishicize my crucifiction? I owe you nothing. You owe me nothing. I neither own you nor am I bound to you, certainly not before death. I am not in search of your charity in you supposedly taking the time to read this. I point this to you. You offer an interrogative hospitality. You desire that I justify for you why I chose to write what it is I am about to write and why I believe in what I believe in. You offer an interrogative hospitality. You desire more. Wretchedly filled with greed you are. Yes I said. Greed. You ask why, as if somehow audaciously justifying an absurdity? You ask, why? You desire from me to justify why I choose to live the way I choose to live and not any other way, and more so perhaps why I choose not to live your way. I am not finished with you yet. You desire to interrogate and evaluate my existence upon your supposedly hearing of my justifiable reasoning(s). Reasoning(s) that lie within the purview and in accordance with your cordoned linear criteria(s) and preconceptions, criteria(s) and preconception(s) you have established as a priori(s).
You desire of me to, now that I am about to begin to surface and appear to you in what you believe to be all the spectrums of my subjectivity, devise a means to calculate the benefits of assimilating onto your stage, whatever that stage maybe. You desire me to engage in cheating myself and you desire to become a God. You drown in an abyss of arrogance. I owe you nothing. You pretend to desire in exploring where I come from and where I intend on migrating to. Who do you intend on mutilating here, me? You? The both of us, I say. In a wish and if I could fulfill a waking dream of making this page a theatrical scene for my voice and my body, I would respond to Artaud’s calling here for my replacement, the author-creator, with myself as director. Matters would be different. You would bear witness my unsympathetic wrath in response to your interrogative hospitality. A disorderly wrath, belonging to an intuitive theatre, for you to see without any hesitation, that “all creation comes from the stage, finds its expression and its origin in [speech] before words” (Perez, 1990: 36). My senses, fantasies and body would come alive in your midst and no longer become mourned. We would welcome my becoming as director and not an author/creator. A “director who has become a kind of manager of magic, a master of sacred ceremonies. And the material on which [I] work, the themes [I] bring to throbbing life are derived not from [me] but from” God (Perez, 1990: 36). I would be a shaman, not a Creator or hierarchal figure-but merely the mediator of magic. That said. Forget the theatre. You here have a factory and its economy in its stead. From now on you only know what I am about tell you, this is my hegemony, my resistance in response to your interrogative hospitality, unless you choose to engage in creativity for yourself. Create if you desire. Here there are no mediators between you and I. Here you have consciously greeted my threatening alienation in response to your desire to expose my paper and belittle the power of this factory; this economy of a paper. You may have your moment(s) of victory, but they are merely moments and a moment is never infinite though temporally at times it may seem to us as such. You come here as a psychologist imposter, and mind you so did I, though not to interrogate my factory, the factory that is my unconscious and the factory that is this economy of paper. You are mistaken. Here you cannot win. Why? For while we are both imposters you and I, you encounter here something else of me. I speak not of an encounter with me as a director. There is no encounter of that nature to speak of here. Need I remind you this is not a theatre? I speak of another encounter. Two factories: this economy of a paper and an “other”. The “other”, I mentioned above while you weren’t paying attention to the written words; the factory of me, my unconscious. It is a factory that carries meanings that neither you nor I can decipher or call to question as it is undiscovered and in response, it is to be feared. It threatens you constantly because it protects itself, without my consciousness of it. And like the economy of my paper it is always producing and reproducing, in between your pauses and mine, sounds and thoughts, between the gaps that filter all the unspoken words and all the forever non-coded gestures. The spectacle you thought would exist here does not. You may try and scrutinize what happens here, analyze it, diagnose it with all its symptoms, but it still stands, always has and always will, and is not in need of a second coming. Why? It is endless becoming(s).
Here, lies an ushering instead and the offering of an interpretation…
Introduction: The Rhizome, Processes of Becoming(s) and Faith
I think she moved away, still with the feeling of lightness
So begins in this economy of a paper neither an alliance nor a contract, neither a familiarity nor a fictional friendship but rather an abrupt collusion or in some sense none other than the arrival of an interpretation. I ‘speak’ here and now and at this instant say its character, the interpretation’s character, is signified as Islamic Anarchistic Becomings. I ‘speak’ of an interpretation whose essence is drawn from infinite separations of thoughts whose belongings testify to my conscious and unconscious factorial experiences themselves, here and now in this economy of a paper. Until…
She found herself in a distant forest, named Bois des Bruyères
Here, obviously, is where we, You and I, must have a debate. In Classical Anarchism’s insurrection against ‘the’ theological authority, God, You a former Classical Anarchist and now a self-proclaimed Post-Anarchist became, through mere processes of re-inscription, God’s replacement, a demagogue, a master and a new form of authority. You forgot and forget: In engaging in an un-statutory process, You claimed to have murdered God, but You left the actual place of the divine intact (Newman, 2001: 119). Your deliberate outbursts now proclaim Conventional Classical Anarchism(s) to have exhibited fragility. A fragility emanating from them laying hostage, You say, as they are linked and attached to and emerge from Euro-centric metaphysics. Euro-centric metaphysics whose conceptions and “concepts of human subjectivity and human rationality…are implicitly bourgeois and statist; it is [rightly noted, as You have,] therefore [that it is] extremely difficult, if not theoretically impossible, for such [Classical] Anarchism[s] to transcend the sociopolitical order” which they purported to challenge (Call, 2002: 33). You announced, created and invited Post-Anarchism as a substitute. More easily than such substitution, You utter that Post-Anarchism affirms the importance of difference. You deliberately bless yourself by complementing yourself on Post-Anarchism’s understanding of “the need to draw together different strands of radical thinking-anarchist, feminist, postcolonial, and so on- into provisional tactical alliances” (Call, 2002: 42-43). You lie. The ‘dead’ Classical Anarchism(s) still belong(s) to You and the ‘newly born’ Post-Anarchism is still deprived from offering hospitality, distancing itself and hence yourself yet from Religion. There is not and there must not be any inheritance or filiation from Classical Anarchism(s), worthy of your appellations upon Religions. Yes, You lied to ever yourself, never I. You are far beyond and without good reason engaged in your own praises under the rubric that Post-Anarchism is distinct from Classical Anarchism(s) as they bury Classical Anarchisms’ placed vision(s) of a return to an authentic human condition (Call, 2002: 42- 43). You sigh secretly that ‘the’ Post-modern Anarchist finds their dwelling place not in the past but rather in the future (Call, 2002: 42-43). You are yet, still trying to escape a selective past, performing a partial excavation, as fast as possible, rather than returning faithfully to the past in order to move forward; Sankofa. Your decree upon Religions ceases not. Religion(s) continue(s) to be exiled, deported, expelled and deprived from your excavation(s). Religion(s) always equated with the manipulative and parasitic. Hence, You resort to blackmail. Your blackmail wants still to keep “God [and God’s fettered religion]…nonexistent; their promises…still [perceived to be] null and void, since they can only be fulfilled by ‘man’s’ subordination” (Goldman, 1969: 5-7). Thus, your former Classical Anarchism(s) and your present and future Post-Anarchism remain(s) deprived and uncommitted to disarming “centuries of engrained Euro-centrism” that have yet to acquire and require overcoming(s) (Adams, 2003: 1). In principle it certainly seems that “the importance of [your] Anarchism[s] …[lies] in its exposing the authoritarianism[s] within [Classical] Marxism[s], and the unmasking of the place of power within the state” (Newman, 2001: 159). But in paying attention and combating another, Classical Marxism(s), it, Anarchism(s), and You neglected itself and yourself and You both became ‘blind’, consciously and unconsciously, to the “authoritarian tendencies” through your exclusion of ‘the non-Eurocentric other, Islam(s)’ (Newman, 2001: 159). Your “[Classical] Anarchism’s pure place of resistance against power, its uncontaminated point of departure…was [and remains yet with Post-Anarchism and You, un-strangely] somewhat impure, and contaminated with power” (Newman, 2001: 159). You mistake and confuse yourself to be taken for someone else, for something else unless you confront that Anarchism(s) [Classical and Post] and hence the “the identity of the anarchist subject [your identity] is actually constituted through its subordinated other- the power that it claims to eschew” over me (Newman, 2001: 119). You and “Anarchism(s) [, Classical and Post, ought to be]…forced to reflect on the authoritarian possibilities within [your] own discourses, and develop appropriate strategies of resistance” to your Micro-fascism(s) (Newman, 2001: 119). In contesting and disarming such authority, your authority, rather than submitting to its basic and limited jurisdiction, I engage in ‘super-seeing’; seeing in the ‘blind’ place of the ‘blind’ Anarchism(s) [Classical, Post] and the ‘blind’ You. Where…
She remained sheltered by trees she never knew well
Your avowed treatise on an absolute disarmament of your abstractions and your commitments to draw together different strands are respectively infinitely vulnerable.
You serve to classify heterogeneous religions under the same name. Your farce remains, it just changed sides; from Classical to Post and back again to Classical. You a Post-Anarchist have followed and still follow Classical Anarchism’s trajectory towards religion. You have yet to come to realize that in choosing such a re-inscription and the political representation that accompanies it that You have delegated “our” supposedly deceased God’s power to yourself. Respectively You run the risk of exploiting, if you have not do so already, and perpetuating that oppression [formerly a type of theological oppression, now a Post-Anarchistic oppression] onto other groups or individuals, I (May, 1994: 47).
“How [do You, a self-proclaimed Post-Anarchist] talk religion, talk Islam? Of religion, of Islams? Singularity of religion, singularity of Islams today? How dare [You] speak of [them] in the singular without fear and trembling, this very day? And so briefly and so quickly?” (Derrida, 1996: 1). Islams are not Islamism and You should not forget that the latter operates in the name of the former and thus emerges the grave question of the names of Islam(s). As for I, a mute witness, such names of Islam(s) emerge out of recognizing that “the ‘hyper-orthodox’ & the ulemocracy cannot...reduce it [Islam(s)] to a hegemonistic/universalistic ideology…to rule out divergent forms of ‘sacred politics’ informed by Sufism [e.g. the Naqshabandis], ‘radical’ Shia-ism [e.g. Ali Shariati], Ismailism, Islamic Humanism, Sunni-ism, the ‘Green Path’ of Col. Qadafi (part neo-Sufism, part anarcho-syndicalism)…the ‘cosmopolitan Islam of Bosnia…there is and will not be a single “monolith” of Islam” (Bey, 1996: 7). As for I, “The Qur’an by means of its pulverization of human language, is…Avant-garde...Post-modern…In its structure, its allusiveness, its ambiguities, its imagery, and its poetry” (Cheethan, 2005: 122). You know not Islams. As for I, “the Qurran reveals human language crushed by the power of the divine word; God’s word unmakes all human meanings, all the proud constructions of civilization, of high culture, and returns all the luxuriant cosmic, imagery back to the lowly and the oppressed, so that in their imaginations it can be made anew” (Cheethan, 2005: 122). Made anew through Ijtihad. As for I, Islam(s) offers me this Ijtihad, a kind of wandering in the vertigo of the past, present and future. As for I, Ijtihad translates to an Islamic right and duty to track, identify, intercept, pick up, translate, interpret and re-interpret Islamic principles and values to meet the social conditions of the past, present and future (Esposito, 2002: 159). As for I “the Islamic imagination, [as] Massignon has written, should be seen as a desperate regression back to the primitive, the eternal pagan substrate of all religions-that proteiform cubehouse, the Ka’ba- as well as to a primitive pre-Mosaic monotheism of Abraham… The Dome is built upon the Rock’” (Cheethan, 2005: 122). As for I, I hold “that, whatever our relation to religion may be, and to this or that religion, we are not priests bound by a ministry, nor theologians, nor qualified, competent representatives of religion…as such, in the sense the certain so called Enlightenment philosophers are thought to have been” and which You continue to strive to be (Derrida: 1996: 7). As for I, the world must be imaginalized, must be interpreted along with the soul. As for I, if the balance between the visible and invisible worlds and if the balance between the material and the spiritual is tragically lost, caught in an instant of death, creativity dies. As for I, religion is a spiritual bond, “a reflecting faith…[and] opposed to dogmatic faith…in so far as the latter claims to know and thereby ignores the difference between faith and knowledge” (Derrida, 1996: 10). As for I, I deny that “there is any a priori reality to the signifier: words, and specifically certain words, are nothing more than elements within an established semiotic field, and thus we repeat” (Perez, 1990: 116). As for I, “there is no universal structure of the mind, of relationships, of sexuality, etc. any more than there is an eternal essence of Woman-or Man. In the end we together say: we are becoming…Woman…Man…Animal…all.” (Perez, 1990: 119). Henceforth…
She was never bound to death by my surreptitious friendship
You have not come here to become friends. My friendship does not belong to your intention or your espoused ubiquitous and ambiguous ‘solidarity’. You, now a Post-Anarchist, have not come here to become friends and You have not given me infinitely respectful attention. Even if your friendship and attention came here, they are merely premised on the intention that we may hypothetically have the same enemies. You ask of my friendship? My friendship came here in the knowing that the differences between us would never leave anything else for us but friendship. My friendship further differs in that it is premised in infidelities that occurred prior to us trying to relate here, if that is at all a possibility. My infidelities, despite being each unique, were with other friends and strangers, whom I have met, not met and will never meet. Or do you think yourself my only friend? These friendships, my friendships, which forever lie in my possession were and are not premised on, as yours, an intent whose belonging is premised upon launched interrogations upon my factory; this economy of a paper. These friendships sought not to interrogate like You my factory here. How could they, for if they did they would no longer be my friendships? Rather they were and are premised on open theatres outside this economy of a paper. You desire to know open theatres? Listen to Antonin Artaud. It is where the written text is replaced with the body and the theater. After all is the theater not “the only place in the world where a gesture, once made, can never be made the same way twice?” The theater is the only place where one can escape the violence of inscription which kills the human spirit” (Perez, 1990: 47). Thus my desire here, instead of an unattainable theatre, as a gift of my consciousness to You, becomes a belonging to Gilles Deleuze’s expression. Deleuze’s expression becomes that “You can always replace one word with another. If You don’t like that one, if it doesn’t suit You, take another and put another in its place…Let us create extraordinary words on condition that they be put to the most ordinary us and that the entity they designate be made to exist in the same way as the most common object” (2001: 193).
I am going to listen to Deleuze. Now if I indulge in the luxury of replacing a word, a written word, with another, substitute it with another, layer it with another, can I replace You with another? What and who are You? Do you know? Unlike you I am not going to pretend to know. I informed You that my friendship here began with infidelity. What I propose to know about You becomes this though. You are a Post-Anarchist and a Muslim. You are both? Yes you. Why? You know neither. Even had You ascertained knowledge of both You forget that “any claim to a universal structure of the mind stems from the reactive desire to make life mathematical, calculable and simple, as in a story with a necessary beginning and a necessary end” (Perez, 1990: 112). However, relationships between human beings are a lot richer than that. “There are as many kinds of relationships as there are individuals.” (Perez, 1990:112). Henceforth if you seek not richness and its prose You do not belong here. And…
At the moment when the shooting was no longer, but to come…
Respectively and in response to your authority, expressed in many paragraphs above, I offer a resistance. This economy of a paper and its language(s) are a form of resistance that ought to be accounted for and in accordance with your analysis. This economy of a paper is my interception, an injunction of language. A language whose “essence is friendship and hospitality” (Derrida, 2000: 98) A language that “is political, and while it can participate in political domination, it can also be used as a tool against it”, against your jurisdiction(s) upon my religion(s), my faith(s), my Islam(s) (Newman, 2001: 106). “Your linguistics [of the ‘past’ and the ‘future’ by excluding Islam(s)] participates in authoritarian or state thought…practices of domination…by establishing a rational truth or essence…prevalent in thought, in images of thought…in words themselves” (Newman, 2001: 106). Respectively I resist here. Respectively I create here. Again I tell You, I perform Ijtihad. Do You require reminding? “Power creates its own resistance” (May, 2004: 73). Your liberation from your own self-subscribed authority, from your own Micro-fascism(s), and hence power must respectively take into account the kind of resistance that is being engaged in [here, in my economy of a paper], on pain of repeating that which You are trying to escape; Classical Conventional Anarchism(s) and your Post-Anarchistic authority (May, 2004: 73). And…
In the dense forest, suddenly, after how much time, she and I rediscovered a
Sense of the real
I tell You again I take it upon myself, here in this economy of a paper, to invoke and draw new contours of what You perceive as illicit and impossible; Islamic Anarchistic Becomings. Three nodes of congruence and, respectively, three plateaus or chapters are unveiled here. I speak of plateaus that unfold here all three reasoning(s) one might insist upon Anti-Capitalist Islamic Anarchistic Becomings, Anti-Authoritarian Islamic Anarchistic Becomings and Islamic Anarchistic Becomings of Nous. These plateaus of which I speak are particularly oriented and address remnants of Classical and Post-Anarchism’s merciless antagonism(s) against religion(s). Here, with instances of every plateau, I open and teach You of my Islam(s). The first two plateaus are nocturnal moments of movement, if You will, constituted of two sacred enemies we, You and I, are a versed to. Here I testify to Anti-Capitalist Islamic Anarchistic Becomings and acquire a gift for You along the way; I write you an alternative way of economically living through Islams.
The first enemy then, your enemy and my enemy, takes the form of fluid circular economism or monetarism; Eurocentric Capitalism (Chapter One). I unravel the lines of force shared between You and I that semantically traverse the idea of Anti-Capitalism and recreate such a signifier as an Islamic Anarchistic reply to Eurocentric Capitalism. A Eurocentric Capitalism whose strength resides in the fact that its axiomatic is never saturated (Perez, 1990: 56). A Eurocentric Capitalism whose capability belongs to its residual strength, in that it is always adding a new axiom to the previous ones as it appropriates whatever it finds to be a threat (Perez, 1990: 56). A Eurocentric Capitalism that always works and makes others work “by inscribing, coding and re-directing the flow of desire so that they may correspond with the flows of capital at the stock market” (Perez, 1990: 56). A Eurocentric Capitalism that seeks to establish an arborescent hierarchical structure, coding our every socious, our every relationship and our every desire into relationships and desires with a material essence, through processes of “de-territorialization (degrounding) and territorialization (grounding)” (Perez, 1990: 56). A Eurocentric Capitalism that makes repetition, a simulacrum, if You will, its end, such that every other someone or something is merely a copy of a copy, as this economy of a paper is to every other paper. I speak here of a Eurocentric Capitalism that desires the destruction of meanings by and through its insatiable appetite for repetitions. A Eurocentric Capitalism known for its creation of myths “to make people dependent on those myths…[to make] people feel that they lack, and of course, desire something” (Perez, 1990: 113). A Eurocentric Capitalism engaged in promoting its culture that basks in the greed and egoism of money and profits to eclipse and render idolatrous more authentic concerns, namely, ‘us’ and everything else on earth (Call, 2003: 46). I speak here of a Eurocentric Capitalism that Islams harmoniously beside Post-Anarchism believes is a cause and not an effect, not a disease but rather a symptom (Call, 2003: 127).
The second enemy represents itself primarily through worldwide pedagogical aerial juridical orders; Eurocentric Authority (Chapter Two). Here I testify to Anti-Authoritarian Islamic Anarchistic Becomings. Here I testify in truth to the truth and for truth, as Islams are not only capable of, but rather they do in fact espouse Anti-Authoritarian testimonies going hand in hand with Post-Anarchism and their despising of Eurocentric and Non-Eurocentric Authority. A Eurocentric and Non-Eurocentric Authority whose essence is abstractly simply authority and that takes Tactical forms, hence is micro-political and Micro-fascist, like You paragraphs upon paragraphs above, as well as Strategic forms, hence the macro-political is Macro-fascist like the Eurocentric-ally conceived State. I speak of a Micro-political authority whose power finds its site in the “observation that power does not operate, as many people believe from the top down” (Call, 2003, 66). It is a power whose form is “capillary: it is everywhere, it flows through every social relation” (Call, 2003: 66). I speak here of a Micro-political power whose means and presence is in everyone and everything and not solely constrained, confined, or shackled to oppressors but those who suffer under oppressions as well (Call, 2003: 66) I speak of a Micro-political power that passes through the hands of the mastered no less than through the hands of the masters. I speak here of a Micro-political power that is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another (Call, 2003: 66). I speak of a Micro-political power that is intimate and is divulged in private like secret events. I speak of a Micro-political power that is within You and within I. I speak here of a Micro-political power that I use here and now in resistance to You, as your eyes foreshadow my text, trying to catch up merely with some of the resistances contained through it. Resistances amplified in my every word, the spaces in between what is said and unsaid and which represent an infinite collection of spontaneous, calculated and uncalculated micro-revolts that are savage, rampant, violent and center-less, tactical, upon You. I speak of a Micro-political power that is not utopian or dialectical in its pursuit(s), as it is always becoming something else, and neither is it confined or locked in definite relationships or Micro-Fascisms, but rather is spiraling as it creates and re-creates itself. I speak here of Micro-fascisms that operate on a cellular degree. I speak of Micro-Fascisms that grow “not, perhaps out of the fact that…[they] can seize power at the macro-political level; any state can do that…[but rather horrific fascisms that penetrate] the smallest nooks and crannies of the social organism” (Call, 2003: 52). I speak of a “rural [Micro] fascism and city or neighborhood [Micro] fascism, [Micro] fascism of the Left and [Micro] fascism of the Right, [Micro] fascism of the couple, family, school and office” (Call, 2003: 52). I speak of Micro-fascism(s) that require overcoming(s) through becoming(s) and whose presence provides the necessary breeding ground for the germination and conditions of thinking which makes the state possible in the first place (Call, 2003: 51). I speak of becoming(s) which connote a “kind of radical personal responsibility” and permanent revolutions against our own selves with every waking moment of every day in retaliations to these Micro-fascism(s). After all “organizing signifies first, work on oneself, in as much as one is a collective ‘singularity’” (Guattari and Negri, 1985: 116). I speak of Micro-fascism(s) that stand on their own, then “communicate with other [Micro-fascisms] before resonating in a great, generalized central black hole” (Call, 2003: 52). The central black hole, I speak of here, that I had not lost sight of and that I mentioned formerly, Eurocentric Capitalism, is a Macro-fascism, and intertwined with it, the Eurocentric-ally conceived State, another form of authority, another Macro-fascism, albeit an abstract authority. The authority subsumed by and through the modern Eurocentric State, takes on an abstract and generic form, that is strategic and centered as it is “a prudent institution [that proclaims that it is for] the protection of individuals against one another” but at any rate invites the dissolution and enfeebling of the individuals within it; that is its function (Call, 2003: 50). It is a Macro-Fascist institution, an organized bureaucracy, whose desire is to enforce the creation of a homogeneous political culture, eradicating difference as opposed to liberating it and repeating everything as opposed to creating anything (Call, 2003: 46). It is a Macro-fascist institution that is hierarchical and whose eco-political frameworks are set up, put into place and protected by those whom cannot lead or obey it themselves (Perez, 1990: 20). A Macro-fascism, the modern state, that “is infinitely bound up with [Eurocentric] Capitalism…as part of the [Eurocentric] Capitalist machine: capital and the [Eurocetnric] state…[are] a system of signifiers within individuals as infinite debt” (Newman, 2001: 99). Macro-fascistic ‘structures’, in the most fluid of senses, that refuse to be addressed in any names but ’the holy State’ and ‘God-Capital’, till these names, these signifiers become, if not almost become, “religious signifiers which individuals are subordinated to” (Newman, 2001: 99).
The third plateau anticipates the Islamic Anarchistic Becomings of a multiplicitous, non-fictional and plural Nous, as a form of resistance to our two former featured enemies. I bear witness that Islams commits no shirk, testifies not, to its responsibilities towards declaring its desire for ‘the other’, any ‘other’, to live. It, at least theoretically, longs not to render ineffective any beauty belonging to ‘the other’ and accepts for ‘the other’ to declare itself as it desires to be, never insisting, never camouflaging, never masking the rights of ‘the other’, within and without itself to such an extent that it strives, as Post-Anarchism, at least in theory, for Nous. Nous denotes becomings of a fluid “us” between these two ways of living, Islams and Post-Anarchism (Chapter Three). Nous, a rhizomatic “us” that is unlike trees or their roots. A rhizomatic “us” that connects any point from You to any other point with I and any point from I to another point with You (May, 1994: 53). Nous whose attributes are traits not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature, attesting to difference. I speak of Nous that brings to play not units but dimensions, discovered and undiscovered, or rather directions of motions, of the You and the I, and hence always resigned to fluxes of difference. A Nous speaking volumes as it has neither beginnings nor ends, but always a middle from which it grows and which it overspills (May: 1994: 53). A Nous that indicates, albeit even if but temporally, that You and I, have disappeared. Disappeared not into a colorless and puritanical “one”, rather a hospitable and friendly multiple. A Nous “characterized by a radical openness to an outside…[as it] embraces four characteristics: connection, heterogeneity, multiplicity, and rupture…[and whose] purpose…is to allow thought ‘to shake off its model, makes its grass grow-even locally at the margins, imperceptibly’” (Newman, 2001: 105). A Nous, like the thousand flowers left to blossom and bloom, without organizational slogans and even less an enlightened prediction, on the terrains of undermined capitalist and authoritarian disciplinarian regimes of madness and their machines (Guattari and Negri, 1985: 132). A Nous composed and always “recomposed and [that] will multiply as a subversive and innovative presence” (Guattari and Negri, 1985: 132). A Nous, a war-machine, that “constitutes an outside to the state…characterized by an absolute exteriority…[and that is] purely conceptual: it is an image of thought, an idea without an object…a non-place, a space characterized by pluralities, multiplicities, difference, and becoming…an assault of the physical place”, the Eurocentric State (Newman, 2001: 108-109). A Nous whose invention becomes a ‘system’, not built upon abstract unifications, but rather new lines of alliances, new lines of co-operations and new ways of living (Guattari and Negri, 1985: 127). A Nous, a way of living, “that rejects binary divisions and hierarchies, does not privilege one thing over another, [You over I, I over You] and is not governed by a single unfolding [governing] logic [but rather innocent becoming(s)” (Newman, 2001: 105-106). Been through Times Square on a Saturday night? Did You disappear or were You re-born? Me? A polygamous both.
Chapter One: Kapital’s Wet Dream: Islams & Post-Anarchisms
No Hospitality
Has it become that easy for you to proclaim that you are just a Post-Anarchist? Has it become easy for me to admit that I am just a Muslim? What do you and I know about either? I admit. You proclaim otherwise. You deceive yourself, not me. Are you about to accuse me of fascism? Fascism begins when you insult an animal, including the animal in “man” (Derrida, 2005:181). I did not insult you. Then your accusation is for? For imposing labels on you? You picked the label of fascism in your mind and uttered it out loud, thinking that I have lost my hearing, not I. Who is the imposer of labels now? Tell me then and I shall listen, what and who is a Post-Anarchist? What and who is a Muslim? What “is”? If you are proposing that these signifiers are something to be taught and just “are”, think again. You are assuming they can be. Taught by whom, you and I? Defined by whom, You and I for everyone else? It now seems that you are interested in the same fascism I am? I tell you this. These signifiers do not signify theories, they are ways of living, ways of being in the world; attitudes (Perez, 1990: 67). “Sylvere Lotringer is an an(archist). The Italian ‘autonomists’ are an(archists). And the Rastafarians, with their own language (patios) and lifestyle, are also an(archsits). An(archy) takes as many forms as there are individuals” (Perez, 1990: 67). But and without being chauvinistic; in their own language and lifestyles they are all Muslims as well. Theatre and factory, your desire yearns for the solitary. Your desire traverses few lives. I? I desire a taste for the grandeur, a desire for addressing those whom have come before I, those who will come after I, or are already after I, a desire of promises interrupted, broken all of a sudden, and yet still indestructible. A desire where the subjectivities of a “we”, Nous”, the You, the “tu”, and the I, transgress the “is” and race instead, in haste, with, through, in and out of un-despairing fluxes. Un-despairing fluxes? Yes, un-despairing fluxes of becoming(s). My movements of speaking are speaking…
The only other thing is the opening attack on Eurocentric Capitalism
I do not welcome a stranger here. The stranger here becomes Eurocentric Capitalism. A Eurocentric Capitalism whom is understood and judged through Post-Anarchism as entailing a certain mode or “a ‘method’ of Capital...specific procedure[s] of valorization of commodities…goods, activities…services”, subjects and objects (Alliez, 1996: 233). Listen. A Eurocentric Capitalism whom is determined through Post-Anarchism and its inherited Classical Anarchism(s) as positing a generation “of a particular type of social relation; here, regulation[s], laws, usages and practices [that] come to the fore” (Alliez, 1996: 233). A Eurocentric Capitalism whom offends Post-Anarchism and its inherited Classical Anarchism(s) as it is constituted merely by “process[es] of production…material forces, human labor, social relations… investments of desire” (Alliez, 1996: 234).
Now and first, I work, I write, and consider Content, Expression and the Components of Expression, the cruelly arranged nervous system, if You will, belonging to it, Eurocentric Capitalism. Here, I will teach You of Islams’ Property, define for You caretaker(s). I will ‘speak’ of “the principle of social control of production” by caretakers. I tell You and discuss with You “[Useful] Profit-sharing as…[a] basis…[for] distributing equally the resources and output of production, [and that are] activated in” Islams through particular principles (Choudhury, 1997: 107). I will ‘speak’ and You will ‘hear’ that “[Useful] Profit-sharing is implicit in the Koran…[through an] instrument known as Mudarabah or Musharakah…the principal alternative to interest-bearing transactions” (Choudhury, 1997: 110). I will ‘speak’ of other principles attained through Islams, “the joint role of profit-sharing and equity participation under economic profit-cooperation/equity-sharing (Muddarabah/Musharakah), [the] abolition of interest (Riba), [the] institution of Wealth tax for specific targets of spending, and the abolition of economic waste in consumption and production (Israf)” (Choudhury, 1997: 108). I will ‘speak’ of how “the elimination [if not minimization] of Israf links…to the efficiency of Mudarabah, which then provides the impetus to eliminate Riba…itself…considered a form of Israf...[and] since Zakat, disbursement, is a positive function of absolute poverty…[there] will be an enhancing effect…to combat poverty and generate more distribution” in a community Choudhury, 1997: 111). All these violent reactions, all these ‘I speaks’, against your Eurocentric language like your Eurocentric Capitalism are not to merely commercially invite You into my world. Rather I write, I ‘speak’ to introduce to You that Islams, as an invention, as Post-Anarchism, notices the vampirish activity of Eurocentric Capitalism and offers an alternative. Islams spoke and continues to speak loud to hear only its own scream and which has met no answer nor anything that draws its force away from such a scream until it found you, Post-Anarchism and your inherited Classical Anarchism(s) (Deleuze & Guattari, 1975: 92). Listen and You will hear Islams are Anti-Capitalist.
I warn you of your limits. So I tell you that you will have just begun to comprehend what this chapter is pursing by the end. But in order to comprehend it, it will become necessary for you to pass through its nets, its ‘new’, at least to you, visible creations, concepts and languages. I will clear a path for you but first you will have done well to admit that you are in a foreign country, about to experience a foreign language and foreign concepts, which you cannot speak for yourself but that will be addressed to you into a language, your language, and that indeed you do speak (Deleuze & Guattari, 1975: 94).
Content, Expression and Components of Expression
For this section it, Eurocentric Capitalism, becomes a god. How do I ‘speak’ of the Content, the being, of such a god? I ‘speak’ of such a god as a being whose essence is parasitic never symbiotic. A god whose expression and whose signification with such an expression are announced as Rhizomatic Ecumenical Capitalism. How do we speak of this signification, this Expression, Rhizomatic Ecumenical Capitalism? And how do we speak of the Expressive Components of this god? The god, this Rhizomatic Ecumenical Capitalism, offers hospitality to Components, Capitalist Machines, and which are spoken of here through the two ‘head types’ it possesses. I ‘speak’ of two head types, their respective apparatuses of capture and processes, decoding and de-territorialization. I would have longed a collapse of distinction between them, head types, decoding and deterritorialization, seeing them as always referring to the other-seeing a transformation in one area as always having implications in others (Newman, 2001: 98). But I choose and I ‘speak’ then of these head types, apparatuses of capture and processes, that return upon each other, double for each other, only to unfold and explain for You, to You, Eurocentric Capitalisms’ depth.
First, a head, a machine, desiring Wealth and which offers hospitality to or is comprised of Four Apparatuses of Capture: Ground Rent, Surplus Profit, Inheritance & Taxes, all premised upon Eurocentric conceptions rises. This first ‘head’ named Wealth belonging to this god is “no longer…determined as money dealing, merchant’s or landed wealth, but must become pure homogeneous and independent capital”; a free flow of capital (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 452). So I now speak here and in depth of this head, of god’s first head, Wealth. Wealth through Eurocentric Capitalism becomes “a right, or, to be more precise, a relation of production that is manifested as a right, and as such it is independent of the concrete form that it cloaks at each moment of its productive function” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 453). Wealth becomes a private appropriation of the public (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 451). And this Wealth becomes hospitable to? Private Property. Private Property that expresses the independence of a Master or Owner, or a group of Masters or Owners (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 453). A Master or Owner here is “not the one who achieves [the] recognition of the slave, but the one who dismisses the project of recognition altogether, in order to create something new…what characterizes the slave [here], then, is not the failure to obtain recognition, but the attempt to elicit it” (May, 1994: 134). Rather than the expression of a bond of personal dependences, Public Property, there is sole bond, Private Property (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 453). I tell You, Private Property through Eurocentric Capitalism is in itself a right, an active right and presupposes Public Property (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 427-453).
The second head, another head, a machine, takes place, desiring and lusting before Involuntary Relations again premised upon a Eurocentric conception of Labor. Then I say to You, these two heads, these two machines, belonging to this one god, to this Rhizomatic Ecumenical Capitalism, are not to presume and dismiss that there are not other discovered or undiscovered heads to which this god of a capitalist machine(s) offers hospitality to. “It is their abstract conjunction [that of the two heads chosen here that] in a single stroke constitutes [Eurocentric] Capitalism, providing a universal subject and an object in general for one another” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 453). And what becomes of the second ‘head’? The second ‘head’ named Involuntary Relations, connotes associations between ‘owners’ and ‘owned’ guided though “the flow[s] of labor…no longer…determined as slavery or serfdom but...naked and free labor” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 452). Here I will ‘break’ abruptly and temporarily from un-deciphering Involuntary Relations only to return to it further and later in And the Store at the level of the Maids and the Employees. Instead I turn to the question below.
Is it useless to ask in what sense is Rhizomatic Ecumenical Capitalism’s depth decipherable-undecipherable? What is being explained here through this question? What is being explained is a pondering as to what are the conditions both of possibility and impossibility for Eurocentric Capitalism to hide at depth, always through its collectivities, its components of expression, its two head types, even when it seems or appears upon the surface to be emitted as a solitary singularity? And so…
It is Essential here that You and I should not banish from mind the idea of god’s guilt
In the depth, these heads, these collectivities, are rhizomatic like the rhizomatic ‘us’ I spoke of formerly in the Introduction. A rhizomatic ‘us’, a model that defies the very idea of a model as it is an endless, haphazard multiplicity of connections not dominated by a single site, center or place, but that is rather decentralized and plural, inter-being, intermezzo (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 25). Its plurality, that belonging to the rhizomatic ‘us’, permits it to move “between things…going from one thing [subject and/or object] to the other and back again…a transversal movement that sweeps one and the other way, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the middle” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 25). Its fabric is then that of “conjunction, ‘and…and…and’” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 25). The middle from which it operates is by no means an average of all of god’s heads but rather quite the contrary it is where things pick up speed and its effects become intensified (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 25). After all how can there be an average, if there are undiscovered heads to this god that are not accounted for here? I ‘speak’ then of two heads whom at depth are engaging in what is referred to as decoding and de-territorialization. I ‘speak’ of ‘two heads’ belonging to a god, Eurocentric Capitalism; an apparatus of capture through these two processes of decoding and de-territorialization. Now I explain for you decoding and de-territorializaiton and remember, I tell You, remember, that I longed for their collapse.
Decoding, is linked to axiomization. Axiomization, a process of strategic value to Eurocentric Capitalism, whose streams of quantified factors of production, raw materials, skills and knowledge are conjoined with desires to extract a differential surplus from any subject and any object (Holland, 1996: 241). Decoding is always a positive movement, supporting and yet given birth to by axiomization. Decoding, a transformation of all that is meaningful to You and I, including the You and I, subjects, and the ‘this’ and ‘that’, objects, into a calculable quantity (Holland, 1996: 241). Decoding signifies the means and impetus for an act of de-territorialization. De-territorialization of what and whom, as You beg for a response? De-territorialization of every social You and I, ‘he’ and ‘she’, ‘this’ and ‘that’ and ‘that’ and ‘that’ and ‘them’ and ‘them’; every subject and every object. Yes You? Why? Remember ‘it’, Eurocentric Capitalism, of which I ‘speak’ of, is a parasite. A parasite that desires the disconnection, unplugging, and the reconnection, plugging, of the You and I, the ‘this’ and ‘that’ into either of its two heads. I tell You though that there is a differential difference between de-territoriralization and decoding that ought to be noted. De-territorialization functions or acts upon the physical. I ‘speak’ of physical bodies acted upon, without the permission or consent of either the subject or object, and which de-territorialization demands material investments and energy from, through acts of production or consumption (Holland, 1996: 242). Decoding, functions upon that which carries symbolic representations and again without permission or consent, demands investments, energy, of the mental type as in cognition and fantasy (Holland, 1996: 242). Decoding I say then is an ushering in of a symbolic order. A symbolic order always operating on all that is quantitative and whose objects are insignificant or strictly meaningless within the cash nexus of the market. I explain further through an offering of an example. Do you think it matters? What matters? Nothing! Precisely! It matters not, of whatever gender workers are. To this decoding process, machine, all that is solid is melted into air and what becomes of importance is that subjects, labor, and/or objects, land, are equated to calculable amounts, in the example, of surplus labor-power or surplus land-power. It, decoding, functions between, through, within and without the You and I, ‘this’ and ‘that’, and converts all social relations to desiring machines that become subject to subsumption under markets and exchange values (Holland, 1996: 244). I ‘speak’, through Post-Anarchism and its inherited Classical Anarchism(s), then of markets and exchange values that mobilize desire, by “freeing it from capture by any stable, all-embracing code-only to recapture it, it must be said, via the recoding of advertising, for example, which re-territorializes it onto the objects of the latest administered consumer fad” (Holland, 1996: 244). I ‘speak’, through Post-Anarchism and its inherited Classical Anarchism(s), then of markets that seek to de-territorialize and decode everything organically pre-programmed into re-programmed “objects [and subjects] of investment such as the [, Your,] mother’s breast…so that investments can be made elsewhere” (Holland, 1996: 242). You and I, ‘her’ and ‘his’, ‘this’ and ‘that’, like your mother’s breasts and breast milk, become subjects and objects of economic value and the productivity of these underlying subjects and objects constitute an essence to both Wealth and Involuntary Relations, god’s two heads.
I am becoming vulgar and so I now insist then and remind you that god has two heads offering hospitality to decoding and de-territorializing, two heads that are neither exiled from nor radiating from one another but are rather, more clearly, rhizomatic heads, delocalized, decentralized but connected, in ‘affinity’, in ‘solidarity but without solidity’, for lack of a better word, in ‘Fluidarity’ (Guattari, 1989: 15). I ‘speak’ and tell You, through Post-Anarchism and its inherited Classical Anarchism(s), that these two heads seldom functioning separately, each exhibiting the possibility of being identified and thereby associated with certain differential mode(s) of domination. I ‘speak’ again, again and again, and tell You, here and now of the associations amidst, through, within, without and which these two heads and their respective ‘techniques’ of domination and their associated powers operate. More particularly I tell You of the types of forces they utilize, oppressive, yes, but, and, that give birth to, resistance.
Types of forces then and here that are not premised upon master - slave dialectical oppositions, a top-down model of power, or a bottom-up model of power as Classical Anarchism(s) had thought and spoke, and which now Post-Anarchism only now admits was invalid on behalf of its former self: They, Classical Anarchism(s), were mislead and hence without humiliation Post-Anarchism corrects such a former self. Rather I ‘speak’ of forces whose essence now becomes in that they are rhizomatic, ever present anywhere and everywhere and represent power. These types of forces, oppression and resistance, here bear together instead a conscious desire to pledge allegiance to one another, the unconscious desire to co-exist together. These types of forces are un-premised upon dialectical oppositions, as I wrote earlier, and cannot exist without one another, with one dominating and the other resisting instantaneously and always. I ‘speak’ then and tell You that these types of forces, powers, interplay alongside with, against, for and through one another and cause the oppression or occupation and liberation of their host, You and I, subject, or ‘this’ and ‘that’, object, for they are born together (May, 1994: 70). Again, I re-iterate. I pronounce these force types to be simultaneously varying in their degrees, intensities and without a threshold, a strategic messianic revolutionary point, to attain; they are endless. Rather they, these forces types, are contractually bound together and obligated upon their birth and their founding to becoming a creative liberator and a destructive oppressor at once within all the social relationships and associations they exhibit (May 1994: 70). Power is everywhere and its other half, resistance, anywhere. Now I tell You of Islams’ Property.
A Reprisal
Islams interpret, instead of Eurocentric Capitalism, that “everything [subject and object] ultimately belongs to God…Human beings are simply caretakers, or vicegerents, for God’s property [subject and object]” (Esposito, 2002: 165). You and every other subject are caretakers of ‘yourselves’, You and every other subject are caretakers of one another and You are all equally caretakers of all of God’s objects. But for the sake of simplicity in this chapter I discuss here Property to objects, respectively discussing God’s objects themselves and the association between caretakers of God’s objects. As for the association between caretakers of God’s subjects and God’s subjects themselves I discuss them solely in their relevance to Involuntary Labor. But I shall address these caretakers and their association with one another more abstractly in the third and final chapter titled Nous.
A Koranic verse emerges to respectively iterate and remind us, You and I, that everything object ultimately belongs to God: “O believers, expend of the good things you have earned, and of what We have produced for you from the earth; and intend not the corruption of it for your expending, for you would never take it yourselves…Those who expend…night and day, secretly and in public, their wage awaits them with their Lord, and no fear shall be on them; neither shall they sorrow” (Surat II, Verse: 269). God creates God’s Property, the object, and all objects of which are of this world, with abundance and with an intention that such Property, such objects, become shared in equity (Esposito, 1980: 37). Property signifies abstractly through Islams, unlike through Eurocentric Capitalism, bonds that are communal, Public, rather than personal, Private. I tell You this, You and I through Islams, have claims to at least that which suffices in creating a decent ‘quality of life’ rather than just a ‘standard of living’ (Esposito, 1980: 37).
Attente! Idealism however has no place here. Differences in Mal, money, rise to the surface amongst caretakers and whose essence is composed differently than what is Eurocentrically referred to, as I defined earlier and above, as that which is constituent of Wealth. Differences in Mal arise in Islam(s) through “differences in human…[, individualized desires,] for work and not…[through] individual claims on natural resources”, as Property, object, is Public and if You recall belongs solely to God (Esposito, 1980, 32). Differences in Mal evolve, evolved and shall always remain evolving (Esposito, 1980: 32). You enquire why? I respond why not? Do you anticipate desires belonging to subjects, conscious and unconscious, to ‘be’ centered, fixed, in ‘states’ of stagnation or have they, are they and will they not always occupy varying intensities and ‘states’ of flux? I affirm and demand that you tell me of a desire centralized. There are none. Thus we say together: desires are infinitely in flux and endlessly becoming. Endlessly becoming something ‘other’ than what they were and what they supposedly are. I ‘speak’ of desire(s) pertaining to one matter over another matter or even desire(s) that are in varying degrees of intensity to the same matter. The consequence remains the same: Desires are always changing; Desires always becoming. I illustrate then through an example: I may till a land hard one day upon sunrise and till sunset, only to wake during dawn the following day to find myself bathing till sunset, all day. One day I work, the following day I ‘play’ and though ‘play’ could be regarded as a form of ‘work’ by some it gives not a living sustenance. Respectively Islams desire and adopt overriding tactics paralleling such desires and that actively denounce disparaging differences of Mal aroused through these fluctuating desires. I ‘speak’ then of desires belonging to fluctuating individualized and communal subjectivities that give birth and are given birth to through communities. I ‘speak’ then, through Islams, of desires centered upon economic and social cooperation or associations, giving birth to the communal. But I ‘speak’ simultaneously then, through Islams, of individualized desires that despite the communal, are recognized, adorned and relished in their very essence as they connote possibilities of what is multiple and plural in the individualized singular itself. I ‘speak’ then of recognitions, adorations and a relishing of practical practices through de-centralized decision-making processes and which, as I intend to ‘speak’ later, are premised upon consultation, Shura. Shura, never derived from secondary sources of literature but a fact emanating from the fundamental source of knowledge, namely the Koran (Choudhury, 1997: 107).
I tell You for I warned You of your limits, that Public Objects, through Islams, belonging to God’s Property become a collective and communal right and access to such fruits of such objects are to be divided ‘equally’ (Esposito, 1980: 32). I ‘speak’ then, complement myself and say that “the public sphere [here and through Islam(s)]…characterizes the objective nature of Property” as opposed to a private appropriation of Property (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 451). Again this god, a Eurocentric Capitalist of a god, is a god whose regards, interests and desires belong to a Master’s, a capitalist’s intentions. Intentions that are in a continual quest and thirst for the maximization, hence quantification, of surplus objects and subjects, and which will be discussed in more detail further on in the subsections Rejoice and And the Store at the level of the Maids and the Employees (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 17). But for now I tell You that, Islams and I ‘speak’ then of these intentions as having been given birth to through ideas bred out of “selfishness, cruel individualism, and greed…[and always] bound to create an environment of loneliness and isolation” (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 17). I ‘speak’ of a god, Eurocentric Capitalism without regard for the homogenous, for the collective and the communal, unlike Islam(s).
To become done with the Judgments of gods: A kind of deliverance
I announce again for perhaps I have school sickness like others have seasickness, but after all this is the hegemony of my economy of a paper: Eurocentric Capitalism, always “a decentralized system that provides individuals with…[an] atmosphere of severe competitiveness [through private appropriations, unlike Islams, and which [is]…bound to lead to deep tension[s] and depression[s]…[bound to lead to acts of] criminality, corruption on a large scale and a [birth of a] deep fear of insecurity since there can be no limit” of an individual’s discard of the communal (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 17). I ‘speak’ then and say that “it frequently happens- as much in Arab, Slavic, Latin American as in Anglo-Saxon countries- that this experimentation with new forms of organization [that signify resistance(s) to Eurocentric Capitalism] develops from within a religious imaginary…[and] one [, You,] must distinguish between religious motivations which attach to an act of liberation and those which are re-territorialized, around theological alienation[s]” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 116). There lies then an alternative to a god, this Eurocentric Capitalist of a god, which surfaces and resists at least theoretically and throughout a rhizomatic history of pasts, presents and futures, practically, and is revived in this interpretation here through Islam(s).
I seek here, through Islams, then to territorialize what Eurocentric Capitalism has de-territorialized and continues to de-territorialize and recode what Eurocentric Capitalism has and continues to decode. However and I am compelled to address first that to this god, a Eurocentric Capitalist god, lays another dialectically opposed god, Eurocentric Socialism. I ‘speak’ then and iterate what has been already said: “[Eurocentric] Capitalism and [Eurocentric] Socialisms [represent two extremes and they] have only succeeded in…[subjugating] work to a social mechanism which is logo-centric or paranoid, authoritarian [through their differential means and in their own ways]…and destructive” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 14). Islams and I ‘speak’ then of an unbridled Eurocentric Socialism whose conceptions of the communal has no limit in its disregard for the individual and that respectively signifies a forbiddance of desires. A forbiddance born through the complete impossibility of becoming a ‘borrower or caretaker’ of any kind, ushering instead centralizing and regulating mechanisms and machines where infinite desire(s) is/are controlled, kept in line and bound to nepotism (Abdul-Raud, 1978: 18-19). Islams and I ‘speak’ then of a nepotism that signifies a usurpation of an individual’s autonomy, agency, liberties of economic action(s), desensitizing any potential desires in the process to innovate, to create, to work all of which could be done in moderation and without depriving subjectivities of their dignity, through a deprivation of their multiple desires. Islams and I ‘speak’ then in defense of these necessary desires, that in fact and reality are not in need of defense and which are associated with ‘productions’ and ‘consumptions’, both of which could be left to flourish whilst yet preserving and without sacrificing a communal, as they give rise to the communal and the communal gives rise to them (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 18-19). Again I ‘speak’ it more clearly, through Islams, there lays neither the necessity for excesses, surplus of subjects and objects, as in Eurocentric Capitalism, nor the necessity for scarcities, rationing of subjects and objects, as in Eurocentric Socialism and which I have and will continue to illustrate (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 18-19). Islams admit and insist that “the most important lesson: the construction of healthy communities begins and ends with unique personalities, that the collective potential is realized only when a singular is free”, but again never at the expense of the communal, and without being oblivious, the opposite becomes required for it stands erect as well and no doubt is necessary (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 17). Returning once more, there lies the necessity to undermine further this despotic Eurocentric Socialism that forgets the singular, the unique, the always differential and the always ‘other’ in favor of the artificial homogeneous pack of ‘oneness’ in the communal. I ‘speak’ of a nepotistic god, Eurocentric Socialism, then whose purpose is to engage in the polar opposite view to Eurocentric Capitalism through its seeking to idealize and homogenize an un-homogenizable and always differential desire belonging to the particularity of individualized subjects within the communal. Eurocentric Socialism, a desire for a forced homogeneity in the proposed singularity of a community and with a disregard for everything subjective. Eurocentric Socialism fails save in a community comprised of ‘one’ subject. Eurocentric Socialism explains Eurocentric Capitalism, its lifestyle and “all [that lays in between, in terms of] commodities [consumed and produced, primarily through the] labor [power] necessary to produce” objects, discounting thus Eurocentric Capitalism’s first head (Esposito, 1980: 42). Eurocentric Capitalism however, though Eurocentric Socialism fails on this count, neglects not, abandons nor prioritizes less the first head, Wealth, over the second head, Involuntary Relations premised upon Eurocentric conceptions of labor. Eurocentric Capitalist Wealth and Involuntary Relations, dependents on supposedly rational relations between productive inputs, labor, subjects, capital and raw materials, objects, utilized under proclamations of such a rationality. This dependency and this proclamation ritualizes markets over-spilling with surplus subjects and objects, and whose characterization or attribute becomes complemented at times when interrogated by Anti-Capitalists, through an offering of an explanation or a justification. They, the capitalists say, ‘it is desires that appropriate the market value’ (Esposito, 1980: 42). Alternatively there comes Islams with an alternative and resistive offering to both Eurocentric Socialism and even more so to Eurocentric Capitalism. But to conceptualize what Islams offer in response to Eurocentric Socialism and Capitalism, there lies the necessity of creating new Non-Eurocentric concepts, ‘Islamicized’ concepts.
Through an Innocent Child Sentenced to death by drowning
I create ‘new’ concept(s), through Islams therein: A first, a caretaker, a mere temporary ‘beneficiary’, a ‘trustee’, a mere ‘borrower’. Such a caretaker once more as I iterated before is a ‘borrower’ and not the ‘absolute owner’; that position of the ‘absolute owner’ is left to God (Esposito, 1980: 36). I ‘speak’ here then and now, in depth, of a community of caretakers, a non-Eurocentric conception and that comprises but a portion of a new language, and a new way of relating, a new way of associating and a new way of living and which is created here. I ‘speak’ then of caretakers whom are symbolically and practically, in accordance with the interpretation I provide here, ‘bound’ by new forms of relations, amongst You and I, subjects, and with ‘this’ and ‘that’, objects. I then ‘speak’ here not of a detached prisoner, a proletariat, concepts and signifiers, Eurocentrically conceived and premised upon and in accordance with Eurocentric models. Eurocentric Capitalism and Eurocentric Socialism become something else here: something ‘other’. An ‘other’, that necessitates further commentary and hence in part further interpretation and clarification.
Recall, in Islams, all Property belongs to God. But this requires an in-depth discussion. A dual ownership or partnership emerges if You will: It, this dual ownership, is a hybrid, and though seemingly complex is quite simple. It becomes an ‘in between state’ that is comprised and takes shape or form between two parties. A party comprised either of an individual, an individualized caretaker, or a community, communal caretakers, and the second party, God, whose ownership precludes everything. In this ‘in between state’ a new non-Euro-centric meaning of Property emerges as a result of its, Property, Eurocentric definition now becoming de-centered. Property, through Islams and with this new conception, is absolutely owned by God and with it a new type of economic relationship: God-Caretaker(s). This relationship is unlike the egoistic decentralized Eurocentric Capitalist’s Property and unlike the centralized despotic Eurocentric Socialist Property. This relationship’s essence belongs to and is derived from the recognition of the plurality or multiplicity of individualized subjects and their respective individualized desires and yet the necessity for collective un-totalizing social associations and their respective communal desires. These ‘new associations’, this ‘new economy’, ensured through this interpretation of Islams proposes an alternative to Eurocentric Capitalism and Eurocentric Socialism in its becoming comprised or composed of “a large number of small [borrowed] ‘firms’ [through borrowed Property from God]” (Awan, 1983: 30). These creations, at least with respect to Eurocentric conceptions call to shore associations under ‘small borrowed firms’ that utterly “differ from a traditional [Eurocentric] sense of Ownership” (Awan, 1983: 30). “What becomes then of the difference(s) between these ‘small borrowed firms’ and “self-managed [Monopolistic and Oligopolistic] firms and cooperatives in [Eurocentrically] Capitalist and [Eurocentrically] Socialist economies [respectively]” (Awan, 1983: 31)?
Unlike Islams’ creation of ‘small borrowed firms’, “self-managed [Monopolistic and Oligopolistic] firms and cooperatives in [Eurocentrically] Capitalist or [Eurocentrically] Socialist economies remain financially dependent [up]on owners of capital or state bureaucracies” (Awan, 1983: 31). A resultant “undue influence on the decision-making process [through the ‘state’, through ‘capitalists’ or a hybrid of both] arises” (Awan, 1983: 31). Patience, as I shall speak of this Coercion in depth and of Islams’ addressing of it soon enough in the next chapter Pedagogical Juridical Orders: Decentralized & Anti-Authoritarian. Associations within these ‘small borrowed firms’ become related not to ‘Eurocentric ownership’, but a ‘dual ownership’, again where individuals and the communal are in continual processes or ‘states’ of temporary borrowing(s) of Property; Property that belongs and to be more precise Owned solely by God. I ‘speak’ of associations and bonds within these ‘small borrowed firms,’ through Islams, premised upon acts of participation, involvement, and more importantly characterized in their never excluding desire to becoming radically open to everyone occupying and occupied by the communal (Awan, 1983: 31). I ‘speak’ here of participatory acts of a Voluntary essence unlike Involuntary Relations, the second head, born out of the gods of Eurocentric Capitalism and Eurocentric Socialism. Thus I ‘speak’ of a radical openness, through Islam(s), whose presence is to the extent or is conditional upon that a/the individualized subject(s) desiring inclusion, through participatory acts within ‘small borrowed firms’, recognize(s) two matters: First, the importance and necessity of all that is communal, unlike Eurocentric Capitalism, through an appreciation of all associations with other caregivers; Secondly, that a/the individualized subject(s) recognize the participatory commitments through a becoming ‘borrower’, a caretaker, never absolute owner themselves and hence like all other and any other caretaker(s) are equal and never privileged over others. Ownership is correlated, through Islams solely with God. As for a caretaker, a caretaker belongs not to a master – slave, owner - owned or bourgeoisie – proletariat, hence Eurocentric Capitalist, Socialist and Classical Anarchist dialectics and axioms.
A Caretakers’ Face wears it emptiness openly
I ‘spoke’ and uttered formerly that idealism however has no place here. I ‘spoke’ and uttered that Islam(s) embraces the collective potential, but that such a realization is born when the singular is free. I ‘spoke’ of Eurocentric Socialisms’ desires for absolute homogeneity and Eurocentric Capitalisms’ desires for absolute heterogeneity. I ‘spoke’ of something else, Fluidarity, ‘solidarity without solidity’. Now I speak further of the individualized caretaker, the singular, not communal caretakers, not the plural and multiple.
I learned yesterday. I learned today. One must find a major field of action for human inertia. So I said, a subject may seek to become through radical openness a borrowing partner, a communal caretaker, never absolute owner of Property through ‘small borrowed firms’, thus engaging in being involved communally. All this is very well, but there is always a subject whom desires to create something a new, which others belonging to the communal are not necessarily inclined or interested in. Or have desires stopped turning and have we all chosen to live the same way? Such a subject then may become an individualized caretaker, a ‘small borrowed firm’ themselves, albeit whose essence becomes of a different character again than that belonging to capitalist entrepreneurs.
After all “in order to have shit that is, meat, where there was only blood and a junkyard of bones…[‘man’] learned himself [or/and herself] to act like an animal and to eat rat daintily” (Artaud, 1976: 560-561). Again I really feel that you are trying to break up the atmosphere around what I am clearing the way for, respectively I am allowing myself room to advance here, to provide room for a seemingly impossible space as I germinate virtually and so I often repeat: Such essence alternates upon degrees of difference neither premised on Eurocentricity or the rise of Neo-mercantilism (Choudhury, 1997: 144).
So You strike me and enquire as to what becomes then and respectively of Islams and their supposed individualized caretaker? I inexhaustibly strike back with a blow and I tell you this: “communal caretakers” are preferred (Esposito, 1980: 42). But I ‘speak’ and iterate that Islams seeks that the singular also be free, that desires become affirmed rather than negated and dismissed, that desires be left to flourish only up until they override the rights of the communal. An individualized caretaker is bound solely by a personal borrowing, I tell You, of specific types of property as the remaining necessities, the remaining properties must be strictly communal properties for they are for the larger community’s interests (Ahmad, 1991: 34). This is not an illusion for I to think of this here, trying to fix arbitrary states of things in order to think, in order to ‘speak’ but I am creating spaces for life, spaces which do not exist and which do not seem to belong to your place of thinking now. Look here, I not only imagine, I know that if an individualized caretaker is using or going to use certain resources over which they may claim ‘priority’, they are required to “give it up to another member of society [if it is unused] and should not claim ultimate [absolute] ownership over the…[Mal] produced by that resource” (Esposito, 1980: 31). I tell You this and that is that a caretaker, whose use of a Property “in a manner which damages…[communal] others is disallowed” (Ahmad, 1991: 33). An individualized caretaker is not a creator, but whose position is necessary to rightly maintain the conditions for the creativity belonging to the individualized caretaker’s autonomy and desires. Instead of seeing this caretaker as a capitalist, You need to understanding the desires belonging to the former are ignited and subtly controlled by Islams. You need to rightly comprehend that extra Mal beyond the caretaker’s equal share and “which is due to productivity of those natural resources that are used” and which does not belong to the individualized caretaker to begin with, are all to be given up, detached and uprooted from a caretakers’ lust for such Mal (Esposito, 1980: 31). I tell You this and that is an individualized caretaker and communal caretaker for that matter is/are never required to be rooted and fixated in materialism. That is faith and this is the Islams I speak of here. “If a segment of society is without [a reasonable quality of life which includes] shelter, clothing, food, and adequate economic opportunity, then societal needs [the communal]…take[s] priority over” these ‘small borrowed firm’ inhabited by an individualized caretaker’s desires. It is time for You to think in reverse and to suddenly revile your thoughts.
Almost all the witnesses had a different opinion
So I am continuing to think without the slightest breaking off and I tell You that ‘Small borrowed firms’ under a caretaker or caretakers could be conceived of as undergoing dual ownership exhibiting states of becoming as they are always repeating. Repeating though always with some of its fragments always repeating with a difference, different caretakers, hence taking pleasure in forms of communal circulatory resistance against entrepreneurial authority, authority in the commercial abstract sense. As for absolute authority it belongs, through Islams, to God and can be resisted but I recommend that it not be contested. I ‘speak’ then of dual ownerships that, through Islams, “guarantee equal [indiscriminate] division of initial…[Mal and Public Property] among all members” of a community (Awan, 1983: 32). A community that Islams signifies with and through a new signifier and a new conceptual creation ‘outside’ your Eurocentric vocabulary; a community referred to as an Ummah.
Islams and I preside and ‘speak’ then of ‘small borrowed firms’ occupying and occupied with an Ummah, constituted by continual temporal ‘states’ of abductions and transformations in which the individualized caretaker and/or communal caretakers are always becoming. Communal Caretakers transmit an essence: Shirakah, partnership in everything, particularly that which subscribes to the economic, and whom “decide freely [Ikhtiy’ar]…[to participate or not] without outside influence…[unlike those un-consented to and influential visitations by] capitalist suppliers [in Eurocentric Capitalist Economies and similarly] planning authorities [in Eurocentric Socialist Economies]” (Awan, 1983: 32). This participation that Islam(s) ‘speaks’ of is guided upon the ‘basis of equality’ and a collective obligation, Fardh, towards a shared communal responsibility through what is referred to as Tawheed. Tawheed, is anything but a limit, for it is a private recognition and a public declaration that “once the Sovereignty of God is recognized, the ‘authority’ for [a small borrowed firms’] establishment is vested in the whole Ummah (Community) and is to be exercised in the light of the Koran through the ‘democratic’ process of [partial or full] consultation with[in] the Ummah” (Awan, 1983: 32). A Koranic verse illustrates further: “And they conduct their affairs by mutual consultation”, again and again Shura (Surat 42, Verse 38).
But what becomes of Islams position with respect to individualized or communal caretaker(s) whom may attempt to accumulate Mal or appropriate Public Property? The individualized caretaker and communal caretakers is/are always overridden as to their desire to such a claim to natural resources through the principle of absolute ownership; the principle of Tawheed and which is limited to God (Esposito, 1980: 41). Such a caretaker’s, individualized or communal, economic power is always symbolically contained, kept in check through Tawheed, and which was always accounted for here but is being addressed more specifically now. Furthermore economic power is practically contained as I intend to address shortly through Zakat and Haqq.
Tawheed, again is a coin with two faces: one implying that God is the creator, and the other that individuals are equal partners or that each individual is brother and sister to another (Esposito, 1980: 31). Pertaining to Mal and Public Property, this Tawheed’s implication is that the Ummah becomes built upon equality and cooperation, as divinity belongs solely to God (Esposito, 1978: 31). “Natural resources [objects] in the universe, such as land, capital, general circumstances such as shortages for reasons of war or disasters as well as laws of nature, all these ‘belong’ to the whole of society, and all its members have equal shares and rights of access to them” (Esposito, 1978: 31). No individualized or collective caretaker has the right of claiming a bigger share (Esposito, 1980: 31). This is the dialogue in Islams’ thoughts.
Again I aspire to think in reverse and so I ask: And who ‘supplies’ the initial capital for these ‘small borrowed firms’, individualized or communal? “The answer to this is fairly obvious if one understands” Islams, as “the availability of [communal] capital at zero interest rate [since interest is forbidden in Islams]…guarantees that an individual or community would be better off by providing ‘their’ monetary assets for investment, rather than keeping them in the…banks and paying costs on these assets” (Awan, 1983: 32). Furthermore and now that You are beginning to contend, You ask, why would the communal be inclined to do this? I answer absurdly: To prevent a Monopoly and an Oligopoly. There is/are no monopolies and oligopolies permitted, at least theoretically, in Islams as the growth of these ‘small borrowed firms’ cannot lead to a monopolistic control of caretaker(s) (Choudhury, 1997: 108). I will amuse you further and tell you that if Property is temporally used and if its availability is through God first and whose priority belongs to the communal, then “no artificial obstacles prevent new [small borrowed] firms from entering or existing [small borrowed] firms from leaving” (Awan, 1983: 33). You desire a further form of resistance to Eurocentric Capitalism’s Monopolies and Oligopoies?
Mudarabah/Musharakah an external financial structure, completely devoid of Interest; joint ventures, if You will. It calls forth for an extension and the creation of new caretakers and further commence, or at the very least provide the potential for such commencing of ‘new borrowed small firms’, raising them to the surface as independent offshoots of existing ‘small borrowed firms’ (Choudhury, 1997: 110).
There are obviously two positive effects of such an impetus, Mudarabah/Musharakah. The first pertains to a greater number of ‘small borrowed firms’, more diversified ‘small borrowed firms’, and subsequently greater effective complementary inter-linkages appearing and hence more adequate resource allocation amongst these ‘small borrowed firms’ occupying and occupied by an Ummah; a minimization of Israf (Choudhury, 1997: 110). I shall return to posit the second effect further down for I wish to address the first more adequately, more justly.
When I ‘speak’ here then of Mudarabah/Musharakah’s more adequate resource allocation, I find myself yet again critiquing Eurocentric Capitalism in particular and Socialism as You and I begin to witness an alternative to them. An alternative, as a gift to You, and that minimizes waste in production, consumption and commodity exchange value, Israf. Let me ‘speak’.
“According to intrinsic value embedded in market exchangeables, neither labor nor capital can solely capitalize on…[an intrinsic] value for the their own prices” at least in accordance with Eurocentric Capitalist and Socialist principles and analysis (Choudhury, 1997: 66). Clarifying further I tell You that according to their principles and analysis, “the price of a factor cannot include this [intrinsic] value in its asking price for the sole worth of labor or capital” (Choudhury, 1997: 66). “There is neither exchange value nor use value but rather an evaluation…[and] an calculation of risk…an anticipation-evaluation that takes into account the ritual character as well as well as the utilitarian, the serial character as well as the exchangist” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 439). Respectively both the pricing of Eurocentric Capitalism and Socialism “taken up in terms of use-value or exchange value, become excess prices [Surplus Profits] of such factors” (Choudhury, 1997: 66). Suddenly You and I are confronted with that, through this analysis, there is an alternative that remains and appears. An alternative, appearing through Islam(s), whose “intrinsic value of exchangeables in an ethicized market is revealed through the pricing process by making consumers and suppliers cooperate with each other to sacrifice some of the consumer and supplier surpluses, [and whose]…process becomes increasingly diversified in every round of interaction-integration-evolution” (Choudhury, 1997: 67). In this sacrificing of surplus, this stock piling, lies the key. Attente! “Exchange does not assume a preexistent stock…stockpiling begins only once exchange has lost its interest, its desirability for both parties [consumer and producer]” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1997: 440). Islams though desire that the exchange not loose interest in such commercial transactions, quite the contrary, so they speak out and express that their desire becomes that they advocate for cooperation between consumer and producer. More plainly, without You wondering, their desire is to minimize the gap of stockpiling, the surplus of object and subject; to prevent unnecessary depletion or destruction once a threshold, the threshold in which stock begins to pile, is reached (Deleuze & Guattari, 1997: 440). This is very significant. It is significant that You comprehend that this limit is the exchange limit, in which exchange is of interest to both parties, consumer and producer; whose “law is one of temporal succession because…[it, exchange limit] preserves itself [from Israf]…by switching territories [of what is produced and what is consumed in a joint collaboration by both parties] at the conclusion of each period (itinerancy, itineration)…this iteration will govern the apparent exchange” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1997: 440). Conversely as I have communicated to You, Eurocentric Capitalism desires such stockpiling to occur and whose law and concern is that of the simultaneous exploitation of different territories; or, when the exploitation is successive, the succession of operation periods bears on one and the same territory” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 440).
There is something left of Mudarabah/Musharakah. I counted two positive effects of such an impetus. Now I return and tell you of the second. The second positive effect of the impetus behind Mudarabah/Musharakah becomes four-pieced intertwined desires. A desire, that belongs to Ehsan, kindness and generosity to another subject, a member of the communal. A desire, that belongs to Huquq al-Ibadah, duties to another subject, a member of the communal. A desire, that belongs to Huquq al-Allah, duties to God (The absolute owner of Property which You and I have temporarily borrowed) through a fulfillment of God’s request of preserving Huquq al-Ibadah. Finally, a desire, that belongs to an active minimization of any risings of income disparities and differentials, Mal, amongst subjects occupied by and occupying the communal. This is part of the whole campaign of Mudarabah/Musharakah.
The accuser even pretended that it wasn’t the accused but someone else who had sung
I wanted to try, outside the stylistic limitations that are necessarily imposed by Eurocentrism, to describe for you, with an intense feeling of intellectual sympathy this world.
So I ‘spoke’ and uttered that differences in Mal, through Islams, are faced through “differences in human…[desire] for work and not…[through] individual claims on natural resources” and which evolve, evolved and shall remain evolving with desires (Esposito, 1980: 32). Desires and in particular those desires constituting work are in flux and respectively circulate into a translated reciprocated monetary value, following an initial division of wealth that was and is indiscriminate. I repeat but always with a difference.
To put an end, to indicate, to express what I wandered here to do I am left with this. I am about to ‘speak’ of Eurocentric Capitalist Wealth and Islams tactical resistances, practical re-territorializations and symbolic recodings, towards such Wealth. I now ‘speak’ of Wealth hospitable to four outsides, four types belonging to this apparatus of capture: Interest, Surplus Profits not Profit, Ground Rent, Inheritance and Taxation.
Rejoice
Interest, Riba, belonging to Wealth’s hospitality, becomes referred to through Islam(s) as Usury and Riba. It, Riba, is forbidden thrice, at least, throughout verses, Koranic. First verse: “And for their taking interest even though it as forbidden for them, and their wrongful appropriation of the other peoples’ property, We have prepared for those among them who reject faith a grievous punishment” (Surat Al-Nisa, Verse 161). Second verse: “O believers, take not doubled and redoubled interest, and fear God so that you may prosper…and obey God and the Prophet so that you may receive mercy” (Surat Al-Imran, Verse 130-132). Third verse: “Those who benefit from interest shall be raised like those who have been driven to madness by the touch of the Devil; this is because they say: ‘Trade is like interest’ while God has permitted trade and forbidden interest…If the debtor is in difficulty, let him [/her] respite until it is easier, but if you forego out of charity, it is better for you if you realize” (Surat Al-Baqarah, Verse 275-281).
Riba, and its “collection…was and is forbidden because it served [and serves] as a means of exploiting” all whom bare poverty (Esposito, 2002: 163). It, Riba, takes advantage of an individual’s weak economic position and is repugnant of the spirit of Islam(s) whose underlying philosophies are one of al-‘adl wa’l-ihasan, justice and benevolence (Ahmad, 1991: 36). Riba is an apparatus of capture. It, Riba, whose essence is anticipation-evaluation-calculation, offers “an unfair gain to the lender [of a loan, Qard-e-Hasanah], [and] whom receives money without working for it, and imposes an unfair burden on the borrower, who must repay the loan and a finance charge regardless of whether his [or her] money grows or he [or she] suffers a monetary loss” (Esposito, 2002: 166).
I ‘speak’ then of Riba, Interest, as that associated with conventional saving accounts, though not constrained to its association with such accounts, and upon which Eurocentric Capitalism is premised and continues to hoard. I ‘speak’ then of Riba whose fluctuations perpetuate monetary disequilibrium and a randomness causing the exchange value itself of money to neither reflect the properties of store of value in money or stable valuation of Property (Choudhury, 1998: 170). I ‘speak’ then of Riba resulting in “monetary aggregates [that] fail to satisfy the essential conditions of stability, exchange and convertibility of monetary numeraire” (Choudhury, 1998: 170). I beg You and so I ‘speak’ to You then of Riba whose hoarding is equated with praying to Wealth with the undoubted expectation of a predictive and predetermined return of that Wealth and moreover at no risk to a Capitalist (Esposito, 2002: 166). Riba, Interest, created, hegemonically determined and imposed by a Capitalist, a self-declared Master of Wealth, as the condition of economic ‘normalcy’ upon which the Slave and temporary recipient of but a portion of that Wealth, a loaned wealth, must subscribe. Riba, Interest, a Capitalist’s, a Master’s selfless motive, with no hospitality for a Slaves’ tears, sweat (Esposito, 1980: 32). Riba, always has been and always will be a form of guaranteed Wealth power and privilege for a Capitalist, a Master. Riba, Interest, a guaranteed like, though not identical or the same, to ‘Surplus Profit’, for it is never subject to loss (Esposito, 1980: 32). Riba, “the payment of something definite in return for something uncertain militates” and is differentially distanced from Islams and ‘Useful Profit/Mal,’ whose essence is Haq Al-Mal, the right to earn a living, is not Surplus Profit, but ‘Useful Profit/Mal’ whose earning is required to be lawful and carries with it due obligations that ought to be duly discharged to the community (Ahmad, 1991: 39).
Again and again I find that I am tormented repeating my original intentions and desires, as I point to You with the hope that You shall listen, with the sensibility that I may create for you a new impression of a work, of a world, that is disconnected from you yet attainable by you. I desire to nail you through the heart, in the place where I love you best. So I tell you that Wealth circulates with desires and Mal is always becoming something other than what it initially began as. I ‘speak’ then to address what becomes of additional Mal, Useful Profit/Mal. Useful Profit/Mal, that is accumulated individually and collectively over and above the initial communal Mal. Mal that was divided equally amongst a community and which is in accordance with the varying fluxes of desiring subjects that constitute the communal and thus varies. I iterate prior to ‘speaking’ of such Useful Profit/Mal: Desires as I iterated always are and occupy ‘states of flux and become subject to varying degrees of intensities, not just amongst varying individualized subjects, but amongst the individualized subject themselves. I ‘spoke’ before and said that one day I work, the following day I bathe all day.
‘Useful Profit/Mal’, never constitutes the whole, Wealth, generated by individualized and/or communal caretakers “through work that should be just, but it need not be strictly [though Islams always strives for them to be] egalitarian…skill[s]…responsibilities…[and desires] of work, the share of the residual” always have and always will be different (Awan, 1983: 31). Surplus profit is an apparatus of capture. Surplus profit accrues exploitation of a subject or/and an object and premised on comparisons of the ‘two equal’ subjects, ‘two equal’ objects and their appropriation for the sole monopoly or oligopoly of an owner or owners respectively (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 441). Surplus Profit is excessively constitutive of, over and above‘ Useful Profit/Mal’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 446). It, ‘Useful Profit/Mal’, unlike Riba “is uncertain and [respectively its] actual quantum, positive or negative” is not predetermined and yet limited within “reasonable bounds in the ‘interest’ of an equitable distribution of income and wealth” (Ahmad, 1991: 39). ‘Useful Profit/Mal’, through Islams always has been and always will be a never guaranteed Wealth taking the form of Surplus Profit or Riba due to radical openness, a reciprocated privilege for all caretakers, individualized and/or communal, as well as the forbiddance of Riba/Interest respectively through Islams. I explain further, Wealth is never guaranteed with ‘Useful Profit/Mal’, but rather guaranteed with Riba/Interest and Surplus Profit. “The principle of social control of production” by caretakers, individualized and communal, “profit-sharing act as the basis of distributing equally the resources and output of production and are activated in” Islam(s) through these principles and obligations (Choudhury, 1997: 107).
From discussing Riba/Interest and Surplus Profit to a repeated though appreciated difference, when discussing Ground Rent and Inheritance. To discuss Ground Rent and Inheritance, there is a becoming of importance to re-iterate, albeit briefly in a single sentence, Property further underneath dual ownership.
An Exodus without Enunciations
Property always un-appropriated through Islam(s) and belongs to neither the ‘I’ nor the ‘us’. The ‘I’ and the ‘us’ are borrowers. “Ground rent, in its abstract model, appears precisely when a comparison is drawn between different simultaneously exploited territories, or between successive exploitations of the same territory” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 440). “The earth…the lands has two potentialities of deterritorialization: (1) its differences in quality are comparable to one another, from the standpoint of a quantity establishing a correspondence between them and exploitable pieces of land; (2) the set of exploited lands is appropriable, as opposed to exterior unclaimed land, from the standpoint of a monopoly that fixes the landowner or –owners” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 441). The second postulate here is the necessary condition for the first. “The worst land (or the poorest exploitation) bears no rent, but it makes it so that the other soils do bear rent, ‘produce’ it in a comparative way” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 441).
Islams say then “to receive rent on [God’s property as] virgin land or resources is prohibited” (Esposito, 1980: 34). No individualized caretaker or communal caretakers within Islams may lay claim(s) to virgin resources if they do not put them to use for the community (Esposito, 1978: 36). Put them to use for the whole community I said. Contrarily, “ground [absolute] rent homogenizes, equalizes different conditions of productivity by linking the excess of the highest conditions of productivity over the lowest to a landowner [not a caretaker]” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 441). However, “if [through Islams and baring in mind that] the… [caretaker(s), are never absolute owners but rather borrowers] of such a property, [that it happens that] God’s property, has ‘improved’ the land or resources, through labor or other resources, ‘rent’ [never ‘absolute’, never ground rent] can be levied [only] in proportion with such ‘improvements’”; not in proportion and through association-comparison apparatuses of capture to other territories (Esposito, 1989: 34). Furthermore it, ‘rent’ is subject to a conditional ‘if’ and a conditional ‘can’ as opposed to a ‘must’. Hence there is never absolute ground rent through Islams, rather ‘a possible rent’, as opposed to ‘a must and absolute ground rent’ through Eurocentric Capitalisms. Respectively and even in such a case of a caretaker’s desire to touch, to request ‘rent’, never absolute ground rent, a caretaker receives two conditionals: an ‘if’ and a ‘can’ to which obligations arise, as the caretaker owns not property. A/The caretaker(s) is/are bound and obligated by Islams whom interpret that “many individual ‘needs’ and…any excess…[were and are] not permissible” (Esposito, 1980: 37). A/The caretaker(s) is/are bound and obligated as I asserted formerly in the use of such Property through the requirement that such Property be borrowed for the benefit of the communal. A/The caretaker(s) whose desires remain always on par with the desires of the communal, never above them. Islams explode everything because their body can’t be touched, as it remains dedicated and appreciative of the singular and the communal.
Class Struggle already permeates the family
And what becomes of the third subcategory, Inheritance, an apparatus of capture of the head, Wealth? “Islamic inheritance laws are aimed at achieving a wide distribution of wealth amongst the close relatives of the deceased; at the same time the laws are geared to avoid hoarding and individualistic discrimination and squabbling within the family unit” (Esposito, 1978: 35). No, this is not something bizarre. Its, Inheritance laws, essence desires an emission, a de-centering of the deceased individual, displacing them, for the fabric of a community is placed “ahead [and above] of the emotional whims of the deceased” (Esposito, 1978: 35). Again I iterate, its principle, its essence is something, a thing I say, that centers upon the principle of distribution. I speak of a principle that is concerned with a “dispersal of wealth from one to many, rather than its channeling from many to one” as Eurocentric Capitalism (Esposito, 1978: 35). Koranic verse: “Those who devour the property of orphans unjustly, devour fire in their bellies, and shall assuredly roast in a Blaze” (Koran, Surat IV: Verse 11).
I sacrificed my nights to your business
Now I ‘speak’ of the last apparatus of capture, Taxation, and of an injunction, Zakat through Haqq, a new concept, a new idea, a new thought, that is both symbolic and practical, an act of resistance through Islams towards an enemy Eurocentric Capitalism. It is an act for You here and that ‘works’ against any further potential hoarding desires seeking to worship Wealth: Zakat through Haqq. Zakat, the third pillar in Islam, and there are five (Esposito, 1990: 26). Zakat, a “divinely revealed requirement for those who wish to believe [in] eternal salvation (Esposito, 1980: 26-27). I ‘speak’ of Zakat, an endogenous money multiplier. Zakat, “the annual payment of alms [a principled tax] in income and savings, in trade commodities, in crops, and in certain other properties” is an obligation to the needy. I ‘speak’ of Zakat, an anti-thesis to Taxation.
“Taxation...creates money…and it corresponds with services and goods in the current of that [Economic] circulation…[in it] the state finds the means for foreign trade, insofar as it appropriates that trade…and which makes Monopolistic appropriation of outside exchange” possible (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 443). Zakat, is not merely a conventional source of ‘nourishment supposedly for the poor’, like that associated with governmental revenue and taxation (Esposito, 1980: 27). Zakat, is not used for the appropriation of an outside exchange as a means for foreign trade nor could and should it be a source for Monopolizaiton. It, Zakat, is not to be collected by the state, unlike Taxation. I ‘speak’ of Zakat, an obligation to the community as a whole, to be made specifically and directly to those in more need of it, never paid to an impersonalized government nor to it a revenue-collecting agency (Esposito, 1980: 27). It, Zakat, and I know well, is a resistance to Eurocentric Capitalism’s without the envisaging of poverty as an act of normalcy in and through economic associations and its distortion as some sort of free generosity of some towards others in the hope that wealth of the rich and the destitution of the poor may somehow miraculously find a point of balance (Ramadan, 2004: 178). I ‘speak’ of Zakat, a disassociation of a ‘being’ from its ‘Wealth’ hoarding self, a full and ethical conception of human relations (Ramadan, 2004: 178). I ‘speak’ of Zakat, for “those in whose ‘Wealth’ is a right known for the beggar and the outcast” (Esposito, 1980: 27). I ‘speak’ of Zakat, given willingly, not to be paid begrudgingly, if the divine law [associated with it] is to be fulfilled” (Esposito, 1980: 27). Zakat, a means of reducing selfishness and expiation for past selfishness and a tomorrow filled with the incentive of having improved oneself, having conquered the Micro-fascist within even if but temporally, until the next time it is paid again and again (Esposito, 1980: 27). I ‘speak’ of Zakat, a guaranteed act of giving the poor and needy, the orphaned, the elderly and the like, at least, what is necessary for their qualities of life (Esposito, 1980: 27). A Koranic Verse: “The free will offerings are for the poor and needy, those who work to collect them, those whose hearts are brought together the ransoming of slaves, debtors, in God’s way, and the traveler; so God ordains” (Surat IX, Verse 60). Zakat, if not sufficient to restore equality is ‘repeated’ until the sufficient qualities of life of those who claim assistance are met (Esposito, 1980: 28). Zakat, is not “just a widow’s mite to be paid out of duty and distributed as charity…anything but that…woven into the very fabric of society, that aims at freeing the poor from their dependence so that eventually they themselves will pay Zakat [to help others]” (Ramadan, 2004: 189). Zakat, demands…knowledge of the environment, the community, and the social and economic situation” of that community (Ramadan, 2004: 193). Zakat, premised upon Haqq, “the right of the poor to receive charity” and never regarded as a bestowal or privilege that a caretaker offers to those in need (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 19). A caretaker, whose property does not and will never belong absolutely to them.
And the Store at the level of the Maids and the Employees
And what remains for You and I here is this: the second head. The second head, belonging to Eurocentric Capitalism, reduced to the signifier Involuntary Relations. There is “not only the land, from the double point of view of the comparison of lands and the Monopolistic appropriation of land; it has work as another correlate, from the double point of view of the comparison of activities and the monopolistic appropriation of labor (surplus labor)” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 441). I ‘speak’ then of Eurocentric Capitalism’s labor and surplus labor that are “strictly the same thing: the first term is applied to the quantitative comparison of activities, the second to the monopolistic appropriation of labor by the entrepreneur (and no longer the landowner)” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 442). I contrast this with Islams.
I find myself compelled to posit this: If “human…[desire] for work and not…[through] individual claims on natural resources” evolve, evolved and shall remain evolving with desires, then there will become an ‘other’ that emerges (Esposito, 1980: 32). This ‘other’ is not laborer and owner: These Eurocentric conceptualizations are given birth to through Eurocentric Capitalism. This ‘other’ is the voluntary worker born out of Ikhtiy’ar, the voluntary relations and associations (Wilson, 1997: 134), I discussed formerly and whose essence is something else, something ‘other’. If You wish You and I may call the voluntary worker a voluntary laborer. Why? Again my response remains: Desires. If desires are in flux then there proceeds the birth of some, the ‘other’, the worker whom desires not, the necessary responsibility, Fardh, of becoming a caretaker, in as much as there is radical openness through Islams and in as much as there is a guaranteed degree and expected quality of life. I speak then of a new type of social interrelationship that neither Eurocentric Socialist or Capitalist believers can deliver or associate to (Choudhrury, 1998: 40). What then becomes through Islams of this relationship between caretaker and this supposed worker?
Governing the relationship, the association, the ‘new bond’ if You will, amidst a caretaker and voluntary laborer becomes an ethical conduct. A conduct that neither perceives a caretaker or voluntary worker to become in a position of enjoying any innate moral superiority though Islams affirm that there are greater temptations faced by the caretaker to hoard (Esposito, 1980: 44). The voluntary worker respectively is “accorded a dignity in keeping with …[their] status as a vicegerent of God on earth…[whose] return can take the form of wages or a share in the ‘Useful Profit’ of enterprise [hence becoming caretakers IF they desire” (Ahmad, 1991: 37). I speak then of Islams “strongly opposed to exploitation of [voluntary labor] and [that] seeks to promote the greatest amity between” caretakers and such voluntary workers, as it respects their desires not to be caretakers (Ahamd, 1991: 41). A Koranic verse: “Withhold not things justly due to others” (Surat 29, Verse: 183).
Islams ward off what Eurocentric Capitalism appropriate, to preserve, safeguard this voluntary worker and resists Eurocentric Capitalist actions that suffocate the Involuntary worker, further by decreeing that “wages [to the Voluntary worker are not] to be determined exclusively by the free play of market forces” (Ahmad, 1991: 41). Hence I ‘speak’ and say that respectively this does not belong to the same essence or the circumstances that give rise to a Eurocentric Conception of labor. I ‘speak’ then of a “wage…not related to the marginal productivity of the worker but to the cost of” a quality of living (Ahmad, 1991: 42). I ‘speak’ of a wage, a compensation that Islams requires to be paid to a worker before sweat dries and hence does not await for market forces to determine the cost or ‘profit’. (Ahmad, 1991: 42). I ‘speak not of Real wage that is a portion of Nominal wage, and which is not converted by correspondence and comparison and hence exacerbates the difference between the two sets, owner and owned (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 446). I ‘speak’ of a Nominal wage that includes everything, but the wage-earners income siphoned off and captured by enterprises (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 441). I ‘speak’ then of something ‘other’ unfamiliar to you. This ‘other’, as every ‘other’ I have gifted You through acts of hospitality, is an interpretation; an interpretation of Anti-Capitalist Islamic Anarchistic Becomings.
Here you are starting to comprehend what this chapter is pursuing in my place
I do not know but I know that there remain three more injunctions, practical, three acts of resistance through Islams towards an enemy Eurocentric Capitalism, for You here, and that ‘work’ against any further potential hoarding desires of Wealth.
A Wealth, whose transfer from poor to rich, promotes selfishness, and weakens community bonds” (Esposito, 2002: 166). But “The believers feed the poor, the orphan, the captive for the love of God, saying: ‘We feed you to please God alone…we do not expect any recompense or gratitude from you’” (Koran, Surat 76, Verse 8-9). “The parable of those who spend their possessions out of a longing to please God, and out of their own inner certainty, is that of a garden on high fertile ground: a rainstorm smites it, and thereupon it brings forth its fruit; and if no rainstorm smites it, soft rain [falls upon it]” (Koran, Surat 2, Verse 265).
Infaq, voluntary spending, un-obligated as Zakat, to the welfare of those in more need; Sadaqah, voluntary charity, again un-obligated as Zakat; It’am, voluntary feeding, again un-obligated as Zakat; forces of resistance launched towards Eurocentric Capitalism (Ahmad, 1991: 42). If You need more of a clarification, more of a stance, more a vengeful act to illustrate the points I raised regarding Wealth. I through the Koran offer you this verse: “As for all who lay up treasures of gold and silver and do not spend them for the sake of God- give them the tiding of grievous suffering [in the life to come]: on the Day when that [hoarded wealth] shall be heated in the fire of hell and their foreheads and their sides and their backs branded therewith, [those sinners shall be told] ‘these are the treasures which you have laird up for yourselves! Taste, then, [the evil of] your hoarded treasures!” (My Holy Koran, Surat 9, Verse 34-35). You demand another do You? Koranic verse: “as does he [and she] who spends his [and her] wealth only to be seen and praised by others…for his [and her] parable is that of a smooth rock with [a little] earth upon it-and then a rainstorm smites it and leaves it hard and bare” (Koran, Surat 2, Verse 264).
Without menacing, this last verse wants to get something out; something of vital importance. This attitude, this duty to be discreet is more important than it appears: “it bears the mark of respect for and individual’s dignity in all circumstances, even the most intimate…to give before the poor who need to beg...to avoid being seen by anyone so that no one has to be embarrassed…[to give members of a community what they] are entitled to have” (Ramadan, 2004: 181). “To bare faith is to bare responsibility for social commitment at every moment…to possess is to have the duty [and obligation] to share” (Ramadan, 2004: 182). Conversely this god, Eurocentric Capitalism, my enemy, your enemy, is one for whom Islams offers no hospitality or any dwelling place for, symbolically or practically. This god whose duties comprise an inhumane economy that organizes, produces, and structures injustice, discrimination, exploitation and famine” and is a jungle and “no jungle on earth is [ought to be] home to such horror” (Ramadan, 2004: 182). It is a god that idealizes the individual (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 17). It is a god that regards an individual’s possession as sacred. A contradiction, for Islams pledge the roots that everything on earth belongs to God alone, and people are only merely entrusted with managing these belongings amongst themselves. As a further gift, an offering of a hospitality Islam(s) and I offer and give You two more injunctions, Ramadan and Islamic Banks, two acts of resistance that belong to Islams and against our enemy, Eurocentric Capitalism. There is nothing left for I here but these further two acts of resistance.
It is calculation, rationalization, that causes you to fall with open eyes into
other relations instead of reaching a turning moment in my foreign thought
Ramadan, a fast, a Sawm, from dusk till dawn for a month, adopts a symbolic and a practical element. Ramadan, a symbolic, “an act of worship in itself…leads Muslims to perceive, and to feel inwardly, the need to eat and drink and, by extension, to ensure that every human being has the means to subsist” (Ramadan, 2004: 89). Ramadan, a fast whose end commences with Sadaqat Al-Fitr, “another charity [in addition to Zakat and all others I mentioned above]…imposed on every Muslim/Muslima who has the means for themselves and their dependents…[and] related to Property and is obligatory on every Muslim/Muslima that possesses more than the prescribed amount of provisions after giving the charity…to be given in person into the hands of those who are eligible to receive…[not] the wealthy” (Budak, 2005:93-96). Ramadan, practical, as it reduces consumption and respectively production, discourages the extravagant spending and wasteful use of resources even if but temporal. I ‘speak’ of Ramadan, a disruptive resistance to a god, Eurocentric Capitalism. A god whose banking systems extends financial facilities only to the rich and propertied classes, leading to their further hoarding and the accentuation of further economic inequalities.
Now, lastly, seriously, Islamic banking, a resistance, allows not unrestricted access and use of the financial resources of the banking system primarily with reference to the criterion of ‘creditworthiness’ (Ahmad, 1991: 46). A resistance that rose to Eurocentric Capitalist banking institutions, “established in the mid-nineteenth century…end of the twentieth century…funding trading activities…saving accounts with no interest…whose patrons [credit worthy or not] participate in investments and either earn a share of the profit on the return or suffer a portion of the losses sustained by the bank” (Esposito, 2002: 168). Islamic banks aim at “[socially] empowering grass-root levels by extending their social funds towards developing a diversity” of ‘small firms’ to generate a rhizome, inter-linkages, to benefit and uplift the grassroots; to bring forth about inter-communal economic cooperation, participation and restoring agencies back to whom these agencies belong to, You and I (Choudhury, 1997: 178). Transactions involving risk, the use of equity sharing, rather than debt financing…a [new un-colonial] means” of offering hospitality, a way out to impoverished communities (Esposito, 2002: 168). The rise of alternatives to a god’s whose Inflations and deflations militate against Islams ideals of giving fair measure of value in all transactions (Ahmad, 1991: 46).
The Other Trial
I tell you this I deny altars. “The disinherited (and the rest) will not be mobilized by just any form of Islams; what above all needs to be offered to them, with or without Islams, is a future prospect that means progress in the conditions under which they live” (Rodison, 1973: 230). I tell you this I deny altars. There needs to be a mobilization of Islams under the conditions and concepts proposed above. These Islams would operate where the above links, ideas, become forces, where a new zeal to mobilize commences once more, making Islams ready to sacrifice immediate interest, individual interests, to the collective once more. I ‘speak’ of a psychologically individualized ‘agenda’ armed with steel and borrowed from if not enforced by a god, Eurocentric Capitalism, and whose values and injunctions offer powerful corruptive forces of possessiveness and love for Wealth, particularly along the ruling and influential classes in Islams. I ‘speak’ of a psychologically individualized agenda, starting with the introduction of the dynastic concepts in Islams, “concentrated power and corruptive influences among certain families and their entourages” and now inherited by succeeding generations after generation (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 13). I ‘speak’ of a psychologically individualized agenda brought forth by Mongol wars and the Crusades (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 13). I ‘speak’ of a psychologically individualized agenda brought forth by European Colonialism causing the fragmentation of Islams, the abandonment of traditions in favor of European institutions and a gradual transition towards nationalism (Abdul-Rauf, 1978: 13). The former two are not justifications worthy of attention any more for Islams, for they have been used as excuses for far too long, a blaming game, a sobbing game and a tautological game. The sacrifices required of these Islams require neither an evasion of nor a profiting from the sacrifices made, neither a boasting nor a glorification of such a virtue or piety when made. For Islams to ‘return’ to its lost yet not forgotten essence, for Islams to confront reality, rather than a mere augmented past, that neither could return nor become redrawn. There needs to be something new that is translatable into specific, clear and combative slogans and actions. “Through these slogans, each individual would have to see himself [and herself] confronted with an immediate duty to perform, each in his [and her] place…all this might be associated with a denunciation of the privileges of wealth and power identified with those who had distorted Islams” (Rodison, 1972: 230). “This revolt and these micro-revolts against the current shapes of Islams have to be linked with the proclamation of new Islams…in which the enemy of this construction can be denounced as an adversary of the highest values to which these ideologies appeal” (Rodison, 1973: 231). Even if this adversary becomes the ‘clergy’ themselves. I ‘speak’ of ‘clergy’ who and whom Muslims and Muslimas who supposedly choose Islams and supposedly follow one form of it or another, have become too reliant on, too attached to, and worshipping of. I’ speak’ of ‘clergy’ who “with the coming of [nationalist] independence…gradually…[rose] on the social scale...[alongside] the (more or less exploiting) upper strata [and who] increasingly proclaim their ‘attachment to Islam[s], in a frenzied search for an ideological guarantee for their social and material advantages” (Rodinson, 1973: 226). “The more successful the ‘clergy’ become in raising their standard of living, or even merely in becoming integrated in the nation, the less will Islam[s] serve as...[a] slogan for the disinherited” (Rodinson, 1973: 226). For now, despite a few, Islams’ ‘clergy’, the meek, have inherited Islams and I offer them like the god I ‘spoke’ of here, Eurocentric Capitalism, no hospitality. Now I speak of authority and now I am becoming Anti-authoritarian.
Chapter Two: Pedagogical Juridical Orders: Decentralized & Anti-Authoritarian
Movements of Speaking
Pleading with you, I ask you once more, tell me what “is”? “Is” signifies what you are? “Is”, present indicative and singular. “Is” this, not that. “Is” not that, “is” this? “Is”, an un-litigated totality. “Is”, the presumption of a firm metaphysical ground, an essence. “Is”, the presumption of a fixed being, and center, where the meaning of your life remains constantly unchanged. “Is”, an oppression (Call, 2003: 50). “Is”, exclusionary of everything outside it. “Is”, a negation unparalleled to affirmation. “Is”, a propositioned mandatory un-porous membrane, a way of life that permits no movement(s). “Is”, a solitary haven from “Nous”, “us”, everything and everyone dispersed. Dispersed from that which we do not know and have not experienced, would not like to know and experience and that which we refuse to know and experience. “Is”, a demarcation of a You and an I. “Is”, a “state” between the You and I and any potential propositions towards becoming(s) of “Nous”. “Nous”, a symbiosis, an alliance that brings to play parts of a you and a me, varying in degrees and intensities, and void of accompanying possibilities for filiations. Look for a ‘Nous’, a “third party”, here, in this factory of a paper, and in the theater (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 238). I am not suspending my demystifying of “Nous” yet. Deleuze and Guattari propose that “tu”, you, have two axes within a social space, significance (surface) and subjectification (depth). You, “tu”, have very different semiotic systems (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 167). What does this imply for “Nous”? Picture your face no longer an “is” but exhibiting possibilities of becoming(s) part(s) of something and someone “other”. Your self- proclaimed beautiful face, mine, infinitely wretched. Our skin, a canvas, a surface but really maps comprised of colors, facial traits, wrinkles, lines, different shapes, fonts and sizes. Any scars? Forgive my indecency. No scars. Recall now your face “is” a self-proclaimed beautiful. I ask you. Has your face not become an “other” between today and yesterday? Or have you witnessed no signs of aging yet? Or have you achieved immunity? You resist, I know. You desire your face to always remain an “is”, for temporarily your “is” is most beautiful. It protects you. I? Wretched, yes, but never mourned my face. I, unlike you, never greeted farewell what I saw in the mirror. I felt no despair. Instead I wrote its eulogy and buried it. I, unlike you, embrace my distance from your beautiful face. I unlike you bask in the difference of my ugliness. I unlike you bask in difference, period. I, unlike you, bask in organic deepening separations, through my facial maps and coordinates. I, unlike you, value my face in its incompleteness even more than for its fragmentations, and even more for its pronounced incompleteness, for its punctuated yet open interruptions. I desire my face to always remain as becoming(s). You propose a singular. Absurd. Singular implies ‘is’. I propose multiple upon multiple. I propose ‘Nous’ in steps of hospitality…
History of the Lie: Prolegomena
“If you were to obey a human being like yourselves, then verily you indeed
would be losers”
Holy Qur'an, Surah 23 Al-Mu'minun: Ayat 34
“The reverse side of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and no limits” (Derrida, 2000: 36). I ‘speak’ and say then that You and I conduct our selves here through bonds built upon our principled conception of words. I ‘speak’ of words that signify a medium for us to communicate our wishes and that experience ‘states’ of becoming something else from what they were initially intended. This ‘event’ frankly commences as our intentions and thoughts attempt to correspond to one another, pitied and always becoming pursued through words. I ‘speak’ then here and now of words pleading to signify such thoughts belonging to our soul’s interpretations (Derrida, 2000: 290). I ‘speak’ then of words that can be falsified as they could be interpreted in ways and to no ends, becoming betrayed when falsified. Why You ask? Why?! At the instant when falsification of words commences their center, what they originally were thought to signify, while they waited for thoughts and intentions to correspond, becomes deceived. I ‘speak’ then of words deceived because they can no longer hold a center; the center can no longer hold the position of Authority it direly desires.
I ‘speak’ then here and now, again and again, of an Authoritarian god. Here I will not feign, according to the ‘code’, a single thematic nucleus belonging to a merely abstract signifier ‘Islams’, as I justly, rightly and explicitly enacted in Kapital’s Wet Dream: Islams & Post-Anarchism. I tell You, I am about to announce here something else: ‘Islam(s)’. I believe this to be an essential and ludicrous operation because pointing a single guiding thesis precisely premised upon the signifier ‘Islams’ would be strange, misleading and unjust to the viewpoints surrounding Authority here in this economy of a paper. I will not resort to reducing the impossibility of a single signifier, even if such a signifiers’ appearance remains abstract, plural and multiple. Such a verdict here would cancel itself out, for I would be presenting along the way a representation of ‘Islams’ that is Anti-authoritarian, when certain representations destroy politically such a declaration. Destroy it politically for a reason that let me say in advance offers a few supplementary complications to be found in Without an Alibi. I only and solely testify respectively to the pluralities of these interpretations and point that subsequently such interpretations will present themselves before your eyes. I see them as truths never ‘the truth’. I pledge no allegiance to them and hence I provide another interpretation a more comprehensive Anti-Authoritarian Islamic Anarchistic Becoming. Still less, despite appearances of these seemingly politically authoritarian Islam(s) which I will shed light on further, the route here towards Anti-authoritarian Islam(s) will be visible and oblige itself to speak, ‘canceling’ subtractions; what may appear contradictory and at the same time have some value of truth; Islam(s) that espouse a particular form, and I will be very clear, of political authority.
I must proceed and testify that despite subtractions, the Islam(s) that I conceive of here were, are and shall continue to remain determinate like Post-Anarchism to “undermine structures of [Eurocentric conceptions of] authority and [Eurocentric conceptions of] hierarchy…[through the employment of] a war model of writing to expose the suppressed antagonisms and differences within…[Eurocentric] discourse whose claims to universality, wholeness and lucid self-reflection have been sounded since the time of Plato” (Newman, 2001: 115). What I intend then lays in the here and now, so I deny altars and want to give You something more.
Posed in these terms, the question ‘What ‘is’ Authority?’ would already be caught up in a series of presuppositions that demand dismantling. This proposed oneness, this inaccessible ‘is’, envelops a web, as there is always a surprise in store for the anatomy or physiology of any signifier [, here, Authority,] that thinks that it mastered ‘the game’, deluding itself, creating its own myth, wanting you to look at it without touching it (Derrida, 1972: 63). I first touch it in the subsection Searching the ‘States’ of Authority Soul. It appears to have two souls a tactical politik, a Micro-political, a Micro-fascism and a strategic politik, a Macro-political, a Macro-fascism. At the Macro-political it takes a turn and there is where it becomes visible at it smashes You and I into little pieces. I will repeat this statement soon enough, and said it once prior: You and I owe our Micro-fascism to the Eurocentric State, but the Eurocentric State owes its inception from our thought. In a sense it doubles itself as a collective, a rhizomatic ‘us’ composed of dual Macro-Fascisms, a hybrid, dubbing itself as a union, a masochistic combative relation: ‘God-Capital’ conceived of as the Eurocentric State and Eurocentric Capitalism. From this point on and for an instant Authority becomes The Other Trial.
Searching the ‘States’ of Authority’s Soul
I begin to ‘speak’ then and say this To You, so listen: the logic of Post-Anarchism proclaims to become one whose essence necessitates the disruption of “the unity of political thought [pursued primarily and as offered formerly through Eurocentric word(s)] by freeing it [and them respectively] from ‘essentialist’ foundations, and thereby opening it [and them] to contingency and multiple interpretations” (Newman, 2001: 173). Post-Anarchism becomes an alibi then for what I intended above and what I do throughout this economy of a paper and below, the obsessive quest to create and bring to the surface Non-Eurocentric language. A Post-Anarchism whose desire becomes to disseminate “[Eurocentric conceptions of] authority and domination [that] exist not only in the apparatus of the state and centralized political institutions; they are also prevalent …in linguistic structures, in words themselves…language, then is political, and while it can participate in political domination, it can also be used against it” (Newman, 2001: 106). A Post-Anarchism still yet shouldering the weight of Classical Anarchism(s) in its desires that attempt to undo the Eurocentric (Newman, 2001: 158). I ‘speak’ of a desire leading “to [the] rejection of [a Eurocentric conception of] authority and domination” (Newman, 2001: 158). I ‘speak’ then of a rejected [Eurocentric conception of] authority “that constitutes “the very basis of Anarchism, and the destruction of [such an] authority…is its ultimate goal” (Newman, 2001: 158). This is Authority in its most abstract of senses, and which I clarified enough and I am uninterested in addressing it here any further as an abstraction.
Rather the Authority of which I desire to search for and ‘speak’ of here and whose depth I seek, occupies two souls; two souls of Fascism: A Micro, inside all subjects, the You and the I, the he and the she, the us and the them alongside with your dear mother’s breasts, and A Macro the origins of which are thoughts. I ‘speak’ of two rhizomatic Fascisms, whose belongings beckon always for ‘is’; ‘is’, the proclamation and imposition of ‘the truth’; “a tautological or fictitious proliferation, a multiplication by subtraction” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 463). I ‘speak’ of two Fascisms though I would have longed again and again, as pronounced ample times formerly, if You would only listen, for a “collapse of distinction between the Micro and Macro-political spheres, seeing one as always referring to the other-seeing a transformation in one area as always having implications in others” (Newman, 2001: 98). I ‘speak’ then of two, two cruel Authorities, one Micro-fascist, comprised of secret events and whose essence neither necessitates its becoming conceived of Eurocentrically or non-Eurocentrically and another Macro-Fascist, comprised of public events and is Eurocentric, as it is the Eurocentric that has given birth to it.
Secret Events
So I ‘speak’ first then of Micro-fascisms and the Micro-fascist, comprised of secret events. I ‘speak’ of secret events that I posit and believe rhizomatically emit two radiations through two significations, though not necessarily constrained to such radiations, as I will show You further below: A first radiation, a first signification, a being’s, the You and the I as well as any other subject, interest(s) translated into intent(s) of worshiping ones own self, commencing forth the birth of Micro-fascisms. These Micro-fascisms take on dramatic form(s) in egoisms struggling with one another and which are at war with one another, each against all. They, these Micro-fascisms whose multiplicity is comprised of all allergic egoisms, are at war with one another, but are also however ‘together’, and individually call for the birth of a subject’s paranoia and the subject’s, through the becoming Micro-fascist, subjugation of others (Levinas, 1987: 4). I ‘speak’ of a Micro-fascism exhibiting always the resurrection of itself. I ‘speak’ then of “the very egoism of the ego that posits itself”, unconfined, unconstrained to the radiations I began to present above and have yet to continue below (Levinas, 1987: 137-138). I ‘speak’ of egoism desiring its ego becoming an “uncreated, sovereign principle, a prince” (Levinas, 1987, 136). A second radiation emerges, a second signification, a being’s interest, longings and desires become “preceded by pure passivity that is responsibility…[a] responsibility for the freedom of others” (Levinas, 1987: 136). A radiation shouting cries of the necessity for a responsibility that is “far from being a limitation or negation of…[a being’s] freedom, [as] the freedom of [a being’s] neighbor is instead its precondition and confirmation” (Guerin: 151). I ‘speak’ of then of another radiation, a responsibility, a resistance even if but temporally to the becoming Micro-fascist and their respective Micro-fascisms. I ‘speak’ of Micro-fascisms signifying first, “the difference between active and reactive forces, and…[whose] complex [rhizomatic] organization…results-where the weak have conquered, where the strong are contaminated, where the slave who has not appeared prevails over the master who has stopped being one: the reign of law and virtue”; the birth of Micro-hierarchy, a genesis and rule; Micro-fascisms of Micro-hierarchies (Perez, 1990: 17).
I ‘speak’ of secret events then to You, a Prince, constituted by acts of territorialization and de-territorializaiton, acts of resistance and oppressions and acts of decoding and recoding.
Possible Beyond of Public Events
You need reminding and I let it all out as there exists another Fascism. I ‘speak’ of a guilty ‘other’; a more often fetishicized and prioritized ‘other’; an ‘other’ signifying a particular type of Authority; Macro-fascisms afflicting public and secret events; moderated through dual Macro-fascists, whose associations are again rhizomatic. All relations and associations are Rhizomatic lest You have forgotten. Macro-fascisms, dual, marking, evoking and commencing a second hierarchy the reverse of the above and first hierarchy, Micro-hierarchy. And we, You and I, are given, gifted with a Meta-hierarchy built upon making the “Church, morality and the State the masters and keepers of all hierarchy” (Perez, 1990: 18). Such a hierarchy, Meta-hierarchy, which I ‘speak’ of here, is that “hier(archy) of institutions and eco-political frameworks set up by those who cannot lead or obey themselves: of the weak and the slaves and of those who need an outside hier(archical) authority in order to act” (Perez, 1990: 18).
Dual Macro-fascists open to play here. One a former god, discussed during Chapter One in this economy of a paper, Eurocentric Capitalism. A former god preoccupied with axiomization, and whose tendencies become opposite though no less effective than that of the ‘new’ Macro-fascist of a god, the Eurocentric State/Eco-Political Institutions. You, the reader, a Post-Anarchist, demand an explanation and I comply, for such declare the tenants of my hospitality.
The first Macro-fascist of a god, Eurocentric Capitalism, “tends to fall back on a very small number of axioms [through de-territorializaiton] regulating the dominant flows, while the other flows are given a derivative, consequential status…or are left in an untamed state that does not preclude the brutal intervention of State power” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 462). I remind You, a Post-Anarchist, once more. I ‘spoke’ of it, this Macro-fascist of a god and of its depth formerly. I ‘spoke’ of its authoritarian tactics and laws. It seems to me significant, in this ‘place’, and for countless reasons that I will not develop it further and though discussions of it to You may never suffice or become adequate in your expectations, I informed You that your expectations matter not here. I am merely here only paying You due respect, something You never gave me. Remember that. Respectively I intend only to situate Eurocentric Capitalism’s Authoritarian role with respect to the ‘new’ Macro-Fascist of a god. Thus, before I leave it, I tell You this though of it: Our former god, Eurocentric Capitalism “ is not short on war cries against the State, not only in the name of the market, but by virtue of its superior deterritorializaiton” as it desires and develops “an economic order that could do without the [Eurocentric] state” for it possesses no laws but immanent ones (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 454). Now I tell You of the ‘other’ Macro-Fascist Authority; the ‘other’ god; The Eurocentric State.
The Eurocentric State, preoccupied with “the multiplication of axioms [always varying through axiomization but becomes] most notably [preoccupied with such mutliplciation] when an integrated domestic market is being organized to meet the requirements of a foreign market…Axioms for the young, for the old, for women, etc” (Deleue & Guattari, 1980: 462). What makes axioms vary You ask? Absurd, but I tell You. They vary in degrees and intensities with respect to the distinctions between foreign and domestic markets (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 462). Now Your questioning of this Macro-fascist of a god’s Authority ought not to pertain “to that of freedom [from] and constraint [of the Eurocentric State] nor of [its] centralism and [its] de-centralization, but of the manner in which” it masters these flows through “a multiplication of directing axioms” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 462). I clarify. It, the Eurocentric State, in its “abstract form [is an abstract machine]…[giving] rise to minor dominations, giving them meaning and form…[as it] provides ‘general models of realizaiton’ for the various dominations within society” (Newman, 2001: 98). We, You and I, ‘speak’ of a Eurocentric State whose apparatus “is a concrete assemblage which [desires,] realizes [and adopts] the machine of overcoding” (Newman, 2001: 98). I tell You that this overcoding is a stamp, an imprint of systemic and overt domination repeated yet never without a difference, seeking that which is yet un-dominated, un-territorialized and territorializing it, subject and object, seeking that which becomes temporarily liberated and recoding it once more. We, You and I, ‘speak’ then of a Eurocentric State in its generic form as it is devoid of an essence. A Eurocentric State, an archaic state, an oppressive apparatus “imposed from without by a ‘master race’ who ‘appear as lightning appears, too terrible, too sudden, too convincing too ‘different’ to be hated” (Newman, 2001: 98). A Eurocentric State “infinitely bound up with [Eurocentric Capitalism]…[as it] provides the models of realization for the [Eurocentric] capitalist axiomatic, reterritorializing decoded flows released by capitalism” (Newman, 2001: 99). Eurocentric Capitalism whose axiomatics deterritorialize desires by overthrowing traditional state-coded structures as they simultaneously re-territorialize “through the Eurocentric State, these flows of desire which, if unrestricted, present a threat to it” (Newman, 2001: 99). The Eurocentric State, a part of the Eurocentric Capitalist machine. I ‘speak’ then of axiomatics that become internalized within You and I, and every other subject, as infinite debt (Newman, 2001: 99). Again. You and I owe our Micro-fascism to the Eurocentric State, but the Eurocentric State owes its inception from our thought. As it is only thought that is “capable of inventing the fiction of a [Eurocentric] State that it is universal by right, of elevating the [Eurocentric] State to de jure universality” (Newman, 2001: 99).
Wailkum Assalam unto & Salut to you!
Your thoughts, your way of living, as it stands safely here and now, Post-Anarchism, becomes complicit in state domination, as it, Post-Anarchism, remains state philosophy. Shocked and choking You ask me why? How could I refrain from presenting such a claim: ‘Post-Anarchism as State Philosophy’ when you, a Post-Anarchist, and Post-Anarchism have become blind to religions, particularly Islams, as they face obscurity in your inventions, vanishing them from all the schemas that constitute your Post-Anarchism. The annals of State philosophy signify a way of thought characterized by and through Western metaphysics: a rational, calculable foundation of order premised on identity, truth, justice and negation (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994: 99). ). “The [Eurocentric] State is immanent in thought, giving it ground, logos, providing it with a model that defines ‘goals, paths, conduits, channels, organs’,” Eurocentric State Philosophy (Newman, 2001: 99).
Post-Anarchism never greeted Islams, as it dwelt and continues to reside in Classical Anarchisms’ favorite theme: religion is possessed by possibilities of domination. Post-Anarchism continues to conceal Islams, though it claims to dismantle Eurocentric metaphysics. However strange this priority may appear, the first aim of your audacious ‘re-interpretation’ of Classical Anarchisms to Post, I had thought, for You, was to posit even if but by expression and make necessary, through any means necessary, contact with Islams with the intention towards it, facing any pleasures from it, through your appreciation of différance. What I thought You desired was to become in continual movement, prepared to co-exist along with multiple ideological dimensions, all the mean while developing an analysis and a confrontation which, without trying to overcome specific differences, nevertheless tries to prevent them from degenerating into passive and mute divisions” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 111). Once more I ponder how such an arrangement may commence subsequently if Post-Anarchism and you have not killed, or at least sought or had the intent to kill, your inner fascists regarding both of your presumptions, expressed or unexpressed, regarding religions, particularly Islams, and without any delay and whose single minimal limit has not yet opened up incomprehensibly vast vistas of becoming. The nerve of my argument becomes that there are surely a billion ways to fulfill this prescription; a prescription of comprehending, thinking of, and resisting Hegemonic Authority, Micro and Macro-Fascisms that impose upon individuals limits and constraints. But reciprocally You need to once more comprehend your limits which I seem to remind You of quite often. Authority is not plainly as I shall illustrate absolutely Hegemonic, even when discussing it in its political, Macro-fascist forms as I shall illustrate through what subtracting Islam(s) refer to as the Khilafat. These subtracting Islam(s) present it, the signifier Khilafat in its most traditional of senses, as ‘the truth’, and though I disagree with the presentation of what it, the Khilafat, signifies through subtracting Islam(s), I recognize such a signifier as a form of truth: Political Authority, that was, and to I only ‘was’, previously distanced, to varying degrees, from being absolutely Hegemonic, absolutely fascist and which I intend on addressing shortly through Without an Alibi (Call, 2003: 53). Consequently You, a Post-Anarchist, have not acknowledged nor given respect to singularity: “a respect for what is different [with respect to conceptualizations, interpretation of what constitutes Khilafat as opposed to Hegemonic Authority], for what is singular” (Newman, 2001: 170) and it implies that you have not risen alongside, let alone greeted with the slightest gesture, a kindness, a hand lifted or laid on shoulders or foreheads of Islams (Derrida, 2004: 313).
You, a Post-Anarchist, have placed Anti-Authoritarianism, at the centre of a politics aiming to eliminate the concept of religion instead of presenting a greeting to Islams, to You an ‘other’, or is it impossible You think to find presentable points upon which relationships with Islams could be formulated? In according to this necessity to draw contact, to converse with someone who to You remains an ‘other’, your Post-Anarchism becomes a rational thought, becomes a coded thought, and becomes penetrated by state thought and whose “dependency [lies] upon rational discourses for its legitimization and functioning, while, in turn, making these discourses possible”, is what provides its thought with life; even if such a life is generic and abstract (Newman, 2001: 99). Here I wish to segment albeit briefly and characterize a distinction, for it is a thing with value, as You will undoubtedly see. I wish to clarify something for You. Here and throughout thus far, I ‘spoke’ here of Fascism not Totalitarianism. Why the departure? Though you are and so you may exercise your autonomy, your valued freedom, I caution You and advise You that ’Why the departure?’ is not the question You ought to posit. Rather think, but think with a difference: ‘Where is the departure’?
Corpus: Another Departure
This, Totalitarianism is something ‘other’; signifying a pole of the Eurocentric State whose desires belong to a restriction of the “number of axioms and operates by the exclusive promotion of the foreign sector…the collapse of the domestic market” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 462). This totalitarian pole, which I call forth, finds itself in a “collapse of the domestic market and the reduction of axioms…the promotion of the foreign sector does not at all take place through an appeal to foreign sources of capital and through export industries” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 463). Rather it takes place “through a war economy, which entails an expansionism foreign to totalitarianism and an autonomous fabrication of capital” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 463). I tell You this. The Totalitarian Eurocentric State [unlike] the Macro-Fascist Eurocentric State overcodes, though it desires to localize all that bares in its path, subjects and objects, whereas Macro-Fascism is constructed on an intense line of flight, and desires the transformation of that line of flight into a line of pure destruction and abolition. The ‘thing’ of value that I wished to clarify, for You, has been paid attention to and so Wailkum Assalam unto and Salut to you.
I ‘spoke’ of Macro-fascism’s lines of flight; lines of flight that do not belong explicitly to the Macro-fascist god of a Eurocentric State but to, by substitution, its resistance, Post-Anarchism. Lines of flight that Post-Anarchism “must invent [along] new lines of political action…lines of flight that do not allow themselves to be reterritorialized by rationality” and lines of flight that if reterritoiralized”, You create them anew (Newman, 2001: 99). Lines of flight signifying, an always tangential catapulting that flings ‘us’, You and I, out of the spiral of domination. Lines of flight that create always opportunities upon a particular stratum that affords You a means out of your debt and mine, a partial undoing of Your hyper-organized State and mine. Lines of Flight, a way for You and I to dodge subjectification but in a way that still lets You and I remain as subjects of domination without bringing the weight of power down upon You and I even harder. The weight brought upon ‘us’ through the Macro-fascisms of A Eurocentric State or a Eurocentric Capitalist apparatus. Lines of Flight, like that which Islams and I created through Kapitalism’s Wet Dream.
And so they say “everything changes with [the] State…[and] it is often said that the territorial [stratified, organized, signified, attributed etc] principle becomes dominant…to gain mastery over matter, to control its variation and movements, in other words, to submit them to the spatio-temporal framework of the State- either the imperial spatium, or the modern extensio” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 388-389).
I agree with what they said above, the last quote, but if I agree then it becomes a duty for me to seek a different way of living that merely becomes a way and never the shortest way. A necessity arises then for me to discover the answer to these series of questions: Am I to become content with a single line of flight, an Interpretation here in this economy of a paper towards an Islamic Anarchistic Becoming premised in its singularity to Resisting through the interpretation offered in becoming and acting as Kapitalism’s Wet Dream? Should I be content with that line of flight as the only maxim of importance or relevance here? Ought this maxim become where I want to ‘be’, because I can’t fly anymore? Is it deceitful to say that there is no appeal to claim an Anti-Authoritarian Islamic Anarchistic Becomings before trying? It would become a crime I say to extricate myself from difficulty now, for my maxims here throughout this economy of a paper and which I never could or would expect to be complete nor be held as a universal law as that would necessitate them destroying themselves, would become made in bad faith; without the intention to fulfill promises. I could proclaim that I did not lie but that instead my promises were misstatements. But such a claim would be taking refuge in the shorter path to your house, the shorter way to a potential hospitable host, Post-Anarchism, and an equally hospitable host, Islam(s), and in due my initial promises would become deceitful. So I proceed without an alibi.
Without an Alibi, sans délai
Here I ‘speak’ no longer of two Fascisms as I “collapse… distinction[s] between the Micro and Macro-political spheres”. (Newman, 2001: 98). I told You, I desire and I see “one as always referring to the other-seeing a transformation in one area as always having implications in others” and hence believe I can no longer be imprisoned without such a desire, my desire, never belonging to your order (Newman, 2001: 98).
I had my fill with order; I desire less of it; more circulation by free wandering; a ‘kind of wandering in the vertigo of the past, present and future’, Ijithad. Ijtihad, never stationary processes but rather a signifier for a polyvocality of directions accompanied by “different interpretations [even] during the lifetime of [Prophet] Muhammed [SAW]” (Esposito, 1996: 45). A polyvocality whose rise comes in the realization that “Ahkam [judgments] of Al-Shariah [religious jurisprudence,]…are not permanent, and therefore, different interpretations can be permitted [and are encouraged]…disagreement based on…Ijtihad [, informed, independent judgment]…is a blessing on the Ummah, and demonstrates plurality” (Esposito, 1996: 45). It is not chaos I seek it is Anarchy. You ask of here and now? I tell You “here [and now] people [, those whom ascribe to Islam(s),] not only assume that they know the whole truth and all answers, but also try and coerce other people to follow them…tend[ing] to forget that their own understanding and interpretation of the texts [including this] are not more than hypotheses which may be right or wrong...no human i.e. no Alim [, Scholar,], is infallible” and such says Islams (Esposito, 1996: 45). Any human becomes beyond measure a Alim but not every Alim can become human.
I called upon it, Ijtihad, once through this economy of a paper’s Introduction. I intend not to limit its body by discussing it further. In its stead I desire to offer and I beg your pardon for doing what I am about to do, to address Islam(s) directly, momentarily and temporarily, instead of You, a Classical turned Post-Anarchist, through a sign: God will not retract knowledge by suddenly withdrawing it from people’s hearts, but God will retract knowledge by retracting scholars, until, when God has left no scholar, people will take ignorant leaders, who will be asked, and will pronounce verdicts without knowledge, thus going astray and leading others astray” (Esposito, 1996: X). A sign, that now says: ‘Let us stop here’. Oh dearest Islam(s) do you wish not to reclaim your faith and your communities? You, Islam(s), appear appeased in “giving lip-service to dogmas [given by Authority]” instead of scrambling their codes, taking strolls with Ijithad such that you may go places, wander about and dissonantly disturb Authority, Micro and Macro (Rodinson, 1973: 236). You, Islam(s) have forgotten that it was, is and always will become possible “to proclaim adversaries of God those Ulemas [, those Authoritarian Scholars,] who looked too tolerantly upon the veneration of saints.” (Rodinson, 1973: 214-236). You, Islam(s), have forgotten that the “Ulemas (Clergy) are naturally tempted to play upon the moralistic string that is always ready to vibrate in favor of a resigned attitude…” (Rodinson, 1973: 214-236).
As for You, a Post-Anarchist, I tell You this: Regard “Islam(s) as a human construction, and like all other such constructions, subject to change and evolution”, it undergoes an always becoming[s] of something else “if the conditions are ripe for them…Islam(s) of today are [not and cannot be] the Islam(s) of yesterday, and the Islam(s) of tomorrow will be probably be even more different” (Mozaffari, 1987: 98). I tell You this, You Classical Anarchist becoming Post, “the existence of a legion of Islam(s) today, each of which holds itself supposedly to be the one and true authentic Islam, is sufficient evidence the Islam(s) is neither a unified bloc, nor an edifice that will weather all eternity without change” (Mozaffari, 1987: 99). This always becoming of ‘incompleteness’ becomes the essence of “Islam(s)’ relationship to civil society and the [Eurocentric] Nation-State” (Mozaffari, 1987: 99). I desire then to castrate and attack such ‘incompleteness’; I ‘speak’ of ‘incompleteness’ whose inscriptions “contains a number of notions that can be construed as obstacles to the establishment of civil society” (Mozaffari, 1987: 99). “There is no place for the status of ‘citizen’ in the Koran”, that is clear (Mozzaffari, 1987: 99). I ‘speak’ of a citizen who within Eurocentric traditions “form[s] a pact” with the Eurocentric State (Day, 2003). A pact, I say that is of the type of “an ‘agreeing’ to become a citizen of a particular state/Empire…limit[ing] one’s difference so as not to exceed the boundaries of the triangle to which one has been assigned…[agreeing] to respect the regularities and disciplines associated with capitalism, racism, heterosexism, the domination of nature, and so on” (Day, 2003). A citizen whom is “at home in the striated space of the state form” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 474); A citizen oriented and hegemonically coerced and forced to ‘staying on the road’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 403) upon “striated spaces [, as opposed to smooth spaces,] signifying the divided grid-like structure”, territorialized by the Eurocentric State, “fenced off against errant flows of flora, fauna, and indigenous peoples” (Day, 2003). A smooth space, in the other hand, “using a maritime model, [becomes as] the ocean prior to the invention of latitude and longitude…extremely smooth, that is one navigated according to ‘wind and noise, colors and sounds of seas’”; an ‘unmarked territory’ (Day, 2003). If Islam(s) have no reason to theologically believe in Eurocentric conceptions of the Citizen, as that contradicts Tawheed, and that Eurocentrism has posited in the past that: “human beings can supposedly only have vertical relationships, in terms of power…another myth of the [Eurocentric] tradition” then what lurks in their stead. What residues become of subsiding Eurocentric Civil Societies and the Citizen? I ‘spoke’ of an Ummah; a community; an Ummah made of ‘believers’ not citizens (Mozaffari, 1987: 99). ‘Believers’ whom are comprised of ‘states’ of “symbiosis between the temporal and the spiritual” (Mozaffari, 1987: 99). These ‘states’ of symbiosis are premised again upon Tawheed and which serves as a “barrier to the construction of [a Eurocentric] civil society (Mozaffari, 1987: 99). I tell You in depth of the ‘state’ of what I mean by ‘temporal’. This ‘temporal’, of which I ‘speak’, finds its essence in that it belongs to conceptual and theological findings which become that “once the Sovereignty of God is recognized…‘authority’…is vested in the whole Ummah (Community) [the all matters communal are] to be exercised in the light of the Koran through…[mutual] consultation with [in] the Ummah” (Awan, 1983: 32). Tawheed bestows upon beings, individualized and collective, independence and dignity, and is a form of submission for those whom choose Islam(s) where submission belongs to God solely thereby compelling beings, You, if You wish, and I, to revolt against all earthly powers, for beings are answerable only before God (Esposito, 1996: 25). There is not Authority but Gods’.
I am about to add something to the mix. A mutual consultation rose earlier in Chapter Two as I called upon it, signified it, prior as Shura. Shura cannot be merely a signifier but occupies an entire Chapter, Surat Al-Shura, in the Koran. Shura counterattacks authority and hierarchy, if they exist, and which both have been historically condemned in Islam(s) (Esposito, 1996: 25). Shura is a process comprised of mutual consultation complemented with two new creations and significations: Ijma, community consensus, and Maslaha, public interest (Esposito, 2002: 159-160). There You begin to see, that there is a temporal ‘state’ of a being, a Muslim and an Ummah, whom, at least theoretically, in this world as if they are strangers or are traveler(s) and whose decisions alternate, with degrees of difference, always in flux, dependent upon the community’s circumstances and environmental conditions. A temporal ‘state’ then of Islam(s) and Muslim(s) bound by principles of Tawheed, Ijma, Maslaha, an always required Ijtihad comes about, remaining unbound by territories, unbound and ignorant of assembly points that are only signifying of the presence of the Eurocentric Nation-State. Need I remind You with two Koranic verses: “Not all of them [beings] are alike” (Koran, 4: 113) and “Unto every one of you We [God] have appointed a different law and way of life and if God had pleased, God would have made you in a single Ummah [community], but that God might try You in what God gave you. So vie with one another in virtuous deeds. To God you will all return, so that God will inform you of that wherein you differed” (Koran, 5: 48). I tell You Islam(s) occupy temporary ‘states’ of traveling as Muslims/Muslimas exhibit traits of the nomad and the migrant. I ‘speak’ of the nomad who enjoys both autonomy and a path of their own, as every point is a relay and exists only as a relay (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 380). Every being voluntarily choosing to follow Islam(s) adopts, on the surface, a seemingly contradictory identity that “cannot…belong to one person alone, and no one belongs to a single unity…every identity comprise[s] a multiplicity of elements” (Day, 2003). Every identity in part a nomadic identity as barbarians who ‘sow not, nor have any tillage…[are] without habitation, having no dwellings but caves and hollow trees” (Day, 2003). A nomadic identity whose trajectory is that “it distributes people (or animals) in an open space” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980: 380); or even to distribute Divine attributes as viceroys opposed to Fasasd-Al-Ard, the blasphemous act against God by destroying God’s creation, cutting “asunder what God has bidden to be joined” (Koran, 2: 26-27). “But every [nomadic] identity [is also] a migrant identity that goes from one point to another, even if the second point is uncertain, unforeseen or not well localized” as they those Muslims/Muslimas rely solely, first and foremost, upon God (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 380). “Nomads and migrants can mix in many ways, or form a common aggregate; their case and conditions are no less distinct for example, from those who joined [Prophet] Mohammed [, SAW,] at Medina, those who had a choice between a nomadic pledge, and a pledge of Hegira [, migration,] or emigration” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 380).
A choice always with Islam(s), at least theoretically, and whose Koran “envisages the…[Ummah] as a perfectly egalitarian, open society based on good will and cooperation” and whose Koran furthermore “laid down the principle of Shura to guide the community’s decision-making process” (Esposito, 1996: 28). I do not ‘speak’ of a “classical doctrine of Shura, as it developed, [and that] was in error…[as] it viewed consultation as the process of one person, the Khalifah, asking other people for advice, whereas the Koranic understanding of Shura does not mean that one person ask others advice, but rather mutual advice through mutual consultation” (Esposito, 1996: 28). Now before You begin your passing judgment(s) on the signifier, Khalifah, I tell You this.
The signifier Khalifah, a Non-Eurocentric signifier, historically underwent “traditional and modern debates, over the [its nature and its viewing] in monarchical terms” and which is now becoming an ‘other’ (Esposito, 1996: 26).
This ‘other’ of whom I ‘speak’ “is [of] a profoundly different meaning of the term [, and what that terms signified and now signifies, as it has] received [and continues to receive] increasing attention [during] the second half of the twentieth century (Esposito, 1996: 26). “In addition to the connotations of ‘successor’ that the Arabic term Khalifah involves there is also a sense in which a Khalifah is a deputy [or] representative” (Esposito, 1996: 26). The Khalifah is no Malik, no king, but one whom is supposedly chosen [, and here I understand your skepticism, but ask for your patience,]” (Ramadan, 2001: 148). The choosing may occur “by means of elections, a representative system or any other original ideas…[provided that] all the conditions that allow one the opportunity to choose with full knowledge of the facts [are present] …[and where] any pressure or attempt at Coercion, to influence public opinion, [becomes principled and conditioned upon and] the subject of strict participation of the people…as is the care…with ignorance, illiteracy and misery which are many social phenomena [that are Islamically regarded as now] obstructing the real participation of the grassroots” (Ramadan, 2001: 148). Listen for I have more to say. “In Islam(s) general principles were given in the field of politics and social affairs…but the Koran does not mention details and particulars which have been left for the Ummah to formulate to the needs of the time and space” (Ramadan, 2001: 148). But if as I illustrated and proved formerly that the Koran perceives all beings of the Ummah as bearers of God’s trust whether pertaining to God’s Property or the Ummah’s associations, caretakers on of one another; God’s vicegerents. If such is the presupposition proved fact, at least here, then “it is possible to interpret…sections of the Koran as identifying human beings [, the Ummah,] in general as God’s vicegerents [Khalifahs, multiple, as opposed to its singular form, Khalifah,] on earth and human stewardship over God’s creations” (Esposito, 1996: 26). So I expand further and further and say this: If the conditions pertaining to the ‘choosing’ of the Khilafah fail, as they do in contemporary society, and the fields pertaining to the political are unspecified, as I proclaimed above, then the political “can be an autocracy or bureaucracy, a monarchy or republic, a dictatorship or constitutional or consultative government; it can be democratic, socialist or Bolshevik” (Abd Al-Razeq, X, X). What then becomes of the Ummah if I here and now proclaim its, Islam(s), politik to become empty of all such containers? For why not? Are Islam(s) as I have illustrated not nomadic-migrants, and are they, Muslims/Muslimas, not all Khalifahs, and is there any proof of the necessity for a Eurocentric Civil Society in Islams? Is God not the sole Authority based on Tawheed? Yes, Yes and No respectively. I tell You more for “let us now consider [further] ‘Khalifah’, which according to the Arabic lexicon, means ‘representation’…the representation of God on earth…required to exercise divine authority in this world within the limits prescribed by God (Esposito, 1996: 26). “The implications of this for the group of people [Muslims/Muslimas], the community [Ummah] as a whole, when [it] is ready to fulfill the condition[s] [above pertaining to Tawheed is that it] carries the responsibility of representation after subscribing to the principles of Tawheed (Esposito, 1996: 26). “Such an…Ummah…carries the responsibility of the Khilafah...each one of its individual[s] shares the divine Khilafah…every person in an Ummah enjoys the rights and powers of the Khilafah and in the respect all individuals are equal” (Esposito, 1996: 26). I am not done with You yet so I tell You that the identification of Khilafah with humanity as a whole, rather than with a single Khalifah or political institution, is affirmed in Islam(s)’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “A document [, this declaration, whose]…second phase is to ‘reach the level of self-governance’, [and thus] this perception of ‘Khilafahs’ becomes a foundation for concepts of human responsibility and of opposition of systems of domination…[providing along the way] also a basis for distinguishing between democracy in Eurocentric and through Islam(s)” (Esposito, 1996: 26). I do not desire chaos I desire Anarchy. The obligations of bearing the communal right to self-govern and which “do[es] not fit into the limits of Eurocentrically based definition[s]…[is premised in]…consultation (Shurah), consensus (Ijma) and independent interpretative judgments (Ijtihad)” (Esposito, 1996: 26). I am not, myself, satisfied so I provide You with more ‘proof’ and say that “the growth of …and the gradual formation of legislative assemblies in Islam(s) constitutes a…step…the transfer of power of Ijtihad from individual representatives of schools [of thought] to Muslim legislative assembly which in view of the growth of ‘opposing’ sects, is the only form of Ijma…[that] will secure contributions to…discussion[s] from [lay individuals]” who desire keen participation and which is necessary in Islam(s) (Esposito, 1996: 27). As illustrated with Inheritance there is always the desire within Islams whether be it regarding Wealth or even power to become dissipated from the singular to the plural.
I ‘speak’ then and say to You that Islam(s) are not willing to adopt Eurocentric models whether pertaining to the civil society, hierarchy or authority. “There are significant problems with Eurocentric-style democracy…as every Muslim [is required, in accordance with their individualized abilities]…to give a sound opinion on matters [pertaining to Islam(s)], is entitled to interpret the law of God” (Esposito, 1996: 25). “The theory that the influential persons could represent the general public was [and still is] operative in [Islam(s)]…in a particular period of history…but in view of changed circumstances and in consideration of the principles of consultation…it is essential that this theory should give place to the formation of an assembly…real [representation] of the people” (Esposito, 1996: 25). “People are the rightful bearers of the trust…within this framework…the absolute sovereignty of God makes any human hierarchy [theoretically] impossible, since before God all humans are equal…A hierarchal, dictatorial system has been condemned as non-Islamic…[and] the label ‘king’ (Malik) was a negative term for arbitrary personal domination” (Esposito, 1996: 25). Islam(s) are en route to becoming Anti-Authoritarian or perhaps it already was ever present.
I tell You of two more matters pertaining to Islam(s) route to Anti-Authoritarianism. You may approve of what was and has been claimed above but call to question Prophet Mohammad’s (SAW), my Prophet’s ‘Authority’. I tell You without hesitation that a prophet signifies prophecy, neither a Malik nor God, as opposed to what exists with Isa, Jesus, ‘The King of all Kings’, in at least the majority of forms of contemporary Christianities, and this signification which You ‘speak’ of does not necessitate its association with your Eurocentrically conceived Authority. You merely seek once more to apply residual Eurocentric criteria upon Islam(s). But and at the risk of sounding defensive I tell You further that a prophet through Islam(s), is “nothing but a Rasul, a messenger, for a religious call, purely for the sake of religion, unblemished by any [necessary] tendency to rule or call for the formation of a nation [or state]” (Abdul-Al-Razeq, 1978: 44). The further proof You and I have here, belongs to this Koranic Verse: “And our [Messenger of God’s] duty is only to deliver the clear Message” (Koran, Chapter 36, 13-29). The key here if You still wish to remain blind is ‘only’. Again, You may proclaim endlessly that “al-risalah [, the message of my Prophet] required the prophet to capture some power over the Ummah” (Abdul-Al-Razeq, 1978: 44). I proclaim that You are hypocrite and reply and say that indeed that maybe true but this does not imply that the prophet’s intent belonged to power, or that power belonged to his intent and thus I ask You to tell me which individualized being is free of power? Again need I remind You of your own postulate that power is everywhere and anywhere, within You and I and everyone else, now, yesterday, tomorrow, the day before and the day after and though its varying is in degrees, intensities and its types “one [and particularly You] must not confuse…al-Risalah [and al-Rasool’s, Messenger’s, power …with that of a Malik…it is [and could be] untainted by the urge to rule “ (Abdul-Al-Razaq, 1978: 44). Unless You possess the ability and the will to resurrect the deceased, unless You possess the ability and the will to resurrect my prophet, in an attempt to enquire of whether his intentions had been tainted with a lust for authority I have nothing more to ‘speak’ to You further of here.
As in regards to the second matter, I tell You this for I know that You contest and detest God’s Authority but I seek not your pleasure here, as I have not come here to worship You nor for You to worship I. More critically You need to comprehend through Islam(s) that there is la ikrah Fi’d-din; “there is no compulsion in religion” and so I have no desire for You to occupy my dwelling Islam(s) (Koran, 2: 26). But You must realize, that God is not deceased as You joyously and formerly proclaimed and that “God has not been completely usurped…as has always been claimed [in your discourses]…God [to You] has only been reinvented in the form of essence” (Newman, 2001: 6). Just because you claimed that God is dead does not imply that you have annulated God or that ‘that’ God exists not any longer, as you have no proof as such to your claim. “As long as [You] continue to believe absolutely in grammar, in essence, in the metaphysical presuppositions of language…You continue to believe in God” (Newman, 2001: 6). I told You before in the beginning and in the Introduction that You “have not ousted God …the place of authority of the category of the divine remains intact, only re-inscribed in the demand for presence…Atheism changes nothing in this fundamental structure” (Newman, 2001: 6). You, a Classical Anarchist turned Post, are a re-inscription of God and Your authoritarianism still inhabits structures of thought, leaving You still, perhaps thinking that You will always and You are the only form of alleviation and means of rescuing all else, subjects and objects, save yourself from domination (Newman, 2001: 6).
So I tell you this: If it had not been found in one way or another that You, a Post-Anarchist, are justified in certain matters then your existence to me would have been nothing more than an abject drifting. But all of those who know You including I during the course of the years would agree with the assertion in mind. When I began to know of You, You Classical Anarchist becoming Post, I learned about the unbelievable difficulties in which you found yourself and which finally caught up with you, that no one would have wanted to be in your place I thought of myself and I too felt the same of Islams. In a sense I felt pitiless. I had wanted to see both our existence, even though and let me be frank I knew You to be guilty of certain charges and perhaps you felt the same regarding I, though not having ever justly justified such charges. I did not feel pity because like you I continue to find you and I very ‘strong’, always up to the ordeal, without wondering to much where we both found our strength but a quick look into your resolved eyes, with the quick assurance of what was needed from us both, any doubts that I had were put to stop though the curiosity remains forever to everlastingly and strangely wander about for our Nous…
Chapter Three: Nous
Step of Hospitality
An “us”, “Nous”, is unavoidable. The passion, the endurance, the patience of work towards an emanation of a referent, “Nous” is recorded here. Together forever. You are a Post-Anarchist and a Muslim. Contrary to your wishes, our faces, “Nous”, the You and the I, are not “states” confined solely to difference. Let us assume an open theatre. You walk past me and I past you. You merely capture a surface me. If you believe in chance, and I decide to stand still, you may watch me, as the spectacle you seek. If not by chance then you are blessed. Your captured image of a surface I, begs me to think that you think me, hideous, indecent and wretched? But you are the starting point for such a reflection and judgment upon me. You recognize me as an infidelity and betrayal of you. Here you opened, naively, the prospect for an “us”, “Nous”. On the other front, I am too wretched for you so I blind you. There remains a discreet means for you to interrupt my radiations or ugliness. My eyes. My eyes are hollow black holes. My eyes are doctrines that testify to something beyond my surface and stand for depth. A depth inaugurated by interpretations without beginnings and without ends. A depth that irrupts with unconditional hospitality. A depth that desires an “us”. An unconditional hospitality that consists of welcomes without reservations and calculations to all new arrivals. You picked me out. You singled me out. You think me an anomaly in your equation for believing in religion? You have not come here to be friends. You know nothing of my depth. You know nothing of Islam(s). You know nothing of Post-Anarchism. You only know what I am about to tell you and have told you and now I refer to you as a seductive horror of a fascist. You, a becoming Post-Anarchist, have treated me, a becoming Muslim, as a receptacle and allowed me to be treated as a receptacle for others through your prescriptive merely surfacing and cryptic, at best, reservations on Islams (Perez, 1990: 63). You see no “Nous”, no us. Now I tell you of my discovered depth and “Nous”, an “us”.
A Different kind of Friday Morning
From the beginning of this economy of a paper and throughout this text I reminded You that if anyone including You insisted on replying to the subject matter ransacked here, that it ought to be taken into consideration more or less that “there are friends to whom one abandons the ‘empirical’ and friends to whom one confides the essential” (Blanchot & Derrida, 2000: 84).
You need to account for any mute witnesses in your Post-Anarchism without speaking for them, in place of them or drawing all sorts of consequences in truth from an abandoned or inadequate search of them. As for I, I ‘speak’ with the pretext of sparing You this former complaint of You upon I. Let us not forget what I had come to do, as our invincible desires for one another are linked to this expectation as opposed to not wanting to hear something discussed; something that You may want to be rid of. The testimonies here addressed, make clear an essential belonging to your initial allusion: your complaint that Islam(s) confines, binds, unceasingly torments the ‘other’, as You tormented ‘I’. Incidentally I am going far to understand one, You, a Post-Anarchist, whom I can associate with. I am bound to You. Unlike your excommunication of I, either as an intentional activity of your Micro-fascist ego or your unintentional and somehow involuntary calculation that your castle of a dwelling place could be and is vulnerable in your eyes at the instant when You are and ought to be I might add inspired through Islam(s). In Islam(s) and I, You have not benefited from knowing Islam(s) and I, but instead placed Islam(s) and I at fault and expect an impossible redemption of what in your eyes connotes a sin and an illegitimate temptation because of my passion for God. You have condemned Islams and I for not being yours, belonging to the necessities of your traditions. But such a passion, that I espouse here and now, would not exist nonetheless without You, for the stronger You attempt to drive me from a dwelling place that is a non-dwelling place, as I and Islam(s) are wanders, the greater, no doubt my passion to supposedly ‘impossibly’ relate to You through some of You. The greater, no doubt, my passion to not be ‘passive’ to your transgressions and assassinations of I, as You seem to believe yourself to belong to a self-righteous noble class, that rejects both Eurocentric Authority and Eurocentric Capitalism. In the same sentence I seek to have Islam(s) with your name, not before and not after your name, as that would suggest a privileged order, a prioritizing, of either your rejection towards Eurocentric Authority and Eurocentric Capitalism over I and Islam(s), or I and Islam(s) claiming a privileged order and hence a priority over you. Here, then I transgress out of passion for You, for us, Nous, to clarify Islam(s) position of You, as a plural non-essentialist ‘other’, as any mutations of any lifestyle, any thought, also varying in interpretations as Islam(s). Islam(s) are not interested in attaching a stigma of verdicts, for how could they strive to live their own plurality, a plurality within, without enigmatically witnessing themselves the living of another’s multiplicity without themselves.
It would be difficult for Islam(s) to free themselves, to regard themselves as wanderers, without formally recognizing the possibility that others, choosing to remain as non-Islam(s), ought to reserve the right, as they have, to translate the world in their own ways. Henceforth starting from this point I am a witness translating the untranslatable weight of describing Islam(s) verdicts on plurality without and their associations, elective affinities, with a plurality without, in so much as it relates to the logical and contextual practical corpus or voice of Nous; Coming Communities.
When my gaze meets you
At the beginning and in the instant Nous’ voice becomes ensued, there comes a cataclysmic intuitive understanding that permeates what may appear to be a hegemonizing vacuum or ‘space’. This vacuum or space is alive, between ‘us’ is alive I tell you, hence its ability to distance You and I or any strangers and wanders fearing speech, making clear that which is unclear, living up to their own pretensions as they, consciously or unconsciously incubate or foster egoism, vanity as they presume to know everything when they know nothing. The permeation of this and that space, through Islam(s), in a sense is preordained to a re-ceding reagent or preceded by acts not necessarily accommodating despair and that arise due to what may appear as radical separations between You and I. Rather the act that Islam(s) demands here is an affirmative desire to characterize, to examine in depth the mysterious You such that an instance is born, where the act becomes subsumed into what is intuitively understood or signified as an association, a friendship. I will turn to this radical separation as it is a separation signifying differing worlds belonging to strangers and wanders. Koranic verse: “We have created you tribes and nations so that you may know one another. In the eyes of God, the noblest among you is the one whose is the most virtuous” (Koran, 49:13). I return to the instance.
Bodies are in touch on this page
You would be neglecting plenty if You choose to not relate here or there in the open theater. I tell You as well that the instance of ‘knowing one another’ is not an instance unless an instance implies that which is infinite. Furthermore ‘knowing one another’ is not an instance of elective affinity, finite. You may relate elective affinity’s occurrence to a consciously or unconsciously motivated relation or connection that You and I share and whose instance is again subsumed in a portal, a window or a opportunity, a node belonging to Nous and becomes where the rhizomatic You intersects and is capable of accommodating the rhizomatic I or vice versa. Elective affinity is ‘elective’ as it is selective of the traces, the points of relation that it desires and consciously chooses though not necessarily rational in such a choice or its choosing of such a choice, to see a theme reflected from You in I, or I a theme in You. It forms therefore a hierarchy if You will as it seeks the acknowledgment that ‘I have something common’ or ‘of interest to You’ and that You and I share. You endow upon I the privilege of ‘knowing’ something of You or I endow upon You such a ‘privilege’. But this might lead one to think that what You know, what I know belongs to either You and/or I. What You do not see coming is this: Everything upholds its testimony to God, Tawheed, material property or otherwise to the extent You and I are ‘caretakers’ occupying places of autonomy, of choice, of a will if such a will exists and God opens and binds our hearts together, towards us knowing one another. Koranic verse: “And if God had pleased, God would have made you in a single Ummah [community], but that God might try you in what God gave you. So vie with one another in virtuous deeds. Too God you will all return, so that God will inform you of that wherein you differed” (Koran 5: 48).
In the end, your gaze touches upon the same character tracings that mine are
touching now and you are reading me, and I am writing you
Elective affinity then is where your eyes and mine meet. Elective affinity is where you and I differ. Elective affinity carries with it the advent, if the individual, You or I, or both parties desire, You and I, at least the discovery and perhaps the partial emergence of a line of flight towards a fictional friendship. A fictional friendship that is not yet a Nous and which requires a never exhausted yet always exhausting line of flight or processes of always getting to know one another for it to become Nous as the Koran testified above. Thus fictional friendship does not go far enough to give it the status of Nous. Nous is not selective. Nous is not elective. Nous requires the lengthening, prolonging and relaying of its line of flight. Nous is not aggravated solely upon lines of alliance between You and I, as that denotes You and I becoming selective or elective of what You and I specifically desire from one another. Nous is not built solely upon an intent, for You and I, to ‘meet and greet’, supposedly uniting in ‘solidarity [in] every struggle against [Eurocentric] Capitalist/and or [Nepotistic] Socialist [or even Eurocentric Authoritarian] orders” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 19). Nous, from a “molecular point of view [is not premised upon places where] each attempt [becomes] at [achieving] ideological unification” for such a desire “is an absurd and reactionary operation” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 108-109). Why? “Desire, on a social terrain, refuses to allow itself to be confined to zones of consensus…why ask a feminist movement to come to a doctrinal or pragmatic accord with ecological movement groups or with a communitarian experiment by people of color or with a worker’s movement, etc…?” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 108-109). Why ask? And so the Koran testifies: “If your Lord had willed, all those on earth would have believed together. Would you then compel people to become believers?” (Koran, 10:99). And so “ideology shatters; it only unifies on the level of appearance [as fictional friendship]…what is essential [conversely] is that each movement shows itself to be capable of unleashing irreversible molecular revolutions” (Guattari & Negri, 1985: 108-109). Perhaps I should insist on this difficult and decisive point: These molecular revolutions are not described and defended as testifying purely to all that is irreversible, as they undeniably request to all that abides and all that believes in and appreciates infinitely the plural and multiple.
In a silent instant…the touch of a promise
Through and through Nous becomes a pluralistic form of affinity occupied by exponentially decaying degrees and intensities of fear, egoism and vanity within You and towards I and the opposite. Nous becomes through and through a demand of You to live to your own pretensions, and to turn your abstract love for humanity into a concrete act directed toward a flesh and blood individual, I (Dostoevsky, 1989: 224). Nous’ act is void of any intents to coerce or compel another belonging to Nous or those whom have not yet produced or recognized a Nous. Over and over again debasing, degrading, coercion and conversion exemplify compulsion so I everlastingly repeat “the Koran…does not look at faith in terms of what divides and disperses, ignoring the wisdom of diversity and objectives of having faith to begin with” (Esack, 1997: 171). “Righteous deeds… recognized [in Islams] are not the monopoly of any single competitor…as the judge God, has to be above the narrow [and divergent] interest of participants…claims of familiarity with the [sole] judge [God] with any particular ‘team’ will not avail the participants” (Esack, 1997: 175). Koranic verses: “Unto us our works and unto you your works; let there be no dispute between you and us. God will bring us together and to God we shall return” (Koran, 42: 15 and 2: 139). To exist, to indulge upon such an existence through not yielding and proclaiming the right of way to other dignitaries of God, dignitaries belonging to Islam(s) or not, denies God’s, the sole Authority. Islam(s) summoned the courage even if but theoretically to pronounce long before our Nous here existed that “no Authority, no leader, no government, no assembly can restrict, abrogate or violate in any way these rights”; rights ordained, asserted and which belong solely to God not demagogues (Arkoun, 1994: 106).
“Contempt for [the] other, the Koran suggests, was [, is and continues to become] rooted in notions of being the chosen [ones] of God” (Esack, 1997: 158). But Islam(s) claims not that Muslims/Muslimas are the chosen ones, at least theoretically. “Nay, but it is God who causes whomsoever God wills to grow in purity; and none shall be wronged by even a hair’s breadth” (Koran, 5: 49). A new creation, Al-Haqq, just, “applies to God as a transcendent being to whom one as being has not a privilege of accessing but rather a right to” (Esack, 1997: 158). This creation “takes on the movement from the singular transcendental form to a pluralistic one on this earth through its multiplicitous form; Huquq. Islams cannot as a social entity display superiority to “the other” for the other and You bear Huquq granted only by God, and such an obsessive superiority complex associated with having such an inflated self-image summons Islam(s) if they proclaim otherwise and their parochial God above “the other” (Esack, 1994: 175). Such a claim, if it were to occur by Islam(s), would place Islam(s) as hegemonic “others” encountered historically, whom have monstrously exaggerated their crimes of vanity in the name of their God; those whom plunge in a savage and solitary desire to appropriate and negate God all together for their individual or communitarian indulgence (Esack, 1994: 175).
Inclusiveness becomes superior to exclusiveness, plural desires through Islam(s) revolt over the singular and expressions belonging to the “other” are always expected to be left filled, displayed, occupied by the ‘other’ and blessed at this point no less than those who desire or proclaim to desire, that which was always for God to keep. Like an indestructible reminder, I tell You, the Koran from the beginning became aware of residences of ‘the other’ and the monumental nobility of the notion of ‘the other’, a testimony before God of le differénd, the legitimacy and right to uphold castles in the world and to ‘coexist’ with Islams, who itself at an instant occupied a space of ‘the other’. The proof that I have here lays with the Koranic verse: “Freedom from (all) obligations (is declared) from God and God’s Messenger (SAW) to those of the Mushrikûn (polytheists, pagans, idolaters, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allâh), with whom you made a treaty” (Koran, 9: 1).
An echo of my Incarnation
Islam(s)’ in so far as abstractions as justice and injustice suffers no allusion and although it desires it is not naïve to request the “[dissolving of all] power relations in the utopia of perfectly transparent communication…but to give one’s self the rules of law…the ethos, the practice of self, which would allow these games of power to be played with a minimum of domination” (Foucault, 1987: 129 cited in Day, 2001: 30). You saw and I testified to this certainly here, in this economy of a paper, during our attending to the encounter with Micro-fascisms; Chapter Two, as Islams sought the preservation of the plural and the singular. Islam(s)’ role becomes the cultivation of a spirit in respecting ‘the others’’ customs and practices as it accepts that the faithful adherents of all traditions will also attain salvation and that “no fear shall come upon them neither will they grieve” (Koran, 2: 262). Conversely an unjust desire on part of Islam(s) would be for them to strike fear upon and thus transgress ‘the other’s’ house because ‘the other’ supposedly did not testify to or pledge allegiance to Islam(s) is an absolute brevity upon Tawheed; upon God. So I haunt You with these Koranic Verses: “O you who believe! Let not a group of you be-little [and hegemonize] another; it may be that the latter are better than the former…Nor let some women belittle other women; it may be that the latter are better than the former… Nor defame one another, nor insult one another with nicknames… How bad it is to charge someone with iniquity after they have believed… And whosoever does not repent, such are indeed transgressors… O you who believe, avoid much suspicion; indeed some suspicions are sins. And spy not, nor backbite one another” (Koran, 49: 11). The root is here made clear, a root of tireless responsibility for ‘the other’; a “‘responsibility without limits’ in the face of the other” (Derrida, 1992: 22 cited in Day, 2001: 27). “The infinity of this demand means that, justice cannot be reduced to any particular system of injunction –it remains always to come (à venir)” (Derrida, 1992: 26-27 cited in Day, 2001: 27). Look for it here in a Koranic Verse: “And if two parties or groups among the fall to fighting, then make peace between them both, but if one of them rebels against the other, then fight you (all) against the that which rebels till it complies with God’s command for justice; then if it complies, then make reconciliation between them justly, and be equitable. Verily! God loves those who are equitable”(Koran, 49: 9)
Without an interest but to attest to God’s creativity, the Koran invents and does not prevent Islam(s) from engaging if not competing with ‘the other’ in the spirit of that which is just and that which recognizes the mutual benefit of neighboring communities (Esack, 1997: 179-203). Nous for Islams “is not based on a vague and undefined desire for peace and quiet…rather it is based on a struggle against injustice and for the creation of a world wherein it is safe to be human and people are freed from enslavement” (Esack, 1994: 179-203). Such non-elective affinity with the “oppressed, furthermore, implies the recognition of them as agents of their liberation with their own resources to draw own” (Esack, 1994: 179-203).
If one day I dared
Nous is then where not You and I ‘fictionally’ conform in and through abstract associations but where everything is and always continues to be done, lived according to the principal of desiring ‘to know’ one other with each episode we become drawn closer to one other. This ‘knowing’ ought to be complemented un-regrettably with the conscious impossibility that we shall never be one another and accordingly this ‘knowing’ becomes turned inside out; an ever present thought always in a decaying vacuum that reduces the distance between us and does not exacerbate further the separation between You and I, but rather that affirms the desire never to conform but instead to create and discover. What becomes commonplace in a terrain belonging to Nous is for You to indulge underground in a soul belonging to I, in the depth of my eyes, breaking yourself, breaking yourself from yourself, from solitude and I along the way in search for Nous.
Nous, You and I, are tormented in our passion or longing for the “creation of a ‘community with neither presuppositions nor a State’” (Agamben, 1993: 82 cited in Day, 2001: 35). Through these coming communities, comprised of Nous, there comes a challenge to “the false dichotomy between ‘ineffability of the individual and the intelligibility of the universal’ by appealing to singular rather than mass poles of identification” (Agamben, 1993: 81 cited in Day, 2001: 35). Mass poles as those infinite thoughts whose end becomes a beginning becoming an end…
Chapter Four: Infinite Thoughts as The End becomes a Beginning becoming an
End
Mourn Nous, not these words whose analytic show that both Your understandings and imaginations have entered into a contractual agreement constituting your judgment and taste regarding this economy of a paper? A ‘beautiful exposition’ is here, certainly not for “I” but perhaps for You, and that you insist in destroying through this infinite hold on its language and which is always retractable. You leave no imagination on the other hand for the extraordinary violence not of language, not of the word, words, striated segments, but rather for any flights of thought that accompany this economy of paper. I could take leave forever from that which has been ‘spoken’ here; what you think to be and believe is my voice. But that which has been thought can never be said again (Agamben, 1982: 108). Language was never my voice here, rather my voice here accompanies my thoughts and that belongs to an “I”. An “I” that is neither fascist nor paranoiac; an “I” that is rhizomatic and anarchical; an “I” that requires… no… no…it creates without even needing to demand Nous; a rhizomatic ‘us’. You came as close as possible to language, but never to “I”, though you almost brushed against it, encountered it but turned back. You could though reach the ‘depth’ of “I” as opposed to merely trying to correspond with the ‘surface’. In a further move undeniably You could alternatively take the shortest way, walk away towards your home untroubled. That would become pity and an act of terror, but I desire that you flap your wings and think like a pheasant lifting off and then disappears instantly among the trees, as a porcupine buries in the thick underbrush, and dry leaves crackle as a snake slithers away (Agamben, 1982: 108). There is something that is ‘said’ here in your flapping, as it does not communicate through language with the porcupine or the snake that slithers away yet somehow has a voice. A voice that is something else, not language for that “is not my voice”, but rather infinite thoughts and which are here, and that require you to go beyond your limits, to think beyond, to over-think (Agamben, 1982: 108). You need to understand why you and I came here and why I rose from depth only to surface to tell you of my depth. You need to think why it was “I” whom initiated this and what “I” initiated here. Was there a distant proximity occupying the spaces between You and I, that I was not aware of, or was there a negative secret animosity, upon unfounded foundations, that made you remain in your infantile dwelling place while “I” became and am still becoming a you and “I”; Nous? This is not mysterious and sacrificial wisdom that I am trying to make you conceive of here and bestow upon myself. “I” initiated this. “I” initiated this noise, I chose and choose noise oriented towards and for you to reflect upon, while you remain in your ever yet infantile dwelling, your looking glass; glace. It is worth being reminded that again a noise, a noise I say, castrated your glace while you covered your ears. Now you are delirious and for a start you recognize that to this debate there is no side to take, but the declaration of Nous, everything else becomes cinder.
Keep it in the family
Formally speaking I am not an assassinating imposter transformed “into [an] incendiary projectile”; I am not a neo-pilot (Badiou, 141). When the Towering cements temporarily departed a movement became realized; an overcoming, an always becoming, became initiated, conjured up from its depth.
One might say a former having been terror, became hidden, absolved, removed, betrayed, reproduced and once more presupposed; again overlapping itself. ‘Yesterday’ terror, having been terror, “qualified a particular figure of the exercise of State power” (Badiou, 144). Now, its expressions belong to always becoming terror, at least unconsciously and just for now. An always becoming terror is not a co-belonging or interweaved terror, for such terror would somehow suggest it being constituted by both a having been and always becoming. For now instead, a thought followed by an act gave birth to a relentless faceless invisible enemy. The Towering cements departed and terror now always becoming terror signifying exactly that which is contrary to yesterday’s Terror (Badiou, 144). Now this always becoming terror has come to “designate…from the position of the dominant, [the State,] all those who engage in a combat [militant or any other] using whatever means at hand, against a given order which is judged to be unacceptable” (Badiou, 144). “Anti-Nazi resistors for Pétain and his militia”; “Algerian patriots of the NLF for every French government without exception between 1954 and 1962”; “Chechens for Putin and his clique”; an always becoming terror (Badiou, 145). Terror now a spectacular performance; a play whose predicate and habitual dwelling place has become, at least for now, Islam(s); Terror whose “point[s] of departure…[are a rhizomatic set] of extraordinary complex maneuvers in relation to…[a] manna of…[black gold]” in a Monarchy of Meccan Kingdoms of Sheikhs (Badiou, 149). Always becoming terror whose motif announces for I never again an always becoming excluded, but rather an always emancipated name. “’Excluded’…[was] the sole name [given to I and to which I was supposedly imprisoned with yesterday’s terror]…just as ‘market’ is the name of a world which is not a world” (Badiou, 162).
Now, I am not accumulating a second name Terror over another, Excluded. Terror never substituted Excluded, rather Terror is synonymous and preordains every other signifier to follow. I have come to realize this though. If I whose signification is abstractly denoted with a give name, my name, that I ‘carry’ and which can always become replaced with another name by imperial machines, Eurocentric Capitalism and State, when they don’t like it, doesn’t suit them, then what holds the space of my name intact? If these imperial machines dare to take another name and place another in its place then the space occupied by first Excluded, and now Terror, was always inhabited by symbolic positions determined by supposedly imperial machines. But then where is my name??? Has it, my name, been kept by these imperial machines in the attic. Has my name resigned to these imperial machines on pain of returning to its habitual dwelling place or has it become indifferent to such a return? Surely, if my name chose to hide then I would not hold its choice as being far from being innocent. Quite the contrary I believe that my name that now signifies an always becoming terror, has never and could never become threatened as it remains anonymous to these imperial machines. Never has anyone ever asked me of what this anonymous name of mine signifies in the open theater; certainly not You. Perhaps everyone already knows or presupposes that they know. I am skeptical of this. My name without a disregard to such skepticism though, I say, was always an emancipated name. It was free to be what it desired to be in all its ferocity, in all its Terror from itself and to itself.
A Testimony Already Forgotten: Invading Oceans by Becoming Planters
We, You and I, are becoming acquainted and I feel there is a need for Nous to take action, to grow roots, not for fun but to incapacitate two guests, Eurocentric Authority and Capitalism, to whom we never offered hospitality towards. Nous remains to come following this preposition: Our practices, Ourselves require that we surface, discuss our depths, to accept, to receive, to invite Nous, if it can be supposed that we understand each other when we ‘speak’ and make ourselves understood on the basis of the roots spoken of many lines and ample times above. One might as well say that I came here not to assimilate but to alienate yourself from yourself, for You to lament back at Your beginning, Classical Anarchism(s), to respond to Islam(s). I came here for You to think that such a reply through my correspondence has ended here, only for I to inherit deliberately the act, the exercise of conducting symphonic ally demoniac scissions upon Your Post-Anarchism; The End becomes the Beginning becoming an End. I would say that in this economy of a paper and following this, the next, and every other I write, that throwing Your head first, like your former Classical Anarchism(s), is very, very near alienating and offer instead that You always remain immediately conscious; for you to be light on your feet; for these blows here to create us both. I without question came here, instead of staying with my secret, to this supposedly inaccessible place; War of Dreams: Becoming(s) of a Redeemed Circle A with an Eye and a Redeemed Eye with a Circle A. I belong not here in this economy of a paper nor am I interested in worshiping the boundaries of its supposed nodes of affinity. Like you, I am engaged both individually and collectively, both in theory and praxis, in re-creating myself like when I was first born, becoming human; fitra.
In this re-creation I believe that I am becoming what we call and without settling in them individually or collectively, Muslim and Post-Anarchist. I have tried to elaborate non-figuratively and literally giving Nous a way, a practice, an alternative, another painting, a clarification and explanation, with rigorous points of relating to one another; giving myself a new way to living. I have tried to remind You that every day on any street corner we suffer as prisoners to imperial machines; Eurocentric Capitalism and Authority. I told You of matters partially belonging to my depth instead of merely giving You a surface effect. I have tried to bring You to admit that You yesterday, a Classical Anarchist, have historically and politically exiled, sometimes an inner type of exile like those belonging to Micro-fascists, all religions, here, particularly Islam(s) and whose testimonies are absent from your Post-Anarchism of today. Each time throughout, I taught You that “in order to think religion abstractly, we [You and I collectively] will [have to] take these powers of abstraction as our point of departure, in order to risk eventually, the following hypothesis: with respect to all these forces of abstraction and of dissociation, ‘religion’ is at the same time [always] involved in reacting antagonistically and re-affirmatively [always thus] outbidding itself” (Derrida, 1996: 2).
I told You that it does not serve You or I right to classify religions under the same name because there is no right, no concept, nor even a word corresponding to perhaps the last two monotheisms, Islam(s) and Judaism(s), that “ revolt against everything that in the Christianizing of our world, signifies the death of God, death in God, two non-pagan monotheisms that do not accept death any more than multiplicity in God…two monotheisms alien enough at the heart of Greco-Christian, Pagan-Christian Europe” (Derrida, 1996: 12).
But I also admitted that the “surge of Islam(s) will be neither understood nor answered as long as the exterior and interior place…have not been called into question [, and this is my life long promise to conduct such questioning that is,]…as long as one does not define the passageway between this interior and all the apparently exterior dimensions” (Derrida, 1996: 20). This passageway would require ‘an other’ already absent here, in this economy of a paper, the interior, and out there, in the open theater, an exterior. I will remind You as I have shown You that this ‘other’, is personal, involves an establishment of social connections through our commitments to values towards obstructing two imperial machines. Correspondingly I have tried to interest and tempt You to looking for Nous. I tried to give these thoughts and their bodies some flesh. I tried to show You that Nous seldom if at all could be taught and seldom has to do with just cooperation (May, 2001: 194-199). “Our values, our inferential structures, and our daily engagements” have to arise not solely from attentive ears quietly grasping that there exist overarching imperial machines desiring to acquire each Nous You and I create (May, 2001: 194-199). Just for one day, just for one day I said and say, even if in passing, Nous needs to awaken its desire for becoming human.
In a step beyond me now, these are the discovered and surfacing becoming(s) I testify to thus far. But it is, as often the case is, that there is no prohibition against me copulating like animals thereby recognizing that these are merely discovered becomings. So I remind myself before You that “animal copulation leaves behind itself no monument, no burial place, no institution, no law that opens and assures any history” (Derrida, 1974: 12). Respectively I am not naive to think that I am passively confined to these discoveries and therefore, as I must, I attest to ‘being’ associated with all that resides yet undiscovered, impatient to be discovered and all that is beyond discovery. Furthermore, I am not passive to associate any becoming without it always fluctuating; becomings associated with flux; a flux testifying to its own variation in degrees and intensities.
I possess no abode to hide now I tell You, so as to remain a secret or in a secret, nor would I desire for such an abode’s possibility. Such a wish corresponds to an avowed desire to distance Nous, to attest to all the manufactured oppressions that I feel I detest. Such a wish, even if but for an instant, in principal renders that I possibly belong to imperial machines. On the contrary, my name and I believe I myself am free. I believe only in God, and for one and I to testify to an order there must be an indivisible instant at the divisible moment of testifying, in which one, and I, believes that there is ‘something’ truly belonging to that someone, myself, that could be lost and that the something has a value of truth.
That however would contradict, for I, Tawheed; I am left with mourning solely God’s absence from our, God’s and mine, Nous. And so the End becomes the beginning becoming an End.
As for You, a Post-Anarchist, and I, not to mention, our Nous? I attest not to imperial machines that bare not, recognize not, understand not, comprehend not and witness not even my name. Imperial machines to whose constituents are constituted and testify solely through the rubric of their saturated rationalizations. To what exemplary competence will they, these imperial machines, and without difficulty sustain such a will over Nous; my moves towards Post-Anarchism; Your moves towards Islams. It is a unique place, at the indivisible instant when Nous is brought to an imperial machines’ attention in so far as their, the Imperial machines’, difficulty in territorializing, de-territorializing and capturing Nous increases. A Nous which can be understood through becoming human, Post-Anarchist and Muslim presupposing throughout itself an alternative, a ‘detachment’ of itself from language, symbolizations and lives predetermined by imperial machines. Nous is manifested in Nous, inscribed within itself from itself, and whose birth brings with it a thought by imperial machines whose only insight regarding Nous upon seeing it is that ‘there is something more to them [Nous] than what is seen’. Nous’ carries with it two affirmations; simultaneously it plays two sides. An affirmed offering in that it, Nous, can only be understood from within, by those whom choose to circulate ‘through’ it; I could be saying that I relate to You here ‘through’ You, to be more precise, a part of You for You are becoming You and I becoming I. You and I, our individualized always becoming and are always released in an affirmation of differences, a separation, belonging to You and I; a resistance to assimilation.
The other affirmed offering could be conceived of as a protection against the danger of incorporation whereby our Nous is never identical to another Nous elsewhere, due to the formers affirmation of individualized always becoming hence beginning the realization that Nous becomes a Collective always becoming. Nous, encrypts itself from itself and others, amounting to a fusion of ties within itself haunting any instants for introjections made by imperial machines. Nous is a relationship of clinging detachments.
To a blind ‘we’ that ‘we’ become
Contrary to your expectations this body of text has taken time, shuttling between thoughts and now that I am nearing ‘the end’ I utter that all this creation, this interpretation from origin to its in between, is but a stray hair denoting a line of flight for Nous if You will and desire. You may contest and ridicule the bodies enclosed within those boundaries, and You may detest its themes, its glossaries and spectacles that desire to overcome what seem to be produced distances foreclosed before Islam(s) and Post-Anarchism, but You already forgot its founding achievement.
Your eyes have been, are and will always be fixated about it like a tourist in a text that has always been open to Nous, even if in order to illustrate to You all the necessities of what I really wanted to show You and that took place, even if but carelessly. By fate or luck it is bound to create an effect. Not an effect whose intent belongs to your belief that You may be more self-righteous over I, or I over You and not an effect whose intent belongs to your proclamation that You know the course that ought or should be taken towards liberation, as that is an old trick that characterized Classical Anarachism(s) and neither belongs to You or I, but to Prophets and God.
This disturbance that took place in both traditions, in these ways of living here began at the instant in which both these traditions were born from thoughts that work; working thoughts. Thoughts un-appropriated by claims like that associated with property and thoughts that do not take up residence in neither You or I, but rather in instances of Nous. You, like I, are merely introduced here as a stranger and wanderer, always legible, always there. But You and I can open Nous, something creative, something formerly unheard of. Without such a recognition You maintain yourself, You oppress yourself by yourself, becoming a fascist through yourself, and more precisely a Micro-fascist, a stranger as I continue to wander finding anything and nothing but and except what I desire; a Nous; a wandering stranger in your world and You in mine.
“Geographers say there are two kinds of Islands”; Continental and Oceanic (Deleuze, 2002: 9). “Continental islands are accidental, derived islands…separated from a continent, born of disarticulation, erosion, fracture; they survive the absorption of what once contained them” and “serve as a reminder that the sea is on top of the earth, taking advantage of the slightest sagging in the highest structures” (Deleuze, 2002: 9). The other, Oceanic islands “are originary, essential islands” some of which form of from coral reefs, “some rise slowly; some disappear and then return, leaving us no time annex them”, acting as a reminder that the earth under the sea remains yet alive (Deleuze, 2002: 9). Continental islands are a resultant of a betrayal of the sea passing over and attempting to exceed the limits of the earth in their every movement territorializing, deterritorializing, negotiating with winds as the Eurocentric State and Eurocentric Capitalisms negotiate. Oceanic Islands alternatively choose to become Nous; becoming wandering strangers in each others worlds, gathering their strength getting ready to punch through the surface. By fate or luck, You desire Nous as parts of yourself betray yourself.
Here lies only the thought of Nous, not its act. You want me to reveal who I am. But who I am and who You are is not something for Nous to so arrogantly proclaim in this factory; in this Economy of a Paper. Who I am and who You are is for Nous to discover and that is designated somewhere else. Nous desires an open theatre where the body takes preface over the written word and thus where supposed masterpieces will be minimized and reduced such that they can no longer occupy the monitored and censored space of a supposed masterpiece. Rather what transpires instead are mandates of Infinite Thought never doubled, replicated, and accompanied with always differentials, remainders; degrees of difference. Can there be or can you recall an instance occupied by the same words You speak ‘openly’ and the same way twice, thrice? Do you recall such an instance, your body’s movements, interventions, your body’s language or is it and are they already dead, created anew, in their instants of birth. Look for an open theater where You will encounter parts of I and I parts of You as You and I privilege one another, as You and I create Nous. The encounter will throughout no doubt expose moments occupied by silent words signifying but a portion of Infinite Thought as Nous allows itself to negotiate itself till The End becomes the Beginning becoming an End.
As such the taste of the lemon and the words have coursed my veins…As such I ate the words and lemon and spat the seeds…for when yesterday I supposedly ‘woke’ up I found myself sucking what you and they might call a ‘lemon’…now a dried ‘lemon’…whose seeds are like these words which I just spat…perhaps now they, the seeds and their company of words may sprout into inverted trees of half red half green apples…As such my duty for now, but for now, becomes fulfilled…As such my infringement upon good tastes comes to a temporal beginning of something new…As such was my vision this afternoon…call it poetic terrorism if you like….all I propose to know is that it was but a war-like portrait of two dreams, redeeming one another…so now I have but two more matters…the first matter becomes the second of two promises I made you in this economy of a paper…Either way I expect that you read the second matter, yes the second matter, before the first…As for the second matter, it is a request also found below…
Juste en face de la rue…Pas jojo familier…Juste au coin del la rue, Regarder dans lex yeux…En paix, salve and peace be unto you…
If you don’t admire something, if you don’t love it, you have no reason to write about it. But there are No castles on the Rhine to be enshrined here. Read this once. Read this once. Read this once, burn it, tempt Nous and cry Brûle.
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