/ 16 September 2024

The sexual tension of a genocide

Aftermath Of Israeli Army Hit Palestinian Tents In Al Mawasi Area, Khan Yunis
:A woman looks from damaged tent following Israeli army hit Palestinian tents in al-Mawasi area, Khan Yunis, Gaza on September 14, 2024. The tents were destroyed and their belongings were damaged in the attack. (Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Philosopher and academic Edward Said said that Orientalism allows the West to free it’s imagination from the forbidden and, therefore enter the world of magical thinking. The way in which the West has constructed the Orient makes it the holding space for the secret life of the id (the unconscious realm) — one of two unbridled basic drives: to connect with the other. In this case a genocide is the ultimate absorption of the other which in most healthy societies works itself out, some times a little risqué; in a dark room in the early hours of the morning. 

Now, if philosopher, author and political activist Michel Foucault was alive, I am sure he would caution against this because in a world where an Aids vaccine is lacking, this would be unwise. Free love is on pause while toxic masculinities wage a pissing contest on the future of life itself. Moreover, what we are seeing in Palestine — and Sudan — with high levels of sexual violence being sanctified by holy men like the Rabbi Meir Mazuz, is the normalisation of the misuse of sexual tension for control. 

German sociologist and writer Klaus Theweleit explored these concepts of toxic masculinities controlling pleasure in his work on the Third Reich in a book titled Male Fantasies. But usually in disciplined societies (and not to be confused with societies in discipline which are policed states), the healthy response to the other is through recognition processes such as ubuntu and the joy of seeing and being seen. Here we can think back to jouissance (joy) as a form of solidarity and resistance. 

Recently, I was diagnosed with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The constant livestreaming of genocide and ecocide has triggered my trauma and numbed me to the extent that I feel empty. To celebrate my loved ones’ triumphs in a state of chronic PTSD is a superficial joy because I am unable to fully experience the joy of the moment when I feel suspended in a trauma that can be triggered through my cellphone. Trying to evade images of mass death and destruction is futile because I also advocate for knowing and seeing as opposed to the denialism and erasure that comes with the narcissism of coloniality. Therefore, the bind that I face and, which I assume many others like me living with PTSD endure, is that our healing is suspended in this moment. We are living in a limbic hell. Now, the assumption is that in a country such as post-apartheid South Africa, this limbic hell is a collective experience because what we are witnessing is apartheid on steroids. 

Consequently, the environmental impact of the ongoing wars in various parts of the Earth, destabilises the future (especially if we are fast tracking to doomsday). Frantz Fanon cautioned us: “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it.” Subsequently, adding to the collective anxiety which is more acutely felt by younger generations, the trauma of a global pandemic that isolated people and arranged the ways in which we work, has not been processed before being confronted with the resumption of devastation aired on our news channels. If, like me, you feel sick from the consumption of these images (and here I am channelling Deleuze and Guattari and their work on how desire is manufactured through the market economy), imagine what it must be like for those children being sacrificed for the system to perpetuate control through fear and greed. 

How far have we fallen down the rabbit hole when becoming a monster is a compliment because we have entered what was in the recesses of our imagination filed under (for want of a better phrase) the banality of evil. The sexual tension produced through genocide is not the same as grief sex. Grief sex is gentle and nurturing but this emptiness is devoid of connection; the empty sexual tension that comes with the misrecognition of the other. Much like rape. And, it feels like this op-ed is a justification to claim human because to laugh, to dance, to sing, to lanterfanteren or dolce far niente — these have become muted pleasures. We are all so lacking in happiness that Fanon referred to this as the colonial condition, in part as the management of the native to stave off collective suicide, an attempt to escape the banality of evil. 

In times like these, the only radical hope is to love, fiercely and unconditionally. To see without blinkers the truth that stares back at us. To connect when connection feels fragile and to continue to build community and solidarity across multiple struggles against injustice. These are the ways in which to survive the emptiness of the narcissism of coloniality. And, as for the collective PTSD that we face as a people surviving historical injustice, we need to remember that a utopic future is only possible if we are able to overcome our momentary debilitation and collectively agree to social contracts that are based on the Fanonian dictum: to put the last first and the first last. 

Nadira Omarjee is a decolonial feminist scholar affiliated to the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and to the University of the Witwatersrand. She has published two books: We Belong to the Earth: Towards a Decolonial Feminist Pedagogy Rooted in Uhuru and Ubuntuand Reimagining the Dream: Decolonising Academia by Putting the Last First