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Tradition, alteration and mutilation – things we do and things being done

Essay

Tallinn 2016

Introduction

Writing about genital alterations is not an easy task. First of all one has to read through myriad of materials which are not the easiest to digest. Essays and articles on the matter will visualize practices and anatomical operations with genitals, on our “private parts” and it can be quite difficult on the mind. I come from a society which views any kind of genital alteration as something bizarre and odd. It is there, but in the background, on the periphery, practiced by minorities (religious and cultural/ethnic groups), members of subcultures, or performed due to medical reasons. In the same time it occurs among human societies so often that it seems like it is abnormal that Estonia doesn't have it. But this is when we think of it only as an initiation ritual (such as male circumcision of Jews). There is a lot more going on with our genitals, things like body modifications, piercing, sex change operations etc, and this is mostly done by ourselves or professionals, depending on the societies expectations and readiness. The second difficult aspect is that the issue of genital alterations is loaded with morals, ethics and questions “What is allowed? What is acceptable?” Several materials on genital alterations are dealing mainly with the ethical issues, with human rights and especially with children's rights issues. Genital alterations is a very complex and multifaceted issue which makes it almost impossible to to find a correct answer for the ethical issues, and this is not my aim with this essay, I am more interested in explaining how complex this issue is and how contradictory views we have on it.

From words to actions

The first problem and also a good starting point for analysis is the usage of terminology. When I first started to read into the matter, I immediately encountered the complexity of the issue on the base of gender. The most usual and also most acceptable form of genital alteration in Western world seems to be male circumcision. This has caused several other forms of genital alterations to be called also circumcision, even though it is a specific medical procedure describing the removal of foreskin from male genitalia. Pedersen uses the term clitoridectomy in her article about the politicization of female genital alteration in Kenya during 1920's and onward (Pedersen, 2007). She speaks strongly against using circumcision to describe alterations on female genitals as it makes false assumptions to the analogy between these two procedures (ibid, 342). Even though clitoridectomy indicates to the removal of the clitoris (both clitoral glans or hood), which is just one of the parts of external female genitalia, it is being used by Pedersen to describe also the removal of labia minora and majora. Although the usage of clitoridectomy is not sufficient it feels much more professional and unbiased to use a medical terminology.

Pedersen is specifically using the term clitoridectomy and goes even so far as to say that she compares female circumcision to the amputation of penis (Pedersen, 2007, 342). For her this is the case due to the fact that the women's sexual pleasure was not taken into account during the whole discussion of clitoridectomy abolition in Kenya, and her view is that removal of the clitoris and labia minora/majora is the same as the removal of the penis as it will remove any possibility for sexual pleasure. Bell is mentioning the same tendency among her students: “For the majority of students in the class, the only procedure that they considered at all equivalent to female circumcision was castration, or more than that, full frontal castration - a penectomy.” (Bell, 2005, 127) and so is the case with Darby and Svoboda: “There we have the conventional U.S. view, which is echoed by the tenor of the commonly used terms: circumcision is no worse than ear piercing, whereas any form of FGM is the equivalent of penis amputation.” (Darby, Svoboda, 2007, 302)

Bell (Bell, 2005) sometimes uses the term female cutting, which is also used by most professionals in dealing with issues in Africa. She is regularly using the term female circumcision and after reading her article on the genital alterations, it doesn't seem to me that she is doing it to compare the two to each other or to compare female genitalia to male, but rather it falls out of discussion as she seems to focus on the difficulties in comparing male/female sexuality and our cultural views on it.

The majority of authors use the term female genital mutilation (FGM), sometimes adding cutting (FGM/C, used for instance by UNICEF (UNICEF, 2013)). The problem with genital alterations were recognized already in the 1930's but the issue became more actual from the 1970's until the 1990's, when activist started to address the wider public and it was picked up by media (Bell, 2005, 128). WHO developed precise anatomical typology for these practices:

“Type 1: Excision of the prepuce with or without excision of part or all of the clitoris

Type 2: Excision of the clitoris together with partial or total excision of the labia minora

Type 3: Excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching/narrowing of the vaginal opening (infibulation)

Type 4: Unclassified (includes a wide variety of mutilations not falling into Types 1 through 3)” (Darby, Svoboda, 2007, 305; also UNICEF, 2013, 7).

Darby and Svoboda use in their article the term genital alteration (Darby, Svoboda, 2007). We have terms like circumcision (both male and female), genital mutilation (also both), cutting (female), medical terms (clitoridectomy and penectomy). Whilst I do prefer medical terminology when speaking about specific procedures, for example if it is Muslim or Jewish boy then he is being in my opinion circumcised, and if girls clitoris is removed then it is clitoridectomy. But in general terms I'm going to use also genital alteration (GA) because: circumcision doesn't cover the specter of different acts performed on genitalia; using the term circumcision might diminish the seriousness of alterations performed on girls and women and it might also diminish the work of women's rights organizations on banning “traditional” rituals of female genital cuttings in several African countries; on the other hand not all procedures are felt by males and females involved in these procedures as mutilations; and several procedures are wanted and sometimes even done by the persons themselves. As Darby and Svoboda puts it: “...otherwise the terms female genital alteration [FGA] and male genital alteration [MGA] as a way to avoid evoking the emotional response that our culture invests in the practices.” (Darby, Svoboda, 2007, 302)

Regarding GA on males, one of the most common practices is circumcision. It is a common practice among Jews and Muslims, traditional cultures in Africa, Asia and Oceania, and it is also common among all newborn males in the USA, regardless of their parents religion. The only “but” is that it is in many cases quite different in the way the procedure is performed, when it is performed and to what “extent” it is performed. Bell writes about it:

“For example, in parts of East Africa not all of the foreskin is removed, while in other regions the foreskin is left largely intact but cut into strips /--/. Such ritual circumcisions also take place in Aboriginal Australia, the Philippines, Eastern Indonesia, and Melanesia, with wide variation in procedures. Similar variation exists in the religious circumcisions conducted among Islamic and Jewish populations. Even the clinical circumcisions familiar to many of my students vary widely, as judgments regarding the amount of skin to be removed from the penis are left to the skill and aesthetic preferences of the individual doctor. Indeed, while the majority of circumcisions are performed on newborns, a minority undergo the operation after infancy, and some men choose to be recircumcised in later years due to dissatisfaction with the original result (see Altschul 1990).” (Bell, 2005, 126)

For Jews the command for circumcision is quite simple, a covenant between Abraham and God is done (Gn 17:11) and it must be resigned between every newborn Jew on the 8th day of their life (Gn 17:12). For Muslims the case is not so clearcut and is varying in great length, usually being performed on the 7th day or up to prepuberty at the age of 12. That depends on the quality of medical procedures (with well developed medical networks it is usually done right after birth and in the hospital), traditions (from 5 year olds in Central Asia up to 12 in Indonesia and Malaysia). So in many cases circumcision among Muslims is performed when males will remember it and are aware of the procedure performed on them.

And we haven't even touched the issues of subincision or superincision:

“Moreover, other forms of male genital cutting such as superincision and subincision are also practiced. Superincision, where a dorsal slit is made in the foreskin, is performed in several Pacific island societies (see Firth 1963; Kempf 2002). Subincision, a far more invasive procedure, involves slitting open the whole or part of the penile urethra along the ventral or under surface of the penis. The initial cut is generally about an inch long, but this may be enlarged so that the incision extends from the glans to the root subsequently of the scrotum, in this way the whole of the under part of the penile urethra is laid open. [Montagu 1974:312]” (Bell, 2005, 126)

So there is a huge variety of alterations being performed on men. Referencing to Dr. Sami Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, a Swiss-Palestinian doctor, Darby and Svoboda offer a possibility to categorize male genital alterations into similar types as FGM:

“Type 1: This type consists of cutting away in part or in totality the skin of the penis that extends beyond the glans. This skin is called foreskin or prepuce.

Type 2: This type is practiced mainly by Jews. The circumciser takes a firm grip of the foreskin with his left hand. Having determined the amount to be removed, he clamps a shield on it to protect the glans from injury. The knife is then taken in the right hand and the foreskin is amputated with one sweep along the shield. This part of the operation is called the milah. It reveals the mucous membrane (inner lining of the foreskin), the edge of which is then grasped firmly between the thumbnail and index finger of each hand, and is torn down the center as far as the corona. This second part of the operation is called periah. It is traditionally performed by the circumciser with his sharpened fingernails.

Type 3: This type involves completely peeling the skin of the penis and sometimes the skin of the scrotum and pubis. It existed (and probably continues to exist) among some tribes of South Arabia. Jacques Lantier describes a similar practice in black Africa, in the Namshi tribe.

Type 4: This type consists in a slitting open of the urinary tube from the scrotum to the glans, creating in this way an opening that looks like the female vagina. Called subincision, this type of MGA is still performed by the Australian aborigines. [2001:9]” (Darby, Svoboda, 2007, 306jj)

They conclude that as type 3 and 4 are practiced by a few excluded tribes and type 1 is also not the most popular procedure, then type 2 should be analyzed most throughly. At this point they bring in also one anatomical part of the penis, what other authors have not considered whilst talking about male genital alterations:

“The severity of the operation is also affected by whether it removes the frenulum, the sensitive "bridle" on the underside of the penis, adjoining the cleft in the glans. This is now known as the frenular delta and is understood to support one of the body's densest concentration of fine-touch nerve receptors, whose specific function is to detect and transmit pleasurable touch (Cold and Taylor 1999; McGrath 2001; Taylor et al. 1996).” (ibid, 307)

On the following page they break it down to 5 types, which correspond to the amount of foreskin being removed and whether the frenulum is also removed or not. They also break FGM down to 7 types of procedures: “...a nick to the clitoris; separation of the clitoral hood or prepuce, without amputation of tissue ; removal of the clitoral hood; excision of the labia minora ; excision of the labia majora ; excision of part or all of the clitoris; stitching up the vaginal orifice.” (ibid, 308) MGA is in the case of type 2 a rather singular operation, being performed on one part of the genitalia and its' severity depends on how much of that part is removed, the severity of FGA on the other hand depends on how many procedures are being performed (ibid, 309).

The problem with all GAs is that we tend to categorize them under two edges: female genital mutilation type 3 and male circumcision type 2:

“I also pointed out that just as there is a common inclination to consider all female operations under the rubric of "mutilation," there is a parallel tendency to collapse the widely variable forms of male genital cutting into a single operation involving the removal of the prepuce of the penis...” (Bell, 2005, 125)

This is done without even considering the huge variety of different forms and practices nor taking into account simple statistics. Yes, type 2 is the most regular genital alteration being performed on men, but FGA type 3 is not, it is around 15 percent of the FGA procedures (Bell, 2005, 130).

Preservationists and prointact

“Indeed, what was striking was how willing students were to relegate such practices to the realm of "culture," and how unwilling they were to place female surgeries in the same realm.” (Bell, 2005, 126)

During the same time when FGA became the “hot topic”, the Western world saw also the rise of the anti-circumcision movement. Even though it is usually seen as a “misguided group of “extremists”” (Bell, 2005, 129), they do make a valid point in gender equality: how is something not an issue for men and an issue for women; how is one ritual called mutilation (for example FGA in Kenya is called Irua) and the other one circumcision (not penile mutilation)? Erik Silverman devoted several pages in his article “Anthropology and Circumcision” to describe these movements, their aims and also some of the practices they are doing (Silverman, 2004, 434-436). At some points it seems rather anecdotal, the way he is describing these movements and their activities, but in the same time this issue is taken very seriously by members of these movements: they have group discussions and confessions on how MGA has changed their life, problems with sexuality, “feelings of parental betrayal, violation, victimization, powerlessness, distrust, shame, abuse, deformity, and alienation. Circumcised men who oppose MC have often likened the procedure to rape and maternal abandonment. Consequently, it is often said that circumcised men are more likely to abuse and rape women. Others have asserted that circumcision made them gay.” (Silverman, 2004, 435) I personally have serious doubts in putting the “blame” in being gay on circumcision. Also for being a rapist and misogynist. I do agree that there are consequences for a MGA, especially when it has been performed in unsanitary conditions and/or violent/abusive way, such as described by “...female victim of forced circumcision during a "holy war" by Islamic extremists in Indonesia /.../ what was done to the men was worse than what the women suffered: "I know the men suffered more than us women. The circumcision hurt them more than it did to us because their scars could not heal fast. Several of the men I knew got serious infections after suffering from severe bleeding" (Murdoch 2001).” (Darby, Svoboda, 2007, 310) But this is not the case with USA based preservationist movements, where it is usually performed on newborns in hospitals.

In medical hygiene lies also one very big difference between MGA and FGA. Whilst we talk about FGM, then there is mainly discussion about how it causes medical problems (especially Type 3 but also others) and sexual problems, there is not much talk about how to eradicate these problems from the actual procedure or from it's outcomes. At the same time MGA in none Western countries is being monitored and improved, made more sanitary etc. (Bell, 2005, 130) Problems do occur even in Western countries with MC performed in hospitals and under strict sanitary conditions, and also later during puberty (Darby and Svoboda, 2007, 306) but this is not seen as a problem by most human and child rights activists. There is also a big contrast between views on consent, FGA is usually performed on children who cant give their consent and this is one of the points why it is being condemned (Bell, 2005, 130). This is not seen as a problem with MGA even though it is usually performed either in a neonatal state or before puberty.

Sex

In the current Western discourse on sexuality, sex is not seen just as a reproductive act but is deeply connected with pleasure. Darby and Svoboda bring out also differences in Western discourse about sexual activity and MGA impact on mens' sexuality: “Articles in U.S. medical journals or mass media that find or report that MGA makes little or no difference to male sexual activity often present this as a positive reason why MGA of infants should be performed” (Darby, Svoboda, 2007, 310). Procircumcision websites promote circumcision with claims like “circumcised men last longer” and “uncircumcised penis may be more sensitive, this same sensitivity can lead to premature ejaculation” (Bell, 2005, 137). There is nothing very concrete to rely on besides every persons own story (as is the case with FGA). But there is something important what Bell brings out: current sexual discourse is still depicting men as sexual animals, “men's sexual apparatus and needs are simple and straightforward” (ibid, 136). She continues: “In this discursive framework, genital surgery is far less likely to impair a man's sexuality than a woman's because of his highly developed, instinctive, and powerful sexual drive. A woman's sexual instincts, being fundamentally more delicate, will be crippled by any form of genital surgery” (ibid).

Bell talks much about the beginning of secular circumcision in US and Britain, how it is connected in the beginning with different ideas of hygiene, how it is connected with the cure for the “terrible disease” of masturbation (Bell, 2005, 131). Clitoridectomy was also promoted from the Victorian area until 1960's “as a cure for excessive masturbation” (ibid, 132). Bell points out that according to Laqueur clitoris was thought to be an essential part in the reproductive process until the 18th century (ibid). From the 18th until much of the 20th century clitoris was dismissed as useful and that “the female orgasm serves no reproductive purpose and was therefore unnecessary to the perpetuation of life” (ibid, 133). In the beginning of the 20th century the importance of the clitoris in sexuality was even more diminished by Freud as for him “...mature female sexuality resided in the vagina, and immature female sexuality resided in the clitoris” (ibid) and “...by the late 1940s it was common practice to omit the clitoris from anatomy textbooks altogether” (ibid, 134). With the 1970s and feminism came also the reorientation of sexuality from vagina to clitoris, which in one sense has been very helpful for women's sexual liberation but on the other hand restrains parts of sexuality. In one hand The Hite Report claims that “...almost all women achieve orgasm through clitoral, as opposed to vaginal, stimulation.” (ibid) and on the other hand: “In Koedt's framework, there is no room for females who do not fit this clitoral model. She accuses women who claim the capacity for vaginal orgasms of ignorance and false consciousness. According to Koedt, these women are confused, because they either fail to locate the real center of their orgasm (the clitoris) or they desire to fit their experience into the male-defined idea of sexual normalcy.” (ibid)

FGA is a problem and in many cases it does affect women's health and cause complications. The fact that several African countries, where it is an active ritual and part of social life and culture, have decided to ban it, and that this is done by local women's rights activists, speaks for itself. The question here is that on what grounds has it been done. Removal of the clitoris has been equated with the removal of the penis on the grounds of sexuality (Bell, 2005, 134) not on the grounds of reproductivity. In the same time there are studies which indicate that GA does not affect the women's sexual life as it doesn't men's. Bell references to Fuambai Ahmadu, Rogaia Abusharaf and Ellen Gruenbaum, that women who have had GA do have orgasms (ibid, 138). Same references are made by Darby and Svoboda:

“A recent study by Okonofua and colleagues (2002) in Nigeria examined 1836 women who had been subjected to either FGA type 1 (71 percent) or type 2 (24 percent). They found no significant differences between cut and uncut women in the frequency of reports of sexual intercourse in the preceding week or month, the frequency of reports of early arousal during intercourse, and the proportions reporting experience of orgasm during intercourse. There was also no difference between cut and uncut women in their reported ages of menarche, first intercourse, or first marriage in the multivariate models controlling for the effects of socioeconomic factors.” (Darby, Svoboda, 2007, 310)

Looking into the most severe form of MGA, subincision, there is not much going on against it, no movements against it or any that try to ban it. There are even claims made by authors that it is good for practitioners' sexual life: “Bettelheim (1962:100) also speculates that subincision "probably alters the sensations during coitus."” (Bell, 2005, 126) and “It seems that subincision produces increased sensitivity for both the male and female during intercourse. Especially the women seem to get more pleasure out of it. This function was noted earlier as a possibility for the Samburu of Kenya.” (Lobdell, 1975, 22).

The whole discourse of sexuality and GA is a complex knot of different views, reports and claims, in several parts they are contradictory to each other.

Why are we talking about Africa?

Even though GA seems to be happening in every human society, we seem to be focused only on Africa and on FGA as something that needs to be eradicated. As I pointed out earlier, GA happens quite often in Western culture and on infants (especially in USA), and that GA happens mostly around the world on male infants. It is true that FGA is a problem in Africa, it does cause health problems, but at the same time it feels somewhat strange that WHO and UNICEF seem to not deal with it in Middle-East and Southeast Asia. For instance the study on FGA in Indonesia, showed that 86-100 percent of the questioned girls were “circumcised” (Budiharsana, Amaliah, Budi Utomo and Erwinia, 2003, 24). And whenever I look it up in the Internet, I get an African map issued by UNICEF. And in the same time there is not much talk about MGA and it being a “mutilation”. Darby and Svoboda see it as historical development:

“Although the Jews were seen as proto-Christians, and (both in the United States and Britain) increasingly admired as exemplars of sanitary wisdom as the 19th century advanced (Glick 2005:ch. 6), genital alteration of girls was perceived as an outlandish rite, performed by obscure barbarians whose example did not warrant emulation.” (Darby, Svoboda, 2007, 311)

Silverman discusses the issue as well and comes to a conclusion that there is a specific way Western world likes to see it:

“...this view of FC portrays Africans, especially African women, as passive victims of their own ignorance and of patriarchy, wholly wounded in body and spirit, devoid of any possible joy, erotic or otherwise. In effect, this view of FC offers the West justification for intervention and, more subtly, assertions of cultural superiority. Anthropologists increasingly contest the view of African women as mutilated and imprisoned by a physiological mark of their own making .” (Silverman, 2004, 429)

I'm not trying to imply that there is some kind of grand conspiracy regarding this issue, but it seems that there is a problematic stance that the Western world has taken. This can be seen also from Susan Pedersen writing about the politicization of FGA in Kenya: white men in the Western world are making decisions for black women (Pedersen, 2007, 336). One of the questions regarding GA alterations in Africa is that why are we looking at the issue only from the females' side if GA is practiced by both sexes. Bell references on several researchers on that matter and writes that it is completely alien and artificial to deal with these issues separately from each other, as Africans “...consider these operations to be fundamentally related in both their functions and effects. However, little attempt has been made to explore precisely why international opinion remains largely hostile to female genital cutting and indifferent to the male operations.” (Bell, 2005, 128) Silverman brings out also the controversy between Western and African view on FGA, which is in his opinion connected with colonial domination (Silverman, 434).

Why are we not talking about Western cultures?

I have questions on several aspects of genital alterations, on gender equality, on children's rights, on human rights etc. But before looking “abroad” for their “mistakes”, I would need to look for the problems in our cultural sphere. As I said in the beginning, my cultural background is rather alien to genital alterations as there is no presence of traditions regarding it nor a medical prophylactic presence of it. In the same time it is there in other forms like cosmetic practices or wider understanding how and for what purposes genitalia is used. The western world has practiced besides circumcision also clitoridectomy (or excision of the clitoral hood) until 1950's and 60's as a “cure” for masturbation (Bell, 2005, 132; and Darby, Svoboda, 2007, 312). Of course this can't be used as an excuse for practicing FGM and it is completely reasonable to ban it in Western countries. It will affect only people who have migrated there from African or Asian countries and it will protect girls from unsanitary and abusive procedure, which is definitely not corresponding to the host country's legal, medical and human rights culture. If it would be done under medical surveillance in hospital, it would definitely be safer but still traumatic for the child. If it would be done in neonatal state, it wouldn't be so mentally traumatic but there is still the question why is it necessary and if the person would feel as she has been maimed later in her adulthood. I was trying to find an answer if ritual FGA can be done to an adult in Western countries but I didn't get a clear answer. It seems that most countries, who have laws against FGM, are banning every kind of practice on the base of abuse and violence against women. Darby and Svoboda reference on Christine Mason who “...has explored the paradox whereby an adult female (in Australia) cannot elect mutilating forms of cosmetic genital surgery for herself yet has the legal right to alter the penis of her son.” (Darby, Svoboda, 2007, 302) Mason is against both male and female infant GA but in the same time there should be legislation to “..allow freedom of minority practices when a person is old enough to give informed consent” (ibid).

Interestingly there is FGA in Australia which is available to Australians. It is not called mutilation nor female genital cutting, it doesn't have a strange sounding traditional name, it is called labiaplasty and it is in some cases even funded by a persons health insurance (Van Badham, 2015; and Labiaplastymelbourne.com.au). The same GA can be done also in Estonia and has been done for several years (Delfi.ee, 2013) and with some quick research I found two places, where I could enlarge my penis surgically and my wife could rejuvenate her vagina (Christinaclinic.ee and Freyaestetica.com). With money everything is possible. Van Badham writes in her article that the main reason why women do labiaplasty is because they are not satisfied with how their vagina looks, and this has to do with todays worlds perceptions (for example what kind of image is given to us by mainstream pornography) on female genitalia. So instead of some barbaric initiation ritual Western people are driven by an obsession of how it looks or how society might want it to look.

The same goes for male GA such as penis enlargement, with the slight exception that this can be done, to reach ideals set by the pornographic industry, and for the satisfaction of a sexual partner. Coming back to the gender issues this seems rather controversial. Taking into account that many procircumcision sites talk about how it is better for men's sexual partners, it seems that MGA can be done also for the same reasons as FGA:

“Indeed, what is interesting here is how irrelevant the issue of reduced sensation is for both the men who have this operation and their sexual partners. This poses a striking contrast to the dominant discourses surrounding female genital cutting, where the idea of a woman undergoing genital surgery to enhance her partner's sexual pleasure (while concomitantly reducing her own level of sensation) strikes most observers as "barbaric" and misogynistic.” (Bell, 2005, 138)

Conlusion

“As Hellsten observes, "all forms of genital alteration" (2004:249-250) are derived from ideas of the place of human sexuality in society, are intended to alter sexual function in some way, and are performed in the belief that the procedure - no matter how physically injurious - will in some way improve the subject's life.” (Darby, Svoboda, 2007, 304)

As I said in the beginning of the essay, genital alterations are a very complex and multifaceted issue. I do agree with Bell when she says that “Ultimately, the message is clear: genital mutilation is gendered.” (Bell, 2005, 131). It is gendered when we talk about children's rights, when we talk about sexuality and how it affects our sexuality. It is gendered when we talk about it in the Western world and what is expected by our society from females and males. In the end it is our genitals and they are the base of our gender. But there is also connections to post-colonial issues, minority rights in Western world, cultural diversity and cultural appropriation, economical discrimination and so on.

My question is that where do we move with all the knowledge we have gained through researches and studies? Darby and Svoboda write that: “The way forward, in our opinion, is not to abandon the concept of universal human rights, as argued by Baker, but to attempt to apply them consistently, without discrimination on the basis of gender.” (Darby, Svoboda, 2007, 315) I'm doubting that it will ever happen and my reason is rather blunt: as long as it is part of Jewish traditions, it can never be banned, unless there is a change in Western opinion on antisemitism. I know that there are Quranist Muslims (a really small minority in the Muslim community), who are against circumcision because it alters God's creation, I'm not aware that there is the same kind of tendencies among Jewish community.

“The female rite, in particular, as a result of transnational movements and refugees, is now clashing with Western law from California to Paris.” (Silverman, 2004, 420) FGA will be an issue in the Western world now more than ever. It is currently under discussion also in Estonia to legally ban FGM and with more migrants from Africa, Asia and Middle East, it will cause more discussions and debates inside our own cultural sphere. Even though FGM is being actively banned in Africa, it will still be present for decades to come. I'm also predicting that there will be a revival of it under “traditionalist” agenda. And that there will be more cases when women turn to cosmetic surgery and private practices with requesting some type of FGA which is not viewed as appropriate as labiaplasty is.

References Cited

Bell, Kirsten. 2005. Genital Cutting and Western Discourses on Sexuality, in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Jun., 2005), pp. 125-148. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3655483

Budiharsana, Meiwita; Amaliah, Lila; Budi Utomo and Erwinia. 2003. Female Circumcision in Indonesia : Extent, Implications and Possible Interventions to Uphold Women’s Health Rights, Jakarta: Population Council Jakarta with support from the Ministry for Women’s Empowerment under USAID funding, September 2003. Electronic: http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNACU138.pdf

Christinasclinic.ee = http://www.christinasclinic.ee/et/esteetiline-kirurgia/intiimpiirkond/peenise-pikendamine , last viewed 9.01.2016

Darby, Robert, Svoboda, J. Steven. 2007. A Rose by Any Other Name? Rethinking the Similarities and Differences between Male and Female Genital Cutting , in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Sep., 2007), pp. 301-323 Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4499734

Delfi.ee. 2013, February 28. Uus ilutrend eestlannade seas — väikeste häbememokkade lõikus (New Beauty Trend Among Female Estonians – Surgery For Small Labia). Retrieved from: http://naistekas.delfi.ee/kirevmaailm/uudised/uus-ilutrend-eestlannade-seas-vaikeste-habememokkade-loikus?id=65746148

Freyaestetica.com = http://www.freyaestetica.com/index.php/en/services/non-invasive-labioplasty-prot-g-intima , last viewed on 9.01.2016

Labiaplastymelbourne.com.au = http://www.labiaplastymelbourne.com.au/how-much-does-labiaplasty-cost/ , last viewed on 9.01.2016

Lobdell, John E. 1975. Considerations On Ritual Subincision Practice, in The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1975, February), pp. 16-24. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.tlu.ee/stable/3811640

Pedersen, Susan. 2007. National Bodies, Unspeakable Acts: The Sexual Politics of Colonial Policy

Making, in Margaret Lock & Judith Fraquhar (editors). Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Material Life. Durham, Duke University, pp. 330 – 346.

Silverman, Eric K. 2004. Anthropology and Circumcision , in Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 33 (2004), pp. 419-445 . Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25064860

UNICEF. 2013. Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A Statistical Overview and Exploration of the Dynamics of Change, New York: United Nations Children's Fund, July 2013. Retrieved from: http://www.unicef.org/media/files/FGCM_Lo_res.pdf

Van Badham. 2015, August 26. Female genital mutilation is alive in Australia. It's just called labiaplasty. The Guardian. Retrieved from:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/26/female-genital-mutilation-is-alive-in-australia-its-just-called-labiaplasty

#anthropology #fgm #mutilation #alteration #autoethnography #pulp fiction #transgression #transgressive

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magalarajoonideprohvetid · 5 years

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1.10.2 ramadan.man [in english]

First part, Ramadan.man_12.1_last_saved_02/07, published in Nihilist.fm on 03/07/15;

second part, Ramadan.man_12.2_last_saved_17/07, published on author’s blog on 17/07/15;

full text in estonian in 6ism2e_dpi_error:_unsupported_personality, 2016, Nihilist.fm and ZA/UM, pages 89-98;

translation by Kristi Ockba

1.10.2 ramadan.man

Ramadan.man_12.1_last_saved_02/07

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It is evening. The boys were watching yet another episode of Avatar before I sent them off to bed. The time is 22:30 and I will soon be able to eat. The first day of fasting is about to end.

«Boys, today you must go to bed on your own.»

«Why?»

«Because I must now eat.»

«Why now?»

«Because it is Ramadan now. I do not eat during the day, but when the sun sets, I can start eating.»

«Why are you eating now?»

I am tired and hungry and so I snap: «Because otherwise I will die, if I don’t eat during the day and I don’t eat during the night either!» This was the wrong thing to say, but I am hungry and tired.

«I don’t want you to die!» Happy starts to cry.

«I don’t want to sleep, I want to eat,» Generous says without a care.

I love Happy’s sentimental sensitivity and Generous’ raw carelessness. I console and comfort Happy until he also decides that he would like to eat something. It is 11:00 pm. The three of us are sitting in the kitchen. Generous is eating some fried ham and Happy shares my Ramen noodles while his spaghetti is boiling. We are happy, happy to be the way we have been created. This is a tribal thing. The Vihalem tribe of United Autonomous Individuals. UAI — it’s a tribal thing. We are happy and free. Unfortunately millions of people around the world are not.

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My senses are tight, loaded. Supersensitive. I smell cigarettes before non-smokers do. At the Kristiine youth center some guy on his way out lights a cigarette. The hoodlum wanted to act tough and bend the rules. He was barred from the center for life. Serves him right, his stupid behavior didn’t just end badly for him, but also made me crave for a cigarette.

Walking down the street I can smell lovely perfumes, feminine and sweet, and the smell of cigarettes coming from those girls walking a few steps ahead of me.

There is a terrible smell coming from three guys sitting in bus number 46, just a few rows ahead of me. They smell of ethanol; it exits their bodies with every breath, from every pore. As they get up to get off the bus, I can sense garish stench of smegma. Bastard, wash your self or go get circumcised. Hobos.

I can smell the aromas of food – everywhere. All food smells good. My stomach is no longer growling. It is much too empty to growl. Food is beautiful. I am on the terrace and I am thinking how beautiful food would be in my mouth. The wind brushes through the leaves of trees. The wind is beautiful. It brushes me. Somewhere in the distance some people are making sandwiches and fruit bars. The time is 16:30 and I would be able to eat them in six hours and twelve minutes. By that time they will most probably be eaten.

I sense a some kind of smell, sweet, carried by the wind from the leaves. I do not know the source, but I can sense it sharply, suffocatingly. My senses are loaded. My senses are my superpowers. I am a starving superhero, I am Ramadan.man.

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I have started reading the Koran again. After the second Sura I always find myself thinking about Harut and Marut. Two angels, sent to earth with free will. On the first day they get everything wrong. In addition I am reading Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali’s Rescuer from Error/The Niche of Light. I so hope it will not be a disappointment. In the meantime, I skim through the posthumous catalog of the Polymer Cultural Factory, which I received from the compiler for a pleasurable barter deal. The first five chapters of Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness also seem great.

I like to read during Ramadan. This is my only passtime, self-education, my only entertainment, the consumption of which I do not feel guilty. I don’t feel guilty feasting letters with my eyes, rapaciously, as if someone were trying to take it away from me.

I am focused, fast. Hunger concentrates me. I am Ramadan.man. Superhero, with supersenses, a superreader.

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Ramadan.man’s superpowers do not include fixing things. One can say that one of Ramadan.man’s superpowers is messing things up. For instance, that’s what happened to my bike last year.

First of all I wanted to oil the wheel collar and then screw it shut. When I unscrewed them it was evident that the rings had been rusted and the wheel bearings fell apart. I should not have touched it to begin with. The same applied to the pedals; I wanted to change them but I accidentally screwed it in the wrong direction. The stem threads were completely ruined. This year, I started to clean the ventilation of my laptop and ruined the motherboard. At the same time, the desktop computer that I was using to view the tutorial to open the laptop stopped working. Yep, superpowers.

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Midsummer day. At home. No grilling what so ever. Not even meat free. I was ready for it. I built a lego house for Generous. He was extremely happy. Maybe in his eyes I have some superpowers?

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I enjoy watching films. Especially in the summer and especially vampire films. This Ramadan I finally watched a movie that has been on my list of films to watch for a long time, and this film became the winner of my top five vampire films.

The movies left out of my top five list were Shadow of a Vampire (2000), Interview with the Vampire (1994) and From Dusk Till Dawn (1996). The first one I just really liked and the second was my first. I went to Kosmos cinema to see it when I was seven years old. The third… the only guy who could pull of a 90’s tribal tattoo is George Clooney. For sure.

TOP 5:

5. What We Do in the Shadows (2014). New Zealand. Mockumentary. It is funny. Really funny.

4. Thirst (2009). South-Korea. From the same director of Old Boy. Need I say more?

3. Let the Right One In (2008). Swedes can do and show you all kinds of things in their films. For God’s sake don’t watch the 2010 film Let Me In!

2. A Girl Walks Home Alone (2014). A feminist Iranian vampire film. Thank you, Ernest, for recommending!

1. Only Lovers Left Alive (2013). An ocean of references. Music. Tangier. Drinking blood from drams.

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I sacrifice this world, the comforts of this world. And I sacrifice myself. I watch this world, I try to be only an observer. My presence is perceivable; I perceive my own presence. And at the same time I am vanished. And that doesn’t matter. The sun climbs across the building. These are it’s final rays. I look desperately at the sky and search for the moon. The sun and moon determine my situation, my condition, my position in this world, that I bring for a sacrifice. My sacrificed self-position. Sunset and dawn rays determine me as alive or an observer. The crescent starts from the right and grows towards the left. Half means a quarter and a full moon means half. The full moon scares me. Too many lunatics, who find themselves just then. During Ramadan I don’t feel myself loosing my mind, I am too tired and empty. There is just the reflections of a past madness, reflections of primal madness. I throw stones at those reflections, to get to the primal madness, to look it in the eye. I am afraid.

I cry a lot, more than I can consume water. My heart is tender and soft, this must never change, it must never petrify. I cry because people die in the hands of crazy people, because of how wonderful children can be, because of how much a brother can love his sister. I would like to cry more because of how much good there is in this world but unfortunately I can’t. My sacrifice is trivial, a trivial disciplinary exercise, a reminder and a self admiration in comparison to the millions, who must daily endure hunger and thirst. In the best case scenario, this is a preparation for times when winters are long and droughts hit the summer, and the only one’s who survive are the ones who do not care about their presence.

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Have a lovely Ramadan, only a full moon’s worth is left. Mustamäe, 07/15

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Ramadan.man_12.2_last_saved_17/07

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Hunger has disappeared. I can’t feel hunger anymore, I have no more strength to feel it. Hunger made me awake, made me want, need, desire. Hunger made me jump. 3 hours and 50 minutes. With every night I eat less, and with every day I do less. I have the feeling I am disappearing, vanishing. With every day there is less «I», my body is in permanent ratio with my ego, with the forward-leaning and active one. Imagine people who have been starving for years –– how much can they do for themselves? Their families, their communities?

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Why am I always trying—and always pointlessly—to define myself? Who I appear to be, how I label myself, as what I feel myself, to what can I connect myself? Am I a vegan, a nationalist, a feminist, a chauvinist, a capitalist, an anarchist, an islamist? Ist-ist-ist. Who is «I» without anything? What is left of «I”, if I have no history, name, background system? Who am I? A living being? A human? How much have I tried to discover what a human is? Evolution, the history of humanity, the stories of creation, genes, processes, memes. Am I able to look at my self as a noumenon or am I just a holistic phenomenon? Am I a dirt, a «sounding clay» or an intermediate link in evolutionary chain? Am I all at the same time or none of them? Creator/created, conflict, an independent communicator or a syncretist? Maybe I am not set in stone, maybe I am not a static character, but a constant adaptor? The history of «I» consists of development, movement, change, adaptation. «I» is a human. Do you feel the same?

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I sleep everyday until the midday prayer. Sleeping saves my energy. Today I had to wake up early, to make it to the MA admission test. I feel like vomiting, I feel really bad. Not sure what I would vomit. Three quarters have past, I am enfeebling.

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You know this refugee thing. I have spent too much time on it. I wrote many pages on what I find to be wrong with it. It’s crap, both what I wrote and how it is dealt with. I am not willing to criticize, argue nor ramble anymore. I basically refuse to fall into the spiral of online commentaries, where some guy wants to say some absurdity and expects someone to answer. I don’t see a reason for this, I can’t see what good it does, it is not good for me, it is not good for my emotional and psychological wellbeing. All people have equal rights, the right to life and freedom. For all! There is no difference whether the color of your skin is «white» or «black», whether you are a woman or a man, your right to life and freedom does not depend on your passport or your personal ID, it depends on working heart. And you have the right to strive towards life and freedom.

Fuck, I started preaching again. You know what I mean… Think good, speak good, do good.

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We went to watch Minions with the boys. It was the 10:00 PM screening. As true westerners we broke our fast in the middle of the movie with nachos with melted cheese and Coca-Cola. After the movie we came home. Whilst waiting for the elevator, Happy noticed CCTV cameras in the waiting area and said: «This is freakin’ creepy.» Right on, boy, this is creepy. While the West killed God, the All-Seeing eye, we birthed Big Brother who watches over our every step, every action, every time we scratch our asses. Freakin’ creepy.

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It’s 1:42 AM and freshly asphalted road underneath Tammsaare/Järvevana viaduct is sprawling in front of me. Tires chirr on fresh asphalt, and thou the rear wheel is wobbly and chain covered with dirt, my bicycle scampers surprisingly fast. Today was the last tarawih prayer; I am glad that I was present. It was good, good for my body, soul and mind; they needed it. An hour and half of praying, four raka‘āts of evening prayer and twenty four raka‘āts of tarawih prayer. An hour and half out of that four hours, during which I could have been consuming, eating and drinking. Penultimate sacrifice before the end of the lunar-month. Last time I saw moon crescent was seven days ago. Clouds were slicing it horizontally into pieces. Now I can’t see it anywhere. Moon is dead. Dead to be born again. And the circle starts again.

This Ramadan is the twelfth Ramadan of my life. Every one of them has been different, but that doesn’t matter. Tomorrow is left. I must remember the two days I traveled and two days I fasted in Mecca time. Two full nicks and two half ones. I hope the rest will be accepted.

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Tonight, I read the children’s encyclopedia for Happy. In the beginning there was the Big Bang. It seemed to me that he did not fully understand all of this talk of compression of matter and the ever-expanding universe. Or I was not able to fully explain it to him. It was all too abstract, it was much easier to talk about planets and stars. I assume it is quite similar, if I had to talk about God to him.

Doubt, doubt is constant. Doubt follows me all the time. I doubt in everything – actions, principles, the actuality of my faith, the existence of God, my existence, the norms of society, reality. Doubt is good. Doubt is an earthquake that destroys badly constructed buildings to build new ones. Doubt makes the mind soft like crying does for to the heart. The mind must not harden, a petrified mind is evil, it is not capable of dialogue.

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Happy Holidays! Mustamäe, 07/15

#literature #badliterature #pulp fiction #transgression #transgressive #punkmuslim #ramadan #ramadan.man #6ism2e_dpi_error #Nation of Islam #islam

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magalarajoonideprohvetid · 5 years

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4. 23 Kaptain Tangerine and the POP!

“Peel of power—Pee, Ou, Pee, POP!—the tangerine peel that gives me, the Kaptain Tangerine, captain is with “K” brudah, write it down!, the peel that gives me my power, peel that draws it from the interdimensional cosmic power of the jõulupuu, Christmas tree, the world tree of Finno-Ugric original human’s faith, the axis mundi that connects the underworld with sansaara and heaven and vice versa and different dimensions and its really great and unforgettably the most awesome power of the universe, the multiverse and all known and unknown dimensions and so the POP!—we call it POP! for short ya see brudah—and so the POP! collects the power and channels it thru my body, it warps thru all dem chakras, Mooslims say I direct the baraka, Christians that I direct the Holy Spirit thru my body, Buddhists witness me as a madafucking Bodhisattva, my body is like a portal ya see, I connect heaven and hell, darkness outside and dem Christmas lights—jõulutuled brudah I tell ya—inside, I connect melancholy with happiness, yin and yang, black and white, bad and good, my mighty ax of POP! will slit and unify inna single blow, mighty and sharp is its blade and I can slit ya in half right here in this moment, ya wont be able to say “phallocentric paradigm” and I would have slit ya in half and melt ya back to one, to a new human being, filled with completely new ideas and thoughts, new ya that is surfing on the POP! wave as a new, enlightened and holistic mean-lean, superfantastic and most definitely the greatest ya could be, trust me, ya will love it ‘cos it will be the best ya can be,” he takes a sip of his beer and burps, “And ya know, I mean I don’t want to slice ya, some people are not ready, some people need time to surf on the POP! wave, I can give ya time before slice’n’dice and just teach ya the basics, dem principles and everything, ya can be like my student and I can be like zen-master Tangerine, and don’t worry, it ain’t like a scheme or something, I don’t need ya money or nothing. I just need some weed brudah, what do ya think if …”

[INSERT NAME] is mesmerized by this weird scruffy fella with a piece of tangerine peel on his forehead, pupils as wide as the night sky. Several friends have tried to drag him away but he can’t leave, he wants to know if there is anything that Kaptain Tangerine could actually do, if he is a divine being, if he even is a true lunatic and not an imposter. “Please, you can even be a street prophet, ghetto priest, a scum from the drench whose shit is so tight that it’s divine, just don’t be a fake-ass lier!” he tells himself.

Kaptain Tangerines ramblings go on and on, to the point that he takes his would-be disciple outside, to the parking lot where his beige rusty rape-van looking vehicle stands. He asks him to take something from the back of his van and opens the door, his disciple is ripe to follow him wherever and starts to climb into the van.

“What is wrong with ya? Ya meet a random crazy with a tangerine peel on his forehead, totally wasted, telling ya ramblings, and ya follow him to an empty parking lot and he asks ya to check something from his rape-van and ya go ahead and waltz right in? Dafuq is wrong with ya? Didn’t ya mama tell ya not to talk to strangers? I could be a serial killah who’d be fucking ya in ya eye-sockets …”

A flash of lightning hits the parking lot, but it’s not like the lighting that comes zig-zag-zig, it came like a beam straight from the heavens. Out of smoke and sparks a figure appears, a huge fellah with four wings, each one having flames instead of feathers. As he walks, the asphalt lits up behind him. His face is dreadful, fangs of a wild boar and skin green, gills on cheeks. He’s naked as fuck, and his dong swings from side to side as he strolls toward Kaptain Tangerine and [INSERT NAME].

“Kaptain Tangerine!” he shouts, “Your time is up, and I, Azreal, I’m gonna get as real as it gets with ya!”

“Oh-yeah? Watcha gonna do, dong me to death?” says Kaptain Tangerine, lights a cigarette and loiters on his rape-van.

“Ya bitch-ass junkie, I’m gonna fuck ya up, ya ass has been on the loose for too long!”

“So dongin’ yeah?” smirks Kaptain Tangerine.

“Fuck ya!” screams Azreal and wipes out a sword bigger than his dong.

“Delightful,” says Kaptain Tangerine, flicks his unfinished cigarette and wipes out his ax, “by the POP! Wave …”

“Fuck ya POP! wave, bitch I’m oldskuul and bepop is my rhytm!”

They jump at each other and the battle commences. Both the ax and sword are made from the thickest material on earth and anywhere else, from the melted skulls of white heterosexual middle-aged men, and both fighters have equal experience in battling—even though Kaptain Tangerine’s appearance is puny compared to Azreal. The first blow comes from …

[TO BE CONTINUED]

#literature #badliterature #kirjandus #Eesti kirjandus #eestikirjandus001 #pulp fiction #transgression #transgressive #hälbekirjandus

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magalarajoonideprohvetid · 5 years

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#eesti kirjandus #badliterature #kirjandus #literature #pulp fiction #autoethnography #eesti luule #ethnography #pulp #transgression #transgressive

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magalarajoonideprohvetid · 5 years

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3.08 algupärased inimesed ja sinisilmsed kuradid

Auväärsele Isand Fardile, ja tema prohvet Eelija Mohammedile.

Aasta on 9311 ning mööd randa ja mööd metsi kõnnivad uhkelt algupärased inimesed, põhimõtteliselt on nad samas kohas kus praegu on Mustamäel Lamekas ja Rahumäe kalmistu. Neid ei vaeva ei haigused ega mured, nende kogukonda ei vaeva ahnus ega sõjad. Algupärased inimesed teavad tasakaalu endas ning enda ja neid ümbritseva keskkonna vahel, nad on jumalad, õiglased ja ehtsad.

>Tuhandeid aastaid hiljem taastatud õppetunnid tõelisse usku algavad küsimusega, kes on algupärane inimene? Algupärane inimene, asiaatlik must inimene, Looja ja Omaja, on planeet Maa koorekiht, tsivilisatsiooni Isa, Universumi Jumal.>

Läbi lainete kimab tume raudlaev ning randub otse liivasel kaldaäärsel. Laeva vöörist avaneb luuk ning sellest kargavad välja kahvatud humanoidid, inimese sarnased olendid. Nende punetavates silmavalgetes kiirgavad sinised silmaiirised ja suunurkades vahutavad urinad, nad on siin, et tappa ja vallutada, nad on siin, et jätkata oma looja Jakuubi seatud eesmärke.

>Õppetund jätkub küsimusega kes on värvitud inimene? Värvitud inimene on kaukaaslane, valge inimene, Jakuubi poolt meisterdatud kurat, planeet Maa tõhk.>

Algupärased asiaatlikud mustad inimesed näevad neid mööd peenliiva ringi redutamas, peituvad metsadesse ning sosistavad algupärases keeles viimast korda jumalate sõnu, lauseid mis vaikivad seitsmeks aastatuhandeks sel pühal ja puhtal maal. Kahvatud sinisilmsed kuradid aga määrduvad mööd randa ja metsaääri, määrduvad oma sõnades ja tegudes, oma meisterdatud olemuses.

>Kes meisterdas kahvatud sinisilmsed kuradid? Jakuub meisterdas kahvatud sinisilmsed kuradid.>

Keegi ei saanud aru kuidas kurat võtaks need kuradid suutsid ümber terve subkontinendi siia kärutada, aga kuidagi see juhtus. Aasta oli 8400 kui suure peaga algupärane inimene Jakuub kolis Meka linnast Patmose saarele Egeuse meres ja hakkas seal kuradit meisterdama. Selle peale kulus 600 aastat kuni lõpuks sai ta valmis päris ehtsa kuradi. Seejärel pagendati teda koos oma meisterdustega sellele koobastega kaetud subkontinendile ning mööda rannaäärt jõudsid kuradid Patmoselt siia, proto-Lamekale.

Algupärased inimesed jagunesid oma mõtisklustes kahte leeri, osad otsustasid lahkuda ja osad jääda. Lahkujad läksid kaugemale, et kogeda oma jumalikkust veelgi huvitavamates keskkondades, keset jääkõrbeid seiklevad need algupärased inimesed. Jääjad soovisid kuradeid aidata naasta oma õigesse olekusse, kuradid aga oma kuue untsiliste ajudega ei saanud millestki aru.

>Kui kaua peab kurat õppima enne kui ta saab ennast kutsuda Moslemi pojaks ning kanda võimsaimat ja ainsat Universumi lippu? Kurat peab õppima 35 kuni 50 aastat enne kui ta saab kanda Püha Lippu, millel on Päike, Kuu ja Täht. Rohkem ei saa ma teile rääkida.>

#nationofislam #masterfard #kirjandus #Eesti kirjandus #eesti luule #literature #badliterature #divineliterature #divine #pulp fiction #nation of islam #nation of gods and earths

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magalarajoonideprohvetid · 6 years

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3.07 kaerahelbeke ja valge mehe rahvuspark

«Bljääd, maast lahti sitanikerdised!»

Aida ukseavast kiirgab silmipimestav valgus ja Vassili siluett selles kui raamitet.

«Bljääd, kukk juba ammu кукарекал ja te piderastõ magate siin hambad lahti. Bljääd, kui kaks minuti pärast köögis ei ole, siis kumminui perse, saab aru jobanõi uroodeh, ah?!»

Ägisedes ajavad kõhetund kogud end koikudelt maha ja lohistavad kuulekalt aidast välikööki. Päike ei ole veel kõrgel ja varjulistes kohtades katab maad härmatis. Valguse käes muutuvad kõhetud kogud veelgi hädisemaks, nende karvakasvand pead tunduvad ebapropotsionaalsete kapsastena, mis vaid imeväel püsivad luistel kehadel, mida katavad määrdunud ja rebenenud linassärgid. Paljasjalgselt seisavad nad köögi juures rivis, maa on külm ja nad püüavad salaja seista kord ühe, kord teise jala peal.

«Bljääd, ei niku seal nagu mingi piidrik, seisab kahe jala peal nagu valge jeesti mjees jah?» tunneb Vassili end lõbustatult seda nähes.

«Teate, jobikakud, ma loen palju viimasel ajal tjeie kohta, noh, tjeie jeestlaste. See mul nagu professionaalne huvi, teate?» kõnnib Vassili rivi ees aeglaselt edasi-tagasi. Tal on seljas vanglaameti vormiriietus, mille pükstetaskust päevalilleseemneid võttes ja neid mäludes tunneb ta end väga mugavalt kõhetunud kambale varahommikust loengut pidama.

«Eile õhtul lugesin ma vanainimeste мемуары, no kuidas nemad elasid ja kuidas karja käisid, bljääd öeldakse nii karja käisid jah? Teate, neil ei olnud ka ботинки, nu bljääd, kes see ostab lapsele ботинки, võibolla sureb ära ja mis sa siis teed nendega. Nemad ka hommikul vara ärkasid ja läksid lehmi karjamaale viima. Ja neil nii külm jalad, ja teate mis nemad teevad? Nemad pissivad maha ja siis seisavad seal peal, piss hea soe ja jalad ka soojad. Nii, täna hommik alates te tulete seisate rivi ja pissite ja siis seisate selle peal nagu vanad jeestlased tegid.»

Kõhetunud kujud vaatavad imestunult üksteise otsa ja seejärel Vassili poole.

«Bljääd, ei saanud aru jälle või?! Xуй püksist välja ja pissib raisk!»

Kõhetunud kujud kergitavad linaseid särke ja tirivad nokud auklikest trussikutest välja. Üksteise järgi on kuulda sorinat ning seejärel seisavad nad keset enda auravat kust. Paar vanemat meest aga jäävad seisma esialgsele kohale ning nende ees ei ole auravat kuseloiku.

«Nu bljääd Mart ja Ahto, nahui te ei oska pissida või?»

«Mul on eesnäärmega probleem, see on mu haigusloos ...» alustab Mart vabandamist.

«Mind vabsjee ei huvita sinu haigus, mitte kedagi ei huvita, mine söö rukkilill bljääd, hakkab parem urood või sureb ära! Jobanõi eesnääre, bljääd kumminui teeb sul eesnääre probleem,» silitab Vassili vööl ilutsevat musta kumminuia, mis nii mõnelegi kõhetunud kujule valusaid mälestusi meelde tuletab. Mart ja Ahto pingutavad nii, et higimull otsa ees, ja suudavad paar piiska kasteniiskele pinnasele kukutada. Kiirelt astuvad nad nende tilkade peale ja jäävad sõnakuulelikult seisma.

«Karotze, marss sjöma njüüd! Mul on jüks surpriis tjeile ka.»

«Kas me saame täna hommikusöögiks avokaadosid,” kilgab Ruuben, üks noorematest vangidest.

«Ole vait jobanõi gipster, sjööb kaerapudru mitte mingi javokaado,» röögib Vassili ja manab seejärel magusa naeratuse näole, «Hjelleriinil sai menstruatsjoon ljäbi, kes teist esimene läheb valge rass tegema?»

........

«Miks tuntakse viha, millest see tekitab? Need on küsimused, mis painavad inimkond, sest kaastunne, empaatia, ligimesearmastus, need muudavad meid inimesteks...»

«Tegelikult see ei ole see, mis muudab meid inimesteks, meid muudab inimesteks suurenenud mingi aju osa ning kognitiivsed oskused nagu näiteks rääkimine, see eristab meid teistest primaatidest?» kostub rahvahulgast.

Keegi rahvast turtsatab «konserv» ning mitmed tigedad näod hakkavad rahva seast otsima seda sotsiopaati, kes raudselt tahab oma sõpru vabadusse lasta. Oma imestuseks saavad nad aru, et see kes seda ütles, oli turbani ja vahvate vuntsidega sikh grupi tagaotsas.

«Ise oled konserv,» vastab ta turtsujale, «minu perekond kannatas ka tagakiusamiste käes, ma sain ise ükskord tänava peal kaerahelveste käest tappa. Aga ei ole mõtet mingit eetikat ja moraali teadusega segi ajada, rääkige nagu asi ja näitake, mis neist kriminaalidest saanud on!»

Giid teeb oma peas 180 kraadise pöörde ning pöördub taaskord kõigi turismigrupi liikmete poole:

«Lugupeetud külalised, tere tulemast Valge Mehe Rahvusparki. Nagu te teate, siis liikus meie ühiskond peale rahvuslikkonservatiivselt meelestatud erakonna võimuletulekut kiirelt totalitaarse mudeli poole. Mitmed vähemusgrupid ja -rahvused kannatasid repressioonide all, mitmed tolle hetkeni kehtinud inimõigused kaotati ning senini tekitab see inimestes imestust, kuidas sai see nii kiiresti toimuda. Eelnevalt mainitud moraal sai ühiskonna alustalaks ning selle all kannatasid ka näiteks loomeinimesed. Taamal näete kuulsat kunstitaiest «Lõtvunud fallos», selle looja, tänavakunstnik Esmalt on Tõmblus, sai seda vast kõige karmimalt tunda, kuna peale selle taiese installeerimist Vabadussamba juurde, kuulutas valitsus välja tõelise nõiajahi kunstniku tabamiseks. Peale tabamist mõisteti see kunstnik riigireetmise eest eluaegsesse vangistusse, ning vähe oli puudu sellest, et oleks taastatud surmanuhtlus. See ajajärk iseseisvas Eesti Vabariigis on saanud nime «Vaikiv ajastu 2.0». Aga sama kiirelt kui see algas, saabus ka selle lõpp. Vabas maailmas tulid taaskord avalikuks mitmed salajastatud dokumendid ning üheks neist olid idanaabri ja võimule pürginud erakonna juhi vahelised suhted. Sügavamale kaevudes saadi teada, et idanaaber omas erakonna juhi kohta kompromaati sellest ajast kui too idanaabrite juures viibis. Ning veelgi sügavamale kaevudes hakkas Esmalt on Tõmbluse taies hoopiski uut ja otsekohesemat tähendust omama. Sellest kõigest saate juba täpsemalt lugeda meie interaktiivses «Vaikiv ajastu 2.0» muuseumis uurida. Mis peale seda juhtus oli see, et rahvas sai toimunud mahhinatsioonidest teada ja tegelikest riigireeturitest koosnev valitsus kukutati, kahjuks ei toimunud see nagu eelmine kord lauldes, ning kõik kolm demokraatia märtrit jäävad meie iseseisva ja vaba riigi ajalukku igaveseks. Peale valitsuse kukutamist hoiti erakonna juhtfiguure Viru vangla poliitvangide osakonnas, mis oli loomulikult totalitaarse ühiskonna ajal enim kasvanud osakond, aga olukorra üldise absurdsuse foonil otsustati rajada Valge Mehe rahvuspark ning saata nad siia sunnitööle. Neile on tagatud elementaarsed vajadused elujäämiseks, ning samas saavad nad aidata kaasa kohalikule mahepõllundusele ja üldisele majanduse arengule piirkonnas, ning nagu näha tänase grupi suurusest, siis on sellest kohast abi ka siseturismi edendamisele.»

Grupist tõuseb käsi.

«Jaa, palun, küsige.»

«Kas me näeme ka neid ka ja kas neist võib pilti teha?»

«Loomulikult! Kohe lähme põllu peale ja siis võite pildistada palju tahate, eelmine grupp tegi isegi niiöelda sõbrapilte nendega, nad alguses võibolla puiklevad veidike, aga kui kommi või küpsist annate, siis on täitsa taltsad.»

Kõik grupiliikmed naeratavad ja tatsavad giidi järel põllu suunas.

........

Iga kaerahelves on eriline, alguses. Iga helbeke on omanäoline aga üldjoontes sama tooni, sama päritolu, samast seemnest, aga igaüks on eriline. alguses tundub iga kaerahelves karm ja kõva, nagu tõeline eestlane, valmis vastupidama meie raskele ilmale ja rängale saatusele. Kaerahelves on karm ja kõva, ning iga helbeke on eriline, kuni momendini, mil see helbeke saab kokku piimaga, elueliksiiriga, ning siis moondub iga karm ja kõva helbeke pehmeks ja mõnusaks plödiks, ühtlaseks pudrumassiks. See pudrumass ongi tõeline eestlus, selles pudrumassis saavad kaerahelbekesed tõelist eestlust kultiveerida, soojalt ja mõnusalt, #koos. Algul ollakse rõõmsad kui sinna torgatakse kõva tükk tõelist eesti taluvõid, see tükk penetreerub sooja pudrusse kui peigmees pruuti kauaoodatud pulmaööl, soe eestlus lõõmab kirest ning saab kohe esimesel korral orgasmi. Peale raputatakse suhkrut, pudrule meeldib see uus tehnoloogia, mis toob välja temast parima ning muudab ränga saatuse veidikegi magusamaks. Kõige lõpuks saabub kaneel, ja ta on küll väljamaalt aga tõeline pudru ei karda teda, enam, tõeline pudru on talle juba ammu nime and ja enda osaks võtt, ta on okei, peaasi, et teda massiliselt peale ei raputata. Ja siis aurab see pudrumassike mõnda aega ning variante on kaks, keegi tuleb ja sööb selle pudrukese ära, või jääb see pudruke seisma kuni tõmbab peale taaskord karmi kooriku, et selle kooriku all veelgi enam kõvastuda. Kui plödi tükike kukub kuskile pinnale, siis ta ka kõvastub seal ja jääbki nii sinna lebama, kõvalt ja karmilt, kuni tulen mina Chillit Bangi ja svammiga. Kui ta jääb kaussi, siis üks moment tuleb sinna peale hallitus ja siis ei ole temaga enam midagi teha. Põhiline kogu loo juures on see, et kaerahelbeke ei naase enam kunagi tagasi olema kaerahelbeke. Seeeest lumehelbeke, lumehelbeke sulab ära, aurab ära ja langeb kohe tagasi lumehelbekesena, iisi-biisi Pöial-Liisi.

#Eesti kirjandus #eestiluule001 #eesti keel #eesti luule #eestimeelne #rahvuslane #kaerahelbeke #lumehelbeke #transgression #transgressive #badliterature #literature #pulp fiction #pulp #imemuna

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magalarajoonideprohvetid · 6 years

Text

loits.jpg

...

tule ja pane käed peale

tule ja pane palved peale

tule ja pane sõnad peale

tule ja pane ennast peale

tule ja pane lihtsalt peale

tule üle liivadüünide

tule läbi vastuoluliste soovide

vigase ühiskonna, halbade käskude

läbi tule ja vee ja tapvate välkude

roni everesti tippu

ja ma sukeldun mariani sügavikku

su armastus on jumalik

su olemus on taevalik

sinu armastus on mu superdroog

su sõna on su käsk on mu soov

tulen 7000 miili sekkis

läbi kosmose täiesti pekkis

sissepõledes kuupmeeter ühes parsekis

oumaiallah ja wallah maijoo

vaheldumisi

lõpmatus multiversumis ei ole

väljamõeldisi

kirjuta pornhubi hairy‘n’hot ivory

istifanous esimene, hingega robot ori

tulen tevatroni kiirendis ja sa vastu

kokkupõrkel ühildu, sulandu, samastu

läbi stringide osakesteks ja tolmuks

algmaterjaliks, armastuseks

tule, ja ma panen käed peale

tule, ja ma panen palved peale

tule, ja ma panen sõnad peale

tule, ja ma panen ennast peale

tule, ja ma panen lihtsalt peale

tule, ja ma tulen ka

#luuletus #luule #luuletaja #eesti kirjandus #kirjandus #badliterature #pulp fiction #pulp #spells #loits #armastus #autoethnography #ethnography #transgression #transgressive #love

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magalarajoonideprohvetid · 6 years

Text

method.man

[...]

since september 2002:

autonomous one became two;

part of a wider scheme

laid down by master Kabiir

we have lived almost 1000 lives

and died at least 1000 times

relax, reflect

flex, reflect

relax, reflect

flex, reflect

screaming “takbir!”

i implode daily

so on the nuclear wasteland of Antumbra

mutated posthuman

can crawl through the wormhole

toward the absolute

as if one could ever become absolete

relax, reflect

flex, reflect

relax, reflect

flex, reflect

phenoo-menoo-noo-noo-noo...

my mistake in pronunciation

is caused by my emphasis on

phenomenon

it should be on both

the phenomenon and the logos

pheno-meno-logy

relax, reflect

flex, reflect

relax, reflect

flex, reflect

nomenclature can mean two things

to define is to name is to imprison

it is the thirdness i am after

the thirdness of all the dichotomies

the thirdness of fiction and of non-fiction

the thirdness of oneness and of plurality

the thirdness of thirdness and dichotomies

kaos

tohuvabohu

relax, reflect

flex, reflect

relax, reflect

flex, reflect

can submission be a methodology?

methods include prayers,

rituals, mind altering and mysticism

possible contributions from

hermeneutics and hereticism

i’ll leave it to you to reflect on

relax, flex, relax, flex

hold it

[...]

mustamäe 04/18

#poetry #poem #anthropology #methodology #methodman #autoethnography #luule #eestiluule001 #literature #badliterature

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magalarajoonideprohvetid · 6 years

Text

blackouts [transgressive anthropology]

«Wow! I thought the lights went out!» (sudden exclamation by prof. Carlo Cubero at Debates in Anthropology lecture on the 15th of March 2018)

This moment is embedded in my memory, an ultimate manifestation of honesty, said out loud with no restraints, the peak of the lecture, the peak of the whole course – a sudden darkness. I do not know about you but I have on several occasions felt a sudden blackout, like the blink of an eye and I am not sure – did I just blink, did the lights go out for a micro-second, did my brain shutdown for a second, did I have a stroke, did only I (not) see it? Usually I have had others around me to calm me down, «Yes, we saw it also, I think the electricity flickered for a moment.» Is it you, Niko, sending us inter-dimensional messages through your most known invention, chthonic news through alternative current? If there would not be electricity in our households, would I even be writing about this phenomena, is momentary blackout a ‘thing’ without the light bulb? Or am I writing about something completely different, the blackout our unconsciousness creates when our consciousness is not ready for the incoming message?

writing culture

If there are any dogmas in anthropology, it is the inclusion of fieldwork into the methodological frame - for it to count as anthropology, a researcher needs to step out of academia and come back with outsourced data. Yes, it is extremely valuable that there is something new added to the usual academics circular referencing, agency has been given to the unheard and original voices. But in the same time questions arises - what is and when is anthropology? Is it students reading the theories? Or is it anthropologist on the fieldsite? James Clifford analyzes the cover picture of Writing Culture, where Stephen Tyler is writing during his fieldwork:

«In this image the ethnographer hovers at the edge of the frame—faceless, almost extraterrestrial, a hand that writes. It is not the usual portrait of anthropological fieldwork. We are more accustomed to pictures of Margaret Mead exuberantly playing with children in Manus or questioning villagers in Bali. Participant observation, the classic formula for ethnographic work, leaves little room for texts.» (Clifford, 1)

This picture gives the impression than an anthropologist does everything in the field, he participates, observes and simultaneously writes. In reality the ‘real’ writing happens retrospectively, and that might be one of the biggest problems of anthropology – there is no anthropology of the present, the reproducible anthropology is classically done in the post-fieldwork stage. This is valid for both ethnographic writing and film, as both ‘texts’ are produced afterwards. Doing currently auto-fieldwork, being on ‘ramadan-mode’, I am deeply stressed as I cannot do much writing, my notes are scribbles bearing no great weight, I am too heavily influenced and too stuck in the actual experience to do any reflective writing. Vincent Crapanzano says similar things about Goethe’s experience of the carnival:

«A conventional Ash Wednesday meditation, perhaps, Goethe's conclusion marks are turn to contemplation, introspection, and concern for the meaning of what we do. His “return” parallels a return in the ceremony he describes. During the carnival there is no reflection, just play, masquerading, and, as we say nowadays, acting out. With Ash Wednesday begins a period of penitence, and, we must presume, a return to introspection, order, and individuality.» (Crapanzano, 68)

After the experience thou, the author becomes active and starts to describe the lived experiences; how the description is done, how it is reflected and to whom it is directed, that depends on the author. Crapanzano describes the ethnographic encounters of George Caitlin with the Mandan tribe in North America and their initiation rituals of O-Kee-Pa:

«Here Catlin moves from his (objectifying) metaphorical perspective to that of the tortured; despite this move, his intention is not phenomenological, but rhetorical: He does not describe either the Indian's or his own experience of the torture. The «imps and demons as they appear» (to whom? to Catlin? to the Mandan?) is stylistically equivalent to «there is no hope of escape from it.» They are directed to the reader, and it is the reader's reaction that will guarantee Catlin's perceptions.» (Crapanzano, 57)

So Caitlin’s intention was to captivate the reader, to tell the story in a way that it works specifically on the reader, it is not him nor Native Americans in the story he has written, it is the reader he is trying to drag into the story. In Caitlin’s case, the author is playing around with the reader’s morality and the reader’s possible endeavor toward morality. Crapanzano gives another example, where the author is more inclined to play on the ‘dirty’ thoughts of the reader by using contemporary puns:

«The title of Clifford Geertz’s essay «Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight,» written about the time the film Deep Throat was all the rage, announces a series of erotic puns—puns, Geertz maintains, the Balinese themselves would understand—used throughout his essay. Puns are frequent in ethnography. They position the ethnographer between his world of primary orientation, his reader's world, and the world of those others, the people he has studied, whom at some level, I believe, he is also addressing (Crapanzano 1977a). Through the pun he appeals collusively to the members of one or the other world, usually the world of his readership, there by creating a hierarchical relationship between them. He himself, the punster, mediates between these worlds.» (Crapanzano, 68-69)

Crapanzano’s general theme for the article in Writing Culture is anthropologist/ethnographer as god Hermes, someone who is always bringing messages, someone who is a translator between ‘gods’ and ‘humans’, but whose messages might not contain the whole truth, they (singular!) might be lying for the sake of themself, the informants or for the sake of the readers, they needs to make a convincing case (Ibid, 52).

transgressive fiction

If I have to name three books from high school that really influenced me (both literally and literary), then these books were not and most probably will not be in the obligatory reading list. Two of them were loaned to me by friends, they had read them and suggested that I would be interested – Dead Babies by Amis Martin and The Beach by Alex Garland. Both stories travel in closed communities where sex and drug usage is common among the characters, where atrocities happen to them, and in general the environment of the book, its locus is a degenerate one. If one is to make charts, then Dead Babies is in my opinion a few grades more on the transgressive fiction side than The Beach. Now the third book was Check-out by Estonian author Kaur Kender, the first and last book in Estonia that has had «PARENTAL ADVISORY EXPLICIT CONTENT» sticker on it (only for advertisement reasons, there has not yet been such restrictions in the literary scene). The protagonist of this book is a filthy rich business-man, whose main efforts in life revolve around fornication and intoxication, both fueled by boredom and leading to the humiliation of others as he is capable to do whatever he wants with other people, it is self-destruction and liberation, mirroring society back at itself. Having grown up watching movies like Pulp Fiction and Dobermann, where protagonists are the ‘baddest’ on the conventional moral and ethical paradigm but in the same time there is something likable about them, they stand on the right side of life whilst doing bad things, Check-out did come as a shocker because there was nothing good about the main character, he was utterly bad, none of that misunderstood Robin Hood type of ‘badness’. For the first time I had been transgressed by the author, and I transgressed into the character. In retrospective Kender has said (heard it on a public event of the re-release of the Check-out in 2016), that the character was based on the stories he had witnessed and heard of local businessmen, and of his own alcohol and drug addictions (especially the ending of the book, where the protagonist starts using heroin). His book was based on participant observations and autoethnographical method.

Chuck Palahniuk is most known for his novel Fight Club, made famous by movie adaption and Brad Pitts’ six-packs’. I have not read that novel but I have read Haunted by Palahniuk (that one also has a PARENTAL ADVISORY sticker on the cover, Kender’s book was released almost a decade earlier). It tells the story of a group of people who apply for an experimental creative writing course and are then locked up in an abandoned art-house cinema. Every chapter consists of a poem about the main character of that chapter, a story of her/his origin, and a part of the main narrative with her/him as the leading character in it. The first chapter tells the story of a character named Saint Gut-Free, it consists of three different stories about ‘masturbation gone wrong’, onanism that might have killed the onanists. On page 17 of this 400 page modern horror story I have a blackout, the story becomes so disturbing, so real in my head, every word brings me closer to the conclusion of the story, and in my mind I already know where it is leading, Palahniuk has given enough hints, there is no happy ending, and every word brings it closer and my heart is rushing and I feel noxious… I blackout, I skip a paragraph (of course I read it later), I calm myself and continue reading. Palahniuk writes in the afterword a longer explanation how this story came to life, and how the reception has been so far. We tend to hope that the craziest stories are not the ones taken from real life, that these are made up, the fruit of fantasy. Palahniuk ruins the illusion the same way Kender did:

«No, this week, my writer friends just laughed, and I told them how the three-act story of ‘Guts’ was based on three true anecdotes. Two had happened to friends, and the last had happened to a man I’d met while attending sex addict support groups to research my fourth novel. They were three funny, gradually more upsetting true stories about experiments with masturbation gone wrong. Horribly wrong. Nightmarishly wrong.» (Palahniuk, 407)

Without mudding the water, I say out that in my opinion he was performing a participant observation, he, as many other writers, are ethnographers without the academia and without theory. Palahniuk’s emphasis is not on the credibility, it is on style and on affect:

«Reading ‘Guts’ takes a full head of steam. You don’t get many moments to look up from the page. But when I did, the faces in the front row looked a little gray. Beyond that were questions and answers. The book signing. The End.

It wasn’t until I’d signed the last book that a clerk said two people had fainted. Two young men. They’d both dropped to the concrete floor during ‘Guts’ but they were fine now, with no memory of anything between standing, listening, and waking up surrounded by people’s feet.» (Ibid, 408)

I could have been one of these two fainters, or at least fluctuating between consciousness and blackout. The main question for me is in the affect of the text, how something that is usually considered ‘unreal’ can make us feel physically sick?

transgressive ethnography

In a way, ethnographers have always written transgressive texts, most of the texts describe social norms and activities very different from the one of the audience of these texts. One of the dogmas for transgressive fiction is that the protagonist emerges through the violations of norms as a free(er) individual. One way of describing anthropologist is that they are like translators, who translate different cultures to an understandable format (as a colonialist discipline it used to be for the Europeans but things should have changed?). Another way of describing anthropologists is not so much as an interpreter but an inventor, s/he invents a culture, dogmatizes its principles into an ethnographic ‘holy book’, how this culture should be, has been, and will be, not understanding that it is not how it used to be, that is not how every single person inside that environment and/or space relates to that culture, and people do not have to spend their lives fulfilling the dogmas set in the ethnographer’s ‘holy scripture’ (most probably half a year later there will be a missionary there and everyone is wearing pants and singing songs of our Saviour Jesus). Vincent Crapanzano unites these two description into one:

«Like translation, ethnography is also a somewhat provisional way of coming to terms with the foreignness of languages – of cultures and societies. The ethnographer does not, however, translate texts the way translator does. He must first produce them.» (Crapanzano, 51)

Lets take for instance the infamous case of Margaret Mead and the Samoans. As we know by now, Margaret Mead went to do fieldwork with Samoan, came back and wrote an awesome ethnography on how Samoan teenage girls are sexually liberated. Derek Freeman waits a few years after Margaret Mead’s death, publishes a book on how she was wrong and that Samoans have actually very strict rules for sexual conduct. Now, there are several interpretations for this controversy, and explanations, some of them, like Paul Shankman’s The History of Samoan Sexual Conduct and the Mead-Freeman Controversy gives more ambivalent interpretation to the sexual norms and behaviors in Samoa (Shankman 1996). It could be possible that both Mead and Freeman just saw different sides of the same society, if there only would not be this moment when one of Mead’s informants tells a retrospective view of the incident:

«Yes she asked us what we did after dark. We girls would pinch each other and tell her that we were out with the boys. We were only joking but she took it seriously. As you know Samoan girls are terrific liars and love making fun of people but Margaret thought it was all true.» (Heimans 1988, 3:36)

So what did she do – ‘translate’ the culture in the wrong way, had wrong data, or maybe she was in a way creating something the readers wanted to hear? Looking at both Mead and Palahniuk I must come to the following conclusions: Samoans lied and we were happy, Palahniuk presumably told the truth and it is disgusting. We as readers, we like to read about ‘sexually liberated’ women, and Samoan girls played that role in Mead’s ethnography really well. In a way, Mead’s ethnography tells more about her own society and herself than about the Samoans, she was giving liberation to the Western world and to herself.

In a discussion about transgressive fiction, we cannot continue without talking about Untitled 12, a modern horror story by Kaur Kender, where the first person protagonist is a pedophile (and sadistic sexual pervert in general). I read the whole story on Nihilist.fm on the night it came out and it was a devastating experience, I skipped parts of it as I was not capable to read even the obviously exaggerated and absurd descriptions of sexual violence, I felt hollowed after that experience, and that was something he wished to accomplish (Kender 2015). What happened was that someone reported to the police, that it might be child pornography (Estonian laws include a very wide range of material from pictures and videos to written text as it might depict underage children in pornographic situations), and police went after it. It was taken to court and got media coverage even outside of Estonia (as it is not usual any longer in Western societies that known writers have been taken to court for these specific charges) (ERR 2017). In the end he was declared innocent by two levels of court, and has since then left Estonia with a promise to never write in Estonian again. But what was very interesting with this case was the possibilities for alternative situations and how would they have been perceived. For instance, if it would have been someone’s personal experiences, someone who had been raped as a child and if that someone writes about this experience with graphic details, could that be also considered child pornography? Or if someone describes their sexual experience as a minor (depending on the explanation of the Penal Code it could be either under 14 or 18 years old), could that be considered child pornography? As a reader, was I consuming unknowingly child pornography if Kender would have been found quilty? These may sound as hypothetical questions, but if one is active in literary world (both as producer and consumer) then these questions become rather substantial.

Untitled 12 is made up, it is fictional, and from this fictional world it became very realistic, I was in court during a few of the open hearings and those benches, the jury and the prosecutor, they were all very real. But how is this all connected to anthropology? In some cases anthropologist are not the good guys, friendly scientist, who participate with respect and observe with sincerity. For instance José Padilha’s documentary Secrets of the Tribe deals with several controversial incidents what different anthropologist researching Yanomami tribe had caused. One of these anthropologist was Jacques Lizot, who according to his victims had raped and sexually abused several young Yanomami boys (Padilha, 42:44-55:08). This was known by other anthropologist and researchers, but it was overlooked for many years and until today there has been no court cases nor other serious consequences for his real transgressions. He transgressed in real life, not in a fictional world, his victims are real human beings and not made up characters. His contribution to anthropology? Yanomami dictionary, with specific terms for sexual activities like masturbation etc.

Lizot case is a real pedophilia case, this kind of behavior is not accepted in the current Western society nor in Yanomami society, it is a taboo. Gilbert Herdt’s case is a little bit different, but the similarities reside in the transgression, in his case it is the witnessing and writing part what matters. Herdt has done fieldwork with the ‘Sambia’ tribe (pseudoneum he created for the tribe) in Papua New Guinea and has published several articles on them and a collection of these articles Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays From the Field (Herdt, 1999). The Sambia tribe used to have a rather controversial initiation rituals for young boys (current situation with these rituals is unknown for me) – they were taken from their mothers at age 9, put through painful purification ritual of bloodletting from the nose, and then forced to perform oral sex on older boys. Later on they become the boys who receive oral sex, and after that they become adult man who will marry a woman and presumably only participate in heterosexual activity. Reasoning behind the ritual is that the bloodletting will purify them from the attachment to their mother (and women in general), and that men are born without semen and to have semen one has to digest semen. Herdt seems to view these rituals from a less negative stance, as a form of bisexuality and gives agency to free sexual desires. James Giles, who has written a review of Herdt’s book, is less enthusiastic about it and clearly questions the rituals as in his opinion they are not connected to desire at all:

«… sexual behavior can be engaged in for numerous reasons, many of which have nothing to do with sexual desire (Giles, 2004). This fact is especially important to be aware of when one is studying the sexual desires of people from a sexually nonpermissive and prescriptive culture like that of the Sambia.» (Giles, 2004, 414)

Now my point is neither condemning of Sambian rituals nor Herdt’s presentation and analyze of them, my point lies much more in the product, in the ethnography. If an anthropologist writes on a similar topic, something that is in generally considered a taboo topic, that s/he describes with graphic details, then there is a chance, at least in Estonia, that someone might complain to the police, as was the case with Kender’s book. Police will then forward it to the “Porn-committee”, expert committee in Ministry of Culture, who will then decide if it is pornographic or not. We might say “But this is science and it is protected by the constitution”, but this was also the case with Kender – both are protected by the constitution:

«§ 38. Science and art and their teachings are free. Universities and research institutions are autonomous within the limits prescribed by the law.» (The Constitution of the Republic of Estonia)

What is problematic, is the Penal Code, definition of child pornography is rather broad and thus it can include different forms of it:

«§ 178. Manufacture of works involving child pornography or making child pornography available

(1) Manufacture, acquisition or storing, handing over, displaying or making available to another person in any other manner of pictures, writings or other works or reproductions of works depicting a person of less than eighteen years of age in a pornographic situation, or a person of less than fourteen years of age in a pornographic or erotic situation, is punishable by a pecuniary punishment or up to three years’ imprisonment.» (Penal Code)

I have been so far talking only in the context of written text, most probably the situation becomes more difficult if the text includes pictures, Allah forbid if it is not text but a film. In case it includes pictures, or if it is a film, then we have a serious ethical and moral problem, and that is not even connected to the child pornography laws. It is a question for us anthropologist, can we and should we show visual data to others, are we abusing the right for privacy, are we exploiting our informants? A great friend of mine had a self-made zine which he called National Pornographic, he had taken old National Geographic editions, cut out all pictures of naked ‘indigenous’ people and glued them together with added sensual texts. He did it purposely to show how Western society has sexualized the ‘natives’, how their breasts and nipples can be shown without censoring, as if the same rules do not apply to ‘them’ as do to ‘us’. National Geographic is a safe haven for monsters like Lizot.

[non]clusion

There are occasions when anthropologists truly transgress. And there are occasions when anthropologists write truly transgressive ethnographies. Unfortunately it usually happens after they themselves have been transgressed. Such is the case when reading Eva Moreno’s chapter Rape in the field in collection Taboo: Sex, Identity, and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork (Moreno 1995). First, and basically the foremost, she builds the story (ibid. 219-232), like the rapist built the assault on her, she builds it the same way as Palahniuk built his story, the reader is obviously hinted from the title that there will be rape but she is calmly leading the reader toward the rape, adding with the suspension until one fatal page she hits us with it. And I do blackout again, skipping paragraphs ashamed as I have a privilege to do it, she did not have a chance to skip it. The reflection part of the chapter (Ibid, 236-248) adds other layers, it elongates the rape but in a weird way calms the reader as you will see the surviving after the rape. I do not know her feelings about the chapter and writing it, but it does feel as if she has done something that is more on the positive side than on the negative one, that this text has been written with traumatic emancipation.

What seems to be essential in this inner discussion is the role of the author. These texts (both literary and audiovisual ones) would not exist without the author, people and culture and practices and incidents would abide in their own realm as they are, but these texts need the author. And as much as these texts need the author, so does the author need the texts, it is a validation of their experience. Having just finished Michael Muhammad Knight’s Osama Van Halen, sequel for his debut novel Taqwacores, I feel compelled to do something with the author. Knight’s take on the author was that he included himself as character into a fictional story, as Michael Muhammad Knight and as ‘the author’, he tossed himself around in the novel until he is beheaded by one of the main characters, by ‘burqa wearing riot grrrl’ Rabeya (Knight 2009, 207). Is the symbolical beheading of the discipline, the removal of the ‘mind’ and revival of the body, is that something that I am after as an author? Sometimes we need to blackout to flashin.

«Sun set a few hours ago, and moon is not around. Sky is striped with clouds, stratocumulus and stratus clouds, altocumulus and altostratus clouds, they are all there. Midnight prayer was already 2 hours ago and I look on horizon as the rays of dawn shine there. Smoke diffuses and the bud drops in the ashtray, I recede to lay on my bed and to watch the first season of Narcos. As the violence on screen escalates, I have doubts in my sanity, I think I am hallucinating as I continuously see flashes of lightning outside of my window. Delusions were happening already on the first week of Ramadan, I saw glimpses of movement, small swirls of energy in midair, flashes of something from the corner of my eye. Today there is lightning I see from the corner of my eye, moments of flash/ins instead of black/outs. It’s not raining and the clouds are not dark, air doesn’t feel as it has been electrified to that extent. Kristi is sleeping and I can’t get verification from anyone. After the first flash I think maybe it was some kind of trick my mind played on me, after second one I think maybe it was a reflection from TV, after the third one I assume it was an ambulance car light (I live next to a hospital). After the fourth and final flash I am afraid to look out from the window, instead I drink my last glass of water and pray dawn prayer. 17th day of Ramadan has a weird start. As I fall to sleep, I hear the rain arriving, it sooths my fears of going insane. I saw the lightning and heard the rain, but I didn’t hear the thunder nor see the drops.» (Fieldwork notes; 17th of Ramadan, 1439 / 2nd of June, 2018)

References

Clifford, James. 1986. Introduction: Partial Truths. In James Clifford & George E. Marcus (Eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography ( 1 – 27 ). Berkeley, California and London, England: University of California Press.

The Constitution of the Republic of Estonia.

Retrieved June 5, 2018 from

https://www.riigiteataja.ee/en/eli/530102013003/consolide

Crapanzano, Vincent. 1986. Hermes’ Dilemma: The Masking of Subversion in Ethnographic Description. In James Clifford & George E. Marcus (Eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (pages of chapter). Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

ERR. 2016. Finnish PEN club: Kender’s ‘U12’ is a ‘grotesque thriller’, not child porn. Eesti Rahvusringhääling (ERR). Retrieved June 5, 2018 from https://news.err.ee/118569/finnish-pen-club-kender-s-u12-is-a-grotesque-thriller-not-child-porn

Garland, Alex. 1999. Rand [The Beach] (Turu, Rein, Trans.). Tallinn, Estonia: Varrak.

Giles, James. 2004. Book Reviews: Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays From the Field. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 33(4), 413–417.

Heimans, Frank (Director). 1988. Margaret Mead and Samoa [Documentary]. Cremorne, New South Wales: Cinetel Productions. Retrieved June 5, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8puR-AaSrg

Herdt, Gilbert. 1999. Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays From the Field. Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

Kender, Kaur. 2001. Check out. Tallinn, Estonia: Pegasus.

Kender, Kaur. 2015, January 14. Mõned sõnad Untitled 12 kohta [Few words about Untitled 12] [Web log post]. Retrieved June 5, 2018 from http://nihilist.fm/moned-sonad-untitled-12-kohta/

Kender, Kaur. 2014. Untitled 12. Nihilist.Fm : ZA/UM

Knight, Michael Muhammad. 2009. Osama Van Halen. Brooklyn, New York: Soft Skull Press

Martin, Amis. 2000. Surnud lapsed [Dead Babies] (Metsaots, Kati, Trans.). Tallinn, Estonia: Olion.

Moreno, Eva. 1995. Rape in the field. In Don Kulick & Margaret Willson (Eds.), Taboo: Sex, identity, and erotic subjectivity in anthropological fieldwork. London, England: Routledge.

Padilha, José (Director). 2010. Secrets of the Tribe [Documentary]. Brazil: Avenue B Productions Zazen Produções. Retrieved June 5, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd7SXbsn0hU

Palahniuk, Chuck. 2006. Haunted. London, England: Vintage Books.

Penal Code of the Republic of Estonia. Retrieved June 5, 2018 from https://www.riigiteataja.ee/en/eli/522012015002/consolide

Shankman, Paul. 1996. The History of Samoan Sexual Conduct and the Mead-Freeman Controversy. American Anthropologist, 98(3), 555-567.

#anthropology #transgressive #transgression #autoethnography #literature #eesti kirjandus #kirjandus #ethnography

6 notes · View notes

magalarajoonideprohvetid · 6 years

Text

vares

:>>

pistke uretrasse endal see kuradima astmeline

tulumaks

pistke anusesse j6ks, reps ja saks

ma ei taha yhtki maksu ega poliitikut

sa jajjaa tee edasi oma kriitikat

keda kotib, et mu romaan ei ole romaan

igalpool kuhu vaatan näen potentsiaal

nautige s6jaeelset dekadentsi

algamas on uus hooaeg saatesarjal

“maailm otsib presidenti”

k2i perse

pista pokemon perse

pista telefon perse

tee pilti ja rippa yles

filtriga justkui oleksid hyljes

ytle, et oled normaalne

et su prunn on aint nasaalne

ei saa aru v6i? ma olen hull

jajjaa, mul on “aega” sulle null

küsi kas ma teen seda iga p2ev

vastan tihti aa selleks vaeva n2en

see ei ole see, et “ou vaata mind”

vaid ait2h, et su aega peatasin

ainsat naudingut toob kunst

lambakari aja maha vunts

movember on eesn22re mitte stash

sa ei ole tommy cash

n2ed v2lja nagu pedo

anna k6igile kredo

-tyra, keegi ei plaksuta-

emodži pärakusse see p8ial

käi paraadnas kanyylisaial

ifriidilt suitsule tuld palu

ole lõpuks maailma kuldvalu

kohe varsti on s6da

must must s6da

aa me liugleme radari all

hall maa. hall taevas. hallhall

svjuuuuuuuhh!!!

stratosf22ri pystloodis

sa n2ed meid aint kajalokatsioonis

must keset mustust.

k6ik n2itavad ust

must lipp. must meel

must-must ja veel

must sydametunnistus

must usk. must unistus

me oleme must blok

ja meist tehakse alles peale 3ndat s6da dokk

-tyra, keegi ei plaksuta-

mustam2e, 02/17

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magalarajoonideprohvetid · 6 years

Text

axis mundi

“Literature is black letters on white paper. It is like a system that does things with our heads and with our thoughts, and in literature… Literature is needed to talk about things that cannot be addressed in journalism. We are like utterly naive if we think that we can talk about anything in newspapers, actually we can’t. Enormous field of human activity, especially things which are the craziest and the most intimate, their place is only in literature, some things only in poetry.” (Kender 2017, 16:20-16:50)

“It’s 1:42 AM and freshly asphalted road underneath Tammsaare/Järvevana viaduct is sprawling in front of me. Tires chirr on fresh asphalt, and thou the rear wheel is wobbly [in Estonian ‘in eight’, as ‘bending circle into eight’, bending Ouroboros into infinity symbol] and chain covered with dirt, my bicycle scampers surprisingly fast. Today was the last tarawih prayer; I am glad that I was present. It was good, good for my body, soul and mind; they needed it. An hour and half of praying, four raka‘āts of evening prayer and twenty four raka‘āts of tarawih prayer. An hour and half out of that four hours, during which I could have been consuming, eating and drinking. Penultimate sacrifice before the end of the lunar-month. Last time I saw the moon crescent was seven days ago. Clouds were slicing it horizontally into pieces. Now I can’t see it anywhere. The moon is dead. Dead to be born again. And the circle starts again.” (Vihalem 2016, 96-97)

Poetry is alive on that moment when I am compiling it, when I am uttering it, when I am writing it down. It has a beginning in my mind, a moment when the first letters are combined into a word, and thus has an end, that end comes with the last thought, the last breath and thelast stroke. It is revoked, revived by You as You relive and repeat these words of mine. For Islam, as a socio-cultural religious phenomenon, the beginning is in the body of prophet Muhammad, trembling in awe in a cave as an ethereal entity identified as an archangel Jibra’il commands him to “Read!”, and thus he relives the divine book in an earthly format. Fourteen hundred years later and the same words have been rendered through time and space, through billions of bodies in thousands of environments, repeated to be reiterated and reenacted in the Hyperborea of Anthropocene.

In the “embodied religion” chapter I am explaining [not yet finished chapter, I have circulated the research plan draft with snippets of this chapter in previous MA seminars] how word ‘islam’ has been used in noun form and the emphasis should be rather on the verb form, the acts and performance matter more than collective unification, and simultaneous exclusion of the collective ‘other’, of the concept. I am drawn back to self-reflection on word ‘islam’ as I read Michael Muhammad Knight’s Taqwacores, where he makes a case for more ambiguous definition of the word:

“Inevitably I reached the understanding that this word ‘punk’ does not mean anything tangible like ‘tree’ or ‘car’. Rather, punk is like a flag; an open symbol, it only means what people believe it means. There was a time in China when red traffic lights meant ‘go.’ How would you begin to argue?

I stopped trying to define Punk around the same time I stopped trying to define Islam. They aren’t so far removed as you’d think. Both began in tremendous bursts of truth and vitality but seem to have lost something along the way–the energy, perhaps, that comes with knowing the world has never seen such positive force and fury and never would again. Both have suffered from sell-outs and hypocrites, but also from true believers whose devotion had crippled their creative drive. Both are viewed by outsiders as unified, cohesive communities when nothing can be further from the truth.

I could go on but the most important similarity is that like Punk as mentioned above, Islam is itself a flag, an open symbol representing not things, but ideas. You cannot hold Punk or Islam in your hands. So what could they mean besides what you want them to?” (Knight 2004, 7)

It does start to feel as if I should go into talking about an abstract concept, much like the state or nation, enigmatic in its essence, something that we cannot touch but what can touch us, concepts where our contribution feels unrecognizable and concepts which affects us in unmeasurable ways. It is not the concept that affects us, it us ourselves who become affected through reliving it, may it be through rituals or relations, through retrospection or imminent experience. Besides ‘islam’, also prophet Muhammad has been rendered through time and space into a symbol, there are his companions who knew him as a living human being, but for most of the believers he is as mythical as archangel Jibra’il. Knight writes in Why I am a Salafi about the ḥadīth corpus and the Companions (Knight 2015, 97-134), people who lived during and next to prophet Muhammad, people who accompanied him. That timespan is called qarn, a generation which lived during and after the Prophet. Concept itself is of course more ambivalent and can signify multiple things (ibid, 104-108), but more important is that both of these concepts, companion and qarn, are cultural constructions and they can transmute in time. Thus there are multiple layers, curtains between me and him, multiple translators and transmitters, creating him into a myth as Michael Jackson describes in Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Ethnographic Project:

“No life is sufficient unto itself. A person is singular only in the sense in which astronomers use the term: a relative point in space and time where invisible forces become fleetingly visible. Our lives belong to others as well as to ourselves. Just as the stars at night are set in imperceptible galaxies, so our lives flicker and fail in the dark streams of history, fate, and genealogy. One might say that we are each given three lives. First is our conscious incarnation, occupying most of the space between our birth and death. Second is our existence in the hearts and minds of others - a life that precedes the moment of our birth and extends beyond our death for as long as we are remembered. Finally there is our afterlife as a barely recognized name, a persona, a figure in myth. And this existence begins with the death of the last person who knew us in life.” (Jackson 1997, 137)

I am left alone in the Hyperborea, from beginning until the end, and he is in the stories, in traditions, simultaneously expanding into multiple identities and rounded off to polished action figure1 in the heads of descendants. I am left with divine words, uttered and believed in his times in unwritten, in verbal format, divine words laid down in a post-prophetic medium. I am left with words whose meaning is as fluid as the concepts of language and culture, mutating with every generation and contact, exposures that cannot be eliminated as they have kept it alive.

If looking new religions, then it is possible to get a glimpse of that ‘golden age’ of prophetic times, times when one could have a direct relationship with the Prophet. Disciples of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (known also by his later name Osho) had an opportunity to meet their ‘prophet’2 and interviews with them show that close intimacy they encountered. Ma Anand Sheela, Bhagwan’s personal secretary between 1981-85, describes the first time she saw Bhagwan as follows:

“And then, all I realized that tears were rolling through my cheeks. I saw this smile and these open arms. And I just went into his arms. And my whole head melted. It was in this moment… if death would have come… I accept. My life was complete. My life was fulfilled.” (Way, C. & Way, M. 2018, 14:32-15:28)

On the third day in Mecca, in 2013, after completing umrah, pilgrimage, on the first day, after wondering around the city on second day, and disorientately landing back at the center of the universe, next to the House of God, Ka’ba, I sat and observed. Thousands of people, from the Americas to Japan, from South Africa to Finland (representatives from beyond the Hyperborea), the whole known world was performing tawaf, circling around Ka’ba. It was right before afternoon prayer time, right before asr, and between the first call to prayer, adhan, and the second one summoning to line up, iqama, in between there was this moment I had been hoping for, moment of enlightenment, of clarity. Circling slowed down and the whole mass of people was quiet, most probably it was myself who slowed down and stopped hearing. I looked up and saw birds flying between the columns built by Ottoman emperor. Marble stone under me was cooling and I looked over the Al-Masjid Al-Ḥarām. Someone had told me that praying there equaled of 100,000 prayers, but that did not matter on that moment, what mattered was that I felt also fulfillment, I felt exactly the same as Ma Anand Sheela, I could just die right there at that moment. I felt forgiveness and acceptance, I was in ultimate zero, no debts and no abundance, past erased and future unknown. That moment, I was there, definitely.

Can I say that this was a religious experience? And if yes, then what makes it a religious experience? Yes, I as a Muslim, I was in one of the holiest places, and I had performed a sacred rite and performed several mind altering rituals, I was knowingly loaded in a spiritual sense. But what if it had been a random place, random cube shaped house with random pillars with birds, what if I have no religious affiliation and it is just a special occasion, ‘nice moment in a scenic setting’? Michael Jackson stumbles on a similar problem in the preface of The Palm at the End of the Mind and finds solace in the concept of penumbra:

“I decided to turn my attention to those critical situations in life where we come up against the limits of language, the limits of our strength, the limits of our knowledge, yet are sometimes thrown open to new ways of understanding our being-in-the-world, new ways of connecting with others. Whether such border situations are quintessentially “religious,” “spiritual,” “historical;” “social,” or “biographical” may be beside the point, for though such terms help us describe the conditions of the possibility of our experience or help us retrospectively explain our experience to ourselves and to others, the meaning of all human experience remains ambiguous, containing within it both the seeds of its own comprehensibility and nuances and shadings that go beyond what can be comprehensively thought or said. To capture this sense of experience as occurring on the threshold between what can and cannot be entirely grasped- intellectually, linguistically, or practically - I use the image of the penumbral (from the Latin paene, almost + umbra, shadow) with its connotations of a phenomenologically indeterminate zone “between regions of complete shadow and complete illumination,” “an area in which something exists to a lesser or uncertain degree," and “an outlying or peripheral region.” I also take my cues from Wallace Stevens's late poem "Of Mere Being,” where "the palm at the end of the mind" stands “beyond thought,” on “the edge of space;” while a gold-feathered bird sings in the palm, “without human meaning, without human feeling, a foreign song.”” (Jackson 2009, xi-xiii)

This word, image, penumbra, it fell on my cornea in a most suitable time, I had been longing for a satisfactory word to describe the thirdness, the otherness; it came with the ‘added value’ of directly connecting it with incomprehensible human experiences, of “those critical situations” that we tend to emphasize in our autobiographical storytellings. It does not matter if it was a spiritual or religious experience, it was a defining moment in a humans’ life. It does not even matter if it truly happened, or it is a lie, we mix facts with fiction to create a grander coherence in our stories and thus grander reliability (Danesi & Perron 2005, 227). This chapter starts with one paragraph from ramadan.man story, it is quite obvious that I did not write it whilst cycling, I cycled, had a moment worth to be memorized, came home and lied on paper as if I am presently experiencing it. Why? To transgress. How? By setting my reader into that moment, I transgress into Your head. Using second-person singular, I transgress further. And it all started from transgression before it was recorded, it is I who transgressed in these penumbrial moments, inside myself. Knight says about his desire to make sense of Qur’ān’s content and to experience that as a divine message, that this: “has taken me from a straighforward “what the Author clearly intends” approach to a reader-centered approach that privileges me as the Qur’ān’s maker and owner.” (Knight 2015, 95)

Keenness for these moments is embedded in me, I am addicted to these moments, unconsciously and consciously lurking in penumbra, occasionally falling into antumbra for better view, encountering multiple personalities for literary exploitation. And these literary exploitation are adding more centripetal force to the inner tawaf, circulating around axis mundi to collect and to dispose the sacred, the hallowed moments. As Marcus Boon writes in the preface for Walter Benjamin’s On Hashish, both ‘literature’ and ‘drugs’ are in a sense obsoletes of our imagination:

“Since I've linked Benjamin so firmly to literature, I should point out that what he really intended to do with the notes he collected is highly unclear; and if we apply the term "literature" to this jumble of apparently scientific drug protocols, psychological fragments, philosophical observations, essays, short stories, and other generic oddities, this is in part because literature is where we place that which does not fit within the boundaries of traditional disciplines. The words "drugs" and "literature" in their modern senses emerge around the same time (circa 1800, with the Romantics). Both are concerned with the full manifestation of the power of the human imagination, with consciousness in its expanded sense, at a time of increasingly relentless utilitarianism. And both become conceptual garbage dumps where the apparently dangerous excesses of the imagination are shunted for disposal-places filled with an allure that is all the more intense because of the sense of the forbidden, of transgression, with which they are invested. What gets disposed of in these sites is not always treated with great discrimination.” (Benjamin, 7)

Expanding the epigraph, literature resides in the liminality, in chaos, so we could use it to express things we are afraid to say. Poetry is there, in the same chaos, to express things we are even afraid of thinking about. It is in the mist of tohuvabohu that I find my axis, it’s made of fire, ever-changing and neverlasting, hurting when tangible and dyeing if contained, not a substance but a process.

“Doubt. Doubt is constant. Doubt accompanies me constantly. I doubt in everything – in actions, principles, reality of my faith, existence of God, my own existence, societal norms, reality. Doubt is good. Doubt is an earthquake that destroys poorly built houses, to build new ones. Doubt makes the mind soft as crying makes the heart soft. Mind cannot harden, hardened mind is evil, it is not capable to have a dialogue.” (Vihalem 2016, 98-99)

United Autonomous Individuals

““I don’t love dead ones.” “You are not supposed to love dead ones. Living ones are for that.”” (Gorki, The Lower Depths [quotation as heard in a theater play, most probably incorrect in its wording, needs to be revised])

I am not left alone as I did not enter to Islam alone, I am a companion to an imam3 and a khateebah4, I am Stefanos, the first martyr of prophet Issa aka Jesus Christ (Acts 6-7). I must admit that there have been moments when I have tried to conceal the fact that my conversion was due to another human being, there had to be a divine, metaphysical reason, life-path leading me to become a Muslim. Same goes for my wife Kristi, out of modesty and of moral pressure which comes with converting someone, she does not want accept herself as the reason of my conversion. Yet, without her I would not be here as I am, with her I have experienced Islam as intimately as possible, Islam manifested to me in physical form. It has also created situation where emic and etic research is done simultaneously and alternately by both of us, we are each others informants. It has also created a situation where I cannot agree with neither individualist nor wider social relations based paradigms in analyzing Islam and Muslims, our close kinships and relationships speaks with much clearer voices.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

References

Benjamin, Walter. Translated by Howard Eiland and Others. 2006. On Hashish. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England

Danesi, Marcel & Perron, Paul. 2005. Kultuuride analüüs. Tallinn

Jackson, Michael. 1997. Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Ethnographic Project. University of Chicago Press. Chicago

Jackson, Michael. 2009. The Palm at the End of the Mind. Duke University Press. Durham and London

Kender, Kaur. 2017 Radio interview “Kaur Kender: palun vabandust, et ma ei palu vabandust” (“Kaur Kender: I am sorry, that I am not sorry”) https://kultuur.err.ee/596161/kaur-kender-palun-vabandust-et-ma-ei-palu-vabandust

Knight, Michael Muhammad. 2004. The Taqwacores. Soft Skull Press. Berkeley

Knight, Michael Muhammad. 2015. Why I am a Salafi. Soft Skull Press. Berkeley

Way, Chapman & Way, Maclain (Directors). 2018. Episode I [Television series episode]. In Wild Wild Country. Netflix

1Borrowing that metaphor from Knight, he describes Ibn Ḥanbal, ḥadīth scholar and founder of Ḥanbalī school, with this metaphor.

2Using the quotation marks not to ridicule nor to diminish Bhagwan, but to indicate it as a word, general term for holy men. He himself was against using word ‘religion’ to be used for his religious movement.

3Term for a priest in Islam, someone who is leading other in prayer.

4Female term for a sermon giver, someone who is giving a sermon for the ummah (congregation).

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