“Could we say … that the prioritization of form is detrimental—almost hostile—to the recollection of context? If we did, we would not be the first. Indeed, formal analysis has often been taken as an anti-political distraction or bourgeois salve for psyches incapable of grasping larger, more worldly contradictions: the small, beautiful thing has always been pitted by critical voices against the forgotten social reality. Still, it seems important to note that form is able to reduce and disarm our awareness of context only because awareness of context is so difficult to maintain; it depends on the comprehension of something intangible and hulking in the background, of that which necessarily exists outside the lines. And the rub: any overarching network of conditions—but especially those of global capitalism—is one we ourselves are implicated in and shaped by. We live and move in the same context that produces the forms we espy. No wonder we would rather see the form by itself. Isolated, it is a tiny and pleasurable thing, to be palmed and inspected. To zoom out, to see its environment and our place in it, would require us to see ourselves as if from a birds-eye view. Such an analysis—whether of political economy or the historical and personal meanings that lead to an aesthetic experience—renders us subordinate and part of something baggy and bigger than us.”
By Nadeem Mahjoub Documentary film-makers G. Troeller and M. C. Defarge once asked a cabinet minister in South Yemen, why socialistic ideas were so readily acceptable in that part of the Arab world. He replied: “Because we have been communists for a thousand years! My mother was Qarmatian.” Official Muslim scholars and clerics, and many so-called moderates (whether individuals or groups) oppose sedition ( fitna ). Tensions and contradictions in society should be solved peacefully and even if the ruler was unjust and impious, it is generally accepted he should still be obeyed, for any kind of order is better than anarchy and sedition. “The tyranny of a sultan for a hundred years causes less damage than one year’s tyranny exercised by the subjects against one another.” Revolt was justified only against a ruler who clearly went against the command of God and His prophet.” 1 Here we look at not what happened in the minds of people who call for calm, oppose dissent and preach the re...
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