Poetry and Consciousness In The Present

Hasib Hourani, Rock Flight (2024)

A Note on Theory  

Scholars of the Global North sometimes shelter themselves in neo-colonial positions when confronted with revolutionary praxis.   

 Oxford Professor Jane Hiddleston, in her book Poststructuralism and Postcoloniality: The Anxiety of Theory (2010), asserts that notable post-structuralist philosophers rarely intended their political critiques to materialise into action. Their texts, then, deserve to be read through an intellectual (artificial) separation of philosophy from politics:  

“[Post-structuralists’] goals at the outset were always philosophical rather than political and, indeed, there must be a space for philosophy independent of any practical political outcome. If Foucault argued that power was constructed and supported by the production and dissemination of knowledge, then these thinkers question the knowledge offered by their own writing practice and seek to invent not a programme of political resistance, but a way of theorising that refuses to appropriate the other.” [1]

Here, materialists are confronted with idealism. Hiddleston’s interpretation of Foucault separates his discourse analysis from the dialectical method consistent with critical theorists. Though in his debate against Noam Chomsky, Foucault explicitly links his critiques with political struggle:  

“It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions [...] and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.” [2]

We are left to question the veracity of Hiddleston’s proposition, as she indicates that Foucault’s critique simply aspires for a post-racial taxonomy. As people from the Global North, we must not obfuscate political resistance as a passive act in this way.   

In Saul Williams’ words, the responsibility of people from the Global North is to “crumble that empire from the inside”. [3] 

Poetic Critiques of Israel’s ‘Frictionless Occupation’  

Palestinian author Marwan Makhoul had a poem, ‘On Politics and Poetry’, become viral on various social media outlets. It reads:  

In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political,  

I must listen to the birds  

and in order to hear the birds  

the warplanes must be silent. [4]  

As Israeli technological developments aspire towards a “frictionless occupation”, [5] non-violence is postulated alongside the (im)possibility of “poetry that isn’t political”. In Antony Loewenstein’s words, as “the Global South has been controlled and pacified with (principally) Israeli and US weapons,” then a poetics of peacetime necessitates an end to the financial capitalist world system affording such violence. [6] More broadly, evolving poetic forms reciprocate the absurdity of algorithmic patterns inherent in software, through market volatilities or news broadcasts which capture (and profit from) continuing colonial violence in Palestine and the Global South.  

In his poem ‘one more’, [7] Lebanese-Palestinian author Hasib Hourani reiterates how financial capitalism and neo-colonialism are inextricable:  

hp  

provides  

maintains  

controls  

١* the identification system in israel [2]

٢* the control mechanism at checkpoints [3]

٣* administration for their navy’s IT infrastructure [4]

٤* digital storage systems for their illegal settlements [5]

———

[2] Who Profits, Technologies of Control: The Case of Hewlett Packard Stratified Identities: the new ID cards system” (Tel Aviv: Who Profits, 2011) 16–17 

[3] Who Profits, Technologies of Control “OK Computer: the Basel biometric checkpoint system” 9–11 

[4] Who Profits, Technologies of Control “Smart Occupation: HP’s contracts with the Israeli army” 20–22 

[5] Who Profits, Technologies of Control “aiNo boundaries: HP’s activities in the Israeli settlements” 25 

Contrastingly, Edward Said in his book The Question of Palestine (1979) emphasises the epistemological contention between Israeli and Palestinian presences; that “Palestine [sic] too is also an interpretation, one with much less continuity and prestige than Israel”. [8] Hourani’s poem signifies a contextual shift in literary representations of Palestinian resistance; embedded in the internationalist and materialist logic of anti-colonial struggle. [9] 

Australian Mardi Gras and Settler-Colonialism  

Wiradjuri poet and artist Jazz Money’s poem ‘mardi gras rainbow dreaming’ continues the anti-colonial, anti-capitalist critiques of Makhoul and Hourani’s texts in the context of Australia:  

༼ つ ✿◕‿◕✿༽つ (‿ˠ‿)  

the BWS is now a BWyaasssssS as in yass queen as in yasssss gay pride as in yass we co-opted this lingo from black queer communities on the other side of the world as in BeerWineSpirits is now a place to drink down some black queer liberation on land stolen that locks up blak queer bodies if maybe they’ve had a bit too much BeerWineSpirits but won’t lock up the others who snarl as you walk down the street hand in hand with ya misso on ya way to have a drink  

(っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ ≧❂◡❂≦ [10]

The corporatisation of Mardi Gras is emblematic of a broader intersectional critique of capitalism throughout its history. Here, Money synthesises the continuities of capitalist accumulation; white nationalism attached to Australian settler society, and heteronormativity beyond reproductive labour. Read alongside Hourani’s poem, it reiterates that corporations do not only attempt to erase and prevent manifestations of political resistance. In fact, the ultimate aspiration is to render democracy within private workplaces, and capitalism, impossible. [11] Corporations’ presence in everyone’s lives is immediate, whether through the sale of one’s labour to the market; the compensation of labour through a wage-relation; or the investments of wages through superannuation into private financial markets, which allow continuing capitalist pervasion. 

Here, we are confronted with anti-colonial poetics that communicate the urgency of anti-capitalist resistance. Again, we possess the responsibility not to obscure political resistance as a passive act. Poetry is inextricably concerned with politics, whether or not it is instructive of revolution.  

[1] Hiddleston, Jane. Poststructuralism and Postcoloniality: The Anxiety of Theory. Liverpool University Press, 2010: 10.

[2] Chomsky, Noam & Foucault, Michel. The Chomsky-Foucault Debate On Human Nature. The New Press: New York, 2006: 41.

[3] Williams, Saul. “I have no business with genocidaires’: Saul Williams on Gaza, US empire and the power of art,” interviewed by Mohamed Hashem, Real Talk, Middle East Eye, 9 June, 2025, Video, 0:17-0:27, https://www.middleeasteye.net/video/saul-williams-gaza-us-empire-and-power-art

[4] Eugene Skeef. “On Politics and Poetry.” X, 18 December, 2023, https://x.com/eugeneskeef/status/1736666942260326803?lang=en

[5] Loewenstein, Antony. “The Palestine Laboratory – EP 1.” Al Jazeera, 30 January, 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/program/featured-documentaries/2025/1/30/the-palestine-laboratory-ep-1

[6] Loewenstein, Antony. The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports The Technology Of Occupation Around The World. Verso, 2023: 30.

[7] Hourani, Hasib. Rock Flight. Giramondo Press, 2024: 17.

[8] Said, Edward. The Question of Palestine. Routledge, 1979: 10.

[9] Salamanca, Omar. J; Qato, Mezna; Rabie, Kareem & Samour, Sobhi. “Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine,” Settler Colonial Studies 2, no. 1 (2012): 1–8.

[10] Money, Jazz. “mardi gras rainbow dreaming.” UNProjects 15, no. 1, https://unprojects.org.au/article/mardi-gras-rainbow-dreaming/

[11] Varoufakis, Yanis. Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. Vintage Press, 2023.

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