Satire ceases to be satire when it begins to disparage the dispossessed’s sacred. Sacred, in this context, is not because the Gods of these Muslims and Jews amplified their divine potency overnight but because, to the marginalized, faith is all they have in such extreme alienation. Satire is satire when it speaks truth to power and offends those in positions of privilege. But who does satire offend when we ourselves are powerful? Satire becomes something else, something far more sinister when it fails to criticize the disciplinary apparatuses of society and embarks on a witch-hunt for society’s members that are already punished and constantly watched. The malaise of Charlie Hebdo is not in the extremely racist depictions of Muslims as large-nosed pedophilic Arabs surrounded by flies, perforated by bullets passing through the Quran or Black women as welfare queens or a Black politician as a primate or Jewish people in the most vilifying anti-Semitic tropes or other highly homophobic and sexist depictions of other figures but in Hebdo itself. It is indeed true that Hebdo lampooned everyone and everything (including the Holocaust) in the attitude that nothing is sacred but its focus fell squarely on those living on the bare margins of society. For those situated on the razor sharp ends of a nation that refuses to accept them for their Otherness (a construct enforced upon them against their will) and in a global spectrum and discourse that posits them as criminals par nature, religion becomes exponentially sensitive – and prone to injury, as Saba Mahmood said – because of the incommensurable schism erected between them and secular affect. The malaise is in creating art that waltzes dangerously close to political militaristic notions of Muslims in France.

Dubout and Hebdo

I wrote my thoughts on the Hebdo shootings. For full text (which is necessary to read to understand the entire article and issue), please go here.

(via mehreenkasana)