#my fanon interpretation of India is. different.

[batataaurdoodh]

13 India?

Unpopular Opinion about (India)?

in all honesty what is there to have an opinion about him canonically he shows up for 2 seconds total in the anime and his personality is basically just Bollywood 😭 I love him but canon does him so dirty that I literally have not thought about canon him at all...

does this count as an unpopular opinion (it's not and doesn't count)

tldr I cannot have an unpopular opinion bc what is there to have an opinion about with him T-T

[rainingpouringetc]

Hi! So, I’ve been wondering what the problem with Anna Lightwood is, because my brain saw that she was bending gender norms and hit love. But, now that I’m on tumblr, people are saying that she is problematic?

hi! i’ll try my best to explain, idk if i’ll hit everything but i hope this helps. and i’m sorry it took me a while, i wanted to do it justice so i tried to cover my bases and do my research.

basically, anna has said and done things that came across to many as ignorant, racist, and even misogynistic. 

first, let’s look at “every exquisite thing” from ghosts of the shadowhunter market. 

“If I were to tell my parents the truth about myself, if I were to reveal who I really am, they would despise me. I would be friendless, cast out, alone.”

Anna shook her head.

“They would not,” she said. “They would love you. You are their daughter.”

Ariadne drew her hand back from Anna’s. “I am adopted, Anna. My father is the Inquisitor. I do not have parents who are as understanding as yours must be.”

“But love is what matters,” said Anna.

this is from when ariadne was trying to explain why she would be getting engaged to charles. anna is very lucky: her family loves and accepts her and she’s able to live her life as she wishes, which we see her doing in chain of gold. ariadne, however, is not as lucky, and she has to take into consideration the conditions of her parents’ love. anna apparently struggles to understand this, ignoring ariadne’s valid concerns and telling her that it doesn’t matter because “love is what matters,” as if it makes everything perfect.

this is where anna’s ignorance begins to show through. ariadne is: (a) a woman in the late 1800s/early 1900s (i don’t remember for sure what year this story took place but i’d assume 1900s), (b) indian at a time when india is under british rule, (c) adopted, and (d) a lesbian shadowhunter. we know enough about how intolerant people have been about homosexuality, but shadowhunters are a whole other story. put all of this together and you have someone who is terrified of letting down her family and being shunned by society more than she already has been. in ariadne’s mind, she has no choice but to hide who she is.

 anna ignores this. entirely. she doesn’t take the time to talk to ariadne about her concerns, but rather skirts around them and insists that what she wants is what’s more important. this is highly indicative of her privilege and how she puts herself before others and others’ feelings.

now let’s look at chain of gold. there are two scenes in particular that i want to look at, but there are more.

“I quite like your mother. She reminds me of a queen out of a fairy tale, or a peri from Lalla Rookh. You’re half-Persian, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Cordelia said, a little warily.

“Then why is your brother so blond?” Anna asked. “And you so redheaded--I thought Persians were darker-haired.”

Cordelia set her cup down. “There are all sorts of Persians, and we all look different,” she said. “You wouldn’t expect everyone in England to look alike, would you? Why should it be different for us? My father is British and very fair, and my mother’s hair was red when she was a little girl. Then it darkened, and as for Alastair--he dyes his hair.”

“He does?” Anna’s eyebrows, graceful swooping curves, went up. “Why?”

“Because he hates that his hair and skin and eyes are dark,” said Cordelia. “He always has. We have a country house in Devon, and people used to stare when we went into the village.”

Anna’s eyebrows had ceased swooping and taken on a decidedly menacing look. “People are--” She broke off with a sigh and a word Cordelia didn’t know. “Now I rather feel sympathy toward your brother, and that was the last thing I wanted. Quick, as me a question.”

this scene is from cordelia’s tea with anna. i won’t touch so much on the “peri from lalla rookh” comment so much as i’m afraid i don’t feel well enough qualified or researched to adequately represent people’s concerns about this statement, but i do know that there were several posts going around about people discussing how it rubbed them the wrong way, so i thought i would include it as well.

the rest, though, is a bit more obvious. one of the things about books is that it can be more difficult to interpret someone’s words and their meaning because we don’t have things like tone or facial expressions or any of that unless the author explicitly includes it. however, we can draw on the way other characters react to certain comments. cordelia goes on the defense, answering anna’s question “a little warily,” setting aside her tea and explaining rather bluntly that not all persians look the same. it’s pretty easy to infer from her reaction that she’s uncomfortable from anna’s words. now, is that to say anna was intentionally being racist toward cordelia and her family? absolutely not. this is where microaggressions come into play. we see them with anna and also with matthew and even jessamine (though we see hers in the infernal devices rather than the last hours). microaggressions, while often unintentional, are still a form of racism. given the times these characters have grown up in, it’s not necessarily a surprise, but that certainly doesn’t excuse her behavior.

there is, however, a more intentional party to this scene that really rubbed me the wrong way. it’s her discussion of alastair. cordelia has just explained that alastair dyes his hair to stop people from staring at him when he’s walking down the street, and anna replies that she feels sympathy for him and that is “the last thing” she wanted. i understand that she has her own feelings about alastair, likely from listening to the merry thieves’ depiction of him, but that doesn’t excuse her. she even starts to say something about it, likely drawing on her own experiences of wearing menswear at a time when fashion was much more strictly regulated in society than it is today. but she stops herself and instead goes on to reemphasize her dislike for cordelia’s brother and changes the subject.

She held up a small black-bound memorandum book... “This,” she announced, “will hold answers to all our questions.”

...

Matthew looked up, his eyes fever-bright. “Is this your list of conquests?”

“Of course not,” Anna declared. “It’s a memorandum book... about my conquests. That is an important but meaningful distinction.”

...

Anna flipped through the book. There were many pages, and many names written in a bold, sprawling hand.

“Hmm, let me see. Katherine, Alicia, Virginia--a very promising writer, you should look out for her work, James--Mariane, Virna, Eugenia--”

“Not my sister Eugenia?” Thomas nearly upended his cake.

“Oh, probably not,” Anna said. “Laura, Lily... ah, Hypatia. Well, it was a brief encounter, and I suppose you might say she seduced me...”

i hope i don’t have to explain this one too much. there’s just something... unsettling about the fact that anna is held up as this feminist icon and yet she keeps a book with the names of and her encounters with all the women she’s slept with... and then reads those names aloud to everyone. it’s a bit much, don’t you think? and all of this is even without touching the leak we got about her and ariadne, which i’d rather not speculate on too much but is also quite damning. 

all in all, i’d like to believe anna is really a good person who’s just misguided and confused, much because i love the idea of a genderqueer character, especially one in an era before stonewall, but her actions and behaviors have led me to believe that she has a long road ahead of her. as i said earlier this week:

let me get something clear: i would die for fanon anna but canon anna needs to get her shit together before i’ll willingly breathe in her direction

i really hope this was helpful... i did my best lol. if anyone else has more to add, please feel free.

[insideanairport]

Jalal Al-e Ahmad's “Gharbzadegi (Weststruckness)”

❍❍❍

In the first chapter of the book, Jalal Al-e Ahmad (جلال آل‌احمد‎) defines the term and what he really means by “Westoxification” (غرب ‌زدگی‎). This term has been translated into English as Weststruckness or Occidentosis. The Persian term was originally created in the Heideggerian philosophical laboratory of Ahmad Fardid (احمد فردید), an Iranian modernist philosopher in 1940. Al-e Ahmad took this term from Fardid and popularized it with his essay under the same title, which later he published as a book. Then in the following chapters, he gives the historical background on how “we” (the Iranians alongside other countries with Islamic background) have become Westoxified? In the opening page of the book, he describes the idea as a disease or sickness.

He designates the ”West” geographically as Europe alongside USSR and North America, as opposed to how white leftists generally define the West (North America and occasionally Western parts of Europe).

”Our time is no longer a time when they scare the people with communism in the ’West’ and with the bourgeoisie and liberalism in the ’East’.”  -Al-e Ahmad in Gharbzadegi [Weststruckness], translation by John Green and Ahmad Alizadeh (1)

Al-e Ahmad’s Westoxification is not so different from other classical anti-colonial critics such as Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and Eqbal Ahmad aside from the fact that it was written in 1962 and it is specifically from a Muslim-Iranian perspective. In the book, ”Transnationalism in Iranian Political Thought: The Life and Times of Ahmad Fardid”, Ali Mirsepassi mentions that Iranian intellectuals such as Al-e Ahmad and Ali Shariati interpreted the term Westoxification in slightly different ways. (2)

Throughout the book, Al-e Ahmad describes the role of culture, universities, and intellectuals in opposition to the forceful Westernization that happened in Iran during the illegitimate rule of the Shah. Al-e Ahmad suggests that we might need radicalism, not Westoxification; the type of consumerism that makes us dependent on the West and its technology. He reminds Iranians that part of their history has been written by the West. In chapter two, he mentions the fact that by Ibn Battuta, Muslims were able to define the West (Maghreb المغرب) before Europeans were able to define Orientals and the ’East’. This topic is mentioned briefly in the recent book “Reversing the Colonial Gaze: Persian Travelers Abroad” by Hamid Dabashi. (3)  

I can clearly see this book written on a political background where Western interventions have changed a nation’s destiny simply due to the fact Iran wanted independence from Western hegemony and economic exploitation. After the 1953 CIA coup in Iran, the Iranian government and the Shah became a direct follower of the West. Therefore Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s generations (my father’s generation) took the task of digging up the root of acceptance of Western atrocities in the name of modernization or development. This was simultaneous with the resentment that people held against the forceful interventions that West played in their countries with a complete disregard for people’s sovereignty and autonomy over their territories, internal politics, and religions.  

There is also an extensive critic of technology throughout the book, which has been translated as ”Machinstruckness”. Al-e Ahmad talks about the role of spirituality, and what happens to Iranian culture when it's presented as inferior and uncivilized in relation to the West. In chapter seven, he describes Orientalism in a pre-Edward Said way and presents many different ways that the colonial subjects have been trained to see themselves through the gaze of the colonizers and civilized Westerners.  

When it comes to the ways that colonialism operates outside of the Middle East, Al-e Ahmad is not the greatest political analyst. His views of India, Africa, Caribbean, South America, and other post-colonial regions are good in relation to colonialism, but they are not so accurate in themselves. He shares the same overall understanding of colonialism with the rest of the global south. Yet, it seems like he has been reading a lot of white Anthropologists. Part of Westoxification (as he argues in chapter seven) is to read about your culture from the Western canon, I am guessing Al-e Ahmad is from a generation that didn't really apply theory to his own life so zealously. After all, he was an academic, and academia as always gives you a natural image of the world that always seems standard and correct.

In the starting chapters of the book, he presents a critic of academic discourses such as Anthropology and Orientalism. The academic discourses in which Europeans make the non-white people as the object of their study. He mentions that colonialization draws its roots from development and scientists and intellectuals are also take part in this issue. Yet, on the last few chapters of the book, he focuses on the Iranian cultural and political response to Westoxification including the resistance (or lack of resistance) from the universities, artists, and cultural institutions.    

”And because this discussion will relate primarily to the geographic, linguistic, cultural, and religious background of its author [Jalal Al-e Ahmad], I might expand on the definition by saying that when we Iranians have the machine, that is, when we have built it, we will need its gifts less than its antecedents and adjuncts.” (4)

(The drawings in this edition of Gharbzadegi are by Ardeshir Mohasses and were completed in 1982)

Bib 1. Ahmad, Jalal Al-e. Gharbzadegi (Weststruckness). s.l. : Mazda publishers, 1983. 2. Mirsepassi, Ali. Transnationalism in Iranian Political Thought The Life and Times of Ahmad Fardid. s.l. : Cambridge University Press, 2017. 3. Dabashi, Hamid. Reversing the Colonial Gaze: Persian Travelers Abroad. s.l. : Cambridge University Press , 2020. 1108488129. 4. Ahmad, Jalal Al-I. Occidentosis:a plague from the West. s.l. : Mizan Press, 1984.

❦❦❦ *Currently we have a media studio with a lot of expenses. We are independently critical without any state funding, and your support allows us to continue. If you like the content and want to become part of our community, please consider supporting us on Patreon or make a one-time donation through Paypal. 🙏 ❦❦❦

[hp-rbiim]

That anon was rude! But i am curious why do people race swap characters?? It doesn't add anything?

Hello nonnie! I will do my best to answer your question, but keep in mind that I cannot answer nor represent everyone in the fandom! There is no right or wrong answer – people do POC characters for many different reasons. It could be as simple as green eyes looking aesthetically pleasing on darker skin, or because it is what they head-canoned/felt/imagined when they first read the books. Many people grow up within POC communities, it can be automatic to imagine characters as something you know/see/are apart of. Odd concept, unfortunately, but imagine instead of growing in a majorly white area, everyone from your mother to your grandfather, teachers and friends were not white. There are also people who are later converts, like if one saw the movies before the books, however changed them in fandom, because of the thirst for representation and diversity.Now, for me personally, POC!Harry is something I have grown to love and not necessarily grew up with. I can imagine him being POC, because it fits and matches the character, from Indian take-away to wild black hair, to the contrast it makes against a fair-skinned Draco, it’s just good. Of course, I enjoy their white counterparts as well, and whenever I color I’m always contemplating his shade of skin (because frankly, I like them all, so I’m afraid you’ll see his skin shade vary every now and then) but ultimately, I tend to stick with a darker shade. Even if he wasn’t POC, he reminds me of someone who would tan (just because he’s very outdoorsy).My secondary reason is diversity. To be honest, I am thirsty for diversity. As a person of color myself, it is a very, very frequent thing to have aspects of our culture taken, and then subsequently, credit erased. They will take our musical instruments, our textiles, our places, our mythology, and white-wash it. In a world where more and more cultures are becoming westernized, we will see the dwindling, often crippling disappearance of important cultural heritages. The point of fandom/fanart/fanfiction is precisely about doing multiple different interpretations from canon. There would be no fandom if we purely stuck to canon material and went to annihilate anything that deviated from it. The point of fandom is that everyone can have their piece of cake and eat it. The point of fandom is that we can write our experiences, our imagination – and that includes interpretations of characters as people of color.On a closely related note to cultural representation, I personally was extremely ecstatic about Nagini. Of course, this is an entirely different argument, and I suspect many people will have differing opinions (and that’s perfectly ok!). Yes Nagas are also Indian, and we share many cultural origins, however there is such a thing as the evolution of that idea as it passes through other cultures. Here are some links to good explanations about Nagini represented as coming from Indonesia, rather than India [1] [2].  But for me, as someone who has never, NEVER, not once gotten a satisfying highlight of my culture, was so, so close to tears. Never have I ever, and then suddenly, I got something that was Indonesian. Wow. I just. Wow. I was so mind blown, I was so heart-wrenchingly…well, I can’t even begin to express how I felt to be represented. Ultimately, I was happy. So yes, representation is important, even if it is in fanon. Why do people race swap characters? Because it makes us happy. And whatever more could people ask for? We just want to be happy.Now if someone were to fanon Nagini as Indian, I would be ok with that. I’m not going to be the person who says NO you can’t have that. Because you can. That’s the whole point. I got my piece of cake, and you get yours too. In the same way as if someone were to fanon Harry as Indian/Black/White/Asian, really, why would I not be happy about that? I get a piece of Harry of all sorts of flavors (if we’re going by the cake metaphor), and isn’t that just a more delightfully happy experience? Eating one flavored vanilla cake for the rest of your life would be… well, I can’t imagine that being very pleasant. Unless you really, really love vanilla flavored cake to the extent that you would eat that and nothing else for the rest of your life, but still.In my party house, everyone can have whatever the damn hell cake they damn well please, and I will be happy to both provide and see them enjoy it (even if it’s some obscurely strange flavor like orange chili cappucino)The moral of the story is: all interpretations are validDon’t forget to remember that this is all fiction.The world is your oyster.And now words from our famous, gay headmaster “…pity the living, and above all those who live without love.” along with “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?” I hope, if nothing else, this will help you understand just a little bit better where we’re coming from. Hi, this is hp-rbiim, thanks for coming to my ted talk. 

[alex--stephenson]

Compare the idea of exploitation in Marx and Fanon

[This essay was submitted as part of the ‘History of European Political Ideas’ module at UCL. The resultant grade was 75.]

This essay presents an analysis of the notions of exploitation proposed by Marx and Fanon; both the act of exploitation and how it is sustained. In evaluating and comparing the thinkers, I will initially expound upon the key concepts which I consider to be of most analytical value. With Marx, it is necessary to understand the structural nature of exploitation; whilst Fanon emphasises the role violence plays in engendering exploitation and, in addition, its interaction with the social. An understanding of Fanon’s appreciation of the social is essential, in my view, in order to grasp the role exploitation plays in the construction of identity. Whilst the comparison accentuates differences it also highlights flaws; namely Marx’s inadequate theorisation of alienation and, in light of Fanon’s analysis of colonialism, the assumption that labourers have the right to comodify their labour. In my opinion, the comparison of these two thinkers’ works highlights  the extent to which an appreciation of the social is necessary for understanding the evolution of forms of exploitation, and thus, I conclude that Fanon presents a more useful theory.

Marx, historical materialism and exploitation as a feature of the labour-capital nexus

Firstly, in understanding Marx’s approach to exploitation the principal concepts I will draw on are his development of historical materialism and the physical and psychological exploitation which, for Marx, are an invariable feature of living in what I have termed the ‘labour-capital’ nexus, that is the inevitable consequences of labour being traded for capital under capitalism.

Marx’s belief that capitalism creates structural features that lead to the appropriation of a labourer’s produce stems from the theoretical framework outlined in ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ (1859). In building his philosophy Marx argues ‘neither legal relations nor political can be comprehended’ by the ‘general development of the human mind’ but instead ‘they originate in the material conditions of life’ (1859; preface) and thus, all labour is a manifestation of ourselves (1844; 4). Under capitalism, labour becomes commodified, and thus the labourer, as opposed to working for his own realisation, works on behalf on capital in order to survive. As a commodity, the labourer ‘gets the smallest and utterly indispensable part of the product - as much, only, as is necessary for his existence as a… slave class of workers’ (ibid., 5). Marx described the difference between the full amount of his produce and the worker’s subsistence wage in Capital as ‘surplus value’, or the ‘exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labour- power by capital’ (Marx, 1868; 153).

The key point of interpretation here is that for the labourer, living under capitalism necessitates the commodification of labour, and thus guarantees his exploitation. Again drawing on his historical materialist perspective Marx posits the Lockean notion that ‘the product of labour is labour which has been embodied in an object’ (1844; 29), outlining the relationship between labour and the self and the economic means of production and subjectivity. Thus Marx deduces that the process of labouring for capital constitutes the psychological alienation of the labourer, insofar as his produce confronts him as something alien, ‘tormenting’ him to the point where he exists ‘first as a worker, and second, as a physical subject’. Alienation constitutes psychological exploitation as the process of labour means ‘his life no longer belongs to him but the object’ (ibid., 29). Thus, man, living within the capital-labour nexus, is driven toward economic (surplus-value) and psychological (alienation) exploitation as a matter of fact; a feature determined by the rules of the economic system.

Fanon, violence and the social, and identity

In understanding Fanon’s exploitation I will draw on his conceptualisation of violence, its impact on the social and the consequent need for psychological study. Philosophically, Fanon also draws on a historical materialist perspective, arguing decolonisation ‘can only be understood, can only find its significance and become self-coherent while we can discern the history making movement which gives it form and substance’ (1963; 2). However, whereas Marx theorises exploitation as an unavoidable systemic consequence of the labour-capital relationship; Fanon is theorising an exploitative system without an integrative exchange process (meaning labour is not exchanged for capital). Consequently, Fanon argues ‘violence’ and ‘cohabitation’ constitute ‘the exploitation of the colonised by the coloniser’ (ibid., 2), due to the fact that the violence inherent within colonialism restricts the colonised’s autonomy of the colonised.

In order to understand how exploitation is sustained, Fanon incorporates elements of the social and its interaction with violence. Colonialism creates a world in which the colonised are dehumanised, devoid of values and ‘quintessentially evil’ (ibid., 4). To simply understand the creation of a world of ‘different species’ (ibid., 4) is insufficient; it is necessary to understand the means through which this state is normalised. Fanon identifies the state of exploitation to be maintained by:  a ‘language of pure violence’ (ibid., 4), the regulatory pacifism promulgated ‘by the inescapable powers of religion’ (ibid., 28), the division of the colonised into groups (ibid., 8-9) and the stifling of self-expression (ibid., 20). The state of exploitation culminates in the impregnation of the colonised’s shared reality, when the issue is not ‘whether to fall in line with the armour-plated world of colonialism, but to think twice before urinating, spitting or going out in the dark’ (ibid., 19). Whereas Marx’s exploitation can be theorised through the relationship of labour to capital it becomes clear that for Fanon an understanding of how exploitation, and thus violence, interacts with the social, is necessary.  

In order to fully understand Fanon’s exploitation, however, it is necessary to appreciate the interplay he posits between this permeation of the social and the identity of the colonised. Firstly, Fanon argues in Black Skin White Masks, that in order to understand the effects of colonisation we need to understand ‘the internalisation, or better, the epidermalization, of inferiority’ (1952; 13). This is perhaps further illustrated by the inclusion of his ‘notes on psychiatry’ and at the end of ‘The Wretched of the Earth’. The link between exploitation and identity, in my view, should be understood through the cathartic (or ‘cleansing’ (1963; 51)) nature of violence. That is to say, violence, for Fanon, constitutes the rejection of the identity imposed onto the colonised by the coloniser. Or, viewed in reverse, colonisation creates an identity of being exploited which can be ‘cleansed’ through the process of violence, ‘liberating’ themselves from ‘unreality’ (1963; 21). Such an understanding is, in my view, still rooted in Marxist theory. The focus, however, should not be on violence as structural change, as Marx advocates when arguing for ‘the forcible overthrow of all existing social condition’ (Communist Manifesto, Ch4), but ‘violence as the absolute praxis’ (Fanon, 1963; 44). For Fanon, ‘the militant is the one who works’ (ibid), drawing on the Marxist link of subjectivity and labour.

Comparison

Having considered the two thinkers side by side, the key features of their respective theories become apparent; Marx’s focus on the economic cause of exploitation results in a structural analysis of the ‘labour-capital’ nexus in which participation guarantees physical and psychological exploitation. Fanon’s explanation is, in my opinion, more nuanced in demonstrating exploitation to be an inescapable, intransient feature of life under colonialism; demonstrating how the permeation of violence within the colonised’s reality creates an identity of exploitation. Marx’s theory does not touch on the social and Fanon does not attempt to measure exploitation (as Marx does with surplus capital).

Marx, colonialism and the means of production

The narrowness of Marx’s view, in considering explanations from a purely economic standpoint, precludes an understanding of the differences between nations under similar means of production. From a Marxist perspective ‘the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life’ (1859), from which we may suppose that in societies where the means of production are the same, political and intellectual life should also be the same. The process of colonialism in India replaced the ‘handloom and the spinning wheel’ which were ‘the pivots of the structure of that society’ with ‘British steam and science’ and ‘English free trade’ (Marx, 1853), demolishing ‘unchecked the systems of reference of the country’s economy’ (Fanon, 1963; 6). Hence the material modes of production in the colonies are analogous, but patently the ‘social, political and intellectual’ features of society are not, as demonstrated by the fact that the proletariat has the right to sell their labour, whereas the colonised do not. Marx’s a priori assumption that labour can be traded for capital under means of production necessarily includes colonialism, as per his own description of colonised India, yet in doing so opens it up for critique. Such a criticism may, arguably, be an unfair imposition on Marx’s text. Indeed, whilst the proletariat have the ‘right’ to sell their labour Marx does argue they do not do so entirely freely but as a necessary means of survival under capitalism. However, the fact remains it highlights issues with his philosophical foundation. The focus on the economic ultimately precludes a nuanced understanding of the divergence of states. Instead, Fanon highlights the issues here in his explanation of violence and identity as coercive forces beyond the economic. In other words, the social as well as the economic dictate the lives of citizens and hence enable an understanding of colonialism that distinguishes it from capitalism, despite the similar modes of economic production.

Marx, Fanon, and psychological exploitation

The multifaceted approach with which Fanon approaches exploitation, and thus the explanation of how it permeates all aspects of our lives, also highlights flaws in Marx’s psychological explanation of exploitation. Put simply, Marx fails to consider that self-affirming labour can happen independently of capital, undermining the notion of alienation. Marx’s theory of psychological exploitation relies on the ‘connection between this whole estrangement and the money system’ (1844; 28), the idea that labouring for capital prevents the labourer from self-realisation. The explanation of psychological exploitation is undone, however, by his broad definition of the labour process. For Marx, labour ‘with the help of the instruments of labour, effects an alteration, designed from the commencement, in the material worked upon’ (1967; 128). Such a definition, however, invariably includes actions outside of the labour-capital nexus, thus affording the opportunity to practise self realisation and objectification. As a result, man does not undergo the alienation from himself, his labour and his produce in the way Marx describes. Again, Marx’s focus on the economic is accentuated by Fanon’s theorisation of how the social, too, becomes exploitative. Whereas Marx fails to offer an explanation of exploitation without relying on capital, and thus confines it to the workplace, Fanon’s explanation of violence, the social and identity leads to a situation in which exploitation is so cemented ‘even dreams of liberty [are] impossible for the colonised’ (1963; 50).

Usefulness

Finally, it is worth considering who presents the most useful framework through which to understand exploitation today. Unequivocally, the Marxist notion of surplus value presents a vital tool in measuring exploitation on an economic level. However, caveats must be made insofar as labour no longer exists as a single commodity; some workers, due to various technical reasons, are in greater demand than others. Fanon’s usefulness, however, is guaranteed in his permissions of an understanding of exploitation that factors in language, norms, institutions and ultimately, shared reality. Whilst it continues to build on the Marx’s materialist understanding the ability to factor in ‘the evolution of the forms of exploitation’ facilitates societal and structural changes. Fanon demonstrates the extent to which exploitation has transcended the labour-capital nexus in his argument that over time ‘the rigour of the system made the daily affirmation of a superiority superfluous’ (1964, 37).

To conclude, having drawn out what I consider to be the key concepts in understanding exploitation in Fanon and Marx, the question remains whether they have conceputalised the same phenomena.  The answer, in my opinion, must be yes. Fanon considers the ‘European dominance’ of ‘racial hatred, slavery [and] exploitation’ to be driven by ‘the question of profitability, of increased production, of production rates’ (1963, 238). However, Fanon goes further in his understanding of how exploitation exists within society by (necessarily) attempting to explain how it interacts with the social; invoking language, norms and shared reality and, ultimately identity. Marx’s exploitation exists within the confines of capital, and thus whilst presenting a cogent explanation of economic exploitation fails to explain the effect of phenomena outside the labour-capital nexus.

Bibliography

Fanon, F (1952) ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ (Pluto Press: London)

Fanon, F (1963) ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ (Grove Press: New York)

Fanon, F (1964) ‘Toward The African Revolution’ (Grove Press: New York)

Luxemburg, R (1913) ‘The Accumulation of Capital’ (Butler and Tanner: London)

Marx, K (1844) ‘Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844’ (Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1959)

Marx, K (1848) ‘The Communist Manifesto’  (Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1959)

Mark, K (1849) ‘The Poverty of Philosophy’ (Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1955)

Marx, K (1853) ‘The British Rule in India’ (The New York Herald Tribune: New York)

Marx, K (1859) ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ (Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1977)

Marx (1867) ‘Capital’ (Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1977)

[renmaru]

you know. sometimes i love something a lot so i need to scream about the things that piss me off about it. i don’t think this is a particularly negative post but it’s just like sheer frustration and if you dont get some satisfaction from articulating your frustration into tumbler dot coms longposts and destroying the capital of this website because you are not a gemini sun then like fair i guess feel free to disregard this. tonbokiris kiwame is cool go look at that.

now to the lukewarm tea ive been simmering for five years. the one thing i always think about all the time is that tkrb is a popular game despite itself. the piss poor gameplay with only the barest of bare QoL in the five years its been up, the seeming complete lack of direction and the frankly nonexistent worldbuilding is held up purely because of its attention to detail and reverence to the original culture and history of the swords combined with some very good character design and subtle but nuanced character writing that can be openly interpreted. just enough flavour to imply something larger but chickening out on actually making anything y’know. concrete. basically allowing the fans to draw their own conclusions. but even then a game like that would not survive cause there have been countless, hundreds of games with high quality and fervent attention to detail and respect for the source material that just died completely because they have such little to actually offer in terms of engagement. i think the main thing that bugs me about tkrb is that it has one of THE most creative, dedicated and strong fanbases of this genre of game who go out of their way to engage with any and all of the content and the devs seem kind of oblivious to this.

in comparison to modern gacha style games, touken ranbu releases barely any new content and frequently recycles content but somehow it’s still relatively popular with approx. 1mil active players daily but the maddening thing is that tkrb can reach much MUCH further. the fans are there, the curiosity is there, it’s just the game content is not fucking there. it does not put the effort into commissioning seasonal art, pushing new events with actual plotline/story content, creating promotional materials, tie-ins etc. but somehow its still in the top 5 comiket circles for nearly five fuckin years straight. here are your badley compiled receipts: c89(w2015), c90(s2016), c91(w2016), c92(s2017), c93(w2017), c94(s2018), c95(w2018), c96(s2019)

 it can launch itself from laughably low in the appstore ratings, hovering in the middle of the 200′s to TOP 30s in the appstore at the flick of a switch. what is this magic button that fucking quadruples revenue and skyrockets your app into the top 50 grossing apps? 3/4 of your characters getting static CGs that you cannot use at all anywhere in the game but will do a powerpoint transition and appear for 5 seconds at login. oh and like a few free mats i guess. and i kid you not it fuckin worked.

wanna know why that worked? it’s cause otherwise characters, especially fan favourites just don’t get anything at all. it’s like most characters outside of the very popular ones rarely get new art, new recollections, new anything outside of their kiwame upgrade which is more often than not years down the line and only recently, four years in, they decided to add alternate costumes but even then there’s a catch which has me feeling some kind of way.

and yes, i fully understand that tkrb is a multi-media franchise, i get that it’s got its fingers in so many pies like the stageplay, musicals, various manga anthologies, the animes, hell its even got live action but man, would it hurt to give some love in game? i’m not asking them to go full fgo route and commission the industry creme de la creme to make 6 full CE illustrations, lots of promo art and tonnes of new merch every single month. but the fact is for such a big franchise, reusing the same sprite art on nearly every piece of official merch, going so far as to add NEW costume art which is just the heads of the old default sprites edited onto new bodies? it screams cost cutting, it screams lazy, the path of minimum effort. it’s almost like the game itself and the original materials are an absolute afterthought at this point with only the most dedicated hanging on to it. i guarantee that the majority of people still playing tkrb are the committed day1 players and the actual rekijou cause it’s just painfully offputting to new fans, with other fans even going out of their way to specify the game is not integral to enjoying the series which sucks, but it’s true.

its a real damn shame to think that something you are so invested in is not particularly invested in itself. sometimes, just sometimes i wish they dev team for tkrb was more hands-on, more adventurous, more willing to listen to players, invest in the game and genuinely try and make the game the best it can be. i’m not asking for balls to the wall summer events, beautiful animated CMs from the likes of the industries best animators, i’m not asking for pages of supplemental lore compiled into books, character backstory novels or whatever i’m just asking for the lore and the characters that we love to sometimes occasionally be remembered in the actual game outside of like ... the two years between their kiwame and the vague possibility of a recollection. i want to feel like this game puts as much effort into itself as the fans do towards it.

it’s a painful truth but there’s one shining light which is that the fandom for tkrb is genuinely one of the most committed and transformative ones ive ever seen. i have never been involved with a fandom that varies so widely and puts in so much effort for these characters and this world. tkrb exists solely as a popular franchise due to the sheer legwork of the fans carrying it on their backs collaboratively. ultimately, tkrb is very very lore-light, there’s so much thats missing and the characters in-game rarely rarely interact with each other. the characters are contained solely in however many voice lines they get at implementation, their kiwame letters, and their updates kiwame lines and the only interaction they get with other swords is recollections or depending on the sword, the odd custom sparring lines.

but despite that there has been so much fan effort to explore everything in so many different varied ways, and amazingly there are certain tropes, relationships, lore etc. that have started off fanon and become canon. the fan community, especially the fanartists, doujins, writers, animators etc. being given a small indulgence by the anime is one of my favourite things about tkrbs relationship with its fanbase. that’s not to say that the fans dont give back in kind a hundred fold.

there’s so much i love about tkrb fans going out of their way to go SEE historical swords in japan, single-handedly reforging swords using crowdfunding and revitalising lots of small-town tourism having real world impact. shit makes me unbelievably happy. the stage plays and musicals are always met with warm reception and are always well attended and even though its hard to access, there are lots of western fans who have dived into a whole new MEDIUM that most of us arent really familiar with but out of their love for tkrb theyve done that. they have hosted the musical as far out as india and france, making tkrb a truly worldwide franchise and there theyve met full seats! as far out as india! then theres the fantranslators, who always have the drive the commitment and energy for the thankless work, the wiki always always is well maintained and they have new content up so fast, and there are so many people willing to help you out. even when crunchyr*ll got hanamaru s2 (i think) a week late and we were left without subs for the premier episode for a whole ass week, fantranslators who had never subbed before stepped up to translate a whole episode for FREE, encoding, subbing and timing it all despite never having done so just so others could understand the episode faster than cr*nchy themselves could. even, as well, it’s made so many history nerds out of a whole bunch of people, it’s created an appreciation for nihontou and japanese history that would otherwise probably never be in their orbit because of how inaccessible it is, especially in english. even on a personal note, i started learning japanese primarily so i could understand tkrb and the history behind it better and to read jp fanart/interact with fanartists.

 no matter what, i am forever warmed by how much i love tkrb and its fanbase and im glad that tkrb is still going strong, even despite itself sometimes and i hope that moving on tkrb tries new things, and becomes better for everyone.

[tiger-moran]

fabricdragondesigns replied to your post:

What Tiger says: I’m fine What Tiger means: Why is...

i’ve explored both sides of it- the moran who would be horrified by rape, and the moran who is a rapist- i suspect a greet deal has to do with how limited the character is in the canon *compared to* the other major players. it makes him a blannk slate to work things out in. in addition: a dishonnorable dscharge for someone of such sills is OFTEN for really bad things (although it can be over politics… ive done both in my fics) and it is therefore easy to imagine

He wasn’t dishonourably discharged though, he retired from the army. Him being dishonourably discharged is an idea put about by fanon and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and the canon says nothing about why he had to retire except that “Without any open scandal he still made India too hot to hold him”. That effectively rules out most serious crimes and even many less serious crimes because he’d have been charged for those (and executed for some of them) and Holmes probably would have referred to them in that case and/or they would have impacted on his life back in England (e.g. if he’d been caught cheating at cards in India that would have prevented him acquiring membership of respectable clubs in Britain). There could have been loads of reasons why he retired some of them probably morally questionable or socially unacceptable (like sleeping with other officer’s wives or cheating his associates out of money) but not actually very serious or violent acts (of course in that era such reasons could also have included consensual sex with men. An illegal act then but one that was probably fairly difficult to prove but would be enough to force him to have to retire and get the hell out of India ASAP if certain people got to know of it). Although it’s also perfectly plausible his retirement may not have even had anything to do with his other illegal or potentially scandalous activity, he could have retired just for health reasons or something (the same as Watson) and it was purely coincidental that he was ‘up to no good’ elsewhere; there’s nothing that really disproves that idea either.  

That he committed a very serious crime but couldn’t be convicted of it for lack of evidence and was just hounded out of the army instead essentially through peer pressure is a possibility of course but it’s just one of many many possibilities but time and time again people choose to interpret him as a rapist and just...why?

And I don’t think compared to many other characters he actually is that limited, he doesn’t appear much but neither do most of the others even those who show up in far more stories than him. And we’re given far more biographical detail for him than many of them; we (through Watson witnessing this directly) actually do see him at least briefly for ourselves and interacting with Holmes directly. We see enough of Moran and also, significantly, Holmes’s reaction to him to see that Holmes behaves differently towards him than towards various other criminals. Plus there are characters who are far more obviously set up as abusers and potentially as rapists but nobody ever seems to do anything so bad with them. I’ve seen it suggested once that Milverton may have coerced people into sex along with blackmailing them for money but that was once when there are lots of characters, people who have abused women in some way especially, that Holmes shows clear contempt for. Like Gruner in particular seems so strongly implied to be some kind of sexual predator who enjoys harming and even sometimes killing women but he’s almost completely ignored by fandom/pastiches/everything else. Even with Moriarty I’ve seen several times different authors make it plain that he’s capable of pretty much anything but he at least despises the sexual abuse of children, although I’ve seen Moriarty portrayed as a rapist once or twice too but nothing like the number of times I’ve seen Moran portrayed as a rapist. With pretty much every other character the only bad thing people seem to be able to conceive of them doing is killing (or trying to kill) someone but Moran is the one who gets repeatedly portrayed as a rapist and I just do not get it, and I hate it. No matter how brief his appearance I think Moran is an incredibly complex character both in himself and in relation to Holmes’s relationship to him and interaction with him (as well as in relation to his relationship with Moriarty) and for him to just be turned into an Evil Rapist character over and over again... it’s something I do find deeply unpleasant.

I’m not saying that characters who are rapists can’t be complex or interesting because sure they can be. I mean like... Dostoevsky’s character Nikolai Stavrogin... he fascinated me. It turned out he was a child rapist, but he was still an incredibly interesting character. But with Moran often making him a rapist seems to be like Evil Character Trait Number 3 or something, some trait that’s just assigned to him without much thought just to emphasise how ~evil~ and ~villainous~ he is or just so he can rape Holmes to enable Holmes/Watson hurt/comfort to happen, reasons that actually have nothing really to do with Moran’s characterisation and giving him any kind of depth. In some ways that sort of thing where it’s just a trait slapped onto him almost entirely for the sake of furthering some other character’s storylines makes portraying him as a rapist even worse. (Although I hate rapist Moran full stop, I can’t see it happening and I am never going to accept that interpretation however it’s portrayed and I do maintain that it contradicts what we see and know of Moran from the canon.)