To give the horror a name

The dissonance between what is communicated through local and international propaganda machines and what is actually taking place across the streets of Sudan.

Image credit Elsadig Mohammed, used with permission.

[a]ll social phenomena today are so completely mediated that even the element of mediation is distorted by its totalizing nature. It is no longer possible to adopt a vantage point outside the mechanism that would enable us to give the horror a name; one can tackle it only where it is inconsistent with itself.

– Theodor W. Adorno

During the early days of the Sudanese revolution of December 2018, the limited but defiant resistance against the military-Islamist regime revealed the depth of its violence, utilitarianism and ideological inconsistencies. That widened the revolution’s base and eventually ousted the dictator. Now, as the second wave of the revolution attempts to achieve the slogans that fuelled it, the fight is moving beyond individuals to challenge the dominant social and political structures, revealing this time the inconsistencies of our postcolonial order. Though without the elaborated analysis of the global order or its imperial capitalism, youth across the country are giving the “horror a name.” The calling out of the perpetrators of this horror can be heard in the comic dissonance between what is communicated through local and international propaganda machines and what is actually taking place across the streets of Sudan.

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