Manifesto of a trans-Orientalist aesthetic

Words by Mohamedali Ltaief

Last Friday night I encountered a mob of wildly milling men all yelling

"Judgement! The Last Hour's upon us!

The return to Allah!

The prophets say a sign of the End shall be the Sun at Midnight! Here it is!

We tremble! We submit!"

I laughed & said,

"This is no sun that rises as a star,

but only my friend, young Ahmad,

brightening the velvet canopy with his crystal track,

the dogstar on his forehead, venus on his cheek."

(Abu-Nuwas)1

The future is that which tomorrow, later, next century—will be.

There is the future that is predictable, programmed, scheduled, foreseeable, and

there is l'avenir— to come, which refers to someone who how comes, whose arrival is

totally unexpected.

(J-Derrida — Le futur n'est pas l'à-venir)

A preliminary remark

The tragedy is not speaking on behalf of the victim. The tragedy sits on the heart of the human.

He is a hybrid monster.

Half-human, half-animal, half flower, half fire.

An anomaly rather than an abnormality.2

His feelings are not well-known, he is constantly excluded. He is not a person who as such contradicts a rule,

it is nature itself, which embodies the anomalous.

The whole city is an abstract paradigm of his own escape. He is a phenomenon of border(s).

His name is Faris, Garulphus, or even Wargus.

They change his name, Wearth, Wearing, or Friedlhos.

Remark 1

Orientalism is an extreme form of realism. 3

Remark 2

Fabulous, dangerous and mythical. "The east is a career."4

Remark 3

Colonial history is an Orientalist story of heteronormative authority.

Remark 4

From Napoleon to Lawrence of Arabia,

Eastern despotism becomes a Western subject.

Remark 5

Heroic orientalist on the front: here it generates fear and illusion. Michel Foucault says: speaking on behalf of others.

Remark 6

Self-Orientalism is the oriental reproduction of the invented Orient.

Remark 7

The oriental must approve: the transmission of fear and a predisposition to translate realism.

Remark 8

From the future means: from the genealogy of desire.

Remark 9

Queerness is the unpredictable time.

A form of performativity behind future.

Remark 10

Trans-orientalist aesthetic is, above all, an art of deconstruction.