[syndicate] Mathesis of Killing Field

[Alan Sondheim]

Mathesis of Killing Field

It comes down to this: here is an organism of a particular species, or
rather a sample or individual of that species, and here is a second
organism of the same; call the first 2 and the second 1. Then 1 kills 2
for one or another reason, let us say for sexual-territorial reasons or
reasons of anger or insanity. An entire world is lost with the death of 2
and this includes the family of 2 and friends of 2 who must now reorganize
and divides the belongings or nest or nestlings of 2 which most likely,
the last, will not survive. 1 kills 2 with its bare hands. Let us assume
consciousness and ethos, then we will not have a problem with this equa-
tion, the acquaintance-world of 2 may then retaliate. But I say 1 is a
criminal and if there is justice in this world or any other, then 1 must
be rendered impotent, that is the actions of 1 must be short-circuited,
circumvented, 1 must be rendered useless, ridiculous, harmless. Let us say
1 has hired or imposed force upon 3 to kill 2, then let us hold 1 doubly
responsible and 3 singly responsible. It comes down to an organism killing
another organism and the implications of habitus, political economy, the
social, on this action which is only, but not for 2, part of a train of
actions, what we might call activity in general. I say 1 is a criminal and
must be treated as such and the justification of 'war' is meaningless in
this regard, if 1 is the violator, even given the activity. I say 1 must
be rendered harmless. I say for example a president who sends people to
war, who insists on war, is not only barbaric, but a criminal situating
itself behind a bureaucracy, rewriting the languages of legality in order
to create a situation otherwise known as murder. It is as simple, I say,
as 1 over or through 2, that is a singularity within which 2 is stopped
through no reason of hir own, that there is a chain between 1 and 2. I say
as well that religion is not justice, religion is the enemy of justice,
and no appeal subvents or justifies the elimination of 2, insofar as 1 has
been aggressor, it does not matter what masquerades as results or
interpretations, what masquerades as the deconstruction of the real, in
this case destruction of the real, concrete, inert destruction. I say our
enemy is among us, our enemy is a president who is doubly an enemy, first
for war and actions against others, second for war and actions against
ourselves, as if we have generated, and we have, this disease in our
midst. Let us think of the habitus of 3, let us mourn 2, let us annihilate
1 who will continue its pyramid of annihilation until all is lost, until
so much is lost that the losing and what is gone have been forgotten. Let
us remember that a performative carries force, not the force of justice,
which has no force, and that the blindness of justice is the only sight
there is. Let us remember that all other sight is invested, and thereby
corporate, even the other-sight of the pre-industrial, that only the
other-side other-sight of the chthonic may remain speechless and true and
just, the slight memory of 3, the deepest and most violent rape of 1, that
2 no longer figures into this broken equation. 1, 3, equivalence sutures
across the pillage of the dead, equivalence no longer exists. I say let us
remember equivalence and its hammer, neutral, neutral neutral. I say 2 is
dead.

http://www.asondheim.org/photoalp30.jpg