The beginning. Nothing. Nothing is
happening. The discomfort of nothing happening. Das Unbehagen.
A consequence of the family life domesticated by conformism and
consumerism. Idiotic home-masks gaze at us, masks unlike those
unhomely ones brought from Africa we hang on the walls as a promise
of discovery of magical Africa. However, we recognize the mother and
three sons seated in the sofa gaping at us from the screen as we gaze
at them. Indeed a gaze turned back, the primal state of things, of
the audience seated waiting for the thing to happen on the stage
whereas nothing is happening but a projection of nothing happening.
We hope for something, for love perhaps, as we deny the Unbehagen
starring at us. Yet, we
are here for We Love Africa. Fortunately, the Chance is there for the
Father to engage in the humanitarian restoration of Africa. We want
to help. We Love Africa. We want Africa to love us. So this is a
story of love, as “every story is a love story”. The idea is
explored previously by the trio Öhrn, Institutet and Nya Rampen in
internationally acclaimed Conte d'amour, a
love story inspired by the loving father, Josef Fritzl. Is
then the story of Africa not a love story too? A story of love, as
any other. And of the post-colonial condition of the West. Or is it a
demand, that Africa “loves us” just because we love Africa?
The story unfurls on the staged
projection in front of us. Then, reawakened and engaged in dread and
ecstasy of destruction and cruel deaths, the stupid tranquility of
the family boredom is suddenly confronted by orgasmic blood streams
pouring over dead decomposing bodies of Africa. In the basement.
Orchestrated by the Father. We (who love Africa) are equally involved
in the orgies of merciless scene, as we watch in tele-vision, here as
well as real. The conformism of discomfort, the exposition of
returned gaze in a circle of tired life, lobotomy and authentic life.
The invention of family is perhaps
overlapping with the emergence of the unconscious instantiated in
human existence indeed as an “eccentric place“ as Jacques Lacan
calls it. This was the case, perhaps by the event
of the emergence of consciousness, to be obscured at the dawn by language; an event
possibly emerged when the ape hit the Other-Ape with a bone. We have
it pictured in the unforgettable and ridiculously sublime intro of
2001: A Space Odyssey. Or to put it with Hegel: the
Self-consciousness of the Spirit is a bone, and/or not a bone but the
Self-conscious Spirit.... Nevertheless, it was Sigmund Freud who
famously scandalized the good old idea of family supposed to stand firm on
the ultimate ground of bourgeois values. No, family was founded on
aggressivity, from Totem and Taboo to Civilisation and Its
Discontents. More precisely, the
family institution was built upon the murder of the primordial Ape
which subsequently became the Father. And we learned to talk. Every
utterance therefore conceals the truth which eventually becomes
unspeakable, or as Lacan points out, the truth can only be
half-said. This is why we say
“so to say”. There is a fundamental displacement between the
truth and the speech. The truth is the event, perishing in time
before and after, to paraphrase Alan Badiou. Hence, speech is a
symptom of the primal repression of the real and the forever
repressed truth. Or, more precisely, of the mythical beginning
(un)known to us as the cause of the prohibition of incest.
Not
that we became conscious of incest as we know today that it is wrong.
But, as the Freudian myth goes, because every single one of the horde
belonged to the Ape who eventually became the Father. What once was owned by the Ape is now forever the function of the Father: to guard the Ape's natural right. The institution
of the prohibition is then build upon the murder of the primordial
Ape who is to be sublated to the function of the Father,
whereas also the structure of
family relations and kinship are established, on repression as it
were. The Ape's was thus natural right to exercise his power in
capacity of his unconditional will, animated by aggression and sex
drive. The family constitution build upon the murder of the
Father is of course a Freudian myth. And the myth, we learn from
Claude Levi-Strauss, is precisely something which gives an idea of
underlying structure although the structure itself is repressed and
unconscious. Impossible to know, the myth of the primordial dead Father however animates the family
on the deepest and therefore precisely repressed truth-level of its function:
as a discomfort in the culture (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur). And this is what the Father of the We Love
Africa learn: to revive the
strength of his muscles and erection. Like the Hippies who now and
then travel to India or Tibet for spiritual or sexual arousal. The
Father of We Love Africa
learn over-there, in Africa of his perverse fantasy, how to identify
with the primordial strength of the Ape. He, as a Father, is merely a
castrated Ape. What then the Father does not know (or he knows, to
put it with Octave Mannoni, but still he pretend as if not...), there is no
return other than the unconscious return of the repressed: Africa as an image of Father's failure and impotence to sustain his status as a head of the family and as a white male master of the Dark Continent (women and Africans).
According
to a popular scientific idea, the Ape, who is to be the Father of
civilisation and culture, originates in Africa. This is not important
as the very projection of Africa in We Love Africa
signifies the castrated post-colonial Father, although it may be a
racist assumption to instance the Ape in Africa as the “real”
progress supposedly begins with the ancient Greece.... Nevertheless,
in WLA, there is a dialectics of exploitation and loving care. The
West demands humanitarianism as the Father's demand breeds the terror
upon his own family. For example, the Father-figure of Josef Fritzl,
explored in Conte d'amour of
which the Father of We Love Africa
is a conceptual continuation, is not an exceptionally pathetic figure
as he signifies a post-colonial condition of Western culture and
civilisation today, of which the attempts to conceal the impotence
are not only pathetic but frustrated, as we may conclude watching the
war on terrorism. (The West has lost the battle without fighting even and the real question
is what do we do now. Lying in the dust of the ruins
of the past world dominion with the face in the sand we perhaps indeed become illuminated alas with our
pants down, by the wisdom of love....)
As the
internationally acclaimed production of Conte d'amour
before, now also We Love Africa of
Öhrn, Institutet and Nya Rampen successfully fails to represent the
subject of Fritzl and Africa, as it effectively unearths the more
important underlying truth: of the function of the Father.
The Conte d'amour does
not tell the actual story of Fritzl and his debased family. But the
performance exposes the discomfort which reminds us, unpleasantly of
course, of the very repressed of the family structure: of the
family's aggressive foundation of society, as the Oedipal conflicts
and Father's violent demand for love indicates. With We
Love Africa love is at stake
again. The story of impossible love. Ultimately, “Africa loves us”
is about love on demand. In media, Africa is pictured as a body
in need of Western love and care. We Love Africa initiates
an exploration of Western universalism (which is closely related to
Christianity if we read Badiou on Paul); the universalism disguised
in humanitarian initiatives. But we know also that the West is in no
position to play wolves in sheep clothing.... We Love
Africa thus illuminates
consequences of love and care for Africa, as Western humanitarian
universalism basically declares numerous countries and nations of
Africa univocally incapable of any progressive action.
Finally,
the hunch: the Father must acknowledge his castration: that he is not
in position to demand love. The Lacanian formula of love is to
give what one does not have. In
We Love Africa, as in
Conte d'amour, the
Father believes precisely the opposite, that love is to give and
demand in return. This ultimately puts family relations in discomfort
of reproduction of a père-version
of love. Love on demand of the Father, or: pure terror.
www.institutet.eu
www.nyarampen.fi
www.markusohrn.org
