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Both online as well as in the classrooms, cafes, and bars of the West Bank, related and unrelated to the U.S. It's a term that has widely circulated, off of tongues and across wireless networks alike, seemingly without much consideration or constraint in the days that have followed November 8th. The other day, just after I wrapped up a lecture on the politics of reenactment and brought the class to a close, several of my students approached me and asked about how I was responding to Trump's election, and specifically inquired as to whether I thought he was a fascist. The screen scrolls past countless debates between friends on facebook concerning what speculative direction Trump's authoritarianism will first follow, past photos of demonstrations filled with tear gas and banners and masks and police that at some point become indistinguishable and blend together with one another, past colorful animated memes of Trump, of Hillary, and of exasperated liberal celebrities still unable to come to terms with an outcome that even the victors seem to not have fully anticipated. Every morning I swipe across the surface of my phone on my way to work as we pass through one checkpoint and then another, eventually driving along the graffitied separation wall itself as bright pixels blink in and out of existence with each subtle drag of my finger. Since this Fall I've been part of the faculty at a small university in the West Bank of Palestine, a unique and unquestionably defamiliarizing vantage point from which I've somewhat obsessively been following the U.S. This piece deals with the willingness to break and destroy as a vital part of implementing change while indulging in the catharsis of witnessing that action.
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Our bureaucratic processes slow down and remove us from any direct elements of change and, as a result, a boiling over of frustration becomes the dominant ideology. I am convinced that people don’t actually want to witness the apocalypse, but that they want to witness change on a scale Governments would never allow for. Our culture’s obsession with notions of the apocalypse, collapse or disaster is the single tangible way we see the ability to witness dramatic change, so we fantasize about "acts of god" as the only possible way we will ever see any transformation. As a result our hopes shift away from changing the system or building a new one and more toward “something” being able to change what’s around us. The Governing body has an alienating hold that pushes its subjects toward a sentiment of hopelessness.
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The work was born out of a deep distaste for the contemporary political state, as well as feeling stifled by my own anger and the inability to feel as though I can enact positive influence beyond myself. Part self-help exercise, part coping mechanism, part instruction set for the inept protestor, this video depicts how both protest and catharsis have potential to be moot points. Giving myself a reason to scream but not cry examines the correlation between catharsis and protest. GIVING MYSELF A REASON TO SCREAM BUT NOT CRY by Adan de la Garza