The Ends of Equivalence
Against the Teleologies of Empire
Salma Shamel
When revolutions happen, people are present, and when revolutions fail, the very same people question their presence. In the aftermath of a failing revolution, there is a failing of belief, and in the failing of belief, events in Syria teach us that some things have no beginnings and no ends. That emancipation can never be contained in squares and seasons; that in fact, Springs extend into Winters. That it can take thirteen years and have to erupt outside centers.
I hear them, here, in this center, the masters of equivalence. I hear them equating the secular father to the secular son, the son to the holy state, a state of eternity, stating that this is the price to pay, or else Syria will turn out like Afghanistan, like Iraq, like Libya.
Outside Empire, all is identical; inside Empire, all is identity. Beware those who forecast the present as identical to the past, a changing same and an unchanging same, undifferentiated forms of similarity where certainty tames the historical event, turning its contingency into constancy, flattening its turning points into lines of equivalence—Syria will be like Afghanistan, it will be like Iraq, it will be like Libya. Yet, here, no man can know what it’s like to be a woman, no White can know what it’s like to be Black, no straight person can know what it’s like to be queer. Outside of Empire, all is identical; inside it, all is identity. There, every state is like another; here, every self is like no other. Sameness for the post-colony and singularity for the metropole.
Look! The Big Dipper! We have the ability to look at the smallest group of the brightest stars to turn it into the largest, long-handled spoon, the drinking gourd to guide through the longest routes. We have the ability to look for fleeting similarities in the non-similar and turn more like the world as the world turns more like us.
I want neither singularity nor sameness. I want to find likeness within the seemingly different and differentiate the undifferentiated sames. I want us to push back against the binds of this Empire that values nothing but the either-or or perhaps I want to write in the body of this text “on the silk of the seas and the arctic flowers” and, in the margins, make a note: “there is no such thing.” Because only we can create affinities between the silk and the sea and the arctic flowers and at the same time dissolve them: There is no such thing.
The child who plays is not only a firefighter but also a windmill and a train. The child loses himself in likeness to discover what he might like to become. He knows what it would be like to be a windmill and what it could be like to be a train, and yet if you ask him: is the train like a windmill? he will stare at your equivalence in disbelief, for why would you subtract him, the agent, who could be both a windmill and a train? He is the windmill, he is the train, he is who makes things similar or different and turns an unbearable world more bearable. Syria will be like Libya only if you subtract the world of its people.