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⏳⛰️🛡️ Süreç Heval ⏳⛰️🛡️

(Turkish)

The attack on the Communist Party reading group in Cologne [*] is not merely an act of violence. The attack is a small but symbolic example of the new techniques of repression directed at critical thought in our age, of the forms of intolerance within the left itself, and of how social struggles have been handed over to a certain “regime of images.” With threatening words—“if you don’t erase your publications within a week, blood will be shed”—the aim becomes to replace the debate of ideas with fear, political subjectivity with repression, and to pursue “rendering one’s own sacred untouchable” instead of confronting criticism. For this very reason, this attack is not just a physical incident, but a flare signaling the necessity to interrogate the subject and myth of the contemporary left.

From here, it is necessary to dialectically question the underlying dynamics of the debates and conflicts within leftist circles today, under the headings of Rojava/PKK/Jineology: repressed desires and deficiencies, the aestheticization of struggle, the tendency of the collective to reproduce itself through myths, and the inertia generated by all these. Based on the incident, we can trace this process across five fundamental dialectical layers [*] [*].

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The Crisis of Representation: The Spectacle of the Commune, the Feeling of Revolution

The analysis titled “A Teapot of Hope: The Aestheticized Commune Fantasy of the Rojava Documentary” [*] reveals the extent to which the idea of revolution and the practice of the commune are reduced to spectacle, a regime of feeling, and a “desired landscape.” The documentary presents the warmth of daily life and the communes in Rojava through the steam of a tea glass and the dispersion of collective decisions in neighborhood streets. Yet it is precisely this “presentation” that becomes intertwined with the crisis of political representation. The commune circulates not as a warmth that touches people, but as a spectacle of feeling; it produces not subjectivity, but an object for empathy.

The over-aestheticization of the political displaces the struggling subject with the passive spectator. When hope is not united with struggle, it turns into a kind of “emotional opiate.” Revolutionary gestures repeatedly staged before the camera trap the authentic in representation, and representation in spectacle. Thus, the greatest radicalism of the commune—everyday contradiction, invisible labor, the roughness of collective decision—evaporates, leaving in its place a narrative that feels good but does not mobilize.

All of this, instead of confronting the real contradictions, structural problems, and class relations in Rojava, opens the door to an excess of “feeling,” to a kind of aestheticized dream of revolution. The commune becomes ineffective to the extent that it is sacrificed to representation.

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Jineology and the Phallic Woman Myth: The Repression of Lack, the Collapse of Desire

The crisis of representation appears not only in the dream of the commune and revolution, but also in the epistemology of Jineology, which has become central to the women’s movement. Originally developed as an alternative to male-centered knowledge, Jineology quickly turns into a new regime of domination built on “intuitive wholeness,” “women’s wisdom,” and “mythical completeness.”

The dialectical tension here is related to the repression of lack. Woman is no longer a desiring, contradictory, lacking subject; she is reduced to an all-knowing, all-feeling, flawless figure of the Phallic Woman. At this point, the crisis of representation leads to the collapse of subjectivation. Because, in Lacan’s terms, desire is only possible through the acceptance of lack. Where lack is not acknowledged but denied, political desire and freedom become impossible.

Instead of producing knowledge, Jineology turns the “state of being woman” into an endless interpretation and an object of pleasure. Emotional suggestion and symbolic fullness replace scientific debate. Relying internally on a Jungian essentialism, this discourse transforms womanhood from a subjectivity into a symbol of libidinal completeness. Suggestion takes the place of debate, mystification that of criticism. Here there is no subject; only a flawless figure, not desire but gratification, not truth but pleasure circulates.

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Myth, Glorification, and Mediatic Fantasies: The Transformation of Political Figures into Images

This crisis is not limited to the commune or the women’s movement; new myths are also being constructed around leaders and social figures. Žižek’s characterization of Öcalan as “the Mandela of our time” points not to analysis, but to the dominance of myth and mediatic fantasy. The leader becomes uncriticizable, unquestionable, almost a sacred icon. Historical differences are erased; figures circulate not with their social contradictions, but through their symbolic glorifications.

Here, aestheticization replaces critique, fetish replaces contradiction, and iconography replaces historicity. Every act of fetishization closes off avenues for political debate and intervention. Especially in structures like the PKK, rather than confronting internal contradictions, the instrumentalization of women militants, or forms of domination within the organization, the images of “angels” and “heroes” are used to block the path to social critique.

Of course, there are times when myths motivate collective action. But at a certain point, the myth turns into a form of power closed to critique, covering up real conflicts.

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Death, Women’s Resistance, and the Bodily Phantasm: The Fetishization Cycle

A similar problem recurs in writings on the women’s movement: the bodies of women who lost their lives in resistance are transformed, in collective memory, into “inspiring,” flawless, contradiction-free hero/fetishes. Such representations turn the woman not into a subject, but into an aesthetic and moral model.

The transformation of political tragedy into libidinal inspiration, lack into aesthetic suggestion, and the struggling subject into the fetishized body… In this cycle, desire and lack are completely repressed. The murdered woman’s body creates not “meaning” but “impact”; it does not speak, it proclaims; it does not debate, it represents. This blunts the political existence of the female subject, reducing resistance to a collective fantasy of empathy.

This excessive glorification of representation distances the struggle from authentic subjectivation and from facing real contradictions. As the collective mythologizes its own heroes, the possibility of liberation recedes even further.

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Engagement as Parapraxis: The Contamination of Thought and Contact with Truth

In the last dialectical link of the article, we are confronted with the inevitable contradiction of philosophical-political engagement. Heidegger’s relationship with Nazism, Foucault’s approach to the Iranian revolution, or Žižek’s romanticism for Öcalan… Each involves the contamination of thought, error, and deviation. Yet it is precisely this error that is the condition for thought’s contact with truth, for its ability to touch the world.

Truth can only be produced through the risk of engagement, by passing through contradictions. A mistaken engagement opens the path to critique; lack of critique paves the way for the reign of myth and fetish. Therefore, it is essential for collective movements and political figures to pass their own myths and fetishes through a critical dialectic.

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Closing: The Dignity of Lack and the Possibility of True Liberation

From the attack to the crisis of representation in the commune; from the mystification of the women’s movement to the fetishization of leaders; from the idealization of dead women’s bodies to the error of philosophical engagement, all these dialectical links converge at a certain point: When lack and contradiction are repressed, desire and freedom wither. Real revolution is only possible on a plane where, instead of myths, aestheticized representations, suggestion, and repression, critique, contradiction, and lack are acknowledged.

Every collective must show the will to question its own myths and fetishes, to face criticism, and to reconstitute itself. Because desire arises where lack and contradiction are honored. And freedom emerges exactly here—not from myths or aestheticized fetishes, but from genuine debate, critique, and dialectical struggle.

In short: the real lesson to be drawn from the attack is not to repress, suggest, or represent, but to debate, to accept lack, and to reconstitute the subject each time anew. Because the honor of collectives lies not in their infallibility, but in their courage to confront their own mistakes. Revolution is not possible through spectacle, feeling, or legends, but through the acceptance of lack, and in the dialectic of desire and critique.