Ilayda Tank

recent posts

Thought, written (sometimes badly), drawn (often worse), and photographed by Ilayda Tank Sundt.

  • HAHA! The Ironic Cage

    In a letter to a dear friend, Maurice Blanchot once wrote or tiredness as possessing “a broad heart”. Lacking sufficient defense, we are receptive creatures. A tired society, on the other hand, carries even broader implications. On the political scale, tiredness fosters a restless mind, often described as political fatigue. Differing from the broad heart’s receptiveness, political fatigue is in active search of distraction – or better yet – entertainment. Thus, in evaluating the role that humor plays in politics, we must part with the notion that laughter is solely a joyous expression, for it is just as much an expression of discontent. To this end, Milan Kundra’s distinction between laughter that springs from a sense of superiority, and the other from a sense of solidarity, is important. While the latter can be understood as an end to itself (something is either funny or not), superior humor is a means to an end (and often a political one). For while solidary laughter fosters community, binding society together, the former disbands them, tearing at the seams. The subsequent unravelling creates two comedic camps: those we regard as comrades, and those whose inferiority we find comedic. As “a soul selects her own society, then – shuts the door”, the flip side of that election is the closing valves of our attention. In this process, the “divine Majority”, as Emily Dickinson’s poem continues, is “present no more”.

    In examining the question at hand, whether Humor has a role to play in politics, I would like to draw the reader’s attention to the intentional capitalization of humor. By ascribing the word with the grammatical status typically reserved for nouns, I will treat it accordingly: as a pollical actor. Thus, anthropomorphize humor, it is only fitting that we ask the question modern society has become all too fond of asking, “where do you actually come from”? 

    In his essay, Laughter, Henri Bergersen identifies the Meaning of the Comic, the sources of our laughter, as twofold, ugliness and absurdity. In the contemporary geopolitical landscape, where realism has reemerged as our central interpretative framework, a new air of anarchic unpredictability is hurling states into the abyss of Bergersen’s absurdity. Humor encapsulates the anarchy classical realists attribute to human behavior, and which structural realists locate in the international system itself. It plays a decisively larger role in a realist reality, than a system centered around predictability. The rise of nationalism, limitations of liberal interventions, and perceived decline in US hegemony has contributed to a distrust to the co-operation and shared values that define liberalism. Kundera’s solitary laughter has been Trumped by the superior kind. Max Webster’s notion of the “Iron Cage” may now more aptly be characterized as an “Ironic Cage” of international relations. On the individual level, the modern subject, together with his corresponding state, is unable to break free. No longer kept in chains by negativity, he is lying in a fetus position of excessive positivity. As he bursts into erratic laughter at the onslaught of tweets, we must once again ask ourselves, who stands to profit off this hilarity?

    The Cultural Revolution

    The answer to this question is at best far-fetched, and at worst far reaching. Before we can endeavor to answer it, Bergersen’s two fundamental observations on the Comic may help us understand the phenomena at hand. Firstly, humor is always an andromorphic operation, as “the comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly human” (Bergersen, 1900). Secondly, laughter is a social corrective tool, whose “natural environment is society” (Bergersen, 1900). Following this line of reasoning, one could argue that humor has always had a role to play in politics, in so far as the fundamental aim of politics has always been the mechanization of human life, conducted in the social sphere. The processes of organizing peoples and distributing power amongst them is imposing of order on that which is inherently free, us. Thus, genuine laughter is, not an abnormality, but an intrinsic component of political life. Nevertheless, while it may always have had a role to play, I would argue that its fundamental aim of humor in the political realm has changed. No longer concerned with comedic relief, but rather tension. 

     In discussing this nascent actor on the international stage, we must first digress to distinguish between laughter and humor, as they are not interchangeable terms. The former is the physiological respo­nse to the latter, the roots of which Bergersen argues humor is “incompatible with emotion” (Jones, 2016). Of an entirely different nature to compassion, which ensures politics remains humane, humor requires detachment. To laugh at something entails a distance. This disconnect manifests in the mechanization of “élan vital”, the vital life force that underlines all living things. When élan vital takes on attributes of rigid automatism, Bergersen argues it loses a part of its essence. Ceasing to be wholly alive, we laugh at life’s new absurdity. This may aptly be extended to polices we perceive as “non-sensical”, explaining why the news is degraded into a form for entertainment, instead of information.

    Harkening back to Bergersen’s sources for laughter – absurdity and ugliness – one could argue that humor is playing a decisively larger role modern political landscape, albeit in an entirely new fashion. Writing within the context of the nineteenth century mechanization of life, Bergersen was concerned with the transition from agriculture to industry. However, today the mechanized élan vital surpasses mere political or industrial organization, concerned instead with an entirely different force of life (and driving force of politics): communication. Social relations between individuals, fostering the exchange of ideas, has been mechanized by the ongoing Digital Revolution. The digitization of the social sphere manifests in our interactions (mediated algorithmically) and complex relationships (become quantifiable through likes or shares). In fact, our entire social life is commodified; every digital interaction is of economic interest due to the potential for advertisement. While the nineteenth century mechanization of labor denied the common subject his laughter, today the ease of the common man is profitable. While leisure once stood as an antithesis to labor (and by extension capital), today our ability to stay entertained is fleeting, our focus is lost, and politicians compete to capture and retain it. Attention is capital. Thus, 2ithin the twentieth century digitalization of the social sphere, the modern subject is experiencing a new type of denial; the denial of less. The violence of positivity, as Byung Chul Han describes it, or stomach cramps of too much laughter, is the new mode of suppression. The attention Han believes we are missing is negative potency, the power not to do; the power not to laugh. To experience rage when confronted with the absurd – as opposed to amusement – is to be politically engaged, as opposed to entertained. As Noah Berlatsky wrote for Foreign Policy, a meagre eight months into Trump’s 2020 Presidency, “a dollop of humor makes the anti-establishment rage go down.” Berlatsky was right. Rage, as the antithesis of laughter (which Trump so often provokes in both his supporters and critics) speaks to the “capacity to interrupt a given state and make a new state begin” (Palliativgesellschaft, 2020). According to Han, “today it is yielding more and more to offense or annoyance” for it is near impossible to engage meaningfully with a life that doesn’t take itself seriously. 

    A New Absurdity

    To make this process work of political pacification function, the digital sphere is a perfect vessel. As an abstract semblance of reality, social media presents itself with enough fidelity to mimic the real. In this detached state, lending an air of unreality to our relationships, the process of othering is indisputably easier. As users engage with constructed representations instead of embodied individuals, digital political humor fosters in-group ridiculing humor, as opposed to solidary humor. Instead of laughing with others, it naturally follows that the digital climate is apt to laugh at “them”. Scrolling past what we don’t like, the digital sphere is prone to objectifying others; further removing our sense of community. A stark example is cancel culture, by which an individual thought to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner is publicly shunned. Aided by social media, which in modern politics may be understood as the globalized “town square”, spectators are humored in these political show trails; cancelling the person as if they were a product. The digitalization of social relations turns those with opinions we object to into objects of their opinions. And as a war is waged in its name, our ability to pay attention wanes. This inability to focus is especially threatening. Attention is what lends legitimacy, we simply do not recognize political institutions that we deem “lacking” of authority. When our ability to pay attention is degraded, our ability to revoke such constant suffers. Thus, as humor plays a larger role in on the political stage; the individual may play less. 

    Bergersen may have claimed that this absurd way of living is the source from which modern laughter originates. This lends credence to Bergersen’s second argument, which states that laughter’s primary function is not as an expression of joy, but rather a corrective tool. The attempt to bring élan vital back to “those half-alive people on society’s fringes” (EBSCO, 2022) who have forgotten all that we have in common. The people on the fringes of society may as well be the politicians at the forefront of elections, whose outcome “70% of Americans believe corporations and wealthy elites’ control” (NORC, 2025). According to the Harvard Political review, in 2024 “41% of respondents indicated that they “don’t believe my vote will make a real difference,” (HPR, 2024). In a sense, our politicians have become mechanized, out of touch with life, and out of reach from our influence. In the context such political disempowerment, humor as a corrective tool will have an increasingly important role to play in politics. Ridicule becomes one of our sole means to express discontent with a system that operates outside our bounds of control. Amplified by passivity, powerlessness is perhaps the biggest political party of our age. The absurdity of which rests in the latter component of the party program: “no questioning of the political regime”. Lacking a belief in their individual agency, humor functions a small scale “levelling” of a power imbalance. In the modern age, the act of ridiculing a politician is akin to the act of de-legitimizing an institution. However, as established: to laugh at is not to take action, it is to consume. “Attention without feeling”, as Mary Oliver wrote, “is only a report”. Laughter is a passive act, one that is imposed on us by an external “funny”; not stemming from an internal “receptiveness”. To Oliver, true attention is the perceptive waiting, or negativity as Han would have it. To the latter, the constant influx of positivity is responsible for the “absolution of vita activa” and loss of vita contemplitiva”. (The Burn Out Society, 2010). Slowly deranging the prism through which voters see politics, constant activity devoid of contemplation inspires a constant nervous laughter. As Zarathustra once spoke, “if you believed more in life, you would hurl yourself less into the moment” (Nietzsche, 1883). If we believed more in life, in our own potential to enact change, we would retreat and contemplate.

    Entertainment Trumped Engagement

    As has been established, once individuals find their own political power waning, humor assumes an increasingly larger role due to its mechanism for social correction, an act that resembles the revoking of legitimacy. However, within a society that values attention as the rarest commodity, humor is increasingly co-opted by those whom it is intended to regulate. Earlier in this essay, we discussed the commodification of people into products fit for cancellation, an act of othering those we politically disagree with. Now I wish to turn our attention instead to the commodification of politics into products fir for consumption, and the role humor plays in its digestion.

    As the news becomes a form of entertainment, the political subject is turned into a consumer subject. Possessing “no real interest in politics (…) they react only passively to politics: grumbling or complaining, as consumers do about a commodity, they don’t like” (Burn Out Society, 2010). As with any other self-regulating market, “politicians and parties follow the same logic of consumption”. On a politician’s new-found duty to “deliver”, one could argue that a people who want to be humored shape politics on these elementary desires. The rise of cheap populism must be understood as a direct result of the consumption of – as opposed to engagement with – politics. As humor becomes the mode of consumption, a means to digest politics, politicians must commodify themselves and make their politics humorous. This dynamic makes populism the modal form of modern politics, and politicians such as Donald Trump a true “product of their time”. Americans, laughing themselves to the polls, have once again elected their favorite comedian. With a rather dark, albeit not overly sophisticated, sense of humor, Trump is a hallmark of postmodernism, in both the philosophical and artistic understanding of the term. The latter embraced rejected grand narrators of modernism and instead embraced a “playful fragmentation” in its artwork, while the intellectual similarly movement rejected objective truths (not so much in terms of aesthetics, but rather in terms of ethics). Once everything is subjective, post-modern politicians achieve a monopoly on what is fair, or fun. Trump, full of vim (although lacking in vigor), is known for his alliteration, a comedic tool that uses the same initial constant sound in two consecutive words. The first alliterations that spring to mind are perhaps Bad Bannon, Desperate Democrats, and most recently: the Big (often Beautiful) Bill. These examples are not intended to suggest that the use of alliteration make the austerity measures imposed by the Big Bill “acceptable”. That being said, the use of alliteration to name political measures with far reaching, disastrous consequences hide such a reality behind a wall of absurdness. The Big Beautiful Bill sound like a joke, and perhaps that is the intention? Confronted with such a “light” title, as opposed to for instance the 1986 Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act, our knee-jerk reaction is to laugh at its absurd name, not contemplate its ramifications as we would the latter. It is an alliteration whose function is akin to that of a euphemism, a mild expression in exchange for an unpleasant reality. 

    Beyond domestic politics, states fall prey to a similar absurdist humor (albeit with significantly higher stakes). On the international stage, humor is active guerilla warfare, as opposed to a domestic sedative. Historically, American Presidents have been known to deploy humor as a tool to control the immediate social situation. To this end, Ronald Regan was known as the “Great Communicator” who brought about détente during the Cold War. Trumpism, who some claim has its roots in Reaganism, seems to be adopting the same tool of communication.  Only this time to fragmentize diplomatic relations, resembling something far less admirable than a “Great Communicator”, and more akin to a German Blitz Krieger. Unpredictable, sporadic attacks by Trump echo Herbert Spencer, who in The Physiology of Laughter claimed that humor “has developed from one primitive behavior, the roar of triumph in an ancient jungle duel” (Spencer, 1869). In this anarchic state, unpredictability lends political mobility. In the Ironic Cage, the inability to know where the punchline is, when it will come, or who will deal the blow all speak to the power of the joke-teller. It is the essence of a joke that makes it funny to the individual, dangerous on the international, and disastrous to the historical. “In the struggle of memory against forgetting”, which Kundera equivocated with “the struggle of man against power”, laughing as form of catharsis allows us to “move on” from a moment of political tension. What is found to be funny may aptly be forgotten.

    Punchline

    As established, humor’s role within domestic and global politics is to provide comedic relief where agency is desired, make politics consumable where contemplation is lacking, and stun states back to an era of realism which the international community has attempted to eradicate. What then can be said of the adjacent dynamic at hand? Milan Kundera posits that we make a great mistake when we blur the lines between laughter and the imitation of laughter. Does politics degrade the essence of humor in the same manner that humor degrades the integrity of politics? Confronted with absurdist politics, are we fabricating a false release from pressure? 

    As Simone de Beauvoir proposes in the Ethics of Ambiguity, the human condition, defined by a lack of pre-ordained meaning, speaks to a fundamental absurdity of existence. When confronted with such an absence, humans seek clarity and understanding. De Beauvoir’s philosophical framework may help us understand the psychology driving the slow rubble of giggles that pervade political life. Laughter at absurdity, both on the individual and institutional levels, becomes a means of participating in the absurd rather than being excluded by it. On the individual level, laughter, like elan vital, is in constant flux. It is spontaneous. However, the contemporary comedic culture of our age has morphed into one that relies on tension, as opposed to relief, mimicking the political culture our states are increasingly finding themselves trapped within. Essentially, we have abandoned laugh tracks that once defined sit-coms such as Seinfeld or F.R.I.E.N.D.S, in favor of a more “mature” sarcasm that is perceived as “real”. This shift speaks to a broader embrace of a realist rhetorical stance, both in international relations, and the entertainment industry. Positing that their world view is aligned to the true nature of human behavior and political structure, contemporary comedians echo Thomas Hobbes: shunning the perceived immaturity of laugh tracks, as realists do liberal tenants. To this end, comedy is accused of having become didactic, assuming a patronizing tone intended to teach, while inversely, politicians have become comedians, using punchlines to provoke reaction instead of reflection. As spectators, desperate to avoid the discomfort of existential dislocation, we laugh as a defense against crisis, both political and existential; implying that we are in on the joke, in on the condition: not indeed the brunt of it. 

  • Buildings of worth

    The Architecture of Anorexia


    The oscillation between starvation and gorging exists as a gravitational pull within us , manifesting as eating disorders . Our bodies have become buildings meant to be torn down once inhabitable, or undeserving of its residents. The architecture of anorexia is constructed on this one tenet of our economy, deservance. Another capitalist mantra, “sing for your supper”, bears the implication that, should a voice falter, the body must go to bed hungry. Once a voice wavers, and the thing – building or body – proves itself undeserving, it must relinquish all claims to space in the modern landscape. This dynamic emerges from the contemporary notion of space which, which for the modern subject, exists solely in a capitalist context of worth. Buildings of worth assume space our this landscape, and the self-imposed starvation by its people mimics the de-construction – or clearing of space – of “un-worthy” buildings, irrespective of any intrinsic value they may have to the people.

    Prophet Muhammad
    “Whoever breaks a fast during Ramadan without an allowance or illness, even if he fasted for the rest of his life, it would not make up for it.”
    (Hadith: al-Tirmidhi)

    There is a strong argument that capitalism has developed into a faith, and can no longer simply be described as an economic order. Our religion lies in the market, our rituals in labour, and our sins in failure to produce or consume. If we understand capitalism as a religion, and not an ideology, the tradition of disordered eating is akin to an act of worship. But unlike Christianity or Islam, Capitalism offers its believers no forgiveness. There exists no promised land, only the promise of ever-lasting expansion: a continuum of spatial colonization. Another area this religious devotion manifests itself is within the climate crisis, and more specifically, our inability to grasp our fate. Historically, we have been conditioned to expect punishment for our sins. However, with capitalism as a religion, the practice of consumption will never be regarded as such. Therefore climate change can never truly be real in the modern mind.

    The God of capitalism is starvation Himself; and this self-inflicted rite of passage serves as a symbol of loyalty to, as Simon and Garfunkel would have it, “the Neon God we made”. In feudal times, following the Black Death, the proletariat experienced a sudden agency on account of the barren landscape, the sheer space that death allowed meant that there was a shortage of people, not land. Today, the opposite is true. Contemporary architecture, in its nature, channels movement and organizes bodies: funneling us through space, directing us toward entrances and exits often grossly disproportionate to our bodily size. Our embodiment suffers a void, as we become fragmented minds in bodies adrift.

    Philosophically, there is a sense in which spatial voids are vital for a people to transcend. A blank page. The absence of a pre-ordained meaning, such as the funneled movement architecture dictates, allows us to control our own mobility. The decades following the Black Death were a lost opportunity for emancipation; the world transitioned, or rather a war was waged in favor of, the capitalist order. Its architecture regards voids as lost capital, whose space must be optimized.

    In many ways, these building’s architecture reflects Nietzsche’s True World Theory, where we model our behavior on an ‘ultimate reality’, an ideal separate from human perception and existence. Even Scandinavian interior-design represents (what I deem) is an unhealthy obsession with cleanliness that never truly left the European collective consciousness. Aspirational realities are an embedded tradition within architecture, a strong state is reflected in brutalism, while capitalist vascular architecture is, as coined by Jesse Seegers, meant to convey a “conspicuous consumption”. Architecture is ambient in its coercion. It is, like the human body, an unavoidable art form. While you have the choice to engage with a painting or song, our buildings, like the body we are born in, are not something we can consent to. It constructs our spatial experiences, during which architects have constructed a dome of disorders. Grand buildings, and their brutal, unapologetic colonization of public space is a style purposefully “presented in monumental and dominant scale in its physical context”. This is a truth architects – and Nazis – instrumentalised. The latter’s “architecture was renowned for their “upper, richly decorated zones (…) frequently used to emphasize the irrelevance of a small man before the superiors.” Bodies are experienced as authoritarian in the totality of grandness. The skewed body-building dialectic that is so prevalent in cosmopolitan cities mirrors Karl Marx’s warnings of ‘the bodies alienation under capitalism’. However, I would argue that – not only are we alienated by our “larger than life architecture” – we actively model our consumption of food on its spatial understanding.

    John Vervaeke describes meaning as the desire to connect with something we “wish to exist, even when we do not”. In pre-capitalist times, death was regarded as a natural process, not the disruption it has come to represent. He identifies three components of meaning: coherence, significance, and meaning. Buildings with clear social or spiritual purpose, like a church or a local AA meeting space, serve this longing. But once they fail to turn a profit, once they are deemed “worthless” by the noen god we made, they must be torn down, replaced, all to make space for a worthier cause. Body-mass is now regarded in the same way. Once we are worthless, we no longer have claims to space: so we must starve. In traditional religions, bread was eaten to atone for sin. Today’s faith demands its rejection, we are compelled to throw it up.

    Should meaning be derived from something that outlives us, cremation is another painful reminder of capitalist spatial politics. Neither our bodies nor our building will remain once we die. For what is our worth without its capital-producing potential?

    However, one could take this argument and spin it. The rejection of expansion for expansion’s sake, an agent’s withdrawal of agency, challenges the logic of architecture, and capitalism. Thus, aanorexia may actually be quite counter-cultural. The sense of control inspired in anorexia may be attributed to the re-claiming of agency through the renunciation of space as an end to itself. Controlling our size expresses a bodily sovereignty and thus anorexia becomes the manner of reclaiming the means of production: our bodies. Essentially, the stubborn insistence to self-express through self-inflicted oppression. Is it really worth it?

  • Framskritt mot Frode; Fuglane til FrP

    Norge – Det finnes en vond taushet i hjertet, i innlandet, i hjemlandet. Menn føler seg forkastet, men i det stille hvisker Ivaar Aasen og Simen Velle i øret: “Om du skriv og fortel litt om deg sjølv, så skal eg skaffe deg ei skrivebok og ein god penn” (Tiller, 270).

    Frode – for et kjent navn. 

    Når jeg holdt Skråninga av Carl Frode Tiller i hånda, tenkte jeg på bokmål. Og så kom en ny norsk til meg – en ny måte å være i Norge på. En måte å være én blant mange menn som ingen treng – én blant de tause, ensomme mennene i fremmedlandet: Noreg. 
    Skråninga var et eksperiment for Tiller fra Trønderlag, som vanligvis ikke brukte nynorsken, men fant fort ut at  “det eg las gav heilt andre kjensler og uttrykte mykje meir enn det dei konkrete orda (bokmål) viste til” (Framtida, 2019). Frode var et kjent navn, for det er nemlig fornavnet til Grytten, forfatteren av Menn som ingen treng og fortelleren av Den Dagen Nils Vik Døde. Da jeg leste om dødsfallet til den ensomme ferjemannen, kom jeg til å tenke på en annen Vik, en Mattis Vik, og en lignende død i Fuglane av Tarjei Vesaas. Både Nils og Mattis drukner, midt på havet, utenfor synsvidde. Navn, både de som gis og de som mangler, er svært viktige i de fleste ny-norsk romaner som forholder seg til menn. FpU hevder noe lignende skjer innen politikken; menn drukner, denne gangen innenfor synsvidde, og majoriteten har vendt ryggen. I Skråninga av Tiller og Trilogien til Jon Fosse blir navn erstattet med mannen og kvinnen, ettersom mennene “hadde vært så forfærdelig einsam, og til slutt hadde han drukna seg i hel” (Skråninga, side 271).

    Nynorsk blir ofte beskrevet som kompakt, konsis og rett på sak; maskuline egenskaper. Den er jordnær i kontrast med bokmålens mer abstrakte og latiniserte stil. Ønsket om en tilbakevending til det fundamentale – til jorda– er framhevet, politisk instrumentalisert, av Framskritts Partiet. I ny-norsken deler menn etternavn og mellomnavn, samt navnløshet. Mennene deler drukning, drikking og død: alt innenfor synsvidde. De deler Noreg; en annen måte å være i Noreg på. Nynorsk, et språk sviktet av dens etterfølger: bokmål, og hvite menn sviktet av deres etterkommere: kvinner og muslimer.

    “Muslimane er som oppdrettslaks. Vi forar dei opp, ikke sant? Vi gjør dei sterke. Ein dag svømmer dei opp elva og tar over.” (Muslimene lager ungar heile tida, mens vi dør ut, klager Sidemannen i Frode Grytten’s Flytande Bjørn. Den store utskiftingen ombolerrer Norge; nå må nordmenn flykte til Noreg. Der de kjem frå. Den mørke novellen “badet i norsk sommerlys” forteller om det nasjonal romantiske småbyen Odda i Hardanger som nå “ligner Memphis etter Elvis”. Hvordan forholder Amerikanerne seg til bygget, nordmenn til bygda, dersom Elvis er dratt? Hvem flykter inn der oppe? Hvem er det som erstatter oss?

    I 1892, skrev Amalie Skram Forrådt. Kvinner i det borgerlige miljøet avviste Skram sine naturrtalistiske skildringer; men de som befant seg i samfunnets randsone fant trøst i språket hennes. Skrams realisme rommet fortsåelse. Litteraturen ble et ly. Nynorsken kaster lys over “menn som ingen treng”. Menn i eit nytt og skrudd Noreg. Nynorskens tilstedeværelse i samtidslitteraturen belyser resultat av Skrams kvinnefokus; generasjoner med forrådte fedre, og nyfødte FrPere. Samfunnet består idag av et mannfolk som ikke lenger kan undertrykke oss verken utvikle seg selv. De er stillestående i samfunnet. De er politisk sterile, svake for Simens Sildenafil. Under kvinnekampen, kjempet kvinner ikke til tross for hat; de kjempet for å trosse hatet. De ble innstilt med en hevngjerrig vilje om å overleve, som aldri ble dyrket i menn. Idag tiltaler nynorsk et folk på den sosiale yttergrensen, og i 2024, ble Simen Velle kåret til Årets Stemme. Nynorsken rekker der bokmål ikke lenger når, og Simen påstår at “han forstår” de samfunnet ikkje vil sjå.

    “Kva?

    Vil du sjå han?

    Eg reiste meg og sa jeg kunne komme igjen senere.

    Vil du sjå ham?

    Eg takka for drikken og gikk mot døra. Pedersen stansa meg. Han tok meg i armen og førte meg mot døren.

    Eg vil at du skal sjå han, sa Pedersen. (Flytande Bjørn, Grytten).

    Som i utdraget fra Flytande Bjørn av Frode Grytten, vil Tiller, Foss og Vesaas belyse den stereotypiske tause nordmannen. Sønnen som, ja, kanskje ikke var guds beste barn men “var faen meg ikkje nazi.” Hade nettopp fått seg fast jobb, hadde nettopp blitt førstegangsvelger. Også menn som var ung på sekstitallet, og hadde en midtlivskrise på åttitallet, “var faen meg aldri nazi”, likte bare han Carl I. Hagen. Nå sigger han alene i bakgården (ettersom det ble tabu-lagd på nittitallet). Han bruker kaffekoppen som askebeger, og tilhører en kommune du aldri har hørt om. En man du bemerker på ferjen på vei til hytta, som uttaler et beskjedent «god dag» dersom du med uhell møter blikket hans. Hvor er kona, hvor er barna? Hun er død, de har dratt, dro til himmelen, flyttet til storbyen. Forlatt. Forrådt. Forlengs. 

    ‘Du er nødvendig som jorda, eg treng deg som brødet om morgonen, som søvnen om kvelden.’ (Sande, 1945).

    Den ny-norske litteraturen når misantropene i samfunnet; dvaledyr om vinteren, kvinnehater om sommeren; FrPere til høsten. Om våren, vil de bli til jord. Denne tilbakevendingen til det fundamentale, til mold og opphav, framheves av Frodene og Vellene. Skråninga, samt FrP, når våre menn dersom de sklir ut i skråplanet. En massevandring til høyre-siden innebærer ett ønsket om et Noreg – en ny norsk som taler til menn – den nye minoriteten i Norge. Nynorsk er virkelig opphavstedet til Norge, dersom den ble utviklet av dialekt, og ikke fra dansk. Dens litteraturen bringer rettferd til den moderne mannen, akkurat som Ivar Aasen skapte et rettferdig språk for nordmenn på 1800-tallet. Idag føler sønnen deres sviktet av det andre skjønnet samt skjønnlitteraturen. Han søker ly; og tar ett framskritt mot Frode. Hva representerer denne returen? Handler det om representasjon, eller revansje? Et hevntørstig håp.

    “Far min blir til jord snart no. Far min skal være sjølve våren snart, og eg kjenner eg blir rolegare når eg tenker på det. Eg skal også bli våren ein gong. Ein gong skal eg og far min vere våren i lag.” (Tiller, 272).

    Når dommedagen kjem, og sonen min er død, vil mennene vende seg nedover og grave seg eit hol.

    Dei vil venda attende til jorda, og søkje ly i mørkret – i kjelaren av kloten; ly fra solen. 

    Kva skal stå på gravstøtta? 

    Frå nynorsk er du komen, til bokmål skal du bli.

    Av nynorsk skal du atter oppstå. (Sundt, 2025)

  • It Ends With Us

    Contemporary Romance Literature and its Derogatory Depictions of Sex: Paulo Freire on Colleen Hoover.

     “Designed to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind” is what George Orwell made of the English language. Any attempt to translate lived experience to written form is, to some sense, a dishonest act; the written word will never fully encapsulate the vibrancy of the living world. “Bad english”, Orwell believed, served as a vehicle for oppressive ideology. Letters are not an objective medium, they are a politicized construct. It is an attempt to harness what is, by nature, inherently free: like Orwell’s wind – or, in the case of contemporary romance literature, women. 

    Mark Fisher once argued that capitalism is so embedded within our collective consciousness it defines our very notion of existence. Its eradication would constitute a collective existential crisis. Similarly, one could argue that the patriarchy defines our very notion of womanhood. Its dismantlement would correspond to a similar existential crisis. This is due to the fact that, as Fisher argued of capitalism, the patriarchy is embedded into our consciousness, fostering an oppressor conscious, as Paulo Friere understands the term in his 1970 work Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Forming our sexual drive, the conception of life itself is marred by the patriarchy. While I do not regard the patriarchy as a direct product of capitalism, I do regard sex as a means of patriarchal oppression embedded within capitalism. Sex becomes more than a means of profit, it yields power; and capitalism awards power. Sex sells, sex is on sale in bookstores, and sadistic sex turns the most profit.  A means of oppression sold to the oppressed, a means of enslavement wrapped up under the Christmas tree; Satan’s little helper. 

    Investing in our own enslavement, do women suffer from a “fear of freedom” as defined by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed? Adopting Freire’s perspective on true liberation, when young women discover a yearning to be free, a longing for sexual liberation, they will only perceive that this longing can only be transformed into reality when “the same yearning is aroused in their comrades” (Friere, 1968). Adopting an attitude of adhesion toward the patriarchy, mothers become their daughters’ sub-oppressors when providing them with derogatory, abusive, and degrading literature. Colleen Hoover is only one such author of the plethora that exists. Romanticizing abusive behavior and toxic dynamics while promoting toxic masculinity, Hoover has a chokehold on teenage girls, and our daughters are gasping for breath under the weight of her oppressive literature.

    Power struggles and pillow talk; Sex is as much an expression of politics as it is love. As literature encapsulates the current political climate of its time, the insurgence of oppressive literature should serve as a warning to society. The rise of the right, the longing to return to traditional values, following the reinforcement of gender roles, make contemporary literature a true product of our time.

    The oppressor consciousness, much like the capitalistic consciousness, develops a strictly materialistic concept of existence. Profit is the primary goal, and sadistic sex sells. A perverted love that, as Paulo Freire states, “is a love of death, not of life” (Friere, 1968). A deranged love of oppression, not liberation. The sexual themes present in contemporary romance embrace a sadism and masochism that was previously confined to the adult world. This Christmas, there is a three for two. The human sexual psychology of modern romance subscribes to the allure of a lacking consent, or transactional sexual favors. Referring back to Freire, “self-deprecation is another characteristic of the oppressed, which derives from the internalization of the opinion the oppressors hold of them.” The authors of these modern contemporary romance novels are women themselves, writing for a female audience, as exemplified by Colleen Hoover. Thus, the internalized misogyny women harbor indulges in further oppression as “although they (the oppressed) desire authentic existence, they fear it.” We must liberate ourselves from the oppressor whose consciousness we have internalized, and reject the current influx of derogatory literature that solidifies our oppression. Our fear of freedom will fuel the extinction of our sexual liberty as an “authentic existence” (in terms of sex) encompasses the eradication of the oppressor consciousness. 

    Women must achieve a liberation of the mind, forbid the oppressors from entering our bodies, and planting their seeds of oppression in our womb. The oppressor conscious is truly a sexual disease, and the modern woman is held back by fear, not of the sickness itself, but rather its absence. A fear rooted in the intrinsic belief that, as a woman, your human value corresponds to your sexual value. Challenging the oppressor conscious will provoke an existential crisis amongst the oppressed. We will lose our sense of selves when we lose a sex that sells. But the time has come for women to reclaim their identities. Thus, it is time women are liberated from the oppressive literature they are taught to be “romance”. It is time women free their daughters, and spare them from a generational pain painted as pleasure, consolidated in oppressive contemporary literature. It is laborious, as “liberation is a childbirth, and a painful one.” It is time to face a collective existential crisis, because, as Paulo Freire explains it, and Hoover herself puts it: It Ends with Us.