– ^{i’m not arrived yet} – _Ilghar
– _{but your body does} — ^Lerato

^{The Body is the Language.}

^{Phenomenology, simply and finally put, is a philosophical construct that examines
how the human body is the primary source and interpreter of all significations:
desire, sexuality, power, freedom, presence, intelligence, aliveness,
spirituality joy, grief, anarchy, etc.}
― Esiaba Irobi

I used to be. Body who?

I used to be a russian in the land of my birth for 23 years. By right of claimed oblivion — I didn’t know who my ancestors were and I still don’t know it well. I used to be russian in a land that was russian by right of force and imperialist greed. In '91 it was no longer russian. Was this land ever russian? No, never. But the belarusian-ukrainian-russian roots-mixes in the bodies of my ancestors were there because land is taken over by bodies. Settlers. My grandfather was a settler. My mother was a settler. And so my body became redundant in '91 on the land of my birth. How did my body change then? My teenage body was ready for a fight with a body of a different ethnicity because it was a casus belli. Was? Is. Still is. Look at the british people in the summer of 2024. And they’re not the only ones. Shame. Yes, our bodies are still here, in the space of racism, even if it’s officially shameful and constitutionally impossible. Racism is forbidden. Protectionist anti-migrant policies and nation-states are taken as the basis for the male-dominated "prosperous enlightened" societies. Yes, it’s an irony. A very bitter irony, mixed with horror.

 ^{When a Mojave says, Inyech ‘Aha Makavch ithuum, we are saying our name.
We are telling a story of our existence. The river runs through the middle of my body.
‘Aha Makav is the true name of our people, given to us by our Creator
who loosed the river from the earth and built it into our living bodies.
Translated into English, ‘Aha Makav means the river runs through the middle of our body,
the same way it runs through the middle of our land.}
― Natalie Diaz, The First Water Is the Body

How did my body change when I brought it to Moscow in 2007? It shrunk. This city is very fast and aggressive. I haven’t learned how to attack. I left m-city. In 2018 I brought my body to Berlin. Here it was perplexed for a while. I trust myself and my sensations quite enough and try to expand the way I see myself, so I choose the sets in which my consciousness and body are included. I don’t want to be part of the "russian" set, I don’t want to be part of the "male", "white", "enlightened" sets. I will make up my own identity and find ways to redigest the sociopolitical constructs that have historically touched me, such as "russian male" or "privileged migrant" or "favorite war". In January, my body and I experienced powerlessness and anger. It was named Қанды Қаңтар — Qandy Qañtar [Bloody January]. In February, my body and I experienced powerlessness and anger. This bloody full-scale invasion has been going on for ten years. In October, my body and I felt powerlessness and anger. This genocide  has been going on for decades.

_{Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun.
Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.}
― Mahmoud Darwish

In a world of xenophobic wars for resources, I want to choose my own identity and my own values.

I can be freer in my identities. And hyper-identities like national ones are total evil. I refuse. In these terrible wars, there is also the shameless exposure of an inhumane system in which the body is a weapon and an excuse for war (casus belli). I must find another body language to resist the system. And liberating my body from the language of war is one of the important tools of resistance.

^{body is the last tool}

Erdwesen [earthcreatures]

How come an absolutely sacred, life-giving space turned into a resource, into a curse? The Longest Train in the World carries not people, but land from one territory to another so that the market will make it a commodity with increased value. What’s at the other end of that train? That’s where the dust from the heavy wheels falls. It falls into deep holes with roots twisted out of the earth. If there was A Girl Called Terra, is that Girl dead or alive at the destination point of this train? Why are forgetfulness, neglect, exploitation, greed involved in these processes? Where is the love? Where’s the care? Where are the people?

“respect the mountain”
treat the land as your equal
the holes of the ruined Amazon
the bare tree trunks with broken roots as teeth around the edges

they speak

speak about disrespect
disrespect that has the power of fire
disrespect
of other’s body, of other’s sensations
disrespect as LSD for one’s ego

they, she, it always speaks
the one who is “right” loves silence
even if there is no silence at all
as well as the only truth doesn’t exist

they always speak

Who is listening? This motion is in the direction of listening and revelation.
Who is listening? This action is in favor of the voices of the Other.
Who is listening? This is openness in the way of the notunderstandable and crucial.
Who is listening? This is a space for stories whose languages are diverse.
Who is listening? I-you-they-we.

The people are here. Iyoutheywe. Everywhere. Iyoutheywe sees the train. Iyoutheywe sees the dust. Iyoutheywe sees the holes. Iyoutheywe are listening. Iyoutheywe starts to speak.

the Body Speaks

It is hard to get along with the body. I wanted to forget it and believe in the power of knowledge. A utopian challenge. Images of the normative body fill the city all around. There are fewer male ones, more female ones, no transgender ones at all. It’s the same on the Internet, in movies, in magazines, in newspapers. Disney animation has hyper-normative princess’s bodies detached from reality. It’s very obvious what a beautiful normal body is. Also, it is super obvious that my body is an exception. My body is the problem — this world tells me.

^{The worst allergy is an allergy to yourself.
You can’t swap bodies with anyone else.
You can’t not be in contact with yourself.
It’s a very terrible allergy.}
― Maja Esakova

The capitalist market offers a solution — fitnessgym, proper diet, liposuction, therapist, porno vulva correction filters, cocacolazero, scheduled vomiting. A forgotten body on the sidelines of progress. The body will not be taken into virtual reality, there will only be Zuckerberg glasses as a guide to finally matching the image of me with the images of the mass media.

^{As Sobchack, a North American scholar, goes on to remark:
“At this historical moment in our particular society
and culture — the USA — the lived body is in crisis.”
She argues that the body’s struggle to assert its gravity,
its vital and social investment in concrete life-world inhabited by others
is now marked in hysterical and hyperbolic responses
to the disembodying effects of electronic representation.}
― Esiaba Irobi

So far, Metaverse is more promised than realized, it is more advertising banner than body oblivion. So far. The body is still demanded by propaganda and the state machine. Parades with ideologically correct automated bodies, wars with expendable bodies, banners with bodies admiring leaders, including dead ones. As well as bodies behind bars. They disagree with the state. These bodies are publicly shown punished, forced to endure the will of the state and its power apparatus. Other bodies are not shown by this machine of official violence, because torture is (not)forbidden, and the state machine does not know other ways of dealing with the body.

The body is still here. The body speaks. And it’s here forever.

_{the Word is Yesterday
the Body is Today
Tomorrow is …}

 An Igbo proverb states that
when we dance we express
who we were,
who we are,
and who want to be.
― Esiaba Irobi

the Body is an Archive 

Perhaps it was worth the years of persistently losing my body to discover that it has always been here and brought me to this point, and it is the archive of me and my ancestors.

_{The loss is always bigger than expected.  Otherwise, is it a loss?}

The body has a memory. The body is uncontrollably present in the now and knows nothing about the future. The body’s language is understood by the Other and the body wants to be near the Other. The body communicates with the Other while the language is still only looking for words.

^{While their captors thought that these Africans were mere properties,
acquisitions with an extraordinary capacity for manual labour
and a unprecedented capability to adapt or acclimatize to a hostile landscape,
the Africans, as history has come to reveal,
were actually mobile libraries of their culture’s total intelligence.}
― Esiaba Irobi

If the pyramids of power have repressed bodyreality for thousands of years, I read this as a direct message, an indication of the fear of the holders of the top of the power pyramid. The body is a glitch. It is an inherent characteristic of a complicated system, unpredictable by the creator and the operators of the system itself, and therefore frightening to them as madness. The glitch is out of control, it appears unexpectedly and produces changes in the system. The glitch is always collective and therefore its effect on the system is considerable. Glitch is a transition, it is a permanence of changes.

^{A body that pushes back at the application of pronouns,
or remains indecipherable within binary assignment,
is a body that refuses to perform the score.
This nonperformance is a glitch.
This glitch is a form of refusal.}
― Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism

_{it was supposed to be}

a Garden of Radical Care

What is (radical) care and if we ever manage to practice it? 

^{Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation,
and that is an act of political warfare}
― Audre Lorde

Where is the difference between care-self-care-care-about-the-others-I-don’t-care-at-all-I don’t give a fuck-I just want to be a hedonist?

_{- Are you tired?}
^{- I am also tired, and for me, it is better to stay alone.}

It became clear that we understand care very differently—some see it as self-care (to the point of selfishness), some as caring for others (to the point of rescuing), some as just a way to be and observe, some simply as relaxation, some as play, some as pleasure, and some even used the space as a bar.

And when we were right at the town hall and Sonqo Ruro was shouting under flags of violence — others were on the grass at that moment — and they saw how police started an operation — they were just approaching “random” people from the crowd and arresting them. We were sitting there for the sake of radical care, watching the people get arrested.

We were resting for sure, but did we care?
Was it a Garden?
Who were Radicals?
Where was Care?

?

the Body out of the Body through the Body

One day the sensation came
of the vulva. In my body, the penis
was mounted before birth.
On the imaginary vulva
that trip was the end.
No clitoris, no vagina, no orgasm.
Is this a complete list of my knowledge
about this organ? Where are the secretions? Where’s the--
I can’t even find a word to ask,
I’m stuck in ignorance.

The question came later
beyond the reach of my body
with a pre-implanted penis.
- how is it two bodies in one?
There’s a body growing in my body.
Does it eat there
drink? And what?
Do I feel the parts of this body in my body?
Hands? Legs? Skin? Stomach rumble?
When it’s gurgling, do I get a burbling sound?
And how do we talk
Do we speak with an inner voice
or the womb voice
the voice should not be directed outward
but through the throat into the belly
into another body in the body.
Does the sound resonate with my and the other body
by the membranes, by the fatty films
Does one body call out to the other
body to body 

It’s like talking to god.
sending him (her!) a request, a question
as if outwardly, but actually inside yourself
and you come up with the answer yourself
lack of imagination in prayer
is tantamount to atheism or extremism
Talking inward requires a generous imagination
or perverted
What if the goddess (she!) inside answers?
by a hand, or foot, or skin, or rumbling
or an unknown part, an unknown language
An overwhelming deafness to the languages of other bodies
even within myself
and that imaginary self which is the She
without the pre-implanted penis 

What if we are one
this is all one body of mine
it’s actively growing
no sensation of an other one
ratio produces explanations for the changes
sedates
everything seems logical
schizophrenia
neither as word
nor as a feeling
is not allowed
as an assumption is rejected
in the puberty years of a body emerging from the body
the efforts of rejection are multiplied
I am one and no Other
even if there are two bodies
no duality
unambiguity. weareone
ratio will doubt one day
will realize that I’m not one
or that I’m not me
or that the other body is She or They
What’s it like?
Then I’ll imagine the release
of the body out of the body through the body
as best I can, ra (emo)tionally

separation
reparation
preparation
an act of giving birth

I was reading outside the trip
beyond my possible imagination
the first time the body that emerged
does not separate itself
from the body that gave birth
once divided into two
it’s one
for a while

And I am not
And I am not two
I am definitely not separated
not confusing the bodies
I am becoming a service
(better not military, even with a penis)
caregiver.
psychologically borderline
I can be happy to fall apart
polarized
Though all I can do is imagine.
In a body with a pre-implanted penis
There’s no space for the Other
only the secretions of the divided
unconnected
absorbing
keeping distance
drawn by perspective
force
power
delegating carework
to make room for the hungry gaze
of another body
under control

_{Denis Esakov}
^{with the careful participation of Marina Solntseva}

^{Must read link:}
Esiaba Irobi, The Philosophy of the Sea: History, Economics and Reason in the Caribbean Basin