Aestheticizing Politics: The ICC and Elitist Educators

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By Oliver Perater

Just recently, I encountered the term ‘Aestheticizing Politics’ in the work of Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. It means making political actions seem as if they are works of art. Benjamin warns us of the tendency of the ruling class and elitist educators to aestheticize politics, making politics a spectacle to manipulate the masses. Aestheticizing politics is one of the best means of the ruling class to maintain hegemony which is necessary to stay in power. It shows to the oppressed the elegance and grandeur of the political theater and distracts them from seeing the power structure that dominates society and the global order.

Duterte’s trial in ICC has been subjected to aestheticizing by some elitist educators, some politicians, and mass media to support the ruling class they probably and ambitiously aspire to join. They invoke a magnificent notion of elegance, solemnity, and majesty, trying to present the ICC rituals as if the ICC is a divine institution worthy of reverence. They are trying to obscure the ICC’s ideal fundamental function, i.e., the administration of justice grounded on fairness rather than political maneuver. They intentionally emphasize the majesty of ICC instead of its role, which is not actually a mechanism of justice but as a Western neo-colonial court.

I am neither a judge nor a lawyer and determining Duterte’s guilt is beyond my capacity. What I know is that in the Philippines, which is legally recognized as a democratic society, Duterte has millions of supporters, and I respect that. Furthermore, based on my Sub-Saharan intellectual capacity, ICC’s move to arrest Duterte probably goes beyond the Duterte-Marcos feud. Nothing more is invested in Duterte’s freedom than the U.S. oligarchs, who have already established nine US Military bases in the Philippines through EDCA, a treaty expanded during BBM’s presidency which is arguably unconstitutional.

Hence, more than the notions of majesty, elegance, solemnity, and world-class litigation portrayed by some educators trying hard to be elitist, ICC is a Neo-Colonial tool of the Western oligarchs.

- Oliver Perater is an Assistant Professor at MSU-IIT 


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