The Future Has Always Been Dire: On Andrea Abi-Karam's "Villainy"

Andrea Abi-Karam | Villainy | Nightboat Books | 2021 | 136 Pages

My response to the idea of art as activism fluctuates. Though lately I find myself more cynical about art’s inclusion as activism, I don’t deny that art can and has been not only activism but also radically impactful at a political, cultural, and social level. But a lot of the art masquerading as activism out there probably isn’t. Much of documentary poetics (indeed, even the documentary poetics being lauded and taught currently) co-opts trauma narratives not belonging to the author and parades them as grotesque displays of suffering. Often these representations lack nuance and minimize entire lives into narrow histories, exclusively characterized by exploitation. What does documenting another person’s suffering mean ethically? What does it mean when you (reader, writer) are distanced from these processes and not directly impacted? Any art dabbling in this arena must grapple with the ethics of observation and participation.

When I say I believe that a body of work is operating as activism when it creates a poetics in the politics of action, I mean that I think the work radically overturns harmful systems of thought within the reader and challenges those directly at the idea level. I believe this has implications for how the reader then thinks and even lives their individual life, which might then translate to a greater body of action and even local change. This might grow into collaboration or movements which amount to political and societal change. What’s clear however is that one person’s thoughts aren’t sufficient to make change; it takes many people working together. This process involves many small acts that generate many ripples outward, which might take time. But I think one of the early ripples could be a body of poetry that changes a person who reads it. I think Villainy by Andrea Abi-Karam is a book that could be an act that becomes a ripple. The book itself grapples with the question of whether art can be activism:

it’s coming back to this Black Panther Party vs. BLA line of can we ever

think of arts as a form of militancy—& i’m very much conflicted on

this too

like i want to & i do but also with the understanding that it’s not enough

& really has to arrive out of a moment of upheaval or conflict or

feeling & can’t actually be predictive

To read Villainy is to participate in its process, challenging harmful patterns of thought and preconceptions surrounding how one views others and systems. I say this as a queer, non-binary person. I say this as a white person who carries an abundance of privileges based on this and other identities. As much as this is a book about radical action and queer protest, the book is also a voice acting in protest of violence against Arab and Arab-American people as well as their systematic villainization—hence the collection’s title Villainy:

I am the villain.

But how dare u think me to be simple

This collection has a theatrical streak, separated in sections operating akin to scenes and acts, rendering itself as performance in both content and form. I find it helpful therefore to speak about Villainy in a consecutive fashion. Its untitled prelude acts as a contextualization, unveiling to us the greater endeavor of the collection: to imagine better futures for excluded and oppressed groups, documenting the steps it may take to get there, and attempting to realize them in the world.

Villainy’s first section, “Aftermath” begins this imagining while also acting as a protocol for resisting current systems:

we can share

we can support the strike

we can show up

we can show up against

we can show up for each other

attracted to some & repulsed

by so much else

maybe even everything else

it’s fucking overwhelming

Sections like these make the book materially and practically applicable, a poetry collection permeated with small advices for action and protest. The book is also grounded in real circumstances, documenting the violences against queer people as well as violence in the War on Terror and against resisters of capitalism and imperialism. There are times, however, when the collection feels like it’s trying to prove itself by asserting the steps of thought at every moment. Maybe this is because as a trans narrative it mirrors real life. I say this knowing that conversations surrounding how much of gender is performance are only so helpful, but I think that to be accepted as yourself you often have to perform in a certain way. To be recognized as your identity you must present yourself a certain way. You are surrounded by society’s constraints at every turn. Abi-Karam’s collection pushes back on this reality in every way possible, even naming it: “the gender webmess.” 

Villainy endeavors to find a future outside of the metaphors of the present, acting to queer language by the earnest performance of oddity and flamboyance. It operates in a structure of interchangeable parts in constant communication, playing with repeating lines like “I am the villain. / But how dare you think me to be simple.” This line specifically seems to act against reductive understandings of intersectionality.

The lyric within Villainy is self-aware, and recognizes its level of grandiosity of gesture. It recognizes its own endeavor by imagining a way forward that not only dismantles capitalism but builds a new system which prioritizes the well-being of its most vulnerable members: 

kick cops out of pride

or better yet

we make a world without them…

queer liberation means a world without prisons

This collection’s conversations are timely not simply because they are rooted in the present, but because the violence inflicted on marginalized groups is a continuation of past violence, a propagation of patterns, generational violence being preserved. Andrea Abi-Karam’s book uses moments of true human reality to ground its historical and theoretical concerns and to operate simultaneously on so many levels of thought and meaning. Consider, for example, its depiction of surveillance:

I think about wanting to document everything & also how I want to

delete everything

I think about wanting to free up space to document new things

I think about wanting to document new things & how I have to delete

digital relationships in order to do this…

I scroll through correspondence from the dead & can’t bring myself to

delete them…

…I delete them in hopes it makes it harder for the FBI to find me…

This surveillance is carried out not only by the state and its systems of oppression but also by the self as it grows and changes with age:

All of my selves/ contained in separate bodies/ connected through the

desiring machine/ not through skin/ all of these selves/ contained in a

room

Villainy does many things well, but what it does best is use Abi-Karam’s documentation of experience to make the case for a radically different world. It imagines a future for us which “LOOKS LIKE CENTURIES OF QUEERS / DANCING ON THE GRAVE OF / 1. CAPITALISM / 2. THE STATE / 3. COLONIALISM / 4. NAZIS / 5. RACISM / 6. OPPRESSION.” This is an important task, and one that goes beyond the documentary. Villainy is a timely collection and it should be an enduring one, something we keep reading and talking about. The future is dire and the time for action is now.