Mapping the Digital performance of Violence as a tool of Resistance in Iraqi Poetry ‘Militia of Culture’

Abstract

I.Poetry, Politics, and Technology: The poetic scene in Iraq underwent significant changes following the collapse of the ruling regime and the invasion of the country by the International Coalition headed by the United States of America in 2003. These changes mainly took place on two levels: political and technological.
 In post-2003, normal existence became impossible for the Iraqi people as their country plunged into an unprecedented and wholesale waves of destruction and violence. In “As Iraqis See It,” Messing concisely described the situation of Iraqis ‘expressing anger and gloom, exasperation and despair.’ He says:
 The overwhelming sense is that of a society undergoing a catastrophic breakdown from the never-ending waves of violence, criminality, and brutality inflicted on it by insurgents, militias, jihadis, terrorists, soldiers, policemen, bodyguards, mercenaries, armed gangs, warlords, kidnappers and everyday thugs. ‘Inside Iraq’ … suggests how the relentless and cumulative effects of these various vicious crimes have degraded virtually every aspect of the nation’s social, economic, professional, and personal life. (qtd in Adelman, 2008, p.184)
 What happened in 2003 onward, however, is not strange or unexpected. It is a culmination of a long history of blood shedding, politically-motivated murders, several coups d’états, a wearing war with Iran(1980-1988), thirteen years of tiring and exhausting economic sanctions imposed by the United Nation after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait(1991-2003), and a ruthless totalitarian system that makes Iraq “suitable for nothing,” in the words of the Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh(2004, p.209). (For more information about the modern history of Iraq, see Al-Athari,2008 and Anderson and Stanfield, 2004)