ABSTRACT
The petty officers affiliated with the People’s Democratic Party who stormed the Presidential Palace in Kabul in the morning of April 28, 1978 and proclaimed the victory of “the proletariat” in the largely peasant society of Afghanistan were intent on creating a future society where “class antagonism” would be abolished and “the toiling masses” paving the way for the rapid demise of “the bourgeoisie.” This military coup-known as the “Glorious Sawr Revolution” in official state propaganda-and the subsequent Soviet occupation of Afghanistan signified a precise moment in
history that was “pregnant with possibilities” to some Afghan writers and poets who were vociferous proponents of literary commitment. The selfproclaimed “revolutionary” state appeared “as if it [were] the harbinger of a new tomorrow.” “In such situations,” as Ngu˜gı˜ also astutely generalizes in his lecture, “art and the state may see themselves reflected in each other, fellow travelers so to speak.”4 In order to achieve legitimation and extend its hegemony, the new state had to deal with problems of subjection and discipline, problems that proved political in essence. It soon became clear that the emergent “democratic socialist” state was no less than an authoritarian polity, a form of commandement that was, as described incisively by Achille Mmembe in a different yet pertinent context, comprised of “a series of corporate institutions and a political machinery that, once in place, constitute[d] a distinctive regime of violence.”5 Such a regime was propelled to “invent entire constellations of ideas [and] adopt a distinct set of cultural repertoires and powerfully evocative concepts.”6 In spite of its attempts to suppress potentially rival discursive formations and create and institutionalize a “master code” as part of a comprehensive political-cultural agenda, the Afghan commandement inevitably demonstrated the “banality” of its own power as it increasingly resorted to an unprecedented “aesthetics of vulgarity.”7 As the following discussion demonstrates, the proponents of this kind of aesthetics showed themselves to be more imprudent sloganeers than sophisticated intellectuals.
