Allegory of the Ronin by A. Shahid Stover

THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH, VOL.2, ISSUE#14, DEC/2014-FEB/2015

The epistemological clergy of Empire are legion, smugly basking in their cozy relation to a western imperialist continuum that orders the world according to the dictates of capital and racist dehumanization, colluding through materialist orientation towards an ever more perfect globalization of permanent coloniality in the Raw. These imperial retainers, loyal samurai of the status quo, function as gatekeepers of public discourse presiding over an unprecedented global cultural hegemony which encompasses both the Academy and the Streets with sanctioned structures of meaning.

And yet even as these obedient watchdogs continue to hone the normative gaze and polish the prestige of Empire, an emancipatory gaze enters the fray with swords drawn against the authoritative source of their discursive legitimacy. Who is this disheveled existential outlaw, this swarthy rebel of ill repute, this fearless iconoclastic denizen of postmodern lumpenproletariat subjectivity who dares challenge these sentinels of established power through the sheer potency of his insurgent philosophical discourse?

Behold, the Ronin-as-autonomous radical intellectual; rugged, uncouth and intemperate – wielding an existential liberationist critique that severs normative epistemological standards of a western imperialist continuum and destabilizes the socio-ontological conditions which forcibly maintain and globally consolidate Empire. Engaged in continuous discursive onslaught against structural-inert global power, the Ronin remains resolute in maintaining a critical dialogue with both the Academy and the Streets without leaning too heavily on either for ultimate legitimation.

The Ronin and the imperial samurai exchange a fierce mutual gaze of tempered contempt across the Bridge without a trace of any mutual recognition between them in an antagonistic reciprocity of epistemological alterity. The normative gaze of Empire regards the Ronin as a seditious upstart, uncredentialed rogue and dangerous usurper of discursive authority. The emancipatory gaze of the Ronin regards the multitude of imperial clerisy marshaled against him as well-trained watchdogs, professional bootlickers and discursive lackeys of established unjust global power. No quarter is asked; none is given.

Emboldened by the prestige of imperial sanction and the pragmatic lure of financial gain, combined with the sheer facticity of their numerical advantage, these obedient retainers of Empire find themselves regularly squaring off in cultured literary opposition to the growing insurgent philosophical encroachment of the Ronin. Yet with each intellectual melee, these loyal samurai, blinded by bureaucratic will to appease the imperatives of structural-inert power, fail to properly cope with such pyrrhic conditions of possibility which compel them forward to meet the Ronin’s challenge at an epistemological topography ill suited to their ‘objective’ frame of mind which flourishes in stale spiritual climes at several removes from the Real.

However, the Ronin-as-radical autonomous intellectual thrives in the Raw of insurgent philosophical endeavor and experiences no such ‘objective’ distance from the lived consequence of his thought. Indeed, each moment his pen conquers a notebook and each instance his laptop responds to the constant flow of his typing hands, is indicative of a total commitment of human ‘being-in-the-world’ towards the Divine through intellectual work. The Ronin thus writes, implicated by an intellectual engagement which constitutes an emancipatory ontological wager against the Real of a western imperialist continuum.