the man with the sandals of fire

This entry is part of the Intelligence-Love-Revolution (ILR) Research Program, developed and led by Sepideh Majidi, with research contributions from Maure Coise.

Partner Platforms: Foreign Objekt, Posthuman School, Deep Objekt, The Space Gallery, UFO.

It was only a few years ago that I sat in Hassan Hamdan’s house for days, sifting through archives and searching for the right questions to ask his son, Redha. This was not due to a lack of questions but rather the challenge of where to begin in understanding the connection between Hassan Hamdan, who I grew up hearing about, and Mahdi Amel, a revolutionary who shaped Marxist thought in the Arab world.

Growing up, these two figures were seperate in my mind. The former was a man who took his niece by the hand, swung her beneath a group, and watched her dance in wonder. He played a significant role in raising my mother, and his assassination impacted the trajectory of my life. The latter was a man who introduced a large collection of theoretical anti-colonial works, born out of a colonial social reality. His work was grounded in a universal science that interrogated the persistent schizophrenia between material reality and thought in the context of national liberation, imperialism and its influence on internal dynamics and the role of armed resistance.

In another conversation with Redha, he recalled discovering small poems his father had hidden around the house: tucked inside books, above cabinets, and in the pockets of old clothes. Some notes, found after Hassan’s assassination, symbolized a truth he carried—a truth which arrived only by a way of emotion, where lies the repressed forms of knowledge when the intellect alone cannot express. For Hassan Hamdan, poetry was never separate from philosophy or theory but rather a path to truth.

This has been my starting point in finding my answers. Hassan Hamdan made Mahdi Amel, and not the other way around. Mahdi Amel’s theory and poetry is a mathematical equation. When he writes he never says I will arrive here. He begins with you by asking the question, doing the demonstration and arrives with the reader at the conclusion. It’s also a dance. Materializing my research over the past years has been difficult, but it’s clear that the work can’t be static and needs to include this mathematical equation, linking both the poetry and the theory. 

I have created a formula to materialize this link taking the form of an animation. The animation accompanies Mahdi Amel’s final speech, Culture and Revolution, delivered shortly before his assassination in Tripoli, Lebanon in 86. While this is just the beginning, today we’re sharing a five-minute snippet from the twenty-minute seminar. As this is a work in progress, we ask that no photos or videos be taken.

Magnetic field - enlarges over time and space 

C (t): Colonial economic structure at time (t)

S (t) : Colonial relations and class dynamics at time (t)

P (t) : Political power structure at (t)

I (t) : Ideology framework at time (t)

D = differential operator representing an infinite change in variable 

dC

—--- = F (C,S,P,I)

dT 

Through the revival of old archives, poems and manuscripts, the formula captures a continuous dynamic of a dialectic system, where there is always a relation between theory and reality. It also captures the nature of his form, that often comes back on itself. Truth, as Mahdi Amel sees, emerges from a violent contradiction—specifically, the moment of rupture between material reality and thought. If history unfolds through the resolution of contradiction within the material conditions of society, it was necessary for Mahdi Amel to come up with a theory to address the historical changes occurring during the Lebanese Civil War. In 1982, the war accelerated, Israel attacked Beirut in June and invaded the city in September. During this time, the Arab national question took on an existential meaning for Amel, not that it became a priority over the social revolution, but rather that he carried both within him, and that it was its condition. Evelyne transcribed Amel's words at the time which captured this the temporality of revolutionary transformation; "we have concrete problems to solve. To these just problems, we must find just solutions. These are the problems of today that we must deal with, even if socialism would have to wait two hundred years. That is the criterion of validity of Marxism.”

Amel developed the concept of the ‘Colonial Mode of Production,’ an ambitious yet practical theoretical apparatus linking the struggles of distant societies and their working classes. He applied this theory to the environment of the Lebanese Civil War. His painstaking work—both theoretical and poetic—symbolized writing against the void, against the quietism and nihilism to which even the most committed can succumb in times of defeat and war.

Mahdi Amel is still present. He is still with us because his thought is in continual movement While we stare ahead into a junction blurred with ambiguity, we’re reminded that no less than in Amel’s time, is there a dire need for a systematic understanding of Zionist settler colonialism as a primary enforcer of American hegemony in our region. This at the same time opens a myriad of possibilities. At this juncture may we recognise that our anticolonial struggle - Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese and the wider Arab world, are joint and may we deconstruct together, the same web of capitalism and colonialism that are forcing us to subjugate or fight. Amel’s work resides in us and helps us with understanding the complex reality of the two systems. His thought should not be preserved however, it cannot be fossilized, nor should it be sacralized. Quite the contrary, it must be taken as a fertile thought, capable of renewed conferment. It is up to us to keep Amel’s thoughts alive, because by freezing him, it would be like killing him a second time. 

I’ll leave you with a message from Evelyne, written in the Man With The Sandals of Fire (p.993)

"This work has nothing to do with reparation or consolation. It opens onto a drama that is certainly intimate, but an intimacy strongly linked, united, welded to a political, historical drama. The drama of the Arab countries, of all the colonized countries of the entire world and which are trying to emancipate themselves from colonial domination. The drama that precisely Mahdi Amel, the thinker as much as the man, denounced in all the acts of his life: his gestures, his words, his public interventions, his writings. Because there is no partition between his life, his thought. His life is thought, his thought is lived. He went so far as to live all his ideas” 

Technical Rationale

1.⁠ ⁠Spiral Dynamics Reflecting Recursive Thought

• Thematic Influence: Mahdi Amel’s methodology loops back on itself while expanding outward, reflecting dialectical recursion and progress.

• Visual Representation: The tornado structure spirals upward, dynamically growing in size and complexity

• Technical Implementation: This is achieved using mathematical equations (to drive procedural animation, where variables like time and position dynamically influence the spiral’s motion)

2.⁠ ⁠Material Conditions 

• Thematic Influence: His philosophy emphasizes the grounding of critique in material realities and contradictions.

• Visual Representation: The tornado’s base is denser, representing the rootedness in material forces, while the upper spirals grow more expansive, representing intellectual and revolutionary reach.

• Technical Implementation: Parameters like particle density, radius scaling, and noise are manipulated to show this material-to-abstract transition. For example, lower segments have tighter, more concentrated geometry.

3.⁠ ⁠Elliptical Form and Disruption

• Thematic Influence: Amel’s elliptical reasoning challenges symmetrical, linear progression, reflecting uneven development and contradictions.

• Visual Representation: The tornado incorporates asymmetrical distortions and elliptical trajectories, breaking perfect symmetry to highlight dynamism and tension.

• Technical Implementation: This is achieved through variations in the sine and cosine components of the spiral equations, as well as noise and clipping for irregular cuts and distortions.

4.⁠ ⁠Continuous Flux

• Thematic Influence: Dialectics emphasize constant motion and transformation driven by historical forces.

• Visual Representation: The tornado never settles; its motion is continuous, embodying perpetual critique and re-evaluation.

• Technical Implementation: Dynamic CHOPs (e.g., Noise and LFO) modulate the motion and shape in real-time, creating a sense of unending flux.

5.⁠ ⁠Expanding Intellectual Reach

• Thematic Influence: Amel’s critique seeks to break boundaries and expand outward from its material base.

• Visual Representation: The tornado widens as it ascends, symbolizing the broadening scope of revolutionary thought.

• Technical Implementation: Parameters for radius and spiral growth are scaled with height (Y-axis), procedurally defining the visual metaphor of expansion.