“Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries”
I have always been very interested in the aesthetic, it is a characteristic I find to be particularly informative. There is a lot you can learn from such a preliminary observation.
One place in particular, very deserving of analysis, is the Persian gulf monarchies. A rapidly expanding region filled to the brim with petrodollars and vanity. I think this region has a lot to teach us about the future. And what better lens then the aesthetic of Cyberpunk?
Now, it may sound strange to analyze a bunch of US-backed and hyper-conservative absolute monarchies through the lens of a media genre, but I think this will make sense throughout (or at least I hope so).
Let's begin
Firstly, What is Cyberpunk?
Cyberpunk is a dystopian subset of science fiction that imagines a futuristic world with unbelievable technological advancement, paired simultaneously with crippling inequality and oppression. (if you have seen the anime “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners” you get the gist)
Neon lights, flying cars, abundant transhumanism, a criminal underworld, and corrupt politics. This is Cyberpunk;
In a general sense, this services as a critique of the inevitable conclusions of capitalism itself. To portray a system with such great wealth and prosperity, yet a perpetual underclass beneath.
Cyberpunk is the darker contrast to techno-optimism. The future may be big, but it certainly is not big enough for the poor or otherwise disregarded. If anything, the future becomes even narrower for them.
This is a commentary even for the contemporary context. As William Gibson, pioneer of the cyberpunk genre, would say "The future is here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
So, in some sense, "Cyberpunk" is a hyperstition, it is a *fiction* that is capable of speaking to reality on a deeper level than truth itself. Fiction is deeper then truth because it can simply be characterized. Cyberpunk is thus the exaggerated characterization of what we already know to be true.
And in actual practice, the Persian gulf monarchies are the most exaggerated forms of this. It would be harder to find a bigger contrast between the obscenely wealthy and the cripplingly oppressed, with slaves working next to shopping malls and skyscrapers. The Gulf states are techno-capitalism in the worst possible way.
Now, a lot more can be said on the particularities, so let's example that
Firstly, how and why are the gulf states linked to futurism? And what even is Oilpunk?
One inspiration for writing this substack was an old blogpost from the Kuwait-Based author Thorsten Botz-Bornstein. He's known for writing bizarre and esoteric books on futurism, and just so happened to write an article reading this phenomena in the gulf (I will quote this post a few times throughout) .
In this article, he gives a general characterization of "Oilpunk" in specific reference to Kuwait.
His description:
"Oilpunk is an idealized version of an oil-based society making use of brassy visceral machines covered with oily grime. Bearded individuals drive through the digestive apparatus of the Oilpunk universe. Their super powered vehicles never touch the ground and their white clothes never get dirty. This place does indeed exist. Welcome to Kuwait."
Obviously a bit tongue in cheek, but you get the point. The gulf states are unquestionably headed to the future and have embraced technology to the fullest. Oilpunk has no time to waste.
Another related term is "Gulf futurism" as coined by Qatari-American author Sophia Al Maria, being a characterization of the gulf states as a pessimistic and hypermodern project enticed with the persona of "Futurism". It is a description of an aesthetic theme
To quote
"The themes and ideas of Gulf Futurism emerge: the isolation of individuals via technology, wealth and reactionary Islam, the corrosive elements of consumerism on the soul and industry on the earth, the erasure of history from our memories and our surroundings and finally, our dizzying collective arrival in a future no one was ready for."
“Gulf futurism” is thus a heading warning for what shall come for the rest of humanity.
Such ideas of "futurism" are in of themselves symptoms of a reactionary capitalist society, and the political fixations it produces.
Sci-Fi (and aesthetic in general) is ideological, even if in subtle form. Take the famous cartoon “The Jetsons” for instance. It depicts the idealized form of a 1960s nuclear family in a lighthearted future society. This serves as a window into the post-WW2 optimism of (white) American society where the future and seen as innovative and bright.
Aesthetics can be fine political commentary, and this is especially true for Cyberpunk or any “Punk” really
To quote
"Literary and cultural critics have long maintained that postmodernism marks a post-futurist moment in which imagined futures are pre-determined by the ideological imperatives of market capitalism. Yet, this “slow cancellation of the future” has paradoxically entailed a proliferation of 21st-century futurisms: Afro-Futurism, Sino-Futurism, Gulf Futurism, accelerationism, design fiction, climate fiction, and so forth."
Futurism is often an extremely reactionary idea, and it's no coincidence that the original Italian futurists were fond of the rise of Mussolini.
Being narrowly obsessed with the latest technological advances will leave you absentminded to all other considerations.
The Italian futurists cherished war, because it was the ultimate manifestation of the latest technological paradigm. They loved the Italian bombings of North Africa in 1911 because it was the first aerial bombardment in history. Accumulation for the sake of accumulation is not much different from barbarism after all. There’s a reason the industrial character of Fordism would be directly linked to outright support for Nazism.
This hyper-fixation on technological innovation and progress may actually sound similar to some ideas of Accelerationism. This is worth a brief overview
In 1967, Roger Zelazny wrote a famous Sci-Fi novel titled “Lord of light”
In this book he describes a group of revolutionaries called the "Accelerationists" whom want to radically changed societal perception of technology, believing that unmitigated technological development is best possible path.
Nick Land expanded on this concept, and saw it as a natural conclusion to capitalism itself.
To quote Nick Land in his intro to accelerationism
"In this germinal accelerationist matrix, there is no distinction to be made between the destruction of capitalism and its intensification. The auto-destruction of capitalism is what capitalism is. "Creative destruction" is the whole of it, beside only its retardations, partial compensations, or inhibitions. Capital revolutionizes itself more thoroughly than any extrinsic 'revolution' possibly could."
That is to say, the only way through capitalism is through *it*. The hurried intensification of capitalism is the only hope available. Hence, we should not look at rabid neoliberal outposts such as Kuwait or Dubai as problems, but rather as solutions. Oil is the fuel for all humanity.
To quote Vaden
“Oil does not only create change, but increasing rates of change. All that is solid melts into air, and the melting is faster, year by year. Futurism took up the torch of acceleration; various forms of romanticism opposed it. The sovereignty of oil has a privilege previously reserved for gods: it can change the way experience is experienced.”
Much more will happen, and this is only the beginning. Oil will hasten the velocity of time itself
To quote once more from land
"Not to withdraw from the process, but to go further, to "accelerate the process," as Nietzsche put it: in this matter, the truth is that we haven't seen anything yet."
Maybe the solution was never supposed to be found in Lenin, but Rather in Mohammad Bin Zayed? (Or maybe this is just a meaningless schizophrenic ramble, but who can tell the difference these days...)
Now, with all that said, let's circle back and further discuss the particularities of futurism and Oilpunk in the gulf.
The conservative and regressive nature of the gulf states can be deceiving. In contrast to said backwardness, they are absolutely obsessed with (at least the aesthetic) of Futurism and Cyberpunk.
They are known for suggesting bizarre and futuristic infrastructure projects, such as the "the line" the metallic and linear "smart city" that would be built in Saudi Arabia. It is such an excessive and indulgent proposal that one cannot help but be enthralled.
Or, one can look at the already existing tallest building in the world "Burj Khalifa" in Dubai. These constructed symbols are nothing and mean nothing, and that's precisely the function they must serve.
To quote from a separate Bronstein article
"At the heart of Dubai is the Burj Khalifa. Being rather empty for the time being, the tower seems to illustrate Roland Barthes' idea of "the zero degree of the monument" that must be empty and useless in order to fully realize its utopian potential. For Barthes the Eiffel Tower is a supreme example of an empty signifier or a pure sign, whose meaning, constantly bordering on the irrational, can never be exhausted"
The Burj Khalifa is that exact irrational nothingness you are drawn toward, it is the creation of a symbol from nothingness.
Beyond just infrastructure, this desire for the future is represented on every other level of organization.
They invest heavily in bitcoin, they sponsor internet influencers, and host gaming events. Everything to be on the cutting edge of technology and trends. If there is an excessive and aesthetically futuristic commodity or concept, you can imagine the gulf states are already onboard. They are headed for the future no matter what. This is true even on a population level
The gulf states have an extremely young and internet-connected population.
Looking at Mobile cellular subscriptions (per 100 people) the UAE has 212, and Kuwait has 181.
For reference, the U.S. is only 110.
Looking at Individuals using the Internet (% of population) you would find that the UAE is 100%, Kuwait is 99%, and the U.S is 91%
If you want to find a society more hyper-online than America, it's in the gulf. (No wonder so many gulf teens got radicalized into joining ISIS via the internet, but that's a story for another day).
This is how you get the "Punk" in "Oilpunk". It is that rambunctious youth frenzied with consumerism and excess. The new crashing against the old.
From Bronstein:
"The word 'punk' suggests the articulation of an anarchic behavior of post-industrial youths. In cyberpunk it does not result in politically motivated counter-cultural actions, but rather in a consumer-oriented teenage anomie propelled · by high-tech development, a phenomenon that was first observed in Japan. Cyberpunk can be defined as a political nihilism."
Oilpunk is entirely about speed and energy. Dostoevsky in his famed work "the idiot" said that "Beauty will save the world". Such a statement is entirely juvenile. It fails to recognize that beauty can *only* exist in speed
From the futurist manifesto:
“We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed.”
It's thus no surprise that gulf states have some of the highest rate of car accidents in the world. They want to get where they're going. The future does not have time to wait.
If you’re familiar with the racing car anime “Inital D” you are familiar with the line “Gas, Gas, Gas”. This is futurism distilled. The racing automobile is the tool of the future
And, As the Italian futurists would say "A racing car is more beautiful then the victory of Samothrace".
There's something even deeper that can be said, particularly on the aesthetics of both city and Oil. Naturally, Dubai is the best example.
Dubai first of all presents a deep Americanization.
There is something deeply *American* about Dubai, with its abundant mixture of consumerism, classism, and the like.
Indeed, Ann Applebaum wrote herself "Americans visiting Dubai know how 19th century Europeans must have felt when they saw the United States."
Even modern America and Dubai share similarities in in the simple realm of a ghastly car-centric urbanism.
"Every road has at least four lanes; Dubai feels like a motorway punctuated by shopping centers. You only walk anywhere if you are suicidal."
The closest parallel is perhaps, Los Angeles, with its similar urban planning and world-famous consumerism. Jean Paul-Sarte visited Los Angeles in 1949 and gave a colorful description, one that could similarly describe the cities of any Gulf Monarchy.
To quote Jean Paul-Sartre:
"Los Angeles, in particular, is rather like a big earthworm that might be chopped into twenty pieces without being killed. If you go through this enormous urban cluster, probably the largest in the world, you come upon twenty juxtaposed cities, strictly identical... In America... cities... that move at a rapid rate are not constructed in order to grow old, but move forward like modern armies, encircling the islands of resistance they are unable to destroy; the past does not manifest itself in them as it does in Europe, through public monuments, but through survivals."
This totally excessive urban sprawl does draw a visual parallel. LA and Dubai can chain themselves together in the art of consumption and splendor.
Yet, with that said, a major difference can be found. Primarily in the form of Disneyland. That being the fact that Dubai does not have Disneyland (at least yet)
To quote:
"For Baudrillard - and for Louis Marin long before him - Disneyland has been created "in order to make us believe that the rest [of America] is real." Otherwise, we would think that "Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and the order of simulation"
The Utopic atmosphere of Disneyland has a function. With its clear geographic boundaries, it enables us to distinguish between the real and the unreal, between the authentic and the inauthentic, that is to say; if Disneyland is unreal, then Los Angles must be real.
To distinguish oneself from the other there has to be an other in the first place.
Dubai, on the other hand, has no such anchor in reality at all. You have no reference point to distinguish between the real and the unreal. Henceforth you are left adrift,
As Bronstein would say "Nothing could be more opposed to the sterile New World atmosphere of Dubai which is a "Disneyland" with the death penalty."
If you've read "Oil" by Upton Sinclair (or the more popular adaptation "there will be blood) you would know that real Oilpunk does not occur in Southern California, but in the gulf.
Oil is a very transient commodity, and it is a defining aspect of the Middle East - and this leads us to one of the most important questions of all: an examination of Oil itself
Oil is the center of everything for this, It is the most remarkable and excessive commodity. Dubai will have to be understood in the terms of oil.
We have to understand Dubai in terms of perpetual "appearance". A city that is "not yet there" yet perpetually in speed and occurrence.
A city may have a performance. Hong Kong for instance, performs as a taste of the orient for the western traveler, and a taste of the west for the Chinese traveler. It is contrasted to something concrete.
Dubai has no precedent. It is not based on Arab or Islamic culture. Arabism has never entered it, and it has never entered Arabism. This is what gives Dubai the ability to transcend time and space. Dubai is new performance or appearance.
This can be understood in terms of Cinematography.
Take the editing technique of "Step-Printing".
Step printing is used in filmmaking in which individual frames of a film are printed multiple times onto a single frame of the final print, resulting in a slower frame rate.
It creates a blurred and dreamlike effect to motion (here's a representation if still unclear)
This technique is used abundantly by director Wong Kar-Wai, the Hong Kong filmmaker known for "Chungking express" and "In the mood for love".
To quote Bronstein
"Wong Kar-Wai uses this method abundantly in several of his films. I believe that this "step printing" symbolizes Dubai's cultural situation. In step printing, speed acquires a new dimension because it establishes a paradoxical relationship between the past and the future.”
As one frame appears or disappear into the next, you conclusively acknowledge that disappearance is in fact appearance. The conclusion has revealed itself in the premise.
And in the particular case of Dubai, It is an appearance predicated on the disappearance of *oil*
From Bronstein once more
"The paradoxical constellation that Dubai's eternally postponed appearance is, in the last instance, based on the disappearance of oil makes the comparison even more pertinent"
This was a choice. Dubai has never chosen anything different. They desire to become fictitious, to live only in the aesthetic, to immediately engage in an act of self-abstraction, which is the contemporary mode of disappearance.
As Pablo Picasso would say, "Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction”.
The appearance must exist within the disappearance
There is something deeply libidinal about the extraction of oil. Even if it may be wrong, one cannot help themselves
The excessive nature of oil helps us understand the excessive and consumeristic nature of the gulf itself. It is a consumption in perpetuity.
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I think an interesting example to further illustrate this would be "Spec Ops: the line" which takes place in a post apocalyptic war-torn Dubai.
This game touches a lot on the darker side of war, paranoia, ect
But what I would like to talk about is the visual aesthetic of the city. It speaks a lot to the character of Dubai even contemporaneously.
Walking around the long-abandoned skyscrapers that were overtaken by a huge sandstorm, there is a persistent feeling of being stuck in the past, if not long abandoned.
There is consistent illusions throughout the game, and the player can never tell if his perspective is being misled or confused. It all feels very fleeting.
I think this aesthetic and vibe (for lack of a better term) speaks to the contemporary gulf itself.
From Bronstein:
"Kuwaiti economy is a cliché. a punky "No Future" slogan lingers over the entire country because one day the oil will run out, and the exuberant lifestyle and hyperdoped economy cannot be sustained."
The stereotypical desert mirage incurs seeing some desired object (be it water or food) until, on arrival, the commodity is then fleeting and never existed in the first place. Dubai is the oasis that will never arrive, yet the every thirsty wanderer cannot help but to partake.
In a sense, this is similar to the hyper oil-dependent gulf economies. At some glance, they seem like a feverishly wealthy, yet, with an underlining feeling that this is not sustainable and could not possibility last.
You may find this aesthetic analysis to be a bit tripe, but understand, it is often difficult to discern between the aesthetic and the political
As the Italian futurists would say:
"As any good anthropologist will tell you, aesthetics and politics are so closely interwoven that it is often impossible to determine where one begins and the other ends."
Now, even with all this said, we have only scratched the surface of Oil.
There are much deeper philosophical implications for such a miraculous and unique commodity.
From the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani
"Oil [naft نفط] is an occult matter that forms the phantasmagoric collective and political subconscious of the Middle East."
For Negarestani, oil is decidedly non-human, and consequently outside the area of simple rationality.
In the modern age, Oil serves as the pretext (and subtext) for all political and economic conflict in the Middle East. It is the "Ur-Commodity" with an influence beyond imagination.
Oil distributes itself across the world via a network of pipelines and ports that humans have built on its behalf. Oil is the liquid gold, it is the ultimate fetishization
In the gulf states especially, capital has become synonymous with oil. The overwhelming majority of their currency, wealth, and capital is derived from the trade of Oil.
Oil in the gulf is a symbol for everything they have, it is in some sense, god-like in character.
From Bronstein.
"For an Oil producing formerly poor country, Oil signifies freedom. At the same time, God’s authoritarian chains remained tight. In the West, the liberation from God led to a dissolution of meaning, which was compensated by adopting the new meanings of an Oil powered consumer society. By contrast, in Kuwait, two competing Gods had to share one and the same space. God cohabitated with his own surrogate: Oil."
Oil, as a perfect representative of capital itself, unites everything between heaven and earth. It can serve the function of god as well as anything else. Oilpunk unites the material and the immaterial
In the West, the bourgeoise revolutions of secularism and modernism killed God, sending him underground turning into Oil. God became associated with the formation of industrial capitalism, of greed, and of the bourgeoise. (Rockefeller got rich from standard oil after all). Oil became bad god
In the gulf, Oil had always been God; it simply had not yet been discovered. Zion has arrived, and it is oil.
It makes sense that god comes from the ground. Theism can illustrate itself in the material. Particularly in the Middle East, which is the origin of all Monotheism.
Monotheism is a perfect religion for the desert, with everything in existence between the sand and sky. Everything ends as it begins, we come from dust and will end as dust. As Carl Sagan would say "we are all made of Stardust". Truth is in the singular and the united.
Marx described such evolution into monotheism.
“At a still further stage of evolution, all the natural and social attributes of the numerous gods are transferred to one almighty god, who is but a reflection of the abstract man.”
We will all return to the ground, and what better representative of that then Oil, which itself comes from the ancient remains of long-dead organisms.
Oil has a demonic and esoteric character, and it is not hidden just for the Middle East. Due to the proliferation of engines, chemical fertilizers, and petrochemical items, the jinn within oil is spread across the globe.
Yet as we remain, Life and limb will continue to be sacrificed for Oil, and it must be sacrificed for oil. In the 21st century, oil is the most consistent pretext for war. To destroy oil is akin to human sacrifice (though as we've seen, many would happily sacrifice humanity for oil)
In 1991, when Iraq was retreating from Kuwait, they set fire to the oil wells, leading to the largest oil fire in human history, costing billions of dollars to repair. in a sense, this was the largest ritual of sacrifice.
From Bronstein
"Saddam Hussein set fire to the Kuwaiti Oil wells, sending huge amounts of black smoke to the heavens. The human yearning for a remission of their sins is deep-seated and will never cease; but the practices shifted from blood to Oil."
Oil has this godlike characteristic, due to its obvious relation to capital, and capital as god is something Marx acknowledged extensively.
Commodities are so fantastical and inexplicable that Marx writes of the “mystery of commodities” with its “magic and necromancy”.
Marx saw money as an "alien mediator" that has estranged itself from man, existing far beyond man himself.
From his 1844 comments on James Mill
"Owing to this alien mediator – instead of man himself being the mediator for man – man regards his will, his activity and his relation to other men as a power independent of him and them. His slavery, therefore, reaches its peak. It is clear that this mediator now becomes a real God, for the mediator is the real power over what it mediates to me. Its cult becomes an end in itself."
This “god” is what knowingly or unknowingly guides our actions and perspectives within capitalist society. It is an abstraction without an abstractor.
The experience of living in a developed capitalist world is the experience of being at the mercy of opaque and complicated systems whose origin, function, and even purpose are often unclear to the participant. All that is known is that we must work the machine.
We think that we've become the master of commodities, whilst only becoming ever-more enslaved.
Capital destroys both us and the environment (especially the case with oil). The endless loop of production and profit cannot possibly stop, because each individual capital must ruthlessly compete to survive.
Like automatons marching into unknown infinity, capital most progress.
Marx in capital volume 1 said as much:
“Accumulate, accumulate! … reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus-value … into capital! Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie”.
This is the end state of capital. This is the end state of oil. Breaking the cycle is the only alternative. Until then, we must accumulate. Might as well enjoy it while we can.
I could continue a bit more, with other schizophrenic screeds to fill more of the page, but perhaps that would just be pandering. So I will leave you this.
Thank you for reading. let me know what you think.
As someone who's only foreign trip has been dubai, this captured the feeling so well