Power structures are like darkness – visibly invisible, uncatchable, untouchable; having no contures, no shapes. They are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The borders are hidden. Such power structures are soft and amorphous, they will penetrate everywhere – like the darkness. These power structures make their real characters and their intentions unclear. They are more problematic, they are hard to define, hard to catch in words and hands, hard to oppose. They are in close proximity. Everywhere we move in everything we do there is an element of power structure, the shadow of darkness.
Fear of the power structures is same as the fobia from darkness. Dark is unfair enemy, having no face so that we could hit it, talk to it or even arouse compassion.
We all are in darkness in our self. Darkness is fear and uncertainty, doubts. Darkness is also our most personal space, space of delving into the pure self, space of no distrurb concentration by visual and surrounding world of perception. Darkness is a space of revealing the truth. I am in the darkness means I am deep in my soul and I can see the truth. We meet face to face in darkness with the power structures. What are we talking about together there?
„You are person. You are personal to yourself. Your final purpose is you. I am power structure. My final purpose is my power. You are just a tool to reach my purposes. You have your love and pains. I have you just as a body with cardiac muscle and nerves. You have your name, I have your evidence number. You are uniform cell in the system agregate.“
Power structures disrupt personal structures by unpersonalizing personal. In power structures, personality is reduced to object. Power structures negate human authenticity, human freedom. Human is not a final purpose anymore, but just a tool to reach other purposes, the purposes of power structures.
The power structures distribute reward of time and injustice of work. They precisely organize our opportinities and limits, define the character of our freedom, feed us by abundance of conveniencies. They put us masks on, giving us roles. We slowly get to distance from ourselves. We fall into darkness. We become passive, because we have no choice. We are falling asleep and we feel safely, because dark is also our personal safe space. We are taken care of and sleep in a square space of objective world, tired from work and sated by material conveniencies. We have everything. But do not dare to wake up!
Soon you realize your freedom is false, you live within precise framework planned in advance for you, you are a puppet of power structures, you are caught in a box with no exit.
Then everything that does not fit in square, your identity, your humanity, your art, will start screaming and beating on the walls trying to get out of the darkness to light, of the masks to nakedness which will not be shame but rescue.
Jana Kubankova