Is This a Portrait of Europe?

Fadi Abou Hassan, Minister of Finance, September 7, 2014.

We have grown up being taught of the dangers of this figure. The Eichmann of the Holocaust, the one who made the ultimate identification with his role, making himself invisible, if not nonexistant outside his task at hand. Adorno was critical of Arendt and her analysis of Eichmann, of which the word "banal" precedes all familiarity of what she actually wrote. Adorno would not be Adorno had he not insisted on clarification by way of problematizing, so he agreed with her in identifying the evil as trivial. Only he would put it the other way round: Evil is not trivial per se, it is triviality that is evil.

Fadi Abou Hassan has made a series of ministers representing each their field and yet remaining hidden. The same amorphous body underneath all of them, defining the "unchanging in form and character" of a uniform.

To the one fleeing from war, this is how Europe presents itself today. The bureaucrat sealing off the continent.



The cartoon shown is courtesy of Fadi Abou Hassan and must not be reproduced without his permission.