On Untitled12

Posted: February 13th, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Estonia, human rights, things that suck, thoughts | No Comments »

In Estonia, the controversial author Kaur Kender has published a piece of transgressive literature at nihilist.fm, a free-for-all alternative publishing platform that he himself has helped to create. The Untitled12 story depicts the character’s gradual loss of humanity and includes vile and depraved sexual acts, including against a minor. The publication of the work has resulted in the author being the subject of criminal trial, which has divided the public opinion.

The more traditionalist-conservative people seem to enjoy with glee that a subversive counterculture figure who criticises the status quo, existing hierarchies of power and stagnation of Estonian culture has finally received punishment. They see him as a symbol of a wider threat to nativist culture, Estonian language, to bourgeois living. For them, he is an outsider who is interested in ‘foreign’ rap music and who refuses to conform with the safe, static mainstream of the small Estonian cultural circles. Because he cannot be easily marginalised otherwise, he has to be dealt with some other way: boycotted or possibly put into jail.

Putting Kender to trial seems intuitively wrong to any person who has grown up with liberal democratic ideals. Tolerance of publications that shock, disturb and insult other people is a part of the bedrock of freedom of expression. It would be hollow and meaningless if only conformist mainstream expressions that everyone agrees with are allowed. Indeed, freedom of expression can only be limited if it incites violence against minorities. Even then, books and other forms of artistic expression require from states to meet a much higher burden than other types of expression.

Artists usually occupy spaces in the margins of the society, because they create original works that challenge the status quo in order to shape the culture in a continuous communication. If those margins were cut off and only conformist works allowed, the culture would wither and die quickly. The government and society needs to accommodate these expressions, even if they go against the most basic moral standards. This case is about morality, and not the abuse of children.

The more liberal part of the elite support the view that the trial is a misguided enterprise and blame the authorities in having a too wide of a interpretation of the criminal code, which puts many other works of art in danger. For them, the eventual vindication of the author would be a statement of Estonia as a liberal country. However, it can also be a Pyrrhic victory.

Hannah Arendt described in the Origins of Totalitarianism the public mood in the 1920s. The ‘anything goes’ roaring twenties were a time of redefinition of morality. She wrote:

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Hopefully we are not re-living the preWWII era, but there are dangerous similarities with the current case. Kender is so effective in his onslaught against moral values that he risks (with considerable help from the prosecutors) that the effect of his work could be the opposite of his intentions. That it trivialises the sexual abuse of children or that it actually helps to bring about more mob-mentality, not less. For the mob that is currently rallying behind extreme right this is a sign that the liberal elites have lost it, because they are defending someone who is so profane and who has written something so vile and unacceptable. The liberal elite may become more amoral in the eyes of the masses.

It is difficult to know how this case ends. The debate around it already shapes the reality and creates unintended consequences. It would have been best for the authorities not to get involved, in which this niche work could have remain just that. Whatever the solution that the justice system comes up with, it seems to be a lose-lose proposition for everyone involved.



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