This text was published in three posts: post/page three (3/3)

Giorgio Agamben is an Italian philosopher whose thought is concerned with power, instruments of control and human rights. In his view, the one element shared by elections held in all totalitarian systems is that the principal ruling power in every one of these systems remains, in a guaranteed manner, unchangeable and beyond question.

This is a method for channelling society’s opposition and protest in a controlled direction so that the “basis of opposition and protest” itself is brought under control, creating conditions that Václav Havel, politician and author of *The Power of the Powerless*, calls the age of “post-totalitarianism”: an age in which citizens are invited to vote by participating in what is merely an illusion of the right to choose. They are encouraged to vote so that they may declare their implicit consent to living under despotic domination.

Albert Camus, in his book *The Rebel*, from which I recently drew, rewrote and published a text entitled “Rebel or Revolutionary,” says:
Every slave longs for freedom and for the experience of a day on which they possess a free choice. Every master knows that there must be a day on which slaves are allowed to wear the crown so that their demand for justice may end with the temporary crown placed upon their heads and stop there: a mockery of the possibility of freedom and choice designed to conceal the reality of repression.

My question to you is this: what makes you think that our circumstances are different from all this repeatedly experienced historical knowledge? What makes you regard this action as more honest and more correct than not voting? What even makes you regard voting as more hopeful than not voting?

If you think non-voting is passivity born of despair, read once more these brilliant sentences from Dr Mostafa Mehrayeen:

“Having a passionate political life capable of transformation is not particularly difficult or complicated!
First, you do not cooperate with the government. Second, you continuously demand your rights and demands from the government.
The first approach tells the government: because the people are not with you, you are weak; and because the people are together, they are strong.
The second tells the government: fulfil the people’s demands, otherwise they will move beyond you.
Under such conditions, no model of repression can come to the aid of a political system and prevent it from changing itself:
the political system must either assume the form of its united people or the people will move beyond it.
Everything that has become possible in society in recent years—whether concerning compulsory hijab, women attending stadiums, changes to certain judicial sentences, pushing back the morality patrols, and so on—has been the result of the activities of the people, especially women and young people, within civil society. If only everyone would learn from women and young people how to pursue their demands passionately.”

An election, even when it is not an election, is still a possibility of choosing. The aim is to choose consciously. The election itself is not nearly as important as the principle of creating a space for dialogue within society. In the remaining days, write. Narrate. Talk. Analyse. Criticise. All of these are important for our civil and cultural growth. Participation in dialogue is the most important principle in the possibility of cultural development. Speak with those with whom you have the greatest disagreement, if they are willing to engage respectfully. Listen to them, and think about how a society can be built in which a shared and free life is possible. Whether you support boycott or believe that voting can produce meaningful change, remember that the day after the election is more important. It is the day on which you must redefine where you stand.