The Flesh of the Text and the Trauma of the Border: Biopolitics, Neuroaesthetics, and Pragmatic Deconstruction in the Work of Somaia Ramish

By Ivan Pozzoni 

The Cartography of Terror and the Pragmatic Resignification of the Body

The poetic production of Somaia Ramish (سمیه رامش) configures itself as an arena of impact in which linguistic matter ceases to be a mere vehicle of representation, transforming into an illocutionary act, a biopolitical operation of resistance against the systemic erasure orchestrated by religious fundamentalism. The Foucaultian concept of anatomo-politics allows for the interpretation of the practices through which the Taliban regime disciplines female corporeality and public presence. Confronted with such annihilation, Ramish’s syntax reacts by reworking the rich Afghan poetic tradition through a contemporary lens. When the author writes «شعرهايت را با باروت پر كن / جغرافيای جنگ است اینجا!» (‘Load your verses with gunpowder / this is the geography of war!’), the performative utterance shatters the contemplative distance between the reader and the artistic object. The imperative por kon confers an illocutionary force upon the statement that reconfigures poetry as a practice of resistance; the word barut (باروت, ‘gunpowder’) itself redefines the act of writing as a warlike action of self-defense. This process moves from biopolitical oppression and the anatomo-politics of the body toward a pragmatic deconstruction that deconstructs syntax, ultimately reaching an illocutionary action that resignifies the word into self-defense. This procedure directly echoes the theories of contemporary philosophers of biopolitics and radical aesthetics, such as Achille Mbembe and his notion of ‘necropolitics’. While Agamben enables a reading of the production of a life exposed to the state of exception and stripped of full political belonging, Mbembe allows us to shift focus onto the differential management of exposure to death. 

Pragmatic Deconstruction, Jabr, and the Sociology of Global Reception

From the perspective of analytical criticism and linguistic pragmatics, Ramish’s text works on the semantic extension of the Persian term jabr (جبر), liberating it from its traditional categories. While on a conceptual level jabr shifts from abstract predestination and divine fatalism in the traditional theological register to bodily coercion understood as an administered ‘daily meal’, its political and sociological impact lies in unmasking gender-based violence and media indifference. In the same way, the temporal dimension is reconfigured: the time of infinite waiting and the exercise of faith is replaced by the ‘uninterrupted night’ of the disruption of the future, transforming into an explicit denunciation of the historical and generational blockade endured by Afghan women. Finally, the space of discourse abandons sacred contemplation or resignation to become a clash between the global media spectacle and the suppressed tragedy. In the poem «من می‌توانم جبر را به سه قسمت تقسیم کنم» (‘I can divide coercion into three parts’), the author shifts the syntagm from the metaphysical register to that of daily violence, executing a fierce, ironic deconstruction. By writing «جبر سه وعده‌ی غذایی‌ست برای دخترانی که یک شب به خواب رفتند» (‘Jabr is the three daily meals for the girls who fell asleep one night’), temporal and spatial deixis is destroyed and reassembled to critique the global hierarchy of media attention (highlighted by the surreal contrast between media coverage of the Johnny Depp trial and the erasure of human rights). Ramish’s critique thus extends to the mechanisms of the political science of art and the sociology of culture, denouncing the selectivity of Western media that sensationalize pain and commodify tragedy. This communicative short-circuit evokes the analysis of spectacular indifference conducted by contemporary philosophers such as Judith Butler in her work on grievable lives. Ramish’s poetry does not beg for pity; it unmasks the complicity of global hegemonic discourse, which favors entertainment narratives over the ontological abyss of jabr.

Neuroaesthetics of Trauma and the Biopolitics of Exile

The neuroaesthetic hypothesis allows for reading Somaia Ramish’s poetry of exile as an embodied representation of the transformation of the body into an administrative object. Contemporary neuroaesthetics interprets the aesthetic experience as an integrated process of perception, emotion, cognition, and memory, avoiding its reduction to the activation of single cerebral circuits. From this perspective, «Je suis en vie» (‘I am alive’) constructs a progressive metamorphosis of the subject: a wounded body («Malgré la balle que j’ai au cœur» / ‘Despite the bullet in my heart’), a migrant body, a body exposed at the border, and finally a body administratively reduced to «un numéro à sept chiffres» (‘a seven-digit number’). The sequence «Zéro – Cinq – Huit – Quatre – Deux – Deux – Deux» (‘Zero – Five – Eight – Four – Two – Two – Two’) renders the conversion of identity into code phonetically perceptible.  Studies by Freedberg and Gallese on embodied simulation have shown how the artistic representation of actions, emotions, and sensations can engage bodily and visceromotor processes; subsequent fMRI research on the artistic representation of pain has further identified the involvement of regions such as the insula and the cingulate cortex, which are associated with affective processing and empathy. However, these findings do not warrant inferring a specific cerebral response in the reader. The aesthetic core of the poem resides in the friction between the embodied physical self and the abstract code: the poetry interrupts the progressive bureaucratization of the subject through the line «Je laisse tomber mes numéros» (‘I drop my numbers’). The initial bullet and the final number thus become two complementary forms of violence: one strikes the body, while the other compresses its identity. Between them lies the border, a mechanism of political recognition: «Les frontières ne reconnaissent pas ma vie» (‘Borders do not recognize my life’). Poetry thus restores to life what administrative procedure had reduced to a number. 

The Body-Archive: The Resonance of the Wound and Ontological Resilience

In the autobiographical poem written for her birthday, Ramish recites: «یک هزاره و یک صد و پنجاه و یک زخم روی تنم! / زاده شده‌ام که با زخم‌ها زندگی کنم / با زخم‌ها برقصم» (‘A millennium and one hundred and fifty-one wounds on my body! / I was born to live with wounds / to dance with wounds’). In this passage, corporeality transforms into a historical and political archive. The numerical hyperbole disrupts the linear chronology of time and merges the biological body of the individual woman with the millennial, tormented history of the Afghan people. From the standpoint of the anthropology of art, the act of ‘dancing with wounds’ (ba zakhm-ha beraghsam) represents a ritual of resignifying trauma. This is not a surrender to violence, but a ritual reappropriation of physical presence. This dynamic enters into an open dialogue with Byung-Chul Han’s thought on the society of pain and the necessity of reconnecting suffering to a narrative and communal dimension. The wound, reclaimed from the sphere of pure biopolitical victimization, becomes an ontological trophy, a manifesto of resilience that transforms the scar into a radiant point of poetic and political projection. 

Conclusion

In essence, Somaia Ramish’s poetry is not merely a diary of protest or a collection of lamentations on exile, but a true instrument of linguistic and political attack. Facing a religious fundamentalism that seeks to erase women’s presence and voice, Ramish responds by turning words into weapons and her body’s wounds into symbols of redemption. The author unequivocally unmasks both Taliban brutality and Western hypocrisy, which frequently reduces human tragedies to mere background news or cold bureaucratic files. Through her verses, suffering never turns into resignation: poetry confirms itself as an irrepressible space of freedom where even the deepest pain is rewritten to reaffirm the right to exist, speak, and fight.

About the author: Ivan Pozzoni was born in Monza in 1976. He introduced Law and Literature in Italy and the publication of essays on Italian philosophers and on the ethics and juridical theory of the ancient world; he collaborated with several Italian and international magazines. He wrote 152 volumes, wrote 1000 essays. His verses/essays are translated into 30 languages.

Note: The contents of the article are the sole responsibility of the author. Afghan Diaspora Network will not be responsible for any incorrect statements in the articles.