The Saboteur: an image-essay

The saboteur emerges from the underground, seeking solitude in dark edges, where carelessness and lack of foresight expose pernicious vulnerabilities. She is the configuration of capital’s question, and, consequently, incapable of escaping its shadow. Her sabotage may prefigure revolution, but it will never be revolutionary. Unlike the Partisan, the saboteur has no “absolute enemies,” and, thus, refuses the comforts of Manichean dichotomy. Instead, as ideal type, she is the scorned traitor; her only antagonist, complicity with the regime’s crimes. Praxis is atonement. Its impossibility compels bitter destruction. 

The images in this series were produced from medium format negatives, printed using a traditional enlarger, with overlaid direct photogram. Print dimension: 8"x8"

Sources: 

Schmitt suggests "the absolute enemy" is a "configuration of our own question", while Fanon argues that colonial violence produces a necessarily Manichean response. 

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 2004), pp.1-62. 

Carl Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan (Telos Press, 2007), pp.85-95.