Illnesses of Illusion and Disillusionment: From Euphoria to Aporia

ABSTRACT This essay explores how engaging linguistic patterns and philosophical aporias in writing has helped me cope with the pains of disillusionment of quotidian life in Lebanon. Three Ps cause and aggravate my illness: the Protests, Pandemic, and Pandæmonium. I name my illness 3P and I seek a rhyming therapy in writing—a 3P-Therapy—to combat my illness of illusion and disillusionment. The pattern of confrontation and self-destruction recurring in the arena of Lebanese politics enables me to trace a linguistic expression of such a pattern in the double consonant ‘l’ found in the words illness, illusion, and disillusionment (ll appears as the deceptively similar looking 1–1/one to one). I explain that the ‘ll’ as 1–1 represses an inherent strife between self and self on the personal level, simultaneously as it betrays a 1–1 confrontation between self and other on the political level. The Port Blast becomes this force of disillusionment that suddenly makes the euphoria of being Lebanese transfigure into an aporia in which it is hard to determine whether I am alive or dead, having hopeful fears or fearful hopes, being a citizen of the world or a monstrosity of stoic survival.