“Courage is grace under pressure.”

— Ernest Hemingway

Protestors march down Valletta's Republic Street on the first anniversary of Daphne's assassination. Photo by Miguela Xuereb.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what actually makes certain people become historically impossible to ignore.

Not perfect people. Not clean people. Not even necessarily likable people.

While researching very different public figures — Oriana Fallaci, Julius Chambers, and eventually Daphne Caruana Galizia — I kept noticing the same underlying element appearing again and again beneath completely different personalities and styles:

an inability to leave perceived injustice alone.

“It’s true that life is unfair and that much of it can’t be helped, but where I can do anything to avoid unfairness or to set it straight, then I will.” — Daphne Caruana Galizia once said. It was her philosophy of life I believe.

At some point, I realized I was no longer simply reading journalism.

“All over the island, there were people who were certain that they hated her but had never read a word she had written. They simply knew her as is-sahhara tal-Bidnija — the witch of Bidnija.” — Ben Taub, The New Yorker, 2020

I think that description is only partially true.

What fascinated me more while reading Daphne Caruana Galizia directly was something else: many people did read her constantly. Even some of those who hated her most.

A new post appeared, and tension immediately spread through the atmosphere around it — who was mentioned, who was exposed, who suddenly found themselves pulled into public visibility again. (I mean famous running commentary blog of Daphne) At some point, the language surrounding Daphne stopped sounding like the language of ordinary journalism altogether. It became mythological, ritualistic, almost socially claustrophobic — as if the island itself had turned her into a permanent symbolic presence moving through its own nervous system.

And honestly, I probably should have mentioned this earlier for people who may not be familiar with her.

Although, to be honest, it’s difficult for me to imagine many people not immediately understanding who is being discussed once someone simply says “Daphne.”

At some point, her figure clearly moved beyond the boundaries of Malta itself.

But for those who may not know much about her or her work yet, I’ll leave a biography here first: https://human.libretexts.org/Courses/Pima\_Community\_College/Local\_and\_Global\_in\_Pima\_County/Making\_a\_Difference/Risking\_It\_All/The\_Defender\_Of\_Free\_Speech%3A\_A\_Biography\_of\_Daphne\_Caruana\_Galizia\_-\_by\_Jennette\_Homer

And if someone would like to look at her from another angle or go deeper into her life and legacy, I’ll also leave the official Daphne Foundation page here: https://www.daphne.foundation/en/about/daphne/

And honestly, this is where something strange started happening to me during the process of writing all of this.

I’ve actually been trying to begin this text properly for almost three days now. And today I finally started writing, only to realize again that I still can’t fully do it. Because this figure is so multilayered and contradictory that every time I think I’ve found a stable angle, it immediately begins collapsing into something more complicated.

I read negative reactions to her, admiring reactions, hateful reactions, almost reverent reactions.

Then I started reading her blog directly.

And at different moments it caused completely different emotions in me: disgust, exhaustion, fascination, inspiration, admiration.

Because honestly, writing the way she did — inside a system like Malta, during that specific period of time — required an extremely high level of personal courage.

And this point matters because people often forget something very important here:

she was among the first people who openly signed this kind of writing with her real name.

That alone shocked people.

Especially in that environment.

And yes, someone may say it was recklessness, obsession, even madness.

But it was still courage.

And at some point I realized that I still wasn’t really managing to “begin” the essay itself, because I kept returning to the same question over and over again:

who exactly was this person? Why did she become like this? Why do some people write this way under pressure while most others do not?

Why are some people willing to push through fear while others instinctively retreat from it?

And I started noticing that the journalists and public figures I mentioned earlier seem to share some underlying psychological or philosophical core.

Not identical personalities. Not identical politics.

But something deeper.

Some particular relationship with pressure, injustice, confrontation, and fear.

Which is why I’m starting to realize that this text probably cannot remain a single isolated essay.

It feels more like the beginning of a larger and much more fundamental research direction that I will probably have to keep returning to over time.

At some point I also realized something else:

I cannot fully understand Daphne Caruana Galizia only through archives, articles, or academic analysis.

I need to hear from people who actually lived around this atmosphere directly.

Because even now, years later, I still constantly see Maltese people discussing her, arguing about her, remembering her, reacting emotionally to her presence.

Which means the phenomenon itself clearly never disappeared.

And eventually I understood that maybe the central question here is not simply Daphne herself, but the mechanism behind figures like this in general.

Why do some people become psychologically incapable of remaining silent?

What forms that kind of philosophy?

Is it personality?

Environment?

Upbringing?

Historical pressure?

Moral obsession?

Or something else entirely?

Because whatever that force is, it clearly has the power to shape not only individuals, but entire media environments and collective emotional atmospheres around them.

So for now, I’m deliberately leaving this text somewhat unfinished.

Because I already understand that this subject is much larger than a single essay.

And if anyone reading this has their own thoughts, experiences, criticism, interpretations, or personal memories connected either to Daphne herself or to the formation of figures like this in general, I would genuinely be very interested to hear them.

ps

ty for reading.

This essay argues that "pornography" describes less a specific content than a mode of representation to satiate historically specific desires. I then use this definition to interpret a range of mass cultural media from "react videos" and "food porn" to Queer Eye and Superhero films. I argue that, in contrast to the original defenders of capitalism in the 18th century who thought that capitalism would serve as a corrective to our passions, capitalism has instead stoked them in increasingly spectacular and lascivious ways, particularly as its capacity to satiate our needs dwindles Reading this terrain of pornographies as a map of our collective longings , I argue, can offer some guidance to leftists trying to appeal downtrodden, yearning masses.

Part I addresses pornography as a contingent category and uses this to examine the reality show Queer Eye

Part II extends this analysis to the superhero genre and argues that despite the genre's obviously reactionary tropes, it contains glimmers of socialist longing

Part III (which appears next week) will discuss workplace sitcoms, fantasies of unalienated labor and how these efforts to stoke desire relate to Albert Hirschman's book which lends its title to this essay

Part IV (appearing in two weeks) shifts to Marx and Hegel to discuss alienation/asceticism and bourgeois entertainment as responses to the question of passions/interests raised by Hirschman.