You Are Coming Home to Yourself

Vladimir Rizov 

It cannot be overstated how unusual Andor is for the general Star Wars universe. There is hardly any mysticism, and history is neither random nor arbitrary. Alasdair Stuart, in the first volume of Andor Analysed, noted the TV series’ contradictory position in terms of Star Wars lore – it is both steeped in it and it rebels against it. I am interested in this exact tension.

In simple terms of content, the series is a prequel pure and simple. In formal terms, this expresses itself in a centripetal principle, on the basis of which the two seasons lead up to the film Rogue One, and ultimately Andor’s tragic and heroic death. More than that, Andor’s death (together with Jyn Erso and the rest of the fallen rebels in Rogue One) stands as the revolutionary insurgent action that makes possible the climactic resolution of A New Hope. Without Andor’s sacrifice, and many others’, it would not have been possible for Luke Skywalker to enact his role as a possible Chosen One[1] and bring balance to the force by destroying the Empire’s most powerful weapon. In such terms, Rogue One stands as the absent cause of the rebellion’s pivotal point made manifest. Andor is truly radical – radical in the way that it largely departs from the mythical character of the original episodes, but also radical in the sense that it portrays the roots of the rebellion – the insurgents, the revolutionaries, the spies, and the traitors of the Empire. It is these largely unknown figures that make Luke's heroic act possible.

Andor does a similar manoeuvre in relation to Rogue One, which the latter does to A New Hope. In the series, the focus is not so much a demystification of Andor’s heroism as a dedication to making visible the nameless figures, countless interactions, and painful realities that have made who Andor is possible. In many ways, Andor deviates from the formula by refusing to present its central character as a straightforward hero. After all, Rogue One presents him as a ruthless rebel agent willing to execute informants and assassinate key figures of the Empire’s scientific apparatus. The abandonment of the abstract tone of legend makes Andor thoroughly critical. n Andor, and for Andor, history is what hurts. In many ways, Andor is a story dealing with the manifold meanings of necessity in a world thought of as something more than the product of “chosen ones” and mythical forces. Again, this is where Andor is at its most radical, in its commitment to the roots of the matter, in its representation of its main character as a product of his circumstances and as a complex and reluctant figure who struggles with himself, with the world he is forced to live in, and ultimately together with others for bringing on a different world.

Ideology and Affect in a Series of Soliloquies

My approach here is part theoretical, part a rearticulation of disparate moments in the series into a cogent whole. I take one of the most popular elements of Andor – its occasional monologue – and try to take it seriously as an entry point into the series’ articulation of the innerworkings of affect and ideology. To do this, I take six examples: Nemik’s manifesto, Luthen’s enraged response regarding his own sacrifices, Maarva’s posthumous call for rebellion, Kino Loy’s incitement to take over a prison, Saw Gerrera’s recounting of his traumatic experiences, and Andor’s response to Niya, an inexperienced insurgent, expressing fear. Notably, I have clearly omitted one of the most pivotal monologues in the series: Mon Mothma’s address to the Senate. My reason is simple: the senator’s speech is a clear outlier; it is a public address in her political role. As such, it is an instance of the world’s history, rather than its undercurrent, as is the case with the soliloquies I have selected.

In this sense, I am not interested in these monologues, at times even simply excerpts of conversations, as moments of revelation in which the show’s politics are somehow more explicit, nor am I interested in these as moments of ventriloquism, in which the show’s writers put forward their true ideas, not even as encapsulations of a certain archetype. Rather, I am interested in treating these moments as indications of an interiority that runs parallel – as an undercurrent – to the series’ main narrative. It is my contention that these speeches need to be taken seriously, and by that I mean not simply as rhetoric. If this brief essay has a singular goal, then it is this: to argue that ideology is not something to do with manipulation, but about orienting one in the world. Andor’s reassurance at a moment of another insurgent’s doubt is not to be understood as manipulative or callous; it is ideological, but that does not make it untrue. The same can be said about the other examples I will mention. For instance, Kino Loy’s prison uprising incitement is likewise more than simply a provocation. It is a reorientation of others’ imaginary relationship to their real conditions of existence.

It is at this point that it is best to clarify further what is meant by ideology. As the classic formulation by Louis Althusser goes, ideology is ‘the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.’[2] What most tend to forget is that this is neither a fixed image, nor is it a static reality. Rather, ideology has a productive character, and it constitutes subjectivities and practices. In other words, ideology is more than just a representation, it is also the very premise of how one understands oneself. Even more so, it is concerned with how one understands their being in the world, as someone who acts within it and is in turn acted on by others. In such a sense, ideology is more than just a structure, as some critics of Althusser would be quick to dismiss it. It is a living thing.

The best way to illustrate this is an often-ignored claim made by the affect theory scholar Lauren Berlant: affect theory should be understood as a continuation of the study of ideology.[3] They add, affect is ‘a way of talking about the impact of the world on subjects and the way they try to assess their belonging to the world.’[4] In this sense, taking affect and ideology together, we can see that the terrain of interest is one of the same. ow does one make sense of the world they are in, their relations to others, to themselves, and to the world at large. While both terms, ideology and affect, are somewhat ambiguous and, at times, vague, they can provide insight both despite and because of this ambiguous character. With regard to the first, ideology often tends to get bogged down in discussions of falsity, attempts to dispel it or its assumed equivalence with propaganda. The moments of interest in this essay are significant as they point to ideology’s productive effects and, importantly, the truthful aspect of ideology in its affective register. With regards to the latter, affect is ‘an increase or decrease of one’s capacity to act.’[5] Affect’s own ambiguity is expressed in the relations it allows for and takes part in. Namely, affect is indeterminate and polymorphous. There are not predictable relations between a subject and an object; no thing brings joy to everyone, and likewise no single thing incites everyone to revolt.

Freedom is a Pure Idea

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.

Remember this, freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause.

Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

And remember this: the imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.

Remember this: Try.[6]

The first moment of interest here is not exactly a monologue, but Nemik’s manifesto. In the introduction to Andor Analysed Part I, Jamie Woodcock has already noted that Nemik was intended to serve as ‘the young, naïve radical’ that is also ‘a dialectic character,’ in the way that Andor is introduced into the struggle. In this way, Nemik’s manifesto functions as an appeal to both Andor and us, the audience, as we are both brought along for the journey, still unsure what this rebellion business is about. This is certainly true for Andor, who is, in essence, a hired gun, someone experienced but ideologically uncommitted, nevertheless useful for hitting the Empire in a way that will build the rebellion’s strength.

The effects of Nemik’s manifesto, rendered a few times as a monologue in the series, are twofold for our purposes. On one hand, there is Nemik’s rearticulation of the rebellion as inevitable. The rebellion is plural, indeterminate, both minuscule and constantly growing. More than that, the rebellion is impossible to crush in Nemik’s view, precisely because the conditions that give rise to it will not go away unless it is successful. On the other hand, Nemik sees the Empire as brittle, made up of constant effort that will, without doubt, exhaust itself. More than that, still, the Empire is a fraud, since its control can only ever be illusory and temporary, something the Empire knows too well and rightly fears. In such terms, Nemik’s manifesto provides a solid basis on which to build struggle – the Empire is contingent, the resistance is necessary. This brings a number of affective benefits, but chief of those is perhaps the revolutionary hope it inspires.

It is this way that Nemik provides a different imaginary to Andor and the struggle. The benefits of Nemik’s manifesto are affective, yes, but they are also practical. Tyranny is not inevitable; it is a product of effort. Effort takes the form of infrastructure, institutions, and procedures. Infrastructure can be sabotaged, institutions can be infiltrated, and procedures can be subverted. The struggle, insurrection, and freedom, however, are inevitable. They are necessary. And they are growing.

A Sunless Place

Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. I’ve made my mind a sunless place. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion, I’m damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet.

What is my sacrifice?

I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude.

So what do I sacrifice?

Everything!

Luthen’s monologue is delivered in outraged response to Lieutenant Supervisor Lonni Jung’s working as a covert agent for the Rebellion and betraying the Empire. Jung is self-focused and scared for himself and his family. He asks Luthen Rael: ‘And what do you sacrifice?’

In turn, Luthen responds with a monologue that echoes Bertolt Brecht’s ‘To Posterity:’

[…] Alas, we

Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness

Could not ourselves be kind.

But you, when at last it comes to pass

That man can help his fellow man,

Do not judge us

Too harshly.

Luthen’s outrage serves a different purpose than Nemik’s manifesto. We should not take it as a complaint or a bemoaning of things Luthen mourns. If anything, what is mourned is perhaps best said to be the inability to mourn such losses. This outburst speaks to an interiority that has until that moment remained hidden out of sight, much like Luthen’s own role in the story – an undercurrent to the rebellion. While interiority is not something that is privileged, as the show remains quite focused on the circumstances of struggle, it is nevertheless a pivotal point to the extent that the show is not interested in a Great Man of History narrative – neither when it comes to its Jedi, who are virtually non-existent in Andor, nor when it comes to its revolutionaries. It is interested in the reality of revolutionary struggle. And this reality is made up of countless sacrifices, many of which are determinedly less grand and pivotal than Luthen’s. Just like Andor is the making manifest of Rogue One’s lacunae, which was the same for A New Hope. The struggle is cruel and ruthless, and it has left thousands of sacrifices in its wake.

In terms we have already introduced, the equation Luthen speaks of is, at its core, the same as what Nemik described as necessary and inevitable. Luthen is a revolutionary trapped in the reality of revolution. The struggle is necessary, but it is not forgiving, and its rewards are not for those who die fighting to bring them about.

Fight the Empire

[…] I fear for you. We’ve been sleeping. We’ve had each other, and Ferrix, our work, our days. We had each other and they left us alone. We kept the trade lane open, and they left us alone. We took their money and ignored them, we kept their engine churning, and the moment they pulled away, we forgot them. [she sighs] Because we had each other. We had Ferrix. But we were sleeping. I’ve been sleeping. And I’ve been turning away from the truth I wanted not to face.

There is a wound that won’t heal at the center of the galaxy. There is a darkness reaching like rust into everything around us. We let it grow, and now it’s here. It’s here and it’s not visiting anymore. It wants to stay.

The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness, it is never more alive than when we are asleep. It’s easy for the dead to tell you to fight, and maybe it’s true, maybe fighting is useless. Perhaps it’s too late. But I’ll tell you this, if I could do it again, I’d wake up early and be fighting those bastards from the start! Fight the Empire!

Maarva’s posthumous speech is part diagnosis, part insurrectional pathos. In the first place, she captures evocatively the day-to-day reproduction of complicity with the Empire. The Empire is possible because its constant efforts to oppress reveal its reliance on the complicity of ordinary people, especially those who are not yet oppressed as brutally as others. This is sleep, Maarva sums up, a dreamlike, imaginary version of the world in which people actually live. But more than that, this complicity corrupts, it spreads like a disease.

The fact that Maarva’s speech is posthumous should not be overlooked. So much of what I am trying to foreground throughout this essay is the idea of undercurrents to the established historical accounts. In one famous critique of the historicist approach to history, Walter Benjamin solemnly noted the stakes of the victor’s historical account for the oppressed:

even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.

Maarva understands this, and her final act is ever the more powerful because of it. She is refusing to peacefully become a funeral stone. She is fighting the Empire. The stakes of death are apparent from the speech; one is no longer capable of saving others.

There is an echo of Andor’s other parent, Clem, in Maarva’s speech. As he is shown in a memory to teach young Cassian a lesson:

People, they don’t look down to where they should. They don’t look down; they don’t look past the rust. Not us though, eh? Eyes open, possibilities everywhere.

Andor’s eyes are always open, and he never stops looking down. He sees past the programming of K-2SO – his figurative rust – just as he will with Kino Loy, Niya, and many others. Andor is no longer asleep, and he understands that fighting the empire means fighting it with others.

One Way Out

My name is Kino Loy. I’m the day shift manager on Level Five. I’m speaking to you from the command center on Level Eight. We are, at this moment, in control of the facility.

Andor [interjecting]: Is that the best you got?

How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us. We have deactivated every floor in the facility. All floors are cold.

Wherever you are right now, get up, stop the work. Get out of your cells, take charge and start climbing. They don’t have enough guards and they know it. If we wait until they figure that out, it’ll be too late. We will never have a better chance than this and “I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want.”

We know they fried a hundred men on Level Two. We know that they are making up our sentences as we go along. We know that no one outside here knows what’s happening. And now we know, that when they say we are being released, we are being transferred to some other prison to go and die and that ends today!

There is one way out. Right now, the building is ours. You need to run, climb, kill! You need to help each other. You see someone who’s confused, someone who is lost, you get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us.

There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we've been working, we will be home in no time.

One way out! One way out! One way out!

Kino Loy is both a prisoner and a prison functionary. He is the day-shift manager for other prisoners. Yet another person forced by circumstance into complicity with the empire, yet another traitor to the struggle. Loy, however, redeems himself. He manages to see through the lies of the Empire – ones that give him power and authority. But still, he needs to be pushed, Andor needs to convince him, to stake out his position: “I’d rather die trying to take them down.” Loy needs to first hear Andor say it, before he is capable of saying it himself.

Loy’s redemption should not be seen as arbitrary. He is aware of the realities of his condition, his treason, and the cost at which his sliver of authority comes. He knows how much effort goes into the labour of tyranny and oppression, since he has been delegated this task. When he proclaims, “If we can fight half as hard as we’ve been working, we will be home in no time.” Nemik’s spirit inhabits the truth of this statement: the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere, but there is only one way out. To do this, however, he needed to be reoriented and repositioned in this struggle by Andor’s intervention. It is this reorientation that we can witness in Kino Loy’s echo of the words Andor used to convince him to rise up.

Revolution Is Not for the Sane

Saw: I was younger than you are now. I was a prisoner. They made a work camp in the jungle. No droids, no beasts, just men and cargo. Onderon jungle. Real jungle. Hot, wet, blistering jungle. Old men died fast. Just dropped where they stood. We came back next day, there’d be nothing but a bone or two where they went down. Our clothes, just- just melted away. So they worked us naked. Two, three hundred men. Boys really. Back and forth until the only thing you could remember was back and forth. Then one day, everyone started to itch. Everyone, all at once. Even the guards. You could feel your skin coming alive. It was the rhydo. They had a leak. You could feel it before you could smell it. So they all panicked and ran away, but it was new to me.

Wilmon: It’s done. You can open the valve now.

Saw: [to the rhydo, laughing] I have always loved you.

Wilmon: What are you doing?

Saw: There it is. [taking a deep breath of the rhydo]

Wilmon: How can you do that?

Saw: Because I understand it. Because she's my sister rhydo, and she loves me! That itch, that burn... You feel how badly she wants to explode? Remember this. Remember this moment! This perfect night. You think I’m crazy? Yes, I am. Revolution is not for the sane. Look at us: unloved, hunted, cannon fodder. We’ll all be dead before the republic is back and yet... here we are. Where are you, boy? You’re here! You’re not with Luthen. You’re here! You’re right here, and you’re ready to fight! We’re the rhydo, kid. We’re the fuel. We’re the thing that explodes when there’s too much friction in the air. Let it in, boy! That’s freedom calling! Let it in! Let it run! Let it run wild!

Saw begins by recounting a story of his internment in an imperial work camp. Yet another prison. His first experience with rhydo, an intoxicating, highly volatile jet-fuel-equivalent substance, is the culmination of horror, disaster, and exploitation. And somehow, fascination too. Rhydo is the culmination of all the horrors one encounters in the work camp. An intoxicating experience, a high that Saw is not so much chasing, but embodying in his rejection of the Empire and any other formal organisation associated with the Rebel Alliance.

The rhydo appears in some way as a weapon, in others as a drug. With this latter connotation, it would be naïve to take this as a subversion of the often quoted ‘opium of the masses.’ Saw’s account does not lead us to interpret that revolution is a religion, and thus a drug, and he is a simple fanatic. On the contrary, Saw’s experience of the rhydo is one of trauma, because Saw’s life has been one of struggle. From his first exposure to it in an imperial work camp to his current use of it as a drug and weapon of war, Saw’s relation to it is one of necessity, because that is how he also sees his own role in the rebellion. The implication is clear – Saw’s intoxication is a higher version of truth – he is the fuel for the revolution; he is destroying himself in the process of destroying his enemy.

It is dangerous to read this as a kind of revolutionary despair. Saw sees rebels as “unloved, hunted, cannon fodder.” his is an honest appraisal, because this is what the Empire has made them. To be the fuel for the revolution, to be the “cannon fodder”, is not a delusion brought on by the intoxicating effects of the rhydo. On the contrary, it is the awareness that revolution is the movement that will destroy the conditions that render the rebels a weapon and that dwarf all of the Empire’s victims by the scale of its capacity for repression. At the core of Saw’s speech lies an unspoken truth, the understanding that the Empire has always produced people such as him, and it always will. That is why revolution is necessary.

You Are Coming Home to Yourself

It is in the second season’s pilot, Andor says the following to Niya, a nervous accomplice, in response to a brief moment of weakness she experiences:

This makes it worth it. This. Right now. Being with you, being here at the moment you step into the circle. Look at me. You made this decision long ago. The Empire cannot win. You’ll never feel right unless you are doing what you can to stop them. You are coming home to yourself. You’ve become more than your fear. Let that protect you.

Andor’s story is, in so many ways, the story of the people around him. Granted, he is capable, and he is determined; his role in the heist on Aldhani is pivotal, as is his behind-the-scenes encouragement to Kino Loy that leads to the latter’s incitement of the prison uprising. Nevertheless, he is constantly shaped by others, and this shines through in his treatment of those he brings into the circle.

Andor’s brief speech to Niya seeks to reorient her. It is easy to interpret this cynically and see Andor as propagandising an unsure cadre. The effects of what Andor is saying are true, however, precisely because the affect inherent to this reassurance is one integral to resistance. Andor does not need to convince Niya that the Empire is tyrannical and a force of ruthless destruction and oppression. She already knows this. Just like Kino Loy already knew the cost of his authority as a prisoner and manager of other prisoners. My reference to affect here is also not just a vague gesture towards the sometimes-empty term empowerment. Andor helps Niya see herself as more than someone who is afraid, as someone who is already resisting, and thus someone over whom the Empire no longer has control. This reorientation is a protection, precisely because of the Empire’s inevitable demise. Niya is the terrain on which the Empire fights its battle for control. And the Empire has already lost, Andor reassures her, because she has already rebelled.

This is the case only because Andor is able to see beyond the rust, as Clem and Maarva would say. He understands the significance of Niya’s insurgency and treason to the empire. Such moments encapsulate Andor’s expansive treatment of its main premise. It is the unknown, the unloved, the hunted, the cannon fodder, the insane, the abandoned, the orphaned, the incarcerated, the criminal, the unsure, the hard-working, the condemned who are the multiple absences, voids, and omissions in history. They are what will break the seemingly everlasting siege of the Empire. This is because they do not have a choice, but to try. Remember?

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[1] I say ‘possible’ in order to clarify that A New Hope appears to lead to a reading of Luke being the Chosen One at this point of the film and the original trilogy – something which is ultimately reformulated as Anakin Skywalker realising his role as the Chosen One upon killing Emperor Palpatine.

[2] Louis Althusser, On Ideology (Verso Books, 2020), p. 36.

[3] Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Duke University Press, 2011), p. 53.

[4] Lauren Berlant, Interview with Lauren Berlant. Research Centre for Cultures, Politics, and Identities, Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, 2016.

[5] Jason Read, “The Affective Reproduction of Capital: Two Returns to Spinoza”, In: G. J. Seigworth & C. Pedwell, eds. The Affect Theory Reader 2: Worldings, Tensions, Futures. Duke University Press, 2023. p. 369.

[6] The reader should be reminded of Yoda’s guidance to Luke Skywalker: ‘Do or do not, there is no try.’ Nemik’s plead is in stark opposition to this. The struggle is made up of multiple tries.