Hollywood has had, at best, an oblique relationship to America’s longest running nightmare, slavery. As Donald Bogle demonstrated in Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, the screen is haunted by the first images of Blackness and slavery by white actors performing in black face in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1903) and D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915). The industry’s most enduring twentieth century film of slavery, Gone With the Wind (1939) portrayed the end of slavery not through the eyes of the white master, but through a plantation’s headstrong mistress, Scarlett O’Hara. The film also provided the first Oscar to a Black actress, Hattie McDaniel for her role of Mammy. Our latest filmic encounters with slavery Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012) and Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013) continue this process of cinematic indirection, even while focusing our gaze on what was largely ignored in the 1930s versions—the enslaved themselves.  For instead of showing the liberation from slavery as primarily a Black struggle, both of the more recent films continue the well-worn narrative that the only way for their black protagonists to be free is through the agency of white men. Yet interestingly, the white men are not ostensibly abolitionists, even though they are sympathetic to the plight of the central Black characters, Django (played by Jamie Foxx) and Solomon Northrup (played by Chiewetel Ejiofor). Rather, the white men are interested allies, men who have an agenda that goes beyond race, a desire for redemption themselves that both enables but limits their ability to be true liberators.

This article uses Django Unchained (2012) and 12 Years a Slave (2013) to consider slave cinema (films that take slavery as their main subject) as unique sites of labor in which Black bodies are organized as commodities to perform economies of “pleasure and terror” (Hartman:1997) on the screen as cultural workers under the rubric of United States capitalism and white supremacy within the Hollywood film industry. Based on close readings of the films, interviews with directors (McQueen and Tarantino) and screenwriter (John Ridley), as well as a close reading of Solomon Northrup’s text, 12 Years a Slave, I argue that the economies of terror and pleasure produced through these films reify colorblind ideology and white supremacy by denying Black people empathic capacity or viewing them as full human beings. To understand the problem of the colorblind is to understand the function of two types of overlapping modes of performance – aesthetic and efficacious – in which the aesthetic performance of Black social death is congruent with the way in which the performance of Black laborers is persistently marginalized within Hollywood.

Tarantino’s story begins in 1858, in the still of a night in Texas. Two slave traders (who go by the name of the Speck Brothers) make their way through the darkness on horses followed with their chattel in tow when they are confronted by an odd character, Dr. King Schultz (Christopher Waltz), who insists on purchasing their slave, Django. We later find out that Schultz is in the business of bounty hunting on behalf of a judge in Austin, and Django is in fact the only individual who can positively identify Schultz’s next bounty – a trio of overseers who formerly whipped, scarred, and then sold Django and his wife to separate plantations. Thus, when Schultz guns down the Speck brothers after their refusal to sell Django, he is acting out of pure economic interests. For Schultz, profit motivates Django’s purchase. He states, “On the one hand, I despise slavery. On the other hand I need your help. If you’re not in a position to refuse, all the better. So for the time being I’m going to make this slavery malarkey work to my benefit. Still, having said that, I feel guilty. So I would like the two of us to enter into an agreement” (Django 2012). The agreement is for Django to assist Schultz in capturing his bounty, for which Django will receive not only twenty-five dollars per bounty, but also his freedom. This begins Django’s journey into an improbable world of violence to fulfill his “super-objective” – to rescue his German speaking wife, Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington). The final scene culminates in fireworks when Django literally explodes the Candieland Plantation. The destructive act also destroys the antagonist of the film, the loyal slave Steven, played by the loyal Tarantino collaborator Samuel L. Jackson. Steven’s loyalty to Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) parallels Jackson’s loyalty to Tarantino who became “the filmmaker’s ticket to street cred” (Vognar, 27). Tarantino’s film suggests, therefore, that the white character who liberates the Black man does so because of some inexplicable but evident infatuation with the Black body and violence.

12 Years also pictures gratuitous violence, yet without the sensational violence on the order of Django’s exploding plantations, or the Spaghetti Western romanticism of riding off into the moonlight. The viewer watches Northrup (a formally free New Yorker) make several attempts to escape bondage on his own after having been kidnapped and sold into slavery by two white slavers. McQueen’s epic 12 Years ends in 1853 with Northrup leaving behind the repeatedly brutalized and sexually violated Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o) in the dirt road before he is then reunited with his family. Northrup is finally “rescued” (for lack of a better word) from the Louisiana plantation by former friends from New York who, after having received word of his location by way of a sympathetic Canadian named Bass (Brad Pitt), have come to the plantation along with the United States Marshall to retrieve Northrup. In Tarantino’s piece, Django, with Schultz, kills white bounty for money on behalf of the same government that sanctions slavery as an institution. Yet, the institution of slavery, and the United States government that sanctions it, is never contested in either of these films – certainly not contested in the way that Christopher Dorner contested the Los Angeles Police Department as arbiter of racial and anti-Black violence.[1] While scholars such as Walter Johnson have suggested that there is a collapse between Django and Dorner (to an extent I believe this to also be true) there is a distancing in Tarantino’s use of the Western genre that allows audiences to find pleasure in Django’s violence while disconnecting the historical factuality of slavery from the very real racial inequality of the present. Because “the United States is constructed at the intersection of both a capitalist and white supremacist matrix,” (Wilderson: 2005,1) these two films, despite the different approaches, are not for Black audiences. Rather, they are ways for civil society,[2] “the ensemble of so-called private associations and ideological invitations to participate in a wide and varied play of consensus making strategies,” (Wilderson: 2005, 4) to render slavery as either historical adventurous entertainment or somber sentimental docudrama. This without the viewer being implicated in the perpetuation of slavery’s legacy in the present day police state, carceral system, and racial economic disparity. Any demand for contemporary social justice is elided in 12 Years by McQueen’s choice to end his film with Northrup’s return to his family in New York and not with the trial and the subsequent acquittal (á la George Zimmerman) of Northrup’s kidnappers. Similarly, Django would have its audience believe that by riding off into the moonlight, the slave is being returned to civil society.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

My discussion thinks through “social death,” the desire and disavowal of Black flesh as a fetish which masks colorblindness but also undergirds, and locks into place, “the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons” (Patterson 13). To understand slaves as simply property is to fall short of understanding “the principal way in which power is immediately interpreted in socially and cognitively acceptable terms” (18). Social death is structured through an unrelenting discursive, sexual, and corporeal violence, whose effects are felt today in the most vernacular of ways; in particular the unrelenting Black necropolitics of the carceral system. This is what Wilderson means when he refers to the “contingency of violence,” (Wilderson:2010) that holds civil society together (the world of the living), and a matrix of gratuitous violence that places the slave (in this case the Black) outside of civil society through a structural antagonism. Hence the non-slave, non-Black people, may engage in conflicts within civil society that can be reconciled through various mechanisms such as courts, schools, museums, and cinema. However, the constituent elements of civil society (a commons which can be equally accessed) are anti-Black.

While Black actors appear on the screen as characters, Django and 12 Years still render Black people and Black suffering illegible. As Frantz Fanon demonstrated in Black Skin, White Masks, the proscriptive therapy for suffering colonized subject/objects was and is decolonization.  However, the psychoanalytic conceptualization of what it means to suffer, to be a human, is located in the Jewish Holocaust as the constant reference point for humanity. This is evidenced in interviews by Tarantino’s and McQueen’s repeated conflating of slavery with fascism, “little family quarrels,” (Fanon 87)[3] and Anne Frank. Black suffering and empathy[4] for Black humanity is incomprehensible because the grammar through which to understand Blackness is choreographed by a white Eurocentric discourse. As Susan Leigh Foster suggests, research “indicates that empathy and the feelings, such as compassion and admiration that it enables, are “hard-wired” in the brain” (Foster 127). However, empathy must be organized and socially choreographed through performance. While human beings may be hard-wired to empathize by projecting their condition into the situation of another, colorblindness, as the lingering effects of social death, is a technique that prevents the development of a language through which to recognize (and hence empathize) in a way that affords Black people a humanity and a voice.

What is the Colorblind and its Relationship to Performance?

As scholars such as Eithne Quinn and Brandi Catanese have demonstrated, colorblind ideology has shaped labor markets from the Antebellum South to current day Hollywood. Slavery, as a production of the African American subject/object, should be considered in terms of the stylized behaviors of Black bodies to occupy a certain social role as well as the economic imperatives that performance opens up in relation to those bodies at different moments in history. Django and 12 Years are representative of sources of labor in which unions, guilds, agencies, and a multi-million dollar Hollywood network are a part of an economic order that has historically marginalized Black labor. These diegetic experiences produce a paradoxical tension between Black performance within the Hollywood apparatus that affords employment to a small percentage of Black talent (actors, writers, directors, and producers)[5] and an almost return to plantation-like ghettoization through the corralling of laborers and objects within an industry which continues to propagate whiteness as the norm[6] reaping tremendous profit in the process.[7]

Working through the effects of aesthetic and efficacious performance elucidates how race continues to structure relationships of power and how at “both institutional and cultural levels, performance has become the medium through which American anxieties about race (and in particular, blackness) are pondered, articulated, managed, and challenged” (Catanese 3). Ejiofor’s performance of Northrup as a free man, skilled laborer, violinist, and slave means survival as an actor within the Hollywood industry just as performance of labor meant survival for Northrup.[8] The desire and necessity to perform was at once a paradox for Northrup, for it was the offer from Merrill Brown and Abraham Hamilton (Northrup’s captors) to perform in their traveling circus company which lead to his kidnap. As Northrup wrote, “They also remarked that they had found much difficulty in procuring music for their entertainments, and that if I would accompany them as far as New-York, they would give me one dollar for each day’s services, and three dollars in addition for every night I played at their performances, besides sufficient to pay the expenses of my return from New-York to Saratoga” (Northrup 13). The slavers veil their nefarious intentions with promises of financial return just as Schultz’s relationship to Django was driven by the profit motive.

The Black body in these films is still a fungible object despite Tarantino and McQueen laboring to convince otherwise. These films ask us to suspend our disbelief and buy into, as Tarantino purports in an interview with Henry Louis Gates, “a different place…an unfathomable place… not just…a historical story play…but actually…a genre story… an exciting adventure”  (Gates 50). Tarantino gets away with this by conflating a Western genre story (civil society) with that of the Antebellum South (social death). Django’s and Northrup’s struggle relies on unique exceptional individuals who are able to endure American slavery and further inflate colorblind ideology by suggesting that the “racial regime” (Robinson xii) is about individual choices (rugged individualism) and not the power of the institution or collective struggle to change it. Rugged individualism is embodied by Django’s decision to role play a Black slaver as well as his constant decision to return to emancipating his wife rather than taking up arms with other slaves. To be truly manumissioned (in the eyes of Wilderson or Fanon) would require fulfilling an excess lack which would mean the implosion of civil society and the film and entertainment industry as we know it. Historically, this is most clearly evidenced by the temporal relationship to the Constitution as a legal framework for slavery,[9] the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which further solidified the Constitution’s relationship to Black folks, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford of 1857, which not only upheld the Fugitive Slave Act, but removed the Black body (as text or corpus) out of any conceptualization of civil society in Justice Tauney’s decision.[10] There was no empathy for the Black within the Constitution because the Constitution only applied to human beings; not to property or those who were three-fifths of a human.

Moving from New York to Washington, D.C. (a slave holding territory), Northrup and the reader/audience are led further into the South’s forced performance spaces by Brown and Hamilton. Northrup writes, “The voices of patriotic representatives boasting of freedom and equality, and the rattling of the poor slave’s chains, almost commingled. A slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol! Such is a correct description as it was in 1841, of William’s slave pen in Washington, in one of the cellars of which I found myself so unaccountably confined” (23).  And it was there in the nation’s capital and with a savage beating at the hands of the slaver James H. Burch that Northrup would learn to perform what Harvey Young refers to as “the still stand of [B]lack bodies” (Young 29) the Black embodiment of silence for survival. Northrup’s text demonstrates the awareness of the very capitalist processes that are at the central trappings of social death. Observing the slaver peddling human flesh forces Northrup to negotiate an economy of terror that is dependent upon the corporeal power of his labor for which he gains nothing in return.

Colorblind ideology also operates to produce apathetic narratives around Black labor within the material conditions of the film industry itself. Film and cultural studies scholar, Eithne Quinn, demonstrates how the ideology of colorblind practices grew out of neoconservatism within Hollywood during the 1960s and was initiated as part of anti-Black campaigns against Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s findings of widespread discrimination. Quinn writes:

a new “colorblind”’ discourse was first fomented by intellectuals and policy advisers around the turn of the 1970s. These influential advocates, many of whom became known as neoconservatives by the late 1970s, came from the right of the Democratic party and the left of the Republican party and turned sharply away from the black freedom struggle, which they had supported, after the mid- 1960s civil rights victories. Proceeding from the assumption that discrimination had more or less ended with civil rights reforms, these new conservatives championed a laissez-faire approach to racial equality. That strategy was to have far-reaching implications. (Quinn 467)

As Quinn goes on to suggest, this logic of the colorblind, as ideology and policy, has been perpetuated and now buttresses the current state of the industry through white nepotism between individuals and institutions and denies Black participation. Indeed, Quinn suggests that Jack Valenti – head of the Motion Pictures Association of America from 1966 to 2004 — galvanized support for anti-Blackness through the strategic deployment of neoconservative rhetoric.

The logic of neoconservative rhetoric fulfills white supremacy by pealing off cultural producers such as 12 Years writer John Ridley who will then deploy neoconservatism when discussing the lack of Black economic mobility in return for a seat at the executive table. As he stated in his 2006 Esquire magazine op-ed piece titled “The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger,” ascendancy necessitates assimilation at all costs even when it means negating empathy for poor and working class Blacks. In the opening lines Ridley writes:

LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING ABOUT NIGGERS, the oppressed minority within our minority. Always down. Always out. Always complaining that they can’t catch a break. Notoriously poor about doing for themselves. Constantly in need of a leader but unable to follow in any direction that’s navigated by hard work, self-reliance. And though they spliff and drink and procreate their way onto welfare doles and WIC lines, niggers will tell you their state of being is no fault of their own. (Ridley:2006)

This rhetoric was born out of the false belief that the few gains that Blacks had made through the Civil Rights struggle had somehow genuinely leveled the playing field and that anything else granted to Blacks through federal intervention was reverse discrimination, despite the fact that those in the position of white privilege were constantly lobbying the state and federal governments for advantageous tax accommodations and relaxed corporate regulation. It is as if Ridley has downloaded the neoconservative playbook and refashioned himself as a Black Valenti. Before continuing to identify the ideal models (Collin Powell and Condoleezza Rice) for the ascension of niggers, Ridley makes clear that he is not a nigger. Furthermore, he must tow the party line that his own success is the result of his ability to keep the promise of taking what is rightfully his in exchange for his investment, energy, and dedication to the American Way. He writes:

Now, let me tell you something about my generation of black Americans. We are the inheritors of “the Deal” forced upon the entrenched white social, political, and legal establishment when my parents’ generation won the struggle for civil rights. The Deal: We (blacks) take what is rightfully ours and you (the afore-described establishment) get citizens who will invest the same energy and dedication into raising families and working hard and being all around good people as was invested in snapping the neck of Jim Crow. In the forty years since the Deal was brokered, since the Voting Rights Act was signed, there have been successes for blacks. But there are still too many blacks in prison, too many kids aggrandizing the thug life, and way too many African-Americans doing far too little with the opportunities others earned for them. If we as a race could win the centuries-long war against institutionalized racism, why is it that so many of us cannot secure the advantage after decades of freedom? That which retards us is the worst of “us,” those who disdain actual ascendancy gained by way of intellectual expansion and physical toil—who instead value the posture of an “urban,” a “street,” a “real” existence, no matter that such a culture threatens to render them extinct. “Them” being niggers. (Ridley:2007)

In 1967, EEOC studies showed that at all of the major studios Black employment was never higher than 2.1% and of that, they were all low-skilled and low-paying jobs. Beyond the paucity of Black and minority employment in the studios at the corporate level was systemic exclusion within the trade and guild organizations, which required that union employees vouch for an individual who wanted to enter a trade or guild. As a further obstacle for minorities, guilds and unions such as the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees screened applicants with questionnaires that inquired into the nature of employment held by applicants’ parents and grandparents. In this context, empathy as acceptance is reserved for the white working middle and upper middle class laborers who solidified their privilege through unionization. The fact that white men such as Valenti, who only recently retired in 2004, continue to be the arbiters of the Hollywood film industry and the broader economy of America, Ridley’s critique of Black dysfunctionality[11] is disingenuous as it ignores systemic racism of the present.

Tarantino has been able to actualize his fetish for Black bodies and Black death without consequence by creating and delivering an economy of pleasure through which audiences can consume an unrelenting ideology of tolerance for Black suffering. Django, is not an individual case of necropolitics within a slave narrative. It is part of a genealogy of Tarantino’s “dead niggers” or “dead nigger storage” as witnessed in his own on screen performances in Pulp Fiction (1995). Dead niggers – social death writ large – have been very good to Tarantino earning him an Oscar for best screenplay for Pulp Fiction and Django. Echoing Ridley, Hollywood’s rush to celebrate McQueen’s 12 Years as an unprecedented work about slavery, negates Gordon Parks’s television adaptation of 12 Years (1984). As Janice Harris Jackson suggests in her editorial for New York Amsterdam News:

African artists risk getting lost in the concept of “art for art’s sake.” The 2013 film “12 Years a Slave” is certainly very powerful. It is the most painfully carnal and graphic portrayal of slavery that I have ever seen. Its cinematography engages and disturbs all of the senses. It is intimately terrifying and a brilliant moment in filmmaking, but we must remember, nonetheless, that this excellent work is not the first cinematic portrayal of Northup’s story. Its remarkable artistry is bonafide while its “discovery” is fraudulent. (Jackson: 2014)[12]

Parks (an award winning African American photographer) worked on a limited budget from the National Endowment for the Humanities (created for PBS). As Jackson points out, the lack of acknowledgement from any sector of Hollywood, most importantly McQueen, Ejiofor, Ridley, or any corner of the 12 Years team would suggest an investment in the mythology that African Americans have been somehow incapable of working through slavery on their own terms.

The Economies of Terror and Pleasure

In McQueen’s and Tarantino’s attempts to represent the terror of slavery, Black cultural laborers must perform what Sadiya Hartman refers to as “scenes of subjection” (Hartman:1997) in order to bring into materiality the historicity of slavery. This performance is always brokered through the interpreter (filmmaker, biographer, historian) who must filter the lens of the spectator’s gaze. This filtering is problematic because it pleads for empathy by asking whites to read their subjectivity into the condition of the slave. The white spectator reads themselves, and thus whiteness as ontological condition, into the non-ontological. White audiences can seclude themselves in the economies of pleasure produced by Tarantino’s Django. It is an opportunity for them to enjoy the brilliance of Tarantino’s boldness and edgy filmmaking because they are not asked to take seriously the possibility of Black suffering. With 12 Years, it is not the Black as a person who suffers, rather it is white subjectivity projected into the narrative of Northrup.[13] Subsequently, cinema plays a slight of hand by suggesting that through the genealogy of slave cinema, the nation has embraced a racial progress toward colorblind egalitarianism.

McQueen’s film unearths performances of horror and traumas that echo through the crack of the whip. In the world of Edwin Epps’s plantation, the inscription of cruelty through a confluence of performative labor and torture enmesh, intertwine, ejaculate, and unrelentingly receive the violence of the racial regime. The absurdity of these performances is captured in Northrup’s passages such as the following:

All of us would be assembled in the large room of the great house, whenever Epps came home in one of his dancing moods… “Dance you [damned] niggers, dance,” Epps would shout. Then there must be no halting or delay, no slow or languid movements; all must be brisk, and lively, and alert. “Up and down, heal and toe, and way we go,” was the order of the hour. Epps’ portly form mingled with those of his dusky slaves, moving rapidly through all the mazes of the dance. (Northrup 137)

Epps’s desire to see the “niggers dance” was no less about his desire for amusement than it was about instruction and reminding of how to behave and perform as a slave. The spectacle simultaneously operates to maintain the idiom of power through the surveillance of Black bodies. The master instructed the slave how to dance in order to remind the slave that they were not the master of their own body. The very pleasure of the performance derived by Epps was terror for the slave. “Formations of terror and enjoyment” solidified the relationship of domination because representing power was essential to reproducing domination. Terror and domination also produced economies of enjoyment which “bound the black body, [and] permanently affixed [it] in its place, engender[ed] pleasure not only rooted in the buffoonery and grotesqueries of Cuff, Sambo, and Zip Coon but above all deriving from the very mechanisms of this coercive placement; it is a pleasure obtained from the security of place and order and predicated upon chattel slavery” (31). I would argue that these very same economies of enjoyment permeate throughout audience consumption of 12 Years and Django. In particular, scenes such as Mandingo fighting in Tarantino’s Candieland, in which two Black bucks are forced to fight to the death for the amusement of plantation owner, Calvin Candie, are capable of reproducing a similar spectacle of amusement. Django’s misplaced vengeance, not at Candie, not at the state as sanctioning institution of Black violence, but at the ultimate slave, Stephen, satisfies similar (white) audience desires.

While Black audiences may have gone to see 12 Years or Django to support the overwhelmingly Black casts, as one columnist, Orville Lloyd Douglas, writes, “The narrow range of films about the black life experience being produced by Hollywood is actually dangerous because it limits the imagination, it doesn’t allow real progress to take place. Yet, sadly, these roles are some of the only ones open to black talent. People want us to cheer that black actors from…12 Years a Slave are likely to be up for best actor and actress awards, yet it feels like a throwback, almost to the Gone with the Wind era” (Douglas: 2013). In response to Douglas’s editorial and augmenting commentary over the lack of insurrectionary impulses, Demetria Lucas suggests the following in The Grio:

And maybe I’m just too demanding and never satisfied, because I (and Douglas) want more options than watching blacks suffering in servitude with stoic dignity. If Hollywood insists on giving me slave narratives, can I least get a Nat Turner movie where a black man goes H.A.M. at the injustice of it all? If I must watch servants, can I get more maids, like the character Minnie from The Help, who exact revenge? Must black people always be calm and righteous in the face of social abuses? (Lucas: 2013)

While Django explodes and scales up the act of revenge to the point of farce, 12 Years remains in steady tension through calmness and “critical stillness,” and this is especially true in relationship to the most salacious of performances.

Sexual Desire and Fetish

While intimated, Tarantino denies the visualization of sexual abuse of the light skinned German speaking Broomhilda whom, by Django’s account was, “not a field nigga…she pretty.” However, if Broomhilda is not a field nigga, then what is she? Bound by the particularity of white sexual desire for Black flesh in Northrup’s text, Patsey, on the other hand is “the queen of the field,” queen of Epps’s desire, and the desire of white audiences to hold onto the Black female body as a sexually dysfunctionally functioning object. While the darker skinned Nyong’o has been awarded the Oscar and People Magazine named her most beautiful person of the year for 2014, her acceptance speech at the Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon reveals a paradoxical disavowal and desire that I have been exploring:

I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin. And my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned. The morning would come and I would be so excited about seeing my new skin that I would refuse to look down at myself until I was in front of a mirror because I wanted to see my fair face first. And every day I experienced the same disappointment of being just as dark as I had been the day before. (Nyong’o:2014)

When placed in conversation with Kerry Washington’s performance and career trajectory, Nyong’o’s statement reveals how Broomhilda’s sexual violation as “mulatta” is denied on the screen in exchange for her contrapuntal relationship to the position of “field nigga.” In so doing Django makes sexual violation of the Black female body all the more palatable for civil society by reifying the notion that sexual violation is acceptable for some bodies, if not for others.

The darkness of Patsey’s flesh as a Jezebel, her inability to be raped because of her lascivious tendencies, simultaneously secures the validation of relentless sexual violence visited upon the Black female corpus. As Hartman writes in her discussion on seduction and the ruses of power, “the actual or attempted rape of an enslaved woman was an offense neither recognized nor punishable by law, but also its repression was essential to the displacement of white culpability that characterized both the recognition of the black subject as the originary locus of transgression and offense” (80). Sexual domination as a technique of control worked to return the Black female body to the place of object by denying ontology and natal sexual identity. The Jezebel trope validated and justified unfettered access to the Black female body, in turn precluding any consideration that it was even possible for the sexual relation between master and slave to be anything other than necessary and consensual.

The historicity of sexual violation of female slaves at the hands of white masters often took on a pedophiliac nature. Such history was documented in the legal case of State of Missouri v. Celia, a Slave (1855)[14] as well as in McQueen’s 12 Years in the relationship between the Patsey and Epps.  Northrup writes:

Patsey is twenty-three—also from Buford’s plantation… [She]…was queen of the field… Her back bore the scars of a thousand stripes; not because she was backward in her work, nor because she was of an unmindful and rebellious spirit, but because it had fallen her lot to be the slave of a licentious master and a jealous mistress…Nothing delighted the mistress so much as to see her suffer, and more than once, when Epps refused to sell her, has she tempted me with bribes to put her secretly to death, and bury her body in some lonely place in the margin of the swamp. (143)

Both in the passages and scenes in the book and film, the depiction of Epps’s relationship with the Patsey further illustrates the tyrannical process of gender constitution within the economy of terror and enjoyment. This process renders the Black female body as sexually illegilible, and with the state’s collusion, incapable of being raped. Hartman writes:

The eliding of rape must also be considered in relation to what is callously termed the recognition of slave humanity and the particular mechanisms of tyrannical power that converge on the black body. In this instance, tyranny is not a rhetorical inflation but a designation of the absoluteness of power. Gender, if at all appropriate in this scenario, must be understood as indissociable from violence, the vicious refiguration of rape as mutual and shared desire, the wanton exploitation of the captive body tacitly sanctioned as a legitimate use of property, the disavowal of injury, and the absolute possession of the body and its “issue.” (86)

Patsey is forced to endure the desire and disavowal of both master and mistress, rendering her culpable of unprovoked violence that she must suffer at the hands of both parties and even at the hands of Northrup, when he is forced to whip her. Patsey has no right of redress under the law. She is the one deemed responsible for her own suffering, in which the nonexistence of rape means that the enslaved woman is a guilty accomplice and seducer. The omissions of any kind of jurisprudence must be read symptomatically within an economy of bodies in which the full enjoyment of the slave as thing depends upon unbounded authority and the totalizing consumption of the body and its fungibillity. Patsey as free laborer is queen of the field in her ability to barrel cotton as well as fulfilling Epps’s sexual fetish. There is no empathy for Patsey for she is the very purpose of her suffering.

Yet, McQueen has described the relationship between Epps and Patsey as one of love? In an interview with Charlie Rose for PBS, McQueen is asked specifically about Epps the character and his relationship to Patsey. Rose asks, “You see Epps as a victim of a man who could not see anything beyond his own property?” (Rose:2013) McQueen responds, “I think Epps is a human being first of all, just like everyone here at this table… [sic] He doesn’t understand how, he, a white slave owner, is in love with this black slave. There is a passion there which, you know, love is a thing where it decides. You don’t decide. And his dealing with that is classic. It’s a classic tragedy in a way” (McQueen:2013).  Granted, as a filmmaker McQueen would have to ask of his actor to commit to the role of a three-dimensional person. Northrup’s description of Epps in the book doesn’t bode well as he suggests that the slaves referred to Epps as “old hog-jaw,” when not in earshot – a nuance which is absent in the film.

However, I read the dynamics between these two individuals as not love, but the quintessential example of simultaneous desire and disavowal of the Black body by the white patriarchal heteronormative gaze. It is this contradictory dialectic, which cannot be euphemized as love, through which power is produced, and in this case enacted upon the slave’s body in the most brutal and horrific ways. Such brutality is embodied in a scene in which Epps brings Patsey out into the moonlight and mounts her on top of a wooden cart. After climaxing, he slaps Patsey with full force across the face and proceeds to choke her. Epps stops short of completely asphyxiating Patsey as he realizes that he is vulnerable to discovery and the jealous rage of his wife. The absolute authority that the master holds over the slave as object – as thing – pushes the relationship between Epps and Patsey toward what Harvey Young suggests as a fetish for the Black body as a souvenir object. Young’s discussion of the spectacle of lynching, which renders the Black body as souvenir, a fetish, emerges from his historiographic reading of the brutal practice.

Patsey’s body, as Epps’s queen and souvenir, takes on an aura of mystique because in addition to being incomplete, her body is also illicit. It displays the romance of contraband, for its scandal is its removal from its natural location and its appeal to the person who takes the object and the audience to whom it is displayed. Taken away from its environment, which is unlike the one in which it is displayed, the souvenir’s presence reveals its own theft (170). Epps’s nonconsensual control and desire to possess Patsey within political and sexual economies is not love but a fetish.[15] Young, citing William Pietz, defines the properties of the fetish as having four traits:  “it is materially based; it synthesizes multiple elements in a single body; it has social value; it has power to affect the physical body” (179). Epps’s fetish over Patsey’s body synthesizes his desire to brutalize Patsey with the whip and his genitalia, while simultaneously lending social value to his status as master. Indeed, in perhaps one of the most horrific scenes after Patsey has been whipped, we see Epps strolling in the pastoral of his plantation holding hands with a prepubescent young girl who is a spitting image of Patsey. Epps has found another souvenir to replace his old one and a thing through which to further enact his fetish. On this point Ridley seems to grasp the non-empathetic condition of negrophobic pedophilia.

 Colorblindness and its Relationship to the Ruse

Citing Fanon, Afro-pessimists such as Jared Sexton and Wilderson have called attention to the ruse of analogy which negates social death, Blackness, and further reifies the non-ontological condition of the slave. It is this non-ontological condition in relationship to civil society that Wilderson suggests throws the Black into a state of objecthood which cannot be understood through the analogy. This is what McQueen and Tarantino cannot comprehend. As Fanon wrote, “the attitude of the anti-Semite can be equated with that of the negrophobe…the anti-Semite is inevitably a negrophobe (101). However, Fanon did not say the negrophobe is invariably an anti-Semite. Yet, the metadiscourse on racial formation and its relationship to domination necessitate that any conversation about Black suffering is immediately checked by analogizing it to European fascism.

When asked why make 12 Years now, McQueen automatically defaults to the Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. It is only through lens of the Holocaust, that slavery seems to make sense for McQueen, his interviewer, and for whiteness writ large. The grammar that constructs the parallax through which suffering is understood is still rooted in the ontological condition that has provided the natural metaphor through which one can ask what does it mean to suffer? However, Auschwitz is not unprecedented for one whose frame of reference is the Middle Passage. The Muselmann is not the slave. Yet, the historiography of intellectual thought emerging out of the Second World War has fortified and extended the “interlocutory life of widely accepted political common sense which positions the German/Jewish relation as the sine qua non of a structural antagonism” (Wilderson 36). This historiography allows political philosophy to attribute ontological and social significance to the Jewish Holocaust that can be resolved because the Jew can be returned to civil society as a human being. This is the difference between being hunted and being sold.

In a roundtable discussion with the Hollywood Reporter’s David Simpson in 2011, McQueen is the only one of six male directors who is not white.[16] At the end of the hour and seven minute interview Simpson asks, “You’re all men. Only one of you, Steve, is a minority.” There is uncomfortable laughter with eyes turned down as the group attempts to name three to four woman directors. Then McQueen states, “The question should be different. The question should be why are there no Black directors since there are more women directors than there are Black directors.” To which Simpson presses further, “So, what’s the answer?”  It is here where I would argue that McQueen shows the disjuncture between African descended people of the North Americas and his positionality as a Black British artist.  Similar to his other interviews, McQueen cannot fathom the idea that the very negation of Blackness, as non-ontology, is the principle reason for the underemployment of Black directors. Because directors construct the reality of the film set, they are often the primary arbiters of employment for talent in front of the camera. Hence the paucity of Black directors correlates with the casting of Blacks and other minorities. McQueen fumbles around for an answer, concluding:

I’m always astonished by American filmmakers, particularly living in certain areas, when they never cast one person as a Black person, who have never actually put a Black person as a lead in a movie. I’m astonished. It’s shameful. [sic] How can you be living in a country or cities in America as a director and not cast sort of [Black] people, I don’t know, you live in New York and not cast Black actors or Latino actors. It’s shameful. It’s unbelievable. (McQueen:2011)

Simpson presses on, “Why is that?” McQueen nods with his head to the rest of directors sitting in the circle who are now all silent and squirming awkwardly in their chairs, further intensifying the very point of McQueen’s Blackness as an alienated condition.  McQueen continues:  “You ask them. It’s bizarre…I feel it’s odd. I feel it’s shameful. Tremendously shameful in fact.” Simpson then presses the question to the rest of the group about why this reality, which McQueen has made blatantly obvious, exists. There is a pause from the group and then the following answers, “I’m not stepping into that,” and “I don’t know.” For a moment, McQueen had managed to articulate the problem. The exchange took place three years before McQeen’s 12 Years won the Oscar for Best Picture. The conversation could not “hold the break” (Moten:2003). Rather it had to close by returning to a discussion what the coming year would hold for independent versus commercial (as if inclusion isn’t commercial) cinema. A topic to which the other roundtable directors were more than eager to entertain given their inability to speak back to McQueen’s previous remarks.

This is not to suggest that the Black is at the top of every hierarchy of discrimination. Rather it is to call attention to the manner in which “violence which…destroys the possibility of ontology because it positions the Black in an infinite and interdeterminately horrifying and open vulnerability” (Wilderson 38) with practical and real implications. Another way to think about this is the constant echo-chamber of Black on Black violence that Ridley espouses as the dysfunctionality of niggers.  In filtering the suffering of the Black through the white lens of the Holocaust, we are blinded, calloused, and indifferent to Black social death, and the lives of actual people. We can see this indifference in President Obama’s reaction to the carnage Adam Lanza unleashed on New Town, Connecticut, in which President Obama, rightfully so, decried that this “kind of senseless violence” has to stop and pointed his anger toward the gun manufacturing industry and structural inequality in mental health.  Adam Lanza, a member of civil society, was mentally disturbed, not a thug, right?  By contrast, the President’s rhetoric regarding Black youth dying either at the hands of other Black youth or at the hands of the state often has been couched in a language of absentee-fatherism, gangster youth music and culture, urban decay, and the necessity to just pull up one’s trousers. This language, even coming out of President Obama’s mouth, is never an issue of mental health caused by colonialism and internal colonialism of the mind.

In fact, it finally took the tragedy of Trayvon Martin, and the subsequent acquittal of George Zimmerman, for the President to finally pose the question to the American public on live television, in effect, asking how would a jury have reacted if Trayvon Martin made the same claim to stand your ground. Or better yet, can Black people make the same claim to the second amendment and the right to self-defense? In the press conference the President stated:

And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these “stand your ground” laws, I’d just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?  And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened? (Obama: 2013)[17]

Yet, this would have nothing to do with mental health because as Fanon demonstrated, “A drama is played out every day in the colonized countries. How can we explain, for example, that a black guy who has passed his baccalaureate and arrives at the Sorbonne to study for his degree in philosophy is already on his guard before there is the sign of any conflict?” (123). For President Obama and Django the state’s sanctioning of violence cannot figure into the question of Black liberation. However for Fanon, writing and fighting were revolutionary acts to bring about the denouement within the drama of a dying colonialism.

Conclusion

This article has used Django and 12 Years to work through recent iterations of slave cinema. I have demonstrated that these films are representative of unique sites of labor in which Black bodies are organized as commodities to perform economies of pleasure and terror within a Hollywood film industry that propagates colorblind ideology and white supremacy by denying Black people empathic capacity or humanity. Furthermore, simultaneous desire and disavowal for Black bodies has created a fetish for Blackness that has been conflated with love as well as the suffering of white innocence. In exploring these relationships, I have also been calling for an understanding of how colorblind ideology is intertwined with aesthetic and efficacious modes of performance in which Black social death is congruent with the way in which the performance of Black labor is persistently controlled and marginalized in Hollywood. As a consequence, cinema helps shape the discussions around race relations that continue to affect the lived experiences of Black people in the United States.

I didn’t cry when I went to an invited screening of 12 Years, which had a predominantly Black audience.  As Wilderson concludes, empathetic aesthetics, by which popular socially progressive films are underwritten, dissipate cinema’s critical potential by hailing the spectator to an impoverished ensemble of questions, such as Isn’t it sad? Isn’t it tragic? Why do some people behave badly and others don’t? (339).  Certainly, within McQueen’s project we are asked to move in the direction of these moral questions at the expense of analytical ones. Yet, just like analytic film aesthetics that strive to repudiate moral assessments by privileging effect over cause as well as independent cinema’s implicit and explicit political promise, neither tradition processes the ensemble of questions nor approaches a language through which to articulate the economy of Black non-ontology.

In Django Unchained, we are never asked to ponder any kind of relationship to civil society, as the protagonist is presumed to live outside society except when accessed as fungible object by the will of the state to perform the role of bounty hunter alongside Schultz. All of this, despite the fact that the will of the state determines that the slave has no relationship to the state because the slave is a non-citizen, a non-human. But exploring the relationship of Blackness to civil society is neither Tarantino’s project nor concern. Tarantino, like Ridley, is concerned with the box office and obsessed with Black necropolitics. As the history of capitalism in the United States has demonstrated, Black bodies and money make excellent bedfellows. While Ridley recognizes that he is in fact being consumed and simultaneously prospering, but yet cannot comprehend why he is being consumed in parasitic like fashion (and thus must insist that he is a unique host unlike the other niggers), the parasite, Tarantino, feasts. Tarantino wants us to indulge with him in his fetishization of the slave’s body. He will do anything to it he wants. He will kill it, eat it, fuck it, shit on it, and then fuck it again. His obsession, yes, festishization, with the Black body has no end and he wants everyone to know it. He enjoys knowing that everyone knows it. It is through this process that his status as white, male, and privileged is affirmed, and for this his audiences handsomely reward him.

*******

Acknowledgements

Funding for this project was made possible by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, a research center within the Institute for American Cultures at University of California, Los Angeles. For their generous sharing of time, resources, and knowledge I would like to thank Vice-Provost Belinda Tucker, Professor Darnell Hunt, Dr. Ana-Christina Ramon, the Bunche Center staff, and the Race and Hollywood team for committing their energy to the study of diversity (or lack thereof) in the Hollywood and entertainment industry. I am most grateful to Dominic Steavu-Balint, Leo Cabranes-Grant, Darnell Hunt, Bob Myers, Rael Jero Salley, and Jeffrey Stewart who contributed to the shaping of this essay by lending insights and providing comments on drafts.

The post Economies of Enjoyment and Terror in Django Unchained and 12 Years a Slave appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

En una actividad de presentación de un proyecto comunitario en el municipio costero de Loíza para “dar voz” a los jóvenes de comunidades marginadas mediante talleres de escritura creativa, la discusión se abrió al público y de inmediato giró hacia la falta de movimientos organizados, sostenidos de oposición política en el Puerto Rico. El público, en su mayoría proveniente de los sectores más radicales dentro y fuera de la universidad, de activistas comunitarios y gente solidaria en general, se debatió por unos veinte minutos acerca de las dificultades para aunar fuerzas, motivar a personas, establecer alianzas, pasar del ciber-activismo al trabajo de base y de pensar más allá de la convocatoria para una marcha o un piquete aislado. Varios de los y las presentes intervinieron para traer a memoria lo acontecido durante la lucha contra la Marina de Guerra Norteamericana en Vieques quince años atrás, durante la más reciente huelga universitaria 2010-2011 y durante la exitosa campaña ciudadana en defensa del derecho constitucional a la fianza en el 2012. Esto con el propósito de identificar los factores que posibilitaron movilizaciones considerables de la población en el pasado reciente, y de auscultar las razones por las que estos aparentarían estar ausentes ahora. A estos fines, las y los presentes argumentaron cómo en esas instancias o bien se logró fraguar un imaginario compartido de la oposición, o se había realizado un trabajo de bases extenso, o simplemente existía un consenso acerca del “mal” a derrotar. La conversación fue algo frustrante y en extremo aburrida.

Antes de eso hubo poesía. Antes de la poesía, el fundador del proyecto comunitario habló extensamente acerca de la desinformación que existe en torno a la historia de las comunidades más pobres en el País (por qué mayúsculas?). Habló más extensamente aún acerca de sus viajes y su conocimiento en temas de pobreza, activismo y apoderamiento comunitario. Habló de su poesía y recitó un poema. En fin, de lo menos que habló fue del proyecto. Acerca de éste, lo único que recuerdo al presentador decir es que sería demasiado estúpido e irresponsable compartir la poesía de la poeta americana Emily Dickinson con los jóvenes de una comunidad negra, costera y pobre en el caribe. Semejantemente, y en relación a la discusión que se suscitó entre el público en torno al actual panorama de la oposición política en Puerto Rico, parecería ser que existe un consenso acerca de lo estúpido e irresponsable que sería imaginarnos un panorama político actual atiborrado de diversos actos de oposición que pasan desapercibidos por la mayoría. Esto porque los mismos no acontecen en los escenarios tradicionales para la protesta en el País o porque los reclamos no son articulados de formas fácilmente comprensibles por el público, o porque son escenificados por sujetos que no son reconocidos como actores políticos. En este ensayo, intereso abrir paso a la estupidez e irresponsabilidad del pensamiento en torno a la oposición política en Puerto Rico. Es decir, pecaré de iluso, de inevitablemente optimista.

“Hope is the thing with feathers”[1]. Así comienza un poema de Dickinson—tan comprensible y contundente, se me ocurre, en su natal Amherst, Massachusetts como en el municipio costero de Loíza. Sin embargo, el presentador de la actividad antes descrita insistió en que la poesía de Dickinson no tendría resonancia alguna entre los jóvenes de la comunidad que él buscaba impactar. Esto porque no compartían los mismos referentes socio-culturales. Lo que resulta a lo menos paradójico cuando consideramos que el mar ocupa un lugar prominente en el imaginario poético de Dickinson, y los jóvenes que el presentador se disponía a cautivar viven marginados por razones de raza y clase social frente al mar. Esta paradoja, se me ocurre, hace evidente un imperativo de la crítica y la creación literaria: Para abordar poesía es necesario desprenderse de presunciones con respecto a cuáles podrían ser los y las interlocutoras de un texto. Descartar a una posible audiencia para un poema significa abandonar a priori un universo inesperado de interpretaciones en torno a su forma y contenido. Esto es grave, puesto que estas interpretaciones, en muchos casos, podrían trascender los contornos discursivos del ámbito poético para asentarse en los imaginarios propios de la acción política, que a su vez dan forma e inciden directamente en el devenir de una comunidad. Dice Zizek: “Words are never only words’; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do”.[2] Añade Rancière: “If words serve to blur things, it is because the conflict over words is inseparable from the battle over things”.[3] De ahí que en materia de análisis literario, como de teoría y práctica política, resulte imperioso precisar el significado de los términos con que armamos el imaginario solitario y singular de un poema, al igual que el imaginario colectivo, dinámico de una comunidad.

Ahora bien, si se nos permitiera hurgar en y jugar con las palabras de la poeta, y al hacerlo, tomar un atajo discursivo de una discusión sobre poesía a una sobre política, podríamos decir que “protesta es cualquier cosa con esperanza”. No importa si el acto en cuestión no comparte las mismas señas y signos de las manifestaciones políticas estereotípicas. O que éste no haya sido realizado por manifestantes con una postura bien definida en cuanto a sus reclamos, o que estos incluso carezcan de la conciencia de que han incidido en el espacio público con el fin de oponerse políticamente. De acuerdo al filósofo puertorriqueño Bernat Tort, “lo político o lo ético en el arte o en el activismo no se define según la intención del artista o autor de los actos, sino por las reacciones del público, por el contexto social en que se instaura la pieza o el gesto; son los espectadores quienes le dan su sentido”.[4] Siguiendo la pista de Tort, podríamos decir que actualmente en Puerto Rico, las manifestaciones de oposición política protagonizadas por sindicatos y partidos sufren de una deficiencia de sentido en tanto y en cuanto, las mismas siguen un libreto harto conocido por el público, que las asume con relativa naturalidad. La marcha, el piquete, el cese momentáneo de labores por los y las empleadas de alguna agencia gubernamental, por ejemplo, con camisas y pancartas y consignas coreadas son presenciadas por la multiplicidad de espectadores con la certeza de que nada remotamente significativo ocurrirá. Esto porque dicho tipo de manifestación se ha vuelto parte de nuestra cotidianidad compartida y si bien podría incomodar al interrumpir el flujo regular del tráfico momentáneamente o las funciones gubernamentales durante un día normal de trabajo, lo cierto es que su escenificación regular, invariable, no comunica una amenaza real al gobierno de causar una interrupción mayor a su funcionamiento. De hecho, la repetición de las mismas, sin mayores disturbios a lo largo del tiempo, podría incluso dar fe de la estabilidad y recrudecimiento del orden imperante. Podríamos decir, entonces, que las protestas tradicionales en Puerto Rico han dejado de ser, que han devenido en otra cosa, en tanto carecen de esperanza.

A propósito de la desesperanza, el historiador puertorriqueño Carlos Pabón, en su reciente libro Polémicas: Política, Intelectuales, Violencia, señala la necesidad entre las y los intelectuales críticos de desarrollar y lanzar nuevos conceptos para armar un nuevo imaginario político que nos permita interpretar lo que nos acontece a nivel local y global. Particularmente, y ante los diversos eventos de oposición política que se han desatado alrededor del mundo, Pabón hace hincapié en la responsabilidad del intelectual de hacer las preguntas precisas—“¿resultarán estos movimientos en transformaciones radicales o se disiparán sin lograrlo?”[5]— antes de dejarse llevar por el entusiasmo y optimismo espurio que determinados levantamientos podrían provocar. Se me ocurre pues que tanto en el campo de la acción política como en el ámbito intelectual-académico actual se percibe una aparente aversión hacia esa cosa con plumas que Dickinson llama esperanza y que propongo, es un elemento esencialismo tanto para aquellos que inciden en el espacio público a reclamarle al estado de manera informal, como para aquellos espectadores críticos, que interesamos desarrollar un marco teórico apropiado para interpretar el quehacer de los y las manifestantes. Sobre todo cuando el quehacer del sujeto que protesta resulta en extremo alocado o desagradable o errático o caprichoso y el mismo toma lugar en el sitio menos adecuado, en el momento menos indicado; lo que bien podría denotar demasiada estupidez y/o irresponsabilidad de parte del actor como para catalogar su gesta como una manifestación clara de oposición política. Aquí seguimos a Rancière cuando propone:

“Politics, then, has no proper place nor any natural subjects. A demonstration is political not because it occurs in a particular place and bears upon a particular object but rather because its form is that of a clash between two partitions of the sensible. A political subject is not a group of interests or of ideas, but the operator of a particular dispositive of subjectivation and litigation through which politics comes into existence. A political demonstration is therefore always of the moment and its subjects are always precarious.”[6]

En lo que sigue posaré la mirada sobre tres actos precarios de protesta provenientes de nuestra contemporaneidad en Puerto Rico, marcadamente distintos a las protestas tradicionales y protagonizados por sujetos disímiles a aquellos que típicamente las escenifican, con el fin de, como espectador, aquilatar su contenido político. Cada uno de estos eventos recibió cobertura mediática local—dos de ellos de hecho fueron tema de conversación, parodia y debate durante varias semanas y meses—sin embargo, ninguno fue abordado por los medios o por la crítica como actos bona fide de protesta ciudadana ni mucho menos reclamados por grupos de oposición. Esto, argumentaré, se debe en gran medida al perfil demográfico de los sujetos envueltos: su raza, género y/o posición social; como también al carácter y contenido de sus reclamos. Sobre este particular adelanto una teoría de forma alocada e irresponsable: las protestas sólo son esperanzadoras cuando sus reclamos resultan incomprensibles y por tanto imposibles de atender sin transformar el entramado de entendidos sociales en una comunidad. Veamos.

ii.

SENOR GOBERNADOR LO PEOR K A ECHO ES JO… KON EL DINERODEL PUEBLO NO SIGA ASIENDO BRUTALIDADES K LE PUEDE KOSTAR LA VIDA”; “USTED ANDA EN UN 300C Y YO EN… BIEN KA… NO SIGNIFIK K NO SEA APRUEBA DE BALA NOSEA PUREKO SAKO D AKI PA METER AKA”; “Manana marcha a la 1 pm… Mi reintegro o SEKUESTRO AL K… GIBERNADOR Y K VENGA KIEN KIERA AREGLARME POR LO DICHO SE VA AMORIR ATT YO”. [7]

En diciembre 2013 el autor de este tweet—un joven padre— fue sentenciado a seis meses y medio de cárcel por un juez de la corte federal de los Estados Unidos, distrito de Puerto Rico, quien aprovechó la ocasión para aconsejarlo y advertirle de las consecuencias del mal manejo de su temperamento. El texto del tweet, apenas comprensible, fue interpretado por las autoridades que diligenciaron el arresto y por el juez que lo sentenció, como una amenaza de muerte al gobernador. Basta con decir que ningún grupo, organización o partido político se expresó en solidaridad con el convicto, ni mucho menos acogió el contenido del mensaje como propio. Esto, supongo, porque ningún grupo de oposición interesaba quedar en récord apoyando la amenaza de secuestro y muerte del gobernador. Adicionalmente, no hay nada en el tweet que remita a un conflicto eminentemente político entre el autor y el primer mandatario. De hecho, el objeto principal de la disputa parecería ser el tipo de carro que ostenta el gobernador. O más bien el hecho de que el emisor, suponemos, no tiene uno comparable o que simplemente no tiene vehículo propio. Es decir, se trata de un asunto de mera envidia, producto seguramente del consumerismo rampante que por décadas ha arremetido contra la fibra moral de nuestra ciudadanía; de esa pulsión que sienten miles de individuos por tener más, haciendo menos. O, lo que es peor, tomando en cuenta el lenguaje empleado, se trata de la pulsión de tener más, a toda costa, no importa a quienes se les haga daño.

Esta lectura, se me ocurre, resultaría ser la más lógica y quizás hasta más acertada. Partamos, sin embargo, desde la estupidez e irresponsabilidad del pensamiento y digamos, en cambio, que se trata de una diferencia de estatus social y/o poderío económico que el emisor interesaba resaltar—sumada a un aparente disgusto con el uso del fondos públicos— lo que lo motivan a comunicar su frustración en las redes sociales. El problema, claro, es que uno no tiene derecho a desahogarse de esa manera—las amenazas de secuestro y muerte no son expresiones protegidas constitucionalmente. No obstante, ante el desenlace de esta historia, y visto desde una perspectiva de criminología crítica, uno bien podría argumentar que seis meses y medio de cárcel por un tweet resultan en extremo punitivo para lo que a todas luces no fue más que un desafortunado desahogo producto de un aparente desasosiego con el lugar que el emisor ocupa en el mundo en comparación con aquel ocupado por nuestro gobernador. Pero, qué tal si en vez de hacer una apología al autor del tweet, consideramos las posibilidades de acoger su reclamo y solidarizarnos con su expresión.[8] Para ello habría que, en primer lugar, tomar conciencia de la severa desigualdad social y económica que existe en Puerto Rico.[9] Luego habría que potenciar otra lectura de lo acontecido en corte. ¿Qué tal si en lugar de una sanción penal impuesta sobre el autor de una expresión que cumple los requisitos del delito de amenaza, se haya castigado al emisor por abrir un horizonte de acción política imprevisto e impermisible para el Estado ante la severa desigualdad social y económica en la Isla? Es decir, ¿acaso el carácter ofensivo del tweet no radicará en la aparente negativa del emisor a acoger y asumir la desigualdad como una realidad social a la cual cada individuo se debe atener? Visto de esta forma, el texto es punible en tanto amenaza con el desarrollo de un subjetividad política que contempla acciones violentas, descabelladas, como respuesta a la inequidad en nuestra sociedad. Su tweet entonces es una invitación al público a considerar si en efecto la brecha entre ricos y pobres en el País es lo suficientemente grave como para que un individuo cualquiera tome las armas y cometa una locura. Más importante aún, el tweet—y la posible incomodidad que el mismo podría causar de tomarlo en serio (tal como hizo el juez)— es una invitación a sopesar la diferencia entre actos particulares de violencia a manos de sujetos individuales y la violencia sistémica del Estado. Sobre este particular, Zizek arguye:

“One should learn to step back, to disentangle oneself from the fascinating lure of this directly visible ‘subjective’violence—violence performed by a clearly identifiable agent. We need to perceive the contours of the background which generates such outbursts. A step back enables us to identify a violence that sustains our very efforts to fight violence and to promote tolerance: the ‘objective’violence inscribed into the smooth functioning of our economic and political systems. The catch is that subjective and objective violence cannot be perceived from the same standpoint: subjective violence is experienced as such against the background of a non-violent zero-level of ‘civility’. It is seen as a perturbation of the normal, peaceful state of things. However, objective violence is precisely the violence inherent in this ‘normal’ state of things.”[10]

Desde Zizek, entonces, argumentaría que resulta útil y necesario visualizar al emisor condenado a cárcel federal como un prisionero político dentro del marco de un orden político y social en Puerto Rico que censura y castiga a todo aquel que intente abordar la desigualdad social como un problema público y cuya solución requiere cambios radicales al orden imperante. De ahí que el gobernador, recientemente sentenciara: “Puerto Rico está para propuestas. Y no para protestas.”[11] Claro, procede preguntar: ¿acaso este tweet cuyo registro discursivo nos remite al bajo mundo y a los protagonistas de la violencia callejera constituye una protesta? ¿Podríamos argumentar de forma seria que ha quedado cifrado en el texto algún reclamo al poder ejecutivo producto de una frustración válida, reconocible del emisor? ¿Es el tweet indicativo de algo más allá de la crisis de valores y del fin trágico que le espera a miles de nuestros jóvenes ligados a o inspirados por el mundo criminal que continúa cobrando sus vidas a niveles alarmantes? Sobre este particular, Carlos Pabón propone:

“El asesinato de miles de jóvenes —sobre 15,000— constituye una guerra social (in)visible, que opera como una “limpieza social” de sectores socialmente excluidos o “desechables” en el país. Se trata de una suerte de un nuevo tipo de conflicto social, de una suerte de auto-purga social, que produce cadáveres indiferenciados, cuerpos de personas cuyos nombres no conocemos o recordamos, cuerpos de una población excedente que se asume con demasiada frecuencia como una excrecencia social”.[12]

Para Pabón, la violencia ligada el narcotráfico debe ser abordada como un problema político, no como un mero issue de seguridad—abordaje que, según él, ha acrecentado los niveles de exclusión y desigualdad en Puerto Rico a través de los ámbitos de la educación, el trabajo, la salud, y la vivienda, entre otros. Ante este panorama, yo leo el tweet una y otra vez y siento que leo las palabras de un sujeto que tiene más probabilidades de matar y/o morir violentamente por una cuestión de drogas, que de irrumpir en el espacio público y obtener una audiencia. Leo sus palabras una y otra vez, y luego de intentar despacharlas como un simple desahogo, intento abordarlas con seriedad y urgencia, como una expresión dirigida, consciente, emitida desde algún rincón del bajo mundo a nuestro centro de gobierno. Y me perturba, por supuesto, la idea de que la violencia callejera continúe desbordándose de sus límites. Pero, siguiendo a Pabón, esa preocupación, sin más, me haría cómplice de lo que en esencia es una política pública dirigida hacia la invisibilización y desaparición de un sector—joven, varón, predominantemente negro y pobre—de nuestra población. Quien habla entonces es un sujeto atravesado por efectos de raza, clase y género que lo marcan como sujeto y objeto de una violencia que el estado permite en tanto no está dispuesto a abordarla como un resultado directo del sistema social. Lo cierto es que durante las últimas tres décadas en Puerto Rico se ha atendido el problema de violencia desde la perspectiva exclusiva de la seguridad y la privatización. Quienes cuentan con los recursos suficientes viven en urbanizaciones y complejos de vivienda con control de acceso, matriculan a sus hijos en colegios privados, equipan sus residencia con sistemas se seguridad y vigilancia, frecuentan los costosos e inaccesibles centros de comercio cada vez más lejos de centros urbanos. Quienes no cuentan con esos recursos, quedan sujetos al patrullaje policial intenso en sus barriadas y residenciales públicos, a la ineficiencia del sistema de educación pública y a la creciente ola de encarcelamiento en un estado cada vez más punitivo.

Entonces vuelvo a leer, y me propongo acoger la expresión como una protesta política y pregunto ¿cómo exactamente debo esperar que estos jóvenes articulen sus reclamos, sino a través de los códigos discursivos que manejan en su cotidianidad, con toda su crudeza? Exigirle otro registro discursivo es insistir en su invisibilidad. Visto así, por supuesto que el tweet debe ofender, porque la violencia objetiva a la que apunta es en extremo ofensiva. Desde Pabón, quien habla aquí no supone tener voz; supone morir o caer preso antes de los treinta años. Quien habla no tiene representantes autorizados, ni tiene audiencia. O más bien, su única audiencia fue en corte abierta. Y, sabemos, la corte es uno de los lugares más riesgosos desde donde articular una protesta.

iii. [13]

El 6 de enero del 2013, dentro del marco de la Tradicional Fiesta del Día de Reyes, ofrecida por el gobernador y la primera dama, una joven madre fue entrevistada para la televisión. La mujer, a preguntas de la reportera, se mostró inconforme con la actividad, en particular con el obsequio que recibió su hija—una bola de baloncesto. Se refirió a la misma como un “trapo de bola”[14] y lamentó haber traído a la menor, quien estaba enferma. La entrevista que culminaba un reportaje especial de la estación, donde se recogían las expresiones de agradecimiento y las apreciaciones positivas de varios de los asistentes, obtuvo gran difusión en las redes sociales. Analistas políticos, académicos y funcionarios públicos comentaron la intervención de la mujer, calificándola como lamentable, vergonzosa. Ella, a su vez, fue tildada de malagradecida y mala madre—culpable de haber llevado a su hija enferma a buscar un regalo gratis, y culpable también de su aparente incapacidad para inculcar en la pequeña los valores correctos. De hecho, por espacio de meses, la mujer fue la “poster child” de lo que para muchos resulta ser hoy el principal problema social en la isla: la dependencia de ayudas gubernamentales.  Si nos fuéramos a dejar llevar por la prensa y por los comentaristas en los sitios de noticias web, la crisis social y económica que enfrenta el país se debe en gran medida a una población excedente que vive de dádivas y del trabajo y esfuerzo de los demás; que no aporta nada al país, en tiempos en que el país necesita de las aportaciones y el trabajo de todos y todas para salir de la crisis. De ahí que los comentarios de la mujer fueran recibidos como desafortunadas y despreciables quejas de la boca de una “buscona”. No obstante, otra lectura es posible. Pero antes es necesario volver atrás.

La Tradicional Fiesta de Reyes ofrecida por el gobernador y la primera dama se distingue principalmente por la entrega de regalos. Desde el amanecer, familias enteras esperan en fila largas horas para que sus hijos e hijas obtengan algún obsequio de manos del gobernador y su equipo de trabajo. En el pasado, esta actividad ha servido como una manera en extremo efectiva para ganar el favor del electorado mediante la entrega de juguetes electrónicos y computadoras, por ejemplo. También ha sido escenario de discordias, principalmente debido al largo rato que las personas han tenido que esperar, las condiciones bajo las cuales permanecen en espera, y/o por las cantidades insuficientes de los regalos prometidos. Para algunos, la actividad es representativa de una cultura de mantengo gubernamental, mediante la cual el estado satisface una vez más las necesidades y caprichos de personas—provenientes de los sectores más desaventajados—que no hacen nada por ellas mismas ni por otras. Ante esta situación, el gobernador de turno había anunciado que el propósito principal de su celebración del Día de Reyes sería la unión familiar, el fomento de valores morales y el desarrollo integral de nuestros niños. De ahí que los juguetes a ser obsequiados serían exclusivamente de índole educativo y/o deportivo, y de bajo costo. Adicionalmente, la entrega de regalos cobraría la forma de un intercambio: los niños asistentes tendrían que hacer un dibujo de los reyes para obtener su obsequio. Esto con el propósito de fomentar en ellos una ética de trabajo y una cultura del mérito. No es sorpresa, entonces, que la reacción de la joven madre, desde la perspectiva de nuestros funcionarios públicos y otros, pusiera en evidencia la urgente necesidad de educar e inculcar valores entre nuestras clases más bajas. Su queja pues terminó dándole la razón al gobernador, en tanto las expresiones de la mujer ante las cámaras simplemente sacaron a relucir la deficiencia de integridad y la falta de fibra moral que caracterizaban su vida domestica privada. De esta forma, el trapo de bola se convirtió en la metáfora para una cotidianidad al garete, vivida malamente en miles de hogares a lo largo y ancho de la Isla. Es decir, la crítica lanzada por la mujer a la actividad fue redirigida, transformada al momento mismo de su enunciación en una alegación de culpabilidad. No era un trapo de bola, sino un trapo de madre con un trapo de vida, ofreciéndole a su hija un trapo de crianza, y qué rayos se cree el trapo de mujer esa para venir ahora y quejarse. De esta forma su expresión se convirtió en la razón principalísima para no reconocerle derecho alguno a hablar.

Dice Rancière: “If there is someone you do not wish to recognize as a political being, you begin by not seeing him as the bearer of signs of politicity, by not understanding what he says, by not hearing what issues from his mouth as discourse.”[15] En este caso, esperar en fila para obtener un regalo de navidad—que suponía ella comprar—con su hija enferma—que suponía ella cuidar— alegadamente la desautorizó como actor político que interesaba manifestar su oposición al gobierno a raíz de su participación en dicha actividad. Asumir esto como correcto implicaría que sólo aquellos y aquellas que no sufren de la necesidad económica necesaria para estar ahí podían articular su disgusto, desde la comodidad del afuera. Es decir, que protestar—ser reconocido como un actor político—también sería un privilegio en Puerto Rico. Ciertamente no estoy de acuerdo con esa visión y por tanto, propongo considerar las expresiones de la mujer como lo que Zizek llama  “la condensación metafórica de una demanda”[16] donde el trapo de bola representa no la falta de valores de la hablante, sino un emplazamiento al gobierno por el trato  condescendiente que le ofrece a los sectores más desaventajados de la población. Por hacer de una fiesta navideña una lección de moralidad dirigida a un grupo de personas que quizá no tienen otro remedio que asistir a ella, en tanto y en cuanto interesan obtener un juguete para sus niños. Y que evidentemente al tomar la palabra no pueden más que fingir agradecimiento por la lección brindada. En ese sentido, la Fiesta de Reyes resultó en una perfecta lección en estrategias de coerción.

Ante este escenario, nuestra responsabilidad como espectadores críticos consiste en acoger las expresiones de la mujer según estaban intencionadas. Esto es, como una crítica al gobierno. Y jugar creativamente, críticamente con la metáfora empleada por ella en toda su especificidad. Esto requiere, primero, situar a la joven madre dentro un contexto socio-político donde la vida de mujeres está en riesgo. Actualmente en Puerto Rico, las mujeres representan una mayoría de la población bajo niveles de pobreza. Enfrentan niveles alarmantes de violencia de género, acoso y agresión sexual. Adicionalmente, en el imaginario colectivo, una de las razones principales por la difícil situación económica y social que enfrenta el país es la supuesta crisis de la mujer puertorriqueña (en singular) que no sabe ni controlar su sexualidad, ni criar correctamente a sus niños, en hogares marcados por la supuesta ausencia del padre. A esto se le añade una renuencia tanto del poder ejecutivo como del judicial de promover la equidad entre hombres y mujeres mediante decisiones de política pública y de política jurídica con perspectiva de género. Tomando esto en consideración, esta joven madre hablaba  (“se quejaba”) desde la vulnerabilidad extrema de una mujer que ante todo, era culpable de haber tomado las decisiones (malas todas) que la llevaron a hacer esa fila en ese día. Y si estaba ahí era porque merecía recibir cualquier cosa que el gobernador estuviera dispuesto a dar. De hecho, ni eso.

¿Se trataba pues de un trapo de bola? Diría que depende de la bola. Y de qué se puede jugar con ella. Y cuántos son. Y si hace falta guante o raqueta o líneas en la tierra o mallas en los canastos o un set de palos. Depende de cómo se coge y a dónde se tira. Depende de si tienes quién te enseñe a jugar. O si tienes donde jugar cerca y más o menos seguro. Depende de la bola. De si basta con tirarla contra la pared. De si puedes o no pasar horas viéndola picar y rodar. De si tienes quién te mire y te practique y la pique y la ruede contigo, más rápido, con mayor gracia y dominio. Depende de si la puedes agarrar con una mano o con dos. Si necesitas membresía a un club para jugar o si el punto se trasladó a la cancha y los canastos hasta nuevo aviso permanecerán cerrados. Depende de quién te la tire y cómo y para qué. De si la bola supone ser un pasatiempo en tu vida o tu vida. Depende de la bola. Y si un poco la bola, vista de cierta forma, te recuerda al globo terráqueo y sientes que sujetarla es sujetar el mundo con una mano o con dos. Depende de si en el salón hay suficientes globos del mundo para darle vuelta y vuelta y pensar el mundo tan accesible como salir y agarrar un balón. Depende de con qué manos. Depende de si sabes de las manos de los grandes que alguna vez sujetaron esa misma bola y la lanzaron o la encestaron o la sacaron del parque. De cómo llegaron a darle la vuelta al mundo con la bola debajo del brazo. Depende de si tuviste alguien que tuvo el tiempo y el amor y el conocimiento para hacerte las historias de los grandes y te hizo sentir que tú con la bola debajo del brazo eras lo más grande en el mundo. Depende de la bola y de las circunstancias en que llega a tus manos. De manos de quién por ejemplo. En ocasión de qué por ejemplo. Siendo tú quién ante los ojos del mundo. Siendo el mundo qué cosa exactamente en los ojos de quien te obsequia la bola. Depende de lo que la bola significa como regalo para un nene como tú en el mundo. Depende de qué representa la bola como regalo en tus manos. De cuánto vale. De si la bola vale más que tú.

iv.

Y tú eres una ignorante, lee un maldito periódico. ¿Quiénes pagan la reforma de la salud de este país? Yo con mis taxes. ¿Tú pagas taxes? Ah, pues, nosotros somos los que pagamos la reforma…“¡Maldita sea! Yo me ‘escocoto’ en el Recinto de Ciencias Médicas para venir aquí a bregar con ustedes…Por eso es que este país es una porquería. Coge un maldito libro ignorante.[17]

Estas expresiones le pertenecen a una doctora recién separada de sus funciones en el Hospital Regional de Bayamón. Las mismas salieron a la luz pública luego de que una paciente grabara con su teléfono celular una diatriba de la galena contra un grupo de pacientes en la sala de espera del hospital, ocurrido en agosto de este año. El vídeo, como el del trapo de bola, ha sido diseminado y comentado hasta la saciedad por individuos particulares, noticieros y funcionarios de gobierno. La doctora quien fue sancionada de inmediato por la Secretaria de Salud, debido a lo que ésta determinó fue un trato discriminatorio hacia los y las pacientes que suponía atender, ha gozado, no obstante, del apoyo de amplios segmentos de la población que aparentan identificarse con ella. Para muchos, la galena—una mujer blanca, miembro de ese grupo altamente cotizado de puertorriqueños y puertorriqueñas profesionales que actualmente migran del país en grandes números—simplemente expresó una frustración colectiva hacia esa masa vaga, indecente y problemática del país, que no sabe apreciar la ayuda y el servicio que personas como ella le brindan. Lo que dijo la doctora, entonces, lejos de ser percibido como discriminatorio o reprochable, fue una dosis de “medicina amarga” tanto para sus interlocutores en la sala de espera como para el gobierno, que mediante dádivas fomenta y premia la indecencia y dependencia extrema de estos sectores.

Esta identificación con la doctora y el apoyo demostrado por medio de foros en línea, sondeos y entrevistas para radio y televisión, tiene su contraparte en el odio vertido no sólo hacia las pacientes con quien la doctora discutió (quienes no aparecen en el vídeo), sino que hacia la mujer que grabó y difundió el mismo. Ésta, previo a que fuera identificada por la prensa y concediera entrevistas para la televisión, ya había sido descrita como una mujer negra, pobre y “cafre”, quien seguro también estaba ahí como beneficiara del plan médico que ofrece el estado y que según la doctora, ella ayuda a costear mediante el pago de impuestos. De ahí que, para muchos, lo verdaderamente ofensivo y lesivo a los derechos de las personas envueltas fuera el acto de grabar, ya que sirvió para perjudicar a una mujer profesional y “fajona” que tuvo un mal día y dijo la verdad de forma cruda ciertamente y quizás hasta lamentable; pero no por ello, dejaba de ser verdad.

De esta forma, entiendo, se perdió de vista el gesto políticamente esperanzador de la mujer que grabó. Esto es, delatar una manifestación clara de los patrones de prejuicio, discriminación y exclusión por razón de raza y clase social que activamente empobrecen la vida de miles de personas en el País. Este acto transgresor, sin embargo, no fue acogido por ningún grupo u organización política. La autora del mismo no obtuvo defensa contundente alguna. De hecho, todo lo contrario aconteció—los medios se limitaron a hacer públicos ciertos detalles acerca de su vida privada y su situación económica, que sirvieron para confirmar las sospechas y satisfacer los prejuicios de los y las comentaristas; quienes, a través de los distintos foros, solicitaron algún tipo de sanción penal para ella.  Esta reacción visceral, hiperbólica, multiplica el carácter políticamente radical del gesto puesto que pone en evidencia no sólo el grave problema de exclusión por raza, clase y género en Puerto Rico, sino que deja claro que el problema de la oposición política en el País no se remonta a una falta de activismo sino a una carencia crasa de un contexto de recepción e interpretación crítica progresista que recoja, desde la solidaridad, las protestas que sí toman lugar en el País. Actos que más allá de responder a una decisión particular del gobierno de turno en materia de convenios colectivos, por ejemplo, arroja luz a la desigualdad estructural y la violencia sistémica en Puerto Rico y que fuerza al público espectador a lidiar con hablantes y actores que por razón de su raza, clase y/o género no suponen tener ninguna agencia política.

Estos sujetos, entonces, cuando irrumpen en el espacio público se propasan desde el inicio—la mujer que no debió haber grabado, el hombre que no supo expresar sus frustraciones, la madre que no sabe aceptar dádivas. Son aguafiestas, un excedente incivilizado de la población cuyo único lugar en el imaginario es el de ser una carga y chivo expiatorio para la diversidad de males sociales que nos acechan. Por ende, como manifestantes, ocupan los lugares más precarios en nuestro entorno. No son estudiantes ni empleados públicos ni obreros (todas categorías que connotan un valor de producción)—son hombres que suponen morir en la calle o en prisión y las mujeres que o los crían o tienen hijos con ellos. De ahí que sus intervenciones pasen desapercibidas como protestas, sus reclamos resulten incomprensibles y reciban el reproche colectivo, el castigo o la amenaza de sanción penal como respuesta. Se trata entonces de los y las manifestantes más peligrosas en el país: aquellos actores particulares, que no teniendo otra alternativa y desde la vulnerabilidad extrema—en el sentido de que no pueden darse el lujo de no hacer la fila para un regalo, de no tomar asiento en esa sala de espera—con la más mínima acción interrumpen nuestra cotidianidad; nos aguan la fiesta ideológica, si se quiere, de pensar felizmente que la desigualdad social es un asunto personal. Lo hacen a la mala, desde la diversidad de espacios—siempre los menos indicados—sin organización ni comité ni consignas, halando por los pelos esa cosa emplumada, en forma de protesta.

The post Aguafiestas: Marginalidad y Protesta en Puerto Rico appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

Por mais poderosos, articulados e sofisticados que sejam os aparatos filosóficos, epistemológicos, institucionais e teórico-ideológicos em favor  do capitalismo e do imperialismo, os sujeitos sociais e coletividades oprimidas têm sido capazes de responder com alternativas. Ainda que a modernidade ocidental hegemônica, forjada em grande medida pelo eurocentrismo e pelo etnocentrismo, tenha longo alcance através de suas “mãos” (vísiveis e invisíveis), é possível realçar, de forma paralela, variados exemplos concretos, forjados nos mais distintos contextos, que revelam o protagonismo, a rebeldia e a inventividade de subalternos que, compartilhando de outras matrizes de pensamento, conhecimento e experiência de vida, não se submeteram a (e até subverteram) o que lhes foi imposto.

Este artigo busca destacar alguns aspectos do complexo processo de “formação”[1] de um movimento que constitui um desses exemplos. O movimento katarista da Bolívia desafiou as regras pré-estabelecidas e ganhou terreno, especialmente a partir do final dos anos 1960, duas décadas antes da formalização por Krenshaw (1989) do conceito de “interseccionalidade”[2] – que descreve a opção pela relevância prática e teórica da complementaridade entre as normalmente distintas categorias de “raça” e “classe”. No bojo do enfrentamento ao sistema corrente de relações de poder marcado pela opressão aos povos originários, camponeses-indígenas[3] Aymara da região do Altiplano andino formaram uma inovadora articulação e estiveram à frente de mobilizações com fortes demandas étnico-culturais em um dos países com maior grau de exclusão social da América Latina.

O Katarismo emergiu, grosso modo, como resultado da confluência de dois processos (Hurtado, 1986): um de longo prazo, marcado pelos sucessivos atos oficiais de deslegitimação e expropriação de amplas terras coletivas e respectiva conversão das mesmas em propriedades rurais individuais privadas – que tiveram início no longo período marcado pelo colonialismo espanhol, mas continuaram durante o período republicano (a partir de 1825); e outro mais de médio e curto prazo, caracterizado pelo ambiente de alta tensão resultante do tenebroso massacre de soldados camponeses-indígenas na Guerra do Chaco (1932 a 1935), seguido das políticas públicas de incorporação e cooptação adotadas pelo bloco em torno do Movimento Nacionalista Revolucionário (MNR) que, com a ajuda dos próprios camponeses-indígenas empenhados na extinção do pongueaje econômico[4], deslocou a elite extrativista e mais conservadora que dava corpo à chamada rosca[5] e assumiu o comando do Estado Boliviano após a Revolução de 1952.

Uma das medidas estruturais que fizeram parte da agenda inicial do governo revolucionário[6] foi justamente a reforma agrária (no sentido de garantir legalmente as posses de terras a comunidades “tradicionais”, especialmente em áreas andinas), associada à aplicação, a partir dos gabinetes da República, de um modelo de organização das comunidades rurais com base nos sindicatos agrários. À medida que cumpria, ao menos parcialmente, a promessa de evitar a continuidade da desterritorialização dos povos e nações indígenas, a coalizão à frente do governo que se seguiu à Revolução de 1952 colocava em prática também, com a compulsória exigência da sindicalização rural, uma tentativa de enquadramento dos beneficiários aos padrões sociopolíticos da modernidade. A intenção era forçar o deslocamento de todo esse contingente, que mantinha um peso populacional enorme, para a condição de camponeses, dentro de um regime de organização classista, enfraquecendo, ainda que de forma gradual, as demandas de ordem étnico-culturais.

Em compasso com a implementação de um modelo educacional “integracionista” – ou seja, que assumia o aprendizado formal concentrado na língua espanhola, sem espaço para a diversidade social[7]-, a sindicalização rural compulsória foi pensada e implementada como mais um recurso de engenharia social dentro do paradigma moderno de dominação e incorporação de povos e culturas “inferiores” ao modelo institucional “universal” construído a partir de modelos de países do Norte.

O que os idealizadores da “inclusão por decretos” dos indígenas ao quadro institucional moderno não esperavam é que os próprios “objetos” das nomeadas políticas pudessem vir a atuar como “sujeitos” dotados de saberes, demandas e estratégias próprias. Em resposta à tentativa positivista de invisibilização e extinção de seus padrões distintos de modos de vida, camponeses-indígenas aymara do Altiplano Andino trilharam um “caminho próprio” – sem seguir necessariamente o receituário da modernização assumindo-se como camponeses nem se refugiar no essencialismo indígena de cunho “purista” que, pelo lado oposto, também acaba se acoplando perfeitamente à divisão simplista entre aqueles ocidentais e não-ocidentais.

Essa escolha “imprevista” que toma como base o diálogo – e não o divórcio – entre estruturas de cariz “moderno” (sindicato agrário) e práticas aparentemente “tradicionais” (mantendo a organização em ayllus[8] e o papel de jilaqata[9], por exemplo) permite identificar no movimento katarista insinuantes características pós-coloniais, no sentido sublinhado por Young (2003), em seu compêndio de síntese sobre o tema. Para este autor, o pós-colonialismo oferece a possibilidade de “ver as coisas diferentemente”, de acordo com uma linguagem e uma política em que os interesses dos subalternos “estão em primeiro plano, e não em último”.

Imagem 1 – Monumento em homenagem a TupacKatari na cidade de Achacachi (Bolívia) – Fonte: Maurício Hashizume (2009)

2. Antecedentes e contextualização

A análise da formação do Katarismo não pode prescindir da revisão do perfis e dos caminhos percorridos por alguns personagens que vieram a se firmar como precursores e primeiros líderes do movimento. Para este fim, destacaremos as biografias de dois artífices que lhe foram centrais: Raimundo Tambo e Jenaro Flores.

Há um consenso – presente em variadas obras que de alguma forma abordam o movimento, entre as quais as de Hurtado (1986), Albó (1987), García Linera (2008) e Tapia (2007) – de que os primórdios do Katarismo estão ligados ao surgimento de “uma corrente de opinião entre jovens aymaras residentes em La Paz que empreenderam a revalorização de sua cultura” (Hurtado, 1986: 11). Esses jovens – quase todos vindos de áreas rurais do interior da Bolívia – encontraram nas reivindicações étnico-culturais, ainda durante a década de 1950, não só uma forma de nutrir a auto-estima para enfrentar o intenso racismo nas áreas urbanas (ou seja, como um mecanismo de defesa em território hostil), mas também de dar visibilidade às suas intenções de atuar e interferir como sujeitos políticos na definição dos rumos do país. (ou seja, como mecanismo de ataque, ainda no bojo da “abertura”, especialmente com a reforma agrária nas terras altas e nos vales, proporcionada pela Revolução de 1952).

Entre os jovens indígenas que despontaram no interior desta articulação na área urbana, despontaram nomes como Raimundo Tambo e Constantino Lima. De acordo com este último, o grupo realizava reuniões clandestinas em lojas de comerciantes simpatizantes e decidiu fundar a primeira entidade política de inspiração na cultura indígena (Hashizume, 2010). Em 5 de novembro de 1960, 21 índios se reuniram na capital boliviana para formar o Partido Autóctone Nacional (PAN), que pode ser considerada como a primeira agremiação política a abraçar a ideologia indianista. O PAN defendia, grosso modo, a autonomia dos povos indígenas por meio do resgate integral da civilização pré-colombiana e a extinção da organização social com base no Estado-nação, copiada do modelo europeu. Tambo e Lima faziam parte do rol dos 21 que estiveram presentes no que pode ser considerado um marco do Indianismo[10]. Em 1962, os militantes do PAN recebem o reforço decisivo do intelectual Fausto Reinaga, que veio a consolidar obras que se tornaram referência indianistas.

Com Reinaga, o PAN se converte primeiro em Partido dos Índios do Qollasuyo  (PIQ) e, logo depois, em Partido dos Índios Aymara Quechua (PIAQ). Fundado em 15 de novembro de 1962, no mesmo dia e mês da morte do mártir indígena Tupac Katari[11] no final do século XVIII (1781), em Peñas (Departamento de La Paz), local no qual fora esquartejado em praça pública. O período que se seguiu à criação do PIAQ foi marcado pela crise de governança enfrentada pelo comando político do MNR. Essa situação de instabilidade culminou, em 1964, com o golpe militar do astuto general René Barrientos, um dos articuladores do que veio a se chamar de Pacto Militar-Camponês, que teve grande relevância no relaxamento temporário de tensões entre os setores descontentes do campesinato-indígena e o governo central.

Dois anos após o golpe, em 1966, o PIAQ se converteu no Partido Índio de Bolívia (PIB). Mesmo sob os auspícios das perseguições da ditadura militar, Reinaga é nomeado para presidir o PIB, junto com uma nova direção, na qual Raimundo Tambo aparecia como secretário geral e vice-presidente.

Como já foi dito, mesmo antes do regime militar, jovens estudantes aymaras vinham se reunindo em núcleos de discussão em La Paz. E Tambo, como um desses estudantes, permaneceu na operação dessa forma de agitação ao longo da década de 1960, paralelamente à sua participação como militante indianista. O colégio militar Gualberto Villaroel, situado numa área de grande concentração aymara em La Paz, era um dos principais focos de movimentações. Juntamente com outros que também vieram do campo, Tambo fundou, em meados dos anos 1960, o Movimento 15 de Novembro, grupo secreto formado em homenagem a Tupac Katari (data de sua morte[12]) que se dedicou ao estudo e discussão dos valores e da história indígena.

Nesse exercício de reinterpretação do passado a partir da perspectiva indígena, redescobrem as figuras lendárias de Tupac Katari, Bartolina Sisa e Zarate Willka, além de promoverem ampla reflexão sobre a discriminação étnico, racial e social cotidiana sofrida no “exílio” que enfrentavam na urbe. Todas as questões discutidas no âmbito mais intelectualizado do círculo indianista sendo compartilhadas por meio de Tambo (e não só por ele) com a “base” dos estudantes indígenas.

Ele terminou o ensino secundário e tentou, sem sucesso, galgar posições nos colégios militares. Matriculou-se então na Faculdade de Direito da Universidade Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA) e, junto com outros ex-participantes do Movimento 15 de Novembro[13] fundou o incômodo Movimento Universitário Julian Apaza (Muja). Ao mesmo tempo em que combatiam o preconceito e a discriminação no meio acadêmico e urbano, os jovens do Muja também procuravam denunciar o conjunto de problemas enfrentados pelas comunidades camponesas-indígenas da área rural.

Curiosamente, Tambo também estreitou laços com segmentos da esquerda sindical, ligada às ideologias originadas na Europa e alojada na COB, entidade que concentrava grande parte dos trabalhadores “formalizados” da Bolívia. Já no final da década de 1960, com apoio da COB, Tambo se engaja em uma manobra ousada – forma o Bloco Independente Camponês (BIC), que almejava se firmar como uma espécie de núcleo político rival  ao sindicalismo agrário marcadamente dependente do governo central – instituído oficialmente pelo MNR no contexto de 1952 e depois largamente “aproveitado” no contexto do Pacto Militar-Camponês.

A montagem do BIC se deu em paralelo aos esforços da COB, de partidos de esquerda (com destaque para o POR trotskista, com Guillermo Lora à frente) e de organizações independentes em fazer prosperar a Assembleia Popular – mobilização com ambições de gestar e aplicar uma agenda paralela popular, surgida no hiato democrático após a queda de Barrientos (1969) que se estendeu pelas administrações dos generais Ovando e Torres, até 1971. Uma das principais fragilidades da Assembleia foi, por sinal, a sua limitadíssima participação camponesa.

Enquanto o BIC, de Tambo (bastante influenciado tanto pelo Indianismo como pelo Marxismo sindical e partidário), não conseguia alcançar os seus objetivos, outra liderança katarista dava os seus primeiros passos por dentro da complexa estrutura do sindicalismo agrário, institucionalizado e fomentado pelo Estado (seja pelo MNR, no bojo de 1952, ou pelos militares que assumiram o poder) com inegável intuito de controle dos camponeses-indígenas.

Jenaro Flores, então jovem indígena que havia também frequentado o colégio Villaroel e retornado à comunidade  onde nasceu, assumia, em 1969, o comando do Sindicato Camponês de Antipampa (Subcentral de Lahuachaca, Província de Aroma).

Antes de iniciar a sua carreira dentro do sindicalismo agrário, contudo, Jenaro Flores passou por uma experiência marcante, mas pouco conhecida, até entre pesquisadores do tema. No final da década de 1960, quando voltou para Antipampa , foi escolhido para trabalhar como assistente de investigação de um estudo sobre os reflexos da reforma agrária de 1953 que estava sendo levado a cabo pela Universidade de  Wisconsin, nos Estados Unidos. Coordenada por Ronald Clark, a investigação era financiada pelo Comitê Interamericano para o Desenvolvimento Agrícola (Cida) e apoiada pelo Serviço Nacional de Reforma Agrária do governo boliviano. Essa experiência, segundo Albó (1987), permitiu que Jenaro aprofundasse os conhecimentos técnicos sobre as questões rurais. Ao mesmo tempo, o jovem testemunhou de perto a discriminação sofrida pelos pongos aymaras, que tinham o trabalho explorado em relações de servidão e ainda tratados, inclusive pelos próprios funcionários oficiais (que também participavam da pesquisa), com extremo desprezo.

“Mais do que qualquer coisa”, define Albó (1987), “esses estudantes de mão cheia criaram uma identidade baseada nas suas próprias experiências como camponeses e aymaras em face aos desafios da cidade”. Na comparação direta entre os indianistas (articulados em torno dos partidos e movimentos dos quais Raimundo Tambo e Constantino Lima fizeram) e os kataristas, que passaram a focar esforços na organização por meio dos sindicatos agrários, Yashar (2005) ressalta que os kataristas foram “mais bem-sucedidos na formação de redes transcomunitárias” (Yashar, 2005: 169). Os ativistas do katarismo viam a sua luta de forma “diferente em termos ideológicos e estratégicos”, como também realça Hurtado (1986: 262). Ideologicamente, eles concordavam que o colonialismo era um instrumento de opressão que vigorava há séculos contra camponeses-indígenas. O final do período de domínio oficial do colonialismo político em 1825 (independência da Bolívia como Estado-nação) acabou se desdobrando em um novo período de colonialismo interno (González Casanova, 1969) que manteve a condição de subordinação e de exclusão dos indígenas, mesmo depois da Revolução de 1952. “Mas eles se recusaram a reduzir a sua luta à questão racial ou à questão de classe” (Yashar, 2005: 169).

Nesse sentido, como deixa poucas dúvidas o Manifesto de Tiwanaku, documento de 1973 que é apontado como referência inicial do Katarismo, é bastante abragente. “Nós nos sentimos economicamente explorados e cultural e politicamente oprimidos”, destacam os signatários[14], reforçando o potencial de ações efetivas de  “tradução intercultural” (Santos, 2006) e de “ecologia dos saberes” (Santos, 2007), com espaço para as “epistemologias do Sul”[15] (Santos e Meneses, 2007).

Imagem 2 – Sede da CSUTCB, que tem sua origem ligada ao Katarismo, em La Paz (Bolívia) – Fonte: Maurício Hashizume (2008)

3. Diálogo entre lideranças e “tradução intercultural”

Como se nota pelas trajetórias de Raimundo Tambo e Jenaro Flores, os kataristas optaram pela escolha mais complexa de cruzar permanentemente as fronteiras estabelecidas pelo “cardápio cognitivo” então existente. Cruzaram sistematicamente não apenas a “linha abissal” (Santos, 2007) entre o que o mundo moderno (escolas, universidades, instituições do Estado e sindicatos) e o que pensamento hegemônico classifica como “pré-moderno”, obsoleto, rudimentar e descartável (cosmovisão, herança cultural, práticas e rituais aymaras), mas também a linha das grandes ideologias identificadas pelas correntes de esquerda e de direita, reciclando os conhecimentos adquiridos no contato com esses diversos campos de conhecimentos.

Uma das linhas divisórias do conhecimento mais subvertidas pelos kataristas foi a que tende a separar o rural e o urbano. Por exemplo, ainda em 27 de maio de 1969, aymaras que residiam em La Paz – entre os quais Mario Gabriel, cunhado de Jenaro Flores -, criaram o Centro de Coordenação e Promoção do Campesinato – Mink’a[16], um espaço cultural na principal aglomeração urbana para tratar das tradições, histórias e da cultura camponesa-indígena, como um todo, que inclusive é uma das signatárias formais do Manifesto de Tiwanaku. Manteve-se um fluxo de trânsito de pessoas entre campo e cidade. Todos os familiares de uma comunidade retornavam (e ainda continuam retornando até hoje, em algumas regiões andinas), por exemplo, para ajudar a recolher a produção agrícola no período de colheita. Ao mesmo tempo, estudantes camponeses-indígenas eram frequentemente enviados para a cidade, assim como ocorreu no caso do núcleo que veio a formar o Katarismo. Incontáveis deslocamentos para o perímetro urbano também eram feitos por conta da venda de muitos dos produtos agropecuários produzidos no interior.

Um episódio envolvendo os dois principais líderes do movimento katarista ajuda também a mostrar esse insinuante caráter híbrido do movimento. Em março de 1970, realiza-se um congresso na localidade de Ayo Ayo para a escolha da direção sindical agrária da Central da Província Aroma. Mais de mil delegados compareceram e assumiram uma posição antioficialista, afastando conhecidos “dirigentes amarelos”  como Pascual Lara, Francisco Lima e Angel Morales, enfraquecidos por terem apoiado o Imposto Único Agropecuário instituído pelo general Barrientos. No entanto, a disputa pela secretaria geral da Província colocou frente a frente Jenaro Flores, da Subcentral de Lahuachaca, e Raimundo Tambo, da subcentral de Ayo Ayo. Este último tinha muito mais experiência sindical e política: era quase um advogado formado e havia sido condutor tanto do Movimento 15 de Novembro como do Muja, no período em que viveu na capital La Paz. Cinco anos mais jovem, Flores não apresentava grande experiência no sindicalismo, mas atraía atenções com seu carisma pessoal. Em menos de um ano e meio, Flores tinha saltado do sindicato de sua comunidade para a subcentral, e já concorria à central, numa carreira veloz (Hurtado, 1986: 36).

A eleição foi muito disputada, mas as bases acabaram elegendo Flores, jovem que era casado e, detalhe que veio a se mostrar importante, atuava concomitantemente como jilaqata (autoridade rotativa “tradicional”) de sua comunidade; o preterido Tambo era solteiro, e não ocupara nenhuma posição dentro do sistema indígena de organização social. Ou seja, numa acirrada disputa pela chefia de uma instituição tipicamente “moderna” – e por que não dizer, colonial? -, teria pesado o fato de que um dos candidatos tinha uma conexão mais efetiva com a identidade e os valores de extração “étnico-cultural”. Esse caso mostra como a hibridação pode se dar na prática, com base no diálogo intercultural entre os distintos conhecimentos.

Conta-se que, após a divulgação do resultado da disputa, o público exigiu um abraço de unidade entre os dois concorrentes (Rocha Monroy, 2006: 12). O perdedor Raimundo Tambo teria, então, partido para um abraço em Jenaro Flores. A partir dali, começaram a trabalhar juntos. Tambo passou a ocupar posição estratégica no Conselho de Amautas (ligado ao modelo indígena de organização social), que assessorava a Central Agrária de Aroma, e consolidou-se como quadro político e formulador do Katarismo. Enquanto isso, Flores se firmava cada vez mais como dirigente camponês de massas.

Formado na encruzilhada da cidade e o campo, Jenaro Flores utilizou habilmente os ensinamentos e os contatos mantidos entre essas duas esferas. Organizou, por exemplo, campeonatos de futebol para atrair camponeses e fazer ressoar as idéias kataristas. Estimulou e manteve canais relevantes com La Paz, com destaque especial, além dos já citados Movimento 15 de Novembro e do Muja, para duas emissoras (Rádio Méndez e Rádio San Gabriel[17]) que passaram a transmitir programas com conteúdo e história indígena, e o Centro Mink´a .

Em 1970, dois fatos relevantes fortaleceram a imagem de sindicalismo “cultural” dos kataristas (Hashizume, 2010: 22). Pela primeira vez, a simbólica bandeira wiphala[18] apareceu hasteada, em 6 de junho, por ocasião de um encontro de camponeses no dia do professor, em Corocoro (Província Pacajes, vizinha à Aroma). E no dia 15 de novembro, a wiphala voltou a tremular em Ayo Ayo diante de cerca de 30 mil camponeses-indígenas que compareceram para homenagear Tupac Katari.

Por meio da aproximação com políticos como José María Centellas e Juan Chambilla (ambos da ala mais à esquerda do MNR), Flores promoveu o evento de 189º aniversário da morte de Tupac Katari, no qual foi inaugurado um monumento em homenagem ao mártir, e conseguiu atrair a presença não só do presidente naquela ocasião, Juan José Torres, mas também de outras autoridades bolivianas (Hurtado, 1986: 38). Esse primeiro impulso de ascensão dos kataristas[19] foi sucedido pelo golpe de Banzer, em 21 de agosto de 1971, que colocou todo o movimento na clandestinidade. Mesmo nessa condição, o Katarismo continuou a conquistar espaço. Primeiro, surgiu o já citado Manifesto de Tiwanaku (1973). Ladeado por assassinatos, desaparições, prisões e perseguições, o massacre de Epizana, Tolata e Melga, em 1974, que ceifou a vida de camponeses-indígenas que protestavam contra o governo, tornou o clima ainda mais tenso (Rivera Cusicanqui, 2003: 147). Após aprovar mais uma declaração de apoio ao programa katarista em 1977, o setor consegue realizar um importante encontro em 1978 que, por sua vez, permitiu estruturar duas conquistas centrais em 1979: a fundação da Confederação Sindical Única dos Trabalhadores Camponeses da Bolívia (CSUTCB) e as mobilizações populares contra o governo que resultaram numa paralisação nacional contra o pacote de medidas de ajuste econômico receitadas pelo Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI) da presidenta interina Lidia Gueiler, em dezembro do mesmo ano.

Como desdobramento desse processo de lutas, a CSUTCB reiterou a adoção da análise dos problemas e da busca de soluções com base na “teoria dos dois olhos”: como camponeses, juntamente com toda a classe social trabalhadora explorada, e como povos indígenas (aymaras, quechuas, ayoreos, moxeños etc.).

Em junho de 1983, com sua tese política, a CSUTCB de certa forma conclui o seu programa político, que pode ser sintetizado no seguinte trecho:

Nosso pensamento não admite uma redução unilateral de toda nossa história a uma luta puramente classista nem puramente etnicista. Na prática, dessas duas dimensões reconhecemos não apenas nossa unidade com os operários, mas também nossa personalidade própria e diferenciada.

Imagem 3 – Reprodução de cartaz exposto em prédio municipal de Sica Sica (Bolívia) – Fonte: Maurício Hashizume (2009)

4. Formas de luta e “ecologia de saberes”

Na prática, portanto, o movimento katarista utilizou a estrutura formal e institucional formada em torno do sindicalismo moderno/colonial para cultivar e disseminar outros conhecimentos, ou melhor, a hibridação de conhecimentos, sempre de acordo com os contextos nos quais os problemas eram apresentados. As jilaqatura e sindicato agrário foram (e continuam a ser) utilizados como duas faces, uma mais institucional (com registro formal junto às autoridades estatais) e outra mais simbólica (com forte influência na vida comunitária), de uma proposta comum. Há depoimentos que garantem que a luta sindical ganhou com os ensinamentos culturais, e vice-versa. Em vez de recusar em absoluto possíveis ensinamentos “vindos de fora”, o katarismo escolheu absorver e reorganizar as ideias de acordo com as suas necessidades.

Evidentemente que essa sobreposição não se dava de maneira natural, tranquila e sem sobressaltos. Em inúmeras vezes, a convivência entre essas duas lógicas gerava “faíscas”: impasses, entreveros e contradições. O caso do Katarismo demonstra claramente, porém, que o pressuposto paradoxo social formatado pela matriz colonial pode se misturar, embaralhar as regras pré-estabelecidas e funcionar como elemento de contestação das relações de poder, saber e, inclusive, ser.

Se é inegável que não chegou a dar forma final a um projeto alternativo completo (não só no aspecto epistemológico e intercultural, mas também nas esferas política, econômica e social) de relação entre sociedade e Estado, capaz de articular os níveis local, nacional e global, também é possível afirmar que ajudou a ampliar e embaralhar as margens que dividem o previamente bom do irremediavelmente ruim, o válido do inválido, o possível do impossível e, em última instância, o real do utópico.

Em larga medida, o movimento katarista inspirou e abriu as portas, com décadas de antecipação, a uma série de mobilizações, reivindicações e programas políticos que vieram a se consolidar na Bolívia desde então[20].

Por não permanecerem confinados e se afastarem de “purismos” conceituais adotados por grupos políticos mais convencionais de esquerda, os militantes kataristas colocaram a “interseccionalidade” na prática e ganharam espaço em diversas frentes de atuação. Atualmente, a imagem do movimento pode ser associada por alguns à demasia “flexibilidade” de alguns de seus notórios membros – como é o caso de Victor Hugo Cárdenas, que ocupou o cargo de vice-presidente entre 1993 a 1997 na gestão francamente neoliberal de Gonzálo Sanchéz de Lozada (MNR). Ainda assim, o Katarismo segue como relevante referencial político-ideológico de contestação para as organizações camponesas-indígenas até hoje.

Na prática, a experiência katarista ratifica a problemática das dicotomias como obstáculos à interpretação da “ecologia dos saberes”, apresentada por Santos (2007) como alternativa diante do sistema colonial, capitalista e imperialista que, nos últimos séculos, tem determinado o desperdício da experiência social que o próprio Santos (2000) define pela desigiação de “epistemicídio”. A escolha pelo diálogo e combinação recíproca entre diferentes conhecimentos contribuiu para furar os bloqueios e limitações armadas pelos esquemas e relações de poder estabelecidas.

O questionamento à relação intrínseca entre colonialidade/modernidade – duas faces da mesma moeda, conforme conceituação de Mignolo (2000) – não implica o anseio por “sociedades congeladas no tempo, ilhadas e essencializadas”, como adverte Blaser (2007: 14). “É muito fácil constatar que estas sociedades não existem, que são fantasias românticas”, conclui este último.

“A capacidade inovadora, a adoção de tecnologias e conhecimentos ‘externos’ úteis, a adaptação e a mudança, a conexão com e a abertura relativa com relação a outras sociedades”, prossegue Blaser (2007: 14), “não são atributos exclusivos da sociedade moderna; são atributos de todas as sociedades”. Não se deve, contudo, assumir que as diferenças sempre significam antagonismos, mas tampouco se “deve dar por certo que existe complementaridade entre elas ou que essa complementaridade pode ser imposta de cima para baixo” (Blaser, 2007: 14).

Uma formulação interessante para essa mescla sobreposta de culturas pode ser encontrada em Rivera Cusicanqui (2006: 11). Ao se auto-definir ela própria, ela diz se considerar uma mestiça – não mais nos moldes da integração por meio dos programas modernos de mestiçagem, mas no sentido de mistura conflitante – ou simplesmente chhixi, em língua aymara. A palavra chhixi, de acordo com ela, tem diversas conotações: é uma cor produto da justaposição, em pequenos pontos ou manchas, de cores opostas ou contrastantes: o branco e o negro, o roxo e o verde, etc. “A noção chhixi, como muitas outras, obedece à ideia aymara de algo que é e não é ao mesmo tempo, ou seja,a lógica do terceiro incluído” (2006: 11).

Além disso, na arena imaginária em que os diversos e recombinantes conceitos pós-coloniais estão em contínuo encontro, conflito e sobreposição, a experiência do Katarismo dialoga diretamente com a escolha do “essencialismo estratégico” (Spivak, 1999), pois apresenta um componente de ressignificação da condição do subalterno por ele próprio como protagonista da ação política e sujeito social. Também guarda relação com as reflexões acerca da “outra modernidade” (Chatterjee, 1997) forjada por diferentes pontos de vistas e das especificidades dos contextos de ex-colônias.

De alguma maneira, este trabalho procurou seguir a dica deixada pela própria Spivak. “Se o sujeito (…) foi mascarado como o sujeito de uma história alternativa, devemos refletir sobre como ele está escrito, em vez de simplesmente ler sua máscara como uma verdade histórica.” (Spivak, 1994: 188)

O que a autora indiana reforça é que escrever e ler, em um sentido mais amplo, “marcam duas posições diferentes em relação à ‘oscilante e múltipla forma de ser’”. (Spivak, 1994: 188). Segundo ela, “produzimos narrativas e explicações históricas transformando o socius, onde nossa produção é escrita, em bits – mais ou menos contínuos e controlados – que são legíveis”.

A forma como essas leituras emergem e a definição a respeito de qual delas será legitimada são questões que têm implicações políticas em todos os níveis possíveis, reitera. Ou seja, o subalterno e seu discurso não são apenas e necessariamente as formas como alguém é capaz de lê-los, mas é inclusive como ele mesmo se produz por meio da ação social. Por isso, o Katarismo como “epistemologia do Sul” é resultado não de heranças ou legados mantidos pelos camponeses-indígenas do Altiplano Andino, mas da iniciativa coletiva daqueles que agiram diante da subalternidade e conferiram um significado convertido em conhecimento contra-hegemônico, ou seja, em “outros saberes” que, diferentemente da “pureza” reivindicada pelas teorias produzidas pelas ciências sociais do Norte[21], são repletas e constituídas de “contaminações” e interferências mútuas, no sentido do que pode ser definido como exercício prático de “tradução intercultural” (Santos, 2006).

Imagem 4 – Manifestações em El Alto: wiphalas tremulam ao lado da bandeiras nacionais – Fonte: Maurício Hashizume (2009)

5. Conclusão

No campo dos estudos coloniais, é bastante comum ver citada a obra do  psiquiatra e ensaísta negro Frantz Fanon, nascido na Martinica, como um dos principais referências “históricos”, visto que sua obra data justamente da década de 1960: a mesma em que se deram desdobramentos determinantes para a formação do Katarismo. É notável a convergência entre os escritos de Fanon sobre os conflitos socioculturais na Argélia e as formulações kataristas no que diz respeito à “inadequação” dos marcos teóricos do Norte hegemônico para o Sul Global.

Quando se examina de perto o contexto colonial, é evidente que a divisão do mundo começa pelo fato de pertencer ou não a uma determinada raça, a uma determinada espécie. Nas colônias, a estrutura de base econômica é também a superestrutura [da teoria marxista]. A causa é a consequência; você é rico porque é branco, você é branco porque é rico. Esse é o motivo pelo qual a análise marxista deve sempre ser ligeiramente alargada toda vez que temos que lidar com o problema colonial (Fanon, 2001: 31)

Tal “coincidência” não reflete exatamente uma espécie de pensamento único e uniforme a respeito das experiências coloniais na Argélia (principal referência para as inquietações de Fanon) e na Bolívia, mas antes uma latente discordância, moldada pelos respectivos contextos sociais, quanto aos quadros-gerais eurocêntricos e etnocêntricos.

No caso mais específico do Katarismo, os camponeses-indígenas Aymaras bateram de frente não só com a colonialidade (do poder, do saber e do saber) – que, como ressalta Quijano (2000), vai muito além do colonialismo em sua concepção convencional e se perpetua através de práticas sociais de subalternização assimiladas e incorporadas pelos próprios colonizados, mas também do supracitado colonialismo interno (Gonzáles Casanova, 1969), desafiando conspirações elitistas a partir de massivas mobilizações de nações e povos indígenas, originários e camponeses.

Esta forte vinculação com as experiências sociais vividas no terreno faz dos pensamentos pós-descoloniais não uma escola de pensamento “de vanguarda”, conforme léxico usado com frequência no âmbito das ciências sociais convencionais. Em vez disso, ancoram-se na concepção de pensamento “de retaguarda”, em linha com as reflexões de Santos (2012). Daí a relevância de sublinhar os processos de enfrentamento protagonizados pelos movimentos por trás da emergência de tendências acadêmicas. As lutas dos movimentos sociais são prévias a quaisquer giros pós-descoloniais. Estes últimos podem ter sido beneficiados pelo acúmulo, consistência e abrangência derivados do aparecimento de um conjunto posterior de escritos – que incluem o aclamado Orientalismo (1981), de Edward Said -, mas as primeiras são as fontes e as bases da concretude e repercussão da perspectiva pós-decolonial como crítica sociopolítica.

Sob o manto das pretensas neutralidade e universalidade (repletas de pré-concepções, direcionamentos e limitações de caráter eurocêntrico e etnocêntrico), destacadas lutas como as do movimento katarista têm enfrentado cânones, postulados, proposições e intervenções modelares de transformação social. Esses sujeitos sociais expuseram problemas e exigiram direitos, cavando e ganhando terreno em espaços científico-acadêmicos. Empurrada por interpelações “sentidas na pele” e por contestações vigorodas dos movimentos sociais, as portas, então, se abriram. Como detalha um reconhecido investigador dedicado aos estudos pós-descoloniais, desenvolveu-se, desde o início dos anos 1980, “um corpo de escritos que tentam deslocar as formas dominantes pelas quais são vistas as relações entre povos ocidentais e não-ocidentais e seus mundos” (Young, 2003: 2).

O que isso significa? Isso significa virar o mundo de cabeça para baixo. Isso significa olhar a partir do outro lado da fotografia (…). Isso significa se dar conta de que quando os povos ocidentais olham para o mundo não-ocidental o que eles enxergam é frequentemente mais a imagem deles mesmos e de suas próprias suposições do que a realidade daquilo que de fato lá está, ou ainda a forma como as pessoas fora do ocidente realmente sentem-se e entendem-se a si próprias (Young, 2003: 2).

O segmento final da referida definição (“a forma como as pessoas fora do ocidente realmente sentem-se e entendem-se a si próprias”) remete novamente às experiências protagonizadas por sujeitos políticos do Sul, tais como o movimento katarista, que desafiaram o status quo (político, econômico, cultural, epistemológico e ontológico) com a sua opção pelo ativismo sindical com forte influência étnico-cultural.

Isso faz com que se torne imperativo evitar a delimitação territorial, temporal e sociocultural da ideia de interseccionalidade e do pensamento pós-descolonial. Há evidências de que essas proposições analíticas não são propriamente “novidades” das últimas décadas, desconectada das lutas anticoloniais do passado levadas a cabo pelos povos colonizados. Muito antes da “onda” de produções e reflexões que passaram a ser categorizadas “técnica e cientificamente” como pós-descoloniais, diversas mobilizações concretas protagonizadas no Sul já tinham sido formadas não só para pensar, mas para aplicar programas político-ideológicos que não se restringiam aos manuais engessados e moldes pré-fabricados dos setores “de vanguarda”. Tais iniciativas, a despeito de suas incomensuráveis heterogeneidades, se coadunam no diálogo e intercâmbio horizontalizado entre diversos conhecimentos e modos de vida ocidentais e não-ocidentais, ou seja, tendem a combinar justamente, cada um da sua forma, elementos “clássicos” da luta de classes com a defesa dos direitos “diferenciados” nos campos étnico-culturais.

Este artigo foi desenvolvido no âmbito do projeto de investigação “ALICE, espelhos estranhos, lições imprevistas”, coordenado por Boaventura de Sousa Santos (alice.ces.uc.pt) no Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra – Portugal. O projeto recebe fundos do Conselho Europeu de Investigação, 7.º Programa Quadro da União Europeia (FP/2007- 2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. [269807]

The post Colonialidades em xeque – Lições a partir da experiência do movimento katarista da Bolívia appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

The history of El Paso’s queer population, in particular, has been briefly illustrated in various works, most notably by El Pasoan gay authors Arturo Islas and John Rechy, who both speak to various aspects of homosexual life in their burgeoning city.[3] This paper will place El Paso’s queer community in a larger discussion with intersectionality by exploring the chronicle of the city’s alternative nightclub – the Old Plantation (or OP) – across four decades, the 1970s to 2010s. By studying queer encounters along the border through intersectional lenses, it will uncover varying racial and sexual anxieties between the American imperial state via Fort Bliss and the surrounding Latina/o population. Due to El Paso’s bicultural history and segregated past, queer life must be examined through several academic and community–based methodologies, which cultural historians such as Hayden White and Lynn Hunt have employed in their studies of peoples and interactions, especially the use of oral testimonies.[4] Furthermore, a “people’s history” of queer life will elucidate sexual encounters (and transactions) that cannot be found easily in the traditional archive. Previous scholars like Madeline D. Davis and Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy have researched culturally homogeneous queer sexualities in cities before, but in locales without national borders or without multiple races like Latina/os.[5]

In order to historicize this city’s queer nightlife given the deprivation of printed sources, it employs theoretical frameworks from Latina/o scholars such as Michael Hames-Garcia, Juana María Rodríguez, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, and Ramón Rivera Servera, all of who have investigated queer Latina/o communities, relationships, and discourses.[6] Their scholarships retain the intersectional lenses of race, time, location, and sexuality to unravel histories of biopower and sexuality. The paper builds upon the models set forth by Hames-Garcia, contending that queer Latino identity is created in resistance to the “imposition of modern colonial manifestations,” such as white gay mainstream culture.[7] Furthermore, it adheres to the scholarship of queer Latina/o dance clubs laid out by La Fountain-Stokes, Rodríguez, and Servera, who suggest that the dance floor, rather than being a site of literal dancing, is more a location where colonized subjects, usually Anglo gay males, feast on the Latino-ness, or “latinidad” of the “othered” men present in the club.[8] Finally, it models oral testimonies upon historian Nan Alamilla Boyd, and the “historical narrative theory” proposed by Karen Halttunen.[9] In “Cultural History and the Challenge of Narrativity,” Halttunen calls for a “domestication of theoretical issues [about] narrativity” within the discipline of history to elaborate upon the relationships and connections between people in assembling histories.[10] This paper will construct a single narrative from several oral interviews to help uncover the queer past in the American Southwest, but should be used only as a starting point in further understanding the intricacies and intersectional nature of queer life and identity within contested borderlands between modern empires.

Before the OP: Cold War Gender Rights

In the early 1960s, the second wave of feminism permeated the United States with intellectuals such as Betty Freidan pushing for women and men to redefine gender roles by working in jobs and political spheres that were traditionally reserved for a single sex.[11] At the same time, Cold War era political and social sentiment transformed the nation’s civil rights positions, “as the primacy of anticommunism in postwar American politics and culture left a very narrow space for criticism of the status quo.”[12] Consequently, racial and sexual diversity were notions that were considered dangerous in a black/white, heterosexual society. Given the influence of the Feminist movement and the Cold War, 1960s El Paso homosexual life was hidden within “McKelligon Canyon or past the border into Mexico,” recalled Cristina Hernandez, a self-identified El Pasoan lesbian.[13] Hernandez, a fifty-five year old Mexican American, had spent her entire life in the borderlands region. The history of cruising, or driving slowly through city alleys and streets scouting for sex had been one of the main vehicles for El Paso gay men to find each other, but not lesbians.[14] Because of a lack of queer, in addition to heterosexual nightlife, El Pasoans negotiated the national boundary to experience the vibrant entertainment of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.

Ever since the 1950s, Ciudad Juárez was deemed a cultural hotspot for northern Mexico and the southwest United States, hosting famous celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and James Dean who publicized their visits to the city known for its vivacious lifestyle.[15] Scholars, such as Rachel St. John, have even proposed that most northwestern Mexican border cities experienced a golden age of vice and international nightlife during the first half of the twentieth century.[16] El Paso resident Cristina Hernandez commented that before the rise of the disco era and the year 1973, Ciudad Juárez became “the city of sexual expression that lesbians could retreat to when they were not living different lives as heterosexual women in the city of sexual repression [El Paso].”[17] For several decades, El Pasoan queers not only separated their public from private lives, but also traversed the U.S.–Mexico border to fully embrace and perform their reserved sexual lives, especially when Cold War America retaliated against the conception of sexual freedom. In 1973, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission lowered the legal drinking age from 21 to 18, and “many lesbians who crossed the border for alcohol and partying could now remain within the U.S., consuming booze,” stated Hernandez.[18] Perhaps it was of no coincidence that the legal drinking age changed, as the American disco music movement was concurrently growing in tandem around the United States, “especially among Hispanic and Black demographics.”[19]

Hernandez alleged that the disco movement “brought mainstream gay culture into straight bars and clubs, allowing for lesbians and gays to return to El Paso and participate in a new [revitalized] gay nightlife.”[20] The Pet Shop, one of the first lesbian bars in El Paso history, opened sometime in the early 1970s. According to El Pasoans Yolanda Chávez Leyva and Irma Montelongo, the Pet Shop was located underground in a prewar building that would later become the San Antonio Mining Bar.[21] Leyva, a leading fifty-eight year old Chicana lesbian, moved back to the city after completing college at Austin in the 1980s. Montelongo, a native fifty-two year old El Pasoan, experienced the many changes in nightlife within the region. Leyva and Montelongo revealed that the social environment of the bar was distinct from established disco bars and clubs, as “working-class femme and butch lesbian couples made up most of the patrons and they listened to a mixture of rock and roll, blues and disco.”[22] Furthermore, Montelongo maintained that “many of the butch lesbians embodied masculinity and at times, exhibited that masculinity by engaging femme and other butch lesbians within the dance space of the establishment.”[23] Leyva stated that her first experience in the Pet Shop was surprising yet comforting: “I walked downstairs into a place where all kinds of women had the freedom to do what they wanted.”[24] The Pet Shop succeeded in attracting a large lesbian population, in part because of the revitalized El Pasoan nightlife, or in part because of the new drinking law. But most of all, because this space operated as separate venue from mainstream disco culture, providing a safe haven for lesbians to congregate and express their sexualities. Word of mouth about its success reached other parts of Texas, and soon, more “alternative” bars began to open up downtown.

Creation of the OP: Queer “El Chuco”[25]

In the mid-1970s, Dallas-based company Craven Entertainment dispatched businessman Bob Bonaventure to scout for possible alternative bar locations that would bring the lesbian, gay and hetero-disco communities together in West Texas. Bonaventure, according to friend and co-worker Jak Klinkowaski, was thought to “believe that the trade secret to gaining a large audience – whether gay and straight – was to position a large ‘alternative’ club away from other clubs.”[26] Klinkowaski, an Anglo American El Paso native, worked in many of the queer bars throughout the last decades of the twentieth century. The space Bonaventure purchased eventually led to a conversion in El Paso’s queer culture. In 1977, he discovered that 219 South Ochoa Street had become vacant, and founded the thirty-five year-old bar that would go down as one of the longest running gay establishments in West Texas: the Old Plantation (OP).[27] According to several lesbian and gay oral histories, the OP bar was mixed with both women and male patrons.[28] During its first year, the bar included “multiple performances” of “drag shows, foam parties, all girls nights and military nights,” as well as a diverse audience of “whites, blacks, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, lesbians and gays and everything else in-between,” recalled Klinkowaski.[29] The minority, Montelongo and Klinkowaski recalled, “were Anglo males,” which was understandable given the large El Paso Latina/o demographic.[30]

The OP, like the Pet Shop, became a prime location for same-sex sensual expression and intimate encounters. Montelongo mentioned that the most unique part of the bar was the “female” bathroom, where “lesbians, straight women, and drag queens congregated and interacted with each other.” She recalled that the conversations that took place were illustrative of how different each “woman” viewed fashion, boys, girls and popular culture: “I remember talking about hair, dancing and music and even learned new colloquialisms.”[31] The bar brought the queer population of El Paso together on a single dance floor, and in closed, safe spaces like the bathroom. Rodríguez suggests in her work that “in multigendered queer Latino spaces, fags and dykes, both friends and strangers, will often invite each other out on the dance floor.”[32] The OP was no exception. There finally existed a fully public venue for perceived “deviant” behaviors and identities to congregate.

After homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973, it was assumed that lesbians and gays were able to express themselves with the understanding that their sexual identities were no longer classified federally as mental disorders.[33] This was not the case for the transgender community, as American psychiatrists maintained the notion that transgender identity was an illness that was synonymous with Gender-Identity Disorder (GID).[34] Susan Stryker has argued that after 1973, transgender populations throughout the U.S. felt left out of a national gay rights discourse because their identities had remained stigmatized. Stryker upheld that the transgender movement’s “politics toward the medical establishment were more like those of the reproductive freedom movement than those of the gay liberation movement.”[35] Moreover, she suggested that transgender individuals “wanted to secure access to competent, legal, respectfully provided medical services for a nonpathological need not shared equally by every member of society,” a concern that their queer sisters and brothers did not have to worry about.[36] While the political activism and awareness of lesbian and gay communities mobilized nationally and within the OP and El Paso, transgender persons still had to grapple with the reality that federal recognition and support of transsexuality would not arrive for some time.

As legal transgender legal rights idled, trans culture flourished. Klinkowaski pointed out the early 1970s were exciting due to the rise in “drag king culture and transgender participation at places like the OP.”[37] Drag kings essentially performed a gender and sexuality that was usually opposite of the drag king’s biological sex and acted gender. Thus, many drag kings were persons born with female sex organs who embodied notions of “masculinity” and contested “maleness.” Chanel, an forty-five year old Anglo American El Pasoan drag queen, or male performing femininity, stated that she “met various transgendered ‘women’ who told [Chanel] that they would perform as drag kings within the OP because other homosexuals and friends were more accepting of their lifestyles as drag queens and kings.”[38] Chanel commented that when she witnessed many transgendered females pushed to perform drag, she questioned her own desire and sexuality. Transgender persons posed a threat to the El Paso gay rights movement in that the people who represented transgender identities did not fit into the homosexual and heterosexual binary that was formed uniquely in the aftermath of the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement. While 1970s El Paso nightlife evolved to include more private spaces for lesbians and gays to interact, it reinforced the discrimination and overall national intolerance for the lifestyle and identity of transgender people living along and crossing the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands.

Even though the El Pasoan heterosexual population viewed the sexual conduct inside the OP bar as illicit, sexual behavior was not as polarized during the 1970s before the time of carnal epidemics. The exchange of oral and anal sex was “usually unprotected,” commented Chanel, as HIV had yet to enter society.[39] Chanel and Klinkowaski noted that while many individuals came to the bar to enjoy alcohol and disco music, others, “especially Anglo American males,” came there for sex. The two described that the place had become an outlet to “fast-track” sexual experiences. Chanel remarked that many of his “straight-identified” male friends “came to the OP, scouted out some Jorge or Guillermo [meaning any Latino looking boy], penetrated them and then left the club, never to speak to them again.”[40] The bar was an innovative dance space, not only due to the consumption of latinidad, which Rodríguez, La Fountain-Stokes and Servera articulate in their research, but also because the location operated as a space where two men, one identifying as “gay” and the other “straight,” executed sexual acts without personal knowledge of one another, but with complete anonymity and disclosure. In addition, the proximity to the national border bifurcated cultural and sexual understandings between Anglo, Latino, and other “foreign” men.

The reputation of the OP as an alternative bar would take a “moral blow,” after 1982, when Lawrence Altman described a disease that “attacked and killed homosexual men” called Gay-Related-Immune-Disorder, or GRID, in his controversial New York Times article.[41] In the words of Chanel, “it was as if everything they [bigots, heterosexuals, society] said was vindicated, our lifestyles were scientifically condemned.”[42] Thus, OP sexual politics for gay men, as Chanel pointed out, “were disrupted and sexual activity decreased in number for several weeks,” as the public waited to learn about the proper precautions in distancing oneself from contraction.[43] Still, unprotected sex occurred between various bar attendees. Chanel and Klinkowaski reaffirmed that “having unprotected sex up to 1984 was considered normal and there wasn’t the stigma that existed today.”[44] After GRID (Gay Related Immune Disease) was reclassified scientifically as HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and the use of a condom was articulated as the best defense in protecting oneself from the disease, the sexual behaviors in the bar rehabilitated with the increased use of the condom.

The erotic practice of “barebacking” also arose from the HIV/AIDS stigma in response to changes in contemporary sexual behaviors during the 1980s. At the time, many in the El Pasoan queer community were both in denial and acceptance of the possible consequences and “euphoric risks” associated with anal sex without a condom. Tim Dean historicizes and explains the phenomenon of barebacking in relation to the prejudice of homosexual life as “both the premeditation and eroticization of unprotected anal sex.”[45] Thus, barebacking was the sexual act of unprotected sex in an HIV/AIDS conscious age. Before the pandemic, Chanel engaged in unprotected sex that was synonymous with barebacking, but the action lacked the associated social and moral stigma in a post-HIV/AIDS discursive environment. Now, the “gesture” of barebacking brought intimate, political, and social underpinnings. The lens of “gesture,” first used in deconstructing queer life by Rodríguez, can also serve as another intersectional unit in investigating queer behaviors. She explains gesture as “a socially legible and highly codified form of kinetic communication, and as a cultural practice that is differentially manifested through particular forms of embodiment.”[46] Hence, the gesture and practice of barebacking was politically charged.

In The Subculture of Barebacking, Dean revealed that the notion of hypermasculinity was associated with the exchange of semen during gay bareback sex as “hypermasculinity accrues to the man who assumes what used to be thought of as the female role in homosexual relations. The more men by whom one is penetrated, the more of a man he becomes.”[47] Chanel and Klinkowaski stated that barebacking held an inimitable attraction for them: “it felt good before, but now raw sex felt more intimate and deeper,” explained Chanel.[48] Sex between two participants of the same gender altered structures of power, control and masculinity. Furthermore, kinship became the ultimate result rather than the consumption of more masculinity, as the entrance of sexual risk made the act of sex more dangerous. Dean argued that bareback subculture’s hypermasculinization of bottoming, “its picturing erotic submission as a proof of manhood could be seen as a compensatory response to modern society’s feminization of male homosexuality.” Dean’s contention is corroborated by the testimonies taken from various attendees of the OP, and fits the categorization of gesture, which Rodríguez unpacks in her research.[49]

While the entrance of GRID and later HIV/AIDS reformed club attendance, sexual practices as well as understandings of sexual identities at the OP, the bar still became a landmark of El Paso queer culture. The bar featured weekends where “events were either sold out or near occupancy level,” remembered Klinkowaski. The OP, unlike other night clubs like The Pet Shop, attracted “the most diverse clientele out of all the clubs” as “Blacks, Whites, Cholos, and Drag Queens all shared the dance floor,” something various queer residents were not accustomed to seeing in El Paso.[50] Attendance was high at the bar, and popularity only increased over time. Eventually, Bonaventure realized that his bar was too small to accommodate El Paso’s queer and “straight” audience, and decided to move it to a larger venue. In 1985, he found an open lot across the street at 301 S. Ochoa Street.[51] The New Old Plantation as Bonaventure called it was advertised as “bigger, better and operated by gays and lesbians.”[52] The OP’s move added more publicity and audience to the nightclub, and its existence was now fully recognized and felt throughout El Paso. Chanel stated that “tipping,” or the process of drag queens engaging in sexual acts with white and black military men, increased as the New OP’s building had two floors where individuals could retreat to and maintain a sense of privacy. As the dance space of the New OP was split between different stories, people could choose their crowd and ambience. Chanel remembered the sexual politics, and “gestures” of the club:

Younger boys situated themselves at the focal point of the dance floor while older men circulated the periphery, scouting for any men. And if he had luck, he and his boy would go upstairs and move to a corner to either make out, or perform oral sex.[53]

Klinkowaski similarly recalled:

I remember the girls’ bathroom was where to hookup, mainly because its where all the trannies went. And it also helped that it was ‘cleaner,’ not just in hygiene but some trannies were ‘Poz’ [HIV-Positive] and therefore always used condoms.[54]

It became apparent that while the club featured the same demographics of the original OP, sexual encounters and meetings were executed in new spaces in the two-story gay discotheque. Simultaneously, the anal sex that was performed in the dark corners and bathrooms of the New OP was split between barebacking and protected sex, whether or not knowledge of HIV/AIDS was present.

The club’s dance floors allowed for multiple performativities of gender and sexuality in comparison to its original, which was styled more as a bar than a nightclub. While Klinkowaski and Chanel mentioned that “straight” men came to find young Latino males, Mexican Americans and Mexican-nationals from Ciudad Juárez also interacted with the “heterosexual” men. The space of the club had perhaps transcended nation as well as ethnicity. Adrian Gutierrez, another gay attendee during the early 80s, noted that “the only reason why the OP was different was the inclusion of Anglo straight acting men.”[55] Gutierrez, a forty-nine year old contractor for the U.S. Army Military Beaumont Medical Center, was a teenager when the OP first opened. Gutierrez revealed that many of the men he had sex with from the OP were enlisted soldiers who were usually single but mentioned that a couple of them were married to women and had children. He believed the “rush and taboo” associated with sleeping with “straight men” made the act attractive in addition to barebacking.

Gutierrez stated that “masculine” or “straight acting men” were most desirable for gays, mainly because they embodied a masculinity and sexuality that he and his friends envied and craved. The club transformed into a site of contact for consumption(s) of masculinity between distinct parties; in Gutierrez’s case, he received the thrill of being with a “straight” man, which informed his sense of manliness. More interestingly is that his Anglo sexual partners gained something particularly special in return: consumption of latinidad, or alternative masculinity, that he (the military male) had eroticized and “othered” onto Gutierrez. Historian George Chauncey has explored a similar sexual exchange of masculinity between effeminate “fairies” and more masculine “queers” in New York City; the difference in the case of the OP and Gutierrez was that ethnicity and race were also exchanged between sexual partners.[56] Using the theories set forth by Hames-Garcia, Gutierrez also desired Anglo military men because of the innate “modern colonial power dynamic” that epistemically thwarted Gutierrez into desiring kinship from colonizers.[57] But Rodríguez believes that scholars must think of consuming latinidad as a practice of reaffirming agency for the consumed Latina/o. She contends that “rather than attempt to redeem or erase our [Latina/o] experiences of violence and violation, register the possibility of recovering pleasure in the shame of abjection, a sexual pleasure that engages the sexual submission demanded of racialized subjects.”[58] In applying Rodríguez, the exchange of racial fetishization serves both parties.

It is notable that the impact of Fort Bliss and its men held a unique position in terms of the behavior of people who attended the club. The presence of Fort Bliss had long been felt before the opening of the OP in 1977. Historian Leon C. Metz writes that Fort Bliss was founded in response to the U.S. War with Mexico during 1848, citing that the U.S. Department of War felt the need to form a military post to occupy and protect the area opposite Mexico’s Paso Del Norte.[59] Fort Bliss was created at a time when Mexican-nationals and Anglo Americans fought a borderless conflict. And for over a century, the fort was steadily growing, and represented a facet of the past and presence of military history. When the original OP opened, this military presence had already existed and was over a hundred years old. According to the 1960 through 2000 censuses, the size of the Fort Bliss military population had progressively increased through time, with a total population of 8,286 persons or 1,444 households and families by 2000.[60] That figure did not include troops who arrived at the fort for deployment overseas, government contractors, or El Pasoan hired workers, which would bring the population number to over 30,000. Moreover, it did not include troops who arrived to the area for a two-week briefing before deployment to Asia.

Klinkowaski, Chanel, and Gutierrez, revealed in their oral interviews that the OP’s dance stage was filled with military personnel: “we began to see not only whites and Latinos, but also Middle Eastern men who informed us that they were employed by the U.S. military as contractors.”[61] Why did the OP environment attract so many agents of the state? In one of the interviews with an enlisted soldier who wanted to remain anonymous, it was noted that the club became the “only homosocial space where we [anonymous] could be intimate with each other and acknowledge our sexualities. Being on post [Fort Bliss] everyday takes a toll on you, as you must act straight-edged all the time in an environment that is dominated only by men.”[62] The atmosphere of the club was much like that of Fort Bliss; the difference was that one’s sexuality and behavior was not judged and embraced on the OP dance ground and in the closed spaces of the facility.

The last few oral histories that this author conducted were with servicewomen that were referred to by other club owners. Based on several testimonies from anonymous military women who moved to Fort Bliss in the early 1990s, there indeed existed a large lesbian servicewoman community. One respondent stated that “lesbian and bisexual life was easy to navigate at the OP and other alternative bars like Nua Nua, the San Antonio Mining and the Whatever Lounge because they had been distanced enough from the military base.”[63] The same female army soldier stated that she was looking for femme lesbians, and commented that the club was the best place to find mostly femme, Latina lesbians. Another female army officer regarded the Whatever Lounge as her favorite spot because she looked for both femme as well as butch lesbians. When asked if they saw or met any transgendered persons, both women replied no, suggesting that the “transgendered people they did see in the 1990s were able to transition and perform in full gender,” thus making them lesbian or gay rather than transgender in the women’s eyes.[64] Before the use of the Internet, several spaces within downtown El Paso operated as meeting points for lesbian servicewomen.

The two female military officers also knew from other female colleagues before they were stationed to Fort Bliss that the lesbian culture had grown increasingly throughout El Paso since the late 1970s.[65] The women confirmed that they felt a sense of “unanimity because they had the luxury of separating their public lives as military servicewomen from their lesbian lifestyles in downtown as their work would never leave the gates of Fort Bliss and into the larger, civilian El Paso.”[66] While lesbian life was not exposed publicly on Fort Bliss, lesbian state agents migrated downtown, in the same way that 1960s El Pasoan lesbians traveled to Ciudad Juárez. The presence of Fort Bliss had a significant influence on the demographic that attended the OP. Chanel reiterated that “because the OP featured new and exotic men who wanted men, it became even more of a popular nightclub.”[67] The original and New OP channeled sexual politics that reflected more national discourses concerning not only mainstream Anglo gay culture, but also racial and ethnic tensions and desires.

New Leadership at the OP: The Decline of Queer “El Chuco”

In 1986, Klinkowaski left the employment of the New OP and Bonaventure eventually sold his club to its current owners, Jesus Santillan and his partner Gilbert Morales. Under the leadership of Santillan and Morales, who also owned The San Antonio Mining Cluband The Whatever Lounge, the use of social media was employed, as they advertised their New OP through magazines such as El Paso 411, a local digest.[68] In the 1990s, the two men achieved more publicity by promoting the club in West Texas queer publications such as 1994’s El Paso PRIDE and 1999’s Microcosm El Paso/Juarez, which were circulated throughout El Paso, Las Cruces, and Ciudad Juárez.[69] Klinkowaski and Chanel continued to visit the OP during milestone events, such as the “Halloween costume garty,” and the New Year’s Eve party, both of which were usually heavily attended.[70] The owners contended that during the 1990s, they began to see “a decrease in attendance to the OP, as the clubs on Stanton Street were more popular and more people cruised them.”[71] During the early 1990s, newer gay clubs began opening on Stanton Street, an area located directly in the heart of downtown El Paso. Klinkowaski and Chanel believed that because of the creation of a “pride square that featured new and upcoming clubs such as 8 and ½,Chiquita’s,and The Briar Patch,” there was less of an impetus to return to the other side of downtown to visit the OP.[72]

At the time when queer individuals and interested heterosexuals had a choice in attending different alternative clubs, Santillan and Morales decided to advertise the club as a space that featured an exclusively gay male clientele by appealing to the majority-male, military community. Marketing was again spread through word of mouth, but also through El Paso 411, and queer publications like PRIDE.[73]The new owners not only had to compete with other gay and lesbian bars and clubs, however, but also had to remain knowledgeable of current trends and fads in popular culture that they could incorporate into their gay male nightclub. In one interview with a source affiliated with the New OP who wished to remain anonymous, the New OP tried hosting events, which aimed to spark the interest of younger males as well as portraying a nostalgic 1970s theme such as disco to the older crowd. Thus, themes like “July All Red White Blue Block Party,” and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Dance” were commonplace at the club.[74] The argued result was that the OP would see a return of past attendees. The actual effect, however, was a dwindling attendance rate, especially since the owners mainly appealed to gay males and interested heterosexuals.

The process of recreating a male homosocial gay club by projecting Anglo military culture as caricature is similar to the notions of Jasbir Puar’s ascendency of whiteness and larger homonational projects. As Puar writes, the “national homosexual subject,” who has historically been a white Anglo male, “seeks to dismantle any foreign homosexual culture or politic,” and impose a uniformed Anglo homonormativity that “aims to destroy any sexual-racial other that does not adhere to whiteness.”[75] The themed events that Santillan and Morales constructed illustrated how beliefs of imposing homonational sentiment in the OP would assist in attracting a larger male audience. Gutierrez notes that during the 90s, “many mid-aged men lost interest in the OP and the club was more populated with young under-21-year-olds and older, white Anglo and African American military men.”[76] The multiculturalness and diversity of the OP shifted to Hames-Garcia’s epitome of “modern colonial” systems, where military men exoticized not only the colonized, Latino-ness of the younger men, but also their gayness that did not prescribe to the hegemonic, homonationalist model of queer identity that the military men understood.[77] And so, as the military presence on Fort Bliss increased through the 1990s, so too did the Anglo male attendance at the club.

The 2000s “saw a steady interest back into the New OP, increased participation in queer events like Mr. Pride Texas, and its citywide collaboration with El Paso Sun City Pride” during June Pride Fest, revealed Klinkowaski.[78] Chanel stated that with the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003 “much more Puerto Rican and African American vets were seen in the club,” something that they recall was “new and called attention in the gay community.”[79] When asked how they knew these men were veterans, Chanel responded that “their straight edged-ness with distinct military haircuts, which were usually short fades, pinpointed them as vets.”[80] The sexual encounters in the OP throughout the 2000s were “militarized” due to the increased attendance from wartime soldiers. Santillan and Morales had succeeded in revitalizing the level of male attendance at their club vis-à-vis homonational propaganda. Puar argues that homonationalism is a byproduct and symptom of war-related sentiment and emerges in response to “terrorist assemblages and attacks upon notions of citizenship, identity and sexuality.”[81] The Iraq War and the proximity of Fort Bliss to the New OP reasserted the need for military men to escape the government land and perform their same-sex desires with Mexican-national and Mexican American males. Homonationalism and a post-9/11 Anglo gay identity, however, became difficult to completely impose in a border city, as many of the non-military attendees who entered the club “were mixed, bilingual and lived separate lives as Mexican Americans and as jotos (fags),” declared Gutierrez.[82]

Santillan and Morales began to employ new social media outlets that had never been accessed before, such as MySpace and eventually Facebook, to maintain the slowly growing interest in their decades-old club.[83] The posters the two circulated in downtown El Paso and on social media websites employed images of queer military men to attract the various demographics the OP had seen in attendance during the early 1980s. They commissioned these images and concepts from the late 1990s until the 2010s. The themes associated with these documents illustrated the appeal and fixation for Anglo military personnel. In a study of archived posters produced by the owners of the OP, one can view how these advertisements conflated traditional images such as the military uniform and colors reminiscent of national holidays, such as Labor Day, with queer themes. Moreover, veterans who revealed their military IDs at the door received free admission.[84] Santillan and Morales hoped that by appealing and commodifying the military to the OP’s diverse clientele, the club would remain busy or at least regain its historic demographic of military men and El Paso Latinos. Images of army men illustrated the masculinity Gutierrez, Klinkowaski, and Chanel desired. At the same time, these images and others like them, reminded the spectator of a fantasy: sexual activities with the colonizer, an idea that “aroused” young men like Gutierrez. The backdrop of the Iraq War persuaded Santillan and Morales to recreate homonational imagery to attract a once popular demographic back to the New OP. Gutierrez surmised that many of the soldiers he met and slept with eventually left Fort Bliss and arrived to the club to forget the duties of a serviceman during war times.

Homonational imagery, the aesthetic that Santillan and Morales tried to embed in their club, succeeded in drawing gay males from the city, Northern Mexico, and Fort Bliss. But it could no longer contain El Paso’s ever growing queer identity of lesbians and other gay men. The U.S.-Mexico border and Fort Bliss functioned as catalysts in assisting Latina/o lesbians and gays to break free from “white Anglo gay culture and identity,” and embrace a queerness that exceeded the narrow categorization that Santillan and Morales tried to incubate. Over time, the OP no longer became a club for gays, but “for allies and everything in-between.”[85] After thirty-five years of evolution, El Paso queer identity metamorphosed. The original and New OP was a bar, and later a club, that illustrated the power, gender, and sexual politics that would raise and harness the uniqueness and interchangeability of borderland sexual identities and behaviors.

The New OP officially shut down on October 27, 2012.[86] No official word has been given to why Santillan and Morales suddenly closed it doors. Online social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook allowed El Pasoans of all generations to comment on the legacy the club left on the city.[87]

Conclusion

In the history of U.S. sexuality, scholars have contended that the lesbian, gay, and transgender past grew in tandem with the Civil Rights era, blossomed during the Stonewall Riots and took shape through the 1970s and 1980s. This paper argued that in borderland cities with predominately Latina/o populations like El Paso, scholars must examine sexuality and the story of LGBT movements through multiple intersectional lenses and academic methodologies to further elucidate the contested history of queer peoples. The original and New OP provided the first long-standing alternative public space for folks of all sexual identifications in the bordered, bicultural city of El Paso. Bonaventure built a bar that staged music and sexual trends, which were in conversation with the national sexual movements of the U.S. from the 1970s to the 2010s. Sexual behaviors and identities transformed, however, with the entrance of HIV/AIDS and war, as attendees altered sexual acts based on national stigma, homonational imagery, and wartime sentiment. The dance floor of the OP came to represent colonial, racial, and ethnic consumptions between Anglos and Latina/os, gay males, and men who have sex with men, military personnel and civilians. Even more, the themes and commercialization of the OP revealed the interconnectedness between its political assemblages and sexual norms. After thirty-five years, the old and the New Old Plantation stood as a testament to the construction of community spaces and most especially, racial and ethnic fetishisms within the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands. Queer nightlife did reside in the American Southwest, fighting local, national, and international normative discourses of gender and sexuality. The principal border for queer communities and individuals situated along the U.S.-Mexico national boundary is the borderland called their sexuality.

The post This Borderland Called My Sexuality: Excavating Queer Nightlife of the American Southwest Through the Lens of Intersectionality appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

1. Les palimpsestes verbo-culturels de Mai 68 : une analyse lexi-culturelle des médias

Dans cet article, le mot-clé « événement » est presque un synonyme du mot « parole », d’où mon attention à la lexiculture, qui représente l’une des méthodologies de recherche les plus actuelles permettant d’analyser la culture d’une communauté, justement, par son système sémiotique, c’est?à?dire le langage. Galisson définit les expressions que nous prenons en considération ici comme des « palimpsestes verbaux » obtenus par la « délexicalisation » de l’énoncé de base et sa substitution par un « sur?énoncé », devenant ainsi des révélateurs culturels, donc des « palimpsestes verbo-culturel » (P.V.C.). Seul celui qui vit dans la même « sémiosis sociale » peut les reconnaître, d’où l’existence d’une « identité collective » qui « possède le mystérieux pouvoir d’agréger, de solidariser, d’aider à vivre ensemble des individus qui se reconnaissent en elle (implicitement, ou explicitement)[1] ». Dans la société française, Mai 68 semble ne pas être tombé dans l’oubli[2] et de nombreux interlocuteurs partagent encore sa mémoire… discursive. Cette section propose une analyse lexicale de huit de ces P.V.C.

• « Sous LE PAVÉ… (la page) »

Il s’agit titre d’un site Web d’une coopérative dont le but est l’éducation populaire, enjeu d’éducation au politique et au social. Elle enseigne à « prendre conscience de l’importance de se révolter » et de « s’entendre sur les mots[3] ». Le P.V.C. dérive du sous-énoncé « sous les pavés, la plage », par une délexicalisation avec filiation phonique et avec modification par suppression phonémique (plage à page). On remarque une transformation du nom, du pluriel au singulier, et du caractère graphique conférant de l’importance au terme « pavé », ainsi qu’une substitution d’un nom commun à un autre (plage à page); les points de suspension et les parenthèses sont ajoutés. Bien plus, il faut remarquer la polysémie du terme « pavé » (défini de façon dépréciative comme un gros livre), à partir de laquelle un jeu de mot s’établit. Le « pavé » fait appel à la « page », créant une synecdoque et véhiculant le message principal de l’association : l’éducation populaire pour créer les bases de la compréhension du monde capitaliste afin de le démanteler, en donnant importance aux « pages de la vie » de chaque citoyen.

• « Sous les pavés, Libé… mais sous la pluie, rien de nouveau »

La source médiatique de ce P.V.C. est un article du 18 avril 2008, « France Inter célèbre Mai 68… à sa manière »[4]. Il s’agit de sous?titres à deux paragraphes de l’article. Les sous-énoncés en question sont « sous les pavés, la plage » et « rien de nouveau sous le soleil ».Ce palimpseste est fort intéressant, car on peut l’interpréter de deux façons. Si on le considère comme une expression unique, alors il s’agit d’un palimpseste-amalgame qui mélange les deux sous-énoncés ci-dessus, tandis que si on les considère comme deux palimpsestes séparés, les remarques à faire sont multiples. Le premier est une modification de l’originel par une délexicalisation sans filiation phonique et avec déstructuration syntaxique : le nom commun est remplacé par un nom propre (plage à Libé), abréviation de Libération. Le deuxième est toujours une delexicalisation, sans filiation phonique et sans déstructuration syntaxique, mais avec une inversion des syntagmes par rapport à l’expression originelle, créant ainsi un parallèle avec le palimpseste précédent. Or, puisque la lexiculture nous permet de jouer avec les mots, pourquoi ne pas voir dans le célèbre « nihil novi sub sole », en français « rien de nouveau sous le soleil », une source d’inspiration qui arrive à Bernard Cousin pour créer son slogan, « sous les pavés, la plage » ?

• « Sous les pavés, des bulles »

La source médiatique de ce P.V.C. est une émission télévisée sur Mai 68, diffusée sur Public Senat le 2 mai 2008. Le sous-énoncé est encore une fois « sous les pavés, la plage », transformé par une délexicalisation sans filiation phonique et sans déstructuration syntaxique, vu que le nom « plage » est remplacé par un autre nom de la même catégorie, « bulles ». La seule différence est dans le nombre et dans le partitif qui suggèrent l’idée d’une quantité considérable et indéfinie, en opposition à l’idée de la « plage », déterminée et définie. Au-delà des déterminatifs employés, les deux énoncés jouent sur leur signification connotative : le sous-énoncé définit le caractère imaginaire et lyrique de Mai 68, alors que le P.V.C. renvoie, par une relation métonymique, à la création des bandes dessinées auxquelles l’émission télévisée a consacré un Spécial Mai 68. Les bulles représentent donc les BD ressorties de l’action à la fois révolutionnaire et poétique déroulée sur la rue, dont le pavé est le symbole. Il faut donc remarquer un même rapport symétrique des énoncés aux niveaux non seulement linguistique et grammatical, mais aussi au niveau de la signification, ce qui exige un travail d’abstraction et d’imagination, rappelant toujours l’atmosphère de Mai 68.

Dans cette catégorie il y a d’autres P.V.C., comme « sous les pavés la terre », « sous les pavés, le design », « sous les pavés, la grève » ou « sous les pavés, l’underground ».

• « Pour consommer sans entraves »

Ce P.V.C. se retrouve dans un article intitulé « Que reste-t-il de 68 ? » dans Le nouvel Observateur. Il contient un entretien avec Daniel Cohn?Bendit et Luc Ferry, écrit le 17 janvier 2008 et inséré dans un dossier spécial sur Mai 68.Le sous-énoncé est« pour jouir sans entraves », qui subit une délexicalisation sans filiation phonique et sans déstructuration syntaxique. Le verbe « jouir » est remplacé par un mot de la même catégorie grammaticale, c’est?à-dire le verbe « consommer ». Et c’est à partir de ce verbe que l’on peut saisir la critique que Luc Ferry lance envers les événements de Mai 68, qui ont été pour lui « la première grande libération de la société de consommation de masse ». Le P.V.C. s’insère en effet dans un cotexte qui révèle un ton plus que critique sur le concept de « consommation », créant des champs sémantiques opposés, celui de la « destruction » et celui de la « révolution ». Du dernier font partie les mots « mouvement », « valeurs », « libération » et « lutte », alors que du premier font partie les termes « casser », « destruction » et « déconstruction ». De plus, il faut noter que le sème « libération » pourrait appartenir aux deux champs sémantiques, mais sa collocation dans la structure de la phrase confirme la critique de l’énonciateur, Luc Ferry, associant au terme « libération » une idée négative. De fait, si Mai 68 a toujours été défini comme un mouvement de libération des valeurs culturelles et morales, pour Ferry il s’agit d’une « libération de la société de consommation de masse » ou encore d’« une révolution de futurs consommateurs qui changeront de portable tous les six mois ». La phrase en question est ainsi structurée :

Mai 68 a été un mouvement non pas de lutte contre la société de consommation, mais la première grande libération de la société de consommation de masse.

À travers la rhétorique de la négativité et la particule adversative, Luc Ferry oppose deux idées contrastantes : ce que Mai 68 aurait dû être, c’est?à?dire une « lutte contre » la consommation de masse, et ce qui au lieu se serait réellement passé, c’est?à?dire une « libération » de la consommation de masse.

Ce n’est donc pas un hasard si l’émetteur change le verbe « jouir » avec le verbe « consommer », conférant au slogan un ton de moquerie et de critique.

• « La culture c’est la chienlit »

Il s’agit d’un slogan tiré d’une photo d’un blog personnel qui se réfère à une manifestation de protestation de la part des Verts contre une émission de télé?réalité dans le troisième arrondissement de Paris, « Star’ac »[5]. Le sous-énoncé « la chienlit, c’est lui » est transformé par une délexicalisation sans filiation phonique et sans déstructuration syntaxique dans la première partie de l’énoncé. Ainsi, le nom commun « chienlit » est remplacé par un nom de la même catégorie, « culture », tandis que, dans la deuxième partie, on assiste à une déstructuration syntaxique par laquelle le pronom « lui » est remplacé par un nom commun « chienlit ». Entre le sous-énoncé et le P.V.C., un chiasme se crée, changeant d’ordre les termes de l’expression : dans la source, c’est le terme « chienlit » qui est mis en évidence en incarnant la figure de Charles de Gaulle, à l’époque critiquée par les soixante-huitards, tandis que dans le P.V.C. le terme en évidence est la « culture » considérée après comme « chienlit ». Ce rapprochement est une évidente dénonciation de ce type d’émission, (de télé?réalité), proposée comme « culturelle » mais qui en réalité est l’exaspération de la société de consommation contemporaine. Bien évidemment, le procédé, tout à fait ironique, utilisé par les énonciateurs est basé sur l’antiphrase : ils affirment le faux pour sous?entendre leur critique féroce d’un type de « culture », jugée déviante, et contre ses partisan. Ce sont ces derniers qui auraient transformé la culture en une mascarade, une véritable « chienlit ».

Dans cette catégorie, il faut rappeler aussi l’expression « La chienlit, c’est Sarkozy ».

• « L’imagination prend la Bastille »

C’est le titre d’un reportage sur la marche pour une sixième République[6]. Le sous-énoncé « l’imagination prend le pouvoir » est reformulé par une délexicalisation sans filiation phonique et avec déstructuration syntaxique d’un nom commun à un nom propre, indiquant une institution publique. La Bastille est interprétée par l’historiographie comme un symbole historique de liberté et de révolution. Au moment de la Révolution française, elle symbolisait le pouvoir despotique du Roi, qui l’employait comme prison. Le 14 juillet 1789, le peuple français l’occupe et la détruit, d’où la célébration de ce jour comme fête nationale. Malgré sa destruction, le mythe de la Bastille existe aujourd’hui encore, constituant donc une mémoire à la fois historique et discursive, et très forte puisqu’on parle de révolution. Dans ce reportage, en fait, on prépare une marche symbolique vers la « Bastille », donc vers la liberté, et les instruments les plus utilisés sont les slogans, réhabilitant le style de Mai 68, tels que « Nous, on peut », « J’ai des mots à faire défiler », ou le titre de l’émission.

• « Obama, nous sommes tous des Oussama »

La source médiatique de ce P.V.C. est un article de Libération datant du 14 septembre 2012, écrit à la suite d’une tentative d’assaut de l’ambassade américaine à Tunis par des salafistes protestant contre le film américain « L’innocence des Musulmans »[7]. Ce palimpseste donne le titre à l’article, mais c’est aussi un slogan crié par un manifestant lors de l’assaut.

Le célèbre sous-énoncé en question est « nous sommes tous des juifs allemands » qui subit une délexicalisation sans filiation phonique et avec déstructuration syntaxique, de fait la modification voit le passage d’un adjectif (dans ce cas deux, « juifs » et « allemands ») à un nom propre, « Oussama ». De plus, il y a des transformations ultérieures dans l’énoncé : les énonciateurs ajoutent à leur slogan le nom propre, Obama, président de l’Amérique qui rime avec Oussama, prénom de Ben Laden, en créant une rime interne et donnant une structure circulaire à l’énoncé.Le cri de solidarité que les soixante-huitards avaient crié à Daniel Cohn?Bendit se transforme en un cri de révolte et de défense de leur religion de la part des Musulmans salafistes[8]. Ce slogan évoque toujours une idée d’union et de solidarité qui peut s’élargir bien évidemment au journaliste qui l’a d’ailleurs choisi comme titre de son article. Outre la provocation faite réellement par les Musulmans contre les Américains, je pourrais y voir aussi la solidarité de certains Français, en premier le journaliste et le journal Libération, s’exprimant contre l’islamophobie.

Suivant cet exemple, je peux citer aussi « Nous sommes tous des Arabes[9] », « Nous sommes tous la France[10] » et « Nous sommes tous Américains[11] ».

• « Nous sommes là pour boire »

Il s’agit d’un slogan pour la campagne publicitaire du vin de la région Languedoc-Roussillon, l’une des plus grandes productrices de vins au monde, par la vaste extension de son vignoble totalisant une surface de 40 000 hectares.Le sous-énoncé « Nous sommes le pouvoir » est modifié par une délexicalisation avec filiation phonique et avec modification par fragmentation morphemique basée sur une assonance entre le mot « boire » et le syntagme « là pour boire ».Au niveau linguistique, l’énoncé évoque une masse, désignée par le déictique subjectif « nous », prête à l’action, à l’acte de boire : le ton du P.V.C. transmet une idée d’exigence qui, hors de parallélisme, peut vouloir faire l’éloge de la qualité du vin très demandée et mettre en évidence la grandeur, en termes d’extension physique aussi, de la production de vin, tout cela souligné par ce jeu phonique basé sur l’assonance entre le verbe « boire » et le terme « pouvoir ».

Sans être en mesure de donner une quantité considérable d’exemples, mais du moins satisfaisante pour le but établi, je peux constater que les expressions liées à Mai 68 sont nombreuses : en particulier, me fait réfléchir la provenance de ces P.V.C. soit dans des sites Web reconnus et officiels, soit dans des journaux plus périphériques ou bien des blogs personnels, ce qui confirme l’actualité de l’événement, malgré les décennies passées. Il a pénétré dans la culture des Français, puisqu’il fait partie d’une étape sociale et historique fondamentale pour l’Hexagone. Évidemment, Mai 68 est non seulement descendu dans la rue, mais il y est resté! Bien plus, selon le deuxième axe de ma réflexion, qui essaie de saisir le lien entre culture et médias, ces derniers sont vus comme porteurs de réalité sociale et donc de bagage culturel et historique de chaque peuple. Les P.V.C. en sont un exemple significatif.

2. Mai 68 et sa mémoire discursive dans les médias : les mots-événements

À propos du lien entre culture et médias, Sophie Moirand, soulignant l’importance du concept de « culture partagée », a postulé l’existence d’une « mémoire des mots » « voyageant aucours du temps, d’une communauté à une autre et d’une époque à une autre » selon l’orientation dialogique de Bakhtine, et que « tout membre d’une collectivité parlante ne trouve pas des mots neutres libres des appréciations ou des orientations d’autrui, amis des mots habités par des voix autres[12] ». Dans un autre travail, la chercheuse insiste sur le fait que les mots définissent l’événement et l’inscrivent dans un imaginaire commun grâce à la fonction des médias :

Ce ne sont pas les interlocuteurs qui interagissent directement dans la presse, mais les textes, les énoncés, les mots eux-mêmes, les titres, les photos, les dessins de presse, avec les discours qu’ils transportent, ceux qu’ils anticipent et ceux qu’ils rencontrent sur l’aire de la page… Les discours des médias sont essentiellement des discours « médiateurs » d’autres discours[13].

Elle nous montre la force énonciative des textes médiatiques et leur interdisciplinarité, car on peut étudier les textes d’un point de vue non seulement linguistique, mais culturel et sociologique. Charaudeau a postulé l’existence d’un modèle socio-communicationnel du discours où existe un « contrat médiatique[14] » basé sur « l’information » et la « captation » liant le texte au lecteur : le texte médiatique doit informer et en même temps capturer l’attention de son lecteur par l’emploi d’un langage, dirions-nous, « séduisant » qui fasse appel à un imaginaire, culturel et linguistique, collectif. L’approche de la chercheuse Moirand, soutenue par les thèses du professeur Charaudeau, se prête donc bien à l’analyse du langage de Mai 68 qui a envahi le domaine médiatique et qui révèle la complexité non seulement du discours médiatique même, mais des mécanismes socio-culturels qui en dérivent. L’événement Mai 68 est repris dans la presse d’aujourd’hui imposant sa majesté historique à travers un fonctionnement intertextuel, confirmant encore une fois le pouvoir de la parole sauvage, agissante et révolutionnaire qui encore au XXI^e siècle ne cesse de faire irruption dans la vie sociale de l’Hexagone.

Dans cette partie, j’analyserai un corpus de cinq articles de presse, évidemment groupés autour du moment discursif de Mai 68 dont l’air se fait sentir au long des textes à travers les mots-événements. Ils datent de 2007 à 2012 et ils concernent des sujets d’actualité variés.

2.2 Analyse du corpus

Le premier article, écrit en 2007 et paru dans Le monde diplomatique,explique le scénario du documentaire « LIP, l’imagination au pouvoir » sur un mouvement ouvrier en avril 1973. Bien évidemment, le contenu se prête à la réhabilitation, presque spontanée, dirions-nous, des mots?événements de Mai 68 : de fait, l’annonce des licenciements de l’usine LIP déclenche la révolte où les acteurs principaux sont les ouvriers, les syndicats et les patrons, et qui mieux que ceux-ci peuvent réhabiliter la mémoire de Mai ? Au cours du texte, l’auteur semble utiliser des mots qui attestent son savoir sur Mai 68, comme « grève », « camarades », « ouvriers », et de certaines expressions aussi, notamment « tout est possible » rappelant l’atmosphère de rêverie et de lutte soixante?huitarde. Au premier paragraphe, on lit :

le syndicaliste ouvrier Charles Piaget se montre hostile à la grève. Il préfère que ses camarades freinent le rythme des machines et celui des mains ; mais« ils avaient tellement les cadences dans la peau que c’était pas possible de ralentir ». Ils arrêtèrent de travailler dix minutes par heure.

L’image du rythme des « machines » et des « cadences » incessantes n’est?elle pas un écho direct aux revendications des ouvriers de l’époque ? Les mots deviennent donc symbole d’intertextualité d’un slogan soixante?huitard « BRISONS LES VIEUX ENGRENAGES » : il rappelle l’image des engrenages qui roulent sans cesse et écrasent l’homme. Les « usines », au centre de la contestation de Mai, reviennent au cours du texte à côté d’un autre slogan, « tu n’as pas besoin de lui », se référant au « patron » qui, avec « l’ouvrier » et les « camarades », définissent les acteurs concernés dans ce type d’événement. Ce qui est intéressant, selon mon interprétation, c’est la présence d’une phrase que l’auteur a voulu mettre exprès pour stimuler la mémoire du lecteur envers Mai 68, c’est?à?dire « y compris sur les plages ». L’extrait se poursuit ainsi :

Que faire de toutes ces montres ? On décide de les vendre et de remettre en route l’usine pour en produire de nouvelles, cette fois sans patron (« tu n’as pas besoin de lui »). La vente est un énorme succès, y compris sur les plages.

Il est évident que les montres de l’usine LIP à Besançon ne sont effectivement pas vendues sur les plages, (même si personne ne pourrait l’empêcher !); par contre, leur image m’a spontanément renvoyée au célèbre slogan « sous les pavés, la plage » et à la rêverie et à la puissance que les soixante-huitards confiaient au pavé, leur symbole de révolte, ce qui donne une identité culturelle au texte.

L’idée de rêverie mène à un autre article qui tisse un réseau de mots?événements sur Mai 68. Déjà le titre, « Sur les pavés, le pochoir », considéré lui-même comme un P.V.C.[15], plonge le lecteur dans cette « sous-culture » : la proposition « sur », renvoyant à la superficie du pavé, confirme l’idée de matérialité et de créativité, puisque l’article suggère des techniques pour dessiner sur les murs et décorer la rue. D’où l’emploi du terme « pochoir », l’instrument privilégié par l’illustratrice Keri Smith et auteure du guide Réveillez la rue! Idées, astuces et outils pour embellir le quotidien. Si, dans l’énoncé?source, le pavé est lié à la plage par une dimension presque onirique, dans le P.V.C. sa signification réside pour la plupart dans sa dimension dénotative : le pavé est au service d’un instrument concret, le « pochoir », qui déclenche de toute façon l’imagination et encourage les gens à pratiquer l’art de la rue. Le titre du livre renvoie donc à Mai 68 et à l’endroit le plus « massacré », c’est?à?dire la rue. D’autres désignations, comme par exemple « graffiti », « murs », « imagination » et « beauté ». Évidemment, ce dernier me rappelle le célèbre slogan, « la beauté est dans la rue ». Cette forme verbale s’unifie à d’autres au cours du texte, comme par exemple « créer de la beauté », « disséminer de petits mots poétiques » et enfin le titre même du livre « réveillez la rue », ce qui désigne le moment discursif de Mai 68 et en particulier son aspect à la fois lyrique et réactionnaire.

Cet aspect est repris dans un autre article tiré de Libération et publié le 20 mars 2010, « La jeunesse kurde prend le maquis[16] », où reviennent les mêmes acteurs des articles précédents, comme par exemple « camarades » et « jeunes », ainsi que d’autres mots?événements qui désignent Mai 68, à savoir « actions », « cocktails Molotov » ou « guérilla ». Dans ce cas aussi, il s’agit d’un P.V.C. dont le sujet est repris dans l’image de « jeunes camarades » qui rejoignent la guérilla kurde pour prendre le maquis. Il est intéressant de remarquer que non seulement le journaliste réhabilite l’imaginaire de Mai 68, notamment dans le titre de l’article, mais les témoignages des jeunes manifestants confirment l’idée que derrière chaque action révolutionnaire le souvenir de Mai 68 est bien fort, d’ailleurs les mots le confirment. En guise d’illustration, voici des extraits de l’article en question :

« Mon fils a 14 ans. De temps en temps, il participait avec ses camarades de classe aux manifestations dans le centre?ville. Il ne parlait pas beaucoup avec nous. Un soir, il n’est pas rentré à la maison. On était inquiets. Je suis allé voir ses camarades et on m’a informé qu’il était parti avec un groupe d’une trentaine d’autres jeunes »,raconte un fonctionnaire de Diyarbakir, la capitale du sud?est de la Turquie.

L’une des entrées du mot « camarade » dans le dictionnaire implique aussi l’idée d’un groupe solide et compact de gens[17]; on lit dans le texte que ces jeunes se nomment « Jeunesse » et qu’« ils détestent les journalistes et affirment « s’exprimer dans des actions avec cocktails Molotov et non dans les salles de conférence de presse ». Ce témoignage sous?entend aussi l’idéologie de Mai 68 qui oppose les actions de rue aux « salles de conférence » typiquement bourgeoises et ce n’est pas un hasard si le journaliste nous explique que l’origine de ces jeunes est justement bourgeoise, sous l’exemple des soixante-huitards.Dans un autre article, « Comment les conflits sociaux minent l’Afrique du Sud », publié dans Challenge le 31 août 2012, et traitant des conflits sociaux dans l’Afrique du Sud, apparaissent les mêmes mots?événements, comme « camarades » et « pavé » à côté d’autres nouveaux termes, par exemple « gréviste », « réformes » et « revendications », et d’expressions métaphoriques, notamment « nombre de salariés battent le pavé en dansant et en chantant leurs revendications ». Les acteurs de l’événement, « salariés », et les termes « pavé » et « revendications », avec les actions verbales « danser » et « chanter », sont une référence évidente à l’atmosphère de Mai. Bien plus, l’article se conclut par un témoignage d’un manifestant qui ressemble au ton des slogans soixante-huitards, on lit « Ils nous ignorent », où l’opposition des pronoms « ils » et « nous » est une constante que l’on trouve souvent sur les murs parisiens à l’époque et derrière laquelle se cache une opposition sociale entre la bourgeoisie, définie par le déictique objectif « ils », et le prolétariat qui se fortifie dans l’action collective et intime du « nous ». L’imaginaire de Mai revient dans deux autres articles, « Grève générale en Grèce contre la rigueur », tiré de Challenge et publié le 11 mai 2011, et « Grèce : manifestations et débrayages contre le nouveau train de rigueur », publié dans l’Express le 12 septembre 2011 concernant la crise et les protestations en Grèce. Ici, les mêmes mots?événements apparaissent, notamment « cocktail Molotov », « pavé », « grève » et « manifestation ». En particulier, l’expression « battre le pavé » est présente dans le sous?titre du premier, « Des milliers de manifestants ont commencé à battre le pavé » et dans le deuxième, « les médecins, dont les salaires sont menacés de nouvelles réductions, et les enseignants dénonçant la grande misère de l’éducation publique, ont aussi battu le pavé mercredi pour dénoncer le nouveau tour de vis ». Le pavé, emblème de la révolte, revient comme outil principal dans toutes les manifestations et il est associé à l’image de la rue. Dans le deuxième article, l’expression verbale « descendre dans la rue » apparait dans le contexte de lutte sociale et de sauvegarde des droits personnels. Bien plus, l’article relate les « banderoles » qui ont dominé la manifestation de la Grèce, à savoir « Ils nous poussent vers l’extrême pauvreté » où l’opposition connotative des déictiques objectifs et subjectifs revient, ou encore « Santé gratuite pour tous » et « Non au bradage de la patrie », rappelant le style sec et direct de la parole « sauvage ». Ainsi, la structure énonciative semble?t?elle être reprise dans ce mouvement discursif réhabilitant la mémoire de Mai 68, ce qui permet de pousser l’analyse de la chercheuse Moirand à un niveau supérieur, car ce ne sont pas seulement les mots qui deviennent événements, mais les tournures discursives mêmes qui acquièrent le mouvement de l’énonciation soixante-huitarde.

En conclusion, je peux bien affirmer l’existence d’une mémoire collective et d’une culture partagée réveillant le souvenir de Mai 68 : tous les médias ont recours à cet imaginaire bien vivant chez les Français qui ne cesse jamais de surprendre et surtout d’exprimer la « rage » et l’action des manifestants, car tous les mots?événements dans les articles pris en considération confèrent à leur contenu une touche révolutionnaire et rêveuse à la fois, typique de Mai 68. Ce qui frappe, c’est la diversité des articles contenant ce souvenir. Le pouvoir des mots et leur force ne s’obscurcit jamais : non seulement les murs avaient parlé en Mai 68, mais même aujourd’hui ils font parler les textes créant un véritable dialogue dans les médias qui suit le chemin naturel de la mémoire et de la culture.

The post Mai 68 au service de l’interdiscursivité médiatique : entre mémoire révolutionnaire et mémoire discursive. Deux approches interdisciplinaires : lexiculture et mots événements appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

Les Troubles en Ulster sont propices à donner lieu à ce genre de pièce expérimentale comme le met en avant Ophelia Byrne, spécialiste du théâtre en Irlande du Nord : « theatre has […] had to find imaginative ways to respond to an always vital, often dangerously energised, and sometimes brutal society » (Welch 66). Dans Protestants, première pièce de l’auteur irlandais catholique Robert Welch, jouée à Belfast le 28 avril 2004, le thème abordé met en effet en lumière une tentative de (re-)définir le protestantisme. Welch fait coïncider le fond et la forme dans la mesure où la pièce monologique est également un moyen de retracer les contours du théâtre. En outre cet éloignement délibéré de la norme théâtrale sous-tend un acte de résistance à une autre norme, le colonialisme. Cette pièce aspire à démontrer qu’un détachement du joug impérial de la Grande-Bretagne sur l’Irlande du Nord est possible artistiquement.

Nous nous interrogerons tout d’abord sur les raisons pour lesquelles le théâtre expérimental minimaliste de Welch est un acte de résistance au colonialisme, assis sur une conception particulière du protestantisme en Irlande, héritage du passé. Nous nous pencherons donc sur sa stratégie de résistance en appuyant notre démonstration sur les travaux de Helen Gilbert et Joanne Tompkins. L’étude des signes linguistiques et paralinguistiques nous permettra d’articuler études post-coloniales et théorie brechtienne du théâtre. En effet, la théorie du théâtre épique de Bertolt Brecht viendra nourrir notre réflexion première. L’analyse de la crise du sujet ainsi que l’étude des arts littéraires et musicaux illustreront le désir du dramaturge et nous permettront de comprendre comment le monologue devient un outil post-colonial pour l’auteur dans sa démarche de redéfinition de cette religion à travers ses multiples représentants.

1. Le poids du passé

Dans ce monologue, Robert Welch montre à quel point le passé pèse sur le présent en Irlande, thème qu’il reprend à la tradition littéraire irlandaise pour annoncer sa tendance à mêlertradition et modernité. Welch s’attache ainsi à démontrer que le colonialisme reste gravé dans les esprits en Irlande du Nord. Pourtant, s’il a intitulé sa pièce Protestants c’est précisément pour démontrer que le colonialisme est assis sur une définition erronée du protestantisme. Le protestantisme n’est pas ce que l’Histoire, notamment celle de l’Irlande du Nord, laisse apparaître. De fait, le pluriel du titre nous indique qu’il existe plusieurs façons de considérer ceux qui incarnent au mieux la religion, les Protestants, et, par conséquent, plusieurs manières de faire l’expérience du protestantisme. Il nous livre donc plusieurs autres visions, d’autres définitions. Afin de déconstruire l’image que renvoie la notion de protestantisme, l’auteur adopte une stratégie particulière, qui s’inscrit dans un double discours : celui du post-colonialisme et de l’héritage de Brecht. En d’autres termes, il articule théorie brechtienne du théâtre didactique et études post-coloniales.

Le dramaturge souhaite remonter aux origines du protestantisme et de son adéquation avec l’impérialisme. Pour mener à bien son objectif, il utilise tout d’abord les personnages que le seul acteur doit camper sur scène. Si ces derniers n’apparaissent pas dans un ordre chronologique évident, c’est avant tout pour mettre en lumière l’idée que le passé prend toute son importance. Welch convoque ainsi, dans leur ordre d’apparition, un narrateur contemporain, en réalité le seul personnage sur scène qui doit camper six autres personnages. Dans ses premières didascalies, Welch nous annonce que ce narrateur, aux allures néo-brechtiennes, doit être un Protestant de classe moyenne, la quarantaine, et résidant à Belfast. Ce personnage campe alors Elizabeth 1ère dont le règne sur l’Angleterre marqua la domination de la foi protestante.Vient ensuite un supporter de l’équipe de football des Glasgow Rangers, qui s’emporte contre les révoltes au sein de sa propre communauté. Puis l’acteur endosse le rôle de Martin Luther qui déclame son amour pour Dieu et sa haine contre les secrets des prêtres catholiques. Puis, un homme originaire de Cork, soldat dans l’armée d’Oliver Cromwell et témoin de l’exécution du roi Charles 1^er, un dresseur de serpent dans le sud des Etats-Unis qui force sa foi à vaincre sa peur ; enfin un jeune garçon observant son grand-père qui se prépare pour le défilé des Orangistes un 12 juillet dans le comté d’Armagh en Irlande du Nord. Nous constatons donc que sur les sept personnages, trois appartiennent à l’histoire de l’Europe : Martin Luther, Elizabeth 1ère et le soldat de Cromwell. Martin Luther renvoie aux origines du mouvement protestant, Elizabeth 1ère à l’affirmation de la suprématie du protestantisme sur le catholicisme en Irlande lors de la période des Plantations, et, en ce qui concerne Cromwell, Benedict Nightingale, critique littéraire pour The Times, nous explique qu’il n’est mentionné que dans la mesure où il rappelle le passé colonial de l’Irlande : « Cromwell is soon remembered, presumably to make the point that Protestantism became and perhaps remains a colonial weapon, wielded most ruthlessly against the Catholic Irish. » (Welch 76). Avec ces trois personnages se tissent donc des liens étroits entre l’impérialisme et le protestantisme.

Pour souligner à quel point le passé pèse sur le présent, le temps dominant est le présent simple. Si le présent de narration n’existe pas véritablement en anglais, il est possible de l’utiliser afin de donner une information brute sans notion temporelle, valeur que Welch semble avoir privilégiée dans cette pièce. Le passé dans la pièce est raconté, voire vécu, au présent pour montrer à quel point il marque le quotidien dans cette partie du monde. Ainsi lorsque tous ses personnages racontent leurs histoires et anecdotes, ils utilisent le temps du présent. La première stratégie que le dramaturge a choisie afin de retracer les contours du protestantisme est donc celle du brouillage des pistes temporelles. Cette stratégie a une dimension post-coloniale comme Helen Gilbert et Joanne Tompkins le soulignent dans Post-Colonial Drama lorsqu’il s’agit de définir le post-colonialisme : « history is a discourse which is ‘culturally motivated and ideologically conditioned’ in the present. » (Gilbert & Tompkins 112). Si pour ces deux auteurs le théâtre fonctionne comme une arme anti-impériale, nous constatons que Robert Welch s’approprie cette définition pour faire de sa pièce une arme contre le colonialisme. Cette stratégie lui permet également de redonner à ses personnages du pouvoir sur l’Histoire puisqu’ils en livrent leur propre version.

Nous remarquons en outre que si l’unité du temps, chère à Aristote, n’est pas respectée, celle du lieu, également aristotélicienne, ne l’est pas non plus. En effet, à cette discontinuité temporelle (le présent, qui code la continuité, est utilisé afin de raconter le passé) s’ajoute une discontinuité spatiale puisque tous les personnages ne se trouvent pas en Irlande du Nord. Si l’Ulster est le lieu que Robert Welch a privilégié, la raison en est, selon l’auteur lui-même, que l’Irlande du Nord est un lieu où les divergences passées sont toujours présentes : « Northern Ireland is one of those places, across the world, where the differences in conviction and religious practice that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe still animate contemporary life. » (Welch 16). Il lui apparaissait donc plus pertinent d’inscrire sa pièce dans un contexte nord-irlandais. Pourtant, lorsqu’il le met dans la peau d’autres personnages, Welch projette aussi son personnage – narrateur dans d’autres lieux : Martin Luther se trouve en Allemagne, la reine Elizabeth 1ère en Angleterre, le dresseur de serpent dans le sud des Etats-Unis. Nous assistons donc à une fragmentation de l’espace et du temps qui n’est pas sans rappeler à nouveau la théorie brechtienne du théâtre et sa vocation didactique. Dans Bertolt Brecht, L’Homme et son œuvre, Wolfgang Jeske et Gunter Berg, rappellent que « dès 1926, Brecht proclame l’idée d’une œuvre scénique comme construction d’éléments narratifs, texte, musique et tableau, qui sont indépendants les uns des autres mais agissent les uns sur les autres, se complètent, ou se perturbent sciemment grâce à la mise en scène, empêchant dans tous les cas une action fluide, homogène » (107). La conception de la réalité est, pour Brecht, fragmentaire.

Robert Welch montre sa résistance à nourrir l’héritage laissé par la colonisation à travers Protestants de deux manières. Il semble en effet combiner l’élément post-colonial et la résistance à la norme théâtrale afin de déconstruire la définition de protestantisme et aborder le sujet selon une approche didactique où le public aura aussi un rôle à jouer. Il part des origines de la religion, puis du lien qui fut tissé entre colonialisme britannique et protestantisme, et montre d’emblée que son objectif est de déconstruire cette adéquation. Effectivement, il y a non seulement brouillage des pistes temporelles et spatiales, mais encore brouillage d’autres codes, notamment le code vestimentaire. L’auteur écrit en effet que son acteur doit être ainsi vêtu : « bare chested, black jeans, Doc Martens » (Welch 23). Il fait donc naître une tension entre ce qu’il porte et ce qu’il doit représenter. Il évoque une nudité pour que son personnage puisse revêtir divers personnages et devenir ainsi un acteur protéiforme. Cependant il est chaussé de Doc Martens aux lacets défaits pour ancrer son existence dans le temps présent, mais aussi pour marquer une certaine marginalité. Cette tenue peut aussi refléter la difficulté qu’ont pu éprouver certains Protestants d’Irlande du Nord à définir leur identité à la fin du XXème siècle. L’arrivée des colons britanniques en Irlande a d’abord privé de leurs repères identitaires les Catholiques irlandais, puis, depuis les multiples tentatives de Westminster d’engager un processus de rapprochement entre les deux communautés en Irlande du Nord, les Protestants se sont eux aussi peu à peu sentis trahis par le gouvernement britannique au point de ne plus se considérer tout à fait comme des Britanniques. Le personnage de Welch incarne ces générations qui se sont progressivement éloignées de leurs repères identitaires, héritiers du passé colonial de l’Irlande. Joanne Tompkins et Helen Gilbert soulignent que le corps de l’acteur est un outil permettant de véhiculer le malaise lié à la perte de repères identitaires, elles considèrent le corps post colonial comme étant : « a vehicle for subverting and problematising the roles of identity, subjectivity, and corporeality that colonialism has assigned to the colonialised subject. » (Gilbert & Tompkins 1996 : 253). L’utilisation de la corporalité est ainsi un des éléments de stratégie de résistance au colonialisme sur lequel Welch prend appui.

Cette pièce repose donc sur de nombreuses tensions qui mettent en évidence une certaine absence de cohésion et de linéarité, un manque de repères et qui corroborent par la même occasion l’enjeu de l’écriture du monologue, c’est-à-dire la crise, et plus particulièrement celle d’un sujet en proie aux questionnements autour de son identité.

2. Lacrise du sujet

Cette crise d’identité est due à la violence et aux dissensions balayant l’Irlande du Nord à la fin du XXème siècle, période durant laquelle les Républicains nord-irlandais (catholiques) luttaient contre le pouvoir britannique dans l’espoir de s’en affranchir. Ces hommes et femmes qui n’avaient jamais accepté le contrôle des Britanniques (et par conséquent des Protestants) en Irlande, souhaitaient un rapprochement géopolitique avec la République d’Irlande. Ces troubles affectèrent aussi bien la communauté catholique que la communauté protestante. Aussi, dans un article intitulé « ‘Am I talking to Myself ?’ Men, Masculinities and the Monologue in Contemporary Irish Theatre », Brian Singleton considère que la culture nord-irlandaise en est ressortie profondément abîmée. Il explique que cette crise affecte les hommes plus que les femmes, précisément à cause de la relation qui lie la violence au pouvoir masculin en Ulster. Il s’agit donc pour Welch de retrouver la définition gâtée de cet homme protestant en crise, et s’il convoque une femme, la reine Elizabeth 1ère, ce n’est que pour en souligner les traits masculins puisqu’il lui fait dire : « I’ll show them whose daughter I am. The daughter of the great lion of England and terror of Spain. I have, I know, his lion heart even though it’s stuck in this woman’s body. » (Welch 25). Eckart Voigts-Virchow & Mark Schreiber écrivent ensemble que le monologue est un genre qui se prête particulièrement à l’expression de la masculinité en détresse en s’éloignant de la théorie aristotélicienne :

In rejecting the Aristotelian stage interaction, the male narrators have, both in terms of form and content, been transformed from men of action to static wordmongers, who tell their stories with varying degrees of confidence in the cathartic healing this limited congress with an audience may afford. The monologue, this much is clear, is an excellent means in expressing masculinity in crisis. (Wallace 296)

Dans Protestants, la crise du sujet masculin est indubitablement liée à la crise que la religion traverse en Irlande du Nord pendant la période des Troubles. Cette crise est à la fois politique et sociale et héritée du colonialisme. Welch utilise le monologue afin de mettre en exergue la violence du colonialisme qui prend son origine dans une définition erronée du protestantisme, marquée dans le corps, dans l’esprit et dans le discours de l’acteur sur scène. Une analyse de l’utilisation de l’espace scénique, de la kinésique et de la proxémique nous permet de constater que l’acteur, qui doit incarner le protestantisme au mieux, tente d’investir toute la scène.

Nous avons vu précédemment que la scène ne représentait pas seulement l’Irlande du Nord mais aussi d’autres lieux. Dans une volonté de redéfinition du protestantisme, il semblerait que le principe émis par Eamonn Jordan dans « ‘Look Who’s Talking, Too’ : the Duplicitous Myth of Naïve Narrative’ » à savoir « dislocation, rather than location » (Wallace 153) est important chez Welch. En effet, c’est à travers la multiplication des lieux, la fragmentation de l’espace, que l’expérience du protestantisme doit être faite. L’analyse du déplacement de l’acteur dans ce décor minimaliste montre qu’il commence debout sur l’estrade à gauche pour terminer, sept scènes plus loin, en bas de l’estrade à droite, après avoir investi le centre de l’espace scénique. Etant donné que les enjeux du colonialisme furent fondés sur un conflit territorial dont le Protestant nord-irlandais a hérité et qu’il ne veut pas perdre, il est possible de souligner que cette tentative de réinvestissement de l’espace scénique symbolise la tentative de reprendre toute sa place dans l’espace, et par extension dans l’Histoire. Notons par ailleurs, l’utilisation d’une estrade sur la scène, pour ajouter à la prise de possession de l’espace horizontal, une prise de possession verticale, qui peut en outre symboliser le rapprochement direct de l’homme et de Dieu (et rappelle qu’il n’y a pas besoin de médiateur pour les Protestants). L’utilisation d’une échelle corrobore cette idée. Cette estrade et cette échelle, comme les quelques accessoires utilisés par l’acteur, ont donc un sens bien précis.

Dès la première page de son œuvre, l’auteur nous livre la liste des objets dont se servira l’acteur. Ainsi Welch cite-t-il le tuyau d’une pompe à essence, une échelle en aluminium, une scie, une chaîne en fer, un télescope, un seau en métal, un pentacle (ou une étoile de David selon l’auteur lui-même en didascalie, qui brouille encore une fois les pistes). Chaque objet, associé à un personnage, est destiné à avoir une utilisation particulière. A propos du télescope que le jeune garçon de descendance orangiste manipule, Welch nous dit:

The boy is given as prop a telescope hinting at the play’s attempt to bring up close for scrutiny what lies far off; and also at the spirit of scientific inquiry that accompanied the Reformation’s stress on the individual mind’s capability to appraise evidence for itself, free of the dictates of dogmatic authority (Welch 19).

Si l’utilisation du télescope est à la fois pragmatique et symbolique, en revanche, les autres accessoires ont une fonction détournée. Donnons pour exemple la scie circulaire qui devient la collerette royale de Elizabeth 1ère ou encore le tuyau qui se transforme en un serpent. Ce détournement des objets dans leur fonction peut s’inscrire dans la stratégie de résistance au colonialisme de Welch dans la mesure où il semble faire écho au détournement de la définition du protestantisme. A travers ces accessoires et leur utilisation détournée par l’acteur, Welch met en lumière la définition erronée du protestantisme et s’en insurge. En effet, Michael Portillo, critique littéraire pour The Spectator, remarque: « one by one, Hickey [c’est le nom de l’acteur] tosses the props from the stage, as though angry with these symbols of prejudice and hate » (Welch 78). L’acteur doit incarner le protestantisme, ce que la religion a subi à travers les siècles, et son discours vient accompagner les mouvements de son corps afin de redéfinir la notion de protestantisme. Ses propos ont une résonance post-coloniale mais aussi didactique puisqu’ils doivent provoquer la réaction du public.

3. L’art pour redessiner les contours du protestantisme

Lorsqu’il évoque les origines de sa pièce, l’auteur, catholique, livre également la définition suivante du protestantisme :

It was in fact an engraving by Blake, “the Traveller makes haste towards evening” that provided a unifying thread for the play. Blake’s traveller became the narrator, a figure setting out on a journey, towards evening, leaving the comfort and security of the known and the familiar, the suburban, the gravelled pathways, the lamps being switched on as dark falls, to head into the uncertainty of memory and the fragmented recollection of history. The journey is one into what I imagined to be Protestant freedom and solitude, because it seems to me, rightly or wrongly, that one of the great discoveries of Protestantism was the terrifying isolation of the mind and the personality when confronted with the complex mystery of being (Welch 18).

A la lecture de ces explications, nous comprenons mieux pourquoi l’auteur a choisi la pièce monologique comme forme théâtrale (il s’est ainsi senti libre de rejeter la norme)mais aussi pourquoi le champ lexical de la peur est omniprésent. Néanmoins, les nombreuses répétitions de mots tels que « fear » et  « panic » sont contrebalancées par le discours de paix délivré par Martin Luther, technique qui rappelle la vocation dialectique du théâtre de Brecht selon laquelle des éléments de nature différente sont confrontés afin de faire naître un questionnement chez le spectateur. Welch souhaite ainsi mettre en évidence le fait que si le Protestant, et en particulier Martin Luther au moment de sa scission avec l’Église catholique romaine, éprouve un sentiment de peur, il ne doit pas la susciter, comme il en est trop souvent le cas en Irlande du Nord. La pièce de Welch repose ainsi sur cette évolution détournée, déformée de la religion en Irlande du Nord où la violence des colons protestants, puis de leurs héritiers, a pu effrayer. En outre, le discours de Martin Luther n’est pas au début mais au cœur de la pièce, alors que selon un enchaînement chronologique, il devrait ouvrir la pièce. L’expérience de Martin Luther se voit ainsi encadrée par celle des autres personnages. La structure de Protestants met donc une fois de plus en évidence l’importance des origines du protestantisme et la nécessité de les retrouver afin de mieux les comprendre, en comprendre l’évolution pour les déconstruire. Le monologue, et en particulier cette multitude de personnages qu’un seul acteur doit incarner lui permet, dans un second temps, de retrouver le message central de Martin Luther, précisément par le recentrement sur l’individu, la prise de conscience du personnage sur son individualité ; il lui permet ainsi de mettre en lumière l’évolution du protestantisme au fil des siècles.

Ces pistes de réflexion doivent provoquer la réaction du public, qui intervient et participe activement à la pièce. En effet, la fragmentation, le brouillage des pistes, les tensions entre linéarité et absence de linéarité, entre tradition et modernité, le discours dialectique de Welch, doivent susciter l’attention du spectateur, qui à son tour peut retrouver la chronologie, la fluidité et la continuité de ces éléments éclatés, des scènes juxtaposées. Pour le metteur en scène, Rachel O’Riordan, la forme et le contenu participaient à l’intervention du public : « the monodrama, and that format deeply affected the way in which the show was received. By communicating to the audience without character interplay the subject of the piece was thrown into the spotlight without any of the easy familiarities of naturalism. » (Welch 62). L’absence de naturalisme combinée à l’intervention du public fait écho à la théorie brechtienne du théâtre didactique. Pour Brecht, le théâtre doit susciter l’intervention du spectateur qui prend conscience d’un besoin de changement. Brecht écrit : « with the learning-play, then, the stage begins to be didactic. The theater becomes a place for philosophers, and for such philosophers as not only wish to explain the world but wish to change it. If there were not such entertaining learning, then the entire theatre would not be able to instruct. » (Brecht 80). De la même façon, la réception brute du message par le public est prépondérante pour Welch, elle fait partie intégrante de la pièce. En effet, des tables rondes et discussions furent organisées après chaque représentation pour recueillir les questions et réactions des spectateurs mais aussi pour échanger leurs points de vue.

Il s’agit donc de retrouver une définition plus juste de ce que représente le Protestant après avoir soumis à la fragmentation les critères qui le définissaient jusque là. Clare Wallace démontre en effet que le monologue dramatique permet de mettre en lumière la perception de l’Homme comme un produit fragmenté qui a subi les pressions des forces sociales et historiques :

Dramatic monologue enables the poet to inhabit a range of personae that may, as opposed to the confidential, earnest lyric ‘I’, open a space for doubt and ambivalence around the speaker. […] The perception of the self as ‘not autonomous, unified or stable, but rather the unfixed, fragmented product of various social and historical forces’, is fundamental to the emergence not only of this poetic genre, but also to the later development ofmodernist aesthetics (Wallace 10).

Ainsi, l’acteur, qui, dans une performance vocale incroyable, doit adopter les divers accents des personnages qu’il campe tour à tour dans un souci de cohérence physique et vocale, doit également, à travers son discours, montrer que la définition du protestantisme n’est pas immuable et figée, et qu’elle peut encore évoluer, qu’il faut la faire évoluer. La stratégie de Welch a, ici encore, une dimension post-coloniale et une vocation didactique. Il a recours à l’intertextualité, à la transgression des frontières littéraires et à la musique, code non-verbal dont le dessein n’est pas d’illustrer la scène mais de la compléter.

Welch renvoie à de nombreux auteurs avant lui, il cite les œuvres d’autres dramaturges irlandais tels que Brian Friel, ou Samuel Beckett. Les thèmes qu’il a choisis renvoient à de nombreux égards à la pièce de l’auteure nord-irlandaise, Marie Jones, A Night in November, mais il se réfère aussi à d’autres œuvres d’auteurs internationaux tels que George Steinbeck. Lorsqu’il s’agit de (re-)-définir les identités, de nombreux chercheurs en études post-coloniales considèrent que l’intertextualité permet d’assurer à d’autres langues d’être exprimées. Dans le cas de Protestants, il ne s’agit pas de langages, mais plutôt de points de vue. Ici, Welch rend hommage à ses prédécesseurs, mais les utilise à des fins modernes et expérimentales qui permettent à sa pièce de s’inscrire dans un mouvement littéraire nouveau à vocation didactique et de faire valoir son œuvre parmi celles d’autres auteurs.

L’auteur s’autorise aussi à transgresser les frontières littéraires, et mélange les genres pour montrer cette absence de figement et d’immanence, et au contraire, la possible mobilité et l’évolution de la définition du protestantisme. Ainsi, sa pièce devient un poème, regorgeant d’allitérations, d’assonances comme à l’occasion de cette réplique du narrateur où les termes thrill (frisson) et fizz (pétillement) sont juxtaposés : « and nothing else matters but the thrill, the fizz, of grinding someone else down » (Welch  29). Il est intéressant de rappeler ici que Robert Welch est également un poète. Il a écrit de nombreux recueils de textes poétiques tels que Muskerry (Dublin: Dedalus, 1991); Secret Societies (Dublin: Dedalus, 1997) ; Blue Formica Table (Dublin: Dedalus, 1999). Welch n’hésite pas non plus à conférer des titres à ses scènes, afin de mettre l’accent sur l’absence de linéarité et d’enchaînement chronologique d’une scène à une autre (un autre des principes brechtiens en rupture totale avec la pièce dite classique), mais aussi dans un but de transgression des frontières littéraires, car ces titres ne sont pas sans faire écho au genre du roman.

Enfin, le dramaturge incorpore chants et musique à son œuvre, comme pour rendre hommage aux origines du théâtre, mais il les utilise dans une perspective nouvelle, à la fois post-coloniale et didactique. En effet, selon Gilbert et Tompkins, « musical signification generates cultural meanings in its own right » (193). Ainsi, pour les chercheurs en études post-coloniales, la musique et les chants peuvent être des outils de résistance au colonialisme :

Song also affects the agency of language, altering the way that it ‘means’, while silence on stage can be a forceful and effective manner in/through which to express a post-colonial discourse of alterity, difference, and autonomy. The careful redeployment of linguistic signifiers – such as tone, rhythm, register, and lexicon – can generate as much political resistance as the rewriting of history or the introduction of politically embedded properties to a stage (Gilbert et Tompkins 168).

Si une étude sur le silence se révèlerait être impertinente dans Protestants du fait de sa rareté dans l’œuvre, l’analyse de la musique à portée post-coloniale s’avère plus riche. A l’étude de la pièce, il ne nous aura point échappé la sensibilité de Welch pour l’art musical, notamment le gospel, le bluegrass, le blues et la musique country. En effet, l’auteur a choisi de ponctuer les interventions de son narrateur par des interludes musicaux, sans leur donner une fonction structurale particulière. Ainsi, si certaines chansons annoncent la scène suivante, ce n’est pas le cas pour d’autres. En revanche, les titres qu’il cite, directement inspirés de la musique afro-américaine pour la plupart, mettent particulièrement en lumière une volonté de se détacher des thèmes musicaux traditionnels d’Irlande du Nord. De la même façon, les instruments de musique qu’il nomme, tel le banjo (47), ne sont point les flûtes et tambours utilisés par les Orangistes protestants d’Ulster pour commémorer la victoire de Guillaume d’Orange sur les Catholiques. Cette stratégie répond donc à la nécessité de se détacher des représentations du protestantisme qui évoqueraient la violence. A travers cette insertion, Welch montre que le protestantisme est capable de transcendance musicale et d’ouverture.

Dans l’œuvre de Welch, la musique est également utilisée à des fins didactiques si l’on adopte un point de vue brechtien. Pour Brecht, la musique, qui n’illustre pas les scènes mais fait partie intégrante de l’action, a une résonance didactique dans la mesure où elle apporte découpage et fragmentation à l’œuvre afin de créer un effet de distanciation pour le spectateur. Brecht explique sa démarche expérimentale dans laquelle la musique occupe une place fondamentale en ces termes :

Another series of experiments that made use of theatrical effects […] led to the ‘Lehrstücke’, for which the nearest English equivalent I can find is the ‘learning-play’. [This includes] the use of music and of the chorus to supplement and vivify the action[s] on the stage […] so as to call for a critical approach, so that [the actions] would not be taken for granted by the spectator and would arouse him to think; it became obvious to him which were right actions and which were wrong ones. The learning play is essentially dynamic; its task is to show the world as it changes (and also as it maybe changed). (Brecht 79).

C’est pour cette raison que l’auteur inclut dès le début de la pièce la chanson de Van Morrison « Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child » parmi d’autres mélodies de musique country, bluegrass et de gospel dont il ne cite pas les titres de manière systématique. Cette chanson, dont le titre rappelle l’importance des origines, thème dominant de Protestants, est interprétée par un musicien nord-irlandais dont les performances sont réputées pour être expérimentales. Ce titre peut jouer le rôle de fil conducteur au sein de la pièce dans la mesure où il évoque la spiritualité (il était un chant spirituel des noirs américains) et où il reprend le thème principal de la pièce sans l’illustrer. Un autre exemple pertinent dans le cadre de notre démonstration : l’inclusion d’une mélodie irlandaise, dont le titre est en gaélique, au beau milieu de l’intervention de Elizabeth 1ère. Welch incorpore  « Ag Scaipendh na gCleiti » de Sean O Riada dans cette scène afin de créer un effet d’étrangeté, d’inattendu, visant à marquer la surprise du spectateur qui devra réagir. La musique est pour Brecht une façon de « faire sortir le spectateur du cours de l’intrigue, de dévoyer son attention. » (Banoun : 349). C’est ainsi que Welch l’utilise.

Le texte de Welch repose donc sur de multiples tensions. Le sujet ouvre la voie à la polémique, et la forme donne lieu au questionnement. Pourtant, le fond et la forme coïncident : ainsi nous trouvons de la cohérence au-delà des tensions et contrastes. L’objectif de l’auteur n’est pas de donner une définition du protestantisme. Selon Jane Coyle dans the Irish Times : « Protestants is not an end in itself. It is a provocative, mischievous spring board to wider discussion and debate, comparison and analysis » (Welch 73). C’est pourquoi, l’impact sur le public est très fort, la participation du public est vivement requise. Si l’expérience du protestantisme se fait de manière solitaire, la redéfinition de l’homme protestant doit se faire à l’aide du public pour Welch; la performance devant le public devient ainsi une technique de redéfinition à la fois du contenu et du théâtre. Ophelia Byrne considère que l’Irlande du Nord est entrée dans une nouvelle ère, post-conflit, annonciatrice de changements : « it is perhaps only now as Northern Ireland is beginning to move away from conflict that plays like this can perhaps be staged here, and that there is the space for them to emerge. » (Welch 69). Il est désormais possible d’inventer de nouvelles normes théâtrales inspirées de divers mouvements et théories pour le XXIème siècle en Irlande du Nord ; c’est pourquoi ces pièces expérimentales qui s’inscrivent au carrefour d’un discours post-colonial et néo-brechtien foisonnent aujourd’hui.

The post Au Carrefour du didactisme brechtien et de la résistance post-coloniale : Protestants (2004) de Robert Welch appeared first on The Postcolonialist.