Our latest call for papers, “Excitable Speech? Radical Discourse and the Limits of Freedom” sought to explore and question the notions of speech and open-ended discourse as “free,” and to challenge how dominant narratives are constructed and propagated. Despite the “free” and often overwhelming proliferation of ideas of the digital age, broad access has been paralleled by expansive moves towards censorship, both institutional and self-imposed, as well as the facile manipulation of information for personal or political gain. We have witnessed intense debate over the right to know and the right to tell, paired with tensions between individual rights and state interests often opposed to those of citizenry. Calls for expanded and disruptive dialogue have been a driving force behind sociopolitical movements that have taken excitable speech to the streets. Yet the concept of speech as something that can or should be unquestionably “free” and individualized may itself be an idea that privileges Western concepts of knowing, as other societies may prioritize speech and expression that encompass and serve the collective rather than the singular, or delineate vastly different lines between the public and the private.

Therefore, the featured pieces, ranging from academic research to poetry and photo essays, delve into the kinds of narratives and topics that are often elided, quieted, or subsumed, absorbed or refashioned under other more ‘acceptable’ or ‘mainstream’ speech and expression. These are topics that generate debate, or, alternately, are defined by absences that speak for themselves. Keivan Djavadzadeh’s piece “Colonialité du pouvoir, postcolonialité du rap: l’émergence et la repression d’un rap français structuré autour de la critique postcoloniale dans les années 2000,” posits that French rap of the present decade presents a rupture from rap of the 90’s, taking a more political and anti-colonial slant which has been criminalized in the public sphere, therefore paradoxically ensuring its place within postcolonial discourse and keeping its critiques salient. Ritu Mathur engages “fast feminism” in her analysis of widespread politics of the womb that deploy women’s reproductive capacity against them via gendered violence (with an emphasis on South Asia) in her piece “Excitable Speech and the Politics of the Womb: Wake up Grrrl!” Ana María Colling continues critiques of politics and gendered violence in a Brazilian context, outlining the fractures and impasses in discussing embedded gendered biases and practices in “Os impasses das questões de gênero e sexualidade no Brasil atual.”

Isolde Lecostey analyzes the role of satire and black humor in civil society and the challenge to describe or inscribe, align, or claim satire within national political discourse in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in her article “De l’humour noir aux caricatures : impensés d’une tradition satirique.” David Bélanger and Josefina Bueno Alonso each take different lenses to Michel Houellebecq’s controversial yet widely read novel Soumission, as Bélanger explores the limits of literature as a medium of unfettered expression, and Bueno Alonso deconstructs what she deems the mysoginist and Islamophobic imaginaries of “political fiction” in “Soumission de Houellebecq: ¿Islamófoba, decadente, o misógina?”

Our other pieces delve into the ideas of not only what is said, but the notion of how we say what we say assigns or takes away value, as well as the intrinsic power behind omissions and silences. Ann Deslandes questions the power dynamics and the role of the eyes behind the camera in her film review “Unsalting the Earth: Sebatião Salgado and Le sel de la terre,” while Fodei Batty provides a challenge and a counterpoint to pervasive representations of Africa via a vibrant and at times tongue in cheek photo essay of his native Sierra Leone, devoid of the prevalent poverty and despair images of the continent. His related piece also seeks to detour mainstream depiction, as “Braving Oceans: Migration and Subjective Illegality from the Pilgrim Fathers to the Boat Migrants,” provides an alternate assessment of mass movement of peoples, highlighting how those moving between spaces are imagined differently according to their site of origin.

The idea of language itself as that which stakes powerful claims to place and identity is explored in various works, such as “Writing Rites of Reclamation: Blackness and Caribbean Remembering” by Melanie Manuel Webb, which posits the act and ritual of writing as a reclamation of soul, self, and identity in the Caribbean context. By way of historical account as well as reclamation, Cruzhilda López draws upon her academic linguistic knowledge in her creation of an alphabetical, lexical explanation of Puerto Rico’s complex colonial history (and present) in her unique and timely piece “Represión, persecución y estrategia de lucha del independentismo puertorriqueño.” Sania Sufi beautifully highlights the epic nature of family narrative in her memoir “Dispatches from Lahore: The Importance of Politicized Ancestral Narratives,” which weaves together English and Urdu and brings to life both the wounds and beauty of pre-partition Pakistan and India through memories and images of her grandfather. Trihn Lo explores the linkages between content, form, and the expressive and creative act in her poem “À la naissance du sens.” Finally, Manash Bhattacharjee reminds us of the primal power of one’s native tongue, and what is lost and negotiated as multiple languages battle for primacy in the domestic as well as public space in his poem “Mother Tongue.”

Together, these pieces offer a glimpse into how language, narrative, and discourse are framed and reframed within numerous cultural and regional contexts, continually revising and interrogating the meaning of “free,” and refashioning the contours of “excitable” speech.

The post Letter from the Editors: “Excitable Speech? Radical Discourse and the Limits of Freedom” appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

I spent my summers growing up at my grandparent’s residence in Lahore, Pakistan. Every morning, despite the sleepless nights spent goofing around with my cousins, I was begrudgingly woken up by my mother and taken to the breakfast table. “Eat!” nanabu (maternal grandfather) would say, “This is halal!” Despite his repeated insistence, my American upbringing conditioned me not to stomach (pun intended) the lahori delicacy of siri paye, or the head and hooves of goat. I looked on; however, as I could tell how much enjoyment my beloved grandfather took in eating and also giving food to others. Perhaps feeding others freely was an acquired trait rooted in his impoverished past as a laborer in pre-partition Amritsar. As my cousins and I had compromised on minced meat sandwiches with butter slathered toast – made by nanabu himself, mind you – the lethargy from the previous night subsided as our oblong breakfast table in Lahore converted into an intellectual coffeehouse.

Despite having completed only a fifth grade education, Nanabu would recite poetry from memorization. My grandfather was not educated; he was knowledgeable. His intellectual prowess would today be castigated by western secular epistemology, which de-legitimizes knowledge rooted in indigenous and religious traditions, attained outside the context of an institution. Many of his favorite poems mirrored Eastern/Islamic philosophy or political thought. He revered Iqbal; many Muslim colonial subjects from the Punjab did. “Nanabu agar aap parh likhe hotey aap shayad Einstein bante! (If you finished school perhaps you would have become Einstein!)” I would tell him. “Nahi,” he would say, “mai kuch nahi hoon.” (No, I am nothing.) He carried himself with humility, a rare trait to be found these days. After all, such morals only serve to strengthen human beings, yet weaken citizenship, the central social identity defined by the nation-state and its restrictive parameters.

His room smelled of a hint of cigarettes, English toffee, and cologne. If I were to smell his sweater long enough today, I am able to place myself back in his room, twirling from his music collection to his books to his chairs and coffee table for his guests, whilst catching a whiff of that intoxicating scent. It is an odd combination of smells for a young girl to adore, but I loved it nonetheless. Much to our parents chagrin, my cousins and I would mimick nanabu — and not TV or billboard ads — as we held the perfectly crafted cigarette between our fingers. I don’t know why our parents hindered us from constantly barging in his room, it was clearly the most exhilarating! The man had an aura of magnetism around him, which his eight children and twenty-five plus grandchildren can attest – although I admit, we are perhaps biased. I have always felt that it was his undying belief in self and community empowerment which made him unique; he exuded an understated confidence. “Khudi ko kar buland itna kay har taqdeer se pehle khuda bande se pooche ‘bata teri raza kya hai? (Elevate yourself so high that before every decree, God asks you ‘What is your wish?’)” he would often remind us. Nanabu sought refuge and agency in Iqbal’s concept of khudi; it allowed him the political imagination to envision a future beyond an occupied existence. He was amongst the Muslim underclasses of British Punjab; an ordinary man. And yet, in this ordinary existence of odd-end jobs, political turmoil, and social isolation, his rigorous and continuous engagement with intellectual advancement made him extraordinary.

My poetry classes at the breakfast table were complemented by evening lectures and discussions surrounding classical Urdu and Punjabi ghazals, or lyrical poems set to music. Nanabu taught us to recognize enlightenment through various mediums – whether in music, human relationships, or poetry. My cousins and I would often tip-toe into his room, paanch (meaning ‘five,’ as the rooms of the house were numbered) and turn on his stereo system. We were disappointed when a click of the on button did not result in the latest Western pop music as it did on MTV India, however, later on in life we would appreciate the wisdom behind nanabu’s mystical collection of poetic ghazals. Faiz taught me the multiple meanings behind struggle, Habib Jalib and Ustad Daman became a language for those silenced, and the raags, or musical notes, accompanied by Ustad Barkat Ali Khan and Begum Akhtar allowed me to envisage love as a metaphor for a broader political and spiritual vision. There is a well-known phrase in Urdu related to the complex art of raising children: taaleem-o-tarbiyat. Nanabu’s tarbiyat, or upbringing, of his children is (hopefully) apparent in our commitment to ihsan (the Muslim responsibility to seek excellence in worship), and his instilling of taleem (education) is in our constant search for knowledge, which elevates human beings.

Besides being my respected elder and fashion inspiration, nanabu was also my go-to political analyst in Lahore. His morning routine consisted of feeding the animals in our front yard, followed by reading his newspaper in the garden. As a quiet yet curious teenager, I was eager to inform myself about the world, and so I asked nanabu if he would subscribe to the English language newspaper for me. We read our Urdu and English newspapers and mutually reflected knowledge based on our respective times. He brought in wisdom rooted in poetic politics and spirituality. I was the young woman who asked questions – still a daring concept in many contexts. After 9/11, I would inform him about the plight of American Muslims. As I detailed the stories of mass surveillance, detainment, and racial profiling, my capricious tone – sometimes reflecting anger, sometimes desolation – revealed my adolescent reaction to the extremity of the situation. Nanabu; however, would simply nod with a monotonous expression as if he was somehow familiar with the narrative of isolation. His wounds as an occupied subject of British colonialism allowed him to relate to and critique post-9/11 geopolitics. He would speak of the economic disenfranchisement of Muslims in colonial Punjab, for instance, as an integral component of occupation. While the economic condition of Muslims in post-9/11 American cannot act as a parallel, the ideologies of power and occupation still permeate political and social contexts. Nanabu understood such ideologies, their centrality to US Empire, and their influence in peripheral institutions. My camaraderie with my grandfather reflected what I yearned for in the US: a detailed critique of Empire and its consequences. Our conversations provided me with the intellectual vigor to examine politics not from the perspective of those in power, but from the sea of people whose existence and resistance serves as a reminder of the spiritual heights the human race is capable of.

Like soldiers returning after a sanguinary war, survivors of the colonial and partition era also embodied significant trauma. Life moved on for my grandfather and others, but they were never able to revert to the previous state; I’m not sure if my grandfather ever did. Despite wounds rooted in enforced poverty, violence, and war, nanabu also shared stories that represented kindness, human empathy, and the will to implement ihsaan, or good, which Islam teaches is a part of worship. There was a particularly special story in which nanabu remembered the benevolence and companionship provided to him, a young Muslim boy, by a newly wedded Sikh woman in his time of distress. During one of his odd jobs, he had to deliver a package to someone’s house. He couldn’t find the house; however, and came across a Sikh woman who — through her ghoongat, or uniquely styled scarf which gave away her identity as a new bride — spoke to him in Punjabi: “Veer, ai lo roti kha. Assi chadd awaan ge. (Brother, here eat some food. We will drop off the package.)  Nanabu remembered the softness in her voice sixty-five years later as he lay on his deathbed in post-partition Pakistan, her kindness remembered across newly drawn geopolitical lines.

The humanity exemplified in my grandfather’s story problematizes the orientalist tropes of the ‘intolerant’ Hindu, Sikh, or Muslim taught in prevailing westernized discourses. Indigenous narratives evoking memory of a South Asia once known for its interreligious harmony, political unity, and camaraderie challenges the matrix of Empire and client state patronage and thus acts as a politicized weapon of truth-telling and resistance.

In a way, my grandfather’s generation represented a lost tribe. Freedom, for them, was a glimmering memory of the past. And yet memories often have the power to reinvigorate the beauty and consciousness found within the collective human spirit. Pakistan was created in 1947, and my grandfather’s love for his land was spiritually kinetic. I often wish my grandfather and Edward Said could have met, as Said’s writing often follows a theme on homeland and displacement.[2] Nanabu’s sentiments can be explained by a simple truth: as the country grew, so did he. As Pakistan’s newly born population crafted statehood, nanabu immersed himself in Islamic intellectual history, poetry, and grew intellectually. As the country neared its fifth year, nanabu laid the foundations for his business and contributed to Pakistan’s industrial growth. And when our repackaged colonial ‘leaders’ sold the country in promises of multi-billion dollar deals and validation from western interests, nanabu’s lamenting sighs echoed those of Faiz in poetic form: Chale chalo, kay woh manzil abhi nahi aye (Let us go on, for that goal has not yet arrived). What else is there to describe about a traveller’s compassion towards his fellow traveler?

He was not a class theorist, yet his critiques on the subject were much more refined than those of the elites of the country. “Inka bhi dehan rakhna chahiye” (We should take care of them too), he told me once as he pointed to the servant staff in our house. As I grew older my interest in the family business piqued, and so I would ask nanabu questions about his employees — ‘approximately how many employees?’ ‘What is their pay?’ ‘Are there unions?’ While memories have faded, I recall him always prioritizing the rights of workers in his responses. He did this in other contexts as well; car rides home after meeting with relatives or friends were slightly daunting, as everyone anticipated nanabu’s interrogation sessions.‘Kithon aye ho? Khane kinney da si? Ik mazdoor di kamaai day barabar tussi Ik din da khana kha lita! (Where are you coming from? How much was dinner? The dinner you all ate was equivalent to a worker’s salary!’) He would ask this in a pre-partition Punjabi vernacular that now seems like a wistfully lost art. I dearly miss that line of questioning; it reminded me to live amongst the people.

Towards the end of his life nanabu found it difficult to speak due to illness. What was perhaps most difficult for his family, and presumably for him as well, was to witness the slow acquiescence of a man brimming with stories, travels, lessons, and other remnants of wisdom. South Asian women are the ones usually depicted as vivacious, with their rich clothing and jewelry – however my grandfather was no less colorful. On one August 14th, Pakistan’s independence day, in an effort to get my grandfather to speak, my mother asked him the obvious question. “Aaj chauda August hai abaii, aaj kera din ai? (Today is August 14th dad, what happened today?)” With eyes wide open and his neck lifting from his reclined state nanabu replied — in a rather confident and doting tone: “Pakistan bana tha! (Pakistan was made!)” I remember his love for homeland not as a cry for nationalism but rather as a profound trust in the fruits of liberation and struggle for justice.

Islamic philosopher Syed Naquib al Attas defines knowledge as an individual’s recognition of his/her place in God’s hierarchy of beings.[3] My grandfather was not a theologian, but rather an individual part of a sea of people who recognize their existence as spiritual beings with a collective commitment to pursue knowledge as a means to implement ihsan in worldly and spiritual affairs. Part of this commitment also entails restoring the balance of tawheed, or oneness of God and His creation, within the self and greater society. Nanabu was not without flaws, but that is exactly the point. Iranian intellectual Ali Shariati says that human beings are constantly migrating – migrating within the soul – which parallels jihad al akbar, or the greater struggle with one’s ego.[4] He embodied a constant struggle: as a subject of a colonial occupation, as a laborer, as a self and community taught thinker, and as a self-made industrialist.

A month ago I sat in a mosque nanabu had built in Sheikhpura, a small industrial village on the outskirts of Lahore. I offered the early afternoon prayer, and as my forehead met with the carpet I thought about the significance behind such an act. In an age of modernity, where the technologies of progress are constantly defined by the self, my prayer represented the antithesis of what we call progress. That act of prostration, that dire need for the spirit to find its way home, represents sagely wisdom lost amidst today’s talk of progress. My grandfather’s praxis represented a softer revolution: to realign the soul with its Divine origin. The memory of him embodying khudi and revolutionary love is with me today, and continues to remind me of the deeper imperative to decolonize and indigenize collective political systems, but also individual hearts and minds as well.

The post Dispatches from Lahore: The Importance of Politicized Ancestral Narratives appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

As modulações discursivas do pensamento filosófico e suas articulações com outros discursos como o religioso, médico, psicológico, psicanalítico, pedagógico, etc., transformaram-se em práticas que irão afetar a sociedade como um todo, instituindo um modelo de homem e de mulher, e de relação entre eles. Inaugurando as redes discursivas sobre a desigualdade entre os sexos, o filósofo grego Aristóteles em uma obra monumental, descreveu a diferença entre os animais machos e fêmeas, inclusive homens e mulheres. Demonstra que as mulheres tem a voz mais fina, os pelos mais ralos e que  morrem antes dos homens. Mas, o mais importante desta obra, e que será utilizado como desqualificação do feminino,  são os estudos sobre o tamanho dos cérebros. A mulher, segundo o filósofo, possui um cérebro menor do que o homem. Durante muito tempo, essa diferença foi utilizada para impedir que as mulheres estudassem, trabalhassem etc. Também foi um importante referencial na feitura dos códigos napoleônicos e do Código Civil Brasileiro para torná-las incapazes, subordinadas ao homem, tido como racional e capaz.

A historiografia acompanhou este movimento de silenciamentos e desqualificação de sujeitos Ao longo do tempo escreveu sobre os feitos das camadas dominantes e silenciou a grande parte da população. As versões históricas do passado giraram em torno do sujeito masculino, heterossexual, branco das camadas privilegiadas. A presença feminina, assim como a indígena e a negra sempre foi registrada ocasionalmente, especialmente quando fugia dos padrões de comportamento estabelecidos.

Quando acabou o sistema escravista em 1888, uma mancha vergonhosa na história do Brasil, poucos efeitos sentiram as mulheres. No ano seguinte, com o  fim do Império e o advento da República, elas não foram alçadas à categoria de cidadãs pela nova constituição e continuaram relativamente incapazes pelo Código Civil de inspiração napoleônica.

A mudança inicia no Brasil, assim como no restante do mundo, a partir do movimento feminista, demanda social e política, responsável pelas conquistas das mulheres. As universidades e as editoras agora viam com bons olhos trabalhos sobre a emancipação feminina. As universidades começaram a receber mulheres, inicialmente como alunas e depois em seus quadros profissionais, e consequentemente novas pesquisas envolvendo estas novas questões e novos sujeitos foram se multiplicando. Mas, apesar do longo caminho percorrido, do reconhecimento de novos objetos como o poder, o corpo, o cotidiano, a sexualidade, a vida privada, a situação das  mulheres e das relações de gênero ainda enfrentam desafios e impasses. Mesmo com incentivos públicos através do fomento às pesquisas, as diversas áreas do saber continuam encarando com desconforto a inserção feminina como agente histórica e sua incorporação, assim como os demais sujeitos excluídos, ao protagonismo histórico.

Novas perspectivas de pesquisa tem ocupado importantes espaços acadêmicos no Brasil. A ANPUH, Associação Nacional de História, possui Grupos  temáticos de Gênero para socializar e debater as pesquisas realizadas pelos historiadores/as brasileiros/as.  Reunidos/as a cada ano os/as pesquisadores/as apresentam temáticas  múltiplas e diversificadas, e uma preocupação é constante: como ultrapassar o gueto historiográfico e  incorporar a perspectiva de gênero na forma de pensar a história e o conhecimento histórico. Novos campos de pesquisa histórica, além de mulheres, sexualidades, feminismos, corpos, etc., são incorporados ao debate como masculinidades, maternidade/paternidade, famílias, homossexualidades, etc.

Também no Brasil ocorre a cada dois anos, desde 1994,  o Seminário Internacional Fazendo  Gênero, em Florianópolis. Sua característica é a interdisciplinaridade, reunindo intelectuais das mais variadas áreas do conhecimento.  A última edição reuniu 4.033 especialistas para discutir gênero, feminismos, mulheres, masculinidades, sexualidades, etc. As temáticas abordadas nos trabalhos apresentados  de maior incidência foram mídia, etnia/raça, memória e corpo.

No campo da educação a questão de gênero também tem assumido um caráter emergencial e urgente, entendendo que a escola é um lugar de demarcação do feminino e do masculino e o estabelecimento das desigualdades de gênero. Se ela produziu hierarquias e sujeições entre os sexos, pode agora produzir relações igualitárias e democráticas. Os novos arranjos familiares, as novas parentalidades, as novas sexualidades tem batido à porta das escolas, que muitas vezes se mostra arredia. Apesar da importância destes estudos, no mês de junho do corrente ano, foram debatidos e votados os Planos de Educação, à nível nacional, estadual e municipal. Em quase todos eles foi retirada a questão de gênero, isso a partir de argumentos baseados em preconceitos.

O estudos das masculinidades e dos movimentos LGBTTTs (lésbicas, gays, bissexuais, transexuais e transgêneros),  encontraram nos estudos de gênero um campo fértil para seus estudos. Hoje no Brasil, os eventos que discutem  gênero, recebem uma grande quantidade de  trabalhos que analisam as questões de identidade e sexualidade e das orientações sexuais  discriminadas.

Também aparecem como novas perspectivas de pesquisa a articulação dos estudos  de gênero  com a crítica pós-colonialista (análise dos efeitos não somente políticos, mas filosóficos e históricos deixados pelos países colonizadores nos países colonizados).  Estas estudiosas e estudiosos, entendem que será  a partir das margens e não do centro a construção de um novo projeto de sociedade, pois a  crítica pós-colonial tenta recuperar as vozes dos silenciados pelo colonizador.

Em contrapartida, o Brasil está vivendo uma situação paradoxal em relação às questões de gênero e das sexualidades, tanto no campo público como privado. Ao mesmo tempo em que viveu os avanços do movimento feminista, como em todo o mundo ocidental, carrega a herança colonial machista. Nos dois últimos anos tem regredido assustadoramente nas questões dos direitos das mulheres e dos homossexuais, transexuais e transgêneros.

As propostas de combate à desigualdade e discriminação, como o kit anti-homofobia, material didático produzido pelo Ministério da Educação,  com o objetivo de auxiliar as escolas na educação igualitária, são impedidas pela bancada evangélica, numerosa no Congresso Nacional. Conservadora e moralista barra todas as discussões relacionadas às questões corpo, à sexualidade, especialmente à homossexualidade. Também são barradas as propostas de  descriminalização do aborto, apesar dos abortos clandestinos serem a  causa da morte de milhares de  mulheres. Segundo dados da Pesquisa Nacional do Aborto feita em 2010 uma em cada cinco  mulheres fez aborto até os 40 anos de idade  no Brasil. Tudo que diz respeito ao corpo, à sexualidade, especialmente à homossexualidade, causa pavor  nos políticos  conservadores e moralistas.[1]

O fato de termos uma presidenta mulher, pela primeira vez na história do Brasil,  não significa que estamos salvos do pensamento machista sacralizado em nossa sociedade. Pelo contrário, tem colocado à nú a ideologia ou pensamento do que pensam brasileiros e brasileiras sobre a participação da mulher na política. Isso é comprovado em episódios como nas passeatas ocorridas  no mês de maio, organizadas pela oposição à presidenta Dilma Roussef.  Por todo o país, liam-se os cartazes denegrindo a imagem da presidenta a partir de marcação de gênero. O mais sério, baixando de vez o nível da aceitabilidade ou conivência, foi a feitura de adesivos misóginos, feitos para vender, e que foram  denunciados pela Secretaria de Polícias para Mulheres. Os adesivos com o rosto da presidenta numa montagem no corpo de uma mulher jovem e de pernas abertas, tinha como finalidade ser colado na entrada de combustível dos automóveis. Ela seria penetrada pela bomba de combustível.

Segundo as investigações, a autora dos adesivos seria uma mulher, demonstrando que os discursos machistas atuam de maneira tão efetiva que incorporam-se em homens e mulheres. Se admitirmos que a violência simbólica se exerce prioritariamente sobre as mulheres, não poderemos supor que baste ser mulher para se ter uma visão libertadora das mulheres. A visão feminina é uma visão dominada, colonizada, que não consegue ver a si mesma com autonomia. Segundo Pierre Bourdieu, “é preciso descolonizar o feminino”.

O Brasil tem apresentado ou simplesmente escancarado sua face machista e racista como nunca em sua história. Apesar de ser um país mestiço, pardo, a desigualdade entre brancos e  negros  e pardos é abissal. As cotas para afro-descendentes nas universidades brasileiras ainda são motivo de debates calorosos. A elite branca não aceita ter que dividir vagas nas universidades e empregos, e não consegue entender que para acertar o futuro precisa acertar as contas com seu passado.  A união da desigualdade de gênero, com a desigualdade de raça, ainda é muito presente na sociedade brasileira.

Um caso paragdimático de um país que não consegue apagar as marcas da escravidão, apesar do abolicionismo ter acontecido oficialmente em 1888, gerou protestos, recentemente, escancarando a hipocrisia da igualdade racial brasileira. Uma repórter negra, da mais importante emissora de televisão brasileira,  recebeu centenas de agressões nas redes sociais que diziam entre outras agressões, “onde posso comprar esta escrava?”, “não bebo café para não ter intimidade com o preto”, preta macaca”, “só conseguiu emprego pelas cotas”, etc. O caso foi amplamente noticiado e discutido por diversos segmentos. Esse episódio nos faz refletir sobre quantas mulheres negras brasileiras, especialmente pobres, escutam diariamente estes impropérios, mas, por não se tratar de uma personagem midiática não alcançam a proporção desse caso.

Soma-se a isso uma Câmara de deputados onde a maioria é extremamente conservadora, não somente no plano político, mas no plano moral e dos avanços nas questões de gênero e sexualidade. Poucas deputadas e senadoras são eleitas para o Congresso nacional e as eleitas passam muitas vezes por cenas constrangedoras e de desacato às suas pessoas. Há poucos dias um deputado torceu o braço de uma colega deputada, que ao exigir providências ao ato de agressão, ouviu de outro deputado “mulher que participa de política e bate como homem tem que apanhar como homem”. São somente 51 mulheres no total de 513 deputados e 13 em 81 senadores. Segundo dados da ONU, o Brasil ocupa o 124º lugar entre os que têm maior  número de mulheres na política.

Mas, o maior impasse entre os avanços da igualdade de gênero, é a sua radical desigualdade – a violência contra a mulher. Apesar das leis igualitárias como a Constituição de 1988, o novo Código Civil (2002) e a Lei Maria da Penha (2006), o Programa   ‘Mulher, Viver sem Violência’ (2013), a  violência, questão de saúde pública,  continua de uma forma crescente. Estas leis igualitárias são fundamentais, assim como outros dispositivos e  discursos para a mudança comportamental, mas sozinhas se transformam em letras mortas. Como mudar uma sociedade que desqualifica de todas as formas  o feminino e aqueles que não correspondem à heteronormatividade?

A história da violência contra a mulher no Brasil e a sua naturalização é longa. As constituições tratavam a mulher como uma quase nada, os códigos  que permitiam castigar a mulher e até assassiná-la ainda estão presentes no imaginário masculino e feminino devido a sua longevidade e pelos diversos discursos legitimadores reproduzidos na sociedade. Esses discursos são potentes e envolvem alguns mitos. Demonstrando essa realidade a pesquisa intitulada “Tolerância social à violência contra as mulheres”, realizada  em 2013 e publicada em março de 2014 pelo IPEA [2],   assustou o Brasil. Respondendo a questão “mulher que é agredida e continua com o parceiro gosta de apanhar” teve como respostas 42,7% que concordaram totalmente e 22,4% que concordaram parcialmente. Um alto índice de entrevistados declarou que a mulher provoca seus agressores, ou pela vestimenta, ou pelo comportamento. O alarmente  é que as mulheres consistiram no  maior número das entrevistadas, 66%.

O ano de 1979, marcou a vitória do movimento  feminista contra a impunidade destes assassinatos, tidos como crimes da paixão. Durante o julgamento de Doca Street pelo assassinato de sua companheira  Ângela Diniz, ocorrido em 1976,  surgiram pela primeira vez manifestações feministas contra  a impunidade em casos de assassinatos de mulheres por homens. De vítima, Ângela passou a ser acusada de “denegrir os bons costumes”, “ter vida desregrada”, “ser mulher de vida fácil”. Era como se o assassino tivesse livrado a sociedade inteira de um indivíduo que punha em risco a moral da família brasileira. As feministas organizadas conseguiram reverter o processo e o assassino foi condenado.  Surge deste episódio o lema “Quem ama não mata”  que acabou se transformando numa  minissérie de televisão, com altíssima audiência.

A urgência de se atuar contra todo o tipo de violência da qual a mulher é vítima, emerge como ideia no Encontro feminista de Valinhos, São Paulo, em junho de 1980, com a recomendação da criação de centros de autodefesa. O SOS Mulher traduziu-se na criação das Delegacias Especiais para Atendimento de Mulheres Vítimas de Violência. A primeira implementada em 1985 em São Paulo,  serve como modelo e a partir daí irradiam-se no restante do país.

Incrementação importantíssima na luta contra a impunidade foram estas delegacias, porque muitas vezes a polícia transformava o interrogatório das vítimas numa verdadeira tortura, desconfiando da inocência da mulher e até manifestando uma certa cumplicidade com o comportamento do agressor. As raras queixas, as dificuldades de prova e a estigmatização da vítima sempre foram componentes que transformaram o crime da violação feminina em assunto doméstico e pessoal.

Nas últimas três décadas, o número de mulheres assassinadas triplicou no país. Para coibir essa violência em 2006 foi criada a  Lei Maria da Penha. Esta Lei além de criar mecanismos para barrar a violência, dispõe sobre a criação de Juizados de violência doméstica e familiar contra a mulher, altera o Código de processo penal, o Código penal e a Lei de execução penal. A Lei Maria da Penha possibilita que os agressores sejam presos em flagrante ou tenham prisão preventiva detectada, quando ameaçam a integridade física da mulher. Prevê também medidas de proteção para a mulher que corre risco de vida, como a afastamento do agressor do domicilio e a proibição de sua proximidade física junto à mulher agredida e seus filhos. Nomeia as formas de violência, não somente física, como  psicológica, sexual, patrimonial e moral, independente de orientação sexual.

Segundo dados do Mapa da Violência de 2012,  dos 70.270 atendimentos de mulheres em 2010, em todo o país, 71,8% foram dentro da residência das vítimas, sendo o companheiro o principal agressor. Cresce o número de assassinatos de ex-mulheres, ex-namoradas, ex-amantes que após separadas,  não querem voltar para o companheiro. Entre janeiro e junho de 2013, a central de atendimento á mulher – ligue 180[3] – contabilizou 306.201 registros de mulheres que ousaram denunciar agressões sofridas, aumentando para 3.364.633 o número total de atendimentos computados desde a implantação da Lei Maria da Penha. Vemos que o aumento de registros de abusos e violências foi imenso após 2006. Sabemos que os casos não aumentaram, mas as mulheres sentiram-se encorajadas em denunciar.

No primeiro semestre de 2014, segundo balanço divulgado pela Secretaria de Políticas para as Mulheres da Presidência da República, foram registrados mais de 300 mil atendimentos. A maior parte das ligações foi sobre relatos de violência física, seguida de violência psicológica, moral, sexual, patrimonial, cárcere privado e tráfico de pessoas. Em 83,8% dos relatos de violência, o agressor era o companheiro, cônjuge, namorado ou ex-companheiro da vítima. Quase 60% das mulheres agredidas tinham 20 a 39 anos, 62% não dependiam financeiramente do agressor e 82,7% eram mães.

Segundo esta mesma Secretaria,  uma mulher sofre violência a cada 12 segundos no Brasil. A cada 2 minutos cinco mulheres são espancadas, e a cada 2 horas (em algumas estatísticas 1 hora e meia) uma mulher é assassinada no Brasil. Esses são os números apresentados pelo Ministério da Saúde que colocam o país em 12º lugar no ranking mundial de homicídios de mulheres vitimadas por parentes, maridos, namorados, ex-companheiros ou homens que se acharam no direito de agredi-las. Um dado alarmante é o envolvimento de crianças que presenciam os casos de violência, que no ano que passou de 64% dos casos. E estudos demonstram que crianças que sofrem ou presenciam violência tendem a ser violentas no futuro, pois naturalizam estes atos.

A violência contra as mulheres é historicamente naturalizada, conservando o estatuto da defesa da honra masculina estabelecido no Código Civil de 1917, que teve vida muito longa, e que transformava a mulher em um quase nada. Herança cruel do patriarcado, ainda presente no corpo social. As Constituições brasileiras, com exceção da carta cidadã de 1988, desconsideravam a mulher como sujeitos, contribuindo com a construção do discurso machista arraigado na sociedade.

Muito há para fazer no campo dos discursos e das práticas. Das práticas discursivas e não discursivas que nos falava Michel Foucault. O empoderamento feminino é tarefa urgente. Não é mero acaso ser o Brasil o país do mundo em que as mulheres mais fazem cirurgia plástica, assim como serem 75% dos consumidores de remédios psiquiátricos. Apesar das leis igualitárias, das pesquisas acadêmicas, da atuação das ONGS (Organizações Não Governamentais) o impasse continua: como transformar a cultura que aprendeu como verdade a desqualificação do feminino?

The post Os impasses das questões de gênero e sexualidade no Brasil atual appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

“…the upshot is that while we now feel we know nearly everything that African states societies, economies, are not, we still know absolutely nothing about what they actually are…” (Mbembe 2001:9)

Introduction

This collection of photographs, taken during recent visits to my native Sierra Leone, are part of a continuing effort to help others see a bit more of the everyday in Africa through my subjective eyes –behind the objective lens of a camera, of course.

The images are not intended to (UN)change anyone’s perceptions of the beautiful, diverse, and vibrant continent of over fifty(50) separate, independent countries that constitute AFRICA.

Such (r)evolutions are best left to western media and (ma)paternalistic observers who continue to distill their (in)versions of Africa.

We, Africans, do not often get the opportunity (or take the time?) to interpret the sights or sounds of our countries, as we see fit, in order to resist the uniform exaggerations of an exotic, faraway place ravaged by poverty, starvation, disease and conflict.

As Mbembe asserts, “… there is language that every comment by an African about Africa must endlessly eradicate, validate, or ignore, often to his/her cost, the ordeal whose erratic fulfillment many Africans have spent their lives trying to prevent…” (Mbembe 2001:5).

Everything takes place within the context or contours of the preceding or existing discourse.

Hopefully, these glimpses do not nullify that greater purpose…

********

All photographs courtesy of Fodei Batty

Ships docked at the Queen Elizabeth II Quay in Freetown, Sierra Leone — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

Any Postcolony without a port to exploit its resources is not worthy of its misery

Although the Queen Elizabeth II quay is said to have one of the world’s deepest natural harbors, the presence of such a fine seaport has only expedited the exploitation of Sierra Leone’s natural resources by various multinational mining companies who use its fine services to ship commodities out of the country.

An Australian’s best friend: Diamonds from Sierra Leone — Bo, southern Sierra Leone

You, too, want a piece of me? An Australia diamond merchant seeks his fortune in the Postcolony.

Winners of Chinese Language Scholarships at the University of Sierra Leone — Mount Aureol, Sierra Leone, July 2015

From North-South to South-South domination? These students at the University of Sierra Leone were the “lucky few” who won scholarships to study the Chinese language at universities across China. They will be excellent speakers of the Chinese language, for the future.

Chinese car dealership in Freetown, Sierra Leone — Lumley, Freetown Sierra Leone, July 2015

The Great Wall goes South: Chinese car dealership in Freetown

Chinese merchants in Freetown, Sierra Leone — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

The Chinese are busy in Africa. Here a Chinese expatriate family hangs out in front of their store in Freetown as their employees also lounge rather idly nearby

On Umbrellas… — Lumley Market, Freetown Sierra Leone, July 2015

…and on Jerry cans: President Obama is the Midas Touch in Sierra Leone — Construction site, Freetown Sierra Leone, July 2015

Sierra Leone is a place in search of heroes and inspirational figures. Most Sierra Leoneans tend to look elsewhere because examples of good leadership within the country are rare. Hence, President Obama’s popularity across the country. Everything emblazoned with his name is an instant bestseller. The photograph of an umbrella carrying President Obama’s name next to a woman carrying her wares on her head and his name on a jerrycan are all evidence of the president’s popularity.

From Virginia to Sierra Leone: With Love? — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

A huge market for used cars; you cannot miss America’s finest anywhere you go on the streets of Freetown

Gifts to the Postcolony: Trojan Horses? — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

A popular sign across the developing world, all USAID-funded projects carry the questionable phrase “from the American People.” This one was stamped on a wall commemorating American support for a project preventing bush fires in the Postcolony.

Warscapes and Mercedes Benzes in Kenema, Sierra Leone — Kenema, eastern Sierra Leone, July 2015

Even though the war ended thirteen years ago, the landscape across Sierra Leone is still littered with the bitter memories of war –warscapes

Headscratcher: Office of Nuclear Safety, in Sierra Leone? — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

The postcolony is rife with contradictions. The sign on this building made for one head scratching moment. Nuclear energy in a state that has not found a way to provide sufficient thermal or hydroelectric energy to its people a century after the invention of electricity?

The sign on this nearly decrepit building in the heart of Freetown says it all: BE SMART! — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

Philadelphia Medical Clinic in Sierra Leone: another sign that says it all — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

Road Crossing Sign on the street of Freetown — Lumley, Freetown Sierra Leone, July 2015

This sign struck me as quite ironic because the constant flow of traffic does not allow children to cross the road safely on this busy street in the west of Freetown.

Total Domination in/of the Postcolony — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

A Total gas station. Next to residential dwellings…

The lifestyles of the rich and shameless contrast sharply with others: a mansion in Freetown — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2012

Hardly do structures such as this make it into the pages of western media. There is, in fact, a direct correlation between the construction of mansions such as this one and the misery of the people. The more mansions rise, the more the misery of the people increases.

Not a mud hut in sight! Juba Hills, Freetown, Sierra Leone — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2012

You see what you want to see in the postcolony. There are mud huts, diseases and poverty galore but there is also what you see above. In some cases, those who live here are responsible for the conditions of those who live where capitalist western media would like to divert your attention.

More mansions blend into lush foliage around the hills of Freetown — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2012

And then there is this one, also in Freetown, Sierra Leone: Not your average mud hut? — Freetown, Sierra Leone. April 2007.

A street scene in Freetown, Sierra Leone — Freetown, Sierra Leone. April 2007.

There is also the everyday.

Ingenuity — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2012.

Ingenuity is evident everywhere on the streets of Freetown. This is the postcolony, after all.

In a mud hut in eastern Sierra Leone – November 2006.

Perception is not reality. I could choose to show you the above…

Beautiful sunset along Lumley Beach, Freetown Sierra Leone — Freetown, Sierra Leone, circa 2007

…this beautiful sunset

*****

So, you see? My photographs have just played tricks on you by showing you the AFRICA that I want to show you! Perception is not reality…

The post (Alter)Native Lens: Seeing my Sierra Leone like a Postcolony appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

Ya motivados por dicho estudio, nos interesamos mucho más por el léxico de la política puertorriqueña, en especial, las innovaciones léxicas en cada cuatrienio electoral. Iniciamos, entonces, la recopilación de artículos periodísticos relacionados con dicho tema y en 1984 nos sorprendió la creatividad lingüística en esas elecciones. Para citar un ejemplo simple pensemos en el fenómeno del melonismo o más específicamente el voto melón: Se dice del elector afiliado al Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (PIP), pero que vota por el Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) para detener la ofensiva anexionista. Se le compara con esta fruta, porque es verde por afuera (color que identifica al PIP) asimismo rojo por dentro (color con el cual se reconoce el PPD).

Otro ejemplo emblemático es  cangrimán. Voz con la cual fueron conocidos un grupo de congresistas estadounidenses que visitaron el País en 1910. Los isleños los llamaron “cangrimanes” por confusión con el inglés “congressman”. En la propaganda política de las elecciones 2004, vuelve a utilizarse el término (Véase el discurso  Ante el engaño y represión, dignidad  y perseverancia, Rubén Berríos).

Aclaramos, antes de pasar al análisis léxico-político, que algunas voces se apartan del tema seleccionado en el título del ensayo: represión, persecución y estrategia de lucha. Las hemos incluido ya que nos parece pertinente por la alta frecuencia de uso y por la trascendencia adquirida en la realidad puertorriqueña.

Sin más preámbulos, recordemos que “tutte le parole possono  diventare termini politici , se sono usate in una situazione politica ” (Maurizio Dardano1981:150).

abstencionismo. Práctica de abstención en el proceso electoral. En algunos partidos y agrupaciones de izquierda, el a. es una forma de protesta al status quo. Puede utilizarse en relación a otras actividades políticas no eleccionarias.

activista comunitario. Oscar López Rivera, el a. c. que el 29 de mayo de 2015, cumplió 34 años de prisión en cárceles estadounidenses;  por el único delito de luchar por la independencia de su País. Oscar, después de su experiencia militar en Vietnam, se convirtió en un luchador muy activo en las comunidades puertorriqueñas  de la metrópolis. En 1981, fue acusado por ser miembro de una organización militar clandestina  independentista. Condenado por ello a 55 años por conspiración terrorista , aún permanece en  prisión.  En estos momentos, es el prisionero político más antiguo del hemisferio occidental. Pero, diversos sectores del pueblo puertorriqueño han emprendido una campaña nacional e internacional por su excarcelación: Se pide el indulto al Presidente Obama.

albizuismo. Ideología y estrategia política-revolucionaria seguida por  Pedro Albizu Campos  y los afiliados al Partido Nacionalista Puertorriqueño en el periodo de 1930 a 1950.

amordazar. (De mordaza). Silenciar o reprimir con violencia actuaciones políticas o sociales en que se usen los símbolos de la Patria. Impedir hablar o expresarse libremente a todas las voces independentistas o nacionalistas del País.

anexionismo criollo. Asimilación e integración (como estado 51) a la federación norteamericana que postulan los simpatizantes del Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP).  El a. c. propone, además, la preservación de nuestro idioma, cultura e identidad puertorriqueña, los cuales no están sujetos a negociación. En las elecciones de 2004 y 2008, el adjetivo “criollo” fue perdiendo vigencia.

asimilismo colonial. Tendencia política que pretende destruir o sustituir la identidad cultural puertorriqueña por la estadounidense.

antimilitarismo. Oposición a la presencia y al programa militar obligatorio del  ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Course) en las instituciones universitarias del País. Como consecuencia de esta lucha decenas de estudiantes fueron expulsados y suspendidos de sus estudios. Hoy día el ROTC se establece fuera del campus universitario y se ofrece como curso electivo o voluntario.

asistencialismo. Se dice de la dependencia económica impuesta a las masas populares y otros en esta economía colonial  (v. también mentalidad cuponera).

boricua mutante. Dicho de una persona que sufre mutación de identidad. Que por su vehemente y absoluta lealtad al sistema y a la nación norteamericana se aleja de sus raíces; por tanto su sello de identidad tiene muy pocas huellas de puertorriqueñidad  (Juan Mari Brás), (v. también pitiyanqui).

cacería de brujas. Locución que se acuñó para describir la persecución y represión de todo aquél que resultara sospechoso de preferir la independencia. Como consecuencia de dicha cacería, “los candidatos para puestos políticos  se removían a tenor con las reglamentaciones federales. Liberales prominentes, entre los que se contaba Jorge Font Saldaña… , fueron obligados a  abandonar sus cargos por  haber establecido un pequeño grupo con el nombre de Renovación” (Thomas Mathews 1975:266).

cadete de la República. Perteneciente o militante del nacionalismo albizuista. Vestían de negro y recibían un entrenamiento militar.

carpeta. Nominativo con el cual se conoció la práctica del gobierno y la policía de Puerto Rico de crear expedientes a todo aquel ciudadano que por su afiliación o creencias políticas de izquierda se consideraba subversivo. El Tribunal Supremo de la Isla declaró ilegal e inconstitucional tal práctica, pero “la decisión del Tribunal no alcanzó a las agencias investigativas de los EE. UU. en Puerto Rico. En consecuencia, los actos ilegales del FBI y sus colaboradores continúan  impunes” (Luis Nieves Falcón 2009:197).

Cerro Maravilla. El asesinato de los jóvenes Arnaldo Darío Rosado y Carlos Soto Arriví en el C.M. el 25 de julio de 1978, “fue un acto provocado y ejecutado por la policía de Puerto Rico, sin que mediara justa causa y con la intención específica de quitarles la vida. El crimen de Cerro Maravilla fue planificado por miembros de la policía, quienes tomaron la decisión de dar muerte a los jóvenes por la única razón de que éstos fueron vinculados a actividades relacionadas con el movimiento independentista en la Isla” (Nieves Falcón 2009: 158-159).

Claridad. Esta publicación – un pequeño boletín –  aparece en la realidad política de la Isla en 1959. Empieza en forma muy artesanal, esto es, hecho en un mimeógrafo. Se inicia por acuerdo del Comité Organizador del Movimiento Pro- Independencia, y sus fundadores fueron dos grandes de la lucha independentista: César Andreu Iglesias y Juan Mari Brás.

En su primer aniversario, y no obstante las dificultades iniciales, se convirtió en la voz del independentismo tanto en Puerto Rico como en Estados Unidos. Por miles razones, no pudo seguir publicándose diariamente, y en los años setenta se convirtió en semanario.  Recuérdese los intentos que se hicieron para eliminarlo. Pero, Claridad sobrevivió y actualmente es valorizado como “El Periódico de la Nación Puertorriqueña” (v. Paralitici 2004:190;  Mari Brás 2006:135-138).

colonialismo puertorriqueñista. Estrategia de dominación impuesta al colonizado. Consiste ésta en reconocerle su identidad latina, así como idioma, bandera y otros símbolos patrios (Véase el ensayo crítico Posmodernos, neomelones y neoconservadores: respuesta a Carlos Pabón, Ramón Grosfoguel).

colonialismo “light”. Se dice de los sectores del Partido Popular Democrático que en pro de la derrota del Partido Nuevo Progresista piden a todos los independentistas el voto melón. Este sector desea mantener el status quo colonial  (Estado Libre Asociado) o la Libre Asociación Soberana permanentemente, pero exigirán a la metrópolis más autonomía.

confusión permanente. Frase acuñada por Rubén Berríos para describir el sistema colonial del País: dos banderas, dos himnos. Sin embargo, el pueblo escogió curiosamente otros dos himnos: Preciosa  de Rafael Hernández  y  Verde Luz  de Antonio Cabán (El Topo).  Esto es evidente en las actividades deportivas y músico-culturales.

diáspora boricua. Se dice de los tres y medio  o  cuatro millones de  residentes de origen puertorriqueño establecidos en Estados Unidos. También son conocidos como los nuyoricans o niuyoricans;  indiferentemente del estado donde residan.

espanglish. La lengua creada por la diáspora boricua como identidad y signo de resistencia.

espionaje doméstico. Dicho del control que ejercen las agencias federales en la Isla: FBI, CIA  y sus colaboradores.

estadidad jíbara. Sintagma nominal creado por el ex gobernador de  Puerto Rico Luis A. Ferré  en las elecciones de 1976. En las elecciones de 2004 y 2008, el  adjetivo “jíbara” pierde  vigencia (v. también anexionismo criollo).

Frente Puertorriqueñista. Coalición  constituida por sectores independentistas y autonomistas para detener la amenaza del anexionismo: evidente ésta en el triunfo electoral del PNP en 1968 y 1976.

Gran Jurado.  La institución del G. J. tiene su origen en Gran Bretaña. Trasladada  a  Estados Unidos, y después de la independencia , se incluyó dentro de la Quinta Enmienda de la Constitución. “En Puerto Rico …, se  ha utilizado principalmente contra el independentismo desde la década del treinta, cuando Juan Antonio Corretjer fue encarcelado por un año por negarse a entregar documentos del Partido Nacionalista  en 1936” ( Paralitici 2004: 362).

Grito de Lares. La conmemoración  del  Grito de Lares - 23 de septiembre del 1868 contra el imperio español – fue y sigue siendo una ingeniosa táctica que ayudó  a crear continuidad en la lucha por la independencia. Fue el Partido Nacionalista y Albizu Campos quienes iniciaron esta conmemoración.

hoyo. Práctica punitiva en la cárcel federal por parte de la Marina de Guerra  de EE. UU. en Vieques. Consistía en “aislar al preso en una cárcel pequeña y solitaria para castigar aún más los desobedientes  civiles” (Nieves Falcón 2009:203).

indulto incondicional.  Acción mediante la cual se libera a un prisionero antes de cumplir su condena, sin que esta liberación esté sujeta a reglas específicas. El i. inc. fue otorgado, en septiembre 1979, a cinco miembros del  Partido Nacionalista Puertorriqueño: Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andrés Figueroa, Irving Flores Rodríguez  y Oscar Collazo. Los nacionalistas habían cumplido una larga condena a raíz del ataque, por ellos perpetrado, al Congreso de los Estados Unidos y la Casa Blair en los años cincuenta.

jaibería. Se dice de “la estrategia existencial  para sobrevivir  en una situación de dependencia y marginación” (Juan M. García Passalacqua 1993: 58).

jaula de perro. Práctica punitiva de la Marina de Guerra de Estados Unidos en Vieques. Los desobedientes civiles “fueron encerrados, por largas horas, en jaulas malolientes, con espacios reducidos, sin techos, divididos o separados por verjas de alambre eslabonado” (Nieves Falcón 2009: 202).

Ley de cabotaje. Ordenanza mediante la cual Puerto Rico está obligado a utilizar (para su comercio) barcos de matrícula y construcción estadounidense, los más caros del Mundo.

Ley de Comercio Interestatal. Obstáculo colonial al desarrollo económico nacional, por virtud  de  ésta los centros comerciales se pueden establecer en cualquier lugar. Esta realidad colonial ha provocado la quiebra y desaparición del pequeño y mediano comerciante nativo, ya establecido en zona. Ejemplo fehaciente actual es la lucha de las farmacias de la comunidad  para poder sobrevivir.

Ley Jones (Acta). Política de dominación emprendida por el gobierno norteamericano en 1917: imposición del inglés como idioma único en el sistema educativo, imposición de la ciudadanía y del servicio militar obligatorio.

Ley de la Mordaza. El 21 de mayo de 1948, la Legislatura de Puerto Rico aprobó la ley de la Mordaza, cuyo propósito principal fue silenciar las voces independentistas y nacionalistas. Al amparo de esta legislación se persiguió toda expresión independentista y de afirmación nacional; se encarceló a cientos de puertorriqueños.

Ley 600. Autorización otorgada  a Puerto Rico – por el Congreso de los Estados Unidos – para redactar su propia constitución. Ésta debía estar dentro del ámbito de las leyes de los Estados Unidos.

Ley Servicio Militar Obligatorio. El 18 de mayo de 1917, el Congreso de los EE. UU. impone (a los jóvenes puertorriqueños de 18 años) la ley de S. M.O., mediante la cual fueron obligados a servir en el ejército de los Estados Unidos so pena de encarcelamiento. Esta ley fue abolida después de la guerra de Vietnam.

Ley 7. Ley especial sobre emergencia fiscal en Puerto Rico del 9 de marzo de 2009. Fueron despedidos 30,000 empleados públicos bajo la gobernación del Partido Nuevo Progresista.

macheteros (los). Nombre oficial Ejército Popular Boricua- Macheteros (EPBM). Organización militar clandestina creada en los años ochenta. Su área de acción  fue tanto contra el sistema político y militar estadounidense en Puerto Rico como en cualquier territorio de Estado Unidos. Se ignora el destino de esta organización después del asesinato de su líder Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, por el operativo del FBI y la policía de Puerto Rico en 2005.

Marcha de la Dignidad. Marcha de protesta de los populares (los afiliados al PPD) e independentistas para repudiar la intervención de la Corte Federal en el proceso electoral de la Isla en 2004.

Masacre de Ponce. Nombre con el que  se conoció la masacre de un grupo de nacionalistas desarmados, los cuales celebraban una manifestación política el 21 de marzo de 1937. Como consecuencia murieron 25 personas y más de 150 resultaron heridas.

melonismo. (De melón). Tendencia en el proceso electoral de 1984 seguida por los independentistas y socialistas  a favor del PPD. Consistía ésta en prestar sus respectivos votos a dicho partido para así detener la avanzada de la estadidad. Estos electores ideológicamente continuaban comprometidos con la independencia.

mentalidad cuponera. Se dice de la dependencia económica impuesta a las masas populares en este sistema colonial, la cual ha traído enajenación e impotencia para luchar y mejorar su nivel económico y social.

Monoestrellada. La bandera nacional de Puerto Rico. Fue creada en 1895 por un grupo de independentistas exiliados en la ciudad de New York. Invertido los colores es idéntica a la bandera cubana. Es el símbolo más amado  y el que nos representa en nuestra soberanía deportiva.

Movimiento Pro- Independencia (MPI). Organización  no- partidista, y una de las fuerzas políticas independentistas más influyentes  en el País a finales de los años cincuenta. Evoluciona con el tiempo y se convierte en el Nuevo Movimiento Independentista Puertorriqueño.

Movimiento Independentista Puertorriqueño (Nuevo). Surge como una nueva gran casa independentista. Pero, “la dispersión fue tal que ese mismo año se convoca a otro encuentro amplio del independentismo  con miras a aglutinarlo”. Se crea, entonces, el Congreso Nacional  Hostosiano (CNH). Es la reunión de todos los sectores del independentismo, con excepción del PIP (Jorge Farinacci 2004).

Movimiento Independentista Nacional Hostosiano (MINH). Nueva fusión de los proyectos políticos anteriores (MPI, NMIP,CNH). Actualmente es un organismo amplio policlasista, no partidista  y más unido al Partido Popular Democrático (Véase el ensayo Se organiza el Reformismo melonista, Jorge Farinacci).

neonacionalismo criollo. Nueva ideología puerorriqueñista que apoya la alianza de los independentistas  y socialistas con el PPD. Como se ha dicho , el n. c. es en su vertiente política melonista (v. Grosfoguel 2003:37).

pitiyanqui o pitiyanki. (Del fr. petit y del inglés yanki). Persona que admira e imita todo lo norteamericano. Partidario fanático de la estadidad. Esta voz fue creada por el poeta puertorriqueño Luis Lloréns Torres (1878- 1944).

pivazo. Voto emitido por un sector del  independentismo en las elecciones del 2004. En las papeletas del p., aparecían dos cruces: una debajo de la insignia del PIP y otra al lado del nombre del candidato a la gobernación del PPD.

Proyecto Tydings. Proyecto de independencia para  Puerto Rico propuesto por M. Tydings al Congreso de Estados Unidos. Se consideraba como un castigo a los puertorriqueños, por el auge alcanzado por los independentistas y nacionalistas en la década del treinta (v. Mathews 1975: 254- 258).

puertorriqueñizar. Dar forma puertorriqueña a un vocablo o expresión de otro idioma, especialmente del inglés norteamericano . Introducir elementos puertorriqueños en los arreglos musicales afrocaribeños.

purga. Acción con la cual se conoció la destitución de maestros y profesores puertorriqueños opositores al programa de americanización en el sistema educativo del País en los años treinta. El despido que ocasionó mayor protesta fue el de Inés Mendoza, profesora de español y luego esposa del primer gobernador elegido por el pueblo: Luis Muñoz Marín.

Revuelta Nacionalista. Se inicia probablemente en octubre de 1950, ya que “el directivo militar del Partido Nacionalista, parece que había dado orden de empezarla en ocho pueblos del País. Se inicia formalmente en la residencia de Blanca Canales, en el Barrio de Coabey, donde se decide tomar el cuartel de la policía de Jayuya, y junto a otros nacionalistas ocupan el pueblo y declaran la República de Puerto Rico. Pero, al otro día 31 de octubre de 1950, Jayuya es bombardeada …”  (Nieves Falcón 2009: 120-121).

sedicioso (terrorista). Dicho del liderato nacionalista “encarcelado por s. y desterrado a cumplir largas condenas en cárceles norteamericanas “(Nieves Farcón 2009: 69).

Vieques. Isla-municipio puertorriqueña  que – después de 60 años de bombardeos – logró sacar de su territorio  la Marina de Guerra de los Estados Unidos. Con la participación de los pescadores viequenses, de diversos sectores de la sociedad puertorriqueña, la diáspora boricua y otros ciudadanos extranjeros se logró (a través de la desobediencia civil) impedir los ejercicios bélicos. No obstante los actos punitivos a los que fueron sometidos los desobedientes civiles, la Marina de Guerra tuvo que abandonar el territorio viequense en mayo de 2003. Pero dejó graves daños, por ello se le exige la rehabilitación  ecológica de las tierras y playas.

voto melón. Elector independentista que presta el voto.  Llámese también voto derrotista, voto flotante, o voto periférico.

zona restringida. Se prohíbe la entrada, so pena de encarcelamiento en la zona de prácticas bélicas de la Marina de Guerra norteamericana.

The post Represión, persecución y estrategia de lucha del independentismo puertorriqueño appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

I, as a student of international relations, occasionally read some texts by feminist scholars critiquing discourses of ‘sex and death in the rational world of defense intellectuals.’[4]  The ‘Wake Up!’ call issued by feminists to fellow academics in a world that is changing helped articulate fresh insights into a stagnant discipline stifling with boredom and shallowness.[5] As a graduate student I attended a workshop where a professor very confidently proclaimed ‘feminism is dead.’ Several years later, this same professor came out with a book Fast Feminism.[6]  I, on the other hand, was slow to engage with questions, history and practices of feminism. I am no ‘fast feminist,’ described as a ‘gender risk taker going the distance with her body.’[7]  I am perhaps more of a novice caught up with the ‘pure intensity’ of time.[8]  A time in which I wish to re-issue a wake up call with the forceful ‘intensity and movement’ of ‘fast feminism’ proposed by Shannon Bell.[9]

Fast Feminism is an accidental but lively ‘Grrrl’ child representative of feminism and hypermasculinity.[10]  It is a coupling together of the material body with speed, to ‘queer’ the gaze, destabilize and recode ‘how we look at bodies and sexual acts’.[11] It is a ‘high speed exercise’ that ‘propels you through locations’ and is critical of practices that seek to curb ‘the naughty, kick-ass, confident, loud-assertive, active, curious, prepubescent, joy-for-life tendencies that have been toned down, repressed and castrated in turning woman.’[12]

This ‘high speed’ exercise of fast feminism is painfully conscious of the violence endured by the positioning of a female body for political purposes. It carries within it a ‘Grrrl’ child’s sense of bemusement and is watchful of tendencies that ‘morph’ into a desire for an alternative.[13] The dynamism of fast feminism and its ‘Grrrl’ energy are now redeployed to issue a wake up call in international relations. This wake up call proclaimed, ‘rape as a weapon of war’ with fierce intensity and immediately captured the imagination of academics, activists and policy-makers.[14]  Fast feminism responds to this call not simply as a fight with men but rather with fighting injustices.[15]

In situations of armed conflict, rape as a weapon of war generates immense human suffering. In some conflicts women have been raped repeatedly until pregnant and then these pregnant women were held in captivity until abortion was no longer possible.[16] The ‘new wars’ or ‘ethnic conflicts’ waged in Rwanda, Liberia, the former Yugoslavia and other places generated concern regarding religious commitments and military tactics of using the womb to wage a political struggle. These new wars refuted old arguments of rape as a ‘side-effect’ of war and compelled recognition of the fact that ‘Rape, is literally, a weapon of war.’[17] It is further argued that rape is a ‘bio-political strategy’ deployed to ‘stamp directly on the body’ a mark of ‘sovereignty’[18]. Diken and Lausten suggest, ‘the penetration of a woman’s body works as a metaphor for the penetration of enemy lines.’[19]

This understanding of rape as a weapon of war is imperative to grasp the politics of the womb. In the politics of the womb, excitable speech works always in feverish anticipation of the penetration of enemy lines and exhorts women to bear more children to safeguard the freedom of the nation and the state. While ‘rape’ is viewed as an instrument, the ‘politics of the womb’ requires the skillful art of watching a caterpillar weaving an intricate cocoon. The politics of the womb is interested in understanding the manipulation of a woman’s reproductive rights for political purposes. These practices of manipulation have a long global history that demands careful deciphering and codification of this particular form of violence endured by women.[20] This paper undertakes this exercise by focusing on some contemporary developments in an effort to light a candle of watchful vigilance against this continuous struggle.

The active voice of the victim of rape is encouraged by feminists in order to articulate her experiences of rape and the difficult choices that unwanted pregnancies unexpectedly force upon her. The repeated attempt here is at ‘flipping the obscenity of “distilled perceptions”’ through the verbalization of feelings of guilt, shame and trauma experienced by these women.[21] But these expressions do not seem to hinder or halt the continued drama of the politics of the womb. It is a drama enacted everyday in many iterations: in the form of ridicule hurled against the veiled woman, the ‘scientific’ engagement with the idea of ‘immaculate conception’ and then the vainglorious attempts of paying homage to women’s reincarnations in the form of saints and Goddesses.

But the voice of a woman, even a raped woman, does not seem to register among those whipping up religious and sectarian fervor. Feminists have long been aware of ‘how communalism, operating within patriarchal structure of power, often implies the advocacy of sexual violence towards women.’[22] The nevertheless fragile voices of feminists are in a fierce contest with other authoritative voices that carry their influence in as much as ‘rape pollution aims to strengthen a patriarchal structure.’[23] These authoritarian voices persist in exercising their authority over a woman’s womb. They insist on telling women that they must bear more children to maintain the majority status of a particular religious community.

The strategic purchase of religious, communal mobilization to fuel ethnic riots and sexual violence against women has long been registered in the subcontinent of South Asia.[24] But despite this long history of violence, India, the second most populous country in the world, has recently witnessed a spate of statements issued by male political and religious leaders (even from those sitting in jail) advising women on how many children to bear to help maintain or change the demographics of a particular local area or the nation.

Mohammed Qasim, a Muslim separatist leader in India, urges the male members of his community to ‘marry more than once’, and to ‘have as many children as possible.’[25] He justifies his argument by resorting to the Quran to make a claim, ‘The Quranic tenet on justice between wives is only in providing equal provision and not inclination of the heart.’[26] Justice is to be meted out only by the male members of the Muslim community to their women in the respectable guise of marriage. Any consideration of birth control measures, women’s health issues and economic considerations that factor into make choices about carrying a child are dismissed as nonsensical or irrelevant. Anyone unwilling to share this burden is decried for undermining the strength and future of this community in India.

Similarly a Hindu religious leader and Member of Parliament, Sakshi Maharaj, stipulates in categorical terms, ‘ A Hindu woman must have at least four children’ and that she must give one to the army and the others to religious leaders like himself.[27] This proclamation not only shows the temerity of demanding a particular number of children from a woman but also presupposes her willingness to sacrifice her children at the altar of the state and religious leaders as a matter of duty! These outrageous statements publicized by the media unfortunately gain much visibility and voice in society. There is scarcely any resistance or alternative presented to these demands.

On the contrary, there is much support for a political party that has come to power thumping its chest championing nationalism. In this understanding of patriotic and patriarchal nationalism, not a single opportunity is to be missed in reminding the ‘educated and enlightened new woman’ of her responsibility to ‘act as guardians of national culture, indigenous religion and family traditions—in other words to be both “modern” and “traditional.”’[28] A political party can slap a show cause notice on Sakshi Maharaj, its representative, and urge restraint as it damages the image of the party.[29] But the portrayal of a subservient woman, and the community’s subsequent expectation from her as a woman carrying the seeds of a (national) family within her is not to be decried.

This political rhetoric reduces the body of a woman to the status of a kickball tossed between communities and conversations. These conversations, especially among the educated middle class cosmopolitan contingent, are first encouraged with  a look of disbelief, followed by indifference, and then are silenced. There is a quiet assertion to the effect  of ‘Indian women can no longer be taken for a ride. They are much aware and capable of taking their own decisions.’[30] Yet, are they? Which Indian women? Surely if nothing else the statements issued by the leaders of these communities have made it abundantly clear that there are no homogenized Indian women. Their divisive appeals, made on sectarian grounds, play upon the religious differences among women. Their appeals also take note of the cloaks of socio-economic class differences that shroud the world of these women from each other, and at times pit them against one another.

The unifying image of Mother India invoked in a classic Bollywood film served its purpose in representing a woman’s sacrifice and suffering to evoke emotions helpful in consolidating and stabilizing a state structure. It did not necessarily generate conditions of authentic respect and security for women.  Respect for a woman’s autonomy unravels as soon as she steps out of her home and, due to economic necessity, tries to make use of the public transport system. She becomes the victim of six men that abuse her physically and psychologically, and assault her with an iron rod that is left as a memento of their willful act of barbarity inside her body.[31]  The victim died as a result of her catastrophic wounds. The voices of women are now hoarse shouting in anger and frustration making stringent, vocal demands. Nothing less than a ‘death-sentence’ is demanded to punish the perpetrators of the crime, even if one of them is a minor.

This 2012 ‘rape that shocked the world’ and became the pet project of domestic and international media sensationalism labeled and shamed New Delhi as ‘rape capital’ of the country.[32] The victim Jyoti Singh is now labeled as ‘Nirbhaya’ meaning ‘the fearless one’ and she is morphed into an embodiment of women’s struggle for security and justice within the state. Her violated body is now represented as ‘the bridge between India, old and new.’[33]  The suffering of ‘Nirbhaya’ is medicalized as doctors treat ‘the atrocious, unbelievable injuries she had sustained.’[34]  These medical practitioners communicate their sense of shock at the ‘horrific brutality’ experienced by the victim.[35] A violence so intense it startled the sense of resilience cultivated by experienced practitioners of medicine. This is the price the young victim must pay to seek some remedial measures from the state.[36]

The failure of the state in addressing gendered violence is also exhibited in a desecrated church in Rwanda. This desecrated church is now a memorial to the dead, and displays ‘a skeleton of a victim of sexual violence with a pole up her genitalia.’[37] Coomaraswamy notes, ‘There she was preserved for posterity. Such horror in the most sacred of places.’[38]  But unlike the skeletal remains of the ‘victim of sexual violence with a pole up her genitalia’ in Rwanda, the victim of ‘the rape that shocked the world’ has caught the attention of the West. The panoramic view of candlelight vigils, peace marches and popular tactics of naming and shaming deployed by the civil society against the state has captured the gaze of the West. The mobilization of civil society against the everyday practices of rape in the urban life of the city presents a challenge for a democratic country struggling to maintain its respectability and its secular credentials, touting the principle of freedom of speech, even of mavericks, in a language much understood by the West.

The powerful, civilized West that defies the powers of censorship of a state and makes readily available a film on rape culture in India. It shows a particular tenacity of purpose in investigating the particular case of Nirbhaya through the film, ‘India’s Daughters.’ But this film makes little attempt to ‘focus on rape speech that we encounter daily in our socio-political context’, fails to understand the pervasive influence of ‘rape speech’ and the culture of silence around rape deliberately construed in civilized societies.[39] The ‘white savior complex’ of the West is held responsible for in fact giving voice to the rapist with his incendiary observations and silencing a culture of protest that has emerged in India around sexual violence.[40] The film, in addressing the problem of sexual violence, does not even ‘begin to tell the story of how Indian girls are treated even before they dare to emerge from their mother’s wombs.’[41]

While a rapist gets a voice through the film ‘India’s Daughters’, the beseeching voices of teenage mothers in Guatemala finds expression through another documentary, ‘Too Young to Wed: Guatemala.’[42] In Guatemala, the state and the Church sanction marriage at the age of fourteen. This painful documentary of young mothers barely out of their own childhood, pregnant and burdened with the responsibility of caring for another life with no income and no education, compels one to question one’s own ethics in indulging in this spectator sport of viewership. It compels one to think whether the word ‘happy’ should be removed from International Women’s Day and question the violence of a middle class morality that exalts marriage and motherhood, while the price of this morality is often paid by these poor young girls with no right to vote.

While Western film-makers have made strident efforts in depicting sexual violence in developing countries, one cannot ignore the politics of the womb played out even more vociferously in the West. The War on Terror waged from here encourages a proliferation of ‘hero discourses’ in the public sphere.[43] These ‘hero discourses’ deliberately construct  ‘a morality tale where forces of the good combat the evil’ and ‘nation becomes a family; during war more than ever.’[44]  They advocate a ‘vision of a unified nation where women, the protectors of the family at home, serve as the counterpart to the boys on the front, the mighty men in battle.’[45] These hero discourses reinforced in public life through the media have actively marginalized ‘feminism and activism as possibilities for political expression.’[46] They have made the American debate on abortion a ‘spectacle’ a ‘war flick with overtones of melodrama’ for the world to watch.[47]

In this ‘spectacle’ the battle lines are clearly drawn between the pro-life and pro-choice activists and all activism is ‘tarred with the same brush.’[48] These battles have been fought with abortion clinic bombings and continue to be waged against each abortion clinic with Biblical chants and efforts to alter the wording of each piece of legislation on abortion. Followers of the abortion debate in the US argue that it is a ‘tug of war of language’ in which ‘linguistic victories translate into political victories.’[49] The coercive power of law and the moral authority of the Bible are both invoked to the effect that not more than seven abortion clinics are available to women in the state of Texas, and the survival of one in Mississippi is contested.[50] The tenuous survival of these abortion clinics in Texas, North Carolina, Mississippi has raised the question: ‘who calls the shots on abortion laws?’[51] The question of power and responsibility does not clearly reside with women, although their  ‘vulnerability and poverty’ is often conveyed through television shots of ‘Latina and Black women’s bodies.’[52] The burden of travelling long distances to get any medical assistance is visualized as ‘bleeding episodes’ of disempowerment of women.[53]

The question of responsibility is configured more abstrusely. Its history is traced to the struggle for power between the Church and the State, and the politics of the womb is the grey zone encrypted in a play of constitutional provisions that can be written, rewritten and erased. The players are on the one hand,  ‘politicians’ seeing the passage of state laws forcing closure of abortion clinics on the premise that they want to secure safe conditions for women seeking abortion. On the other hand are the stewards of religious diktat asserting their operative hand through the Church and its influence on the State. The Catholic Church’s position has

consistently been outright condemnation of abortion in all cases.[54] Abortion is seen as a sin, and the key to ‘subversion of women’s destiny to be mothers.’[55]

Feminists have long critiqued the Church’s position on abortion as representative of a ‘deliberately misogynistic, power-hungry institution, seeking to extend its reach into every all spheres of social life.’[56] Feminists also express deep concern for the suffering endured by women due to botched up abortions. But the power of the Church over the abortion laws in many places, such as in Ireland, remains enormous. This became obvious in recent times when the medical authorities in a hospital failed to assist Savita Halappanavar, who had been undergoing a painful miscarriage.[57] Her hopeless struggle to exercise her autonomy over her womb came to naught. This despite her pleas that she belonged to a different faith and it was only on medical grounds that she was seeking assistance with an abortion. She was refused and died three days later. The laws of the state promise protection and those that seek to enforce them listen attentively to the ‘fetal heartbeat’, but are mindless towards the tremendous pain experienced by a woman undergoing a miscarriage for several hours, or the septicemia (blood infection) that prolongs her suffering for another few days, and the price of death she pays for her womb.

The laws of the Catholic state of Ireland and those that seek to uphold them promise an investigation based on list of procedures. These ritualistic procedures question legality and illegality of providing medical assistance to a woman seeking medical help with a miscarriage. There is an indulgence of precious time with legal hairsplitting on procedures that permit abortion when a mother’s life is at risk and procedures that prohibit abortion when a woman’s health is at risk.[58] These promises and procedures are normalized to the extent that they benumb the voices of pain and protest endured by those carrying a womb. It is only when a woman shares the pain of her womb, endured seven times and ready for the eighth with a Pope, that she receives an assurance that there is no need for Catholic women to ‘breed like rabbits.’

The Pope argues that the Bible suggests natural birth control measures instead of the use of contraceptives. He exercises his authority in telling women not to breed like rabbits. The authority of his statement based on listening to a woman carrying an eighth child in her womb at great risk to her health emerges as an authoritative statement apparently giving coherence to the Church’s position on birth control. The denigration of the status of a woman to a rabbit does not even evoke the need for an apology. The woman remains anonymous in her suffering. But the Pope is applauded for his penchant for ‘straight talk’ and ‘colloquialism’.[59] It is with convenient ease that one statement from the Pope seems to erase all memory of the active participation of the Church in the politics of the womb and its harmful legacy registered on the body of a woman/rabbit. A persistent participation that once again finds expression in the Pope’s concern with ‘ideological colonization’ interpreted as the imparting of education on gender theory to question the traditional division of male and female roles in developing societies.[60]

The traditional division of male and female roles is a subject of much debate even in the corporate sector. But it is the politics of the womb or pregnancy discrimination that ‘can only be experienced by women’ which is of critical significance in the workplace, as pregnancy discrimination is ‘most prevalent among corporate practices.’[61] The vulnerability of pregnant women in the workplace is the subject of several articles, books and lawsuits registered on how pregnancy discrimination in the workplace undermines women’s self-esteem, increases stress and economic loss. These concerns need to be taken seriously in a neoliberal economy, a neoliberal economy in which corporate bosses exhibit a sense of naiveté or innocence of ‘corporate profiting from women’s work’ while women are still struggling for equal pay and promotions in the workplace.’[62]

This pretentious innocence became starkly visible at a recent corporate conference convened especially to celebrate the skills of women in the high-tech field of computing.

Satya Nadella, Chief CEO of Microsoft as a mentor in high-tech field of computing was questioned on how women should most effectively ask for a raise.[63] His prompt reply was that women should not ask for a raise. He offered reassurance to women that their efforts will be rewarded in the ‘long run’ when their good work was ‘recognized’ and therefore there was no need for them to ‘ask for more money.’[64]  He justified his advice in a warped logic of ‘good karma’ and the operative principles of human resource systems.[65]

This observation drew criticism from some for striking ‘an international high watermark for tone-deafness and being flat out wrong.’[66]  But there were others that continued to dole out trite advice that women entering the workforce must, ‘be prepared to advocate for themselves when they negotiate salaries and subsequent raises.’[67]  These voices are willing to make allowances:

I don’t doubt for a minute that Nadella, along with many other-tech CEOs right now, considers himself a strong advocate for women in computing…But he obviously still has some things to learn, as do many people in this field. There are many hearts and minds that need to be changed across the computing and technology companies, and even some of our best allies have a lot to learn.[68]

A language of ‘best allies’ and ‘strong advocate’ is still being deployed in the defense of Nadella a powerful male executive, despite his gender insensitive comments.

The danger here is of a failure to realize that gender games are ‘deadly games’ played by some that are simply oblivious, and others that are playing with an acute awareness of participating in a ‘cultural hallucination’ undertaken with ‘variations according to time and place.’[69] A month after Nadella’s so called faux-pas, President Erdogan in Turkey, speaking at a forum on Women and Justice, appears to engage with the question,  ‘what do women need?’[70] He responds to this question by endorsing a logic of ‘equivalence’ and not ‘equality’ for women.[71]  These arguments are buttressed by iterating the ‘natural’ differences between men and women. It is emphasized that the same conditions of work cannot be imposed on a pregnant woman than a man and therefore ‘what women need is to be able to be equivalent, rather than equal.’[72]

This politics of equivalence and not equality within the state structure encourages stereotypes and endorses ‘a subordinate role as supporters, but not an equal role as agents.’[73] Thus women as recipients of male exhortations are to bear more children and embrace motherhood. It is only in the status of a mother that a woman is expected to exult in the glory of her sons bowing at her feet, shed her tears, glance ‘coyly’ at her sons sharing her mythical state of ‘paradise.’[74] It is only in this status that a man appears willing to concede ‘motherhood is something else’ and dole out ‘respect’ for a woman.[75] Any resistance to these male exponents on the politics of the womb brings fierce and speedy condemnation against feminists and feminism for their rejection of the concept of motherhood.’[76]

Media sensationalism of such prejudiced statements by corporate and political bosses sometimes evokes an apology, and occasionally expedites a court trial.

Efforts are made through social networking sites to retract particular statements in a face saving exercise. These retractions and apologies qualify their jingoistic observations in terms of lacking in tact and being caught off-guard, on the spur of the moment. [77] But these efforts do not conceal a mind-set operative in the corporate world that acknowledges and plays the politics of womb in practices of hiring, promotion and salaries of women. In the ‘fast-track trials’ the perpetrators of violence sometimes still continue to laugh, crack jokes unashamed and lacking in remorse.[78]

These recent experiences bring center-stage the continuous political battle being waged between the religious-political ideologues and feminists against the politicization of the womb. The feminists are conscious of the painful struggles wrought to bring the voices of women to claim a stake and participate in political discourses. This attempt to map the contemporary terrain of the politics of the womb endeavors to re-issue the ‘Wake Up’ call. We can no longer sit complacently and enjoy the benefits of struggles waged by our predecessors.  Asha Devi, mother of ‘Nirbhaya’ was rendered speechless as she watched her daughter suffer and die. She attested that it was the public protests on the streets that made her feel that humanity still prevails on this Earth.[79] My effort is to no longer remain listless to the calls of ‘fast feminism’ that seek to wage a speedy battle against those engaging in a war of attrition, a politics of the womb, looking to assert their masculine dominance against the body of women.

In re-issuing this ‘Wake up’ call, fast feminism reminds us that ‘we are to the degree that we risk ourselves.’[80] It issues a call to resistance with one’s body, it insists on action that will ‘queer’ the gaze that looks at the womb.[81]  This resistance is not against motherhood, but on a woman’s right to assert ‘ownership’ of her body and demand respect.[82]  The act of resistance performed in writing this text publicly expresses a wistful desire to confront the political violence of the womb.  It is not radical politics, but a demand for respect every day. The persistent lack of respect for the female body incurs the danger of in ‘no way predicting what women influenced by fast feminism will do.’[83] Grrrl!!

The author would like to dedicate this article to Dr. Shannon Bell, Political Science Department, York University, Toronto.

The post Excitable Speech and the Politics of the Womb – Wake Up Grrrl! appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

In the 239-year history of the United States, the closest this would-be nation has come to accomplishing that largely unfulfilled promise of immigration at Ellis Island is letting in the multitudes of Europeans who have arrived on its shores in several waves since the earliest decades of its founding. Like the Statue of Liberty itself, a gift  from one occidental community to another, most arrived in the United States with little more than the shirts on their backs as their sole worldly possession, but a path to possible acceptance and integration nevertheless.

Other would-be immigrants from elsewhere: the Orient, the non-western world, and nether regions have found the fabled “golden door” of America firmly shut to this promise.

Look no further for the evidence for this assertion than the uninformed, yet calculated statements of Donald Trump, the man who might easily become President of the United States were the presidential elections to be held today. In announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination on June 16, 2015, Trump boldly declared to global media that “…when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…they’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems…”

Is that not, in fact, the promise enshrined at the feet of Lady Liberty? If Trump’s inarticulate and rather unfortunate assertions had any element of truth in them, why should Mexico not send their worst when America, arguably the most prosperous country yet in the history of human civilization, boldly promises to welcome “…poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” and make better citizens out of them?  How does this country conceive of immigrants, and of the idea of freedom itself?

Opinion polls have since shown that Trump’s contemptuous attitude towards would-be immigrants is actually a pervasive sentiment across the contemporary American political landscape and within the cultural mainstream, one shared by many respondents in opinion polls around the country.

Trump’s claims were not only outrageous and divisive, they were also largely untrue. When most countries around the world today send their immigrants, Uncle Sam demands that only their brightest, their most talented and most diligent be allowed to remain.

Except for the State Department’s Refugee Admissions Program and the Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery Program, current immigration laws of the United States demand that visa applicants and travelers demonstrate binding ties to their home countries such as property and family. It is expected that legal immigrants be educated with at least a high school diploma. Most of those who come through legal immigration channels, in fact, arrive with far more than that, comprising the upper echelon of society in their countries of origin.

Statistics from the United States Census Bureau  and Data from the Department of Homeland Security show that the more substantive percentage of immigrants to America are legal immigrants and not illegal immigrants, as falsely claimed by Trump and believed by most of his sycophantic followers.

From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, Fortune 500 companies and other major economic stakeholders are staffed with some of the most educated and talented immigrants anywhere in the world.

The denial of entry to those most in need is not exclusive to the United States. Across the Atlantic, the ignominy of the current immigration discourse in Europe is sadly similar to that championed by the far-right in America.

This summer has seen perhaps the highest mass transnational migration of human beings the world has seen this century. From the war in Syria, the post-Gadhafi instability in Libya, and the continuing political and economic crises in several parts of Asia, central and North Africa, refugees have fled by boats and land routes in desperate bids to reach the relative peace and stability of European shores. The Syrian refugee crisis alone has generated over 4 million refugees in neighboring countries, with over half of the country’s population displaced.

Their mass arrival in many parts of Europe has been met with scorn akin to that faced by the most outcast of minority groups in Europe, such as the Romani, have faced in their history of transmigration across Europe.

From train stations to open fields, refugees and migrants[1] have been left to perish in the elements while European politicians dither in deciding what to do about and with them. Only recent coverage of children’s bodies washing up on European shores and deaths of dozens of migrants on a truck in Austria have spurred enough outcry to generate a more organized response from the EU.

Ironically, the greatest migrants the world has ever known, Europeans, now refuse to countenance those caught in similar predicaments and circumstances as thousands of their ancestors.

From the revered Pilgrim Fathers who arrived in the so-called “New World” to Boer Trekkers in the Veldts of Southern Africa, Syrian, Asian, and North African migrants are now undertaking the same perilous journeys for similar reasons –religious freedom, economic opportunity and safety.

Everywhere they arrived across “new worlds,” from the Americas, through Africa, Asia, Australia to New Zealand, European migrants supplanted autochthones, transforming the very definition of citizenship in the process: If you brave oceans and arrive anywhere in the world, if you fancy your destination, if you plant roots and make it your own, you may belong and claim a place…but only if you are European!

Look no further for affirmation of this perverse doctrine of citizenship than the fates of native communities– Aborigines, Maoris, and Zulus, and Native Americans in the Americas, as they continue to fight for recognition in their native lands.

Yet, whereas the exploits of the Pilgrim Fathers or the European explorers are lauded as brave, intrepid and adventurous in historical accounts, those of the current boat migrants and refugees who are in similar circumstances are described as desperate, and even foolish, for jumping on rickety boats and risking all with their families to disturb the peace, tranquility, and  more critically the economies and narrowly defined national characters of Europe. The regard for the quality of an endeavor, and the humanization of those involved, still depends on the place of origin of the subjects in question.

The hypocrisy of “open borders” is unfathomable when you contrast how migrants have been treated in the summer of 2015 with discourses of global trade and economic exchange. “Globalization is inevitable!” “To trade…everyone!” “Open borders!” Weaker countries in the developing world are constantly harassed, bullied, humiliated and reprimanded by the World Trade Organization, the European Union and other hegemons of neoliberal reforms to open their borders to global trade, as long as their people always stay inside those borders.

Had Cecil the Lion’s murderer been denied a visa to enter Zimbabwe, you can bet your last dollar that the State Department would have been furious at the Zimbabwe government for being foolish and petulant over a “few travel bans” on Zimbabwean authorities for “human rights violations.”

As soon as conflicts erupt or are instigated through the interventions of European powers or their American counterparts in the postcolonies, however, those same advocates of the “free movement” of (European?) people and goods change their tone and cry out for their borders to be closed. “Keep the hordes at bay,” they weep, “lest Europe collapses under the weight of the problems they bring with them.”

Thus, we now have arrived at another shameful milestone in the history of the human community. Future conflicts will be deadlier precisely because belligerents will be reassured by the fact that the Europeans and Americans who have long dominated the economic and political landscape will stand by and do nothing as countries are ravaged and civilians displaced. They also know no one will directly intervene to stop them and, more disturbingly, they know Europeans will promptly shut their borders to innocents trying to flee the atrocities.

On Wednesday, September 2, 2015, body of a dead boy washed up on the beach of a popular tourist destination in Turkey. Only in death was the boy recognized as a human child in crisis. There cannot be a more symbolic reminder of the world’s failure to offer refuge to those who seek it, just as Pilgrim Fathers once sought refuge from their oppressors in Europe. The boy was found face down in the sand as if the innocence of his young life that was prematurely extinguished had proclaimed a big “shame on you Europe…I have left your world for a much better place!”

The post Braving Oceans: Migration and Subjective “Illegality” from the Pilgrim Fathers to Boat Migrants appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

According to Maya Deren in her seminal book Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, the Vodou rite of reclamation or the retirer d’en bas de l’eau, enables a family to “reclaim [an ancestor’s] soul from the waters of the abyss…and to lodge it in a govi [pot] where it may henceforth be …consulted … and so may participate in all the decisions that normally unite the members of a family in counsel” (46). While seemingly “primitive,” this ritual perseveres in the modern age because “the enduring presence of so many dead demands that it be tried again and again” (Lowe). This rite enables participants, both dead and alive, to performatively enact force in the material world through shared decision-making. I would like to argue that by bringing the dead back to life as a writer does when composing a text, in particular within a ritualized context such as publication and distribution, he/she enables a reading audience to participate in a cultural ritual, a performative act, one with external consequences: readers are affected by the voices they contact between the pages. Those rallied spirits alive in the book join the world once again as active participants. Like reading, Haitian Vodou is, through its “worship of metaphysical forces…ritualistic, rather than meditative, and involve[s] … [sustaining metaphysical forces] by feeding, or sacrifice, and [the spirits’] benediction [is] maintained by propitiation” (65). A Haitian’s religious system, Deren claims, “must do more than give him moral substance… it must provide the means for living. It must serve the organism as well as the psyche” (73). I aim to prove that the feeding of the spirits occurs in the reading, the praise in the writing. And the dead speak from the pages.

Collective memory is maintained through the performative act of writing. The writer becomes the mambo (priestess); the reader becomes a hounsis (initiate). Narrative construction must serve the writer, reader, and history by, according to Joseph Roach, “juxtapos[ing] living memory as restored behavior against a historical archive of scripted records” (242). Fiction functions as a record, promoting and maintaining culture. The voice of a text resounds with performative cultural iterations which reinscribe the identity of the writer, the reader, and the characters in the book. Too often readers are exposed to singular, authoritative voices from the Euro-centric majority and so marginalized voices are forgotten. While Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and Willa Cather write very differently, their narratives contribute to a North American western-centered sense of ethos: white, individualized, rooted, whole. But the Afro-American or Caribbean writer, as suggested by Derek Walcott, inherits a narrative fraught with loss and division, a history defined by the other. How then, can a post-plantation era writer contribute to his sense of cultural history? By resurrecting the past and offering, as Roach claims, “mnemonic materials- speech, images, gestures- that supplement or contest the authority of ‘documents’ in [any] historiographic  tradition”(242). Through the act of writing itself a Creole writer reestablishes the identity of ancestors and so weaves the past with the present. I see the dead speak through the text itself and shape the present in the extra-semiotic world. The text houses the cultural identity “of successive generations that sustain different social and cultural identities” (Roach 242), like the govi pot houses the dead.

James Weldon Johnson offers a complicated narrative in his fictionalized memoir The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, published in 1912. In his fabricated autobiography, “a veil has been drawn aside: the reader…[is] given a view of the inner life of the Negro in America… [and is] initiated into the ‘freemasonry,’ as it were, of the race” (Johnson 3). Theorist Brent Hayes Edwards claims that the novel offers a “small but crucial shift of authority” from an Anglo-centered narration to an Afro-centered narration (41).

But defining who that narrator is becomes challenging. The speaker is of mixed race- his father is white, his mother black- but his mother never communicates this to him, and he defers to a white identity. After hearing her son call a classmate “nigger,” the speaker’s mother “turned on [him and said] ‘Don’t you ever use that word again’” (7). Unwittingly, the speaker is forbidden to use a word which is a label of self-representation, albeit one of slander and shame. But the narrator, who is arguably a construction of Johnson’s psyche or an amalgamation of his personal experience, is writing the word and indeed his fictionalized self in the story speaks this word. The written signifier, “nigger,” stands in for the self, the “I,” and maintains a sense of permanence in shared memory as it is written and published. But the “I” in this tale is not the “signified” Johnson even though the text was published within the autobiographical genre, although it later was recanted and Johnson claimed the text as fiction. Herein lays complicated notions surrounding presence and absence in Afro-American texts. I rely on Deconstructionist Jacques Derrida in order to mine the self-referential nature of ‘beingness’ in text. The binary of who one is, is reliant on who one is not. We understand black in relation to white, reader in relation to writer, self in relation to someone else. Yet the true nature of the self is unknowable, there is no Platonic essence, as the self is an identifier for some indescribable interior consciousness which is paradoxically understood by who one is not. To further complicate deconstructionist notions of being, our Platonic understanding of self suggests a static, unchanging identity, a singularness, a purity. In a contact zone and in the context of postcolonial theory, I believe there is an added danger to trying to define static selfhood. If the narrator of Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man is defined in a singular way, he cannot have any other identity, he is solely white or solely “nigger”. But readers and narrators cannot get around self-referents. This is Johnson’s entire point- the limits of language and of consciousness. For the speaker there is a sense of Derridean essential drift, for the self and the identifier never align- the “nigger” and the “I,” as he doesn’t identify fully as black and definitely not as “nigger.” He continues to climb the American socio-economic ladder through playing ragtime music and in his later years as a white businessman. The narrator passes back and forth from the white and black world, defined by the gaze of others both black and white. Arguably, Johnson was not interested in a definitive notion of race or identity as the narrator remains unnamed; rather Johnson chose to pen a text representative of black experience at the turn of the century. This shifting sense of identity, this “dual personality” actually leaves room for Derridean différance, a play on the French for “to defer” as well as “to differ,” by deconstructing notions of selfhood, race, and representation. According to Heather Russell, the “narrative structure simultaneously veils and conceals while unveiling and revealing,” ‘leaving its readers’ “tasked with standing at the gateway… of The Autobiography’s hybrid structure” (Russell 30). Suzanne Scafe notes that with Johnson’s fragmentary voice of re- and un- representation, he “foreground[s]… the constructedness of the ‘I’ identity and privilege[es] the texture of experience and memory” (190). Through the “simmering gumbo pot” (Cartwright 100) of “I,” “nigger,” “white,” and “black,” “speaker” and “author,” Johnson summons readers to participate in his narrative by forcing them to wade through his various representations. Like the “composite and multiple” spirits, “every first-person consciousness, every “I”, is an assemblage, a plural ‘we’” (Cartwright 100). I argue that by adding an assemblage of narrative voices to the Afro-American literary tapestry, Johnson reclaims the unspoken lives of millions of men and women who have passed as white, or who have identified as black. The retirer d’en bas de l’eau of giving voice to the dead remedies breaches in black history by establishing the presence of an everyman, not deconstructing identity, but re-constructing it. This turn of the century text seems to me to take up Derek Walcott’s call for acts of presence through art, “allowing the group [(readers)] to act itself out by reiterating its structure [(identity)] and commenting on its [own] values” (Brown 210). I read The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man as a govi pot to consult on my road to selfhood as I shift through fluid self-representations, the narrator providing me a predecessor to consult for advice through the performance of race and identity.

If Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man allows Johnson to reclaim shared memory through narration, then Eileen M. Julien’s Travels with Mae: Scenes from a New Orleans Girlhood (2009) addresses the specific and personal dead instead of the death of assumed identifiers. Julien’s text functions specifically because she writes from place- a contact zone. Common culture makes for “ersatz families both created and reinforced through ritualizing” (Brown 207). The setting of New Orleans offers an amalgamation of people, voices, perspectives, and opportunities for filial connections, but grounded in a specific culture where “community is both occasion for and the product of its own ritual activity” (Brown 210). Due to the multitude of voices (in addition to a factious history of violence, environmental disaster, and gentrification) a single voice can get lost. Readers can approach Julien’s text as a reclamation of the spirit of her dead mother. The performative act of writing this memoir contributes to the uniqueness of post-plantation shared memory and reclaims the past of New Orleans, her ancestral space.

For anthropologist and Vodou initiate Karen McCarthy Brown, the term “Vodou” was coined by outsiders and considered a religion, but its practitioners do not “believe” in Vodou, rather, they claim to “serve the spirits” (205). With this emphasis on action or serving, Vodou ceremonies illustrate that performative ritual creates a symbiotic relationship between the living and the dead: “the living need advice, warning, protection provided by…the spirits… The spirits, in turn, have to be…honored if they are to muster the strength… to protect the living” (206). It seems the act of performative remembrance is perhaps all the more vital for underrepresented populations. According to Keith Cartwright: “Our corrective effort to go to the mouth of the govi of New Orleans… calls for difficult acts of listening to subalternized voices that are often poorly represented, if recorded at all, in available texts. These voices that would balance our vision and open our eyes to clashing energies and contradictory impulses have been censored, silenced, and ignored” (101). Often readers are granted a glimpse into the lives of poor, marginalized black New Orleanians in fiction, but Eileen M. Julien offers readers an under-represented demographic: that of a middle class black girl who attended bourgeoisie balls, social clubs and parties. The members of the black middle class in New Orleans, as portrayed by Julien, developed their own exclusive subculture that was not a reaction to whiteness but rather a celebration of the presence of Blackness. Julien’s story unfolds in a series of vignettes reminiscent of Derek Walcott’s Nobel Prize speech on the fragmentation of Caribbean history, which I see Julien repossessing. Travels with Mae is largely a celebratory novel filled with food, family, and humid New Orleans, neighbors where okra grows in the backyard, jazz music plays in the music hall, and dainty party dresses swirl around girls’ ankles.

Several vignettes in the memoir present insight into Julien’s relationship with her mother, most notably her mother’s last days when age and fear beset both Mae (Julien’s mother) and her aunt Fe. Julien “spend[s] Thanksgiving at home because death lurks here and everywhere” (99). Mae and Fe fret over food for mourners after a series of neighbors and relatives pass away. The sharing of food, in particular gumbo which is mentioned several times in the memoir, which I believe becomes a performative reclamation of the dead as those alive eat to remind themselves that they are still living and memorialize, through the act of living, those who have died. Gumbo, known widely as a New Orleans dish, also reminds those consuming it of their African heritage, as “Gumbo, Louisiana-style, shares common ingredients with Senegalese suppakanja”(105).

Another vignette, narrated through journal entries, brings Mae to life but in one of Julien’s dreams: “Her hands on my forehead- joy, ecstasy to know that even though she was dead, she was somehow alive!” (113). Interestingly Julien ends her memoir not with the death of her mother, but a scene when her mother was still alive, seeing her off at the airport, when she gestured to her mother from the terminal and her mother “came back!” (129). I offer that the return of her mother’s spirit and body seems an appropriate moment to end the text as Julien’s book becomes the public govi for Mae, “[b]ecause… of them, of my them, all that will be left is me, a book like this one, and my pen” (100). The use of the first person pronoun (my), and Julien’s claim over the city of New Orleans, is a performative act of reclamation. The ritual enactment of writing and reading Travels with Mae, or what Keith Cartwright infers is a “govi text,” seems to me to expose readers to her memorialized past, and brings her mother to life.

A fictive tale, Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall (1983) offers another method for summoning ancestry and maintaining shared memory: ritual movement through the abject. Protagonist Avey/Avatara’s rebirth launches her through vomit, excrement, blood, and abjection to bring her dead ancestors back to life, as well as herself. It seems appropriate to mark this text as distinctly Modernist due to its self-conscious narration, rejection of Enlightenment notions such as free will, and its subtle commentary on fragmented family life in the face of racism and industrialization. Modernism is often thought to be a movement at odds with black/Caribbean/Afro-American experience. But Paul Gilroy in The Black Atlantic notes that some Afro-American literary ventures represent the notion of “the slave sublime” in which “the concentrated intensity of the slave experience is something that marks out blacks as the first truly modern people, handling the nineteenth century dilemmas and difficulties which would become the substance of everyday life in Europe a century later” (220-221). Paule Marshall, who was born to Barbadian parents and grew up in Brooklyn, was likely familiar with historical and cultural fracturing, and her protagonist Avery/Avatara has “slave sublime” experiences on her cruise vacation to the Caribbean in order for Marshall to explore her connection with our Afro-American past by “complicat[ing] individualist notions of personhood, authorship, filiation, or salvation, [by] present[ing] Avey as an avatar of lives that have preceded her, an avatar ritually bound to generations past and future” (Cartwright 50). Unlike the speaker in Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man who performs fluid identifiers and  presents readers with an ancestry of changeable identification in order to complicate our understanding of beingness, Avey of Praisesong for the Widow moves through an abject bodily experience to divorce her mind from the body, and in bodily absence focuses on the spirit, or inner world.

The notion of bodily absence is of course a familiar one in Caribbean culture. Slavery forces an abject state because the physical body is othered; a body absent of consciousness or soul is arguably not a person. According to Carole Sweeney, “the optimum functioning of the slave system required not only utter disregard for the…slave body but also the denial of the existence of consciousness in individual slaves” (52). Under the terrors of slavery the body was the privileged binary within the body/mind binary, therefore the slave mind did not exist for white slave owners and so slaves functioned as soulless commodities. Economics deemed the slave body “collective” because slaves were only worth the value of their labor (Sweeney 52). Any fungible slave represented labor, and so could stand in for another slave. Despite Marshall’s heavy hand at characterization- Avey is a well-rounded character- she is just a body, a slave, albeit a victim of Anglophile consumerism rather than plantation labor. Avey’s life is absorbed by materialism— she buys fashionable clothes and expensive dinners. She lacks self-actualization; she is not a whole person but an unconscious body. After her rebirth into full spiritual and cultural consciousness, her retirer d’en bas de l’eau or reclamation of her soul, I see her as standing in for anybody but this time, she “situates [her] place in an historical continuum,” in memory (Sweeney 52).

I’d like to posit that we first encounter the performative, ritualistic aspect of a retirer d’en bas de l’eau at Ibo Landing, where Aunt Cuney tells young Avey about the Ibo slaves who walked off the slave ship and chose to drown in defiance against their enslavement. This first gesture initiated by ancestors, constitutes a collective defiance against the white slave owners who attempted to make slaves of both the Ibos’ bodies and history. The Ibos’ drowning, returning to what a Haitian may call the Waters of the Abyss where the loa and souls of the dead reside, brought the living— Avey— back to life.

The blurring of lines between the living and the dead plays out through abject instances in the novel. Avey’s vacation on the cruise ship the Bianca Pride (White Pride) could be likened to traveling a kind of perverse Middle Passage and she experiences this voyage in an abject state. On board Avey eats a European- style parfait and “her stomach, her entire midsection felt odd.”  She maintained— “[I]t felt like a huge tumor had suddenly ballooned up at her center” (Marshall 50, 52). Avey’s discomfort continued until she seemed “in the grip of a powerful hallucinogen- something that had dramatically expanded her vision, offering her a glimpse of things that were beyond her comprehension” (59). In this semi-catatonic state Avey escapes the ship to the island of Grenada where she finds herself in an “unlikely sacred room of mourning (a hotel)” (Cartwright 51). From there she smells a child’s filth and sweat (arguably her own); she releases her bowels on a small boat and finds herself anointed while sick by rum shack owner Legbert who represents Papa Legba the loa of the crossroads, and his daughter, perhaps a representation of an initiate, or hunsis. In one of the final scenes in the novel Avey attends the nation dance where diasporic Caribbean attendees dance for their ancestors, “drawing on…[a] shared pool of memories…to reconstruct [ritual African dances]” (Brown 209). Avey performs her own nation dance; her subconscious connects with the other dancers, moves beyond her body, and she suddenly remembers Ibo Landing, the resting place of her African ancestors. It seems Avey’s symbolic death and rebirth as she proceeds through abject stages of physical discomfort, allow her to reclaim her ancestral spirits, in particular the spirit of her mentor Aunt Cuney and the spirits of the Ibos. I see Ibo Landing as also offering up a ritualized space for a retirer d’en bas de l’eau. The water submerges the slave bodies and Avey’s repeated visits memorialize those under the water, making for a performative, ritualized space. Avatara resolves to bring her grandchildren there and share her ancestral past. Marshall’s narration reverses the intentions of slave owners who attempted to empty the Afro-Caribbean body of consciousness. By emptying herself of consciousness through physical abjection, I see Avatara standing in for her ancestors themselves and reaches back through history to reclaim collective memory in the govi pot of the body, no longer mindless, no longer soulless, but conscious.

I conclude with arguably my most definitive offering of the retirer d’en bas de l’eau, Toni Morrison’s Beloved in which Beloved, a two-year-old, is murdered by her mother who intends to rescue her from slavery. Beloved, residing in a woman’s body, emerges from a kind of Vodou Water of the Abyss “full of venom” to haunt her mother Sethe. Eventually the reclaimed child consumes her mother as Sethe wastes away and Beloved grows fatter and fatter on guilt and love. Finally the community of Black women who previously rejected Sethe because she killed Beloved and tried to murder her other three children, circle the house and exorcise Beloved’s spirit and Sethe is accepted back into the community again. Beloved is a warning of what can happen when we ignore the whispers of the novel’s epigraph: “Sixty Million and more,” slaves Morrison memorializes in her novel. Un-reclaimed spirits sleep uneasily, and so will our history if we fail to recognize the voices of speakers with fluid identifiers, the soul reaching beyond the abject body, and our ancestors calling from home.  There may be no better way to allow those voices to be heard than through the act of writing, where they can speak for themselves.

The post Writing Rites of Reclamation: Blackness and Caribbean Remembering appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

Quelle réponse, s’inscrivant dans une perspective postcoloniale, apporter aux attentats terroristes qui ont eu lieu à l’encontre du journal satirique français Charlie Hebdo, et ont conduit au massacre brutal de l’ensemble ou presque de son comité de rédaction? Le 7 janvier 2015, deux hommes armés ont pénétré dans les bureaux de Charlie Hebdo, situés dans le 11^ème arrondissement de Paris, tuant des dessinateurs de premier plan tels que Charb, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous et Wolinski. Les deux tireurs auraient alors crié « Allahu Akbar » (Dieu est grand en arabe) et aussi « On a vengé le Prophète », faisant référence à une série de caricatures du Prophète Mahomet. On a identifié plus tard les tireurs comme étant les frères Kouachi, deux citoyens français musulmans d’origine algérienne s’étant formé au maniement des armes au Yémen, et appartenant à l’organisation terroriste islamiste Al-Qaïda dans la Péninsule Arabique (AQPA). Des preuves indiquent également que des liens existent entre les frères Kouachi et Amedy Coulibaly qui, deux jours après les attentats, tuait quatre otages dans un supermarché casher juif situé Porte-de-Vincennes dans le 12^ème arrondissement. Dans une courte vidéo posthume, Coulibaly affirme avoir appartenu à un autre groupe armé, L’État Islamique en Irak et au Levant (EIIL).

En tout, la tuerie de Charlie Hebdo a fait douze morts, y compris trois officiers de police. Une chasse à l’homme a suivi, à l’issue de laquelle les trois terroristes ont été abattus dans une embuscade policière se déroulant simultanément à deux endroits différents de Paris. La couverture sensationnaliste qu’a fait les médias de l’événement a contribué à l’intensification du choc post-traumatique que de nombreux Français ont éprouvé au lendemain des attentats. Le 11 janvier, environ deux millions de personnes, y compris 40 dirigeants à travers le monde, ont défilé dans les rues de Paris afin de montrer leur solidarité à l’égard des dessinateurs morts et de soutenir la liberté d’expression, ainsi que la liberté de la presse. Les gens n’ont pas manqué de pointer du doigt l’ironie causée par la présence de chefs d’état en provenance de pays tels que l’Egypte, la Turquie ou Israël, dont le bilan en matière de libertés est plus que discutable. Le slogan « Je suis Charlie » (I am Charlie) est devenu le cri de ralliement d’une foule autrement silencieuse dans son ensemble, encore en deuil et encore frappée par la signification des attentats. Les gens ont eu le sentiment qu’une partie de l’esprit irrévérencieux français s’était éteint dans les attentats. La question n’est pas de savoir si l’on aime ou non Charlie Hebdo, mais de comprendre que le journal était le symbole d’une époque vraisemblablement révolue.

Charlie Hebdo est d’abord apparu en 1970 dans le sillon de Mai 68, et comme successeur du magazine Hara-Kiri, interdit pour s’être moqué de la mort de l’ancien Président Charles de Gaulle. La posture gauchisante, anti-cléricale et anti-militariste du journal a amené ses dessinateurs à tourner en dérision toutes formes d’autorité, laïque ou non, comme le patriarcat. Son contenu sexuellement explicite, son langage cru et sa caricature du « beauf » (équivalent français du « redneck » américain) a servi à briser de nombreux tabous au sein d’un pays encore majoritairement rural, superstitieux et bigot. L’impertinence de Charlie Hebdo épousait à la perfection un des slogans révolutionnaires de Mai 68 : « Il est interdit d’interdire ». Après avoir cessé la publication du journal dans les années 80, Charlie Hebdo a repris son édition hebdomadaire. Depuis, le journal a comparu dans plus de 50 procès judiciaires, la plupart découlant de plaintes de la part de l’extrême droite, des grands médias, et de l’Église Catholique. Dans la plupart des cas, il a remporté ces procès. Depuis 2006 et la controverse au sujet des caricatures du Prophète Mahomet, Charlie Hebdo a systématiquement nié être un journal raciste et islamophobe. Le licenciement de l’éminent dessinateur Siné en 2008, suite à des accusations d’antisémitisme, l’incendie criminel contre les bureaux du journal en 2011, et les attentats terroristes en ce début d’année 2015, laissent cependant penser que si Charlie Hebdo est demeuré fidèle à son credo libertaire, la société française, quant à elle, a changé – et pas forcément dans le bon sens.

Étant Français, j’éprouve des sentiments très partagés s’agissant de défendre Charlie. En France, le blasphème n’est pas un délit et il existe une longue tradition de satire politique et religieuse faisant la fierté du pays, et remontant à la Révolution française. Ce n’est pas pour nier le contexte spécifiquement postcolonial dans lequel s’est inscrit la controverse autour de Charlie, ce qui m’a poussé à coucher sur papier mes pensées afin de provoquer davantage de débat au sein de la gauche. L’histoire commence dans les années 50 dans le cadre des luttes de libération anticoloniales, en particulier en Algérie. L’actuelle V^e République française est née du fait de la guerre d’indépendance algérienne, entraînant l’effondrement de la IV^e République. Ces luttes furent en général laïques, inspirées du nationalisme panarabe, du tiers-mondisme ou du communisme. Ces idéologies laïques n’ayant pas réussi à se constituer en alternatives viables au capitalisme, l’idéologie religieuse – « l’opium du peuple », pour utiliser une formule marxiste consacrée – est venue occuper un vide politique dans une époque que certains ont décrite comme étant « postrévolutionnaire » (Dirlik 1997). Ainsi qu’a ajouté un journaliste français du journal britannique The Guardian après les attentats, « le chaos qui a émergé pendant et après les guerres d’indépendance vis-à-vis de l’Occident (dont la responsabilité est clairement engagée) a fourni une excellente opportunité aux fanatiques de revenir au premier plan, dont la profonde rancœur face à l’évolution de leur pays était venue alimenter un désir de vengeance. »

Les Arabo-Musulmans qui ont émigré en France à partir des années 60 jusqu’à nos jours sont venus pour différentes raisons : pour fuir le fondamentalisme religieux (en Algérie : la décennie noire des années 90 et de la guerre civile), fuir la pauvreté, ou parce que ces derniers voyaient en France le pays de la liberté, égalité, fraternité. C’est je crois ici, toutefois, qu’une autre histoire commence. Les Arabo-Musulmans de deuxième et troisième générations sont nés en France et pourtant ont grandi dans un contexte de chômage de masse, de discrimination raciale et de montée du communautarisme ethnico-religieux. Les émeutes de 2005 furent un symptôme de la ghettoïsation rapide des banlieues, désormais largement racialisées (concomitant avec la montée de l’extrême droite), et qu’un film comme La Haine de Mathieu Kassovitz avait prédit dix ans auparavant. De bien des façons, les émeutes ont marqué un tournant décisif : considérées en France comme le plus grand soulèvement depuis Mai 68, celles-ci ont aussi conduit le gouvernement à réinstaurer la loi martiale. De manière significative, la dernière fois que c’est arrivé était pendant la guerre d’Algérie. Composé d’intellectuels publics, d’universitaires et de militants locaux issus d’origines diverses, la naissance en 2006 du parti politique décolonial Les Indigènes de la République est venu occuper un espace plus que nécessaire à gauche. Leur diagnostic était que la gauche française, à laquelle Charlie appartient, s’est rendue complice de la perpétration d’une situation s’apparentant à l’apartheid au sein d’une France néocoloniale.

C’est une réalité à laquelle des segments de la gauche, en particulier dans le monde anglo-saxon, n’ont pas hésité à se confronter en condamnant de façon quasi unilatérale le caractère islamophobe de la ligne éditoriale de Charlie Hebdo. Certains sont allés jusqu’à suggérer que n’importe quelle organisation de gauche digne de ce nom devrait faire de son mieux pour faire interdire Charlie Hebdo (par des moyens légaux, faut-il préciser!)[1]. Ce faisant, ces organisations se sont jointes au concert général de dénonciation et de colère émanant de Musulmans qui, à travers la planète, ont protesté contre la publication par Charlie Hebdo d’une nouvelle caricature du Prophète figurant sur la couverture de leur premier numéro suite aux attentats. Le journal indépendant a choisi de faire un tirage exceptionnel à 7 millions d’exemplaires au lieu des 60 000 habituels ; le numéro a été distribué dans plus de 20 pays, et traduit en espagnol, en italien, en anglais, en turc et en arabe. Il est significatif, cependant, que de nombreux canaux médiatiques anglo-saxons aient choisi de censurer le numéro afin de ne pas heurter la communauté musulmane. Beaucoup de critiques de Charlie, venant de la gauche, ont ainsi soulevé les préoccupations suivantes, que je n’essayerai pas de réfuter, connaissant bien le journal satirique : à savoir que Charlie a manifestement ignoré le contexte d’une islamophobie rampante en Occident; qu’il a appliqué une politique de « deux poids, deux mesures », en particulier depuis l’arrivée du directeur de la rédaction Philippe Val, quand il s’agissait de caricaturer les Juifs; et que de se moquer du christianisme, religion dominante en France, n’est pas la même chose que de se moquer d’une minorité religieuse opprimée telle que les Musulmans.

Je souhaiterais à mon tour soulever certaines préoccupations, dans la mesure où, que nous aimions ou non Charlie, ce dernier faisait et fait encore partie intégrante d’un certain esprit de gauche – libertaire, anarchiste, et anti-clérical. Devrions-nous nous précipiter pour « traiter » (ou interpeller, selon la terminologie de Louis Althusser) Charlie d’islamophobe, au risque d’étouffer notre critique de l’Islam politique et de la façon dont celui-ci a échoué au cours des quatre dernières décennies à remplir ses promesses de prospérité, d’égalité et de liberté ? Nous avons vu, en France et ailleurs, la manière dont l’accusation d’antisémitisme a servi à entraver toute critique du régime d’apartheid d’Israël vis-à-vis des Palestiniens. Ne devrions-nous pas aussi réfléchir au fait que des djihadistes aient choisi de prendre pour cible un journal gauchisant plutôt que, disons, le siège du Front National et de l’extrême droite de Marine Le Pen ? Cette simple réalité devrait nous alerter au climat politique profondément réactionnaire qui est le nôtre. La montée du fondamentalisme religieux, en outre, ne concerne pas seulement le Moyen-Orient et l’Islam, mais aussi l’Inde hinduvta et le sionisme juif, ou, plus près de l’Europe, un pays rongé par la crise tel que la Grèce, où l’Eglise Orthodoxe – avec la complicité du parti néo-nazi Aube Dorée –, a dans certains endroits remplacé l’État suite à l’effondrement du système social. Enfin, et surtout, ne devrions-nous pas réfléchir à la politique « représentationnelle » d’un journal satirique comme Charlie, au lieu de condamner ce dernier, et par là-même écarter des questions épineuses ? En effet, l’envie de conserver l’exclusivité de la (non-)représentation qui est faite de la figure hautement symbolique de Mahomet, sujet au demeurant contentieux même au sein de l’Islam, m’apparaît comme un geste auto-essentialisant renvoyant, par effet de miroir, à l’imaginaire orientaliste de l’Occident. Dès lors, on piège davantage l’Islam dans une image faussée d’elle-même, à savoir religieuse, dogmatique, ou arriérée.

Pour les Musulmans français, dont la condition est par certains aspects semblable à celle des Noirs américains aux États-Unis de par leur marginalisation de longue date, il n’existe guère d’autre choix que de se radicaliser ou de rester des « Musulmans modérés »  – l’équivalent français du « bon nègre ». Pourtant, le cas des frères Kouachi, qui parlaient à peine arabe et n’avaient rejoint le djihad qu’après de longues années de radicalisation, fait d’eux une parodie du « terroriste essentialiste » (Said 1988, 49) dépeint par les médias. Comme l’a fait remarquer dans le passé l’intellectuel Edward Said, « la chose la plus frappante concernant le “terrorisme” […] est son isolement de toute explication ou circonstances atténuantes, et aussi son isolement des représentations de la plupart des autres dysfonctions, symptômes et maladies du monde contemporain » (47). Souvent occulté des médias, en toile de fond apparaît l’enfance des frères Kouachi, qui ont grandi dans un ghetto parisien, avec une mère suicidaire et un père absent, ou encore le confinement d’Amedy Coulibaly dans les conditions sordides du système carcéral français. Cela montre qu’on ne peut pas évacuer le terrorisme en invoquant un acte irrationnel de barbarie (c’est-à-dire, étymologiquement, ce qui est étranger ou « Autre »). Cela ne signifie pas non plus que ces derniers ne furent que de simples « victimes du système ». Ils se posent plutôt en sujets rationnels portant des revendications spécifiques dont il faut tenir compte : de manière explicite, comme l’ont déclaré eux-mêmes les terroristes, l’exigence que la France cesse sa politique militaire interventionniste tuant des Musulmans à l’étranger ; et, implicitement, qu’elle se mette à « écouter » les nombreuses frustrations des banlieues françaises. Ainsi que l’a affirmé Gayatri Spivak, « la résistance prenant la forme d’attentats-suicides est un message inscrit à même le corps lorsque qu’aucun autre moyen ne réussit » (2012, 385).

Tout en gardant ce contexte à l’esprit, l’une des marques de fabrique du postcolonial (de caractère diasporique, discursif et privilégié tout spécialement) est sa célébration de la moquerie, de l’ironie et de la dérision, perçues comme étant subversives et transgressives. Comme l’a écrit la critique littéraire Sneja Gunew,

[Les minorités] n’ont pas le droit à l’ironie ou à d’autres hétérogénéités de langage et se limitent simplement aux contraintes linéaires ou uni-dimensionnelles, à la nécessité de « parler clairement » ou de risquer de souffrir du fardeau de se voir traduit, relayé par un porte-parole, représenté au sens double. (1994, 94)

La question n’est peut-être alors pas de déterminer si oui ou non nous jugeons les caricatures de Charlie Hebdo offensives, puisque pour beaucoup elles le sont, mais plutôt qui parle, et pour qui. La distinction qu’utilise Spivak entre représentation politique (vertretung, « se mettre à la place de ») et re-présentation artistique (darstellung, « mettre en place ») dans son essai réputé Les subalternes peuvent-elles parler ? suggère que l’action de représenter est à la fois « procuration et portrait » (1988, 276). Alors qu’un petit groupe de terroristes armés se sont auto-désignés porte-paroles des Musulmans opprimés, Charlie a affirmé le droit de re-présenter, et de se moquer, des Musulmans, tandis que d’autres segments de la gauche (principalement blanche et laïque) cherchent maintenant à défendre ces derniers, après avoir longtemps nié l’existence de l’islamophobie en tant que catégorie valide[2]. En termes absolus, cependant, aucune représentation ne semble plus légitime qu’une autre, car en toute circonstance, les subalternes ne peuvent pas parler – c’est-à-dire que celles-ci sont privées de la possibilité de s’exprimer en leur propre nom. Ceux que Spivak appelle « impérialistes bienveillants » incluent aussi bien la gauche libérale (au sens anglo-saxon) que la gauche radicale-marxiste occidentale, dont le discours court toujours le risque de tomber dans l’essentialisme (stratégique ou non), constituant un autre exemple de « violence épistémique ». Pour Spivak, « [s]i, dans le contexte de production coloniale, les subalternes n’ont pas d’histoire et ne peuvent pas parler, la femme subalterne, elle, est davantage plongée dans l’ombre » (1988, 287). Cela a été vrai en France, qui a par exemple interdit le port de « signes religieux ostensibles » dans les écoles publiques en 2004, et la « dissimulation du visage » dans les espaces publics en 2010. Les femmes musulmanes, clairement visées bien que la loi ne le dise pas explicitement, ont été à peine consultées, sinon pas du tout.

Il n’est pas surprenant que l’auteur primé Salman Rushdie ait déclaré son soutien à Charlie Hebdo suite à une invitation à l’Université du Vermont le 14 janvier. Tout en étant « postcolonial » de par ses origines culturelles (l’Inde), Rushdie a toujours été un ardent partisan d’une remise en cause du statut quo, et connu pour sa contestation de l’islam en particulier. On a aussi accusé Rushdie de blasphème et d’avoir abusé de la liberté d’expression avec la publication des Versets Sataniques (1988), et on l’a forcé à vivre sous la menace d’une fatwa pendant de nombreuses années. Je crois que le positionnement cosmopolite privilégié de Rushdie est ce qui lui a en partie permis, avec un détachement suffisant, d’ « abuser » de ses origines indiennes comme moyen de décrire les dangers de l’anomie et de l’aliénation sociales dans une Angleterre multiculturelle, postcoloniale, à travers ses personnages Chamcha et Farishta. Cependant, alors que Rushdie a survécu à une menace de mort de l’ayatollah iranien Khomeini, d’autres, comme son traducteur japonais Hitoshi Igarashi, ont été assassinés. Des autodafés du roman ont eu lieu à travers la planète et, comme pour Charlie Hebdo, beaucoup de gens de la gauche se sont pressés d’accuser Rushdie, bien que ce dernier ait toujours affirmé que son livre n’avait, au final, pas grand chose à voir avec l’islam – et encore moins avec l’islamophobie. Ce qu’on a jugé incorrect dans le roman de Rushdie est sa lecture non-littérale (c’est-à-dire à la fois fictionnelle et fictive), ambivalente (capable d’être interprétée de deux façons) et parodique de l’islam, du Prophète et du Coran, entre le sacré et le profane, et à travers l’utilisation par Rushdie du réalisme magique.

De la même façon, on pourrait arguer que les caricatures de Mahomet venant de Charlie Hebdo constituent un détournement (au sens littéral comme au sens figuré) du signifiant religieux que représente le Prophète sur le terrain laïque, en tant qu’Être tangible faisant partie de la superstructure sociale et de la sphère idéologique, plutôt que/tout en étant simultanément un artefact figé symbole de la « différence tiers-monde ». Pour Chandra Mohanty, c’est ainsi que la différence tiers monde se lit et est lue aux yeux de l’Occident : « religieux (comprendre réactionnaires), orientés vers la famille (comprendre traditionnels), mineurs légaux (comprendre ils-ne-sont-pas-encore-conscient-de-leurs-droits), illettrés (comprendre ignorants), tournés sur eux-mêmes (comprendre rétrogrades), et parfois révolutionnaires (comprendre leur-pays-est-en-état-de-guerre- ils-se-doivent-de-se-battre !) » (1991, 72). Une action de glissement (« sliding-effect ») du langage, entre le dire (discours) et le vouloir dire (intentionnalité) est à l’œuvre lorsque Charlie, en 2006, reproduit des caricatures de Mahomet provenant d’un journal danois de la droite conservatrice (l’une d’entre elles montrant le Prophète, une bombe sur la tête), ou quand, en 2011, est fait le portrait, en page une, d’un Mahomet en pleurs déclarant que « c’est dur d’être aimé par des cons… », affublé du gros titre « Mahomet débordé par les intégristes ». Le langage, comme l’a observé le théoricien de la déconstruction Jacques Derrida, est, à partir du moment même où nous nous exprimons, toujours déjà rendu «Autre », altéré : « Cette structure d’aliénation sans aliénation, cette aliénation inaliénable n’est pas seulement l’origine de notre responsabilité, elle structure le propre et la propriété de la langue » (Derrida 1998, 25).

L’herméneutique entourant les caricatures (du latin caricare, « charger, exaggérer ») révèle l’indécidabilité fondamentale du système signifiant et ouvre ainsi le sens à l’excès, à la contingence, à l’indétermination : faire le portrait de Mahomet est blasphématoire; faire le portrait de Mahomet une bombe sur la tête est raciste/islamophobe par la suggesetion que tous les Musulmans sont des terroristes; faire ainsi le portrait de Mahomet fonctionne comme moyen de dénoncer l’extrémisme religieux. Au bout du compte, ces perspectives s’invalident les unes les autres, échouant à atteindre un consensus ou l’unanimité – ce qui est le propre d’un journal satirique et polémique comme Charlie[3]. Les éditeurs de Charlie ont constamment déployé leur droit à l’ « erreur » (du latin errare, errer ou vagabonder), à la démystification, à la liberté de rire de ainsi que (quelquefois) avec. Charlie Hebdo n’a cessé de réaffirmer le droit d’avoir tort, par-delà une partie de la gauche qui a depuis longtemps désavoué le journal; par-delà les menaces terroristes, mais aussi le politiquement correct. Sur la première couverture de Charlie suite aux attentats, l’on peut voir un Mahomet en pleurs, une pancarte « Je suis Charlie » autour du cou, disant que « tout est pardonné » – là encore, un message hautement ambigu qui résiste à l’interpellation.

Le militantisme laïcard affiché de Charlie Hebdo fut lui-même parfois dogmatique, sinon problématique dans un pays où la laïcité est devenu le cheval de bataille d’organisations issues de l’extrême droite telles que Riposte Laïque, ou bien du gouvernement et de ses tentatives de suppression de la différence culturo-religieuse. Encore une fois, je ne souhaite réfuter aucune des critiques suivantes de la laïcité émanant de la gauche : que la version républicaine française de la laïcité (c’est-à-dire la séparation de l’Église et de l’État dans toutes les questions relatives au affaires publiques) est, en pratique, appliquée de manière sélective; que l’État demeure partial vis-à-vis des Catholiques, à travers le financement direct d’écoles privées catholiques par exemple; que la laïcité ne devrait s’appliquer en principe qu’aux représentants de l’État (loi de 1905), plutôt qu’à ses citoyens (Musulmans récalcitrants), comme c’est désormais le cas depuis 2004 et l’interdiction du foulard islamique (hijab) dans les écoles publiques, ou l’interdiction de la burqa (voile intégrale) dans l’espace public. Cependant, je crois que Charlie  – peut-être malgré lui  – a tout de même aidé à « rendre possible… un sens de l’histoire et de la production humaine, ainsi qu’un scepticisme sain vis-à-vis des diverses idoles vénérées par la culture » (Said, 1983, 290). La compréhension qu’a Said du fait laïque ou séculaire se refuse à une simplicification à l’excès consistant à présenter un sécularisme intrinsèquement progressiste, et un fait religieux rétrograde, ou vice versa. Comme il l’écrit dans son livre The Text, the World, and the Critic:

Un érudit entend la religion en termes séculaires mais passe à côté de ce qui dans l’Islam donne encore à ses adhérents une nourriture spirituelle sincère. L’autre voit l’Islam en termes religieux mais ignore largement les différences séculaires qui existent au sein de la diversité qui compose le monde islamique. (276)

On se doit de maintenir cette double articulation non-manichéenne afin que la subalternité arabo-musulmane puisse un jour tendre à l’auto-représentation, en France, mais aussi ailleurs en Europe, où la principale menace à laquelle nous faisons désormais face n’est pas l’« islam », mais le fascisme. À moins que la gauche ne se mette à se mobiliser pour faire cesser les nombreuses « guerres contre l’erreur » de ce monde, en Afghanistan, en Irak, en Libye ou au Mali, où le néo-impérialisme français est lourdement responsable de la propagation de guerres confessionnelles et du fondamentalisme islamiste, l’exclamation célèbre de Kurtz face aux monstruosités du Congo belge dans le roman (post)colonial classique,Au Coeur des Ténèbres de Joseph Conrad (« L’horreur ! L’horreur ! ») continuera de se faire la chambre d’écho d’une autre apostrophe toute néocoloniale (« La terreur ! La terreur ! »). Considérée comme étant produite par la peur de l’invisible/indicible (par opposition à l’horreur vivide d’un cadavre), la terreur peut frapper n’importe où et à tout moment, rendant à leur tour les mesures antiterroristes futiles, certes, mais pas inoffensives. L’imposition dans les écoles d’une minute de silence en mémoire des victimes des attentats de Charlie Hebdo, en même temps que la criminalisation de voix contestataires, ne va servir qu’à réprimer davantage les libertés citoyennes et à réduire le droit à la désobéissance civile – en particulier pour celles et ceux dont la voix est déjà muselée.

Pour conclure, je citerai Jacques Derrida, qui dans son « discours sur la terreur » suite au 11 septembre 2001, nous rappelle ce qui rend unique la contribution historique européenne. Loin d’être eurocentrique, Derrida, ne serait-ce que de par ses origines juives algériennes, était bien conscient du fait que les idéaux laïques des Lumières se bâtissent alors sur la dépossession systématique du colonisé, dont les répercussions se font ressentir aujourd’hui. Nous voici donc face à une aporie, ou ce que Spivak appellerait un « double bind », auquel la gauche révolutionnaire aurait tort de renoncer, au prétexte qu’une telle problématique appartient exclusivement à l’héritage libéral, au même titre que le concept abstrait de « liberté d’expression » :

Dans la longue et patiente déconstruction qui est requise pour la transformation à venir, l’expérience qu’inaugura l’Europe au temps des Lumières (Enlightenment, Aufklärung, illuminismo) dans la relation entre le politique et le théologique ou, plutôt, le religieux, bien qu’étant encore inégale, irréalisée, relative, et complexe, aura laissé dans l’espace politique européen des marques parfaitement originales en ce qui concerne la doctrine religieuse (remarquez que je ne parle pas de religion ou de foi mais de l’autorité de la doctrine religieuse sur le politique). On ne peut trouver de telles marques ni dans le monde arabe ni dans le monde musulman, ni en Extrême-Orient, ni même, et voici le point le plus sensible, dans la démocratie américaine, dans ce qui dans les faits régit non pas les principes mais la réalité prédominante de la culture politique américaine.

 

Photo Credit:  Peinture murale, Oberkamf, 11^ème arrondissement (Paris, France); Copyright © Anne Marie Ricaud

The post « Je suis Charlie » ? Laïcité, islam et guerre de l’erreur appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

What postcolonial response can be made of the terrorist attacks on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which led to the brutal massacre of most its editorial board? On January 7, two gunmen entered Charlie Hebdo’s offices in the 11th district of Paris, killing – amongst others – leading cartoonists Charb, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous and Wolinski. The gunmen are believed to have shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great in Arabic) and also “the Prophet is avenged”, in reference to a series of caricatures of Prophet Muhammad. The gunmen were later identified as the Kouachi brothers, two Muslim French citizens of Algerian descent who received weapon training in Yemen, as part of the Islamist terrorist organization Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Evidence also indicates that Amedy Coulibaly, who two days later killed four hostages at a Jewish kosher grocery in Porte-de-Vincennes in the 12th district, was connected to the Kouachi brothers. In a short video posted posthumously, Coulibaly claims to have belonged to another armed group, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

All in all, the Charlie Hebdo shootings killed twelve, including three police officers. The three terrorists were hunted and ultimately gunned down by a police raid following a double hostage crisis, taking place simultaneously in two different Paris locations. The media’s sensationalist coverage of the event contributed to relaying and intensifying the post-traumatic shock that many French people felt in the aftermath. On January 11, about 2 million people, including more than 40 world leaders, marched in the streets of Paris to show solidarity with the dead cartoonists and support freedom of speech and of the press. The irony of political leaders being present at the march from countries like Egypt, Turkey or Israel, with dubious records with regards to freedom of speech and freedom tout court, was not lost on many people. The slogan, “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie) became the rallying cry of an otherwise largely silent crowd, still mourning and still struck by the significance of what had happened. People felt that something of the French spirit of irreverence had died in the attacks. Whether or not we liked Charlie Hebdo, the newspaper was the symbol of an epoch that seems by now definitely gone.

Charlie Hebdo first appeared in 1970 in the wake of May 1968, and as a successor to the Hara-Kiri magazine, banned for mocking the death of former French President Charles de Gaulle. The newspaper’s left-leaning, anti-clerical and anti-militarist stance led its cartoonists to lampoon all forms of authority, both secular and non-secular, such as patriarchy. Its sexually explicit content, crude language and caricature of the “beauf” (French equivalent of the redneck) served to break many taboos in a still largely rural, superstitious and bigoted country. Charlie Hebdo’s impertinence espoused to perfection one of the revolutionary slogans of May 68: “Il est interdit d’interdire” (it is forbidden to forbid). After ceasing publication in the 1980s, the newspaper resumed its weekly edition. Since then, Charlie Hebdo has been involved in over 50 legal trials, most of them stemming from complaints from the far right, mainstream media, and the Catholic Church. In most cases, it won. Since 2006 and the controversy over the caricatures of Prophet Muhammad, Charlie Hebdo has routinely denied being an Islamophobic, racist newspaper. The firing of leading cartoonist Siné in 2008 over allegations of anti-Semitism, the arson against the newspaper’s offices in 2011, and the terrorist attacks earlier this month however show that while Charlie Hebdo may have remained true to its libertarian credo, French society, on the other hand, had changed – not necessarily for the better.

Being French, I find myself deeply conflicted when it comes to defending Charlie. France does not forbid blasphemy and there exists a long and proud secular tradition of both religious and political satire, dating at least as far back as the French Revolution. This is not to deny the specifically postcolonial context in which arose the Charlie controversy, which pushed me to put my thoughts down on paper in what will hopefully trigger further debate on the Left. The story begins in the 1950s with anticolonial liberation struggles, particularly in Algeria. The current 5^th French Republic was born as a result of the Algerian war of independence, which caused the collapse of the 4^th Republic. These struggles were largely secular, inspired by pan-Arabic nationalism, third worldism, or communism. With the failure of these secular ideologies to prove inspiring alternatives to capitalism, religious ideology – “the opium of the people”, to use a consecrated Marxist formula – came to fill a political vacuum in an epoch described as “postrevolutionary” by some (Dirlik 1997). As one French journalist added in The Guardian after the attacks, “the chaos that emerged during and after independence wars (for which the west clearly has responsibility) provided an excellent opportunity for fanatics who had deeply resented the evolution of their countries, to return to prominence with a vengeance.”

Arab-Muslims who migrated to France from the 1960s onwards came for different reasons: to flee religious fundamentalism, to flee poverty, or because they saw France as the country of liberté, égalité, fraternité. This is, though, where I believe another story begins. Second and third generation Arab-Muslims were born in France yet grew up in a context of mass unemployment, racial discrimination and the rise of ethnico-religious communalism. The 2005 French Riots were a symptom of the rapid ghettoization of the now largely racialized banlieues (concomitant with the rise of the far right), and which a film like La Haine (Hatred) had predicted ten years earlier. In many ways, the Riots were a turning point: considered to be the biggest upheaval since May 1968, it also led the French government to re-institute Martial Law. Tellingly, the last time this had happened was during the Algerian War. The birth in 2006 of the decolonial political party Les Indigènes de la République, comprised of public intellectuals, academics and community activists from a variety of backgrounds, came to fill a much-needed space on the Left. Their diagnosis has been that the French Left – to which Charlie belongs – remains complicit with the perpetration of an apartheid-like situation within a neo-colonial France.

This is a reality that segments of the Left, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, have chosen to insist on in their quasi-unilateral condemnation of Charlie Hebdo’s editorial line as Islamophobic. Some went as far as to suggest that any left-wing organization worthy of the name should try its best to ban Charlie Hebdo (by legal means that is!)[1]. In doing so, these organizations have joined in the chorus of denunciation and anger on the part of Muslims across the globe who protested against the publication of another caricature of the Prophet by Charlie Hebdo on the front cover of their newest issue following the attacks. The independent newspaper chose to print an exceptional 7 million copies instead of the usual 60 thousand, and the issue was distributed in more than 20 countries as well as translated into Spanish, Italian, English, Turkish and Arabic. It is significant, however, that many Anglo-Saxon media channels chose to censor the issue in order not to shock the Muslim community. Many leftist critiques of Charlie have thus raised the following concerns, which, being well acquainted with the satirical newspaper, I will not attempt to refute: that Charlie conspicuously ignored the context of growing Islamophobia in the West; that it applied a double-standard, in particular since the arrival of editor-in-chief Philippe Val, when it came to the caricaturing of Jews; that poking fun at Christianity, being the dominant religion in France, is not the same as mocking a religiously oppressed minority such as Muslims.

Here, I would like to raise a few concerns of mine, for whether we like it or not, Charlie was and still is very much part of a certain – libertarian, anarchist, and anti-clerical – spirit of the Left. Should we rush to “call out” (interpellate, in Louis Althusser’s terminology) Charlie as Islamophobic, with the risk that it muffles in turn our critique of the failures of political Islam over the last 40 years to deliver its promises of prosperity, equality and freedom? We have seen in France and elsewhere the ways in which calling out someone as anti-Semitic has in effect served to stifle any critique of Israel’s apartheid regime with regards to the Palestinians. Should we also not pause a minute on the fact that Jihadists chose to target a left-leaning newspaper rather than, say, far-right Marine LePen’s National Front headquarters? This alone should alert us to the profoundly reactionary political climate in which we live. The rise of religious fundamentalism is, besides, not only true of the Middle East and Islam, but of proto-fascist “Hindutva” India and of Jewish Zionism, or, closer to Europe, of a crisis-ridden country such as Greece where the Orthodox Church – in collusion with neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn – have in some places replaced the State following the collapse of the welfare system. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, should we not further reflect on the “re-presentational” politics of a satirical newspaper like Charlie, instead of condemning it and effectively brushing off some thorny questions? Indeed, the urge to retain the exclusivity over the (non) representation of the deeply symbolic figure of Muhammad, which remains a contentious issue even within Islam, appears to me as a self-essentializing gesture that mirrors the West’s Orientalist imaginary. In effect, what it does is to further entrap Islam into a false image of itself as religious, dogmatic, or backward.

For French Muslims, whose condition is in some ways akin to Black Americans in the United States given their long standing marginalization, there now is little choice other than to either become radicalized or to remain “moderate Muslims” – the French equivalent of the “good nigger”. Yet the case of the Kouachi brothers, who hardly spoke Arabic and had only recently embraced the Jihad, makes a mockery of the figure of the “essentialist terrorist” (Said 1988, 49) depicted in the media. As Edward Said once remarked, “the most striking thing about ‘terrorism’ […] is its isolation from any explanation or mitigating circumstances, and its isolation as well from representations of most other dysfunctions, symptoms and maladies of the contemporary world” (47). Mostly occluded by the media, the Kouachi brothers’ background growing up in a Paris ghetto, with a suicidal mother and an absent father, or Amedy Coulibaly’s incarceration in the squalors of the French jail system, show terrorism cannot be explained away as an irrational act of barbarism (i.e. etymologically what is foreign and “Other”). This is not to say the latter were mere “victims of the system” either. Instead, they appear as rational subjects with specific demands of their own to be reckoned with: explicitly, as was stated by the terrorists themselves, that France ought to stop its politics of military intervention and killing of Muslims overseas; and, implicitly, that it should “listen” to the French banlieues’ many frustrations. As Gayatri Spivak argued, “suicide resistance is a message inscribed in the body when no other means will get through” (2012, 385).

Keeping this context in mind, one of the postcolonial’s hallmarks (especially of a certain diasporic, discursive and privileged kind), has been its celebration of mockery, irony and derision, seen as subversive and transgressive. As postcolonial literary scholar Sneja Gunew has written,

[Minorities] are not permitted irony or other heterogeneities of language and are bounded simply by the linear or one-dimensional constraints, the necessity to ‘speak clearly’ or risk suffering the burden of being translated, spoken for, represented in its double sense. (1994, 94)

Perhaps the question, then, is not whether we deem Charlie Hebdo’s caricatures offensive, as for many they surely are – but rather who speaks, and who is spoken for. Gayatri Spivak’s useful distinction between political representation as vertretung (“stepping in someone’s place”) and between artistic re-presentation as darstellung (“placing there”) in her renowned essay Can the Subaltern Speak? suggests that representing is both “proxy and portrait ” (1988, 276). Hence, one ought to speculate upon the complicity between “speaking for” and “portraying” (1988, 277). When a small group of armed terrorists self appointed to speak on behalf of oppressed Muslims, Charlie affirmed its right to re-present, and mock, Muslims, while other parts of the (mainly white, secularist) Left now seek to defend the latter, after having dismissed Islamophobia as a valid category for many years[2]. In absolute terms, however, no representation seems more legitimate than the other, for in every circumstance, the subaltern cannot speak – that is, Muslims are prevented from speaking for themselves. Those Spivak calls “benevolent imperialists” include both the Liberal as well as the radical-Marxist western Left, whose discourse always runs the risk of falling back into essentialism (strategic or not), becoming yet another case of “epistemic violence”. “If,” for Spivak, “in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow.” (1988, 287) This was true in France, which for instance, banned the wearing of “ostensible religious signs” in public schools in 2004, and “face covering” in public spaces in 2010. Muslim women, clearly the ones targeted although the law does not explicitly say so, were hardly or not consulted at all.

It is no surprise that award winning literary author Salman Rushdie has come out in defense of Charlie Hebdo following an invitation at the University of Vermont on January 14. While being “postcolonial” in that he is from a postcolonial culture (India), Rushdie has always been a staunch advocate of upsetting the status quo, and known for challenging Islam in particular. Rushdie was also accused of blasphemy and of abusing freedom of speech with the publication of The Satanic Verses (1988), and was forced to live under the menace of a fatwa for many years. I believe Rushdie’s privileged cosmopolitan positioning is what in part allowed him, with sufficient detachment, to “ab-use” his Indian origin as a means of describing the dangers of cultural anomie and alienation in a postcolonial, multicultural England through his two characters Chamcha and Farishta. While Rusdie survived a death sentence by Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini, others, like his Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi, were murdered. Burnings of the book took place across the globe, and, as with Charlie Hebdo, many on the Left were quick to blame Rushdie, although the latter always claimed his book had, in the end, little to do with Islam – and even less with Islamophobia. What was judged wrong with Rushdie’s novel is its non-literal (i.e., both fictive and fictitious), ambivalent (able to be interpreted in two ways) and parodic reading of Islam, the Prophet and the Quran, in-between the profane and the sacred, and through Rushdie’s use of magic realism.

Similarly, we may argue how Charlie Hebdo’s Muhammad caricatures constitute a détournement (hijacking) of the religious signifier of the Prophet onto secularized terrain, as a tangible Being part of the social superstructure and the realm of ideology, rather than/while being simultaneously, a frozen artifact of “third world difference”. For Chandra Mohanty, this is how the third world difference reads itself/is read: “religious (read not progressive), family-oriented (read traditional), legal minors (read they-are-still-not-conscious-of-their- rights), illiterate (read ignorant), domestic (read backward), and sometimes revolutionary (read their-country-is-in-a-state-of-war; they must-fight!)” (1991, 72). When in 2006, Charlie reproduced caricatures of Muhammad from a Danish far-right newspaper (one of which shows the Prophet with a bomb on his head), or when in 2011, a crying Muhammad is portrayed saying “it’s hard to be loved by morons”, along with the heading, “swamped by integrists”, what in effect takes place is an act of glissement (sliding-effect) of language, in-between dire (“to say”, i.e. speech) and vouloir dire (“to mean”, i.e. intentionality). Language, as Deconstruction theorist Jacques Derrida has observed, is, from the moment we speak, always-already made “Other”/altered: “This structure of alienation without alienation, this inalienable alienation, is not only the origin of our responsibility, it also structures the peculiarity and property of language.” (Derrida 1998, 25)

The hermeneutic surrounding caricatures (from Latin caricare, ‘load, exaggerate’) reveals the fundamental undecidability of the signifying system and opens up meaning to excess, contingency, indeterminacy: to portray Muhammad is blasphemous; to portray Muhammad with a bomb suggests that all Muslims are terrorists and it is therefore racist/Islamophobic; to portray the Prophet in this way works as a means of denouncing religious extremism. This multiplicity of perspectives ultimately invalidates each of them, failing to reach consensus or unanimity – which is what a polemical, satirical newspaper like Charlie does[3]. The editors of Charlie constantly deployed their right to “err” (from Latin errare, to stray, to wander), to demystification, to laughing at as well as (sometimes) laughing with. Charlie Hebdo has kept reaffirming its right to be wrong, pace a section of the Left that has long disavowed the newspaper, pace terrorist threats, pace political correctness. In the last Charlie cover following the attacks, a crying Muhammad is seen with a “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie) placard around his neck saying “tout est pardonné” (all is forgiven) – yet again a highly ambiguous message that resists interpellation.

Charlie Hebdo’s self-proclaimed laïcard (secularist) militancy was itself sometimes dogmatic, if not problematic in a country where secularism has become the trumpeted cause of far-right organizations such as Riposte Laïque or of the French State’s attempt at suppressing culturo-religious difference. Again, I do not wish to refute any of the following leftist critiques of secularism: that the French Republican version of laïcité (i.e, the separation of Church and State in all matters of public affairs) is, in practice, being selectively applied; that the State is partial to Catholics, with direct State financing of private Catholic schools for instance; that secularism ought to exclusively apply to State representatives (Law of 1905), rather than to its (recalcitrant Muslim) citizens as well, as is now the case since 2004 and the ban of the Muslim headscarf (the hijab, or foulard in French) in public schools, or the Burqa ban in public spaces. But I believe Charlie – perhaps against its own will – nonetheless helped “enable…a sense of history and of human production, along with a healthy skepticism about the various idols venerated by culture” (Said 1983, 290). Said’s understanding of the secular speaks against over-simplification of secularism as inherently progressive, and religion as backward, or vice versa. As the latter wrote in The Text, The World, and the Critic,

One scholar understands the religion in secular terms but misses what in Islam still gives its adherents genuine nourishment. The other sees it in religious terms but largely ignores the secular differences that exist within the variegated Islamic world. (276)

This double, non-Manichean articulation must be sustained for Arab-Muslim subalternity to one day be able to represent itself, in France, but also elsewhere in Europe, where the main threat that we now face is not “Islam”, but fascism. Unless the Left starts mobilizing to put an end to the many “Wars on Error” of this world, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Mali, where French neo-imperialism has had a heavy responsibility in the spreading of confessional wars and Islamist fundamentalism, Kurtz’s famous exclamation in the face of the monstrosities of the Belgian colonial Congo in Joseph Conrad’s classic (post)colonial novel Heart of Darkness (“The horror! The horror!”) will keep piercing through the historical chamber of yet another neocolonial apostrophe: “The terror! The terror!” Terror, as that which is produced by fear of the unseen/unknown (as opposed to the graphic horror of a dead corpse), may strike anywhere and at any time, in turn rendering counter-terror measures meaningless – though not harmless. The imposition in schools of a one-minute silence in memory of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, along with the criminalizing of any dissenting voice, will only serve to further repress citizens’ liberties – particularly those whose voice is already muzzled – and curtail their right to civil disobedience.

To conclude, let me quote Jacques Derrida, who in his “terror speech” following September 11, reminds us of what makes European historical contribution unique. Far from being Eurocentric, Derrida, if only because of his Jewish Algerian background, was well aware that the secularist ideals of the Enlightenment are built upon the systematic, enduring dispossession of the colonized. An impossible double bind, as Spivak would have it, which the revolutionary Left would be wrong to forsake on the pretense that such a problematic exclusively belongs to the Liberal heritage, like the abstract of “freedom of speech”:

In the long and patient deconstruction required for the transformation to come, the experience Europe inaugurated at the time of the Enlightenment (Lumières, Aufklärung, Illuminismo) in the relationship between the political and the theological or, rather, the religious, though still uneven, unfulfilled, relative, and complex, will have left in European political space absolutely original marks with regard to religious doctrine (notice I’m not saying with regard to religion or faith but with regard to the authority of religious doctrine over the political). Such marks can be found neither in the Arab world nor in the Muslim world, nor in the Far East, nor even, and here’s the most sensitive point, in American democracy, in what in fact governs not the principles but the predominant reality of American political culture.

The post Defending Charlie Hebdo? Secularism, Islam and the War on Error appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

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First, there was the balkanization of the response to address a problem ostensibly caused by a contemporary Berlin Conference –directives out of the Washington Consensus. Thus, France responded to Ebola in Guinea, its former colony. The United States responded to Ebola in Liberia where some of its former subjugates had grudgingly returned about two centuries prior. And the greatest colonialist of them all, Great Britain, reluctantly took charge of its former burden Sierra Leone.

How neat! But was this the best approach by which to tackle one of the most deadly viruses known to man in the 21^st Century?  In the middle of 2014, Ebola was raging in Liberia. The country had the highest number of recorded cases and casualties per day. Then Liberians wailed out to Uncle Sam. The might and cavalry of the United States military came charging in. It seems that this time, the response to a viral epidemic will be militarized, according to Adia Benton. Before long, the numbers began trending downwards in Liberia. Sierra Leoneans cried, “oh Britain where art thou?”

Then there is France. Vive La Postcolonie! Patron François Hollande paid a visit to former charge Guinea. There were many promises of sending Ebola in Guinea back to the gates of hell. Back to the dawn of colonialism? The most memorable of Hollande’s photo ops in Guinea was, of course, that of him gazing into the deep eyes of a beautiful Guinean lady who was head of the Ebola Survivors Association in Guinea. Oh her beauty! What beauty? “If only”…a perfunctory sigh of regret. Colonial “mistress,” reversed? Did Julie quiver several thousand miles away in the métropole? Will she be next? Were scooters dashing out of the Elysée Palace at breakneck speeds for midnight trysts for Françafrique?

But let us proceed to the facts. What do Kent Brantly, Nancy Writebol, Rick Sacra, Craig Spencer, Nina Pham, Amber Vinson, Ashoka Mukpo, Thomas Eric Duncan, and Martin Salia all have in common? All of them, at some point, were actively sick with Ebola on United States soil.

Now let’s go to another much shorter set of names, what do Martin Salia and Thomas Eric Duncan have in common? They are the only two people known to have died of Ebola on United States soil.  There could be medical and biological factors accounting for the difference between the fates of Salia and Duncan and the others, or other yet unnamed factors. But no matter the spin or twist on it, you cannot easily get past the inescapable fact that the only people to have died of Ebola within the mighty trillion dollar, formidable, United States healthcare system were Africans from two affected Postcolonies.

We constantly keep tabs on subaltern elements in Postcolonies to ensure they stay firmly within our ideological line. Agents are admonished to work harder in order not to leave any space for terrorists and anti-Western ideologues to occupy and ferment trouble. “Tap phones if you can!” “Extraordinarily render if you must!” “No holdbacks.” “We’re in the fight of our lives.” “The clash of civilizations is at hand!”

Yet from December 2013 to March 2014 no one knew that one of the most deadly pathogens known to man was decimating innocent populations in the jungles of the Postcolony? Would we have known earlier had a pesky anti-Western ideological ferment taken root instead?

The noblesse obligé of indulgent colonial maternalism led France and Britain to come in only when indescribable things had hit the ceiling. “Manifest destiny must be fulfilled.” “We cannot leave these helpless Africans to perish lest we find the problem at our doorsteps in the morning of reckoning.” “They cannot fend for themselves.” “We must help them.” This is the “white man’s burden,” to quote the venerated Basil Davidson.

In time, an emergency response was scrambled to challenge the virus. Too little, too late? Where was the response when Ebola festered for over three months orphaning innocent children faster than drones?

Many have blamed weakened local healthcare systems for enabling the spread of the virus, but what is the response when African politicians pillage their countries to support ostentatious lifestyles in Western métropoles? As the health systems crumbled most paid, and still pay, lip-service to the effectiveness of aid.

Commercial flights to the three most affected countries have long since been restricted lest anyone repeats Eric Thomas Duncan’s folly in thinking he could transport Ebola to Western shores. But where is the response, even now, as politicians in the affected countries send their girlfriends, wives and children to the safety and comfort of the same Western shores as they abandon the poor to their Ebola doom? WHERE ARE YOU?

Even the explanations of the origins of the virus smack of imperial arrogance. First we were told by no less an authority than a study published in the respected New England Journal of Medicine that patient zero of the outbreak was a two-year old boy in the forests of Guinea who contracted the virus by eating fruit bats. Imagine a two-year old independently acquiring and consuming a fruit bat! Then the origin of the outbreak was recently re-explained as patient zero having contracted the virus NOT from eating the fruit bats, but from coming into contact with their droppings while playing with other children in the hollow of a tree in his village.

But what explanations have been offered by Guinean, Liberian and Sierra Leone scientists for the origins of the Ebola virus in their countries? Wait, are there scientists in the Postcolony? Who is a “scientist,” anyway? “We tell you who scientists are, or not, because we train them –we train the best in the world.”

“In any case, dismiss anything anyone from the Postcolony says. It’s all conspiracy theories and wild figments of the imaginations of a vanquished people.”

For Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to survive Ebola and the next calamity that could be lurking around the next bend, they will first have to survive postcolonial imperialism and the self-interested dictates of the consensus in London, Paris, Berlin, and Washington.  The Ebola epidemic served as a reminder of colonial frameworks yet to be overcome.

The post Surviving Ebola, Surviving Postcolonialism? appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

The year 2014 marked twenty-five years since Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” to describe how social realities such as “class” or “race” should not be analyzed in isolation, but instead be combined in order to understand the complexity of a particular praxis. Building upon previous work by scholar-activists Deborah King, The Combahee River Collective, Gloria Joseph and Jill Lewis, as well as Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa’s 1981 anthology This Bridge Called My Back, among others, Crenshaw proposed that: “Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.”  While Crenshaw may have been speaking particularly of the lived experience of Black women and ‘mainstream’ feminism in the United States, the intersectional approach proposed by Crenshaw has been adopted by many disciplines and groups in order to analyze the junctures at which complex identities are contested and staged.

This interrogation of political, social, and economic systems is particularly salient today, as the past decade has seen a wave of global socio-political and economic changes punctuated by the specter of ideologically driven acts of violence and “The War on Terror.” We are witnessing geopolitical conflict on a local as well as international scale, intensified by rising wealth disparities, mass migrations, crippling austerity measures, repression of dissent, and increasingly controlled borders.  These borders—at once more porous and more visible–may be nationally designated or internal, as increasing division and strife in civil societies mirrors longstanding geopolitical tensions. These events make evident the centrality of class and to any discussion on the sweeping changes taking place in the global political landscape, as well as the struggle to both emerge from and generate new discourses from lingering legacies of colonialism and race/gender stratification. Major developments that shaped the last year, such as unrest in Ferguson in the United States and the resulting #BlackLivesMatter movement, the missing 43 students of Ayotztinapa, the spread and media coverage of the Ebola virus, the assault on Gaza, and the spread of ISIS, further illustrate the need to analyze events by focusing on layered experiences of power and marginalization. Indeed, the point of departure and means of articulation do not operate in isolation from social structures such as the economy, a fact that underscores the need for continued interdisciplinary and intersectional research.

The pieces in the Fall/Winter Intersectionality, Class, & (De)Colonial Praxis issue draw from varying regions, disciplines, and languages, but all seek to tease out how “intersectionality” is deployed in contexts where intersections—points of meeting, points of encounter—frequently reveal sites of slippage and tension. Maurício Hashizume’s “Lições a partir da experiência do movimento katarista da Bolívia” delves into the Katarista movement in Bolivia, reminding us of indigeneity’s uneasy role within postcolonial studies. Virginie Privas-Breauté’s “Au Carrefour du didactisme brechtien et de la résistance post-coloniale : Protestants (2004) de Robert Welch” further interrogates ideas of postcoloniality as a North-South phenomenon by analyzing Northern Ireland as a (post)colonial site of enunciation. Zachary Price’s timely “Economies of Enjoyment and Terror in 12 Years a Slave and Django Unchained” employs visual and critical race analysis to recent films that seek to illuminate the present by analyzing the past, while Rebecca Galemba’s “Mexico’s Border (In)Security” study brings stark reality to abstract debates on immigration and border crossings. Intersectionality’s possibilities within Francophone Arab feminist studies are explored in Ines Horchani’s “Intersectionnalité et feminismes arabes,” and in turn the invisibility of political actors who do not align neatly within the sociopolitical imaginary in Puerto Rico is examined and re-envisioned by Guillermo Rebollo Gil’s piece “Aguafiestas: Marginalidad y Protesta en Puerto Rico.”

“This Borderland Called My Sexuality: Excavating Queer Nightlife of the American Southwest Through the Lens of Intersectionality” by Kris Hernandez probes the claiming of queer sexual identity among Latinos in the US border space of El Paso, and how race, class, and sexual identifications problematize such (be)longings , while Alissa Simon’s “Mythology, Taboo, and Cultural Identity in Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul” explores how the domestic realm and its associated female body both shape and defy the contours of societal expectations, and Cristina Onesta’s “Mai 68 au service de l’interdiscursivité médiatique : entre mémoire révolutionnaire et mémoire discursive. Deux approches interdisciplinaires : lexiculture et mots événements,” brings us back to 1968, a year of massive cultural shifts whose outcomes are frequently invoked and contested today. These and other arts and editorial pieces, such as Annie Mcneill Gibson’s vignettes and photo essay on mythologies and changes surrounding Cuba from a foreigner’s perspective, Anna Stielau’s observations on the Dakar Biennale, and Maheen Hyder’s poetry on ‘home’ as site of both salvation and ruin, explore how intersectionality has been built on, applied, and questioned in a contemporary world of crossings: the intersection is not the destination, but the starting point.

As we look back at 25 years of intersectionality, and in spite of the growing criticism of the concept itself, it is above all important to look at how scholars and organizers around the world are employing an intersectional spirit in their analysis and praxis. Even as the concept of intersectionality faces increasing pressure from the academy and hegemonic liberal feminism and is at risk of losing its radical potential, it is clear that it continues to be used by countless critical thinkers. Indeed one way of countering its co-optation is by continuing to use the concept in radical and groundbreaking ways. The aim of this issue is to present some of the research that is doing just that.

The post Letter from the Editors: “Intersectionality, Class, and (De)Colonial Praxis” appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

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.

Image 1: Bus stationed in Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas, Mexico in expectation of a journey to the U.S.-Mexico Border. – Photo Credit: Rebecca B. Galemba

Mexicans ride these buses, but Central Americans also seek to blend in. At the southern border, a history of cross-border marriage, social networks, and refugee flight and return during the height of Guatemalan counterinsurgency conflict (1980-1981) make distinguishing Mexicans from Guatemalans difficult. Mexican adults in the region told me that most could not trace their families any further back than their parents or grandparents to Mexico. They all had Guatemalan roots. Yet Mexico’s official attitude towards such fluid identities is anything but. In this region many poor residents lack documents and the border has been historically porous. Meanwhile, at the southern border, the municipality of Frontera Comalapa has developed into a hub to purchase any document you want. Official surveillance in this context often takes on ethnic and classist tones. I asked one immigration official how she could ascertain the difference between Mexicans and Guatemalans in this context. In addition to dress and dialect, she mentioned, “we can often detect by the smell.”

One February day in 2007, I purchased tickets for this trip at a “Travel Agency” in Frontera Comalapa. I was not planning to travel until the end of March; advance purchase did little to secure my reservation. When my husband and I attempted to travel north on one of these buses one March Wednesday morning, many buses refused to let us board. Operators claimed they were full. While some buses were hired directly by maquilas, or border assembly plants, at the northern border, it was also clear that many were neither full nor contracted. What I learned from the one company that allowed me to ride was that many were wary of human rights reporters. I had bought my tickets to Tijuana, where I intended to visit contacts from field research in 2004. While many people said they were going to Tijuana, in reality few buses had Tijuana as their destination. The drivers told immigration agents they were headed for Caborca, Sonora. Only as we approached the border did I learn that the bus was destined for the desert border town of Altar, Sonora. Why were these buses so openly advertised, yet also disguised? A Mexican bus operating in Mexican territory should be free to operate without fear. The tourism or travel label was partly designed to get around Mexican bus companies’ monopolies over particular routes. Yet this label also disguised the purpose of the journey since a deeper suspicion of illegality surrounded the buses due to their destinations and passengers. This bus ride from Mexico’s southern to northern border provides a window into how Mexico is implementing border security through interior checkpoints, as well as to how the U.S.’s security agenda casts a specter of illegality over these buses and their passengers even within Mexican territory.

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This piece focuses on the problems of trying to prevent undocumented migration to the U.S. by investing more resources and assistance into Mexican border policing in order to fulfill a U.S.-designed security agenda. Mexico has recently escalated border enforcement to stem what the U.S. termed a “border crisis” of undocumented Central American youth arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2014. In July 2014, Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto implemented Programa Frontera Sur (Southern Border Program[1]) to improve border security and to protect migrants entering Mexico. To solve this crisis, according to many politicians and dominant media renderings in the U.S., Mexico must enforce its own southern border. U.S. assistance is implicit and explicit in this solution as the U.S. embraces Mexico as a key partner for establishing hemispheric security (Benítez Manaut 2003). Alan Bersin, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security recently stated, “The Guatemalan border with Chiapas is now our southern border” (Isacson et al 2014: 5). Recently, Mexico’s Secretary of the Interior Miguel Angel Osorio Chong similarly articulated Mexico’s “new” approach to the border, “Never before has Mexico announced a state policy on the border… now [it is] absolute control of the southern border” (Archibold 2014). Yet these statements are somewhat misleading while they also lack historical depth. The southern border has never been consistently well patrolled, but periodic crackdowns have been common throughout Mexico’s recent history.

This article reveals the historical continuity that the discursive construction of a “border crisis” has played in justifying increased, yet often ineffective, counterproductive, and perhaps even destructive, border enforcement. As recently argued by Gabriella Sanchez (2014), the construction of a “border crisis” is a powerful narrative to justify the escalation of criminalization, militarization, and violence.[2] It entrenches the political status quo: fear of a “crisis” derails immigration reform and justifies more resources for controversial U.S.-backed Mexican and Central American security initiatives. In this narrative, enforcement, rather than human rights, the right to mobility, and the failures of broken immigration and labor systems, becomes the dominant policy and media focus.

The justification of heightened security to combat a purported border crisis has older roots. The suspicions and surveillance surrounding this bus’ journey, for example, highlight Mexico’s subservience to the U.S. border agenda seven years prior to the 2014 crisis. To claim that a crisis has simply emerged obscures the ability of historical analyses to temper current approaches and to offer alternative solutions. Specifically, the crisis discourse, and the enforcement policies it legitimizes, shares much in common with the U.S. approach to the U.S.-Mexico border, which became especially prominent during the 1980s War on Drugs and the 1990s border enforcement built up.[3] Peter Andreas identifies the similar power of the narrative of “loss of [border] control” at the U.S. Mexico border. According to Andreas (2000: 7):

The stress on loss of control understates the degree to which the state has actually structured, conditioned, and even enabled (often unintentionally) clandestine border crossings, and overstates the degree to which the state has been able to control its borders in the past…it obscures the ways in which the state itself as helped to create the very conditions that generate calls for more policing.

In the historically porous Mexico-Guatemala borderlands, the rhetoric of border security has intermittently risen to the fore to justify increased surveillance; state officials have often used ethnicity and dialect to signal otherness and exclusion.[4] Mexico first militarized its border with Guatemala to contain the refugee flow during the Guatemalan conflict in the early 1980s (Cruz Burguete 1998). More recently, Mexico intensified border enforcement and interior inspection points in line with a U.S. post-September 11, 2001 hemispheric security agenda. In July of 2001 under Plan Sur,[5] Mexico signed onto a U.S.-backed plan to not only strengthen its southern border with Guatemala, but also to implement militarized internal checkpoints. According to Miguel Pickard (2005), “the measure had the effect of ‘displacing’ tasks of the U.S. southern border to southern Mexico.”[6] Plan Sur increased migrant vulnerability as migrants sought out more dangerous routes and sophisticated smugglers to avoid the checkpoints (Birson 2010). Migrant desperation has become lucrative for cartels and criminal gangs who bribe their way through the bolstered security system (Birson 2010).

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On the bus, the mood was light as passengers joked with one another, music switched somewhat seamlessly between Mexican Norteña bands and Britney Spears, and passengers requested different DVDs. Some DVDs were bootleg copies of comedies; bus passengers laughed when the amateur bootlegger also captured audience members walking in and out of the theater when trying to film the actual movie. Most of the DVDs did not even have Spanish subtitles. However, most passengers seemed content to focus on something else besides the barren hillsides. The bus journey, however, was impeded by multiple checkpoints staffed by immigration, customs, the police, or the military. Checkpoints were more frequent at the southern border in Chiapas and again, as we neared the U.S.-Mexico border. At each checkpoint, the atmosphere shifted as passengers were instructed to get off the bus and to file into separate male (over 40 individuals) and female (4 individuals) lines as their papers, faces, and ways of talking were inspected.

Outside of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, we came to a temporary inspection point in the form of a tent set up on the side of the road with a small plastic table for food and a television. An immigration agent boarded the bus yelling, “Gather of your belongings [when you get off]. Please gather all of your belongings.” She didn’t give anyone time to speak. We were never given a reason why three men were kicked off the bus after the agents inspected every passenger. The agents suspected that the men were Central Americans. One passenger, who others referred to as their “guide” or “boss”, urged people who knew the men to defend them, but many people were afraid that this would render them suspect as well. One passenger told me that he was traveling with five friends, but that two were from Guatemala. The men told officials at the Mexican checkpoints that they were traveling separately because, as the passenger explained, “I don’t want to be accused of being a coyote [human smuggler] if they [Guatemalan friends] are caught. We don’t want to be associated.” He continued, “Sometimes Mexicans are being taken [off the buses] at the checkpoints while some Guatemalans pass fine. They [officials] will confuse [Mexicans] as being Guatemalan. It is very strict now.” Sometimes people were unsure if others were Mexican or Central American. The above passenger was uncertain, “They are from Guatemala, but have lived in Mexico for a long time. They are more Mexican.”[7] The “guide” believed that the men were Mexican and that the immigration officials “just want money. They often behave badly. If they have money, the [officials] will let them pass. They [officials] don’t have the education to know who is Mexican and who is not. They also don’t seem to care.” He continued to explain that people “often do not know how to defend themselves…Even when they are Mexican, the migra [immigration agents] will remove them [from the bus].” The three men had been taken off of the bus, but at later checkpoints, officials instead collected money from individuals or from the bus drivers who then collected from the corresponding passengers. Some men told me they believed that people who anticipated a problem could sometimes pay an advance fee to the bus drivers to help them through checkpoints. One man told me that he refused to succumb to this practice; “If you don’t pay, they take you off the bus…[But] I am Mexican and I would rather get off the bus than pay.” When this man was stopped for further questioning at one checkpoint, he related, “They asked for everything, all my documents…” He laughed…“And then, what are my parents’ names, how old are my parents, where was I born, how old am I, what day was I born, why did I leave? …If you answer just one question not to their liking, they take you off the bus.”

Ironically, Grupo Beta,[8] a Mexican unit dedicated to protecting migrant rights in Mexico, stopped the bus a few miles after the men had been removed from the bus by immigration. As they delivered pamphlets addressing the right of Mexicans to travel freely within Mexico, we recognized the terrible irony that the men had just been kicked off the bus. A Grupo Beta representative inquired if any immigration agents had asked for money from anyone or if anyone had been kicked off of the bus. They told the passengers that no one should be able to infringe on their rights to travel as Mexicans or to take money from them; if this occurs, then they should report it. Yet, the passenger who identified as a “guide” explained, “If you are Mexican you can go to human rights, but it’s often too late. They [human rights] should be watching the migra since it is complicated to denounce them. But they [human rights] are often located where they cannot do anything to resolve anything. Then you lose time and money.” When passengers mentioned that three men had just been kicked off of the bus, the Grupo Beta representative responded, “If you know they are Mexican… from your communities, defend them.” Yet the representatives also admitted that this could lead to problems since they knew that many people carried false documents and “if you do not know, you can be accused of being a coyote.” The potential for illegality rendered all passengers vulnerable to the whims of authorities operating under a U.S. security lens that is suspicious of all travelers heading north. Surveillance in northern Mexico is often racially marked against not only Central Americans, but also against southern Mexicans and the indigenous, who northern Mexicans have historically stigmatized as backwards and as posing a potential threat to the socioeconomic order (Vila 1999: 80).

As we approached the U.S.-Mexico border, the bus drivers gave gifts of DVDs and cigarettes to immigration inspectors to ensure a smooth passage through various checkpoints. The drivers knew the agents well; then the agents would wave, “see you next week.” As we neared the border, the bus drivers also urged passengers to hide their cell phones in overhead compartments. They knew officers might confiscate phones since they suspected they would be used to call coyotes waiting at the border. Some passengers had made the journey to the U.S.-Mexico border in groups and planned to call coyotes to help them with the long trek through the desert into the United States. Less experienced passengers were accompanied by the Mexican “guide” on the bus, whose task was to deliver them at the U.S.-Mexico border to a partner more familiar with the next leg of the journey. When we arrived in Altar, Sonora, everyone got off the bus and seemed to disappear into the desert dusk. My husband and I entered one of the few taquerias in an otherwise desolate town to wait almost two hours for a bus to Tijuana.

The bus journey illustrated the unpredictability of surveillance and the anxieties, as well as opportunities, this generated for passengers. Immigration agents might detain and deport someone, collect a bribe, or choose to ignore or fail to recognize false documents. While many bus passengers were apprehensive about the journey, more experienced migrants knew that they would eventually succeed. One passenger who was friends with the men who had been kicked off the bus received a phone call from them as we approached the U.S.-Mexico border. His friends would be joining him at a hotel in Altar, Sonora to wait for their coyote.

The Mexico-Guatemala border has long been selectively and unpredictably enforced. The actual official border is often easy to cross. At an official inspections post at Ciudad Cuauhtémoc, Mexico and La Mesilla, Guatemala, I often found confused tourists wondering where to get their passports stamped when they crossed the border. Border officials generally remain in their offices as people easily walk across the border and board vans to their destinations. However, semi-permanent, as well as unpredictable, checkpoints increasingly break up interior highways. Makeshift checkpoints may emerge overnight and vanish the following day. However, at the same time, a lack of sufficient and trained personnel, historically porous flows, the necessities of trade, and the fact that border security is costly and often counterproductive, lead the government to promote one image—of total control—while the reality is otherwise. As one customs official explained, “There are only 30 fiscal inspectors in all of Chiapas. Look…[he beckoned out of his office window to the expanse of mountains that constituted the international border]. This is a big state. With only 30 [inspectors] what are we supposed to do?” Unpredictability at once engenders fear and hope, which fuels the ability of corrupt state officials and smugglers to take advantage of migrants. Meanwhile, an image of control, rather than its actual implementation, enhances state legitimacy by demonstrating the state’s commitment to border management (Andreas 2000: 11; Nevins 2002). Similarly, at the U.S.-Mexico border, Peter Andreas (2000: 9) argues, “successful border management depends on successful image management, and that does not necessarily correspond with levels of actual deterrence.”

One customs official in Chiapas explicated the function of the image of control:

What the government wants to do most is show an image of control…but of course…if you actually see, you know that isn’t true…To actually exert control costs…the government is often not willing to spend the money…The government has sent more forces, but they are the same….They could send ten more units and it would be the same.

This disjuncture between image and reality has proven true in the past; when Mexico created a new border police force (Policía Estatal Fronteriza-State Border Police) in 2007, border residents I knew soon realized that many of the officers were the same men they knew from the state police force. The officers had received new uniforms, but otherwise nothing had changed. This buildup of the border security apparatus is a product of the state’s desire to show a public presence of force, while simultaneously realizing the inability, and impracticality of, fully controlling the border (Andreas 2000).

Recently numbers of undocumented migrants at the U.S. border have declined and the rhetoric of crisis in the U.S. media has subsided. However, Mexico continues to confront much of this flow. A priest who works with the Casa del Migrante in Tecún Umán, Guatemala told me in 2007, “To work for immigration is dirty work…Bush asked Mexico to help detain migrants going north and Mexico is doing its dirty work.” According to Migration Information Source, Mexico has deported over 30,000 Central Americans in 2014 (Archibold 2014).  Can this really be termed a successful solution to a crisis? When migrants are caught within Mexico’s web of enforcement, they’re more likely to be preyed upon by gangs, officials, and cartels, especially in border cities where migrants may desperately wait, become stranded, or try to gather funds to try again or return home. The hostel worker related, “And from these same migrants the officials feed themselves, taking their money and then they are allowed to proceed.” One migrant described the symbiosis between migrants and officials, “If there weren’t migrants, the migra [immigrant agents] would not have jobs. The migra are corrupt, they take your money and beat you.” To him, officials and bandits belong on the same continuum. He was deported because he had no more money to pay officials-the maras gangs had already taken everything.[9]

Mexico recently committed to patrolling the freight train called “La Bestia”/ “the Beast”, which migrants jump on and cling to as they attempt to make the journey north.

Image 2: Flyer warning migrants of the dangers of “The Beast” if they decided to travel north. Translation: “If you go… ‘the dignity and human rights of migrants do not have borders.” – Photo Credit: Photo taken by Rebecca B. Galemba at the Casa del Migrante in Tecún Umán, Guatemala.

In Tapachula, Chiapas, I met double amputees whose limbs were crushed by “the Beast” when they fell from the train. Yet for many the risks of “the Beast” were preferable to alternative routes, where they believed they would encounter more official corruption and criminal groups.[10]Amputees at the Albergue Jesus El Buen Pastor in Tapachula, Chiapas, a shelter for injured migrants, have fashioned wheelchairs out of plastic chairs.[11] One man, a double amputee, realized the irony behind his higher quality wheelchair. He told me that in 2006, Maria Shriver, who was married to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California at the time, came briefly to the shelter to donate fifteen wheelchairs. He told me “It was nice of her to donate the chairs,” but he disliked Schwarzenegger’s politics, especially concerning immigration.[12] “No he didn’t come,” he said. “We wouldn’t accept him if he did.”

Image 3: Photo of a make-shift wheelchair at Albergue Jesus El Buen Pastor in Tapachula, Chiapas – Photo Credit: Rebecca B. Galemba

The lesson from the U.S.-Mexico border is that the militarization of enforcement does not stop unauthorized border flows (Andreas 2000). When security escalates, smugglers become more sophisticated, violent, and demand higher fees, migrants pursue more dangerous routes, and officials increase bribes (ibid.). In turn, the border policing apparatus expands to combat it in a spiral of mutual escalation (ibid.). In 2012, the U.S. budget for immigration enforcement was $18 billion, larger than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined, despite evidence that such escalation may be counterproductive (Preston 2013). A similar border security approach is exported to Mexico, without enough consideration of judicial and policing reform, corruption, causes of migration, and a lack of transparency and accountability in policing institutions (Isacson et al. 2014). In this context, further feeding the current security and migration infrastructure has led to an escalation in human rights abuses. For example, human rights activists point to concerning implications for migrant rights as Grupo Beta, whose purpose is to aid migrants, has now been enlisted to help Mexican authorities conduct migrant raids (Stanton 2014).

In 2014, The Merida Initiative,[13]a security agreement established between the U.S. and Mexico in 2008 to combat drug trafficking and transnational crime, directed increased funds and attention to  “creating a 21st century border” and securing Mexico’s borders (Isacson et al.: 24). As of February 2014, The Mérida Initiative allocated $112 million in technology for border security including training, inspection equipment, and infrastructure, including additional small amounts for Navy/Marine training and facilities from the Defense Department’s counter-narcotics budget (ibid.). Most of this funding has gone to the northern border, but the southern border is now also becoming a priority (ibid.). Yet militarizing security forces in Mexico and Guatemala through U.S.-backed initiatives like Merida and Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI[14]) has not only failed to stem the drug war, but Mexico’s war on the cartels has also left 80,000 dead, 27,000 disappeared, and thousands displaced and since 2006 (MAWG 2013: 3; Abrego 2014). Such approaches are worrisome in regions where the military continues to be associated with human rights abuses and impunity. The United States cut off funding to Guatemala’s military in 1990 due to human rights abuses. Despite this, conditions have loosened and these restrictions do not apply to Defense Department funds, from which $27.5 million was given to Guatemalan security forces for counter-narcotics control form 2008-2012 (Isacson et al. 2014: 29; MAWG 2013). As David Bacon (2014) warns, “giving millions of dollars to some of the most violent and rightwing militaries in the Western hemisphere…is a step back towards the military intervention policy that set the wave of migration into motion to begin with.”

Mexico’s current approaches to tackling border issues, such as the Southern Border Program, do not contain sufficient measures to protect migrants or prosecute corrupt officials. While the program stresses migrant protection as a key component, Jorge Urbano, Director of the Program on Migration at the Iberoamerica University, expressed doubts that “if there is no qualified human capital…professionally trained to do a job that requires expertise in the subject of human rights, the measure…will result in little more than merely good intentions” (Langner 2014, translation mine). The program also does not address the concerns of migrants in transit (Langner 2014).[15] Rubén Figueroa, Coordinator of the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement in the Southern Region, asserts that:

the federal government has applied the Southern Border Plan as a police action to detain and deport the largest number of migrants…within this plan there are no provisions to prevent crimes…In the last decade more than 70,000 migrants have disappeared in Mexico and there are no mechanisms to denounce these disappearances when family members are in Central America[16] (Blanco 2014, translation mine).

Tasking Mexico’s migration institutions and enforcement agents with bolstering border security, regularizing migration, and protecting migrant rights raises additional concerns as critics doubt the ability of Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (INM) to implement immigration laws and respect human rights. In 2013, the INM ranked 8^th in the number of human rights abuses reported to Mexico’s National Human Rights Ombudsman (Isacson et al.: 32). The federal police and military ranked even higher in terms of abuses. According to Casa del Migrante in Saltillo in 2013, the federal police received the most denunciations for migrant abuses, even ahead of the Zetas cartel and maras gangs (Ureste 2014a). It is evident that strengthening security does little to make people feel secure. One merchant complained to Mexican journalist Manu Ureste, “as there are more checkpoints, there is more corruption” (Ureste 2014b, translation mine). As soldier demanded money to look through her bags, the merchant laughed when asked if the additional checkpoints made people feel more secure (ibid.). Instead, she saw the checkpoints as an opportunity for officials to distribute money amongst themselves (ibid).

To further understand Mexico’s approach to Central American migrants, it is important to note that Mexico accepts very few refugees–last year only 208 Central Americans (Kahn 2014). Many migrants are deported before they can pursue claims or they are detained indefinitely in INM’s poor facilities while filing (Isacson et al. 2014: 33). Once detained, migrants have a miniscule chance of advocating for an asylum case (IAHCR 2013). At one Mexican detention facility I visited in 2007, the women told me the men were denied water. Visits with their husbands in a different cell depended on the discretion of individual agents. One woman said the only reason the immigration delegate in charge came to check on them that day was because I was present. “Normally,” she said, “they yell at us and insult us.” Most detainees did not know how long they would remain in INM facilities or when they would be sent home. Mexico has recently made some efforts to decriminalize migration in 2008, as well as to enable migrants to seek justice for abuses regardless of status under the General Population Act in 2010 (IAHCR 2013). Nonetheless, detention remains the norm and protections have been insufficient to stem abuses. A recent Washington Office on Latin America report cautions:

Given the widespread and well-documented involvement of Mexican authorities with human smugglers and organized crime, increased immigration enforcement in Mexico is likely to accomplish little, and will only contribute to the further enrichment of corrupt officials and criminals, and to the victimization of innocent migrants (Meyer and Boggs 2014).

We need to become attuned to the reasons why people migrate and why they go where they do; this forces us to look in the mirror at foreign intervention, devastating trade policies, and inconsistent and insufficient immigration and refugee policies.[17] Pushing the crisis elsewhere through increasingly militarized means not only does not work, but it also leaves death and violence in its wake. Moreover, just as the crisis imagery obscures the fact that such problems have long been in the making, it also makes the issues seem to disappear once media and policy attention dissipate. Instead, Joseph Nevins (2002: 171) points to how the political-economic context and political elites shape our perceptions of crisis even when actual conditions may remain similar.

The power of the U.S. to control the border has become a normalized response to larger economic, political, and global anxieties (Nevins (2002: 37). Laying bare the social, historical, and political processes by which border policing has become a normalized mode of nation-building can help us question the implications of extending such exercises of power beyond and within national borders (Nevins 2002; Nevins 2014). As witnessed by the suspicions of illegality surrounding the Mexican bus’ journey, the U.S. has extended its border surveillance practices to Mexico, effectively undermining its sovereignty. Mexico and the U.S. have also instituted internal borders like the checkpoints depicted along the bus trip while the U.S. has implemented various practices of governance (e.g. E-Verify, Secure Communities, workplace policing, and the denial of driver’s licenses in various states) that increasingly delimit and criminalize the movement and existence of immigrants, creating what Nuñez and Heyman (2007) term, “entrapment processes” (also see Nevins 2014).

The restriction of rights based on national borders, coupled with the presumption that border policing can effectively guarantee these rights, relies on an assumption that threats to a nation come from outside of its borders and that such threats should therefore be combatted at the border. The normalization of this logic has made the granting and withholding of basic rights conditioned on national borders appear beyond reproach.[18] Such national frames of concern further contribute to the exploitation and abuse of migrants in transit as well as in the U.S., as their rights are either outright devalued or all too easily suspended in the name of security.

Image 4: Mural of the difficult northward journey, which depicts an imposing border with a narrow entryway between the United States and Mexico at the Casa del Migrante in Tecún Umán, Guatemala. - Photo Credit: Rebecca B. Galemba

The post Mexico’s Border (In)Security 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.

Black Gay Genius, an anthology edited by Steven Fullwood and Charles Stevens, opens with a meditation, a series of haunting questions that linger and will, perhaps, never be answered. In the Introduction, the editors ask us to tarry alongside them; they invite us to wrestle with how to negotiate the legacy of Joseph Beam’s In the Life[1] and envisage its continued influence.

“How do we honor [Joseph Beam] and that generation of black gay men? How to handle his legacy, so heavy with ambiguity?”

[...]

“How do we excavate the site that Joe occupied and conquered so brilliantly, we who inherit his courage and his loneliness? How do we create a project in conversation in an incompleteness?”

And it is the struggle to create a communion within and against an incompleteness—which can never be completely resolved—that drives this beautiful anthology. Each essay included in Black Gay Genius grapples with the implications of “un-burying our dead, our memories and our futures.” Each contributor “invite[s] us to look back, look ahead and, most critically, reveal where we might be now.” It is an invitation to engage in what Christina Sharpe would call “wake work.” Sharpe writes,

“Wakes allow those among the living to mourn the passing of the dead through ritual; they are the watching of relatives and friends beside the body of the deceased from death to burial and the accompanying drinking, feasting, and other observances; a watching practiced as a religious observance. But wakes are also ‘the track left on the water’s surface by a ship; the disturbance caused by a body swimming, or one that is moved, in water; the air currents behind a body in flight; a region of disturbed flow; in the line of sight of (an observed object); and (something) in the line of recoil of (a gun)’; finally, wake also means being awake and, most importantly, consciousness.”

The contributors to Black Gay Genius have taken up the commitment to perform “wake work”—to situate themselves in the wake of the In the Life, the ground breaking anthology of literary works by Black gay men—with a passion. Joseph Beam’s life was stolen. He was working on Brother to Brother, a second anthology of Black gay men’s writings, when he died unexpectedly of AIDS-related complications on December 27, 1988—just three days before his 34th birthday.

Black Gay Genius is a hymn to Joseph Beam, and his work. However, it is not a hagiography, the editors assure us. Instead, the book traces how Joseph Beam’s legacy speaks to our present reality. In the process, “Joe isn’t elevated to sainthood, he is humanized and unpacked. Memory stripped of sentimentality and faced head-on without blinking.”

Such an unflinching endeavour to ‘‘wake the dead with discursive interventions’’ is not easy. The wake work of recovering “those black gay men whose lives were ripped from us, violently” leaves us “suspended in place [...], our fingers deep in the grime of the rubble.” The rituals of raising the dead, our memories, and futures suggest, “we might need to perpetually bury our dead over and over again so that we can truly appreciate those individuals who came before us.”

Joseph Beam, Audre Lorde, Essex Hemphill, his “spirit family,” emerge through and within the revelatory essays, stories, interviews, and poems. Beam’s presence saturates the book, but the ‘real’ Joseph Beam never materializes. “The ‘real’ Joseph Beam is,” as Robert F. Reid-Pharr remarks, “available to us only as metaphor.” The image of Joseph Beam that surfaces in Black Gay Genius “represents nothing more than an attempt to frame and delimit what Beam was good at.” Reid-Pharr urges us to “resist the impetus to read Hemphill, Beam, or any of the other black lesbian and gay creative intellectuals whom we take them to represent, as simply forebears of an ever-nascent black gay/lesbian/queer cultural enterprise.”

Instead, Robert F. Reid-Pharr suggests a continued engagement with “the discursive artifacts that Hemphill and Beam left behind,” and invites us to approach their works “as living and engaged documents.” While admitting that we “cannot predict with any certainty the uses to which these works will be put in the future.” I read Reid-Pharr’s words as an adjuration to curate the dead, the voices that speak and dream in terrifying spaces of silence. To attend to the dead is a queer act.

The meditations in Black Gay Genius call for a critical wakefulness to the cuts, ruptures, silences, and wounds that shape how we connect ourselves to not only a Black gay past, but also our Black gay present, and future. However, Black folk’s relation to ‘contemporary’ time and its dissipation—or, perhaps, accumulation would be more fitting—is a sticky matter. The historical conditions of Black life have deeply affected how Black folk experience the ‘passage’ of time. The afterlife of slavery “has so welded past and present that it is virtually impossible and certainly meaningless to speak of it as occurring, as it were, in time.”

Black (gay) folk live “in expectation of something that has not yet been realized, is delaying being realized, is constantly unaccomplished and elusive.” In his essay In The Life and Death, Kenyon Farrow presents a queered/blackened way of “measuring time,” that illuminates the temporal strictures and structures of an anti-black world. Farrow opens his essay by noting that he “mark[s] the passage of time by death.” He learned to ‘keep time’, he tells us, by “the casket-count that marches to the beat of time passing.” A rhythm that has become an indelible feature of Black life: approximately every 28 hours a black person is killed by police officers.

Thinking In the Life—and death—alongside the ongoing, steady assault on Black life is to inhabit “a place where life and death are so entangled that it is no longer possible to distinguish them.” ‘Black time’ emerges as “the ‘moment’ of no time at all on the map of no place at all.” Farrow’s question of “how to best make Black gay premature death legible to Black people as a part of the structural violence that we’re all dealing with,” when Black gay men exist not only outside of ‘White time’, but ‘straight time’ as well makes it the more pressing. Black gay lives often disappear under the banner of ‘Black community’—a proxy for ‘Black family’.

For our survival, we need to “be politically and emotionally engaged around the totality of Black suffering (violence, unemployment, the inability for Black men to love each other, etc.).” When we say Black Lives Matter, we need to go “beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all.”

Black gay men and women in the Netherlands are dealing, perhaps unsurprisingly, with similar issues of erasure of our particular kind of suffering, “due to the “heterosexist erotics of family,” that often shape popular Black political attitudes. Where do Black gay men and women, who destabilize a politics of respectability and civility, fit in the (sanitized) archives of Black memory? It seems that irrespective of our geographical location and temporal frame Black gay lives are engulfed by silence, and subject to erasure.

The gestures that Joseph Beam’s writings have made “to end the deafening silence about our lives” are themselves precarious, passing. To speak our truth is not enough in a world where most ears are not attuned to the distinctive features of Black suffering, which is often heard as what Saidiya Hartman and Stephen Best call “black noise.” Black political aspirations and demands are “inaudible or illegible within the prevailing formulas of political rationality.” And yet, Black gay women and men must continue to write, sing, dance, dream, and organize—despite the fact that much of what we have to say is ignored within and without Black communities; it goes literally unheard—even when it is screamed into ears, and onto pages.

David Green suggests in his essay Erotic and the Crisis of Black Love: At Home with Joseph Beam, Melvin Dixon, and In The Life a queering of Black home in order to make Black gay lives legible. Green writes that “we must all live ‘in the life’, if we truly wish to survive this and future life.” While musing on Green’s entreaty, I drifted back to Kenyon Farrow’s words and Christina Sharpe’s theorization of wake work: in the life and in the wake. To live ‘in the life’ in the wake is to inhabit an antinomy between life and death. How, then, do we in this space of impossibility, of incommensurability—where “the time of slavery” appears to lag, lengthen out, stand still—begin to imagine a “future life” in the afterlife of slavery?

The question of “future life” cannot be divorced from the urgency of attending to the centrality of death, and “doing time,” in Black (gay) life—so much of the “future life” work we do is centred on attending to the dead, the “prison slave,” and the “prison slave-in-waiting.” In a certain way, I imagine, heterosexual, cisgender Black folk are already living ‘in the life’. Black life is already queered. It is lived against the odds. Jared Sexton uncovers the queerness of Black life when he notes, “that black life is not social, or rather that black life is lived in social death.” [emphasis in original] Being Black/queer is “a fatal way of being alive.” When our future is already precarious, and constrained by an anti-black time frame (every 28 hours) our persistence is an act of resistance. We need to say over and over and over again that it is possible to imagine different futures. We need to “believe in and create the world that we actually deserve.”

In Queer Relative: Joseph Beam, Audre Lorde, and the Diasporic Poetics of Survival in the 1980s, Alexis Pauline Gumbs breathes more life into this queerness that “disrupts the reproduction of a social narrative that says that Black life is worthless.” We must conjure alternative visions of freedom and survival from the violence and terror that haunts Black (gay) life across the Diasporas. In the wake, daring to dream and surviving is a queer thing to do. And yet, we must avoid the temptation of over-romanticizing the power of dreams, “as if having a dream were all we needed to transform ourselves and our futures.”

“Black dreams,” Joseph Beam warns us, “are dashed as assuredly as Black dreamers are killed.” And yet, Joseph Beam dared not only himself, but also us as well to dream “dreams borne of personal conviction and desire.” In the foreword to On Black Men David Marriott takes on Joseph Beams’ plea to dream the unthinkable in order to “contest the dream work of racist culture in its verisimilitude, address and imagine another kind of experience, another kind of living present and future.” [emphasis in original]

In the Life called a tradition of Black gay writing into existence, and left in its wake seeds of new possibilities; “the [ethical] commitment to dream ourselves differently,” to find and nurture “healthy (meaning non-patriarchal, non-objectifying) holistic love between Black women and Black men.” Alexis Pauline Gumbs shows us that Audre Lorde and Joseph Beam have provided a cognitive map. We must respond to the call of those who came before us, those who are no longer with us.

In Making Ourselves from Scratch Joseph Beam asks us, “what is it that we leave them beyond this shadow-play?” The most valuable thing we can leave behind is evidence that you do not have to make yourself from scratch. Black Gay Genius shows the evolving influence of Joseph Beam’s dictum.  It not only offers, but also inspires a sustained engagement with Joseph and his work. To use a turn of phrase like “a timely contribution” to describe Black Gay Genius seems jarring when “Black life is filled with untimely deaths.” This deeply moving anthology reminds us that our journey doesn’t end with death—one way or the other we remain in the life.

The post Black Gay Genius (Book Review) appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

**********

Title
“The Strategic Success of ISIS Propaganda”

Date & Location
October 24, 2014 – University of Madison, Wisconsin (CEH)

Abstract
To borrow the words of Judith Butler, “if we are interested in arresting cycles of violence to produce less violent outcomes, it is no doubt important to ask what, politically, might be made of grief besides a cry for war.” For reasons that will readily become apparent, the present lecture derives not simply from my professional area of expertise, but also from an uncomfortably personal connection. Of course, the spheres of personal experience, political convictions, and academic work are never as separate as one might like to believe, imagine, or pretend. On rare occasions, however, these closely related arenas intersect more fully—one might even say violently. “Strategic Success of ISIS Propaganda,” was, in fact, prompted by precisely such a brutal collision—provoking painful self-examination, at levels personal and cultural.

This analysis of ISIS propaganda is limited to a singular genre of production that I title: “The Beheading Series.” This infamous video set, comprised of four installments, depicts the decapitations of Western journalists and aid workers, including—at the time of writing—James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines, and Alan Henning. These political snuff films have prompted a heightened level of global hysteria, media hyperbole, and inflammation of viral fear that comes closest in intensity to the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001. But on that day, an atrocity was committed on American soil, and claimed thousands of casualties. Here, however, pixelated screens mediate and distort the atrocity, in terms of both space and time (“over there” seems yet “over here”); the death toll of U.S. citizens numbers merely two. What makes ISIS propaganda more horrifying than its terroristic predecessors? Stated differently, how does it succeed—and why? Further, the necessary questions are not simply “what” is different, nor “why,” but also—how? And—for whom?

I argue that the “Beheading Series” is not a recruitment attempt. Rather, this set of films is best understood as an advertisement campaign for apocalyptic war (or, “reverse recruitment”)—an extremely effective use of viral marketing techniques, that draws from horror films, video-game-style “immersive media,” and models of public diplomacy’s “soft power” arsenal—i.e., the “branded nation.” “The Beheading Series” belongs to a particular genre of propaganda, produced for a specific body of consumer-spectators, coded “the West.” Successful PR, after all, requires “knowing the audience.” And ISIS knows quote-unquote “us” very, very well. I demonstrate that the group’s media sophistication includes the deliberate exploitation of Islamophobia (with which Western cultures currently wrestle), and thrives within the (now) invisible distinctions between the spheres of entertainment, politics, and news.

Finally, against this lecture’s thematic backdrop, I also argue for the cultivation of visual literacy as an increasingly urgent tool for critical political analysis. This essential skill enables recognition of an influential connection rarely—if ever—voiced in public forums, such as the global mass media. I refer here to the intertwined relationship between the intense power of emotional affect, and the nebulous sphere of “geopolitics,” a connection that is particularly pronounced in our collective transnational context—i.e., consumer capitalism’s globalized marketplace. By purchasing ISIS advertising as if an “impulse buy,” the political arena and news media—however unwittingly—serve as (to borrow a term from security studies) “collective force multipliers.” The ad campaign, literally, goes viral—and most ominously, entirely by design.

The post The Strategic Success of ISIS Propaganda (video lecture) appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

On my last trip to NYC, I was overwhelmed with Homeland season four’s new advertisement campaign plastered on almost every public bus in the city. The American political thriller has received overwhelming support, with six Emmys and five Golden Globes. President Barack Obama has even claimed it his favourite show on television.[1] Focusing on CIA agents and their fight against terrorism, the show has received widespread criticism over its (mis)representations of Muslims and Islam, all while maintaining a universalized view of Muslim spaces. Laila Al-Arian has called it “TV’s most Islamophobic show.”[2] Despite this criticism, the show’s newest campaign demonstrates no sign of progress in its representations of Muslims and, specifically, Muslim women.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Producers of the American political thriller revealed that the new season’s plot takes place in Islamabad, Pakistan and Kabul, Afghanistan. Season four’s poster features lead actress Claire Danes (as Carrie Mathison) wearing a red headscarf surrounded by a group of burqa-clad women. Although the poster does not reference a specific location in which the image takes place, by the style of dress of the women in the poster we are to assume that these are Afghan women. In one of the show’s video teasers titled “Target Confirmation”, the same red veil is shown on Carrie as she undergoes a ground mission in Pakistan. As Carrie walks onto the road, the teaser shows a brief close up shot of a Pakistani woman gazing at Carrie. As the teaser goes on, Carrie sees male terrorist suspects and gives the order to destroy them. Upon giving this order she–in slow motion–unwraps the red veil off her head and throws it aside carelessly. The camera then shows a slow motion shot of the red scarf as it makes its way to the ground.[3] The teaser ends with a shot of the CIA led missile explosion and the falling red veil is placed in the center of the frame.

It is important to first acknowledge the varying geographies present in the poster. Considering that the Afghan burqa is traditionally blue in colour and taking into account Carrie’s red veil in Pakistan, the poster blurs distinctions of Muslim spaces by combining varying illustrations of Muslim women’s cultural dress into one image. Homeland’s deep interest and fondness of Muslim women’s attire is consistent all throughout the show’s ad campaign and costume design. It even made it all the way to the episode titles, with season four episode three named after the traditional South Asian dress “Shalwar Kameez” even though the episode’s plot is irrelevant to the attire it references. In its universalized pooling of different cultural and Islamic dress, the show dispenses of any factual articulation of the different meanings behind different forms of covering. Homeland’s point here is not necessarily to depict the specific location of the storyline, rather to visually demonstrate that the show is about Muslims­–and the CIA’s patriotic fight against them.

The poster and the teaser both limit Muslim women’s participation to outer physical appearance. Using images of passive veiled Muslim female bodies to suggest eastern backwardness and western emancipation efforts for eastern freedom is a common trend in popular representations of Muslim women. By removing all forms of active dialogue with the represented Muslim women, Homeland references historic and cultural orientalist stigmas of Muslim women’s ‘passive oppression’ in the face of backward eastern societies. Similar orientalist images have been circulating for decades. For example, circa 1900-1930, European photographers based in North Africa and the Middle East established studios to market and produce commercial postcards displaying images –mostly staged female nudes/veiled/erotic dancers–of the Orient[4]. In his critique of French postcards depicting face-veiled Algerian women, Malek Alloula highlights the colonial de-humanizing implications of these images on the subjects in question. In the case of postcards depicting a group of Moorish women in full veil attire, Alloula argues that the veil is seen by the colonial photographer as a generalized mask; where whenever the photographer captures a veiled woman, “he cannot help but include in his visual field several instances of her […] For it is always a group of veiled women that the photographer affixes upon his plate” [5]. The striking similarities of the aesthetic grouping of face veiled women in both the postcards and Homeland’s poster pose the question: What purpose do these images serve?

Moorish Women Taking a Walk. Postcard from The Colonial Harem, by Malek Alloula. Image Credit: ReOrienting the Veil, University of North Carolina

In the case of the French postcards, images of veiled Algerian women caught the imagination of western audiences by allowing them to look into the ‘exotic’ life of women in the French colonial east; this imagination thereby allowed for the justification of French colonial presence. Taking into account Homeland’s plot in Afghanistan and Pakistan, season 4’s campaign brings forward colonial fantasies of imagined eastern–Afghan and Pakistani–Muslim women through the praxis of U.S foreign policy. As the traveling colonial postcards repetitively reproduced stereotypes from one western home to the other, Homeland’s traveling poster buses and orientalist moving images also work to recycle and fixate the stereotype of far-away Muslim women as non-resistive passive victims stuck in religion-based fanaticism and turmoil.

For the case of contemporary post- 9/11 North American society, Homeland functions alongside larger political frameworks working to ideologically justify U.S imperialism. Anthropologist Lila Abu Lughod suggests that since 2001, defending the rights of Muslim women was offered as a rationale for military intervention in Afghanistan; thus, images and stories of oppressed Muslim women have been widely circulated in North America and Europe (a timing that is not coincidental). For Abu Lughod, stereotyping Muslim women “distracts us from the thornier problem that our own politics and actions in the world help create the (sometimes harsh) conditions in which distant others live”[6]. As seen in Homeland’s campaign, emphasis on region-cultural depiction works to “artificially divide the world into separate spheres–-recreating an imaginative geography of West versus East, us versus Muslims, cultures in which First Ladies give speeches versus others where women shuffle around silently in burqas.”[7] In the case of the show, it is Carrie playing the role of the first lady.

The campaign’s poster draws on the implications of ‘third world’ vs. ‘first world’ difference through its use of colour and juxtaposition. Presented in deep black, the burqa-clad women are all standing facing forward while Claire Danes looks back and gazes resistively straight at the audience in her bright red scarf and peeking blonde hair. By separating Carrie from her imagined Muslim female counterparts, the poster presents a strong contrast that isolates and labels one party as privileged and the other as voiceless, oppressed and in need of outside intervention. Similarly, the teaser also reinforces such distinctions of privilege through the dramatic visual portrayal of Carrie’s act of unveiling. Homeland’s insertion of the non-Muslim character Carrie Mathison in conflated Muslim spaces illustrates a striking colonial framework that subjugates Muslim women’s imaged bodies for the glorification of Carrie’s western efforts of feminist-based resistance.

What does it mean to have a whole teaser illustrating a non-Muslim American woman unveiling in Pakistan? In removing and disposing of the scarf while veiled Muslim women are present in the scene, Carrie attempts to play out an act of agency against a backdrop of women who are presumed to lack freedom and autonomy. Carrie removes the veil as an affirmation of power, for she has just ordered the killing of a group of threatening male terrorists. Her feeling of empowerment in destroying dangerous men plays out in her decision to unveil. In its insinuations of power dynamics, the scene draws a direct relationship between veiling and ideas of weakness. Similar to the colonial gaze of the French’s postcards, Jasmin Zine borrows the term “imperialist feminist gaze” to suggest the recurring colonial motives played out under the banner of feminism[8]. Zine highlights the collision between feminism and Orientalism, where the two allow for the othering of Muslim women through the lens of the feminist gaze[9]. The imperialist feminist structure creates a binary that inherently juxtaposes ‘oppressed’ third world Muslim women against ‘liberated’ women of the west. Placed alongside Carrie’s unveiling, the close up shot of the Pakistani woman early in the scene visually affirms the imperial feminist binary. The teaser is extremely problematic in its depictions and not only undermines but also blatantly questions veiled Muslim women’s agency in every way.

What is most interesting about the show, however, is that it does not at all focus on specific Muslim women issues or their lives. Homeland’s Western women, like Carrie, are given a highly acknowledged individuality.

Photo 1 of Marvel comic still taken from page 4 of 27 from Ms. Marvel 001 digital comic book

In contrast, Eastern Muslim women are simply used to reiterate and support Carrie’s occidental livelihood. The show’s poster campaign and storyline are almost irrelevant to each other in their subject matter. The difference between the two acts as proof of the bleak reality of face-value imperialist feminism for what is really a national propagandist pop cultural creation. For audiences in North America, the ongoing failed depictions of Muslim characters[10] in popular texts only further instigates Islamophobic threats and pushes for the exclusion of North American Muslims from their societies[11].

In order for any form of representational progress–in popular fiction–to occur, we have to reject the idea of imperialist feminism by creating roles that negate existing stereotypes and that actively work to resist and refute them. Marvel comics recently released a new comic series featuring the first-ever lead female American Muslim superhero. The new Ms. Marvel stars a 16-year-old Pakistani-American superhero named Kamala Khan and is on its sixth printing with over 30,000 print copies sold, placing it among the top-selling comics in the market[12]. Created by Sana Amanat, Ms. Marvel provides a positive example in the popular representations of Muslim women. The superhero presents a non-universalized young woman’s negotiations of daily life as a Muslim in America, all while battling super villains. This comic book production not only acts in favour of diversity, but also allows audiences to identify with strong characters with similar relatable experiences and backgrounds.

Image Credit: Photo 2 of Ms. Marvel’s portrait taken from Marvel’s web image gallery and marvel.wikia.com

While positive representations, such as Kamala, demonstrate a hopeful move to Muslim audiences, the imperialist-led struggle does not end there. Indeed, the media dangerously enforces and creates marginalizing stigmas, but the real-life danger inflicted on those marginalized–both external and internal–remains harshly present in the everyday. As mentioned earlier, Homeland’s point to focus on non-American human targets and places re-directs people’s attention away from the local American governing villains–who, as Abu-Lughod reminds us, actively work to inflict violence on distant others for imperial gains. For a true re-scripting of the imperialist colonial structure, I urge us to self-reflect on how each of our everyday lives contributes to or resists this imperialist framework. I call for the pursuit of productive decolonial action by locals in Western communities against their local Western powers. Active participatory resistance takes many forms, and creating a lead Muslim female superhero is certainly one of them.

The post Framing Muslim Women: The Problem with Homeland’s Season 4 Campaign appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

Faltando dias para a eleição presidencial, no dia 5 de outubro, com tantos temas em jogo (veja aqui um resumo), a novela política e ideológica do Brasil segue em suspenso. Ao invés de entrar nesses debates, discutirei uma nova política em nível menor, o do município de São Paulo. Os eventos atuais na cidade me levaram a considerar o seguinte: o que acontece a uma sociedade quando a urbanização está completamente orientada para o lucro? Se houver desenvolvimento social do espaço urbano, como será?

Durante a minha última estadia na cidade, entre maio e agosto de 2014, algo curioso ocorreu. O prefeito de São Paulo, Fernando Haddad (PT)  criou o Plano Diretor (agora referido como PDE, “E” significa “estratégico”), um complemento ao Estatuto da Cidade (2001). Na verdade, o PDE está longe de ser um esforço individual por parte do prefeito. Em vez disso, foi resultado de mais de nove meses de debate, envolvendo 114 audiências públicas, incluindo diretamente mais de 25 mil moradores. O plano de desenvolvimento urbano, criado em 30 de junho de 2014, foi sancionado um mês depois. Com um mandato de dezesseis anos para “humanizar” o desenvolvimento urbano, valorizar o meio ambiente, aliar  o conceito de “função social “à urbanização, além de apoiar “iniciativas culturais”, a experiência do PDE em São Paulo merece a atenção de todos.

Sim, chegamos a esse ponto. Por gerações, desde o boom da industrialização e da grande onda modernista, uma montanha-russa financeira  que empurrou São Paulo ao centro econômico no início do século 20, a cidade não dispunha de nenhum plano sério. A urbanização ocorreu em sua maior parte em função da especulação imobiliária, com milhões de deslocados, residentes migrantes improvisando espaços residenciais e comerciais, bem como serviços básicos, como eletricidade, água e transporte. São Paulo tem tomado forma, como resultado de acordos de curto prazo, amplificados por uma infra-estrutura maciça dos meios de comunicação comerciais, e não por  planos sócio-geográficos sustentáveis.

Photo Credit: Derek Pardue

Por que o PDE agora? Houve uma mudança de cima para baixo e o contrário também. Ora, Haddad tem sido comparativamente mais proativo do que prefeitos progressistas anteriores, tais como Marta Suplicy (2001-2004) e Luiza Erundina (1989-1992). Em retrospectiva, as administrações da cidade de São Paulo têm abertamente apoiado o desenvolvimento “wild west” combinado às forças policiais repressivas para controlar os protestos populares. O Partido dos Trabalhadores ou qualquer partido com agenda similar raramente ganha em São Paulo. Talvez, a mudança mais importante tenha sido a atitude e e a organização de base (grassroots) em torno da questão da moradia. Ocupar e reaproveitar prédios abandonados para moradia e centros culturais tornaram-se práticas comuns nos dias de hoje, especialmente em bairros centrais, mas também em alguns bairros da periferia. Grupos como FLM (Frente de Luta pela Moradia) e MTST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem-Teto) têm sido protagonistas na sensibilização para as questões cada vez mais urgentes relacionadas à moradia e à especulação imobiliária.

O PDE é uma nova tentativa, robusta, para reestabelecer o “social” no desenvolvimento urbano. A especulação imobiliária é um jogo de baixo ou nenhum risco para a elite que tem o capital. Ela se beneficia não só da  mídia publicitária,, cheia de panfletos de sonhos distribuídos em quase todos os semáforos, de outdoors em avenidas e rodovias, e propaganda na Internet, mas também frequentemente conta com o apoio do estado. Uma ala dos protestos contra a Copa do Mundo criticou precisamente as conexões entre o desenvolvimento do megaevento e o aumento da especulação imobiliária.

Não é que as administrações políticas dos últimos anos não tenham levado  em conta o planejamento urbano. Órgãos burocráticos, como EMURB (Empresa Municipal de Urbanização de São Paulo) já existem há décadas. Criada em 1971, a Emurb usa fundos públicos para a renovação de edifícios históricos, como o Edifício Martinelli, uma marca da indústria paulista moderna e gestão de elite. No entanto, nunca houve qualquer menção ao desenvolvimento sustentável e muito pouca ação no desenvolvimento de moradias populares, além dos projetos habitacionais distantes, que muitas vezes demonstraram o pior do populismo: infra-estrutura de má qualidade, resultando em políticas rápidos e escândalos subsequentes. Em 2009, a EMURB foi dividida em duas empresas públicas. A SMDU (Secretaria Municipal de Desenvolvimento Urbano) é a agência mais pertinente. Em maio de 2013, a SMDU foi reorganizadoa em face de um potencial PDE.

Em um mapa novo de São Paulo, o governo dividiu a cidade em setores para destacar os objetivos específicos do PDE. As categorias de desenvolvimento sustentável e igualitário propostas abordaram o problema em nível micro (bairro) e macro (a cidade como um todo). Por exemplo, território e sociedade se unem numa das iniciativas, conhecida como ZEIS (Zonas Especiais de Interesse Sociais). Na sua versão atual, o projeto prevê que a cidade irá utilizar fundos públicos para desenvolver até 33 quilômetros quadrados, sessenta por cento dos quais para famílias com renda inferior a 3 salários mínimos (cerca de 2.100 reais por mês). Em contraste à habitação pública anterior, esta construção é projetada não para a periferia, mas para o centro da cidade e bairros históricos, como Bela Vista, Brás, Santa Ifigênia, Campos Elíseos e Pari. Além disso, semelhante a um conjunto de leis de urbanização em Nova York, o PDE exige “cotas de solidariedade,” que estipula que qualquer proprietário (pessoa física ou jurídica) de uma propriedade com uma área superior a 20.000 metros quadrados deve dedicar 10% do espaço de habitação “social” em conformidade com o Estatuto da Cidade. Este espaço deve ser no local ou numa área do mesmo bairro.

Mudanças inspiradoras, mas será que pegam?

No Brasil, a crença na lei é sempre ligada à fiscalização, o processo complexo de regulação. Como foi observado várias vezes nos últimos dois meses, por Raquel Rolnik, em seu blog, há atualmente uma desconexão entre o PDE e a realidade de aplicação da lei. Como alertado anteriormente, os ativistas certamente sabem em o que o PDE implica, uma vez que eles e os seus representantes contribuíram para sua formulação. No entanto, o mesmo não pode ser dito para a polícia ou, infelizmente, muitos juízes, pois eles continuam a ignorar ou recusar-se a aceitar o conceito de função social da cidade. Para os investidores imobiliários, a “função social” do planejamento urbano representado pelo novo PDE é um dreno no lucro e um obstáculo injustificado ao desenvolvimento. Esta minoria tem muitos porta-vozes à sua disposição para culpar a cidade por causar especulação. Ironia brutal de braços com fingida ignorância.

A visão do Plano Diretor é que uma cidade deve ser organizada como um direito humano e não um recurso econômico. A cidade não é como diamantes ou tecnologia informática. Para o governo, esse tipo de desenvolvimento empreserial é de importância secundária. Em vez disso, a função principal de gestão da cidade deve ser a alocação e regulação do espaço como um gesto de contribuir para o bem comum. Dado o fato de que a maioria de nós vive em cidades e que esta tendência deve se intensificar, todos nós temos algo em jogo no tocante ao que vai acontece em São Paulo.

The post Lições de São Paulo: Uma Mudança Merecida na Política Urbana appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

With only a few days left before Brazil’s presidential election on October 5th, and so many important social issues under scrutiny (see this review, for example), the political and ideological novela of Brazil remains a cliffhanger. Instead of prediction and pontification on the federal level, I will discuss a policy turn on a somewhat smaller scale, the municipal level of São Paulo. Current events in the huge city provoked me to consider the following: what happens to a society when urbanization is completely driven by profit? If there is to be any social development of urban space, what might that look like?

During my last stay from May to August of 2014 something unusual occurred, the mayor of São Paulo created the “Directive Plan” (Plano Diretor, referred to for the rest of this essay as PD), a new complement to the City Statute (2001). In fact, it was far from a solo effort on the part of Mayor Fernando Haddad (PT). Rather, over nine months of debate, involving 114 public discussions (audiências públicas) including directly more than 25,000 residents, the urban development plan was created on June 30, 2014 and signed into law on July 30th. With a mandate of sixteen years to “humanize” urban development, valorize the environment, bring urbanization more in line with “social function,” and to support “cultural initiatives,” the PD experiment in São Paulo deserves everyone’s notice.

Yes, we’ve gotten to that point. For generations, ever since the boom of industrialization and the great modernist wave of roller coaster finances thrust São Paulo into the economic limelight in the early 20th century, the city has lacked a serious plan. Urbanization has occurred for the most part in function of real estate speculation with millions of displaced, migrant residents improvising residential and commercial spaces as well as basic services such as electricity, water and transportation. São Paulo has taken shape as a result of short-term deals amplified by a massive infrastructure of commercial media rather than sustained socio-geographical plans.

Why the PD now? There has been a change from above and below. Namely, Haddad has been comparatively more proactive than previous labor party or progressive mayors, i.e. Marta Suplicy (2001-2004) and Luiza Erundina (1989-1992). Taken overall, São Paulo city administrations have overtly supported “wild west” development combined with repressive police forces to control popular protests. The Worker’s Party or anything like it rarely wins in São Paulo. Perhaps, a more important change has been the grassroots attitude and organization around the issue of housing or moradia. Occupying and repurposing abandoned buildings for residency and cultural centers have become commonplace these days, especially in downtown districts but also in some periphery neighborhoods. Groups such as FLM (The Struggle for Housing Front) and MTST (Homeless Worker’s Movement) have been central players in raising awareness of the increasingly urgent issues regarding housing and real estate speculation.

The PD is a new, robust attempt to reestablish the “social” in urban development. Real estate speculation is a game of low to no risk for the elite who have the capital. They benefit from not only media propaganda, filled with dreamscape flyers distributed at almost every traffic light, billboards on avenues and highways, and internet sidebar advertisement, but also frequently state support. One wing of the anti-World Cup protests targeted precisely the connections between mega-event development and the rise of real estate speculation.

It is not that the political administrations of years past did not take into account urban planning. Bureaucratic bodies such as EMURB (Empresa Municipal de Urbanização de São Paulo / Municipal Company of São Paulo Urbanization) have existed for decades. Created in 1971, EMURB’s objectives were to use public funds in the service of renovating historic buildings such as the Martinelli skyscraper, a landmark of modern São Paulo industry and elite management. However, there was never any mention of sustainable development and very little in popular housing development beyond far-flung housing projects, which often demonstrated the worst side of populism, shoddy infrastructure resulting in quick political gain and eventual  scandal. In 2009, EMURB was divided into two public companies. The SMDU (Secretaria Municipal de Desenvolvimento Urbano / The Municipal Secretary of Urban Development) is the more pertinent agency. In May of 2013 the SMDU was reorganized in prediction of a potential PD ordinance.

In a newly designed map of São Paulo, the government has divided the city into sectors to highlight the specific goals of the PD. The categories of proposed sustainable and egalitarian development approach the problem from both micro (neighborhood) and macro (the city as whole) levels. For example, territory and society come together in one of the initiatives, referred to as ZEIS (Zonas Especiais de Interesse Social / Special Zones of Social Interest). In its current version, the project stipulates that the city will use public funds to develop up to 33 square kilometers (approx. 12.75 square miles), sixty percent of which is for families whose income is below 3 minimum wages (roughly 900 US$ a month). In contrast to previous public housing, this construction is designed not to be relegated to the periphery but rather be part of downtown and historic neighborhoods such as Bela Vista, Brás, Santa Ifigênia, Campos Eliséus and Pari. In addition, similar to a set of urbanization laws in New York City, the PD calls for a “solidarity quota,” which stipulates that any owner (corporate or individual) of a property unit with an area above 20,000 square meters (approx. 215,000 square feet) must dedicate 10% of the space to “social” housing in compliance with the City Statute. This space must be located either in that construction site or in an area in the same district.

Inspiring changes but will they stick?

In Brazil, belief in the state and law is always posed in terms of fiscalização, the tricky process of policy regulation. As noted several times in the past two months by Raquel Rolnik in her watchdog blog, there is currently a disconnect between the PD and the grounded reality of law enforcement. As signaled above, the squatters and activists certainly know what the PD entails, since they and their representatives contributed to its formulation. However, the same cannot be said for the police or, unfortunately, many judges as they continue to ignore or refuse to accept the concept of the city’s social function. For real estate investors the “social function” of urban planning represented by the new PD is a drain on profit and an unwarranted obstacle to development. This cadre has plenty of mouthpieces at their disposal to blame the city for causing speculation. Brutal irony meets feigned ignorance.

The vision of the Plano Diretor is that a city must be organized as a human right not an economic resource. A city cannot be equated to diamonds or internet technology. For government, this sort of entrepreneurial development is of secondary importance. Rather, the primary function of city management should be the allocation and regulation of space as a contributing gesture towards the common good. Given the fact that the majority of us now live in cities and that this trend will only intensify, we all indeed have a stake in what happens in São Paulo. 

The post Lessons from São Paulo: A Deserved Shift in Urbanization Policy appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

There’s no never-again ending to their stories of displacement: From Congo to Burundi, from Iraq to Syria, From Darfur to Tripoli to Tunis, to New Haven.  They’ve had to flee persecution on foot, by boat, by air, moving under duress with the traumas of forced migration.  They are walking with scars, and yet they are marching, in protest of yet more violence near their new homes in Connecticut.  The struggle for justice can be as hard as trying to march on crutches. But every hop-step we take with another is a movement towards solidarity.

…

Last spring, sitting beside an Afghani grandmother whose name means Moon in Farsi at the Criterion Cinema, I got a taste of the beloved community Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned.  Moon and I were among a group of IRIS clients and volunteers who went to a screening of “Girl Rising,” a documentary film about nine young women who were deprived of a basic education in their home countries.  It was Moon’s first American movie. She only speaks a few words of English.  When the tub of butter popcorn came around to her, she took a handful and then dropped the kernels in the cone shape she’d made of the movie flyer, a small, make-shift tub of her own—I should say our own.  Every few minutes, she would look at me and smile, pushing the cone-tub of popcorn towards me, saying khosh, khosh. I was not hungry, but I took the popcorn. I don’t know a word of Farsi, but I could tell khosh, khosh, means something like “Take, Eat.”

The following week, Moon came to participate in a cooking group for refugee women to pool their culinary skills using Connecticut Food Bank Food to prepare a meal to share together.

The food-bank item most left behind in the IRIS pantry, the iron-chef secret ingredient of the week, was artichokes.  “Ard shawqy,” a woman I’ll call Zeinab said, Arabic for “thorn of the earth,” I recognized.  I’d never learned the word for artichoke before.  But I’d learned earth, and I’d learned thorn, from my Uncle Latif, my dad’s brother, who taught me how to speak Arabic.

“Ma feesh ard shawqy fiy Eritrea, mish kidda?”  (“There are no artichokes in Eritrea, right?) I asked a woman I’ll call Aamina, one of the few Eritrean refugees with whom I can communicate.  I don’t speak a word of Tigrinya, but Aamina speaks the Arabic dialect most familiar to me: She lived in Sudan for nine years, and Sudanese Arabic sounds much like the Upper Egyptian accent of my dad’s side of the family.

Talking to Aamina is like going back to a place where I was from, a home that never was my home, in a language foreign and yet strangely native to me.  Talking thorns of the earth with Aamina is an inkling of what I imagine speaking phrases in Tigrinya must be like for her.  Though my experience growing up with an Egyptian father in an affluent suburb of Birmingham, Alabama is not comparable to Aamina’s coming of age as a refugee in Sudan, our disparate stories converge in the guttural cadences, the slang phrases, of the dialect we half know by heart.

“Aiwa, bas fiyha fiy Malta,” she told me, they have [artichokes] in Malta. It was the artichokes that got Aamina telling her migration story.  She’d spent her first nine years in Eritrea, the next nine in Sudan.  Then, like many Eritrean refugees, she crossed the desert by jeep to get to Libya.  From Tripoli, she took a boat to Malta.

We took a walk with Zeinab through the irises, opening wider by the day, in the garden outside the church kitchen we use for cooking group.  I saw a loose, half-built, empty bird’s nest in the crook of the limbs of small dogwood tree, and I took a few pictures with my phone.  Zeinab looked up, to the place higher in the tree where the sound of a bird was coming from.  “We can hear her, but we cannot see her,” she said.

Aamina was exploring another tree. “Shufty!,” she said, “Look! Beit al asfoor, house of the birds,” she said, showing me a complete nest holding three blue robin’s eggs.

I remembered, from my days of learning Arabic with my Uncle Latif in Alexandria, the root word for bird, safara, means to travel, journey.  My father, aunts and uncles have all passed away.  That day, Aamina and Zeinab helped me remember them. That day, we had journeyed from thorns of the earth to house of the birds.

We could have sat out there under the dogwood trees all day, but we were called inside.  It was time to eat.  The feast had been laid out on the table: spinach-potato latkes, cabbage-apple slaw, a cake and muffins made of the canned carrots that always get left behind in the food pantry.

On her way up the stairs, to the kitchen, I heard Moon whispering with each and every step, gingerly, B’ism allah al-rahman, al-raheem, “in the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate” the beginning of every Muslim prayer.

While the women were serving themselves, one of my fellow volunteers was putting the muffins she’d baked in Zip-lock bags for the ladies to take home to their families.  She was cutting the cake she’d made with the same batter, saying “Here, we eat from the same cake.”

We didn’t know what to do with the fennel leaves, so Zeinab put them in a vase of water at the center of the table next to a white flower Moon had improvised out of paper towels.  Our grace that day was B’ismallah ya rahman ya raheem, Amen.

IRIS Community Liaison Ashley Makar shares stories about refugees in her presentations to congregations and community groups. This piece is an excerpt of a sermon entitled “Making the Shapes of Justice,” which was published in full on the website of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Hartford: http://www.ushartford.com/sermons.html.

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Arctic Summer stands apart from fiction that either speaks back to empire or belongs to its ideology, in a third space all of its own. It offers the colonial written by the postcolonial: a writer imagines the writing process of something already written. Forster’s novel is dedicated to Syed Ross Masood, the Indian Muslim who was his lifelong friend, and with whom Forster fell painfully in love. Galgut is a frequent visitor to India and his own book is dedicated, in language that mimics and echoes Forster’s, to his friend Riyaz Ahmed Mir. Is Galgut’s Arctic Summer homage, appropriation, or simply an evocation of a writing life? Is it a biography or a travelogue? Reading it one experiences a certain kind of vertigo, as when cave paintings are illuminated by flashes of electric light, and the ghosts of centuries past seem to speak.

Arctic Summer is a novel that looks both ways – to its past and future – even while it postdates and pre-empts some formative tropes of postcolonial thinking. Mimicry forms a chain of echoes through it. The title is taken from the eponymous novel that Forster began in 1911 but never finished, and one of Galgut’s themes is writer’s block. Galgut’s style is very much the spare, heart-piercing voice of The Good Doctor (2003). All the repressed anguish of In A Strange Room (2010) is intact but the focus in Arctic Summer is reminiscent of Forster’s Maurice: the inner life of one central character dealing with his sexuality. Though it was not published until after Forster’s death, Maurice was written in 1913, during the eleven-year gestation period of A Passage To India, and this writing forms a rare moment of exhilaration for the fictional Morgan inside Galgut’s novel. Here, the writing of Maurice, which occurred when homosexuality was still criminalised and considered shameful in England, becomes Morgan’s working out of his own sexuality – the darkness he must confront. For it is only by doing this, Galgut imagines, that Forster gained the confidence and the courage to leave blank what actually happened to the young, impressionable, evocatively named Adela Quested, “an English girl, fresh from England”[1] in the Marabar caves, masterfully allowing the reader’s terror to rise alongside the outrage of the English at her “assault” by the native Dr Aziz, and creating a suspense that could only be constructed by an author who understood that the greater fascination and horror lies in the acts we privately imagine.

This choice effects a striking reversal into an act of subversive mimicry, one that Forster only approaches in his previous novels. The white English author inhabits the position of the “other”. Instead of following Adela, Forster remains with Dr Aziz as he ducks out of the cave in confusion over the social faux pas Adela makes in asking him, a highly educated and cultured Muslim, if he has more than one wife. Forster remains with Aziz, full of worry for Adela and fear for himself when he thinks she is lost. His relief upon seeing her below glosses over any residual anxiety he might have felt when he finds her binoculars at the entrance to a cave. Forster nearly lulls the reader into Aziz’s confident sense of security when he writes, with such a sense of finality, “The expedition was over.”[2] In the 2005 Penguin edition of the novel, the eye travels from the bottom of the page to the top of its facing partner. This tiny pause does not prepare readers for what comes next: the shock that hits Aziz and breaks any fragile concord that he has attempted to spin between himself (as host, yet subordinate to his British ‘guests’). “…[A]s they sat up in the gloom and prepared to enter ordinary life, suddenly the long drawn out strangeness of the morning snapped. Mr Haq, the Inspector of Police, flung open the door of their carriage and said in shrill tones: “Dr Aziz, it is my highly painful duty to arrest you.”[3] “Ordinary life” is no more – the reversal is complete – and the reader is fully on the side of the wronged party – Dr Aziz, the ‘other’, who cannot be guilty. Forster breaks the coda described by Ania Loomba, “Perhaps the most binding imperative of colonial life was to stick to one’s own,”[4] and tricks his readers into recognising the morality in doing the same.

Forster’s great theme in Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) and A Room with A View (1908) was the English abroad: their sense of superiority, their manners and habits, their prejudices and, in Lilia, Philip and Lucy Honeychurch, the yearnings for something more. ‘Others’ – the Italian Gino and liberally raised George, upset English sensibilities so thoroughly that they provide a vision for how life could be lived, if, as Margaret Schlegel observes in Howards End (1910) we could “only connect”[5]. In A Passage To India, begun two years after Howards End, Forster attempts a supreme feat of connection – placing himself alongside Aziz’s point of view, leaving Adela in the dark. Here, Galgut effects the same, casting himself into the mind and body of a writer haunted by his own banned desires, living in a time when to be a “minorite”[6] as he termed it, was as socially vilified as the idea of the dark native thinking he could accost a young white woman.

But mimicry is deeper and subtler than a fiction writer’s effective evocation of the ‘other’. In Arctic Summer Galgut is dealing with a real person and his writing process. Writing in the close third person, Galgut shadows, echoes and mimics Forster in creating an English voice in tune with the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The difficulty of such an act of ventriloquism was perhaps made easier by the apparent similarities between the two authors. Both are fascinated by male relationships and the intimate distance they exist within: Philip and Gino in Where Angels Fear to Tread and Dr Aziz and Fielding in A Passage to India. In A Strange Room gives us a fictional Damon, written by the real Damon in remembered fragments, through travels with various equally solitary companions: Ranier and Jerome. The search for love – and not only of the romantic kind  – is at the core of Galgut’s questing third novel, and in Arctic Summer he casts himself into that intimate, distanced communication with a Forster both real and imagined. Galgut drew on his own experiences of growing up in apartheid South Africa to imagine the internal life that Forster kept so private. As BBC Radio 3 presenter Rana Mitter noted in an interview, the younger Galgut was “a white liberal gay man benefiting from a system of racial privilege,” just as Forster was in colonial India. Galgut said, “You can’t grow up in apartheid South Africa without being aware of matters of race, matters of power and how they connect, and of course that leads directly to Forster’s experience.”[7] Galgut understands what it is to live through a time of great division in a position of unasked for superiority and yet, still, be regarded as ‘other’ in terms of mainstream ideas of sexuality. He holds that no one thought apartheid would ever end, and that this enabled him to write from Forster’s perspective about colonialism while it was still very much in force. Of apartheid he said, “It was an astonishing shock when it ended. It was inconceivable… Being in the middle of a system shapes the way you think about it retrospectively.”[8] Of course as he goes on to say, the desire for Indian independence was already in the air when Forster made his first visit there. By the time he went again in 1921, the Independence movement had found its figurehead in Gandhi. Though Gandhi only has a fleeting mention in Arctic Summer and does not figure in the inexplicit chronology of A Passage to India, Forster was aware, according to Galgut, of horrific injustices perpetrated by the British in India including the Jallianwalabag Massacre at Amritsar in 1919. Here is Galgut, imagining Morgan’s encounter with Indian nationalism following those events:

For the past six months, Morgan had been among Indians who were attached, sentimentally and politically to the British crown, and it was startling to suddenly hear the opposite. How hated they were, the English! How unwanted, how mistrusted! And how very far from understanding what they had done.[9]

There is a direct connection between this moment, imagined from Forster’s diaries and letters by Galgut, and Aziz at the end of A Passage to India:

Aziz in an awful rage danced this way and that, not knowing what to do, and cried: “Down with the English anyhow. That’s certain. Clear out, you fellows, double quick, I say. We may hate one another, but we will hate you the most. If I don’t make you go, Ahmed will, Karim will, if it’s fifty or five hundred years we shall get rid of you, yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman into the sea, and then” – he rode against him furiously – “and then” he concluded half kissing him, “you and I shall be friends.”[10]

This connection shows just how much Galgut was aided by Forster himself, and how A Passage to India, with its effective reversals, can be called a postcolonial novel.

Half of the joy of Galgut’s novel is the seamless weaving in of his deep research into Forster’s own diaries and letters, which fed Galgut’s ventriloquism and provided a rich source for imagining how his extraordinary Indian novel was formed. In Arctic Summer, Morgan meets the Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy, and Galgut imagines Cavafy saying, “I myself have always been poised between history and poetry”.[11] That seems a fitting description of Galgut’s style and the hybrid nature of this novel – a merging of biography, broader historical detail and the writer’s imagination. In fact ‘hybrid,’ that key postcolonial term, is one that the novel does not shy away from: Galgut’s fictional Morgan even uses it to articulate why he is drawn to Alexandria.

[W]hat stirred him most deeply was that it was a mixture: an inbred miscegenation, a bastardy of influences and traditions and races. He had learned to mistrust purity, rather, because the real thing didn’t exist. Everybody by now was a blend; history was a confusion; people were hybrids.[12]

And later, thinking of himself as a mixture of sympathies – English born and bred, changed by his visit to India, having consummated his desire and fallen in love, Galgut writes of Morgan, “His own hybrid self missed Mohammed terribly.”[13] Subtly inflected is a mission statement against the 19th century meaning of ‘hybrid’, connected to miscegenation, but also captured is Forster’s own sense of ambivalence,

He himself, as usual, was subtly conflicted. […] he couldn’t help believing that on a certain level, this great dream [of Empire] was dying because of petty rudeness in railway carriages.[14]

This internal sense of conflict Forster feels between his various identities – what one should feel as a proud Englishman, and what one should feel as a human: empathy towards one’s fellow being – is the real subject matter of Arctic Summer. Structures of power – racial, sexual and gendered, that prohibit real connection – are Forster’s, and they become Galgut’s. If anything this novel is a consummate last word in the exercise of speaking back. That it comes via a South African voice, when South Africa (with its formative impact on Gandhi) forms a vital echo to the Indian-British relationship only makes Arctic Summer a more nuanced novel.

But perhaps the most daring feat of imagination in Arctic Summer comes when Galgut writes Morgan’s visit to the real ‘Marabar caves’ at Barabar. To venture into the caves with a Morgan who has yet to write Aziz or Adela, to bring to light that moment so carefully protected by Forster’s later maturity and worshipped in literary studies, is a risk. Yet with his careful evocation of Morgan’s voice, his concentration on the ambivalent feelings of love and shame that Morgan feels towards his friend Masood, the cave becomes a place where yearning fights with horror, race, desire, the humiliation of rejection by the beloved who is also the ‘other’, and finally, the need to give voice to these emotions is born from the rock, from the darkness:

It would be good to have a few minutes sequestered in the rock. Looking out from the first arched room through the entranceway, he had a sense of the sunlight world beyond as a remote dream, which he was looking at through a window. Then he retreated into the second chamber. Instantly, he felt sunken profoundly into the world, or into himself. He spoke his own name aloud. The cave repeated it endlessly. He said Masood’s name too, and then the word “love” – all of it rumbled back at him. […]

In the darkness […] he experienced what he had done with a fresh wave of shame. Aie-aie-aie! It was terrible, terrible, to have been wanted so badly, to have been pushed so firmly away.[15]

Here are the pre-emptive echoes of Adela’s yearning: her fear of exposure and her own half articulated desire. The scene works because Galgut sets it before Adela is even imagined and long before she is named. The echo Morgan hears is the absolute opposite of the dull, almost narcissistic “boum”[16] Mrs Moore is disappointed to experience when she sounds a noise in the caves on the fateful, fictionalised Marabar visit.

This sensitivity to the workings of successful appropriation means that Arctic Summer avoids sounding such a dull “boum”[17] of echo. The sweep of history that takes place in the eleven-year period against which Forster grappled with A Passage to India provides an epic backdrop for Galgut. He includes Forster’s first trip to India, the writing of Maurice, the start of the First World War and a posting with the Red Cross to Egypt where Forster finally fell in love and consummated his desire with Mohammed, a poor young man. Galgut imagines Forster in moments of doubt, thinking Mohammed “was flattered, of course, to be courted by an Englishman, and eager for the financial help too.”[18] These events provide startling moments and moving insight, even if they are imagined into the minds of two writers whose novels feel so much for the delicate threads of human relationships.

It is difficult to remember that Galgut’s Morgan is a hybrid of biography and fiction. Forster said himself that he only writes about “The person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I would like to be.”[19] Galgut has followed this lead bringing to life a Morgan that perhaps Forster would have ‘liked to be’  – compassionate, ambivalent, self-doubting, and yet determined and adventurous, with insight far beyond his times.

In A Passage To India, Forster wrote: “Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.”[20] Galgut’s sparse writing is elegiac without being sentimental, and urgent without resorting to polemic. The position it occupies in contemporary postcolonial fiction is a unique one, an act of compassionate mimicry for the troubled inner life of a man whose interest in the humanity of others was the true forerunner for this book, and for the difficulties of the writing life itself.

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