World Social Forum 2009 - Belém

This year the World Social Forum will take place in the Brazilian Amazon, more specifically in the city of Belem. Yet there is the attempt to reach as much of us who believe in another world possible and we should keep up and participate with what is going on in this space through this link:

http://openfsm.net/projects/fsm2009interconexoes/project-home

Hasta la victoria siempre,

saudades,
ricardo

Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane

I'm reading this great novel about an "ambiguous adventure" of an African boy from his country Diallobe' to a foreign school and later to Paris. There are a lot of great passages, but this one in particular reminds me a little bit of Snow. I'm sure if we roleplay the dialogue like we did in class and get asked by Andy every sentence or two "what do you mean by that," :-))) we would see so many more layers in each sentence... but even at the surface of my first encounter, I love the talk about the end of the world, about the anguish, about "a little truth each day"...

(The dialogue is between a man from Diallobe and a Frenchman at the time of sunset and started by the latter. The former is called the knight here because he appeared to have "the air of a knight of the Middle Ages" to the Frenchman and his son...)

"Does this twilight not trouble you? Myself, I am upset by it. At this moment it seems to me that we are closer to the end of the world than we are to nightfall."
The knight smiled.
"Reassure yourself. I predict for you a peaceful night."
"You do not believe in the end of the world?"
"On the contrary, I even hope for it, firmly."
"That is just what I was thinking. Here everyone believes in the end of the world, from the most simple-minded peasant to the man of great cultivation. Why? I have been asking myself; and only today, with this twilight, I have begun to understand."
The knight looked attentively at Paul.
"Let me ask you a question in my turn: you truly do not believe in the end of the world?"
"No, obviously. The world will not come to an end - at least not to the end that is expected here. That a catastrophe might destroy our planet - of that I do not speak."
"Our most simple-minded peasant does not believe in such an end as that, episodic and accidental. His universe does not admit of accident. In spite of appearances, his concept is more reassuring than yours."
"That may well be. Unfortunately for us, it is my universe which is true. The earth is not flat. It has no steep slopes which give upon the abyss. The sun is not a candelabrum set upon a blue porcelain dais. The universe which science has revealed to the West is less immediately human, but confess that it is more solid."
"Your science has revealed to you a round and perfect world, in infinite movement," said the knight. "It has reconquered that world from chaos. But I believe that in so doing it has laid you open to despair."
"Not at all. It has liberated us from fears - childish and absurd fears."
"Absurd? What is absurd is the world which does not end. When will one know the truth - all the truth? As for us, we still believe in the coming of truth. We hope for it."
Then that is it, Paul Lacroix thought. The truth which they do not now possess, which they are incapable of conquering, they hope for in the end. It is so in the case of justice, also. All they want and do not have - instead of trying to conquer it, they await it at the end...
He did not express this thought. He merely said:
"As for us, we conquer a little more of truth each day, thanks to science. We do not wait..."
I was sure that he would not have understood, thought the knight. They are so fascinated by the returns they get from the implement that they have lost sight of the infinite immensity of the workyard. They do not see that the truth which they discover each day is each day more contracted. A little truth each day- to be sure, that must be, that is necessary. But the Truth? To have this, must one renounce that?
Like Paul Lacroix, he did not express this thought aloud. He said, instead:
"I believe that you understand very well what I want to say to you. I do not contest the quality of the truth which science discloses. But it is a partial truth; and insofar as there will be a future, all truth will be partial. Truth takes its place at the end of history. But I see that we are setting out on the deceptive road of metaphysics."
"Why do you say 'deceptive'?"
"'To every word one can oppose another' - is that not what one of your ancient philosphers has said? Tell me frankly if this is not still your conviction today."
"No. And if you please, let us keep away from metaphysics. I should like to know your world."
"You know it already. Our world is that which believes in the end of the world: which at the same time hopes for it and fears it. Just now, I rejoiced greatly when it seemed to me that ou were in anguish there in front of the window. See, I was saying to myself, he has a foreboding of the end..."
"No, it was not anguish, truly. It did not go so far as that."
" Then from the bottom of my heart I wish for you to rediscover the feeling of anguish in the face of the dying sun. I ardently wish that for the West. When the sun dies, no scientific certainty should keep us from weeping for it, no rational evidence should keep us from asking that it be reborn. You are slowly dying under the weight of evidence. I wish you that anguish - like a resurrection."
"To what shall we be born?"
"To a more profound truth. Evidence is a quality of the surface. Your science is the triumph of evidence, a proliferation of the surface. It makes you the masters of the external, but at the same time it exiles you there, more and more."

Conversation with Chinua Achebe

I've been reading his collected essays in Hopes and Impediments and absolutely love his unbudging writing/fighting against the most sophisticated, "even brilliant" and well-intentioned (as he recognizes) colonialists... and his very inspiring, emphatic call upon us all to speak, to challenge Europe's presence, position, intervention and all that "they dress up in fine robes which they call universality," and perhaps most importantly, to be "ready to guide the curious visitor to the gallery of (our) art, willing to listen with politeness even to his hasty opinions but careful, most careful, to concede nothing to him that might appear to undermine (our) own position within (our) heritage or compromise the integrity of (our) indigenous perception."

Slumdog Millionaire

"Even if you did cheat, I am here to protect you. What you tell me cannot be used against you in a court of law."
(...)

Time to make a decision. I take out my trusted one-rupee coin. Heads, I coopearate with her. Tails, I tell her ta-ta. I flip the coin. It is heads.

"Do you know Albert Fernandes?" I ask her.
"No. Who is he?"
"He has an illegal factory in Dharavi which makes watch-strap buckles."
"And?"
"He plays matka."
"Matka?"
"Illegal gambling with cards."
"I see."
"So Albert Fernandes plays matka, and last Tuesday he had an amazing game."
"What happened?"
"He came up with fifteen winning hands in a row. Can you believe it? Fifteen hands in a row. He cleaned out fifty thousand rupees that evening."
"So? I still don't see the connection."
"Don't you see? He got lucky in cards. I got lucky on the show."
"You mean you just guessed the answers and by pure luck got twelve out of twelve correct?"
"No. I didn't guess those answers. I knew them."
"You knew the answers?"
"Yes. To all the questions."
"Then where does luck come into the picture?"
"Well, wasn't I lucky that they asked only those questions to which I knew the answers?"

The look of utter disbelief on Smita's face says it all. I can take it no longer. I erupt in sadness and anger: "I know what you are thinking. Like Godbole, you wonder what I was doing on that quiz show. Like Godbole, you believe I am good only for serving chicken fry and whisky in a restaurant. That I am meant to live life like a dog, and die like an insect. Don't you?

"No, Ram." She grasps my hand. "I will never believe that. But you must understand. If I am to help you, I have to know how you won that billion. And I confess, I find it difficult to comprehend. Heavens, even I couldn't answer half those questions."

"Well, madam, we poor can also ask questions and demand answers. And I bet you, if the poor conducted a quiz, the rich wouldn't be able to answer a single question. I don't know the currency of France, but I can tell you how much money Shalini Tai owes our neighborhood moneylender. I dont know who was the first man on the moon, but i can tell you who was the first man to produce illegal DVDs in Dharavi. Could you answer these questions in a quiz?"


Wanna watch The Movie together some Thursday when we are back, village?

Historical determinism, a costly and bloodstained fantasy, expelling us from the present, expelling our presence...

From Octavio Paz's Nobel Lecture:

... Como todos los niños, construí puentes imaginarios y afectivos que me unían al mundo y a los otros. Vivía en un pueblo de las afueras de la ciudad de México, en una vieja casa ruinosa con un jardín selvático y una gran habitación llena de libros. Primeros juegos, primeros aprendizajes. El jardín se convirtió en el centro del mundo y la biblioteca en caverna encantada. Leía y jugaba con mis primos y mis compañeros de escuela. Había una higuera, templo vegetal, cuatro pinos, tres fresnos, un huele-de-noche, un granado, herbazales, plantas espinosas que producían rozaduras moradas. Muros de adobe. El tiempo era elástico; el espacio, giratorio. Mejor dicho: todos los tiempos, reales o imaginarios, eran ahora mismo; el espacio, a su vez, se transformaba sin cesar: allá era aquí: todo era aquí: un valle, una montaña, un país lejano, el patio de los vecinos. ... El mundo era ilimitado y, no obstante, siempre al alcance de la mano; el tiempo era una substancia maleable y un presente sin fisuras.

¿Cuando se rompió el encanto? No de golpe: poco a poco. ... puedo recordar con cierta claridad un incidente que, aunque pronto olvidado, fue la primera señal. Tendría unos seis años y una de mis primas, un poco mayor que yo, me enseñó una revista norteamericana con una fotografía de soldados desfilando por una gran avenida, probablemente de Nueva York. "Vuelven de la guerra", me dijo. Esas pocas palabras me turbaron como si anunciasen el fin del mundo o el segundo advenimiento de Cristo. Sabía, vagamente, que allá lejos, unos años antes, había terminado una guerra y que los soldados desfilaban para celebrar su victoria; para mí aquella guerra había pasado en otro tiempo, no ahora ni aquí. La foto me desmentía. Me sentí, literalmente, desalojado del presente.

Desde entonces el tiempo comenzó a fracturarse más y más. Y el espacio, los espacios. La experiencia se repitió una y otra vez. Una noticia cualquiera, una frase anodina, el titular de un diario, una canción de moda: pruebas de la existencia del mundo de afuera y revelaciones de mi irrealidad. Sentí que el mundo se escindía: yo no estaba en el presente. Mi ahora se disgregó: el verdadero tiempo estaba en otra parte. Mi tiempo, el tiempo del jardín, la higuera, los juegos con los amigos, el sopor bajo el sol de las tres de la tarde entre las yerbas, el higo entreabierto - negro y rojizo como un ascua pero un ascua dulce y fresca - era un tiempo ficticio. A pesar del testimonio de mis sentidos, el tiempo de allá, el de los otros, era el verdadero, el tiempo del presente real. Acepté lo inaceptable: fui adulto. Así comenzó mi expulsión del presente.

... Apenas ahora he comprendido que entre lo que he llamado mi expulsión del presente y escribir poemas había una relación secreta. La poesía está enamorada del instante y quiere revivirlo en un poema; lo aparta de la sucesión y lo convierte en presente fijo. Pero en aquella época yo escribía sin preguntarme por qué lo hacía. Buscaba la puerta de entrada al presente: quería ser de mi tiempo y de mi siglo. Un poco después esta obsesión se volvió idea fija: quise ser un poeta moderno. Comenzó mi búsqueda de la modernidad.

transcripción completa


-------------------

... Like every child I built emotional bridges in the imagination to link me to the world and to other people. I lived in a town on the outskirts of Mexico City, in an old dilapidated house that had a jungle-like garden and a great room full of books. First games and first lessons. The garden soon became the centre of my world; the library, an enchanted cave. I used to read and play with my cousins and schoolmates. There was a fig tree, temple of vegetation, four pine trees, three ash trees, a nightshade, a pomegranate tree, wild grass and prickly plants that produced purple grazes. Adobe walls. Time was elastic; space was a spinning wheel. All time, past or future, real or imaginary, was pure presence. Space transformed itself ceaselessly. The beyond was here, all was here: a valley, a mountain, a distant country, the neighbours' patio.... The world was limitless yet it was always within reach; time was a pliable substance that weaved an unbroken present.

When was the spell broken? Gradually rather than suddenly. ... I can remember fairly clearly an incident that was the first sign, although it was quickly forgotten. I must have been about six when one of my cousins who was a little older showed me a North American magazine with a photograph of soldiers marching along a huge avenue, probably in New York. "They've returned from the war" she said. This handful of words disturbed me, as if they foreshadowed the end of the world or the Second Coming of Christ. I vaguely knew that somewhere far away a war had ended a few years earlier and that the soldiers were marching to celebrate their victory. For me, that war had taken place in another time, not here and now. The photo refuted me. I felt literally dislodged from the present.

From that moment time began to fracture more and more. And there was a plurality of spaces. The experience repeated itself more and more frequently. Any piece of news, a harmless phrase, the headline in a newspaper: everything proved the outside world's existence and my own unreality. I felt that the world was splitting and that I did not inhabit the present. My present was disintegrating: real time was somewhere else. My time, the time of the garden, the fig tree, the games with friends, the drowsiness among the plants at three in the afternoon under the sun, a fig torn open (black and red like a live coal but one that is sweet and fresh): this was a fictitious time. In spite of what my senses told me, the time from over there, belonging to the others, was the real one, the time of the real present. I accepted the inevitable: I became an adult. That was how my expulsion from the present began.

...Only now have I understood that there was a secret relationship between what I have called my expulsion from the present and the writing of poetry. Poetry is in love with the instant and seeks to relive it in the poem, thus separating it from sequential time and turning it into a fixed present. But at that time I wrote without wondering why I was doing it. I was searching for the gateway to the present: I wanted to belong to my time and to my century. A little later this obsession became a fixed idea: I wanted to be a modern poet. My search for modernity had begun.

complete transcript

"If we aren't accumulating knowledge, what are we doing?" "Singing."

a short and sweet story of how to go (and how not to go) to school...

The Idiot's Warehouse

I know the idiot's warehouse
Is always full.

I know each of us
Could run back and forth from there
All day long

And show everyone our vast collection.

Though tonight, Hafız,
Retire from the madness for an hour,

Gather with some loyal friends
Or sit alone

And
Sing beautiful songs

To God.

-Hafız, our poet friend from Persia

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

I was looking up this famous Urdu poet and his words reflect such a beautiful and indomitable spirit of people resisting oppression:

Stanza

If they snatch my ink and pen,
I should not complain,
For I have dipped my fingers
In the blood of my heart.
I should not complain
Even if they seal my tongue,
For every ring of my chain
Is a tongue ready to speak.

"equality"...

How's my village doing, loves? Before we resume our adda, I wish you all a 2009 overpoured with love, poetry, turkus, Amir-Hamza feasts and endless conjovial addas as always :-))) xoxoxooxxx This past semester has been such a dream... and I hope we'll all stay adream in the coming ones... i know our Beyza definitely will :-)))

In the spirit of continuing our addas despite break (there's never a break for adda-ers right? :D), I wanna share and ask you guys about smthg i've encountered time and again, esp. recently in readings and papers... the notion of Equality. So... there is the much-discussed problematic of campaigns for "universal human rights": they warrant unwanted "humanitarian" interventions claiming to "emancipate the oppressed," they assume universalistic values that are most of the time Euroamerican-centric, etc. And then there are the "fundamental" ones that seem unquestionable. What do you have against "freedom," "equality," "democracy"? - they ask. But equality in terms of what, i wonder? individual rights under state's (or empire's) management?

In showing the limit of liberal-rationalist theory, Chatterjee wrote "... what is asserted in a collective cultural right is in fact the right not to offer a reason for being different. Thus when a minority group demands a cultural right, it in fact says, "We have our own reasons for doing things the way we do, but since you don't share the fundamentals of our world view, you will never come to understand or appreciate those reasons. Therefore, leave us alone and let us mind our own business."" --> How does the omnipresently cited "right to equality" square with this, which is just one among many instances and contexts that contest its universality?

Any thoughts on the subject? :-)