how was your summer? any interesting trips, experiences, readings, news... to share? :-)
I was at home for most of the summer, doing more readings than usual... more readings than writings I should've completed i regret to say... but it also felt great and rewarding to read so many stories from different places. I read Chinua Achebe's novels and loved swimming in his caressing river of Ibo words and proverbs while at the same time trying to immerge myself in his characters' poignant struggles. I read Homi Bhabha's Location of Culture and of course didn't understand nearly as much as i wished to. While I admire his sublimely poetic writing, I have this nagging feeling that if only he could write in less cryptic codes, i'd be able to agree with him so much more :-))) sometimes i marked a whole passage as if i got what he's talking about without understanding what he's saying at all :D Charmaine, did you by any chance feel the same? I know it's a book to revisit many times though, and im in no hurry :-)
I also read a few short books by Ashis Nandy and liked them all (The Intimate Enemy - this one is a classic - highly recommended!!, An Ambiguous Journey to the City, Talking India); was particularly struck by his observation about how secularly motivated and implemented violence is often belyingly produced as religiously rooted riots/strife in the Indian context.
Perhaps most engraved in my mind are the moving, inspiring, but also terrifying memoirs of the Vietnamese who fought against the French and the American, those who were imprisoned and tortured and yet resisted till the very last breath, those who battled and were soooo close to being buried by bombs and mines along with their friends in Dien Bien Phu, those who got shot in the eyes and still continued firing back fiercely, those who volunteered to have their leg amputated without any palliative drug to save the limited anesthetics for their comrades, pleading with the surgeon "please save it, please, many others will need it more than me".... One person I remember vividly: his legs were cuffed down to the floor in a pitch-dark black-painted windowless room, it was his fourth day of no eating, no drinking in protest of the enemy's inhumane in-prison treatment, his body was fatigued, they put human feces near him to make him suffer, and yet at this extremely trying moment he was making a poem (!!!) expressing his undying belief in eventual liberation, and what's more, he stretched his hand to grab the spoon they gave him for eating, rubbed it against the floor to hone one end sharp and, despite how little energy was left in him, tried to sit up (with torturously aching ankles) and use the sharpened spoon to carve the poem of fire on the wall!!!!! can you believe it?! I mean it's not unimaginable, it's like that revolutionary man in Rang De Basanti who engraved his immortal poem on the wall in his solitary confinement... and also like many other unyielding fighters who hold their heart's ideals sacred and intact in spite of all trials and tribulations... but still, totally credible as it is, the person's incredible account does not cease to amaze to me!!
...
I really wish we could all do a live adda together now (I actually wish that every day, especially now that so many of you are not around VC any more :-( )... but since a reunion's not possible until... maybe the next ISA?, let's blog adda in the meantime ;-) hope to hear from all of you soon!
Lots of love,
wb
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/28-1
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1 comment:
WB, so wonderful to hear from you! Even though it's online, I almost felt like I could hear your voice while reading that. You're right that the elasticity of our little village can definitely be maintained on this blog. Thanks so much for writing and keeping it all together!!
I definitely had the same feelings about Bhabha. Some of his theories were a little too post-structuralist and deconstructivist for me - a lot of the "Third space" ideas seem to obfuscate the violence of the colonial moment, and suggest hybridity as the alternative (although I also remember that he defended the concept of hybridity quite well). And somehow even though Spivak is as hard to read, her language seems to me to be consciously doing the work of returning the violence, whereas Bhabha's big words and difficult language only seem to block off understanding.. what were your thoughts?
I miss you and the whole village, especially in Minnesota. Insha'Allah, we will see each other soon!
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