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? :-)

The Hermeneutics of Shoes lol

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/12/14-1
"This is a farewell kiss, you dog!"

"All i can report is it is a size 10" - Bush on thrown shoes

See the comment section :D

"This was an early christmas present."

"Poetic justice."

"Finally an example of honest journalism."

"Somebody make a T-shirt commemorating this incident. I'll buy a dozen."

...
i'm sure there'll be a lot more to come, this is way too exciting haha

And in all seriousness, they are starting to analyze the "symbolic significances" in "Arab" culture of throwing shoes at Bush and calling him a dog lol
"Now people at home might be wondering what's the importance of the shoe... well, in Arab culture the sole of the shoes is considered an insult..." (watch the video)

Ghosh on xenophilia.....

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081222&fname=Amitav&sid=1

"If I am to think of what drew me to Egypt in 1980, it was, at bottom, the very impulse that I have been describing here – a kind of xenophilia, a desire to reclaim the globe in my own fashion, a wish to eavesdrop on an ancient civilizational conversation. Admittedly, this impulse could have taken me to many other places, but the opportunity presented itself at a time when I was just becoming aware of the ties that had once linked Yemen and China, Indonesia and East Africa – and most significantly for me, India and the Middle East."

The play of meanings....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/magazine/07teasing-t.html?scp=1&sq=teasing&st=cse

"...teasing is a mode of play, no doubt with a sharp edge, in which we provoke to negotiate life’s ambiguities and conflicts. And it is essential to making us fully human..."

Masks and Silences

I just read one of the zapatista speeches, and i love how they put things:

"It would seem evident that masks conceal and silence quiets.
But the truth is that masks also reveal and that silences speak.
...

Yes, this is a country of masks and silences, I tell this to the sea, and she answers me, from behind her ski mask, with a silent gesture of paradox, which is more than eloquent, as she rolls up and guards the great plans.

But I tell you, and I tell myself, that there are masks and masks, and silences and silences."

and then he went on to talk about Masks and the Silence from above and the masks and the silences of those from below... and kopi kampung, this is what i was stutteringly trying to retell to you the other day:

"In order to supplant its lack of legitimacy with legality, the Mexican State (and not just the government) must carry out a complex surgical operation on the entire social order. That is, to eradicate the historical memory from the governed. And they try to do this by substituting the true history (in lower case), with the Official History (in upper case). And this Official History is not learned in books, rather it was created in the mental laboratories of postgraduates in foreign universities. Harvard, Oxford, yale, and the MIT are the modern "Founding Fathers" of the current Mexican leaders. And so the Official History comes from as far away as the indicators of economic growth, these have the constancy of a weather vane in the middle of a storm. (...) If constancy and pain and hard work are characteristic of the history of those from below, the ephemeral is the preferred place for the Official History. (...) This Official History has its mask."

uhm... i wonder why he didnt say the histories of those from below instead of "the history" (singular form despite in lower case)...

"Their" "choice" of "violence"

"... Y, al mismo tiempo, las enfermedades empezaron a acabar con los niños y con las niñas. De 1990 a 1992, no había niño, en la Selva Lacandona, que llegara a los cinco años. Antes de los cinco años, morían de enfermedades curables. No era el cáncer, no era el SIDA, no eran enfermedades del corazón, eran enfermedades curables: tifoidea, tuberculosis, y, a veces, una simple calentura era la que mataba a niños y a niñas menores de cinco años.

Yo sé que en la ciudad esto puede ser hasta una ventaja: mientras menos burros, más olotes, dicen. Pero en el caso de un pueblo indígena, la muerte de su niñez significa su desaparición como pueblo. O sea, en el proceso natural, los adultos crecen, se hacen ancianos y mueren. Si no hay niños, esa cultura desaparece.

La mortandad de los indígenas, de los niños y de las niñas indígenas, agudizó todavía el problema. Pero la diferencia que había aquí al resto de otros pueblos indios, es que aquí había un ejército rebelde, armado. Fueron las mujeres las que empezaron a empujar esto. No fueron los hombres. Yo sé que la tradición en México —los mariachis, Pedro Infante y todo eso— es que los hombres somos muy machos. Pero no fue así. Quienes empezaron a empujar: hay que hacer algo, ya no, y ya basta, fueron las mujeres, que veían morir a sus hijos y a sus hijas.

Empezó a haber una especie de rumor en todas las comunidades: hay que hacer algo, ya basta, ya basta, en todas las lenguas. Para entonces, ya estábamos también en la zona de los Altos. Y ahí teníamos dos compañeras que habían sido, y son todavía, la columna vertebral en ese trabajo: la finada Comandanta Ramona y la Comandanta Susana.

Por diversas partes empezó a surgir esta inquietud, esta molestia… Vamos a decirlo por su nombre: esta rebeldía en las mujeres zapatistas, que había que hacer algo. Nosotros hicimos lo que teníamos que hacer, entonces, que era preguntarle a todos qué íbamos a hacer. Hubo, entonces, en 1992, una consulta —sin televisión, sin gobierno del Distrito Federal, sin nada de lo que hay ahora—, y pueblo por pueblo se pasó y se realizaron asambleas —como ésta en la que estamos ahorita—. Se planteaba el problema. La disyuntiva era muy sencilla: si nos alzamos en armas, nos van a derrotar, pero va a llamar la atención y van a mejorar las condiciones de los indígenas. Si no nos alzamos en armas, vamos a sobrevivir, pero vamos a desaparecer como pueblos indios.

La lógica de muerte es cuando nosotros decimos: no nos dejaron otra opción. Ahora, después de catorce, casi quince años, nosotros —los que llevamos más tiempo aquí— decimos: qué bueno que no teníamos otra opción.

...."

(From recent speeches in August http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/comision-sexta/978)

Please bear with my best attempt to combine Google translator and my own :-)

"... And at the same time, the diseases started to break out on the boys and the girls. From 1990 to 1992, there was no child, in the Lacandon Jungle, that reached 5 years old. Before the age of five, they died of curable diseases. It was not cancer, not AIDS, not heart diseases, they were curable diseases: typhoid, tuberculosis, and sometimes it was a simple fever that was killing boys and girls under five.

(...) But in the case of an indigenous people, the death of their children means their disappearance as a people. That is, in the natural process, the adults grow older, they become elderly and die. If there are no children, this culture will disappear.

The mortality of indigenous peoples, of indigenous boys and girls, heightened the problem still. But the difference between here and the rest of other Indian peoples, is that here there was a rebel army, armed. They were the women who began to push this. They were not men. I know that the tradition in Mexico - mariachi, Pedro Infante and all that - is that men are very macho. But it was not so. Those who began to push: something must be done, and no, and enough, no more, were women, who watched their sons and daughters die.

There began to have some kind of rumor in all of the communities: something must be done, enough is enough, enough is enough, in all languages. By then, we were also in the area of the Highlands. And there were two companions who had been, and still are, the backbone in this work: the deceased Comandanta Ramona and Comandanta Susana.

(...) There was, then, in 1992, a consultation - without television, without government of the Federal District, with nothing of what is now -, and people by people came and assembled - the same way we are doing right now-. They posed the problem. The dilemma was very simple: if we raise in arms, we are going to defeat, but it will draw attention and will improve conditions for indigenous people. If we do not raise arms, we are going to survive, but we are going to disappear as Indian peoples.

The logic of death is when we say: they did not leave us another option. Now, after fourteen, nearly fifteen years, which took us more time here, we say: what good that we had no other choice..."

These words were echoing in my head when somebody in last Thursday's class commented that the Zapatistas chose violence to draw people's attention before using other means of communication (books, lectures, internet, etc.), the same comment i heard in my Latin American Politics class a year and a half ago,... If I was shocked and upset then, I am enraged and find it impossible to stay quiet now... but before I could respond, Khwaja was taking over, and he's pushing the same point a lot more eloquently, but somehow i haven't since been able to let that comment go.

They "chose" to take up arms? do we even have the slightest awareness of what they were going through before that? did we even see them, hear them, know that they existed??? They were "using" "violence"? What about the crushing violence that los pueblos indigenas have endured for centuries from imperial as well as state forces? What about the brutal violence that keeps sucking "natural resources" out of people's lands, bleeding Mother Earth? What about the kind of turning-blind-eyes-and-deaf-ears violence that let curable diseases kill children before they could live even five years?

"They chose to exercise violence..." Just casual like that. Care-less like that. Thoughtless like that. I'm not blaming the person who made the comment per se, but i certainly condemn the conditions in which some people not only have the luxury to entertain illusions of choice for themselves but also have the extravagant audacity to cast everyone else into their delusional/bogus morals of choice, i certainly want to knock down the structures that hides in the dark massive violences and brings to light all (and only) the counter-violences, the structures that celebrate and celebritize some lives while burying other lives into nonexistence, the structures that honor and memorialize some deaths while trampling over other deaths in ignorance and oblivion, the structures that perform all sorts of sacred rituals on some bodies while disposing other bodies as mere dirt and trash, the structures that shield and shelter some human beings at all costs... from other/their fellow human beings... :-((((

I know i shouldn't've been that surprised to hear sth like "they chose violence, they could've chosen to be peaceful"... after all, i am at a place where liberal comments like such are thrown around as often as campaigns to save the world are waged... maybe i'd get used to it or grow immune to it after being here long enough, after hearing all this nonsense frequent enough? i wish so... but until that immunity kicks in, i can only feel sad, and shocked, and hurt, and enraged, and wanting to fight back, como los pueblos dijeron: pelea, pelea con nosotros,
compañero/a
hermano/a
de la vida que vendrá.

Opening to Voices: sharing, suffering, selves...

Of all Ashis Nandy's amazing insights, here is one passage that means the world(s) to me:

"Openness to voices, familiar or strange, may well have to be the first criterion of the shared self which transcends nation-states, communities, perhaps even cultures themselves. A direct, sharp awareness of man-made suffering, a genuine empirical feel for it, may be the second."

I recently watched the film Bashu, the little stranger, and cannot even begin to express how much the story has been moving me. It speaks of shared selves, it hits your nerves so you cannot but be a little more acutely aware of suffering (and resilience and healing), it opens up voices and silences, it opens up the possibilities of strangeness and familiarity--it follows these realms as they fold into one another. A little stranger loses and finds a family.

Anyway, in the spirit of Nandy's quote, I opened a new list of links, "Voices" and posted the link to a small piece of Bashu's poetry, spoken in a voice i cannot and cannot and cannot understand, but that i can hear a little, understand a little, and that I feel drawn to listen to again and again. Some sacred part of myself, our shared self, feels its found a voice in his.

So, watch the clip, or better, watch the film and let me know how you feel, what you hear, ...

rereading Cohn

this is such a classic of dissecting "Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge." Kopi Kampung, it'd def. be benificial to take a quick look again at this and Hevia's English Lessons for ur paper.

Cohn's p. 162: "In the conceptual scheme which the British created to understand and to act in India, they constantly followed the same logic; they reduced vastly complex codes and their associated meanings to a few metonyms. If Indians wore shoes in the presence of sahibs, they were being disrespectful in the early 19th century. But to Indians, the proper wearing of slippers or shoes stood for a whhole difference in cosmology.

The European concepts of custom and superstition were a means to encompass and explain behavior and thought, and allowed the British to save themselves the effort of understanding or adequately explaining the subtle or not-too-subtle meanings attached to the actins of their subjects."

I'm sure there's a lot to be dissected about the grotesque translation (or ensnaring) of "alternative" forms of healing under the conceptual stares of modern medicine, about what is being "reduced vastly" when transported between two whole different systems of meanings, different cosmologies, different epistemological spaces, or what our Khwaja often calls different "underlying grammars" :-)

Even the language of calling what's different "alternative," i feel, already takes for granted a norm at the center, from which the "alternative" deviates/differs. Do we acknowledge also that what we are having - whatever system or ways of doing or ways of relating... - is also an alternative among millions possible, and unfortunately, a pretty impoverished one more often than not...?

"History"

It so happened that the night we had the Forum discussion on The Politics of Collective Memory: Making or Erasing History?, I came home and stumbled onto this marvelous short story by Galeano. With only a few words, he redefines history on such beautiful terms, i'm absolutely enamored:

Ventana sobre la historia universal
Hubo una vez que fue la primera vez, y entonces el bicho humano se alzo y sus cuatro patas se convirtieron en dos brazos y dos piernas, y gracias a las piernas los brazos fueron libres y pudieron hacer casa mejor que la copa del arbol o la cueva de paso. Y habiendose erguido, la mujer y el hombre descubrieron que se puede hacer el amor cara a cara y boca a boca, y conocieron la alegria de mirarse a los ojos durante el abrazo de sus brazos y el nudo de sus piernas.

Window on World History
Once there was a time that was the first time, and that when the human being rose up and his four feet became two arms and two legs, and thanks to the legs the arms were free and could build better houses than treetops or occasional caves. And having stood up, women and men discovered that they could make love face to face and mouth to mouth, and they learned the joy of looking into each other's eyes during the embrace of their arms and the knotting of their legs.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if history is filled with wondrous stories like this?

What Mother told me once

I lost my father when I was just two.
My mother, for my sake, chose not to wed again.
She'd grow mulberry trees,
raise silkworms, and weave cloth -
she reared me till I was grown up.
After some twenty years I still recall
that day when I was five.
It happened I told her a lie -
next day I feared she'd spank me.
But no, she just looked sad.
She hugged me, kissed me on the head:
"My son, before he closed his eyes,
your father said that all through life
you should remain sincere and true."
"Mother, what does it mean,
to be sincere and true?"
My mother kissed me on the eyes:
"My son, a man sincere and true
will laugh when, glad, he wants to laugh
will cry when, sad, he wants to cry.
If you love someone, say you love.
If you hate someone, say you hate.
Someone may not entice you with sweet words -
still, dont say hate when you feel love.
Someone may grab a knife and threaten you -
still, dont say love when you feel hate."

Since then, when some adult asked me,
"My boy, whom do you love the best?"
remembering what my mother told me once,
I would reply:
"I love best one who's true, sincere."
The person stared at me in disbelief
thinking, "He's just a parrot, that young boy."
But no, for what my mother told me once
impressed itself upon my brain, my mind
as if on some immaculate, virgin sheet
were drawn a crimson, bright red line.

Now I am twenty-five -
the orphan has become a writer since.
But what my mother told me once,
when i was five,
remains intact - a crimson, bright red line.
What at the circus tightrope walkers do
is quite a feat.
Yet harder is what writers do
who'll walk the path of truth through life.
If you love someone, say you love.
If you hate someone, say you hate.
Someone may not entice you with sweet words -
still, dont say hate when you feel love.
Someone may grab a knife and threaten you -
still, dont say love when you feel hate.

A writer, I shall write the truth
and speak the truth throughout my life.
No sugar and no honey of success
can bribe my tongue.
Thunder that crashes overhead
cant strike me down.
And if they grab my paper, seize my pen,
I'll take a knife and write on stone.

(1956)

Links

Hey guys, just posted some of our fave links... how do you like 'em? anything interesting u'd recommend to add?