A Place in Space: September 2006 Archives
Why should we worry about farmers in India?
The media's emphasis on the five year anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon blatantly reveals our cultural penchant for the short-term. I am not speaking of the grief of those who lost family members because that pain is of a different order than the rest of us who look on and talk about the event as if it is the lynchpin upon which the living of this day turns.
What if, instead of spending the day in various ceremonies of remembrance and mourning, we honored and celebrated the beginning of one of the most successful, powerful, and inspirational peace movements of all time? Today, September 11, 2006, is the 100th anniversary of satyagraha: the pursuit of truth initiated by Mahatma Gandhi in Johannesburg, South Africa, thereby launching the first modern movement of nonviolent resistance. An interview with Gandhi's grandson was broadcast on Democracy Now on September 8th (the highlighted text above takes you to written transcript and links to audio).
Puru asks, "are we anywhere close to the truth?" A trailer produced by Arun Gandhi about his grandfather's work introduces some of the resources available from the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence. This cartoon depicts "the elephant" of Gandhi's Passive Resistance Movement as a barrier in the path of the British which they could not move. Arun Gandhi argues that satyagraha is hardly "passive".
I agree.
It takes tremendous effort to turn away from habitual resistances, the mirroring of other/opposing habitual resistances. Gandhi found another way. We must do the same.
As of approximately 10 am EST, the most active discussions of the The Living Library were:
* Why has a big company like Allianz no sozial [...]... - by Question Donor 1042
* How rich would everyone be, if we [...] - by Question Donor 1850
* Why do so many people in foreign countries [...] - by Question Donor 4470
* Do animals have a soul? - by Question Donor 9046
* who is more intelligent: womem or men? - by Question Donor 9046
UPDATE 11:20 am EST, the most active discussions are:
* Why has a big company like Allianz no sozial [...]... - by Question Donor 1042
* How rich would everyone be, if we [...] - by Question Donor 1850
* How many peoply would buy a product for 100 Euro..... - by shybyte
* They fire 10.000 employees because... - by 10823 berlin
* sorry - by sine [regarding Question Donor 4470: Chris B: Why do so many people in foreign countries that don't have democracy which are also being oppressed by dictators, get so aggressive against the Western World, which wants to spread our way of life (i.e. not living in fear all the time etc.)]
The bachelors have been reduced from five to three (and one of them is actually taken but his partner is back home in India.) I will move out soon (when I stop procrastinating). I don't WANT to leave, because I keep getting introduced to new yummy food (recipe for
sabudana khichadi below).
While we ate, we engaged in a lengthy political discussion. [sidebar] (Well, they did, mostly I listened. The guys drift into and out of Hindi and English. I've deduced that they've made a decision to include me - or at least make the topic accessible - when they use English. Otherwise they're just doing their thing while I'm doing mine - usually on the computer. :-) Very comfortable.) [end of sidebar]
During the reprise at dinner time, Ambarish complained (!) "why do we always talk about right and wrong?" Perhaps as preparation for the extraordinary upcoming conversation hosted by Dropping Knowledge?
They have a one minute video describing a global Table of Free Voices. If you register you can rate the questions for discussion on September 9th - the questions have gone through a generation and prioritization process on the web over the past several months, being cut from 20,000 submitted to 500 condensed. Now they're working on the top 100. (Barry Wellman posted info on this to the aoir-listserv. Thanks.)
This is what Koushik, Puru, and Ambarish were debating, inspired by a question posed by The Bohemian the night before. Their examples were based in India, especially the urban/rural split and the efforts of the Maoists there. Dada kept arguing that basic citizenship will resolve most problems: "Whatever you are doing, do it with absolute honesty. Basic thing - do primary school teaching with absolute honesty; whatever else you do is bonus." He had several personal examples illustrating his own process of learning good citizenship. Puru argued against the idealism of this solution, describing four individual options:
1. I don't care, just get along the best I can: the system will do what it does with/without me.
2. I embrace the system, i.e., try to make money.
3. Work inside the system toward change.
4. Work against/outside the system.
As I listened I thought, these orientations are evident in these units of languages I've been calling discourses. Perhaps the challenge I perceive, and the juxtapostion I seek to both co-create and proactively engage, is at the "places" where these orientations meet? Because there is an incommensurability between the person who can choose Options 1-3, and the person who is forced into Option 4. Anyone with a choice has relative privilege compared with those revolutionary movements who do not experience this luxury. (It seems possible to me that one point of contention is whether or not choice does exist, and to what extent. Another point is the transition process from an orientation/mode of Option 4 to one of the others: both systemically - institutionally and culturally - and individually.)
Ambarish argued that everyone simply keeps on moving: one chooses a point-of-view and tries to implement it. The key that he emphasized, is that there are consequences regardless of which choice one makes. The "consequence" I'm trying to resist is a predetermined channeling of viewpoints/discourses into more-or-less "traditional" lines. By "traditional" I mean customary to that political perspective or point-of-view, and I include my own!
Puruman claimed there is "no answer in any of the four options." I agree. Any "answer", if there is to be one, must be a confluence of the options, it must include/accommodate them all.
Dada offered a phenomenological example of time and living. He revisiting a movie they had watched the previous night (Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi) (situated in the 1970s) and argued that we make parallel choices now - living "in this time" with the choices made, for instance, by people living in the time of the 1920s in India (during the revolt against the British).
There were many other nuances, examples, and illustrations. I could imagine this conversation in various forms (different languages, different contexts) and the same overall pattern (individual range-of-choice vs systematic impositions & constraints, circumstantial differences setting distinct and variable limits, the struggle of finding adequate points of leverage, the resistance of the elites to change).
I missed the moment to actually submit a question to the Table of Free Voices event, and - in truth - I'm still formulating it, but I know it is along these lines. It was fitting that the evening ended with a game of Carrom, which illustrates the precise challenge of dialogue: how do we shift patterns of talk that produces sharp (even if minute) concussions to talk that allows some kind of merger or blending? Simultaneously, can we develop skills to absorb the subtle shocks of real difference and work past them together?
As I always do, I've been wondering about the "silence" regarding my last few posts/emails regarding the discussion about Lebanon (outlined here.)
Lo and behold Swati walked in the door the other night. No small talk for us! We dove into politics. :-) It was intense: she was jetlagged and I'd just downed a beer. I kept telling myself, "Think, Steph, think! This is serious!"
It seemed to come clear that we were both "missing" or "misinterpreting" something in the other person's talk. The point I gained from our talk was that maybe the concept of "discourse" itself is biased? I'm not sure if this is what Swati was trying to get at, but (it seems?) she was reacting to a certain narrowness (?) in the term. I don't mean to speak for her: I'm publicizing my interpretation for correction and/or confirmation. Hopefully, also expansion! :-)
Swati critiqued my emphasis on discourse as limited only to culture. This isn't my view, but I think I can imagine why it might seem so. I tried to clarify that what I'm really interested in (and trying to talk about) is language. "Discourses" are units of language (I add, now, as further clarification) that make wrapping my mind around the complexity of language somewhat manageable. I think the political and economic count just as much as the cultural, perhaps - in substantive, material terms "more" (although I'm not sure this kind of quantitative hierarchy gains us much theoretically). Language (perhaps only in my imagination?) is a way "in" to understanding and changing these systems, specifically at the level of values and choices that uphold them.
Meanwhile, I was amazed by this story: Hamas Spokesman Blames Palestinians for Gaza Chaos, which came shortly after I challenged my friends to participate in a discourse of self-criticism (August 26th). NYTimes: "In an unusual instance of self-criticism, a well-known Hamas official has deplored the collapse of Gazan life into chaos and has said that much of the blame belongs to Palestinians themselves."
“'I’m not interested in discussing the ugliness and brutality of the occupation because it is not a secret,' [Ghazi Hamad] wrote. 'I prefer self-criticism and self-evaluation. We’re used to blaming our mistakes on others.' Palestinian joy after the Israeli departure 'made us forget the most important question — what is our next step?'”
Now, will my friends reading other sources situate this official for me in some other narrative, some other discourse? Another thread of the argument (!) between me and Swati is the credibility I attribute to the NYTimes (source of the above-linked story). I read a variety of viewpoints in the Times, including political and economic critiques. I'm not entirely convinced the alternative press is saying anything that unique? As a case in point, a student in the intro to mass media class I taught last semester presented on alternative and mainstream press coverage of the May 1 immigration rights protest in Boston last spring. ALL SOURCES USED THE SAME AP ARTICLE, they had simply changed the headline.
