"It has to do with ownership of the public space."
"We cannot teach the way we have always taught".
"Our museums were not decolonized."
"We need to reinvent the classroom. We need to reinvent the university. For the redistribution of knowledge."
"Why is that we build buildings that are in total contradiction with the abundance of light we have? The sun which gave us most of the year. Why this kind of introverted architecture? The way buildings are built. That in itself only speaks to the isolationist and the national chauvinistic parts this country is all about."
A LIVING BODY IS IN THE FIRST INSTANCE A BODY THAT CAN BREATH.
ACHILLE MBEMBE NOTES AS I LISTEN TO HIM
FANON WAS PREOCUUPIED WITH HOW MADNESS (or LA FOLIE) TAKES A POLITICAL FORM
COLONIALISM AS A FACTORY WHERE MADNESS IS MANUFACTURED
MADNESS FOR LACAN - the relationship btw madness and freedom (madness ultimate consummation of freedom) - madness as freedom
To be free is to be mad to simplify it.
Most faithful companion to freedom.
On the other hand madness is the limit of our freedom (DOUBLE PERSPECTIVE)
The moment (our age) is Fanonian
NOW: >> People are looking for another form of political existence.
People are not interested in reconciliation
People are not interested in “democracy”
People are interested in radical irruption in South Africa
The reactivation of archives: resurgence or emergence of revisiting Black critique to Afro-pessimism and queer theory.
DECOLONISE SOCIETY
The return to two thinkers Steve Biko and Frantz Fanon - have become subjects of new modes of reading.
The rise of activist practice. Language of confrontation and protagonism.
2 Re-articulation of the political.
Emotions and affect are being re-intergrated in the political process.
The importance of LIVED EXPERIENCE.
Strategies of violence, redistribution of violence.
3 Language of opposition. It explicitly rejected conventions of reason.
It is matter what kind of pain have you undergone.
An entry ticket. Which allows to make claims.
4 Forms of political activism.
Moral outrage. The past is no guaranty anymore
Moral authority derives from one’s willingness to draw a line between past and present. Either you win or you loose. There’s no middle ground.
WHAT ACHILLE MBEMBE IS TRYING TO MAKE;
THE POLITICS OF VISCERALITY.
Something that is bodily, organ-based.
Emotional and instinctive response.
Many different responses body can give in many situations.
Vital energy is at stake.
Suffocation caused by pain.
WHAT I’M SUGGESTING IS: what we see taking shape in the world is the politics of viscerally.
w/ PAIN, ANGER, GRIEF, FEAR, OUTRAGE.
Who’s the subject of this new kind of politics.
He or she inhabit a frustrating body. A body is a home.
A subject that is unable ( a body that is unable) to shout because of the horror inflicted by the various structures of power.
A feeling of choking. A question of suffocation that is all over Fanon's text.
I cannot breath is all over Fanon's text.
A LIVING BODY IS IN THE FIRST INSTANCE A BODY THAT CAN BREATH.
The path to madness begins to attempts of suffocation.
Why is this kind of politics taking place in South Africa now?
The face of poverty is still Black.
A living example of a student (Chumani Maxwele) The University of Cape Town who emptied human excrement on the statue of Cecil John Rhodes PC - a British businessman, mining magnate and politician in South Africa, who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. His gesture unleashed a chain of reactions.
Why did you that? why the statue? a journalist asked.
He says: "The simple answer is that I was bringing the shame and disgust of black people at the history of Rhodes…
You know that most of the time we the black students of UCT along our academic life….try to run away from the black shame and the black pain and try to emulate whiteness.
Because of the filth way Rhodes treated us.
The fist question this kind of politics raises is?
The violence of the subaltern.
THIS IS CALLED RETRIBUTION OF VIOLENCE.
How do we go beyond Sartre to read Fanon properly.
Self-love. How do we reconstruct it? How do we reach beneath the skin?
LIVED EXPERIENCE. The types of wounds that have been inflicted upon us.
Are there any other grammars to articulate suffering?
THE POLITICS OF WAITING.
The catastrophe is here. There’s no pointing in waiting.
To wait is madness.
What we have is a shift. New strategies of TEMPORALITY.
"The
colonial world is a world divided into compartments. It is probably
unnecessary ti recall the existence of native quarters and European
quarters, of schools for natives and school for Europeans; in the same
way we need to recall Apartheid in South Africa. Yet, if we examine
closely this system of compartments, we will at least be able to reveal
the lines of force it implies. This approach to the colonial world, its
ordering and its geographical lay-out will allow us to mark out the
lines on which a decolonized society will be reorganized.
The
colonial world is a world cut in two. The dividing line, the frontiers
are shown by barracks and police stations. In the colonies it is the
policeman and the soldier who are the official, instituted go-betweens,
the spokesmen of the setler and his rule of oppression. In capitalist
societies the educational system, whether lay or clerical, the structure
of moral reflexes handed down from father to son, the exemplary honesty
of workers who are given a medal after fifty years of good and loyal
service, and the affection which springs from harmonious relations and
good behavior - all these aesthetic expressions of respect for the
established order SERVE TO CREATE AROUND THE EXPLOITED PERSON AN
ATMOSPHERE OF SUBMISSION AND OF INHIBITION WHICH LIGHTEN THE TASK OF
POLICING CONSIDERABLY. In the capitalist countries a multitude of moral
teachers, counselors and ' bewilderers' separate the exploited from
those in power. IN THE COLONIAL COUNTRIES, on the contrary, the
POLICEMAN AND THE SOLDIER, by their immediate presence and their
frequent and direct action maintain contact with the NATIVE and advise
him by means of rifle-butts and napalm not to BUDGE. THE INTERMEDIATE
DOES NOT LIGHTEN THE OPPRESSION, nor seek to hide the DOMINATION, he
shows them up and puts them into practice with the clear conscience of
an UPHOLDER OF THE PEACE; yet he is the bringer of violence into home
and into the mind of the native."
p 29
The Battle of Algiers (La battaglia di Algeri), dir. Gillo Pontecorvo Italy/Algeria, 1966.
"The zones where the natives live is not complementary to the zone
inhabited by the settlers. The two zones are opposed but not in the
service of a higher unity. Obdient to the rules of pure Aristotelian
logic, they both follow the principle of reciprocal exclusivity. No
conciliation is possible, for of the two terms, one is superfluous. The
settlers town is a strongly- built to town, all made of stone and
still. t is a brightly-lit town.; the streets are covered with asphalt,
and the garbage can swallow all the leavings,unseen, unknown and hardly
thought about. THE SETTLERS FEET ARE NEVER VISIBLE, EXCEPT PERHAPS IN
THE SEA: BUT THERE YOU"RE NEVER CLOSE ENOUGH TO THEM. HIS FEET IS
PROTECTED BY STRONG SHOES ALTHOUGH THE STREETS OF HIS TWON ARE CLEAN AND
EVEN, with no holes or stones. THE SETTLERS TOWN IS A WELL-FED TOWN.,
an easy going town; its belly is always full of good things. THE
SETTLERS TOWN IS A TOWN OF WHITE PEOPLE, of FOREIGNERS.
The
town belonging to the colonized people, or at least the native town,
the Negro village, the medina, the reservation, is a place of ill-fame,
peopled by men of ill repute. They are born there it matters little
where or how; they die there, it matters not where, nor how. It is a
world of WITHOUT SPACIOUSNESS, MEN LIVE THERE ON TOP OF EACH OTHER. THE
NATIVE TOWN IS A HUNGRY TOWN, STARVED OF BREAD, OF MEAT< OF SHOES, OF
COAL, OF LIGHT. The native town is a crouching village, a town on its
knee, a town wallowing in the mire. IT IS A TOWN OF NIGGERS AND DIRTY
ARABS." p 30
