File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1998/postcolonial.9804, message 164


Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 08:26:33 -0600 (MDT)
From: leslie anne lopez <llopez-AT-unm.edu>
Subject: Re: No Subject


(Original message follows)

Estimado Zona Sur:

Grave essential meanings refers to the signified--the meanings--implied in
acts of strategic essentialism.  In other words, when people claim "blood" 
rights to certain soil, territory, national belonging.  Or when people
call themselves "chosen" or "sent" by deities to occupy some sort of
temporal (world, real-life) space.  Or when speakers refer to what "the
people" want, invoking "lo popular" as a pre-made category.  My reading of
Hale's comment (sorry this wasn't clear; maybe it needs its context)  is
that while strategic essentialism is a competitive discursive move,
strategic multiplicity leaves much space for others.  I don't know much
about the Miskitu (except that their exclusion from the revolutionary
Nicaraguan citizenry helped to bring down the Sandinistas).  But while the
Sandinistas in plena epoca of revolution were talking about "el
pueblo," their discourse now tends towards "la gente," which is somehow 
less essentialized and more inclusive.  And even during the contra phase,
Nicaragua was the site of international brigades who did not claim to be
Nicaraguan patriots, but rather interested in supporting alternatives to
US hemispheric hegemony and compulsory capitalism.   

For me, Hale's assessment resonates with what I know about the EZLN in
Mexico, which often uses modes of multiplicity:  "our flag flies with all
other flags under the flag of the reason and understanding of our people,"
or their lists of the world's dispossessed with whom they are in league: 
housewives, clerical workers, students, poor neighborhood residents, etc
etc. 

The EZLN definitely refers to blood rights, and the rights implied by 500
years of resistance, but these modes of making revolutionary claims are
accompanied by "patriotic" insistence that they be recognized by their
nation (Mexico) NOT by announcements of secession.  Their calls to Mexican
"civil society" to revive Mexico in its moment of need is tempered by its
simultaneous calls to "the peoples and governments of the world" without
which they'd be dead by now.  All of their approach is marked by a kind of
irony that comes from seeing themselves as simultaneously isolated
regionally, and as key global-level actors, fully "integrated" in world
systems. In other words, their will turn away no-one who is acting in good
faith towards the improvement of world conditions and the undermining of
(to put it briefly) the neoliberal world order, which is currently
screwing them into the ground.

Besides EZLN communiques, which are often hilarious and poetic, and
strongly marked by Marcos, their demands at the table since 1994 have
never been about Indians' essentialized links to "nature" or "the land,"
and some sort of luddite rejection of technology or "development."
Instead, the documents and discourses produced by the indigenous
leadership show a strong sense of belonging to a continent in which the
highly varied majorities need to respect each others' differences in order
to survive, and in which indigenous women are demanding access to modern
infrastructure and modern technology.

Incidentally, the idea of integrating indigenous peoples into nation
states with specialized rights to cultural and political autonomy (the
EZLN's demand which has the Mexican govt so freaked out) has recently been
implemented in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru.  And, as another couple of
examples, citizenship movements in Brazil and a wide coalition in Ecuador
are achieving impressive things by recognizing blurred boundaries between
groups, regions and social identities, and coming together to undermine
govt. corruption and privatization of national resources.

Hope these examples help.  And no, most self-conscious grassroots
movements would never use this terminology.  Hale, like many of us, is
attempting to synthesize a lot of information and a lot of vibes into
academic language.  Does it help?  It helps act as a bridge so that I
can get up in front of academic people and talk about what's going on
in the world.  For some reason I don't understand, there's
lots of well-meaning, well-educated people who look at demonstrations of
100s of 1000s of people holding giant signs with slogans and
demands, screaming, and they ask each other "what do those ______
want, anyway?"  At least Hale is discussing real live contemporary
movements towards justice.  Sale, chale?

Vale. 

Leslie

On Sun, 12 Apr 1998, Zona Sur wrote:

> RE:  "grave essential meanings"--please, at the risk of sounding Luddite,
> crankish and/or flamish, WTF are "grave essential meanings?"  For the life of
> me, I am trying to imagine a self-conscious, grass roots political movement
> using such terminology.  The explanation of  a "hybrid politics" in which
> people (... Nicaraguan
> Miskitu) "use, discard and partly use again discourses previously imbued
> with grave, essential meanings." , pardon me, doesn't seem to explain
> anything.  As a gentle reminder of this sort of thing--our risking terminal
> jargon-ese, I keep the following over my desk:
> 
> 	The role of the police is best understood as a mechanism for the distribution
> of nen-	negotiably coercive force employed in accordance with the dictates of
> an intuitive grasp of 	situational exigencies.
> 						-Egon Bittner
> 
> 	What the f____ does that mean?
> 
> 						-Sargeant, Los Angeles Police Dept.
> 
> How about a little--just a little?--effort on the communicative end of
> language (such as it is, this poor old tongue)?
> 
> B. Mills
> 
> 
>      --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 



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