Change of Venue

From now on, you will find my blog posts over at http://davidbrown05.wordpress.com

:-)

Loza and Cigarettes

Last night was fantastic... . I attended a lecture on the erased, hung out with, and scored the personal email of, Silvia Federici and two Sloven activists / akademics from Ljubljana.

In talking at length about the issue of the Erased in Slovenia, about Freedom Fight in Serbia, and migrants and Roma issues, I felt totally at home in the subject matter. I also realized how strong my desire was to be part of an intellectual community and to be connected with the Balkans...

Ironically I also thought about the fact that it took a return to Maine to make akademic connections in Slovenia. But now I have them, and they will be useful, particularly if I opt for the MA Program in Bolognia, and go to Ljubljana for the second year. I will also have all the right connections for a sweet thesis on migrant / immigrant / Romski issues related to borders as power and transnational citizenship.

I still don't want to be a professor, but I realize how important it is for me to have this kind of stimulation in my life. Without it, and this happened to some degree in Belgrade (though I did have this kind of interaction with Aleks) and over this past summer, I get bored and lazy. This then becomes a slippery slope towards general unhappiness. So I am glad that I am finding a balance of work and intellectual challenge in my life again.
:-)

Welfare

I spent about two hours at the Department of Health and Human Services today in order to apply for food assistance. It was an experience in the diversity we have in Portland, it was long and it was boring, but none of that came as a surprise. Upon entering the building, I was confronted by a sign that read We are experiencing a high volume day... In other words: be ready to wait a long time. Ok so. I got in line, filled out my paperwork, took my number and began the wait. Sitting there, reading Virgil’s Aeniad and plugged in to my ipod, I was suddenly conscience of my upbringing, my class, and my ethnicity. I was suddenly the minority in all categories: white, middle class and a tri-lingual, continental European. It was clear to the eyes that looked me over that I didn’t belong there; these services were not supposed to be for me.

I likely reek of middle class-ness to some of my companions in this particular waiting room. Although this is not totally accurate, I really do have a few serious safety nets in my life. While my parents never earned a lot, it was middle class income and I was educated in elite International schools in two of Europe's richest cities. If I was truly about to face homeless-ness or destitution, I would be sent money for a plane ticket, or to see me through a few months (and there are a few sources at least, I can turn to). This means, as I walk into DHHS and sit waiting for benefits, there is a visible wall of privilege between me and my companions. For me, going to get food assistance is a luxury, something I decided (another indicator) to do during a quiet afternoon at work. I am eligible for food assistance because of the nature of my work (I am a volunteer on a very small monthly stipend). The reality of my income is such that it is very hard for me to live within my means, but only because of all the extras in my life: cell phone, credit cards, restaurants, etc. If I were to really go through my spending each month, and cut out just the “entertainment”, I bet I could live on my income and not need food assistance.

I was given more cause for reflection when I sat in the office with my case worker and she was going over my numbers. She literally threw money at me: food assistance, food pantry vouchers, heating assistance and medical insurance. All of this is great, and I am thankful that I live in a system that provides me with these support nets, but what struck me is how quickly my case worker determined that I, and my flat-mates, clearly didn’t have enough money. We needed lots of assistance to off-set our costs each month. We were offered ways of getting most of our ‘essential’ bills reduced (housing, heat, water, food, etc.) with virtually no verification.

I am struck by the fact that we are fortunate to have these supports, and I believe that we should have it this way, but it is also amazing how much we feel we need. We don’t live within our means and to some degree, we have a system that is facilitating this excess. On my income, it is a relief to get food assistance, but not totally essential, and all the other stuff just mean I am have more disposable income. Again, this is good, most of it will go into savings, but it is crazy to me that $800 a month, as a single individual, is considered too poor to survive without help. So, my point here is that rather than simply being supported in ways that are significant to the individual applicant, I left DHHS with a sense that I now had more ‘fun’ money, I was encouraged to take more than I needed.

To myself ~ a confession

I was accused today, of being conceited in how I use my lack of roots to keep my distance from everyone. I was accused of keeping everyone at arms length, and, in some fashion, martyring myself because I cannot settle. It stung. But it was liberating also. I wish I had been told these words months ago. I wish I had been told what I was doing, that I couldn’t see myself. I wish it didn’t take hurting a companion to see myself clearly.

When I came back to Maine from Belgrade I was happy to do so. I wanted the stability of Maine, of my friends, of being with someone very special. I got here and things didn’t work as smoothly as I wanted, and I began to feel a bit lost again. Everything was a challenge, and the European grass was getting greener and greener. I began to focus almost exclusively on a personal relationship, making it the definition of my happiness. This was totally unfair, and I became resentful when the relationship remained complicated, and didn’t solve all my problems.

I didn’t find any work that was fulfilling or that provided me with some stability in making future plans. But the reality was, I had returned to Maine because I wanted to be there, and I had claimed repeatedly that things such as material gains were secondary, that just being in Maine, in love, and with friends was enough. But alas, it wasn’t. Rather than looking at myself for what was wrong, I looked at all that was around me: bad economy, complicated relationship, lack of home, etc, and I blamed these things for my discontent. But really, I was just personally unhappy. I had lost sight of why I was inspired to come back to Maine. If I am objective, and recall some conversations about how I could justify going back to Maine, I was looking for small projects, a life less hectic than I would have at large, bureaucratic institutions. And, holy shit! That is exactly what I have. I have (had) love, friends and a job allowing me to focus on small local projects.

But somehow this wasn’t good enough. The reality is, I couldn’t hack the transition out of the OSCE. I was lost and no-one was offering me a job. I created a fantasy of returning to the farm; I returned to the farm; I still felt bad. Always it was someone else's fault though, never my own. The worst seems to be the effect it has had on the relationship I was in. Certainly it takes two to Tango, and certainly this is just my side, but I was so blinded by my own dissatisfaction (with myself) that I pushed her down and then got mad when she didn’t support me.

I allowed myself to wallow in self-pity rather than get up and get on with it: Yeah, I didn’t get the jobs I wanted, yeah, I only get $800 a month, yeah, I have to share an apartment; deal with it! But look at what I did get: Friends, a great place to live, love. I am sorry to all that the awakening has come late, but there it is. I am perhaps not quite the exile in Said’s terminology, but certainly I am in Freud’s. I am experiencing the forced separation from my symbolic mother, and I cannot return to the womb. It is simply impossible, and I cannot come to terms with the fact that I am standing on my own two feet. If I could come to terms with this, then I would see the world from a different perspective all together. I might see opportunity rather than insecurity, experience rather than disappointment, Love rather than problems.  Ironically, this experience has nothing to do with geography, though that has always been my excuse. I won’t ever find a replacement home by continually moving; because this isn’t about Geography, its about me. It is about realizing that I can do what ever I want, and that pressures such as job and money are only as powerful as we let them be. We are all exiles, or as she said today, we are all visitors in this land, and this is about me reconciling myself with a life that is not easy, but is or can easily be fulfilling and rich in experience, no matter where it is lived.

The Daoist would say I don’t need to leave my front door to know the world. There is infinite truth in that. The world is in me and you, and finding the world means finding me. I found work I am good at, I found an academic subject I love, I have amazing friends on three continents and I have a loving family. I hate to admit it, but there is no reason to be unhappy with that lot. I am so, so sorry.

On Love

Sent from Belgrade to cheer me up:

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down.”

~Woody Allen

Soccer violence

Is this an ominous foreshadowing of the end of the Federation? When Yugoslavia began to shatter between 1990 ~ 1993, the ethnic violence was initially manifested in soccer stadiums and between rival fans... Now Bosnia is in a political crisis, and we are seeing soccer hooligans, divided along ethnic lines, begin to kill each other.

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/22632/

Think and Write

I'm wearing my Che t-shirt and a pair of chuck taylors; I'm unshaven and I don't give a fuck what you think.

 

~~

 

The weekend is past, and although it is Monday, I am feeling better than I have for sometime. Maybe suffering from the a mysterious stomach ailment on Friday and into Saturday was helpful in clearing out some of the mental blocks (i.e. I felt so miserable being sick, that once I recovered, everything had to feel better). Then Sunday was relatively relaxing and I can look forward to a three day weekend in the hills of New Hampshire in 5 short days.

 

E made an interesting point last night after the Belly Dance show. Asked why she thought that the No On One campaign might promote itself with a form of dance historically associated with inequality, subservience and servitude, E said it was possible that many of the Women likely considered it as empowering. Considering that once they were forced to dance, the fact that they now have a choice to dance, means they are controlling their involvement and reclaiming its location in their lives and in culture. This then relates well to No On One in that the campaign is equally about a marginalized group standing up and claiming equal rights under the law. Like Belly Dancers, they then choose to participate in one of the symbols of their oppression and exclusion (they choose to get married). It is not exactly apples to apples, as belly dancers were not excluded from the hegemonic community, rather they were objectified and used for entertainment (the fact that they were primarily Women meant, of course, that they were excluded from participating in community affairs). But the analogy of one marginal group (re)claiming power is what is relevant in this context.

 

I haven't seen a Belly Dance show since K left. I am still not sure how I felt watching it: there was a twinge of sadness mixed in with ambivalence about earlier association I had with it. But above all, the movements were beautiful as were the Dancers. On the night, I guess that is what matters most; that and the No On One campaign.

On Death

As the news of Ali's passing sits on my mind today, I think about the meaning of death to me. It feels so abstract, as if it were some philosophical concept to be thought about, deconstructed and articulated in some 'profound' analogy. Death, when it comes, is just the end of life (life in the secular sense: bodily life, terrestrial life), the end of the functioning of our bodies and, most likely, our minds.

But it is always abstract to me. I have never seen death of any kind. I have seen death only on TV, and thus I have never connected with death as a reality, as something that actually happens. I've never seen a dead body, been to a funeral, or experienced any of my pets die (except for one hamster that I didn't like much). So I feel strangely ambivalent about death. It has no face to me. I've been sad when people I know die, but I have never really understood what that means, on some elemental level, beyond the fact that I will never see them again.

I would like to think that I am not afraid to die, that I can see death as part of the cycle, and thus an extension of life. But how can I know? Life has never seemed fragile to me. Ali's death is no closer to me than the news of 58 protesters being killed in Guinea. Yet I knew and loved Ally personally. I will not be at her funeral, nor will I have contact with her family after today. Just like I won't attend the funeral of people I didn't know in Guinea.

But that is not to say I am not sad, or moved in anyway. It is simply that my feelings are confusing to me, rather than clearly 'sadness' or 'loss', because I don't know what that means beyond knowing I will never see her again.

But there is another element to death in the age of internet. I have now put her memory in cyberspace, which will exist so long as we generate electricity and have the ability to understand it. She also has a facebook page, which at the moment of posting, has yet to acknowledge her passing. Thus she is not dead in that space. Hmm, feels strange to write these words, almost as if it were a disrespect to her or her family. See, I am making her death into an academic thing, making weird arguments about facebook defining life and death.

Allison Wills was my 6th grade Social Studies teacher, and my 7th grade English teacher in Munich. She was a great person who was not confined to arbitrary boundaries of politeness in the class room. We were free to address topics that some thought inappropriate; she removed taboos for us hormone-saturated teenagers. She died of cancer. I knew for a year that she had it, but I never thought she would die.

Think and Write...

...with a nod to Bjelic and Baudrillard.

The issue of racism is one of perception. Orientalism, for example, is problematic because we in the west only understand the orient through the works of Western men who explored the lands during the colonial era. Thus, all knowledge created at this time of intellectual exploration, and all subsequent knowledge built off of the initial corpus, was written and interpreted from the hegemons perspective. This means that we only have a single, ideologically infused, perspective from which to analyze the data, to acquire and understand the information.

Reality is created through the relationship between the signifier and the signified: the signifier is the language that creates the object, the signified is our experiential understanding of the object (our understanding via interaction). In other words, we know it is coffee because we have language to define it (the signifier), we have our understanding of it through language (the signified), and the third component is its physical root / manifestation, the referent.

Hyper Reality is when reality becomes more real than reality itself. Said differently, this is when the signifier becomes the referent to its self. Reality in this context is totally detached from any actual physical reality. Mickey Mouse has no physical referent, rather it is real only because of its signifier: a drawing of a mouse. Yet, you can now go to Disney Land and chill with the Mouse, shake its hand etc. Hyper Reality occurs when the signifier tells us how to understand an image that has no referent.

We can watch a media image totally unconnected to the narrative, but assume it fits the narrative by virtue of its ‘representativeness’ of the the narrative, and through the language of the narration. In one news report the sniper is a Serb, but when the same image is recycled on another channel, the sniper becomes a Bosnian-Muslim. Thus our racism must also be only a flawed perception of this other. Our perception is not rooted in reality, particularly when our understanding of the other is created through portals of hyper reality such as mass media.

Soap box rant

All things considered, these are hard days. But then, in how many eras has that maxim been spoke? I cannot think the Trojans thought they were in for a good time when Achaeans landed on their shores. Same for the Egyptians when they saw the French and then the British sailing up the Nile. I say this only because I caught myself thinking today how things seem worse than ever in the World. But that is pretty foolish. I’m just having a Howard Beale kind of week:

Edward George Ruddy died and woe is us!

But, most likely, the world has always been a pressure cooker for ‘civilization’ with fantastic pressures through war and alienation. This was probably as true now as it was during the Peloponnesian War, it is why the Dao was written, and why we are in a constant state of war today. Maybe I am reading too many of the classics (The Odyssey, The Aneid, Trojan Women) but the news seems to be unusually brutal these days. Maybe it is this sad business with the Roma in Belgrade. I know the context is different, and the violence of a much lower magnitude, but is the destruction of Gazela not, as an action, similar to the destruction of Palestine? An unwelcome people in a prestigious location. It is all I can think of when I see that image on B92 of the Bulldozer.

I am alienated from the health care debate raging in this country. Really? Let us not get a national health service say the same people who also agree that the current system is busted. So they oppose a ‘universal’ system that would guarantee a basic coverage for all the un- and under-insured people, while everyone else can keep their private insurance. Its not even supposed to affect Medicare / Medicaide. Instead they would rather just keep moving towards privatization. Are they afraid of something? Maybe that people will drop the insurance companies? If we lose the health care struggle, then woe is us.

I have no Home

The news, the very tragic and disturbing news, of Gazela has come to me late. I want to be in Belgrade, if only because of a morbid, privileged type of curiosity. The same type of curiosity that came over me after I went to NYC some months after the destruction of the Twin Towers. The destruction of Gazela: is this a ground zero for Roma in Serbia? In the Balkans? What does the site look like now? I have only one picture, on B92, of a bulldozer crushing what used to be the home of a human. A human who has now been sent somewhere, possibly South Serbia, possibly a metal trailer with some furniture and plumbing. Is this really a replacement for what was once a home?

A Day of Service 11.09.2009

September 11th is Patriots day, a day of service in America. The connection to September 11th, 2001 is obvious I guess? No need to explain. In my new job I was ‘encouraged’ to take on a volunteer project for the day. As it turned out, we piggy-backed on another project, a park cleanup/city beautification event. I spent the day conflicted. Conflicted on many levels.

I like what I do for work. I like connecting communities, bringing people together, and being able to explore other identities through my job. So I have no problem with volunteerism, or even doing community service as a response / reflection to violence. But I don’t like tokenism. I’m also not a patriot of any nation: nationalism is a dangerous, violent and divisive emotion / ideology. The only time I get vaguely nationalistic is over soccer, but even so, I’ll never take to the streets in defense of a nation or national ethos. So the first conflict for me is that my job, by definition, is in service of a nation-state. But, I am not confronted with it on a daily basis, and I have enough freedom in my work, that I can bring my own ideas to the projects, ideas that are not Nationalistic in nature. I can work with critical multiculturalism in my mind as I approach something, etc...

But the larger conflict for me was /  is the token-istic nature of Patriot Day, and doing a beautification project on that day. I wandered round for over an hour picking up rubbish in the park and wondering why I was doing this? What does 11.9 mean to me? I wasn’t in this country when it happened, and I am repulsed by the Government response to the event. This response has caused the deaths of many more than were killed in the Towers. Is this a proportional response? Does it address the root cause of our conflict, the cause of the attacks? More over, how does my beautification of a city park have any reflection on the tragic events of 11.9 and those since? It doesn’t, is my conclusion. I have done nothing more than done the work of our Parks and Recreations Department for a few hours. We had no reflection on what this day means, 8 years later; there was no debate on appropriate responses; and there was little in the way of alternatives.

Perhaps this is partly my fault for not organizing the alternative, for encouraging a reflection, etc... But when I refused to write cards to soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, I was given dirty looks. This is not a crowed, liberal though they are, that wants to debate the last 8 years, the meaning of Sept. 11, or the appropriate activities for today. No, we must clean, and not question. Certainly I wish America had just turned to its gardens, and to its own streets on Sept. 12, not to guns and credit cards; I wish the States had encouraged growth rather than death after the attacks, but they didn’t, and they, myself included, really need to talk about it.

I also don’t understand why do we need to set a day aside for this? If community service is a value we hold dearly, then why only do it once a year? The fact that we need to make a show out of this event, invite fancy people and small children, shows how shallow our regard for community work is. Hey, I’m not moralizing here, ‘cause I’m as lazy as the next guy. I only started doing community work because my jobs demanded it. It is like valentines day, if you love someone, you should treat them well and tell them how you feel everyday, not just on February 14th. The point here is just that we should be doing community work because we want to and think it is important, not just because 8 years ago some assholes flew planes into some of our buildings.

There is a further point, and that is one of perception, which is perhaps one of the most important elements. The city I live in has many problems, the least of which is the lack of rubbish bins in the park. So was a beautification activity really the best thing? How are the immigrant and refugee communities going to perceive this? We would rather clean a small park than spend a day with them? Many are here, after all, because we invaded their country... My points here are not meant to be Anti-American, though I understand that I cannot totally avoid it. I was glad to see people out on the streets today, people doing something together that didn’t involve national anthems and flag waving, I just wish we would do more of this, any and every day, not just as a memorial.

Am I too cynical for this?

Written 12 August, 2009

Am I too cynical for this?

The question turned round and round in my head as I listened to the evenings motivational speakers, one of whom will be my mentor for the next three days. I didn’t feel the spirit, I didn’t catch the fever in the room, rather, I often found myself being critical of what I heard. The nationalistic rhetoric was at times brutal, the message often condescending to the communities we will serve, and as my room-mate remarked, some people join cults after hearing motivational speakers.

We were shown pictures of Kennedy and Johnson, of poor blacks and Indians, we heard about how this was good for America, and that we were joining a legacy of people who had given to develop a better society. Finally we ended the video with my man Barak Obama talking about his year of service, and all I could think of was a thick jar of treacle. We then turned to the people at our tables and each rattled off a bullet points of the things that caught our attention. I thought everyone missed the point. They talked about how this was good for America, that they could finally feel like the lived in America... But I don’t know what that means? And I am not sure they do.

The one thing I liked was the idea that poverty is more than just lack of cash, but also the inability to access opportunity, or to even imagine it. I told my table that I thought this is what VISTA was about: helping people see their circumstances, and helping them to figure out how to change that circumstance. It is about sustainability, and we can keep throwing cash at problems, but tomorrow the people will still be hungry. So opportunity, or the ability to be creative and create opportunity is so much more valuable that some bullshit American nationalism. This isn’t about America or any other country; this is about being good to the people around you, about sharing, about giving back.

Only one of the speakers had something interesting to say: if you have questions about service, then don’t do it. i.e don’t waste our time if your not serious, because this will be hard. How do I respond to this. I am cynical, I don’t buy into the corporate mentality they want to socialize me into, I’m not doing this for America, or for my man Barak. I’m doing this for me, and for the community in which I live. I’m doing this because I am sick of hearing racist diatribes about refugees being criminal minded and destroying the fabric of my city, and I’m doing this because I didn’t get a better offer for the year. So should I turn this service down?

No – I don’t think so. I have a different agenda to be sure, and no doubt this different perspective and cynicism will get me into some trouble. However I bring diversity of thought and approach, and thus I facilitate the creative possibilities of the office in which I work. Moreover I will be good at my job, even if I am not doing it for America, or my man.

The day Fitzy saved Portland soccer...

The kid was lying on the ground in a crumpled heap, clutching his stomach. Blood was pouring from his nose and with each drop, my nightmare scenario was being enacted. As the league director, this was now my mess to clean up and avoid a mutiny by the other teams. Along with the kid bleeding on the floor, my ref had also been slugged, although this appeared to be accidental, and he was ok. In misfortune, I had been lucky: lucky it wasn’t worse, lucky the ref hadn’t quit, lucky no-one was arrested, lucky the kid was ok, lucky...

We called the game and told the teams to leave immediately. Get the fuck off the pitch and go the fuck home. But the kid who took the beating was now standing; he had gone for some rocks and was trying to hurl them at the opposing team. Luckily he was being restrained by team mates, but it was enough to have the whole opposition team massed once again, ready to fight... So I did the only thing I could think to do: call 9-1-1 and get the cops to send everyone home. I hated doing it. It was an admission that I was out of my depth, and that I had failed to control the situation myself. Two minuets later, the cops were there and asking who was in charge. That would be me officer... I explained the situation, told them the trouble was over and if they could just encourage people to leave, that would be a help. They did just that, staying for less than 10 minuets.

There were about 20 minuets before the next game, which I did not cancel. So I went and paid the ref (who left with a smile and feeling ok), and spent the remaining time in my car thinking about what had just transpired, and how to deal with it. E came around and gave me a hug, and listened to me for a few minuets, which helped a good deal. Around the time she left, Fitzy showed up. He is a kind man and also the ref for the next game. We sat on the grass at KP, in the shade and talked through the situation. It was calm now and some people were milling around the food stand, a few players for the next game were warming up at the far goal. People should play because they love the game, irrespective of results or ideology; I couldn’t help thinking that was a totally naïve desire. The whole thing had made be really sad.

Fitzy, an accountant by day, calmed my nerves with his jovial smile and his lack of serious concern for what had just transpired. It wasn’t that he didn’t think we needed to take it seriously, but that it wasn’t something that should cause us to consider whether the league should have a future. He loved the league, and had come to know so many of the players, as have I. He didn’t want to see it go away. The league just needs to come down hard on the few that were involved in order to break up the mob mentality of a few of the teams. This I agreed with. The heart break for me was one of the culprits has been a real leader all season, getting involved in addressing the leagues issues and making sure his team was not getting into fights.

After the last game Fitzy asked me if I would remain involved next year. I half lied: yes. Truth is, I don’t know if I will. I don’t know if I want to. I enjoy soccer, no, I love soccer, and there is nothing that can change those feelings. But I also spent a year writing a thesis about how the sport is ultimately a divider, rather than a unifier, and I don’t believe that it will ever unite Portland’s divided communities. So, will I keep giving up every summer weekend for something I don’t believe in and makes me no money? I doubt it. I wonder now, if the league isn’t facilitating conflict rather than resolving it? If that is the case, then we should all walk away now, rather than ferment nationalistic tensions along ethnic lines in this small costal city. If the league is fostering tension, rather than diffusing it, then I want no part of it. Fitzy left with an offer to be involved in the management next year.

Well, the season is coming to an end in 4 weeks, so I will see it through to the conclusion, and then take the winter to see if I want to stay committed or walk away. And it had been such a wonderful day, 75 and sunny...

Short Story

Here is a short story I came across last night. It was written by Ralf Bönt, former captain of the German National Writing team.

http://www.ralf-boent.de/essen_gb.html

Saying no to discrimination....

...is discrimination against people who want to discriminate. :-)

UEFA recently announced its newest initiative to tackle racism in stadiums across Europe. This initiative comes almost exactly one year before an African nation prepares to host the World Cup for the first time (South Africa in 2010). While there is no direct link between the these two things, the reality, in Europe, is that African players are most often subjected to racist abuse and FIFA will need to consider the demographic represented in many of the National fans that may travel to South Africa next summer. So in a sense, FIFA may want to pay close attention to how well these new initiatives function.

Basically, UEFA has mandated that the Referee be give the power to interrupt the game in three stages when they become aware of racist behavior towards players on the pitch. First, they stop the game and have the stadium announcer make a public announcement, if the abuse continues, then the game is to be stopped for 15 minuets, the teams sent into the changing rooms and another announcement is made, if the situation continues, the game is suspended until further notice. I find this approach interesting for a few reasons, not only because it will, in theory, create a public pressure inside the stadium against racist behavior. UEFA is essentially introducing social regulation by punishing everyone for the transgressions of a few individuals. The idea is as ingenious as it is suspect, and the potential for the public to act as a lynch mob should give pause for thought.

No-one who paid the relatively high ticket prices will want to see the game cancelled, or even interrupted, so the logic is that the public will get involved when they see racist behavior on the part of a fan (or group of fans). It is a carrot and sticks approach that will punish a whole village for the transgressions of one of its wayward children. Interestingly, I just watched The Art of Soccer with John Cleese. A portion of the documentary was dedicated to Xenophobia: many of the people interviewed (players subjected to racism, and fans) formulated a similar approach to the one UEFA has now taken. The idea being, if fans see people being racist, they will take action... But as much as one hopes that this action would be a nice group explaining to the racist what they had done wrong, I fear it could be much more violent than that.

But this is also facinating on another level: it is meant to develop normative behavior and is thus a sort of mass brainwashing. The effect that this could have, though I may be giving too much credit to the power of soccer, is of building community. It is, on some level, an extension of the imagined community as much as it is part of Schmitt’s thesis. We are now united against racism, as a community, and we will be held responsible, as a community, if we fail to ensure that racism is controlled.

I bring this up, in the context of the first African World Cup, because it will be fascinating to see how fans from Europe, notorious for highly racists views, attitudes and songs, will behave, and how FIFA will handle the racism. It may be a moot point, because maybe South Africa will simply be too far for these types of fans to travel. But in case it is not, FIFA will need to have effective measures in place to handle such situations, on the field and off. But I also think it is interesting to reflect on this in light of recent comments by Arch Bishop Tutu, who said that it would be the World Cup that will help South Africa grown an additional two inches in stature. South Africa, with its deep history of a vitriolic racism, is facing a massive challenge as host of the worlds largest sporting event. Success and failure, either way, will have lasting effects on the nation as much as on the sport.

Football cannot be used to end racism. We have to educate them. ~ Kaká

Stand Up...

About a Film

I am so glad he didn’t ask me what my favorite film was; I dislike that question. How do you answer that? Maybe this is an easy for some, but all I can think is: based on what criteria? Genre? Director? Do we start with Orson Wells, Kubrick, Roeg, Almodovar, Kurusawa or Von Trotta? What about Fassbinder or should I go back to D. W. Griffith? But as I was thinking about ‘favorite film’, and my interlocutor was quick to offer Millers Crossing as one of his favorites (a great film, to be sure), I thought about the one film I have often used to answer that awful question: Easy Rider.

Having grown up in Europe, the road movie was something of a novelty; fascinating and difficult to relate to. Easy Rider has a simple narrative, two men traveling from A to B on bikes during a time of great change in American Society. The simplicity is not a handy cap however, and the film yields an effective social critique of the downward spiral (from the film-makers point of view). Well, I don’t mean to get bogged down in offering a review of this film, but it has been on my mind again, particularly as I read Jean Baudrillard’s Amérique, a European’s take on America in the 1980s, half-way through the Age of Reagan (a time seriously committed to the rear-view mirror fantasy). He opens the text with a quote: objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. Most Americans see this short statement on a daily basis as they look back at the place they just came from, they read this as a literal statement: the car behind you appears larger to you than it really is. But for Baudrillard, this means something totally different. It is a powerful statement about a culture in which everything is a mirror image of something that has already existed, but in its recreation, it has been made bigger (larger than life). According to Baudrillard, American culture, or the American experience, is defined by the fact that everything is a reproduction of something else, but bigger and better than the original (I am thinking of Las Vegas thanks to Simons blog entry). Everything in a mirror is artificial, two dimensional and unoriginal.

In Easy Rider, we get something of a premonition of Baudrillard’s analysis. Representing the counter-cultural movement in the USA, the two protagonists go in search of the authentic experience, without a real roadmap, and certainly no time-frame in mind. But their existence is an affront to most of the characters they meet along the way. Their death at the hands of strangers is the result of their lack of conformity (at least in a superficial reading of the film); their authentic life (and look) is a challenge to a system built in a rear-view mirror with magnifying properties, and they are not the mirror image of anything. In fact, they represent a moment of authentic creation in Americana, and they have since been mirrored, along with the whole counter-cultural movement (in language, dress and attitudes, we constantly recreate the 1960’s in our new realities).

In death, Billy and Captain America (along with the whole movement) became pure and unassailable, and though is was lambasted and repressed at the time, they have now become a beacon of American free-expression and liberty. We dream about the freedom that comes from the open road, the lack of schedules, and the feeling of the wind screaming past your ears. Our idealistic view of this period is problematic however, and it is false and out of proportion, unoriginal and larger than life. The trip in Easy Rider begins with a drug deal after all. Billy and the Captain were flawed, as was the whole movement, and it wasn’t just about flower power and free speech either. But that is, in many ways, all we know of it today. Kids at Target buying their 1960’s inspired shirts and dresses are not reflecting on what this means (well, maybe they are) on a symbolic level, and how they feel about recreating a rewritten history. We often do not ask ourselves what it means to wear a Ché shirt or wear peace symbols, we do not think about how these things came to be, what they were then, and what they are now.

In any case, I love this film, but it is only one of many that are, in my tilted view, brilliant...

Negotiations

You are leaving already? But you haven’t contributed anything yet! His face was darkened by the sun coming in through the window behind him, and for a moment I thought he was mad at me. I replied that I was simply listening because I thought they were sending me to Sudan. Everyone laughed. It was the fourth of July and I spent the whole day with non-Americans, Africans and Serbs, and it was a great day. After coffee at NorthStar with Alfred, we tooled over to SoPo to visit with his brother and have some food. We’ll be there for an hour or so, he said. But you have to be flexible.

Three hours later, my belly was stuffed with Sudanese foods and tea, most of the women and all the children had been kept away from us men, and we were now deep into debates. I quickly realized that I was in an intense meeting over the construction of the school Southern Sudan. People were calling contacts in Jubba, men were offering advice to Alfred on how to handle the ‘locals’, and the whole time we sat in a circle sharing the floor fairly democratically. A few voices dominated the conversation, but even being a total outsider, I felt as though I could have said something and they would have listened.

Alfred drove me back and I could see he was strained. As experienced as he is, the trip he was about to take, going home for the first time in 14 years and overseeing the construction clearly feels like a monumental task. I spent the evening playing soccer and watching Milos Foreman movies. I didn’t even bother with the fireworks.

Constant Gardner

He paused. The rake was cutting into his hand, tearing away a small patch of skin. Some part of him enjoyed the sensation; it wasn’t too painful. He examined his work, the clear patch of dirt, and thought about the people he knew, about good will and trust. Were people generally good natured? Those he knew were, so he believed. He trusted and had been hurt as a result. He trusted again and suspected he was being played now.

Pressing the wooden handle of the rake against the open wound, he went back to work. He didn’t turn to look at his friends, it wasn’t them he was thinking about. He had nothing to offer them, and they nothing to offer him. They were friends because they all wanted to be. He thought about how pain fades and scabs over, like the small wound on his hand. Someone yelled out; a bird was busy scolding him for being too close to the nest, and he felt calmness come over him in that environment. Focusing on a patch of weeds right in front of him, hidden slightly under the burning bush, he went over the ground, again and again, slashing through roots and pulling up stones. His nose was filled with the smell of freshly uncovered dirt. He kept going. Not aggressively, just rhythmically going back and forth.

Beer? Before he answered, the bottle cap was removed and the pressure released with a sucking sound. He put down the rake and held the bottle against the place where the skin had rubbed off. It felt good.

I’ll go see about those rose bushes next. He walked across the newly laid sod and her eyes followed him.

Don’t injure yourself.