The Riots 5: Three dominant interpretations (plus a fourth)

Looking at writings about suburban unrest in France 2005 or in Sweden today, I think one can discern three predominant interpretations. I'd like to call them the progressive, the culturalist and the security interpretation.

The progressive interpretation is propably familiar to many. It emphasizes the structural socio-economic roots of the riots. The outburst of violence is caused by discrimination and exclusion, and the violence is a misguided expression of frustration and a hidden plea for help. The solution consists in reforms to enhance inclusion, socio-economic equality and a general promotion of tolerance of difference.

This interpretation is challenged from the right by the culturalist and the security arguments. Together these arguments form the core of a nebulous mixture, in which structuralist and individual-centered factors are both emphasized. “Culture” is used as a structural explanatory variable to challenge the progressive emphasis on economy or class, while “security” is introduced to reframe the riots in individualist fashion, as caused by professional trouble-makers or criminals. The riots are thus partly blamed on culture, thus justifying the call for a more restrictive immigration policy, and partly on the recklessness of gangs, which need to be controlled by a more massive police effort.
The best example of this confused mixture is probably Alain Finkelkraut, who manages to claim both that the rioters in the French banlieus 2005 were cultural fanatics driven by hatred of the West and that they were spoiled brats who only desired the consumer items, the brand goods and the girls they saw on television (Finkelkraut 2005; for the context of these statements see Shurkin 2006). This inconsistency doesn’t matter, of course, since the point he wants to drive home is that they are uninterested in public welfare or better schools and that the Leftists who see the riots as a revolt against discrimination or unemployment are wrong.
For some reason, the strength of this rightist discourse hasn't suffered from its internal tensions. What is happening is rather that voices on the right use their own lack of consistency to jump swiftly between individualism and structuralism according to occasion, either relying on a "security" interpretation that stresses the criminality of the rioters in order to justify the more resources to the police, or on a "culturalist" interpretation that blames the “culture” of the immigrants in order to justify restrictions on immigration.

Let us have a closer look at what the conjunction of structural and individual factor implies in reality. The “security” interpretation can be exemplified by Sarkozy’s statement at the time of the Paris riots 2005:

The primary cause of unemployment, of despair, of violence in the banlieus, it isn’t discrimination, it isn’t failure of the education system. The primary cause of despair in the neighborhoods, it’s drug trafficking, the rule of gangs, the dictatorship of fear and the abandonment by the republic. (Le Monde, 22 November 2005:12, quoted in Dikec 2007:166)

Here the problem is viewed above all in terms of security and the solution is located in enhanced policing and a stricter enforcement of law and order. A defining characteristic of the security interpretation is the denial of structural factors. As soon as the few real culprits are arrested, the rest of the immigrant population will be integrated peacefully, maybe even be grateful to the state and the police for protecting them from the vandalization of their neighborhood. Arguments along these lines are plentiful also concerning the recent outburst of violence in Sweden. “Society must stand up forcefully for law and order, not least to protect the majority of the inhabitants”, Dagens nyheter wrote at the time of the Rosengård riots, “That the recent riots have taken on such a violent character is partly because of the participation of professional troublemakers – football hooligans and so called autonomous Leftists” (”Malmö rämnar”, DN, 2008-12-21). “One should remember that it’s all about younger kids incited by one or at most a few older ones. It turns out again and again that things calm down when you remove the leader”, a Gothenburg police officer states in another newspaper article, which also quotes a local politician who claims that there is no general conflict behind the disturbances, which are linked to individuals ("Hisingen inget nytt Rosengård", DN, 2009-08-20).

As long as politicians and others choose to rely solely on the "security" interpretation, the resulting picture may appear rather innocuous. Just provide the police with some more resources, and the problem will disappear. However, as a moment of reflection will tell us, conservatives often embrace a “culturalist” interpretation in addition to the "security" interpretation. The common prejudice that “foreigners are criminal” is only the most blatant example of this mixture.

Now this is important. Let us think for a moment about what it means. Isn’t there a risk that these two arguments in conjunction will imply a far more virulent and explosive mixture than each of the two arguments taken separately? In my view, this is undeniable. It means that one deploys the police to use its "legitimate force" to solve a structural problem – structural and hence endless, since the police will never be able to get to the root of the problem. This can only mean a declaration of perpetual and endless war against the immigrant population. The police’s task is no longer saving the this population from a few culprits, but intimidating and controlling it as a whole on a daily basis. Force is no longer used as a temporary measure to restore the system, but becomes part of the system itself in the form of an institutionalization of harassment against an entire segment of the population simply by virtue of its ethnicity. I think it is fair to call this fascism. So far, this fascist option may not be official state policy. But it has many adherents and who can deny that it is de facto implemented by the police, customs officials and guards on innumerable occasions?

In addition to the three interpretations above, I wonder if there is not room for an additional argument on the Left besides the progressive or social democratic one. My aim is to grope for such an interpretation. Let’s call it the “autonomy” interpretation. It is an interpretation that the rioters are rioting for the pleasure of rioting rather than out of a sense of victimhood, for the pleasure of being able for once to shape their own lives, for the pleasure of being able to hit back at the police and make fools of them and laugh at them, for the pleasure of the freedom they momentarily create, for the pleasure of proving that one is neither weak nor intimidated; that the riots are a way for them to reassert their independence, pride and ability to enjoy life in the midst of exclusion. I am not saying that the rioters are really thinking like this. What I am suggesting is that such an understanding seems more helpful than the others mentioned above to grasp many of the aspects of the riots. I am also suggesting that the rioters are deserving of at least some measure of respect. That they should be respected even when they don't behave like victims.

This interpretation is also detached from structural factors in the sense that it highlights the importance of agency, a will that is free to choose and create, rather than viewing people as the passive puppets of structure. In this sense it resembles the security interpretation. It is, however, eminently compatible with structural interpretations, both of a socio-economic and a cultural kind. The riots may not be reflection of the material basis, but they may be response to it. When you revolt against an intolerable structure, you address it, you call it intolerable and you say "Enough!", but that doesn't mean that the revolt can be predicted from it. If it is truly creative, it always comes as a surprise. As Alberto Toscano once stated, "the rebel is the one who gives rise to the exception". I agree. True creativity is not impossible, even if it may appear impossible from the point of view of structure. As for culture, autonomy implies the creation and defense of independent lifestyles and resistance against the culture of mainstream society or the "spectacle" with its representations and ready-made roles. Almost by definition, riots driven by a quest for autonomy will therefore become "culture wars", although in a sense totally different from that in which conservatives or nationalists use the term.

Are you objecting that the rioters are also asking local politicians for space for leisure activities, work and perhaps also other forms of welfare benefits, and that they can therefore hardly be aspiring for autonomy? Well, in my view such demands don’t necessarily have to be made from a standpoint of victimhood. Pursuing a free and real life is not incompatible with strategically demanding whatever benefits and guarantees of survival one may get. Demands don’t have to be understood as pleas or beggary. Rights can be won and benefits can be spoils of war. In a country like Sweden, with a long tradition of a proud and strong labor movement that always rejected the posture of “asking with cap in hand”, this lack of modesty should surely not be viewed as too unbecoming. Why not let the progressive and autonomy interpretations join hands against the amalgam of culturalist and security interpretations on the right?


References:

Dikec, Mustafa (2007) Badlands of the Republic: Space, Politics, and Urban Policy, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.

Finkelkraut, Alain (2005) “La voix "très déviante" d’Alain Finkielkraut au quotidien ’Haaretz’”, interview by Dror Mishani and Aurelia Smotriez, English translation here.

Shurkin, Michael (2006) “France’s Jewish Prophets: Alain Finkielkraut, Albert Memmi, and the Looming Crisis of Liberalism”, ZEEK, May 06

Toscano, Alberto, ”Religion and Revolt”, published on seconds.

The Riots 4: Vignettes

This will be a descriptive and fragmentary entry (too fragmentary to be called a montage). I'll start with a brief description of what happened in Rosengård (part of Malmö in southern Sweden)in December 2008. That will be followed by three vignettes from the riot and the aftermath, which I think will give a taste both of the atmosphere during the riots and of how the mass media reported them. The first of these is a translation of a newspaper article with a few comments added. The final two ones are shorter. They are based on newspaper articles and concern the police.

I.
The riots broke out shortly before Christmas in December 2008. They were triggered by conflict involving the refusal of a landlord to renew the contract of a basement used as a mosque by the Salafist Islamic Culture Society. For three days we saw things on the news which were reminiscent of the Paris riots 2005 or the recent riots in Greece: cars and trucks overturned and set on fire, burning telephone booths and recycling stations, vandalized gasoline stations, damaged police vehicles and clashes in the night with hordes of young people attacking the police and the fire brigade with stones, eggs, fireworks rockets and homemade bombs. Buses were cancelled and the traffic on the major road through the area was stopped as hundreds of young people started attacking cars with stones from an overpass. Thirty or so members of autonomous groups rallied to the area to participate in the clashes. No one was hurt, but seventeen young people were taken into custody. Acts of arson and attacks against the fire brigades continued for a half a year after the riots.

II.
Here is my translation of an article published in Dagens nyheter.

A meeting with power an evening without fires
As the sun sets over Rosengård the young start to gather as usual outside the drug store in Herrgården. A kilometer away the fire brigade at Jägersro fire station is waiting for the first alarm from Rosengård. But tonight there is no alarm. Yesterday evening the recycling station next to the drug store was burnt down to the ground. Nothing remains but the charred stone foundation and a container with some soot-covered remains.
“We needed to warm ourselves”, one of the youngsters outside the drug store says and holds out his hands as towards a fire. The other 10-15 youngsters laugh in agreement.
Dagens nyheter [the newspaper] has brought Ilmar Reepalu to Herrgården to hear his explanation of the constant fires and attacks on policemen and fire fighters. The reportage takes a new turn as we are stopped by youngsters, who are eager to talk.
“What’s your name”, the kid who appears to be leader in the group asks.
“My name’s Ilmar”
“What’s your job?”
“I try to run this city”
Ilmar Reepalu is the chairman of the municipal government since many years back and a social democratic politician.
“We’d need a space for leisure activities. Why not where the mosque used to be!”, the leader who introduced himself as Kalle says. “And we also need new recycling stations to warm ourselves”.
Loud laughter. The youngster are cocky but definitely not unfriendly. They don’t know who Reepalu is, no one reads Swedish newspapers here. But when he answers to one of their questions by saying that, yes, he’s met Fredrik Reinfeldt [the prime minister], they start to realize that he’s some kind of big shot. Not that they’re impressed, but they start listening.
“We need a space for leisure activities for us who are over 16 years”, Kalle continues.
“Burning down a recycling station is not the way you get a space for leisure activities. Things don’t work like that”, Reepalu answers.
”We do it our way. Nobody listens to us”, one of the youngsters says.
“You know why all this happened in Rosengård”, another says, “It’s because the police harasses us. They took my little brother who’s only fifteen and when he got home his face was all bruised up”. The youngsters return again and again to the harassments by the police and claim that this is the reason for the fires of the last weeks.
“But why do you attack the fire brigade”, Reepalu asks.
“We didn’t! We threw stones at the police”.
“It can’t be very fun for you yourselves if there are fires all the time in your own neighborhood”, Reepalu says. “It may be fun right now while it lasts, but not later. Tell me what you want to do yourselves to improve things here”.
Kalle draws his breath to start a small speech: “Ilmar, let me tell you something. We don’t have any expectations here. I don’t think things will be better. I tell you that straightaway. Do you know why? Well, we’ve talked to journalists, to the police and with the municipality. But nothing happens. Not a single stone has been changed. Look at that”, he says and points at a house behind a high fence. “Everything is just brown, brown, brown”.
“If you got some paint would you paint it and make it nicer?”
“If you can fix work to all of us here in Rosengård no one’ll destroy anything”
Suddenly the cocky tone subsides and the youngsters start listening intently.
“Are you ready to work here”, Reepalu asks.
“We all are”, they reply all at the same time.
“But not cleaning up!”
“Who’s going to do that then?”
“The municipality”
This time it’s Reepalu’s turn to laugh.
Kalle writes down his name and telephone number on a piece of paper and hands it to Reepalu. He promises to contact the local landlord to hear if they are interested in engaging the younsters.
“If I make it nice here and a kid comes and tries to burn it down, I’ll hit him”, Kalle says by way of conclusion.
As Dagens Nyheter and Reepalu leave the youngsters a middle-aged man calls out to us.
“You’ve just talked to the ones who’re destroying Rosengård! They’re idiots, raised in the forest instead of at home. Their parents haven’t taught them respect for humanity. They’re the one who plant all the fires”.
But this night there are no fires in Rosengård.
(“Möte med makten en kväll utan brand”, DN, 2009-03-26)

The tone in this reportage is carefully optimistic, almost sunny. But this carefully optimistic account should be read in a carefully pessimistic way, against the background of a massive reporting about the problems of Rosengård. Malmö as a whole has the greatest proportion of poor children in the country and in Rosengård, where more than 94% of the children are of foreign background, 76% of the children are classified as poor. This poverty reflects that of their households. In Rosengård 38% of the inhabitants work, to be compared with 78% in wealthier parts of Malmö. The proportion of children or young in Rosengård is far higher than average. According to a report published in April 2009, half of the area’s inhabitants are below 26 years, to be compared to 31% for the country as a whole (DN 2009-04-22). In school, their results are markedly below the average for the city as a whole. The reportage mentions spaces for leisure. One reason that such spaces are lacking is that far more people are living in Rosengård than the area was planned for. Living in overcrowded apartments, young kids are often forced outside where they drift around with little else to do (girls by contrast tend to stay at home and 58% of women in the age interval 20-25 years are already mothers, as compared to 10% for the country as a whole) (These statistics are gathered from various articles in DN from 2008 onwards; I’m not sure if they are wholly accurate but they will serve to give a general picture).
Another thing that strikes me in the reportage is the clarity with which the youngsters tell Reepalu what they want. They want more space for leisure activities, they want work and they’re fed up with police harassments. I found myself wondering why so many commentators persist in describing the riots as nothing but blind violence and the rioters as lacking in political self-awareness and unable to articulate their demands. A scurry of theories exist about what the rioters want. Some appear to be totally unfounded (perhaps I will have reason to return to these later). Others appear to be derived mainly from ideological standpoints – the idea of the riots as a protest against neoliberalism or as a slap in the face of “Western culture”. I’m not saying here that ideology is necessarily false, but the problem with ideologically derived formulas is that they can be constructed without much help of reality. Political views will of course always influence how one views what is happening in society, but when it comes to interpretations of people’s motivations I prefer those that listen to what the people in question are saying to those that don’t even bother to ask. The material I’ve read so far contains very little of such listening (although I’ll of course go on looking for more), but what I think this article shows is that the young rioters don’t lack any political awareness at all. As far as I can see they are very clear about their demands. Who said you must mention neoliberalism or “Western values” to have political awareness? Furthermore, the demands seem perfectly reasonable. The riddle doesn’t consist in the young rioters’ political awareness. It consists in the fact that these perfectly reasonable demands are refused or not heard and that those who put forward them are branded as extremists.

III.
Three young people are prosecuted for participating in the riot. Sequences from a film are shown in count in February 2009 as evidence against one of the youngsters. The film was made by the police during the riots from inside a police van and, unfortunately for the policemen, reveals not only the acts of some young activists but also an embarrassing conversation between the policemen, as they are talking in heavy southern Swedish accent while driving.

“I agree with the old man at Ica [a supermarket] in Vellinge: ‘you’ve come to the wrong municipality, dagos”.
“That fucking little monkey [Den lille jävla apajäveln]. Should I make him sterile when I get him?” Someone laughs and a colleague adds:
“Yeah, we’ll give him a treatment so he won’t be able to stand on his legs when we’re finished”. (Elin Fjellman Jaderup, Lugna Gatan: "Hatet blir större". Sydsvenskan, 2009-02-06)

As this was shown on the TV news, many were of course scandalized. The policemen, however, were not judged to have done anything incorrect. Some tried to excuse the policemen by pointing out that the word “monkey” (apa) referred to a particularly aggressive member of the Anti-Fascist Action (afa). In my view, this doesn’t excuse anything. The police shouldn’t make anyone sterile, not even a political activist. I was also intrigued by the fact that these policemen recorded the entire thing themselves and handed over the film to the court, obviously oblivious of the scandal that would ensue. Do we have here some variant of the Abu Ghraib-syndrome of soldiers or policemen being so brutalized by their business that they start filming or photographing their own violations in the belief that they are something fully normal and acceptable? Or were they simply stupid?

IV.
Let me add by a piece of news which I think is significative of the restoration of order. In August 2009, the Malmö police had been patrolling Herrgården in Rosengård for four months, 24 hours a day, at foot, by car and on horseback, and a local headquarters has been set up in a van. “We are tremendously grateful”, a fire fighter at the nearby fire station says. As a result of the surveillance, the number of arsons has declined rapidly. “Above all we haven’t been victims of violence or threats a single time since the surveillance started”, the fire fighter adds, “That grown-ups in the area now have the courage to show their support for us is perhaps even more important. As late as yesterday I was out fixing a water leakage and people came up to me and thanked me and in general showed their appreciation. That is something they wouldn’t have done half a year ago”. The article adds that the support of local residents for the police was demonstrated a week ago, when a group of autonomous activists planned a street party in Herrgården under the slogan “Reclaim Herrgården”. “The residents went out and told the black-dressed hooligans ‘Get away, we don’t want any trouble in our neighborhood’”. (“Polisinsats har gjort Rosengård lugnare”, DN, 2009-08-28).

The Riots 3: Badiou

Let me jump back to France 2005. A number of interpretations exist of the riots in the cités and banlieus. Alain Badiou’s is one of the most convincing I’ve encountered so far. He states something which upon reading it sounds very self-evident:

It is above all against the ideology of security [sécuritaire] and against the incessant police harassment that these kids are rising up, against the cops in the estates who everywhere and at all times exert their control, with insults and intimidations, even of kids of 13 or 14. (Badiou 2005a).

This is the gist of his analysis. They are rising against the police, against harassment and against daily humiliation. To illustrate these humiliations, he gives a vivid account of his adopted black son’s life:

I can’t even count the number of times he’s been stopped by the police. Innumerable - there is no other word. Arrested: six times! In 18 months. What I mean by arrested is when you are taken, in handcuffs, to the police station, when you are insulted, latched to a bench, left there for hours, sometimes kept for a day or two. For nothing. (Badiou 2005b)

Surely it’s easy for anyone with even the slightest darker skin than the average European to empathize with Badiou here and to share his indignation at the “omnipresent checking/questioning and the interruptions of their normal lives” which many immigrants have to endure.

A noteworthy point is the total and absolute support he gives the young rioters, unlike the Socialist or Communist parties and many others on the Left, whom he accuses of paralysis.

The youth must not be left to face the police alone. It is necessary to rise up against the police harassment of which they are the object. Parents must stand side by side with them.(Badiou 2005a)

We should note that he is far from romanticizing the riot. Burning cars and pelting the police with stones is not the way to stop the power of financial capital or “the politics of Sarkozy, Villepin and Chirac”. But far from arguing, as many others on the Left, that the riots are therefore confused and lacking in political awareness, he gives them his full support. No matter how misguided the riots may be when it comes to combating neoliberalism, the pure and simply anger at the endless daily insults and humiliations and the desire to get back at the police is enough to justifiy them. This anger is just, and parents should be with their children in the face of the police, not against them.

The reason that I sympathize with Badiou’s argument is not only emotional. Another reason is that, as far as I can judge, he is attentive to what the young rioters say themselves – that they are tired of police harassment – and he treats them with enough respect and fairness to take them at their word. How refreshing, compared to the stereotypical explanations we’ve been used to hearing – that the rioters are fighting a cultural war or even some form of jihad (commentators on the Right) or that they are fighting for economic reasons or a more welfare (commentators on the Left)!

A second reason is that Badiou helps us to recognize pride as a legitimate source of protest. Burning cars makes much more sense if seen as motivated by pride – by a desire to get back at the police, demonstrate one’s power and restore respect – than if motivated by economic victimization or cultural fanaticism. To burn one’s own neighborhood is reckless and irresponsible from the point of view both of economic utility and traditional ethics, but it makes better sense as a manifestation of pride – as a way of saying, “We are not victims, we are masters of this area, and we do as we please”. Whereas many commentators on the Left by reflex regard the immigrants as victims, this is a label which the rioters themselves would probably reject with scorn, at least to the extent that they are driven by pride (that in turn may be a reason why pride is not a very popular explanation of the riots among well-meaning politicians). I seldom find myself in agreement with Baudrillard, but I like this passage:

All the excluded, the disaffiliated, whether from the banlieues, immigrants or ‘native-born’, at one point or another turn their disaffiliation into defiance and go onto the offensive. It is their only way to stop being humiliated, discarded or taken in hand. In the wake of the November fires, mainstream political sociology spoke of integration, employment, security. I am not so sure that the rioters want to be reintegrated on these lines. Perhaps they consider the French way of life with the same condescension or indifference with which it views theirs. Perhaps they prefer to see cars burning than to dream of one day driving them. (Baudrillard 2006:7)

As I mention here and elsewhere a curious blindness seems to persist about what motivated the riots, which are sometimes portrayed as a kind of riddle. Take for instance Negri's statement: "This movement does not yet know what it wants". But as Badiou points out, it seems to know very well what it wants. The riots are acts of vengeance, animated by moral indignation. The riots in France 2005 were triggered by the death of two teenagers who tried to escape the police. Deaths resulting from perceived police injustice or police brutality also triggered the riots in Watts 1965, Detroit 1967, Tottenham 1985, Vaux-en-Velin 1990, Bristol 1992, L.A. 1992, and Greece 2008 – to mention only some of the most well-known cases (for more on the history of these riots, see Lapeyronnie 2006 or Wacquant 2006). This is a repeated pattern. We can turn to the riot in Kamagasaki last year for a similar example in Japan: although no-one died, this riot too was triggered by police brutality. In other words, Badiou's interpretation is not the least far-fetched. It's almost embarrassingly self-evident. He didn't need to think to arrive at it. He only needed to listen.



References:

Badiou, Alain (2005a) “On Riots that Come After Pain”, Infinite Thought (tr. of the first part of Badiou's piece from Le Monde 15 November 2005) http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/2005/11/badious-lorganisation-politique-on.asp

Badiou, Alain (2005b) “Daily Humiliation” (tr. of piece from Le Monde), http://lecolonelchabert.blogspot.com/2005/11/badiou.html

Baudrillard, Jean (2006) “The Pyres of Autumn”, pp 5-7, New Left Review 37, January-February; http://newleftreview.org/A2595; accessed 2009-09-16.

Lapeyronnie, Didier (2006) “Primitive Revolt in the French Banlieues: Essay on the Fall 2005 Riots”

Wacquant, Loïc J.D. (2006) “The Return of the Repressed: Riots, ‘Race’ and Dualization in three advanced societies”, pp 18-31, Monu: Magazine on Urbanism Vol. 5 July

The Riots 2: A bitingly cold day in 2003...

I take the bike to Rosengård, my first visit. Curiosity at finally getting a closer look at the notorious suburb with its jarred skyline. The cars plunge into the tunnel-like passage under a huge overpass, on top of which a big super market has been erected - an imposing structure which as I try to recall it take on the hazy features of a crumbled pyramid of grey desert stone. This is the big main street which shoots into the ward, or perhaps shoots out of it like a long grey tongue which it sticks out at the rest of society. That’s about as much as I’ve seen of Rosengård until now, but this time I enter it on a winding bicycle road and I’m struck by how beautifully planned the area appears. The towering buildings are thinly spread out in a gently sloping area covered with green lawns and checkered by a network of undulating paths and walkways. Between them are playgrounds. Here and there are small drug stores and kiosks with curious names like Babylon Food. I see many children. A family is out for a walk: a wrinkled elderly man with a white moustache and grim look, a woman in head dress.

I take a quick glance inside the new super market, "City Gross", its logo written in big blue and yellow characters, the colors of the Swedish flag. What's the need of such an obtrusive national statement, I thought. The absurdity of it all. I'm reminded of the function of flags to mark sovereignty in a contested terrain. It's like the reception of the Migration Board which I once visited, where the immigrants are greeted by an enormous portrait of the Swedish king, sternly smiling and in military uniform. Michael Billig once wrote a book about what he called "banal nationalism", by which he meant the "normal" and unobtrusive flagging of nationality in everyday life which no one hardly ever notices and which people don't tend to regard as connected with nationalism at all. Billig's point, I think, is that such nationalism is not harmless at all, since it easily turns into more overt and aggressive forms of nationalism in times and places of need. Now what happens in places like Rosengård or the Migration Board is that banal nationalism becomes impossible. Here the flag almost by necessity loses its innocence and becomes a symbol of a more strident and overt nationalism. At the same time, it grows to monumental, grotesque proportions, assmuming forms that would be in bad taste elsewhere. It becomes a boot in the face. Perhaps the reason that I'm so disturbed by discovering these portraits and billboards is that they offer a kind of creepy and monstrous closeup of the nationalism which also pervades the rest of society in a more banal and seemingly more harmless form. The creepiness of the king's smile derives from the fact that it is far from a mere smile. It is interlaced by a layer of implicit messages: Firstly, there is the innocuous "Welcome", which I presume may be the official meaning. Secondly, the portrait functions as a "flag", as a marker of territory, and hence of another meaning: "Don't forget where you are, this is Sweden". The third meaning is: "Here where we identify as Swedes, even if we do not always say so openly". I think of the sheer impudence of such a message, especially to people who have come here as refugees from across half the globe...

At City Gross everything seems big, larger than man: the buildings, the stacks of merchandise, the parking lot outside, the roads, society… Apart from the blue and yellow, it’s grey and feels grey. Big, boring, and meaningless, like the deafening traffic below. But close by in a few winding corridors is a bazaar-like market, which delights me with its colorful kitsch, glittering furniture and articles in gold and pink, plastic paintings of Mecca, exotic music CD’s – and above all its human scale. There are even some old men playing chess.

In this area, the Rosengård riots broke out shortly before Christmas in December 2008. More about them next time.

The Riots 1: Stones and fires

This entry will be about the recent news from Sweden: in the major cities the suburbs are on fire, we hear of burning cars, fire squads attacked by stone throwing youth, and arrests... In Gothenburg around a 100 cars are reported to have burned only this last month. In Stockholm and Malmö there are said to be fire incidents practically every night and the last few weeks the phenomenon has spread to Uppsala.

Let me state at once that I don't really know anything about this problem. In any case, I know far from enough. My first impulse as I read the news is that I should go there, listen to people, read the research. This is simply a problem which I feel is so serious that I want to understand it better. My only hope in writing this entry is that my haphazardly gathered information will yield some form of pattern, a clue to some future possible understanding. People who already know something about this problem should probably stop reading right now, since I don't want to waste their time (or perhaps they could give me a helpful comment).

Why do I feel it is so serious? Not only because of the violence, or the pain and anger which these actions seem to express, and not only because of my concern for the crisis faced by the welfare state and its unsuccesful integration policy. Isn't it also a question of urgency for many social movement activists and intellectuals? Who is posing the most radical challenge to mainstream society today? Is the "precarity" movement really a movement for the most marginalized? Isn't it time that we face up to the fact that immigrants setting fire to a car or throwing stones may represent a better example of "dissent" in Rancière's sense than a movement calling for "another world"? Is solidarity with such a politics possible? Is it desirable?

Banlieus on fire is of course not only a Swedish phenomenon. In future entries I will try to present some material, background facts and interpretations. Most will concern Sweden (in particular Rosengård in Malmö), but I will also try to check up material on similar incidents elsewhere.

To be continued...

Children

Testing boundaries and limits
That’s what children always do.
Parents are bewildered and resist.
Parents are so conservative.
Children experiment with boundaries
And that’s how they grow.
Children are people for whom every day
is filled to the brim with politics.

Art, activists and ripped trousers

In my last entry I wrote about activists who fought Kyoto University by putting up cafés on the campus where they would squat and associate with friends and guests. In 2007 Endô Reiko, a part-time teacher at Ritsumeikan University, initiated a hunger strike while squatting on the campus to protest against the system of dismissing part-time employees automatically after a maximum of three years. Inspired by this, Yamada Shirô, a student at Kyoto Seika University similarly went on hunger strike later the same year to protest against the high university fees, and afterwards he began raising chicken and pigs on the campus. Other students sabotage campus festivities by suddenly starting to cook their own food on the campus and inviting others to join their party until they are chased away. As I'm based in Kyoto, these events have a special interest for me as a local phenomenon, but I also think there is something in them of general interest. In some of the recent issues of the journals Vol and PACE there are some essays that, I think, throw an interesting light on these struggles, and I will use them as my point of departure in this blog entry.

Is there a common denominator in these struggles? It’s often pointed out that that they all target the “neo-liberalization” of the universities or in other words their transformation from institutions relatively independent of the market into profit-hungry corporations in which teachers are increasingly turned into flex-workers, students are mass-produced for a precarious labor market, and campuses are increasingly subject to control and surveillance (and prettified by chic restaurants and glass-covered skyscrapers).

However, we strikes me most is that these activities seem to be conceived of as a form of art. In fact, it is easy to find similarities between these acts and art. These similarities also distinguish them from more traditional forms of political activity (think electoral campaigns, demonstrations or petitions).

To start with, they are often performed by individuals or small groups, who prefer to rely on impact rather than large numbers. Yamada himself explains:

In a trial of strength, we are sure to lose. Better than that is to use a little imagination, irony or humor, including setting up weird buildings. I can’t think of any other method and in the end I think it will have effect. Activists have been demanding too much until now. What matters is not how many handbills you hand out or how many hours you spend in conferences, but rather something I think can be called art. In practice, it means doing what you think is fun somewhere where it will attract attention. (Yamada 2008:171)

Shiraishi Yoshiharu comments that in Japan "there’s no organization of students that can conduct a strike, like in Europe or North America, so what Yamada did was that he used his own body as a stake in the struggle instead” (Shiraishi 2008:172).

A second similarity to art is that these acts are meant to be more than mere means to achieve some purpose. As the activists themselves stress, the acts are fun and meant to be enjoyed for their own sake, even when they are physically excruciating. “I wasn’t thinking about dying or anything else as desperate as that. I just wanted to do it in an enjoyable way”, Yamada explains (ibid 170).

But the third, and in my view most interesting similarity is that, just like art works, these acts seem to aim at ambiguity, working most effectively the more ambiguous they seem. This ambiguity usually stems from their power to question and challenge norms and borderlines. That slightly nervous feeling which makes their activities provocative in the eyes of some (Is this really defensible? Aren’t they going a bit too far?), is also what makes them thrilling, funny, and memorable to others. While street parties have already begun to become normalized as a part of the standard repertoire of young activists, this provocative quality can still be found in squats of various kinds. Squatting doesn’t just mean the occupation of a building or part of a building. One of the members of the Oasis project – a group engaging in what they call “art squatting” – occupied the seats on a train by lying down, proving that you can squat even being on the move (Takemura 2008:15). Even street gigs or graffiti can be seen as forms of squatting, since they at least partly occupy audible or visible space. They thus raise the question of who has the right to control what can be heard or seen. Squatting in this wide sense can be seen as a common element in all of the examples of activism mentioned above.

Another way of producing ambiguity can be seen in Yamada's principle of not asking permission from the university authorities for his activities.

When I started raising chicken on the campus, guys who do some foolish circle activities came and asked me if I had gotten permission from the university. Of course I hadn't. Again, when the people of the music circle wanted to do a guerilla live concert, even they went and tried to get permission. Then they got upset when they were refused. Sure, I understand their anger, but why on earth ask for permission in the first place if you're doing a guerilla live? Pretty strange, in my view. In any case, that's why I go on doing my things without asking permission. I'm ready to discuss with people if they have complaints. Not with authorities, but with other people who use the place. In that vein, by doing things without permission people will finally just think "Oh there they go again". What's really important is to create an atmonsphere of not asking permission. (Yamada 2008:171)

This statement is in itself clear and unambiguous. The power it nevertheless has to create ambiguity stems from the struggle that is latently or openly taking place over the use of the campus and in which onlookers are invited to try to choose a side. While some will identify with the authorities, others will feel drawn to the activists. My hunch is that among the latter, many will pick the side of the activists, not only because they are "right", but because of the fun and attraction of ambiguity itself.

A conspicuous result of this valuation of ambiguity is that, unlike established forms of political activity (again think of electoral speeches), these artistic forms of activism relinquish the conceit of a firm possession of truth. The activists don’t provide answers, but raise questions. Possessing an answer would (perhaps) even diminish the impact of the act. In the end, the question “Is this really defensible?” reveals itself as being a question posed to society itself, rather than at the activists.

What’s art? Why necessarily use that word? Instead of answering these questions, Kim Yu-nan [of the Oasis project] explains that ‘We’re still thinking, but while thinking, we act’ and encourages me by saying that ‘it’s better to act and see than to worry’. And according to Kim Gan [also of the Oasis project], constructing judicial precedents is also a creative act…” (Takemura 2008:14)

Just like art, this form of activism is caught in a difficult balancing act. It must avoid being in simply in the “right”, but that doesn’t mean that it can permit itself to be simply “wrong”. Falseness is just as bad as truth. Creating moral ambiguity is a much more delicate and difficult business than simply abrogating moral responsibility. The latter makes art boring and predictable. The point is not to dodge moral questions, but to find the balancing point where they lack clear-cut answers.

* * *

I am aware that I have strayed far from the few examples of activism I started with. But blogs are for wandering. I know very little about the activists I have quoted (although it would be nice to meet them some day). So rather than trying to represent their way of thinking correctly, I'd like to simply give free rein to my own throughts and conclude with a few reflections on politics and ambiguity. What does it mean that a form of politics exists that, rather than delivering clear-cut "messages", delights in producing an art-like ambiguity?

Sure, politics and art don’t always need to be ambiguous. But fighting solely to defend the truths one already possesses is a sure way to make oneself conservative and predictable. The feeling such acts generate is fatigue: do I really have to do all this over again? It is a politics we have seen before, a politics without new actors or new lines and which has turned into an administrative game, that of assigning the opponent a category. But politics in a more emphatic sense (here I rely on Jacques Rancière) consists in challenging and upsetting the game as such, in the struggle that enfolds when neglected groups, until now invisible and inaudible, suddenly make their appearance and declare the game invalid. Politics is not a game. It is the appearance of what does not fit. You can participate in politics without having to share any common rules. Politics is to find the points where the seams of order will yield. It is when the trousers rip open.

I wrote "neglected groups", but I could probably just as well have written "individuals" or "energies" or "impulses".

In any case, politics can probabably be defined in the following way: as any attempt to redefine the limits of freedom. Children and activists are experts of politics.




References:

Shiraishi, Yoshiharu (2008) "Gakuhi zero en wa Tôyako samitto kara hajimaru", pp 172-172, VOL, No. 03.

Takemura, Masato (2008) ”Oashisu purojekuto ni sôgû shite”, pp 14-16, PACE, Vol. 4.

Yamada, Shirô (2008) "Motto momeyô! Goneyô! Aru gakusei no hansuto", pp 168-171, VOL, No. 03.

Kubikubi

I like sitting down in Kubikubi Café and talk. It’s a shack set up on the Kyoto University campus by Inoue Masaya and Ogawa Kyôhei, the two founders of Union Extasy, a labor union for the university’s part-time employees. I’d like to use this blog to clarify to myself why I like this café. By doing so, I also hope to get a little closer to understanding why I like so much in the Japanese anarchist movement today. Perhaps I should point out that by anarchist movement I don’t mean a political movement in a narrow sense, but a cultural current or sensibility shared by many activists today. I’m not sure Inoue and Ogawa would accept the label anarchists, but I think they would.

I first heard about Union Extasy in 2007 when it was still new. I remember that Inoue (jokingly?) said that he and Ogawa were looking for a third member. They had a captivating and funny pamphlet with a violin-playing grasshopper and the slogan “Roudou ni yorokobi o!” – We want ecstasy in our work!

Inoue has a background in Ishigaki Café, a café he and his friends had set up on top of the stone wall surrounding Kyoto University in 2005 to prevent the university from tearing it down. Resting on a small platform five meters above the ground, the café was a “house above the trees”, with a fine view of the Hyakuben crossing below. I always found it especially beautiful at night, when it seemed to hover like a phantom above the street. They managed to keep the café running for seven months (selling the cheapest coffee in Kyoto and becoming popular with passers-by and locals in the process). Amazingly, the university caved in and agreed to leave part of the wall. I remember thinking at the time that this was a true TAZ (temporary autonomous zone). Did it matter that they lacked a “serious” ideology or “serious” goal? Some people thought so, but I’m not sure. At least they didn’t frighten people away by talking too much about politics. They squatted on a stone wall in the middle of winter and turned it into a café. Personally, I think that going through such trouble without any “serious” ideology – as if it were the most natural thing in the world, simply for the fun of it – is even better than having an ideology. To add a comment on a more serious note, I think that, regardless of content, it’s important for everyone to try to fight institutions and power from time to time, for the sake of training if nothing else, and in order to expand the sphere of possibility and freedom. And if you need to fight, then fight the strong, never the weak. That’s the best education you can get if you want democracy (and by that I don’t mean majority rule but a society in which everyone counts, the disenfranchised above all). When power becomes too powerful, we will need people who know how to cause trouble. Take people who hide away refugees, for example. Yes, they cause trouble for the immigration authorities but such people helped the Jews escape Hitler sixty years ago, and they help me breathe a little freer today.

Before meeting Ogawa Kyôhei for the first time this year I had already heard much about him in connection with Kinji House, a free space he opened while squatting in an empty part of a university building in the mid-90’s. He and his brother Tetsuo have what seems to be a wonderful talent for questioning conventional borders between private and public. His brother is an artist who has lived for many years in the homeless village in Yoyogi Park in Tokyo, where he and Ichimura Misako has set up the café Enoaru (meaning “there are paintings”, a pun on Renoir or “Renoaru” in Japanese) and who is famous for the “isourou” (a word meaning to live in other people’s houses) lifestyle he led earlier, moving from one acquaintance to another, and asking them to participate in his projects. For those who know Japanese, there are wonderful descriptions of the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the homeless village with its many homeless day laborers and foreign workers in Gendai shisô (2006, vol. 34-9). Although I haven’t read it yet, Dear Kikuchi-san (2006), a book written by Ichimura Misako (and published on Ogawa-san's small publishing house Kyototto), also appears to be a very good account of this village.

Union Extasy entered into a strike against Kyoto University in February this year in order to protest against the “rule” that part-time employees automatically lose their jobs after five years. Starting with a squat around the big camphor tree (“the symbol of Kyoto University”) in front of the clock tower, they quickly gained attention – and much laughter – through their methods, emphasizing funny and drastic (shocking?) artistic performances. For a glimpse of these, see this You Tube clip with Ogawa’s performance in an oil drum which served as their bath tub on the day of the entrance examinations. The words he’s screaming – “Zenin goukaku!” – mean “Let everyone pass in the examinations!”. Placing a big tuna head in front of the tent was another drastic way of getting their message through. “Kubi” means neck or getting decapitated and is a common word for being sacked. In April they opened the Kubikubi café. The price of a cup of coffee is the guest’s annual salary divided by ten thousand (so a part-time teacher gets away cheaply while a member of the university board will have to pay ten times as much). The taste of the coffee, by the way, is good.

This time the cause they are fighting for is serious. Part-timers make up 2600 of the university’s employees. Most of them are women and like female irregular workers elsewhere in Japan their salaries are steeply below that of regular (mostly male) employees. At Kyoto University, the part-timers earn 900-1200 yen per hour, a typical freeter wage that corresponds to something like ten American dollars, more or less.

So why do I like Kubikubi Café? I actually don’t know. I feel welcome when I go there. It’s a shack and hot in the summer, which means I don’t need to dress up. The people who run it are friendly and appear to have plenty of time. The material shape of the café is perhaps also important. Just as Ishigaki Café it lacks walls. It is easy to enter – easier than Ishigaki Café, which felt a little like a fort since it had to be entered by climbing a ladder, which was of course kind of cool in its own way – and gives the impression of permeability and openness. You can easily sit down when you want to and leave when you want to. When I’ve found a book or magazine that looked interesting, I could borrow it. And the coffee, as mentioned, is good.

I like the atmosphere of gentleness. Anarchism goes well with gentleness. It also goes well with parties and festivities. Just as with Dame-ren I am struck by how Ogawa and Inoue demonstrate the possibility of combining these aspects, of combining energy and non-energy. They have a relaxed, laid-back attitude, but their action is perceived by many as provocative and drastic. There is something about both of these aspects – the gentle laidbackness and partylike energy – that is lacking in people caught up too much in the everyday life of work and career. To get away from the closure of such an everyday life you need imagination and the readiness to let imagination influence your lifestyle. I like the café because it evinces this imagination and this readiness! (There´s the answer I was looking for!)

At the time of writing, the university is trying to get the café closed down and the union members evicted, but the café is still operating. The union and the university have filed mutual law suits against each other. This week Inoue and Ogawa have travelled to Tokyo to open a second Kubikubi Café for two days outside the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. If they get evicted, they write, they will set it up in Hibiya Park just across the street instead. Good luck!

The start of a leisurely voyage

I read or (re-read) a few texts by Dame-ren yesterday as part of my preparations for my trip to Tokyo in September. I would like to jot down a few thoughts that caught hold of me while reading (and which refused to let me go).

Dame-ren (”the league of good for nothings”) was a group that became famous in the 90’s for rejecting the Japanese work ethic and affirming the life-style of so-called losers in Japanese society: jobless, poor, or unpopular young men and women – usually freeters (”free Arbeiter” or people lacking a regular job), unemployed, dropouts from school or university, homeless, NEET (Not in Employment, Education, or Training), social withdrawers or mentally disabled. The lifestyle of dropouts, they affirmed, could much more fun and rewarding than that of being a ”respected” citizen or regular employee, worrying about his or her career, income or status. Their main activity was talking and having fun together without spending much money. Despite the flippant attitude, Dame-ren also had a serious aspect, helping the ”losers” in society to regain confidence, restoring their will to associate with other people and generally providing areas in society where the pursuit of alternative life-styles were possible. They also served as pioneers of the precarity movement (or anti-poverty movement), one of the most vibrant and interesting social movements in contemporary Japan.

Here are a few quotes from the book Dame! (Good for nothing!) from 1999. First an enthusiastic 1992 poem by the young Kaminaga Kôichi:

"Hey, you, why are you working so hard?
with just a single day off a week
overtime until late at night every day
hardly able to get enough sleep
the only time for yourself you get is in a crowded train
And the work you do is totally meaningless
Just inflaming people’s desires
At the work place no one cares about you as a person
The way you spend the money you earn is as worthless as your work
Who knows when you’ll collapse from stress and overwork?
Is there really anything good in your life?
Despite all this, why do you work? [...]
'Those who don’t work are good for nothing'
'Dropouts from society are the losers in the competition'
All you who care for nothing but what others think, here’s our reply:
'You’re the ones who are wasting your life'!"

Here Kaminaga recalls reciting some lines from Terayama Shuji's "Sho o sutete machi ni deyou" (Throw away your books and go out in the streets):

"What resounded most within me while reciting were the words of the 'stuttering man': 'Have you seen it! That while the words of order and subjugation are smooth, the sun stutters, the heart stutters, all forms of resistance stutter, stutter, and scream while stuttering...'. Reading these words, I felt I should be more angry. The reason people aren’t angry is absolutely not that that the state of the world or life is wonderful. Isn’t it that they lack sufficient imagination?"

Finally, here he gets serious about what is so good about talking and associating:

"To show up and disappear inconstantly at other’s events without having been invited, or distribute leaflets and suddenly addressing strangers and getting involved in deep talk, or casually join parties meant to be private – all that has to do with the pride of the nomadic warrior. I like acts that turn the city into a place for encounters. It’s a hackneyed phrase, but it’s more rewarding to associate with a single person that to read a book. To bite into a person and talk about life – there is narrative and poetry, and above all that’s where you can find the quiet (or hot) anger calling for a struggle against the state of affairs"

In statements like these one gets a glimpse of why talking and associating and having fun had political import to Dame-ren. It meant going beyond capitalist society, since it implied treating others as more than mere convenient means, and since it yielded up pleasures one could't find on the market.

The quotes are not exactly representative of Dame-ren. They are probably all a bit more “serious” and sober than the usual or average Dame-ren statement. In fact, what made them catch my attention is that they seemed to contain something a little bit different from what I already knew about Dame-ren from other sources.

A blog, I think, should be a medium för ideas in motion, snapshots of thinking, mental notes during a leisurely dérive through empty moonlit streets or maybe a playful adventure rather than a retrospective assessment. Lukács defined the mood of the essay as a longing for an idea not yet born. There is something in these quotes that hint at such an idea. To some people, Dame-ren’s advocacy of dropping out may seem passé, having lost much of its relevance as irregular or precarious employment has become the default option for young Japanese. But nothing that arrests thinking is passé. If you hear a nice sound, you stop and listen. If you notice a delicious scent, why not follow it? This is not the place for me to state what I think that idea is. To search for it will be my pleasure. Conclusions are a way of blinding oneself to clues. Some time in the near future I will try to get my hands on the Terashima Shûji book. That will be the clue I will follow. We will see where it leads. And then we shall see what we shall see.

"Modern society" and "unity" in Urumqi

We’ve all read the depressing news coming from Xinjiang – the dead, wounded and arrested, the violence spreading from Urumqi to Kashgar. The regime is blaming foreigners for instigating the riots. As if there were any need for such explanations. Isn’t the pent up frustration and repression in the region is explanation enough? The story that everything escalated from an Internet posting about a gang rape in Guangzhou may be true, but hardly provided more than the igniting spark in an already explosive situation.

An especially depressing, and worrying, piece of news is the appearance on Tuesday of revenge mobs of thousands of Han Chinese armed with clubs, shovels, lead pipes and machetes, who marched through central Urumqi, smashing shops and knocking over food stalls run by Uighurs. Some of the Han Chinese appear to have been waving the national flag. Perhaps I know too little to judge the situation correctly, but this smells fascism, or at least a very unpleasant form of ethnic bullying.

I was intrigued to find that, according to the journalist William Foreman in this article, the crowd chanted slogans such as ”Modern society” and ”[National] Unity”. These slogans are used by the CCP to legitimize its rule in Xinjiang, but apparently they are also endorsed by the local Han Chinese. The slogans portray the CCP as a benevolent bringer of “modernization” and other blessings. “Unity” is not to be understood as imperialist or colonial domination, but as harmonious cooperation between culturally distinct groups who are united by their gratitude to the CCP and by their enthusiasm for their brilliant common future.

I remember a conversation I had with a young man in Urumqi in 2004. I remember him vividly because of his earnestness, which shone through in his thoughtful and hesitating way of speaking. He and his friends had chosen to study English at a business school ”because it is international” and because they disliked the Chinese language. He dreamed about studying psychology at university, but he couldn’t since there was no literature in Uighur and he didn’t want to study in Chinese. He went on to describe how the situation for the Uighurs was deteriorating from year to year. In school, they can’t study their own language or their classics until in the later years, often in mixed clases where Chinese predominates. Many young people can’t even speak their own language properly, much less read and write. Perhaps it’s fate, he says suddenly. I asked him what he meant. ”Allah’s punishment”, he said, ”because many Uighur have behaved badly”. He started to tell me about Islam. ”The schools teach propaganda, such as Islam being against modernization. And they teach bullshit like Darwinism – have you heard about it? It teaches that man has evolved from some kind of monkey. And they tell that to children, who don’t know better! Islam is not against modernization, but unfortunately many today have forgotten about religion”. “Well, wine and the beer seem to be popular everywhere in Urumqi”, I remarked. “Exactly”, he said, “that’s what I meant when I told you that many Uighur behave badly”.

Yes, there is oppression in Xinjiang, who can deny it? And yes, there is a need for modernization, but what kind of modernization? And modernization to what price? I can’t help recalling Japan’s attempt at setting up its own multi-ethnic empire in East Asia, which ended in 1945. How did it legitimize its rule? By referring to modernization – Japan as a bringer of civilization, of economic and industrial development and of widespread education. Japan as a heroic nation that would liberate Asia from colonialism and even unite all the oppressed peoples of the world in a crusade against the white peril. Japan, whose ”Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” was unlike Western imperialism or colonialism since it was infinately hospitable to difference, allowing each member nation to retain its ”independence” (albeit ”not in the term’s Western sense”) while at the same time remaining a harmonious whole in which each part would gratefully participate and cooperate under Japan’s benevolent leadership.

What is the least that I (and hopefully everyone who reads this) should ask of China right now? Openness, transparency, that the Internet and mobile phones be allowed to function normally everywhere and that journalists should have easy access to the area. That Uighurs should be allowed to make their voices heard, to organize and demonstrate, and be provided with channels to influence the rule of their own province. That they should be able to study psychology if they want to, preferably in their own language, or, if that is impossible, that exchange studies should be facilitated. Finally, I would like the Chinese majority population to reflect on a few questions. Aren't you repeating what you so rightly loathe in the imperialism of other countries? What makes the Han Chinese in Xinjiang different from the Japanese settlers of Manchuria or the European colonizers of most of the rest of the world? Is the contribution to “modernization” and “development” really a valid way of justifying the rule of the territories of other nations and ethnic groups?

Demolition of Kashgar

One of the best memories of my trip to China in 2004 was a two-week stay in Kashgar, a city well known for its location along the Silk Road. Chinese authorities are now planning to demolish the old Uighur part of the town (See this New York Times article or this post on Frog in the Well ).

Authorities claim that the demolition is a safety measure against earthquakes and that the town will be rebuilt in a local "Islamic" style. They also state that since the old parts of town are too densely populated, the reconstruction will involve the transfer of many inhabitants to new dwellings elsewhere.

The concern for earthquakes is understandable in wiew of the Sichuan disaster, but I fear that the demolition also has political motives. Isn't it intented as a blow against Uighur culture and the milieus in which this culture has thrived? Hasn't Kashgar been singled out because of its role as a center of that culture and of Uighur separatism? The top-down process of the reconstruction will ensure that the old part of Kashgar will from now on be Sinicized, if not in appearance, then through the process of its construction. A resurrected town in "Islamic" style would not be the creation of local historical circumstances, but a gift from benevolent authorities - a symbol not of autonomy but of heteronomy.

I am happy to have been able to travel in China. To have seen the hutongs in Beijing before the Olympics wiped them away, to travel along the Sanxia (three gorges) before they were inundated by the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world. Just as glad as to have been able, during my lifetime, to have seen and walked through these dusty but hospitable alleys in Kashgar, so full of surprises, playing kids and tea-houses with beautiful wooden balconies.

How much say did the people affected by all these changes have in any of the decisions? Is progress that silences the voices of dissidents really progress?

Unnamed individualities

This won't be a long note. I just read a few pages in Eric Paras' book Foucault 2:0: Beyond Power and Knowledge. Interesting presentation of the turn to the subject in Foucault's later writings and lectures. Fascinating quotes, some with an existentialist ring. For instance, in 1981 he describes "the art of living" as the "art of killing psychoanalysis, of creating with oneself and with others unnamed individualities, beings, relations, qualitites. If one can't manage to do that in one's life, that life is not worth living" (quoted in Paras, p129). Stunning, isn't it? This (admittedly somewhat hackneyed) imperative takes on a seductive quality when one considers the sea-change in thought Foucault must have gone through in order to arrive at it.

Here's another seductive sentence: a task for study, he writes, is "research into styles of existence as different from one another as possible" in order to help us rethink how we might live (p131). Not bad as a task for sociology. The general relevance, combined with a focus on the singular way of living of people, on their ways of reaching their "unnamed individualities"?

Paras' book is well written. Lucid. It makes Foucault easily understandable, especially how his endorsement of the tradition of the Enlightenment, his enthusiastic support of the Iranian revolution, the advocacy of rights and other concerns, themes and interventions in his later years hang together with his new ideas of the subject and the care of the self. For me personally, it's been a wonderful read during moments when I've felt tired and in need of some relaxation. So, that's it for today.

Puritans and ranters

Salman Rushdie says in an interview I read today that puritans are people who suspect that someone somewhere is having a good time. Today I also happen to be reading Christopher Hill's book on radical ideas during the English revolution. It's stunning to see this flora of rebellious ideas, often millenaristic and pantheistic, affirmative of life and earthly desires – and totally alien to the ascetic puritanism that went victorious out of the civil war and paved the way and provided the legitimation for the profits of a misantropic and intolerant bourgeoisie. I find a wonderful quote by Abiezer Coppe, a ”ranter” who after having handed over all the money he was carrying to a beggar - not much, he was poor himself - rides away with joy and amazement, and on the spur of a sudden impulse decides to ride back to ”the poor wretch” and exclaims: ”Because I am a King I did this...”!

I hate to draw lessons, but here is one anyway: You won't live for ever. Be kind while you can.