Author: sarah

oaxaca

it’s getting too much and i’m getting too cold and i feel like escaping this place, when i run into a demo that saves the day. around the Common, in peak hour traffic: a not so large group of people is effectively blocking the traffic. two giant puppets – a skeleton bride and groom. these are people who responded to the international day of action called for by the EZLN, in solidarity with the people of Oaxaca.

i’m surprised at how long it takes before police comes. they finally come with a brigade on motorbikes, and try to herd the crowd as if they were the sheppards. the body of the crowd makes sure it doesn’t work. then an officer comes up with another strategy.

standing with his arms crossed next to his parked motorcycle in the middle of the street, in front of the crowd, he speaks once the crowd is close enough to hear:

“Listen. You know that this march is totally illegal. You have no permit to be here. But then of course, you are anarchists and anarchists are all about ignoring laws. But i’ll make you a deal. You can go on with the march, but on one lane, so that the cars can pass. And we’ll drive next to you, for your safety.”

the guy is definately enjoying it – his savoir-faire of recognizing the “anarchists” in front of him and knowing what they are all about. feeling he is the master of the negotiation. as his confidence grows he ventures into a joke:

“Let’s do it like this: you just follow me, I’ll be your leader.” big grin on his face.

the crowd kind of says that it needs a moment to decide (“Ah yes,” the officer replies, “You need to do collective decision-making now.” god, somebody went to the “how to deal with anarchists” training and needs to show it…). but that doesn’t really happen because basically the crowd kind of ignores him without really making a point of refusing his deal. soon after that it becomes a bit of a cat and mouse game with the police, the body of the crowd all of a sudden makes a short-cut through the Common, the police speed up on their motorbikes around the Common. i’ve almost been an hour with these people (and the sympathetic french indymedia woman) when i’m starting to feel really cold, albeit revitalized. okay, i realize, in other circumstances i would not have considered this a particularly uplifting or effective action, but immersed in academic conference/Marriot/shopping mall/the academic elitism of the place, definately changes one’s perspective. i also found out that there was a big rally organized by Hotel Workers Rising in the city today. returning to the Marriott in higher spirits.

dsc01006.jpg for a report on the action see
http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/190138/

new england

the second escapade, on my own. wandering through downtown Boston, i stumble upon the Old South Meeting House and it occurs to me that perhaps i should take yet another aspect of Boston’s reputation seriously and explore the “cradle of independence”. built in the early 1700s as a Puritan meeting house, the Old South Meeting House hosts the exhibition “Voices of Protest” which tells the story of the gatherings at the house that lead the settlers or colonists to challenge British rule: the house became an organizing point for the Boston Tea Party (1773), which was one of the events that sparked off the American Revolution. apart from brushing up my knowledge of American history, which definately needed some brushing up, the exhibit strikes me in the way it brands the spirit of liberty and independence. at some point i can’t help making an analogy – so wait, if those Belgians who went to colonize the Congo after some time decide to separate from the motherland and continue the colonization on their own – hell, all those taxes that we pay for the sake of an elite in Brussels – what kind of liberty and independence would that be? or better, whose story of independence would that be? the whole point of the story of Congo’s independence is about kicking Belgian rule out. ay this foundational myth of American independence…

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explorations continue in Beacon Hill, with its 19th century row houses, brick sidewalks, cobblestone streets (or is that already my imagination…), gas street lamps,… very european in a sense, yet there’s a weird time wrap or gap. i realize it reminds me so much more of early medieval parts of cities back home (Brugge!), then of the 19th century houses and streets (like in Saint-Gilles…). something to do with a surreal quality of these hyperconserved places. and then there is obviously a lot of money in this neighborhood…

the Boston Common. the oldest city park in this country, since early 1600s. reminds me i want to read the book that Berna gave me about what happened to the commons in New England.

in all of my wanderings i stumble upon the cafe that is used for the outdoors shooting of Cheers, which i thought i should tell my dad, a big fan.

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(a Cambridge view from Boston)

academic tourism

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(a Boston view from Cambrigde)

so after a brief early morning session of conference, we escape. this first escapade takes place under the standard of what this place is famous for – education. perhaps appropriately we start from the motherchurch of the Church of Christ, Scientist, established by Mary Baker Eddy sometime in the second half of the 1800s, where the Christian Science Monitor is house, just besides our hotel. the way the impressive space is set up, it really seems that people walk on water…

we walk Massachusetts Avenue over the river, to Cambridge, and find ourselves in M.I.T. territory. before Massachusetts Avenue brings us all to Harvard, there’s glimpse of a terroritoy of warehouses that seem to lead to a different world than the overwhelmingly elist academic spaces. Harvard gets us a bit recalcitrant, this is where nadia does her Allahu Akbar video shot (and see, we keep on thinking Samuel Huntington… of course he’s able to come up with his wonderwarland fairy tale theories in this environment… where would he be now… if we dropped in his office and said, hey samuel, now listen to us…). David had insisted i should go to the Widener Library, but when we’re standing in front of it rickard tells us a story he just heard about a student who was asked to show his student card at the library entrance, and before he knew it he was shot down. (later we realize it was the story of the student who got tasered in the UCLA library that got modified along the way… watch the video here if you want to see images of the Patriot Act in action. disturbing in many ways, including the tone of the officer’s voice when he says “stop fighting us”) doesn’t encourage us to go in. (ay, thinking bad of Harvard, after we already got a bit worked up about the “M.I.T Police” and “Harvard Police” cars, when the violation took place at a University of California campus…).

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we end up warming ourselves up in a Starbucks near Harvard Square.
hm, so what do we think about this place…

MESA

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waking up in the hotel which is now our world for the next couple of days. this is where the Middle Eastern Studies Association conference takes place, from 8.30 am till 7.00 pm followed by evenings sessions, this is where we sleep, this is where we eat, if not in the hotel itself, then in the food corner of the shopping mall that flows in and out of the hotel, and lunch break is indeed too short to go very far. feels like a total institution. disciplined bodies doing the weird academic 20 minutes of reading a paper in a langauge which we never use to speak to each other (and the formalism and rhetoric of US academy), the shopping and consuming in the mall and the cosmopolitan thing of living in a hotel (at least in the Marriott that’s how it feels like). too much, over the threshold of tolerance.

happy to be at some of the panels. Lebanon: The Sixth War with As’ad Abu Khalil, Laleh Khalili, Kirsten Scheid. first nadia and i are delighted with how their visions on the war of this summer are more or less shared in this MESA environment: there is debate, but it takes place on much common ground. (after that first emotion it strikes us as an indication of how much of a bubble in US society this is.)

Gender-Based Violence: Prevention, Solidartiy and Transformation. focused on Turkey and seeing Turkish friends again. Cynthia Enloe, the discussant, opening with “i hope that anthropologists are studying the strange rituals of academic conferences”, is wonderful in bringing this meeting in awkward conditions back to what matters. in our brief conversation afterwards she insists on what Lieve had already told on the flemish Women’s Day: Cynthia Cockburn’s new book on Women in Black, coming out in spring next year, is a gem.

(by the way, from the programme we understand that the Middle East in this US acacemic context becomes: Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine/Israel, Iran and Iraq.)

then there are the academic freedom sessions, with joan scott. it is a pleasure to hear her talk, perform, but especially in the second session – on the campaign to boycott of Israeli universities – she is not convincing. Omar Barghouti is. the more we hear her speak, the more a universalist (it is the principle of academic freedom that will redeem us…) and liberal “free speech” (answering the speech that we don’t like with more speech…) american bias becomes striking. in contrast, the strength of Omar Barghouti’s speech lies in how it is grounded and located, how it takes the audience back to Ramallah time and time again. (more speech?… but who has the resources to produce speech, to write and get published, to travel to conferences?…) and it strikes me that if only joan scott would have managed to speak more locally, more embodied (her investment in academic freedom comes from a history particular to the US, a national history that was an intimate one as her father was prevented from teaching in the era of McCarthyism), the conversation would have been more productive. now her position basically boiled down to freedom of speech in the face of Barghouti and others who sought to think about, and subsequently act upon, the position and accountability of the university as an institution in a situation of war. a brilliant intervention from the audience, from a young British guy, on how the academic freedom discourse presented by Scott runs offers no resistance against neoliberalism and the way it affects universities and the production of knowledge, and that this kind of liberal framework fails to take modes of production into account.

the rest of the first conference day just kind of slips by for me, as a repulsion against these conditions build up. if this is the academy (but i know it cannot be equated to this, only the “total institution” feeling dominates here), i want nothing to do with it. of course we go to the inaugural lecture by Juan Cole that evening. he is the new president of the MESA, and is announced as: if there is only one source you could consult about the war in Iraq in this country, it would have to be his blog. i’ve seen him once in action in my very first weeks in Santa Cruz, and was – to say the least – no impressed at all. he turns out to be more of the same thing. the content of his speech is filter thin, with nadia and jeannette we agree already half way through the talk that he has literally said nothing we don’t know yet. at the same time, his tone is all smugness and arrogance (met by much laughter in his audience) – all those other stupid americans out there who don’t have a clue about what is going on in this war, in the middle east, etc. which is true, but should be a source of modesty and dedication to transformation, not smug retreat in a bubble of cynicism. it’s all infuriating till nadia makes the remark that in fact he’s doing a stand-up comedy act. it is true, we put our notebooks and pens down and just keep on laughing, also in moments when the rest of the audience remains quiet. (funny how a sense of humour changes when the speech we hear is not qualified anymore as a lecture but as a comedy act.) an entertaining evening in the end, that shows when the worst of academy (not Juan Cole in himself, of course, the whole Annual Conference-Boston-Marriot-Copley Place-Mall-thing) is taken as stand-up comedy, laughter makes repulsion bearable.

broadway

walking from central park to Times Square before, a glimpse of the city in the late afternoon before we get ourselves to Chinatown and the bus to Boston…

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harlem

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a journey into Harlem, to follow traces of pieces of Black American history and in particular Afro-American Islam. Masjid Malcolm Shabaz, the Nation of Islam mosque which Malcolm X once lead. the story of Betty X Shabbaz, Malcolm X (Shabbaz)’s widow, who died in the late 1990s when her home was set on fire by her teenage grandson, Malcolm, leaves us with a taste of the desintegration of that political legacy. we talk briefly with some people sitting outside of the mosque, to get a sense of what the mosque does (real estate! at first we laugh with how “american” this is, but of course in a city like new york this is crucial to a community…) and who the community is today, but we don’t get much of an idea. the image of the grandson Malcolm setting the house on fire dominates my thoughts. when later on we go to find Harlem’s Liberation bookstore – the store closed down, the building in scaffolds. such a sad sight. the struggle to survive, the pressure, the burn out (ay, the grandson pops up again…)…

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a delicious meal at Amy Ruth’s Home-Style Southern Cuisine, eventhough we definately get many things wrong – the belgians ask for mayonnaise (hm, just for the record, i was perfectly happy with ketchup, its the other one who insisted…) and the non-southerners eat their fried chicken with fork and knife…

arriving in the city

arriving late in New York city. the drive through the city at night from La Guardia to Washington Heights is a gentle announcement of more familiarity to come. sahar picks me up at the Presbytarian Hospital. in her new home i find nadia all sleepy on the couch.

buzzing with the story of nadia’s entry into the country, earlier today…
– “What kind of name is this?”
– “Arab,” she says, with pride. (must have been the first red flag in the guy’s mind)
– “What is the purpose of your visit?”
– “I’m going to present a paper at a conference.”
– “What kind of conference?”
– “About the Middle East.” (oops, second red flag…)
– “What will you talk about?”
– “My research on religious experiences of second generation Moroccans in Belgium.”
– “Are Moroccans Muslim?”
– “Yes.” (hm, third red flag…)
– “So tell me, what do you think of jihad.” (yep, the question that inevitably, let’s say logically, follows the red flags…)
– “Well, I understand jihad as an inner struggle…”
– “Yes, I know (!!), but most people understand it as killing people.”
– “It’s a complex notion, we would need some time to sit down and discuss more…”
– “We’ll have this discussion right here and now, because I have to decide to let you in the country or not.”
– “Oh. Well, if by jihad you mean the killing of innocent people, I am against it.”
– “Good. Enjoy your stay in the US.”

it’s funny how quickly one gets used to quotidian environments, and how a visiting friend makes one’s eyes widen once more. the high securitarian character of the country that strikes and repulses nadia. and then, of course, the refrain of her first-day-of-NYC stories: “juist zoals in the film!” (just like in the movies).

south west

since the flight to Poland earlier this year, i’ve made a habit of the study of the company magazine on board. the advertisements and articles draw the contours of a region which SouthWest seems to target, and identify with – California, Nevada (and lots of Las Vegas ads…), Arizona, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida. this month’s issue includes a special feature on New Orleans, more than 30 pages, all geared towards getting tourists back as part of the reconstruction – the part of reconstruction that the authorities focus on: making the French Quarter ready for tourism. from an interview with hotel manager in the French Quarter, in the article ReNew Orleans: “It is OK to come to New Orleans. That’s the message I’d want to leave you with, that I’d want everyone to get. The city that you’ve always loved is still here. So if you don’t know how to help, coming here is really helpful. Come to New Orleans and have a great time. It’s OK. We want you here.”

cramped in my row with two fellow passengers from California flying east. a young guy who works at Google. with his yellow Google t-shirt and his enthousiasm, he’s a natural ambassador for the company. “What is it that attracts you,” asks our fellow traveller, who shares my google criticism (mind you, i use it all the time…) but is genuinely interested in the attraction of things. “I’ve never been in an environment with such a bunch of intelligent and creative people. I feel I’m being stimulated to think, to be creative, all of the time.” i think i get it, yes, this is how Silicon Valley works, this is the creative and dynamic side of capitalism that the Communist Manifesto invokes so magnificantly. the other travel companion turns out to be professor in Monterey. she’s a theologian, working on the intersection of women, religion and violence. (i had already spotted her taking notes for a lecture on globalization, WTO and popular protests.) we talk and talk. she did fieldwork in asia and focused on buddhism, looking into liberation movements that at some point or another use violent means. the contradictions of what she calls “militant pacifism”…