Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 353

The Consequences of Obama’s sanctions against Venezuela

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro started this year facing a political crisis. The economic depression the country is going through affected Maduro’s public approval. And Latin American leaders, like Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff and the former Uruguayan President José Mujica, sent letters to Maduro expressing their concern for his treatment of the Venezuelan opposition.

But in the middle of this crisis, Maduro received help from an unexpected source: President Barack Obama. On March 10, the U. S. government declared Venezuela to be a “threat to national security,” and announced sanctions against seven Venezuelan officials for alleged human rights violations and corruption. One month after the announcement it seems that, paradoxically, the sanctions ended up helping Venezuela’s leader.

Citizens and politicians in Latin America criticized the sanctions against Maduro’s Government. The Union of South American Nations that gathers 12 countries officially called for the revocation of sanctions and said Obama’s announcement “constitutes an interventionist threat to sovereignty and the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries.”

Uruguayan president Mujica, who sent a letter of concern to Maduro, organized a march in solidarity for Venezuela. Hundreds of Uruguayans attended. “To say that Venezuela is a threat the United States security you need to be have a screw loose,” Mujica said at the rally.

The Latin American diplomatic actors are now focused on the sanctions, not on Maduro’s treatment to the opposition. In an interview with Democracy Now!, Ecuador’s foreign minister explained that the Summit of the Americas, which will be held in April, is now an opportunity to find a diplomatic solution between Venezuela and the United States. It was supposed to celebrate the new relations between the U. S. and Cuba.

Maduro’s popularity has not risen dramatically within his country after the sanctions. According to the local pollster Datanalisis, the president’s popularity increased to 25 percent after the U. S. declared Venezuela a security threat. The same poll had announced that Maduro’s popularity was 23 percent in February. The increase is not remarkable yet, but it is not good news for the opposition either. Maduro’s popularity could keep rising as he capitalizes an anti-American sentiment. He is constantly talking about the sanctions on public radios and state television stations to gather ten millions signatures and demand Obama to take back the sanctions. Millions of Venezuelans have already supported Maduro’s initiative, since many don’t forget the U.S. supported the coup d’état against former President Hugo Chavez.

“Obama’s sanctions reveal how little he cares for Venezuela,” a reporter from Caracas said. According to her, after the Republican Party criticized Obama’s position towards Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu, the negotiations with Iran, and the diplomatic relations with Cuba, Obama’s sanctions were seen by some people within Venezuela as a political move to please the Republican Party with one foreign policy decision. Republicans have always opposed Venezuela’s socialist leaders like Maduro and former President Hugo Chávez.

“With Venezuela Obama has nothing to lose because he knows the economic relations will be maintained,” she said. Despite the anti-American rhetoric and former tensions, Venezuela remains the U. S. third largest trading partner in Latin America, behind Mexico and Brazil, exporting $11,339 millions on goods last year. Most of the exports were agricultural products. Venezuela exported $30,219 million goods towards the United States on the same year, 90 per cent being oil.

Not even the Venezuelan opposition supported Obama’s action. The country will hold legislative elections at the end of this year and the opposition has not gained the majority in Congress since 1998. The economic crisis–which consists of high inflation and scarcity of basic goods–increased the opposition’s possibilities to gain power, as did the public outrage created by the arrest of leaders of the opposition. But after Obama’s sanctions, opposition leaders had to express their rejection to the U. S. decision. “This announcement is not helping the Venezuelan opposition by interfering in internal problems,” an opposition leader and Governor of the Lara region, named Henri Falcón, said.

Experts on Latin American politics criticized Obama’s sanctions for being hypocritical. After security forces disappeared and possibly killed 43 students in the Mexican’s region of Ayotzinapa last September, the U. S. Government did not announce similar sanctions against Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

“The reality is that in Mexico 43 students disappeared in Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero, and hardly a peep from the U. S.,” professor of Latin American Studies at Pomona College Miguel Tinker Salas said. “It took weeks for the State Department to actually respond. So we have a duplicitous policy, on the one hand highlighting human rights issues in Venezuela, while on the other hand turning a blind eye to what is really a humanitarian crisis in Mexico, with over 80,000 dead, 40,000 disappeared and 15 million people being expelled from their own country.”

Obama also ignored Colombia’s human rights record as NYU history professor Greg Grandin explains. “The most dangerous consequence of this action is to put Colombian peace talks between the government and the FARC [guerrillas] in jeopardy,” he said. The left-wing guerrillas are supporters of the Venezuelan government. Since Colombian President Santos is the United State’s most faithful ally, an escalation of the tensions between Venezuela and the U. S. puts him in an uncomfortable position during the peace process.

Obama’s sanctions will probably be a bump on the road, but will not determine the future of Venezuelan politics. The opposition still has a change to win the legislative elections if inflation continues to rise in Venezuela, and the support to President Nicolas Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution does not depend only on Obama’s decisions. But the fast reaction against any form of U. S. intervention shows how important the ‘scars’ of past interventions in Latin America are. During the Cold War, the U.S prevented left-wing leaders from reaching power by supporting right wing dictatorships or death squads. Without acknowledging this traumatic history of U. S. unilateral interventions, Obama missed the opportunity to seriously talk about and to Venezuela.

Is There a Place Where White People Are More Committed to Faux Race Blindness than South Africa?

The first thing that strikes you when you arrive in Australia is how racist this place is, and yet how committed many Australians are to not talking about race. As a South African I recognize this purposeful, focussed commitment to faux race blindness. Even as someone slags off Aboriginal people and immigrants, and rants about the need to “reclaim Australia,” many here will insist that they are not racist.

Last week I opened the newspaper and read a story about a white woman who called a family of neighbors who are originally from Sierra Leone “jungle bunnies” and “monkeys.” In the story the word ‘racist’ was in quotes as though she may or may not have been racist, even though her racist rant had been filmed on their phone. I was chagrined, but others I spoke to weren’t: They argued that the paper was “just trying to be neutral.” 

The levels of racism amongst many white Australians seem to match the levels of denial about their being racist. And there is no doubt that the deepest and most abiding forms of racism are directed against Aboriginal people. It is as though on some psychic level, white Australians are angry with Aboriginal people for still being here, for reminding them of their sins, for refusing to conform to their own ideas about what Australia is or should be. In a country that is so dedicated to the idea of ‘mateship’ that the prime minister sits at the front of the car next to the driver rather than in the backseat, the very idea of racism is jarring. Being racist denies people the ‘fair go,’ that so many people say is at the core of this country’s identity.

Yet, white Australia’s history of dealings with the indigenous people of this continent are as ugly as you’ll find anywhere in the world. It is a history of trickery, dispossession and violence, all of it premised on rock solid racism. Today, Aboriginal people in Australia represent less than three per cent of the national population. Within this small population there is huge diversity in language, cultural practices, connection to land and urban spaces, educational levels, and so on. Yet, because racism follows the same script wherever you find it, Aboriginal people are over-represented in the criminal justice system, and have health and educational outcomes that – if they were taken alone – would make Australia look like a developing country.

So it came as no surprise to many Aboriginal activists here when the federal government informed Australians that it would be cutting off federal funding for ‘remote’ communities effective June this year. This means that the responsibility for refuse collection, water and lights and so on, will soon be the responsibility of state governments. Many (though not all) of the people who live in these communities are Aboriginal people, and most of them have very small populations – less than 100 people in some instances. Despite this for some Aboriginal people life in remote areas is premised on their connection to country; to the land of their ancestors.

Based on the decision by the federal government, the conservative government of Colin Barnett in Western Australia (WA) immediately announced that it does not have the money to take on this responsibility after the once-off payment the federal government has given it runs out. The state government has indicated that it will consult with the affected communities in the next few months, and it has tried to allay fears saying that people will not be forcibly removed from their homes, but it is likely that their plans to stop services – effectively closing communities – will have that effect. 

While other Australians will be affected, the primary target for the actions are understood to be Indigenous people. This was made clear when the Prime Minister Tony Abbott defended the decision that would see up to 150 communities in Western Australia closed. His words were instructive. He was quoted as saying, “What we can’t do is endlessly subsidize lifestyle choices if those lifestyle choices are not conducive to the kind of full participation in Australian society that everyone should have.”

Abbott’s statement caused uproar because it reflects the attitude that successive Australian governments have taken to Aboriginal people. The summary of this attitude across time is essentially this: ‘If only they could just change how they live, they wouldn’t be such a menace to all of us.’ Implicit in the statement is this idea that Aboriginal people are holding the nation back. Never mind that it makes sweeping generalizations about a series of communities and people that are diverse in multiple ways.

Because of the blowback, and the government’s own lack of proper planning, it is unclear how many communities will close at the moment. The Western Australia state government is backpedalling the face of widespread opposition from Aboriginal organizations and their allies. Yet the fact that such plans could even be contemplated, speaks to a far larger problem in this country.

Abbott’s words are the latest in a long line of insults hurled at the people who are the original inhabitants of this continent and the rightful caretakers of this land. They also echo comments that could have been two hundred years ago when thousands of Aboriginal people were exposed to the diseases of the colonising settlers and many others were massacred in events that were often deliberately erased from the history books.

Late last year, as if anticipating Abbott’s words, Pat Dodson, a well-known Aboriginal public intellectual from the Kimberley noted, “There’s some kind of assumption that by a process of osmosis, people will be absorbed into the mainstream of Western-life ways and be successful. We’re talking about human beings who have come from a different culture, butting up a mainstream monoculturalist perspective on how you should live and making very little concession to the diversity and the distinction of other cultures in the main.”

In the twentieth century, the degrading treatment of Aboriginal people was codified into a series of laws and polices that supposedly sought to ‘assimilate’ aboriginal people so that they might become more ‘civilised.’ Using this logic, systematic attempts were made to destroy many of the key tenets in Aboriginal people’s cultures and languages. The most notorious of these were the Aboriginal Act of 1905 in Western Australia (which has startling and not accidental similarities with South African laws) and the policy of separating children from their parents, which was implemented across the country.

In WA, the act worked hand in glove with the nation-wide practice of stealing children from their communities. While many Aboriginal children were snatched from their parents, children who were deemed to be ‘half-breeds’ (therefore of both Aboriginal and European parentage) were strongly targeted. They were placed in large dormitories so that they could be taught the ways of white society. ‘For their own good’, they were subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment, including being punished for speaking their own languages. 

Girls were trained to be domestic workers and boys were raised to be stockmen. Now referred to as the Stolen Generations, thousands of these Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families. They were raised in-group homes and by foster parents, and then released into white society once they turned eighteen. The practice lasted for over a century – beginning in 1878 and officially ending only in 1978. 

White Australia has never fully reckoned with this, nor has it fully addressed its violent birth. While Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, finally said ‘sorry’ to indigenous Australians in 2008, as Robert Manne has pointed out, the apology “did not transcend the confusion that had developed between the general historical apology to the Indigenous people and the historically specific one owed to the victims of Aboriginal child removal.”

Many Aboriginal people I have spoken to are done with waiting around for apologies. Some suggest that although the historical attitude of white Australia towards them has been one of ‘assimilation,’ this latest move has all the hallmarks of an attempt at eradication. This time, they are ready. Aboriginal action groups are prepared for yet another arduous battle for political and physical space in a place that was once theirs.

* For more information on protest actions, follow #SOSBlakAustralia.

Is there a place where white people are more committed to faux race blindness than South Africa?

The first thing that strikes you when you arrive in Australia is how racist this place is, and yet how committed many Australians are to not talking about race. As a South African I recognize this purposeful, focussed commitment to faux race blindness. Even as someone slags off aboriginal people and immigrants, and rants about the need to “reclaim Australia,” many here will insist that they are not racist.

Last week I opened the newspaper and read a story about a white woman who called a family of neighbors who are originally from Sierra Leone “jungle bunnies” and “monkeys.” In the story the word ‘racist’ was in quotes as though she may or may not have been racist, even though her racist rant had been filmed on their phone. I was chagrined, but others I spoke to weren’t: They argued that the paper was “just trying to be neutral.” 

The levels of racism amongst many white Australians seem to match the levels of denial about their being racist. And there is no doubt that the deepest and most abiding forms of racism are directed against aboriginal people. It is as though on some psychic level, white Australians are angry with aboriginal people for still being here, for reminding them of their sins, for refusing to conform to their own ideas about what Australia is or should be. In a country that is so dedicated to the idea of ‘mateship’ that the prime minister sits at the front of the car next to the driver rather than in the backseat, the very idea of racism is jarring. Being racist denies people the ‘fair go,’ that so many people say is at the core of this country’s identity.

Yet, white Australia’s history of dealings with the indigenous people of this continent are as ugly as you’ll find anywhere in the world. It is a history of trickery, dispossession and violence, all of it premised on rock solid racism. Today, aboriginal people in Australia represent less than three per cent of the national population. Within this small population there is huge diversity in language, cultural practices, connection to land and urban spaces, educational levels, and so on. Yet, because racism follows the same script wherever you find it, aboriginal people are over-represented in the criminal justice system, and have health and educational outcomes that – if they were taken alone – would make Australia look like a developing country.

So it came as no surprise to many aboriginal activists here when the federal government informed Australians that it would be cutting off federal funding for ‘remote’ communities effective June this year. This means that the responsibility for refuse collection, water and lights and so on, will soon be the responsibility of state governments. Many (though not all) of the people who live in these communities are aboriginal people, and most of them have very small populations – less than 100 people in some instances. Despite this for some aboriginal people life in remote areas is premised on their connection to country; to the land of their ancestors.

Based on the decision by the federal government, the conservative government of Colin Barnett in Western Australia (WA) immediately announced that it does not have the money to take on this responsibility after the once-off payment the federal government has given it runs out. The state government has indicated that it will consult with the affected communities in the next few months, and it has tried to allay fears saying that people will not be forcibly removed from their homes, but it is likely that their plans to stop services – effectively closing communities – will have that effect. 

While other Australians will be affected, the primary target for the actions are understood to be indigenous people. This was made clear when the Prime Minister Tony Abbott defended the decision that would see up to 150 communities in Western Australia closed. His words were instructive. He was quoted as saying, “What we can’t do is endlessly subsidize lifestyle choices if those lifestyle choices are not conducive to the kind of full participation in Australian society that everyone should have.”

Abbott’s statement caused uproar because it reflects the attitude that successive Australian governments have taken to aboriginal people. The summary of this attitude across time is essentially this: ‘If only they could just change how they live, they wouldn’t be such a menace to all of us.’ Implicit in the statement is this idea that aboriginal people are holding the nation back. Never mind that it makes sweeping generalizations about a series of communities and people that are diverse in multiple ways.

Because of the blowback, and the government’s own lack of proper planning, it is unclear how many communities will close at the moment. The Western Australia state government is backpedalling the face of widespread opposition from aboriginal organizations and their allies. Yet the fact that such plans could even be contemplated, speaks to a far larger problem in this country.

Abbott’s words are the latest in a long line of insults hurled at the people who are the original inhabitants of this continent and the rightful caretakers of this land. They also echo comments that could have been two hundred years ago when thousands of Aboriginal people were exposed to the diseases of the colonising settlers and many others were massacred in events that were often deliberately erased from the history books.

Late last year, as if anticipating Abbott’s words, Pat Dodson, a well-known aboriginal public intellectual from the Kimberley noted, “There’s some kind of assumption that by a process of osmosis, people will be absorbed into the mainstream of Western-life ways and be successful. We’re talking about human beings who have come from a different culture, butting up a mainstream monoculturalist perspective on how you should live and making very little concession to the diversity and the distinction of other cultures in the main.”

In the twentieth century, the degrading treatment of aboriginal people was codified into a series of laws and polices that supposedly sought to ‘assimilate’ aboriginal people so that they might become more ‘civilised.’ Using this logic, systematic attempts were made to destroy many of the key tenets in aboriginal people’s cultures and languages. The most notorious of these were the Aboriginal Act of 1905 in Western Australia (which has startling and not accidental similarities with South African laws) and the policy of separating children from their parents, which was implemented across the country.

In WA, the act worked hand in glove with the nation-wide practice of stealing children from their communities. While many aboriginal children were snatched from their parents, children who were deemed to be ‘half-breeds’ (therefore of both aboriginal and European parentage) were strongly targeted. They were placed in large dormitories so that they could be taught the ways of white society. ‘For their own good’, they were subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment, including being punished for speaking their own languages. 

Girls were trained to be domestic workers and boys were raised to be stockmen. Now referred to as the Stolen Generations, thousands of these aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families. They were raised in-group homes and by foster parents, and then released into white society once they turned eighteen. The practice lasted for over a century – beginning in 1878 and officially ending only in 1978. 

White Australia has never fully reckoned with this, nor has it fully addressed its violent birth. While Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, finally said ‘sorry’ to indigenous Australians in 2008, as Robert Manne has pointed out, the apology “did not transcend the confusion that had developed between the general historical apology to the Indigenous people and the historically specific one owed to the victims of Aboriginal child removal.”

Many aboriginal people I have spoken to are done with waiting around for apologies. Some suggest that although the historical attitude of white Australia towards them has been one of ‘assimilation,’ this latest move has all the hallmarks of an attempt at eradication. This time, they are ready. Aboriginal action groups are prepared for yet another arduous battle for political and physical space in a place that was once theirs.

* For more information on protest actions, follow #SOSBlakAustralia.

Movie Night: A discussion on the film “Concerning Violence,” about Franz Fanon’s writings and ideas

Michael Watts: Franz Fanon is a towering figure in the modern history of thinking about race, human emancipation and democracy in post-colonial states, and radical psychiatric practice. Born in 1925 in Martinique, he died in 1961 in the United States, and was buried in Algeria, a country in which he had lived and worked during the anti-colonial war of liberation. Frantz Fanon’s short rich life weaved together two preoccupations: professional psychiatry and revolutionary praxis. Working in unison, each was put to the service of fighting human suffering and racism and to the goal of post-colonial liberation. Fanon’s contempt for the post-colonial national bourgeoisie across much of Africa was withering and unreconstructed. His writing on the violence of colonial racism and on the productive role of violence in human emancipation was as controversial when The Wretched of the Earth first appeared in 1961 as it is today. Daring to produce a documentary – Concerning Violence: Nine Scenes from Anti-Imperialistic Self-Defense – based loosely on this book and Fanon’s ideas, and to take the topic of violence head on is either brave or foolish. Or both. Using archival footage from the wars of liberation in Angola, Mozambique and Rhodesia, Swedish director Göran Olsson has his hands full. To what effect?

Erin Torkelson: Göran Olsson’s 2014 film Concerning Violence: Nine Scenes from Anti-Imperialistic Self-Defense is a sensitively rendered and deeply disturbing look at Swedish archival footage of anti-colonial warfare, relying on rock-star academics (Gayatri Spivak) and academic rock-stars (Lauryn Hill) to blend image and text, in a postmodern bricolage structured around Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. While I generally enjoyed the film, I am troubled by the premise — laid out clearly in the press packet (and on the IMDB site, box cover, movie poster, etc.) — that the value of this movie is in its archive: alternatively called a ‘new archive of unseen footage’ and an archive of ‘the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation.’

I am left wondering what, exactly, is “new” about this archive? There is plenty of footage of “anti-imperialist self-defense” floating around late night South African TV (with doccies poking fun at “Rhodesians” at country clubs or stories of victims and perpetrators brought together to “reconcile”); there is a horrific corner of the internet where colonial soldiers post films of their murderous devastation throughout Africa (lest we forget mercenaries filmed “kills” in order to be paid); and there have been several archive-based documentaries about African anti-colonial wars in recent years (Cuba: An African Odyssey, a 2007 French documentary film immediately comes to mind). Suggesting that the archive itself is the most important contribution elides the fact that African anti-colonial wars were very recent history and footage of them actually exists. Stressing the value (the never-before-seen-ness) of the archive seems to (once again) place Africa in an awkward pre-history, outside of time, and certainly outside of film. Likewise, why are these scenes the most ‘daring moments in the struggle for liberation’? Surely, that occludes so much bravery and sacrifice across the continent? Considering these questions, it seems to me that what is ‘new’ is that it’s a Swedish archive, and what is ‘daring’ is that is Swedish journalists filming (it says as much in the press packet: “radical Swedish filmmakers” capturing anti-imperialist liberation “firsthand”). In this sense, the movie is self-reflexively Swedish, (re)centering the European subject in anti-colonial struggles in Africa.

Indeed, you can see this Euro-centric perspective throughout the film. It is extremely difficult to watch the (re)enactment of the white, male gaze overlaid with Frantz Fanon’s words — a gaze that is most transparent, most visible and most deeply problematic in a pornographic scene of a beautiful, though mutilated, topless woman, feeding her infant. And while the press packet fesses up to some European ‘paternalism’ and ‘bias,’ it also continually appeals to Sweden’s history of anti-apartheid activism, “material contributions” to the ANC, and “official neutrality.” Olsson’s invocations of the ‘paternalistic’ Sweden and the ‘activist’ Sweden are separated by several paragraphs in the press packet, but I think, our challenge is to see how these statements work together in a discursive formation: how does the second statement (about Sweden’s liberal activism) work to justify, excuse or erase the first (about Sweden’s paternalism and “bias,” often a euphemism for racism)?

This is why having Gayatri Spivak introduce the film is such an interesting choice. In her classic, “Can the Subaltern Speak” she takes Foucault and Deleuze to task for making the Western, European, male intellectual visible and transparent, and thereby occluding the subaltern subject. In many places, the same could be said of this film. Is Göran Olsson asking Gayatri Spivak to absolve him of these very same sins?

Camilla Hawthorne: What I appreciated most about Concerning Violence was that it was not framed as an apologia for The Wretched of the Earth’s infamous first chapter, which is effectively how Homi Bhabha (in his preface to the 2004 Philcox translation) framed his psychoanalytic rejoinder to the narrow readings by Arendt and Sartre that painted Fanon as a “prophet of violence.” Indeed, the documentary goes to great lengths to visually center the originary violence of colonialism, a racialized, everyday violence that is etched into material landscapes and carved into human flesh. I also appreciated Spivak’s thoughtful introduction, which concluded with a frank caveat about the limitations of Fanon for explicitly feminist readings of colonial and anti-colonial violence. Just as Fanon famously “stretched” Marx, she suggests, it is now our task to stretch Fanon.

But upon discussing the doc with Erin, I am also left wondering: what can we make of the documentary’s geographical provenance in a Swedish archive? And why was the footage reassembled and released now? Can this documentary be read against the backdrop of Europe’s complicated and contradictory relationship with postcoloniality as a condition, a relation, and a field of academic inquiry? While it has undoubtedly generated important and reflexive scholarship that challenges the racist myth of European boundedness and homogeneity, the postcolonial turn in Europe has also morphed into either a romanticized, colonial nostalgia (in which colonialism is glossed as cosmopolitanism and multiracial conviviality) or a redirection of scholarly and popular attention to white Europeans in the context of anti-colonial struggles. 

We must not lose sight of the fact that this is all happening at a conjuncture when European states are navigating the tensions of inclusion and exclusion and the boundaries of European citizenship as the empire “strikes back” in the form of immigration; in the Nordic countries such as Sweden, known for their bountiful social welfare systems, those on the left have struggled to incorporate a national self-image of progressiveness and openness toward refugees and asylum-seekers with the stark and too-close-to-home realities of virulent racism and xenophobia. A generous take on the documentary can read it as an attempt to situate current struggles over the construction of Europeanness within the context of a broader (and spatially extended) historical, colonial trajectory—as opposed to a “crisis” catalyzed by the arrival of large numbers of postcolonial migrants during the latter half of the twentieth century. On the other hand, however, one could also view Concerning Violence as a sort of attempt at absolution—an effort to displace contemporary reckonings with racism (see: the Swedish racist cake controversy or the work of geographer Allan Pred) as merely aberrational while simultaneously incorporating African anti-colonial struggles into a romantic national Swedish narrative of inclusion and antiracism.

Brittany Meche: I will begin by saying I found something temporally jarring about Göran Olsson’s 2014 film Concerning Violence: Nine Scenes from Anti-Imperialistic Self-Defense. Above and beyond the tinge of Third Worldist nostalgia, something about the timing and the narrative rhythm felt out of step. I locate my unease in the treatment of the title concept, violence. Famed postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak opens the movie arguing against a reading of Fanon that presents violence as salvational. Instead, Spivak insists that The Wretched of the Earth is Fanon’s meditation on what happens when people are “reduced to violence.” However, Spivak’s presumed lessening gives me pause, and it seems at odds with the steely narration of songstress Ms. Lauryn Hill. Ms. Hill’s rendering of Fanon’s words as they punctuate these moments of “self-defense” do not bely descent into a hellish resignation. Though, lest I be accused, as Fanon is and was, of heralding violence as divine ascent, I contend that these images of jungle patrols, feckless missionaries, mangled mothers and persistent fighters, are undoubtedly terrestrial—the provenance of neither angel nor demon.

Consequently, where in an analysis of violence as reductive descent is there room for Malcolm X’s defiant political prescription: “By any means necessary”? It is this issue of means and ends that is at the heart of my unease about the temporal rhythm of the film. Sitting in the 21st century and gazing back at the 20th, what are we as viewers to make of this representation of decidedly political violence? Particularly in a moment when violence as a means of resistance has been discredited, not necessarily for its ineffectualness, but because it has become the prized possession of powerful states. The term self-defense in the subtitle of the film recalls Olsson’s critically-acclaimed 2011 project The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 about the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Still, I am left pondering: to what extent, in the present moment, can oppositional politics be situated within a framework of self-defense? What does self-defense look like amid late-stage racial capitalism and unending wars on terror? When one can be shot in a position of surrender or when “no-fly zones” are used to justify the bombardment of cities and countless civilian deaths, what articulations of defense remain? Ultimately, I am agitated, exasperated and, yet, profoundly humbled by these images of armed black and brown radicals, poised to make history.

Participants:

Dr. Michael Watts is the Class of 1963 Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of numerous articles and books. His research interests include: political economy, political ecology, West Africa, South Asia, development, Islam and social movements, resource conflicts, and the oil industry.

Brittany Meché is a doctoral student in Geography at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on U.S. military policy in West Africa, risk and preparedness infrastructures, postcolonial theory, race, diaspora, and empire. You can follow her on Twitter @BrittanyMeche.

Erin Torkelson is a doctoral student in Geography at UC Berkeley. Before attending grad school, she worked in South Africa for seven years with land and housing NGOs and social movements. Her current research interests include Southern Africa, youth politics, generation, memory and migration.

Camilla Hawthorne is a doctoral student in Geography at UC Berkeley. Her research addresses the politics of Blackness in Italy, diaspora theory, and postcolonial science and technology studies. She tweets at @camillahawth.

Office Conversations: On Kwaito and Corporate (American) Hip Hop

Welcome to another episode of Africa is a Country “Office Conversations.” This edition we offer up a little arm-chair pop-musicology to help you turn up on a Tuesday afternoon. Participants are Sean Jacobs, Dylan Valley, Boima Tucker, and Ts’eliso Monaheng.

—————

Sean: I like this track…

 

Dylan: What’s interesting now is how the lines between kwaito and SA Hip Hop have become blurred. Really liking the hip hop that has more of a kwaito sensibility i.e ‘Caracara’

 

Sean: Caracara is my favorite track right now. And the remix blending it with Notorious BIG is even better.

Boima: I need to get my hands on that K.O. album! Not for sale outside of SA!?… Glad that you said it had a Kwaito sensibility. Helps me think through my defense of the “Americanization” of African Rap…

Perhaps the tempos and production sensibilities of currently zeitgeist-y Southern Rap are more close to the Caribbean than the Jazz and Soul influenced East Coast predecessors? Allows for a more pan-African [Black Atlantic] rhythmic stew in which kwaito, dancehall (that Burna Boy track with AKA is dope!), rap, and reggaeton can all blend.

Like how easy Nigerians are able to jump on a Bay beat (which is very clave oriented):

 

Ts’eliso: I actually never thought about it like that, but what you’re saying is valid. We were speaking about it the other day with someone; what dudes in SA are doing is to essentially rip off a producer like Mustard’s whole style and layer raps filled with a tonne of kwaito references on top of that. Most of what’s coming out now wouldn’t pass as “hip hop” ten years ago.

Boima: And Mustard “ripped off” Bay Area teenagers.

Ts’eliso: Oh shit, didn’t know that story… and so it goes. There’s an interesting one here about how KO and his clique bit off their entire style from dudes in Tembisa (a hood in Joburg). Man, a whole book could be written about inter-scene biting, or whatever it’s called.

Check out this dude:

 

And there you have it. Join us next time for another episode of Africa is a Country “Office Conversations.”

A Studio Visit with Afrofuturists Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum and Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi

This phrase “Space is the Place” recalls the 1970s work of Sun Ra — father of Afrofuturism. It also resonates in the minds of artists both on the African continent and in the diaspora today. Afrofuturism is not tethered to a specific discipline or medium; because it depends on interdisciplinary borrowing, it allows for new ways of interacting with science fiction, art, the world at-large, and of course, cosmic philosophy.

Two such artists making waves with their Afrofuturist collaborations are Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum and Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi — who are currently living and working in Johannesburg, South Africa. Hailing from Mochudi, Botswana, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum works with drawing, animation, installation and performance. Her creative research interests include exploring the political possibilities of imagining and occupying what she calls “Mythologies of the Future.” Since, the early 1990s, Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi has lived in Harare and Johannesburg, on and off. She is a painter, video artist and filmmaker who splits her time between studio work and navigating the field of collaborative practice. Her work investigates power and its structures — political, social, and architectural, in order to interrogate the invisible forces that create them and ultimately imagine alternatives.

What is it that you keep Forgetting (After the Palais de Justice) (c) Thenji Niki Nkosi 2013

Though these two artists engage with different forms of conceptual and aesthetic expression, each constructs a world that pushes the viewer to critically rethink one’s positioning with respect to time and space. When I visited their shared studio in Selby, located in the Johannesburg CBD, I could see these clear divergences immediately. Their powerful partnership and camaraderie was even more refreshing and energizing to witness, especially when they spoke about their collaborative performance art piece, an ongoing Afrofuturist anti-opera entitled “Disrupters, THIS IS Disrupter X.”

While the form of the opera traditionally provides both a linear narrative and clear division between performer and viewer, Sunstrum and Nkosi’s piece manifests itself differently in each iteration — making it both site-specific and deliberately open-ended. For example, in 2014 Sunstrum and Nkosi constructed a living maquette in which visitors had to physically navigate through in order to experience the anti-opera. This work was the result of their one-month residency at Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth — an archival laboratory and exhibition space dedicated to the production and presentation of contemporary art from Africa.

While given the task of visualizing a work that activates certain objects from the Iwalewahaus’ collection of African art, Sunstrum and Nkosi found themselves focusing on the tools of the archive — the instruments with which the ‘master narratives of history on the African continent have been constructed. They then used objects of force and beauty — such as guns and sculptural masks — as anchors and points of inspiration for key elements of their own video projections, electronic sound compositions, and live choreography, which resulted in one deeply sensory, complex and satisfyingly unpredictable Afrofuturist experience. With these elements, Sunstrum and Nkosi presented the character “Disrupter X”, who is on a mission to find the mysterious “Geomancer” — a powerful machine that can predict the future and is the last hope for her salvation from “The Agency,” a brutal and powerful entity that easily resembles today’s transnational corporations.

From this intensely visceral performance piece, in which collaboration lies at the very heart of the process, the clear departures between Sunstrum and Nkosi’s studio praxes then begin to make more sense. Sunstrum and I spoke about Asme, the female figure who used to recur regularly in her work, but whom recently she has forgone in order explore what it means to convey a compelling narrative solely through landscapes. These scenes embody the latest iteration of her science fictional and mythological explorations, and can be interpreted as simultaneously primordial and futurist — the cinematic panoramas giving a sense of continual oscillation between past and future.

Let me show you my ship (c) Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum 2013

Nkosi mused on the part of painting that she revels in the most — that moment when the shadow and contour just cleanly run parallel to each other, barely grazing one another to give a satisfaction that can only be gleaned from architectural space being manifest on a two dimensional surface. She notes how this painterly habit became especially challenging to her with her 2013 portrait series, which focused on valorizing the perspectives of South African heroes —those known and unknown, subsumed and un-subsumed into the popular archive.

These nuanced and semipermeable boundaries between Sunstrum and Nkosi’s respective praxes present an interesting way that artists can collaborate while retaining a strong sense of independence. They spend a great deal of time work-shopping and revising each other’s theoretical strategies, leading to work that reflects their thoughtful and deliberate approach to the conceptual and aesthetic components of their work, always inquiring and re-thinking in order to present the most precise articulation of their processes.

Painting by Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum

This unique dynamic follows through in their approach to exhibiting work. Through ‘joint solo shows’, Sunstrum and Nkosi don’t ask viewers to look for links between their work, but rather engineer these exhibitions in order to combat the solo show model that is ubiquitous within dominant art world structures. The do not put their work in dialogue, but allow it to coalesce in their own radical re-imagining of the spaces in which it is deemed acceptable. I for one am excited to see where their work takes them, and us, next.

Below are some images from our visit to the two artists’ studio:

Thirty Days Of Joburg City

Rendani Nemakavhani (alias Missblacdropp) is a Johannesburg-based graphic designer and illustrator who initiated the collaborative project 30 Days & A City featuring her work and that of eight fellow creators who live and work in the city of Johannesburg. We caught up with her during the exhibition opening to speak about what inspired her to curate the collaboration, and also where she’d like to see it headed.

Moment of Clarity, April 6, 2015: Nigerian (?) Soldiers Dance Skelewu

“Soldiers in Maiduguri, the embattled capital of Borno state, which has been under constant siege by Boko Haram, celebrate Nigeria’s election to music by Nigerian recording artist Davido” (via CCTV Africa):

CCTV Africa sites top African footballers like Emmanuel Adebayor (is he still around?) and Samuel Eto’o for popularizing Skelewu beyond its Nigerian base. Davido’s official music video–posted on Youtube–has had more than 10 million views thus far when we checked earlier today). Skelewu “is variously said to refer to money, love or elation.” In any case, the video (UPDATE: which may be a few weeks old) is a neat bit of–unintended?–propaganda for Nigeria’s army assailed by the people it claims to protect, in Western media media and by its neighbors for its seemingly inept reaction to Boko Haram. UPDATE: We were just informed those can’t be Nigerians–the patterns on their uniforms either indicate Cameroon or Niger and in any case, “no Nigerian would dance Skelewu so badly!”

Moment of Clarity, April 6, 2015: Nigerian Soldiers Dance Skelewu

“Soldiers in Maiduguri, the embattled capital of Borno state, which has been under constant siege by Boko Haram, celebrate Nigeria’s election to music by Nigerian recording artist Davido” (via CCTV Africa):

CCTV Africa sites top African footballers like Emmanuel Adebayor (is he still around?) and Samuel Eto’o for popularizing Skelewu beyond its Nigerian base. The official music video–posted on Youtube–has had more than 10 million views thus far when we checked earlier today). Skelewu “is variously said to refer to money, love or elation.” In any case, the video is a neat bit of–unintended?–propaganda for Nigeria’s army assailed by the people it claims to protect, in Western media media and by its neighbors for its seemingly inept reaction to Boko Haram.

Liner Notes, No.8: Boddhi Satva and Kaysha Bring Congolese Music to the Deep End

Boddhi Satva recently announced a very exciting collaboration between himself and international Zouk legend Kaysha. For those who are unfamiliar with the current African House movement, alongside names like Black Coffee, Osunlade, and DJ Djeff, Boddhi Satva has become one of the scene’s lead sonic innovators. His style is marked by ther merger of Central African drum patterns with a dark, and percussive synth palette — a sound he calls Ancestral Soul. It is this sound in particular has been really making strides to bring African House to the global mainstream. Besides releasing a remix series (1, 2, and 3) of international pop hits, his recent collaboration with Naija Pop luminary Davido, and Coupe Decale star DJ Arafat is one of the tunes with the biggest reaction in my own sets today.

On the other side of this collaboration, Kaysha is a household name in the international Zouk and Kizomba scenes. However, it is his alter-ego Mr. Shada, under which he has shown to be quite a forward-thinking beat maker — experimenting with Kuduro, Coupe Decale, and House in an endless stream of releases, and churning out some of those scenes’ biggest productions. I was rife with anticipation for what would result from their team up. And, I was not disappointed:

Apparently “Mama Kosa” is the first time Kaysha is singing in Lingala on record. Besides the skill with which Kaysha delivers the animateur style vocals, I personally think Satva is at his best when producing for Lingala, or specifically referencing Congolese music in his productions. It is at that moment, when the MC bounces above the deep drum programming that you realize what Satva is in fact doing is moving Congolese Rumba past its 20 year Ndombolo stagnancy (with all respect due to Fally Ipupa), and putting it on a path to the future.

The full release features a remix by Afro House specialist Atjazz, and as an added bonus Kaysha appears as Mr. Shada to provide his own remix of the track (above version). Both are fire interpretations, so pick up your own copy from Satva’s Offering Recordings to hear all three versions in their full glory!