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Cara Shepley eDITor In chIef Yael Korat arT DIrecTor Yael Korat, Cara Shepley DesIgn anD layouT William J. Levay, Yael Korat WebmasTers

volume 5 | issue 1 spring 2007 r The Democracy Issue

Issn:

an interdisciplinary journal

1559-4963

blur boundaries, re-imagine links, explore the between

Kenneth Norris, Kevin Sheldon, Pat McIntyre, Carolyn Kormann, Joanna Raczkiewicz, Katherine Carlson, Mrinalani Rajagopalan eDITorIal sTaff

We at Anamesa extend special thanks to Catharine Stimpson, Robin Nagle, and George Ydice for their continued support, and to Martiza Coln and Larissa Kyzer for their invaluable assistance. Anamesa is a biannual publication funded by the following entities of New York Universitys Graduate School of Arts and Science: the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Masters Program in Humanities and Social Thought.

www.anamesa.org anamesa.journal@gmail.com anamesa : Greek. adv. between, among, within

Contents
Letter from the Editor Essays The PaPer revoluTIon of The easTern bloc: How Far Has Democracy Progressed? by Tamara Hammond DemocraTIzIng hIsTory by Cara Shepley (more or less) DemocraTIc forms: Relational Aesthetics and the Rhetoric of Globalization by Pat McIntyre eThnIcITy anD PolITIcal ParTIcIPaTIon In bolIvIa by Camila Vergara IsraelI hIP-hoP as a DemocraTIc PlaTform: Zionism, AntiZionism and Post-Zionism by Yael Korat Fiction and Poetry La Lucha eterna/ The eTernal fIghT by Chandani Patel The nIghTWaTchman by Jesse Francis The comPass of blooD Is a mIrror by Jeremy Lybarger haPPIness/aLegra by Humberto Ballesteros Capasso translated into English by Csar Mateo Gonzlez Pearson Photography on The borDer by M. Maldonado-Salcedo sTreeT scene by Shahrzad Kamel man anD hIs messages by Brooke Hughes unTITleD by Shulamit Seidler-Feller connecTIcuT says by Brooke Hughes cITIzen anD hIs Dog by Brooke Hughes cITIzen by Brooke Hughes unTITleD by Shulamit Seidler-Feller classroom by Shahrzad Kamel chIlD solIDer by Brooke Hughes A Dead Republican by Jesse Francis Contributors ii 2 17 35 54 75

15 32 46 69

1 14 16 31 34 52 53 67 68 74 91 92

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Letter from the Editor

Democracy Issue Was set by art. Grappling with an unprecedented deluge of photography submissions, our editorial staff jumped enthusiastically into the spirit of democratic inclusiveness and decided to shift from a primarily textual focus to a more visual field for presenting ideas and information. The votes were in. Bolstered by this invigorating ethos, we boldly changed Anamesas external aesthetic by putting Jesse Francis disarming A Dead Republican on the cover in what I hope youll agree is a refreshing move from realistic to interpretive representation. Brooke Hughes photo essay, shot at Ground Zero and a Save Darfur rally, reveals a layered commentary on one recognizable form of American democracya nexus of collective mobilization, freedom of speech, and celebration of, perhaps ironically for our theme, words. Brookes characters demand the rights of language and action through their exercise. This, though, is only what we see at the very surface of her images. The blurring of boundaries, whether it is between art and text or among the various disciplines in the humanities, speaks to Anamesas commitment to stretching academic inquiry to its most abstract. The journal, thus in sync with the Draper Programs philosophy, remains faithful to its own rebellious tradition. What could be more democratic than respecting

rom The onseT, The Pace for ThIs cycles

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the founders challenge to question all that is inimical to equality, freedom, and change, even if to do so is to move in subtle ways away from their original vision? Two of our essayists look at democracy through artistic lenses. Pat McIntyre examines and assesses Nicolas Bourriauds 1990s theory with an eye towards understanding how Relational Aesthetics echo constitutional concerns. In her rich analysis of Israeli hip hop, Yael Korat provides a sounding board for further interlocution that is at once political, social, international, and local. We see rigid boundaries fall before us as cultures collide, both enmeshed and repelled. Tamara Hammond traces how the same was true when the Berlin Wall fell, heralding the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a new, ostensibly democratic phase in Eastern Europe. Anamesas democratic scope includes a collection of poetry and fiction, this time with two pieces published both in English and SpanishHumberto Ballesteros Capassos Happiness/Alegra and Chandani Patels La lucha eterna/The Eternal Fight. American politicians may still be on the fence about whether or not our democratic nation is necessarily monolingual, but there is an unquestionably safe space in Anamesa for contributors to explore issues of translation and the fluid movement of meaning. Democracy inhabits people, places, and things across the globe to varying degrees and in a variety of forms. It illuminated the pages of this journal before they were even put down and reverberates within them now. We hope you enjoy the Spring 2007 Democracy Issue in the same curious spirit in which it came together. Be interdisciplinary Cara Shepley eDITor In chIef

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On the Border
by M. Maldonado-Salcedo

February 2007 Loisaida, NYC

THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 1

The Paper Revolution of the Eastern Bloc

How Far Has Democracy Progressed?
by Tamara Hammond

hIs PaPer WIll consIDer The grounDWork for The sTruggles of

post Soviet-style capitalism, paying particular attention to the malfunction of democracy during the transition from Communism to free enterprise in Eastern Europe, most specifically in Russia. Based on the premise that the reproduction of pre-1990 political and economic elites1 signals a deficiency of political and economic freedoms, and further, that the anticompetitive attitudes left over from the Communist period obstruct democratization, this paper will argue that political change in postCommunist countries, particularly Russia, has been largely superficial, thereby disputing the popularly accepted notion that the development of free enterprise guarantees the growth of democracy. The capitulation of Communist rule occurred quite suddenly and unexpectedly in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, even for the populations of the countries where it took place. With the fall of the Berlin Wall2 in November 1989, the regimes in all Eastern European Communist countries collapsed, followed by the disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991. The process of de-Communization varied by country, and was successful to varying degrees in each of the twenty-nine that emerged from Communism. Before presenting an analysis of the mechanisms of the change from Communism to capitalism and democracy in Russia, this paper will briefly discuss several of the underlying issues that
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led, in part, to the collapse of Communism across the region. At the heart of the breakdown was the failure of the regions socialist economies, which were based on the original Soviet system, or modeled on the ineffective command economy of state Communism.3 A common characteristic of the individual Communist economies was the lack of a free market, and therefore the lack of competition among producers and suppliers. (This is excluding the unofficial gray and black markets). Since the government as opposed to the market decided what kind of manufactures to provide for its population, regardless of demand, the systems created significant paucities in production. Five-year economic plans, defined and directed by the government, focused first and foremost on military production, imposed crude quantitative requirements for production, and led to poor-quality consumer goods. Masking the Communist blocs floundering economies, pervasive government propaganda extolling the successes of the economic plans led many to believe that their economies were thriving. The pictures presented by the government media were unduly optimistic, and were often based on missing or misreported data. In contrast, Soviet propaganda portrayed the economies of the capitalistic West4 as rotten, decadent, and often unable to provide for the basic needs of their populations. Capitalist reality as portrayed in Soviet-era news was, predictably, a deplorable mix of brutal acts of racial discrimination, poverty-stricken people living in ghettos, and horrific scenes from imperialistic wars. Another widespread Communist myth was that the majority of people living in the Communist countries were themselves party members. Contrary to this belief, statistics indicated that Communist party members represented a meager 3.6 percent of the entire population of the Soviet Union in 1956.5 While this percentage increased with time, by the end of the Soviet Union, registered Communists still numbered fewer than seven percent of the population. In 1986 the first year of Mikhail Gorbachevs rule the number of individuals reporting membership in the Communist party declined to 663,070 from 667,625 in 1982.6 In 1990 alone, the party lost 787,000 members for reasons including expulsion, THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 3

death, or default on membership dues.7 Certain aspects of Western culture8 that penetrated the Iron curtain9 likewise played a role in the demise of the Soviet bloc.10 According to journalist Jolanta Pekacz, Communist authorities were usually ready to subordinate their official ideology to immediate profit by providing Western-style rock music at resorts visited by Western tourists.11 According to Pekacz, the decrease of repression in the name of state profit led to a hybrid culture and allowed the release of films, books and plays unavailable before.12 This secret acceptance of elements of Western lifestyle, officially condemned in Communist propaganda, created a double standard that persists to this day, after sixteen years of transition. Many of the present capitalists of Eastern Europe are reformed members of the Communist elite the same people that had previously persecuted anyone whose views, however remotely, could be construed as embracing the tenets of capitalism. The elites smooth crossover from one system to the next was facilitated by the freedoms they enjoyed under both systems, enabling them to destroy most of the evidence of their ties to the notorious Communist parties. So effective were their masquerades that even the Western democratic press failed to report essential information about Soviet elites, such as their membership in the Communist Party, while promoting them during their visits in the United States. In his book Bear Hunting with the Politburo, American scholar and journalist A. Craig Copetas describes the double standard of the Communist politicians and their repeated visits to the United States. As Copetas puts it, They were all members of the Communist Party a fact that the networks news readers never seemed to touch upon when they lined up the Soviets to speak glowingly of glasnost13 and perestroika14 on Sunday morning television.15 It is ironic that the U.S. media failed to grasp the fact that the Soviet leaders were endorsing a farce of cosmetic change in the interest of their own profit and credibility. A further investigation into the fate of Soviet and other satellite countries elites during the post-Communist era is necessary for this analysis.
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According to Eastern European historians, there are two predominant theories about the destinies of the elites.16 The first is the elite circulation theory. This holds that the economic transition resulted in structural changes at the top levels of government so that the elites recruited new people for command positions.17 Second is the elite reproduction theory. According to this view, the revolutionary changes did not affect the social composition of elites the old nomenklatura18 managed to survive and become a new propertied bourgeoisie.19 In Pekaczs view, before the process of privatization officially began, political leaders had already abandoned Communist ideology and were acting in terms of corporate interest, rather than Communist principles; hence new leaders came to power with new elites already formed.20 Pekaczs observations confirm the elite reproduction theory. Indeed, among scholars, the dominant perception of elites in Eastern Europeat the time favored the reproduction theory.21 Hungarian scholar Elemer Hankiss 1989 prediction that the old nomenklatura would become the new capitalists with the marketization of the economy was confirmed by a cross-national comparative study of elite recruitment in post-Communist Eastern Europe.22 In 1993, a large-scale survey was conducted by an international team of scholars from the United States and several Eastern European countries. The survey, Social Stratification in Eastern Europe, included Russia and five other post-Communist countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.23 The authors declared that around the same time as the Hankiss prediction, a Polish scholar, Jadwiga Staniszkis, began to write about the emergence of a new political capitalism that would occur when the former nomenklatura decided to use its political power to gain private wealth.24 Hungarian scholar Erzebet Szalai also offered a similar theory in 1989. Based on the three independent diagnoses of Hankiss, Staniszkis and Szalai for Eastern Europe, the authors concluded in their article: While the socioeconomic system changed radically, those at the top of the class structure remained the same. In other words, the personnel do not change, only the principles by which they legitimate their authority, power, and THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 5

privilege are altered.25 The authors adduced a number of statistical studies to support their conclusion. A survey comparing data from Russia, Poland and Hungary, which included 2,000 interviews with political and economic elites and 5,000 randomly selected members of the non-elite population of each country, indicated that in 1993 in Russia, 94 percent of the old economic elite was still in power. In Poland and Hungary, 70 percent and 48 percent of the elites, respectively, were recruited in 1993. With the change of regimes in Eastern Europe driven by the Communist elite, the switch from Communism to capitalism was voluntary for the ruling class.26 Gorbachev initiated the first steps with his famous perestroika and glasnost in Russia.27 A curious, little-known fact emerged from Gorbachevs rule. Despite changes made by the Soviet leader that many in both the East and West considered revolutionary, such as the reduction of existing nuclear weapons, Gorbachev continued the historical pattern of limiting induction to the Soviet Communist Party; his administration even set a record for expelling members.28 In 1986, 126,000 Communists were expelled from the Party, a rate 1.5 times higher than in 1984.29 This policy contradicted the progressive image of Gorbachev, and foreshadowed the future elites intentions of dividing government property among a decreasing number of high-level Communists. Therefore, during the privatization of Russia after 1990, a smaller, more organized Communist oligarchy bought government property and federal resources for preposterously low prices and quickly became rich. As the Moscow News reported in 2005, the top ten richest men in Eastern Europe were Russians worth between 3.2 and 15 billion dollars. Millionaires in Russia also comprised 55 of the top 100 richest Eastern Europeans.30 In Forbes magazines list of the worlds wealthiest people in May 2005, Russians placed third in the number of billionaires in the world, with a total of 27.31 Ranked first among this group was Michail Khodorovsky, the richest man in Russia prior to his arrest in October 2003. A former activist in the Young Communist League (Komsomol) of the Soviet Union,
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Khodorovsky had gained many connections at high levels of government as a young League leader.32 Khodorovsky made his billion-dollar fortune almost overnight, using Kremlin ties to buy a controlling stake in Yukos, then a collection of Soviet-era oil companies, at below market value.33 Boris Berezovsky became another of Russias top ten richest people after the collapse of Communism.34 Thanks to his connections to the Kremlin, in 1995, Berezovsky, together with Roman Abramovich, bought a government oil company later renamed Sibneft for a mere $100 million.35 Yet while in 1992, when the government allowed private citizens to buy state property and resources in Russia, even though the prices were relatively low, the only people capable of stepping forward and bidding at auctions were individuals who held high leadership positions during Communism and their cronies. Berezovsky took advantage of his elite status. Currently the richest person in Russia and listed as number 21 on the Forbes list, Roman Abramovich is Vladimir Putins business and political partner.36 After legitimizing the privatizations of the mid-1990s by buying back Abramovichs stake in Sibneft for $13 billion in 2005, the government obligated him in return to stay in office for another term as a governor of Chukotka.37 Allegedly, Abramovichs family was persecuted by the Communist authorities for being wealthy and Jewish, and rose to prominence under suspicious circumstances.38 Khodorovsky, Abramovich, and Berezovsky, share certain commonalities: They swiftly became among the richest people in history with the privatization of state-owned assets and resources in Russia in the 1990s with the help of their Kremlin friends. The second part of the deal was that they, along with other oligarchs, engineered the re-election of Boris Yeltsin in 1996, and the election of his successor, Vladimir Putin, in 2000.39 Ironically, these same men now regard Putin as an ungrateful protg,40 because of his persecution of what came to be known as the Russian Godfathers. Unlike the affable Yeltsin, who was more tolerant of public criticism, Putin realized two crucial facts about many of the oligarchs: they were potentially more powerful than he was, and they were not popTHE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 7

ular among Russian people who were largely poor and resentful.41 Some of the billionaires like Khodorkovsky and Berezovsky, were Jewish in a significantly anti-Semitic culture, and, even worse, pursued independence from the Kremlin and Putin. This disrespect provoked Putins wrath and, as a result, the former KGB agent resorted to tactics he had been trained to employ: spying, persecuting, and pressing charges for crimes that had been overlooked until Putin felt threatened. In 2002, Putin charged Berezovsky with fraud, leading him to flee the country. In 2003, Britain granted Berezovsky political refugee status and a new name Platon Elenin.42 Khodorovsky was the most unfortunate of the Russian Godfathers: Putins former KGB colleagues in the now renamed FSB43 arrested the oil oligarch in October 2003 on charges of embezzlement and fraud. Khodorovsky is now in prison facing a possible nine-year sentence.44 These phenomena of corruption, patronage and authoritarianism can be seen in Putins increasing power and control over the media that led to censorship and decline in non-government sponsored media.45 The Russian presidents former performance in an autocratic organization like the KGB determined his antagonism toward democracy. Putins supporters current intention to amend the constitution to enable him to run for reelection for a third term in office is further proof of the persistence of an authoritarian mentality.46 In the words of political commentator Yuliya Latynina, I think President Putin will secure a third term simply because this is the authorities logic. Power in Russia is in essence authoritarian, and there are no other ways to hand over power.47 According to Londons Times, in 2005, following the murder of Paul Klebnikov, a Russian-born U. S. citizen, Russia was rated the fifth most dangerous country in the world in which to be a journalist.48 The author suggested that the murder happened in response to the challenging nature of Klebnikovs publications. One was a book, entitled Godfather of Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia and the other was an article in Forbes magazine that contained the first list of Russias 100 richest people.49 The death of Klebnikov, among others, demonstrates
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the failure of democracy in Russia. The elites, accustomed to operating above the law, have no issue with violating one of the most fundamental of democratic rights: freedom of speech. In January 2006, the Glasnost Defense Foundation (GDF) released its annual report on freedom of speech in Russia.50 The GDF reported 1,322 pressrelated incidents in 2005, ranging from the arrests of journalists to the cancellation of critical television programs.51 These disturbing statistics revealed an increase in freedom of speech violations from previous years: 1,236 incident cases were noted in 2004 compared to 1,119 in 2003.52 The same author reported a shocking story about popular Russian news anchor Olga Romanova, who refused the station managers order to cut two critical reports from her newscast. In response, Romanova was physically prevented from entering the studio.53 According to freelance journalist Alexei Pankin, even worse was the rise of self-imposed censorship, because it was immeasurable.54 Facts like these refuted Putins claim that he had no intention of suppressing media independence, and freedom of speech in particular. The political infrastructure determined the flaws of what can be referred to as neo-capitalism in Eastern Europe; these include corruption, misinformation, waste of human energy and talent, bureaucracy, and life-threatening environmental hazards.55 One of the most negative consequences of the system change in Russia has been criminal influence upon the federal government: the mafia gained control of the economy, distorted the transition to a free market, and ruined the international image of Russia.56 Activities such as money laundering through big private businesses like oil and gas fields, banking, hotel chains, and nightclubs, were and still are commonly practiced in Russia and many other post-Communist countries. Tax exemptions for the privileged class, and embezzlement of state funds made Russias oligarchs extremely rich. Commenting on the case of billionaire Mikhail Khodorovsky President Putin himself recently stated People who in five to six years earned a personal fortune of $5 billion, $6 billion, $7 billion, cant do this without breaking the laws.57 Ironically, Khodorovsky was a former activist in the THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 9

Young Communist League of the USSR.58 The fact that he wasnt accused of breaking any laws until after he had crossed Putin is significant proof of the relation between the Russian government and the mafia. Because small businesses were forcefully suffocated to ensure the domination of bigger, government-sanctioned businesses, free enterprise did not necessarily lead to free competition.59 Quasi-legal insurance companies mushroomed in the 1990s. These comprised mafia members who racketeered small business owners and even individual car owners.60 No business could exist without paying preposterously high insurance that was collected by the uniform looking fat necks criminals with baseball bats, also known as wrestlers. Their brutal acts became part of contemporary Russian folklore, which was perpetuated through anecdotes, parables, and even on national TV comedy shows. In the years that followed, the malfunctions of post-Communist, capitalist countries multiplied to include crime, poverty, drug abuse, commercialism, inequality, and insecurity.61 People became frustrated that the glamorous image of the Western world, presented by Hollywood and through contact with immigrants, was just not materializing. Moreover, the vast majority of people suffered from the loss of free health insurance, governmentsubsidized housing, and government jobs that required few or no qualifications.

ven Though The PolITIcal changes exPerIenceD DurIng The

transition period from Communism to capitalism in Eastern European countries such as Russia could be considered progressive given the fact that dictatorships were terminated, they only brought false hope to the populations of post-Communist countries. The new ersatz capitalist economic system proved unable to provide stability and freedoms, in terms of sufficient economic production as well as proper laws and institutions. Consequently, the changes were not revolutionary because during the Communist elite-driven transition, the elite reproduced itself to a high degree by practicing corruption and demonstrating antagonism toward freedom and democracy in the new system. r

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Notes
1 The group or part of a group selected or regarded as the most powerful who also set the power structure by determining their successors in the economic and political arenas of their countries. For the intent of this paper the term refers to regional and national government officials. 2 The wall built through Berlin in 1961 by East Germans, with the help of the Soviet Union, as a physical and symbolic barrier between the Communist and capitalist parts of Germany as well as between the Soviet bloc and the Western world. 3 Martin Harris, Distinguished Lecture: Anthropology and the Theoretical and Paradigmatic Significance of the Collapse of Soviet and East European Communism, American Anthropologist 94, no. 2 (1992): 299. 4 The term is used as a concept of all capitalist countries in Western Europe, the U.S.A, and Japan. 5 Walter S. Hanchett, Some Observation of Membership Figures of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, The American Political Science Review 2, no. 4 (1958): 1125-1126. 6 Bogdan Harasimiw, The CPSU in Transition from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, Canadian Journal of Political Science 21, no. 2 (1988): 256. 7 A. Craig Copetas, Bear Hunting with the Politburo (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 20. 8 The term is used throughout the paper to indicate capitalistic influence. 9 A barrier of secrecy and censorship regarded as that which isolated the Soviet Union and other countries within its sphere. 10 Jolanta Pekacz, Did Rock Smash the Wall? The Role of Rock in Political Transition, Popular Music 13, no. 1 (1994): 47-48. 11 Ibid., 44. 12 Ibid., 45. 13 In contrast with the information eclipse for the masses that dominated the system, glasnost promoted a new Soviet policy in the 1980s: the opportunity to be heard, and the policy of public acknowledgement of the nations social and economic problems and the open discussion of them. 14 Perestroika, a policy of reconstruction and reform of the economic, political, and social system of the USSR, was officially initiated by Gorbachev during his term (1986-1991). 15 Copetas, 230. 16 Ivan Szelenyi and Szonja Szelenyi, Circulation and Reproduction of Elites during the Postcommunist Transformation of Eastern Europe: Introduction, Theory and Society 2, no. 5 (1995): 616.

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17 Ibid. 18 The ruling, bureaucratic elite of the former Soviet Union consisted of members of the Communist Party chosen by the party to hold positions of leadership and privilege in government and industry. 19 Pekacz, 44. 20 Ibid. 21 Szelenyi and Szelenyi, 617. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 616. 24 Ibid., 617. 25 Ibid. 26 Anton Steen, The Question of Legitimacy: Elites and Political Support in Russia, Europe Asia Studies 53, no. 5 (2001): 711. 27 Bohdan Harasymiw, The CPSU in Transition from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, Canadian Journal of Political Science 21, no. 2, (1988): 250. 28 Ibid., 257. 29 Harasymiw, 257. 30 Dmitry Dokuchaev and Valery Masterov, Russian Oligarchs Top the List of Eastern Europes Richest People, Moscow News, 14 Sept 2005. 31 Ibid. 32 Yuliya Latynina, Unknown Pages of Khodorkovskys Biography, Sovershenno Secretno, Aug 1999. 33 Sylvia Pfeifer, In Putins Pocket? The Russian Oligarch is $9bn Richer After Selling His Oil Company to the State, London Sunday Telegraph, 2 Oct 2005. 34 Sabra Ayres, A Snapshot of Russias Richest, Cox News Service, 13 May 2005. 35 Pfeifer, 2005. 36 Ibid. 37 Andrew Mueller, The Guide: Russian Godfathers, The London Guardian, 3 Dec 2005, 4-6. 38 David Jones, Tortured Past of Britains Richest Man, Associated Newspapers, London Daily Mail, 22 Oct 2005. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Mueller, 4. 42 Ibid. 43 The Federal Security Bureau (FSB) replaced the infamous KGB after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. 44 Mueller, 5. 45 Sarah Mendelson, Russia: Moving away from Democracy, Washington Post, 26

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April 2005. 46 Erika Niedowski, Despite Legal Limit, Russia Weighs 3rd Term for Putin, The Baltimore Sun, 12 Sept 2005. 47 Ibid. 48 Jeremy Page, Rebel Leader Ordered the Murder of Forbes Editor, The London Times, 17 June 2005. 49 Ibid. 50 Alexei Pankin, Cowering of Your Own Free Will, Moscow Times, 31 Jan 2006. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Harris, 301. 56 Graeme P. Herd, Russia and the Politics of Putinism, Journal of Peace Research 38, no. 1 (2001): 109. 57 Neil Buckley, Isabel Gorst and Arkady Ostrovsky, Oligarchs Tilt at Politics Crossed Line Set by Putin, The Irish Times, 18 May 2005. 58 Latynina. 59 Alexandra Zlatanova and Siana Sevova, 500,000 Small Businesses Face Bankruptcy, Standard, 3 Oct 2005. 60 It was impossible for a random citizen to own and drive an expensive car in Bulgaria in the 1990s without the mafias permission. If the person did not belong to the privileged nomenklature, he or she was forced to make high monthly payments, approximately one fifth of the cars price, to an Insurance Company, or to sign the title over to racketeers. 61 Tina Rosenberg and Pricila B. Hayner, The Unfinished Revolution, Foreign Policy, no. 115 (1999): 92.

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Street Scene
by Shahrzad Kamel

May 2004 Kabul, Afgahnistan

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La lucha eterna / The Eternal Fight

by Chandani Patel

Entre los amarillos, atrapado est el sin nombre. Casi negro, casi berenjena, En la periferia, los brillantes: Rojos, amarillos, naranjas, la salvacin en el verde. Lo oscuro est listo, penetrando. Sangrando a travs de los colores, llega al obstculo final: el verde. Armada y lista para la defensa est la ltima esperanza. En esta lucha eterna la salvacin queda en un poco de verde claro.

Between the yellows, trapped is the one without name. Almost black, almost eggplant, in the periphery, the brilliant ones: Reds, yellows, oranges, salvation in the green. The darkness is ready, penetrating. Bleeding through the colors, it arrives at the final obstacle: the green. Armed and ready for defense, it is the last hope. In this eternal fight, salvation remains in a little bit of light green.

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Man and His Messages

by Brooke Hughes

September 17th, 2006 Save Darfur Rally, Central Park, NYC

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Democratizing History
by Cara Shepley

ostensibly self-defining that they are not asked at all, which are often revealed in the end to be the most complex. Thus, we are continually faced with the challenge, in fact the responsibility, of deciphering what has been and is meant by history. History, if it is anything, is not simply the past. More important than what actually occurred is the historical record transmitted through time and bequeathed, sometimes faithfully and often disingenuously, to actors and historians in the present. As it links people and places with the past and the future, this transmuted, transmuting record begs an exploration of temporalitys fluidity and fragmentation. In attempting to scratch the surface of such philosophical behemoths, the three main concerns here are with history as an overarching metanarrative, history as a more accurate transmission of what happened in the past, and, most of all, with historiography, which refers to how the former groups came about. History, because of its inherently evolving and constructed nature, cannot be confined by temporal limits. Even the historians who write it are inexorably bound by personal contexts of life and location and by a human incapacity for omniscience and objectivity. There is always something at stake. However chimeric, the contemporary academic climate demands objectivity to some extent. As historians and historiographers THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 17

T Is The quesTIons ThaT aPPear almosT easIly ansWereD, or are so

thus reduce these stakes to the lowest possible denominators, general agreement among even the most acrimonious camps holds that there is no monolithic history. Rather there can be seen various historical strands, at times braided together, at others diverged. These may be called histories. Similarly, with respect to temporality, there is no homogenous time, but rather a temporally disjointed texture overlaying past, present, and future. As Dipesh Chakrabarty gratefully reminds us, the discipline of history is, after all, only one way among many of remembering the past. It is noteworthy that even this democratic assertion can be traced to a specifically European historiography that evokes Heidegger and Hayden White.1 History must not be given carte blanche, but interrogated at every turn. But because history does imply practical, material realities as well as the discursive rendering of the former, it is difficult to discern fact from fiction. We are now confronted with more startling, uncomfortable questions: How much does what actually happened matter? Does the past exist other than in incarnations haunting and informing the present? How does the future factor into all of this? History is simultaneously linear and circular, past and present; a fluid, dynamic process that is humanitys hope for attaining immortality. It is fallacious to think of history as valuable for its own sakethe power of history resides in its disarming grip on the present. In its own strange immortality, the power of history is in the powerful realization that just as matter can neither be created nor destroyed, each moment in time is always already present, lost in one sense, but inextricable in another. The same is true of historical scholars. For all his essentialization and error, Hegel can be used as a foundation weapon against the most tenacious postcolonial censures, even when his own thinking is the object of condemnation. On the other hand, Chakrabarty, with his illuminating insight into the indispensability and inadequacy of the European intellectual tradition, democratizes historiography while attempting to provincialize history. His Provincializing Europe invokes and celebrates thinkers of the European tradition as key players in but one of many historicity paradigms that must be shaken from superiority but not entirely discarded.
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Though this is an important step, a perplexing question remains: Even if we are successful in democratizing history, is it ever possible to democratize democracy? Before turning to a compelling interlocutation from Saba Mahmood, let us first look at the concepts of reason, progress, temporality, and historical agency to see what it means exactly to democratize history. Walter Benjamin, a European thinker whose particular indispensability comes not only from his keen intellectual insights, but also through their unique poetic form, wields a larger philosophical project in his Theses on History. By implicitly critiquing not merely history itself, but also its keepers, Benjamin amalgamates a view of history into his Angel of History. This image is worth quoting at length:
A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.2

On a superficial level, it may seem that Benjamins angel unsatisfactorily endorses a fixed, linear unfolding of historical movement. Questions immediately emerge: How does an angel who turns his back on the future accommodate Chakrabartys charge that the writing of history must implicitly assume a plurality of times existing together, a disjuncture of the present with itself?3 How can we accept a single angel of history in the first place if history encompasses not an isolated, universalized sweep from the past onwards but rather an uneven journey of heterotemporality, of heterogeneity, of difference, diffusion, diversity? How is Benjamins angel a part of the historic destruction of subaltern groups, who prove THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 19

that history cannot be characterized by a universal, preordained, or natural force guiding man through reason, freedom, or any other such Enlightenment notion of progress? Where in Benjamins angelic vision are the multitudes of coexisting histories running simultaneously that do not represent various developmental increments in a teleological progression of time but are veritable historical entities existing outside of this fabricated progression? Benjamins angel looks to the past because it is impossible to see what has not yet occurred, not because he thinks historians should turn their proverbial backs on the future. The angel looks back because material realities of the past do generate those of the present and the future, and because the key to futurity is in the present now, which is only discernable in the context of that which has been. Chakrabarty likewise explains that all our pasts are futural in orientation. To understand history then, the angel must move forward as he looks backward and is both of these things at once. Elsewhere, Benjamin reminds us that the essential time of history is not empty, homogenous or secular, but is always filled with the presence of the now. The angel looks to the past because the present writes the past. In this sense, Benjamins model loses its semblance of linearity and becomes a more textured space of incestuous temporality, where past, present and future bleed into one another as they become mutually imbued with meaning through heterotemporality itself. We can recall Heideggers notion of a stretching that includes birth, life, and deatha stretch that is, moreover, already being stretched. Framed in another but related way, Benjamins now can be characterized by a curious hanging, a moment singularly suspended, ephemerally frozen as it were, between past and future even as it shrouds both poles. Hannah Arendt calls this frozen moment:
The odd in-between period which sometimes inserts itself into historical time when not only the later historians but the actors and witnesses, the living themselves, become aware of an interval in time which is altogether determined by things that are no longer and by things that are not yet. In history, these intervals have shown more than once that they may contain the moment of truth.4

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Her understanding of past, present, and future as contemporaneous is recast as a non-time-space in the very heart of time that every new generation, indeed every new human being as he inserts himself between an infinite past and an infinite future, must discover and ploddingly pave anew.5 Coming to terms with this moment is to accept and embrace ones place in the world as a non-place, a non-time, that can never actually be grasped but which alone offers truth in the knowledge that we are forever moving, spinning, simultaneously advancing and devolving in the strange stillness of the evanescent now. Arendts quiet optimism resonates with Benjamins more desperate impression of the past, which is a kind of ploddingly paved non-time in itself: The true picture of the past flits by. The past can only be seized as an image that flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.6 For Benjamin, there is a danger that if we do not grasp history at this crucial moment, it will be gone, only to be transmogrified later through Angelic lenses egregiously tempered by the muddled mess of historical debris. History, in this view, only occurs at the brink of history, which is the very condition of a grasped history. Benjamins dialectical poeticism challenges the historian to envisage the past and history as coeval with the present even as the now moves further into the futurethe proactive angel of this view takes on historic deconstruction, reconstruction, and reinvention through discourse. His description of the Angel of History is a criticism rather than an endorsement, and a charge to the historian to constantly re-imagine and rewrite the past, shifting it to accommodate the various needs of the present. Benjamin writes, Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.7 As White points out, even Kant suggests, We are free to conceive history as we please, just as we are free to make of it what we will.8 And however Eurocentric a conception of free Kant espoused, the sentiment anticipated a more modern democratic impulse to embrace histories as such and eschew history. THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 21

To accept a static historical record would be akin to suggesting that time can stand still. True freedom comes with the acknowledgement that duplicitous histories are forms of a modern historical consciousness reifying reason as an elite other to unreason and relegating superstition to an anachronistic vestige rather than a present mode of being in the world. The danger of such a perspective comes both from without and, perhaps more surprisingly but no less harmfully, from within. Historys authoritative, authorizing pull is so strong that even many historians whose nows reflect non-normative histories sometimes strive through historiography to accommodate and conform to it. Benjamin puts it this way: As flowers turn towards the sun, by dint of a secret heliotropism the past strives to turn toward the sun which is rising in the sky of history.9 Regardless of who actually utilizes the anachronistic perspective, its danger stems from the denial of lived realitywhere the observer as historian is always a part rather than apartand explains how privileging analytical relationships (Heideggers present-at-hand) over pre-analytical ones (ready-to-hand) produces in Marxist and liberal histories versions of the uneven development thesis. 10 Better than anachronism is the recognition of a lack of totality, a heterotemporality that has always and still does constitute the now. This fragmentation is also a kind of fluidity within the now that echoes a synchronicity of past, present, and future in allowing for different ways of understanding and experiencing the present on equally acknowledged banal and profound levels. By extension, this same dimension characterizes the past as well. Only in embracing such a democratic temporal ontology are we freed from a previously conceived history no longer solely acceptable for recording and rendering the past. As Chakrabarty concludes, the challenge is to inclusively reconceptualize the present. To redefine our project as seeking to go beyond resentment towards Enlightenment thought, we need to think beyond historicism. To do this is not to reject reason but to see it as among many ways of being in the world.11 The Angel of History is powerlessly propelled, hurled, driven backwards into the future. Benjamins cynical insight into the reality of prog22 |

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ress is an indictment against an angel who is not an agent, but rather an apathetic bystander, a helpless historian, even a victim of humanitys waiting room who is as ineffectual over his own bodythe presentas he is over the debris that piles up before himthe past. It is a warning against the grave danger of blindly subscribing to views of History and historicism that consider a certain strain of progress to be inevitable: One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm.12 When even those who disagree with progress sanction it as a normative historical entity, the only possible corrective is to follow Chakrabarty and democratize the discipline of history. By diversifying the historical record and devaluating history, even if future histories continue to be characterized by debris and destruction, they are to be done so equitably. Heidegger explains that there can never be a repetition of events, only of possibility. We do, though, have the power to resurrect the dead, to rebuild cities and civilizations, to write these lost elements into the fabric of our future even when they seem to have disappeared. Vibrations from the past have the power to haunt and transfix us, to demand from us a place in the present granted through discourse. Historical ghosts are multi-vocal, representing both the powerful and the powerless, but they can only be heard if historians choose to listen. It is the historiographers responsibility to sort through and use the sky-high debris to construct history. Hannah Arendts comments in this vein are particularly poignant:
Action reveals itself fully only to the storyteller, that is, to the backward glance of the historian, who indeed always knows better what it was all about than the participants What the storyteller narrates must necessarily be hidden from the actor himself, at least as long as he is in the act or caught in its consequences, because to him the meaningfulness of his act is not in the story that follows. Even though stories are the inevitable results of action, it is not the actor but the storyteller who perceives and makes the story.13

Thus history is always a discursive edifice. Benjamin concurs, historicism contents itself with establishing a causal connection between various

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moments in history. But no fact that is a cause is for that very reason historical. It became historical posthumously, as it were, through events that may be separated from it by thousands of years. 14 But why do we see a chain of events where the angel of history sees a pile of wreckagewhat of this cryptic historical dystopia? Benjamins answer harkens back the constitution of historical time rather than historical events: The concept of the historical progress of mankind cannot be sundered from the concept of its progression through a homogenous, empty time. A critique of the concept of such a progression must be the basis of any criticism of the concept of progress itself.15 He questions the foundation rather than the superstructure, offering an alternative avenue for intellectual rendering through his pithy thesesthis is one alternative to normative writing just as there is an alternative to the autocratic endorsement of history, reason, and progress. Benjamin goes on to suggest that someone who pokes about in the past as if rummaging in a storeroom of examples and analogies still has no inkling of how much in a given moment depends on its being made present.16 The creation of history is no less devious or designing whether or not the creator is cognizant of or oblivious to his role in the process. History cannot be made contemporaneously with itself, even if it is recorded faithfully, for it is not the events themselves that are of utmost importance, but the specific means by which they are built into a collective memory and the ways in which they evolve to find salience in various, disparate nows. The true import and reality of the past is so inextricably bound up in the now that history actually reflects more about the present reality than a historical one. Should we then be skeptical, for instance, of feminist histories that attempt to reassign agency to women through an add and stir formulation while simultaneously attributing to the new players certain characteristics that are idiosyncratically or anachronistically modern? Rather than genuinely rendering the past, this kind of history projects an ersatz representation that harmonizes with contemporary longings for gender equality at the cost of marginalizing what the actual reality of the past was
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like. Does this matter? If we can rewrite history, and in so doing make it better, then what is the harm in clearing away the debris for ourselves where Benjamins angel has not? To do so, though, would be to deny injustices that still factor into the now, both in their distance from present reality, and in a haunting closeness. Democratizing history does not call for the erasure of injustice, but for a more faithful record of injustices. To democratize the history of women would mean bringing out those female voices that were historically silenced. It also requires examining the discursive record of that silencethe goal is to look at the whole picture. Historians must resist the urge to clear away the wreckage completely, for that wreckage is the foundation upon which our world is built. According to Benjamin, the most damaging way of discursively conceptualizing history is to envisage, as Kant does, a totality of men puppeteered by universal laws or something otherwise akin to Hegels great Spirit.17 Under these abstract auspices, history is constantly pressed forward, drawn along by the current of progress, steered by reason, dictated by a singly unifying force. Far from outdated, this framework is still more often than not employed as a valid, normative historical method: history done today still takes its object of investigation to be internally unified, and sees it as something developing over time.18 Sexy and appealing as such a history may be, especially to progressive liberal-secular thinkers who would call upon it to justify the rise of gender equality or the demise of the imperial apparatus, it has ultimately disproved itself through Fascist projects and progresss tangential pitfalls.19 More importantly, the existence of 3rd World countries still considered backwards and thus somehow outside of history3rd World subjects characterized by failure, lack, mimicry, or inadequacyscream for an inversion of historicism that implies an underlying unity or guiding hand in historical processes premised on progress. They must be welcomed into the fold of historical inquiry as active agents rather than marginal players waiting to catch up. At the heart of the problem is the rightful constitution of the historical subject. The only object of freedom, Hegel says, is freedom, which wills itself THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 25

consciously.20 The project of democratizing history begs the question of whether freedom is actually a universal human value in the first place. Is freedom not possibly yet another totalizing ideology like progress or history? As jarring and uncomfortable as this suggestion may be in that it suggests, for instance, that a slave may wish to be a slave, there is something quite liberating in it as well, in the notion that there are various manifestations of historical agents, some of a radically different sort than those with which we are traditionally familiar. As John Christman argues, it is not the content, but rather the origin of a desire that indicates freedom. History, rather than being a theater of conflict specifically, is merely a theater of space; open to tension and resistance, but also to willing, conscious conformity.21 Perhaps some histories, some nows, are homogenous. To privilege resistance as the only true barometer of historical action is to impose a specifically Western teleology that obscures forms of being and action not necessarily encapsulated by the narratives of subversion and reinscription of norms.22 In Politics of Piety, a book that shakes the very foundations of secular-liberal thought born from Kantian/Hegelian notions of Progress and Freedom, Saba Mahmood evokes a radical, provocative reading of the Islamic Revival through the Egyptian Mosque Movement. As a phenomenon inimical to the humanist intellectual tradition, the Revival informs assumptions about what constitutes human nature and agency. Mahmood questions whether it is valid to assume something intrinsic to women that should predispose them to oppose ideals that the Islamic Revival embodies. The normative supposition, for instance, that all human beings have an innate desire for freedom, that we all somehow seek to assert our autonomy when allowed to do so, that human agency consists primarily of acts that challenge social norms and those that do not uphold them is not self-evident or even entirely convincing in light of Mahmoods extensive empirical field work.23 Her thesis challenges Kant in suggesting that history is not only constituted by that which progressively advances away from the stability of status quo but also by that which moves less linearly in a contented space that already exists. Under Mahmoods truly demo26 |

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cratic suggestion that even the most offensive outlooks should be treated with equanimity, we are confronted with a situation in which there is no presumed distinction between a subjects desires and socially prescribed performance and where self-realization is not synonymous with an autonomous will bolstered by reason so that agentival capacity is entailed not only in those acts that resist norms but also in the multiple ways in which one inhabits them.24 In the wise words of Cato: never is [man] more active than when he does nothing.25 Muslim women, though seemingly oppressed by the standards of Western feminism, are agents deserving of their own esteemed place in the collective braid of histories, and as such, refute Hegels erroneous claim that only that which has been developed as a result of [Reason], possesses bon fide reality. That which does not accord with it, is negative, worthless existence.26 In Mahmoods proffered glimpse of one Islamic worldview, orderrather than requiring natural antagonism via Hegels house of/against the elements or Kants trees in the forestcomes from conformism and willful submission. This suggests a way of being in the world defiant of that specific strain of European thought attempting to claim for the whole world their own imagined ontology. Accepting members of the Mosque Movement into the congress of historical agents is to democratize history, all the more powerful because to do so is to reject democratic thinking itself. As Chakrabarty suggests, we cannot allow a singular, secular view of historical time to envelop other kinds of time, such that historical time is not integral, that it is out of joint with itself.27 Proponents of the Islamic revival are not anachronistic anomalies who advocate an archaic view of women, but historical agents who demonstrate that just as time exists on many planes in a single now, so too can various moralities, beliefs, and praxis exist in one democratic history among histories, one now among nows.

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enjamIn suggesTs, Through a sTrange anD IDIosyncraTIc versIon

of Marxism, this Western dialectical strain:

Only when the course of historical events runs through the historians hands smoothly, like a thread, can one speak of progress. If, however, it is a frayed bundle unraveling into a thousand strands that hang down like un-plaited hair, none of them has a definite place until they are all gathered up and braided into a coiffure.28

These strands, like Chakrabartys subaltern subjects or Mahmoods Egyptian women, refuse a worldview confined by progress in the Western sensedefying historyand form an integral part of the plait of historical and contemporary humanity. People who rely on oral records to chronicle their history are no less historical than Western academics who adhere to a more institutionalized methodology. No history is any more valid than another. Truth comes in many forms: in thought, in debate, in dance and art and magic, in war or in conformity, in rebellion, revolution, or resignation, in gods and spirits who dont even fit into human ontology. Truth exists entirely outside and within it all. Each of these universal histories represents one of Benjamins strands even as it would define itself as a plait comprising its own frayed and fraying strands. Bound among themselves they may be considered a single static instance. In the end, however, their binding depends more significantly on the specific historical moment as it shifts from what has been, through the now, and into what will be. r
Notes 1 In Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1973), White demonstrates a linguistic mode embodying a strong poetic element in historiography and philosophies of history that serves to show that history is closer to art than to science. He suggests that all history is also implicitly a philosophy of history and that a given mode of relating history is chosen on moral or aesthetic rather than epistemological grounds. In other words, White argues that history is, above all, ideology.

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2 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Shocken Books, 1968), 257-258. 3 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000), 109. 4 Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin, 1993), 9. 5 Arendt, Between, 13. 6 Benjamin, Illuminations, 255. 7 Ibid. 8 White, 433. 9 Benjamin, Illuminations, 255. 10 Chakrabarty, 239. 11 Ibid., 249. 12 Benjamin, Illuminations, 257. 13 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1958), 192. 14 Benjamin, 263. 15 Ibid., 261. 16 Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Vol. 4 (1938-1940), eds. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2003), 405. 17 Immanuel Kant, On History, ed. and trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1963), 137. 18 Chakrabarty, 23. 19 This does not mean, however, that a teleological framework of historical analysis is at all times deficient, especially in light of the fact that certain forms of dialectical thinking, like Marxist theory for instance, has played a significant role in actually shaping subsequent historical processes, such as the socialist formations of the Peoples Republic of China and the Soviet Union. Communism, though, ultimately fails in practice, and thus its theoretical backing also proves inadequate if taken as the one and only course of history. Perhaps the practical failure lies with the theorys impulse to universalize. 20 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Silbree (Mineola: Dover Publications Inc., 2004), 49. 21 Hegels assertion. 22 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005), 9. 23 Ibid., 5. 24 Ibid., 15. 25 Quoted in Arendt, Human, 325.

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26 Hegel, 36. 27 Chakrabarty, 16. 28 Eiland, 403.

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Untitled
by Shulamit Seidler-Feller

NYC

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The Nightwatchman
by Jesse Francis

Lately, I have been so analog. At night, I lace up my boots and I pound the pavement. I lean into the coming winter and I no longer avoid the gathering water in the cracks of the sidewalk; in the space between the curb and the roadway. My path is direct. Lately, I have become accustomed to carrying only cash despite the wishes of my friends and family; despite the trends of the 21st Century. I wince under the yoke now. I own a phone with a cord. I write with a pencil and I roll it across the blade of the sharpener when it becomes dull. My means are primitive.

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Lately, I have become more aware of the movements of the stars and of the moon. I take my stand on the cold concrete of a street corner and I stare into the black-hole pressure of the night. An injustice unheard is an injustice done. An injustice unseen is an injustice done. An injustice unspoken is an injustice done. My time is the night. A mind and a voice What more do you need, Asked the night watchman? nothing, I replied. r

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Connecticut Says
by Brooke Hughes

September 2006 Save Darfur Rally, Central Park, NYC

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(More or Less) Democratic Forms

Relational Aesthetics and the Rhetoric of Globalization
by Pat McIntyre

nIcolas bourrIauDs book of essays on contemporary art, Relational Aesthetics, attempts to theorize the common ground underlying the practices of artists that emerged in the international art world in the years following the reunification of Europe and the fall of Soviet communism. In this context, Bourriaud traces stylistic links connecting the practices of artists as diverse as Rirkrit Tiravanija, Maurizio Cattelan, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. However, Bourriaud does not limit the relevance of his theories to just the works and practices of these particular artists. In fact, Bourriaud manifestly proposes in Relational Aesthetics that the art of Europes radically new social, historical, and economic situation must be totally free from the baggage of the inventory of yesterdays concerns. How, Bourriaud asks, are we to understand Tiravanijas noodle-cooking exploits in collectors homes, or Vanessa Beecrofts exhibitions of half-naked women linedup in galleries, or Pierre Huyghes film-less casting sessions, if not with interactive, user-friendly and relational concepts?1 Bourriaud claims that a new social framework, what he calls the society of extras, necessitates the open-ended, and hence more or less democratic formal structures of relational artworks. I will show how his historical reconstruction mimics a neoliberal rhetoric of globalization, whether deliberately or not, and therefore patently skews the nature of
rench arT crITIc anD curaTor

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the human relations that his program claims to be cultivating. As art historian Claire Bishop suggests, this leads to the inadvertent proscription of hypothetical viewers into a paradoxical space of forced participation. This calls into question the actual value of the relations in question. Bourriaud defines relational aesthetics as a theory consisting in judging artworks on the basis of the inter-human relations which they represent, produce or prompt.2 This determines the relational artwork to be a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.3 The success or failure of a work of relational art is predicated upon its criterion of co-existence, or its ability to foster relations among its participants. This idea is defined as follows: All works of art produce a model of sociability, which transposes reality or might be conveyed in it. So there is a question we are entitled to ask in front of any aesthetic production: Does this work permit me to enter into dialogue? Could I exist, and how, in the space it defines? A form is more or less democratic.4 It is evident, then, for Bourriaud, that relationality draws from elements of participation and viewer interactivity evident in works of art. Bourriaud emphasizes that these social relationships are produced by the art works in question. But according to Claire Bishop, in Bourriauds analysis, The quality of the relationships in relational aesthetics are never examined or called into question.5 Bourriaud explains that the game of art is always changing its rules, and because of this, new standards of aesthetic judgment need to be developed concurrently.6 Bourriaud sees todays artists as working under a very similar paradigm to the original avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, but whereas earlier vanguards announced utopias, Bourriaud asserts that artists working under relational principles are providing concrete ameliorations: [T]he role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist.7 The idiosyncratic epochal label, the society of extras, that Bourriaud assumes is operational, is a condition of utmost contemporaneity so as to
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render most art-historical precedents for relational aesthetics anachronistic. He explains that the society of extras is best understood as an outgrowth of a previous condition, popularized in the radical social theory of Guy Debord as the society of the spectacle. But whereas, for Debord, the individual subject was confined to a passivity, not unlike that of an audience member, because the spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image,8 the social being in the society of extras is compelled to a minimum activity of participation in the reproduction and dissemination of the spectacles form.9 Bourriaud metaphorically describes this radical upheaval from the society of the spectacle to the society of extras as a transition from a television model to a video game model, and historically locates the shift at approximately the moment of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, which was symbolized in the news media by the fall of the Berlin wall, in which state resistances to capital across the globe were supposedly quelled and followed by an influx of embrasures in both economic and social organization.10 It is against this backdrop that relational art is said to make its intervention as learning to inhabit the world in a better way, instead of trying to construct it based on a preconceived idea of historical evolution.11 Falling in line with an overarching video game model of society, Bourriaud claims that the various forms of art become colonized by and turn into social interstices. Marx had explained the social interstice as a marginalized area of the economy that is exempt from the law of profit. Bourriaud sees in these quasi-heterotopias the fundamental condition of art and its exhibition. The interstice is a space in human relations which fits more or less harmoniously and openly into the overall system, but suggests other trading possibilities than those in effect within this system. This is the precise nature of the contemporary art exhibition in the arena of representational commerce: it creates free areas, and time spans whose rhythm contrasts with those structuring everyday life, and it encourages an inter-human commerce that differs from the communications zones that are imposed upon us.12 THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 37

However, Bourriaud has been significantly challenged on his video game model by other critics who point out that works identified with the program of relational aesthetics simply seem to take as their model of production the service industry. George Baker, a contributing editor of the journal October, has pointed out that At its most ambitious, Bourriauds project amounts to a theory of advanced art in the era of a putatively new service economy, a context within which, it is claimed, art abandons its prior (industrial) object forms and shifts to the immaterial form of services.13 Artist and writer Andrea Fraser has also observed the proliferation of the immaterial form of services in much recent art, a theme she finds to be made explicit in the post-war milieus of vanguard art production. Indeed, one could conclude that almost every significant attempt by artists of the past thirty years to transform the conditions and relations of their activity, whether through the redefinition of art works or of the competencies required to produce them, has resulted in a tendency toward forms of work (or working) that include an aspect of service provision.14 Significantly, Fraser questions the presents singularity with regard to service economics through recourse to observations made by classical economists, that services were always simply everything [...] that was not industrially organized; that was not or did not result in a durable, transferable, product; that was not productive of profit. 15 One must also take note of how cozy Bourriauds Weltanschauung is with the Zeitgeist of neoliberal globalization. In the introduction to Art in Europe: 1990-2000, Gianfranco Maraniello lays out political, social, and economic contexts for current European art that are similar to Bourriauds. Maraniello, like Bourriaud, cites the fall of the Berlin wall and subsequent reintegration of Europe into a unified military and economic actor as symbolic of the European condition of the decade. He explains that the resulting enthusiasm for unification and subsequent market triumphalism of Western economic powers initiated an international conversation under the banner of what came to be known as globalization. The gist of this global world is that capital and communication could go from any one place to any other, at any given time, virtually instantaneously. The glo38 |

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balized world is said to render obsolete, or at least transparent, artificial boundaries such as the nation-state, and also more ambiguous phenomena such as Western identity. 16 However, what globalization actually is is contested. Frederick Cooper has emphasized that capitalist enterprise was just as global two hundred years ago. He notes the vast extent of the Dutch East India company and other various joint-stock companies of the early-modern period. He also points out that international patterns of labor migration were at their peaks during the one hundred years prior to the first World War, indicating that movement across the borders of nation-states is, historically speaking, becoming more, not less, difficult, thereby rendering present ideas of trans-nationality unfounded.17 Bourriaud is certainly not alone in his enthusiastic reception of globalizations rhetoric. Maraniello points out the proliferation of many large international art exhibitions over the course of the decade, such as Documenta X and XI, and Manifesta 3. One can also cite the more recent spike in the number of international art fairs in support of this trend. Igor Zabel, the organizer of Manifesta 3, describes the nature of his exhibition program as a radically open and flexible structure, and in paradigmatic fashion, locates the shows genesis in the early 1990s, that is to say, the result of the new enthusiasm and optimism after the fall of the Berlin Wall.18 This curatorial ethos is echoed in the institutional mission authored by Valerie Cassel, director of the Visiting Artists Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and part of the Whitneys 2000 Biennial curatorial team. Cassel emphasizes a construct that incorporates people, not objects, as points of discourse and interrogation, in an exchange program exploring the new verbal and visual languages, evidenced in the work of a new generation of artists, whose sensibilities have been shaped by personal journeys and experiences that move beyond a nationalist understanding of themselves. These innovations are of course heralded as the result of the major political, social, and economic changes.19 This ubiquity of a neoliberal rhetoric of globalization could indicate an attempt to attract the same monied buyers, THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 39

investors, and donors that are profiting from the logic of globalization in other economic spheres. Furthermore, this collusion of curatorial lexicons seems to be indicative of an ethos of the entire arts management industry, which Andrea Fraser slyly pairs with a consistent and durable demand for the type of work that lends itself to community-friendly exhibition structures. Considerably overlapping with Bourriauds project, Fraser has labeled these practices project work:
The demand for projects undertaken in response to specific curatorial concepts could be related to a need on the part of curators and their organizations to induce the usual suspects to produce something special in the context of the exponential expansion of contemporary art venuesand thus exhibitionsin the 1980s, as well as of the corps of curators, swelled by the graduates of at least a half dozen new curatorial training programs.20

One may perhaps wonder if Bourriaud and the new curatorialisms identification of a new era filtered through the code words of an increasingly globalized economy and its projected track of spreading capital to every corner of the globe results merely in an attempt to renew art against a re-conceptualization of mimesis (albeit one taking social relations as its model): this is because Bourriaud seeks to create a similitude adjacent to the open-ended, transnational, and blurred relations he perceives to be already immanent to the book of the world. Claire Bishop asserts that despite the positive aspirations of most open-ended art work, upon further examination of the quality of relations in some early work of Rirkrit Tiravanija, relational practice paradoxically remains a paragon of non-democratic interaction. Bishop cites Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffes qualification of democracy upon the retention of antagonisms within the field of social relations. According to Bishops reading, Bourriauds own criterion of co-existence, which is more or less democratic,21 becomes impossible to achieve within the structure of relational art. In their post-Marxist staple, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards A Radical Democratic Politics, Laclau and Mouffe define de-

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mocracy as necessarily retaining elements of antagonism, that is to say, dissent and the persistence of difference. It is precisely because all differences are smoothed over in acts of generosity and artificial community in Tiravanijas work, such as the cooking of food for audiences, that it serves to erase all democratic possibility for its participants and inscribes the viewer within a homogenous, perhaps even totalitarian, experience that is predetermined by the so-called open structure of the work. One enters a gallery where the only way to behold the work of art is to eat Tiravanijas noodles, and theres no way around it. Bishops problem with this shift of aesthetic criteria to one of co-existence, is that it values merely the possibility for a dialogue, with no regard for the quality and power structures operating within and around that dialectic. For example, it is an irony of Tiravanijas apparent generousity that the majority of participants were power-lunching collectors and art-world professionals.22 Bourriaud also seems to want to ignore the vast history of participatory art. Participatory art has an enormous precedent in twentieth century art practices. I will limit my citations to a few of hundreds of examples. During the 1950s in Europe, for instance, we see clear evidence of pre-cursors to relational aesthetics. At that time, one would have found both Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni dealing directly with issues of performativity and viewer participation. One of Kleins most notorious works, Le Vide, 23 consisted of emptying a Parisian gallery and then offering tours of the immaterial psychic energies he had artistically imbued upon the space, while at the same time serving a blue drink to gallery-goers that caused their urine to temporarily turn blue. Additionally, its hard to imagine a more open-ended strategy and structure for an artwork than Manzonis living sculptures,24 for which the artist graced ordinary peoples bodies with his signature and declared them living works of art.25 It is, none the less, undoubtedly beneficial to see how Bourriauds observations apply to many advanced artists working today. The practice of Pierre Huyghe, an artist Bourriaud frequently cites, and his major work Streamside Day Follies, 26 seems to fulfil the program of relational aesthetics to the brim. The work consisted in the invention and execuTHE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 41

tion of a celebration, Streamside Day, for the residents of the housing development, Streamside Knolls, in upstate New York. The celebration included a parade, music, food, and speeches by local community figureheads. Huyghe videoed the festivities and created an installation at the Dia Center in New York that projected the footage on to large movable screens.27 By identifying his critical project as ceasing to take shelter behind the sixties art history,28 Bourriaud would seem to want to shut-down observations that reveal Huyghes debt to art history. The work draws on performative themes present in the Happenings of Alan Kaprow, and its formal strategy, that is to say, its existence between the reality of the Streamside Knolls community and its representation in video and installation at the Dia, was a strategy exploited by Robert Smithsons site and non-site interventions and tableaux of the late sixties and early seventies. The mature works of Smithsons corpus drew their strength from existing simultaneously in disparate physical locations, in photographic (and sometimes cinematographic) documentation, as well as his theoretical writings. Each of these manifestations can be seen to self-consciously comment upon an inability to totally encompass a work of art within a single medias strictures. In his Spiral Jetty, 29 for example, a physical encounter with Smithsons creation was literally one of an oscillating point of view around as one navigated the jettys curving arc by foot. In the various aerial photographs of the piece, the quasi-scientific topographical documentation is undermined by the hyperbolic grafting of the works bizarre shape onto an actual landscape, while still managing to convincingly suggest an affinity with such ancient monuments as the Nazca line-drawings or the Native snake mounds of Ohio.

T
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history is certainly nothing new to the tradition of art writing; Baudelaire famously cautioned the painter of modern life of the mid-nineteenth century against steeping himself too greatly in the past for fear of forgetting the essential beauty of being present.30 However,

he move To DoWnPlay The WeIghT of arT-makIngs DebT To

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this critical move may also present an opportunity for darker aspects of modernity to emerge. Bourriaud, perhaps sensing this threat, contrasts his open-ended formal prescriptions against the totalitarianism of closed forms at every opportunity. After emphasizing the social models of relational art and its abilities to foster dialogue, Bourriaud reminds us for the record, that the forms produced by totalitarian regimes are peremptory and closed in on themselves [...]. Otherwise put, they do not give the viewer a chance to complement them.31 However, Bourriauds rejection of history might put him on shakier ground than this rejection of totalitarianism would lead us to believe. One may recall Futurisms by now century-old clarion call to smash the museums and sing the praises of speed, machines, and industrialization.32 What history also documents is the utter elation of the Futurist movement for the violence of war, which perhaps explains why so many of its members perished in the trenches of World War I. But some did survive, among them the poet Marinetti, who would eventually champion Mussolinis rise to power. To be fair, Bourriauds work is a serious attempt to restructure our understanding of the social and historical conditions that effect art making, and he therefore directly engages with new possibilities for post-avant garde (or post-neo-avant garde) artistic practice in the wake of the drastic transformations in political and economic spheres. Bourriauds idiosyncratic understanding can be seen as an attempt to go beyond the aporia evident in other theories of avant-garde art, such as Peter Brgers, which argues that post-avant-garde art has only the ability to dispose of all traditional stylistic and aesthetic forms. No new form emerging from the avant-garde is theoretically privileged over traditional forms.33 With his consistent emphases on interactivity and performativity, Bourriaud turns this observation on its head. But, because relational aesthetics becomes symptomatic of the rhetoric of globalizations attempt to base social relations solely on transnational, intersubjective, and other ambiguous processes, it has skewed the value he espouses for relationality. This does not necessarily imply that traditional (or, for Bourriaud, sixties) terms of inquiry need to be reinscribed, or that these terms need to reflect some THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 43

essential truth of our historical situation; on the contrary, as Laclau and Mouffe suggest, the only concern here is with the nodal points of a symbolic reality. By carrying a certain structural weight for symbolic representations of reality and the antagonisms that cut through them, any terms of analysis or rallying points need only operate temporarily.34 Because he assumes that a mere potentiality for interaction in a work of art is inherently democratic, Bourriaud fails to acknowledge that a truly democratic form might only be possible when antagonistic identities are sustained and not suppressed, even if by acts of kindness. r Notes
1 Nicholas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance et al. (Les Presses du Reel: France, 2002), 7-8. 2 Ibid., 112. 3 Ibid., 113. 4 Ibid., 109. 5 Claire Bishop, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, October 110, (2004): 65. 6 Bourriaud, 11. 7 Ibid., 13 . 8 Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1995), 24. 9 Bourriaud, 113. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., 16. 13 George Baker, Untitled Editorial Note, October 110, (2004): 50. 14 Andrea Fraser, Whats Intangible, Transitory, Mediating, Participatory, and Rendered in the Public Sphere? October 80 (1997): 114. 15 Ibid., 114 16 Gianfranco Maraniello, ed., Art in Europe: 1990-2000 (Milan: Skira, 2002), 9-11. 17 Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: U of California P, 2005), 91-112. 18 Igor Zabel, Manifesta 3 / Beyond Boundaries: Rethinking Contemporary Art Exhibitions, Art Journal 59, no. 1 (2000): 19-21. 19 Valerie Cassel, Cry of My Birth / Beyond Boundaries: Rethinking Contemporary

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Art Exhibitions, Art Journal 59, no. 1 ( 2000): 4, 5. 20 Fraser, 115, 116. 21 Bourriaud, 109. 22 Bishop, 65. 23 Yves Klein, Le Vide, mixed media (1958). 24 Piero Manzoni, Living Sculptures, mixed media (c.1961). 25 Jonathan Fineberg, Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being 2nd Ed. (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000), 224, 342. 26 Pierre Huyghe, Streamside Day Follies, mixed media (2003). 27 George Baker, An Interview with Pierre Huyghe, October 110 (2004): 80-106 28 Bourriaud, 7. 29 Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, mixed media (1970). 30 Charles Baudelaire,The Painter of Modern Life, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (Phaidon, 1995), 1. 31 Bourriaud, 109. 32 F. T. Marinetti, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, Selected Writings, trans. R.W. Flint and Arthur A. Coppotelli (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1971), 39-44. 33 Jochen Schulte-Sasse, Foreword: Theory of Modernism versus Theory of the AvantGarde, Theory of the Avant-Garde, ed. Peter Brger (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984), xl. 34 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, London, 1985), 93-148.

THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 45

The Compass of Blood is a Mirror

by Jeremy Lybarger

Home BiBle

her face Is a scuffle of bone. The suitcase is on the floor and the children rustle around it, sour in pajamas, deadbeat with dreams. Rain shaves the window. She lays the chicken against the suitcase where it detonates for a moment before refracting into a white vertigo. The television is on in the next room, teething at the wall. Your father used to shoot them from the porch, the woman says, he hated to get blood on his hands. But I do it the old fashioned way. There is a sheet beneath the suitcase stripped from the babys crib; a squander of milk slurs its edge. What you wanna do is treat it like a fly, she says, youll never kill a fly if you mean to. You gotta empty your eyes. The womans face falls truant from her head in the rooms downdraft. The children watch. Rain and television seem to rhyme. Her hands crimp and collar the chickens throat, cramp around it for a moment, bend the bird oblong over the suitcase; the bird tries once to shriek, but aborts. You gotta think with your hands, she says, you can feel its bloodbeat high in your fingertips here, and thats your thoughts now. She grinds her bootheel over the chickens neck as if snuffing a roach. Give me the axe, she tells her oldest, a boy who has suffered rubella all summer. His brother stands against their sister, whose wooden crutch is

he brIngs The axe In WITh The chIcken.

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all oblique angles. The woman steadies the axe above her head and drops it through the chickens throat; one gust of blood pixilates her dress. The chickens head lolls across the sheet in a lean spat of red and the bird capers around the room in a kind of vaudeville. The children watch this, the woman watches them. The chicken is the closest to God in nature, she says. She opens the suitcase and tosses in the head. Out beyond, the yard lies wild with birth and seed. As tHe Crow Flies There was a guy in Texas some years back, one of those dustbowl haunts thick with trailerparks and Camaros and blondes getting abortions at the Dairy Queen, you know the kind of place, and he lived way out on the far fringe of fuckoff in this tin shanty with nicotine ambience and shithouse acoustics, didnt have hell or hallelujah, but he had a patch of marijuana ripening in his kitchen, Im talking cowboy dandelion here, panama red, and he raised it in his kitchen because the acre binding his shack was all bleach and alkaline and scorpion deathtricks, the sun always up brute and narcs with binoculars, so he quarried a pit in his kitchen floor, got some UV lights and a mess of dirt sanctified by Graceland, and I imagine a radio on the shelf bawling Hank Williams or Patsy Cline, some gaunt liquor blues, and this weed, this weed was jesusalmighty, Im talking stalks twelve feet high and thick as a klansmans dick, really superb shit, he was harvesting like ninety pounds a day, homerolling, getting so fucking stoned he would drone in the bathtub all day growing his hair out, living the life, until what happened was some Mexicans tunneled up through the floor one afternoon trying to cross the border, burrowed right up through the weedpatch when this guy was astral, burr headed, so seeing those Mexicans was a total headfuck, he yanked his 12-gauge outta its hope chest and started blasting blind, I mean like Melvin goddamn Purvis, and he gored a hole through one Mexicans gallbladder big as a sundial, as precise too, and when he emptied the bullets he pitched the gun down like an arson match and fled shrieking mad through the desert, aint nobody seen nor heard of

THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 47

him since, but I guess those Mexicans went back to Jalisco or wherever, said you cant get ahead in America anymore. That one with the hole in him, he lived all right, though for a spell there you could see the sky right through him, clouds to and fro. sHAllow Bed oF KiNgs ANd QueeNs They allow him one conjugal visit a month, always on Sunday. His wifetheyve been married 23 years come Septemberdrives down from Lawrence in the Bonneville hed bought on their honeymoon and which she keeps because its paid for and matches her eyes. She wears the green dress she knows he likesgreen of sink soap and acidthough by now its gone wan with scalps of salt beneath the arms from breathless Bonneville summers. There wont be lipstick and only a hush of perfume, something drastic. Her hair will be newly chemical and he knows she starves herself the week before her visit because shell talk about the lobster they had in Augusta and how good it was, how she thought shed never like lobster but now she does. The conjugal room is 8 by 12 with a washstand in the corner and a mattress on the floor; its single blanket is blonde and bloodshot. The guards have bored a hole into the cinderblock wall. And the wedding ring molds her knuckle with a halo that she scours pale each nightgreen of blowflies and dresses and Bonneville dashlights spoiling through vacant highway drift. They lag on the edge of the mattress, the mans feet curdled against the rooms unanimous walls, and she asks if hes been sleeping well, if his headaches have passed, if the spoons are still so dirty. The guards rasp through the peephole, staccato decay of laughter. He cradles his wifes hand as she peels the green scuff of dress from a body he barely knows. They do what they expect of each other and afterwards she dresses again and batters her hands in the washstand. That night, solitary on his sprained cot, the man remembers that he doesnt know the color of his wifes eyes, but figures that if they match the Bonneville they must be rust by now.

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Here ANd tHere Warmonger, terrorist, dyke, disgrace to the ALMIGHTY AMERICAN DOLLARO valentines, O dripfeed! To suited decoys slack on void corners I shout: youre only as clean as your cunt and mine is damn combustible. See their slow wilt and recoil behind laundered mustache.Days when I roomed with an angel in that halfway house in Odessa. We spent every afternoon shooting up, the opiate stone of our blood halving against ceiling and cankerous wall. My arm was a junkys trellis, trackmarks like wisteria or creeping violet, I burned my sleeves in a kerosene swoon. I told her she was the most beautiful cancer Id ever caught and we fucked in 20 shambled fathoms of light. The other tenants circulated a petition to have me shot, but I was a tarantula stalking birds on Heavens floor, o starling fury. Though it was deadening sometimes too in that flat brownout room while she was out whoring, Id feel this hot stifle like pollen in my veins and the brow of the bed clutched all the gravity of my phobic skull. Thats when I started writing the letterbombs. At first they were completely bureaucratic, phrases like Dear Sir, we regret to inform you, but later I wrote riddles and horoscopes, anagrams in invisible ink, traced the chalkline of a prophetic kiss. I whispered memoirs, songs of my barbiturate marrow. I whispered everything that Id never told anyonethe day my kite panicked into the lashes of a Catalpa tree, my father crooked in the doorway with dirty shirtsleeves and blood on his teeth. Youll need a ladder, he said, or an astronaut, and receded into the long cramp of daysleep. He never came back out that afternoon, and the kite weathered its height all winter, thin and bleached like a mugshot. I watched it from my bedroom window the way I watch the Black Sea now, as something beautiful Ill never have again. Fuck it. Death is only free. some CHildreN You Keep My whole life I was happy and never knew it, the Rifleman says. It is THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 49

August and the hours are fat. Cigarettes flicker like cats eyes through grass. The bandage needs changed. iN tHe drAwer oF merCY: (A movie) cameras rolling * humpbacked bed blown desolate & static in wooden room * convalescent shadow across whitewashed wall * enter the Gypsy Moth in pink monogrammed kimono * hem shushing against vertebral floor * slow scrawl toward demolition of bed * the Gypsy Moths face is the deadletter of lobotomy * convalescent shadow in contraceptive light * the Gypsy Moth stops, removes the kimono in ragged trance * horror of junk anatomy * caesarean thread, varicose blear, spiderbites dense white whorls of cigarette snuff * through the looking glass, on the plain beyond, putrescent scud of sky and cloudpile like bodybags * roachwing whirr of 16mm, backdraft of magnesium white * on the plain, brawling idiocy of tornado sirens * Worst twister I ever saw abducted the dead from the earth * the Gypsy Moth prone on loam of bed * closeup of her burlap labia * the railroad house nervy with wind, rooms stutter * cue the lion* into the frame: a lion * Worst twister I ever saw...baby on the roof...black stain for years * the lion swaggers to the bed, sniffs the diesel and yeast of the Gypsy Moth, cracks its harmonic jaw * Worst twister I ever saw fed a man glass and dinosaur bones * the lions eyes steep with blood * on the plain, everything silently swift * cameras rolling * a pale pink kimono in a wooden room HeArt For BogArdus He never hurt themNot in winters black cellophane nor tarpit drag of June-On highways roughed by inebriate seas he was the Drifter w/ orbital eyes & switchblade lithe, a box shivery with bottles on the pelvis of a drugstore bicycleIn atomic fields his holy palm baited a thrash of birds (lulled by deciduous lifeline & ash)A bottle for each canary and kildeer and bobolink from embalmed eastern bough, breathinghole
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bored through tin lid like a killshot & the birds twittering scribble against glassHe buried the bottles in ancestral scrapes along hillsides roadsides beneath blackbellied stones signposts & derelict womb of floorsHow they sang in their jars undergroundI never hurt them, he said, I only kept them in tuneand through shallow centuries of night the earth cooed. In the chloroform glare of afternoon I pressed for wisdom & the Drifter the Drunk the Birdman, gnarled on whiskey & atlases said:some stones are also songskeep your ear to the ground. r

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Citizen and His Dog

by Brooke Hughes

September 2006 Ground Zero, NYC

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Citizen
by Brooke Hughes

September 2006 Ground Zero, NYC

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Ethnicity and Political Participation in Bolivia

by Camila Vergara

laTIn amerIcan counTrIes, The TWenTIeTh cenTury has been an era of convulsionrevolutions, dictatorships, protests, reforms, revolutions, revolutions, and ethnic mobilizations have all been part of the struggle of achieving equality and democracy. Bolivia, a country that has had more presidents than years of existence as an independent nation-state, has experienced a recent extraordinary change in its political scenario. For the first time, the political elite, comprised of high- and middle-class white and mestizo populations, had to step down and let Evo Morales, an outsider with clear indigenous roots, become the legitimate President. Even though Bolivia has a majority of what is called an indigenous population, until recently, native peoples have been scarcely represented in the political system. In 1980, for the first time, Indian representatives were elected to serve in Congress. For almost twenty years, development of the inclusion of indigenous people in politics took a slow pace, until the so-called Water War in 1999. This conflict confronted the state with a social coalition in Cochabamba over the privatization of water rights in the region. The achievements of protests, both in the national and international arenas, motivated other groups to present their demands and set up a successful discursive framework linked to anti-globalization and anti-capitalist ideas. In this paper I intend to show the development process of the ethnic
or

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movements that emerged during this awakening of the indigenous base, as well as the discourses implemented by their leaders. I will elucidate the different meanings of being indigenous, the uses of ethnicity in the political rhetoric, and the dangers of misrepresentation and inequality that still hover over Bolivias destiny. The Rebirth of Ethnicity? Ethnicity is a socially constructed concept that has to do with self-identification and positioning within society. J. Weber describes ethnicity as perceptions of common descent, history, fate, and culture where language, physical appearance (evidenced more in distinctive clothing than in body features), religion, and modes of production are basic unifying characteristics. Identity refers to the cultural values or perspectives to which an individual most strongly relates. To identify with a group, movement, or community is to acknowledge that you share common elements, which makes you part of it. For Henry Hale, identity is a set of points of personal reference on which people rely to navigate the social world they inhabit.1 This social radar is created from our perception of and our relation with the social world, and it is our universal tendency to reduce uncertainty that makes us gather into groups. Ethnicity is a kind of social radar, and one of the strongest social bonds can be found among ethnic groups. This characteristic makes ethnic identity a powerful tool in politics, especially now that ethnicity has acquired international relevance. It would be just to state that indigeneity has been in trend in the international scenario for a while now. Indigenous culture has stopped being represented as anachronistic and backward, and has started to be depicted as authentic and national. Despite this change in indigeneitys image, Canessa argues that there is some ambivalence to this celebration of indigenous culture: the particularity of indigenous culture and language can be represented as marking the genuinely national even as it serves as the marker of social and racial inferiority.2 THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 55

Even though being indio is still associated with inferiority, there has been a revival of ethnic identity in Bolivia. The last Bolivian census revealed that 63 percent of the population declared itself as having an ethnic identity.3 However, this percentage is at odds with classical ways of classifying ethnicity that emphasize common language and place of residence as fundamental components. Experts in ethnicity agree that language is a pivotal feature for determining ethnic identity. In Bolivia, there has been a slow but consistent replacement of indigenous languages by Spanish, especially in urban areas.4 Even though a majority of Bolivians declared that Spanish was their mother tongue, a greater majority identifies itself as indigenous. The census also shows that only 49.4 percent of the population speaks an indigenous language, thus, 13.6 percent of the population claims to have an ethnic identity, but does not speak an indigenous language. In this case, language seems inaccurate to determine ethnic identity. The other strong indicator of ethnicity is location. During the colonial period, to be an Indian depended partly on the place of residence: someone who lived in an Indian community was supposedly an Indian. Today almost half of those who self-identify as indigenous live in urban areas. The shift of these two important factors regarding ethnic identification may suggest that indigeneity is becoming a broader and more ambiguous concept that could be used to classify a more heterogeneous sector of the population. However, ethnic identity is a much more complex than this. Besides self-identification, ethnic identity is also constructed based upon social recognition. For instance, a person living in La Paz self-identifies with an indigenous community, but for the people that live in indigenous communities he is a cholo, thus, not properly an indigenous person. The case of Bolivia shows the dynamic essence of ethnic identity and how it has changed over time, from being equivalent to second-rate citizenship to being associated with political power. Even though indigenous peoples have always constituted the majority of Bolivias population, their movements have been historically co-opted and their rights denied. However, during the last decade, ethnic identity has become a powerful source of political capital, which has catapulted indigenous movements
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and their leaders to the center of the political arena. From disappearance to protagonism After the 1952 Revolution, the new government of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) officially abolished the term indio because of its stigmatization, and replaced it with campesino. This change veered the discourse of the government and the leaders of the nascent movement from ethnic identity to class identity. The MNRs objective was to solve the Indian problem by assimilating Indian communities, eliminating their autonomy and way of life. The concepts of civilization, progress, and modernization filled up the states discourse as a way of imposing the cultural values of the dominant groups into society as a whole. Juliana Strobele-Gregor argues that the revolutions heirs made the mestizo a fundamental ideological support for the newly formed Bolivian nation: The glorification of Creole-mestizo identity as the substance of the nation was an essential part of the party ideology that became the ideology of the state.5 The state was conceived as the guardian of the national patrimony and of the people. After the legal dissolution of the hacienda system in 1953, the state sponsored an official peasants organization, aimed to keep Indian demands in control while extending a homogenizing veil to transform Indians into modern peasants. The MNR had a strong rural base that was captured by General Rene Barrientos, who took the government by force in 1964. A fluent Quechuaspeaker, Barrientos established the Military-Peasant Pact, which initially supported his anti-labor policies in exchange for public works in the countryside.6 The attempt to introduce a tax on individual rural property brought animosity among the Indian peasants and revealed the demise of the Pact. This disengagement from the official discourse propitiated the emergence of a new kind of social movement based on ethnic identity. At the end of the 1960s, the indigenous group Katarismo gained power in the structure of the CNTCB, the official peasant union, and began THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 57

taking an independent course. By the late 1970s, even though Katarismo had become a leading force in the rural trade unions in the highlands, it didnt play a significant role in politics. From within its Indianist current emerged a new political group, the Indian Tupaj Katari Movement (MITK), which under the leadership of Felipe Quispe elected the first two indigenous leaders as deputies to the lower chamber of Congress in 1980. After the New Economic Policy was launched in 1985, trade liberalization flooded Bolivian markets with cheap imported goods, with the consequent closure of many national factories and the increase of unemployment. Seven years later, Gonzalo Snchez de Lozada decided to run for president in alliance with the Aymara leader Victor Hugo Crdenas as his vice-president. For Willem Assies and Ton Salman, this surprising nomination of Crdenas as a running mate was in good part the outcome of a political marketing study and was designed to attract electors7 who otherwise would have voted for indigenous parties. Parallel to the deepening of economic reforms, Snchez de Lozada also carried out a Constitutional reform that recognized the multicultural composition of the population, and a Law on Popular Participation (1994) aimed to decentralize the countrys political-administrative system. Consequently, the municipality became an important source of regional power that gave indigenous people space for self-rule. In the 1995 municipal election, 29 percent of the total councilors elected were from a peasant-indigenous background.8 Moreover, with the creation of new districts and the modification of the electoral system in 1996, local interests began to be better represented. The new notoriety acquired by indigenous peoples in this period can be attributed to this modification of the system. Donna Lee Van Cott argues that significant changes in electoral rules and institutional design tend to influence indigenous population to form political parties and to achieve electoral success. Bolivia has had, since its return to democracy in 1982, one of the most fragmented party systems in the region: five parties sharing 90 percent of the vote.9 Because of this, seat allocation formulas
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that favored larger parties have prevailed, thus restricting congressional representation of small parties such as the indigenous. The 1994 Constitutional reform changed the system from one that bolstered a unitary representation to one that gave advantages to smaller, regionally based parties. This encouraged indigenous leaders to run for office and pushed local indigenous organizations to form pragmatic alliances with national parties in order to achieve representation. However, Assies and Salman show that the concrete effects of the multicultural recognition and the institutional reforms were limited because they were embedded in a neoliberal economic framework, which hurt large sections of the population. The polity is characterized by a representation deficit that forces popular feelings and demands to be expressed in extra-institutional or even anti-institutional ways.10 This social frustration, led by indigenous people, came to a turning point in the events that started with the so-called Water War. In 1999, Banzers government privatized the water supplies of Cochabamba. The contract was immediately criticized because it carried a sharp increase in consumer prices, which reached 180 percent for some sectors of the population.11 A coalition of urban and rural organizations called Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y de la Vida was created to oppose the project by sponsoring a series of protests. For Assies and Salman, the case of the Water War reflects the typical contempt for and insensitivity for popular needs and feelings from the political elite, who always choose first to ignore the formers demands, then to repress them, and finally to negotiate without any intention of complying to the agreements, which ultimately ignited a new round of protest. What made these protests successful and precipitated the breakage of the violence spiral? Canessa argues it was the adoption of the language of indigeneity, which attracted the interest of the international press that gave the movement its winning edge. The Water War protesters portrayed themselves as indigenous people fighting the forces of globalization. The New York Times article Where Incas Ruled, Indians Are Hoping for Power depicted the incident in Cochabamba as carried out by a singuTHE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 59

lar united movement aimed to wrest power from the largely European elite.12 Paradoxically, the leadership of the Coordinadora was neither indigenous nor rural; it was composed basically of Creole and middle-class mestizos who understood the potential potency of defending their interests with the language of indigeneity.13 This strategy helped engage an important group of Quechua-speakers and yielded an international press coverage accustomed to reporting indigenous rights and environmental concerns as a combined topic. The Water War showed that broad coalitions could be successfully mobilized against multinational companies in the protection of natural resources. The use of ethnic language and the invocation of indigenous deities and mythology proved successful for mobilizing indigenous communities and attracting international attention, which in the end forced the government to comply with the demands. This triumph demonstrated the strength of ethnic identity and evidenced the diminishing power of the state to repress new social manifestations. This awareness would be further capitalized in the 2002 elections, the 2003 Gas War, and the victory of Evo Morales as President of Bolivia in 2005. Ethnic identity as political discourse In Bolivia, ethnic identity has been used to buttress movements and demands, particularly after the Water War. The utilization of ethnicity can be elucidated through an analysis of todays two major leaders of indigenous politics, Felipe Quispe and Evo Morales, who have contrasting visions of indigenism. Both politicians were born in Aymara-speaking families on the highland and are representative figures of a post-revolutionary generation that received a relatively good educational level.14 Their political careers were also forged in union-based politics. However, they have different objectives and appeal to different sectors of the population. Quispe and his party, Movimiento Indigena Pachakutik (MIP), are frequently cataloged as extremists because their indigeneity is much more specific and much more hostile to the current nation-state. Quispes

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vision of the future is one where the current state is replaced by an indigenous nation.15 His language is highly racialized and he usually talks about eliminating the white and mestizo population. He is hostile to Bolivian nationalism and wants to change the name of the country to Republica de Qullasuyu. Because of his radical political approach, his electoral base has remained rather small compared to the appeal Morales has achieved nationwide. In contrast, Morales grassroots base is with the coca-growers unions, so his party, Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS), appeals to mestizos and criollos as well as to indigenous people. From Quispes perspective, this broad appeal makes MAS not a properly indigenous party. Morales language is inclusive, and instead of replacing the current nation-state, he aims to defend the country by transforming indigenous concerns into national affairs: MAS is the expression of all marginalized sectors of the society, which, oppressed by the neoliberal model and globalization, struggles for redress, identity, self-determination, sovereignty, and dignity.16 Between the Water War events and the national elections of 2002, the demands of diverse ethnic groups escalated from typical land petitions to a 90-point manifesto that was negotiated several times with the government. During the protests, the contrasting visions of indigeneity purported by Quispe and Morales began to take shape in the media. Quispe articulated a discourse in which he envisioned two Bolivias, one Indian and one white. This radical separatists vision went against the acceptance of multiculturalism. After this backlash against the pluri-multi ideology that had been mainstream since the institutional change in 1994, George Gray argues that the notions of easy coexistence and unity in diversity were perceived as nave and distorting of the true shape of power relations which favored definite moves toward a modern and liberal or at least formally-liberal state.17 Even though the ethnic discourse tends to radicalize national projects in Bolivia, the 2002 election shows that the majority of voters preferred a more inclusive approach. MAS won 20.94 percent of the national vote, coming in second place, less than two points behind the leader, and placTHE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 61

ing eight senators and 27 deputies in Congress. In comparison, Quispes party, MIP, won only 6.09 percent of the vote, and placed six deputes in the lower chamber.18 Assies and Salman argue that these outcomes, more than being a punishment for the incumbent parties or a growing sympathy for radical ideas, suggest that the governmentand all established and and parties, for that matterfailed to disualify the main protagonists of the protest cycles as extremists and democracy-unworthy politicians, and at the same time failed to qualify themselves as the exclusive legitimate representational game in town.19 Therefore, there is a questioning of the whole traditional system of power and democratic legitimacy, which has been based upon the exclusion of indigenous peoples and the legitimacy of the dominant group as political representatives. The outcome of the 2002 elections and the increasing ethnicitization of politics in Bolivia evidence that there is more at stake than the simple inclusion of indigenous peoples in the political system. More than specific demands, indigenous peoples want to have influence in the formulation and development of democracy. The ethnic discourse of both Morales and Quispe suggest that there is an incompatibility between globalization and the values and way of life of indigenous society. Morales principal ideas are focused on anti-imperialism, and how to protect dignity and sovereignty. Clearly, MAS strategically brings together ethnic and class discourses, and combines them with an even broader anti-globalization speech. In Canessas words Morales indigeneity here is a strategic position against which to challenge global capitalism.20 Even though ethnic identity has been used before to articulate diverse demands and to unify people for a common cause, the innovative feature of MAS is how it has transformed indigenous ideology into a mainstream creed. Moreover, Morales has managed to appeal to a broad public and has made them identify with an indigenous cause, despite the fact that an important sector of his followers does not identify itself with an ethnic group at all. In this sense, Canessa argues that Morales does not fit in a radical model of ethnic politics, but rather in an inclusive one, which has replaced the mestizo as the iconic
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citizen with the indgena.21 Does this mean, then, that ethnic identity can lose its particularity and broaden in order to include non-indigenous peoples? And if so, could this broadening weaken the indigenous peoples identification with the movement, thus losing its representativeness? Ethnic Politics and the Dangers of Uniformity

factor in Bolivian politics. The reforms introduced in 1994 can be understood as an effort to address multiculturalism, but because these reforms were framed in terms of neoliberalism, they could only address part of Bolivias problems. With institutional change, multiculturalism was taken up and indigenous people were given space in the political system. But the ideology of multiculturalism, though it brought a limited incorporation into the polity, failed to resolve issues such as poverty and inequality. Bolivia is presently one of the most unequal countries in Latin America, and the second most unequal country in South America after Brazil, which has an income four times higher. Nevertheless, the institutional change and the international prominence of ethnicity have helped indigenous peoples to go from disappearance to the center of Bolivian politics. Indigeneity has become the language of protests over resources and the defense of the nation against the forces of globalization. This has given ethnic movements a prominence they did not have before, which has yielded political representation and the power to achieve beneficial reforms. In 2005 the cocalero leader Evo Morales was elected Bolivias President with an impressive 54 percent of the national vote. Besides being elected with an ample majority in a country with one of the most fragmented party systems, Morales has achieved unprecedented power for indigenous people and other oppressed groups. Canessa points out an essential question regarding this new type of inclusionist ethnic identity. He argues that just as inclusive mestizaje contained within it the exclusion of the Indian, the inclusive indigenism THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 63

n varIous Ways, eThnIcITy has become an IncreasIngly ImPorTanT

MAS espouses contains within it the potential for a similar form of exclusion.22 In other words, Morales indigenist discourse tends to unify all ethnic identities into one broad national ethnic identity, which is at odds with the reality of the country. According to Weber, there are 38 indigenous peoples within the Bolivian borders. Even though in the highlands Quechua and Aymara speakers predominate, it is estimated that the lowlands harbor some 220,000 indigenous persons of 36 different ethnic affiliations.23 Could these diverse ethnic groups identify themselves with the homogenic ethnic identity propelled by Morales, or would they remain excluded? Canessa tries to answer this question drawing conclusions from his field research in the community of Pocobaya. He argues that ethnic identity in this region is ayllu-based and that even though the Pocobayeos speak Aymara, they do not identify themselves with an Aymara nation: Whereas Pocobayeos will recognize their shared oppression with other poor people, this does not translate into a sense of shared ethnic identity.24 They also do not seem to share an identity with urban dwellers. Moreover, they do not consider urban people to be indigenous at all, because migration to an urban setting connotes a loss of identity. For the Pocobayeos to be indigenous is not to share a common language or to have Indian bloodit is a way of life. Under this lens, ethnic it it identity is not the broader concept used by Morales, but a very specific local link shared by indigenous communities. Does this mean that Morales and his followers are not truely indigenous? Even though this question cannot be properly answered, because identity depends on personal as well as social elements, what is clear is that the identity portrayed by the Pocobayeos is very different from the one expressed by indigenous leaders such as Morales. These different identifications, though they could be currently combined in public discourse, carry a danger of marginalization. If the concept of indigenous becomes broad enough to impose uniformity among the population, indigenous groups that do not share that identity could continue to be marginalized from the political system and the process of nation-formation. r
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Notes
1 Henry E. Hale, Explaining Ethnicity, Comparative Political Studies 37, no. 4 (2004): 463. 2 Andrew Canessa, Todos somos indigenas: Towards a New Language of National Political Identity, Bulletin of Latin American Research 25, no. 2: 243. 3 Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas de Bolivia/UMPA, 2003: 157. 4 In 1976, 34 percent of the population was monolingual in Spanish, rising to 42 percent in 1992, and 47 percent in 2001. In urban areas, the numbers rose to 60 percent in 2001. 5 Juliana Strobele-Gregor, Bert Hoffman, and Andrew Holmes, Social Movements and Political Change in Latin America: 1, Latin American Perspectives, 21, no. 2 (1994): 107. 6 Willem Assies and Ton Salman, Ethnicity and politics in Bolivia, Ethnopolitics 4, no. 3 (2005): 269-297. 7 Ibid., 275. 8 Ibid., 276. 9 Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully, eds. Building Democratic Institutions: Party systems in Latin America, (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995). Gathered in Donna Lee Van Cott, Institutional Change and Ethnic Parties in South America, Latin American Politics and Society 45, no. 2, (2003): 23. 10 Assies, and Salman, 277. 11 Ibid., 278. 12 New York Times, 2000. Gathered in Canessa, 241. 13 Canessa, 248. 14 Harry A. Patrinos and George Psarcharopoulos, The Cost of Being Indigenous in Bolivia: An Empirical Analysis of Educational Attainments and Outcomes, Bulletin of Latin American Research 12, no. 3 (1993): 308. 15 Canessa, 250. 16 Movimiento al Socialismo, 2005. Gathered in Canessa, 251. 17 George Gray Molina, Ethnic Politics in Bolivia: Harmony of Inequalities, 1900-2000, CRISE Working Paper (Oxford: CRISE, 2005), 11. 18 Donna Lee Van Cott, Institutional Change and Ethnic Parties in South America, Latin American Politics and Society 45, no. 2 (2003): 52. 19 Assies, and Salman, 292. 20 Canessa, 252.

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21 Ibid., 255. 22 Ibid., 257. 23 J. Weber, Poblacin Indgena de las Tierras Bajas de Bolivia (Santa Cruz: APCOB, 1994). Gathered in Assies, and Salman, 272. 24 Canessa, 259.

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Untitled
by Shulamit Seidler-Feller

NYC

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Classroom at Ashiana Street

Childrens Center
by Shahrzad Kamel

May 2004 Kabul, Afgahnistan

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Happiness / Alegra
by Humberto Bllesteros Capasso translated by Csar Mateo Gonzlez

lberTo Was born sTrange.

of his life.

ThIs Is The sTory of The haPPIesT Day

That morning the owners rooster woke him up at six oclock. He went out to the yard barefoot. His sister, Yulitza, two years older than him, was nude underneath the stream of water. The tube hung straight down over the grass and shook from the waters pressure. A murmur emanated from the faucets handle. Alberto lingered, watched the tube and made his head shudder with the same rhythm. Then he watched the stream. As water shone, it refracted the sunlight and dispersed it into fireflies that slithered down his sisters skin, extinguishing in the puddle she stood in. He ran to her and the stream. She let him have a little room. He got wet from thumping his head against Yulitzas hip. She let him do that with an uncomfortable smile while she lathered herself with soap. As he focused on the chill water on top of his head and the rhythmic warmth of his sisters flesh against his forehead, out of the corner of his eye Alberto saw his father coming outside from their home, barefoot as THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 69

well, his machete in his hand. He kept pushing his head against his sister until she got tired and left. Then he sat under the water, closed his eyes and began to sway. He tried to mimic the feverish chill that seemed to speak to him; that invited him mercilessly, tirelessly to blend with it, to flow in a straight line onto the ground and shatter into shimmering slivers on the concrete his father had poured onto the yard so that the ground didnt become a mud pit while people bathed. When someone shut the faucet off, he threw himself onto the ground and watched the clouds. He started to play around with his voice, crying out when a cloud tumbled and broke apart, and then lowering it to a mutter when it grew still on the sky. Hours went by with that game. Suddenly a firm hand gripped his shoulder and sat him up. His father offered him a piece of sugarcane. He didnt know what to do. His father slowly took his hand, opened his fingers, placed the sugarcane in his palm and closed his grip around it. Alberto began to squeeze and relax his fingers, focusing on the texture, but his father leaned his face towards his, and Alberto saw that he had a piece of sugarcane too. He was sucking on it. Alberto put his sugarcane into his mouth. His fathers eyes blazed. Alberto began to sway with his tongue, his voice and his head, to the rhythm of the sweetness that seeped into his mouth and drew a disjointed line of happiness through his body. Abruptly, he realized that his father, who was watching him, was swaying too. Entranced, Alberto understood that the rhythm with which his father moved his body back and forth was similar to the one he sensed in the sugarcane, in the taste, in his own body and in the world. He laughed, his father kissed him on the forehead and went to cut down more sugarcane.
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Alberto never saw his father move like that again; but on some nights, while he was sitting in the yard or on the rock in front of the house, he watched his father coming back from working in the field. He would place a hand on his shoulder. For those brief moments he could almost recall the sway of the sugarcane in his mouth and the light in his fathers eyes. The loneliness he was born into became a vibration then, coloring his blood with sugar.

lberTo nacI raro.

vida.

esTa es la hIsTorIa Del Da ms felIz De su

Esa maana el gallo del patrn lo despert a las seis. Sali descalzo al patio. Su hermana, Yulitza, dos aos mayor que l, estaba desnuda bajo el chorro. El tubo, vertical sobre la tierra, temblaba con la presin. La llave desprenda un rumor. Alberto se qued mirando el tubo, haciendo vibrar su cabeza con el mismo ritmo. Luego mir el chorro. El agua brillaba, reflejando el sol y dispersndolo en lucirnagas que resbalaban por la piel de su hermana y se apagaban en el charco a sus pies. Corri hacia ella y entr al chorro. Ella le hizo un espacio. l se moj, golpeando su cabeza contra la cintura de Yulitza. Ella lo dej hacer con una sonrisa incmoda mientras se jabonaba. De reojo, concentrado en el fro del agua sobre su cabeza y en la tibieza rtmica de su hermana contra su frente, Alberto vio a su padre salir de la casa, tambin descalzo y con el machete en la mano.

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Sigui empujando con la cabeza a su hermana hasta que ella se cans y se fue. Entonces se sent bajo el agua, cerr los ojos y comenz a zarandearse. Intent imitar el escalofro que pareca hablarle; que lo invitaba sin piedad y sin pausa a mezclarse con l, a correr en una lnea hacia la tierra y desbaratarse en brillos sobre la placa de concreto que su padre haba puesto en el patio para que no se hiciera un barrial cuando se baara la gente. Cuando alguien le cerr la llave se tumb sobre la losa y mir las nubes. Comenz a jugar con su voz, subiendo de volumen cuando una se desbarataba rpidamente y bajando hasta un murmullo cuando pareca quieta en el cielo. En eso se le fueron las horas. De pronto una mano fuerte le cogi el hombro y lo hizo sentarse en la losa. Su padre le acerc un trozo de caa. l no saba qu hacer. Su padre, lentamente, le tom la mano, le abri los dedos, puso el pedazo de caa en su palma y los cerr. Alberto comenz a apretar y desapretar los dedos, concentrado en la textura, pero de pronto su padre le acerc la cara y Alberto vio que l tambin tena un pedazo de caa, pero en la boca, y lo estaba chupando. Entonces Alberto se meti su pedazo de caa a la boca. Los ojos de su padre brillaron. Alberto dej de verlos un buen rato y comenz a oscilar de nuevo, con la lengua y con la voz y con la cabeza, al ritmo del dulce que le entraba a la boca y le creaba una lnea discontinua de alegra en todo el cuerpo. Y de pronto vio que, frente a l, su padre lo estaba mirando y tambin oscilaba. Alucinado, Alberto entendi que el ritmo con que su padre mova el cuerpo adelante y atrs era similar al que l perciba en la caa, en el sabor, en su propio cuerpo y en el mundo. Entonces ri, y su padre le dio un beso en la frente y se fue a cortar ms caa.

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Alberto nunca volvi a ver a su padre moverse como l; pero algunas noches, sentado en el patio o en la piedra al frente de la casa, lo miraba cuando volva del trabajo y l le pona una mano en el hombro. En esos momentos casi lograba recordar aquella oscilacin de la caa en su boca y el brillo en los ojos de su padre. Entonces la soledad que le haba tocado en suerte se volva una vibracin y le coloreaba la sangre de azcar. r

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Child Soldier
by Brooke Hughes

September 2006 Save Darfur Rally, Central Park, NYC

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Israeli Hip Hop as a Democratic Platform

Zionism, Anti-Zionism and Post-Zionism
by Yael Korat

bar-mITzvah ParTy In 2004, my broTher WroTe a raP song in Hebrew describing what its like to live with us, his family, and celebrating his rite of passage. We performed the song together in front of dozens of guests, backing my brother up for the chorus as he rapped and tried a little break-dancing with his hip hop baggy pants and basketball jersey to the sounds of one of Subliminal and the Shadows latest hits. The performance received loud applause. The star of the evening was initiated to his coming of age and we were initiated to the popularity of Israeli hip hop. A product of African heritage and American culture, originating in the 1970s Bronx, hip hop initially depicted ghetto-life hardships, expressed African-Americans deep frustrations and celebrated inner-city party culture.1 By the 1990s, however, hip hops international outreach had extended far beyond its original African-American context as it became a popular global medium of self-representation and empowerment. Indeed, today scratching, graffiti, hip hop fashion, dance and rap music can be found in different countries around the world. Rappers from France, South Africa and Japan2 rap in their respective languages about local and national lifeexperiences and social concerns. White English kids from New Castle rhyme about Brown Ale as a cause for local problems,3 Franco-Maghribis articulate a complex immigrant identity confronted with French racism
or hIs

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and Muslim fundamentalism,4 and Italian posses rap in regional dialects to censure the corrupt Christian Democratic government.5 Rather than erasing local culture as a process of Americanization or McDonaldization, as hip hop gets heavily disseminated through the mass media, this once-local-now-global phenomenon has been translated to fit the circumstances of those who choose to employ it. It serves as a clear example of the process of glocalization, or of complex global flows of ethnoscapes, mediascapes, and ideoscapes that construct the social imagination and inform cultural identities.6 With democracy as a global master term,7 different groups aim to define themselves in terms of nation and ethnicity, to enhance the construction of a state or to oppose it, and to freely express diverse opinions.8 So how do rappers imagine Israel? Who is included and who is excluded in their representation? What are their concerns? How are these concerns expressed in their lyrics or image? What identity do they represent? Through answering these questions I will assess the extent to which Israeli hip hop is a democratic tool used to express the diverse cultural identities of Israel. For the purpose of this paper, Israeli hip hop can be seen as divided into two camps: mainstream and minorities. While the mainstream is preoccupied with national identity and the secular side of the Jewish Israeli story, minority rappers focus on the social or institutional Israeli oppression and racism that they experience by highlighting their ethnic identity or regional home-town identity more than the national one. This paper offers a close reading of examples from a selection of principle actors in the Israeli hip hop field. Among these are prominent mainstream Jewish Israeli rappers as well as three Arab Israeli rappers, and an Ethiopian Jewish rapper. The first aim is to give a general scope of the different identities expressed by hip hop in the Israeli context to show how it allows for a cross-section representation. The second is to present a nuanced interpretation and analysis of exemplary lyrics and visuals in order to provide a glimpse of the nature of this specific form of representation.

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The Origins of Israeli Hip Hop The Israeli version of hip-hop as a musical genre began in the 1990s when the rock band Shabak Samech started to rap in Hebrew. Shabak Samechs Beastie-Boys-style songs focused on fun, party and sex. Like the early days of American old school hip hop, they endorsed self-aggrandizing lyrics like this refrain from a 1995 hit: Shabak Samech is an empire/See how all the females get hysterical.9 A video-clip of the song shows the band members in hip hop clothes walking in a dusty Israeli street with a lot of young people having a good time around them as they jump on cars and smash a window for fun.10 If they represented an Israeli identity, it would be that of middle-class secular youth with a taste for global mass media. It was cool, trendy and rocking. It was not political. By 2004, Hebrew-language Israeli hip hop embraced a trend of social commentary. It was common to hear a rap song about the Israeli situation on Galgalaz, the popular music station of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) or to see Israeli rappers on television talk shows and childrens programs. The three best known artists in this mainstream hip hop scene are Mook E, an ex-member of the now-defunct Shabak Samech whose music leans more towards reggae than rap, HaDag Nachash, a Jerusalem-based band which consists of seven members lead by MC Shaanan Street, and the rapper Subliminal, who created the label TACT Family (meaning TelAviv CiTy), which promotes Israeli hip hop. Singing about inequality, political corruption, questions of national identity, the hardships of war, and the hope for peace among other Israeli and personal concerns, these rappers represent their mainstream audience, which comprises Israeli secular Jews, to a large extent.11 In addition, at least two Israeli minority groups are known to have representative rappers: Ethiopian Jewish immigrants, most of whom arrived to Israel after 1990, and Israeli Arabs, Palestinians who stayed in Israel after the 1948 war and became Israeli citizens. These rappers criticize Israeli racism and represent counter-hegemonic resistance as they express their ethnic identity through language and music. Jeremy Cool THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 77

Habash, for example, an Ethiopian Jewish rapper and graduate of yeshiva, a Jewish religious Orthodox school system, raps in both Hebrew and Amharic about his Ethiopian Jewish heritage and the frustrations of many Ethiopian Jews in Israel who live in low-socioeconomic areas.12 Habash also created a hip hop seminar with the goal of empowering Ethiopian immigrant youths to cultivate their cultural heritage, thus further encouraging an Israeli-Ethiopian hip hop scene.13 Israeli Arab rappers like DAM, SAZ and MWR14 all rap in Arabic and incorporate a heavier Middle Eastern musical style than the Israeli mainstream hip hop does. Rapping since 1998, DAM uses hip hop music as a platform for political protest, rapping in Hebrew and English in addition to Arabic.15 SAZ, from the Jewish Arab mixed city of Ramle, fuses Arabic and Hebrew, collaborates with Israeli Jewish rappers like Sagol 59 and HaDag Nachash16 and performs at peace activism demonstrations.17 His music and biography were documented by a Jewish Israeli director in SAZ: The Palestinian Rapper for Change.18 MWR, an Israeli Arab group from Akko, rap in Arabic only, making their music significantly less accessible to most Israelis. Nonetheless, their Arabic-language song Because Im an Arab, about Israeli police harassment, became a local radio hit in Haifa, one of Israels largest mixed cities.19 Israeli Hip Hop and National Identity In Popular Music and National Culture in Israel, Motti Regev and Edwin Seroussi describe five variants of Israeliness: Hebrewism (Ivriut) or traditional Israeliness, globalized Israeliness, Mizrahiyut (Orientalism) or ethnic Israeliness, religious Israeliness and Israeli Palestinianness or Palestinian Israeliness.20 Regev and Edwin explain that much of national culture in Israel, in general and in music specifically, deals with the vexing question of Israeli identity. Interestingly, they also note that Israels intense national identity construction and the invention of its popular traditions coincided with the intensification of globalization processes that undermine it.21 Music, from their account, is an important part of the col78 |

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lective imagination and identity of the Israeli nation that challenge the metanarratives or hegemonic constructions of national identity. Contrary to prototypical rappers, Shabak Samech, Mook E, HaDag Nachash, and Subliminal represent mainstream Israeli popular culture rather than marginal identities or voices of oppressed minorities. Nonmainstream Israeli hip hop artists are more likely to address specific local issues, depicting life in a certain town for example, or the hardship of being minorities. Generally, the content of Israeli mainstream hip hop is preoccupied with national problems from the Jewish Israeli secular perspective, while minority rappers express a resistant, counter-hegemonic perspective. Mainstream Israeli hip hop is preoccupied with Zionism and national identity. HaDag Nachash is making Zionist Hip Hop is the bands wellknown hit refrain. Mook E sings: This is the Zionist-educational rap/ Thats my word.22 Subliminal frequently defines himself and his label as Zionist Hip Hop in explicitly nationalistic terms. At the same time, most of these rappers also represent a globalized identity as they adhere to ideas of peace, love, reggae culture, using materials from American and popular culture with an imagined global community in mind. But Israeli rap is not limited to a celebration of Israeli nationalism; it also challenges Israeli identity in general, and its Zionistic core specifically. This is especially the case with Israeli Arab rappers, like DAM, who articulates a bold resistance to Zionism by accusing Israeli policies of racial discrimination and inequality. More often than not, Israeli Arab rappers emphasize their local identity as residents of specific Israeli towns, or their allegiance to hip hop as an African American inspired global tool for expression of oppression, in place of highlighting their national identity as Israelis. rePresenTaTIon of Israel In The sTIcker song/Shirat haSticker anD born here/kannoLadeti HaDag Nachashs famous sticker song attempts to democratically include many of the diverse and contradicting political opinions of the Israeli THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 79

public. The lyrics and music string together the diverse bumper stickers commonly found on Israeli cars.23 These bumper sticker slogans become representative of various cultural identities or factions within Israeli society whose opinions they express.24 In a virtuosic technique of social winks and puns, highly regarded novelist and peace activist David Grossman, who wrote the songs lyrics for the band, manages to both comically entertain many Israeli listeners and to subtly criticize their opinionated aggressiveness by calling for compassion. The song creates an absurd bricolage of contradicting beliefs: religious Jewish sayings about the messiah or blessing God, pro-peace, left-wing, and right-wing statements, army combat units pride slogans, anti-Arab proclamations (like Death to the Arabs), and anti-Orthodox Jews slogans.25 The song, like the bumper stickers, exercises democracy by engaging in a pluralistic political debate in which citizens can publicly articulate their views or demands. However, it also protests against the abundant hate expressed in most of these beliefs, as it strings together two slogans in the refrain: How much evil can be swallowed? Father have mercy! Another song by HaDag Nachash tries to trace the roots of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It describes the beginning of the century as a time of two peoples fighting and maintains that the situation remains unchanged until the present moment. Implying that neither group has not learned from the past nor that both should learn to get along in peaceful ways, the song goes:
In Palestine-Israel in the beginning of the century There lived several tribes on the same land They differed from one another in religion and language The relationship between them wasnt too good They blamed each other in all their troubles They were suspicious of each other and argued over borders They cried a lot of tears on a sea of victims And didnt learn anything, nothing has changed.26

Using the distancing word they both Palestinians and Israelis are included in an external perspective. They are presented with equal blame,

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suffering equally from the tragedies of war. Beginning the account from the start of the century avoids the problem of dealing with the arrival of Jews to the land and departure of Palestinians as refugees after 1948. Maintaining that the war between Israelis and Palestinians has endured from antiquity renders the situation hopeless and dehistoricizes the political context, distancing the memory of historical periods of positive cooperation and collaboration between Arabs and Jews in Israel and abroad. However, these lyrics also attempt to portray a land with several tribes in a tone that highlights their equal rights. The word tribes, with its biblical connotation in the Israeli context, alludes to the Jewish claim on the land, and allows Jews to assert themselves as indigenous to Israel since biblical times. Thus, this song highlights the tension in Israeli society, especially experienced by the left wing, between the Zionist claim of the land with its anti-Arab sentiments and the idealist aspiration for peace that will enable equal rights for both peoples. While HaDag Nachash certainly tackled the loaded subject of Israeli Palestinian relations with special care, they did not express an explicit critique that fundamentally questioned Israeli mainstream sentiment. In contrast, Israeli Arab group DAM delivers its political messages overtly as it articulates the specific oppression experiences by Palestinians in the town of Lod. DAMs song Kan Noladeti, which means in Hebrew I was born here,27 echoes the words of a highly patriotic Israeli popular song played in a 1980s Eurovision contest. It connected Jews to the land of Israel with the refrain Here I was born, here were all my children born, here I built my home with my own two hands, and so on. Using the title Born Here as Israeli Arabs, DAM members assert their own claim to the land of birth and with it a claim to their democratic rights as Israeli citizens and humanitarian rights as Palestinians in a Jewish nation. Subliminals Nationalistic Zionist Hip Hop Subliminal has developed for himself and his label, the TACT Family, a style of pathos and glorification of Israel in an attempt to empower THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 81

the audience with Zionist pride.28 For example, in 2003, on Israels 55th Independence Day celebration, channel 2 broadcasted Subliminals show as the headliner of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) hits-parade, a patriotic mainstream event.29 Together with other TACT Family rappers, Subliminal rapped his song Hatikva, (The Hope) bearing the same title as the Israeli national anthem. Entering the stage through a giant Star of David gate, their keyboard placed on the Israeli flag, Subliminal donned a white-and-blue (the national colors) basketball jersey and sang: Together well survive/Separated well fall to a cheering crowd of soldiers and civilians. The song describes the tragedy of dying soldiers encouraging the audience to have hope, dreams and love within them, yet also suggesting that A strong people, we wont fold/Because the son of a bitch that would stop Israel wasnt born. With a prayer-like verse about the acceptance of hardships and aspiration for strength, the refrain challenges listeners to continue with daily life and be hopeful. While very popular among many in Israel, Subliminal is often accused by others of being fascist because of his style, lyrics and political opinions. Indeed, Subliminal is preoccupied only with one side of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Employing a nationalistic emphasis coupled with fascist aesthetic elements, he encourages Jewish Israelis to be strong in their everyday battle of survival and to nurture hope for a time of peace when soldiers would not return home dead and civilians would not die in the streets by terrorist attacks. While on the one hand the attainment of peace is a crucial concern in his songs, he entirely ignores the other side of the story, that is, the Palestinians who suffer destruction and death because of the Israeli armed forces and internal and external political policies. Subliminals imagined Israel is solely a Jewish state, thus excluding its Israeli Arab citizens and adhering to a nationalistic version of Zionism rather than highlighting the democratic, pluralistic principle of equal rights. When asked about the criticism against him, Subliminal responded: The lyrics are we (Israelis) should never be divided again. Only together will we survive and maintain Israel. What is so wrong with that? 30 He
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explains that he belongs to the right-wing and many people (read: Israeli left-wing) are opposed to his opinions but even they hold that he should express his views because that is his right.31 Nonetheless, it is important to note here that Subliminal had also supported Tamer Nafar, the Israeli Arab MC from DAM in his first foray into music. Their relationship and their political disagreement, no doubt, lead to their separation and has been documented in the film Channels of Rage,32 but it can be argued that Subliminal plays a more complex role in this story than simply that of a fascist representing the right-wing. (PosT?) zIonIsT anD anTI-zIonIsT hIP hoP Through parody and subversion hip hop style, HaDag Nachash expresses criticism of Israeli history classes, broadening the possibilities of Israeli identity beyond Zionism. One of the groups favorite radio hits, Gabi and Debi, features the most well known refrain HaDag Nachash is making Zionist Hip Hop33 in a fun-lovin funky rhythm. The song alludes to two key Zionist figuresBenjamin Zeev Herzel and Joseph Trumpeldorin a critically humorous way that challenges Zionists myths with contemporary Israeli truths. In this imaginary meeting, the speaker in the song tells the state visionary, Herzel, about the details of the hard reality of Israel, like road accidents, the handicapped strike, high unemployment and corrupt politicians. The song describes the military leader Trumpeldor spitting green goo and distorts his famous slogan by changing It is good to die for our country to It is good to spit on our country. Thus, the group articulates an anti-militant anti-nationalist attitude that differs from earlier Zionism and from the nationalistic attitude expressed by Subliminal. In the 1990s there was an ongoing debate to re-define Zionism vis-vis its contradictions with basic ideas of democracy. This reexamination of the so called major narrative of Zionism is referred to as the PostZionism debate.34 Interestingly, one online review of Hadag Nachashs concert asserted that the group does their part to re-define Zionism: THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 83

What is this Zionist hip hop that Hadag Nachash offers? Zionism as you studied in history classes in high school? People with beards who wanted to create a state? Well people, the state exists and it doesnt seem like it will disappear, and now we are left to wonder what is this state exactly? A place to live in? A place to die in? And if to live here, then for what?35

In this respect, it seems that the lyrics of HaDag Nachash reflect a process of reassessment of Israeli national identity. As Regev and Seroussi explain, one of the implications of the post-Zionist debates was that the commitment to Israeliness as a national culture is being eroded and is even disappearing.36 Nonetheless they assert that whether these new phenomena will indeed undermine the commitment to Israeliness as an underlying doxa has yet to be seen.37 Zionism, re-defined or not, is still the underlying doxa of Israeli culture, but hip hop certainly manages to engage in the social debates that questions it. Like HaDag Nachash, DAM challenges Zionism, though operating outside of the hip hop mainstream as Israeli Arabs, and their lyrics and images are distinctly more subversive. Responding to the same symbolic figure, father of Zionism Benjamin Zeev Herzel, DAM attacks Zionist idealism with Palestinian Israeli hard truths. For example, in Kan Noladeti, DAMs lyrics subversively manipulate Herzels image and motto in order to shatter the Zionist myth of equality. The prototypical picture of the solemn European visionary depicts him leaning on a porch, passionately contemplating the future creation of a Jewish democratic state, captioned with his famous Zionist slogan: If you will it, it is no legend. To this DAM responds, I have a belief in the If-you-will-it-it-is no-legendregime/You didnt even leave me a porch to stand on and proclaim it.38 The European image of the Zionist leader leaning on a porch to dream his empowering utopian Jewish dream, questionably realized in 1948, is ironically contrasted here with the porchlesness, or homelessness, of many Israeli Palestinians, which is caused by Zionist driven policies. DAMs lyrics thus insist on juxtaposing the cause of injustice with the utopian dream of justice to expose the inherent contradiction of Israeli democracy
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in ideals v. practice. Indeed, the group articulates this problem artistically through hip hop: while Herzel envisioned a utopian socialist Jewish state in which Arabs and Jews would be equal,39 the predicament of contemporary Israel is drastically removed from it. Public-Enemy-style, DAM boldly accuses the Israeli government and police of racism and demands to be heard and treated equally.40 The video for Kan Noladeti41 shows the group members harassed by Israeli police and images of Palestinian houses ruined by Israeli tractors as they rap about unjust state policies that oppress them in everyday life. Their lyrics double as direct political critique with lines like Its not Zionism, its racism that specifically target the city and government racism, as in the following verse:
Its just that the city didnt care for the Arabs Because the government has a wish: Maximum Jewson maximum land Minimum Arabson minimum land This house didnt get approved by the law And you will not erase! 42

This verse, like many others in the song, exposes the loaded issue of Israeli territorial expansion and neglect of Arab residential areas to open debate and protestation. Though they sing in Hebrew so that their message reaches Israelisyouthe refrain of this particular song is in their mother tongue, Arabic. Through rap, they try to reach the Israeli public to protest against inequality as they are empowered by artistic self-expression. Interestingly, the production of the song, the video clip, and DAMs international tours were funded by the Mixed Cities Project of Shatil, an organization affiliated with the New Israeli Fund. The project encourages civil society activity in Israeli cities of mixed Palestinians and Israeli populations.43 The projects website and the small print following the clip state that the songs lyrics reflect the artists standpoint and not necessarily the standpoint of the project partnersShatil and the European Union. Thus, in a democratic fashion, an Israeli organization empowers THE DEMOCRACY ISSUE | 85

DAM to express their oppositional opinions and to disseminate them nationally and internationally despite the latters anti-Zionist stance. Valuing civil rights more than Jewish allegiance marks this as a post-Zionist act rather than a Zionist one. This highlights the tension between Israel as a democratic state and as a Jewish state, which has been the underlying and inherent contradiction of values at the core of Israeli statehood from its inception.

I have examIneD IsraelI hIP hoP as a DemocraTIc Tool for the expression of cultural identities. I have shown how hip hop as a global genre is employed by Israeli rappers to represent various Israeli identities in local terms. Specifically, rappers sing in Hebrew or Arabic, using local slang as well as biblical language or style and borrowing religious or national symbols and material from popular culture. Hip hop serves as a common aesthetic platform for a spectrum of political opinions and local perspectives. Thus hip hop gives a voice to Zionism, post-Zionism and anti-Zionism. In doing so, in the Israeli context, music proves capable of strengthening national identity even as it empowers resistance. Israeli hip hop engages the question of identity, which has preoccupied previous Israeli musical genres as well. The question remains: what does it mean to be Israeli today? In some cases, especially in Israeli Arab rap, the focus is on the more localized identity of specific Israeli towns. Israeli hip hop is tied up with the construction of national identity on the one hand, and the expression of frustration felt by Israeli minorities, on the other. The more explicitly political and local the songs are, the more they seem to adhere to authentic protest hip hop, as a form of specific uprising against oppression rather than a general call for equality or justice reggae/hippie style: make love not war isnt as specific as saying the Israeli police stops me because I am an Arab. Hip hop as an art form has the function of empowerment through articulation. In exercising freedom of speech and disseminating the music to a wide, even global audience,
n ThIs essay

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Israeli hip hop is democratic. Nevertheless, the question of access remains crucial: who is listening to the voice of protest? To what extent does each community use the genre to strengthen its own identity vis--vis the other, and to what extent is there a (real) dialogue, enabled by the articulation of diverse voices? Future studies may also wish to focus on the conflicts and collaborations among Israeli rappers from various factions of Israeli society and perhaps to asses its impact as a catalyst for change. For now, what is certain is that in the Israeli social context, hip hop has been used by a cross-section of Israeli culture to address national concerns of both mainstream and minority groups, blending a local identity with a global aesthetic of artistic expression. If only politics echoed art, in this case, it seems, equal rights and true democracy would not be merely the stuff of legend. r Notes
1 Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover: Wesleyan UP, 1994). 2 Russell A. Potter, Soul into Hip-Hop, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, ed. Simon Frith, Will Straw and John Street (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001), 154. 3 Andy Bennett, Hip Hop am Main, Rappin on the Tyne: Hip Hop Culture as a Local Construct in Two European Cities, Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place (London: McMilian Press, 2000), 162. 4 Joan Gross, David McMurry, and Ted Swedenburg, Rai, Rap and Ramadan Nights: Franco-Maghribi Cultural Identities, Middle East Report 178 (1992): 11-16, 24. 5 Tony Mitchell, Popular Music and Local Identity: Rock, Pop and Rap in Europe and Oceania (London: Cassell,1996). 6 Arjun Appadurai, Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996), 27-47. 7 Appadurai, 37. 8 Ibid., 37-38. 9 These lyrics, and all subsequent lyrics have been translated from Hebrew by Yael Korat. Shabak Samech, Emperia, Shabak, (NMC Music Ltd., 1997).

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10 Shabak Samech, Emperia, You Tube video clip, added May 30th 2007. <http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVAhd7X6tJc> 11 Other, less famous Israeli rappers include Sagol 59, Kele 6, SHI 360, Fishi Hagadol, and Quami De La Fox to name a few. See Neal Ungerleider, Levantine Hip-Hop 101Whos Who in the Middle East Rap Game, Slate Magazine Online, <http://www. slate.com/id/2147822/> (18 Aug 2006). 12 Loolwa Khazzoom, Israelies Using Hip-hop Music to Express their Cultural Identities, The Boston Globe, <http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2004/01/04/ israeli_rappers_prove_hip_hop_will_translate_to_any_language/> (4 Jan 2004). 13 Youth Torn Between Two Worlds of Rap, trans. Idit Avrahami and Omer Barak from the Hebrew title How Will the Ethiopian Community Look? It Depends to Which Rapper You Listen, Haaretz News, <http://www.tharwaproject.com/node/1277> (14 Jan 2005). 14 DAM stands for Da Arab MCs and means blood both in Hebrew and in Arabic. SAZ are the initials of MC Samech Zakout. MWR are the initials of the members firstnames: Mahmoud, Wassim, and Richard. 15 Amelia Thomas, Israeli-Arab Rap: An Outlet for Youth Protest; Palestinian Hip-hop Musicwith Lyrics in Hebrew, English and Arabic is Gaining Popularity, Christian Science Monitor, <http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0721/p11s01-wome. html> (21 July 2005). 16 Hip Hop Sulha Website <http://www.hiphopsulha.com> 17 Adam Kellner, 40 YearsEnough! Report on a Week of Protest, Gush Shalom Website, <http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/archive/1181638993/> (12 June 2007). 18 SAZ: The Palestinian Rapper for Change, dir. Gil Karni (2004). <http://www.choices.web.aplus.net/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=CV&Product_ Code=CH7036DVD&Category_Code> Date accessed: 7/31/07. SAZ: The Palestinian Rapper for Change, You Tube, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG-xxMOx0gk> 19 Jason Keyser, Israeli Arabs Adopt Rap: Groups Use Music to Send a Message of Social Protest, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, <http://www.jsonline.com> (13 July 2002). 20 See Moti Regev and Edwin Seroussi, A Short Introduction to Israeli Culture, Popular Music and National Culture in Israel, (Berkeley: U of California P, 2004), 15-25. 21 Bar Haim cited in Regev and Seroussi, 19. 22 Shabak Samech, Al Tagidu Li/Dont Tell Me and BeAtifat Mamtak/Sweet Wrapping (NMC Records, 1997). 23 HaDag Nachash, Shirat HaSticker/The Sticker Song, Chomer Mekomi/Local Stuff, (Hed Artzi Records, 2003).

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24 The clip of this song, like the bumper stickers, presents a cross section of prototypical Israeli characters singing the slogansan orthodox Jew, a woman settler with a baby, a macho-male, a cop, an Israeli woman soldier, an Arab, a secular Israeli, a religious Jew, an Israeli rapper, an Ethiopian-Israeli soldier, a suicide bomber, a businessman, a showgirl/ prostitute and a rasta-man. The slogans become further parodied when they are sung by a character against which they protest. For example, the suicide-bomber sings: No Arabs, no terror. While the clip includes representation of two Arab prototypesa suicide bomber (man with dynamite on his body) and a man wearing a kaffiyah, the slogans themselves do not represent Israeli-Arabs at all. HaDag Nachash, The Sticker Song/ Shirat HaSticker, You Tube, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omt29oQe5RI> 25 For example, the bumper sticker mandatory enlistment to everyone is the political demand directed by secular Jews at Orthodox Jews who do not serve the obligatory army term yet influence much of Israels foreign policy. 26 HaDag Nachash, Bereshit/In the Beginning or Gensis, Chomer Mekomi/Local Stuff (Hed Artzi Records, 2003). 27 The official title of the song in English is Born Here. I have emphasized the word here since in Hebrew it is emphasized by being first linguistically: Here Born. In Hebrew, both word orders are grammatically correct, so the choice of using Kan first emphasizes it. 28 Subliminal frequently uses Zionist-national signs like the Israeli flag, its blue-andwhite colors, or the Star of David abundantly in his artwork and on stage. One of his album features a fist emerging from the mud holding a Star of David pendant (Haor VeHaTezel/The Light and the Shadow, (Helicon Records, 2002)). Another album is titled HaOr MeTzion/The Light from Zion, (Helicon Records, 2000). 29 Subliminal and The Shadow, Tikva/Hope Live You Tube, <http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=45DO58ELXvI> 30 Universal Sea, Israels Eminem Wins Fans, Angers Critics, U Magazine Online, <http://www.universalmetropolis.com/magazine/articles.php?article=Israels+Emine m+wins+fans%2C+angers+critics> (5 Dec 2003). 31 Universal Sea. 32 Channels of Rage/Arotzim Shel Zaam, Anat Halchmi, dir. (2003). 33 Other rappers have also used this term to identify their music, as previously noted: Gabi and Debi, LaZooz/To Move, (Hed Artzi Records, 2003). 34 Regev and Seroussi, 25. 35 David, Nitzanim Groove (Iam, HaDag Nachash, Tea Packs), Qube.co.il Website, <http://www.qube.co.il/liveshow_rev.asp?sid=&aid=87&ar_id> 36 Regev and Seroussi, 25. 37 Ibid. 38 To clarify, my interpretation of this line is: I believe in Zionism, and the democratic

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dream of Herzel of the Jewish utopian state, which includes me in it, but you, IsraeliJews and Israel as a state, do not enable me to even have the basic right of having my own home, let alone a porch, or a voice to proclaim my belief, be it patriotic or not. Also note the choice of the word regime which makes the critique of state-power explicit. 39 Theodor Herzl, Old-New Land/Altneuland, Lotta Levensohn, trans. (New York: Bloch Publishing Co. and Herzl Press, 1960). <http://www.hagshama.org.il/en/resources/view.asp?id=1600> 40 For the analysis of song lyrics and video clips by veteran old school American rappers like Public Enemy and KRS One against police harassment of African Americas read Tricia Roses Prophets of Rage in Black Noise. 41 A clip of Born Here, directed by Israeli-Arab Julian Marr, is available on You Tube: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIo6lyP9tTE> DAMs Official Website is <http://www.dampalestine.com> 42 Ibid. 43 Kanoladeti, Shatil Website <http://www.shatil.org.il/site/static.asp?apd=39>

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A Dead Republican
by Jesse Francis

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Contributors

Humberto Ballesteros was born in Bogot, Colombia, in 1979. He will graduate from the Draper Program this summer. He recently finished his first novel, Diario para Ariadna/A Diary for Ariadne. Jesse Francis is a graduate student at NYU. Tamara Hammond is a first year Draper student. Because she has lived in five countries, including her native Bulgaria, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and her current home, the U.S., she considers herself a cosmopolitan individual. She is interested in art, history, different cultures, and traveling around the world. Brooke Hughes is a graduate student at New York University studying visual culture. Her current work has been in photography, performance art, comparative literature, as well as culture and communication studies. Shahrzad Kamel is a graduate student at NYU. Yael Korat graduated from NYU in May 2007 and intends to apply to cultural studies PhD programs to further pursue her curiousity about informal education and the social impact of glocal music. You are invited to visit her upcoming website at http://www.wordsonscreens.com. Jeremy Lybarger is. And writes sometimes.

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Melissa Maldonado-Salcedo is a student in the Latin American Studies Program. She is an experimental cartographer, whose interests include migration, religiosity and the performance of conversion. Pat McIntyre is a September 2007 graduate of NYUs Draper Program in Humanities and Social Thought. He plans to apply to either interdisciplinary or continental philosophy PhD programs in the near future. Former publications include Threads of Vision: Diderot, Melville, and Bataille in the Puerto Rican limited-edition artists book, AGUJA. Chandani Patel is a second year Draper student pursuing a concentration in Literary Cultures with particular emphasis on Indian migrants and their resultant conceptions of home. She hope to obtain a PhD in Comparative Literature after completing her Masters studies. Shulamit Seidler-Feller is a graduate student at NYU. Cara Shepley, a first year Draper student, is back in the states after living in Japan. Her academic interests include postcolonial and aesthetic theory, childrens literature, and poetry. She also works for Scholastic, but is tragically unaffiliated with Harry Potter. Camila Vergara is a journalist and historian from Chile. Currently, she is a graduate student in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University and is doing research on the role of social movements in transitions to democracy in Latin America.

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Colophon

300 copies of Anamesa were printed by Sterling Pierce Co., Inc. East Rockaway, New York www.sterlingpierce.com The text of Anamesa is set in the old-style serif typeface Stempel Garamond, trademark of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, first released in 1925 by D. Stempel AG. Stempel Garamond is a revival of the types cut by Claude Garamond (ca. 1480-1561) in Paris during the first part of the sixteenth century. The sans serif typeface is part of the Univers family of fonts released by Linotype in 1997. Univers was originally designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1957 and was painstakingly reworked by Frutiger and Linotype for the updated 1997 version. The Anamesa masthead is set in Marigold, a font originally designed by calligrapher Arthur Baker, and released by Agfa Compugraphic in 1989. Visit www.anamesa.org for more information. r