Half a century ago, an anarchic scholar struck out to write a heroic story of peasants. As the bodies piled up in Vietnam, it seemed as if people actually cared about peasants. The task had not been easy, given that peasants usually serve as the stage upon which more dramatic disputes between nationalists and colonizers are performed. But in the archives he uncovered books and records to wield against those who had discounted his lowly peasants.
The heroic peasants were a good start for the anarchic scholar. But, after national liberation struggles began claiming that the heart of the nation beat within the peasant, the scholar found an even more elusive class of people: hill peoples, those who buck authorities with a run to the hills. Through diligent scholarship, he was able to bring together an impressive array of theories and terms to describe how people transformed themselves into poor materials for state-making.
The anarchic scholar loved how hill peoples’ slash-and-burn culture was an elaborate trick to be left alone. But everything is different now, he reluctantly admitted. After World War II, it all changed. Most States used technologies, both mechanical and human, to eliminated their “dark twins” in the hills. Space was spanned, he said. The peoples still in the hills were the last ones to escape, and they are on the verge on disappearing, he lamented.
Not far away, a similar discovery was made.
A young college student was tired of the usual posturing of campus activism. The daily barrage of manufactured urgency and its subsequent oppression Olympics asphyxiated most of us long ago. But he had a plan. And the brutal human cost of Reagan’s flagrant imperialism in Latin America demanded a response. So, after gaining a little know-how in engineering, with a focus on alternative energy, he headed south to make a real contribution to ‘people who could use help.’
But after he got there, the student felt out of place, as if that struggle was not his struggle. The projects he worked on were practical, no doubt. Computer donations from the States were not hurting the people of El Salvador, but they were not really helping that much either. When he looked for guidance, they were kind but blunt. War torn El Salvador did not need engineering solutions to political problems.
Look, just go to the mountains, the comrade later said to the student. The student shot back an incredulous glance. Look, you have mountains here. Just go to the mountains. That’s what we do, get some guns, go to the mountains, and wage a revolution. The student responded thoughtfully, suggesting that, yes, there were mountains in Seattle, but that does not make any sense. A few moments later, with an embarrassed grin, he admitted that it simply does not correspond to my reality at all.
The anarchic scholar and the student of revolution silently agree. For most of us, there is no sense in running to the hills. Before, the hills made sense; they were once a place without history, void of space and time. In this non-place, a u-topia, there existed a people without a history. And while it is said that the history of people is the history of class struggle, it would be at least as truthful to say that the history of peoples without history is the history of the struggle for escape. But with the great latticework of surveillance and control that now spans most of the developed world, the veil of spatial isolation has been pierced. So today, the hills cannot make class struggle or freedom a reality.
The answer may be so simple it is already obvious to you, the reader: escape does and will always exist, but escape depends on the context. The second clause is the less contentious of the two, especially given our postmodern culture that breeds a relativism that asks for deferral, pending more complexity (Jameson, “Postmodernism”: 65-6). So, I will begin there. But it is my ultimate aim to convince you of the first clause: even if you feel the authorities hot on your trail, escape is right around the corner. Therefore, when my examination ends with the demolition of the distinction between the valley and the hill or the town and the country, I shift to the new paths of escape that have opened up under the towering figure of the Metropolis. To escape today, one does not run to the hills but burrows deeper into the dark underside of the Metropolis.
Powerful writing. I’m reminded by a similar story Michael Hardt told about going to south America. It’s in a documentary with a name I can’t remember, but he’s paddling around on a boat while he tells the story.
Maybe it was the same one that inspired you – all the same, I appreciate the style of telling stories without all too clear origins. It’s not only a powerful myth making tool (similar to ghost stories?), in the sense that we suddenly get the feeling that there are so many things happening that does not get caught up by encyclopaedias, snatched by news media or published in books. Rumours, tales and anecdotes does this. In a very concrete way it also creates ZOO in our writing. Because just maybe there was a published origin, where I – if I have friends inside the ZOO – can go and look for traces, find the hidden place and occupy it.
Of course, the academic writing process forces you (at least in theory) into transparency. But I’m sure there are ways to escape that as well, and that most academics seek to do that already.
How does your schedule look like for the dissertation? Excited to see where the writing will take you.
I was tempted to not publish dissertation fragments, as I was afraid they were too fragile for public scrutiny, and anything negative would dash my paper-thin will to write. Your kind comments have convinced me otherwise.
Years ago I used to provide a citation for every sentence I wrote. I would hunt through my books after typing a single positive claim, erecting a defense through careful footnoting. Only recently have I gained a voice of my own. Being in the humanities, I’ve found that I am able to distance myself even further from the social science habit of littering original thoughts with millions of perfunctory citations and asides. No doubt the French writing style I’m emulating has birthed an army of clones, all of whom have made careers commenting on the millions of hidden interlocutors and subtexts that authors refused to cite.
You note the positive side to such a style, however. Writing with force while simultaneously giving a voice, often through free-indirect discourse, to multiple perspectives without feeling the need to resolve it all in the end. It reminds me when ATP implores “To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.”
Scheduling:: I have a “hurry up quick” version in the case that I get some post-docs that I’ve applied to, due date July 2012. I have a “your funding is secure” version that I would draw out until June-July 2013.