COMMUNITAS - New Africa

A while ago artist Frank J Miles engaged me on a project he has been workin on in New York called COMMUNITAS, asking me to write a text for the next instalment of the event to be held at Dixon Place NY on the 30th of June 2015.

If I remember correctly it was before Baltimore and most of violence from police towards black african americans started ahowing up in media. I was engaged in a research of the ideas of Pier Paolo Pasolini and especially his text Civil War and poem and he wished that I participate with something related to that subject. During the course of what happened and what is currently happening I wrote a text mixing prose and a poem trying to conceptually create a flawless integration between the two styles and the two subjects.

What I realised after I wrote this text was that I really wanted to understand the question how is it possible to have a community with this historical background and current social context?

You can see some links here:
http://dixonplace.org/performances/communitas-3/
http://www.artinoddplaces.org/a-conversation-with-frank-j-miles-on-communitas/
https://www.facebook.com/COMMUNITASFJM

I am dubious as to what I achieved and or if I understood anything, so I will post the whole text uncritically. I wrote:

"What I have decided to present for COMMUNITAS at Dixon Place 161A chrystie street new york ny 10002 is the in the form of a text framing 2 poems, one by myself called ”New Africa”, and the other by Pier Paolo Pasolini called ”Il PCI ai giovani” for which there is a translation from eflux into english as well as the original at the end.

Archbishop Munib Yunnan told me on my highschool graduation day that I am a ”white arab”. It never puzzled me before the Baltimore raceriots and especially the Rachel Dolezal case.

(note: for some reason blogger is changing the colour of the text of the next part and I cannot get it to change back, somewhat reminiscent of the issue at hand, please select it to see it.)

If Dolezal is serious, and even if she is not, we should seriously consider the case of transraciality as was argued in. And I say this of course from a position of privilage. But also from a pan european point of view, my youth covering the middle-east as well as north eastern finland.

I would compare here her to trans culture and degredetion there of. The levels of hatred towards the possibility of a fluid race concept is overwhelmingly strong, appearing in LGBT trans culture, which I follow closely.

The question to everyone is: What do you think the levels of anxiety Dolezal was feeling in the totally racist (as the interview clearly demonstrates) culture the US is as she was presented with the dilemma of going after journalists who had misrepresented her using transracial as they had adopted black children, describing I would imagine the family as a whole, and now argued to only apply to the children as opposite race to the parents.

I dream Ornette Coleman would have said ”Only the african american is confined enough to have invented Jazz.”

The real question for europeans and almost everyone else is what is essentially wrong with feeling of a different skin colour? It is only right to question this position. But what is the long term gameplan to change the way white privilage disappears from the US?

The question for an african americans is SO much more complex, but I am beginning to grasp it slowly. The civil rights movement was in reality a scesession movement as much as any, evidence is that all the extreme fraction of the black nationalist communities called for it. (If it would have happened we would be in a totally different world.) Problem is that those leaders were all killed by the white master race. And secession was denied from a deserving community.

This is the knot.

The issue is much larger. I was recently listening to a lot of honorable Malcom (he never actually says his name is malcom x in any interview, just malcom as far as I could find). From here it is obvious that here is a man totally traumatized by lack of heritage. He says that his name and culture were taken away from his great grandfather or grandfather by the slave master. If we count the number 381 or 400 years in generations we notice that there are 6 ancestors of which 4 do not know their original cultural heritage. What were the measure by which people were forced out of communicating in any way their native heritage from when they were captured and sold off as slaves?

Here we start perhaps understanding where the african american stands and why this is all so difficult. And I am trying to put as much irony into that statement purely because of despair. And we must also remember, like honorable Malcom says that there are 2 types of black african american. There are the house slaves, and there are the field slaves.

That even the white man, did not have one black man.

There is always Friday.

Now you all see that these things are tied into the american contemporary mythology.

Capitalism was the game changer as white people realised that they cannot operate in Africa proper.

They need a proxy, a token.

Now, here what is interesting, and connecting to the Dolezal case, is to imagine a situation where white people become tokens, tools for the black man to succeed in the world, to go where no black man has gone before. Skull and Bones of course, not the White House and Obama definitely is a white man.

This is a reason why people like Dolezal are essential and it is important to aknowledge it. The NAACP has a history of this, for example Walter White "Why I investigate lynchings", this is not only a history the white man wants to destroy it is a personality that it want's gone with it.

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/segregation/text2/investigatelynchings.pdf

I would like to do two things. Talk a little about the wider community from this context I just presented if it is even at all possible. As I find it very difficult to imagine what US culture really is like.

And attempt at hitting a mark on both the black and white sides respectively. The reason I would like to hit upon a mark is that we are so caught up in the race question. The interview of Dolezals' NBC Today Show clearly demonstrates that a racial divide is still very much in the language i.e. 'your parents are caucasian you should identify caucasian.'

This of course makes no more sense then 'your mother is a woman, you should idenfity as a woman.' Only when you look at it from the point of view of the african american white woman does it start to make sense.

The point that both race and gender are biological and cultural should be made. Both are.

My other point of approach starts from Pier Paolo Pasolinis' text ”Civil War” in which he describes his visit to the US and subsequent feelings.

(pdf copy of Civil War:) http://www.citylights.com/resources/download.cfmGCOI=87286100743270&thefile=InDangerExcerptCL.pdf

And the quote sparked as a explanation for his 1968 poem "Il PCI ai giovani" which you can read in full as well as a rough translation at the bottom of this text.

The quote itself, which is from an interview:

”There are two ways of creating racial hatred towards the poor. First, keep them poor and they will be come to be hated. Make them police and they will be accused of being killers. Being killers they will be open to racial hatred.”

The point of the poem itself should obvious even to the most ardent communist, you should not blame the police when it is your rich fathers who are the jurors and legal advocates making the laws through which you are being oppressed!

This is more then obviously also the case in contemporary US. And is very much connected to the American Dream and the middle class.

A friend of mine hopes for military intervention from the outside. I actually hope the same but for Israel, demilitarizing the whole area. But as we can see from the way Likud policies are being perpetrated it is obvious that even the most extreme forms of violence will not be opposed by the general population of the western world when it is not effecting them directly but through secondary and tertiary signifiers only: IED, PTSD etc.

It is problematic to state that ”one should not oppose violence” when it is obvious that one should. Yet, I do believe that we have a moral obligation even to respond to the types of structural and direct violence white people have created throughout history and especially the way the culture of violence is developing at the moment in communities.

Perhaps we should be asking if it is possible to be a community when there is one clear side that responds to all actions by more and more draconian laws with which to control and further enslave ideologically, and now through information, a population.

I had wanted to write something else really.

An european perspective at first, or at least attempt some artistic approach to what we could do in terms of community action outside of violence.

As such my first responce was flarf and what is termed as offensive.

But even when you just want to slap everyone awake from their collective illusion of race politics.

But I will present that poem at the end here.

To work a vision of the Baltimore situation or NYPD from the point of view of this Pasolini quote. But I came to think that it spoke for itself.

If you look at Baltimore police numbers per city there is a clear discrepency between the number of police men in relation to the population in 2 cities besides Baltimore.

But what I really wanted to do was write a poem an offensive poem. Something really offensive but also absurd. What I know from workin with trauma is that some point there will always be a tipping point in which something either must be worked out or you will perish. And I think it is partly this fear that drives the human to unact out of comfort.

What is important is to end to the propagation of fear.

The absurdity of fear in the face of hatred.

Poem #1 ”New Africa”

Touch is always sovereign.

We are all strached over the earth

We aren't in this all together

Fragmentation, fractioning, alienation

Annexation of the individual.

What if I were to kidnap a black man and take him away from his home?

Can there be a white mans gift before our extermination?

It is the story of the last african america being, kidnapped and transported off to Paradise alive:

STOP or I'll shoot I pointed the gun at the face of this man

he didn't stop I didn't shoot

and we ran like children playing

cowboys and indians.

I out ran this man

side by side like trains competing

I smashed my gun in his face and he fell.

Rolling up a splif, he unconscious, I tied his hands and feet

rolled him up in a persian carpet and Übered him to the harbor

leaving the red bond stained rug on the pier.

My handler came out and greeted me.

He congratulated me on finding the last one,

this would be our last trip east.

My bed was horrid.

Peas in a pie.

Turn up lefward

mulberry pie

What was my dinner list? I don't remember

Bring it up?

Move it up boy or I'll beat you.

These servants were disrespectuful.

cit. Taittirija Upanishad

Paradise will be fantastic, awesome

I remember a direction

iear tear't'dea

sea is

total banality transmutated into matter.

We arrived in Lagos or was it upriver Congo.

Touch is always soveregn because time.

Too much useless information from a ray.

If we are to transubstanciate race we must accept that bones matter more then eyes

we touched each other in the boiling darkness

there was nothing else

like in that book where everyone goes blind

”bony” my partner called it

those bones

close your eyes and lets see where that Leeds us?

The bird was plucking out an eye of a half melted black man

it flew through an open window and shouted; dropping the eye

”spice up your kraw-life”

The dream was solid, the letter ”E” stamped into the landscape

beneath his feet resonated

the eye fell on a porclin plate on a table

around which broken shards were gathered in circle

a chair was two legs in 2 legs out.

What is your fathers name son?

”Abbé”

You remember everything now

Welcome to Paradise my son.

”But everything?”

The eye fell on a porcelein plate was pierced by a fork

poured milk on and cut in half

a left hand middle finger ring finger separated

held on to halves of eyes as fork lifted out

gold hammer flattened the eyes but not fingers

and on the frying pan they went

”I want them medium rare, I said that already once. Go away.”

(”They'll get nothing here I tell you!” Azim said. ”There's nothing we can do to stop it.”

”I will enter.” Tom said.)

We start with an exercise. Close your eyes and touch your face. What does it feel like? What countours? What geography? Altitude? Volume?

It's very important that one forgets to think about symmetry.

It's very important that one forgets to draw.

It's very important that one stops picturing.

Eyes do not matter.

Light is the first instrument.

The first to reach us.

Ray walked up the plank to greet him. This pourous balding white shining sweaty man carrying his coat on his arm. ”disgusting pigs” he thought. ”G'day sir” he said. ”I was just thinking what disgusting looking pigs we have here, don't you think.”

I spar with the devil because he rules the world

and I want to change the world.

Should all white people be killed because of the Athenans?

We should stop following the Atheneans they were monsters. Donna Haraway already killed off humanism.

Enslaving, killing, pillaging, even if we claim the passage of souls as Plato understood it representes the heavenly bodies

it is our bodies that are being smashed

our minds that are being crushed

we are less matter then light.

No things can express what I mean when I say

the complexity of the situation

there is nothing I can say

I have never been black

I have only felt the hands of arab men and women as they feel my light skin and hair in wonder

the touch of hundreds if not thousands of strangers onmy skin through my clothes feeling penetrating, yet I am not convinced this is my trauma.

Recently on a family visit to Marocco my son was taken by a neighbour when we visited my family near Casablanca. His whiteness and size made him easily accessible to the desiring. Even when this was my experience for decades I could not say that this is my trauma.

Exclusion because skin colour when older was obvious. I could never be Israeli. I could never be Palestinian. I could never be Jordanian. I could only be Omani if I converted to Islam. They gave me a Finnish passport.

cheeks pintched rosy red

eyeing grabbing, touching

Backpain makes me stay up at night not my skin colour.

I believe my trauma to be war.

I remember tanks, guns, shootings, bombings,

the best way of not getting killed in a bombing is not going towards the explosion, this is basic.

Everyone should fear the struggle

”but brother

I am here for you

I will stand by you

cry for you

die for you

through every

usable soul”

The solution to the african american problem is their secession.

New Africa

Paradise

But New Africa isn't just a state of mind, it is a place first.

It's a way of being.

Everthing we can dream of

everything we really desire

to address beyond the signs of visual oppression

through the signs of the hand, of closeness

temporance of skin

The reason why New Africa should be in the heart of Old Africa is because it is our choice

Secession is a need, utter desire in the face of total racial segregation

on your own terms

in your own time

Earth is closed not open. We will not fly into space, we will converge with another species one day.

New Africa is at the heart of Old Africa because the contemporary african american has as much in common with the african as does the north european and europe will be destroyed by the coming war between Russia, Nato, China, and Islam.

White people will be subsumed, totally irradicated as the 1% they refuse to see they are.

Historical precedents abound.

A new signifier in european american african history. Unfortunately an African American is as far away from an african as a Finnish person is. They are pets of white people. I can watch them on the zoo of my SocMedScreen.

I always found it strange that europeans treat africans as petite when they are historical and cultural giants.

Not many europeans have ever seen africa.

America is the only country where C.S.Peirce could have happened.

As many other things.

It is the problem of Athenian psychology. And it is the time for revenge. ISIS is the revenging angel.

Their choice of name befits a more ironic personality then most dare to imagine.

So I will give you my prediction.

As I said, my prediction is that white people will be exterminated from this earth as the aristocrats they all are.

This is New Africa.

In my poem I I say ”stop or I'll shoot, the man ran, I didn't shoot”, here is a moral dilemma But ”we ran like indians & cowboys.” Here I am too.

What these two characters have in common is that neither knows their position in the global community. Media covers that for them.

I've recently been wondering what it was like for the first social democrat mp in Finland after the almost half century ban on the political party.

I guess we can ask the facist who have now come back to power after being banned for decades.

Poem #2

Mi dispiace. La polemica contro
il Pci andava fatta nella prima metà
del decennio passato. Siete in ritardo, cari.
Non ha nessuna importanza se allora non eravate ancora nati:
peggio per voi.
Adesso i giornalisti di tutto il mondo (compresi
quelli delle televisioni)
vi leccano (come ancora si dice nel linguaggio
goliardico) il culo. Io no, cari.

Avete facce di figli di papà.
Vi odio come odio i vostri papà.
Buona razza non mente.
Avete lo stesso occhio cattivo.
Siete pavidi, incerti, disperati
(benissimo!) ma sapete anche come essere
prepotenti, ricattatori, sicuri e sfacciati:
prerogative piccolo-borghesi, cari.

Quando ieri a Valle Giulia avete fatto a botte
coi poliziotti,
io simpatizzavo coi poliziotti.
Perché i poliziotti sono figli di poveri.
Vengono da subtopie, contadine o urbane che siano.
Quanto a me, conosco assai bene
il loro modo di esser stati bambini e ragazzi,
le preziose mille lire, il padre rimasto ragazzo anche lui,
a causa della miseria, che non dà autorità.

La madre incallita come un facchino, o tenera
per qualche malattia, come un uccellino;
i tanti fratelli; la casupola
tra gli orti con la salvia rossa (in terreni
altrui, lottizzati); i bassi
sulle cloache; o gli appartamenti nei grandi
caseggiati popolari, ecc. ecc.

E poi, guardateli come li vestono: come pagliacci,
con quella stoffa ruvida, che puzza di rancio
furerie e popolo. Peggio di tutto, naturalmente,
è lo stato psicologico cui sono ridotti
(per una quarantina di mille lire al mese):
senza più sorriso,
senza più amicizia col mondo,
separati,
esclusi (in un tipo d’esclusione che non ha uguali);
umiliati dalla perdita della qualità di uomini
per quella di poliziotti (l’essere odiati fa odiare).

Hanno vent’anni, la vostra età, cari e care.
Siamo ovviamente d’accordo contro l’istituzione della polizia.
Ma prendetevela contro la Magistratura, e vedrete!
I ragazzi poliziotti
che voi per sacro teppismo (di eletta tradizione
risorgimentale)
di figli di papà, avete bastonato,
appartengono all’altra classe sociale.
A Valle Giulia, ieri, si è così avuto un frammento
di lotta di classe: e voi, cari (benché dalla parte
della ragione) eravate i ricchi,
mentre i poliziotti (che erano dalla parte
del torto) erano i poveri. Bella vittoria, dunque,
la vostra! In questi casi,
ai poliziotti si danno i fiori, cari. Stampa e Corriere della Sera, News- week e Monde
vi leccano il culo. Siete i loro figli,
la loro speranza, il loro futuro: se vi rimproverano
non si preparano certo a una lotta di classe
contro di voi! Se mai,
si tratta di una lotta intestina.

Per chi, intellettuale o operaio,
è fuori da questa vostra lotta, è molto divertente la idea
che un giovane borghese riempia di botte un vecchio
borghese, e che un vecchio borghese mandi in galera
un giovane borghese. Blandamente
i tempi di Hitler ritornano: la borghesia
ama punirsi con le sue proprie mani.
Chiedo perdono a quei mille o duemila giovani miei fratelli
che operano a Trento o a Torino,
a Pavia o a Pisa, /a Firenze e un po’ anche a Roma,
ma devo dire: il movimento studentesco (?)
non frequenta i vangeli la cui lettura
i suoi adulatori di mezza età gli attribuiscono
per sentirsi giovani e crearsi verginità ricattatrici;
una sola cosa gli studenti realmente conoscono:
il moralismo del padre magistrato o professionista,
il teppismo conformista del fratello maggiore
(naturalmente avviato per la strada del padre),
l’odio per la cultura che ha la loro madre, di origini
contadine anche se già lontane.

Questo, cari figli, sapete.
E lo applicate attraverso due inderogabili sentimenti:
la coscienza dei vostri diritti (si sa, la democrazia
prende in considerazione solo voi) e l’aspirazione
al potere.

Sì, i vostri orribili slogan vertono sempre
sulla presa di potere.
Leggo nelle vostre barbe ambizioni impotenti,
nei vostri pallori snobismi disperati,
nei vostri occhi sfuggenti dissociazioni sessuali,
nella troppa salute prepotenza, nella poca salute disprezzo
(solo per quei pochi di voi che vengono dalla borghesia
infima, o da qualche famiglia operaia
questi difetti hanno qualche nobiltà:
conosci te stesso e la scuola di Barbiana!)
Riformisti!
Reificatori!
Occupate le università
ma dite che la stessa idea venga
a dei giovani operai.

E allora: Corriere della Sera e Stampa, Newsweek e Monde
avranno tanta sollecitudine
nel cercar di comprendere i loro problemi?
La polizia si limiterà a prendere un po’ di botte
dentro una fabbrica occupata?
Ma, soprattutto, come potrebbe concedersi
un giovane operaio di occupare una fabbrica
senza morire di fame dopo tre giorni?
e andate a occupare le università, cari figli,
ma date metà dei vostri emolumenti paterni sia pur scarsi
a dei giovani operai perché possano occupare,
insieme a voi, le loro fabbriche. Mi dispiace.

È un suggerimento banale;
e ricattatorio. Ma soprattutto inutile:
perché voi siete borghesi
e quindi anticomunisti. Gli operai, loro,
sono rimasti al 1950 e più indietro.
Un’idea archeologica come quella della Resistenza
(che andava contestata venti anni fa,
e peggio per voi se non eravate ancora nati)
alligna ancora nei petti popolari, in periferia.
Sarà che gli operai non parlano né il francese né l’inglese,
e solo qualcuno, poveretto, la sera, in cellula,
si è dato da fare per imparare un po’ di russo.
Smettetela di pensare ai vostri diritti,
smettetela di chiedere il potere.

Un borghese redento deve rinunciare a tutti i suoi diritti,
a bandire dalla sua anima, una volta per sempre,
l’idea del potere.
Se il Gran Lama sa di essere il Gran Lama
vuol dire che non è il Gran Lama (Artaud):
quindi, i Maestri
- che sapranno sempre di essere Maestri -
non saranno mai Maestri: né Gui né voi
riuscirete mai a fare dei Maestri.

I Maestri si fanno occupando le Fabbriche
non le università: i vostri adulatori (anche Comunisti)
non vi dicono la banale verità: che siete una nuova
specie idealista di qualunquisti: come i vostri padri,
come i vostri padri, ancora, cari! Ecco,
gli Americani, vostri odorabili coetanei,
coi loro sciocchi fiori, si stanno inventando,
loro, un nuovo linguaggio rivoluzionario!
Se lo inventano giorno per giorno!
Ma voi non potete farlo perché in Europa ce n’è già uno:
potreste ignorarlo?
Sì, voi volete ignorarlo (con grande soddisfazione
del Times e del Tempo).
Lo ignorate andando, con moralismo provinciale,
“più a sinistra”. Strano,
abbandonando il linguaggio rivoluzionario
del povero, vecchio, togliattiano, ufficiale
Partito Comunista,
ne avete adottato una variante ereticale
ma sulla base del più basso idioma referenziale
dei sociologi senza ideologia.

Così parlando,
chiedete tutto a parole,
mentre, coi fatti, chiedete solo ciò
a cui avete diritto (da bravi figli borghesi):
una serie di improrogabili riforme
l’applicazione di nuovi metodi pedagogici
e il rinnovamento di un organismo statale. I Bravi! Santi sentimenti!
Che la buona stella della borghesia vi assista!
Inebriati dalla vittoria contro i giovanotti
della polizia costretti dalla povertà a essere servi,
e ubriacati dell’interesse dell’opinione pubblica
borghese (con cui voi vi comportate come donne
non innamorate, che ignorano e maltrattano
lo spasimante ricco)
mettete da parte l’unico strumento davvero pericoloso
per combattere contro i vostri padri:
ossia il comunismo.

Spero che l’abbiate capito
che fare del puritanesimo
è un modo per impedirsi
la noia di un’azione rivoluzionaria vera.
Ma andate, piuttosto, pazzi, ad assalire Federazioni!
Andate a invadere Cellule!
andate ad occupare gli usci
del Comitato Centrale: Andate, andate
ad accamparvi in Via delle Botteghe Oscure!
Se volete il potere, impadronitevi, almeno, del potere
di un Partito che è tuttavia all’opposizione
(anche se malconcio, per la presenza di signori
in modesto doppiopetto, bocciofili, amanti della litote,
borghesi coetanei dei vostri schifosi papà)
ed ha come obiettivo teorico la distruzione del Potere.
Che esso si decide a distruggere, intanto,
ciò che un borghese ha in sé,
dubito molto, anche col vostro apporto,
se, come dicevo, buona razza non mente...

Ad ogni modo: il Pci ai giovani, ostia!
Ma, ahi, cosa vi sto suggerendo? Cosa vi sto
consigliando? A cosa vi sto sospingendo?
Mi pento, mi pento!
Ho perso la strada che porta al minor male,
che Dio mi maledica. Non ascoltatemi.
Ahi, ahi, ahi,
ricattato ricattatore,
davo fiato alle trombe del buon senso.
Ma, mi son fermato in tempo,
salvando insieme,
il dualismo fanatico e l’ambiguità...
Ma son giunto sull’orlo della vergogna.

Oh Dio! che debba prendere in considerazione
l’eventualità di fare al vostro fianco la Guerra Civile
accantonando la mia vecchia idea di Rivoluzione?

From eflux ”a bad translation of a 1968 poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini that was so controversial that it got him expelled from the Communist Party:

Its sad. a critique of
the pci <Italian communist party> should have been done in the first half
of the past decade. You are late, children.
And it doesnt matter that at the time you were not born.
Now the journalists of the entire world (the t.v.
ones included)
kiss your (as they still say, I think, in
university) ass. I dont, friends.
You have the face of daddys boys.
Your clean appearance doesnt lie.
You have that mean look.
You are afraid, uncertain, despairing
(very good) but you also know how to be
spoilt, scheming and arrogant:
petit-bourgeoise values, my friends.
When you were at the Villa Giulia yestday you brawled
with the police,
I sympathised with the policemen!
Because policemen are sons of the poor.
They come from the outskirts, urban and rural.
As for me, I know well
I know how they were as little kids and young men,
the precious penny, the father who never grew up,
because poverty does not bestow authority.
The mother calloused like a porter, or tender,
because of some disease, like a little bird;
the many children, the hut
among the orchards overgrown with red weeds (on someone elses
land); the slums
over the sewers;or the apartments in the vast
council estates, ecc. ecc.
And, look how they dress them up: like clowns,
with that rough cloth that stinks of
uniform and poverty. Worse of all, naturally,
is the psychological state to which they are reduced
(for a handful of dollars a month):
with no more smile,
without any friends in the world,
apart,
excluded (in an exclusion without equals);
humiliated at the loss of their human values
in exchange for police ones (being hated breeds hatred).
They are twenty, your age, my dear boys and girls.
We are all obviously against the institution of the police.
But try going against the courts, and then youll see!
The boy policemen
that you, out of the sacred violence (of the venerable risorgimento
tradition)
of the daddys boy, have beaten,
They belong to the other class.
At Valle Giulia, yesterday, occurred an instance of
class war: and you, my friends (although on the
right side) you were the rich,
while the policemen (who were on the
wrong side) they were the poor.A nice victory, then,
yours! In these cases ,
to the police you should give flowers, my friends."

19.6.2015 02:31

Timo Tuhkanen"