[-empyre-] Contrapuntos Dinamicos

[Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet <rfbalanquet@cartodigital.org>]

Dear Friends, Amigos de la lista


It resonates the issue of time and committeemen to writing I want to
clarify that I completely understand the different reasons why the
written silence navigates the list. A lot of us are tide to academic
institutions and we are at the end of the semester, some of us, like
myself, are involved in the production of major events, other are
working hard to finish the manuscripts that must be on the publishing
house yesterday, en fin, there many reasons and my last posting was
an Ode to celebrate that process.

Ryan;

I am always redefining my critical thinking and myself. A long time a
go I realized that the transformative nature of our critical thinking
allow us for permission to change our discourse. It is also, as you
pointed out, an strategy on location, as the Guerra de Guerrilla
employ in my cultural territories, you break apart, regroup in
another instance, move into many directions, never confine the
discourse to an static dimension so we can constantly free ourselves
from the
colonial/informational/capitalist/phalocentric/oppressive/fundamentalist
energy.
Here is a key element in bordercrossing.

I also have understood that my way of thinking or critical discourse
is not the answer to others. If I don't validate your position, even
if I don't agree, I will be enacting the same oppressive force that I
reject. When we allow ourselves to hear the other voices, we break
the phalocolonial power that always dictates how to run the game. In
this process of variable communication we can find points of
agreement and difference. I really don't understand how some people
stereotypes me as "the enemy" because we don't think alike. How
boring will be the world if we all eat the same food (Well, there is
goes for Coca Cola, McDonalds, Malboro).

Kate;

I also agree that we need the phallic and there is goes Laura
Mulvey's questioning of pleasure. It is sad that the linguistic
references we used to codified the spatial relation of knowledge,
culture, economic and social interaction are overshadowed by the
binary opposition of the gender issue. I vote for a hybrid variable
geometry where the diverse spatial views of many cultures could
co-exist in relation to the khaos, the cosmic energy.

Christina;

What most attracted me to your work was the way in which the creative
process interconnects in the Carrizo Diaries. I keep arguing for a
more interdisciplinary approach to creativity and critical thinking,
but it seems that the old dry rhetoric of specialized theory keep
blocking the flow of knowledge that emanates from a critical
perspectives that integrates the social, the cultural, the
historical, the spiritual and the subjective.

Apreciado Jooeser;

Voce tiene toda la razón. Si hay un fetishimo con la tecnología
asociado con lo digital. Muchos se olvidan que "digitus" significa
dedo (aquí está la sabiduría) y que lo digital parte de nuestro
contacto humano.

Eduardo;

Con todo tu respect. I want to answer to this part of your posting

"I believe that we cannot proclaim the culture of "our ancestors."
That time is gone.  Latin America after its decolonization process
was left with pluralities which are not yet fully understood because
the culture keeps changing based on its turbulent past."

You assert that Latin America lives a present after decolonization. I
don't know from where you draw this conclusion. Are you talking about
the Spanish ruling? Because if that is the case, I would like to
point out that the Spaniards came along with the Catholic Church and
they massacred the native, imposed brutal and barbaric punishments in
the name of God and burn a lot of the ancient manuscripts (Most of
the one left are in European Libraries: Madrid, Dresden).  Still
today,  the Catholic Church colonizes the mind of million of people
in Latin America. And nobody can tell me that we have a different
church. It is the same Klan; dominated by men, a well-organized
ideological system that lives off the work of many here. It is the
same Klan that opposes reproductive rights, ethnic equality,
religious diversity and sexual freedom. How can we talk of "after"
if the Mayan temples are used by the neo liberal Mexican government
as tourist attraction contributing to the destruction of sacred
buildings? Oh si, but the Cathedrals built with the rocks stolen form
the  Aztecas and Mayan temples and with the brutal enforcement of
labor upon the native are still up as if the true religion of Latin
America were only one. And in that trail, how can we talk about
decolonization if we have seen in the last 30 years the colonization
of our spiritual selves by the Anglican, The Baptist, The Mormon, The
Jehovah Witness, all eurocentric religions that came with boxes of
canned food, making the people believe that those chemical processed
food was going to save their starvation and poverty and now occupy a
very scary location in our landcape?

How can we talk about decolonization when most of the Latin American
countries, except Cuba and the rocking Venezuela have economies
controled by the US banks/government/Corporations? How can we talk
about decolonization if the people from the country you were born, El
Salvador, after suffering one of the most cruel and horrendous civil
war supported by the US government in the 1980's, is facing the
social issues of the Salvatruchas, who in the name of social
inequality are responding to their historical condition.

I do not fetish my ancestor as if I were a new age seeker in search
of my lost soul. Thanks to my spiritual upbringing and my constant
process of inquiring, I have searched into the knowledge of the
people marginalized by the European colonial process and there I have
found not only answers, but the strength to decolonized by
subconscious, my soul and spirit, which is mi gran amigo, as Fanon
and Foucault have greatly pointed out, the space where the true
emancipation process takes place, not in the rhetoric of linguistic
references that are constructed as an ideological apparatus to
oppress others.

Cuando hablo de los ancestors, quiero implicar que nuestra identidad
es un sitema de flujo que navega en muchas direcciones y que si la
estancas en nuestro presente "multi-etnico" o "hibrido" pierdes las
conexiones con el conocimiento que hemos heredados de nuestros
abuelos y con las proyeciones que nos da el futuro. Anclarse en un
determinado tiempo es un arma de doble filo. Yo me considero 100%
meztizo, pero esa unidad es una fragmentacion mutante que me lleva a
mi herencia Arabe, mi herencia Africana, Mi herencia Canaria, Mi
herencia Catalana, mi herencia Haitiana, mi identidad Cubana
Caribeña, mi identidad sexual y todas con conexiones historicas que
informan mi pensamiento crítico y la producción de conocimiento y
creatividad.

If I keep rooted to a present hybrid identity, I will reinscribe the
colonial process blocking the tribal memory I have inherited thanks
to the mix. I owe this process to Fanon's work, Foucault's history of
punishment, Deluze and Guatari's Rhizome, Jung's psychology, Angel
Rama's interpretation of our social and physical architecture, Stuart
Hall's issues of representation, Babha's understanding of the
geometrical complexities of identity, Laura Mulvey's questioning
pleasure, Benitez Roja's the Repeated Island, Rudolph Arnheim's
Entropy, Anzaldua's delineation of bordercrossing, Audry Lord's
social activism, Ortega y Gasset's critique of scientific
rationalism, Said's historical analysis of representation, Mayan's
though, The Books of Chilam Balam, My experience as a Santero,
Castell"s space of flow, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Pasolini's
radical communism, Althuser, Fassbinder, Lezama Lima?

Eduardo, how can I forget my Ancestors?

--
Raúl Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet MFA
Curador Ejecutivo/ Arte Nuevo InteractivA
http://www.cartodigital.org/interactiva
interactiva@cartodigital.org