[-empyre-] The Remittance State of Being and Becoming

[Ricardo Dominguez]

On 2/18/16 6:50 PM, Alva Mooses wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
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>
Hola,
>
> Ricardo, thank you for the link to Alex Rivera’s film. It is 
> interesting to know this is happening in Newburgh. I’ve been there a 
> few times and as a city it is struggling with cultural and economic 
> development, this raises questions like:
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> How do migrant communities insert themselves into the communities they 
> move to?
>
It depends on the double intersection of how the open the communities 
are to the immigrants and to what degree a pre-established
ground has been staged by those immigrants that came before.

Some individuals may never become a part of that the communities they 
end up living for the rest of their lives-another Alex Rivera
film about his own father, who spends all his non-work life watching 
Peruvian TV:

An experimental video about immigration. Looking at the potato (which 
was first cultivated in Peru) Papapapá paints a picture of a vegetable 
that has traveled and been transformed—following the migrating potato 
North where it becomes the potato chip, the couch potato, and the french 
fry. Papapapá simultaneously follows another Peruvian in motion, the 
artist’s father, Augusto Rivera. The stories of the two immigrants, the 
potato and Papa Rivera, converge as Augusto becomes a Peruvian couch 
potato, sitting on an American sofa, eating potato chips and watching 
Spanish language television.

http://www.vdb.org/titles/papapapa
>
> And in return, how open or inviting is the place?
>
Yes, the question of "hospitality" is a core issue. This also echos for 
me Derrida's 'possible’ conception of hospitality, in which our most 
well-intentioned conceptions of hospitality render the "other others" as 
strangers and refugees. Whether one invokes the current international 
preoccupation with border control, or simply the ubiquitous suburban 
fence and alarm system, it seems that hospitality always posits some 
kind of limit upon where the other can trespass, and hence has a 
tendency to be rather inhospitable. On the other hand, as well as 
demanding some kind of mastery of house, country or nation, there is a 
sense in which the notion of hospitality demands a welcoming of 
whomever, or whatever, may be in need of that hospitality. It follows 
from this that unconditional hospitality, or we might say 'impossible' 
hospitality, hence involves a relinquishing of judgement and control in 
regard to who will receive that hospitality. In other words, hospitality 
also requires non-mastery, and the abandoning of all claims to property, 
or ownership. If that is the case, however, the ongoing possibility of 
hospitality thereby becomes circumvented, as there is no longer the 
possibility of hosting anyone, as again, there is no ownership or control.
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> The challenges of working class immigrants integrating into American 
> cities should not be generalized, but the remittance culture does 
> imply a desire to return to one’s country of origin.
>
Yes, I agree, who is integrated, who is welcomed-as a number of 
participants on the list serv has pointed is about class integration 
speeds and abilities in the new space.

And yes, remittance culture is the call of home that one wants to return 
to-to be "homeless" to produce or maintain "home" as a possibility.
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> Grupo Union’s focussed goals in Boqueron seem key to navigating their 
> many obstacles. The fragmentation of a life connected to disparate 
> places is used as a tool for empowerment by establishing themselves in 
> both cities and circulating the resources they have access to.
>
By transversing the fantasy, the impossible, the field of dreams (a 
baseball field) they do create agency in the fractalilty of being 
"homeless."
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> It becomes problematic however, if the undocumented in Newburgh, as in 
> many other places, are isolated or disconnected from their immediate 
> environment.
>
This is always/already the state of un-documented existences and the 
always/already condition of networked cultures to some degree.
The condition of virtual immigration states of being.
>
>
> Kindest regards,
>
Sorry for the long response, Alva.

Very best,
Ricardo
>
>
> Alva
>
>
>
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