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

Mon Feb 22 01:29:25 AEDT 2016

Hola Robert,

Thanks so much for your thoughts.

Yes, I do think that constructing an ethics at the level of the micro as 
opposed to the macro-scale is
really important diagram.

How much can communities open to flow of the strangers into their zones 
of being?

And to be aware that at the micro-scale even immigrant communities may 
not be welcoming of immigrants.

So that the call of total hospitality becoming more than hospitality is 
not possible at any level or only in
very specific forms, times, and places.

That even the categories of refugees, immigrants, asylum seeker, and 
economic immigrants cannot do justice to
the specificity of individual needs, stories, and states of violence 
each encounters back home or as homeless.

(In Escape Routes one immigrant from Syria navigates the borders by 
becoming different people-he "the end" his journey
becoming a women who has been married and divorced twice-and now has 
multiple "homeless" identities. Some of the
of those citizens without borders chose to be imperceptible (an never 
seek rights or representation that are equated with the
police-state.)

What is the calculus of decision, of an ethics-without-ethics, at the 
macro-scale that allows some to cross and others to be denied?

For instance I have come to understand that at the new border in 
Germany-the process seems random, like
a lottery? So that ethics of decision are not bound to "objective" 
analysis of the individual-but instead an "objective" game
of chance without-the-need-for-ethics. Or perhaps a higher-ethics of 
chaosmosis.

And either one failing before the singularities of each individual's 
needs and reasons. And specific response awaiting them after they across 
the line with even deeper states of alienation awaiting them, even among 
the "own" communities.

We end up is a space where their is hope but not for them or us in 
finding an ethical calculus of crossing or being crossed.

With Abrazos of Anti-Anti Utopianism,
Ricardo

On 2/20/16 11:58 AM, Robert Irwin wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> I have not had a chance to participate as much as I would have like 
> this week and I apologize.
>
> I think some important issues come up here. I think it is important to 
> get up as close as we can to the human experience of migration from as 
> many angles as possible in order to understand its complexities and 
> the ethical issues implied in assuming any position, whether in our 
> politics, our art or our academic work.
>
> I think the focus in the line of discussion here (below) on 
> hospitality is an important one. While we might tend to think about 
> hospitality in terms of a "nation" and whether or not it "opens its 
> doors" to refugees or other categories of migrant or not (and I insist 
> that although war refugees certainly are deserving of attention, if 
> accepting them means turning away others that for not being war 
> refugees are automatically categorized as "economic immigrants", this 
> response is ultimately brutal and indefensible), this is a gross 
> oversimplification, that only begins to get at the diversity in human 
> experience of migration. The emigration of refugees is a form of 
> violent displacement; the deportation of "economic immigrants" is 
> often a form of displacement that is no less violent.
>
> There is a much read book in the US on historical processes of Mexican 
> migration called /Becoming Mexican American/ (George Sánchez 1995) 
> that focuses on community building in Los Angeles. Immigration is 
> often thought in this way: migrants arriving and gradually becoming 
> comfortable as they are accepted into an ever growing community of 
> peers. However, many migration stories, including those that are not 
> merely about so-called circular migration (in reference to those whose 
> aim is only to earn some money then return to their hometown), reflect 
> not only rejection by the mainstream of the host country (whether 
> institutions, vigilante groups, neighbors, etc.) but perhaps a lack of 
> hospitality among immigrant communities - stories of often abject 
> alienation that end in homelessness, incarceration, detention, 
> deportation. These stories are much less well known.
>
> The notion of community tends to be used very casually. Many 
> immigrants, even in the context of long established flows such as the 
> US-Mexico borderlands, are not unambiguously received by a welcoming 
> community of peers. Alienation is a more important part of many 
> individual stories than we tend to think. In many cases, there is 
> simply no community to receive them, but rather individuals here and 
> there who may or may not help them find shelter, work, food.
>
> Ricardo defines unconditional hospitality in a way that would seem to 
> be untenable perhaps for even the most tolerant individuals living in 
> immigrant destinations, including those who manage to settle in stable 
> communities composed of fairly recent immigrants. What would be a 
> reasonable and viable ethical limit of conditional hospitality? What 
> variables might be used to define such a limit? Would they have to do 
> with the motives for their migration? the potential consequences of 
> their forced return? their state of alienation? their state of 
> material need?
>
> Best,
>
> Robert
>
>
>
>
> 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:
>>>
>>> *
>>> *
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> *
>>> *
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> *
>>> *
>>>
>>> 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."
>>>
>>> *
>>> *
>>>
>>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
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>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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