MICRONARRATIVES – SEQUENCE ELEVEN
Events in the rhythms of history
by Azfar Hussain
1
Let me begin with a cartoon-mediated exchange—the cartoon in question appeared in Z a few years ago—between a curious researcher and a corporate capitalist.
Researcher: What, sir, made you appoint an ethicist to the corporation?
Capitalist: We found out we could claim him as a tax deduction, use him as collateral for a loan from a Swiss Bank, and then sell him to a third-world country for ten times his local market value!
2
Capital, too, loves flowers.
And capital loves flowers not because of their aesthetic value but because of their exchange value.
And, of course, in order to account for the outrageously globalized commodification of flowers—not just plastic ones but real ones—one can see how the majority of cut flowers sold in the United States are now imported from Colombia and Ecuador, for instance. And one can certainly look at Kenya and Tanzania—the key overseas suppliers of flowers for Europe.
But, as Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, in their essay called ‘Valentine’s Day Sweatshops,’ tell us: ‘Tutillo [an Ecuadorian flower-worker] explains how hard the work is for Ecuador’s roughly 100,000 flower workers, about 70 percent of whom are women—the faces behind Cupid. The International Labor Organization estimates about 20 percent of the workforce consists of children. The workers generally earn the national minimum wage, $145 per month. They work especially long hours in advance of Valentine’s Day and other flower-giving holidays in the United States. They experience major occupational risks. Back pain is common among those who must stand or lean all day. Repetitive motion injuries are common. Rose pickers are frequently cut by thorns.’
And, yes, the Vietnamese adage runs thus: ‘When you drink your water, never forget the source.’ Commodity fetishism, always in the interest of capital, cashes in on not only just short-circuiting but also brutally erasing the entire history of production and, for that matter, the very history of labor-power that produces value and surplus value.
Capital dirties flowers; it drenches them with at least invisible sweat and blood.
3
Responding to the question ‘where is your home?’ the Korean poet Ko Won tells us in a poem:
To us already,
a birthplace is no longer home.
The place we were brought up is not either.
Our history, rushing to us,
through fields and hills, is our home.
4
So home is historical.
And I emphasize an interplay between the historical and the contextual. In fact, a dialectic can be safely assumed: to historicize is to contextualize, and to contextualize is to historicize.
But it is important to mark how contexts themselves can be rendered vulnerable to manipulations, and that historiography itself—by and large—tends to be selective. Even apparently the ‘most comprehensive’ kind of historiography—even, for instance, the four-volume history of the world by Eric Hobsbawm—cannot avoid being selective one way or another in the final instance. So the crucial questions one might ask are: Who is selecting what? And for what purposes and effects?
Now, historically speaking, certain party-historians come into conflicts with their contending counterparts. But their conflicts keep obscuring or even erasing the very roles the masses themselves play as the real protagonists of history. The individualist and romantic notion of historiography that only a few ‘good’ men or only a few ‘great’ men or only certain political parties make—or can make—history is not only superficial, but is also decisively and dangerously anti-people.
Always three cheers for a few ‘good’ or ‘great’ men, eh? And mark the patriarchal premium placed on those ‘men’ flexing their muscles in the name of making history.
5
I concur with such writers as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and William Blum when they almost mathematically prove that when it comes to US imperialist war—or particularly ‘imperialist and racist war against the Third World,’ as the African revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah used to say—there are no fundamental ideological differences between Republicans and Democrats. Throughout the twentieth century, many wars (not just one) were initiated by Republicans, while many others were initiated by Democrats, and even others were almost jointly waged by both.
For a quick instance, then, let me quote from America’s leading military historian William Blum’s book called Rogue States: ‘Bill Clinton [is a war criminal] for his merciless bombing of the people of Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights, taking the lives of many hundreds of civilians, and producing one of the greatest ecological catastrophes in history, for his relentless continuation of the sanctions and rocket attacks upon the people of Iraq; and for his illegal and lethal bombings of Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan and Afghanistan. [. . .] George Bush [is a war criminal] for the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including many thousands of children, the result of his 40 days of bombing and the institution of draconian sanctions; and for his unconscionable bombing of Panama, producing widespread death, destruction and homelessness, for no discernible reason that would stand up in a court of law.’ As you know, Clinton is a Democrat, and Bush a Republican.
A short poem by Latin America’s writer-activist Roque Dalton makes the point well:
Don’t forget
That the least fascist
Among the fascist
Are still fascist.
6
Let me make a few observations about nationalism in particular at a time when U.S. nationalism and patriotism continue to be the opium of the masses. And this opium is mostly produced by war-instigating leaders who further cash in on manufacturing and naturalizing the fear of being attacked.
And when I think of nationalism, I cannot but think of its different historical versions and political inflections. Thus I think of what might be called ‘imperialist nationalism’ constructed on the binary of ‘superior/inferior’ nations, while I also think of anti-colonial nationalisms that reclaim the sovereignty of the colonized land and the right-to-self-determination. In fact, I find it quite outrageous when some theorists posturing as radicals tend to conflate all versions of nationalism and thus dismiss it summarily. But I also see—in the way that Frantz Fanon does—the ‘pitfalls of nationalism.’ Yes, when nationalism goes crazy or gets aggressive, it tends to border on fascism.
As for U.S. nationalism today, it is not only racist (to be an American, for instance, is to be always already white and English-speaking), but it also responds to the logic of imperialism (‘We’re the best nation on this planet and therefore we have the God-given right to rule your land,’ as President McKinley said once with regard to the Philippines). Thus I argue that any analysis of contemporary U.S. nationalism without an analysis of racism and imperialism—as they remain interconnected—is simply insufficient.
7
Recall the Afro-Asian tsunami disaster?
And recall the egregiously devastating aftermath of the Afro-Asian tsunami disaster that continued with brutal force? Millions of the tsunami-affected poor in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and East Africa remained increasingly vulnerable to death and destruction at a time when George W. Bush had already spent $40 million (more than the amount marked for the tsunami victims) for his own inauguration ceremony. It is true that some ‘aid’ quickly flowed to the wretched of the earth in question. But a number of sources already pointed up the sheer inadequacy of what was called ‘aid.’
Aid?
If a ‘natural’ disaster in the third world is a thoroughly misleading misnomer (it is, of course!), so is ‘aid.’
But to raise the question, Baraka-style: Who aids whom? Writers such as Walter Rodney, Eduardo Galeano, and Pierre Jalee—particularly the Jalee of the book called The Pillage of the Third World—have already demonstrated how the underdevelopment of Asia, Africa, and Latin America is a direct function of the development of the ‘first world’: Bengal was malnourished because England ate well; today the US over-eats because thousands in Asia, Africa, and Latin America die of hunger on a daily basis. Responding to this notoriously deadly calculus—one that remains valid in this age of coffee, Coke, and capitalism—Fanon rightly asserts in The Wretched of the Earth: the first world is literally the creation of the third world.
But US mega-corporations and corporate media want us to forget all these historical and political-economic contexts in the name of providing aid to the victims of the tsunami disaster and other man-made catastrophes. Irony is not at all dead today, despite postmodernism’s anti-irony clap-traps. Mark, then, this: Starbucks and Coca-Cola were involved in ‘aiding’ the tsunami victims in Southeast Asia and South Asia respectively in those corporations’ calculated attempts to morph their ‘humanitarian interventions’ into a chain of global media spectacles. And those corporations are now saying, as a recent Z cartoon puts it: ‘Okay, we need a campaign to tell the public that we put social responsibility ahead of profits (so we can make more profits).’
And, yes, Starbucks donated money to Indonesians with a certain amount of zeal—money that is, however, made from coffee grown in Indonesia’s plantations on which numerous Indonesian laborers had already died brutal and unnatural deaths over the years. In fact, coffee is the world’s second most prized global commodity (next to oil)—produced in as many as 70 countries. According to Harsha Walia’s report, ‘Starbucks, in particular, has grown at an astounding average rate of 28 percent in the past 5 years, with its market value reaching almost $15 billion in 2004. Meanwhile, an estimated 25 million coffee farmers exist at the bottom of the poverty line.’
But, see, Starbucks is now waxing lyrical on its accomplishments in the area of ‘humanitarian aid.’
Give us a break: the damn Star does not produce your bucks, you bet!
And, yes, the story of doing dirty business with coffee is no different from the story of doing equally dirty business with Coke. And Coca-Cola sent bottled water to South Asia, while Coca-Cola thoroughly devastates fertile agricultural land in India by drawing on a daily basis more than 250, 000 liters of underground water from a single Indian province alone, just to give one tiny example. It is not for nothing that a peasant organizer from India—Nandalal Master of Lok Samiti—recently said, ‘Drinking Coke is like drinking farmers’ blood in India.’
In closing, a short song by a Bengali street singer Kalu Faqir (in my quick translation):
O master, you’ve stolen my money.
But now you give me some, calling it help.
And, o master, if I’m not grateful for what you give,
you ridicule me or whip me again and again.
O master, you’re the master of it all.
Dr Azfar Hussain taught English, cultural studies, and comparative ethnic studies at Washington State University and Bowling Green State University in the United States before his recent move to North South University, Dhaka, where he teaches English.
EKUSHEY DIARIES 2007
With less books but more variety
and sales, curtains come down
The curtains have come down. As they say in Bangla, ‘mela holo bhongo!’ More visitors than any other year, less books published than last year (500 less, in fact), but both in variety of topics and the number of books sold it was enviably more than any other time in the Amar Ekushey Boi Mela’s history. This Boi Mela saw sales jump a staggering 3.5 crores according to preliminary estimates of Bangla Academy. Publishers are all gaga, and writers are happy that books of all genres found a space.
And just to think that the mela itself was uncertain even a few days before it all started. Publishers and writers alike have all given credit to the lack of ‘political instability’ for the phenomenal show of people and prosperity at this year’s Boi Mela. But after weeks of wandering around the mela, this year and the previous ones, I would put my money on the gradual change over the years. While this particular mela’s show of strength might have reasons more specific, I would like to believe it to be a more holistic change in the way we perceive our own traditions and the need for a singular consciousness. But tall talk aside, the Boi Mela has ceased to be just a fair of books but a festival. Throughout the year this city’s suffocated millions have few outlets to show spontaneity or solidarity. Apart from Pahela Baishakh, and some collective occasions, they are few and far between. Over the years, the Ekushey Boi Mela has taken up a special space.
Literary history, or for that matter, tragedy is also pegged with the mela. February 27 came again as the day when the fiery voice against all conformity Humayun Azad was gagged by an attack on his life that left the nation and its literary circle shocked. This week, on the day, writers and cultural activists demanded that the day be declared Humayun Azad day. For years, Humayun Azad’s face at the Agami Prokashoni stall gave the feel that things were still where they should. Personally, I miss the days of pestering him about why he was smoking inside the mela, when there was still a restriction on it.
The last week saw a rush to being out all the books still waiting to come out. It’s a shame that so many gems had to wait in the presses till the eleventh hour. My personal pick for the last week was a monumental work by Afsan Chowdhury. In four volumes, his Bangladesh 1971, is oral history of the Liberation War in the common man’s voice. A feat in its own right, it is a work that was needed. Bangla Academy itself adjudged three books as the best at the fair: Abdus Shakur’s Bangaleer Muktir Gaan, Mohammad Zafar Iqbal’s Ektukhani Begyaan, and Morshed Shaiful Hasan’s Purbo Banglae Chinta Chorcha 1947-1970: Danda O Protikria.
February has bid farewell. And already March is here. The month of dissent and independence! Maybe the dreams of real freedom will push us to seek the right course of destiny, not ‘illusions’ of it. While that pursuit is on, may the words that went home with you enlighten these dark times. Chittaranjan Shaha of Muktadhara sat on a piece of cloth with the books he published, in middle of a barren field in front of Bardhaman House, three decades ago, and made one plea. I end with the same one: ‘Buy books. Read books!’
— Mahfuz Sadique
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The Hollow Reed
by Azfar Aziz
Ego is a hollow reed, through which
Blows the temporal wind
Breathing tunes of delusions, emotive moods,
Magic, illuminations, and on rare occasions
Genetic intuition.
Life, though specked with occasional acoustic gems,
Is but a cacophony, a perpetual labour in vain
To recapture on a fife the obsessive melodies
Heard in long-lost embryonic dreams.
Ego is a junky, clad in nothing but a random name,
And the venerable mind is but an illusion
Like the sky, a void that owns nothing,
In which ozone, clouds, wind, birds and aeroplanes fly at will.
Ego is an empty space, so, every ‘I’ tries forever
To build and hide his outer nudity and inner vacuum
Under a monument, a pyramid or a scholarly scroll
Till the time-serpent brings forth the dusk.
And, too weary to play one more stone of tone
Or curve another simple, childish tune,
A man must at last lay down the reed.
Then enters the paradox, the lunatic arbiter beyond reason,
Who makes some guys suddenly find
That by quitting they have actually won,
Can recall the songs and play them in silent sound of Om,
Creating golden, rounded notes
Of red, white and blue lily buds
Setting them afloat in the lake of infinite O.
These flutes that rest and discard ego
Are immaculate and hallowed by the truths
That ‘I am not’ and ‘nor is death’,
That all are live and one is all
Who plays alone all ego-reed-pipes
Composing sonatas of eternal love
With zeros of hollow reed pipes.
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