Malkki

Este texto (como el de grossberg, que me quedo muy sin comentar, y que es otro punto de partida con la idea de las movilidades estructuradas, que podría desestructurar y las inversiones de afecto que podria desinvertir un poco) incluye un concepto central que uso en mi propuesta metafisica del sedentarismo o metafica sedentaria (sedentary metaphysics), recordaba que su texto era de interes, pero no que me generaba algunas objeciones importantes. Asi que quizas un punto de partida, criticar a Malkki. Por supuesto su texto es importante y abre un par de puntas interesantes.
Creo que tengo tolerancia baja para las critica a las "esencializaciones estrategicas" de los indigenas que se corresponden "el mito del buen salvage". Todo bien, ya aprendimos a que los indios a veces se ponen las plumas para cumplir con los deseos "occidentales" y conseguir cosas, y tambien que estos deseos desconocen y no les importa poco el sufrimento de los indios sin plumas. Ya está, vimos que es una idea problematica, por que parcializa y limita la accion politica, y nos sentimos cool por descubrir la trampa y complejizar el asunto y sentir que le sacamos un velo a una representacion erronea de la realidad, que gente piola. Me molesta bastante esta critica especialmente cuando se vuelve "cliche antropologic" (dice Briones), por que tambien esta critica encierra el problema de hacernos escepticos a "eso que perfoman como indiecitos en el amazonas para conseguir simpatías" y nos hace detener el analisis ahi (idiecitos astutos y nuevos movimientos sociales naive), pero quizas sea interesante hacer una critica mas profunda y pensar que es lo que lleva a tal conjuncion de ideas y que cosas se estan poninedo en juego, que politicas se estan conformando y por supuesto que abren y que limitan estas formas de politica. Por otro lado por que es inevitable (y tiene sentido, mas alla de su "agencia" y de "estructuras") para mucha gente "ser" indios, a pesar de los litros de lavandina invertidos en bañarse en silencio, con verguenza y desesperacion "para sacarse al indio de encima" (cuenta Sider) a pesar de todo siguen siendo indios (no solo identificarse, reconocerse, performar, sino que su subjetividad esta atravezada por tal marca).
Bueno probablemente hacer esta critica no es algo tan problematico en si, pero me molesta cuando se instala como "algo interesante que tenen los antropologos para decir" y se desata una catarata de articulos que repiten lo mismo y cumplen con la heroica misión de salir a desenmascarar movimientos sociales. Y no me refiero a Kuper que hace una critica interesante y que moviliza. En fin, no se por que me enoja tanto si tambien critique este tipo de cosas y especialmente pase horas tratando de explicar esta idea algunos amigxs con los que trabaje.



Malkki, L. 1992 “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees.” Cultural Anthropology, 7(1): 24-44.
Malkii critiques the correlation space – culture in Anthropology, specially by pointing to the sedentary metaphysics of theory, government and commonsensical discourses. The question of rootedness is calling to attention for analysis to take into account that maybe the displacement has become routine, and movement chronic. This is not absolutely new as people has always moved as a result of violence and desire. “The recognition that people are increasingly moving targets of anthropological inquiry is associated with the placing of boundaries and borderland at the centre of our analytic frameworks, as opposed to relegating them to invisible peripheries or anomalous danger zones.” This concern is not so much the result of actual corporeal movements but of issues of cultural displacements, of people, things and cultural products, what Edward Said call a general “condition of homelessness”. She proposes to re-examine the relation between identity and territory (she does this by examining the refugees) both in the refugees’ ideas about their homeland, but also in the discourses constructing a national order of things, and explaining the the condition of a refugee.
Malkii is critiquing the correlation space – culture by pointing to the “sedentary metaphysics” that have ruled theory, state and common sense. Sedentary Metaphysics: is peculiarly enabling of the elaboration and consolidation of a national geography that reaffirms the segmentation of the worlds into prismatic, mutually exclusive units of word order, … is taken for granted so much that is nearly invisible, …is deeply metaphysical and deeply moral, sinking people and cultures into “national soils.” (she quotes Del And Guatary in the need of a nomadology, or to write history form a nomad point and not form the Unitarian state apparatus perspective)
proposes a metaphor of cultures following an arborescent root (trees deeply rooted in the soil) metaphor along with kinship metaphors. This is created both discursively and through practice. This logic defines movement as pathological, as abnormally producing “uprootedness”, mobility is presented as not being a natural part of sociality. In anthropology the lin between nation and culture has produced a “spatial incarceration of the native”, by establishing a orreltion between culture and place and a discontinous organization of them, but also by establishing a correltion between culture and land in the notions of “indigenous”, “autoctonous” linked to place and nature. She critiques the metaphysical and moral implication of these as manifested in for example the alliance between conservation movements and indigenous advocates in the defense of the rainforest. [the morality of rootdenes may a dimension of my analysis, yet I’m not sure it plays the central aaspect of my case] It shows how there not only a need to root others but also a nostalgic search for a home in the mobile west.

[I agree that the “myth of the good savage”, now also presented as heroic defender of his soil against evil multinational capitalism, that is implicit in these actions is problematic as long as it makes a rootdeness = good correlation at the time that it “naturalizes” the indigenous. She raises an important concern in relation to what happens to thes people if they move (or even desire to move) to the city. Yet Indigeneity as a effect of colonization puts space as a relevant political dimension of struggle, well just as we said with massey that most politics is spatial]

This is a logic that goes mostly uncontested form social science to state discourses, “civilized” populations (agriculturalists) are presented as having a deep and intimate relation with a particular land or terriotory. This rises the question of how to define indigeneity, and the relativity of its time frames, as all populations come form somewhere else, at what moment one becomes indigenous is a relative matter.

My critique: I agree with this however, the complicated issue is to neither erase colonization form these process, nor erase politics, it is not the same to be part of an ex military dictatorship in exile than to be part of a displaced marginalized group.

In sum the dualities produced by national order of things are the rooted-uorooted, and the sedentary – mobile.
She proposes that a logic of the naturalness and moralization of nationalism generates a notion of the refugee as problem, a pathology and an unmoral condition. However in the two cases of Hutu refugees she analyzes she sees two different models challenging the national metaphysics. In one set of refugees living in camps sustain an identity as refugees is constant long for their homeland, a discourse that attract international aid. This notions do not just unsettle notions of nationalism but also generate an alternative national project by expecting to return to their country, only after a certain moralizing process is achieved (and “illegitimate” government taken away form power). The other is a group of people who relocate themselves in a town and rather than retaining a single national identity, they manage a repertoire of identities (hutu, refugee, tanzanises, form that town, etc) and do not long for a moral return to Burundi. She calls these identities cosmopolitan and rhyzomatic, as they do not have a clear starting point and are not rooted in a singe point (following the concept of Del and Guattari). She finishes her work suggested that the rootdness of the national identities were in part what triggered the massacres of Hutu- Tutsi in Burundi and Rwanda (and she briefly compares it with the Jewish genocide).

My critique: Even she states that no one identity should be considered as just the decision of the ones holding it, but a complex construction, she implies some preference for the “ryhzomatic cosmopolitan”, a type of identity that she presents as embracing complexity, fluidity and its relational character. One can be sympathetic with such a preference, however the issue of cosmopolitanism raises a multiplicity of questions and need for further explorations if we are going to chose it as a supersiding paradigm, as for example what Gidwani and Sivaramakrishanan do without much presumptions. At the same time it raises the question on how much this is not a general and a-critical celebration of cosmopolitanism form a position of a cosmopolitan academy.


esto es muy largo.