The intellectual and the minorities

Transcription

1 The intellectual and the minorities Ivete Lara Camargos Walty (PUC-Minas) To writer about the social place of the intellectual in relation to the so-called minorities, I would like to start using in an allegorical way the story Recortes de jornais (Newspaper clipping), by Cortázar (1981). In this story two Argentine, a sculptor and a writer, discuss in Paris their social and the political place, bearing in mind as reference the violence of the military dictatorship in their country. - You see, all this doesn't mean anything - said the sculptor, sweeping the air with an raised arm. - It's useless. Noemi, I spend months doing those shits, you write book, that woman denounces atrocities. We attend congresses and round-table discussions to protest, we almost believe that the things are changing and two minutes of reading are enough to realize the truth, to... -Hey, I also think about those things now - said her with a necessary anger. - But if I accepted everything, that would be as like sending them a telegram of adhesion and besides that, you know very well, tomorrow you get up and suddenly you're modeling again, knowing that I'm by my typewriter and then you'll think that we're many although we're so few, and that the difference of forces isn't and won't be a reason for us to shut up. (...) (p.61-62) The dialogue above illustrates well the continuing anguish of the modern intellectual concerning his social place between loneliness and alignment (SAID, 1994). In the construction plan of the text, when leaving the sculptor's home, the narrator/writer, taken by a child, witnesses the moment when a man tortures a woman with a lit cigarette. In the impulse to defend the woman, after beating the man with a small wooden bench, the narrator helps her to tide the man and torture him. The writer that few moments before had crossed the street unawarely, sees herself just like the torturer she once criticized. How to know how long it lasted, how to understand that also I, also I who believed at the good side, also I, how to accept that also I at the other side with cut hands and from common roots, also I at the other side of the tortured and shot young girls in this very Christmas night, (...) (CORTÁZAR, 1981, p.70) The emphatic repetition of the expression also I as well as the idea of the movement expressed by the word side points out the old question of what is the place of the intellectual in the transit between the power and the counter-power, the colonizer and the colonized, the violence and the counter-violence, the reality and the dream, the fact and the fiction. This way, in the moment when the intellectual believed him as a defender of the oppressed people, Cortázar debates this function, showing it in all its fragility. This intellectual drawn by Cortázar would concretize the monstrous being about whom Sartre speaks: Being a product of the smashed societies, the intellectual is their witness as he has internalized their smash. He is therefore an historical product. This way no society can 1

2 complain about its intellectuals without accusing itself, as it has only the ones it produces. (Sartre, 1994, p.31) Even aware of this smash, Sartre conceived the intellectual as that on who defended the point of view of the excluded as the only way to understand the society and keep the democracy. For his turn, Bobbio suggests that one of the tasks of the intellectual would be to give his contribution to the advent of a society in which the distinction between intellectuals and non-intellectuals does not have any more reason to subsist (Bobbio, 1997, p.108). Well, this modern intellectual who intended to change the society and defended the excluded, supporting ideologies under the ideals of freedom and justice would have been replaced by another kind of intellectual who seems to have admitted his fragility and impotence and has renounced his position of spokesman of the non-represented people. Nevertheless, one can not mention what Marilena Chauí (1982) has classified as the competent discourse. Some still continue to speak for many others, whether in Universities - stronghold of the contemporaneous intellectual - or in its extensions - congresses, symposiums and so on -, or in the mass media - in special spaces as the educative TV, in popular programs held in auditoriums as of Faustão and Ratinho 1, or household ones as of Ana Maria Braga. Meanwhile, the validity of those attitudes has been discussed: -Should Cony, well-recognized writer, participate in the Program of Louro José? - How could Caetano Veloso visit Island of Caras? - The respectable journalist Barbosa Lima Sobrinho would have lost his composure giving an interview for Bundas 2? On the other hand, the production of the so-called marginalized segment of the society with the partnership or contribution of teachers, artists or cultural producers has never been so intense. The intention is no more to talk for the excluded, but to be at their side in order to let them speak for themselves, conquering the space in the society. The publishing of the book with stories told by the Indian Pichuvy Cinta Larga: Histórias de maloca antigamente 3 (old stories from the Indian village), of which I participated in collaboration with Leda Leonel and Ana Leonel Queiroz, could illustrate this process, about what I started to cerebrate in a doctorate thesis 4, defended in USP. In the preface of the book, we, the organizers, affirm: (...) We joined our names to the names of Pichuvy and to the other Cinta Larga ones, but we did that in order that our voice join theirs to increase the choir of resistance: there are other social forms, there are other cultures, there are other people. (apud. Cinta Larga, 1988, p.11) It is to be noted that we, modestly justified our task repeating the greeting of that people: Paikinin pa mã, pa mã! - We are here let's see each other, let's meet each other. 1 Faustão and Ratinho are popular TV programs in Brazil 2 Caras and Bundas are magazines, but with different approaches; the first is about to the high-society; the second is a criticism to the first. 3 LEONEL, Leda, QUEIROZ, Ana L. et WALTY, Ivete (Orgs.) Mantere ma kwé tinhin. Histórias de maloca antigamente. Pichuvy Cinta Larga. Belo Horizonte/Brasília: Segrac/CIMI, WALTY, IveteL.C. Narrativa e imaginário social: uma leitura das Histórias de Maloca antigamente, de Pichuvy Cinta Larga. São Paulo: USP,

3 Martin Lienhard in the article La percepción de las práticas 'textuales' amerindias: apuentes para un debate interdisciplinario, from the book organized by Ana Pizarro (1995) includes the book of Pichuvy in the content of what she calls textualidad amerindia (American Indian texts), characterizing it as a bunch of texts, verbal or not, en los cuales las colectividades amerindias e sus representantes desempeñam la función de sujetos del discurso (in which the American Indian societies and their representatives play the role of subjects of the discourse) (p.173, obs.1) In an essay presented in the Abralic in 1994 called Da casa do índio em Rondônia ao Museu do Homem em Paris, via USP (From the house of the Indian in Rondônia to the Museum of Mankind in Paris, via USP) (WALTY, 1995), I propound myself to question about my position in relation to the object I had chosen - the book of Pichuvy in all its complexity - as well as the academic implications of my choice. By that time, the difficulties of circulation of my object of research in the Academy whose guidelines were based on the quality of the already canonized texts were evident. In my examining board, two of the examiners wished I had gone further and inserted the Indian Pichuvy's book in the History of the Brazilian literature; other two thought I had gone too far when dealing the text as literary. About it, describing my way in the elaboration of the work, I affirm: Let's go to the last part of the trip: the presentation of the thesis and its difficult subject. I can affirm that the weak point of the thesis to some examiners was its subject. The Indian would have become thesis, text and an excuse to obtain an academic title. It's interesting to observe that the chapter about the book O falador, by Vargas Llosa, was better sustained than the others. And I recognize that it would have been much easier to analyze only the book from the Peruvian author, a poet who is worldwide respected. So, I ask: - where is the Indian in this other publication? Mediated by the fictionist he can come to the University and built a career, but alone with his speech/odd writing should he remain in the space of the reserve? (WALTY, 1995, p.409) Last year, when I was participating in the exam of the thesis of doctorate "Ensaios sobre a literatura indígena contemporânea no Brasil (Essays about the contemporaneous Indian literature in Brazil) by Maria Inês de Almeida, in PUC of São Paulo, I could check this process and I affirmed that Inês may have reached the point I could not when she used in the title of her thesis the expression Indian literature. Maybe it was not the right moment for me, maybe because I was not courageous enough or maybe because we belonged to different academies. This thesis is only a fragment of the work of Inês Almeida and a group of teachers involved with Indian education in Minas Gerais 5. Therefore as it is a partnership work of Indians and non-indians, it is inserted in the complexity of the relation between the intellectuals and the minorities. Because of that, I asked Inês how she saw herself in this process, as in many times we don't know whether we are actually contributing to the growth and autonomy of the other, or we are leeching when we make them our object of study. And this I think is a basic question in the relation between I and the other, between the academy and the community. 5 This is about the Project of books and primers from the Program of Implantation of Indian Schools of MG, started in 1995 and financed by MEC, UNESCO and SEE-MG. 3

4 This way, the coordinator of the thesis Amálio Pinheiro stresses the fact that Inês with this kind of essay plays the role of the external intellectual in opposition to the intellectual from office. From those denominations, it is at least curious to remember the ironic profile that Russel Jacoby in the book Os últimos intelectuais (The last intellectuals) makes about the intellectual in the American Universities. Defining the intellectual as writers and thinkers who speak to an educated but not specialized audience, Jacoby regrets that the intellectual with his dreams and hopes has been disappearing in the society, handing over his position to the University professor: Different from the intellectuals of the past, they linger in their specialties and subjects - for a good reason. Their jobs, careers and salaries depend on the evaluation of specialists and this dependence affects the relevant questions and the language used (JACOBY, 1990, p.19, free translation) Well, the situation experienced by us is at least curious in this matter. We fit this profile as University professors. We were there gathered to grant a title to a teacher that, however, left the closed universe of the classrooms and libraries and worked with an excluded social segment exactly with the intention to, side by side, fight for their integration into the society that discards them. Another example of this is the production of primers Yanomami there described in the presentation of the primer Palavras escritas para nos curar (Written words to cure us), part of a series about health: The production of primers was conceived as a dialogical process the Yanomami and the non-yanomami assessors (medical, odontological), in which the anthropologist worked as an intermediate in the translation/negotiation in the linguistic and cultural plan. (1997, p.6) Other professionals have already offered themselves to this kind of work, as in the case of a foreign plastic artist and other two Mineiro professionals who have developed projects involving children from slums and the streets of Belo Horizonte. Firstly they made a thematic photograph report, published in a bilingual book (Portuguese/English) called No mundo maravilhoso do futebol (In the wonderful world of football) (GERMAIN et al, s/d). In this book, result of a photograph workshop to children, adolescents and youngsters from Morro do Cascalho slum, the organizers therefore present their work: The slum is an ordinary topic for photographic reports - a very traditional genre - which frequently and for many reasons presents a view full of clichés in the way it shows the people and the circumstances. The project of the photograph workshops in the Morro do Cascalho slum in Belo Horizonte, Brazil was a somewhat reaction to this particular way of representation, an attempt to offer a view totally dependent on the creative and active commitment of the participants. (Germain et al s/d, p.12) On the other hand, from the united text of the inhabitants of the slum, one can perceive a tone of acknowledgement used by the real authors who feel honored for being heard in their discourse: 4

5 It's a great honor to have our story told in a book from where many people can read and read again about our lives. In our story, we took the skeletons out of the closet and there wasn't any horrible lie. Everything that is written here is reported. The majority also confirms the legends, after all, lots of stuff happen in this world. (p.18) Giving continuity to this project, the group distributed photographic machines to the street children of Belo Horizonte and without determining any theme asked them to photograph whatever they wanted. The photographs chosen by the own children resulted in an exhibition on the walls of the city and will also be published in a book soon. It is curious to observe that in the moment of selection, the children censored themselves and only chose those pictures that passed a positive image of the group, without compromising at all. Idealism? Once again would the intellectual be assuming if not the position of guide, at least the position of an intermediate, repeating what Yúdice calls platonic place in the representation and in the negotiation of the res publica (Yúdice, 1999, p.313)? Yúdice says, when advocating the end of the writer as a forwarding agent of the modernity: To an insurgent neozapatist or a homeless activist the diagnosis of the reality is not in the literature. Their comprehension of the History has to do with their entry in these once forbidden conflictive public spaces. The new means and technologies of communication have facilitated this new antagonism (Yúdice, 1999, p.315). Or, in the contrary, as underlines Yúdice, do the people who do this kind of work become travelling companions, reporters or witnesses (...) without believing in the prophetic, redemptive or enlightening knowledge of the writer, as Neruda or Fuentes (p.314)? When we published the Indian text in a book or we take it to the University, elaborating thesis about it which role do we play? When an European plastic artist and two Mineiro professionals provide the street children of Belo Horizonte with photograph machines asking them to photograph whatever they want and after exhibit the own photos selected by the own children would they be contributing to make the knowledge of the popular sectors notorious (Yúdice)? When adopting the point of view of the excluded people, are all of those who work in this direction using their own contradiction to sympathize to the man that fights for himself and for the others against those contradictions (Sartre)? Are they giving their contribution to the advent of a society in which the distinction between intellectuals and non-intellectuals does not have any more reason to subsist. (Bobbio)? When one publishes a book with the production of a person that cannot write for himself, is he or she bothering the public, taking it out of the comfort, the resignation (Said)? Or even: is she or he utilizing the comprehension and the dialogue in a medium distance neither closed in a community nor spread in a future world as says Beatriz Sarlo (1997)? I mix on purpose so-called modern thinkers and post-modern ones to raise some questions: anyway, wouldn't we, teachers and artists, be supporting the circulation of those texts? - And, anyway doesn't this kind of work project us in our milieu, and in many times, even outside, through the mass media means? - And, being truth, does it invalidate our work, turning it into something less effective than the others. Well, would the intellectual 5

6 have left the high place in which he was or was put to occupy the ignoble place of a social leech, living on the other people's suffering? When assuming this dichotomy, we would again be trapped in this seesawing situation of being either engaged or alienated, subversive or co-opted, keeping thew divisions of the human thinking. Said says that the intellectual is built between the public and the private domain, as since the moment he publishes, he is the public domain. And, on the other hand, there is always a personal inflexion and a private sensibility in what is being said or published. Therefore, he says: I say or write these things because after much reflection they are what I believe; and I also want to persuade others of this view (Said, 1994, p.9) And this voice motivates other contrary or concordant ones. It is clear now the importance of having an own voice, because as says Enriquez, if the sight corresponds to the unity, the voice corresponds to the division mark. Enriquez says: One can better understand the importance of having his own voice, his own word (and not remain voiceless), because speaking is involving the others in his own discourse, making them exist as he wishes and not to listen to the voice of the others in what it comes to a division, a rupture, to our constitution by the others. (Enriquez, 1974, p.58) To listen to the other is to be able to see new configurations of ourselves. Well, if this is already valid for the individual self-production characteristic of our society what can we say about the explicit collective production? One can notice that all the Indian books produced by the Indian group of studies of Minas Gerais, for example, are written by many authors, taking into consideration among them the non-indian participants, either in the organization, in the coordination or in the publishing. Maria Inês de Almeida says in the preface of the book O tempo passa e a história fica (The time goes by and the History remains) by the Xacriabá Indians: The texts were written through an effort of all the teachers that heard, recorded and put into words the stories and cases of their parents, grandparents, uncles, in short, from those that possess the traditional knowledge of the tribe. Through the written text they intend to construct esthetically new images of their community. For them writing is the political act of making their existence meaningful to the Brazilian society If the Xacriabá lost their language, by now they have appropriated the Portuguese language, adding a mulatto intonation to it. As researchers and teachers of the Xacriabá schools, those new authors suggest another literary scenario: the community production of the book rooted in the orally tradition not subjected to the principle of authorship. (apud: XACRIABÁ,1997, p.6) This long citation is justified because it illustrates not only the production of all books of this kind but also underlines the dialogism of this production. Various voices in the dialogue multiply in time and space. Those who could not speak express themselves among their peers and in the mass media means. Children are raised in bilingual schools due to this joint effort. One can ask then: - Why to discard someone from this process? Indian or non-indian, intellectual or tribe leader, street child or artist, it's all about a collective mouth that lets various voices that want to be heard cry out. Or, is it a monster plenty of mouths? 6

7 Coming back to Sartre, we can affirm that if the intellectual is a monster because he embodies the contradiction of the society, he'd better be aware of this contradiction and stress it through the critical and reflexive practice together with other social segments. On the other hand, those inhabitants of the slum or Indians that write, tell the stories of their people, denouncing arbitrariness or claiming for their rights are also intellectuals in this moment because, as Gramsci has already pointed out all the men are intellectuals (...), but not all the men play the role of a intellectual in the society (Gramsci,1982, p.7) Which function would it be? To talk, to write, showing and presenting ideas and facts in order to think about them. Etymologically speaking, the world monster, according to Rogério Pereira, commenting Calabrese (1988) has a double face: on one hand he reveals himself as something that is not inside an order and, on the other hand, he is a symbol of warning, an omen, an index used for the interpretation and guessing (Pereira, 1999, p.30). This way, according to Pereira, the monster would symbolize the unknown. This etymology confirms, therefore, the classification of the intellectual as a monster as his function would be to point out the contradictions of the world and show himself in his contradiction. Miguel Rojas Mix says: The word monster is used both to the being whose morphology or whose customs differ from those of the esthetical or ethical rules. Used for the men, it acquires a meaning of foreigner. (...) It is the identity of the other. As it was understood that the man had been created the image and resemblance of God, everything that differed from it was monstrous. The Western man was His paradigm, at least, the most perfect. As it was also understood that the body was the reflex of the soul, all different being was considered either noxious or diabolic. (Mix, 1995, p ) The intellectual in this context, just like the monster, interrelates with the identity of the other, because he intends to shelter the different without glooming him. Or at least he would sympathize with the other. For this reason, he becomes also a monster and shows his contradiction to the society. If he shelters the other, incorporating and assimilating him, he disappears, but, if he sympathizes with the other he can hear his voice. The dialogue and the transit therefore would be born. One can notice that the keyword of the process is the dialogue. After centuries of an imposed monologue to the Indian, the non-indian allows himself to have him as an interlocutor. After having assumed that the poor one could not speak for himself, now one intends to open space for his voice, or, at least, to let them conquer this space. In order to teach or to learn? Well, if it is a dialogue, it is to teach and to learn, in a mechanism of cultural exchange. The point is that in this pretentious exchange, in this possible transit, we do not know always where we are, just like when we travel and wake up and we do not know whether we are in our home or in another and, we say, as Cortázar's character: (...)How to know how long it lasted, how to understand that also I, also I who believed at the good side, also I, how to accept that also I at the other side with cut hands and from common roots, also I at the other side of the tortured and shot young girls in this very Christmas night, (...) (CORTÁZAR, 1981, p.70) 7