Brilliant read on Baldwin, #CharlieHebdo and Frances history of racism: To my mind, in addition to the French tradition of anti-authoritarian satiric wit, this is also very much a part of the context of our current crisis, whether we want to talk about it now or not: France has a violent, racist, and unexorcised past. There is no self-respecting way for me to identify with these objects that I sometimes see, just as there is no self-respecting way for me to hear the still-in-use French word for ghostwriter—nègre (literally an unacknowledged, unpaid laborer: a nigger)—without flinching; and there is no self-respecting way for me to gaze on that hideous Charlie Hebdo cartoon depicting France’s first black Justice Minister, Christiane Taubira, as a monkey. Considering the incontestably great cultural monuments of the former colonial powers—whether Descartes or Chartres —Baldwin maintained that the Algerian blue-collar worker in Paris has no reason to genuflect before them (let alone before the infinitely lesser cultural achievements, such as satirical cartooning). Instead, Baldwin says, he has, “once these monuments intrude on [his] attention, no honorable access to them. . . . To bow down before that history is to accept that history’s arrogant and unjust judgment” of him. via Senthuran Varatharajah.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 09:30:41 +0000
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