Katharina With our Critical Whiteness and Cultural Studies background, and our experiences and reflections during our anti-racist performance work in 2012, Carolin and I are curious to continue the talk on „Writing the Other & Authenticity“, held by Ronald and Nora on 8th January.
To give you just a few impressions of our performance Black/white. Strangely mine/ The Other Self, we posted some of the photos and a short explanation below. For our two-months group process from which we developed the performance, one idea was most central: Each one starts from and speaks only for his or her own experiences of being Black, white, „normal“, different, male, female, German, European, African etc. Our first condition was not to speak for or even define the Other, because we found that the Other is a product of our own relationships to the outer world, and it is always tied to our own identities.
To open this discussion, we would like to point out some aspects of Nora’s and Ronald’s talk. But before – to stay with our opinion that speaking for and about ourselves comes first – we want to make our own reflections on and experience of our whiteness visible. I should rather say, my and Carolin’s whitenesses, as they are not identical, although we grew up in the same white dominated German society.
Caro, how did you discover your whiteness and how did it change during the years?
Carolin Even though there were Black people in my closer and wider social circles ever since I went to school and even though I did notice the difference of our skin, I did not notice the difference of our every-day-life experiences and therefore did not pay attention to my own „colour“. Only when I found myself in an all-Black context for the first time did I realize that I was white. Yet the process of recognising the different implications of being white among Black and being Black among white started a little later. What about you, Kikki?
Katharina As I grew up in a quite white rural area, I started to notice my white position in the German hyper-diverse and migrant’s society by entering urban spaces. When I was 16, I read „Germany Black / white“ by Noah Sow, who criticises the subtle racism and white dominance in Germany. This book shook my naive imaginations of Africa, Blackness and the ignorance of being white myself. The open-minded flair in my family did not save me from internalizing everyday’s racism, or at least „color“-lines and stereotypes.
By getting to know my whiteness and its social power during the last ten years, I found out that there is nothing fix what could be called a skincolour. But there is definitely a set of social contracts and power relations which produce a white population. As I am socially marked as white I am belonging to that privileged group in Germany that is seen as normal, as part of the majority, undivided, and fully able to speak and judge. Once, being white meant that I did not even notice it, because the privileges my whiteness implied (they still do) were undoubted and invisible.
Carolin Also I can remember my reading Noah Sow´s „Germany Black/white“, though a little later during my second year in university and how it impressed me. I recall going from sympathy to insecurity to frustration, because Black was making me feel ashamed of myself and my whiteness. It was probably then, that I started to understand, that „we are all the saaaaame“ and „´colour´ is not importaaaant“ doesn´t work really, since, as white people we can not just close our eyes, spin around three times and pretend history never happened, starting on a blank page. I needed to understand where my privileges came from. From there I could stop trying to fit myself into some imagined „good white/bad white“-paradigm. Instead I started to try and build a relationship to my whiteness that feels natural.
Katharina Nora mentions the difference between writing ABOUT others and speaking FOR them, she says: „I wrote about Burundi and its civil war, about Chinese factory-workers. I am not speaking FOR them, but nevertheless, who am I that I think I could talk about their lives?“
Having postcolonial studies and the mechanisms of constructing „the Other“ in mind, I argue, that the line that divides writing about and speaking for someone is often not only fine but dangerously disappearing. I am not voting for new taboos in writing, but for asking oneself, how the description of a Chinese worker is tied to one’s own perspective and affections.
So how does Nora answer her own question: „Who am I that I think I could talk about their lives?“
Carolin Salman Rushdie asks himself the same question. His „answer is very simple. Literature is self-validating. That is to say, a book is not justified by its authors worthiness to write it, but by the quality of what has been written. There are terrible books that arise directly out of experience, and extraordinary imaginative feats dealing with themes which the author has been obliged to approach from the outside. Literature is not in the business of copyrighting certain themes for certain groups.“ (Imaginative homelands, p. 14)
I sympathize with Rushdie´s radical opinion, but from my white, German, cultural studies background I have certain ressentiments against the idea of an author writing as/about an Other, that has no chance participating in the discourse, hence not being able to diversify the picture that is being drawn. Therefore, I see an essential need to at least make the author´s reflection on writing about the Other just as available to the audience as the text itself, in order to prevent building upon existing sterotypes or power-biases.
Katharina I think so, too. It would be nothing but fair and respectful to provide transparency towards the reader and those Others the writer wrote about. In academic papers a passage of self-reflection on the own position can fit in more easily, for example while explaining your research methods. For novels and short stories, authors would have to face the task to develop literary and creative ways to make these reflections fit to their text. Alternatively, they could add it in the afterword, along with the very common grateful listings of contributors and family members.
Nevertheless „the Other“ seems to be a challenge for an author to write. Will I achieve to represent, to draw a certain other in an authentic way? What was @ssekandi-ronald-ssegujja interest to write the short story he mentions which is told from a white lady’s view? What attracted, challenged, inspired him, and what did it mean to him to imagine a „white“ perspective?
Up to now, the communication and the exchange on this blog appears amazingly equal, almost „colour“-blind to us. Social and cultural differences are rarely mentioned, neither are „Africa/Europe“ or „We/You“ categories, nor privileges of being white, nor racist stereotypes, nor discussions on historically grown hierachies and the colonial backgrounds part of the discussion.
If these categories are not that central to all of the six participating authors, we do not want to push you to deal with them, although we are curious to listen to your individual reflections on these topics.
Katharina, this paragraph has jumped off the screen for me. Isn’t it amazing what moving away from “shielded, zones of comfort” can do, and the experiences that come with all that! I don’t think I was ever aware about my skin color until I lived in the US. Even then, there would be moments when I would completely forget that I was living in a world where color is such an issue. A funny anecdote I would like to share here; one time a friend of mine and I were doing random things in New York City. There was an interesting exhibition going on at MoMa. I had seen it, so I convinced her to check it out as well. When we got there, she found that it was quite pricey. Now, due to the nature of the work I was doing at that time, I had an ID that could get me to some exhibitions for free. So, I offered to give her my ID, convincing her that no one was going to notice that she was not the one in the picture. I pulled out my ID, and handed it to her. She kept looking at me with a smirk on her face. I didn’t understand why she was not taking the ID, and her expression confused me. Until she got my hand, put it against hers and then asked; “Are you sure no one is going to notice that your ID is not mine?” That’s when I understood what the smirk was all about. I had completely forgotten about color differences. She is white. Of course, it would have been SO clear that she was not the owner of the ID….I still feel silly about that experience. But anyway, this is all to say that our societies have a way of constantly reminding us of who “we are” and where we “lie”, how to think, and what our privileges or lack of them are.Reference
I love that anecdote. I mean, it would be great, if for all of people the different skin colours just would have the same meaning like the different colours of our hair, eyes or sweatshirts.Reference
I must say I am reflecting on this only now that it has been posted…
Similar to Caroline, I was only made aware of my skin color when I was in an all white context. The whole experience made me remark to a friend with reference to two primary school text book titles: Africa Learns about Europe by H W R Hawes and Europe learns about Africa by J B Whitehead, that while Africa was learning about Europe, Europe wasn’t learning about Africa.
However, for me, the content of a book speaks louder than the author’s race.
Thanks for your dialogue. You say, you´re wondering why categories like “blackness/ whiteness”, “Africa/Europe” or “We/You” are so rarely mentioned in this blog by the six participating authors. Hm, I guess for myself the reason why I´m not talking about this very much is: We´re talking about writing, literature, readings and so on. Most importantly for this project: We´re all writers – different writers for sure, with different backgrounds. Maybe if you read the posts and commentaries you will recognize the cultural, sexual, religious or other differences between all of us, because they have a deep impact on our way of thinking and feeling. But first of all, if we’re talking about writing it doesn’ t matter if you´re white, black or blue; man, woman or transgender; Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist or atheist; spiritualist, rationalist or idealist; growing up in a huge city in Uganda, in a small town anywhere in Germany or in a lot of different places while travelling around the world with your parents. That´s the reason why I prefer not to start talking explicitly about these differences. If it comes in a “natural” way while we´re discussing, that´s fine, if not, that´s fine, too. That´s why I like the make up of this blog, it´s not so structured that you have to talk about these topics all the time, but there is a lot of space to do this if you like.
I guess it gets more difficult, if you´re writing about the other. To be honest, if I heard Nikolas last year reading the first chapter of his novel in Cafe Ambiente, I would ask myself, if he is allowed to write from the perspective of a young man from Uganda. But, then I thought, why not. Man wrote about woman, woman about man, young about old, old about young, academic people about workers, non-religious about religious and vice versa all the time. That is the marvellous thing about literature: It´s possible to do that.
But, there is still one question in my mind: Is the risk to fail with that topic (to be a German man writing a novel about a young man from Uganda) higher than if he would write about a German man? I feel that the risk is higher because, while you´re writing you know that there are a lot of traps. You know all about the problems with stereotypes, history, imperialism, racism and so on. You know that there will be a bunch of people in the audience, who will be very sceptical and just waiting to find a verification of their prejudice, that a guy from Germany is not able to do that. I really don´t know, I have no reply for that question, but I wonder what Nikolas would say.
Hi Jens, I will have to cloak the meta commentary with another quote which illustrates to a great extent my opinion. It is from Shohat’s and Stam’s ‘Unthinking Eurocentrism’ (and while they talk of representation in the vein of film casting, I do feel their elaboration valid for representation in general, i.e. inclusive of writing) : ‘Should we applaud Blacks playing Hamlet but not Laurence Olivier playing Othello? And have not Euro-American and European performers often ethnically substituted for one another (for example, Greta Garbo and Cyd Charisse as Russians in ‘Ninotchka’, 1939, and ‘Silk Stockings, 1957)? Casting, we would argue, has to be seen in contingent terms, in relation to the role, the political and esthetic intention, and to the historical moment. We cannot equate a gigantic charade whereby a whole foreign country is represented by players not from that country and is imagined as speaking a language not its own (a frequent Hollywood practice), with cases where non-literal casting forms part of an alternative esthetic. The casting of Blacks to play Hamlet, for example, militates against a traditional discrimination that denied Blacks any role, literally and metaphorically, in both the performing arts and in politics, while the casting of Laurence Olivier as Othello prolongs a venerable history of deliberately bypassing Black talent…’ Writing, too, I believe has to be seen in ‘contingent terms, in relation to the role (here, character but also author), the political and esthetic intention, and to the historical moment’. The auspicious freedom of creativity does not mean that writers are exonerated from participation in and prolongation of violent and hegemonic discourses (here, lets re-read Hemingway and Fitzgerald). It is a serious question to speak of freedom in rewriting the position of someone violated and cast of as fungible (this corruption of freedom itself is brought down by the entire work of Afro-pessimists such as Wilderson for example). To turn the read-film-as-text paradigm, one could also consider writing-as-film in Werner Herzog’s statement: “Academia is the death of cinema (or writing). It is the very opposite of passion. Film (Writing) is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates” with which, I believe, he distance himself from ethical and political ‘responsibility’ ( I don’t like using the word) and yearns for consideration of films as art, disbanded and unchained from discourse and time. However, that is greatly contradicted by the fact that certain groups of people have protested both writing and movie productions; have written counter and revolutionary stories, and continue to resist dominant narratives (both film and books). Personally, I wish imagination was a place of fire and fire, where thought and its context burn and disappear; and too, this misery gives birth to what Arthur Rimbaud saw as a poet: ‘A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed—and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and if, demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen!’
Like Jens; well, we are talking about writing, right? Personally, I came to the table as a writer interested in chatting with other writers in my city and the city of Bremen and of course other people from elsewhere. Anything beyond that was/is not central for me. I maybe curious about what someone may say or observe in relation to the topic above, and may ask a question or make a comment but, that is it. Do you Carolin and Katharina feel that this is something that we as writers with different backgrounds needed to have chatted about at length? Why? I am curious.