Miracle of the Magpie
Anatole France I LENT, of the year 1429, presented a strange marvel of the Calendar, a conjunction that moved the admiration not only of the common crowd of the Faithful, but eke of Clerks, well learned in Arithmetic. For Astronomy, mother of the Calendar, was Christian in those days. In 1429 Good Friday fell on the Feast of the Annunciation, so that one and the same day combined the commemoration of the two several mysteries which did commence and consummate the redemption of mankind, and in wondrous wise superimposed one on top of the other, Jesus conceived in the Virgin’s womb and Jesus dying on the Cross. This Friday, whereon the mystery of joy came so to coincide exactly with the mystery of sorrow, was named the “Grand Friday,” and was kept holy with solemn Feasts on Mount Anis, in the Church of the Annunciation. For many years, by gift of the Popes of Rome, the sanctuary of Mount Anis had possessed the privilege of the plenary indulgences of a great jubilee, and the late-deceased Bishop of Le Puy, Elie de Le-strange, had gotten Pope Martin to restore this pardon. It was a favour of the sort the Popes scarce ever refused, when asked in due and proper form. The pardon of the Grand Friday drew a great crowd of pilgrims and traders to Le Puy-en-Velay. As early as mid February folk from distant lands set out thither in cold and wind and rain. For the most part they fared on foot, staff in hand. Whenever they could, these pilgrims travelled in companies, to the end they might not be robbed and held to ransom by the armed bands that infested the country parts, and by the barons who exacted toll on the confines of their lands. In as much as the mountain districts were especially dangerous, they tarried in the neighbouring towns, Clermont, Issoire, Brioude, Lyons, Issingeaux, Alais, till they were gathered in a great host, and then went forth on their road in the snow. During Holy Week a strange multitude thronged the hilly streets of Le Puy,–pedlars from Languedoc and Provence and Catalonia, leading their mules laded with leather goods, oil, wool, webs of cloth, or wines of Spain in goat-skins; lords a-horseback and ladies in wains, artisans and traders pacing on their mules, with wife or daughter perched behind, Then came the poor pilgrim folk, limping along, halting and hobbling, stick in hand and bag on back, panting up the stiff climb. Last were the flocks of oxen and sheep being driven to the slaughterhouses. Now, leant against the wall of the Bishop’s palace, stood Florent Guillaume, looking as long and dry and black as an espalier vine in winter, and devoured pilgrims and cattle with his eyes. “Look,” he called to Marguerite the lace-maker, “look at yonder fine heads of bestial.” And Marguerite, squatted beside her bobbins, called back: “Yea, fine beasts, and fat withal!” Both the twain were very bare and scant of the goods of this world, and even then were feeling bitterly the pinch of hunger. And folk said it came of their own fault. At that very moment Pierre Grandmange the tripe-seller was saying as much, where he stood in his tripe-shop, pointing a finger at them. “‘T would be sinful,” he was crying, “to give alms to such good-for-nothing varlets.” The tripe-seller would fain have been very charitable, but he feared to lose his soul by giving to evil-livers, and all the fat citizens of Le Puy had the selfsame scruples. To say truth, we must needs allow that, in the heyday of her hot youth, Marguerite the lace-maker had not matched St. Lucy in purity, St. Agatha in constancy, and St. Catherine in staidness. As for Florent Guillaume, he had been the best scrivener in the city. For years he had not had his equal for engrossing the Hours of Our Lady of Le Puy. But he had been over fond of merrymakings and junketings. Now his hand had lost its cunning, and his eye its clearness; he could no more trace the letters on the parchment with the needful steadiness of touch. Even so, he might have won his livelihood by teaching apprentices in his shop at the sign of the Image of Our Lady, under the choir buttresses of The Annunciation, for he was a fellow of good counsel and experience. But having had the ill fortune to borrow of Maitre Jacquet Coquedouille the sum of six livres ten sous, and having paid him back at divers terms eighty livres two sous, he had found himself at the last to owe yet six livres two sous to the account of his creditor, which account was approved correct by the judges, for Jacquet Coquedouille was a sound arithmetician. This was the reason why the scrivenry of Florent Guillaume, under the choir buttresses of The Annunciation, was sold, on Saturday the fifth day of March, being the Feast of St. Theophilus, to the profit of Maitre Jacquet Coquedouille. Since that time the poor penman had never a place to call his own. But by the good help of Jean Magne the bell-ringer and with the protection of Our Lady, whose Hours he had aforetime written, Florent Guillaume found a perch o’ nights in the steeple of the Cathedral. The scrivener and the lace-maker had much ado to live. Marguerite only kept body and soul together by chance and charity, for she had long lost her good looks and she hated the lace-making. They helped each other. Folks said so by way of reproach; they had been better advised to account it to them for righteousness. Florent Guillaume was a learned clerk. Well knowing every word of the history of the beautiful Black Virgin of Le Puy and the ordering of the ceremonies of the great pardon, he had conceived the notion he might serve as guide to the pilgrims, deeming he would surely light on someone compassionate
Corporeal Punishment, English & Homosocial Tactility
Niladri R. Chatterjee There is a story I had once heard somewhere about a Western woman visiting Calcutta. This was her second visit. The first visit was in the 1970s when she was a teenager. The next was in the 21st century when she was in her late thirties. After going around the city for a few days, on her second visit, she asked her Bengali friends, “Aren’t there any gays in Calcutta anymore?” The friends were puzzled and asked her to explain her question. She said, “Well, the last time I was here, I often saw men walking down the street holding hands. Surely they were gay. Why don’t I see such gay couples around anymore?” There are several ways in which one can read the story. But its most accessible reading would be as an example of cultural incomprehension. Because in her native culture two men holding hands could univocally mean that they were in a homosexual relationship, she had assumed that manual tactility between men in all societies can mean only one thing. She was the native of a society where English was the most commonly spoken language. The story has stayed with me all these years because somewhere in that story I detected a relationship between language/ culture and the body which I thought intriguing. Looking at myself I find that my reduced use of English is inversely proportional to the increase in my sense of security. When I was younger I spoke in English far more than I do now. I was also aware of the reason for this. I felt English was a language which was protecting me from visceral emotional self-exposure. I felt English was a mask which would de-emotionalize even an emotional statement that I may make. I felt protected by the language. This protection also brought in its wake a certain emotional frigidity and unavailability that I acquired which can be used to explain that when I was younger I was far lonelier than I am now, when I do not speak English as much as I used to. This paper is an attempt at exploring how and why the male body in Bengal functions in a certain way when the owner of that body speaks in his native tongue and in quite another way when he speaks in English. I have often noticed that there is a marked difference between the way men in Bengal who speak English think of their bodies and the way those who do not speak English think or do not think of theirs. The holding of hands becomes the touchstone method of telling apart those who do not speak English from those who do. I have repeatedly observed that those men who are obviously employed in blue collar professions, or are even daily wage earners, and therefore almost certainly not in possession of English, show a far greater level of tactility among themselves than those who are white collar workers and are not entirely unlettered in English. Men or boys who do not speak English embrace each other a lot more, even kiss each other on the cheek far more frequently than those who can speak English. In fact, in my own English-speaking circle of friends I have noticed a particular horror of physical contact among male friends, and an inversely proportional lack of corporeal self-consciousness among those who do not speak English. Is it a mere coincidence? Would it be entirely erroneous to speculate whether the English language in any way straitjackets the male body and prohibits same-sex tactility beyond the ‘firm’ handshake? Is the firmness of the handshake an indicator and a performance of hegemonic masculinity? Is the handshake the only kind of same-sex tactility that has been sanctioned and approved as a physical gesture that carries no risk of endangering the heteronormativity of a patriarchal society? English was formally introduced as the preferred language of instruction, business and government in Bengal in the later part of the 18th century, Calcutta having been settled by the East India Company towards the end of the 17th century. Lord Macaulay’s notorious Minute on Indian Education was written in 1835. As Gauri Vishwathan says, English education was introduced to solve the conflict between the proselytising goal of the missionaries and the policy of religious neutrality adopted by the British Government (Vishwanathan 38). So, as I say elsewhere, English and Christianity were being discreetly conflated by smuggling in Christianity under the cover of English literature (Chatterjee 38-9). Foucault tells us that in the 19th century in the West in general and in England in particular the human body, and especially the male body was being pathologized, sexualized, classified and medicojuridically disciplined, with active support from Christianity. There are two famous instances of homosocial tactility in the Bible and both carry negative valence. Judas identifies Christ for the Roman police by kissing him. Thomas doubts the reality of Christ’s resurrection by inserting a finger into one of the wounds received by Christ on the cross. There is only one instance of homosocial tactility in the Bible with positive valence. This is that of St. John the Beloved – not to be confused with St. John the Baptist – who was in the habit of rest his head on Christ’s shoulder. There are statues in Germany dating from 1300 where this instance of homosocial tactility in the Bible is iconised. The fact that these statues are not very well known points to the marginalisation of positive homosocial tactility in the Bible. The only way in which the story of John the Beloved resting his head on Christ’s chest has travelled into English literature is through its homosexualization by Christopher Marlowe when he declared that John the Beloved had a homosexual relationship with Christ. So, that apparently asexual and positive instance of Biblical homosocial tactility was appropriated by Marlowe and therefore reinserted into the criminalising Christian discourse on homosexuality. Therefore all the three instances of
Two Walls : Art & Land
“One Project. Two Sites.” Curator Josef Ng warned viewers at the start that Lin Yilin’s project, carried out in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, presents two utterly different sides of itself. And in the end, he was right. In the Chiang Mai countryside, Lin Yilin highlights the utopian connotations of the “Land Project,” guiding his audience to “recollect” this historical fantasy rooted in Chinese cultural tradition which is radically democratizsed. The high, bare concrete wall built on the border of the Land’s paddy field stands tall like a monument. On the day of the event, some viewers stood rapt at its base or weighed themselves using the built-in scale, while others sat atop it, a few even holding fishing rods. An air of tranquility and simple joy reigned. Especially when viewed against the backdrop of its natural surroundings, the scene is almost entirely stripped of its “Land Project” (i.e. art-world) context, and the notion of “Land” is momentarily restored to its “man and nature” dimension–without an iota of sentimentalism. However, though full of imaginative appeal, these acts—surveying the view, fishing, weighing—transpire at the mercy of that high concrete wall; or more precisely, due to the existence of the wall, people’s aesthetic associations with the Land themselves begin to constitute a kind of landscape. Like the pivot point where the long wooden balance is riveted, the wall serves to tether which could have otherwise become romanticized modes of behavior to material foundations. At Tang Contemporary back in Bangkok, there is yet another wall—similar in size to the Chiang Mai wall, though white and made of brick. On a striking diagonal, it cuts the room into two separate spaces. One space features two videos and a poster print; the poster and the video recording to its right are relics of Lin Yilin’s moments of artistic activism in response to his rented Beijing studio’s premature demolition, which occurred prior to the original date laid out in the government’s land acquisition contract. The other video records the “protagonist” returning to the scene of activism after several months, only to find the remains of the studio in mounds of dirt and ruin. Here, we can see the increasingly common process of land commodification in China with its host of conflicts and contradictions. The video recording on the other side of the wall, right by the gallery entrance (or exit) shows Lin Yilin on the sidewalk of the Champs-Elysées in Paris, handcuffing his right hand to his right foot. His body bent in half, he struggles to walk and manages however he can. None of the videos or posters in the exhibition are physically connected to the wall. As far as the gallery is concerned (from a commercial standpoint), the wall immediately catches the eye and divides the space in a way that serves only as a temporary, aesthetic ascription. The temporality that it embodies forms a kind of tacit agreement with the current system of land acquisition in China. Lin Yilin uses two different walls to define land issues unique to two different spaces (Thailand and China). In the Chiang Mai installation and performance, he takes the greatest pains to build an aesthetic conception into an environment; whereas in Bangkok, he turns his energies towards elucidating some of the most sensitive issues China faces today. Nevertheless, in reality, the intertextual link between the two goes beyond a mere discussion of land ownership, and extends to a reflection upon the human condition. It therefore seems that these two questions printed on the Bangkok gallery brick wall—“Whose Land? Whose Art?”— are a revelation in line with Walter Benjamin’s thinking—a kind of struggle with fatalism and yet aspiring towards some undefined doom. ————————————— [The report first appeared in the magazine Leap] adminhumanitiesunderground.org
No More A Barrier Than A Couple of Beers Between Us
We are Invincible. We Cannot, We do not Deserve to Lose [La Jornada 2/7] February 2, 1994 To Mr. Gaspar Morquecho Escamilla, Tiempo newspaper, San Cristóbal de las Casas: Sir: I have just recently received your undated letter. At the same time, I am reading a newspaper in which you and other noble people are accused of being “spokespeople for the EZLN” or “Zapatistas.” Problems. If you would like to know where these denunciations and threats come from, look in the directories of the ranchers’ associations and you will find much cloth to cut. Well, passing on to another subject, and since this is about memories, I hope that you have finally been sent the mix of drunken crudeness with which you tried to interview us that beautiful first day of January. Perhaps all of you do not remember it well, but that time the one who was interviewed was you, because you would ask a question and then would answer it yourself. I do not know whether you would have been able to take anything coherent for the newspaper out of that monologue of questions and answers about the surprise and fear that took over the ancient capital of the state of Chiapas on the first day of the year. We were many, that day, who burned our bridges that early morning on the first of the year and assumed that onerous path of the ski mask wrapped around our faces. There were many of us who took that step of no return, knowing full well that the end that awaited us was probably death and improbably to see triumph. Taking power? No, something far more difficult: a new world. Nothing is left for us, we have left everything behind. And we have no regrets. Our path continues to be firm, in spite the fact that they are now seeking thousands of grotesque green masks in order to annihilate us. However, Mr. Morquecho, it turns out that we have long known, and not without pain, that we had to become strong with the death of those who fell by our sides, dying from bullets, and yes, with honor, but always dying. We had to shield our ears, Mr. Morquecho, in order to endure seeing compan~eros of many years in the mountains, their bodies sewn with bullets and torn by grenades, mortars, and rockets, their bodies with hands tied and the mercy blows to their heads, to be able to see and touch their blood, our blood, Mr. Morquecho, flowing brown in the streets of Ocosingo, of Las Margaritas, on the earth of Rancho Nuevo, in the mountains of San Cristóbal, and in the plantations of Altamirano. And understand us, Mr. Morquecho, that in the middle of that blood, of those shots, of those grenades, of those tanks, of those machine-gunning helicopters and those planes throwing their explosive darts, understand the simple truth: We are invincible… We cannot lose… We do not deserve to lose. But as we say here, our work is this: to fight and to die so that others can live better lives, much better than the ones that were ours to die. It is our work, yes, but not yours. So therefore please be careful. The fascist beast is bitter and directs its attacks at the most defenseless. Of the accusations being made against you and the entire team of noble and honest people who deliver (because the technical conditions of producing a newspaper must make it a real birth) that standard of impartiality and truth that carries the name of Tiempo, I want to say several things: The authentic heroism of Tiempo does not come from putting out a newspaper with Fred Flintstone’s equipment. It comes from, in a cultural environment so closed and absurd as San Cristóbal’s, giving voice to those who have nothing (now we have arms). It comes from defying, in four pages, the powerful men of commerce and land who have their goods in the city. It comes from not submitting to blackmail and intimidation to obligate them to publish a lie, or to neglect to publish a truth. It comes from, in the middle of that asphyxiating cultural atmosphere that sews up its own mediocre self-reflection, seeking fresh and lively air, actually democratic, in order to clean the streets and the minds of Jovel. It comes from when the Indians came down from the mountain (note: before the first of January) to the city, not to sell, not to buy, but rather to ask that someone listen, but finding only closed ears and doors; one door was always open, had been open for some time by a group of non-Indians who put up a sign that said the same thing: Tiempo. After passing that door, those Indians that today enrage the world with their audacity of refusing to die without dignity, found someone who would listen, which was already plenty, and they found someone who would put those Indian voices in ink on paper and with the heading Tiempo, which was before and is even more so now, heroic. It turns out, Mr. Morquecho, that heroism and valor are not to be found only behind a rifle and a ski mask, but they are also in front of a typewriter when the zeal of truth animates the hands that type. I find out now that they accuse all of you of being “Zapatistas.” If stating the truth and seeking justice is being a “Zapatista,” then we are millions. They should bring more soldiers. But, when the police and inquisitors come to intimidate you, tell them the truth, Mr. Morquecho. Tell them that you simply raised your voice to warn everyone that if changes were not made in the unjust relations of daily oppression, the Indians were going to rise up. Tell them that you simply recommended seeking other paths to follow, legal and peaceful, for those who surround the cities of all of Chiapas