Inviting Silence: An Essay on the Body

Painting by Matt Sesow

INVITING SILENCE: AN ESSAY ON THE BODY.

SAMIRA SAIDI, PHOTOGRAPHER, ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS I/M/D (ALUMNI) .

The Body, Gaps In The Contemporary Western Archives.

Our backs tell stories no books have the spine to carry. [1]

Deeply rooted in the body is its function as a source of knowledge and a home for history, culture, and identity. The body and the archive carry similar responsibilities within them, yet their appreciations throughout our worlds are tangibly different. Whereas the archive has its untouched and unchallenged essence in the holding of these historical subjects, the body has to compromise with various dimensions of appropriation and is seen through multiple frames of reference.

Responsibilities and expectations put onto the body as an operating archive confront and shift its ontology and existence. Setting new frames of reference can blossom into fIelds of non-violent and non-prejudiced behaviour towards and from this very body.

One can perceive the body as an archive in and of itself - recording, documenting, and remembering past experiences. As a monumental entity, it has been used as an archive before the physical matter, and therefore the physical space, replaced it. The body’s essential value, beyond its existence as a tool for labour, unfolds in its interpretation once one acknowledges its actuality as a physical archive fostering moments in history throughout generations.

The structure of the archive can be broken down by the divisions embedded in its foundation: physical matter which is preserved in the archive is divided, among others, by date, location, medium and value. Similarly, black and white bodies are put into compartments, distinguished by race, origin, body structure, and due to these characteristics, their overall value. These separations are considered a justifiable way to differentiate where bodies or physical matter belong.

nurturing yourself with your history, culture, and identity. is growing into yourself. welcoming your own existence in your body - the place you belong to. is a revolution of coming home. [2]

[1]. Kaur, Rupi. “Women Of Colour.” milk and honey, Andrews Me Meel Publishing, 2015, Kansas City, Missouri. (pp.171). 2 Author’s Own, 2017. [2]. Author’s Own, 2017.

The position of the body in the Global South is eminent and often used to bring life into historical or past events. Traditional performances were and still are one medium with which ‘past’ knowledge is passed on to next generations. The educational factor of these performances are valued, due to the personal and intimate aspects of history and the power to inform and communicate their message with purely rhythmic body movements. Movements, which define themselves through the self, of the performer and their body and not through otherness. In those circumstances, the body is creating its own narratives and represents

nothing but itself through the medium of art. A gesture of opening up doors, of the very home with which one comes to this world. A reflection on individual consciousness and collective memory.

How far in the past this memory can extend comes to importance, once one discusses dimensions of blackness in the contemporary.

It is a shame that to this day one has to debate the black body in the premise of colonial matter. Bodies which have not yet found a way to escape these memories or associations and are still a representation of violence, brutality, and ownership of the white man.

A notion of homelessness within the body in virtue of fleeing from institutional racism and discrimination. Seeds - forcefully put into clean soil, polluting the innocent presence of the body. Shifting its essence towards a living for the Western World and through its imaginations and expectations. Generating forms of behaviour which are rooted in colonial thinking patterns towards “the legacy of black bodies as property and subsequently three-fIfths human that pollutes the white imagination.” [3]

Bodies built to keep and hold the past destructed and demolished by the white man to assure the absoluteness of knowledge and superiority.

[3]. Rankine, Claudia. “The Condition Of Black Life Is One Of Mourning”. The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward. Simon & Schuster, Inc, 2016, New York. (pp.151).

Genetic memory has been proven to alter our experiences of the present world. It is not an uncommon thought to be in touch with those with which we share genetic material. The definition of oneself based on race and family history can be related back to ancestors’ DNA and as Carl Gustav Jung puts it in words: “is manifested in our collective unconscious.” [4]

Collective unconscious is a theory of inheriting traumatic experiences from our ancestors. “It must be pointed out that just as the human body shows a common anatomy over and above all racial differences, so, too, the psyche possesses a common substratum transcending all differences in culture and consciousness.” [5] Dr. Berit Brogaard, a philosopher specialised in cognitive neuroscience and the philosophy of the mind, explains this theory, based on her own research, more tangibly. “...it is possible that our basic survival instincts might stem from some long ago trauma experienced by a dead relative.” [6]

The colonization of the Global South was accompanied not only with the process of domination and robbery but also the definition of Europe as the centre

of all worlds. ‘Eurocentrism’ is marked with the idea of itself as the source of all knowledge and historical truth and has therefore the strength to shift perceptions towards bodies and even more so to move those bodies through its parameters.

[4]. “Concept of Collective Unconscious at Jung.” Carl Jung Resources, www.carljung.net/collective_unconscious.html. [5]. “Concept of Collective Unconscious at Jung.” Carl Jung Resources, http:// www.carl-jung.net/quotes.html [6]. Gillespie, Katherine. “Can We Access the Memories of Our Ancestors Through Our DNA?” Vice.com, 20 Dec. 2016, www.vice. com/en_au/article/ypv58j/genetic-memory.

‘Temporal discrimination’, [7] as Rolando- Vazquez, professor of sociology and diversity at the University College Roosevelt, [8] describes the phenomenon of “the organised placement of people in the margins of geography and the past of history.” [9] A notion that can be viewed as the physical and mental displacement of the non-white body with intentions to deconstruct it whilst existing in its own cognitive dissonance. Moreover, the native is continuously asked to find new ways of belonging through their repeated displacement by the white system, which has its foundation in the ignorance and denial of the existence of other historical truths. “... And, in fact, the truth about the black man, as a historical entity and as a human being, has been hidden from him, deliberately and cruelly; the power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white worlds definitions.” [10]

Revisiting the colonial past of African countries, slavery is about the taking over of the native body and its agencies.

[7]. Vázquez, Rolando.”SWICH 2016.” Youtube, uploaded by Museum Volkenkunde, 4 Jan.2017, www. youtube.com/watch?v=jb3Ou9uI_Ro [8]. “Rolando Vázquez.” University College Roosevelt. www.ucr.nl/about-ucr/ Faculty-and-Sta /Social-Science/ Pages/ Rolando-V%C3%A1zquez.aspx [9]. Vázquez, Rolando.”SWICH 2016.” Youtube, uploaded by Museum Volkenkunde, 4 Jan.2017, www. youtube.com/watch?v=jb3Ou9uI_Ro [10]. Baldwin, James.”Down At The Cross.” The Fire Next Time. A Division of Random House, Inc., 1993, New York. (pp.69).

Western ideology destructs these bodies, with their minds and knowledge, separately. It involves devotion to creating disconnection between individuals, which has its impact until this day and can be experienced in the tangible ethnic bigotry throughout the African continent.

[2] Creating divisions between bodies and the minds in order to maintain a dominant position on this planet can be traced back in Western anthropology to its organised oppressive nature towards African heritage and its value. Thus, having control over their bodies, narratives, and the spectacle coincided with disowning the native from their history, experience, and objective.

These colonial wounds are still in the process of healing, due to the absence and oppression of bodies and voices that would embrace historical diversity and connectivity.

The black body in the context of whiteness finds its purpose in fighting for dignity. [11] Resistance movements such as the ’Black Power Movement’, or ’BlackLivesMatter’, have their moral value centred in the struggle for dignity and the acknowledgement of black humanity. Frantz Fanon describes this position as follows: “Black and brown bodies feeling oppression, persecution, and poverty, wherever they are.” [12]

[11]. Vázquez, Rolando. “The Museum, Decoloniality, and the End of the Contemporary.” Youtube, uploaded by Vanabbemuseum, 2 Oct.2017, www. youtube.com/watch?v=eIHCH--Fft0 [12]. Edwidge, Danticat. “Message To My Daughters”. The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward. Simon & Schuster, Inc, 2016, New York. (pp.215).

“People are trapped in history, and history

is trapped in them.” [13] Accordingly, the native body cannot escape the projections of associated identities which are dating back to the colonial years of settlement, particularly after slavery became a racial institution that was heritable.

representation of the other forms the self.” [15]

Repetitive moves of projecting new concepts onto this body lets it drown in its ‘nonexistence’ within every culture including its own. The perception of the black body, beyond its African, ‘primitive’, and ‘deficient’ existence needs the acknowledgement of this very body as a functioning entity in all worlds and the history that comes with it.

This essay should put itself beyond the victimisation of the black bodies, while also displaying the embedded mistreatment and misunderstanding of these bodies in our societies. We need to create a moment of self-love and self-ownership and the restoring of its aura as “we must love ourselves even if - and perhaps especially if - others do not.” [14]

The position of the body in the archive is limited to artificial observations. Yet, the question is how to move the archive back into the body in order to humanise it and how this can become its own moving force to eliminate violence and exploitation, and to dismantle power structures projected onto it. This starts with acknowledging the existence of black humanity, accepting the reality of multiple historical ‘truths’, and the recognition of other worlds, while reclaiming the indigenous subjectives of the Global South. With the belief that “the

[13]. Baldwin, James. “Stranger In A Village.” Notes of a Native Son. Beacon Press, 1955, USA. (pp.119). [14]. Wilkerson, Isabel. “Where Do We Go From Here?” The Fire This Time edited by Jesmyn Ward. Simon & Schuster, Inc, 2016,New York. (pp.61).

[15]. Vázquez, Rolando.”SWICH 2016.” Youtube, uploaded by Museum Volkenkunde, 4 Jan.2017, www.youtube. com/ watch v=jb3Ou9uI_Ro