For The Wild - September 27, 2023


The Edges in the Middle, VI: Báyò Akómoláfé, Madhulika Banerjee, and Minna Salami

Topics
STEPHEN JENKINSON on a Lucid Reckoning ⧸349 JASON BALDES on Buffalo and Land Rematriation ⧸350

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 10 minutes

Words per minute

119.59

Word count

8,436

Sentence count

368

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

12

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 Hello for the wild community. I am sitting here watching the seasons change before my very eyes
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00:02:49.660 so it seems for me belonging needs to be stretched out to take in alien others that we would never
00:03:01.480 have admitted if we had our head set on straight but belonging has to be blasted open to accommodate
00:03:09.660 others exquisite others i'm wondering you know if we were to describe democracy without words
00:03:17.040 It's something, if I were to try and dance democracy or draw democracy or eat democracy, you know, it's something, it's moving into that kind of domain for me if we extract bureaucracy from democracy.
00:03:33.220 certainly the most important lesson from our impermanence that we can derive is our acceptance
00:03:44.860 of fluidity things will change they will flow they will go from one to the next
00:03:50.660 and it's when you flow that you can actually accommodate others
00:03:55.780 for the wild is honored to present the edges in the middle a series of conversations between
00:04:04.760 bio okomalafe and thought companions like john a powell v naomi klein and more these limited
00:04:12.400 episodes have been adapted from bios work as the global senior fellow at uc berkeley's othering
00:04:17.700 and belonging institute in this role bio has been holding a series of public conversations
00:04:22.840 on issues of justice and belonging
00:04:24.740 for the Institute's Democracy and Belonging Forum,
00:04:28.300 which connects and resources civic leaders
00:04:31.120 in Europe and the U.S.
00:04:32.480 who are committed to bridging across differences
00:04:34.740 to strengthen democracy and advance belonging
00:04:37.660 in both regions and around the world.
00:04:40.660 Bio's conversations encourage us to rethink justice,
00:04:44.200 hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise,
00:04:47.600 not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms.
00:04:49.620 To learn more about the Democracy and Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.
00:05:01.640 This recording features BIO's conversations with Mina Salami and Professor Madulika Banerjee. 0.89
00:05:08.380 Mina is a Nigerian, Finnish, and Swedish feminist author and social critic. 0.86
00:05:12.440 Her research focuses on Black feminist theory, contemporary African thought, and the politics of knowledge production.
00:05:19.620 Madhu Lika is a professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Delhi.
00:05:25.080 Her research interests center on the politics of knowledge and its roles in shaping the discourse and practice of development, with a particular focus on the global south.
00:05:49.620 Good evening. Hello. Hi, good evening to everyone on this fugitive channel. We're beaming from the
00:06:04.660 underground and through the cracks and inviting conversation, difficult conversations, the edges
00:06:13.820 in the middle. My name remains Bayar Komalafe, and I'm here with two very, very dear sisters
00:06:22.780 of mine, and their preciousness to me and their work is of these times, their thought
00:06:34.520 and their explorations and their inquiry. There was no way there were not going to be guests
00:06:39.840 and co-participants in this co-creation of possibility.
00:06:44.540 And so I'm really excited and touched
00:06:47.060 that they said yes to being part of this.
00:06:49.640 And I will introduce you to them and bring them up shortly.
00:06:53.160 But just before we do that, as is traditional,
00:06:58.520 I want to say that this conversation
00:07:03.320 is the last in a series of conversations
00:07:11.120 we've been having for some time now since last year.
00:07:15.120 And if there's time,
00:07:18.020 I might say a bit about how we are relaunching this.
00:07:22.900 And it might take some new form,
00:07:24.900 but this is a threshold.
00:07:27.300 We've come to a threshold in this experiment
00:07:30.140 with conversation and exploration that we call the Umbari series.
00:07:37.020 And it has never been a conversation or an exploration that is around reaching consensus
00:07:44.780 or arriving at a stabilized notion of truth.
00:07:49.900 It has always been a dance with possibility, a gesturing towards the possible,
00:07:57.300 are noticing that our bodies are yearning beyond language,
00:08:03.180 beyond text, beyond theory, beyond concept,
00:08:08.700 to do things with the world that our academic work
00:08:12.900 and our activisms may not have space for.
00:08:17.380 So this is a space for radical and exquisite becomeings.
00:08:27.300 And speaking of radical and exquisite becomeings, this conversation in particular around democracy and its exquisite other wants to do something and hold space for questions that I think are increasingly vital now and urgent.
00:08:50.960 something happened a couple of days ago in france as as most of us or everyone here knows
00:08:59.900 there is fire on the mountain right and this is not limited to france this is spreading but that
00:09:10.520 has to be held in context with larger trends and observations about democracy
00:09:17.680 democracy as a system of governance democracy as a power sharing format
00:09:24.900 democracy as the presupposition of the primacy of the citizen
00:09:30.140 there is a sense in which one might say that democracy is shrinking if you will and
00:09:40.300 studies showing the diminishing trust in democratic institutions.
00:09:51.520 Those studies are just symptomatic of what is happening at large. And so what we're here to
00:09:56.560 do together is to probe, is to co-examine this thing that is happening and to see what might
00:10:05.300 want to emerge then, not to displace or to replace or to go beyond democracy. I'm not ready to do
00:10:15.360 that yet. I don't even know what a beyond democracy looks like at the moment. But at least to touch
00:10:24.120 the demise, as it seems, the demise of this paradigm, and to have questions about how
00:10:33.320 people in the global South have experienced democracy, especially to wonder if there aren't
00:10:40.140 other ways of being in power together with each other and together with the world that is
00:10:47.200 creeping up through the cracks of these times. So with that, I would like to bring
00:10:54.560 Professor Madulika
00:10:56.720 Banerjee and
00:10:58.900 my dear sister
00:11:00.080 Mina Salami to
00:11:02.620 the table. We promised
00:11:04.840 we would eat chicken together
00:11:06.360 digitally.
00:11:08.940 But in the absence of that,
00:11:11.820 please unmute yourself, 0.99
00:11:13.160 my sisters.
00:11:14.640 How are you?
00:11:16.400 It's a very banal
00:11:18.520 question, but how are you doing?
00:11:23.080 Mina?
00:11:24.560 Um, I'm doing, however I'm doing, I'm doing all the better for being here with you both.
00:11:30.800 It's really wonderful to be joining this in Bari. And as you say, Bayo, the questions that we're
00:11:37.060 going to be exploring are really emergent, really important, really symptomatic. I think of so many
00:11:44.260 of the questions that people are harboring in their minds and their bodies and their spirits
00:11:49.560 at the moment, and so I'm very much looking forward
00:11:52.820 to just unpacking and exploring this idea of democracy
00:11:58.020 together with you both.
00:11:59.420 Very dear minds and dear spirits to me.
00:12:02.660 Thank you.
00:12:03.700 Thank you, Meena.
00:12:06.020 Well, very happy to be here, Ayo and Meena.
00:12:11.800 Kindred spirits I have just discovered in the past few months,
00:12:16.460 and what a pleasure.
00:12:17.240 And I really welcome this forum, this opportunity for us to talk and share our ideas with others who are listening and watching.
00:12:31.700 Because I think we represent very self-consciously voices that are not often heard and need to be heard.
00:12:43.480 because they have wisdom, experience, forbearance
00:12:49.960 and a lot to offer to the world as it is now.
00:12:57.000 And to ideas like democracy and freedom and progress,
00:13:05.460 there's a lot that these voices can contribute to.
00:13:11.920 So, yes, I thank you for, you know, creating this opportunity where we can chat together, what you call an Mbari chat, my own grammar of Bangla, in which we call it an Adda, where friends sit together and, yeah, it could be chicken, it could be tea.
00:13:34.040 And you talk about things that you share in the hope for doing things better and together.
00:13:41.920 Yes, yes, yes. Thank you, my dear sisters. And this is the first time we are on this platform having a three-way conversation. And this would, of course, this has informed the time. So we usually have this within an hour. We're stretching to 90 minutes to hold the juiciness and the robustness of what we want to explore today. And I'm really glad we're doing this together.
00:14:08.240 Let me start things out by situating with our proposition. I was just on a call just prior to this, and I shared with them that I woke up yesterday and was alerted to a paper, a scientific report, by a Jeff Morgan from the National Museum in California with an intriguing premise.
00:14:36.800 And so this dude has studied over 50,000 years the correlation between the rise and fall of temperature and the shrinkage of brains, right?
00:14:54.900 So what he is finding, what this research team is finding, is that in warmer temperatures, when the earth gets warmer, our brains shrink, right?
00:15:12.620 And I just want to leave that there for a moment.
00:15:15.300 When climate warming and global warming happens, the brain capacitor reduces, if you will.
00:15:22.440 There's so much there.
00:15:23.540 That's so layered on many levels. There's so much we can do with that. But it ignited a different question for me, right? And we'll enter into the definitional aspects of democracy, but let's get into a conversation and see what ignites from here.
00:15:39.500 And maybe I'll start with you, Madilika. Could it be that we are, that our practices of democracy, how we see democracy, how we think about democracy, could it be that democracy is just as much an organic responsivity to these times and it's shriveling up as the earth gets hotter, so to speak?
00:16:06.500 Could it be that in some senses, this decline in trust in democratic institutions, this rise in the big man, in the populist movements, fascist undertakings, could it be that we're seeing these events and it's correlated with rising global temperatures?
00:16:31.740 Could it be that democracy is at risk and it's facing extinction?
00:16:38.900 What does that ignite for you, listening to that?
00:16:43.020 I think that for so long we have been talking about democracy.
00:16:50.340 And if we even go back to the most banal but very significant definition
00:16:59.220 of the people, for the people, by the people kind of thing.
00:17:05.420 I think we need to understand that we have forgotten
00:17:10.480 the part of by the people and of the people.
00:17:16.860 We have focused on democracy for the people,
00:17:21.440 which is okay, which is good, because all people need democracy
00:17:25.780 and all democratic institutions should try to provide it
00:17:31.880 and protect it as much as possible for the people.
00:17:35.740 But I think that democracy is something that people can construct
00:17:39.700 for themselves and that they can continue to construct
00:17:44.160 and continue to contribute towards a democratic undertaking
00:17:50.500 is underestimated.
00:17:52.760 Let me explain and let me see how that links to the issue of warming.
00:17:59.660 I think that while many new concepts of democracy have no doubt come in the last 300 years or so,
00:18:08.420 and actively in the last 150, 200 years or so,
00:18:13.160 one of the most deeply democratic things we had built across culture
00:18:19.160 is a democratic relationship with nature.
00:18:22.760 we always felt that we were part of nature.
00:18:29.520 Nature was a part of us.
00:18:32.280 There is a way in which the human being is at even deal with nature.
00:18:40.340 And so, even though human beings have utilized nature,
00:18:45.820 have been dependent on nature, have worshipped nature for that reason,
00:18:49.960 but have always known that they have power over nature.
00:18:55.400 But because human cultures in so many parts of the globe
00:19:02.240 were extremely respectful of the same nature which they could have power over,
00:19:09.360 that respect meant that they kept themselves at least at even keel with nature,
00:19:16.340 never trying to plunder, use but not abuse.
00:19:19.960 So, this, of course, enabled them to produce so much, to create such beauty, to create so much abundance, to create wealth.
00:19:32.400 But nature was never destroyed in that process.
00:19:35.600 I think that in building all the other dimensions of modernity, of development, and so on, we have somewhere lost this particular aspect of a democratic relationship with Asia.
00:19:54.440 Reams and reams have been written on this.
00:19:58.440 But to link with your question about what is happening today about democracy being in danger and how that links with what I'm saying, is that the kind of democracy that we think ought to be built today always rides on the back of a modernist notion of prosperity.
00:20:24.200 okay there you go so the big man becomes big because he promises that prosperity
00:20:37.880 on the basis of which you can anticipate a democracy whereas and that is accompanied
00:20:46.740 by the claim that nobody could do this for you i'm going to do this for you
00:20:51.280 and we are going to discover
00:20:53.840 a greatness
00:20:54.440 you know
00:20:56.540 and
00:20:57.700 when
00:20:59.020 ever
00:21:00.700 somebody is trying to deliver
00:21:03.220 democracy to you
00:21:04.580 for the people
00:21:06.220 you know today it takes the form of populism
00:21:09.820 and the big man
00:21:11.260 it's a problem
00:21:12.600 but look at the history of democracy
00:21:15.440 that especially in the global south
00:21:17.460 all the people who have tried to deliver it
00:21:19.640 to us, for us
00:21:21.120 there is somewhere an assumption that you know the people are not clever enough or smart enough
00:21:27.440 to be participant we talk about participatory democracy
00:21:32.580 but the way in which we have thought of prosperity in the modern time we don't think that what people
00:21:41.440 know how they have cultivated crops how they have woven cloth how they have produced beautiful
00:21:49.120 materials, how they've built beautiful buildings, how they've had trade and commerce, they've
00:21:56.040 built big ships, they've crossed the ocean, they know the stars, they know the currents.
00:22:01.740 These knowledges are not seen as germane to the project of prosperity and modernity.
00:22:10.980 Right.
00:22:11.140 So, if people, those very people who are supposed to be constituent of the democracy are not respected as human beings with a mind, you have been shrinking their minds for a long time.
00:22:30.380 And the entire process of prosperity building has been contributing to global warming that we know independently anyway.
00:22:41.140 so global warming is happening on the one end
00:22:44.440 while actually you have been shrinking
00:22:48.360 the worth, the self-worth
00:22:51.420 of people who you expect to be participants in a democracy
00:23:11.140 We'll be right back.
00:23:41.140 I want to take this idea of contortion there, because how you describe it, it's that the way
00:24:04.140 democracy has unfolded you know and there isn't a monolithic perception or practice of democracy
00:24:11.520 right but the way it seems to have unfolded especially received by the global south is that
00:24:19.480 it's front-loaded with ways of knowing that are decidedly European that are decidedly industrial
00:24:27.580 I mean, I wonder if you could just jump in on this and what you feel about that, because
00:24:34.280 there is a prevailing presumption that democracy is contentless, that it's neutral and it's
00:24:42.380 universal. So it basically applies everywhere and anywhere. But is that how you understand it?
00:24:49.840 Is that how you understand this political arrangement, its notion of power, its understanding
00:24:54.960 of the citizen as the unit of analysis?
00:24:57.400 Is this what is at stake when you think about democracy?
00:25:03.780 Thank you, Bayo.
00:25:05.120 And thank you for kicking us off with the image,
00:25:08.680 Jeff Morgan.
00:25:09.880 And I want to just turn to that briefly in, you know,
00:25:13.220 in order to respond to the question that you're asking now,
00:25:16.020 because what came up for me similarly to Maduluka,
00:25:18.940 as you shared that, and I know it was metaphorical,
00:25:21.580 so let me also stick with image and metaphor,
00:25:23.580 because what came up for me is a house
00:25:26.560 and an image of, let's say, all of us,
00:25:30.820 all of humanity, all of all living species.
00:25:34.320 If we were one organism and we're in this house
00:25:37.260 and it's a rectangular shaped house
00:25:40.760 with a window on both ends, so two windows.
00:25:45.200 And if you look at the window on the right, let's say,
00:25:49.560 you would see a raging fire, you know,
00:25:52.800 war, destruction, the erosion of our forests, our rivers, our mountains, and so on. So everything
00:25:59.940 catastrophic, all the poly crisis, all of that, one window. And if you walked over to the other
00:26:06.440 end as this collective organism and looked out of that window, there would be, imagine you see
00:26:13.560 this immense beauty, you know, our planet thriving, humanity elevated and elated, knowledge of the
00:26:21.400 mind body and the soul being championed democracy in its best form being practiced and as Madulika
00:26:29.460 was speaking the image started to shapeshift for me following from what you had said Bayo and I
00:26:34.900 thought about how you know at the moment we have I believe it is about 30 percent of the world is
00:26:42.060 under authoritarian rule which is a massive increase if you compare it to a decade ago
00:26:49.220 And it seems as though you could sort of say that we are shifting, this organism is shifting towards the window that faces the fire, that faces destruction, that faces the declining of democracy.
00:27:03.340 but a huge part of that in this is in response to your question to me because there are various
00:27:11.080 reasons yes climate change and it's a sort of shrinking of the organism shrinking of the brain
00:27:15.440 shrinking of the world shrinking of the house that we're all in right even agency a shrinking
00:27:21.040 of agency yes precisely um but one very massive part of this shrinking is eurocentrism and the way
00:27:30.680 that, you know, it has been decades, centuries, soon probably millennia of our trying to end
00:27:42.000 the imperialist forces of Eurocentrism and the way that Eurocentrism shapeshifts and
00:27:51.160 convolutes and contorts and distorts notions such as democracy. Because I do very much think that
00:28:01.920 with democracy, the Eurocentric impulse is very easily transmitted into this form of governance,
00:28:12.940 you know, with its impulse to sort of assert itself as an empire. And so the way that we
00:28:20.020 could associate democracy today is, we can associate it with neoliberal capitalism, for
00:28:26.300 example, that of course is connected to and stems from the Enlightenment and a lot of
00:28:33.780 the thinking of the Enlightenment that conceived of the human in a particular way and freedom
00:28:40.240 of speech in a particular way and knowledge in a particular way and all of these things
00:28:44.820 that have been immensely problematic and destructive for the collective organism.
00:28:51.140 That said, I find that it is important for me anyway, as I think about democracy,
00:28:58.600 to make the distinction between, let's call it, bureaucracy, maybe we can call it.
00:29:05.140 Let's go with that.
00:29:06.420 Let's go with that, right?
00:29:08.280 So there's bureaucracy, and then there's the democracy for the people, of the people.
00:29:14.820 Which, as an African, as a Nigerian specifically, you know, when I've gone to vote in Nigeria, for instance, and it's almost as though people vote with their entire bodies.
00:29:28.900 You know, there's this exuberance about being able to participate in shaping the politics of your society.
00:29:36.600 and and that for me says that there's something almost instinctive about democracy uh to to the
00:29:44.160 pursuit of i mean freedom is not because again then with going back to the enlightenment and
00:29:50.180 all of that but yeah there's something very embodied joyous and of course it is then often
00:29:56.460 completely met with corruption with violence and so on but just that impulse toward democracy
00:30:04.780 that I've witnessed in Nigeria and that I seem to see in all of the so-called global south when
00:30:11.100 the opportunity arises. It's something that I find juxtaposes bureaucracy so massively and
00:30:17.140 it really troubles me that I guess it also corresponds well with this house of the very
00:30:22.660 different worlds that we are faced with. I like that helpful distinction between
00:30:29.240 bureaucracy, which you should
00:30:31.260 obviously write a book about, you know.
00:30:34.900 Can I just
00:30:35.640 quickly say, because I've always
00:30:37.360 struggled with the term
00:30:39.180 Global South, as Madulika knows,
00:30:41.180 I spoke about this.
00:30:41.940 I'm trying to find
00:30:44.240 a better way, and so maybe
00:30:46.840 thanks to you and this conversation,
00:30:48.960 maybe bureaucracy is...
00:30:51.400 Maybe bureaucracy is
00:30:52.560 increasingly problematic,
00:30:55.600 but it's a
00:30:56.920 galvanizing point for the moment to plant a flag and see what we do with space there and how we
00:31:05.140 move there. But there's something you say in distinguishing between bureaucracy and democracy,
00:31:11.480 bureaucracy as an enlightenment product, and then something that feels more instinctual,
00:31:17.180 something that feels animated. Though one has to also contrast this and hold this in light of
00:31:22.420 the diminishing returns of democracy in Nigeria
00:31:27.500 going by our recent elections,
00:31:30.980 less and less people are dancing to the polls, right?
00:31:35.000 It seems there is even a fear to participate.
00:31:38.260 And the very notion of the citizen
00:31:40.280 is called into question in our political arrangement.
00:31:44.160 In fact, I might just venture to say
00:31:46.800 that we don't have a government per se.
00:31:49.160 We have a bully system.
00:31:52.420 that runs parallel to citizen aspirations, right?
00:31:56.900 Like every time something wants to reach out
00:32:00.060 for something new,
00:32:01.660 this bully system reinforces the parallelism, right?
00:32:05.520 And says, stay in your track.
00:32:07.640 We will drive the best cars,
00:32:09.120 we'll fly in private jets,
00:32:10.460 and you will stay in this space of servitude
00:32:14.340 and exclusion and oppression.
00:32:17.920 So there is a sense in which I might
00:32:21.200 hold this
00:32:23.320 space of tension and notice that
00:32:25.380 along with
00:32:27.300 Fela Anikula Kukuti
00:32:28.580 that democracy hasn't worked
00:32:31.200 for us
00:32:32.280 and I wonder
00:32:34.360 how that sits in your body
00:32:36.900 Madhulika, with regards
00:32:39.440 to India as well
00:32:40.780 You know
00:32:44.600 in India
00:32:48.240 an anthropologist who also happens to me
00:32:51.180 my sister who studies elections in India and democracy and she has a book called Cultivating
00:32:56.860 Democracy and she has been studying rural India and its involvement in the democratic process for
00:33:03.600 20 years. Let's go there. You know one of the things that she argues is that like Meena said
00:33:13.140 in India election time is like a festival anyway in our cultures you know every festival is very
00:33:20.560 you know very joyous very colorful noisy and participatory we've turned elections into one
00:33:30.360 of our many festivals so when people come to vote there is that joy of participation
00:33:36.520 i think it cuts both ways in india you know the national election survey that has been
00:33:44.160 doing extensive surveys in India since 1995 has shown a very high rate of participation
00:33:52.740 in the elections. So in simply the procedural terms of democracy, where elections are one of
00:34:00.620 the important institutions and procedures, that is participation. And the highest participation
00:34:07.080 It comes from so-called illiterate people, the lowest of the society.
00:34:13.160 They are the ones who vote the most.
00:34:16.760 And to link with what I was saying earlier, these are the people who have been enfranchised
00:34:25.960 by their ability to participate in the elections.
00:34:30.780 You see them as human beings who are, for me, carriers of very deep knowledges.
00:34:40.460 They have been disenfranchised by the process of development.
00:34:45.100 And the entire history of 75 years of post-colonial India has been this struggle between one kind of enfranchisement on the one hand and another kind of disenfranchisement on the other.
00:35:02.480 And I think that the fact that people continue to participate in what makes them enfranchised, even as they are continually, you know, marginalized, invisibilized by the system, is a remarkable testament.
00:35:32.480 to their spirit, and to their desire
00:35:38.100 to be part of a modern democratic process.
00:35:42.800 And I think that there's so much else
00:35:48.480 in the democratic process that they have participated in.
00:35:52.440 So their invisibilization in terms of their knowledges
00:35:55.000 and their kind of persona, economic persona,
00:35:57.820 what are they going to do?
00:35:59.280 How are they going to contribute to the economy
00:36:00.920 and to the society?
00:36:02.480 There's been so much mobilization against injustice of all kinds.
00:36:10.720 Injustice against caste divisions, injustice against gender inequality, right?
00:36:16.520 Injustice against regional imbalances.
00:36:20.340 And people have mobilized, fought, petitioned every single kind of political, you know, mobilization that is possible.
00:36:30.640 People have done.
00:36:32.480 And there's never a dull moment in terms of political life in India.
00:36:38.880 And there's a continuous desire to grasp with both hands every single possibility that the democratic sphere holds out to them.
00:36:52.820 And I think that that's possibly why democracy in India continues to be by the people, of the people.
00:37:08.580 And this is irrespective of whichever regime may think that they are the ones who are going to provide for the people.
00:37:20.660 You know, there will be more malevolent or benevolent regimes.
00:37:25.960 But regimes always think they have to provide for.
00:37:29.300 We haven't yet reached that point in democracy where the regime says, yes, the people will constitute.
00:37:37.700 I will just be a handmade.
00:37:39.180 the institutions will just be a process
00:37:42.520 by which the contributions of ordinary people
00:37:48.760 will be consolidated into the democratic process
00:37:51.640 that's yet to come
00:37:54.360 but the pressure from below
00:37:57.280 the pressure from different kinds of people
00:37:59.900 different kinds of movements
00:38:01.400 that has been continuous
00:38:04.840 and that has been, you know, energetic
00:38:08.400 and it has been
00:38:10.280 one with great belief
00:38:12.420 carried with great dignity
00:38:13.960 I think
00:38:16.640 that's the real
00:38:18.500 testimony, the real, and you know
00:38:20.140 no surveys or
00:38:22.380 barometers of democracy across the world
00:38:24.540 have yet been able to really identify
00:38:26.820 this
00:38:28.080 aspect of how
00:38:30.380 across the global south
00:38:32.320 people retain
00:38:34.500 their belief
00:38:35.460 in this process
00:38:37.180 despite everything
00:38:39.680 contrary
00:38:40.420 everything
00:38:41.700 and the wrong end
00:38:42.720 of the stick
00:38:43.200 of different kinds
00:38:44.180 of sticks
00:38:44.500 that they have to
00:38:45.240 deal with
00:38:46.180 over the last
00:38:47.800 century
00:38:48.460 they continue
00:38:50.140 they rise
00:38:51.940 still I rise
00:38:53.860 yeah
00:38:54.400 still I rise
00:38:57.320 but Didi
00:38:59.160 and Mina
00:39:00.240 maybe a
00:39:02.500 lingering
00:39:03.500 haunting
00:39:04.200 question here
00:39:05.240 is
00:39:05.700 is civic
00:39:06.980 participation commensurate to a materiality of democracy, right? I think it's quite evident in
00:39:15.140 the regions, the worlds that we come from, that there is a resilience. There's a story of this
00:39:21.200 Nigerian woman who came out to vote. I mean, I don't know if you saw this, the recent, the February
00:39:26.700 elections in Nigeria, February 25th, and she came out to vote and she was beaten by people who work
00:39:35.240 for the ruling party and almost lost her eye. She went home, dressed herself up and came out
00:39:44.080 again to vote. You know, she insisted and she was carried on, you know, became a media project
00:39:51.540 and almost a meme, you know, with that bandage on her eye saying, I will vote.
00:39:57.260 And this happens again and again. This resilience is exploited and almost used as a resource base to fund and nurture bully systems. Again, regimes that do not care for people.
00:40:15.180 And I'm wondering about this one-sided notion of democracy that celebrates resilience, but doesn't actually translate into, I dare use the word power or the term or the phrase power equity.
00:40:32.160 It doesn't translate to agency, the spaciousness and the wonder.
00:40:36.620 So I'm critical, I'm wondering about this materiality of democracy, like as a spatial temporal arrangement.
00:40:45.180 It cannot simply be civic participation, can it?
00:40:48.440 We have to take into consideration democratic institutions.
00:40:51.780 We have to take into consideration post-humanist, you know, infiltrations around us.
00:40:57.540 I'm wondering where does democracy lie if we notice that it cannot simply be one aspect of a spectrum of things? 0.55
00:41:07.920 yeah i think that's why what really came to me was this image of people as madulika also so
00:41:16.200 beautifully explored like the image of people in our parts of the world and in movement in festival
00:41:23.480 in right and festival not you know tradition of festival and masquerades and ritual is not always
00:41:30.760 one that is peaceful or joyous. It can also really be eruptive and bring out all of those
00:41:39.260 shadow sides of society that we're trying to hide and that are indeed very oppressive and violent.
00:41:46.580 And it sort of all really comes to the fore. And I guess you said, Bayo, that maybe democracy
00:41:53.160 isn't for us. And I think that that's a statement that we really need to take seriously, you know,
00:42:00.920 in our societies, in our social criticisms, in our dialogues, in our embodied explorations,
00:42:08.280 because there is something to that that is true. But then on the other hand, I still want to go
00:42:14.100 back in thinking about the materiality of democracy and expanding not beyond democracy
00:42:23.840 but beyond the materiality of it because maybe there is where we can find a way to not get stuck
00:42:32.600 in the idea that democracy is not for us okay thank you let's do this um in this way i would
00:42:42.340 like each of us to pose a question to another, right? So, well, I mean, I don't know when in
00:42:50.960 Nigeria, did you play that, was it called Jangoroba or something? Do you know Jangoroba?
00:42:55.820 You don't know Jangoroba? No, I don't know Jangoroba. What's that?
00:42:59.160 That horrible playground thing where you sat, there was a slide which always burned your behind
00:43:07.220 because it was rusted in the sun.
00:43:10.620 Then there was the other one that you sat in a chair
00:43:13.580 and then you had to pull a wheel and then everyone,
00:43:17.140 but they were always rusty.
00:43:18.640 And so they have this nickname for it.
00:43:20.940 We're going to do something of that kind here.
00:43:23.380 So I like each of us.
00:43:25.340 I know their questions.
00:43:26.560 I know your works.
00:43:27.980 I know each of your works.
00:43:29.140 I know Madulika's work.
00:43:30.240 I know Mina's work.
00:43:31.040 And I'd like you to articulate from the heart of your project
00:43:35.480 The things that keep you up at night, diffractively with this theme of democracy and its exquisite others. Pose a question for someone else here. And let's see if we can rotate our questions in this way. And then we'll come back and see what happens. I've asked questions so far. Who would like to go?
00:43:57.440 i have a question um for madulika first have a comment the prayer that you say you recite every
00:44:05.880 day i think you know it's something that should be disseminated you know if we all could recall
00:44:12.820 that we are these elements and i love that in hinduism that you have five and that space
00:44:17.800 is also an element then i think we would we would just operate and relate to one another
00:44:26.900 and to our planet in very different ways.
00:44:30.620 And yet that said, and this is my question
00:44:34.280 or my provocation to you maybe,
00:44:38.980 is that nature, I don't know that nature is democratic.
00:44:44.520 You know, I think if you look at much of the animal world
00:44:48.700 and even the plant world and nature generally,
00:44:51.640 you know, it can be very harsh as we know.
00:44:54.400 earlier in Hamburg today it was very windy and I got hit by a huge branch that had somehow
00:45:02.340 loosened from a tree it punched me straight in the eyes you know it made me reflect on
00:45:06.940 how this very tiny mundane incident made me reflect on on how harsh nature can be and how 0.93
00:45:14.880 nature really doesn't give a shit about you know the way we go about conducting our days 0.80
00:45:19.960 running our errands, whatever the case might be, let alone the ways in which animals fight wars 0.95
00:45:27.900 in order to survive. So I guess, how do we pull insight from these non-modern knowledges that
00:45:37.480 you're working on without glorifying or romanticizing the natural world? Because I
00:45:44.760 think ultimately that if we do that, we also won't arrive at a true display and dance of a democratic
00:45:52.380 principle that is perhaps instinctual to humans and to living beings. But thank you, Meena. That
00:45:59.460 was, yeah, we've talked about that prayer before too, haven't we? Yeah. And I do think that it does
00:46:08.020 ground one on an everyday basis. And that's why when we greet, we greet with folded hands
00:46:14.820 everyone in the same way as you greet the maker, the universe, because you recognize that the
00:46:23.020 universe resides in everyone. That's why you say you greet everyone with folded hands.
00:46:30.900 Talking about the democracy within nature, I should have clarified. What I was saying
00:46:37.020 actually was about our relationship with nature,
00:46:43.980 which was not extractive,
00:46:50.880 even while it was utilitarian.
00:46:58.120 So in that sense, I meant that we had a more
00:47:02.800 democratic relationship with nature.
00:47:05.120 nature is I certainly don't know enough to be able to claim that it is democratic and I certainly
00:47:14.040 know it in the way that you do actually and I see that there are so many processes which are very
00:47:23.180 harsh within nature which don't seem like democratic at all but the one thing that I do know
00:47:31.940 I do understand, and I'm sure this is something you shared as well, is that in nature, violence between species, within species, is recognized and allowed within the limits of basic need.
00:47:58.680 in terms of, you know, when there is hunger
00:48:03.520 or when you need to protect your young.
00:48:07.440 There are very clear rules for when any kind of violence is allowed.
00:48:14.180 But from what little I have learned,
00:48:17.060 and, you know, the animal world really fascinates me,
00:48:20.260 as does the plant world.
00:48:21.840 What little I have read and understood,
00:48:23.680 simply to be able to dominate and create
00:48:29.860 and a sense of power that is autonomous of any kind of need
00:48:33.320 is not something that seems to be warranted
00:48:36.720 within the animal world.
00:48:39.140 Whether that qualifies to be understood as democratic
00:48:42.380 in the way that we understand it, I don't know.
00:48:45.820 But I do think that human beings who used resources from nature,
00:48:51.720 simple example when you collect medicinal plants to make herbal medicine after all
00:48:57.080 most communities still today use herbal medicines right there are very strict rules by how you can
00:49:06.340 access otherwise when you access a plant if you were to just uproot it who's going to be
00:49:11.720 responsible for the regeneration of that plant so that others can use it for the forget the future
00:49:17.680 generations, even your own contemporaries
00:49:19.820 should be able to use it. So there are very
00:49:21.720 strict rules. And
00:49:23.680 when you know that a plant can, you know, there
00:49:25.580 are leaves or there are flowers or
00:49:27.160 sometimes the roots of plants
00:49:29.040 have medicinal value.
00:49:31.740 There are rules by which part
00:49:33.560 of the root you use, which
00:49:35.520 part you live in the earth.
00:49:38.460 So I'm
00:49:39.700 talking about that as principles
00:49:41.820 of democracy, where you are using
00:49:43.620 but you do not abuse.
00:49:46.140 And I think that
00:49:47.680 This is something that is systematically destroyed by industrial capitalism.
00:49:52.540 Because industrial capitalism, its temporality is different.
00:49:55.980 Its outcomes are different.
00:49:57.960 Its spatial considerations are different.
00:50:01.480 And therefore, that guides how you use.
00:50:04.480 And the sad part is because industrial capitalism is so hierarchical,
00:50:07.960 the very people who collect are the people who are least rewarded.
00:50:13.760 That, of course, is a different set of issues.
00:50:15.460 But deeply undemocratic practices come from our undemocratic practices vis-a-vis nature as well.
00:50:21.940 They're all completely intertwined.
00:50:24.980 I mean, I believe that it's when we engage with the undemocratic nature of our lives at these fundamental levels,
00:50:33.440 that is when we are beginning to ask the substantive questions of democracy.
00:50:45.460 Buried in teeth, buried in teeth, buried in teeth
00:51:12.940 Can't tell if I've got black roots or braids
00:51:16.860 Growing out of my head 1.00
00:51:19.340 Grandfathers eating our graves
00:51:23.580 And buried in teeth 0.97
00:51:27.740 Buried in teeth 0.92
00:51:29.660 Buried in teeth
00:51:31.300 Can't tell if I've got rivers or veins
00:51:34.820 Running under my skin
00:51:37.520 Flowing out over the plains
00:51:42.940 I have my question to you, which is that, you know, why would you want to couple democracy with belonging?
00:51:51.920 Why would I want to do that?
00:51:56.480 Do you know that I want to do that?
00:51:59.880 Okay, tell me why you wouldn't.
00:52:02.260 Let me dance with that. Let me dance with that.
00:52:05.180 Democracy and belonging, there's something deeply aspirational in that framework.
00:52:12.400 the longing for a world where everyone has agency right um everyone has a say and everyone has a
00:52:26.560 seat um i i'm exhausted with the idea of the seat at the table and no but but there you go i'll just
00:52:36.380 use it. But the idea of belonging, of course, in the ways that Elder John Powell and many of
00:52:43.600 the scholars that have nourished this ground together, that idea of belonging just goes beyond
00:52:50.380 can we all get along? No. It notices disparities, unevenness. It notices how things move in and come
00:52:59.540 out. It notices how paradigms die and paradigms swell in their place, but it still longs for a
00:53:08.560 world that is free from the horrors of hierarchical arrangements where bodies are racialized according
00:53:18.680 to various attributes that they seemingly possess, according to one sensorial affinity
00:53:26.440 to that aspect, right? Whether it's pigmentation or something else. So belonging wants to do that.
00:53:33.960 And coupling with democracy is, of course, noticing that there is a sense in which democracy
00:53:41.480 brings together our best political skills. It brings together the best of us. If we can
00:53:51.040 furnish the world with a system that allows belonging to thrive, that would be democracy.
00:53:58.880 That would be the definition of democracy to aspire to. My questions here, the work that I'm
00:54:06.660 trying to articulate here, or what I'm trying to notice and observe and put to writing and text
00:54:15.880 and questions and conversation, is noticing that the vote is dying.
00:54:23.120 And by the vote, I mean the materiality that made democracy
00:54:27.580 as a people project possible, as an anthropocentric project.
00:54:34.480 That materiality is fading away, if you will.
00:54:38.960 Democracy has always been tied to the citizen, right?
00:54:42.300 to the citizen, to the sovereignty of the citizen. And the way the citizen practices this sovereignty
00:54:49.940 is by voting. So there's something about the electoral process that seems to be interwoven
00:54:55.740 with the heart of democracy, right? One man, one vote, as is often said. But I think that every
00:55:04.620 monolith, every political arrangement is indebted to unequal circumstances,
00:55:10.720 is indebted to flows, is indebted to riverine phenomena, is indebted to the world in its
00:55:18.980 post-humanism. And in some sense, what I started out with by noticing the shrinking of brains
00:55:26.040 and how the Anthropocene is not just a geological epoch, not just a climatic condition,
00:55:34.960 It is thought. The Anthropocene is thought. In some sense, the space of the citizen is shrinking rapidly. And the unevenness, like the tree branch that sucker punched my sister, sorry about that.
00:55:56.760 I apologize on behalf of all nature for that. The tree branch is part of this arrangement,
00:56:07.120 it's part of democracy, right? It's part of how we have made a clearing in the wilds and tried
00:56:13.200 to forge a political project in that clearing. But the wilds are now encroaching on that clearing
00:56:19.340 and the space of the citizen, which has always been a humanist project, is giving way to something
00:56:26.060 else. And we're not exactly sure what is being born here. We no longer have a confident response
00:56:33.120 to the question, what is power and who has power any longer? Because power doesn't seem to be even
00:56:39.960 in the colonizer's hand, right? It doesn't seem to be in IMF's hand or the World Bank's hand.
00:56:45.320 We now have to bring in, into the demos of democracy, microbes and bacteria and fungi
00:56:52.160 and the coronavirus. So it seems for me belonging needs to be stretched out to take in alien others 0.97
00:57:02.620 that we would never have admitted if we had our heads set on straight. Belonging has to be blasted 0.77
00:57:10.900 open to accommodate others, exquisite others. So freedom will look radically different from how we 0.80
00:57:16.960 perceive it right now. Perhaps freedom might actually be the postponement of the exquisite.
00:57:24.320 Democracy seems to be doing that right at this moment. We are yearning for some kind of fellowship.
00:57:30.560 We're yearning for a different kind of embodiment that is not available in our political practices.
00:57:35.500 The left and the right are doing the same thing. We're stuck, right? And now in the spaces of
00:57:42.780 democratic impasses. We're seeing the rise of fascist
00:57:46.820 regimes. So I think right now
00:57:49.540 in those liminal spaces, something else wants to be born.
00:57:56.200 I can only think of it as
00:57:58.720 kolam. Madhulika, you know what I'm talking about? You would best
00:58:02.980 describe it. What's kolam?
00:58:06.300 A kolam is a
00:58:08.780 beautiful set of designs
00:58:12.780 that actually bring
00:58:15.640 the geometric precision of the universe
00:58:19.900 align with the beauty of
00:58:24.680 undefined lines
00:58:27.400 to the doorstep of every house
00:58:32.420 in Tamil Nadu, but in other parts of South India as well.
00:58:36.600 and the beauty is that
00:58:39.820 the way it is drawn
00:58:41.500 it begins with dots
00:58:44.260 and then the dots are connected
00:58:46.360 in different designs
00:58:47.560 and this is done with rice flour
00:58:50.200 and it's done every day
00:58:54.180 further beauty is
00:58:55.880 that
00:58:57.160 it has its place
00:59:00.840 that beautiful creation
00:59:03.520 if you and I made it Mina
00:59:05.100 we would want it
00:59:07.540 preserved forever
00:59:09.640 framed, put out
00:59:11.300 you know
00:59:12.100 every day
00:59:15.140 it has a life of
00:59:17.680 one day
00:59:18.360 every day you begin afresh
00:59:21.200 every day
00:59:24.020 you reiterate
00:59:24.860 you know the precision and the beauty
00:59:28.060 of the universe
00:59:29.140 K-O-L-A-M 1.00
00:59:30.960 L-L-A-M 0.92
00:59:32.100 and it is drawn by hand 1.00
00:59:35.980 usually by the woman of the house
00:59:37.640 and it's drawn
00:59:40.200 and every morning it is wiped
00:59:41.820 and you begin afresh
00:59:43.000 and those that, because they
00:59:46.060 do it from childhood onwards
00:59:48.100 and people grow up watching 0.78
00:59:49.940 the older women 1.00
00:59:51.960 in the family do it
00:59:53.120 so it's done definitely and it's done in a few
00:59:55.960 minutes and it's that
00:59:57.980 you know, homage to the
00:59:59.960 universe that is
01:00:01.820 placed outside your home so that you remember it as you go out and see it as you go in
01:00:07.520 and every day it is done anew that's the kola that's the kola that's the kola you know what's
01:00:14.640 so fascinating about this art which is a multi-species art arrangement is i learned that
01:00:22.120 the rice flour feeds the ants as well it's ant agency it's a feminist arrangement it's a 0.93
01:00:30.540 multi-species arrangement. And it seems to me to be this collective yearning for an arrangement 0.72
01:00:36.780 that is yet to come. It is temporal and fleeting. It is not stable or permanent like some monolith
01:00:44.000 that insists that this is the political arrangement for all time, right? It flows.
01:00:49.600 The wind participates in this art project. I don't know what is to come. I do feel in a
01:00:58.080 creaturely fragile way that settlement is heaving and breathing and burdened with its
01:01:06.240 migrancy, that settlement is becoming migrant, that we are becoming fugitive, that the city
01:01:14.260 can no longer endorse our continuity. And so the space of the citizen, the project of the city, 0.99
01:01:22.820 is shrinking. And all I can put in the space of what is yet to come is a kolam, is this thing 0.93
01:01:30.080 that we don't know the name of, right? So that is belonging. Belonging looks like kolam to me.
01:01:35.460 It looks like ants participating in wind and tree branches sucker-punching my dear sister's face. 0.99
01:01:44.740 I'm really struck by this practice. It sounds incredible and I'm looking forward to learning
01:01:50.460 more about it, but it immediately makes me think of sort of dendritic fractal patterns
01:01:56.460 that exist in so much of nature, including human nature, right? In our lungs and every part of our
01:02:07.200 bodies, really, our veins, everything. And how that too isn't anything static, right? In the way
01:02:15.080 that bringing us back to democracy maybe that you know democracy also shouldn't be seen as
01:02:21.280 something static and and that's the terrible thing about bureaucracy because it tries to force it
01:02:27.800 into this rigid box right of rigid participatory function that excludes initially you know women
01:02:36.940 and then people who are non-european and yes i concur completely with you bio that you know we
01:02:44.460 We are invited to bring in other species into our way of doing democracy.
01:02:50.920 But, you know, we haven't even yet invited children, for example, to participate in democracy as they should, let alone other animals.
01:03:00.900 And last week, Madulika was also present when one of our co-fellows, Frederick, shared a project whereby they were trying to understand the language of sperm whales through southern technology and eventually, you know, maybe getting them to be able to respond to questions about democracy.
01:03:24.960 So it's definitely something that we should continue to keep as a feasible thought.
01:03:31.260 But the question is how, and maybe, you know, the column and the fractal patterns that exist in the world can help us with that project.
01:03:41.700 I think the important thing, you know, is to believe in fluidity.
01:03:46.200 We are so afraid of impermanence.
01:03:52.360 The reason that bureaucracy tries to pin us down, as you were just saying, and to box us into, is because we believe, and very foolishly, that structures bring certainty, and certainty will lead to some kind of permanence.
01:04:17.480 It doesn't work like that.
01:04:18.940 And every philosophy that we have inherited asks us to begin with the assumption,
01:04:25.920 with the understanding that everything is impermanent.
01:04:30.520 And we sort of dismiss that as, oh, that's some kind of spiritual belief.
01:04:35.900 It's not. It's the biggest truth in the world that nothing is permanent.
01:04:40.980 So if we don't need to become fatalistic as a result of that, but certainly the most important lesson from our impermanence that we can derive is our acceptance of fluidity.
01:04:59.080 Things will change, they will flow, they will go from one to the next.
01:05:03.880 And it's when you flow that you can actually accommodate others.
01:05:08.200 if you are very bound and restricted
01:05:12.100 then you will know who can be included
01:05:15.180 and who cannot
01:05:15.940 so when you say
01:05:18.620 and I completely agree
01:05:20.300 I cannot say that I have
01:05:23.240 tried in any way to really
01:05:25.060 practice
01:05:27.720 but yes
01:05:29.100 to think of
01:05:30.360 spaces where we include
01:05:34.160 different kinds of voices
01:05:36.780 inputs, children
01:05:38.120 others and the fact that we think that you know that when we say childlike curiosity
01:05:46.080 or behaving without guile if somebody is guileless then that's childlike
01:05:53.540 which means that it's something that needs to be overcome but that it can flow into
01:06:01.100 you know an aspect of adulthood which can be an asset and therefore contribute to a different
01:06:09.320 understanding of correlation between human beings we are so afraid yeah like what we're
01:06:17.360 desperately missing is that as bio pointed out earlier like democracy is not just about the vote
01:06:24.200 It's not just about the civic participation. It's also about creating columns and children playing and adults behaving in childlike ways and meditation and maybe even prayer.
01:06:38.520 Like all of these human practices that are fluid, but that are also about, in some sense, deep in our historical nature, our character, is something about preservation as well.
01:06:54.540 You know, we need and perhaps we we get it wrong in so far that we think that this need for preservation, this need to to remember, to have memory, to have continuity is something that we can actually institutionalize and turn into numbers when actually that is ephemeral, beautiful part of being human.
01:07:16.700 And, yeah, we really desperately need to make space for that in the democratic project, for the aesthetic, the art, the mysterious and the mystical and the metaphysical, all of these elements that are just as true of our lived realities as is the act of waking up one morning and signing, putting your finger stamp or writing something on a card and putting it in a ballot box.
01:07:46.140 You know, it's equally real that you relate with others, you relate with your environment.
01:07:52.820 And we need that in the spaces where we're discussing democracy and how to further democracy.
01:08:02.940 I think that's a beautiful sentiment.
01:08:06.780 Where we three come from, time is also impermanent and fluid.
01:08:11.780 but we are but we are we also work with systems where time is precise and so that precision
01:08:20.820 haunts us now and it seems like a good place to punctuate our conversation around this and
01:08:27.380 i'm so grateful for this exploration that went in rhizomatic directions it was never linear
01:08:34.960 it was never meant to arrive
01:08:37.660 it was meant to depart
01:08:39.160 and in departing
01:08:41.340 it departs
01:08:42.600 I'm grateful Madalika thank you so much
01:08:45.460 thank you
01:08:45.980 we will meet outside of this
01:08:49.580 and thank you everyone for listening
01:08:51.760 and being part of this conspiracy
01:08:53.660 this breathing together
01:08:54.980 yes it continues
01:08:57.500 in fugitive ways
01:08:59.400 so join us as we
01:09:01.040 continue to unravel
01:09:02.580 and stay with these cracks and depths
01:09:05.620 and these troubling ideas.
01:09:08.740 And hopefully, our lives will be met
01:09:12.900 and we will be encountered
01:09:14.480 and we will be supported
01:09:16.560 to hold space for new worlds as they emerge.
01:09:21.360 Thank you, everyone.
01:09:30.500 Thank you for listening.
01:09:32.580 to this episode of For the Wild.
01:09:34.980 The music you heard today is by Sidka Sun,
01:09:38.620 generously provided by the Long Road Society record label,
01:09:42.460 and Marie Su.
01:09:45.860 For the Wild is created by Ayanna Young,
01:09:49.120 Erica Ekrum, Julia Jackson, Jackson Krupp,
01:09:53.740 Evan Tenenbaum, and Jose Alejandro Rivera.
01:10:02.580 Oh, my God.