Reimagining Citizenship Assignment 2 (by Babli)

This assignment consists of three steps. Please DO NOT read step 2 and step 3 before having completed step 1.

STEP 1: Do a 10-15 minute free-write reflecting on art making and cultural citizenship (the way you believe it can be effectively deployed as a concept), in times of a crisis such as the current "refugee crisis" in Europe- a crisis that is a matter of life and death for many. You can refer to different situation than the current one debated here.


STEP 2: Read your own free-write closely and try to establish the main emotion (stayibhava) tha it reveals.

STEP 3: Make a study based on that stayibhava, if you want you can use one of Cynthia's suggestions:

Creative Assignment Possibilities (Cynthia) :

(1)   Create a movement study exploring the idea of living perpetually on a border.  Consider how your study might not be completely abstract but in dialogue with actual border stories.

(2)   Create a study investigating two-facedness: both welcoming and repelling.

(3)   Do a free-write about your own history of migration (this can include your family’s).  Put this story into conversation with stories of current refugees.  You may use text, movement, video, images, etc.

Reimagining Citizenship Round 2: Cynthia's written response

The Refugee Crisis and Cultural Citizenship

Watching the debates, I am struck most keenly by the absence of the voices of refugees themselves: both the absence of their stories, their reasons for leaving their homes, what they have left behind and what it may have cost them; as well as the absence of their voices in getting to have a say in policy or, at least in these debates, in the discourse surrounding the refugee “crisis” or “problem.” 

I also notice there is only one person who is visibly not white – the black man in the second debate who is an “expert on migration” – and I wonder simultaneously (a) how race (not to mention religion) plays into the reception of the refugees and (b) whether I am exporting US frameworks of race onto Europe and West Asia.

I notice the debates shift continually between Germany’s role and that of Europe (the EU) in general.  Disagreement between different European countries: some countries are more welcoming than others, some building walls of barbed wire, some wanting to filter according to religion, an urgent need for an agreement and yet perpetual conflict.  A recognition that some countries have more resources than others.  A desire to throw money at the situation and assume that will fix things.  From my limited understanding, this disagreement seems typical of the challenges of postnationalism and the EU.  It also reminds me, curiously, of ensemble or collaborative process, and brings into relief whether different perspectives and needs can be effectively held together, whether working together across difference makes for a stronger or more watered down politics.  I am a little shocked when the last commentator says that he is waiting for a new US president to be elected so the EU can follow suit.

I am particularly interested in how people articulate Germany’s reception of refugees to its particular history: articulated in one debate as a sort of reparations – or perhaps more accurately a wish to learn from an ugly historical past and to do better; to Germany’s own split into East and West Germany; to a history of blood citizenship, which I am assuming may have something to do with the fact that Germany has no immigration policy.  There is a lot of talk about “dark” and “bright” (that metaphorical use of color is pretty racist) sides of Germany.

I’m fascinated by how Angela Merkel has become a central protagonist around this story and her own background as a refugee from East Germany.  A most un-romantic, plodding “heroine.”  How does her own lived experience inflect her position on this crisis?  What more could I learn about the dynamics of the relationship of East and West Germany that could shed interesting light, knowing that West Germany dominates US Americans’ impressions of Germany?  Time Magazine has named Merkel person of the year, and while I am dubious about US mainstream media’s celebration of her, it is fascinating to read about her growing up in a Lutheran seminary and workplace for mentally disabled adults in the woods.

How do our own histories of migration – both personally and in our families – inflect our understanding of the refugee crisis?

The lack of rigor with which the debates examine the “root causes” of migration.  The split between economic refugees and refugees of war – which here in the US would be the difference between an immigrant and a refugee – sets up a narrative of who “really needs help” and who is trying to take advantage of a more comfortable life in the EU, when surely it is much more of a spectrum.  What are the dominant narratives of migration?  And how much do they actually correspond to people’s real stories and experiences?  I am reminded that my whole life, I bought into the US narrative that my parents came to “make a better life for themselves” when they in fact were leaving an unstable political regime.  And, just to make more connections, how does this dynamic relate at all to the ways in which I have been re-thinking immigrants' complicity in damaging indigenous communities by buying into a settler-colonial state?  As we talked about a couple summers ago, is there a way in which indigeneity as a concept does not fit a European context?  Or is some sort of translation useful?

Regarding the article, which I note was written in 2002 shortly after 9/11, I found myself wondering how the idea of “cultural citizenship” can be usefully distinguished from ideas of “identity” and “belonging.”  Is this simply yet another way to pay lip service to “diversity” and “inclusion”?  For me, citizenship automatically declares a direct relationship to nation-state, to legal status, to rights.  I do understand quite deeply that reimagining what it means to be an American, a Canadian, a German on cultural terms is central to a just, tolerant, diverse society/nation.  For instance, my legal status as an American is incontrovertible, but I am often not treated like an “American” because of anti-Asian racism, xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment (which of course ties into actual histories of denying Asian people US citizenship – or to attempt to tie it into our thinking about anti-blackness and citizenship, the history of being legally considered 3/5 of a person for African Americans).  Yet for me, using the term cultural citizenship without a direct tie-in to rights feels overly theoretical, or more to the point, a missed opportunity to actually make change in the world.  I also noted the North American focus of the article and wanted to understand how cultural citizenship might be more salient to a German and European context.

Creative Assignment Possibilities:

(1)   Create a movement study exploring the idea of living perpetually on a border.  Consider how your study might not be completely abstract but in dialogue with actual border stories.

(2)   Create a study investigating two-facedness: both welcoming and repelling.

(3)   Do a free-write about your own history of migration (this can include your family’s).  Put this story into conversation with stories of current refugees.  You may use text, movement, video, images, etc.

Meena's notes and response to "Reimagining Citizenship Round 2"

Video from August 21, 2015 

• Someone is suggesting point system (similar to Canada). Which refugees are “useful”? Argh.
• There is no immigration system in place in Germany. Need to create a mechanism. What are Germany's immigration policies?
• Differentiating between asylum seekers versus migrants looking for a better economic life but not in life danger. Argh.
• Sweden and Germany are bearing the bulk.
• Hungary, Britain, France, Spanish, are building fences, barriers, walls.
• Betrayal of European values to not accept refugees? What are these so called European values?
• Christian refugees only for some countries. Anti-muslim sentiment :-(
• Ethnic similarities/connections to European country depending on who they accept. If relatives are in the EU, refugees should go that. One guy seems really appalled that someone might want to CHOOSE. 
• 1857 people have lost their lives since June trying to cross over Mediterranean borders.

Video from Sept 18, 2015

• Have introduced policed border controls.
• Merckel's contradiction between saying Germany must accept refugees, and then putting into place border control.

Video from Oct 30, 2015

• Controlling refugee bodies – registration centers are supposedly deterring refugees. Debate as to if they are.
• I’m curious to know how the debate has shifted since the Paris bombs. Increased anti-Muslim and violence towards refugees.
• Dude feeling like a refugee seeking asylum doesn’t have the  right to choose where they want to live. Hmm.
• Rise of right wing political groups in Europe riding on anti-immigrant policies. Argh. Can see similar movement in US too. Canada has only now after 8 years of massive right wing leadership, voted in something slightly more liberal.

Notes from article
Gerard Delanty, University of Liverpool, UK 

Two Conceptions of Cultural Citizenship: A Review of Recent Literature on Culture and Citizenship

• Citizenship as based on formal rights and not cultural belonging.
• Rights in exchange for duties and loyalties.
• Citizenship as generally defined by birth, or in some cases descent, while multicultural policies served to manage immigrants. “Today this distinction has virtually collapsed.”  How would the author now reframe this argument? That the original population is more culturally plural because of four decades of intermixing, but also because of westernization and globalization.
• How culture – mostly defined by diversity – is to be brought into the realm of citizenship.
• “Cultural citizenship”  - the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups or individuals
• I wonder – if minoritarian subjects were included within the dominant notions of cultural belonging (for example including realms of communications such as media) would the practice and policing of citizenship shift? I feel like this author is arguing for that. 

Ideas for creative assignments:

I don't have any ideas for creative assignments. Sorry :-(  I'm open to what you and Cynthia propose.

In honor of the collective's 11th anniversary, we have revised our manifesto in dialogue with our newest member, Meena Murugesan.

Manifesto 2.3

Yes to process.

Yes to complexity.

Yes to hybridity.

Yes to being rooted in the local and rocking the global.

Yes to challenging aesthetic hegemonies.

Yes to interrogating our legacies.

Yes to praxis.

Yes to sustainability.

Yes to resisting market ideology.

Yes to combating exoticism orientalism colonialism racism sexism classism casteism communalism.

No to identity politics.

SHY: Wait a minute! What do we mean by identity politics? I have made work in the past about my identity and certainly don’t wish to erase acknowledging my identity in future work.

ANJ: Much like Shy, I feel I have grappled with this in past work and that we often incorporate the autobiographical into our own work.

SHY: I just hope we’re not saying no to identification at all?

CYN: Well, my discomfort with identity politics is how it often requires a flattening of our complexities — to be only Taiwanese, or only a feminist, or only a kathak dancer – in order to achieve solidarity.

MEENA: I definitely need to complicate identity because we are never one thing. I also think this is possible within identity politics, which helps me honor people’s lived experiences and grounds me in my positionality and privilege. Powerful activism is mobilized through shared and intersectional identities, and in thinking about allyship, it is important to be aware of one’s privilege in not belonging to an identity category.

CYN and BABLI: What brings us together is not primarily a shared identity but a shared interest in critically and creatively expanding South Asian performance tradition.

MEENA: Yet we share an identity as people of color, which is one of the reasons I’m here.

CYN: I also think our collective’s work has historically been women-centered and deeply engaged with postcolonial feminisms of color: our work is affected by our lived experiences of being assigned female, though not all of us identify solely as women 100% of the time.  

BABLI: I don’t think it’s about not acknowledging (our) identities and those of others. It is about acknowledging while also avoiding and critiquing exclusionary and separatist versions of identity politics. So, broken down it might be: we don’t say NO to identity, autobiography, and community – but we say YES to going beyond the politics of self-interest groups and enforcing borders around identitarian constructions.

Yes to working through our own privilege and positionality.

Yes to coalition.[1]

Yes to queering.

BABLI and CYN: Yes to queering as a verb, rather than queer as an adjective or noun.

BABLI: I think of the German word quer, which means oblique: quer can dissect, traverse, and go against the grain of everything - hence in that context, queer as referring only to sexuality narrows the word’s etymology.

SHY: For me, queer is more about sexuality and gender nonconforming identities. As an ally I do not feel I have the right to expand the usage of the word, but I do wish to support others in how they choose to explore it.

MEENA: Like Shyamala, I prefer to use the word “queering” to talk about sexuality and nonconforming gender identities. Within the North American context, queer people have fought, lived, and died to claim the word queer as an empowering term that integrates non-hetero sexualities and the radical worldviews that grow out of these lived experiences.

CYN: “Queer” -- even as adjective or noun -- is situational, contextual, and time-bound. In the context of Indian classical dance, we perform idealized character types, not personal identity…so for me, queering our performance traditions has more to do with shifting dominant scripts for gender and sexuality than declaring a lived reality or experience.

BABLI: Queering one’s life can also me involve integrity and commitment to those aspects of one’s (gendered/sexual) self, one’s choices and preferences that go against the norm - personal and with a political stance (which might be different from having an explicitly political goal).

CYN: Queering fucks with norms

Queering holds a middle finger up to the system

while imagining possibilities outside of the system

Queering is hopeful

Queering is generative

“Queerness is not yet here.”[2]

CYN and MEENA: Queer/ing is politically radical...

MEENA: ...but I would rather say ‘subverting’ than queering when referring to radical interventions that do not address sexuality and gender.

BABLI: Queering can be poetic as well as political -- a continuous going against the grain rather than individual acts of subversion as overturning a system.

Yes to radical dis/agreement.

Yes to meaningful exchange.

Yes to consensual collaboration.

CYN: Be generous. Be a thief. Encourage each other to borrow, steal, appropriate, translate. Do so fearlessly rather than tiptoeing on eggshells. Trust each other as artists and human beings.

Yes to trust.

Yes to honesty.

Yes to respect.

Yes to process without product.

Yes to an online collective process from which we each craft individual products.

CYN: From our collective dialogue, ideas manifest multiply as dance films, scholarly writing, live performance, artbooks, lecture-demonstrations, installations, workshops…

Yes to creative recycling and reusing.

Yes to open-source.

BABLI: But wait, exactly what are we saying yes to? Do we understand the implications of it? And will we really be ok with anyone just taking our work and remixing it without telling us?

SHY: I meant open-source methodology, not open-source choreography.

CYN: You know, I think we’re open-source within the collective, but not necessarily with the outside world. The term connotes creative commons, decentralization of authorship, invitation for re-appropriation, and crowd-sourcing – which do resonate with our creative process.

BABLI: We do make our choreographic assignments, process, and in-progress drafts available online publicly.

CYN: It’s like they have access to the source code and blueprints…

BABLI: …but not always the final products (if there even are any).

Yes to giving credit.

Yes to asking for credit.

Yes to supportive feedback.

Yes to reciprocity.

Yes to multiple voices, multiple aesthetics, multiple authors.

Yes to multiplying energy.

ANJ: A creative toss of ideas. Listening, processing, filtering, feeding, and vocalizing in constant dialogue to sustain and feed our sense of community.

Yes to collectively building infrastructure.

Yes to intelligent divisions of administrative labor.

BABLI: Sharing responsibility instead of multiplying work. Freeing up time and energy for creativity.

Yes to responsibility.

Yes to accountability.

Yes to healthy, balanced lives.

Yes to shared decision making. Yes to moving forward.

SHY: If you aren’t present, you can’t be heard. If you don’t communicate or contribute, you can’t expect to be included.

No to divas.

Seriously, no to divas.

ANJ: But when the shit hits the fan, we can all turn into divas. There is one living in each of us…she comes out under pressure. I’ve seen her.

MEENA: My diva is often not gendered as she!

Yes to the widest possible definition of dance.

Yes to “natyam” as a multiple-faceted performing art.[3]

BABLI and CYN: We are committed to “natyam” as a performative concept.

Yet the verbal association of “natyam” with Bharatanatyam runs the risk of privileging a particular classical form, when we are trained in, committed to, and engage with multiple forms including Kathak, Kuchipudi and Odissi.

Yes to “post.”

CYN: I do resonate with postmodern dance’s valuing of the pedestrian body, of the interdisciplinary, of art-as-everyday-life…as well as its critique of the mainstream.

BABLI: To me “post” resonates in the first place with post-colonialities. I do draw from post-structuralist thinkers. I do not really resonate with postmodern dance as a “genre” (though I like to play with some of the aspects you mentioned, Cynthia).

SHY: From our out-”posts,” we “post” our process on our blog, multiplying, layering and creating dialogue through art, and art through dialogue.

ANJ: Post is engaging in the present informed by what has come before

BABLI: We all have different associations with “post” and don’t need to agree on them.

MEENA: No to the “post” that stands for dominant notions of white postmodern dance. It is not the only place for experimentation.

Yes to experimental possibilities already embedded within non-white and non-Eurocentric genres of dance, including classical South Asian dance.

Yes to dismantling notions of “purity” and single source revisionist histories associated with classical South Asian forms.

Yes to subverting and countering hegemonic experimental dance culture.

Yes to radical imagination.

Yes to asking different questions of South Asian dance forms.

Yes to honoring, challenging, and extending our multiple traditions.

Yes to honoring and challenging each other.

Yes to Post Natyam.

© 2015

[1] In “Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism,” Chandra Talpade Mohanty utilizes Benedict Anderson’s notion of an “imagined community” to think of communities of women apart from essentialized notions of race, class and gender, but as “political links we choose to make among and between struggles” (Mohanty 2003, 46). Mohanty emphasizes a coalition between women of color in the following way: a “viable oppositional alliance is a common context of struggle rather than color or racial identifications” (49).

[2] José Estebán Muñoz (2009), Cruising Utopia, 1.

[3] “Natya” or “natyam” is a Sanskrit word that refers to the inseparable conjunction of drama, dance, and music in Indian performance tradition. In contemporary times, this concept could also include film and multimedia.