Beyond the Other: Beninese Solidarity with Endangered Westerners As Postcolonial Critique

University of Amsterdam RMA Cultural Analysis Thesis by Riccardo Ceniviva 10847936 June 2016 Supervisor: Dr Hanneke Stuit Second Reader: Dr Joost de Bloois

Beyond the Other: Beninese Solidarity with Endangered Westerners as Postcolonial Critique

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“And when one day our human kind becomes full-grown, it will not define itself as the sum total of the whole world’s inhabitants, but as the infinite unity of their mutual needs” - Jean-Paul Sartre

“Let us decide not to imitate Europe; let us combine our muscles and our brains in a new direction. Let us try to create the whole man, whom Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth.” - Frantz Fanon

“The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist.” - Guy Debord

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I Introduction

L’enfer, c’est les autres. Hell is the others, laughs Garcin towards the end of Sartre’s No Exit in a cynical acknowledgement of the play’s three protagonists’ fate, a dire statement of jaundiced avowal that has become one of the book’s key tenets. When listening to the rhetoric currently being deployed by many politicians, public figures and significant parts of the media in various Western countries, for instance in light of the current refugee crisis in Europe or the looming elections in the United States, one could naively believe that this is the case. It would indeed be obtusely cynical to deny that we currently find ourselves in another full-fledged moral panic, fearing the invasion of the non-Western Other who will harm our society, our values, our freedom, our safety. We now ostensibly face the imminent end of our enlightened, rational, pragmatic and free world which we have taken centuries to painstakingly construct. Along with the Other, then, will come Hell.

Notwithstanding, such an interpretation of Sartre’s statement is also obtusely naïve. As Sartre himself has stated, “the others are, after all, what is most important in ourselves, even for our own knowledge of ourselves. We judge ourselves with the means the others have given us. Whatever I say about myself, however I feel about myself, the judgement of the other is always incorporated” (Sartre, L’Enfer, my translation). Thus, Hell is not the existence of others, or the coexistence with others, but rather, the other’s judgement, the other’s gaze, the act of objectification. Or, in other words, Hell is the act, the process of being othered.

In this sense, departing from such transcendental metaphors as Hell, and discarding the heavily mediatised moral panic, a rather apposite question to pose at this stage is, who is the Other who, in many dominant discourses, is uncritically being othered? Even though the colonial era, along with its construction of the un-modern, primitive, atavistic Other who needed to be civilised, dominated and modernised, is to a certain extent over – let us nonetheless not forget the conditions of extreme violence that paralleled its demise – we are still living in its shadow, in what Young calls the “postcolonial condition”. Furthermore, it can be argued that whilst the colonial era is in itself over, many of the ideologies, discourses and power relations characteristic of it are still very well thriving.

Even though some claim that in the age of globalisation – an umbrella term used to characterise the growing interconnectedness, the shrinking of time and space, between various

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parts of the world on various levels – we have become a “global village” (McLuhan), that our world is increasingly becoming homogenised, or McDonaldised (Ritzer), others, in light with postmodern thinking, affirm that the world is gradually fragmenting and breaking down into often antagonistic pieces, that there is a growing rise of anti-globalisation sentiments and actions, and that we are returning to forms of tribalism (Maffesoli). Whilst both sides of this debate hold a certain degree of truth and relevance, what is important to note is that whilst for capital, and those with capital, every barrier inhibiting its flow is gradually being dismantled, the subaltern, those without capital – not just in the monetary sense – are increasingly seeing the world becoming larger and inhospitable, with what Shamir identifies as the “global mobility regime” seeking to keep them, those undesirable people stemming from undesirable origins, out of the global North.

Whilst the colonial language of racial hierarchies has to a certain extent been rendered obsolete, under the auspice of political correctness, it has been euphemised by that of unsurmountable cultural differences (Gilroy, My Britain). Furthermore, whilst the age of colonialism is over, it has been replaced by Western-led forms of imperialism and neo- colonialism, under the auspice of ‘globalisation’. We can think of foreign military interventions in the name of freedom and democracy, developing the underdeveloped world, Western values and culture as the maxim to be globally attained, or the implementation of neo-liberal agendas on ‘weaker’ states through the powerful hand of supranational institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. In this light, according to thinkers such as Fukuyama, once Western-style liberal democracies will be globally instated, it will be the end of history, the apotheosis of human development. The Other is thus the subaltern, undesirable Other, the ostensibly weak, non-Western Other who does not belong to and who poses a perceived threat to the Western project camouflaging itself behind the veil of universality. As Robert Young (Remains 37) has written:

the idea that there is a category of people, implicitly third-world, visibly different to the casual eye, essentially different, and ‘other’, is itself a product of racial theory, its presuppositions drawn from the discriminatory foundations of modernity. The legacy of this, of course, is the existence of minorities, who struggle for full participation within a society that continues to other them as ‘the other’.

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Bearing this in mind, every time I evoke the title of the artistic project, the main object of this thesis, a fake NGO called Beninese Solidarity with Endangered Westerners, people usually laugh. One is led to wonder, then, what is funny about it? It is, in fact, something almost unheard of, something that goes against the established order of things. Charity, development, or aid is always usually a one-way process that trickles down the metaphorical gravitational pull from the global North to the global South. Let us not forget how we still, to a certain extent, speak of the Third World, and how our world has been normatively split in discourse between the developed and the developing world, signifying that the latter is by definition evolving to reach the universal maxim the former has allegedly reached and of which it is a benchmark. So yes, it is rather unusual, thus comical, or even funny, that someone in the so-called developing world had the idea to help us, the masters of progress and civilisation.

In fact, as Holler-Schuster writes, for a long time – and even currently, it can be argued – the West has spoken of Africa in regards to its poverty, “at least to the degree that the people there [in Africa] were willing to believe it, and as a continent largely dependent on humanitarian aid from the West.” Thus, “a lack of self-confidence, and a clinging to the role of victim – a consequence of traumatic developments around the slave trade, colonisation and decolonisation – along with issues in connection with neo-colonialism, still appear to be major factors in the slow development of African countries” (103). Furthermore, the Euro-centrist assertion that African countries are primarily still uncivilised has led to its exoticisation both in the imagination and in discourse, which has been further enhanced by tourism.

In this light, Romuald Hazoumè, a contemporary artist from Benin, created the aforementioned NGO SBOP in 2011, the acronym standing for Solidarité Béninoise pour Occidentaux en Péril, or Beninese Solidarity with Endangered Westerners. On Valentine’s Day of that same year, five well-known Beninese artists – Zeynab Abib, John Arcadius, Angélique Kidjo, Danialou Sagbohan and Jean-Pierre Zinko – commissioned by Hazoumè, walked around Cotonou, the largest city in Benin, to collect funds for the NGO. They all wore a white t-shirt with the acronym of the NGO on the front, the full name spelled out on the back, in green and yellow colours – the same colours reserved for the license plates of diplomats in Benin – and carried red jerrycans, which also bore the NGO’s logo in the same yellow and green colours, in order to collect the donations. The whole event was filmed, recording the interactions with the locals at various markets and along various busy streets, who often displayed very strong emotional reactions towards the fundraiser, ranging from happiness to have personally encountered the artists, surprise at the fact that poverty actually exists in the ‘West’, to anger

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that they are not collecting money for their own people, to name a few examples. Along with the opening and closing credits, one can hear music from the Gangbé Brass Band, a well-known Beninese group playing traditional music from West Africa. The whole video lasts 16 minutes and 37 seconds, to which I was granted full access courtesy of Hazoumè for this piece of research, whilst a shorter, 3 minutes and 15 seconds video can be found for free online, with subtitles.1 The original languages spoken in the video are French, along with other indigenous languages, the precise nature of which I am unfortunately not aware.

A whole exhibition was organised around this project, which was displayed in various museums around the world, and more recently at De Meelfabriek in Leiden, in the Netherlands.23 A makeshift wall, made from various large discarded jerrycans, was built, covered by a tin roof, giving the appearance of being a small building – the headquarters of the NGO. A doorway is to be found in the middle of the wall, covered by a curtain, above which is fixed a sign spelling out the acronym and the full name of the NGO. On both sides of the doorway, where the windows would usually be, are television screens on which the full-length video is being played on a loop. In front of the house stands a bicycle bearing the NGO’s name, on which are fixed various small red jerrycans, similar to the ones used to collect the donations – Benin, and especially Porto-Novo, its capital, are one of the world’s hotspots for illegal petrol trade, which often gets transported in jerrycans, in a highly dangerous way, on bicycles and scooters. Furthermore, one can find various makeshift tables and seats, also made out of the same large jerrycans used to build the wall, and other recycled or reused materials. If one enters the doorway, on the other side of the wall one can find various newspaper clippings reporting on the story around the NGO.

In this paper, then, I would like to discuss how my object – the NGO as a whole, including the video and the installation – can be an effective form of immanent critique against the damaging hegemonic ideology that constructs the non-Western Other as the weak, undesirable, subaltern Other. In the opening chapter, I will spell out in greater detail what can be understood under the “postcolonial condition”, and argue in favour of the relevance of postcolonial discourse in the current socio-political context. I will also situate SBOP within current academic discourses and debates in this field. The subsequent chapters will provide the reader with

1 For the version with English subtitles, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hppc3o5a3dw 2 See Appendix 1 3 What is important to note, however, is that, as far as I am aware, SBOP has only been exhibited in museums in Europe and the United States. Not much information on the project can be found online, and I do not think that it has been exhibited in Africa. Perhaps this can be due to copyright reasons, as the project has been commissioned by the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. BEYOND THE OTHER | Riccardo Ceniviva

semiotic and discourse analyses of the NGO, where I will research in greater depth how the NGO can be a powerful means of immanent critique towards neo-colonial and neo-imperial ideologies and the conceiving of the Other’s otherness. In the second and third chapters, I will conceptualise SBOP through the concepts of détournement and mimicry, which will lead to the main concept of this paper, that of the fake, in the fourth chapter. In so doing, I want to contribute to the existing literature in postcolonial critique. First, I would like to bring these concepts – détournement, mimicry and the fake – in a new relation with each other, and I will argue how they build up on each other and how they enable us to understand the various levels of SBOP through different, yet interrelated lenses. Second, I would like to argue how they can be a powerful form of postcolonial critique, as they have all – apart from that of mimicry – hardly, if at all, been used in such a context.

***

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II Postcolonial Critique and the Other

Modernity, in the large sense, can be regarded as the pinnacle of rationality and reason in human thought, following the Age of Enlightenment, the first shy ray of sunlight, the growing beacon of illumination which chased away the obscurantist clouds imposed upon Europe by the Church and the absolutist State in the Dark Ages. Along with rationality and reason, another irradiating friend enters the game, under the name of order. Modernity, therefore, can be regarded as the quest for order, and the crusade against ambivalence (Bauman, Modernity). To order signifies to classify, to impose a structure upon the benign, passive world. To classify, in turn, signifies the mutually constitutive acts of inclusion and exclusion – if something belongs to, or is made into a class, then something else, by definition, is excluded from it. Ambivalence, or chaos, is then the Other of order, it is uncertainty, unadulterated negativity, unpredictability, the “source or archetype of all fear”. Thus, since “the sovereignty of the modern state is the power to define and to make the definitions stick – everything that self-defines or eludes the power-assisted definition is subversive. The other of this sovereignty is no-go areas, unrest and disobedience, collapse of law and order” (Bauman, Modernity 8). The subversive, ambivalent and chaotic Other hence thwarts our Western, modern will to power (Nietzsche) and will to knowledge (Foucault, Histoire), our perpetual desire to control, to categorise and to organise.

In this sense, the “construction of order sets the limit to incorporation and admission. It calls for the denial of rights, and of the grounds, of everything that cannot be assimilated – for de- legitimation of the other” (Bauman, Modernity 8). Coloniality, then, was co-constitutive of modernity – those who were different, outside, other to our Western system of rational thinking, those who were deemed to be primitive, barbaric or uncivilised needed to be controlled, or even supressed. A new social order arose in which the colonial organisation of society was based on racial hierarchies, and the world gradually became separated between those towards whom the allegedly universal yet parochial Enlightenment concept of humanity applied, and those outside of modernity, to be controlled by the Western-led colonial matrix of power. Tlostanova and Mignolo identify four interconnected spheres of life in which the aforementioned matrix operates, notably the struggles for the control of authority, of the public sphere, of knowledge and subjectivity and of economics. Furthermore, they also identify four successive and cumulative historical periods in which the matrix colonised the world, yet the rhetoric justifying the actions altered – first, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was theology and the

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mission of conversion; then, it was under the auspice of civilising the uncivilised world; and following the second World War, it was the developmental and modernising mission, which lasted until the era of decolonisation.

The fourth historical period, then, is our contemporary one, where, since the 1970’s, the “neo- liberal agenda translated the previous mission of development and modernisation, into the Washington consensus of granting the market economy priority over social regulation” (Tlostanova and Mignolo 136). As capital, one of the driving forces of our world has become heavily transnationalised, decentralised and abstracted, as the Western imperial states are now not anymore fully in control of the colonial matrix, and as Dirlik points out, the narrative of capitalism is no longer of one of the history of Europe, it can be posited that the world order has gradually become diversified and polycentric. Nevertheless we can still speak of global coloniality,4 where the control of and over authority will inextricably prevail, yet disguised behind moralising narratives such as progress, development and security. In other words, whilst imminent to the colonial era was the denial of coevalness between the West and the Rest – to be understood as the political construction and production of distance and difference in Space and Time (Fabian), with the colonised Other narrated to be outside of, rather than otherwise than, modernity (Bhabha) – in our globalised, postcolonial world, we are now increasingly becoming confronted with the Other. Taussig calls this the “second contact” between the former colonisers and colonised, which caused the emergence of a radically different border between the West and the Rest, an unstable border prone to osmosis on behalf of global capitalism and migration. Our so-called “world risk society” (Beck) is causing Space, to a certain extent, to shrink, with countless people around the world fleeing violence, war, oppression and environmental disasters, along with the war in Syria currently causing one of modern times’ largest diasporas. Additionally, due to advances in media and technology, and driven by the imagination, a social practice and “key component of the new global order” (Appadurai 31), many are travelling to the global North in search of a better, more prosperous life. Notwithstanding these developments, our globalised world still operates in a very contradictory logic – whilst global capitalism is vigorously de-territorialising, global colonialism is belligerently territorialising, perpetually installing both physical and metaphysical barriers between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

4 As distinct from the colonial era, during which the colonies were under full and direct control of the metropolises.

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Which is why, whilst much has changed since the colonial era, as previously stated, globalisation can still be regarded as a contemporary form of imperialism, perpetuating the asymmetrical dichotomy between ‘us’ and ‘them’. In this respect, Gregory evokes the colonial present: “I speak about the colonial – rather than the imperial – present because I want to retain the active sense of the verb ‘to colonise’: the constellations of power, knowledge, and geography that I describe here continue to colonise lives all over the world” (xv). The War on Terror, for instance, can be seen as a return of the colonial past, again partitioning the world in binaries such as good against evil, civilisation against barbarism. Huntingdon’s Clash of Civilisations perfectly exemplifies such thinking in uncritically assuming the integrity of homogenous, monolithic entities, and, as Gilroy very rightfully notices, “old colonial issues come back into play when geopolitical conflicts are specified as a battle between homogenous civilisations” (After Empire 25).

However, forms of neo-imperialism, or global colonialism also work on much subtler levels, aside from war and violence designed to obliterate the threatening Other. The idiom of humanitarianism, for instance, has constructed the “ideal of imperial power as an ‘ethical’ force which can promote good and stability amidst the flux and chaos of the post-colonial world” (Gilroy, After Empire 66). Imperial particularism is thus disguised as universal utilitarianism. As Schmitt already identified in 1927, “the concept of humanity is an especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in its ethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism” (54). For instance, as Hill writes, since the 1980’s, once the old colonies were ‘liberated’, African states have mostly been described as weak, failed or incomplete, positioned as the deviant Other in contrast to the developed West, which has enabled the promotion and justification of their political and economic domination on behalf of Western states and institutions.

Furthermore, whilst we might have acknowledged coevalness with the Other, at least in the physical sense – that is to say, that our Western societies are now partially imbued with the Other – the project of multiculturalism, one of the apexes of decolonial thinking, is being, in various dominant discourses, declared dead. Especially in our uncertain, postmodern times, where we are in a sempiternal state of exception (Agamben), or, more apposite, of crisis (Boukalas), unanimity and homogeneity are the best sources of strength and solidarity (Gilroy, After Empire). Whilst different races and ethnicities might no longer be in hierarchical relations – at least not to the extent promulgated during the colonial era – they nonetheless remain allegedly incompatible. We can thus evoke “racism without race”, “differentialist racism” or

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even “neo-racism”, where the category of immigration is gradually replacing that of race5. In this line, Balibar argues, culture functions like nature in the sense that sociocultural arguments are now being deployed rather than, or even in conjunction with biological ones in order to chase the tribal ghost of prophylaxis and segregation constructed around the “stigmata of otherness.” There is thus the idea that historical cultures of humanity can be ascribed into two opposing blocks, one being universalistic and progressive, the other particularistic and primitive. The West is seemingly the pinnacle of human civilisation, along with its universal humanist values, in contrast to the Other from the developing world. In so doing, culture functions “as a way of locking individuals and groups a priori into a genealogy, into a determination that is immutable and intangible in origin” (Balibar 22).

Whilst, obviously, this was not intended to be a sweeping generalisation of the status quo, and whilst lots of progress – even though, it can be argued, only gradually and on a small scale – has been made since the era of colonisation, the imperial, or the colonial, still plays a large role in our world which is simultaneously shrinking and expanding. We are still living in the ghost of an egregious, abject part of our past which many seek to disavow, or even to glorify. As Gilroy writes, there exist growing revisionist accounts of imperial life, and post-imperial melancholia and nostalgia is still shared by many (After Empire). Reading between the lines of US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “let’s make America great again”, for instance, provides a clear example of this. The following section, then, will explore the question of otherness in greater depth, along with the relevance of postcolonial theory in this context. The final section of this chapter will situate Hazoumè’s NGO within postcolonial discourse.

5 It is nevertheless important to acknowledge that certain groups of immigrants are still more welcome than others. People of Muslim faith, for instance, are being conflated in a single race, with people like Donald Trump campaigning to ban all Muslim people from entering the US, or groups like PEGIDA and far-right populist parties fighting against the putative Islamisation of Europe. Notwithstanding, this is still often disguised behind the somewhat subtler category of immigration. Indeed, immigration and its control are one of the key issues currently being deployed in UK politics, and securing one’s borders from migration has now become one of the BEYOND THE OTHER | Riccardo Ceniviva most prominent demands by nationalist parties within the Schengen zone.

Social identities are relational, with people and groups always defining themselves in relation to others. As Okolie points out, identity hardly has any sense without the other; therefore, in defining oneself, a group also defines others. Notwithstanding, in line with Foucauldian thinking, every relation is a power relation; thus, there is always a power differential in making identity claims, as groups do not possess equal powers to both define themselves and the other, and notions of superiority and inferiority are often imbedded in certain identities. Identities are hence socially, historically and politically constructed, they are subjective and can serve exclusionary purposes, especially when the powerful groups define the others in a negative light. This can then lead to the denial of access to certain vital rights, resources and privileges accessible to the more powerful group. In this light, what is salient is not being defined as different, as every social relation is differential, but rather, the performativity of the definition, what is achieved through it, is of significance.

One of the most vigorous criticisms of anthropology in the past century, for instance, is that, through the dehumanising effects of the scientific method, the non-Western, non-coeval Other was objectified, whose exotic otherness, rather than being the result, was the prerequisite of ethnographic studies. The exoticness of the exotic, the primitivity of the primitive, was always a priori presupposed (Fabian). Modernity thus produced its other, “verso to recto, as a way of at once producing and privileging itself” (Gregory 4), the same as we now produce, or “world” the Third World “into a sign whose production has been obfuscated to the point that Western superiority and dominance are naturalised” (Kapoor 629). One of the manifest instances of imperialist epistemic violence towards the global South is the creation of what Said calls “imaginative geographies,” which transforms distance into difference in asserting and delineating the partition between “the same” and “the other,” “designating in one’s mind a familiar space which is ‘ours’ and an unfamiliar space beyond ‘ours’ which is ‘theirs,’” the latter being the inverse, or the negative, of the former (Orientalism 54).

In this regard, Said argued in his seminal book Orientalism that much of the West’s (academic) interest towards the Orient could be justified as acts of political intellectualism serving the affirmation of European identity rather than objective erudite inquiry. Moreover, whilst neither the concepts of the Orient and the Occident – or the West – hold any ontological stability, both being social constructions and manifestations of imaginative geographies, these “supreme fictions” are still prone to the “manipulation and organisation of collective passion,” which can lead to the cultivating of fear, anger, disgust, arrogance and pride. Whilst there is a clear difference between the “will to understand for purposes of co-existence and humanistic

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enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external dominion,” the latter has often been the determining factor of much of the West’s fascination of the Other, often assuming Them to be a homogenous, unchanging bloc which can be dominated and against which we can identify in a belligerent act of arrogant self-affirmation (Said, Once More 872).

There is thus, as Spivak writes, a stark predilection of dominant discourses and institutions to marginalise and disempower the subaltern, non-Wester Other, and, as Hage asserts, “the debates work to silence them [the subaltern, the migrants and so forth] and construct them into passive objects to be governed by those who have given themselves the national governmental right to ‘worry’ about the ‘nation’” (17). This statement can, patently, be translated to an international level, where sovereign Western nation-states and institutions, often led by the United States, are the self-professed harbingers of freedom, democracy and civilisation to the rest of the world. In light of this, in Tristes Tropiques, anthropologist Lévi-Strauss identifies two strategies historically used in order to cope with the Other’s otherness: the anthropoemic and the anthropophagic one (Bauman, Liquid Modernity). In the first scenario, the “incurably strange and alien” Other was deported, murdered, incarcerated, barred from any contact, or, more concurrently, in a more modernised and refined way, segregated in urban ghettoes, denied access to certain spaces, privileges and rights, and so forth. In the second, it was about obliterating the Other’s otherness through, for example, enforced assimilation or cultural imperialism. As much of the discourse being currently deployed by those on the far right of the political spectrum professes, those who cannot and will not assimilate and integrate to Western values allegedly have no place in Western societies.

Therefore, as Said accurately states:

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilise, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice (Once More, 873).

We might be in the postcolonial era, in the sense that most former colonies have become independent from its metropolises, yet a manifold of the nefarious social processes, dynamics and relations still remain pertinent issues and occurrences, only disguised behind different justifications and narratives. As Young asserts, there is a strong desire to declare the postcolonial dead and obsolete in Western (academic) discourse, which can be interpreted as

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the fact that its spectre still continues to derange and to haunt (Remains). Thus, the postcolonial remains, and strongly destabilises the self-assured identity of the West through the gradual intermingling of heterogeneous discourses, temporalities and epistemologies. Van den Berg identifies three levels on which postcolonial discourse problematizes (neo)colonial thinking: it de-stereotypes the Other’s identity, it puts in question one’s own identity and perspective, and finally, it questions one’s own discursive possibilities of representation of the Other (198).

In this respect, postcolonialism exposes the continuing (neo)colonial processes and relations in the world in order to examine, to subvert and to disavow them. It is thus “on the side of memory” (Gregory 9), it goes both against revisionist accounts of the imperial and colonial past whilst reminding us that a frank, honest exposure with history is of urgent necessity in order for us to construct a more humane, just and equal present. In fact, “the revisionist ways of approaching nationality, power, law, and the history of imperial domination are, of course, fully compatible with the novel geopolitical rule elaborated after 9/11. They have also been designed to conform to the economic machinery of weightless capitalism and work best when the substance of colonial history and the wounds of imperial domination have been mystified or, better still, forgotten” (Gilroy, After Empire 3). Furthermore, in unequivocally acknowledging the past and revealing the starkly asymmetrical relations of the current world order, postcoloniality enables “the authentification of histories of exploitation and the evolution of strategies of culture” whilst bearing witness to the Other constituted “otherwise” than modernity (Bhabha 9). And, finally, postcoloniality “represents a response to a genuine need, the need to overcome a crisis of understanding produced by the inability of old categories to account for the world” (Dirlik 352). For instance, Eurocentrist and Anglocentrist worldviews are currently being challenged, whilst the new global configuration poses a palpable defiance to the distinction between the First and Third World. On the one hand, parts of the so-called ‘Third World’ are gradually cultivating a solid position in the global economy and on the other, parts of the ‘First World’ are increasingly becoming marginalised and prone to extreme poverty and deprivation. And, as previously stated, the distance between Us and Them is, to an extent, dwindling, and in the postcolonial condition, the Other is no longer ‘outside’, but contrary to what many assert or hope, very well part of our interconnected world. Regardless of the Other’s otherness being imposed upon him/her, the Other also has a voice, and the Other is markedly coeval.

Postcoloniality is thus about making the invisible visible, the subaltern speak, it is about disavowing politics’ blindness and amnesia, whilst acknowledging and validating the

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“interrelated set of critical and counterintuitive perspectives, a complex network of paronymous concepts and heterogeneous practices that have been developed out of traditions of resistance to a global historical trajectory of imperialism and colonialism” (Young, Remains 20). Other knowledges, other narratives, other epistemologies are equally valid, and they should be given a voice. Especially in our current socio-political climate, then, postcoloniality has a certain urgency, when considering, for instance, the rise of the far-right in Europe, the normalisation of neoliberal ideologies and its unfortunate by-product, the rise of extreme poverty, marginalisation and disenfranchisement; or even the current refugee crisis, to only name a few examples. Young sums this up beautifully – even though, admittedly, what is said is far from beautiful:

Today, it is no longer a question of a formal coloniser-colonised relation. That is for the most part over, though versions of it persist in the settler colonies, and its legacy continues to inflect attitudes, assumptions and cultural norms in the world beyond. What we have instead is something almost more brutal, because there is no longer even a relation, just those countless individuals in so many societies, who are surplus to economic requirements, redundant, remaindered, condemned to the surplusage of lives full of holes, waiting for a future that may never come, forced into the desperate decision to migrate illegally across whole continents in order to survive. The postcolonial question now is how to make the dream of emancipation accessible for all those people who fall outside the needs of contemporary modernity (Remains 27).

* In this context, Beninese Solidarity with Endangered Westerners is a very thought-provoking, enlightening artwork, or even, as Konaté writes, a “performance of a piece of radical theatre as cultural intervention” (115). It can be regarded as a powerful, immanent criticism towards the asymmetrical power relations between the global North and South, towards the nefarious construction of the non-Western Other as the weak, subaltern, underdeveloped Other and its material consequences in actuality. As previously stated, one of the paramount tenets of Western modern thinking and practice is opposition, Manichaeism, or in other words, dichotomy – ‘us’ against ‘them’, the ‘West’ versus the ‘Rest’. Whilst being a manifestation of power, it simultaneously disguises it in creating an illusion of symmetry. And as Bauman writes, “in dichotomies crucial for the practice and the vision of social order, the differentiating power hides as a rule behind one of the members of the opposition,” the second member being but the other of the first, its degraded, negative opposite whilst also being its creation (Modernity 14). And while both sides are co-dependent, this dependence is starkly asymmetrical.

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Charity, therefore, is one of the main facets of Hazoumè’s project, who in Benin, a small West African country which already has over 4000 NGOs,6 many of which are primarily used to either generate, move or launder money (Holler-Schuster), created his own NGO which, somewhat controversially, reversed the direction of foreign aid. In a recent interview, Hazoumè stated that the funds collected would then be donated to the ambassadors of France and of the United States (Cherruau). As previously stated, the art installation surrounding the project resembles that of a small building housing an NGO, similar to the countless ones to be found around the streets of Cotonou, albeit constructed with rather unconventional, re-appropriated materials – which will be further elucidated upon in the second chapter. Furthermore, the collecting of funds, which can be seen in the film,7 also strongly resembles the practice by various charities in which volunteers approach people in cities in order to collect donations for their good cause; in this case, the volunteers are well-known Beninese artists whom the local people often recognise, which further adds to the playful aspect of this project.

Even though charity can be regarded as a positive concept, as a humanistic, utilitarian practice, it can also be regarded as a debatable action. While its mission to help those in need, it also stems from precisely those economic and political structures which created the inequality it is supposed to alleviate. As Nair perfectly sums it up:

Charity is an off-shoot of, and also supports, the ideology of capitalism that presupposes on national and global scales the co-existence of the rich with the poor, as well as the empowerment of the rich over the poor. Within such contexts, charity becomes the soft underbelly of the ‘liberal’ market economy, one that functions not solely within the remit of the nation-state but also on a global scale. The result is the fault line that divides the ‘global north’ from the ‘global south’, a division that is not so much geographical as it is social and economic (74).

Charity, along with its sister, development aid, is usually a linear practice stemming from the West and targeting its poorer global counterparts. Albeit, as previously stated, while the idea behind it is often benevolent in nature, it is both a symptom of the asymmetric power relations in the world and can have damaging consequences, as the money often lands in the hands of the corrupt elites. It can also be regarded as a further manifestation of the West’s Messiah complex, reaffirming its superiority and its delusions of grandeur. As Žižek writes, in our current economy, charity is no longer the idiosyncrasy of ‘good’ people; rather, it is one of the basic constituents of our economy. Remedies do not cure the illness, they are instead part of it, and altruistic virtues, apart from presenting the giver with a cynical illusion of redemption, of

6 See Appendix 2 7 See Appendix 3

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making a difference, actually prevent the challenging, if not even the outright dismantling, of the structures supporting both the illness and their ephemeral remedies. As Cole writes, in strongly criticising American foreign policy, “the White Savio[u]r Industrial Complex is a valve for releasing the unbearable pressures that build in a system built on pillage. We can participate in the economic destruction of Haiti over long years, but when the earthquake strikes it feels good to send $10 each to the rescue fund” (n. pag.). In creating SBOP, Hazoumè strongly destabilises and problematizes this relation between the West and its poorer counterparts, along with the concept of charity itself.

On the one hand, SBOP destabilises this relation in the eyes of the locals in Benin, for whom the assumption mostly is that the West is rich, prosperous, and hardly has any poverty. As Fanon has written, colonisation has produced an inferiority complex in the mind of the colonised, the phantom of which, in current global relations, can still be felt, along with Afropessimism, the perception that large parts of Africa have too many problems to achieve good governance and economic development (Onwudiwe). In this sense, many respondents were surprised that there are indeed poor people in the West. Some of the comments were, for instance,8 “but when they come here they sleep in big hotels, wear suits and ties while we, we wear our simple long tunic. They don’t seem to be in need.” Or, “me, I slept hungry yesterday; it is not easy for us here. (…) Out there the unemployed is paid, while me, I am suffering here.” And furthermore, “Do you think we here, we have money? (…) Our country is poor, we have no wealth! It is the White people who should be giving us money and not the other way round.” Some even told the artists to go see the President instead, as he was the one they should ask for help, rather than the local people who often struggle to make ends meet. Notwithstanding, in spite of the initial resistance put forth by the locals, everybody in the video ended up donating a few coins, often, as they state, on the basis of love9, humanity and even just for the sake of helping those in need, regardless of their origins or geographical locations: “I am happy to support anyone in need, White or non-White,” as one woman said.

8 For the sake of consistency, when quoting dialogues from the video, I will use the exact spelling and punctuation as indicated in the subtitles 9 It is important to note that the concept of love can be somewhat vague, as there are many ways in which it can be understood, and one can also wonder, what about helping those we don’t know or love? However, it plays a significant role in SBOP, especially in the interactions which can be witnessed in the video. “If you have a coin, make a gesture of love for others, because we know how to stick together here in Benin,” states one of the artists. Furthermore, SBOP has been commissioned by the Menil Collection in Houston for their collaborative project, “the Progress of Love” (see www.theprogressoflove.com/?attachment_id=459). Understood this way, SBOP also BEYOND THE OTHER | Riccardo Ceniviva questions how one can conceive of love in our contemporary global context. “In Africa, we have love. We can show them [the West] how to take care for others; we will teach them that love is not only about money,” states another artist. Interestingly, the word ‘love’ appears 13 times in the full-length video.

On the other hand, it is also a very strong critique to those in the West, in indomitably challenging the assumption that those in the West are all wealthy, powerful and benevolent. As some artists in the video have told the locals, “out there in their country, they don’t like helping their neighbour”. Or, “here you are happy because when you are hungry you know your neighbour will give you to eat, he will not let you die of hunger. In the Western world it isn’t like that. If you have nothing, nobody will help you.” And, “you know in the White man’s land there is everything. Yet they have no love. And here in Africa, we have love, but we don’t have everything. We should help them”. Furthermore, “we will teach them that being human, taking care of one’s neighbours, is not solely a question of money.” Thus, alongside the message the artists bring to the locals, that they, for instance, are not inferior to the West, or that they share positive values such as love and kindness which the West doesn’t have, SBOP can also be regarded, as a viewer from the West, as a powerful criticism towards its own so-called superiority complex. Western societies might be further developed, in the purely material and perhaps monetary sense, yet we can all learn from each other.

And finally, it also criticises the concept of charity and development aid itself, which is often counterproductive. As previously stated, there are over four thousand registered NGOs in Benin, and whilst acknowledging the progress and positive change some have fostered, many are used to launder money and to serve the corrupt elites. As one of the artists stated during one interaction in the video: “Let’s not blame the Whites for our situation, they are not the cause. It’s our leaders who betray us. They take loans on our behalf. The debts they leave behind will be paid by your sons, grand-sons and great grand-sons. We should put a stop to that.” In this sense, SBOP can be regarded as a further contribution to the critical thesis provided in Cameroonian author Axelle Kabou’s And if Africa Denies Development, further echoed by Kenyan economist James Shikwati (Welter). According to them, most interaction between the West and Africa was that between a big brother who has money and a small one who begs for some, and that development aid has mostly helped the political industry rather than the local economies. Furthermore, those who practice development aid more often than not merely seek jobs for developers. It is about political influence and resources, and the allocation of the money remains in the hands of the local governments and parties in power, so the only way to get close to the money sent towards aid, according to Shikwati, is to either be a politician or a friend of the aforementioned. Thus, one should give people in African countries the chance to control local production and to sell their own goods, rather than imposing structural reforms from above in order to nudge them towards what is deemed ‘right’. It has in fact almost become a

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competition, of a rather cynical nature, to prove that Africa is poor and needs money, and daily, Western charities publish articles describing the negative sides of Africa, giving the locals the feeling of being powerless. In this sense, in spite of the charitable idea, the side effects of this are very negative. “What I find most perverse,” says Hazoumè, “is that now we Africans are ashamed of our own culture, we view it with their [the West] eyes, and blindly adopt their negative opinions” (Jocks 127). Therefore, in order to help local democracies prosper, Shikwati argues that financial development aid should rather stop. And, arguably, SBOP can be regarded as a playful means to conceive of the impossible – that Africa could become self-sufficient. It is an artistic attack on the shaky structure of Western humanitarian aid, both a social commentary and an expression of consciousness-raising on current social and economic processes.

All in all, then, this chapter provided the reader with various broader arguments concerning the starkly asymmetrical relation between the West and its Other, the relevance of postcolonial critique in the wake of newer forms of colonialism, and it situated SBOP as an immanent intervention within the aforementioned. The following chapter will explore one of the key processes within SBOP, notably the reversal of the direction of aid, through the concept of détournement. Furthermore, I will argue that, in this case, détournement can be considered as a powerful act of delinking from Western ideologies and discourses.

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III Détournement, Delinking and Disobedience

As Umberto Eco once wrote, “in humour we smile because of the contradiction between the character and the frame the character cannot comply with. But we are no longer sure that it is the character who is at fault. Maybe the frame is wrong” (Doll, Spaßguerilla 94). Beninese Solidarity with Endangered Westerners, in this sense, makes us laugh because it is a derisory attack on the Manichaean North-South relations, in criticising the unidirectional path of charity and the underlying structures it is a symptom of. As previously stated, people usually laugh when hearing the title of Hazoumè’ NGO, as it is something rather uncustomary, the “character” not quite fitting into its “frame”. And, rightfully, the NGO is precisely an attack on the “frame”, the global colonial matrix of power and the engendered unequal international relations. As an attack on the negative consequences of globalisation, it can therefore be understood as a powerful piece of global contemporary art. Whilst stemming from Africa, it nonetheless shares the vocabulary from both African and Western contexts, finding itself at the intersection between two different outlooks on art – traditional aesthetics and contemporary conceptual art (Holler-Schuster).

The dangers of cultural essentialism are well known, under the false assumption that culture is something fixed and unchanging, along with one of its hubristic by-products, the parochial presumption that one’s culture is superior. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge the coexistence and coevalness of different cultures and to celebrate both their existence and their difference. As Hazoumè himself has stated, “one could assume I wanted to teach the Europeans a lesson with this exhibition, by elevating myself above them. Yet in fact, I am putting both cultures in their rightful places.” Furthermore, he argues that we should preserve cultural differences: “if we all spoke the same language, we wouldn’t have anything more to say to each other” (Konaté 131-133). However, we should also be aware that one’s culture is very well a social construction that has been, to a certain degree, influenced by other cultures, a recurring trope in Hazoumè’s work. For instance, one of his most famous works is his masks series, where he made masks resembling traditional ones originally used in rituals and ceremonies, yet sculpted out of discarded gas canisters, symbols of the global consumer and throwaway culture along with its object fetishism, and a sad reminder of the illegal petrol trade in West Africa. These discarded gas canisters also play a significant role in SBOP. As previously stated, they have been used to collect the donations, and also as materials to build the installation.

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Furthermore, SBOP also strongly plays with the interaction between Western and local West African cultures, which can be witnessed in the various dialogues in the video, in the music from the Gangbé Brass Band, a popular group which intermingles traditional West African music with jazz and big-band music, and in the juxtaposition of various signs and symbols, which will be further elucidated upon in later sections.

As Fabian writes, then, only in acknowledging coevalness and cotemporality between societies can a truly dialectical confrontation occur, which transcends “false conceptions of dialectics” marketed as “watered-down binary abstractions which are passed off as oppositions” (154-155). Tradition and modernity, for instance, whilst being different, are not, apart from perhaps at a semiotic level, antagonistic or in conflict. And it is precisely in this location of difference, the realm of the beyond, where we can situate the question of culture, especially in postcolonial critical discourse. As Bhabha states, “the interstitial passage between fixed identifications opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy” (5). Furthermore:

these in-between spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood (…) that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself. It is the space of intervention emerging in the cultural interstices that introduces creative invention in existence. (…) Private and public, past and present, the psyche and the social develop an interstitial intimacy. It is an intimacy that questions binary dimensions through which such spheres of social experience are often spatially opposed. These spheres of life are linked through an ‘in-between’ temporality” (11/19). This realm of the interstitial, of the in-between is what Bhabha calls the Third Space, the postcolonial acknowledgement of culture’s hybridity which enables us to elude and to transcend the politics of polarity.

* In inversing the conditions of aid and charity, in reversing the asymmetrical polarity between the powerful giver and the receiver in need, Hazoumè’s project is precisely an opening up of, an intervention in this Third Space, a call towards an imminent dialectical confrontation between equals. Whilst acknowledging the difference between various cultures, it is also an invitation towards a postcolonial dialogue, suggesting that we can all learn from and help each other. Apart from “putting both cultures in their rightful places,” SBOP is equally a whimsical deconstruction of both Africa’s inferiority and the West’s superiority complexes. It is about making the visible invisible – the global poor, the marginalised, the subaltern. Indeed, for many Africans, it is almost impossible to conceive of poverty in the West. On the other hand, the West also often turns a blind eye on its own poor, be it the ‘natives’ or those who have migrated

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there. It is important to note, for instance, that while two decades ago, 93 percent of the world’s poor resided in low-income countries, according to the Institute of Development Studies, 72 percent now live in middle-income countries (Greenstock and Samarasinghe). Furthermore, in our globalised world, what was once an ‘African’ problem, such as poverty, famine or war, can rapidly transform into a ‘global’ problem – and vice-versa. This, for instance, can be witnessed in the current refugee crisis, where countless people are risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea in order to start a new, better life in Europe. Risk, insecurity, war and environmental disasters indeed know no boundaries.

In this sense, when evoking SBOP, one is led to ponder on the concept of reversal, or, borrowing from avant-garde artistic groupings Letterist and Situationist International, on that of détournement, which was the practice of using and recombining already available cultural elements, such as phrases, books, images, films, music and so forth. Not only is SBOP re- appropriating various signs, symbols and materials in order to give them a novel, critical meaning in a new context, but it is also deflecting, or even hijacking – taking the English literal translation of détournement – the practice of humanitarian aid and charity. Similar to Eco’s “frame”, détournement is about “clashing head-on with all social and legal conventions” in order to be a “powerful cultural weapon in the service of a real (…) struggle” (Debord and Wolman n. pag.). The Situationists identified various forms of détournement, such as minor détournement, which re-appropriates elements that have little intrinsic importance, whose meaning is rather gained from the new context. Deceptive détournement, on the other hand, misappropriates an inherently important element, which then procures a wholly new scope from its new context. In this sense, SBOP re-appropriates various every-day, commonplace elements such as the jerrycans, bicycles, or even the colours used on diplomats’ licence plates in order to give them new meaning in a critical context. As previously stated, these elements can be viewed as an attack on the local corrupt elites, on the illegal petrol trade which has caused many deaths, displacements and environmental damage, on wasteful consumer culture, and so forth. Furthermore, the hijacking of charity, a deceptive détournement, whilst being a reversal of a very significant practice, rather than the mere re-appropriation of ‘minor’ commonplace signs and symbols, helps to shed a new expository light on it.

One could therefore state that Hazoumè’s art shares some of the radical affinities and passions glorified by the Situationists. The latter, for instance, were against the Surrealist idea of engendering a state of disorientation. Rather, in the deceptive form of détournement, the notoriety of the re-appropriated cultural element was of salience, whilst in the minor form, the

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effect aimed at was the prominence of certain elements over others (Vicas). Which is again precisely the case in NGO SBOP, in highlighting the relevance of the various signs and symbols omnipresent in the installation and video, and attacking a common practice in which, as Holler- Schuster reminds us, the sender is always in the more powerful position, a situation African societies have almost never felt in regards to the West. Whilst critiquing various social practices, NGO SBOP is also about giving African societies self-confidence, in conjunction with questioning the stoic, undisputed self-assurance of the West. As one of the artists stated in the video, in referring to benevolence, love and helping one’s peers in need: “do you know that we Africans, we have something magnificent, which is worth more than what they have in the Western world?” Moreover, culture can easily be copied, quoted, plagiarised, as Eco reminds us in Travels in Hyperreality, or Baudrillard in his theory of simulacra. Détournement, however, as a challenge to organised knowledge, is not only about appropriating the image, the sign, or the concept; it is about usurping the power of appropriation itself: “the trick is to turn the possibility of copying into an act that restores agency to the act of appropriation, rather than merely adding to the stock of worthless copies that surround us” (Wark 146).

In fact, one of the Situationists’ most germane criticisms was that of the society of the spectacle, which was a radical criticism of our commodity culture and consumer fetishism (Debord, Eagles). Debord argued that the commodity had fully colonised our social life; it is all about images, representations of social life, simulacra and mass consumer culture, which will invariably lead to homogenisation, alienation and the degradation of critical thinking, an argument that still holds a certain measure of pertinence. The spectacle is thus constitutive of modern capitalist societies, and even radical criticism is prone to recuperation, where revolutionary ideas are for instance incorporated in advertisement, which then exploits the revolutionary desires of the consumer in order for them to buy said commodities. Hence the spectacle has the power to absorb, to recuperate criticism which in turn acts to buttress spectacular society. Notwithstanding, if the majority of the proletariat constructs new situations through détournement, spectacular capitalist society, according to the Situationists, could become subverted. In this sense, Eco, in his habitual humorous prose, evokes the concept of “semiological guerrilla warfare,” similar to that of détournement, where citizens should control the message and its numerous possibilities of interpretation; it is about disrupting political powers and the normative interpretations of signs. There is no point in attacking the centre of Power, as no true centre exists; rather, Power has no heart. It is, to use Artaud’s dictum, a body without organs; it is, in the Foucauldian sense, capillary.

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Détournement, or “semiological guerrilla warfare” is hence a non-violent form of subverting the discrete and discreet manifestations of power “distributed along the threads of a fine-spun, widespread cobweb” in a playful, artistic and, in line with the avant-gardists’ passion, a revolutionary way (Eco, Guerrilla Warfare 178). Charity, for instance, can be regarded as part of the spectacle. Although the positive work achieved by charitable organisations around the world needs to be acknowledged, volunteering for them in the developing world mostly requires very high fees, making it only accessible to those with money. In this way, it helps sustain the giving hand’s Messiah complex. What is more, it is often marketed as a once in a lifetime experience, as an addendum on one’s curriculum vitae, or as an adventure to be posted on narcissistic social media such as Instagram and Facebook. The underlying social structures necessitating charity work, the normative assumption that the developing world needs the West’s helping hand, are, however, seldom catechised – an issue SBOP immanently addresses. SBOP also opens up a space of critique, through the lens of détournement, within the Euro- centrist assumption that Africa is largely uncivilised, that its states are weak and failing, that it is a faraway, exotic and non-modern continent. In other words, it directly attacks how the othering of the Other and the ensuing power relations have become largely normalised both in the imagination and in discourse. In this sense, the music from the Gangbé Brass Band, which can be described as local and traditional10, or for the uncritical Western gaze, tribal and primitive, can be considered as a somewhat ironic interjection, as a play on the exotic for the Western viewer, yet also as a celebration of local culture, in contrast to the homogenising forces of globalisation and the society of the spectacle.

* Taking the concept of détournement even further, it can also be viewed as a form of delinking, of epistemic disobedience. As Tlostanova and Mignolo write, “decoloniality means decolonisation of knowledge and being by epistemically and affectively de-linking from the imperial/colonial organisation of society” (132). In fact, the “colonial present,” or neo- colonialist relations will arguably endure as long as the desire of accumulating capital remains the adage of the human condition, and the control of authority will prevail, predominately hidden behind magniloquent concepts such as progress, development or security. De-colonial thinking, however, opens up the possibility of transcending the current world order. Having

10 It is important to note that they use brass instruments and a big band format, which itself can be viewed of part of the colonial legacy. However, they music also incorporates various styles of traditional West African music, ranging from Voudou to jùjú, and which heavily relies on Yoruba percussion. Furthermore, ‘Gangbé’ signifies ‘sound of metal’, referring to the percussive instruments they use. BEYOND THE OTHER | Riccardo Ceniviva

emerged after Taussig’s “second contact,” after the postcolonial confrontation between the West and its former colonies, a diversity of “conceptual tools” emerged which no longer stemmed from the canonical status of Western ways of imagining, constructing and representing the world. To de-colonise signifies to de-modernise, not in the sense of going back in time, but rather, to de-link from Western epistemologies, from the geopolitics of knowledge and the geopolitical imagination – the “imaginative geographies” – of the world. As Mignolo notes, whilst the First World has knowledge, the Third has culture; whilst Native Americans have wisdom, Anglo Americans have science. Thus, Euro-centrist epistemology obscured its own geo-historical and bio-graphical locations behind the idea of universal knowledge, values and ideals; it has the privilege of inventing the system of classification of the world order while simultaneously being part of it (Bauman Modernity). And furthermore, Western secular philosophy and science are still largely regarded as the apex of all knowledge-making.

Epistemic disobedience, in this sense, signifies to delink from this illusion of “zero-point epistemology,” a definite “rejection of ‘being told’ from the epistemic privileges of the zero point what ‘we’ are, what our ranking is in relation to the ideal of humanitas and what we have to do to be recognised as such” (Mignolo 161). The “racially devalued” should also have their epistemic rights affirmed, thus the terms, rather than the content of the conversation should be altered. Détournement, in this context, in hijacking and re-appropriating elements from the colonial matrix of power whilst simultaneously wresting the power, the agency of appropriation itself, can be viewed as a powerful, artistic form of delinking. Furthermore, in reversing the relations between the global North and South, in performing a reverse critique of the phenomena of the NGOs in a country where one is but a simulacrum of the other, SBOP is equally a powerful form of epistemic disobedience undermining the dynamics of dominion. It is about giving a voice to the voiceless, about challenging the assumption that the West has everything and Africa has nothing.

This can be witnessed in many of the dialogues present in the video. Most of the local people asked to contribute donations to help the ‘White people’ were often very astounded that the West has many poor people who are also suffering and in dire need. Most of the opening statements of the filmed interactions went like this: “Give me a coin to help the White people because they are facing too many problems.” Or: “We are asking for contributions to help the White people because they have so many poor people in their country.” “White people are poor! (…) Poorer than us Blacks, Africans. They are so poor.” Many initial reactions were like this one: “This is not possible. It is we Africans who are really suffering.” Or: “I am not

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contradicting you, of course, but the White people are not suffering like we do!” As previously stated, many of the arguments used by the artists were that although the White people have everything, they have no love and they refuse to help their neighbour in need. Moreover, “without Africa they are not rich!” as one of the respondents energetically stated. “They have nothing out there; it is here that they come to tap for their country.” It is evident that the West’s dominant status in the world is gradually coming under suspicion, and perhaps to an end, sentiments largely echoed in SBOP:

A (person on the street): Give money to White people? Which White people? B (artist): White people of Europe, America. They are in crisis. A: The world belongs to them. B: The world does not belong to them. A: Angélique Kidjo, if that is the case, then we should take care of our resources. C (other person on the street): At the moment, the world is changing. Before, White people were ahead… B: Ahead of what? They are behind now. C: They will remain behind. And for this reason, we will always help them.

It is thus about delinking from the idea that the ‘White people’ should be helping Africa; rather, people in African countries have much more than they think they do – one can see a call voiced by various locals that they should be using their own resources rather than depending on the West. It is also about helping the poor, helping one’s neighbour, and cultivating love for each other, something that people in Benin should be proud of. And those who have more than others should be helping those in need, regardless of the colour of their skin or their location in the world: “the one who has more resources helps others,” as one artist told a woman at a market in Cotounou. The somewhat ironical name of the NGO is a strong reminder of this – it is both a call towards universal solidarity and an act of self-affirmation for Benin, a poor West African country, in implying that it could help Westerners, those part of the allegedly most developed and most powerful societies in the world.

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IV Mimicry

The previous chapter sought to elaborate upon one particularly congruous dimension of Beninese Solidarity with Endangered Westerners, notably that of détournement, or reversal, as it is a facet which upon first sight immediately springs to mind. Even the NGO’s somewhat controversial title is eminently evocative of this, as when thinking of charities, especially from a Western perspective, one would rather expect the opposite – perhaps Western Solidarity with Endangered Beninese. Its title, and more patently, its content, operates against the order of things, the latent epistemological assumptions characteristic of every historical period which ascertain that which is acceptable (Foucault, The Order). Nevertheless, the established order of things has become so normative, so commonplace, that one is easily led to forget that it is but a social construction, that is has been, in the first place, established. And through détournement, NGO SBOP playfully criticises and destabilises this order and its underlying epistemological assumptions.

In reversing the constructed linearity of charity and development aid, NGO SBOP as a piece of radical theatre, as a contemporary expression of conceptual art, is also an imitation, a copy of an NGO. As previously stated, the installation reminds the viewer of the countless other makeshift buildings housing NGOs in Benin, even though, due to the materials used, with the addition of a certain creative twist. Correspondingly, this chapter will focus on the concept of mimicry, especially in the sense of colonial mimicry (Bhabha), precisely due to the fact that Hazoumè, in Benin, is imitating a practice usually ascribed to the West. Whilst the previous statement can be regarded as somewhat controversial, especially in line with postcolonial critique, one of the principle positions of this paper, I would like to argue that Hazoumè is operating, immanently, in this dimension exactly in order to criticise the Manichean polarity of our world and the ascribing, from without, of the Other’s otherness.

In thinking of mimicry, in the act of imitating, of mimicking something, questions of authenticity and originality come to the fore. For instance, if rock music stems from the West, it is simply rock, while if originating from China, it is Chinese rock. Additionally, if pop music comes from America, it is again merely labelled as pop, while if issuing from Korea, it is K- pop, or from Japan, it is J-pop, and so forth. In this sense, there is a “geopolitical deadlock of global authenticity”, the West self-servingly having established itself as the “authentic yardstick

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of knowledge” (De Kloet 8-9). However, tangentially, in speaking of academia, Chen argues that “universalist arrogance serves only to keep new possibilities from emerging, since it allows only one set of accepted analytic language to enter the dialogue and is itself a product of a specific set of historical experiences” (245). This argument can of course be translated to other realms, such as culture, social practices, ideologies, and so forth. What is important to note, nevertheless, is that those outside the West perpetually carry the “burden of geopolitical representation” (De Kloet 9); for instance, being a scholar from Latin America, one automatically is expected to be a token of one’s culture and to talk about Latin America, which is not the case if stemming from the global North (Mignolo). This is an issue that Hazoumè strongly touches upon in his work. Stemming from Benin, in line with Mignolo’s argument, it is assumed that he would address Beninese issues, and Hazoumè very well embraces this presupposed subject position: “I see myself as an ambassador for my people. I’m not talking about the government of Benin (…) but about representing the common people who suffer and have to struggle with serious difficulties and problems” (Jocks 123). He does this in attempting to give a voice to African – and especially Beninese – poor people, in presenting, through his art, Beninese problems as global problems, and in fostering, through SBOP, self-confidence to the locals in proving that they are also able to help those suffering in the world’s richer parts. “It’s now our turn to show them [the West] that we can also help them,” as one artist argues in the beginning of the video. “Now Africa must show them that for us that [helping one’s neighbour] is what we do.” Or as Hazoumè himself has stated, “we will have taken a big step forward on the day when we become aware of the wealth we actually do possess. We produce cocoa, which we don’t drink ourselves but export it all and we have the sun, from which we do not profit” (Jocks 131).

The act of mimicry not only destabilises the original, as will be argued later, but it also destabilises the relation between the original and the copy; in so doing, it helps transcend the reification of binary logic. As De Kloet writes, “would it not be more helpful to abandon the idea of the original altogether, and view cultural globalisation as a hall of mirrors, in which copies constantly reflect and refract each other?” (10). This is reminiscent of Bhabha’s Third Space, of the acknowledgement of culture’s hybridity and its location in the realm of the beyond. Culture is not fixed and unchanging, there is no original, and viewed this way, the hierarchical construction of cultures based on their alleged originality, and their fixed, essential features loses its relevance and validity. Whilst different cultures are dissimilar to each other, they are not opposed to each other. We can all learn from each other, we have all learned from

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and influenced each other – even though those believing in the superiority and the purity of their culture are often ready to disavow this – and furthermore, we can all help each other. In this sense, the well-known dictum “when America sneezes, the world catches a cold” gains a certain degree of salience – problems in Benin can easily become global problems, and conversely, issues linked to globalisation and the rest of the world can have damaging consequences for Benin. Moreover, our “world risk society” has caused us to confront the “apparently excluded other,” and through the “global communications networks, all human beings, all ethnic and religious groups, all populations are part of a shared present for the first time in human history. Each nation has become the next-door neighbour of every other, and shocks in one part of the planet are transmitted with extraordinary speed to the whole population of the earth” (Beck 12).

This has led to what Beck calls the “cosmopolitan moment,” where “global risks tear down national barriers and mix natives with foreigners. The expelled other becomes the internal other, as a result not of migration but of global risk” (15). As Fabian writes, “intriguing testimony to the powers unleashed by ‘second contact’ and the destabilisation of the border is the fact that the self is no longer clearly separable from its Alter. For now the self is inscribed in the Alter that the self needs to define itself against” (252). Poverty, inequality, environmental threats and other pertinent issues are everybody’s concern. Whilst, arguably, the world is now being ‘united’ against its will, “without its vote or agreement,” as Beck states, the Other’s imposed otherness is again brought to the fore in the media, in politics and in everyday discourse, thus “the conflicts between cultures, pasts, situations, religions (…) are becoming manifest” in a “fundamental problem of global politics in the twenty-first century” (12). In calling towards the transcendence of the Other’s otherness, of the sublation of binary logics and false dialectics, Hazoumè’s NGO is an appeal towards this so-called cosmopolitan moment – “everyday life is becoming cosmopolitan: human beings must lend meaning to their lives with exchanges with others and no longer in encounters with people like them” (Beck 15). We are all in it together, therefore we should help each other through the means the others has not. As previously stated, a significant part of the dialogues in the video are a call – hidden behind humorous and ironic undertones – towards love, helping one’s neighbour, and a truly shared and universal humanity11 which celebrates cultural difference and hybridity.

11 The concept of humanity – similar to that of universality – can be critiqued, in being “an especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in its ethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism” (Schmitt 54). However, I would like to argue that SBOP is a call towards a truly shared BEYOND THE OTHER | Riccardo Ceniviva

* Mimicry can be regarded as an act that enables Hazoumè to precisely transcend the Other’s imposed otherness, the sublation of binary logics and false dialectics. As previously stated, it is important to acknowledge that the order of things has been established, counterintuitively in regards to its normative character. Furthermore, as Foucault writes, certain classes, societies or groups have special discursive practices. There exist certain epistemes part of specific power/knowledge systems, to be understood as “the strategic apparatus which permits of separating out from among all the statements which are possible those that will be acceptable” and which define the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, discourses and so forth (“Confession” 197, The Order). While space does not allow an exhaustive elucidation on the concept of episteme in the Foucauldian sense, what is important to note is that Western discursive practices or epistemes – and their materialisations in reality, such as social practices – have successfully established themselves as universal, as the apex, the maxim to be reached, or perhaps imitated. Moreover, while Foucault very well acknowledged the co-temporal coexistence and interaction of several epistemes, being part of different power/knowledge systems, I would like to argue that even though our globalised, postcolonial world has brought various epistemes in closer contact with each other, they still stand in a hierarchical relation to each other. Let us remember, for instance, Said’s criticism of what he calls Orientalism – the West’s patronising and imperialist fascination with studying and representing the Orient – or Mignolo’s decolonial call towards epistemic disobedience. Nevertheless, it is still important to note that the postcolonial condition “is distinguished by heterogeneous temporalities that mingle and jostle with one another to interrupt the teleological narratives that have served both to constitute and to stabilise the identity of the ‘West’” (Gupta 17).

Becker et al. for instance argue that, originating from biology, the concept of mimicry has played a large role within cultural studies during the past century, as it opens up the field of tensions between founded orders, and as it questions not only concepts such as similarity or identity, but also the apparent Archimedean points and reference systems we have (9). In the act of copying, of imitating, which can be understood as a process of cultural translation, while some elements get lost, other meanings can be added. Furthermore, “meanings that were hidden in the alleged original – itself always already a copy – may unfold or be actualised in the process of translation” (De Kloet 10-11). Mimicry thus “plays the trick of dancing between the very

and a truly universal humanity, from the bottom up, in contrast to a “worldly vision of imperialistic particularism dressed up in seductive universal grab” (Gilroy, After Empire 5).

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same and the very different (…), an impossible but necessary, indeed an everyday affair, (…) [it] registers both sameness and difference, of being like, and of being Other” (Fabian 129). In other words, while on the one hand operating precisely in the realm of the beyond, in the liminal sphere of hybridity, it also impugns both the original and the copy, the self and the other, or in this case, the West and Africa, its subaltern sister.

For Bhabha, then, mimicry – what he understands to be a metonymy of presence – during the colonial era was “the desire for a reformed, recognisable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (122). Mimicry is constructed around a certain ambivalence, an ironic compromise where the reformed subject, the colonised, should be created bearing an extent of resemblance to the coloniser, albeit not exactly. In other words, mimicry does not signify metamorphosing into a European, but rather imitating the latter. In colonial India, for instance, a strong difference existed between being English and being Anglicised (Becker et al. 20, Bhabha 87), and this difference between the White coloniser and its opaque mirror-image ensured both the opportunity and the justification of the ruling system’s repression of the colonised subject. Mimicry is thus “the sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of reform, regulation and discipline, which ‘appropriates’ the Other as it visualises power” (Bhabha 122). The discourse of mimicry is constructed around a certain degree of ambivalence, in both strengthening and cohering the “dominant strategic function of colonial power,” yet in also posing an “immanent threat to both ‘normalised’ knowledges and disciplinary powers” (123). Mimicry is therefore simultaneously both resemblance and menace.

It is this ambivalence of mimicry, of colonial imitation of being almost the same, yet not quite, which produces a certain excess, a slippage which not only “ruptures” the dominant discourse, but also “becomes transformed into an uncertainty which fixes the colonial subject as a ‘partial’ presence,” a presence both virtual and incomplete (Bhabha 123). And in mimicry’s double vision, in both conjuring colonial discourse’s ambivalence and destabilising its authority, lies its immanent menace. The “look of surveillance returns as the disciplining gaze of the disciplined, where the observer becomes the observed and ‘partial’ representation rearticulates the whole notion of identity and alienates it from essence” (127). Mimicry is like a form of camouflage; it is not about repressing difference, but rather it is a form of imitation, of semblance that partially and metonymically displays presence. It is, therefore, “under cover of camouflage (…), like the fetish, (…) a part-object that radically revalues the normative knowledges of the priority of race, writing, history (…). [It] rearticulates presence in terms of its ‘otherness’, that which it disavows” (Bhabha 130).

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While Bhabha’s concept of mimicry was primarily related to the colonial era, it is still pertinent to our contemporary world imbued with its neo-colonial and imperialist power relations. The colonial legacy in fact plays a significant role in Hazoumè’s SBOP, along with its ideological construction that those outside the West, especially in Africa, are primitive, weak, exotic or even tribal. As Hazoumè himself has stated, “what I find most perverse is that now we Africans are ashamed of our own culture, we view it with their [the West] eyes, and blindly adopt their negative opinions” (Jocks 127). This is a perception echoed in many interactions in the video, that Africa is still largely dependent on the West: “They [the White people] are the ones always helping us, helping African countries build our roads, finance our elections.” Or: “Look at my fingers, they are so damaged. It is the White people who should be giving us money, especially in these times of crisis. Before, a kilo of gari [cassava flour] sold at 100 F CFA, today it sells at 150 F CFA. (…) Have a look yourself at my worn out things.” One respondent spells the current problems out particularly well:

It is impossible to help White people. They come to Benin and go eating our vegetables in our restaurants. But when it comes to exporting these same vegetables, they find them not up to quality and standards. To obtain a visa for Europe, it is a real headache, while the White people come into our country easily. It is always one way!

For Bhabha, the act of mimicry on behalf of the colonised was often inadvertently subversive, undermining the coloniser’s power systems. Hazoumè, however, in SBOP both imitates the act of colonial mimicry itself whilst being intentionally subversive to the global power systems, in destabilising the ‘original’ concept of development aid and charity and its linear direction. NGO SBOP is almost like a ‘regular’ NGO, but not quite. Of course, its dimension as a piece of conceptual art has to be considered, which by definition grants it a certain degree of difference to that which it is imitating. Nevertheless, while for Bhabha, the “desire to emerge as ‘authentic’ through mimicry – through a process of writing and repetition – is the final irony of partial representation” (126), Hazoumè’s NGO expressly does not make any claim to authenticity or originality. It does not take itself seriously, as can be witnessed in the various interactions in the video. This is why, for instance, well-known artists were used to collect the funds, which often were recognised and even asked to sing. It is at the same time an ironic imitation and an ironic attack on the act of mimicry itself.

“What emerges between mimesis and mimicry is a ‘writing’”, writes Bhabha, “a mode of representation, that marginalises the monumentality of history, quite simply mocks its power to be a model, that power which supposedly makes it imitable. Mimicry repeats rather than represents” (125). SBOP also repeats the discourse and process of NGOs, and in so doing, it

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displays that the power structures behind it are very well imitable. Nevertheless, as the act of mimicry always leaves a certain excess, a slippage, that which is not quite the same, Hazoumè both critiques the concept of charity and illustrates how it can be done better, in a fairer and more just way. “If you have a coin, make a gesture of love for others, because we know how to stick together here in Benin,” as one of the artists states in the video. “We are saying that those who are poor in Benin can help those who are poor in Europe and America. Some people don’t even have a place to sleep, nor do they have clothes.” Furthermore, the certain excess or slippage extant in the act of mimicry in SBOP is also both a celebration of local culture and an emphasis on local problems. The latter can be seen, for instance, in the green and yellow colours of the NGO, similar to those used for Beninese diplomats’ license plates, or in the use of the jerry cans, reminiscent of the global illegal petrol trade causing many problems in West Africa. Furthermore, the use of the music of the Gangbé Brass Band can be regarded as celebrating local traditions, along with the red colours in which some jerry cans in the installation, and all those used in the video, are painted, which people illegally transporting petrol also do, as red is the colour of Shango, the voodoo deity which will allegedly protect them. Thus, even though many people in Benin have converted to Catholicism, following the missionaries’ colonial influence, they still deeply rely on local traditions. “I am showing the true colours of the people,” says Hazoumè. “In this way I would like to express that there is an inextinguishable inner core which does not change, even when someone has become evangelical, Protestant or Muslim” (Jocks 129).

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V The Fake

Beninese Solidarity with Endangered Westerners, as the previous chapter has spelled out, can be conceptualised as an act of mimicry, in the colonial sense, of imitating a practice usually ascribed to the West. Let us not forget, as previously stated, that there are over four thousand registered NGOs in Benin – the photos in Appendix 2, taken from Hazoumè’s project, provide the reader with a visual testimony of this. It is therefore important to acknowledge, in spite of the good work some NGOs have achieved, that a significant amount of the money granted to them often lands in the hand of the corrupt elites, and one is led to ponder on how much of the funds actually go towards helping the poor. Thus, in mimicking an NGO, Hazoumè makes a call towards love, solidarity and dignity. As Konaté states, “Africa does not have to hold out its hand eternally, but also needs to take on the responsibility of giving. Accordingly, it must become conscious of what it has already contributed to world culture, and recognise what it still has to offer in the future” (116). Furthermore, “the perception of misery is primarily a certain type of image installed in our minds by the media” (115), an image Hazoumè goes at pains to deconstruct in demonstrating that misery very well exists in the West, and that Africa is in various levels largely richer than believed or perceived.

It can therefore be argued that SBOP is a simulacrum, a copy of a copy of an NGO in a country where most NGOs are but copies of each other, without any original. As Baudrillard writes, “transgression and violence are less serious, for they only contest the distribution of the real. Simulation is infinitely more dangerous since it always suggests, over and above its object, that law and order themselves might really be nothing more than a simulation” (180). This statement is starkly reminiscent of what Bhabha has asserted, namely that one of the dangers of mimicry is precisely the fact that power itself is imitable. It is important to note, however, that Baudrillard’s theory on simulacra is a critique of our hyperreal, postmodern world, where the “‘completely real’ becomes identified with the ‘completely fake’” (Eco, Travels 7), where “the frantic desire for the Almost Real arises only as a neurotic reaction to the vacuum of memories; the Absolute Fake is offspring of the unhappy awareness of a presence without depth” (30-31). Reality and meaning has been replaced with signs, symbols and simulacra, starkly reminiscent of Debord’s criticism of the Society of the Spectacle. I would like to argue that in imitating, or simulating an NGO in a society saturated with vacuous simulacra of NGOs, SBOP is an ironic play on the concept of the simulacrum itself – a further copy, a further imitation, yet not quite

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the same. It is indeed an improved copy, more ‘real’ than the original, a perfect example of what Eco calls the “absolute fake” – yet rather than being a further manifestation of society’s shallow and superficial longing for something more ‘real’ than reality, it is precisely a criticism of this.

In this sense, taking the aforementioned a level further, in this final chapter, I would like to conceptualise SBOP as a fake. Indeed, in the colonial era, the colonised was always regarded as outside of modernity, distant in both political Time and Space (Fabian). In the neo-colonial ideology of Western-led imperialism, the subaltern Other is always the false, the fake Other – its products, its arts, its values, its epistemologies. Nevertheless, as Chang points out, the fake is not just confined to “mimesis,” a metaphorical substitution of the original, or a simulacrum. In evoking the fake, one should therefore not think in terms of an above/below spatiality or a before/after temporality, in the sense that the original precedes and is situated above, metaphorically speaking, the fake. Rather, the fake operates at the “horizontal axis,” the “metonymic moment” (232). Similar to détournement, the fake, for Chang, both means counterfeiting as well as appropriating; the latter signifying both reduplicating and deconstructing globalisation: “Fake globalisation helps to turn globalisation itself inside out and outside in. (…) [It] is not an external attack on globalisation from without, but an internal exposure of how the historical and psychic formulations of the logics of global capitalism are subject to the cultural imagination under (Western) imperialist ideology” (233-234).

Indeed, fakeness is not a value judgement which examines the quality or authenticity of a certain object (Kooijman). Rather, as Abbas writes, “we can think of the fake as a social, cultural, and economic response, at a local and apparently trivial level, to the processes of globalisation and to the uneven and often unequal relations that globalisation has engendered” (Faking Globalisation 251). Understood this way, in studying globalisation, the fake has a unique value, as issues surrounding the fake do not concern the fake alone. Like mimicry, it both problematises the original while being a symptom of the darker aspects of globalisation. For instance, in producing counterfeit products, such as all the fake Chanel bags and Gucci shoes circulating in the shadow economy, the fake does not subvert or protest the global world order, but rather confirms it. Since it is again the product of the non-Western, subaltern Other, two conclusions can be drawn from this. First, fake products expose that quality does not only lie within the monopoly of Western companies – it can be easily copied, or imitated (Abbas, Fälschen). This, of course, is what Hazoumè does in SBOP, in creating an NGO which reverses the direction of aid and charity, and which, to a certain degree, is more effective, utilitarian and

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perhaps universal than many other NGOs in Benin. Second, as fake products are mostly sold on the black market, even though they do not directly subvert the global world order as disruptive, deviant products, SBOP is very well attempting to do this. Here, the artistic dimension comes into play, because rather than creating a fake, counterfeit product for primarily economic reasons, Hazoumè has created a fake NGO for the precise reason to subvert, to critique and to question processes related to globalisation. The fake, as Eco writes, can be viewed as a non-violent form of guerrilla warfare (Guerrilla Warfare), it is a call to delink, to epistemically disobey the forces of Western modernity.

* Nevertheless, at this stage, it is important to make a crucial distinction, taking inspiration from the German language. Doll has argued, for instance, that there is a seminal difference between the concept of Fälschung and Fake, which in English, can both be translated as the ‘fake’ (Intervention). The former, nonetheless, can also signify a counterfeit, where the fact that it is not the original, that it is but a copy, a fake, remains concealed. This helps us elucidate upon Abbas’ earlier conception of the fake, which while being a symptom of the darker side of globalisation, even though it can pose a certain stoic economic challenge, it does not directly subvert it. The Fake, however, which I will capitalise for the rest of this paper in order to allude to the German distinction, is a priori exposed for what it is, and directly and overtly posits to be a means of critique. Hence, the Fake can be viewed as a form of political action, as an intervention based on previous discursive practices. Nevertheless, its sheer existence intervenes upon the former and transforms it, helping us conceive of the unconceivable which disrupts the normative epistemic assumptions, the order of things – that, for instance, Africa can be strong and self-sustainable, that Africa is more than its stereotypes, notably poverty, exotic spirituality and tribalism. This, for instance, can be witnessed explicitly in Hazoumè’s masks series, which while resembling traditional masks made in Yoruba society, are also made out of discarded gas canisters. Thus, such fake objects – taken out of context, and made out of unconventional materials – are transformed, or metamorphosed into highly evocative social subjects which stand in powerful dissonance to the usual cultural contexts of African masks. In complying with the Western stereotypes and clichés along with an allusion to the illegal petrol trade and the West’s object fetishism, as Holler-Schuster evokes, such fake masks cater to the European gaze which only then makes such an artwork effective.

Eminently, as Doll notes, the Fake has to include a certain excess, a surplus in order to differentiate it from the original, and to elevate it from sheer conformity to the established

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discursive practices, so that it can be politically effective (Intervention). Concepts such as hyperreality – creating something more ‘real’ than real –, détournement and the artistic aspect of SBOP can be regarded as being part of the surplus, that which resembles the original which no longer exists, but not quite. Furthermore, the excess, the surplus can be understood as an over-affirmation, an exaggeration, in presenting the viewer with a grotesquely perverted image of the ‘original’. It is therefore not about deconstructing the dominant discourse from a meta- position, but rather a decomposition from within, an immanent intervention, a confrontation of an ideology with its own truth, as Adorno has stated. Nevertheless, even though the Fake can be a distorted simulacrum of the original, it is different from a parodic or satirical repetition, because it does not merely talk about the discourse – it rather acts from within. It explicitly acts according to the discursive practices, yet it simultaneously implicitly colludes against them (Doll, Spaßguerilla 88). In this sense, it does not necessarily aim to be humorous or comical, even though there are certain ironic undertones.

In SBOP, although we might laugh while watching the video because of the charismatic characters of the artists, the primary reason it might seem funny is that, apart from the underlying tones of irony and derision, it does not comply with the normative discursive practices we are used to – it stands in stark dissonance with what Eco calls the “frame”. According to Luigi Pirandello, the great Italian author and playwright, humour can serve as a catalyser which both exposes and deconstructs that which we take for granted, that which is familiar, or normative, in destroying them from within and also in stripping them from their necessity, their obviousness (Doll, Spaßguerilla 92). Thus, the Fake, through humour, enables, or catalyses, the reflexive instance of de-familiarisation, of alienation. Which is why I find the concept of “fake globalisation,” evoked earlier, particularly interesting. Chang and Abbas primarily use it for the eruption of fake, or counterfeit, products, logos and signs in the global market. In such a context, however, “fake globalisation” can signify processes of globalisation that disrupt its normative flows. As Holler-Schuster writes, “we have many models through which to understand the world, many different spaces of culture and memory in which diverse temporal and experiential spaces can take effect. The reality of this plurality should help us dismantle one-sided points of view” (108). In this sense, “fake globalisation” can be regarded as a form of epistemic disobedience, signifying a certain degree of perversion, of deviance – and whilst perversion, deviance, disobedience or the Fake are terms with negative connotations, it is important to ponder on the somewhat rhetorical question, deviance from what? Disobedience from what?

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While I have argued above that SBOP can be regarded as a play on the concept of the simulacra, on being a simulacrum of a charity, a small beacon of critical light shining from above the opaque sea of endless simulations, it would be obvious and somewhat trivial to unproblematically ascribe the Fake, in a culture of general reproducibility and of rather meaningless simulacra, to these categories (Doll, Adresse 156). In détournement, it is not about merely imitating or hijacking cultural objects; the emphasis resides in the power of appropriation itself. The Fake, however, conspicuously demonstrates that something is at stake when its surrounding contexts and discursive practices become both questioned and questionable. Thus, the difference between the alleged original and the Fake is not a formal one; rather, it is a topological distinction. As Doll writes, “the reproduction [i.e. the Fake] is also an operation which transposes a form out of the closed and at the same time historical space into an open, ahistorical space” (Adresse 156-157, my translation).The ‘original’ belongs in a space with a fixed topology – I have explicitly spelled out the somewhat fixed structure and progression of the practice of charity and development aid in previous sections of this paper, along with the dominant, hegemonic discourses and ideologies stemming from the West concealed behind the veil of universality. The Fake, however, is situated in an open space with an undetermined topology – a hybrid, Third Space. And it is this space that allows critique to effectively operate, and which allows new perspectives world to flourish and develop.

SBOP thus alludes to the fact that helping the poor, and caring for one’s neighbour can be done differently. It argues for the eruption of different perspectives, different ways of understanding the world in hegemonic discourse, and it immanently disrupts the othering of the subaltern Other in imagination and in discourse. A similar conception has been put in practice by the Ghana Think Tank,12 a global public art project whose mission is to “develop the First World.” In so doing, they have set up think tanks in so-called developing countries, such as Ghana, Serbia or El Salvador, whose roles are to solve problems and find solutions to issues in the United States and in Europe. As well as SBOP, the Ghana Think Tank thus reverses typical power dynamics and permits the entering and the implementing of new perspectives and solutions in the global scene. As much as the West has self-assuredly posited itself as the lone harbinger of solutions to global issues, even in cultures of which it is hardly knowledgeable, such projects are important because they open up new spaces, new topologies. Thus, projects such as SBOP or the Ghana Think Tanks are starkly relevant, because not only do they show that instead of patronizingly imposing its helping hand on others, the West often ignores its

12 See www.ghanathinktank.org for more information

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own problems, and as much as the West can help the rest of the world, the converse is of equal validity and relevance.

Therefore, the dynamics of the Fake and its discursive effects enable the power relations hiding behind certain discursive structures to be exposed and made questionable. According to Foucault, there is a whole field of possible answers, effects and reactions which open up in power relations. It is important to note that power is not a zero-sum game, where one’s power deficit and someone else’s power balance each other out – power relations are rather a form of agonism, where there is a permanent provocation between power and unyielding freedom (Le Sujet). Thus, in order to understand power relations, one has to analyse manifestations of resistance and the efforts to silence, to subsume them – SBOP indeed being an instance of the former. In fact, wherever there are power relations, there is always the possibility of resistance, because “it does not at all mean that the prevailing power relations are necessary (…). Rather, it remains a continuous political task to analyse, to work out and to question the power relations and the agonism between them and the intransitivity of freedom” (Doll, Widerstand 250, my translation). The Fake, in this sense, is a powerful means of resistance towards such power relations, and in immanently intervening in them, following their discursive practices, their enunciative modalities, it helps expose said relations.

Beninese Solidarity with Endangered Westerners, as a fake NGO, as a fake simulacrum, as an instance of fake globalisation, is therefore a very powerful critique towards the neo-colonial power relations omnipresent in what Gregory calls our “colonial present.” As previously stated, what is also important is precisely the fact that it posits itself as a Fake – both to the Western gaze which witnesses the installation surrounding the project in contemporary art museums and to the locals in Cotonou who were approached by the artists to donate money, all the interactions having been filmed. “Is that what you call aid?” asks one respondent. “That is ironic or are you serious? I know, with you, one should expect anything!” In being a Fake, an immanent artistic expression of Ideologiekritik, SBOP, whilst fully acknowledging and to an extent celebrating cultural difference, is a derisory deconstruction of constructed political Time and Space, a proactive repudiation of the denial of coevalness between the West and the Rest. “If we can understand the multiple ways in which difference is folded into distance, and the complex figurations through which time and space are threaded into these tense constellations, we might perhaps see that what Ignatieff once called ‘distant strangers’ are not so distant after all – and not so stranger either,” writes Gregory (262). Different, perhaps. Distant, or Other, not as much. “People don’t know there are poor people in France,” states one artist in the video. “In America,

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there are some. With the economic crisis, some people lose their house, some don’t have anything to eat, and others feed from garbage bins. They give to us each time we are in need! Now it is our turn to make an effort to help them.” “But anyway, as a human being, by solidarity, I am sending them something,” says one man, standing on a street in Cotonou. And as the artist in the interaction responded, “thanks, you have properly understood the aim of this collection. Thank you. Ah, the [other] gentleman is contributing too. You have indeed understood me. Thank you all.”

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VI Concluding Remarks

All in all, the aim of this paper was to analyse and to demonstrate how Beninese Solidarity with Endangered Westerners, a fake NGO conceived in 2011 by Beninese artist Romuald Hazoumè, can be a powerful exercise in postcolonial critique, an immanent intervention within the hegemonic ideology which politically constructs minorities as Other in representation and in discourse. This ideology, of course, has various damaging consequences in actuality, many of which have been spelled out in previous sections of this paper. Bauman’s metaphorical distinction between the tourist and the vagabond is, in this sense, of particular relevance (Tourists). The former, those with capital – and not only in the monetary sense – can freely roam the world with hardly any restrictions, yet the latter is often forced to be on the move, fleeing war, persecution, famine and other catastrophic circumstances. Furthermore, what Shamir identifies as the “global mobility regime” is placing an increasing level of hurdles hindering their journey and re-settlement. The regime notably operates in our “paradigm of suspicion” characterised by a world “within and beyond the clear distinction between knowledge and non-knowing, truth and falsehood, good and evil” (Beck 5). In uncritically and perhaps self-servingly conflating the risks of migration, crime and terrorism, it aims to keep the Other, those from undesirable origins, away from desirable destinations. The establishing of so- called Fortress Europe is a very good example of this. And in so doing, it is becoming increasingly onerous, for instance, for the Other to gain citizenship in those “desirable destinations,” which in turn hinders their access to vital rights, resources and other material privileges conferred to those having full membership within a particular country.

Furthermore, as previously stated, African states are usually regarded as weak, underdeveloped, and primitive, and they cannot allegedly prosper without the helping hand of the West, its former colonisers. Spectres from the colonial era persist in their haunting, in the form of a lack of self-confidence to be found in many African societies, and neo-colonial, imperialist power relations sustain the starkly asymmetrical dynamics between both metaphorical sides of the planet. For the previously evoked issues, postcolonial critique still maintains a certain urgency and relevance, which the first chapter of this paper has spelled out, further arguing that SBOP is precisely an intervention within such critique. The further three chapters then spelled out in greater detail, through both a semiotic and discourse analysis, and through the lens of three interrelated concepts, in what ways SBOP can be understood to be a

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powerful form of postcolonial critique, what the targets of SBOP, as a derisory and artistic form of Ideologiekritik, are, and what lessons can be learned from it. The three concepts were that of détournement, mimicry and the Fake. While they each share certain affinities with each other, and while each open a new space, a new topology of critique in producing a certain excess, or a certain slippage, the various chapters of this paper have sought to spell out the different aspects and levels of SBOP the concepts respectively enable one to productively comprehend.

In fact, détournement, to be understood as a form of reversal – one of the main tropes of SBOP – signifies re-appropriating signs, concepts and ideas and situating them in a new context. This in turn gives them a new, critical meaning, in opening a new topology of critique. Yet what is important is not only the act of copying, of imitating, as the issue that “culture can be copied, that it is nothing but a copy, is merely a statement of fact” (Wark 145). Rather, the power of appropriation itself is here of salience, which in turn both problematises the ‘original’ and confers agency to the appropriator. And agency is precisely what Hazoumè wants to give to African societies, in the sense that they can be self-sufficient and can also contribute towards solving the world’s problems – similar to the Ghana Think Tank’s mission. Furthermore, I have argued, in line with postcolonial critique, that détournement can be regarded as a form of epistemic disobedience, of delinking from Western ‘universalised’ ways of constructing, representing and acting in the world. Mimicry is also a form of copying, of imitating, and in the colonial sense, the colonised mimicked the culture of the imperialists in becoming something similar, yet not quite. In so doing, mimicry demonstrates how the coloniser’s culture and their power structures can readily be imitated. SBOP, as I have argued, is also a play on the act of mimicry itself in imitating mimicry, in re-appropriating the act in order to provide an immanent form of critique of precisely that which it is imitating. Here we can see the link between détournement and mimicry – both are acts of epistemic disobedience that problematise what is being ‘disobeyed’ and restore the power of appropriation and agency. In this sense, SBOP can be regarded as an instance of fake mimicry, a call towards fake globalisation, a process that powerfully disrupts its normative flows and power relations. Therefore, the Fake – as distinct from the counterfeit – is a very relevant concept in postcolonial critique. Not only does it imply a certain degree of deviance; it also helps shed new, expository light on what it is deviating from, precisely in operating from within, in imitating, the dominant discourses and processes. One can therefore state that the Fake is a self-conscious act of mimicry, of imitation, which in reversing the unidirectional flow of imperialist processes and discourses exposes their false universality, the power structures behind them and the fact that it is not simply the way things

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are. It is thus a call towards the transcendence of fake binaries and a dismantling of fake hierarchies.

At this stage, it is also important to ponder on the social relevance of art. One is led to think of the concept of engagement, in the Sartrean sense, insofar that intellectuals and artists should adopt a firm position regarding current socio-political occurrences and fight against forms of injustice and oppression (Literature). According to Sartre, engagement can be regarded as a form of virtue, in both the political and ethical sense, and it is up to the artist to make the unseen seen, the invisible visible. And it is exactly this which happens in SBOP – it is about giving self-confidence to African societies, about giving a voice to the global poor, the global subaltern who are perpetually discarded, ignored and marginalised, and about asserting the existence, the relevance and the validity of other, different perspectives through which to fathom the world. As Holler-Schuster writes, “Hazoumè’s art (...) serves a very specific and crucial purpose, namely that of raising awareness of social processes and making these processes visible. This art develops out of its own reality and thus makes itself understood in both domestic and foreign contexts” (108-109). And, as an artwork, it is perhaps much more accessible to the general public, making those processes easier to grasp in contrast to the somewhat hermetic and more complex academic context. This sentiment is echoed by American philosopher Richard Rorty, who stated that reading Dickens can better help the wider audience understand society – and its underlying intricate network of relations, processes and defects – than Hegel (Bauman, Tourists).1314

SBOP is, accordingly, a very illuminating exercise in contemporary art, which holds a significant degree of relevance for viewers all across the world, and which successfully juxtaposes various levels and facets. It is on the one hand very evocative for those in Benin, as can be witnessed in the video, a playful call towards de-linking from imperialist ideologies, a demystifying of the West’s superiority and ubiquitous wealth, and an appeal towards

13 Arguably, this is not true for all forms of art, including music, film and literature, as art can often be quite complex and challenging. Even though SBOP is not directly an ‘easy’ form of art, its underlying ideas and assumptions are still relatively accessible, much more, for instance, than scholarly articles and books addressing similar issues. 14 It is also important to note that art galleries and museums can still be regarded as ‘highbrow’ institutions, following the arguments in Bourdieu’s Distinction. As a further manifestation of what is called “symbolic violence,” there exists the normalised assumption that only those with higher cultural capital, id est those stemming from the higher social classes, possess the necessary means, education and backgroundBEYOND THE to OTHER fathom | Riccardo Ceniviva contemporary art. Nevertheless, some information on the project, along with the shortened version of the video, can easily be found online, accessible to all (or at least those with an Internet connection).

recognising their own strengths and richness. For the viewers in the West – I am writing this because SBOP has only been exhibited in museums in Europe and the United States15 – it is a debunking of its Messiah complex, a petition towards caring for its own subaltern, and a deconstruction, a transcendence of its Other’s otherness. Decolonisation, the de-linking from neo-colonial ideologies, concerns everybody – not only those at the receiving end of the imperialist power relations, but also those in Europe, those in the West, become changed through that process. As Sartre wrote, we in the West should also look at ourselves and see, in this light, what is becoming of us (Preface 24). It is a process that starts from the bottom up, which calls for the warranted changing of a whole social structure (Fanon, Wretched).

Therefore, in constructing the Other as Other, not only do we stereotype them as an objectivised construction; we also protectively delimit our own identity against them (Van den Berg 198). However, as Young very well writes:

Not all – if indeed any – forms of difference require the absoluteness of the category of ‘the other’, unless that otherness is chosen by the subject him or herself to describe a situation of historical discrimination which requires challenge, change, and transformation. No one is so different that their very difference makes them unknowable. Othering was a colonial strategy of exclusion: for the postcolonial, there are only other human beings (Remains 39). Whilst very well acknowledging that there are differences between people, cultures, societies, we should also accept and embrace them, rather than merely tolerating them. Distance in political Space and Time, as has been argued, is constructed and purely political in nature. Thus, as Mendus states, toleration entails that what is tolerated is morally deplorable and alterable, and that it is to the Other’s infamy that they do not change that aspect of them which is the object of toleration. Furthermore, toleration can be regarded as an astute and tenuous means of affirming both the Other’s inferiority and the superiority of one’s Leitkultur, implying the a priori intention to end the Other’s otherness – which has been imposed upon them – preferably with their co-operation.

In other words, tolerance concedes and accentuates the Other’s otherness; however, “in constructing multiple others as ‘other’, and in assenting to these constructions and impositions, we do not only do this to others: we do it to ourselves” (Gregory 261). As Kapoor rightly points out, our representations of the Other are much more evocative about ourselves than about the Other. Furthermore, especially after considering Beck’s theory on the world risk society, which

15 As previously stated, there is no information available regarding its reception in Benin. However, I believe that it has also received a certain degree of exposure in Benin, as it has was filmed there featuring various well- known local artists, and that Hazoumè is also a well-known and established artist in Benin. BEYOND THE OTHER | Riccardo Ceniviva

to a certain extent has coerced the world in coming in closer contact to the “apparently excluded other,” Taussig’s quote used in an earlier chapter here gains in relevance: “the self is no longer clearly separable from its Alter. For now the self is inscribed in the Alter that the self needs to define itself against” (252). Especially when thinking of many negative reactions to the current refugee crisis and how certain forms of racism have infected swathes of mainstream parlance, I would like to argue that something else is also at stake. Our contemporary world, following the normalisation of the neo-liberal ideology which has gradually led to the withering away of the democratic state, welfare provisions and many vital rights and privileges, is primarily characterised by insecurity, instability, precarious labour and a state of quasi-permanent crisis. Therefore, in being fully confronted with those we have othered – and whom we still are othering – we might finally be recognising that the Other is not so different, so strange and so distant. What has happened to the Other, in our world risk society, might also happen to us. Most of us are not shielded from war, catastrophe, poverty, the loss of our jobs, and so forth. In this sense, to an extent, I would like to argue that through the current refugee crisis, where problems that were once distant and of little concern to us in the West are gradually affecting us, we finally recognise ourselves in the Other. And in those which we unceremoniously call Other, we see, as in an opaque orbuculum, the fragility and frailty of our own existence. And such a recognition can of course spark violent reactions and emotions.

This is, of course, an issue to be found in SBOP, in which Hazoumè makes us aware that poverty and catastrophe know no boundaries, no borders; it is something which affects every part of the globe. Furthermore, even though SBOP celebrates cultural differences, albeit attempting to deconstruct their contended hierarchies, it is germane to acknowledge that culture also knows no boundaries, no borders. Culture is hybrid, always evolving, in a permanent evolution and revolution, constantly being influenced by various internal and external factors. Therefore, as Bauman suggests, “we should all embrace being bound to live in contingency (…).The right of the Other to his strangerhood is the only way in which my own right may express, establish and defend itself. It is from the right of the Other that my right is put together” (Modernity 236). Rather than trying to control, to know, to define the Other, we should instead accept and be solidary to the Other, instead of imposing their otherness on them. Alongside, we should also accept our own hybridity, the transience of our own cultures and the fact that our ways of understanding the world are not the only valid ones.

To conclude, then, we always define ourselves in relation to others, and we affirm ourselves in contrast to what we are not. “It is always a question of proving the real by the imaginary;

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proving truth by scandal; proving the law by transgression (…); proving the system by crisis and capital by revolution,” writes Baudrillard. Furthermore, “everything is metamorphosed into its inverse in order to be perpetuated in its purged form. Every form of power, every situation speaks of itself in denial” (179-180). The West proves itself through its Other, its distorted mirror image, its weaker counterpart. Yet, in a somewhat utopic manner, if we manage to do away entirely with the Other’s otherness, to render the concept of the Other obsolete – if there is actually no Other against which we can prove ourselves, then one pertinent question remains: who are we?

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Appendix 1

Romuald Hazoumè, NGO SBOP (2011)

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Appendix 2

Examples of NGOs in Benin

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Appendix 3

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