Memory, Race, and Coloniality
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
COSMOPOLITAN MEANDERICITY: SURINAMESE ENTANGLEMENTS OF MEMORY, RACE, AND COLONIALITY Doctoral Thesis by Praveen Sewgobind Research Training Group Minor Cosmopolitanisms University of Potsdam Submitted to the Faculty of Arts at the University of Potsdam in the year 2019 2 I hereby declare that this dissertation has been prepared independently, that I only used the resources stated in this dissertation, and that all text and contents have been referenced properly. Praveen Sewgobind 3 This book is dedicated to my parents and all other meandering members of the Sewgobind and Kisoensingh families 4 TABLE OF CONTENT PREFIX.........................................................................................................................................6 PREFACE.....................................................................................................................................9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................11 INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................13 CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL ENTANGLEMENTS........................................................33 CHAPTER TWO: HISTORICAL ENTANGLEMENTS OF HINDUSTANI...........................89 CHAPTER THREE: ANIL RAMDAS.....................................................................................172 CHAPTER FOUR: HINDUSTANI AND AFRO-SURINAMESE COLONIALITIES..........289 CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................................446 5 CODA.......................................................................................................................................477 WORKS LISTED.....................................................................................................................481 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES.........................................................................................498 6 PREFIX “In mijn hart ben ik zuiver, maar ze sluiten me buiten Er wordt niet geluisterd, dus ik voel me anders, ik ben een Amsterdamse Nederlandse buitenlander” Rocks “Our freedom of speech is freedom of death, we got to fight the powers that be” Chuck D. One visual image is said to be able to capture more than a thousand words. The image on the cover of this work-in-progress - a designation that could be attached to any discursive material - does more than capturing. It allows for the emergence of a whole array of cultural memories, which engender, in line with the conceptual threads and aims of this book, horizons and curvatures, processes and dimensions, underscoring two fundamental notions: entanglement and inflection. What seems to be a rather straightforward dish, i.e. fried rice with certain vegetables and spices, is a metaphor for what will be discussed in the following pages. The dish was made on a cold winter day, in a white neighbourhood of Berlin, Germany. There we go. ''What does ''white'' have to do with a dish ?,'' some readers may wonder. The answer is: everything. The seemingly normal unraced whiteness of a certain environment in a European city does not seem so normal to me. It shakes me to my core, and stirs up memories that are, in this instance, expressed in a culinary fashion, in a bid to connect to my dear and distant cultural heritage. It is a wilful attempt to 7 revisit, relive, reconstitute, reconsider, relate, and so much more. It is a road against entanglements and into entanglements. In the former case, a desire to counter forces of integration/assimilation in a dominant culture. In the latter case an urge to capture my own histories that have been entangled in a spatio-temporal matrix of several hundred years and three so-called continents (critical note: I don't consider Europe to be a continent, it is a rather small Asian peninsula). Fried rice...or nasi, as we, Hindustani, Surinamese, Javanese, and yes, some Dutch people call it, is not a metaphor for a melting-pot, nor a salad-bowl. It is so far more complex. The ingredients sometimes dissolve, sometimes stick together, sometimes remain fiercely sovereign and independent. One begins with rice. Grown in the foothills of the Himalaya, preferably. Then, importantly, a mixture of herbs and spices is selected, originating from Java, India, China, possibly West-Africa, Suriname, and the Netherlands. The rice then is fried with the spice-mixture, and finely-chopped fresh vegetables are added. Then, the travel begins. A whole plethora of aromas enters the kitchen. Aromas generate memories. Javanese restaurants in Paramaribo. Madame Jeanette plants in Suriname. Chinese supermarkets in the Netherlands. Spice plantations in Kerala. Afro- Surinamese ingredients that come to mind but are not used (no salted meat in my nasi). Family gatherings, wedding parties, and trips to the Haagse Markt. Oh my. Memories intermingle, and emotions are geared up. The double migration, from South Asia to Suriname to the Netherlands now feeds into a political identity flexed with academic analyses. British and Dutch colonialism. Powerful experiences of racism. My bag being checked at the airport. Anxious faces of executers of the Law. Apprehend 8 suspicious looking people. Scan suspicious materials. Investigate odd looking herbal mixes ! Might be explosive ! ''Could you please come with me, sir ?'' My nasi is bomb- proof, I know that. See, no explosives, thank you very much. Racially profiled herbal mix is good to go. Memory, race, coloniality. These ingredients are mixed into my recipe, they are inflected by my travels, by journeys of my family, by voyages made by my community. They, we, meander into this world...and what comes out, what is produced in the end, is what the reader will experience as, hopefully, a worldliness that does not chose, but one that boldly goes beyond borders of nations, of cultures. It is my interpretation, and even more than that, my lived experience, my, to put it eloquently, phenomenological account of a dynamic cosmopolitanism. I live it every day. In many ways. One way can be seen on the front page. The nasi that feeds me. It nurtures me, becomes me. Entangled through time and space, bound with power and knowledge, inflected with concepts that condition the will to keep on rocking the boat. Meander along, dear reader. The boat has left the harbour and will sail the waters of the Ganges River, onto the Suriname River, and even penetrate the Rhine Delta. On that journey, I would bring to the fore a type of confronting issues that need to be reconsidered, an academic and oratory mode that is so eloquently and forcefully practised by philosopher and critical race theorist George Yancy, namely parrhesia, or courageous speech. May courage be a stimulus to critically engage with traditional conventions and received wisdoms, and go against the grain, if necessary. 9 PREFACE 10 11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I first of all would like to thank my parents, my sister, and my brother-in-law, without whom I was not able to proceed with this PhD project as an associate fellow. Also, I want to thanks my dear friends Ella Kolodenna, Anna Danilina, Julia Peetz, Shailoh Phillips, Sachita Kaushal, and Maike Stoepker. I also would like to thank Heidi Niggeman, Dana Dolghin, Laura Boerhout, Britt Broekhaus, Margriet Fokken, Gabriel Dattatreyan, Gracie Dixon, Ibrahim Wani, Anouk Madörin, Gabi Bockaj, Silvia Wolf, Bel Parnell-Berry, Jenny Oliveira, and Mikki Stelder. Many thanks to my supervisors Dirk Wiemann and Regina Römhild, as well as all the other members of the RTG supervisor team and its first cohort of Fellows. Moreover, I wish to thank my former teachers at the University of Amsterdam, some of whom have played an important role in stimulating me to pursue an academic career as a researcher. I would like to thank Manon van der Laaken, Imogen Cohen, Niall Martin, Jannah Loontjens, Roger Eaton, Jane Lewty (your dedication I will always remember), Murat Aydemir, Joost de Bloois, Esther Peeren, Jules Sturm, Noa Roei, Ihab Saloul, and Robin Celikates (forever thankful that you sent me that link). My return to academia, first in the English Department, and then in the excellent Cultural Analysis program was the right thing to do. Thanks also to all my former fellow Cultural Analysis students, with whom I had the best academic group discussions ever. Rigour and audacity against the grain. 12 Beyond the University of Amsterdam, I need to thank Markus Balkenhol, Arjun Appadurai, Mieke Bal, Ernst van Alphen, Chan Choenni, Ruben Gowricharn, and Frans-Willem Korsten (thank you so much for that crucial conversation in the heart of the beast). I further would like to thank Müge Özoğlu, Jiyu Zhang, and Tingting Hui (your powerful brilliance illuminates the world), for providing me with some genuine humanity during hard times at Leiden University. Special thanks goes to Judith Butler, who arguably was responsible for the most memorable conversation ever at De Jaren in Amsterdam. Stellar energy was generated because of that electrifying hour. Finally, I feel obliged to pay tribute to the passion of real hip-hop artists who have managed to energise me with wisdom and strength, such as Médine and Dead Prez. And if you are out there, Stephon, my dear Louisville brother, I will always be grateful that you introduced me to Revolutionary Volume 2, during that hot summer years ago, representing my point of no return in Jenin, Occupied Palestine. I will always remember