THE FUNAMBULIST Politics of Space and Bodies GENDERED TOILETS PAUL B. PRECIADO HONG KONG BEDROOMS SONIA WONG / TINGS CHAK QUEER ARABS IN FRANCE MEHAMMED AMADEUS MACK BEING TRANS IN THE CAPITALIST WORKPLACE JOÃO GABRIELL FEMONATIONALISM & DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SARA FARRIS NORTH CAROLINA’S “BATHROOM BILL” MYKA T. JOHNSON & JAMIE MARSICANO SHORT STORY BY NAOMI STEAD PHOTOGRAPHS BY PAOLA PAREDES STUDENT PROJECTS BY ALISON BRUNN AND LESLEY LABONNE AND GUEST COLUMNS ABOUT HAWAI’I (LAUREL MEI-SINGH), THE RIF (SORAYA EL KAHLAOUI), AARHUS (AYSHA AMIN) 13 /// September-October 2017 QUEERS, FEMINISTS & INTERIORS THE YEAR OF THE SHARK: GUEST COLUMNISTS RECOGNIZING THOSE WHO RETERRITORIALIZE HAWAI’I maneuvers, bombing the valley from planes and using homes LAUREL MEI-SINGH as targets. While former residents never returned, the military Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University and Assistant Professor at the University of Hawai’i has not bombed the valley since 2004 as a result of community organizing, lawsuits, and public outcry. After World War II, the pull to Mākua remained strong. Alice’s fam- ily lived in a covered wagon at Mākua while her parents finished building their home, and Hawai‘i’s homeless crisis that was full- exploitation of fellow Hawaiians and the poor. While Indigenous activ- fledged by the 1980s spurred the formation of a self-sufficient ism often aims critique toward the settler state, Alice knows firsthand village. A community leader in the 1990s explained, “People the importance of public services. Speaking to me in November of worked all their lives and the system let them down. Programs 2013, she stressed the need for accessible public transit to bring her son to school (she doesn’t have a car), lunch and education for don’t work. Mākua is like a program in itself…It’s the old Hawaii.” By the mid-1990s, 282 people, 83% of whom were Native Ha- children, services to veterans, and the importance of voting. She critiques the military’s domination of resources, including vacant waiian, lived at Mākua Beach. On June 18, 1996, they faced their sixth and final eviction. More than 100 law enforcement officials, housing and land in Hawai‘i that could otherwise go to the home- including police, sheriffs, conservation officials, and National less. Yet the military enacts just one of many forms of violence. She Guard soldiers participated in the arrest of remaining residents speaks of the many getting paid $7.25 per hour assigned only 20 and supporters. The State of Hawai‘i then constructed metal hours of work per week. She says, “You cannot tell me that they’re gates to manage public beach access. To this day, the military lazy, no good, drug addict, alcoholic bums. Because I’ll tell you one architecture of martial law—barbed wire and fences—unfurled a thing, when they took away my house, my dignity, and everything, I security infrastructure that continues to police people in Hawai‘i became exactly what you guys wanted me to be: an alcoholic, lazy. living in intimate relationship with their environment. But I didn’t create that. The system did.” In the face of repetitive dispossession engendered by Confronting injustices in many forms, Alice never limited her scope of military occupation and its auxiliary police state, stories activism to Hawai‘i. Her husband, James Hatchie, who passed away of sharks represent a territorial practice, a spatial expres- in 2001, visited Vieques in Puerto Rico while serving as a US Marine. sion of power in a place that people have a vested inter- He told Alice, ‘What they’re fighting for is exactly what we have at est in defending and securing. Sharks propose models of Lualualei,” a 9,200 acre, largely abandoned valley inland from Ma‘ili governance and accountability predicated on familial relation- Beach Park, with the most fertile soil in Hawai‘i and radiotransmitters ships amongst and between humans and our environment— that some speculate contribute to high childhood leukemia rates in the as opposed to militarized national defense. These mo‘olelo surrounding area. He said, “And what they had done to the people [in Vieques] depict relationality as the basis of protection, rather than fear. is exactly what they’re doing here.” In 2003, Alice participated in a delegation to The human-shark relationship disrupts colonial hierarchies that Vieques, which she described as a “dream.” “I went over there and I listened to Visit to Mākua by the Protect Kaho’olawe ‘Ohana group (PKO) on July 17, 1977. / Photograph by Ed Greevy. place humans above the natural world, sharing a model of sus- the stories the people told....We had the indigenous people around the world tainability that recognizes ancestral obligations to place. Shark from Guam, the Indian nation, the Cherokee were there…And I was one of the In memory of Alice Ululani Kaholo Greenwood configuration forged through layered histories. Alice continues, “He mo‘olelo also refashion history as an active process linked to reps from Hawai’i.” February 15, 1946 - July 8, 2017 was the guardian of this whole place. That’s how my mother puts it.” continual contestation. Alice describes familial relations to sharks, like many in Hawai‘i who Shark mo‘olelo have undoubtedly shaped the activism of Alice and others When Alice Greenwood begins telling the story of the shark at consider sharks aumakua, or deified ancestor. While Jaws conveys a The Mākua of Alice’s childhood had fruit, sugar cane, fish, fighting for Mākua and for demilitarization, breathing power into intellectual Mākua—a beach and cluster of valleys on the western shore of O‘ahu diabolical shark and now popular Shark Week shares the 1975 film’s and pig, but this abundance proved impermanent. Living out- traditions in Hawai‘i that give life to these efforts. They reflect Epeli Hau‘ofa’s island, where the US military now occupies over 4,000 acres—she be- affinity for war soundtracks and sensationalized shark imagery, Alice’s side became increasingly criminalized while the cost of living offering of “Our Sea of Islands,” breaking out of confinement—analytical and gins with the caveat, “There are as many shark stories about Mākua mo‘olelo (place-based stories, histories) reframes human relations to soared. Alice became homeless in June of 2005, when rent otherwise—that limit conceptions of the importance and power of Pacific en- as there are people who tell it.” Yet she clearly wants to share her own. sharks to reterritorialize space. for the home where she lived for 35 years skyrocketed from vironment and peoples. This oceanic framing recognizes that the scope Off Mākua Beach in the 1950s, Alice’s family would encounter a shark $300/month to nearly $1,000. She moved with her young son, of problems facing Hawaiians is planetary, tied to global warfare, envi- in the ocean; story has it that it was bigger than a Boston Whaler. Al- Reterritorialization holds particular significance at Mākua, where nu- Makali‘i, to Ma‘ili Beach Park, nine miles down the road from ronmental crisis, capitalist exploitation, and imperialism. It encompass- ice describes a cave on the shore, the smell of seaweed and algae merous crops and fishponds once shaped its landscape. Weeks after Mākua. She became a leader amongst the homeless, maintain- es the alliances that have been made, as well as those that have not yet been in its water, and surmises an underground connection to the sea. In the December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor bombing, the Army evicted its ing the living space and teaching neighbors about their rights. realized. It pushes existing structures to change and also develops relatively the cave “there was a mo‘o (lizard), who represents land... And there residents, calling the land a war necessity, and promised its return six autonomous formations. Like the ocean where the shark dwells, these efforts was a mano (shark), who represents ocean, and they fell in love. They months after the war. Mākua transformed from fishing village and cattle Part of an organizing tradition on O‘ahu’s structurally disenfran- for self-determination are contested and in flux, adapting to shifting conditions. had a child, and he was the shark formation.” Alice describes the ranch to busy garrison amidst martial law that persisted until October chised west side, Alice built community and held policymakers And like sharks, activists in Hawai‘i aspire to protect their land and lives, reter- shark not as animal or supernatural being, but rather as a formation, a 14, 1944. For decades, the military used Mākua for joint Army-Navy accountable while recognizing the ongoing dispossession and ritorializing space to fulfill their oceanic environmental visions. 2 THE FUNAMBULIST 13 /// QUEERS, FEMINISTS & INTERIORS THE FUNAMBULIST 13 /// QUEERS, FEMINISTS & INTERIORS 3 #HIRAK: THE NEW NAME OF GUEST COLUMNISTS THE RIF REBELLION SORAYA EL KAHLAOUI Coordinator of the support commitee to the Hirak political prisoners, PhD candidate in sociology at EHESS The Rif paid the consequences of its opposition. In 1984, during a period of state violence called the Years of Lead, King Hassan II made a harsh speech directed at his op- ponents, calling Rifains, inhabitants from the Rif, “waste” — awbach. “The Awbach: Nador, Tetouan, Al Hoceima and Ksar El Kebir. The unemployed Awbach, are those Hirak broke the chains of colonial Morocco by rebuilding the who live on smuggling and robbery,” he said. The sen- Amazigh question. For the first time in a broad protest tence marked the onset of long years of repression and movement, it was not mobilized only through its cultural economic marginalization of the Rif region. aspects, but also through the question of socio-econom- ic exclusion, like the racial struggles in the North.