OF REVOLUTIONARIES AND GEEKS MEDIATION, SPACE AND TIME AMONG ESPERANTO SPEAKERS A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2019 GUILHERME MOREIRA FIANS Department of Social Anthropology | School of Social Sciences This page intentionally left blank 2 „Not all people exist in the same Now‟ Ernst Bloch (1990 [1962]: 97) „We‟re not as numerous as we wanted, but we‟re more than you can imagine‟ Ĵak Le Puil, Esperantist from Île-de-France, 2017 3 This page intentionally left blank 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................. 7 GLOSSARY AND ACRONYMS ......................................................................................... 10 ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................... 13 RESUMO (ABSTRACT IN ESPERANTO) ......................................................................... 14 DECLARATION ................................................................................................................... 15 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT ................................................................................................ 15 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................... 18 INTRODUCTION, OR WHERE TO BEGIN? ..................................................................... 22 In the beginning was the word ........................................................................................... 28 Encounters: on community, movement and mediation ...................................................... 33 Babbling some initial questions and navigating the field .................................................. 43 Researching in La République ........................................................................................... 47 Overview of chapters ......................................................................................................... 51 CHAPTER 1. FOLLOW THE (NON-)NATIVE: (DIS)LOCATING ESPERANTO IN TIME AND SPACE ......................................................................................................................... 54 1.1. A long and winding road ............................................................................................. 55 1.2. The birth of a new contender ...................................................................................... 59 1.3. Among neutralists, leftists and polyglots .................................................................... 68 1.4. The social life of cardboard boxes .............................................................................. 70 1.5. Territorialising Esperantoland..................................................................................... 75 1.6. On the move, in the making ........................................................................................ 84 CHAPTER 2. WHEN ESPERANTISTS MEET, OR WHAT REMAINS WHEN THE OTHER IS GONE? ................................................................................................................ 92 2.1. Countries without queens, can you imagine? .............................................................. 93 2.2. The making of a community ..................................................................................... 101 2.3. From humanism to internationalism, with many differences in between ................. 108 2.4. Fellow Esperantists, national others .......................................................................... 114 2.5. L’étranger et l’étrange .............................................................................................. 125 2.6. The ephemerality of the sociability ........................................................................... 131 5 CHAPTER 3. ON MOVING AND STANDING STILL: THE MOVEMENT FROM THE STANDPOINT OF AN ESPERANTO ASSOCIATION .................................................... 135 3.1. Where have all our members gone? .......................................................................... 136 3.2. The rise and fall of la vie associative ........................................................................ 141 3.3. On unsettled traditional settings ................................................................................ 146 3.4. A movement that is not moving well enough ............................................................ 154 3.5. When time gains centrality ........................................................................................ 163 CHAPTER 4. MOBILE YOUTH: AGE GROUPS, GENERATIONS AND NEW COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ............................................................................ 171 4.1. The invisible networks .............................................................................................. 172 4.2. The old and the new Esperanto communities ............................................................ 176 4.3. Mind the gap .............................................................................................................. 185 4.4. On rhythms, timings and seasons .............................................................................. 193 CHAPTER 5. ESPERANTO IN THE MAKING, MAKING THROUGH ESPERANTO . 200 5.1. Deleuze and the Esperantology of becoming ............................................................ 201 5.2. Doing things differently: Esperanto as a powerful alternative .................................. 208 5.3. Deeds, not words ....................................................................................................... 217 5.4. A language not meant to become universal: Esperanto as a powerless alternative ... 221 COMING TO A CLOSE: TOWARDS AN EMPOWERMENT OF EPHEMERALITY ... 230 On communication and mediation ................................................................................... 231 A matter of space .............................................................................................................. 233 A matter of power and choice .......................................................................................... 235 A matter of time ............................................................................................................... 237 AFTERWORD ..................................................................................................................... 240 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................... 242 Word count: 82,181 6 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Political map of Mainland France (without including the 21 overseas regions), according to regions and departments [Source: website Cartograf.fr, retrieved March 2019]. Figure 2: Comic strip in English, made by young Esperantists, joking 25 about some parent‟s reactions towards Esperanto language learning [Source: Facebook page Steve the silly and vagabond linguist, retrieved September 2017]. Figure 3: Poster saying, in Esperanto: „What are you doing to stop this? 65 Esperantists of the world, put your strength against international fascism‟ [Source: Comissariat de Propaganda de la Generalitat de Catalunya, c.1936. Available at the US Library of Congress. Figure 4: Poster in French, encouraging workers from the world to come 65 together and to break down the wall of languages that keeps them apart [Source: SAT-Amikaro, c.1955. Available at the archives of SAT- Amikaro]. Figure 5: Esperanto associations, in a map made available by UEA and 80 regularly updated by users of the website Esperanto.net. It is worth noticing that this map shows the level of institutionalisation of the use of Esperanto in each place and stands for the geographical distribution of associations, not of Esperanto speakers [Source: website Esperanto.net, retrieved February 2019]. Figure 6: Image of the „sleeping beauty‟ followed by the sentence, in 94 Esperanto: „Find a place to stay anywhere on the planet‟. This image, however, is not on the updated version of Pasporta Servo‟s website [Source: website PasportaServo.org, retrieved November 2017] Figure 7: Picture that was said to exoticise differences, in UEA‟s home 94 7 page [Source: website UEA.org, retrieved January 2018]. Figure 8: The Esperanto flag and the Jubilee symbol [Source: images in 103 the public domain, retrieved February 2018]. Figure 9: Postcard praising the rapprochement of peoples through 109 Esperanto, produced in the United Kingdom. It says, in Esperanto: „Friendly Salutations. Oh, Let us sing a song/ About the language Esperanto/ In poems and odes/ By writers and poets‟. [Source: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1922. Available at Hector Hodler Library, UEA]. Figure 10: Evolution in the number of associations created in France per 150 year [Source: Bazin et alii 2017: 4]. Figure 11: Advertisement saying, in Esperanto: „Travel by aeroplane / Air 157 France / Transport of passengers, mail, goods‟ [Source: Kongresa Libro de la 29a Universala Kongreso de Esperanto, Warsaw, 1937]. Figure 12: On the façade of an information office in Barcelona, the 157 information for foreign participants was displayed in four languages: Spanish, French, English, and Esperanto [Source: photographer unknown, c.1936. Available at the website SobreHistoria.com]. Figure 13: Timesheet in French with the activities offered by the internees 158 at the internment