Rita Segato's speech at the Salon du livre, completed – 26/04/2019

The virtues of disobedience

Elizabeth Costello always saves me when I see myself in such a situation.

He has already done it from other times than coming to my aid, from the sky of literature where he surely is. Professor Costello, the same age as me, is the guardian female angel who protects those who, like me, do not feel satisfied with the formalities and circumstances in which those who survive to the detriment of a legal profession must bend. What I like and where I take refuge in the famous character circulating in Coetzee's novels is not the subject he's talking about, but the fact that he's talking about something he did not talk about, to to know her indiscipline, her indomitable finesse, her distraction from the academic protocol which, apparently, would have taken her to the podium she occupies today. She may have been invited to speak, for instance, of English literature of the seventeenth century and, in the face of public perplexity and disappointment and her son's disapproval, pbades on the life of animals.

The Costello thing with me is practically an alternative state of consciousness, a possession: I'm coming down from a saintas it is said in the language of candomblé, and this saint is Costello, when it comes to speaking in circumstances like this. In my opinion, his policy is not exactly what he says, but his permanent act of disobedience, his distraction from the norm. It's my reading of the divine character. And this is my reading of the most human human: examine the chips that we program, and choose the one we extinguish, to which we give low, what mandate we withdraw from our matrix.

I've been asking my anthropology students over and over again, for many years: "Why do we study how culture makes us a certain way, it shapes us instead of studying how, despite the the culture to which we are supposed to belong, each of us can be unique, irreplaceable, different? "The guiding star of humanity is precisely its capacity for deviation, a capacity to which we owe nothing less than history.

First disobedience

That's why I say, among other things, that a women's policy, for a variety of reasons, can not be principled, but pragmatic and able to improvise, directed to life here and there. now, towards its continuity and splendor, despite everything or, as they say, against all odds. Therefore, and for that, always fueled by what I have called an "ethics of dissatisfaction", a framework of all good politics, an impulse opposed to an ethics of conformity. An ethic for which it is more important to be good than to act well. It therefore becomes necessary to be pluralist before becoming a feminist. to have a radically plural world as a historical goal. An objective that can not be achieved neither by patriarchy nor by the historical project of things, which is that of capitalist accumulation, always in tension with the historical project of links, that of common roots. Nor can one validate, for the purpose of a world in the plural, dogmatic monotheisms, none of them. Because, for capitalist, capitalist and fundamentalist monotheisms, there is one truth, one form of good, one god, one form of future, one justice. They are thus monopolies governed by an exclusive and exclusive logic.

Our logic, the logic that has allowed us to survive so many centuries of slaughter on our continent, is not a monological logic, monopolistic, governed by the neurosis of coherence and control, the monotheistic neurosis and white Europeans. Our logic is tragicin that it can coexist with incoherence, with incompatible truths, with the equation a and non-a, opposite and true at the same time and at the same time. And so, always, always, endowed with the vital intensity of disobedience. A par-coherent logic to preserve life, ensure continuity and improve the well-being of more people, to maintain the open horizon of history without a predetermined destination, to keep time moving.

"Our logic is tragic, in that it can coexist with incoherence, with incompatible truths"

Second disobedience

He sends me back to Europe, the continent of monotheistic neurosis, as I call you in my book Saints and Dáimones (without translation into Spanish). The continent of control neurosis and moral judgment on the world. So I come to the other inevitable evocation of the preparation for this uncomfortable lecture: the discomfort that caused me 36 years ago, the speech of García Márquez, having received the Nobel Prize in 1982, called La soledad de Latin America. The memory of this vague and incomprehensible malaise has accompanied me ever since, and it is only now that I find the space to talk about it in front of an audience. At that time, the word "Eurocentrism" was not in my head, even because I lived in Europe at that time. Let's see: García Márquez I seemed to say that Latin America was alone because Europe did not look at it, did not see it, did not record its existence and did not understand it. As I continue to dislike that day, I really regretted that the subtext of his speech clearly indicates the author's conviction that it is in the eyes of Europe that our continent has been able to reach its full existence. Could it be a being for another to be our destiny?

This would be problematic, because to be effective for others, it is necessary that we learn to be of this other. Over the years, and with the vocabularies I had access to, this discomfort has been transformed into consciousness. A conscience that allows me today to speak to you, as people of the book that you are, of our subject: the circulation of the word and the form of the word.

"Europe lacks this powerful feminine utensil that is the" mirror, mirror "of Queen Mala's stories"

As I stated twenty days ago at the Pompidou Museum in Paris, at a meeting with museum directors in Europe, he was asked to answer an important question , intelligent and very unusual: How does Eurocentrism affect Europe?, it is Europe that is alone. He looks in the narcissistic mirror of his museums, but he misses the real mirror, the one who can exert resistance and show him the defects, because these objects can not make his eyes. Europe lacks this powerful feminine utensil which is the "mirror, mirror" of the bad queen of storiesHe does not see his defect in the reflection that the eyes of others might give him, because the other has only kept him in the window of his colonial power. The visit of the Chirac museum on the Quai de Branly confirmed this impression, because I did not see anything else. "Imprisoned beauty"objects removed from their own destiny, from their historic bed, from the landscape in which they lived rooted. From there, they could have followed their path and radiate their influence. The same goes for books.

We, according to García Márquezwe must see ourselves in the eyes of Europe, in the books of Europe, so as not to be alone. However, it does not record that Europe even perceives its loneliness, loneliness that has slowly led to a decline in its creative imagination, which once dazzled us, and an unbearable boredom.

Third disobedience

I have despaired of my elite teachers in the living languages ​​of my childhood, Juan Ramón Fernández, while, since the age of six, I have accepted hypotheses but my fashionable tests of youand you do instead of you do. As I continue to this day with the arduous task of modifying the language corrector, all the time, at each line, to put an emphasis on the decimme i, on the i of venice, on the eye of if you want to pbad for my house. Against the current of conformity, in disobedience. Later, my beloved would appear Arguedas, with her Quechua language in Spanish, with her inflections of Quechua in a superimposed language, her real kidnapping of Castilian to say what she wanted and it had to be said: it was the Indian who carried the flag of history and sovereignty over our continent.

Just as Polanyi spoke of the deeply rooted economy destroyed by capitalism, we must talk about rooting the word of its path that revives despite the institutions and the verbal gestures of the people.

Fourth disobedience

On 08/07/2018, at 7:12 pm, Juan Pérez (fictitious name) of the very prestigious Spanish publisher La Eterna (fictitious name) wrote:

"Dear Mrs. Segato, I call Juan Pérez and I am editor of Ediciones La Eterna, I just wanted to contact you and cordially invite you to join our editorial fund.

Your critical work seems to me an intellectual gem that should be known and read around the world. In Spain, for example, it does not come easily.

Of course, I know that publishing spaces are not lacking, especially Prometheus, with whom he works continuously.

Even knowing this situation, I allow myself to invite her for the admiration of her work.

Sincerely, Juan Pérez Editor-in-Chief Madrid (Spain)

From: Rita Segato.

Posted on Friday August 10th, 2018 at 03h13

For: Juan Pérez

Subject: Re: Ediciones La Eterna

Dear John, thank you very much for the terms of your message. It is exciting to know that everyone's effort is appreciated, and especially by a publisher of such a prestigious publishing house. But I think that he will understand if I tell him that, as he knows, I write in the perspective of the coloniality of power and knowledge. My point of view is critical of Eurocentrism, which is nothing but a racism applied to the knowledge and products of those who live and work on these coasts, on the other side of the sea, in a landscape marked and delimited by the colonial process. , which lasts until now. I therefore have a publisher, who is the first to have reached out in 2003, when I wanted to return to my country and that no one knew me in Argentina. I appreciate it and it helped me in a series of difficult situations. I publish with him in Spanish, in the same way that I would publish with you. However, since La Eterna is on the other side of the sea, it is easier to broadcast Spanish to all readers, and although I was very happy with his message, I can not be agree with that, bend to that, reconcile me with that. You can understand, right? I'm stubborn like a mule, I know. But it hurts me to know that a publisher in Latin America does not have the same facilities to circulate as a Spanish publisher. The only thing that comes to mind is to suggest that I establish a kind of collaboration with my publisher, Prometheus, so that between them, in partnership, they can edit one of my works soon. … what does this idea look like?

Whatever your response, I send you a hug and my sincere thanks for the appreciation of my work.

Rita

From: Juan Pérez

Subject: RE: Ediciones La Eterna

Posted on Friday August 13, 2018 12:22:11 GMT-3

For: Rita Segato

Dear friend, I understand perfectly, of course. I must say that it comforts me to find an intellectual that is consistent with his speech (it does not always happen) …

Juan Pérez Editor-in-Chief Madrid (Spain)

I quote this exchange with the editor-in-chief of a very respected and respectable publisher of the peninsula for his great elegance and mutual respect, personal, which are revealed between the correspondent representing the interests of the company and myself, as interlocutor. This is one of the many invitations to publish in global editorials that I have received, all rejected for the reasons that I expose to Juan Pérez. Basically, as my dear Claudia Schwartz told me recently, who grew up on the shelves of Faust and who is now very difficult to edit poetry in leviathan: "Why can not I get a book from Chile, why can not I get a book from Uruguay? Why can not I access the authors of these countries of Argentina, if not by # 39; Spain "?

The truth is that the dictatorship has persecuted large Argentine booksellers and destroyed the vast publishing park that we had suffered through political persecution, and Menem has completed the work due to the total lack of protection in which he had left the Argentine publishing industry, which enjoyed great prestige in the country. the Spanish-speaking world for its indisputable quality. Honest booksellers persisted and emerged to try to resuscitate what had been lost … Others died of sadness, like Claudia's father, with the closing of his bookstores, Fausto and his publishing house, Siglo XX, in a supposed "democracy" which, barely restored, succumbed to the coloniality of power and knowledge. Spanish publishers bought textbooks and textbooks, benefiting from the know-how already existing in the country, and thus threatening the beauty and value of the pluralism of the language and the ways of saying Argentine roots.

I'm crying for that: Faust's Argentina was beautiful. How Argentina's Centro Editor of Latin America is irreplaceable. The historical value and purpose of a plural world was therefore in a very fragile situation, in a process little different from what happened with the world record of musical recorders, who bought the world music and "equalized" it so pasteurized "world music" and quickly obsolete. I want to pay tribute here to the publishers who survived this destruction and those who started after the ruin: Corregidor, Coligue, Flor, Byblos, Spring, Place of publication, Editorial Space, Homo Sapiens, Small Editor, Prometheus, Godot, Leviathan. And forgive me if I have not managed to name them all, or if one of those I have named has already perished.

I want it to be understood that it is not the value of patriotism; it is yes the value of pluralism.

Fifth disobedience

Call us. Give the names. We do not pbad on the message to young people, as we usually do, that they come to school, to the university, just to learn. Because this learning automatically refers to the learning of what is already thought, and below it, we inevitably pbad the idea of ​​what has already been thought elsewhere. The task of the intellectual is the production and donation of names. I learned it from my beloved master Aníbal Quijano. Fatherhood comes from the authorization. These are two deeply connected terms. Think of starting here, do not delegate to think of the world in which we live from the outside.

This happens to us, and it happens to Spain as well. Like our continent, it is on the side of the consumption and the application of theoretical categories, not of its formulation. Let's not fool ourselves … This happens to this sadly colonial and Creole country like us, Spain, a nation that has conquered and continued on the side, without any break in continuity, the same year, 1492. The language The Spanish is great, but it's not hegemonic. It does not produce theoretical thinking intended to cross the Great World Frontier from South to North. The books published here by large conglomerates of publishers and aimed at a global profit are not catapulted into languages ​​in which ideas reach circulation and planetary influence. The North Market Reserve on what we might call "patents" in the humanities is closed, impregnable. For, let us not deceive ourselves: it is the domain of the humanities, with its power of words, its poetry of concepts, which shapes the future of history. That is why it is in the hands of a few, who are not here, the key to the way of the Humanities which closes the door of this planetary circulation to the theoretical concepts forged in our language, with sovereignty and autonomy, from d & # 39; here. , from the ground on which our feet land.

Sixth disobedience

Next to the barrier that is erected so that our words do not cross, an impregnable barrier is also erected to prevent the crossing of the style of writing. The technology of the Northern Academy book is imposed on us in the universities. Let us not bend to this technology from the original text of a time when information, because of its rarity, was a problem, and that northern imperial universities did not have this problem. A text or a book was the way to display access to information, the power that meant accessing this information. Today, information is also a problem, but of opposite sign. We are asphyxiated in informationso, what matters is the ability to choose an author's route in the information package that crushes us.

The important thing is to develop the ability to identify what exists around us without naming us and not abdicating the trial, which is our way of discussing. Do not give up the test: the "I say". The voice of the essayist is inexorably a voice of the authorthis does not hide behind the alibi of the signature. Keep in mind that the truth is an agreement between interlocutors. Known names are like parchments in bottles thrown into the sea that reach their destination. I can say that I simply know.

Seventh disobedience

Let's build our own disobedience. Do not confuse the Not One Minus with the Me Too and do not get entangled in its tension with the manifesto of French intellectuals. Every movement and every feminism can only be built with the elements of its own history. In the dispute between Anglo and French feminism, I read the keys to two stories of conjugality, two forms of baduality and love as already pointed out Peter Gay and Josefina Pimenta Lobato. There are two models of love, the Anglo-Saxon model and the French model.

As far as Not a less respect, remember that there is a coloniality within social movements. This coloniality tends to betray us and to disorient us. The Me tooRooted in the American feminism of pilgrims, he approaches and signs the paternity of the state, third indispensable arbitrator of relations, lawyer on the pillow, perhaps the only tool of a world characterized by an extreme individualism. While the Me too speaks to the state, the Not a less He speaks to us and speaks to us, he speaks to a society.

Our feminism belongs to a world in which, even in the whitewashed metropolises, the link is vital and can and must be preserved by the refuge it offers us and the happiness it gives us. A world in which shreds of community have been preserved. I am convinced that we should not delegate the arbitration of our erotic life to a third party. I still believe that the management of desire must be possible in our face-to-face, hand-to-hand world, and that we must fight for it, creating the conditions for that to be possible. For this, we must work hard on power relations in the field of work and studies, in which the hierarchy is decisive and where patriarchy manifests itself more viciously, and regenerate communal structures capable of monitoring and taking into account charge the way people lead lives. The rest serves to dismantle the patriarchal political order and usher in a new era of history. We are going clearly.

Epilogue The octave

Down with the mandate of masculinity!

For the right of peoples to their territories and their way of life in the communal roots!

Yes to legal abortion, safe and free!

Not one less!

Justice for Sabina Garnica, an 11-year-old girl from the Virgen Desatanudos district of La Rioja and an enthusiastic activist from La Garganta Poderosa, raped and murdered on 14 April!

Not a press employee less!

Recognition for popular baccalaureate!

For a radically plural world!