it still hurts

this time, hopefully

erne ibili

so being here in navarra has done strange things to my thoughts on nation. the last time i was in australia, i had no sympathy left for any idea of australian nationalism. i certainly wouldn't describe myself as patriotic. and indeed when i was in ireland had a weird conversartion about why i couldn't possibly say that i was proud to be australian. the whole patriotism thing has always seemed sullied for me ever since i figured out that being a descendent of the first fleet [what's more, as a lieutennant in the army, not a bread-thief] maybe wasn't something to be so proud of [sorry grandma, i'm just not]. i sort of felt like i could see the lines of violences flowing back and forth. me and invasion, invasion and me. and it was always reinforced every time i had a family lunch. as my family sat around worrying about things. i knew that the racism seemed kind of benign because they still felt they had spatial ownership over the shire. the spatial politics of niceness. one ethnic neighbor is almost a lovely idea. sometimes they have all sorts of wonderful tea or strange sausages. a street full is a gang-in-waiting. this whole thing just made me sick, partly becaus ei could neverfigure out of a way to relate to it as anything other than a white managerially empowered citizen. i was the nice one. it's ok, you can come in, i say so.

so it was strange when i arrived in pamplona, which is a site of contestation between two strong nationalisms [and then a nuch of other kinds of regionalisms; ranging from the micro of pueblo self management and autonomous community differentiation to the macro-regionalism of the 'eu identity'). spanish nationalism clearly has it's lines of violence there for all to see. 40 years of violence and repression, both political and cultural, all in the name of national unity. and whilst franco's old falange is pretty marginalised nowadays, the partido popular [similar to the australian liberal party] is always going on about the disintegration of spain, the irrevocable unity of it [despite the obvious and long-standing divisions within it], and then when it gets bored with that starts talking about why gays shouldn't get married and the catholic religion should be compulsory in schools and super-subsidized by the state and all that other random shit. and in pamplona, you notice that any poster that looks kind of interesting, or talks about things like solidarity or women or you know, other commie shit, is either completely in basque (euskara) or at least in castellano (be careful who you call it spanish to) and euskara. the appeal of basque nationalism [for someone like me] is seductive. the cool looking kids at my uni [as opposed to the bizarro yuppie kids at the pseudo-fascist scary opus dei uni down the road] are often called borrokas, which comes from the basque word to struggle, fight. and as several spaniards have pointed out to me this year, my hair, my new piercing, is very borroka right now. and i did that with some level of intention - and corporal privilege, as my viet-oz friend kim pointed out to me once, not all of us can pass as locals. watching a rally in madrid on the weekend, we got sort of excited at the sight of the basque flag.

all this stuff, as well as having to do with a kind of exoticisation of basqueness which i still haven't really reconciled, was brought into relief by the stuff in cronulla. the nation suddenly seemed ugly again. my nation. i went to the bathroom in one of the bars in the old town and on the door was scrawled: gitanos, moros, txibatos! erne ibili [gypsies, moroccans, squealers (grass in the bill lingo) watch yourselves]*. and i get a glimpse of home in another people's home. the reflection of nation.

 

*this is actually basque, more or less. erne ibili, according to my dictionary, translates as andar con cuidado in castellano, which literally, would be walk with care, or walk carefully. above is my guess at the most equivalent translation.

posted by: joelistix at 13:58 | link | comments |