[Reader-list] English and fascism

[pratap pandey]

Dear all,

Like Aabir, I'd like to know where to get a copy of Naukar ki Kameez. Don't try too hard to tell me where to get it. If I really want to get a copy, I'll find it. Meanwhile, let's get together and watch the movie, and after the movie (whether we've read the novel or not) have a chat. An extempore one.

This said, let's get into the english-fascism question.

There exist two kinds of people in India today...

(the academician in me incites me to say: across class, race and gender; the non-academician in me incites me to respond: bugger the stratifications. This is an other kind of stratification we are talking about. Its moorings intersect class race and gender [thankfully, not 'sex'!]and 'pass through' the manner in which these categories are talked about in the Indian context. Its intersections with race class and gender are necessary, but not sufficient. Why? Because the question of suffiency involves the everyday lifeworld. We are touching here upon 'felt' stratification, 'experienced' difference/ indifference, and the effects thereof. We are trying to catch that untheorisable 'thereof')

There exist two kinds of people today in India. Only two. Engcans and Engcants.

Engcans are those who can in english. That is to say, they can articulate in english. Imagine. Render a world-picture. Push a world-view.

Engcants are those who can't -- can not -- in english. That is to say, they cannot articulate in english. They imagine. They can render a world-picture (but not in english, which is the desire in them, which becomes the desire in them). They can push, or pull at, a world-view (but not in english; this is also their desire, a desire precisely because it is inexpressible).

Engcants are neither naturally nor via socialisation primed to be fascists (in fact their ambition is to be the exact opposite). Once an engcant finds that -- thanks to the educational structure the s/he has been through -- s/he has already lost out on the good jobs and the respect and status that comes with these good jobs, s/he chooses to open him/her/self to what can be be called a 'discourse of re/active-becoming'. Seeking respect -- because if you have respect you belong, because to be respected is to always already belong -- the engcant must propel him/her/it self on a path of re/active-becoming, a path where becoming means always to be reacting to the desire of being, which gets inflected onto the need or demand of reactive-becoming, being-in-spite-of. Hence the readiness towards spite. The ability to spit, or spit at; not because you ever thought of doing so (or becoming a person who would do so) but because it is strangely fashionable and attractive and sedcutive and gives power to you and so propels you will and the forms of action you take.

To be-in-spite-of is a very thermodynamic form of being (not necessarily negative). To become-in-spite-of is the reduction of thermodynamicity into adrenalism (necessarily negative). The heat becomes the blood. The blood likes to rush. The brain likes a blood-rush. Addiction, necessarily so. The uncertain excitement of becoming becomes the certain revenge of reactive-being.

And all this because of the presence of english -- not so much as a language, or a mode of expression, or an aesthetic, or a politics of colonial policy, but certainly as a presence in post-colonial education in India -- as that element in the symbolic order that sutures (offers, even, the fantasy or should I say the paranoia, of suturing) existence to desire. That offers the pain of a suturing (your skin is being sewed even as you watch) as well as the pleasure of sublimation (once sewed, you are whole, indestructible).

Think about the engcan. Who is s/he? I have my thoughts; let's think together. The engcant seems the desirable subject of fascism -- reactive-being and all that shit. What about the engcan? Let us accept that english is the name of a desire, a geo-political desire. If so, what is the desire of the engcan? The engcan, as I said, can in english. So there is no need, no demand. So, no gap from which the desire will emerge. Wow. I'd like to be there!

Perhaps there is only education. To that extent, socialisation. To that extent, entitlement and opportunity. To that extent, a welcome into the symbolic order. To that extent, a beckoning from the Real. Oof!

(can the Real beckon?)

pratap                

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