[Music] what [Music] so [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] to transgress [Music] [Music] [Music] i came to theory because i was hurting the pain within me was so intense that i could not go all living i came to theory desperate wanting to comprehend to grasp what was happening around me most importantly i wanted to make the hurt go away that's why i came to theory i saw a theory a location for healing [Music] cementite [Music] [Music] [Music] the mosque [Music] in the living room of my grandmother's house there was a picture of shravan anesthasia above the sofa on the left side of the wall every friday we put a candle a white flower a glass of clean water and oil fresh coffee with no sugar my grandmother used to tell me australia was incarcerated in a mosque as it was common to those who spoke words of emancipation during slavery and she told me i should always remember her i do remember i remember because this story has been memorized i cannot forget it the colonial past is memorized in a way that one is unable to forget it sometimes one would prefer not to remember but one can actually not the theory of memory is in reality a theory of forgetting one cannot simply forget and one cannot avoid remembering the mask cannot be forgotten it was a very concrete piece a real instrument which became part of the european colonial project for more than 300 years it was composed of a bit placed inside the mouth of the black subject clamped between the tongue and the jaw and fixed behind the head with two strings one surrounding the chin and the second surrounding the nose and forehead formerly the mask was used by white masters to prevent enslaved africans from eating sugarcane cacao beans and coffee beans while working on the plantations but [Music] its primary function was to implement a sense of speechlessness and the fear the fear of speaking the mask raises therefore many many questions who can speak and who cannot [Music] and above all what can we speak about why must the mouth of the black subject be fastened why must she he eat or day become silent what could this black subject say if its mouths were not sealed and what would the white subject have to listen to there is this apprehensive fear that if the colonial subject speaks the colonizer will have to listen it would be forced into an uncomfortable confrontation with other truths truths which are not supposed to be spoken to be heard and which should be kept quiet as secrets i like this expression kept quiet as secrets it announces how someone is about to reveal what is perceived not to be told it should remain a secret we have so many secrets secret words like slavery secret words like colonialism and the most secret words racism the fear of listening to what could be possibly revealed can be articulated with the psychoanalytical notion of repression repression lies exactly in turning something away and keeping it a distance from the conscious it is that process by which certain truths can only exist in the thickness of our unconscious far away from the surface due to the extreme anxiety guilt or shame that they cause just imagine an iceberg floating in the blue water all repressed truths are still there but they are not at the surface they are rendered to deepness one knows but one wants to make them known unknown oh i don't understand what you're talking about i actually don't remember i don't really believe in what you're saying aren't you exaggerating i think you're taking this syria too serious you are too sensitive about racism these are expressions of this process of repression in which one resists make the making the unconscious information conscious keeping it as a secret the mouth is therefore a very special organ an organ that symbolizes speech and renunciation within racism the mouth becomes the organ of oppression for excellence it is the organ that enunciates certain unpleasant truths and which needs to be severely confined controlled and colonized if i am telling you this that means that speaking becomes somehow virtually impossible it is not that we have not been speaking we've been speaking since hundreds of years but rather that our voices through racism become silent this impossibility illustrates how speaking and silencing emerged like an analogous project a project between the speaking subject and the listeners for instance today in this scenario i am the speaking subject you came here to listen to me and i become the speaking subject because you are listening imagine you stop listening to what i say would i still be the speaking subject imagine that you don't want to listen anymore but still i'm delivering knowledge would i be the speaking subject we can make a game and i count until three and ask you to start speaking you can speak on your own or with your neighbor and when but when i say stop you stop [Music] okay foreign stop of speaking is really a negotiation between those who speak and those who listen that is between the speaking subjects and their listeners i didn't stop speaking i didn't stop delivering knowledge i didn't stop bringing knowledge to the room but i didn't have the authority of the speaking subject anymore so there is an initiation between the speaker and the listener and the speaker can only become the speaking subject if the others decide to listen to in other words one can only speak when one's voice is listened to but being listened to goes beyond this dialectic being listened to also means belonging and we all know that those who belong are those who are listened to and those who are not listened to are those who cannot belong the past that i showed you before recreates this project by controlling the possibility that the colonized might one day be listened to and consequently might one day be long okay this is the end of the first story we go now to the second part [Music] of [Music] foreign um um [Music] is [Music] um um is [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] is [Music] i'm delighted to inform the public that after more than 30 years the ghanaian film archive is to be made accessible around 40 hours of film were digitized in the summer of 2012. the focus is on works by jose bolama kabumba they shot the films between 1972 and 1980 in guinea-bissau during the struggle for independence and consequent post-independence nation building material evidence of the birth of a ghanaian film production in 1967 amilka cabral sent these four young ghanaians to cuba to be trained in filmmaking at the instituto cabano de arte santiago alvarez in 1972 the four returned to guinea-bissau to document the independence movement early media activists the archive includes a mix of raw footage documentary films news reels and sound some sent from countries that supported the guinean struggle chris marker left films there in 1979 in 2012 felipe cesar and nacho checker traveled to bissau shortly after the april 12th coup d'etat to bring the film material to berlin for years these films were stored at the national film and audio visual institute of guinea-bissau founded by mario de andarati in 1977 the 16 millimeter film roles in varying states of decay are being digitized with a prototype film reader designed by engineer reiner meyer for technical economic and diplomatic reasons the sound should be recovered and digitized at a later date the originals and digital copies will be returned to bisal in late 2012. this is the house of world cultures in berlin in 1957 it was a congress center a gift from the united states of america to west germany [Music] that is writer she will share her readings of particular footage from this archive september 1972 the week of information one of cabral's less known laboratories the colonization what a beautiful word written in images picture by picture a visual language portrayed in each one of these wheels here cinema becomes the colonial act [Music] in 1956 amir khan founded the african party for the independence of guinea-bissau and cape verde for 11 years he led the armed resistance to portuguese colonialism this west african struggle ended in 1974 with the fall of the portuguese dictatorship [Music] this is the people's palace in chronicle in 1967 this congress center was partly a gift from china to the people's revolutionary republic of guinea i am speaking because the sounds belonging to these images have not arrived yet maybe they never will what i speak and have to say may never be what these wheels want to tell but i tell you and i reassure you that the name amilcar cabral was never revealed to me in my history books not mentioned in my classroom in lisbon where other black children and i sat in the back my memories are not sweet though they could have been they could have been memories of pride if these images have been shown to me earlier before they do not come late they come on time that is here he performs the role of host and curator receiving his guests offering them tours of his event these are historical moments which history the struggle for african independence the political strength of tradition and modernity militant filmmaking in africa any of those [Music] stokely carmichael the ex-minister of the black panther party and his wife the south african singer miriam makiba entered the building andrei tourre guinea conakry's first lady arrives a guest of capraral in his own country jose bolama copumba josefinato [Music] the four young filmmakers have just returned from cuba captured the colonial act they captured the blink of strength looks of competence and sovereignty mixed with joy and fulfillment they capture the images that i would have liked to have seen as a child even without sound these images tell a story rather many stories but whose the subjects four young filmmakers the citizens of an unstable post-revolutionary guinea guinea-bissau the world i chose the world then it is also my story why should these images interest me one from a distant desert fragments reach new mexico via san soleil not these exact images but traces of this story cabral's hand gently points to a new identity his continent given a new body is history given a new language his people give it a new shelter his language recovered numbers statistics documents maps pictures books a whole room full of empirical evidence against those intrusive memories of subordination [Music] the eroding film eroding time and eroding space these images are so far away but also so near are they memories lost ones or found ones [Music] what about the children in their crisp pioneer uniforms what happened to them they would be my age my contemporaries do they remember this moment fondly cabral points at the arsenal confiscated from the portuguese army unfolds the portuguese flag to madame turret there is no bitterness in his gestures nor in his words in december 1966 during the liberation struggle he writes a letter to all the portuguese soldiers [Music] [Music] there is something else these are revolutionaries in the midst of revolution is this how revolution imagines itself so beautiful [Music] the colonization was a global act an act of humanism where each single individual was invited to join all gathered in the same room women and men children and adults from north and south speaking a common virtual language these moments captured in topographic soviet four months later emil cabral was assassinated this raw footage almost disappeared making us believe this has never existed [Music] questions choreography [Music] [Music] who can speak in the last years i've been working as a professor at university at the university on board university in berlin and gender studies and postgraduate studies and on the very first day of each semester i count how many students are in the room and then i ask them to raise their ants in case they know the questions we want to know how many of them knows what i start by asking very very simple questions like what was the berlin conference 1884 85 which asian and african countries were colonized by germany or by portugal how many years did the colonization last and then i conclude with more specific questions such as who was emil kirk who was queen zinger when was patrice lumumba assassinated who was maya who wrote black skin white masks name a book by word reward the klingon [Music] angola very very simple questions the berlin conference is when otto from bismarck invited all european countries to come to berlin to divide the continent of africa among themselves that is the berlin conference they had a ruler and divided the continent with a line in seven pieces one piece for the germans one piece for the belgians for the british one piece for the italians one piece for the french one piece for the spanish and one for the portuguese the seminars were always made of 1800 students it was always packed and most of the students could not answer these questions they were irritant to respond you ask yourself how is it possible to be on the first third second fourth year of university and you don't have an answer to such basic knowledge [Music] then finally some of the students very few mostly black students and students of color started very carefully to raise their ends as an answer at that particular moment the world became a performative space where the idea of knowledge was being exposed and questioned they could indeed visualize that the concept of knowledge is intrinsically linked with race gender and power suddenly [Music] suddenly those who are usually unseen become visible and those who are always seen become invisible those who usually are silent started speaking and those who always speak became silence not because they cannot articulate their voices or tongues or because they have a mask but rather because they do not possess that knowledge who knows what and who doesn't and why what knowledge is acknowledged as such and what knowledge is not what knowledge has been made part of the official agendas and what knowledge was not whose knowledge is this who is acknowledged to have knowledge and who is not and who can teach knowledge who can produce knowledge who can perform it and who cannot as you see the concept of knowledge is not a simple a political study of truth it is not but rather the reproduction of racial and gender power relations which define not only what counts as true but also in whom to believe knowledgeable becomes then all epistemologies that reflect the specific political interests of a white colonial patriarchal society please let me tell you what epistemology is epistemology as derived from the greek words episteme meaning knowledge and mean and logos meaning science is the science of the acquisition of knowledge that means it determines the themes which themes which questions which topics preserve attention and which questions married to the question in order to produce knowledge [Music] second paradigms which narratives and interpretations can be used to explain a phenomenon so to say from which perspective can you produce knowledge and third the methods in which form and format can be used to produce truthful knowledge epistemology as i said defines not only how to produce knowledge but also who can produce knowledge with which questions which perspective and which format so to say it defines in home to believe it is so common to hear how interesting our work is but a little bit too specific this is not objective at all is it you have to be a little bit more neutral if you want to be an academic you cannot be personal science is universal not subjective your problem is that you over interpret reality you must think that you are the queen of interpretation these are remarks that illustrates the colonial cherokee in which black people receive as soon as we start speaking and delivering knowledge our voices are silent by these comments which actually function like a metaphorical mask they place our discourse back at the margin as the vintage knowledge while white discourses remain at the center as the norm when they speak the scientific when we speak is unscientific when they speak is universal when we speak is specific when they speak is objective when we speak is subjective when they speak is neutral we are personal they are rational we are emotional they are impersonal we are personal they have facts we have opinions they have knowledge and we have experiences we are not dealing here with the peaceful quick systems of words no but rather with a violent hierarchy which defines who can speak let's see the first video coverage okay please to the day i expose what has been kept quiet as a secret i expose racism without regret pivoting shame or guilt [Music] so [Music] i once had this conversation with a childhood friend about black people and i told her how it is being black here and that it is not easy for me always to be the only black person she listened attentively while i was speaking and then she said well but for me you are not black i don't think that you are black and she said that in a way as if she was doing me a favor i even forget that you're black dude i don't think that you're black the best i would say we are talking about negation this infernal circle when people like me they say that i'm not black when they dislike me they say that it is not because i'm black either way i am trapped in their racisms me and my boyfriend used to go to a cafe and have long long conversations we used to spend a long time there we had all kinds of conversation about nothing really special he was a jazz musician and i remember one day he was telling me what kind of jokes he and his musicians friends used to tell and i asked him tell me one he said that he cannot and i said ah come on tell me and then he explained that he knows one joke but he cannot really tell and i insisted come on tell me tell me he got a piece of paper and drew a circle with two triangles inside and asked me what is it about it looks like a red cross sign that has been a waste no there's two ku klux klan members looking down at the black man who was thrown into the hole i started feeling this pain in my body an ache in my hands and in my fingers it hurt my whole body was in pain me too was placed below his white feet desire and envy a white jazz musician playing the music of the black man desiring him and at the same time murdering the black man for he cannot be black it is alleged in his fantasy he is lynching the black man are you aware what a lynch is black men beaten to death are cut in pieces subjected to rituals of castration and handy trees like strange fruits as the song tells pieces of black men hands tongues ears texticles fingers penises there hanging in trees like fruits isn't it violently strange i think i think that this desire for the death of a black man is in fact an unsolved oedipus complex what do you think but it's part of this story and part of the plantation language and then i decided to take it without the book into the stage and it speaks always about this unreason and how racism is unreasonable illogical and we try very hard to apply reason within and reason and in something so illogical as racism you try very hard to bring some logic but you can you cannot because it is something unreasonable so i go back to the text and talking about different reasons especially in his last comment that you over interpret reality it's in his last comment in particular there are two very powerful moments the first moment is a form of warning which describes the standpoint of the black woman as a distortion of the truth expressed here through the word over interpretation black people always over interpret things the black female colleague was warning me that i am moving over beyond the norms of traditional epistemology and therefore i am producing invalid knowledge it seems to me that this idea of over-interpretation addresses the thought that the oppressed is seeing something which is not to be seen and it is about saying something which is not to be said [Music] curiously in the feminist discourse as well men try to irrationalize the thinking and the knowledge of women as if such feminist interpretations were nothing but the fabrication of the reality and illusion or maybe even a female hallucination within this constellation however it is the white woman who is irrationalizing the thinking of the black woman and by doing so she defines to the blackboard what real scholarship is and how it should be expressed and written this reveals how complex this intersection between gender race and power is but this is another story for another day in the second moment she then speaks of theoretical places over queen she fantasizes we want to be but whom we cannot become the queen is a very interesting metaphor it is a metaphor for power it is also the tougher of the idea that certain bodies belong to certain places such limitation of spaces introduces a dynamic in which blankness signifies being outside place i am said to be outside my place as a body that is not at home racism black bodies are constructed as improper bodies as bodies that are not at home they are outside place and therefore they cannot belong white bodies on the contrary are constructed as proper as clean proper bodies they are bodies that are always in place and always at home it doesn't matter where they always belong through such comments black people are persistently invited to return to their place outside outside institutions at the margins where their bodies belong can you see the next one carlos i hate when people touch my hair ask me where i'm from i never felt that before in my body in my fingers i explained to her that i do not like you she told me a human friend likes it i grew up hearing this word it must be something bad you apologized immediately how do i wash my hair with water and shampoo she committed suicide i think she was very lonely i could not believe it he smelled my hair and sang that song about monkeys i had to be better than all the others three times black and smart angry i am not aggressive angry because this is aggressive yes i combat i do not want to be better imagine being the only black person in the family i do not want to be worse i realize how much of myself i have out at risk i had to read a lot learn study i read many books [Music] people always ask me where do i come from since i was a child they see you and the first thing that crosses their mind is to check where is she from they just ask without even knowing you it does not matter where you are at in a bus at a party on the street at dinner or even in the supermarket i am being asked in the first place because i am categorized as a race which does not belong and if i answer and say that i am german they look confused they stop for a moment like thinking german or they just start laughing as if i misunderstood the question or gave the wrong answer you know and they go oh no no no no but you cannot be german you don't look german pointing at my skin one is black order not black and it seems one can only exist through an alienated image of oneself the question contains the colonial fantasy that german means white and black means auslander i have to add another component race and voyeurism people come to ask where i am from because they have pleasure through the exhibition of otherness they are not interested in hearing that i am from berlin but rather they want to hear a very exotic story where the colonial fantasies about the remote other are revived i am expected to provoke pleasure i address a patiently question about a question the white audience addresses me for the search of that paradise what about your parents where are they from [Music] [Music] is is [Music] and also to create emancipative and alternative knowledge that it seems never to arrive when we say i am portuguese or i am german and you keep hearing but you cannot be it's this increments this illogical this unreason of racism um when we produce knowledge in these spaces spaces like theater like cultural spaces like the university we often forget that these spaces are not neutral spaces these are neither neutral nor simple spaces of knowledge and wisdom of performance science and scholarship these are spaces that historically have been produced violence these are spaces of vines these are spaces which historically have a very problematic relationship with blackness here we have been objectified classified theorized dehumanized infantilized criminalized brutalized sexualized exposed exhibited and sometimes even killed what else what else could this be for me but an imputation an excision and hemorrhage that's patterned my whole body with black blood are the words of funnel he uses the language of trauma like most of black people when speaking of the everyday experience with racism indicating the painful body impact and the loss characteristic of a traumatic collapse for within racism one is like surgically removed and violently separated whatever identity one might really have i i felt blades open within me and i i could no longer laugh there is indeed nothing to laugh about as one is constantly being over-determined from the outside by violent fantasies one sees but one does not recognize as being oneself i cannot even go to a film he writes i wait for me he waits for the black savages the black barbarians the black servants the black prostitutes and courtesans he waits for the black criminals murderers and drug dealers he waits for what he is not what an alienation isn't it to be forced to relate oneself and to give a performance of oneself script by the white subject and what a disappointment to be forced to look at oneself as if one was in their place and what a pain to be trapped in this colonial order still today 2016. what a pain this all seems like very private information that i'm giving you but such apparently private information is not private at all these are not personal stories or intimate complaints but rather accounts of racism within the academic artistic and cultural spaces and these reveal the inadequacy of those spaces to relate not only to the postcolonial condition but also where they subjects they discourses their perspectives their narratives and their knowledges and these this should be our preoccupation it should be our preoccupation and our project the project of decolonizing to decolonize knowledge we do have to understand that we all speak from specific time and place from a specific reality and a specific history there are no new produces when what artists claim not to have to have a neutral and object objective discourse they are not acknowledging that they too write and perform from a specific place which of course is neither neutral nor objective or universal but dominant they write and perform from a place of power you know there is this antidote a black woman says everybody's in the room and the black woman raises the end and says i am a black woman and the white woman who's in the room raises the hand and says i am a woman and then there's also a white man in the room and raises the end and says i'm a person this is the colonial order whiteness remains unmarked whiteness like other identities in power remains unnamed it is an absent center an identity that places itself a descent of everything but is centrality is not regarded as relevant because it is presented as a synonymous of human in general white people do not see themselves as white but rather as people why this is felt to be the human condition and it is exactly this equation that secures whiteness as an identity that marks others and remains unmarked and it is exactly this equation that perpetuates colonialism colonial thinking and colonial discourses and i believe there is no more powerful position than just being the norm and being the normality and being the privileged ecological knowledge is about deconstructing exactly that it means we have to create new configurations of knowledge and new configurations of power so in other words and to conclude today if my work seems preoccupied with narrating positions and subjectivity as part of knowledge production then it is worth remembering and not forgetting that knowledge is neither universal nor neutral but rather always placed somewhere in a time in a place in a history and is always always written by someone who has a biography and the story let's see the last [Laughter] [Music] oh [Music] [Laughter] [Music] thank you [Music] so [Music] [Music] with and then [Music] [Applause] [Music]