avi on belonging
via this tweet thread from avi (met thru museum of care meetings):
This is why I find it difficult to answer:
“Where are you from?”
A tent? https://t.co/NO6dKMCKFf
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/avi_khalil/status/1580844615053082625
and this:
A question I explore here https://t.co/CtaMdQOIDD
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/avi_khalil/status/1580857608801394688
which links to his site.. where i found this on about page:
At first I believed the Moon was my land, as it was the only landscape I saw regularly..t
moon ness.. and cage home law et al
and video above et al found on – affections for a papaya tree – page – (from avi’s presentation in 2022 – his part is from about 24 mind to 46 min) [https://avikhalil.com/2022/07/27/affections-for-a-papaya-tree/]:
How belonging is rooted in private property and given credence by Darwinism.
In this paper I will first draw on 3 peer reviewed papers based on my doctoral fieldwork. This will establish my argument that you can turn places into your belongings by telling stories. Stories that because no one is looking after these places properly, so you are justified in taking on the duty of care for them i.e. colonialising someone else and where they live. ..This will provide the context for me to propose that the notion of belonging – or at least belonging in a proper place – transforms affections freely given. Turning them into paternalistic relations of care. And in doing so justifies the transformation of that which is cared for into a belonging. And that the dominant tradition, theory, and study of belonging in our age, the Darwinian tradition of Biology, bolsters this notion. The notion that the very matter of life is by definition enclosed and packaged into private properties – whether your personal biological properties or your land, house, and possessions – and that stability in life proceeds through the inheritance of these properties.
wilde property law.. hardt/negri property law.. et al
notes/quotes from avi’s 25 min part – affections for a papaya tree (above):
25 min – part 1 – intro – middle english word belonging.. meaning .. to have its proper place
27 min – part 2 – cyprus, then and now (read above intro that was on site)
28 min – environ management involve civilizing and cleaning up the secret/dirty behaviors.. human and non human.. which had been reportedly ruining the island.. this justified the need for greater and more civilized power to control and clean this island.. to protect it and thus colonize it..t
jensen civilization law et al
this pattern of designating ruin to justify paternalistic authority thru provision of cleansing, care and control.. t
graeber violence in care law et al
29 min – the administrative categorizing of dirty behavior had many uses in maintaining and reproducing federations of authority over the land and the mortality of good and bad wildlife (i think?)
35 min – part 2 – belongings and affections
36 min – trying to make normal.. finding belonging in your belonging.. felt normal.. hard to imagine otherwise
37 min – darwin’s tree of life.. everything in proper place.. inheritance of properties defines a group in its progress.. designates what belongs to who.. devel of civ as based on inheritance of private properties.. based on darwin
38 min – problem.. lots of holes..
41 min – present day implications of this inheritance of properties.. is that it continues to ignore the central role of intergenerational care and affection in ecological contingency and change.. if a property deed is about possession then there nothing stoping the new inheritor of a food forest from chopping it all down.. whilst those who used to take care of it.. actually know how much intergenerational love and affection between a matrix species is what that forest is really about.. instead.. we live in this absurd reality where life is treated as property codes.. or in darwin biology.. strings of alphabets.. pretty much the same as written deeds do.. this is like epistemic fallacy.. like pretending the map is the terrain.. pretty that what you know is the same as what is.. your genetic transcript is you.. or the property deed is a house.. except in this case it’s worse.. because it’s only what colonial sciences define is what is known.. vs what is actually known.. and decides who you are.. where you are.. where you belong.. and how to manage you
we have no idea what legit free people are like et al
43 min – to summarize..
44 min – where affection something that is freely given .. not out of paternalistic utilitarian transaction of obligation
obligation ness
45 min – shuffled off as .. he’s just an ignorant old man.. why does he try and apply it here
[all above is avi talking]
47 min – rebecca bryant (in cyprus now): want to see how these papers speak to each other.. start w stefan’s paper (et al.. kept listing other’s papers).. the affective discharge of enforced disappearance.. or how people alter lives in the ever present state violence ‘living in the shadow of violence.. creates tactics of preservation’.. tactics to blend in in anticipation of offense..
51 min – rebecca: ‘a threshold of expectation’.. horizon in the far distance contrasts w affective violence or enforced disappearance.. horizon never reached.. this sense of approaching.. coming to one’s door.. the threshold.. while not apt for everyday individual anticipation
54 min – rebecca: north cyprus is a place where turkish govt has undue influence.. on detaining/deporting cyprit at turkish airports randomly.. so no one knows how it’s going to work.. this kind of anticipation relies on the past.. on cumulative experiences.. ie: thru lens of past violence.. ie: know prisons in istanbul better.. want to be detained there.. so use that airport
57 min – rebecca: migration control as anticipatory practice.. premised on idea of deterrence.. deterring the migrants is to detour that imagined future.. people imagine thru diff kinds of past.. so question i have.. how we can related these forms of anticipation to each other and how they draw on experiences form the past.. and who’s doing that
59 min – rebecca: seems to be a form of risk management
1:01 – rebecca: on the importance of holding onto a nostalgic vision of past co existence as a way of trying to create something in the present that doesn’t yet exist.. in other words.. faking it until you make it.. so to bryan.. to what extend can we see the practices as a performance.. trying to create something not there.. but one problem.. not everyone wants that/those kinds of futures.
1:02 – rebecca: to avi – on how care creates violence.. achieving belonging thru care.. in particular.. displace persons kept talking about their property not as an asset.. but part of a neighborhood or village that also rep’d a community and stood for a reciprocal sense of belonging.. where one’s belonging and place is created thru demonstrating diff forms of care for that place as one’s own..
again: graeber violence in care law.. and steiner care to oppression law.. et al
1:03 – rebecca: and there’s even a distinction in turkish between being something’s owner/master and the word that means to become an owner/master but used to mean to care for something.. so in my own writings i refer to belonging as a sense of care of interdependence and right.. esp of care as something that creates the interdependence..
thurman interconnectedness law et al
rebecca: however.. on lack of place of which to belong.. because future of that place is uncertain/unrecognized.. this sense that they can’t really be rooted
unauthorized home less ness et al.. brown belonging law et al..
1:05 – on being rooted like an olive tree.. rootedness is something that doesn’t exist now.. but it should exist.. it will exist
brown belonging law: the opposite of belonging.. is fitting in.. true belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are.. it requires you to be who you are.. and that’s vulnerable.. –Brené Brown
so to this i’d add perhaps: true belonging does require you to be rooted.. allows you to change you are.. change your mind.. everyday anew.. back to first quote from avi’s site.. on the moon being my home
home ness et al
cage home law
and
1:05 – rebecca: on parts of forest being destroyed to benefit certain parts of population.. a lot of people discuss on social media .. this sense of not belonging and this is what’s causing a sort of overuse of resources.. t
sea world ness.. and not knowing what we legit want/need..
need: means to undo our hierarchical listening so we can here that legit ness.. and then org around legit needs
1:06 – rebecca: on reading quote from friend about sm and no sense of belonging: ‘we finished off trees that are 100s of yrs old .. mine the mtns that are 1000s yrs old to serve our lives that are only decades.. do people who feel a bond w the country do these kinds of things.. in that case.. perhaps we should start to tear down the mtns inside us by asking why we can’t call this land a homeland’
yeah.. that.. again.. maté enough law ness..
need: non hierarchical listening to hear/see that enough ness..
perhaps via tech as it could be
1:07 – rebecca: so also this sense of belonging that turns land into a homeland that is tied up w/colonial understandings of territories and borders and sovereignty..t so here the uncanny is the experience of living in a land that can’t become a homeland because the rest of the world doesn’t recognize the territory as yours
siddiqi border law et al.. constant line law et al..
rebecca: w/laura’s paper.. ways in which living things (in this case people) may be reduced to numbers in a developmentalist calculus that sees too many people as an impediment to econ development.. t.. she says this calculus which maximizes econ benefits rogueries minimizing people is a colonial one in which certain people’s reproduction is controlled more than others
literacy and numeracy both elements of colonialism/control/enclosure.. we need to calculate differently and stop measuring things
any form of m\a\p.. as keeping us from being legit free
1:08 – rebecca: (others) don’t see things that way and engage in what marshall sahlins calls optimizing rather than maximizing.. so affluence is not about an abundance of possessions but rather an abundance of life.. and this is like something that fills one’s home and something that should fill one’s land
rebecca: the question i have is what kind of resources are involved in this abundant/affluent future.. one filled w life.. t
ie: 2 missing pieces
so that we can org around legit needs
rebecca: ie: research in turkish controlled are of n syria.. where i’ve been interviewing fellow academics.. that are based in s turkey but commute to n syria to help rebuild higher ed there.. and talking to these academics.. as well as their students who are in n syria.. one of most striking things is how many children they have.. w/many people planning for 10 or more.. and they would always say.. we lost so many people.. or we need males to fight.. but this is also not a new phenom.. had been changing before the revolution/violence.. and now there’s a move back to these high reproductive rates.. not a new practice.. some say youth bulge may have led to instability.. et al .. so must we see family planning only in b&w terms?
1:11 – rebecca: and finally .. claudia’s paper.. aspirations of youth (in polynesia) continue to be shaped by colonialism.. by a particular training program that leads youth to enlist in the military.. in other ways it seems youth aspirations also shaped by ‘global cosmopolitanism‘.. that with abundance of social media that so many youth in marginal places are imagining and aspiring to lives that resemble those of youth in other parts of the world.. as a type of cosmopolitanism
khan filling the gaps law and 61 ness et al
cosmopolitanism (imaginary) ness
1:12 – rebecca: so.. how are we to put these two legacies of colonialism together.. ones described in these papers here (polynesia, cyprus, kenya).. with the other broader legacies of colonialism.. that is globalization or global capital.. going to end here
1:14 – (responses from panelists) on storm of participation and how infra’s are refugee management.. detainment and registration resonates these diff kinds of participations.. this could be hope or fear of violence.. these come from underlying logics.. why people have to be put in proper place.. defines types of relations.. define diff ethnic communities and where they live and count..
marsh label law et al
1:16 – (same guy): but also how one reacts to the state.. defined by those logics/relations.. ie: must interact w state officers to get travel passes .. risk another kind of violence another kind of registry ‘why are you trying to leave’.. on finding alt grey spaces that get us beyond this constant fear.. where do we find people being defined by this type of belonging
1:17 – (another guy): (can’t hear clearly.. in back of room.. so skimming to next)
1:22 – (next guy): on expectation of danger very likely.. the sense of anticipation was something i constantly experience and feel .. on trying to fake it till you make it.. steer history in one direction.. the expectation of violence.. riots et al.. so trying to create a sense of local id that rejects conflict.. and bound by reciprocity ness.. and hopefully do it before the kind precedence shuffles on .. will this survive when he leaves
reciprocity as a structural violence et al
1:25 – avi: on policy used stuck on a particular science.. to me.. the idea that the tragedy of the commons.. that private property will lead to the destruction of something.. so want to belong to national property.. still transactional rather than reciprocal
myth of tragedy and lord et al
again.. we keep getting that myth because we’re not letting go of any form of m\a\p ie: reciprocity et al
1:28 – rebecca: question to laura burke.. say connections w research i’ve been doing w displacements and returning to a pop politics they had begun to abandon ie: having a lot of children.. the way you engaged it in a somewhat b&w way.. control pop to manage planet engages w colonial discourse of reproduction.. do these have to be mutually exclusive? does it have to be so b&w.. i understand your critique .. but am also concerned about the planet
1:31 – laura: i’m trying to draw connections between both approaches to reproduction.. both envision an idea of prosperity.. one with less and one with more people.. and the politics around this.. managed thru reproduction.. as what matters first.. this refusal to engage w the other side.. because cast as total opposite.. i’m trying to say.. there are similar aspirations here .. to maybe find common ground.. it’s about that will to improve.. living together in a sustainable way.. sustainability in both approaches.. when we do get down to b&w diff’s.. the agreements between get lost.. and that colonial legacy why people might be against one or other.. but when they clash they place responsibility on reproduction for improving things.. we need to step away from reproduction being the fix.. because then placed on young people and their reproduction becomes policed.. this idea of anticipation of danger is interesting.. so much calculation that goes on.. and the ways it connects ideas of what is to come.. at same time people are counting themselves.. so i think there’s other ways we can be counted
and other ways to stop counting..
literacy and numeracy both elements of colonialism/control/enclosure..
we need to calculate differently and stop measuring things
1:37 – (girl in front): on having no other options.. most people happy to join the army.. whether they know what it means or not (couldn’t hear her very well)
1:39 – (avi hard to understand now too)
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be you. 