Anarchic update news all over the world - 13.06.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  Rebeca Lane: Anarchist and feminist rap from Guatemala By
      ANA (pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  awsm.nz NZ: Solidarity With ‘Farmers' Workers
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  Greece, "Black & Red" [APO]: Solidarity gathering with the
      hunger strike of Dimitris Koufontina (gr) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #284 - Nuclear: June 16,
      for Bure we walk to Bar (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  Ruptura Colectiva (RC): Ethnography of the double Bind: A
      conversation with anarchist sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui
      -- Paulo Ilich Bacca (ca) [machine translation] 
     (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  wsm.ie: UK Supreme Court says north ban on abortion
      "incompatible" with Human Rights (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1






Violence and women are key themes in the rhymes of Guatemalan ragdoll Rebeca Lane, who is 
in Europe presenting her latest album, ' Obsidiana '. After his visit to Germany and 
Austria, he visits Spain this month. ---- by Judit Alonso ---- Rebeca Lane started singing 
in 2012 and has already released five albums: Canto, Poesía Poemía, Dulce Muerte, Mestiza 
Alma and Obsidiana . Nevertheless, his artistic career began earlier. "It was a natural 
step, I was already doing poetry that started to have more musicality, like hip hop, then 
I started rapping," he explained in an interview with Deutsche Welle because of his 
European tour that took him to several countries, including the Germany. ---- This is the 
fourth visit to the German country. "Since the first time I came there were plenty of 
people who knew my music in feminist and queer circles." The first time was in 2016. In 
2017 the singer visited Germany on two occasions and this year has been here again. 
Although it has already ascended to several scenarios of cities like Berlin and Frankfurt, 
in each new trip new cities are incorporated to the German script. One contributing factor 
is that "a label, Flofish, has already released two of my albums in Germany," he said.

Roots that mark letters

Lane conducted sociology studies at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala, during 
which he conducted research on urban cultures, including hip hop. "The social sciences are 
also to transform reality," he said. The studies, as well as his native ancestry by his 
mother, marked his musical career. "Being aware of having indigenous ancestry is a path 
that came through music," he explained, recalling that it is a process of understanding 
"our cultural heritage" and "rebuilding the roots, of looking back ". "In the Guatemalan 
case this ancestry is denied which names the European ancestors but not the previous 
ones," he lamented, stressing that "the family has lost its language." And is that "the 
fact of being indigenous implies that your living conditions are lower than the rest."

The situation of indigenous peoples in Guatemala has been criticized at the international 
level. Only a couple of weeks ago, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous 
Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, called the "failure of the State of Guatemala" the 
persistent and historic situation of discrimination against the indigenous population, a 
descendant of Mayan culture . "There are racist state policies criminalizing indigenous 
peoples," she said, recalling the killing of several community leaders last May due to 
their "resistance to megaprojects."

The discontent with the country's political situation, which has recently experienced a 
wave of demonstrations calling for the resignation of its president, Jimmy Morales, is 
also evident in the artist's rhymes. In the song ' Reina del Caos ', which deals with her 
experience as a feminist and anarchist, she denounces a country where social mobilization 
is criminalized. "If you have made many marches to go. Jimmy Morales only had three months 
in office when the cases of corruption came out, "he recalled.

Rhymes with commitment

Lane criticism that to make art and have spaces of promotion in Guatemala one should not 
talk about political reality and historical memory. An aspect that is reflected in ' 
Missing ', a song dedicated to his aunt, guerrilla and poet Rebeca Eunice Vargas 
Braghiroli, who is among the 45,000 people registered as missing by the Guatemalan army at 
the end of the Civil War in 1981. In America Central to hip hop culture reports the 
realities of societies, "he said.

Machismo, discrimination against women and violence are a recurring theme in his 
discography; is reflected in themes like ' This body is mine ' or ' Ni encerradas ni con 
miedo ', which collect personal experiences: for three years the rapper maintained a 
relationship with a man who mistreated her physically and psychologically. "It marked my 
life as a woman," he recalled in speaking of this experience.

Nonetheless, "hip hop, as a tool for expressing emotions, has allowed me to empower myself 
and to empathize with other women," he said. "The songs had their power, I did not think 
about the effect that would have," he assured. For this reason, I am now "more aware of 
what I write." Thus, in one of the songs of his last album, ' Siempre viva ', narrates the 
"types of violence that, through social networks, is exercised against women. It's a real 
kind of violence that scares you, "he added, lamenting what feminist websites have been 
forced to close after threats of assault or rape.

Likewise, their demands cross borders with the holding of empowerment workshops for women 
and musical collaborations with other artists in the region. Among them is the work with 
the Argentinean Vaioflow, with which he has carried out the theme ' Candles and Balas '. 
Centered on repression, the song documents two cases that shook public opinion last year 
in both countries: the tragedy of Guatemala 's Hogar Virgen da Asunción[orphanage], in 
which 40 youths were burned to death by a fire to protest against aggression physical and 
sexual suffering, and the death of Santiago Maldonado after the repression of the Mapuche 
communities in Argentina.

Source: http://www.dw.com/es/rebeca-lane-rap-anarquista-y-feminista-desde-guatemala/a-44071788

Translation> Sol de Abril

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Message: 2






Aotearoa Workers' Solidarity Movement (AWSM) offers its support and encouragement to 
workers at ‘Farmers' stores in Wellington and Auckland who are picketing today as the 
beginning of a nation-wide campaign over wage conditions.
We call on all workers and their organisations to publicise this issue and provide 
whatever solidarity actions or assistance they can.

An injury to one is an injury to all!

http://awsm.nz/2018/06/07/nz-solidarity-with-farmers-workers/

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Message: 3






On 30/05, Dimitris Koufodinas launched a hunger strike requesting him to regularly take 
the regular licenses he is entitled to and the abolition of the prosecution veto. Today 
(June 9th) is on the 11th day of the strike and has already been transferred to the 
hospital because he was exhausted and overwhelmed by previous hunger strikes. D. 
Koufodinas has been deprived of licenses for the last 7 years, as he has argued that the 
CoE has a distorted ideology and has not shown any remorse for his actions. In November 
2017, following pressures and actions of a Pan-Hellenic solidarity movement in the hunger 
strike of the same and the political prisoner, Kostas Gourna, he began to take regular 
licenses, but this was interrupted after the Athenian Pagan prosecutor intervened.

D. Koufodtina's case is one of many that demonstrates the repressive approaches of the 
state towards its political opponents: convictions without evidence, established 
dictionaries, uncontrolled use of DNA, annulment of court decisions, exemplary punishments 
for anarchists, deprivation of licenses, especially cells and special laws aim at moral 
and material extermination as well as the establishment of an exemption regime for 
political prisoners and social militants.

The SYRIZA / ANEL co-operation proves that the state has continued by extending the 
practices of the previous power administrators by upgrading its legal arsenal and 
endeavoring to consolidate repression and control in every social field. The 
criminalization of interventions in workplaces, the attempt to criminalize the trade union 
organization and actions with the persecution of members of the CCA of Athens, the 
abolition of the strike as a means of struggle with the implementation of the new 
polynomiogram and the "Social Alliance", the suppression of self-organized structures the 
attack of state and capital on the slaves.

In the above cases, anarchist convictions are added as "individual terrorists", leaving a 
legacy for the criminalization of belief, namely anarchist political identity, the 
conviction of M. Seisides in 36 years of imprisonment with the only evidence of a DNA 
sample, the imprisonment of Herannas and of Pericles on the basis of their social 
relations and a partial sample of genetic material and the appeal of the innocent decision 
for the anarchist communist Tassos Theofilos again with the intervention of the Supreme 
Court. Modern totalitarianism requires absolute harmonization of "democratic powers" for 
the crushing of political prisoners.

It is demonstrated through all these and so many other slanderous approaches, the dominant 
strategy of the state, characterized by vengeance towards anyone who is associated with 
struggles against the existing. The imposition of totalitarian regimes passes through the 
consolidation of social consensus and terrorism. Thus, the consolidation of repression in 
every social field and the diffusion of fear to level down all social and class resistance 
and to exterminate by all means those who fight are closely linked to the overall attack, 
economic, political and cultural, launched by the state and the capitalism against the 
social base.

As the crisis progresses, creating new deadlocks for the oppressed, the power 
administrators will try to curb our resistance with more control, repression, and fear. 
We, as anarchists, ought not to leave anyone alone in the hands of the state and to fight 
to break the fear and the status of the exception that is being attempted to be imposed on 
political prisoners .  Faced with state and capitalist barbarism, rage, and war, we set 
our collective resistances and solidarity among the oppressed and fight for a society of 
freedom, equality and solidarity for Anarchy and Liberal Communism!

SOLIDARITY IN THE DIFFRONT OF PEACE D. KOUFONTINA
     IMMEDIATE SATISFACTION OF ITS REQUESTS
MICROPHONE CONCENTRATION, TUESDAY 12/06, 18:30 KAMARA

Collectivism for Social Anarchism "Black & Coke "
| member of the Anarchist Political Organization

https://maurokokkino1936.wordpress.com/2018/06/08

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Message: 4





Mobilization continues against the Cigeo bin, a catastrophic solution for the 
non-management of nuclear waste. The Bar-le-Duc event promises to be a big date. AL will 
be ! ---- The fight against the Cigeo project to bury nuclear waste in Bure (Meuse) did 
not say its last word. After falling asleep and manipulating the population for twenty 
years through seduction campaigns and attractive subsidies, the state and the government 
have turned into brutality and unapologetic authoritarianism, just like what they are 
practicing against the whole social movement. ---- The demonstration of August 15, 2017 
was violently repressed and no less than 500 gendarmes expelled February 22, the dozens of 
opponents who occupied the wood Lejuc [1]. ---- The crackdown then intensified: 
surveillance, searches, intimidation, repeated identity checks, roadside checks, 
twenty-four to forty-eight hour police custody, administrative bans and imprisonment. 
After the weekend of mobilization and the intercom meetings of March 3 and 4, several 
people were arrested. Finally, on May 23rd, 11 " owls ", as the opponents call themselves, 
went on trial at Bar-le-Duc. A big fair was organized the same day to support them.

An alternative to burial
It is with stainless contempt that the state and the nucleocrats pursue the atomic 
colonization of the Meuse. A new bogus national debate was announced, and Nicolas Hulot 
told the National Assembly that this project was " the least bad solution ". On the 
contrary, the physicist Bernard Laponche clearly demonstrated, in an interview with the 
newspaper Le Monde, that the geological storage of nuclear waste was " the worst solution 
" by complicating the monitoring and maintenance of thousands of highly toxic barrels 
whose degradation is inescapable over the centuries. It recommends to store them in the 
medium term in " subsurface  », Where they will remain more easily accessible, and to 
continue research to reduce the harmfulness and the lifespan of the most dangerous nuclear 
waste [2].

On March 5, a prefectural decree authorized RTE, a subsidiary of EDF, to " enter the 
parcels located on the territory of the commune of Bure " for the purpose of " electrical 
connection of the project " [3]. Let's hope that these intrusions will exasperate the 
inhabitants and even the least conscious inhabitants.

Opposite, the dynamic of protest remains good. From the evening of the February 22 
eviction, dozens of local support committees gathered in front of the country's 
prefectures. We are also moving towards new ways of fighting. On May 18th, a call was made 
for the construction of tree houses to gain visibility. The next day a wrestling assembly 
was held at Montiers-sur-Saulx, near Bure.

The day of June 16 in Bar-le-Duc will be a great meeting, bringing together the protesters 
in all the diversity of their tactics. A morning to think, and the afternoon to act ! 
We'll meet you there !

Solid owls (AL Nancy)

[1] " To Bure as elsewhere, say no to nuclear peril, " AL release, February 22, 2018.

[2] Le Monde, March 28, 2018.

[3] " RTE invites himself into the fields and gardens of Meuse ! " On Vmc.camp, May 9, 2018.

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Nucleaire-Le-16-juin-pour-Bure-on-marche-a-Bar

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Message: 5





Ritualizing the Memory ---- It is a lively Tuesday in the second week of August 2016 in 
the city of La Paz, Bolivia, as I listen to the song Aylluman Kutiripuna (Let us return to 
the community) by Luzmila Carpio, a Quechua singer who upon facing the double bind of 
singing in Quechua, her mother tongue, or in Spanish, the ‘prevalent' language under the 
trend of Bolivia's modernization, decided to use the language of her ancestors. In such a 
tension, the prioritization of the indigenous side of this double bind is not 
unidirectional. Indeed, the indigenization turn that I am attempting to remark also 
results in the need to colour the Western tradition with the indigenous syntax, which is 
precisely what Carpio's artistic trajectory embodies. By strengthening the melodic ways of 
the Andes, she has projected her music as a political expression of rebellion against the 
overuniform model of cultural progress over first nations' own thinking in two 
complementary ways. Initially, Carpio composed children's music in Quechua as a way to 
keep alive the ancient Andean world training the mind of new generations for the future. 
Subsequently, she started to croon bilingual songs in order to remark on the 
potentialities of a heterogeneous society in which the indigenous legacy can bring about a 
‘creative adjustment' to the world inherited from colonialism.

While listening to music, I make the final preparations to interview Aymara sociologist 
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. After spending one month and a half in La Paz interacting with 
Rivera and El Colectivo, a self-organized group of cultural action and critique, she has 
agreed to converse with me about her work, intellectual trajectory, and political activism 
during the last four decades. As a prelude, the interview uses Rivera's course on 
sociology of the image, an epistemological proposal based on double-bound readings of 
Andean history. In this appraisal, the double bind between the memory of indigenous 
peoples and the records of official history is resolved in favour of what Rivera calls 
indigenous visualization. The ‘heuristic tool' of visualization is a sort of memory able 
to condense other senses beyond sight. Thus, while official history has been over 
determined by the visual, being anchored in both language mediation and data 
interpretation, visualization, by recovering senses of touch, smell, taste, hearing and 
movement, is able to decolonize memory, allowing not only for the expression of indigenous 
sources of knowledge themselves, but also the expansion of mainstream narratives. 
According to Rivera, it is an
attempt to project her own Aymara mode of thinking, termed ch'ixi epistemology, understood 
as an articulating agency of contradictions in which those histories that have been 
hidden, diminished, or forgotten come to the surface as a way to potentiate a dynamic 
dialogue between the contradictory forces.

Recalling Rivera's teachings, I had decided to ritualize our conversation with the help of 
Argentinian photographer Sandra Nicosia, who has kindly accepted to share her photographic 
memories for this interaction. Rivera usually performs a ritual before starting a new 
project-to ascertain her social and political responsibility with what will emerge from 
her writings or artistic interventions. I choose Luzmila Carpio's melodies to create a 
previous harmonizing effect because her work, as well as Rivera's, has been inspired by 
the inherent contradictions of the double bind between colonial impositions and indigenous 
resistance. In fact, as Spivak has sustained, Western tradition has prescribed the ‘proper 
terms' for conducting social interventions: ‘[i]t seemed that there was always an issue of 
controlling the other through knowledge production on our own terms, and ignoring, 
therefore, of the double bind between Europe as objective and subjective ground, judge and
defendant.' However, as Rivera and Carpio have shown in their work, the appropriations and 
reappropriations of the indigenous world to turn such impositions into something else are 
also unquestionable. Or, as Spivak has said, all philosophical traditions should resonate 
with each other as equals, just as all languages are equally able to prepare a child for life.

This harmonizing effect is accompanied by the reading of the poem ‘Tu Calavera' (Your 
Skull) by renowned Bolivian experimental poet Jaime Sáenz (1921-1986), who dedicated the 
piece to Rivera. In this poem, Sáenz refers to an old dream in which Rivera's skull 
appears. It is a reference to a pre-Inca cranium that Rivera considers her adoptive 
ancestor since a period of illness in which an indigenous healer (yatirí) announced an 
antidote to the disease: Rivera would have to return the skull to its place of origin or 
welcome it as a member of her family. Rivera took the second option and named it Jáquima 
after the finding of a set of documents of her maternal family in the United States during 
the seventies. Rivera managed to recover these papers from her uncle's house, being made 
aware not only of her family genealogy but also the traces of a deep colonial history. 
Indeed, those documents tell the story of the Indian who first declared that he witnessed 
the arrival of the Spaniards to Cuzco, the Inca capital. He returned to Pacajes, a 
province in the central Bolivian highlands, and was executed by his indigenous fellows, 
who considered him a traitor. The descendant of this legendary character, genealogically 
related to the
Cusicanqui family, was an indigenous woman named Jáquima and that is why Rivera baptized 
her skull with this name. Finally, leaving my hotel in downtown La Paz, I decide to take a 
walk echoing one of the main sources of indigenous knowledge, which is intertwined with 
ancestral territories as a way of remembering indigenous cosmologies and laws: I go to the 
Basilica of San Francisco set in the historic heart of La Paz and built over an ancient 
sacred place where indigenous peoples render cult to their divinities (wak'a), and where, 
even now, indigenous social movements routinely meet after their mobilizations (see Figure 
1.1). Then, I walk through the Mariscal Santa Cruz Avenue, a central street that leads to 
a corner from which
it is possible to see the Illimani, the highest mountain in the Cordillera Real and one of 
the main geographical and cosmological referents of the Aymaras-the people to which Rivera 
belongs (see Figure 1.2). Thus, I feel that I can be closer to Rivera's work, always 
enriched by the double bind between her own indigenous sources and Western epistemological 
frameworks.

Figure 1.1 Basilica of San Francisco, La Paz, Bolivia.
Courtesy of Sandra Nicosia (P.Bacca)

Figure 1.2 Illimani, seen from La Paz, Bolivia.
Courtesy of Sandra Nicosia (P.Bacca)

A Double-Bound Indigeneity

Evoking the life and work of Gamaliel Churata (1897-1969), a Peruvian novelist and 
philosopher who skilfully mastered the double bind between European avant-garde (taking 
the foundations of critical Western philosophy seriously) and Latin American indigenism 
(assessing the contribution of Andean cosmologies with particular emphasis in the 
conceptual richness of the Quechua and Aymara languages), my conversation with Rivera 
began by exploring the double bind between indigenous and non-indigenous identity. Talking 
about indigeneity with Rivera is to speak of the impossibility of resolving the paradox of 
being simultaneously indigenous and non-indigenous. Rivera recounted growing up in an 
environment where the understanding of Aymara language is a spontaneous experience: ‘I 
grew up in La Paz and there were two women who took care of the home. They spoke Aymara 
all the time and one of them took care of me and while holding me in her aguayo 
(multicoloured woollen cloth) would tell me stories. Somehow, I was bilingual by means of 
my sense of hearing - I could not speak but I was very familiar with the sounds of Aymara 
(there was a lot of onomatopoeia). I was eight-years-old when
she passed away and I felt an orphan since then; indeed, my mother was never able to 
"replace" this woman.'

According to Rivera, her instinctive appreciation of the Aymara world was the legacy she 
received during that moment of her childhood. She related that period with a lot of 
affection since it shaped her temperament and determined her vocation for Andean 
cosmologies as well as her spiritual connection with Aymara mythical beings such as the 
fox and the condor. However, Rivera noted that this ‘learning curve' has always been an 
unfinished process, indeed, a practice of life that is always to come: she was around 
sixteen when she began taking Aymara lessons, but feels that she does not speak the 
language well and is in an unending process of learning. Interestingly, Rivera's 
conclusions regarding this route are inextricably connected with the possibility of 
developing the social sciences using a double bind logic.

In Rivera's view, behind the physical elimination of Aymara amawt'as (philosophers) and 
yatiris (healers) during the fifteenth century Spanish conquest of the Americas, lies the 
‘spiritual' annihilation of the philosophical uses of the Aymara language. The amawt'as 
were murdered, while the yatiris hid their knowledge cryptically and syncretized it with 
Catholic religious elements in order to survive. Thus she considers it necessary almost to 
reinvent the words' philosophical meaning by taking into consideration their metaphorical 
senses in daily life. And this is precisely what Rivera has done in her unparalleled work: 
departing from the pragmatic use of Aymara words, she has been ‘scratching' their 
allegorical connotation in order to project a philosophical reflection based on indigenous 
sources of knowledge. In so doing, Rivera is working with an Aymara idiosyncratic 
translation of what Spivak has termed concept-metaphors, that is to say, the possibility 
of unveiling the deep philosophical roots of expressions that tend to remain unnoticed for 
most anthropologists and ethnographers although they are fundamental in day-to-day 
indigenous activities.

The metaphorization of daily-life concepts is inherent to the polysemous character of 
Aymara language and, it is by using this polyphony that Rivera has been working with the 
contradiction (located at the very heart of double bind logics) as an epistemological tool 
to explain indigenous social realities. One of Rivera's key concept-metaphors is 
encapsulated in the Aymara concept of the ch'ixi. Rivera told me: I have reinvented the 
practicality of this concept by exploring its allegorical and epistemological power. 
‘Pragmatically, ch'ixi is the stained sheep, the spotted toad, the smudged snake. It is a 
descriptor, a keyword; however, its most abstract and philosophical dimension has not been 
developed and this is because after the assassination of the amawt'as and yatiris in 
colonial times, the language has been impoverished by the translations conducted by 
priests such as Ludovico Bertonio (1557-1625) and Domingo de Santo Tomás (1499-1570), who 
have expurgated Aymara concepts and ideas that were incomprehensible to them, subsequently 
removing the philosophical potential of indigenous languages'. In an interview given to 
Francisco Pazzareli, Rivera explained that the ch'ixi as a concept-metaphor, embodies the 
quintessence of an Aymara double bind, namely, a decolonial gesture to work with the 
contradiction as a way of moving between opposite worlds. Thus, for instance, the snake is 
not only ch'ixi for being spotted but also for being an Aymara mythical animal who is 
undetermined in cosmological terms: it belongs to both the world above and the world 
below, it is both masculine and feminine, it is both rain and a vein of metal, it is 
symbolized both as lightning striking from a great height and as a subterranean force. And 
this is precisely the way in which Rivera traces the epistemological signs of Aymara 
cosmologies within the contemporaneity of a modern Bolivia that is indigenous and 
non-indigenous at the same time.

By challenging the official discourse, according to which the colonization of the Americas 
supposed the harmonious mestizo fusion of European and indigenous cultures (in which 
Western imaginaries overlay indigenous cosmologies), Rivera projects a reverse process of 
analysis in which indigenous cosmologies are capable of indigenizing Western imaginaries. 
In so doing, Aymara cosmologies endow Western narratives with a new throbbing immediacy by 
taking the threads of indigenous laws and weaving them in their own modern way. This does 
not occur following the mestizo logic of fusion but by making reference to paradoxical 
structures as the inspiration of a double-bound reasoning. When I asked Rivera if she is 
indigenous and non-indigenous at the same time, her response was categorical: ‘of course, 
being indigenous is a becoming. It is not an identity, it is a search'. Rivera's 
reflections range from the personal to the methodological and from the epistemological to 
the collective. She once described herself, during our interactions, as an ‘abajista'-a 
Spanish term that she uses in opposition to the ‘arriviste spirit' that characterizes the 
Bolivian upper middle class. Indeed, belonging to an upper middle-class family, Rivera 
never expected to join the ‘elite' but rather to become an urban Aymara woman.

According to the Argentinian intellectual Verónica Gago, Rivera refers to herself as a 
‘non-identified ethnic object', and has also reclaimed the labelsochologist (fusing the 
word sociologist with chola, Bolivian term for an urbanized Aymara woman), a term once 
used to discredit her. She similarly plays with the termbirchola (combining chola 
withbirlocha, a name for women whose dress indicates upper class aspirations, and were 
among the social categories that Rivera investigated in El Alto, the indigenous-dominated 
city above La Paz. Gago sees these amusing word plays as simultaneously a merciless 
critique against the essentialization of the indigenous. She quotes from a conference 
address by Rivera: ‘We are all Indians as colonized peoples. Decolonizing one's self is to 
stop being Indian and to become people. People is an interesting word because it is said 
in very different ways in different languages.'

The idiosyncratic way of displaying an indigenous becoming is not only an asset for Rivera 
but also an indigenous performative act that can be seen in different practices of the 
Aymara mind-set. A central Aymara principle that passed from Rivera's personal experiences 
to her methodological endeavours is captured in the possibility of reading Western sources 
using Aymara rationalities. Thus, for instance, Rivera's work clearly demonstrates the 
principle of selectivity with which Andean communities transform Western properties such 
as Spanish grammar/syntax and classical European ways of dressing, as well as the 
epistemological parity demanded in indigenous social struggles (see Figure 1.3). She told 
me, ‘I read in a fragmentary and selective way, from my point of view, you have to put 
what is lacking in an author[...]and furthermore the different philosophical traditions 
should be placed on an equal footing[...]that is to say that the words of an indigenous 
sage are connected with an inherited collective knowledge-they have an intellectual 
genealogy and you do not have to put them as ethnographical data separated from theory. 
Rather, I believe we have to engage in a dialogue between philosophical and theoretical 
conceptions of the world'.

In this way, not only are indigenous epistemological tools capable of nurturing collective 
experiences, as is indeed the case with Aymara cosmologies, but also Western systems of 
knowledge can resonate in a comparable way with indigenous cosmological frameworks. This 
synergy vividly appeared in the course of a face-to-face interaction between Rivera and 
Spivak, in the context of Rivera's simultaneous translation of a conference presented by 
her Indian comrade in La Paz. Gago recounts that in so doing Rivera showcased the 
undiscipline of the text and of linear translation. Finding no Spanish translation for 
Spivak's term double bind, Rivera instead came up with an exact equivalent in Aymara: 
pächuyma, which means having the soul divided by two mandates that are impossible to 
fulfil.' Rivera says that these translation exercises reveal that all words are being 
questioned today: ‘This is a sign of Pachakutik, of a time of change.' Talking with Rivera 
spontaneously about this event, she told me that most people in the audience were Aymara 
speakers, which alerted her to the convenience of translating the idea of the double bind 
to Aymara rather than Spanish. On the spur of the moment and without any kind of previous 
preparation, Rivera began to talk about the pä chuyma in Aymara, explaining to the public 
what Spivak had said. Spivak, double-bind-thinker par excellence, immediately incorporated 
the Aymara double-bind-pä chuyma in her own English speech, which according to Rivera was 
a very sympathetic gesture: ‘Spivak once told me that she makes theory with the guts, so 
she fully understood' (we laugh). Rivera continued explaining to me that the Aymara have a 
three-way logic: something can be and not be at the same time, which is tantamount to the 
possibility of having an included third-completely at odds with Aristotelian logic. ‘I 
think that is what makes possible such a compatibility with Gayatri. She also thinks that 
one needs to live with the pä chuyma, that it is necessary to coexist with the 
contradiction, and that the contradiction must be converted into a purposeful referent 
rather than an obstacle to the subject's integrity. For Bateson, the contradictory subject 
is schizophrenic, and it is a collective schizophrenia that produces a sort of paralysis. 
Instead, for Spivak, the contradictory subject embodies an incomparable creative power', 
Rivera added.

http://rupturacolectiva.com/ethnography-of-the-double-bind-a-conversation-with-anarchist-sociologist-silvia-rivera-cusicanqui/

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Message: 6





Somewhat good news in the struggle for abortion provision in the north, the courts may 
refuse to act but grassroots activists are taking to the streets on Sunday. Pressure 
continues to build following the successful Repeal campaign in the south to introduce 
abortion law reform north of the border. Join Alliance for Choice as part of the 
Processions march on June 10th, Titanic Slipways at 12 noon. ---- An emergency debate was 
held in Westminster on Tuesday where Labour MP, Stella Creasy was pushing for sections 58 
and 59 of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act to be repealed. These sections in the 
OAPA are what criminalises the use of the abortion pills, mifepristone and misoprostol. 
There was clear support for the bill, with only some Tory and SNP MPs insisting that 
Westminster should not interfere in devolved issues. While there was some anti-choice 
opposition, most notably by the DUP who remain as out of touch as ever, pro-choice 
campaigners have viewed this as a victory.

The Supreme Court has deemed the current ban on abortion in cases of rape, incest, and 
fatal foetal abnormality to be "incompatible" with Human Rights, however the case has been 
rejected as the NI Human Rights Commission did not have the right standing to bring the 
case forward.
While the case has been thrown out this should be viewed as another win due to the judges' 
statement on the human rights incompatibility. This will add further pressure to 
Westminster to intervene as while abortion is a devolved issue, human rights issues are not.

Now is the time to continue the pressure. A large pro-choice bloc will form the 
Processions event commemorating 100 years since some women got the vote this Sunday.

Whether Westminster acts is not clear, what is clear is that grassroots activists will 
keep up the pressure.

Author: Fionnghuala Nic Roibeaird

https://wsm.ie/c/supreme-court-north-ban-abortion-incompatible-human-rights

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