left of centre
alex dodd about to spew chlorinated water into aryan kaganof’s right ear
it was the weirdest thing, i got invited by alex dodd to take part in a panel discussion at wits university. it was part of a conference about democracy and the media. i don’t know anything about either of those hot potatoes, but i could not say “no” to the money that was being shelled out to entice my participation. apparently the joe schmos were paying seven hundred and fifty rand to attend this conference and these must be people who are earning good bacon to afford such a price to listen to little old ladies kibbitz about democracy and the media. well anyway, to the left of me on the night of my panel discussion is the very dignified lebo mashile who steals the show by performing a poem of much magnitude and not a little length and doing so without forgetting a single word or missing her timing or any other similar misdemeanour and i can honestly report that lebo deserves all the moolah she is getting paid on this evening, whereas to the left of her rian malan does nothing other than mumble all evening and maybe that’s his schtick but it is a pretty incomprehensible schtick to me so i say come on rian give back the money: you don’t deserve to get paid to mumble all evening you deserve to get the phone number of a speech therapist and make an appointment with such therapist as of yesterday. there is also bongani madondo at the table who makes a deep impression on all of us at the panel discussion by demanding that black men stop with the raping already. there is a general gasp in the audience at bongani’s verve meanwhile
alex dodd herself is drinking out of the bonaqua bottled water bottle that is on the table in front of each of us panelists and she spews the contents of her mouthful all over and into my right ear and screams “chlorine!” and yes it is true that the plastic bottle is filled with chlorinated water. whilst all other bottled waters apparently get their supply of h20 from natural springs underground, the coca cola company who own bonaqua fill their plastic bottles up in the swimming pools of their northern suburbs shareholders. fact. meanwhile somebody in the audience mentions that joburg throbs with humanity. rian mumbles “i’m running on last night’s fuel” (i can hear that because it is a quote and he seems to mumble quotes more distinctly). all this talk about democracy and the media makes me acutely aware that outside this little haven of intellectual debate there is gridlocked traffic all the way home because none of the robots are working because there’s no electricity because dizzy mbeki fired all the white people at eskom who actually knew what they were doing. a girl in the front row not wearing any panties gradually lets her skirt slip up over her knees, i can read her lips, they are saying “let’s go back to my place and do some load shedding together”. alex says of rian, “the brilliant thing he’s done is change his mind”. how would anyone know? it’s all mumble mumble mumble from our traitor’s tongue. rian replies to this backhanded compliment, “i’m not really an intellectual i’m only here to serve truth.” the only time he is ever audible is when it’s a one-liner, he’s mastered the art of the sound byte, he could teach old dizzy mbeki a thing or two. bongani starts up with his unrelenting disavowal of punk status. he claims that boring is radical and tax payers are hip. it’s rian again, “i had 15 minutes of infamy then i sold my house”. suddenly i figure out what rian and david bullard have in common: conservative liberals are all publicity whores. alex calls me an ex-pornographer. i take umbrage to this. i’m not an ex- anything. the enemy is the ascription of identity, it’s all representational tyranny here at wits, the intellectual blackhead on top of a culture in denial.
alex barks out into the audience, “i don’t want to be told by you that i’m in denial”. well exactly, that’s the problem with so-called democracy and the media. nobody wants to hear the truth anyway, so what’s the point of it all? bongani says “i’m interested in the currency of the margins”, but who defines the margins? why let them be defined by the mainstream? actually the truth is that joburg is a money-driven slut and when the chinese come we will all speak mandarin. rian receives a letter from someone in the audience saying that no one can understand a word he’s saying. instead of articulating his words more clearly he becomes even more vague. that’s very vague believe me. sanza pancho in the audience gets up and spends about 7 minutes complaining vaguely about how vague the evening’s been. “I agree with all those in denial” and “blacks feel pity for themselves” are the two smart bits that don’t get mangled by his faux rasta drawl. then it’s lebo’s turn to summarize the evening, “whether you get described as in or out you always need courage”. a round of heartfelt applause. she’s very centred and delivers her poem from the volcanic core of her muse. “apartheid was kak but it made things easy, who’s the enemy now? this is a country that doesn’t have an emotional vocabulary.” she’s a very smart woman. a smart person even. as everybody files out of the origins centre to go snack on prawns and sushi it strikes me that the left really got left behind and the centre is you, wherever you are.
l-r: alex dodd, aryan kaganof, lebo mashile, bongani madondo and rian malan (mumbling)
February 18th, 2008 at 1:12 am
touche
what about you
where are you
surely not
left of your centre.
February 18th, 2008 at 7:14 am
spot on, aryan!
for added confirmation of your analysis see the conference organiser’s muddled defence of the event in this friday’s M&G -
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?articleid=332409&area=/insight/insight__comment_and_analysis/
“asserting the importance for democracy of citizens participating in public life, papers coming out of different projects drew attention to a range of circumstances and conditions that make citizens and, still more sharply, non-citizens, hesitant and uncertain about speaking out, unsure about the ethical grounds from which to speak truth to power”
how they love that phrase - “speaking truth to power” - speaking through a mouthful of sushi.
February 18th, 2008 at 8:20 am
The conference was entitled: “Paradoxes of the Postcolonial Public Sphere: South African Democracy at the Crossroads”.
Debate was centred around “the public sphere”, a concept pretty much coined by Jurgen Habermas in the mid-1960s, embraced by liberal lefties everywhere, and bandied about as a “given” - a defining and vital aspect of every “democratic” “society”. What happened at the conference was interrogation of the actual/possible existence of such a normative and/or descriptive thing as “the public sphere” or “public spheres”, or “counter-publics” with “free, rational-critical agents interacting” blah blah etc (please google Habermas), and also of the usefulness of any such definition/s in describing current conditions… which led to alternative conceptions being debated… yada yada yada.
It was deep. It bent my head to sit there, having last been in such an intensely charged academic atmosphere about 7 years ago. At the same time it was exhilarating and inspiring to be among people from many different disciplines, not all of them academics, attempting genuinely to engage and grapple with issues beyond jargon. Refracted through the wide range of lenses of those present, some fresh and valuable ideas did crystallise over the four days.
You can read Carolyn Hamilton’s observations of some of what transpired here:
http://www.public-conversations.org.za/_pdfs/ap_hamilton_paper.pdf
Whether these momentous ideas go anywhere immediately useful to the so-called “general public” on the ground depends on how they are engaged by the people who were present there in their everyday work. Terry Kurgan’s current project, ‘Hotel Yeoville’, working with immigrants and refugees in inner-city internet cafes, seemed to me to be one such place that they would have direct and vigorous applicability. I certainly feel burdened with urgent responsibility to find ways of applying the insights I gained myself as a result of attending the conference.
As to your own relevance to the conference…
Media orchestrate and perpetuate spaces of public deliberation. Even though these spaces are idealised as “democratic” and “free”, the conditions under which they come into being paradoxically preclude this. Debate is always framed. The “mainstream” does define the “margins”; it relegates debates that don’t fit into its parameters to “marginal”/”outsider” status. There was discussion of whether there were any spaces for public deliberation in existence that were not necessarily dictated to by official discourse and framed in these official ways. This is a hugely important question worldwide, and clearly also has immediate salience in this country right now with the dubiety of the SABC.
Where I think your relevance as a panelist came in was in talking about blogs as one potential area where public interaction is not necessarily governed and framed by centralised, prescriptive terms… (well, unfettered, that is, in a so-called “democracy” where “freedom of speech” is enshrined in the constitution – cf. your links to bloggers in Iran and China for whom it is a struggle every day to maintain an independent presence). In a sense, every blog can be its own “youniverse”, evolving organically without heed for any imposed definition - of “counter-public”, “subaltern”, “marginal”, “left/right” status etc. - so that, as you put it, “the center *is* you, wherever you are”, not labeled by or defined in relation to some thing other. I know this possibility is exciting and important to you, and that here on the Kagablog you have been watching such a space evolve with fascination. You have been orchestrating and fostering participation in this space, and I think whoever invited you to be on that panel noticed and appreciated that too. It wasn’t “the weirdest thing” at all!
February 18th, 2008 at 8:39 am
but, yes, i agree with your analysis of the free for all free-for-all evening session where you participated. i just wanted to qualify the diameter of your slating of the conference. from my observations, having actually been there, that evening was not representative of what went on during the days. whenever you introduce the variable of wine before a discussion, you get vaguaries or bombast… or boredom and annoyance, from those who know there will be platters of obscenely expensive snacky treats and more booze for them when it ends (i usually fall into the last category)! i think the cost of the conference was criminally high - and it was mostly on account of sublimely ridiculous catering excesses. this pissed me off, and also made me stuff my face at every opportunity to try and recoup some of the moolah.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:47 am
i like your t-shirt.
February 18th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Aryan is either writing
“about to spew chlorinated water into Aryan Kaganof’s right ear” or
falling asleep or
both
February 18th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Is that really alex dod?
February 18th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Why do I think you quite clearly enjoyed Alex Dodd’s baptism of your ear, Aryan?
February 20th, 2008 at 11:46 am
god.i’m soooo glad you managed not to kill yourself…