(M)oral Execution

I am sometimes asked to name the books that changed me.  One eye-opener was a novel that took place in a British mining community – far away from the safe conditions of my childhood.  The story led to an interest in mines and in narratives about the lives of miners.  Another book that gave me new and decisive perspectives was Perry Andersson’s groundbreaking study of the transition from antiquity to feodalism, which looked at the rise and fall of the Roman Empire through the lens of the slaves’, their work and their history.  Normally, the history we read is about those in power: historical periods are divided into the ruling terms of kings and emperors.  Often, we need an alternate voice in order to hear the stories of the oppressed.

El Negro, the novel by Dutch writer Frank Westerman, pinpoints precisely this issue.  In 1983, a nineteen-year-old Westerman stands in front of a human on display in a museum of natural history in the Spanish village Banyoles.  A human who most likely was killed and flayed in order to be mounted for an exhibition.  The sign says “Bushman from Kalahari,” but a postcard of the man says “Bechuana,” which is the name for a member of the Tswana people, the largest ethnic group in Botswana.  Which one of these names is the correct one?  Where is the man actually from? The uncertainty about his background makes the man a dissolved individuaal, his personality and the memory of his past have been taken from him.  The villagers call him El Negro, nothing else.  The meeting with this objectified man affects the choices Frank Westerman makes about his life: he understands that going into tropical farming techniques, which he had been planning to do, will mean that he will need to take a stand on racial issues and struggles.

The theme for this issue of 00tal is “The Right to Narrate,” and in the issue we introduce Frank Westerman to a Swedish audience with the opening chapter of El Negro en ik. We also introduce Alexis Wright with the essay “On Writing [her novel] Carpentaria”. Carpentaria is about the indigenous people of Australia, the Aborigines, which Alexis Wright belongs to.  In different ways, both Wright and Westerman function as voices for people who have been denied the right to narrate.  This concept is essential for the postcolonial thinker Homi Bhabha, who states that the right to narrate is an ethical and essential foundation for actually producing a narrative. 

In our opening essay, “The Hierarchy of Narratives,” Stefan Helgesson investigates the concept of a right to narrate.  He writes that narrative allowes us to surpass the boundaries of our own individuality.  “We become a part of a shared narrative space and come into contact with the diversity of the past and present.”  A story does not just presuppose that freedom of speech exists, but also presupposes a reader or a listener.  Stories also function as an aesthetic of resistance against those in power, who occupy themselves with the construction of facts, while the unrestrained freedom of fiction show us that facts can be redefined. 

In many countries, freedom of speech is extremely restricted: Iran, China, Vietnam, Colombia, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Nigeria, Algeria, Turkey – the list could become very long.  Journalists and writers are imprisoned or murdered in totalitarian states and people’s lives are restricted or restrained by prejudice and religious (fundamentalist) laws, or criminal gangs working for the government.  00tal has sought out places where politics, aesthetics, and ethics form explosive unions.  The women’s rights activist and this year’s Olof Palme Prize winner, Parvin Adalan, writes about when she was prevented from traveling to Sweden to accept the award and how she continues her work for the One Million Signatures Campaign.  In another article, Haideh Daragahi and Arne Ruth depict the history of the Iranian feminist movement, which has worked against gender apartheid in Iran for over a century.  At the same time, they critizise the organised feminist movement in Sweden and other Western countries, since they have so far avoided supporting feminist movements in developing countries.  They claim this passivity comes from ideas about fundamental dissimilarities between people, in a misguided desire to protect the right of the other to be different.

Annina Rabe has interviewed Laura Restrepo, Colombian author, journalist, and political activist, who is driven by the journalist’s desire for truth and by the will to narrate the brutal history of her country.  Restrepo claims Colombia is not a nation, that it has dissolved, torn apart by an endless civil war, the high prevalence of crime, and North American corruption.  Her life has been threatened many times, which is an everyday occurrence for Colombians fighting for democracy.  In Colombia, more journalists, artists, teachers, union leaders and intellectuals are murdered every year than anywhere else in the world.

In Europe, the people of Belarus also long for democracy.  Henrik C. Enbohm has interviewed the author Barys Pjatrovitj, who edits the only independent literary magazine in Belarus.  He claims the contemporary literature of his country is among the most remarkable in Eastern Europe, but that it is also one of the least known.  In Belarus, everything written in Belarusian is considered to be written in opposition to the establishment, authors who write in Belarusian are prevented from participating in readings, and their works, even those that are considered classics, are taken off the schools’ literature lists.

The right to narrate is closely intertwined with the right to read.  Close to a billion people in the world cannot read or write, and even more people live with different forms of censorship or suppression of free expression.  But oral narratives cannot be imprisoned, and neither can songs.  Despite everything else, the freedom of narrative gives us, as Stefan Helgesson writes, an ethical response to a history of injustice.  “If you do not fit into one of  pre-prepared cast of narratives, you can speak for yourself.”  And those who do not fit into a literary canon can do the same.

In the West, literature has been reduced to a popularised commodity.  Trends, entertainment, and quick sales appear to be the salient values of books today.  But literature should never be reduced to a marketable product, as if it were a bag of chips.  Literature can be a source of knowledge with the power to change and the ability to open our eyes.  Literature can be a transmitter, like in Mia Couto’s lovely short story “The Letter,” where the interpreter of the letter uses the fluid freedom of imagination to narrate and to transmit deep compassion and love.  Literature could work likea link between people about human and moral values that we have to conquer and defend together.

This issue of 00tal is published in conjunction with the international conference Waltic – the Value of Words, which is arranged together with the Swedish Writer’s Union, with visiting authors and translators from all over the world.  The purpose is to create a global platform for writers and translators, in order to promote international solidarity and strengthen freedom of speech.  The themes include literacy, freedom of speech, digitization, and intercultural dialogue.  00tal participates through our arrangement of an event open to the public, connected with the conference, at the Stockholm Public Library on July 1st with readings and conversations between foreign and Swedish writers on the right to narrate. 

Translation: Vendela Engblom