critical theory from below & to the left | 4 essays by Yásnaya Aguilar examined by Antijuras and Carlos Arroyo
«To think that it is possible, not necessarily to reconcile the dynamics "with the State or against the State", but even "without the State..."»
ANTIJURAS: Welcome everybody to the last session of our seminar. Welcome to Critical Theory from Below & to the Left. Today we have a conglomerate of theory involving interesting categories waiting to be examined. We are going to talk about a person that we love very much in the taller, someone we admire a lot. Her oeuvre seems to us of great clarity and light to grasp the problems that we contemporaneously face; her essays aid us as we try to confront this whole system that has us, well - with a boot over our necks. The author I am referring to is Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil.
As a brief introduction, I share with you the following. I took the biography from the UNAM film library, which states:
"Yásnaya Aguilar is a writer, linguist, translator, researcher, and activist originally from Ayutla Mixe, Oaxaca. She obtained a degree in Hispanic Language and Literature, as well as a Masters in Linguistics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Her work is strongly focused on the dissemination and study of linguistic diversity and native languages at risk of disappearing in Mexico. Her participation in projects enforcing the development of grammatical content for educational materials in indigenous languages is very noteworthy. She has collaborated in publications such as Letras Libres, Nexos, El País, Este País, Gatopardo - among others.
She is part of the COLMIX collective, a group that carries out research activities and dissemination of Mixe culture. Besides, Yásnaya collaborates with the Juan Córdoba Research Library in Oaxaca and writes the blog #Ayuujk."
And well, she has left us orphans on Twitter for a few months now. And now if you want to introduce yourself, Carlos?
CARLOS: Yes, I think it's great to be here to talk about the work of Yásnaya Aguilar, whom I have so much respect for. It seems to me that these discussions are rather important. I am Carlos Arroyo, I work conducting research on indigenous autonomy processes occurring in central Mexico, especially in the state of Querétaro. Would you like to introduce yourself?
ANTIJURAS: Let's say I'm Antijuras, I'm part of the Ahuehuete, and I'm a cashier.
I really like to read, in order to try to grasp what is happening in this world we are living in.
So let's start with something interesting, if you think it's okay, we could begin by discussing Yásnaya’s essay, "Us Without Mexico"? It seems like a perfect place to start.
Press CC to activate English subtitles. Total duration of video: 9:18 minutes.
CARLOS: In these sessions, we’ll study three texts by Yásnaya Aguilar, which are:
"Us without Mexico", published in nexos in May 2018;
"Validation as Capture," published in El País in April 2020;
"The linguistic is political", published in "tierradentro" in 2014.
And, in the end, there would be four texts if we take into account the latter:
"May no God remember your name", published in El País in 2020.
In "Us without Mexico", it seemed to me that the most prescient element is the criticism through comparison of the different structures found in the Nation-State.
In this text, Yásnaya recounts an exchange she had with the Chilean journalist... or, rather, Mapuche journalist, Pedro Cayuqueo. Here, Cayuqueo asks Yásnaya about the EZLN slogan:
"Never again a Mexico without us"
Cayuqueo says that this slogan surprises him because precisely what the Mapuche movement wants in [the territory known as] Chile is not to achieve inclusion into the Chilean nation-state, but rather autonomy, separation.
From that exchange, Yásnaya proposes that perhaps the slogan should be adjusted from "Never Again A Mexico Without Us" instead, to "Us Without Mexico". Which, for her, would mean transcending the structure of the nation-state and transforming forms of organization to go beyond it, to become something else.
Perhaps to get to what she refers to as no longer being "indigenous", but simply being, in her case, "Mixes". What do you think of that text?
ANTIJURAS: I believe that through this text it was the first time I was introduced to Yásnaya. I heard it while at a seminar held at "El CIDECI UNI-Tierra", in Chiapas. She read it there, this essay, and at that moment my head exploded. It made it so clear for me and helped me to understand that there are, really, other ways of thinking. That we can go beyond the idea of what kind of relationship we want with the State, and consider instead that one can think outside the state.
Realizing that our options aren’t limited to “with the State” or “against the State” but we could consider, rather, that one can proceed without the State.
We’ve spoken a lot about this internally. I have always had an affinity for anarchist thought, and this text made me very interested, it allowed me to gather new ways of approaching the State issue. And by this I mean, ways that are not canonical within the libertarian movement. So this dynamic, to be doing a historical reading and later to come to the conclusion that the entire construction of the Mexican nation is fiction. And not a harmless, or naïve fiction, but a fabricated notion that oppresses, and that denies, and that functions through implementing devastation.
I found it very powerful as a tool to contemplate the system of oppression: primarily of racism in Mexico. But also for other latitudes, in my case, I am currently not based in Mexico. As a migrant, I realize that these forms of oppression can be understood on a different scale, with different levels of brutality. But they can, in turn, be comprehended within this historical construction of a nation-state in the light of everything else, which is not part of the official discourse of what this state actually is.
And a nation-state that also makes up stories employing its own speech. For me, that is another important point in this essay. It shows how even from the official narrative itself you end up realizing that there is something missing in this fictional historiographic retelling the State force-feeds: that this very idea of the nation-state, of "Mexico" is false.
CARLOS: Yes, what she does there – it seems to me, a very important criticism – in line with what several theorists have already said as well: Yásnaya criticizes the fundamental manufacture of the nation-state. She tells us that it is inoperable. She says this in line with the research by Mahmood Mamdani, who writes that the state is not equivalent to a nation. And in the case of Mexico, the fiction of the nation, which was built from that state, erases the rest that lives within the same territory. So, the state, which is constituted as an apparatus that protects the country’s patrimony, in reality, is an apparatus that subjugates those it refuses to recognize.
ANTIJURAS: Yes, I think these are interesting concepts. To begin with, her conceptualization of nation: she doesn't equate it to the nation as we currently understand. But rather, to this mixture, let's say - this more anthropological concept - of "nation".
This concept is constituted by:
a language,
a people,
a culture,
a common history.
And not so much this amalgam of the so-called nation-state, which comprises many cultures and peoples that were destined to become a single homogeneous entity, which is the blueprint of the republic as a nation-state.
CARLOS: Yes, I think, based on these ideas, there is important criticism of neoliberal multiculturalism. And Yásnaya proposes the idea of the plurinational state as opposed to the neoliberal multiculturalist model within a polity.
In other words, that would be to transcend the "validation" of cultures, that of the "indigenous" as "cultures", to begin to think of them as nations. And by thinking of them as nations, we would have to transcend the figure of the State.
ANTIJURAS: To clarify [my previous comment], Yásnaya understands nation as "language, territory, and common past". In this case, she problematizes and understands that - for example - in the Sierra of Oaxaca, Mixes and Zapotecs can coexist in the high zone of the Sierra Mixe. And they are distinct nations, at the same time sharing territory and a common past – but this is only recent. Before, they were nations in dispute.
And I think that is another of many beautiful attributes Yásnaya’s oeuvre contributes through her essays: the ability to make our discussions more complex. She incites us to get out of the implied oversimplification; that is to say, instead of the normative discourse involving the following argument:
«Mexico» is a "nation-state", we are a nation and we have to aim towards the construction of more optimal environment. Towards a different reality";
we should opt for:
"yes, all the people that were included within the territory of the Mexican State deserve to live with dignity, and achieve the most favorable living conditions within the material constraints. But... we are not a nation"
And this can be confronted. And we can admit that it is not so simple because there are certain underlying factors that need to be problematized. Factors that lead to how the people who struggle – those who try to confront capital, the State, the status quo, etc., encounter problems among themselves because certain aspects that arise from our fundamental struggles have not been problematized yet. These do not come out [to the light] until a conflict arises, thus manifesting unequal footing.
And this does not result in a collective struggle of resistance among equals, but rather as struggle among different subjects resisting. We are then compelled to understand ourselves as equals within the difference, without hiding this distinction as if we were something somewhat homogeneous.
Until this is properly recognized – given how is a necessity within our fragmented realities – we will continue to face tensions and internal conflicts.
May No God Remember Your Name
CARLOS: It has to do with the fact that the national project is of a colonial nature. And thinking about what you say, about this "give-and-take" between the affirmation of the right to a dignified life, and the erasure of the different nations that live in the territory [known as Mexico], we could move on to the essay that talks about the Mayan Train entitled "Que Ningún Dios Recuerda Tu Nombre", published in "El País" last year (2020).
ANTIJURAS: This text is very interesting because it reminds us that there is antagonism between various visions, regarding how to approach strategies for achieving justice in common.
For the different indigenous groups, in this case, the nations are forced to face this underlying tension, as you mentioned earlier.
You can also refer here to various types of tensions. In this one, specifically, it is the expectation for the state to pay its debts - a deep debt for the crimes it has committed throughout history.
The fact is that when the State shows an intention to help, or to repay for provoking deepening troubles that it was supposed to help solve, well...
In the example of the Mayan Train, which supposedly arrives targeting an area that has been forgotten by the State, under the pretext of helping, we must keep into consideration that when the Zapatista guerrilla and the War Against Oblivion1 began, during the materialization of these more than 500 years of resistance in Chiapas, there was a public sentiment stating:
"the State and the Mexican nation have forgotten the indigenous people. Therefore, we ask for land, work, health, justice, democracy, etc."
That is to say, these were the demands: to say that the State owed us this or that.
But the same dynamic of the State is what drives different populations to realize that perhaps there is another way to obtain this same objective without the need to go through the State. Because now the government – I don't know how many decades after the uprising – comes up with the idea that it is a 'good time' to go and 'bring' education, justice, democracy, progress, work, access to a dignified life, etc., to this area.
However, its approach does not take into account local needs, but the global needs of capital. The need to exploit biological and genetic resources in the area; the minerals, the need for transportation, the curbing of human migration. All this is under the pretext of "showing up to help".
And in the end, we can say:
"Well, yes. It is a solution that provides jobs, that improves an acceptable quality of life of some people"
Nevertheless, the people directly affected have a different perspective on this. They have a historical notion of what these projects have represented throughout the decades.
CARLOS: It seems to me that it has to do with the style and form of reparation.
In that same text, Yásnaya says that "we could speak of a restitution of land dispossession" or "of an attribution of crimes committed in the past" because at the same time she tells us that the current situation is not a question of the State apparatus abandoning the marginalized groups, but rather a situation of centuries of state-violence inflicted.
So, yes, there could be reparations. But what she tells us is that this mode of reparation takes the form of abuse and land seizing. With this, the perils that follow land invasion and displacement.
I think there is a discussion of how the state could provide reparations. However, the form it takes [this "reparation" or form of "absolving its abandonment of a marginalized group"] has to do with mandatory inclusion following the interests of global capital. And that it is not necessarily the quickest path to reparation. Or the best one2.
ANTIJURAS: Yes, that leads us to think that in reality the problem remains not treating indigenous nations – and originary people in general – as subjects, but as objects. For the ruling classes they are not people with whom one seeks consensus to find solutions, but people to whom one has to "hand out the solution" already chewed up and, on top of that, they must be grateful for it.
CARLOS: The State imposes [the solution]. Above all, in the case of the Mayan Train – speaking of such extensive territories – it has to do with a question of sovereignty, of whether we recognize what Yásnaya asks for in "Us Without Mexico": the recognition of indigenous nations, or the birth of a Plurinational State. That would come along with the endowment of land, with the respect for the territorial existence of communal indigenous lands and their autonomy.
ANTIJURAS: And considering that now, in this new stage of capitalism, there is an increase in territorial dispossession: a profound war of the State against the peoples.
The territories they [the representatives of the state apparatus and capital] are targeting are those that before were considered empty, with nothing in them. But now capital sees value in them.
And 80% of the "virgin lands", or territory that has not yet been exploited, is in indigenous areas. In other words, it is the indigenous people who protect 80% of the biosphere. The rest is destroyed or has been captured by capital. So - we would have to consult with indigenous people. We will have to reach a consensus with them, how do you participate in this area? To see how to continue protecting something that pertains to the whole world, a territory they’ve protected with their own blood.
CARLOS: That is the problem, in their refusal of the State to approach them, to begin a conversation. This is the fictitious element of the consultations [between the State and the indigenous nations].
Validation As Capture
And I think that would allow us to move on to the next text, which is "Validation As Capture3". As for what you're commenting on, something that we've talked about previously.
Yásnaya deals with three themes here: science, feminism, and poetics to discuss the acknowledgement of indigenous nations' rights to exist.
If we use consultation as a metaphor, what the Mexican State is doing with the rigged referendums involving the Mayan Train is a validation-as-capture. That is to say,
"I pass you through this sieve of my consultation, which is conducted by people I know, with whom I have already spoken, I validate you, you validate the project".
This Mayan Train becomes a form of recognition of the damages done to the indigenous nations historically, as well as a form of theatrical reparation.
ANTIJURAS: Can you tell us a little about this essay?
CARLOS: Yes, "Validation as Capture" is a very interesting essay. Yásnaya, in this text, what she does is discuss science, feminism and poetics.
And she explains that these three subjects go through a similar process, which she describes based on the work of the biologist César Carrillo. This process is that of a validation that seizes.
Yásnaya begins with science. The clash, or appropriation, between science and other systems of production of knowledge can be divided into three simple categories:
1. Contempt;
2. Idealization and;
3. Validation.
This refers mainly to the clash between science and medicinal systems of cognition.
Speaking about contempt: she describes it simply as absolute rejection. Of idealization, she shares her critique of Western science's tendency towards appraising indigenous cognitive systems, of categorizing this knowledge as "magical", or mystical, or inherently wise. When she discusses validation, she defines it as Western hegemony recognizing indigenous knowledge as "science".
Yásnaya tells us that indigenous medicinal knowledge is not science. And that it is alright that it is not science, because science has a specific tradition, it follows a specific method. One that is not necessarily the same as the one dictated by indigenous medicine. And,
"This recognition has an implicit idea, that scientific knowledge is superior by essence, that to recognize as science knowledge generated in culturally different systems is to elevate it in rank".
And she applies the same idea to feminism and poetics. In the case of feminism, she talks about Ayutla Mixe's struggle for water. It is a movement organized by women, and she mentions that this is not necessarily feminist. To call it "feminism" is to validate it from a canon that categorizes based on the principles of movements seeking human rights belonging to a western feminist tradition that does not necessarily coincide in roots with the history of the Ayutla women's movement.
To quote Yásnaya:
Validation operates as linguistic recognition when the knowledge that has been generated inside a different system is finally labeled and accepted as "science".
This recognition has an implicit intent, to proclaim that scientific knowledge is superior by essence. And that to recognize as science the knowledge generated in culturally different systems is to elevate it in rank…
In other words, it erases the other system.
The third example is that of poetics. I find it very interesting because it talks about the poetic function of language based on Jakobson's theories. And she tells us that,
"the poetic function is present in any speech act..."
She describes a process in which - mainly governments - have taken on the task of establishing official indigenous literature. The government takes rituals and other indigenous poetic acts and turns them into literary acts when in themselves these acts are poetic, yes, but they are not literature.
To paraphrase Yásnaya: "We are doing this for another purpose, and you granting us validity by assigning the label "literature" does us no good." So, she goes on to talk about the colonialism present in the act of naming, palpable through validation. I think this is a very clever essay. If we transfer this idea to "Us without Mexico", what Yásnaya is asking here is that the recognition for indigenous nations shouldn't have to be subjected to the sieve of the apparatus. That it is something else, that it can be something else. And I believe that this is the strongest argument and the issue that has injured some people's ears the most. It is an idea that has been criticized in an essay that came out recently?
ANTIJURAS: Yes. This is one of my favorite Yásnaya essays. And I think it's very useful the logic that she employs to move from the issue of validation being the capture of science.
It's a critique of epistemic colonialism. And it leads to a critique of "friendly fire".
For, in the end, the feminist fight is not - as a certain ruler says, "created to legitimize neoliberal plunder" - but is rather a struggle that seeks to repair and bring forward the recognition of women's rights within [and against] a patriarchal system.
But even these kinds of struggles have a genealogy, they arise under a certain belief system, within a given cultural structure, which is "Western culture" - as we broadly call it, and she broadly defines it.
Western culture is subjugating, a culture that subordinates others, one that possesses power. And it is something she mentions in the essay "Us without Mexico". The fact that there is a difference between indigenous peoples and the non-indigenous is merely rooted on how the indigenous categorization has nothing in common except that they have not formed a nation-state. This implies that they do not have political-military power. That is something very significant.
In this case, Western culture shapes part of the interweaving of power with its militaristic presence. It is armed power. And naturally, one cannot equate feminism with the role of the State, because feminism is a struggle that is often against the very foundations of the State.
Nevertheless, this practice of feminist resistance is different.
In order not to go into it any further and while hoping to avoid getting myself into a pickle – because I am not one of those who should talk about, criticize, or justify the issues within feminism – I could, instead, talk about the anarchist movement, and how anarchism has also been leveraged to validate other struggles.
Listen, Anarchist!
Here is a very interesting essay entitled "Listen, Anarchist! Deconstructing Anarchism from within the Third World" by Guadalupe Rivera4 who makes a very compelling critique of anarchism as a validation method. Validation-as-capture in its turn.
Guadalupe Rivera refers to the entire tradition of anarchist struggle that is constituted as a kind of nationalism, in which there is also a fictitious narration of the 'fathers' of anarchism. [Yes, always fathers.]
And I say fictitious because there were women who were part of the anarchist line of thought, and who were erased from this record. The aim is to incorporate the whole history of the struggle into anarchism, and not to delegitimize any movement that does not have a nexus with anarchism.
Rivera properly speaks of the struggle of Zapatismo, not only of Zapatismo in Chiapas but of all Zapatismo in Mexico today.
One sees very clearly this critique against the Zapatista Army of National Liberation by anarchists when they say "the EZLN is not anarchist" -and above all is it male anarchists- declaring:
"The Zapatistas are not anarchists and therefore their struggle is not valid, because they have an army, they have military ranks. The movement constructed an organization with certain hierarchies, in which there are certain types of modalities of electoral politics... this system does not fit with the model and the mental scheme of anarchism".
This is a notion, according to author Guadalupe Rivera, found within the chauvinist, patriarchal and Western mindset [of anarchism] that in fact does not fit with the authentic anarchist framework [and denies the validity of the EZLN].
It seems to me that Yásnaya's critique of validation, this critique of saying "validation is used as capture" is very useful also in libertarian movements, and in emancipation-oriented struggles; and in those fighting against oppression, because they allow us to see that we have this tendency to exercise dominance even within our fields of struggle.
CARLOS: Starting from "Validation as Capture", I would like to talk about the work of Elizabeth Povinelli, and her 2002 book "The Cunning of Recognition".
It seems to me that the ideas that Yásnaya has exposed in this text, and in others, are very much aligned with a global critique of multiculturalism that is 20 years old; but that, perhaps, because it is not so well known in Mexico, and because Yásnaya does not write [much] in English, it is not given the place it should be granted. Because this is what Povinelli wrote 20 years ago - and I am almost sure that Yásnaya is referring to Povinelli's work when she talks about the errors of neoliberal multiculturalism.
What Povinelli does in "The Cunning of Recognition" is discuss a series of lawsuits that occurred in Australia in the 1990s to grant acknowledgment of official 'native title' to Australian indigenous populations. And Povinelli says that, from these two trials, there was a national discussion about whether Australian colonialism had occurred in the past, or was still occurring.
It was a discussion about who was responsible for crimes against the indigenous peoples: the colonial state in the early 20th century, or the institutions that exist to this day? From the public declaration of recognition a fiction is constructed, allowing to affirm that 'past crimes are in the past and no longer occur'.
The State washes its hands in an attempt to absolve itself. Any crime that happens from today onwards is no longer colonial, or so it claims. Therefore, it is no longer wrong. Or it is no longer the fault of the same people who started the colonial enterprise 100 years ago, or longer. It's a very relevant book, I just wanted to mention it. Because it seems to me that, when Povinelli talks about "the deceptiveness of recognition", it comes very close to what Yásnaya calls 'validation as capture'.
We can speak just from what we were saying about the Mayan Train, about what she says on the essay "May No God Remember your Name", about a 'process' in which 'the attempt' of 'reparation', in the case of the Mayan Train, is a case of the recycling process of colonial exploitation and dispossession.
And that calling it 'reparation' is a verbal act that again denies the connection of current events with the crimes of the past, pretends that the crimes of the past are in the past and no longer occur. It exonerates the current State, the 4T, the indigenismo of the current regime, denying any violent colonial process that causes displacement or destruction. I believe that this act of naming is validation-as-capture.
Linguistics is Politics
ANTIJURAS: And this can lead us to the fourth essay, regarding "The Linguistic is Political". It carries us to this historical moment where certain populations have been hindered from speaking their language, from naming their own world. They have been forced to integrate to another idiomatic structure that has erased all their plurality and cultural depth.
CARLOS: I also like the text very much. I think it is the most evident critique of the colonialist linguistic policies of the Mexican State. And it is where the process of miscegenation, and racism is made evident.
And I especially like two things about it. The first one is a proposal made at the end when citing the work of the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Linguistic colonialism, she says, always goes beyond the realm of the language, it's always politically charged and relates to exactly what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls "the danger of a single history," which indicates that, by imposing only one language, you are erasing more than just languages, you are erasing history.
The second idea that I find interesting has to do with poetics, which is a theme that Yásnaya had already touched on in "Validation as Capture" and, what she tells us in "The Linguistic is Political" concerns aesthetics, namely that the imposition of a single language, in addition to the imposition of a single history, is the imposition of an aesthetic and the elimination of a system of sensibilities.
ANTIJURAS: That's true, from a migrant standpoint, this imposition is very clear. Sometimes you can't explain or express what you want to say in the foreign jargon, no matter how much you mean it. Or you have to speak it unaccented, but sometimes you cannot explain nor express what you want to say in the language, no matter how much you may know it, as you could say it in your language.Or in the dialectal variant you speak of your language.
In my case it is the Castilian-Mexican of the state of Guerrero. I have words that perhaps have to do with other inheritances from the Purepecha people, from Nahuatl, from these nations that remain in the local Castilian Spanish. Yet these expressions are erased from our dialogue, from our conversation.
Moreover, I do not live and do not suffer the violence that our grandmothers and grandfathers who spoke indigenous languages endured and are no longer capable of expressing themselves in these languages. This prevents all of us descendants from speaking them as well.
CARLOS: I would add that it is something that is not in the past, that is, speaking an indigenous language today is still frowned upon in schools; and, in some places, even speaking Spanish with an indigenous accent is widely criticized in various sectors. It is something very significant. Although this is a text from 2014 – it's something that happened, happens and is going to keep on happening.
ANTIJURAS: Thank you very much for this conversation, it has been very interesting. May this contribute towards nurturing our respective movements, our struggles, and our processes of mobilization so that we can build a better collaboration between the different people in this front facing capitalism, as we try to build an alternative.
I am very grateful that you agreed to share with us, discuss and talk about these issues. And to let me spend this time with you tonight.
CARLOS: Thank you very much. And to Yásnaya for her work.