Trying to find the underlying connection between the Machinic Unconscious, Feminist Theory, and Neocolonialism. Perhaps it lies in the dominating hegemony of the era needing to control the coordinates of alternative innovation. Those who label mind control conspiracies or not, can step aside, and see that the scenarios collect within ‘who controls the information’, and why they are so afraid of the innovative alternative.
Wole Soyinka’s placement of colonial development over Africa in his novel Isara, emphasizes: “They sometimes echo what Mahatma Gandhi says on the other side of the ocean - they are in the same boat as we … One way or another we all have to choose our destiny – ourselves” (Soyinka).
One of Soyinka’s characters states that he “can bomb the English language worse than Hitler,” because the average West African, may be a merchant, an electrician, a farmer, or a grocery clerk; but only very few Average-Joes on an occasion, get to shine in higher political roles, and the Average West African is no more fit to govern his own colonies than the Average Brit is fit to be a member of the parliament and even farther to reach and hold a portion of the British Empire for his own welfare (Soyinka).
The developing nations are still locked into dependent economic factors with their former colonizers and wealthier nations with the global market system tying each younger nation into debt cycles with the IMF, World Bank, and agreements with the World Trade Organization. Never is it Africa for Africa, South America for South America, etc.; our integrated market system limits self-reliance. Dependency on the market system is less stable than first predicted. Soyinka’s character believes that he can bomb the dominant system by actually refraining from trade with the wealthier hegemony in confidant civil disobedience. Refraining would cultivate a better system than dependency cycles.
The modern feminist voice notes, on parallel lines to colonial control, “Even if you are a woman who achieves the ultimate and becomes like a man, you will still always be like a woman, as long as womanhood is thought of as something to escape from, something less than manhood, you will be thought less of too” (Ariel Levy).
Ariel Levy in her text, Female Chauvinist Pigs, discusses the similarities between an Uncle Tom and a chauvinist pig, whether male or female, in that, one who does not refrain from “trying to reform the perception of normal bounds,” picking up where James Baldwin toted, “We take our shape within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth: the cultural meaning assigned to our broadest human details – blackness, whiteness, maleness, femaleness, and so on.” In order to start ‘Tomming’ we would have to accept that there is such a limited pre-determined culture first (Ariel Levy).
The acceptance of domination would be inherent in something that we –average voices- would not be able to control and we would be unable to choose our own destiny without seeking permission from higher sovereign forces. This would control our gender rights as much as it would control our race, culture, and creed.
A constraint of individuals to oppressive hierarchies and a methodical flattening of freedom lies in that “Freedom consists in a give and take of quanta of deterritorialization emitted by refrains” (Felix Guittari). Felix Guittari believes that freedom is not created by our mere subjectivity, but it is created by an ‘ungluing of the collective history of humanity.' If we take the territory of the global space and deterritorialize our collective, we would be in a healthier place economically and subjectively. Our identification systems, our language, and our forced ‘universalism’, this is not a return to the ‘primitive’, but this would enable separate growth rather than constant competition for the same space.
Localized growth, Africa for Africa, South America for South America, etc. would give them further sustainability, rather than a determined coordinate where the current world order determines coordinates – femaleness, maleness, blackness, whiteness. “These catchphrases, these call signs have invaded every temporal mode, leading us to feel that we are ‘like everyone else’, and to accept the world as it is.
Refraining from the dominant discourse and reforming the bias image of male over female, North over South, wealthy over poor, would destabilize this false dominant scenario. Are we ready for that sort of change yet? Many of us are.
--- I am still shuffling my own thoughts to better perceive the possibilities, Food for Thought: (to be continued...)
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