Edwidge Danticat, Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Cornel West are from three very different political histories but they come together in a unifying global community of select voices that have the courage to speak truth to power. Cornel West grew up in Sacramento, California during the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement. Edwidge Danticat grew up in Haiti under the Duvalier dictatorship and Tsitsi Dangarembga grew up in Zimbabwe first under the apartheid Rhodesian government and then under the Mugabe regime. In order for us to overcome the limited constructions of greed, success, and sovereignty, we must create a global social consciousness that brings together active members willing to remain heard and outspoken.
Cornwel West recently questioned, “What will you use your success for? Never confuse success with greatness. … You trouble the water by being honest and candid about truth and justice in the world.” Troubling the water with speaking truth to power is one way to overcome the heartless sovereignty. Those who have used their wealth and success to manipulate the system are not great: the corporate elite of Exxon, Mobil, General Motors, General Electric, IBM, Coca-Cola, Monsanto, and the list is long. But the open public, who have been externalities due to the practices of these giants, are significantly more populous in numbers.
Edwidge Danticat in a similar reflection to Cornel West, and alluding to Albert Camus, believes that the artist, the writer, and passionate individuals must be willing to ‘create dangerously’. The Haitian novelist in her superb essay of the same title, discusses how through creative work, ‘we trek back to rediscovery’, we are ‘not just accidents of literacy’ but one’s who ‘keep things alive’. Each writer (and artist) finds unity with the more we create. Reflecting on Roland Barthes terms, ‘a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.’ We must unify through our outspokenness and “create dangerously, no matter how trivial our words may seem” (Danticat).
Writing about reality and the hazardous roads that got us to this passing are our responsibility as citizens of the 21st Century, whether here in the US or in Haiti and Zimbabwe, or all other destinations overcoming destitution. The luxury of not knowing is irresponsible. When corporations like Monsanto poison the food supply with chemicals and genetically modified crops, we are risking a great crime. When elder Americans claim support for US Presidents, whether current or dead, regardless of their policies and how many masses of innocent casualties foreign and domestic they’ve decided not to protect, this is irresponsible; this is not just irresponsible, but an acceptance of ‘repressive tolerance’. In Haiti, the only significant reason the island is extremely poor and unable to develop is because the super-rich elite in Haiti does not care about the human dignity of those who lack the means of subsistence. Though Robert Mugabe may have been a revolutionary, who overcame the apartheid Rhodesian government in the 1970’s, he has overstayed his support to his people, leaving the nation with a dictator and not a savior.
In October 2011, Tsitsi Dangarembga read aloud, available on Tedtalks on-line, her essay reflecting on "The Question Posed by My Cat”. In her passionate reflection she gathered knowledge from observing her cat’s behavior. “The antidote to the desolation in Zimbabwe,” as also seen in the US and abroad, “is that amongst our interpretations of greed and violence, is that greed, like violence, is a much graver ‘existential crisis’ than our limited definition.” While her cat has the capacity to learn when she is full and is satisfied, certain human beings seem impossible to know what is required and when they have reached enough.
“When you do not know where your next meal will come from, it is impossible to eat enough” (Dangarembga). Her cat knows she has had enough, because she has the ability to identify when she is satisfied. But human capacity to identify satisfaction is not just greed or gluttony, it is deeper, there is “a neurosis of not knowing what ‘enough’ means,” and it is essential to understand this neurosis in order for us “to redefine it”.
In the 1940’s, at the brunt of World War II, the economist Joseph Schumpeter projected an idea of Creative Destruction. When the corporations and the banks get too big and overstay their necessity to society, they become obtrusive and in the way. When dictatorships and wealthy elite limit the growth of others trying their hardest to gain a sense of human dignity, creative destruction allows the exclusive dinosaurs and larger trees to creatively collapse so that other species and plants can grow.
The neurosis that allows greed to maintain control with use of violence or manufactured consent is certainly an existential dilemma. But Dangarembge believes global viability is graspable. Edwidge Danticat believes that we can awaken this rediscovery through creative risks, and Tsitsi Dangaremba believes that it is essential to understand this neurosis, so that we can move from a stage of “not I” to a stage of “We” inclusive.
As for Cornel West’s commitment to speak candid and truthful, he traveled throughout the past year across the United States on a ‘poverty tour’ trying to bring to the American attention that poverty is significant in the US. While mainstream media attempts to hide the divide of wealth in the US, Cornel West is addressing the imbalances beyond politics. He is not alone. Ralph Nader and Senator Bernie Sanders have also continually stated that if a financial or corporate institution is “too big too fail,” then “it is too big to exist.” Sanders states, “We should break these institutions up, so they are no longer in a position to bring down the economy.” If they are too big to fail, then the corporate powers need to be broken up, so as not to bring desolation to a larger population. This is true not just in the corporate and financial world, but in the general relations of sovereignty to the greater public whether in the US, in Haiti, in Zimbabwe, and nearly the most overshadowing obtrusive powers.
If the power system does not provide the opportunity for inclusive growth, nor does it provide the tools to obtain a neurosis that understands when enough is enough, then we as socially conscious individuals need to bring together active like-minded progressive voices to be responsible and ‘creative’ risk-takers, like West, Danticat and Dangarembga, who speak truth to power.
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