For Americans, terrorism generally refers to the violent actions of peoples with ideological agendas who often target political and governmental groups based on a concept of justice that's generally misunderstood or ignored by others (e.g., many Americans support the death penalty for rapists and murderers; jihad can be an appropriate analogy when, e.g., talking about the Palestinian response to the Jews who not only displaced them from their homes and killed them, but also created policies that resulted in things like water shortages and which have forced many Palestinians to remain in squalor living conditions and extreme poverty).
But why emphasize the word understood? Because I've had more opportunities living overseas to talk with non-native English speakers, while at the same time trying to pick up words and phrases in the languages of the countries I'm in. So I'm more attuned, as an English native speaker, to the incongruences in language communication. This recent experience, however, has also made me aware that meanings of words can convey very different ideas based on the cultures in which they're situated.
Like, I can't really say that terrorism or performance were the wrong words with regard to the Mavena performance. But they are impacting my responses, not because of what I expected to see [4], but because I don't know how to frame what I saw in terms of the Croatian experience. This is one example of cultural negotiation that I find difficult to navigate because I am, in the end, just a tourist.
I think it's natural for me to want to be critical. At the same, I keep checking myself.
For example, if we take terrorism as a core concept rather than a political one, what are some of the potential generalities? I hope these aren't just American ideas:
- justice: to stand up for what's right
- redress of grievances: to overturn harmful wrongs
- freedom: to express, interact and fully live our lives without relinquishing its control to others
If I relate terrorism to those generalities, the Mavena performance fits. Because have there not been conversations about this? I mean, I didn't come up with the above on my own. Terrorism changes meaning based on the talker. At one point, I believe terrorism was termed guerilla warfare which often involved smaller armed groups who were seeking to change their governments which enabled the elite and held the poor hostage (through fear, starvation, etc.) by disrupting the exchange of goods, etc. That calls to mind revolutionaries, freedom fighters, soldiers, patriots, etc.
The arguments still abound, though: An insignificant percentage of people control the wealth of the world. Poverty, joblessness, economic inequalities, etc. have yet to disappear.
Until the real problems are addressed, people will continue to fight to change things - and violence, more often than not, gets people's attention. Can hacking be considered a form of violence? In the end, however, it's also an insignificant few who make the decisions that affect an entire city, state or country, etc.
What Mavena attempted to show was how masses of people can change things, but you can't change anything if people don't care about what you're trying to change. Every person has the right to shelter (non-squalor), food (three meals a day) and a non-toxic environment (they shouldn't get sick because they can't afford to live anywhere but where the companies have dumped their chemicals, etc.); this means they need employment, a marketplace that responds to their wages, and nondiscriminatory practices.
Terrorism for me, though, has no meaning; it's another word that fails to reflect the reality of economic inequality. And the truth is, many people support the idea of terrorism: If you kill my family, I'm going to kill you. But I don't know anymore what people are fighting for; I'm not sure that violence changes anything.
What, exactly, will it take to make sure no one's starving? Revolutions have been around for centuries, and nothing of significance has changed; there are still poor people. How do you make people care? Many people are, in my opinion, too concerned about how they look and what they have; most of these people will do nothing but complain about how the world is.
So, is that what I'm responding to? I have a lot of thinking to do before I can answer that.
Notes
[1] That's how it was listed in the Studeni/November 93/2011 issue of visitsplit city guide, p. 10/11.
[2] The original Croatian reads "baloni terorističkih čelija 40tak godina poslije." Information taken from the Xontact festival program.
[3] Again, presentation as I understood it. According to the program, there were to be "Two people, two tables, two laptops, two projectors, two speakers." In reality, it was one screen that wasn't flat (this made words difficult to read), with information on two sides of the screen (but it wasn't continuous, as pauses were taken to retrieved files or switch Internet tabs), and only at the end did the audio compete with a live person (this created competing interference). It should be stressed that, as far as I could tell, none of the content was original; instead, the presenters seemed to have pulled various pieces of information together with a specific aim, but it had to do with a real (?) group of computer hackers called Anonymous who have taken credit for WikiLeaks and are about the free flow of information unhindered by censorship.
[4] Because expectation doesn't inform anything, as I've several times been happily surprised with something (e.g. a movie or food item) that I thought would be a waste of time (or taste bad, in the case of food) - and vice versa. But it also depends how strict your attitude is; in general, I'm a very open person and take even things like my perspectives at face value until they've been validated or something else presents to reject them. In general, though, our experiences inform our flexibility.
