Joshua Krueger #3042188
CRS/IDS 4910 – Conflict and the Construction of the
Other
Richard McCutcheon; November 7, 2011
Think Piece #7: Power, Identity & Politics
If it is true that
“with no state of their own, and without even the desire for one – a condition
both unique and unfathomable, then as now – [Gypsies] had to be in the service of some foreign country or sovereign,”[1]
then the Gypsies have perfectly followed their historical destiny. Unlike the
Jewish people, who even during their years of statelessness gained an
international identity, Gypsies have been unable to find recognition, never
mind reparation. International Jewry has been able to fight against their
externally demonizing representations by invoking sympathy through a victim
identity; what then of the Gypsies, whose identity and survival strategy has
placed value on separation from the world through hidden integration into the
margins of it. The Gypsies are an example of what happens to a people when they
are unable to, or abstain from, providing a counter narrative or identity to
the external representations that have been placed upon them. It is only when
there is no voice for a people that we can ask: “But who is going to complain?”[2]
The
transformative power of representation has affected the Gypsies to the point
that they cannot be addressed without stereotype. While Fonseca refrains from
creating a romanticised Gypsy history or an idealized Gypsy identity, she shows
how this external pressure – though it is unheeded by the Gypsy’s themselves –
spotlights the Gypsies as stranger. In this light, their customs are not only
misunderstood, but their meaning is completely transformed. A people group whose
children escape and travel 3.5 km from a Nazi camp to visit their families is
deemed asocial; men who manage to find and purchase German cars that can be
sold at a profit in a matter of days are sentenced to survival training;
nomadic people who do not subscribe to the idea of boarders or care about other
nationalities are branded as spies and enemies of the state. As post-colonial
writers have articulated it, Fonseca shows how the power fed representations
recreate the Gypsies. Historically forced into servitude, the accompanying
justifications for their mistreatment created an overarching representation of
Gypsies as an intrinsic “social class: the slave caste.”[3]
It is quite a thought experiment
to imagine what would happen if it were possible for the positions of power to
be reversed. Gypsy would move through the countryside, scoffing at the strangeness
of the Germans for rooting themselves to one place. One could imagine that
legislation would need to be set up to prevent the Germans from starving in the
winter, considering their foolish action of planting crops where the horses
always passed through. It might even be necessary to set up special places for
these “Earth Harmers” to live in their backwards ways, to protect the integrity
of the migration routes.
This is difficult to imagine, and
I wonder if such an organization is even possible. Is there some inherent power
and natural progress in a lifestyle that values staying in one spot and tries
to master nature rather than the lifestyle that values a journey of coexisting
with it? In this way, the Gypsies do seem like an outdated memory of the past.
Even they know that they must evolve past their usual response and “redefine
themselves as an ethnic problem – rather than a social one.”[4]
While it is not my point here to muse on theories of history or progress, it is
important to note that the “Gypsy question” was the fact that they did not fit into
the neat boxes that were necessary for nationalization, communism or
capitalism. It is important to remember that “the legislation of the past few
years will likely erode traditional Gypsy life more seriously than the
Industrial Revolution eroded it.”[5]
In a different world order the Gypsies could have continued to live as resourceful
and valuable human beings, but the progressing world order was not beneficial
to the Gypsies. Instead of letting ‘progress’ take place, forcing the Gypsies
to adapt or disappear (an important moral question in itself), the powers fostered
a proper representation of the other to remove their requirement to acknowledge
the Gypsy’s humanity while making them beneficial tools as passive scapegoats
for ideological warfare.
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