An idea, a system, an organisation or person has some sort of consistency. Either it experiences itself as consistent to some extent or it is experienced as discussed as if it were consistent. Within that very consistency is the truth, that it is always made up of an argument, some sort of struggle, emotional or ideological, …
Author archives: pasdelasbas
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When the one thing breaks away from another it is the first that experiences itself as finally alone.
“I hate the word integration”
“I hate the word integration” These words were spoken by Michal, a thirty something Roma man from Prague. Brought up in a city where acting like a Gadjo, or an ethnic white Czech, was the way to get on and later being subject to an attack by an (obviously) violent neo-Nazi skinhead group Michal’s …
Noitaly
Sitting in a rather fag end listed churchyard with a busy road going by and lots of people walking past reminds me how much time I spent when I was young precisely in places like this in Italy looking through railings
Cambridge Chavs
Cambridge. It is 35 years ago plus some six months since I first came here. My memories of the town are multiple. But I noticed one or two of them today as I rode through back to the village of Histon. Past a shop in a new shopping precinct that had a clothes shop on …
Obligation
Me involving myself in debt relations with them is in fact knowledge this is the process of getting to know them without obligation there is no relation
jatka
The sign at the local abattoir favoured by my Roma friends:
just enough to properly misunderstand
Driving up the road with E near her house I say something about a boy using the term “raklo” in reference to a Roma boy on the street. She laughs at me. As if I had just said something quite funny that blurred the boundaries of Roma/gadjo. And corrected me to “chavo”. Two funny things so …
Inertia, Poverty and the State
I attended a Lecture by Michele Lancione at the University in Sheffield. ‘Eviction, Enactment and Entanglement: ‘Inertia Creep’ and Committed Positioning at the Urban Margins.’ The Department of, as it’s now called, Urban Studies and Planning, is fertile ground (well at least some parts of the estate are receptive) for someone with an intense productive …
A Jester
I just listened to a comparatively recent lecture by Zizek He made a point via recalling having recently read a late autobiography by a survivor from Auschwitz. The author is quoted saying something which offers justification for cruel but necessary treatment of the Palestinians by the Israeli state. He repeats the criticism made of this …