Mike Davis: slums and refusal

In Planet of Slums Mike Davis writes:

the future of human solidarity depends upon the militant refusal of the new urban poor to accept their marginality within global capitalism.

The book, an extension of Davis's earlier New Left Review article, documents the horrors of a world with over 900 million slum dwellers, the world wrought by neoliberalism. As I read it, the book also puts the so-called war in terror in sharp relief as a new global class war, one fought to protect the way of life of those who can afford cars, gas, movies, water, reasonably secure housing.

In this connection, the refusal takes on a rather different light than other versions we've recently discussed. Davis recognizes the mystification involved in trying to install in slum dwellers the perennial Marxist hope for historical agency. He considers it equally if not more plausible that slum dwellers will continue to eat each other alive in the Darwininan struggle for survival unleashed by the IMF, World Bank, and their structural adjustment policies. In fact, viewed from the perspective of the slums, refusal may well be a refusal of a whole variety of norms and ways of thinking associated with a particularly Western version of modernity--specific modes of reason and science. This rejection makes perfect sense, appearing, we might say, as "modernity for itself": the rejection of a way of thinking and being brought about by global neoliberal capitalism and its fundamental inequalities.

Davis writes:

This refusal may take atavistic as well as avant-garde forms: the repeal of modernity as well as attempts to recover its repressed promises. It should not be surprising that some poor youth on the outskirts of Istanbul, Cairo, Casablana, or Paris embrace the religious nihilism of al Salafia Jihadia and rejoice in the destrucdtion of an alien modernity's most overwheening symbols. Or that millions of others turn to the urban subsistence economies operated by street gangs, narcotraficantes, militias, and sectarian political organizations. The demonizing rhetorics of the various international 'wars' on terrorism, drugs, and crime are so much semantic apartheid: they construct epistemological walls around gecekondus, favelas, and chawls that disable any honest debate about the daily violence of economic exclusion.

Comments

[tco]

"3. Eating each other alive is the rejection of those who celebrate competition in the slums rather than seeing it for the horrible struggle to survive that it is. The cannibal metaphor was deliberate: an unnatural result of neoliberalism (like the emergence of the disease kuru in the wake of colonialism in Fiji (I think)."

Actually, Kuru is a disease that was endemic in certain parts of New Guinea, not Fiji. It was first idenfied amongst the Fore people of the Easteren Highlands. There is some debate about whether or not the disease was transmitted by cannibalism, but the presencce of kuru before colonialism amongst the Fore is completely beyond doubt. The disease is similar to Bovine Spongiform Ecephalopathy, which has been shown to be transmitted by the consumption of infected meat. Rates dropped markedly after 'pacification' and the suppresion of anthropophagy. I would also say that the chances that cannibalism was not widespread in Melanesia (and elsewhere) in pre-colonial days is virtually zero.

I study the area in great detail. If someone suggested that there had been no cannibalism in Melanesia, I would demand the sort of evidence someone might demand of a person who suggested there had been no agriculture in Europe in 12th century.

It should probably be said, though, that 'eating oneself' is exactly what actually existing cannibalism was not, at least in Melanesia. Maybe this is different in other places, I don't know enough. But in Melanesia, eating oneself is a big no no. One anthropologist who cut his finger chopping some sugar cane and immediately sucked on it was met by a horrified crowd - they could not believe what he was doing. It was entirely disgusting. Similarly, one does not eat one's own pigs, and compensation payments must generally be distributed. So too with human flesh.

Otherwise, I agree with the suggestions that activists in the first world should pressure their governments on the IMF and WB, also on patents, privatization of services and trade protection. These things do immense, unecessary harm to third world countries. This is especially the case with respect to Africa and places like the Pacific, where the influence of the first world is decisive.

[Jodi]

TCO--thanks, right, New Guinea. I stand corrected. Thanks. But, really, I thought that the disease was not old or timeless but relatively new (couple of hundred years). I read one book on it--can't recall the title but it came out during the British BSE thing and I was considering working on mad cow (perhaps this was in 99?) Are there any writers who don't see the disease as part of a very long history?

I appreciate your intervention on another level as well-I am quite nervous about mentioning cannibalism. I have one anthology where a number of the authors emphasize that cannibalism is a kind of fantasy construct. (This book and the other are in my office and I'm on leave this year so can't check). Can one talk about cannibalism without relying on all sorts of unseemly methodologies and suppositions? Again, I ask this out of ignorance because I really am curious (when I was considering writing on BSE I took up a bit of the discussion on cannibalism and decided the matter was too complex and contentious for me to deal with given my area of political theory and my interest at the time in conspiracy thinking).

[Nate]

hi Jodi,

Of course I agree with what you think folks where you and I live should do. But how is this not itself a variant of reformism or do-gooderism? Another reponse would be to get to know what different actors exist in slums and what other actors are involved in producing, and contesting the production of, slums. Then, based on one's take on those different actors one could make contact with folks, find out what they want and need in order to continue doing whatever work it is they're doing, and set about trying to help provide that in a way that feeds into the first world activist program. These are not incompatible, and this may also be either reform or do-gooderism or both, but with the difference of placing emphasis on getting folks to act for themselves, and to make sure that the activities are carried out in a productive fashion as defined by the people whom the programmatic activity aims to help.

best,
Nate

[tco]

Well, the bottom line with the Fore is this. Until about 1930, no white person or for that matter no known non-highlanders had ever set foot in Fore territory. It's hard to convey just how hard it is to cross the kind of terrain around the Eastern Highlands area. The first patrols would sometimes take a week to cross 20 km. The place was really only 'pacified' and 'opened' for research in the 60s, I believe. I am not sure about the details of Fore history before 1930, but I do know that all this area underwent a massive demoraphic change roughly 450 years ago when sweet potato was introduced, ultimately from South America. Sweet potato grows better in poorer soils and at higher altitudes, and permits the developing of more intensive pig husbandry. That, in turn, eventually became the basis for the amazing network of exchanges often found in the region, like the Moka or Tee cycles, which were associated with massive political articulation and warfare. But places without these kinds of exchanges, that stuck with yams and taro were also very violent...

Well, the way I see it, of course we can talk about cannibalism without making a bunch of crazy assumptions like cannibals are apemen or inhuman, or talking like Columbus. It may not be easy to do it properly, it may involve approaching very unfamiliar and challenging lifeworlds and sifting through complicated evidence, but it is certainly possible. What is much harder is to avoid the moral panic westerners (and most other people these days) have about cannibalism.

My feeling is largely that it is far harder to avoid talking about cannibalism without making absurd ethnocentric assumptions. Take American Indians, who fiercely resist suggestions that their ancestors were cannibals. Now, the evidence for N. America is iffier than in other areas. But when they say "how dare you say my ancestors were inhuman people eaters!" they are reproducing exactly the idea that eating people is somehow not human, and that if they had eaten people, it would have been ok to take their lands. That's the underlying value which I think is deeply ethnocentric.

The denunciation of cannibalism actually takes some editing of western history as well. Until relatively recently, corpse products were added to western medicines surprisingly often. That's cannibalism. As for cannibalism being a fantasy construct - it actually takes privileging certain western constructs to pull something like that off, because the number one source of cannibalism stories are people who supposedly participated in it as either agents or potential dishes. You have to ignore these people and buy another tale entirely, which is that cannibalism is so horrible it could never happen.

None of which is to say that Columbus wasn't a raving liar, and that false allegations of cannibalism are often made, etc...

On a side note to this side note, I've always rather liked the Manifesto Antropofago, by Oswald de Andrade - in Portuguese or English .

[Jodi]

Nate,
I don't think confronting neoliberalism is do-gooderism. It seems to me more like a kind of class war.

And, of course it's the case that there are all sorts of folks working in various capacities in slums all over the world. Not surprisingly, there are conflicts and contestations and disagreements at every level. Davis relies on reports from this work in his book. To this end, his major criticism is with those who emphasize the entrepreneurial potential they find among the garbage pickers and rickshaw drivers.

[new york pervert]

tco--I've long been extremely interested in the Pacific, Melanesia because my father was in a lot of it during WWII, Polynesia because it's part of my own endeavours, so I've been there twice rather recently. Also, knew Tobias Schneebaum in the 70's from Village parties, who died recently, and who lived with cannibals in New Guinea and ate human flesh with them (I don't know how many times, but the sex was more regular than what he'd enjoyed here, at least unless he apparently paid) in the 60's. I think 'Keep the River on Your Right' is about his sojourns in Peru, not New Guinea, but I couldn't get through it. He was rather a sad person, I thought. I never liked that he'd eaten human flesh, but then so what.

Anyway, my father was in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), especially Espiritu Santo, and the 1944 Pacific Islands Year Book (published in Sydney and then Fiji until a few years ago) he brought back does speak of 'Malekula, where inter-tribal warfare and cannibalism continue, on occasion.' These are the Big Nambas. David Stanley's Moon Travel Handbook to the South Pacific says that the last recorded case of cannibalism, which was 'frequently practised' among the hereditary chiefs, was in 1969. TMy father did see the penis sheaths worn in the New Hebrides, although I don't know if these were the red ones which supposedly distinguished the Big Nambas (who are still there, but relocated somewhat).

I am very interested in your facts about New Guinea, my father having been in New Britain, Finschafen and Sansapore as well.

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/05/slum-world.html

[Matt]

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