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Today with us we have Rodrigo Bueno Lacy.

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Rodigo has done his phd in Nijmegen at Radboud university (the Netherlads)

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in the field of political geography

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He particularly studied european identity seen through cartography

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Hi rodrigo,
well, hello ali

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Would you please introduce yourself briefly, and then tell us what is your research about

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yeah so my name is and Rodrigo Bueno Lacy

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or Lacy it is the same, depending on where you are, you pronounce it differently

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I am mexican, I am from mexico city

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I studied political science and international relations in mexico city

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and then I came to the Netherlands

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10 years ago to do a master's

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in human geography

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and I stayed to do research, doctoral research

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in political geography

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particularly in what you mentioned

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how european identity is constructed through cartography

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how can you see the construction of european identity

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through cartography throughout history

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and how depending on each historical context

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european identity changes

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not only on maps but also in its meaning

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in its deeper meaning, and how this is expressed

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both in maps and in other cultural artifacts

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in i don't know europe

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but also in countries that reflect the idea that europe has of itself

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so in a way it is the study of images

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to understand political identity

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in my very specific case to understand the meaning of political identity in europe

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so basically using maps as some sort of representation

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the humans understanding of the world

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yeah, so my that is the basis of my research

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the basis of my research is semiotics

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and semiotics is both a discipline and a methodology

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that understands the meaning of reality

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as constituted by a collection of signs

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so reality is not one thing

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reality is a collection of signs

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and each sign is associated to a certain idea or object

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not only that but also these signs are edited

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so these signs are representations

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a sign, can be anything

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a sign can be a language

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or a system a numerical system

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a sign can be of course

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a painting or a symbol

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or a gesture or an intonation

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or what is called a phenotype

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an arrangement of physical features

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together with the adornments that people put on themselves

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and the traditional features of a community

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now and then, the construction of these

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signs gives you an idea of reality

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so the idea is that reality is cognoscible

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so it's knowable only through representations

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and that is important because that means

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that you need to focus on the addition

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of these representations

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and the channels through which they are

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transmitted

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which means basically who makes them

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how are they diffused

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who is the audience, and

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how this audience is perceiving these images

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and these representations

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to make an interpretation of the world

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but that's a great point

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so, that's how we understand the word

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through these presentations that we receive

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and these representations are mediated

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they are controlled

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for instance given a map

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that's what you're focusing on

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and try to understand

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how this information is encapsulated

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or reframed and provided to the public

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to form basically

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the identity of the public

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or the wish or the will of the public

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can you elaborate on that

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what was your conclusions in your studies

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how did you see the current

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contemporary or the last century

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maps of europeans has affected

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the european identity

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yeah, i mean it is not the kind of science

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that you can come to

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very strict conclusions about

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because of the very nature of the object of study

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the object of study are images

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what i have is an interpretation

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what i do is iconology

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that is also a part of semiotics

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that is the main method that i use

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so i study what images mean in themselves

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in this case a map

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but also what it means in connection

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to the society in which it is anchored

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to the society that produces it

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so how this image reflects for example

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the interests of the authors. The authors

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are of course not only the map makers

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but also the people that finance them

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and more than the people

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that finance them, many times were

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for example in the renaissance

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people that financed merchants

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are many times stockholders

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for example, that is the begining

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and that is related to the dutch empire

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and to imperial european imperialism

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in general but in the case of

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the dutch empire it is related to the

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emergence of finance so you buy a stock

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in the west indies company

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and the profit they make

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by bringing pepper from the molokan islands

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or musket nuts actually from the molokan islands

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or pepper from the south of india

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or whatever spices

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that are located in southeast asia

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once they arrive to europe

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they sell them to 10000 times the profits

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and then that profit

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that promised profit is what you get

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as an investor from buying stock

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so this is the beginning of finance

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these kind of things

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so you if you look at the beginning of

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i don't know, contemporary european cartography

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it is related to the imperial enterprises

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of the dutch of the spanish of the portuguese

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maps were crucial

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not only were maps crucial

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for navigation, but they were also crucial for identity

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and that is something that for example is very important

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when people talk about colonization

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I think many people talk about

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european imperialism and european colonization

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as something that was done from

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an entity that is well bordered

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and that is homogeneous that is called europe

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to the rest of the world

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and when you study maps for example

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you're going to study many other artifacts

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you realize that colonization also happened within europe

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so europe is a creation of the renaissance

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in the same way as the colonies

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in america or in africa or in indonesia

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or in southeast asia or wherever, are

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the construction of identities happened

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both in the colonies but also in the european continent

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because the idea of europe is an imperial idea

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and it was an idea that emerged for example with the habsburg dynasty

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in spain, they were the big rulers of europe

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it was a dynasty that as the legend had it

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possessed so much of the world

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that the sun never set on their dominions

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because they had possessions in both

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europe and america and also philipines

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Spanish, they still say that
Yeah

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British also said that afterwards

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yeah i think so the British had an even more expanded empire

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so european expansionism is the beginning of globalization

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but also the beginning of the expansion of a very specific political technology

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the state

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this is this is great, this is very interesting

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so if i if i understand it correctly

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we as humans we understand the word around us as representations
yeah

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these representations are modified and controlled

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by the sources of power

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we are looking at a specific region: Europe in this case

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and looking at one of these representations: maps

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and then now we become closer to the to the era of imperialism

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and how these representations were controlled and modified

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by the imperialist power, for certain purposes

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you can see two angles

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I mean one angel is about the identity of the citizens of europe

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how did these representations affected them and why

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and the other factor would be

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how these representations would affect the rest of the world

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of course
can you alaborate on that

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you can see it on maps

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so the idea, the construction of european identity

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is very representational

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so it's very much based on representations

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and these representations takes place

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in many artifacts; in books, in literature, in painting

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but i think the most conspicuous and the most elaborate and the most defining

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depictions that you see of europeans take place on maps

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you see on the renaissance map

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so you see the backgrounds or you see the margins

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that are adorned with representations

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of both european people and the colonized people

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and this is something that you see for example in

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taxonomic treaties,  like the taxonomical treaties of Carl Linnaeus

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the swedish scientist and taxonomist that created the universal system of scientific classification

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and what you see is a transition of representation, in the beginning when they conquer for example

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when they colonize the american continent

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the first depictions that come to europe are fantastic

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in the sense of incredible stories of incredible beings

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for example jewish communities in europe

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when they heard that there were natives

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distinct to any other native in europe

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or the known world in the americas

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they thought they were the  11 i think (i don't know the exact number)

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the 11 lost tribes of israel of which the bible talked about

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and they said these are our brothers

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and people had different claims

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because there was nothing that could explain that

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it is so exotic that there was no scripture

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or text in europe or the middle east or any of the people

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that the europeans had an interaction with

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that could explain who they were

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the spaniards took for example translators that were known

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for speaking dozens, at least a dozen or two dozens of european languages or world languages

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but they could not understand what these people were talking

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of course, because they had never been detected

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so these people said (not to lose their pride) when asked what these natives were talking

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they said they just don't talk

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they don't speak they are animals they emit sounds

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and then this is interesting because it is in the confrontation of these two civilizations

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if you want to call them that, you see how a hierarchy starts being established

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as a consequence of power

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so in the first maps, if we restrict these to maps

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in the first maps you see descriptions

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you see images that have very little civilizational value associated to them

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so you see the brazilians, the mexicas, the different indian groups

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that they detected, and of which they had an account

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which they decided to depict on the maps

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you see them without any connotation of inferiority

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they have exoticism

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is suggested in their image, they are naked, or they are cooking weird stuff

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they are cooking weird dishes that are unknown

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in europe, in spain or in the netherlands or in whatever country where these maps were being made

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and then you have the europeans that are differently dressed

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they eat different, they have other musical artifacts, they have other books whatever

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so in the beginning you see that it is this very innocent

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exchange of  difference or this very innocent remark upon difference

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i mean you have to understand the discovery of america was the closest thing you can have

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to people on earth meeting martians, meeting extraterrestrials

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for both of them it was inconceivable that this existed that this could happen

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because it was entirely different

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they were not only entirely different cultures

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but also there was not a common language in which they could communicate

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which already makes all sorts of communication very different

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than anything that europeans had experienced so far

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all there was always a translator

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in this case they meet a world that they don't know nothing about

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and there is no translator

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so what they start to do is represent this

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novels, it's super exotic everybody talks about it

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scientists, conquistadores, explorers, everybody

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and they send books to europe of statistics of demographics of how people look, representations

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with time of course, the conquest

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the conquest of the spaniards, the british, the french

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all these different empires start to add power to these images

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excotic by itself, it is nothing harmful

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no it's just different

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exactly, but it's when it attracts the interest of people in power

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to pursue a certain  agenda that it might be diluted

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i would say two things

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that it is not only the interest of people in power

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of course there are many people that are interested in representing these people as inferior

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for example the natives

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but it's also a consequence of the development of power itself

267
00:14:12,960 --> 00:14:20,500
so for the europeans that conquered for example

268
00:14:20,500 --> 00:14:24,580
let's say the mexica empire or the inca empire

269
00:14:24,580 --> 00:14:28,000
this is a country the size of nothing: Spain

270
00:14:28,000 --> 00:14:35,500
that back then in the 15th century was the most excluded place

271
00:14:35,599 --> 00:14:41,720
one of the most excluded places in europe from everything that was considered progressive

272
00:14:41,800 --> 00:14:44,780
the renaissance did not take place in spain

273
00:14:44,780 --> 00:14:48,599
at the same time that it took place in italy or in flanders

274
00:14:48,599 --> 00:14:54,399
it was in many ways one of the most medieval places in europe

275
00:14:54,399 --> 00:14:56,960
in the sense of for example religious fanaticism

276
00:14:56,960 --> 00:15:00,940
when they discovered america they had just expelled all the muslims

277
00:15:00,940 --> 00:15:02,980
they had just expelled all the jews

278
00:15:02,980 --> 00:15:07,780
which in european history, in spanish history, is known as the reconquista

279
00:15:07,780 --> 00:15:12,360
that they celebrate as their biggest party of national independence

280
00:15:12,360 --> 00:15:16,540
one of their parties one of their celebrations of national pride and independence

281
00:15:16,540 --> 00:15:20,439
we kicked the shit out of the muslims and we kick them out of this country

282
00:15:22,480 --> 00:15:24,980
but this amounts to the biggest ethnic

283
00:15:25,040 --> 00:15:27,700
not only the biggest, one of the most momentous

284
00:15:27,700 --> 00:15:32,120
one of the most significant and one of the most atrocious ethnic cleansings in the history of europe

285
00:15:32,179 --> 00:15:35,960
not only because the entire muslim and jewish populations from andalusia were expelled

286
00:15:35,960 --> 00:15:48,199
but because they were expelled by religious fanatics that destroyed one of the richest civilizations in the middle ages

287
00:15:48,259 --> 00:15:51,539
the civilization of andalusia is where the ideas of

288
00:15:51,600 --> 00:15:57,920
the primitive idea of humanism, as a conception of humanity

289
00:15:57,940 --> 00:16:06,320
not as a group of different nations, but as a group in itself that shares a common ground

290
00:16:06,399 --> 00:16:08,440
regardless of all the differences

291
00:16:08,539 --> 00:16:12,120
the idea of human rights, the idea of universal rights

292
00:16:12,220 --> 00:16:14,640
that everybody shares, all these humanist ideas

293
00:16:14,740 --> 00:16:22,520
the idea of confidencia which is basically we can have jews muslims christians living together

294
00:16:22,540 --> 00:16:26,920
with a hierarchy of course, but without killing each other

295
00:16:26,920 --> 00:16:28,340
we can live in peace

296
00:16:28,399 --> 00:16:35,119
which was an idea that for example did not exist in the kingdom of castilla, in castile

297
00:16:35,180 --> 00:16:38,140
which was the one that eventually conquered the entire spanish peninsula

298
00:16:39,199 --> 00:16:43,259
and that is also the thing, the state, the element of the european state

299
00:16:43,359 --> 00:16:47,640
and you can claim that the oldest european state is the spanish state

300
00:16:47,740 --> 00:16:51,420
is the beginning of colonization

301
00:16:51,500 --> 00:16:55,960
so the development of the state,  the spanish state, the french state, the dutch state

302
00:16:56,020 --> 00:17:00,580
uses the same ideology and the same technologies

303
00:17:00,680 --> 00:17:03,579
as that of the colonization and imperialism

304
00:17:03,620 --> 00:17:08,759
that these very countries later apply in for example america or their african colonies

305
00:17:08,839 --> 00:17:14,060
so the state is a political technology that is based on a certain amount of tools

306
00:17:14,060 --> 00:17:16,720
both material material and ideological

307
00:17:16,720 --> 00:17:22,160
material tools are for example the need the constant need to survey

308
00:17:22,160 --> 00:17:24,679
and to measure and to read space and people

309
00:17:24,779 --> 00:17:29,099
now for this they use simplistic models

310
00:17:29,120 --> 00:17:31,300
simplistic spatial and mathematical models

311
00:17:31,299 --> 00:17:34,759
and you see this for example in the way they develop cities

312
00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:39,660
by the way they develop forests especially in prussia in the 18th century

313
00:17:39,719 --> 00:17:44,340
they erase forests and they plant trees in lines

314
00:17:44,420 --> 00:17:49,180
so as to make rows and columns in order to be able to multiply them

315
00:17:49,780 --> 00:17:53,219
and know exactly how many trees there are in large extensions of forest

316
00:17:53,220 --> 00:17:55,440
so that they can manage the forest

317
00:17:55,480 --> 00:17:59,200
they can say okay we can cut this amount of forest sell the wood

318
00:17:59,200 --> 00:18:05,140
the state can make all this money without depleting the forest

319
00:18:05,140 --> 00:18:09,179
because we can we know, so science becomes very important

320
00:18:09,260 --> 00:18:11,780
also a very specific science, in the case of the forest

321
00:18:11,780 --> 00:18:19,580
everything related to, i don't know, forestry the health of trees know how to cultivate them how to prevent them from dying

322
00:18:19,600 --> 00:18:24,780
not because of the knowledge in itself, but because the science is useful for the development of the state

323
00:18:24,860 --> 00:18:29,999
and the same happens although with very different technologies

324
00:18:30,040 --> 00:18:31,520
but very similar develope in the colonies

325
00:18:31,540 --> 00:18:33,500
the main one is cartography

326
00:18:33,520 --> 00:18:38,800
because you have kings, and you have royal administrations in spain and in portugal

327
00:18:38,820 --> 00:18:42,779
that have dominions across the ocean 10-15 000 kilometers away

328
00:18:42,800 --> 00:18:47,679
and they need to manage them without not only the natives revolting

329
00:18:47,679 --> 00:18:51,700
but without the elites, the spanish elites revolting

330
00:18:51,740 --> 00:18:54,339
which is something that they feared

331
00:18:54,400 --> 00:19:01,760
you appoint a viceroy, lieutenant of the king in the colonies

332
00:19:01,760 --> 00:19:06,439
together with an enormous amount of the spanish or the portuguese aristocracy

333
00:19:06,540 --> 00:19:12,000
they get lands, they get titles, they get positions, they get wealth and they get an enormous amount of power

334
00:19:12,040 --> 00:19:14,959
over the life of death of entire continents

335
00:19:15,040 --> 00:19:17,440
and then how do you manage them

336
00:19:17,440 --> 00:19:21,080
how do you prevent the thought of the king is too far away

337
00:19:21,180 --> 00:19:25,260
maybe instead of taking the place of the king

338
00:19:25,260 --> 00:19:26,939
I can be the king myself

339
00:19:27,000 --> 00:19:33,000
which happened sometimes in the history as well, but what was the common approach to it?

340
00:19:33,060 --> 00:19:36,980
well, the cartography and statistics

341
00:19:36,980 --> 00:19:40,699
so they started to develop and favor sciences disciplines and technologies

342
00:19:40,699 --> 00:19:45,999
that allowed them to have the feeling or the illusion that they could actually control

343
00:19:46,080 --> 00:19:48,500
territories that were very far away at a distance

344
00:19:48,500 --> 00:19:54,100
for this maps were crucial, maps told you what you needed to know if you were a king

345
00:19:54,100 --> 00:19:57,760
and that's why you see in for example maps from the renaissance

346
00:19:57,880 --> 00:20:04,660
or the age of globalization the age of european discovery

347
00:20:04,700 --> 00:20:06,480
european exploration of the world

348
00:20:06,480 --> 00:20:11,700
you see that the first maps they have, the names are around the coasts

349
00:20:11,739 --> 00:20:17,040
that is what matters to european empires that didn't know anything about the territory

350
00:20:17,040 --> 00:20:22,540
except for the ports and the literals, the delineated literals of the continent

351
00:20:22,559 --> 00:20:28,120
where they were able to disembark or found cities

352
00:20:28,120 --> 00:20:33,559
many of the first cities, many of the capitals of latin american countries are ports first founded

353
00:20:33,600 --> 00:20:36,880
by the spaniards or some of the age most ancient cities

354
00:20:36,880 --> 00:20:42,240
like veracruz is the most ancient city i think in mexico city

355
00:20:42,240 --> 00:20:44,440
i mean the most ancient spanish city

356
00:20:44,459 --> 00:20:48,460
because it was the first city that was founded by the conquistadors that came from Cuba

357
00:20:48,540 --> 00:20:55,280
mexico (city) was the ancient capital of the aztec empire

358
00:20:55,280 --> 00:21:01,480
so sao paulo i think, it was sao paulo or brasilia i don't remember which one

359
00:21:01,480 --> 00:21:04,820
was also one of the first ports that the portuguese settled

360
00:21:04,900 --> 00:21:14,940
so in this way their colonization starts to import into

361
00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:18,460
in this case no let's talk about for example the case of america

362
00:21:18,500 --> 00:21:24,300
it starts to import the very prejudices that europeans have about americans

363
00:21:24,339 --> 00:21:29,800
so they start to construct a reality that is more in their heads about what they are

364
00:21:29,800 --> 00:21:31,740
than what they really are

365
00:21:31,779 --> 00:21:35,380
and this reality is not only constructed as a matter of agency

366
00:21:35,380 --> 00:21:39,120
it's not only that the kings or the aristocrats in europe say we are better than them

367
00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:41,900
it's also a consequence of power

368
00:21:41,900 --> 00:21:47,160
you conquer them,  you conquer them and all of them look different

369
00:21:47,160 --> 00:21:48,560
and this is very racial

370
00:21:48,620 --> 00:21:50,780
all the indians look different

371
00:21:50,860 --> 00:21:56,220
so it is very different than the conquest of a country in which people don't look that different

372
00:21:56,300 --> 00:21:58,640
or at least they are white for example

373
00:21:58,640 --> 00:22:04,060
it's not that easy to conquer them of course not

374
00:22:04,060 --> 00:22:07,720
but the power

375
00:22:07,780 --> 00:22:14,100
what is crucial is that this power starts to create very very visible and very obvious differences

376
00:22:14,100 --> 00:22:17,800
the conquered dressed in a poorer way

377
00:22:17,800 --> 00:22:23,580
their professions are related to servitude because they are slaves they are servants

378
00:22:23,679 --> 00:22:26,220
the women get raped the men get enslaved

379
00:22:26,220 --> 00:22:31,320
and it's clear who has the power, but it's not only clear who has the power

380
00:22:31,320 --> 00:22:41,960
in terms of better dress, better food, less suffering, less abuse it's also clear in the outer skin

381
00:22:42,099 --> 00:22:46,320
these people have deep very different physical features

382
00:22:46,320 --> 00:22:48,540
they have a very different color of skin

383
00:22:48,540 --> 00:22:55,779
they have a language that is entirely unrelated to anything that we can associate to the place where the conquerors come from

384
00:22:55,960 --> 00:23:05,840
they have divinities that also for which there is as far as the europeans know nothing relatable in their own cultures

385
00:23:05,859 --> 00:23:14,639
so the power itself and especially the interaction between the colonizer and the colonized starts to create the natural idea of hierarchy

386
00:23:14,639 --> 00:23:18,300
people start to assume, not only are we different but we are also better

387
00:23:18,379 --> 00:23:23,680
our books are better, our music is better, because look at them, they are filthy

388
00:23:23,719 --> 00:23:27,919
look how they live, look how what they know

389
00:23:27,919 --> 00:23:30,580
and this you start to see on maps

390
00:23:30,660 --> 00:23:36,180
for example something that is very typical about renaissance maps is the representation of the four continents

391
00:23:36,200 --> 00:23:41,920
in each one of the corners, europe is usually at the top and on the left

392
00:23:41,940 --> 00:23:44,979
so it is already a position of prominence

393
00:23:44,979 --> 00:23:49,300
then to the top and right you have asia

394
00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:55,479
now which makes sense because asia since ancient times also in cartography was represented as the wealthiest place

395
00:23:55,479 --> 00:23:58,560
not only because christianity was assumed to come from there

396
00:23:58,560 --> 00:24:00,800
which was very important for the first map makers

397
00:24:00,820 --> 00:24:03,120
that were monks and basically the catholic church

398
00:24:03,120 --> 00:24:09,680
but also because in asia you had the greatest empires from which what was known as wealth and luxury came

399
00:24:09,740 --> 00:24:12,760
the persian empire, the mongol empire, the chinese empire

400
00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:16,479
europe did not have anything equivalent

401
00:24:16,479 --> 00:24:20,480
until the renaissance the roman empire

402
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:22,799
for example was never european

403
00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:25,780
in any sense that can be considered modern

404
00:24:25,799 --> 00:24:28,460
even though many europeans can consider it as its past

405
00:24:28,559 --> 00:24:35,699
for the roman and greek empires of antiquity the germans were as foreign and as barbaric

406
00:24:35,759 --> 00:24:38,699
as the sub-saharan africans

407
00:24:38,700 --> 00:24:43,060
what they consider to be a civilization

408
00:24:43,099 --> 00:24:46,320
that match theirs in terms of wealth, luxury and sophistication

409
00:24:46,320 --> 00:24:49,740
where i don't know eastern empires

410
00:24:49,740 --> 00:24:51,500
with which they had very little contact

411
00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:55,439
maybe the persians maybe the chinese

412
00:25:01,039 --> 00:25:04,899
i'm not an expert in roman history but my only point is that

413
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:09,120
for example in the roman empire in roman and greek antiquity

414
00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:13,360
you can see that the representations that we have today

415
00:25:13,360 --> 00:25:18,039
about europeanness are representations that do not coincide with this past

416
00:25:18,059 --> 00:25:27,240
many people would assume immediately greco-roman antiquity is no the cradle of european civilization today

417
00:25:27,300 --> 00:25:30,480
whereas if you had a time machine and went back then

418
00:25:30,480 --> 00:25:36,460
and you told them, you gave them a map of europe and told them so this is europe

419
00:25:36,540 --> 00:25:38,100
first of all they would never recognize it

420
00:25:38,140 --> 00:25:40,960
because this kind of cartography did not exist back then

421
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:45,020
i mean most of northern europe most of scandinavia was discovered in the 15th century

422
00:25:45,020 --> 00:25:46,780
the same as the american continent

423
00:25:46,780 --> 00:25:51,140
they had no idea how it looked cartographically

424
00:25:51,140 --> 00:25:56,679
for them the germans spoke a language that was not only incomprehensible but was barbaric

425
00:25:56,740 --> 00:26:02,519
not only the language was barbaric, the entire set of costumes they had was barbaric

426
00:26:02,539 --> 00:26:05,000
so much that the romans were used to enslave

427
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,300
large groups of goths and germanic tribes

428
00:26:08,300 --> 00:26:14,759
since they were children they use them as house slaves sexual slaves

429
00:26:14,759 --> 00:26:19,300
cheap labor and exploitable humans

430
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:22,720
so the idea that these people would recognize the europe of today

431
00:26:22,720 --> 00:26:27,440
as european makes no sense today

432
00:26:27,440 --> 00:26:32,320
this is a representation for example that has life as a representation only

433
00:26:32,360 --> 00:26:33,859
not as a historical reality

434
00:26:33,859 --> 00:26:38,660
so basically is this the correct conclusion if I summerize what you said

435
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:43,679
that you mean the current identity of the europeans

436
00:26:43,679 --> 00:26:45,760
the one that they understand, the representation that they that resides with them

437
00:26:48,080 --> 00:26:55,279
is coming mainly from the imperialistic europe

438
00:26:55,279 --> 00:26:56,980
well a nutshell, yeah, you could say that

439
00:26:57,000 --> 00:27:03,039
it is a bit more complex than that, but, yeah, you could say that the modern idea of europe we have

440
00:27:03,039 --> 00:27:08,859
comes from the from globalization and the technologies that developed through globalization

441
00:27:08,859 --> 00:27:12,500
one of these main technologies was

442
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:20,079
cartography, statistics, navigation, all the military technologies that were useful for their conquest, of course trade and finance

443
00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:25,880
and it's a very specific specific period of time in history

444
00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:32,879
it's a period that europeans have this imperialistic endeavor towards the entire universe

445
00:27:32,959 --> 00:27:37,060
and also they they start colonizing a lot of other countries

446
00:27:37,100 --> 00:27:47,120
what (how) do you think these images, this understanding of the world has affected a white european of today

447
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:51,340
not the one who has immigrated and has seen a different background

448
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:55,440
but the one who recognized himself as a white european

449
00:27:55,440 --> 00:28:08,820
so i think what you asked is how can we see for example in cartographic artifacts so in maps

450
00:28:08,900 --> 00:28:17,199
the evolution of european identity and particularly the idea of whiteness in european identity

451
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:21,440
since the exploration of the world

452
00:28:21,479 --> 00:28:29,100
as a consequence of the clash between european imperialism and the people that they colonized

453
00:28:29,139 --> 00:28:34,059
the glory of white as well, not only that it is white, it is white an glourious

454
00:28:34,059 --> 00:28:37,859
yeah of course, so the idea of white superiority

455
00:28:37,859 --> 00:28:45,240
i think this is a very complex question because of two things

456
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:53,460
first, it is important to understand that the idea of what whiteness develops very differently

457
00:28:53,479 --> 00:28:59,240
in different empires, each empire should be conceived as a political technology

458
00:28:59,420 --> 00:29:00,759
that is different than the other

459
00:29:00,779 --> 00:29:07,500
spanish imperialism, portuguese imperialism, french imperialism, british imperialism are different technologies

460
00:29:07,540 --> 00:29:12,720
not every european empire practices empire and colonization and conquest in the same way

461
00:29:12,759 --> 00:29:24,540
the structures of power that that they put in place including their idea of white superiority or european superiority is very specific

462
00:29:24,599 --> 00:29:28,840
and this is related to the way in which they were the places that they conquered

463
00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:40,999
so for example the spaniards and the portuguese sent lonely men, they sent ex-convicts, prisoners, people that did not want to be on a transatlantic trip

464
00:29:41,079 --> 00:29:48,740
when they arrived after months of a horrible trip in which the sailors were attacked by all sorts of diseases

465
00:29:48,800 --> 00:29:54,499
there was a great deal of suffering, death, malnutrition and other physical disgraces

466
00:29:54,520 --> 00:30:01,400
they arrived to america and it's a little bit of a relief

467
00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:04,759
but not only a little bit of a relief they are on the other side of the world

468
00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:08,561
enormous amounts of lonely men

469
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:17,781
so they created families,  the amount of sexual interaction between colonizers and the indians is enormous

470
00:30:17,800 --> 00:30:21,819
this creates not only a different society, a different colonial society

471
00:30:21,900 --> 00:30:28,681
that is still radically different, the colonial societies and their heritage

472
00:30:28,700 --> 00:30:30,559
that you see now in latin american countries

473
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:35,421
are radically different from the colonial experiences of other people

474
00:30:35,500 --> 00:30:39,880
so this is something at the level of what you call transculturation

475
00:30:39,900 --> 00:30:46,140
the mix of people, genes, cultures, traditions, families is enormous

476
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:47,319
and it's comprehensive

477
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:53,180
it goes so deep that it creates entirely new cultures

478
00:30:53,200 --> 00:30:58,000
that are not fusions, but are the fusion of many different cultures

479
00:30:58,000 --> 00:30:59,641
but they create something entirely different

480
00:30:59,700 --> 00:31:04,120
and this you can see expressed in cuisine, in literature, etc

481
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:11,179
whatever, the idea of whiteness is very much related to how successful this is

482
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:14,260
so the spaniards for example if you compare them to the british

483
00:31:14,300 --> 00:31:19,259
tried something very similar to put whiteness at the top

484
00:31:19,300 --> 00:31:24,260
now this is the idea of whiteness as conceived by the spaniards

485
00:31:24,300 --> 00:31:28,701
which is a very different idea than whiteness as conceived by the british

486
00:31:28,800 --> 00:31:31,440
they don't see themselves
can you explain

487
00:31:31,500 --> 00:31:39,440
yeah, i mean first of all the kind of populations in the iberian peninsula are different now than the populations in the british islands

488
00:31:39,500 --> 00:31:44,920
one could say the spaniards are not blonde for example

489
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:53,700
the spaniards have the moment they colonized america already a thousand years of interaction with the moors

490
00:31:53,700 --> 00:31:58,480
which created also an entire mix of peoples in andalusia

491
00:31:58,500 --> 00:32:03,241
and that is why you see a very smooth transition of in terms of demographics

492
00:32:03,300 --> 00:32:07,159
when you go from spain and andalusia and then to morocco

493
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:10,240
people just look similar physically similar

494
00:32:10,300 --> 00:32:16,500
because spain has existed less without moorish influence than with moorish influence

495
00:32:16,500 --> 00:32:23,459
the moors were there for about a thousand years since the 700 somthing, 11

496
00:32:23,500 --> 00:32:30,241
i don't remember exactly until the reconquista in 1492 when they expelled the muslims

497
00:32:30,300 --> 00:32:35,579
in the 1494 they expelled the jews

498
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:42,401
now this idea of whiteness for example in what now is mexico

499
00:32:42,500 --> 00:32:51,841
in the spanish colonies was very much related to very detailed and specific racial categories

500
00:32:51,900 --> 00:32:57,600
spaniards born in spain had access to the best positions of government

501
00:32:57,600 --> 00:33:01,599
and trade and whatever other social positions were the best

502
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:10,641
then you had the second the criollos, the creoles were spanish families, sorry were the children of spanish families

503
00:33:10,700 --> 00:33:15,339
but they were born in the colonies so that made them a little bit less

504
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:18,561
their parents were spanish but they were not peninsulares

505
00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:22,079
they were not born in the iberian peninsula they were born in the colonies

506
00:33:22,100 --> 00:33:27,841
and that already in the eyes of this racial classification made them a little bit less desirable

507
00:33:27,900 --> 00:33:33,880
then you have the mestizos the mestizos are the combination of the indian and the spaniard

508
00:33:33,900 --> 00:33:40,200
and following this hierarchical racial system

509
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:48,659
you go all the way to i don't know the what they conceived as the most strafillarian the most exotic mixes

510
00:33:48,700 --> 00:33:52,680
and they expressed this in something that is called retablos

511
00:33:52,700 --> 00:33:55,120
a retablo is an enormous piece usually of wood

512
00:33:55,200 --> 00:33:59,680
that is divided in a grid

513
00:33:59,700 --> 00:34:02,120
it is segmented through a grid

514
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:06,519
and each of these spaces each of these cartouches

515
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:11,280
these spaces iconographic spaces in the grid

516
00:34:11,300 --> 00:34:18,660
depicts a combination: two parents, the color, the race of each parent and the child

517
00:34:18,700 --> 00:34:22,779
with the race of the child and the name of the specific racial configuration

518
00:34:22,800 --> 00:34:27,101
but it has more than this it is not only the parents, it is also the background

519
00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:30,459
it is also the dress, it is also the wealth and the sophistication

520
00:34:30,500 --> 00:34:32,301
the art, the culture, and the intellect

521
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:38,259
so they they start to construct as a result of power

522
00:34:38,300 --> 00:34:41,921
as a result of who is the vanquisher and who is the colonized

523
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:46,559
which is of course a vicissitude an accident of history

524
00:34:46,600 --> 00:34:49,880
so who is the colonizer and who is the colonized

525
00:34:49,900 --> 00:34:51,181
this is an accident of history

526
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:56,019
but they start to construct the differences, the consequences of this

527
00:34:56,100 --> 00:34:59,921
so the colonized as poor and the colonizer as wealthier and better

528
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:06,240
not as the result of a historical accident but as the result of nature

529
00:35:06,300 --> 00:35:09,721
because it is so pervasive

530
00:35:09,800 --> 00:35:19,220
everybody that looks like that is more or less poorer, malnourished, they don't get the best jobs

531
00:35:19,300 --> 00:35:25,960
their children of course inherit whatever traits are associated to poverty

532
00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:29,080
now we know much all of this better today

533
00:35:29,100 --> 00:35:33,600
how poverty is replicated from generation to generation

534
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:38,540
if nothing is done, if there is no intervention from society or from the state

535
00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:47,580
but back then of course, there was not even an idea of race

536
00:35:47,600 --> 00:35:53,740
the sciences that we now associate to the racial studies

537
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:59,419
that allowed for example the nazis or the americans or any other country

538
00:35:59,500 --> 00:36:02,800
that ever played with racial categories to create them

539
00:36:02,800 --> 00:36:05,540
which were established as a matter of academic tradition

540
00:36:05,600 --> 00:36:10,481
and what we know as scientific racism, that was a very well established discipline

541
00:36:10,500 --> 00:36:14,560
in american and european universities throughout the 19th and 20th century

542
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:24,481
this did not exist, this formalization of racism did not exist, and that is crucial

543
00:36:24,500 --> 00:36:33,740
racism had existed, right? it goes back to slavery, and slaves would come from a certain race.

544
00:36:33,800 --> 00:36:39,080
no, there were ideas. that is very interesting

545
00:36:39,100 --> 00:36:45,080
the idea of racism did not exist, there were always notions of difference

546
00:36:45,100 --> 00:36:51,320
but the notions of difference were related to very different formal systems of knowledge

547
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:57,920
so for example the ancient greeks had the idea a cartographic idea of the world

548
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:03,240
from which their idea of the peoples of the world arrived

549
00:37:03,300 --> 00:37:08,999
but their idea of the world as a matter of cartography was wrong

550
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:14,861
as consequence their idea of racism was also wrong

551
00:37:14,900 --> 00:37:17,900
of course, the races, the civilizations, the nations of the world

552
00:37:17,900 --> 00:37:26,780
also all their medical knowledge was in comparison to what we have today or what they had in the 15th century very primitive

553
00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:30,900
what the greeks used was more logic observation

554
00:37:30,900 --> 00:37:37,240
they came to a hypothesis but they did not have anything close to scientific method

555
00:37:37,300 --> 00:37:40,520
or even the technological means for scientific corroboration

556
00:37:40,600 --> 00:37:46,460
they thought everybody inhabiting the mediterranean

557
00:37:46,500 --> 00:37:48,739
which was very conveniently where they were

558
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:53,401
where the civilized people, the greeks particularly the greeks

559
00:37:53,500 --> 00:37:56,759
and the people influenced by the greeks, the hellenic civilization

560
00:37:56,800 --> 00:38:01,321
then these were people that were cooked right

561
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:08,000
because the semen, the seed of both the man and the woman that created people in the mediterranean region

562
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:11,480
was cooked at perfection because of the temperature

563
00:38:11,500 --> 00:38:13,460
now this is entirely ethnocentric

564
00:38:13,500 --> 00:38:17,580
but this kind of ethnocentrism is something that you find in every single civilization

565
00:38:18,600 --> 00:38:21,540
that has represented itself in comparison to others

566
00:38:21,600 --> 00:38:25,720
now they thought that the germanic people were very melancholic

567
00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:33,820
a little bit prone to depression and being serious and having little passion

568
00:38:33,900 --> 00:38:37,821
because of the cold, the semen with which all these nations

569
00:38:37,900 --> 00:38:38,980
they thought about nations

570
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:45,720
were created was too cold, so the people were baked at the wrong temperature

571
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:50,399
and therefore were not as virtuous as the greeks in the temperate regions

572
00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:53,001
the same with sub-saharan africans they were overcooked

573
00:38:53,100 --> 00:38:57,740
now but this is not racism in the way we understand it today

574
00:38:57,820 --> 00:38:59,860
because there was no notion of genetics

575
00:38:59,900 --> 00:39:01,260
there was not notion of medicine

576
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:04,719
and that is the thing, racism is an entire system of thought

577
00:39:04,810 --> 00:39:08,211
racism is not saying the black are worse and the white are better

578
00:39:08,320 --> 00:39:11,860
racism is not even related to being white or being black

579
00:39:11,870 --> 00:39:15,610
i mean not essentially, of course there is a relation

580
00:39:15,620 --> 00:39:21,620
but you of course can have black people  that belong to a population that is oppressed

581
00:39:21,630 --> 00:39:24,650
that are white, that want to be white

582
00:39:24,660 --> 00:39:30,740
that preserve the system of knowledge on which white superiority or white supremacy is based

583
00:39:30,820 --> 00:39:33,060
this is something that you see in the us today for example

584
00:39:33,070 --> 00:39:38,590
this is something that all the black writers that have meant something for the civil rights movement

585
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:41,539
or the emancipation of black people in the us have always remarked

586
00:39:41,550 --> 00:39:45,371
this is something that malcolm x and james baldwin always stressed for example

587
00:39:45,380 --> 00:39:49,999
that whiteness is not, when they talk about whiteness in a racial context

588
00:39:50,010 --> 00:39:52,011
you're not talking necessarily about the skin

589
00:39:52,020 --> 00:39:53,239
what is white

590
00:39:53,250 --> 00:39:56,950
i mean today we know from biological sciences and genetic sciences

591
00:39:56,990 --> 00:40:00,990
that there is no such thing as a race when you talk about humans

592
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:01,840
there is the human race

593
00:40:01,900 --> 00:40:05,260
and beyond that, yeah of course, there are phenotypes

594
00:40:05,300 --> 00:40:06,520
there are different colors of skin

595
00:40:06,550 --> 00:40:10,509
but i mean nothing that is genetically relevant as far as we know

596
00:40:10,550 --> 00:40:13,211
and that is the basis of humanism

597
00:40:13,220 --> 00:40:17,679
all the cultures are different, but at the bottom, in the essence of what makes us human

598
00:40:17,700 --> 00:40:18,659
we're all the same

599
00:40:18,662 --> 00:40:22,781
now this humanist discourse has been preserved today

600
00:40:22,790 --> 00:40:25,650
very much by the people that have spoken

601
00:40:25,691 --> 00:40:32,331
by the intellectuals of the post-colonial movements

602
00:40:32,401 --> 00:40:37,102
the people that represent those who by the color of their skin

603
00:40:37,182 --> 00:40:44,022
or by what their features mean in their representations of european hegemony

604
00:40:44,070 --> 00:40:46,230
have always been oppressed and suppressed

605
00:40:46,272 --> 00:40:52,651
brown and black writers and philosophers from all around the world

606
00:40:52,742 --> 00:40:58,242
if you listen to james baldwin or malcolm x for example

607
00:40:58,300 --> 00:41:01,819
they always talked about whiteness as an aspiration

608
00:41:01,821 --> 00:41:06,682
of how you should dress, how you should talk, how you should raise your children

609
00:41:06,766 --> 00:41:09,066
it is a culture
yes

610
00:41:09,762 --> 00:41:12,262
and this culture is not only a matter of your behavior

611
00:41:12,342 --> 00:41:14,762
this is also a matter of where you learn your behavior

612
00:41:14,862 --> 00:41:17,061
there are entire systems of thoughts

613
00:41:17,072 --> 00:41:23,392
entire libraries dedicated to the study of dutch history

614
00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:27,480
the study of western thought

615
00:41:27,520 --> 00:41:36,940
the study of efficient and entrepreneurial management

616
00:41:36,950 --> 00:41:41,529
efficient planning of cities, beautiful architecture

617
00:41:41,570 --> 00:41:46,430
so what is the best of the best in every single field of human production

618
00:41:46,442 --> 00:41:48,462
both material and intellectual

619
00:41:48,472 --> 00:41:53,092
this is of course related to the centers of power

620
00:41:53,100 --> 00:41:55,940
who creates these enormous systems of knowledge

621
00:41:55,992 --> 00:41:59,312
that we learn through university, through political propaganda

622
00:41:59,420 --> 00:42:02,080
that determine the spatial way in which we live in

623
00:42:02,142 --> 00:42:03,141
which we dress

624
00:42:03,220 --> 00:42:06,280
that determine emotions like pride, that you feel pride

625
00:42:06,322 --> 00:42:09,882
because you look like something, or you fee shame because you look like something

626
00:42:09,922 --> 00:42:13,762
and so who determine this is for the most part

627
00:42:13,862 --> 00:42:16,482
countries in which the majority of the population are white

628
00:42:16,582 --> 00:42:18,562
this is what whiteness means

629
00:42:18,622 --> 00:42:22,202
it is an idea of what is the good life, what are the good morals

630
00:42:22,232 --> 00:42:28,672
and this is a difference that is necessarily constructed in the reflection of the colonized

631
00:42:28,722 --> 00:42:35,782
so the colonized represents what the europeans are not

632
00:42:35,882 --> 00:42:39,542
and it is by comparison to them that europeans learn to recognize them

633
00:42:39,662 --> 00:42:41,421
this is something that you see in cartography

634
00:42:41,431 --> 00:42:45,552
the more power they acquire the more arrogant their representations get

635
00:42:45,642 --> 00:42:48,541
and then you have every continent represented with a woman

636
00:42:48,602 --> 00:42:58,162
the woman that represents europe is always clean and beautiful, blonde, white, feminine, voluptuous and attractive

637
00:42:58,201 --> 00:43:00,982
the dresses seem expensive

638
00:43:01,020 --> 00:43:10,079
the cut of the dresses, the design of the dresses, matches with which at the time of the creation of this map was considered

639
00:43:10,122 --> 00:43:14,442
the highest most expensive most elegant and desirable fashion

640
00:43:14,542 --> 00:43:17,462
she has a crown, she has a scepter

641
00:43:17,502 --> 00:43:21,082
which in the tradition of european iconography represents the power of the state

642
00:43:21,102 --> 00:43:24,702
she also has a bible which means the power of the church

643
00:43:24,752 --> 00:43:33,072
so you have both, you have the power of the secular matters represented with the scepter

644
00:43:33,100 --> 00:43:36,821
and the power of religious and spiritual matters represented with the bible

645
00:43:36,852 --> 00:43:44,912
you also see pheasants, exotic animals related to both: a symbol of royalty and as an expensive food

646
00:43:44,922 --> 00:43:47,662
eaten only by the aristocracy and the nobility

647
00:43:47,702 --> 00:43:53,221
you also see musical instruments, you see harps, flutes, violins

648
00:43:53,231 --> 00:43:58,871
associated with a cultural refinement, of high culture

649
00:43:58,882 --> 00:44:03,022
you see enormous bounded books

650
00:44:03,101 --> 00:44:07,902
which today means nothing, but back then were expensive artifacts

651
00:44:08,002 --> 00:44:09,601
not everybody had a book

652
00:44:09,611 --> 00:44:12,272
having a book of mathematics if you read it

653
00:44:12,302 --> 00:44:15,142
allowed you to claim you were a mathematician

654
00:44:15,151 --> 00:44:18,812
having a book of engineering allowed you to claim you had studied engineering

655
00:44:18,882 --> 00:44:21,182
it was not like today, these were important artifacts

656
00:44:21,200 --> 00:44:23,640
to claim knowledge and power

657
00:44:23,702 --> 00:44:28,042
in comparison to europe, you see africa for example

658
00:44:28,052 --> 00:44:33,932
that is usually a naked woman without any artifacts

659
00:44:33,952 --> 00:44:37,532
representing any culture, any refinement, any sophistication

660
00:44:37,550 --> 00:44:41,770
there are lions or cheetahs or tigers

661
00:44:41,802 --> 00:44:47,782
there is this exoticism, but for the rest is a naked woman

662
00:44:47,802 --> 00:44:54,862
you're getting getting close to for instance edward said idea of orientalism, right?

663
00:44:54,891 --> 00:45:05,851
so edward said it is very interesting because he talks about how the representations of the arab muslim world

664
00:45:05,862 --> 00:45:13,741
are what europeans, not the people, not the populations even, but the state itself

665
00:45:13,751 --> 00:45:21,532
the european states have taken as the basis to shape and reshape the arab muslim world

666
00:45:21,551 --> 00:45:23,592
particularly through violence

667
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:36,459
what he says is (to put his argument very roughly): what they have made is a caricature of us

668
00:45:36,501 --> 00:45:39,122
of the muslims, they create the caricature of the muslims

669
00:45:39,130 --> 00:45:45,870
but it is important to understand that it is not a caricature that is made entirely out of predatory desires

670
00:45:45,941 --> 00:45:49,601
it's also a caricature that is made by serious scholars

671
00:45:49,611 --> 00:45:54,252
people who really want to understand this world and who are fascinated by

672
00:45:54,302 --> 00:46:02,382
arabic as a language, persian as a language, the mosques of cairo, and the architecture of baghdad and damascus

673
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:06,160
well-intentioned people have created a caricature

674
00:46:06,202 --> 00:46:10,722
and they have created a caricature because they have been allowed

675
00:46:10,802 --> 00:46:15,341
to be academics, to be scientists, to be politicians, to be surveyors, cartographers

676
00:46:15,351 --> 00:46:21,651
within a system that profits from oppressing precisely these people

677
00:46:21,661 --> 00:46:24,742
so it is acceptable to create these caricatures

678
00:46:24,802 --> 00:46:27,362
and not only is it acceptable it is promoted

679
00:46:27,402 --> 00:46:39,502
to create a more accurate representation would be less tolerable

680
00:46:39,510 --> 00:46:48,249
than to create a caricature, because the point is not to offend the point is to dominate

681
00:46:48,302 --> 00:46:53,201
the point is to establish the naturality with which you are superior

682
00:46:53,210 --> 00:47:01,611
and not only that, but also la mission civilisatrice: the civilizing mission

683
00:47:01,720 --> 00:47:05,000
you are not a barbarian as a european

684
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:07,760
that's the way they look at themselves

685
00:47:07,802 --> 00:47:09,622
and this is very interesting psychologically

686
00:47:09,632 --> 00:47:12,772
because you see that they are aware of the problem of the colonization

687
00:47:12,802 --> 00:47:14,702
when they colonize the americas

688
00:47:14,712 --> 00:47:17,412
they justify it as a matter of evangelization

689
00:47:17,422 --> 00:47:25,382
we are going not there to exploit and enslave the indians, and capture their territories, and exploit the resources and enrich ourselves

690
00:47:25,402 --> 00:47:31,382
we are going there to expand the word of christ, and the dominion of christ

691
00:47:31,402 --> 00:47:34,721
the same when they go to the middle east

692
00:47:34,732 --> 00:47:43,632
then they develop a more secular version of the same ideology: we go there because they are inferior

693
00:47:43,701 --> 00:47:49,382
they can use us, we are more modern, we are more advanced, we know better

694
00:47:49,401 --> 00:47:55,862
we are taking this burden upon our shoulders

695
00:47:55,902 --> 00:48:00,462
i think it was Kipling that called the white man's burden

696
00:48:00,502 --> 00:48:04,502
and it was a serious matter, they really believed this

697
00:48:04,512 --> 00:48:09,652
we are going into these colonial and imperial enterprises

698
00:48:09,702 --> 00:48:15,862
because we are good and this ideology of course is ridiculous

699
00:48:15,872 --> 00:48:17,491
for the people that actually hold power

700
00:48:17,501 --> 00:48:19,542
i think they are very aware

701
00:48:19,602 --> 00:48:23,882
that this is just a way of twisting the representation of a certain portion of the world

702
00:48:23,901 --> 00:48:27,741
to convince other people that they are not rapists, that they are not criminals

703
00:48:27,801 --> 00:48:32,302
that they are not plunderers, and that they are not despicable people

704
00:48:32,312 --> 00:48:34,252
but that they are good people

705
00:48:34,302 --> 00:48:39,622
that when they go to the congo, like the belgians did, and massacre entire populations

706
00:48:39,632 --> 00:48:50,911
to exploit some rubber, diamonds or whatever other minerals, trees or precious woods the belgians exploited

707
00:48:50,951 --> 00:48:59,392
when they go there and chop off the hands, the noses, the lips, and the legs of all the black people that they rule over

708
00:48:59,402 --> 00:49:03,001
because they don't bring enough of the resources that they ask them to bring

709
00:49:03,101 --> 00:49:11,002
they don't do it because they're psychopathic criminals but because they are better

710
00:49:11,102 --> 00:49:15,301
and these black people need to civilize themselves, they need to learn

711
00:49:15,401 --> 00:49:21,042
so in a way it is a very interesting process; a very interesting psychological process

712
00:49:21,101 --> 00:49:26,061
for entire populations, what happens to the populations in europe

713
00:49:26,101 --> 00:49:31,482
and this is something for example that the the black poet james baldwin always said

714
00:49:31,502 --> 00:49:37,442
is in a way much worse than what happens to the enslaved

715
00:49:37,502 --> 00:49:40,882
because the enslaved they get dehumanized against their will

716
00:49:40,901 --> 00:49:46,622
in their bodies, in their own bodies they get mutilated

717
00:49:46,722 --> 00:49:51,621
the suffering is unimaginable for most of them  and it remains so

718
00:49:51,701 --> 00:49:54,042
these traditions of violence you see them

719
00:49:54,102 --> 00:49:59,302
you see them well in a life in africa today

720
00:49:59,302 --> 00:50:03,941
in the parts that were dominated by the belgians, like the democratic republic of congo

721
00:50:03,952 --> 00:50:13,132
but what people like james baldwin also said is: what happens to the white people that does that  is perhaps perhaps even worse

722
00:50:13,132 --> 00:50:17,732
because it doesn't happen to one individual it happens to everybody

723
00:50:17,742 --> 00:50:23,502
it's entire societies that learn the naturalization

724
00:50:23,502 --> 00:50:30,222
that learn how to naturalize the dehumanization of people that are their own children in many cases

725
00:50:30,230 --> 00:50:32,309
this happened in the south of the us

726
00:50:32,311 --> 00:50:39,911
you have the white slave owner raping many of the black women that he buys

727
00:50:39,921 --> 00:50:48,142
because this is just simply one of the natural abuses that happened among all enslaved populations

728
00:50:48,152 --> 00:50:51,092
but then you have the contradiction when the baby is born

729
00:50:51,101 --> 00:50:55,461
you have the white baby, or the whiter baby, and the black, or the blacker baby

730
00:50:55,501 --> 00:51:00,022
and depending on the specific criterion on the of the plantation owner back then

731
00:51:00,101 --> 00:51:02,862
that baby is white or black

732
00:51:02,901 --> 00:51:11,842
if the baby is white, he or she get to live in the house and raised as part of the lords

733
00:51:11,852 --> 00:51:19,771
the plantation owners family, they get to be racist, powerful, aristocrats, with comfortable easy lifes

734
00:51:19,801 --> 00:51:24,701
but if they are too black to the criterion of the community or of the person

735
00:51:24,711 --> 00:51:28,191
then they are slaves, these are their own children

736
00:51:28,202 --> 00:51:33,762
of their own children these people learn

737
00:51:33,800 --> 00:51:40,800
to what i think for most of the rest of the world that is not part of this system of white supremacy

738
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:43,520
what would be a monstrous choice

739
00:51:43,551 --> 00:51:50,892
can i profit from my own child then i will enslave them

740
00:51:50,902 --> 00:51:59,082
and submit them to every single savagery that i know slaves in my plantation are the victims of

741
00:51:59,100 --> 00:52:04,080
or will i let them live in the house and have a nice life

742
00:52:04,120 --> 00:52:10,280
maybe this thought is not that much accessible to the person in a conscious manner as well

743
00:52:10,330 --> 00:52:14,591
so maybe the person does not think: i can profit from this child so i put it as a slave

744
00:52:14,620 --> 00:52:21,680
maybe it's just the system of the entire culture that came with whiteness at that time

745
00:52:21,700 --> 00:52:27,560
that made actually this decision to somehow unaccessible to his conscious thoughts

746
00:52:27,620 --> 00:52:32,020
yeah, this is crucial something that people today don't understand

747
00:52:32,110 --> 00:52:35,691
on many sides of the ideological spectrum

748
00:52:35,700 --> 00:52:41,760
and this is a point that if clarified i think would make much of the debate on racism much easier

749
00:52:41,772 --> 00:52:48,832
because it is not a matter of conscious racism

750
00:52:48,842 --> 00:52:54,542
i think especially with the kind of thing we are concerned today

751
00:52:54,551 --> 00:53:04,692
what concerns the people that try to oppose and to deconstruct and to eradicate racism today is really institutional and systemic racism

752
00:53:04,702 --> 00:53:07,142
that is very different than individual racism

753
00:53:07,202 --> 00:53:14,542
and this is proven for example in political science that people that hold really racist convictions

754
00:53:14,552 --> 00:53:20,592
and the people that get their blood boiling if they see somebody black or somebody browner

755
00:53:20,601 --> 00:53:21,801
they're not that many

756
00:53:21,812 --> 00:53:31,152
the ones that are convinced about the supremacy of the aryan race or the white race, they are a few

757
00:53:31,162 --> 00:53:36,702
it is a marginal group in terms of any demographics

758
00:53:36,710 --> 00:53:40,770
even among the demographics that are voting for white supremacist parties like in the netherlands

759
00:53:40,802 --> 00:53:43,681
these people are not racist in that sense

760
00:53:43,700 --> 00:53:52,400
they are not the racists with a whip that would castigate any black body at the very site of it

761
00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:55,499
it is institutional and systemic racism

762
00:53:55,501 --> 00:54:06,081
it is sophisticated in the sense that it turns people that might believe even themselves to be not racist at all

763
00:54:06,102 --> 00:54:10,121
to behave in very racist ways

764
00:54:10,121 --> 00:54:14,382
this is a matter of expectations

765
00:54:14,402 --> 00:54:23,082
they see for example somebody that looks like what they associate with a muslim in the netherlands

766
00:54:23,102 --> 00:54:25,462
or with a middle eastern in the netherlands

767
00:54:25,502 --> 00:54:28,662
and they feel a little bit nervous

768
00:54:28,720 --> 00:54:35,240
because they have learned as a matter of representation in the textbooks that they got in school

769
00:54:35,300 --> 00:54:40,220
in the entire system of representations that has gone through television

770
00:54:40,232 --> 00:54:48,332
entertainment programs, news, talk shows, all sorts of entertainment that they see through

771
00:54:48,341 --> 00:54:51,782
not only traditional but also social media

772
00:54:51,802 --> 00:54:55,682
they have learned the prejudices that are traditional to these geographies

773
00:54:55,702 --> 00:54:58,142
which is the muslims are threatening

774
00:54:58,202 --> 00:55:00,762
this idea of the muslim as a threatening person

775
00:55:00,802 --> 00:55:10,421
the muslim, the arab, the oriental, the persian, moor as a threatening figure

776
00:55:10,452 --> 00:55:19,232
the ones that rape our women, the ones that plunder our wealth, the ones that want to impose their religion upon us

777
00:55:19,252 --> 00:55:23,792
this goes as far back as the crusades maybe even farther back

778
00:55:23,801 --> 00:55:34,202
no this goes to the very beginning of the emergence of christianity and islam for example

779
00:55:35,201 --> 00:55:43,282
so we looked at the matter from the angle of the accused

780
00:55:43,302 --> 00:55:48,002
maybe the white european who is accused as the racist

781
00:55:48,042 --> 00:55:57,262
and we looked at the situation what could be the root causes of this way of understanding the world

782
00:55:57,301 --> 00:56:04,482
why/how a white person has been provided with all these representations

783
00:56:04,502 --> 00:56:07,022
and that formed his understanding of the world

784
00:56:07,052 --> 00:56:13,171
it would be interesting to also look from the eyes of the oppressed

785
00:56:13,202 --> 00:56:15,501
how he accepts this

786
00:56:15,552 --> 00:56:17,831
and you made actually a really interesting point

787
00:56:17,901 --> 00:56:23,422
saying that for the slaves it was a bit different because they could feel it with the bones and the skin

788
00:56:23,450 --> 00:56:27,150
that they are being crueled up on

789
00:56:27,202 --> 00:56:30,921
however when you look at for instance the colonies

790
00:56:31,001 --> 00:56:36,022
there is a different dynamics also working there

791
00:56:36,030 --> 00:56:41,850
for instance in the middle east they have this notion, this discourse of westoxcification

792
00:56:41,902 --> 00:56:48,622
that some group of people have been let's say dissolved in west

793
00:56:48,652 --> 00:56:55,432
have been so much maybe suppressed maybe in love

794
00:56:55,432 --> 00:56:59,011
that they see europeans and they feel europeans are superior

795
00:56:59,012 --> 00:57:00,592
so whatever comes from west

796
00:57:00,601 --> 00:57:03,182
whether it's being the way of ruling

797
00:57:03,202 --> 00:57:04,802
whether it's being the music

798
00:57:04,802 --> 00:57:06,382
whether it's being how you dress

799
00:57:06,402 --> 00:57:07,621
whetherit's being the language

800
00:57:07,632 --> 00:57:11,572
whether it's being what cosmetics do you use

801
00:57:11,602 --> 00:57:16,661
how do you dance, how do you behave in society

802
00:57:16,701 --> 00:57:19,621
they see that as the superior way

803
00:57:19,702 --> 00:57:26,522
and they see the growth or the the ultimate of their society

804
00:57:26,532 --> 00:57:29,332
to be as similar as possible to what west has

805
00:57:29,341 --> 00:57:36,341
how do you think about that?

806
00:57:36,402 --> 00:57:48,302
how does this interaction forms the dynamics between the two groups?

807
00:57:48,302 --> 00:57:52,722
i think it entirely determines them

808
00:57:52,731 --> 00:57:59,071
this has been both studied and conceptualized by a very interesting writer called anival kijano

809
00:57:59,100 --> 00:58:05,101
a peruvian philosopher, that has been concerned with coloniality of power

810
00:58:05,109 --> 00:58:07,668
a concept that he calls coloniality of power

811
00:58:07,701 --> 00:58:18,121
and i think it matches what in the civil rights movement in the united states is considered to be whiteness

812
00:58:18,151 --> 00:58:20,292
whiteness as a way of thinking

813
00:58:20,301 --> 00:58:24,522
what i told you james baldwin, malcolm x and martin luther king constantly talked about

814
00:58:24,532 --> 00:58:31,872
this idea of thinking and acting not because you're white but because also you want to be white

815
00:58:31,901 --> 00:58:34,881
and this coloniality of power

816
00:58:34,901 --> 00:58:38,942
i think this determines all the relations, you see it today

817
00:58:39,002 --> 00:58:45,662
it is for people that come from colonial countries to study for example or to live in europe

818
00:58:45,700 --> 00:58:47,279
for many of them

819
00:58:47,300 --> 00:58:53,900
especially i've noticed because i'm in this particular field the ones that get acquainted with postcolonial and the colonial theory

820
00:58:53,902 --> 00:58:58,661
a great source of anguish

821
00:58:58,701 --> 00:59:05,002
the label that is associated to their nationality and their civilization and their identity

822
00:59:05,002 --> 00:59:08,342
for example i have a very good friend

823
00:59:08,352 --> 00:59:12,012
that was very afraid of saying he was turk when he came to the netherlands

824
00:59:12,022 --> 00:59:16,401
because he felt ashamed because he assumed everything that was being turk

825
00:59:16,411 --> 00:59:19,952
everything that meant being turk, was simply inferior

826
00:59:20,002 --> 00:59:23,542
beginning by the race by the way you look

827
00:59:23,552 --> 00:59:31,571
and this is something entirely embedded in a system of colonialist thought, science, representation

828
00:59:31,600 --> 00:59:36,760
that is not confined to the boundaries of european countries and the european continent

829
00:59:36,771 --> 00:59:40,372
but that is also very much promoted in the colonies

830
00:59:40,400 --> 00:59:41,801
this is something that in mexico we know very well

831
00:59:41,812 --> 00:59:46,372
in mexico we even say that when somebody acquires money or power

832
00:59:46,382 --> 00:59:50,042
they try to whiten themselves, by acting white

833
00:59:50,100 --> 00:59:54,880
by acting more like what the white elites in mexico and in latin america act like

834
00:59:54,902 --> 00:59:59,601
by eating european foods, by trying to buy european cuisines

835
00:59:59,601 --> 01:00:01,302
which is interesting in the case of mexico

836
01:00:01,302 --> 01:00:04,621
because mexico has a fantastic, one of the richest cuisines in the world

837
01:00:04,662 --> 01:00:08,062
and yet when people acquire more wealth

838
01:00:08,102 --> 01:00:11,361
they start to eat more italian, more french, more spanish

839
01:00:11,371 --> 01:00:13,892
they start to buy imported products

840
01:00:13,902 --> 01:00:15,821
it has a lot to do with trade

841
01:00:15,832 --> 01:00:22,571
and this is crucial, whiteness has to do with wealth, with globalized wealth, which very much comes from trade

842
01:00:22,580 --> 01:00:25,481
from moving one thing from one place to another

843
01:00:25,502 --> 01:00:28,642
and telling the people in the other place you really need this

844
01:00:28,652 --> 01:00:31,072
it has to do with advertising and marketing

845
01:00:31,102 --> 01:00:34,042
so that is the thing about whiteness and racism

846
01:00:34,101 --> 01:00:37,262
you cannot deconstruct it by focusing purely on the color of the skin

847
01:00:37,302 --> 01:00:42,422
this is very superficial, you need to focus on the reverberations that whiteness exerts

848
01:00:42,472 --> 01:00:45,312
on marketing, on advertising, on trade

849
01:00:45,332 --> 01:00:51,572
on the very representation that we are used to see on airport magazine

850
01:00:51,582 --> 01:00:54,402
on all of our advertisements, on the political propaganda

851
01:00:54,412 --> 01:00:59,991
on the representations that children at school get from what the mexicans look, like what the africans look like

852
01:01:00,100 --> 01:01:03,881
which still coincide with very racist representations for example

853
01:01:03,892 --> 01:01:08,051
now this is crucial because the world is enormously vast

854
01:01:08,061 --> 01:01:13,401
and we cannot know, not even the most seasoned traveler can by any means know

855
01:01:13,411 --> 01:01:17,891
every single part, every single people, culture of the world

856
01:01:17,911 --> 01:01:20,052
and even if they could, they could not understand all of them

857
01:01:20,056 --> 01:01:25,876
they cannot speak all the languages,  they cannot understand all the cultural nuances

858
01:01:25,902 --> 01:01:30,662
so what we know, what all of us knows about the world

859
01:01:30,672 --> 01:01:35,571
is very much, for a great part of it, based on representations that we have seen

860
01:01:35,582 --> 01:01:42,661
in a collection of items, movies, films, books, narratives, propaganda, our families, our friends

861
01:01:42,682 --> 01:01:45,441
which is also determined of course by the neighborhood in which we live

862
01:01:45,471 --> 01:01:49,671
the socio-economic status that is associated with that neighborhood for example

863
01:01:49,681 --> 01:01:52,022
the possibilities that we have to go to certain schools

864
01:01:52,032 --> 01:02:00,292
and to socialize within certainplaces, certain malls, certain cinemas, certain theaters, certain artistic communities

865
01:02:00,300 --> 01:02:01,740
the languages we speak

866
01:02:01,802 --> 01:02:06,981
an immigrant growing up in the netherlands whose parents speak only arabic

867
01:02:07,000 --> 01:02:12,680
will miss a great deal of dutch culture that his peers are learning while they're same age

868
01:02:12,690 --> 01:02:16,911
and these difference will be expressed in primary school to his disadvantage

869
01:02:16,950 --> 01:02:22,790
so this actually brings us to a very good point

870
01:02:22,800 --> 01:02:31,599
what would be the solution, because it's very simplified way of thinking to just decrease the problem to the color of skin

871
01:02:31,600 --> 01:02:41,580
as you mentioned it's the entire system of culture, of ideologies, of inheritance, that the person is brought to

872
01:02:41,586 --> 01:02:47,346
its entire ecosystem of marketing of the economy that works in favor of one group

873
01:02:47,400 --> 01:02:50,999
and advertises or promotes one group versus the other

874
01:02:51,000 --> 01:03:00,901
and maybe that's not necessarily aimed at suppressing one skin color versus the other

875
01:03:00,901 --> 01:03:03,481
but the outcome is what's happening today

876
01:03:03,501 --> 01:03:09,061
yeah, i don't know that is a difficult question

877
01:03:09,070 --> 01:03:10,831
how to solve it, or how to start solving it

878
01:03:10,851 --> 01:03:15,151
i think the problem with this is: it really depends who you are

879
01:03:15,161 --> 01:03:20,621
for example, i am the victim of racism sometimes

880
01:03:20,651 --> 01:03:22,831
or what i think in any case is racism

881
01:03:22,891 --> 01:03:29,271
but i'm by far not the victim of the same kind of racism than a black african

882
01:03:29,281 --> 01:03:32,260
a black african refugee is in the netherlands

883
01:03:32,300 --> 01:03:35,839
i can deal with it in a very different way

884
01:03:35,840 --> 01:03:38,441
in a much more successful way than they can

885
01:03:38,451 --> 01:03:44,031
i am much better off than most arabs and muslim immigrants here

886
01:03:44,091 --> 01:03:51,711
because mexicans are associated with a lot of violence that is for the most part contained or confined to the country

887
01:03:51,800 --> 01:03:58,560
and for the rest, it is i think a national stereotype that is very caricaturesque and very friendly

888
01:03:58,601 --> 01:04:01,521
it is tequila, el sombreros, party and pinatas

889
01:04:01,531 --> 01:04:05,850
things like this, people do not see me as a threat necessarily

890
01:04:05,920 --> 01:04:10,781
but i notice my muslim and my arabic friends

891
01:04:10,801 --> 01:04:13,201
they notice this when they go talk to a girl

892
01:04:13,211 --> 01:04:20,051
they assume, that they are some sort of players and womanizers

893
01:04:20,101 --> 01:04:23,140
that are going to treat them disrespectfully

894
01:04:23,150 --> 01:04:25,011
and they're very surprised that they don't do it

895
01:04:25,101 --> 01:04:30,981
when i see my syrian friends going to clubs

896
01:04:30,991 --> 01:04:37,191
you see all sorts of shady white dutch guys going in like they are the children of the bouncers

897
01:04:37,200 --> 01:04:47,361
and you see any given syrian guy regardless of how poor or wealthy he looks getting checked twice or three times

898
01:04:47,401 --> 01:04:52,340
so i think it really depends on the resources that you have

899
01:04:52,351 --> 01:04:54,131
the skin that you have also matters

900
01:04:54,152 --> 01:04:56,351
i can hide a little bit

901
01:04:56,361 --> 01:05:03,020
a black person cannot hide even if they were born in the netherlands and even if they speak flawless dutch

902
01:05:03,110 --> 01:05:09,710
they will be the target of enormous consistent sustained life-long racism

903
01:05:09,721 --> 01:05:16,461
and they know this, and they are very aware about how they look, and how people perceive them

904
01:05:16,501 --> 01:05:19,021
all the time they are very aware

905
01:05:19,050 --> 01:05:20,550
and i think that here is the solution

906
01:05:20,551 --> 01:05:29,870
i think the solution is in being more aware of the experiences of people that have been traditionally discriminated and traditionally oppressed

907
01:05:29,900 --> 01:05:34,380
because you find not that there is something essentially better in them

908
01:05:34,390 --> 01:05:37,130
but there is certainly something they know that we don't know

909
01:05:37,140 --> 01:05:41,721
if you read black writers, for me at least it has come as a great revelation

910
01:05:41,731 --> 01:05:49,211
to be aware of the sophistication of the perception that they have about how others perceive them

911
01:05:49,301 --> 01:05:54,741
they are playing a perceptual game of chess that is much more complicated than many other people

912
01:05:54,751 --> 01:05:56,211
because they are forced into it

913
01:05:56,221 --> 01:06:00,680
black people living not only in white populations, but particularly black people living in america

914
01:06:00,731 --> 01:06:11,670
that has arguably one of the most violent and abusive and corrosive racist systems in europe and in the u.s

915
01:06:11,701 --> 01:06:13,121
what we call the west

916
01:06:13,131 --> 01:06:15,051
that is also a category that i oppose

917
01:06:15,100 --> 01:06:19,540
i think opposing these essentializing categories is very much where the solution lies

918
01:06:19,551 --> 01:06:22,951
none of these exist essentially, there is a humanity

919
01:06:22,961 --> 01:06:28,000
there is a global history, which is a point stressed over and over by historians

920
01:06:28,000 --> 01:06:33,101
there is no such thing as a dutch or a french or a spanish history

921
01:06:33,111 --> 01:06:36,590
these are constructions for the benefit of power in every state

922
01:06:36,600 --> 01:06:43,581
but as a matter of scientific integrity, you can never speak about a dutch history

923
01:06:43,590 --> 01:06:48,590
about dutch style of painting about an italian architecture

924
01:06:48,600 --> 01:06:54,421
because the beauty of culture is that it is ceaselessly appropriated and reappropriated

925
01:06:54,431 --> 01:06:58,491
and the moment you show something to somebody else

926
01:06:58,500 --> 01:07:02,279
they might copy it, it improve it, change it or modify it

927
01:07:02,300 --> 01:07:05,041
but if they like it in any way they will take it

928
01:07:05,051 --> 01:07:07,410
and even if they don't like it they might reproduce it

929
01:07:07,420 --> 01:07:10,141
and then it's not yours anymore, then it's theirs

930
01:07:10,150 --> 01:07:11,890
but at the same time it's from everybody

931
01:07:11,900 --> 01:07:21,401
and i think much of the solution lies in being aware of how people perceive us

932
01:07:21,411 --> 01:07:25,871
being aware of how people perceive not only the good things we do but also the bad things we might do

933
01:07:25,901 --> 01:07:27,761
which is i think something that black writers

934
01:07:27,771 --> 01:07:34,651
not even black writers that are concerned with the issues of race like james baldwin for example

935
01:07:34,661 --> 01:07:37,441
but also writers that write about any other kind of thing

936
01:07:37,471 --> 01:07:39,751
they are very aware, their characters are black

937
01:07:39,761 --> 01:07:45,000
and you see how they play these chess of perception all the time

938
01:07:45,011 --> 01:07:47,430
when they flirt, when they go for a job interview

939
01:07:47,441 --> 01:07:51,521
when they are waiter in a restaurant and they serve somebody

940
01:07:51,531 --> 01:07:57,551
when they're walking down the street late at night and they see a white person terrified coming at them

941
01:07:57,560 --> 01:08:00,540
all these things

942
01:08:00,551 --> 01:08:05,091
and this is something that i think black people in the south of the us

943
01:08:05,101 --> 01:08:08,740
or black people in many european countries, share with women for example

944
01:08:08,761 --> 01:08:17,041
there is a a very an excellent theory of how women have been taught throughout history to survey themselves

945
01:08:17,101 --> 01:08:21,441
because very much as many other oppressed minorities

946
01:08:21,451 --> 01:08:23,291
well the women are not a minority

947
01:08:23,301 --> 01:08:26,541
many other oppressed minorities or many other oppressed groups of society

948
01:08:26,591 --> 01:08:29,530
they have learned to survey themselves for the pleasure of men

949
01:08:29,550 --> 01:08:31,031
so that they are pleasurable to men

950
01:08:31,121 --> 01:08:37,721
and that's why women are very aware of how they look, how they smell, how they their hair is arranged

951
01:08:37,780 --> 01:08:43,741
how they behave in certain contexts, what is the proper way to do certain things

952
01:08:43,751 --> 01:08:46,890
because they are very aware that the perception that men have of them

953
01:08:46,900 --> 01:08:51,361
has a great impact on their faith in every single social setting

954
01:08:51,371 --> 01:08:58,191
the same, but i think to a much more heightened degree for black slaves or black people in the us

955
01:08:58,200 --> 01:09:02,441
you cannot hide, you can never hide

956
01:09:02,450 --> 01:09:08,071
your race, when you're of a different color of different features within a society

957
01:09:08,100 --> 01:09:10,980
that is remarkably visually very strikingly different

958
01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:13,520
makes it impossible for you to hide

959
01:09:13,550 --> 01:09:19,731
and if this way in which you look is associated to bad threatening evil undesirable traits

960
01:09:19,751 --> 01:09:22,811
you are in a position of enormous disadvantage

961
01:09:22,851 --> 01:09:31,371
this is a position of enormous disadvantage that you notice very easily when you live in a mostly white northern country like the Netherlands

962
01:09:31,391 --> 01:09:32,671
people don't have at all

963
01:09:32,680 --> 01:09:42,920
they can say all sorts of things that are denigrating and demeaning and vulgar and ordinary

964
01:09:42,951 --> 01:09:49,030
as in what they consider to be very unthreatening ways

965
01:09:49,150 --> 01:09:51,011
they want to play, they want to make a joke

966
01:09:51,101 --> 01:09:55,061
but they can say the most racist things if you will

967
01:09:55,101 --> 01:10:01,140
about muslims, about arabs, or latin americans, about asians, about africans, black people anybody

968
01:10:01,150 --> 01:10:05,050
and you see these people take it and smile or smirk

969
01:10:05,101 --> 01:10:08,921
because they don't want the confrontation, and because they have heard that too many times they are used to this

970
01:10:08,951 --> 01:10:14,711
many of them they even know what to reply because many of these racial slurs are very common

971
01:10:14,721 --> 01:10:18,381
so they are used to it, their skin is very thick already

972
01:10:18,401 --> 01:10:22,381
but then you see what happens when you criticize their culture

973
01:10:22,400 --> 01:10:27,700
you say something about dutch food, you say something about the dutch anthem

974
01:10:27,711 --> 01:10:35,711
say something about dutch morality, go deep and say something about dutch history and their heroes and their slavery

975
01:10:35,730 --> 01:10:37,010
make jokes about it

976
01:10:37,010 --> 01:10:38,970
and they lose their minds many of them

977
01:10:39,001 --> 01:10:44,761
many of them feel their pride touched for the first time and they cannot deal with it

978
01:10:44,771 --> 01:10:52,131
and this is what you see in all these alt-right or neo-fascist parties which are nothing but the same fascist as always

979
01:10:52,141 --> 01:10:59,700
and that's what you see in the kind of heroes, the kind of history, which is essential for any form of political identity

980
01:10:59,731 --> 01:11:08,811
you see that in this history they try to defend the slave traders the colonizers

981
01:11:08,910 --> 01:11:16,710
without any nuance with the races with their imperial and slave related enterprises

982
01:11:16,730 --> 01:11:24,930
because they cannot deal with the complexity that the people that are used to exploitation and denigration are already used to

983
01:11:24,941 --> 01:11:31,201
they are already used to deal with the complexity because they have been forced they have been thrown into a corner

984
01:11:31,211 --> 01:11:33,831
and given all this massive amount of abuse

985
01:11:33,851 --> 01:11:38,791
and at the same time a gift, the gift of reflecting on themselves endlessly

986
01:11:38,801 --> 01:11:42,520
and they are very aware that there is much wrong and much right with them

987
01:11:42,530 --> 01:11:44,471
and their history, and their ancestors, and their culture

988
01:11:44,481 --> 01:11:54,981
which is something that goes entirely missing for many people in white countries

989
01:11:54,991 --> 01:11:59,591
whose national history is related to exploitation, slavery and colonialism

990
01:11:59,600 --> 01:12:04,439
they are not used to a black person making fun of them

991
01:12:04,450 --> 01:12:08,591
telling them you might be funny too

992
01:12:08,601 --> 01:12:12,061
to your food is actually terrible

993
01:12:12,100 --> 01:12:15,261
your morality is disastrous

994
01:12:15,301 --> 01:12:17,501
you're not as good as you think you are

995
01:12:17,511 --> 01:12:27,271
and i think the solution lies much in this

996
01:12:27,301 --> 01:12:32,061
in people in these countries developing a thicker skin

997
01:12:32,071 --> 01:12:40,390
while the people on the other side, that are the ones that could force them to develop a thicker skin

998
01:12:40,401 --> 01:12:46,701
also are very wary to criticize while not taking the pride out of them

999
01:12:46,701 --> 01:12:53,701
you cannot take the pride out of any kind of people without them reacting in some way

1000
01:12:53,711 --> 01:12:57,671
and that is something for example about the left that i don't like

1001
01:12:57,700 --> 01:13:01,240
when they say all white people are bad

1002
01:13:01,301 --> 01:13:02,761
i mean this is a caricature

1003
01:13:02,801 --> 01:13:06,181
but when they make a statement that gives you the impression

1004
01:13:06,201 --> 01:13:09,421
that the meaning is that all white people do this bad thing

1005
01:13:09,441 --> 01:13:15,201
i think this is very as a matter of rhetoric and as a matter of history and genetics you know very poor

1006
01:13:15,221 --> 01:13:17,680
you also have to give them pride

1007
01:13:17,701 --> 01:13:22,820
it is necessary to say okay, the history that is also not history

1008
01:13:22,850 --> 01:13:27,310
it's the national history, the one that you have been taught by the people in power in your country

1009
01:13:27,350 --> 01:13:35,930
this history is wrong, but there is pride, there is certainly pride in many things that people that look like you

1010
01:13:35,951 --> 01:13:39,231
and that people that you think that you come from have done

1011
01:13:39,251 --> 01:13:46,391
but it's certainly not slavery, and it's certainly not the west indian companies, none of them

1012
01:13:46,401 --> 01:13:53,041
it's not the military adventures that have been oriented towards the exploitation of entire nations

1013
01:13:53,051 --> 01:13:54,751
and the enslavement of their children

1014
01:13:54,761 --> 01:13:56,581
it's other things

1015
01:13:56,591 --> 01:14:04,711
So in this case then this is a very progressive movement that we have these days

1016
01:14:04,720 --> 01:14:06,579
with the black lives matters for instance

1017
01:14:06,600 --> 01:14:11,121
that is happening not only in the united states but across the other european countries as well

1018
01:14:11,130 --> 01:14:15,991
it could actually contribute to the discourse that you are explaining here

1019
01:14:16,001 --> 01:14:18,741
i think so, i don't know, i never expected it

1020
01:14:18,751 --> 01:14:21,391
what is happening in the netherlands now is very unique

1021
01:14:21,401 --> 01:14:24,721
i've never seen it, i've been here 10 which is not that long

1022
01:14:24,731 --> 01:14:27,071
but i never expected to see it

1023
01:14:27,100 --> 01:14:28,500
the netherlands has for example

1024
01:14:28,501 --> 01:14:34,181
a sense of humor that i find it very similar to the sense of humor that you can find among the ku klux klan members

1025
01:14:34,200 --> 01:14:35,880
in the u.s sometimes not always

1026
01:14:35,900 --> 01:14:38,521
they also have a very refined humor

1027
01:14:38,550 --> 01:14:43,711
but there is a certain kind of popular humor that is very distressing to hear

1028
01:14:43,751 --> 01:14:48,671
because they make jokes, very very vulgar jokes

1029
01:14:48,681 --> 01:14:53,521
about the very physical way in which people that are not white look

1030
01:14:53,531 --> 01:15:02,191
jokes that involve rape, or torture, or killing nazi jokes, ku klux klan jokes

1031
01:15:02,201 --> 01:15:04,661
and when you hear that you think, aaah

1032
01:15:04,671 --> 01:15:09,111
and yet unlike the us, the dutch do not consider themselves racist

1033
01:15:09,121 --> 01:15:11,061
but post races they are above that

1034
01:15:11,101 --> 01:15:15,221
and i think many of them think precisely because we are above that we can be racist

1035
01:15:15,231 --> 01:15:18,191
because god knows we are not at heart

1036
01:15:18,201 --> 01:15:22,221
but what is happening now is that you see for the first time

1037
01:15:22,231 --> 01:15:24,271
that in every single newspaper in the netherlands

1038
01:15:24,281 --> 01:15:31,220
the dyke that used to contain that kind of reflection about their own racism has broken

1039
01:15:31,230 --> 01:15:43,750
and the newspapers and society has been flooded with narratives in history and reflections and remarks articles everywhere

1040
01:15:43,761 --> 01:15:50,461
about police brutality against minorities and especially against black, brown, muslim minorities

1041
01:15:50,470 --> 01:15:56,770
you see all the dutch people with an immigration background that comes from one of the former colonized countries

1042
01:15:56,790 --> 01:16:01,590
suriname, Curaçao, indonesia speaking out

1043
01:16:01,601 --> 01:16:08,761
talking about how in spite of them being dutch they have been systematically discriminated all their lives, and how this matters

1044
01:16:08,800 --> 01:16:15,320
for the first time you hear an enormous amount of white dutch people making reflections about their white privilege

1045
01:16:15,331 --> 01:16:18,471
in a way this is a discourse imported from america

1046
01:16:18,481 --> 01:16:25,001
and in that sense it should be contextualized because i don't think the netherlands has the same problems as the u.s of course

1047
01:16:25,001 --> 01:16:36,941
but in no way the netherlands has got ridden of its racism

1048
01:16:36,961 --> 01:16:38,521
or of its white supremacy

1049
01:16:38,581 --> 01:16:44,301
so much not so that today the only european country with an openly white supremacist party

1050
01:16:44,321 --> 01:16:53,461
that might win a substantive power if not the prime ministership in the next elections

1051
01:16:53,471 --> 01:17:01,511
is a white supremacist party of an ideology that to my knowledge is very novel in the european continent

1052
01:17:01,521 --> 01:17:05,980
it is not the classical neo-nazi fascist playing party

1053
01:17:06,001 --> 01:17:09,720
it is a white supremacist party that reproduces the strategies

1054
01:17:09,770 --> 01:17:18,731
the representational, the discursive strategies strategies of the south racists of the us

1055
01:17:18,741 --> 01:17:22,301
and in that way it is important but in another way it's not

1056
01:17:22,321 --> 01:17:25,361
because of course the racism in the us in the end came from europe

1057
01:17:25,371 --> 01:17:31,071
yeah, thank you very much

1058
01:17:31,101 --> 01:17:35,261
is there anything else you would like to add to the discussion we had today

1059
01:17:35,270 --> 01:17:40,171
that you see we left untouched

1060
01:17:40,201 --> 01:17:44,521
i don't know, there is much i think we left in touch

1061
01:17:44,551 --> 01:17:47,650
but i think what we touched was good enough i think for start

1062
01:17:47,510 --> 01:17:50,870
to start a little reflection perhaps

1063
01:17:50,900 --> 01:17:54,561
thank you very much Rodrigo, it was a pleasure to have you

1064
01:17:54,551 --> 01:17:55,511
it was my pleasure

1065
01:17:55,521 --> 01:17:58,521
thanks