An equipment and territory of action

Campo Sud, here we are in Calasetta, a border territory, at the margins. I say that because here we are located on an Island close to the main Island of Sardinia and, especially, because there is a linguistic margin. Centuries ago there was a genovese colony here so most of today’s locals in Calasetta and Carlo Martello speak an archaic genovese dialect. In Sant’Antioco (which is also the name of the patrol saint in Sardinia) a town a few miles from here locals still speak a Sardinian dialect.

To be in a liminal space together as a summer camp, willing to create in group a notebook about the Southern Question, isn’t in contrast with the old anthropological practice to investigate at the margin. Nevertheless, we aren’t here to do research, so I’m wondering what should be highlighted at this stage. Looks like political activism, academic knowledge, and Arts are the keywords so far, also they are equipment and territory of action to collectively realize something.

In the first two nights at MACC we assisted two scholars' lectures. Brutal summarization: both author⁄Habib Ayeb and author⁄Iain Chambers in the lectures were scholars doing speeches about some political injustices in a museum: author⁄Habib spoke about how Tunisine “crop substation" was colonized and transformed in “crop market”; author⁄Iain Chambers spoke about the hegemony of west in the Mediterranean area ¹. In addition to this, they decided to use the ingredients of art in their lectures: cinema and music.

We are facing complexity, so I conclude with a suggestive quote to skip it at this stage. author⁄Martha Nussbaum, in her book The Monarchy of Fear (2018)² claims that emotion have an important role in society:

emotions can destabilize a community and fragment it, or they can produce better coAoperation and more energetic striving toward justice - (author⁄Nussbaum, 2018: 53)

for this reason she propose to become philosopher, not in the meaning that all of us should write majestic books, but adequate our behavior to complexity:

is not about authoritative pronouncements. It is not about one person claiming to be deeper than others or making allegedly wise assertions. It is about leading the “examined life, with humility about how little we really understand, with a commitment to arguments that are rigorous, reciprocal, and sincere, and with a willingness to listen to others as equal participants and to respond to what they offer - author⁄Nussbaum, 2018: 46-47.

Notes: