Nina Simone’s rendition of “Strange Fruit” is a memorably dramatic one. It is a rendition where strong and tactile poetry meets a raw, sharp and an almost unforgiving or callous voice. A voice determined to drive home the image of a tortured, dead black body, blood and the serene and beautiful landscape behind it. Simone called the song “ugly” and it is- in the pain that it makes a listener relive and in the beauty of its ability to become immortal, to latch itself onto the world. Abel Meeropol’s poetry becomes language that is truly alive, that leaves no room for lies, that which shows all reality- whether real or imagined. As Toni Morrison showed us, this poetic language becomes “the measure of our lives”, that which really and truly is.

Here one can see language as not just a “system” or a source of “agency” but as a living, breathing phenomenon as Morrison describes. It has a heart, an inside that protects human potential, the place where the meaning of humanity lives. And thus, like all other living things, language too can die. Language too can be tortured, mistreated, ignored, mutilated, caged, killed, protected, loved or made to live on. Language gives humans the “access” to what is left of “human instincts”, and because it has a heart that houses that instinct, language itself is a human instinct. Language itself is the beating or dead heart, the inside. That is why oppressive language “is oppressive”. This is a place where words cease to be a reflection of human thoughts and feelings but become them, with the living, throbbing capacity to create and destroy, to live and die. With a life of its own, language, in all capacities, does not only create its own path but is one. It does not only create a human but becomes one. A Narrative, therefore, creates us the “moment it is being created”.

This is why it is naturally inclined to let its words move towards the place in the human heart to which they really are meant to go to. It “arcs towards the place where meaning may lie.” Somewhere along that movement, that journey is often intercepted- language is made incapable of completing that journey. But Morrison shows us that this does not change the reality of language’s endeavor- to “surge towards knowledge, not destruction.” One may understand poetic language to make the same endeavors, to live in the hope and struggle to say what has to be said in just the way it has to be said. The essence of its life lies in its attempt to “limn the actual, imagined and possible”- all as equally real and meaningful narratives.

The lyrics of “Strange Fruit” encapsulate this reality of the real, the imagined and the possible. It begins by playing with “strange fruit” and “black body”, jolting one into experiencing how language can interweave reality and imagination, emphasizing the sheer truth of both. The imagery is vivid and meant to disturb- meant to make one hear the resonating silence of a breezy afternoon, the blood, and the breeze.  It is meant to make one experience both- the calmness, the silent pastoral landscape, the rhythmic swinging and breeze and the central presence of death, injustice, torture and pain. The sense of tranquility and the notion of human undoing rest within each other. The magnolia is only sensed if one senses the “burning flesh”. The black, hanging bodies, or the “crop”, create the rhythmic swinging. The breeze delivers the smell of blood smeared on the leaves and the roots of trees. The tranquility and the brokenness are inseparable. It is here that language fuses the real and the imagined together. We, inhumane humans, who enjoy the breeze and the blood together. It is all real.

A photograph of the lynching of two African-American men inspired these words. Yet the poetry recreates not just the painfully normalized phenomenon of lynching, but also the heart of that pain. It no longer matters whether a photograph or a real sight inspires it, or whether bodies or fruits hung from the southern trees. What matters is the inescapable, the piercingly real reality of the pain and the peace. In essence, if language dies, if its heart dies, so do we humans because we will no longer say or mean the things we are supposed to say, the things that have a meaning and emanate life. Whether what hung from the trees were just crops or bodies, the poetic language said what it needed to say. It showed its heart, the peace and the pain, the inside- here, the desensitivity. Thus, with a true understanding of the heart comes the power to choose to heal. In essence, Morrison shows the true heart of language and humanity- the power and beauty of being what you may be and still healing. As Morrison’s old, blind woman would have meant- to kill the bird or to let it fly.

Senghor’s depiction of Negritude shows how the phenomenon operates as notions of universalism would, and intends to make itself a part of a larger universe, but refuses to detach itself from black exclusivity. Negritude then exists outside a universe, and functions on its principles- but refuses to be one.

Senghor shows how Negritude is a phenomenon that aims to become a part of the universal, depicting that the “universal” is an external entity, a space outside Negritude. In essence, Negritude seems to seek a connection with, and an “active presence in the world, or better, in the universe.” This shows how “the sum of the cultural values of the black world” seek to co-exist “in the world” where values external to it reside. The black world is depicted as isolated, endeavoring to make its way into the universal. Not only does it then acknowledge the existence of the external universe, but also understands it to possess a “living, throbbing unity”. It understands the significance of the meaning attached to this life of the universe, of the thriving of one energy and network of forces- it seeks to become a force that would allow the black world to establish essential “contact” and “participation” with others. Negritude would then seek to open the world to itself, rather than open itself to the world, which already seems to give space to the whites. In effect, Negritude yearns to become part of the universal, but refuses to give space to it within itself.

However, Senghor shows how the “Rhythm”, the “main virtue” of Negritude imitates a universal reality in its working. Consequently, a notion of universality lies in Negritude’s functioning and experience- of the complex and yet simple unity of life forces that form intricate connections and ties to create a complete reality. In essence, the notion of this kind of universality is rooted in a sense of mobility and interconnectivity. Several small and large life forces and all such existing essences, find their way back to each other, form countless paths without any disjunction, and create an entire experience which transforms “existence” into “being”. The spiritual and the material, the “tangential” and the “radial” both form a single energy- where the core and periphery, the small and the large are placed and interdependent in such ways that produce one complete understanding. In effect, it forms a complete and intact experience that “emanates from God and ends in God” and allows the universe to be “infinitely small” and “infinitely large” at the same time. The universality then, lies in the “complementarity” of these forces, in that one sense of completion.

            This complementarity produces “pure harmony”, a feature of the universe and the way it functions- where oneness becomes inevitable and indestructible, where all life forces are magnetic and respond to each other’s “call of complementarity”. There is no other reality than harmony, and that too a continuous one, like the continuity of the universe’s workings. Notions of separation and reunion both result in harmony- like a separated couple, or “two lovers”. This rhythm of Negritude is what is omnipresent and functions just like a universal force.

Yet, although Negritude functions in ways similar to a universe, it remains a universe for the black. The rhythm is only an African rhythm, understood only by the black African, wherever he or she might be in the world. Only the black can hear the calling and feel the mobility that will allow them to transcend towards “being”- similar to European racism, the Black will truly live by virtue of being black. The “black personality” that was first isolated becomes exclusive, existing outside the universe, on its own. However, one must not ignore an understanding of Negritude as a response to European racism. The response to whiteness is blackness and therefore cannot include everyone in the universe. It is because whiteness was thrust first upon the world, with its supposed superiority, that blackness cannot be universal, but rather must counter it to challenge its superiority. Instead, both whiteness and blackness must contribute to universalism. Negritude chooses to defeat the monster, by becoming one itself. Both the monsters then, are universes in themselves, but one fights only for the whites while the other fights only for the black. In essence, Negritude has space for the universal black, which may not be universal after all. In fact, if there are separate universals for the black and the white, one may question the existence of a pure universal itself. If there is no universalism, how could Negritude as a response, ever make space for it?

Senghor shows how Negritude is a “response to modern humanism” and a “humanism of the twentieth century” at the same time. Negritude in itself functions like a universe would, but produces a harmonious experience that would only manifest itself for the “black personality”. It seeks to make itself a part of the larger framework of the universal by truly remaining an exclusive part, a black part. The lack of diffusion of the black and white parts could mean that the “universal” could never truly exist in the first place, completing this cycle of exclusive response and counter-response, a never-ending phenomenon. Consequently, it is not just Senghor’s Negritude that does not have space for universalism- universalism itself might never have space for anything at all.

Chandra Mohanty’s critique on Feminist scholarship of the First world is continuous with a recurring theme in the history of colonization- the endeavors of the colonizing first world to identify and define itself as more progressive, superior and simply better than the colonized, without which the colonizer’s identity would be insignificant and incomplete. Feminist scholarship of the First World turns women into a “category of analysis”, assumes them as a monolithic whole in the third world, and then adjudicates these very self-created categories, crafting a specific position for the first world woman in the process. Mohanty’s work illustrates a tug of war between feminist concerns serving as a just cause- a cause that could push the colonizers and the colonized in the right direction- and the concealed parallelism of this scholarship with colonialist and imperialist elements, pulling them backwards. The work that could help understand the different women of the world and their circumstances is countered by the scholarship falling into the traps of incorrect “representation” and “self-representation”. In essence, this tug of war produces a feminism that is static- never really moving forward and yet neither backward, but allowing a third way to be engendered between it, that would scream itself of its heterogeneity, diversity and social contexts. It is the stagnancy of the feminist scholarship that allows for the creation of movement, of a voice that tells the world what the right direction might be.

Mohanty’s explanation of the treatment of third world women and men as binaries also helps understand how this feminism is static. Men and women are understood as distinct populations rather than parts of one- as “wholes coming into exploitative relations”, where simply men possess power and women don’t. This undermines the local social and cultural contexts of different areas, cementing the concept of binaries that are based upon assumptions that almost become real for the First World Feminists- it creates the “western eyes” that Mohanty explores. Binaries, by virtue of acting as wholes and monolithic forces, cannot produce an energy that could lead to a nuanced understanding of the conditions of the women of the world. Instead, the only power that binaries possess is to make one imagine the need of women to “move from powerless to powerful”, and therefore an “inversion” of the status quo, keeping just this one goal in mind. In essence, the inversion does not allow for any actual movement towards understanding of forces outside binaries- of degrees of power, of various cultural, economic and social factors and the shades of their impact. It is just one move that occurs in the same place, allowing feminist scholarship to stay static.

Mohanty’s description of the creation of the category of the “Third world woman” is one similar to a process, like the creation of an artwork or a sculpture. Western standards craft molds of “underdeveloped” and “developing” places in the Third world and then place women within these molds. Out then, come chiseled figurines of the third world women, with the “third world difference.” It is precisely here that the First World scholarship ceases to be a global feminist struggle, but one where it becomes a means of First World women defining themselves, also as a monolithic entity-only a more progressive one- in relation to those of the third world. Monolithic entities that keep alive the basic and essential difference of master and subject created by colonisation and imperialistic tendencies. What is still alive is the difference between these two entities, rather than the countless differences between individuals across the global community. In essence, this feminism is static because its very starting point is a flawed assumption, a mold that has a fixed shape, that will churn out the same sculptures to understand the countless women of the Third world.

 In essence, without any real territorial control and extraction of resources, First world feminist discourse keeps the colonialist tendency alive, which in turn keeps the discourse from truly understanding all women and how they fare in the world of colonization and decolonization. This is where the discourse becomes motionless, giving way to the Third world voices to grow louder and point towards the third way- which is not just a third woman, but a reference to numerous women and their conditions. As Mohanty shows, First World Feminist discourses, which assume third world women as a homogenous group, do no service to them but certainly one to themselves. Yet, even this service, of defining themselves, is frozen at a particular point in time. It does not have the power to make the contextual differences of the third world to disappear. The stagnancy of the First world thought is precisely what reveals the impairment of its “eyes”.

Cabral conveys culture as a means to resist foreign domination and views National Liberation through movements as “an act of culture.” His analysis produces a nuanced understanding of the nature of culture as dynamic and constantly evolving- and yet, becomes starkly particular when it begins to play a role in National Liberation movements. In essence, Cabral’s explanation of culture in the context of imperial domination and exploitation leaves us with a sense of tension between the dynamics of culture as distinct human experiences and the merging of cultural commonalities for unity essential to liberation.

            This dynamic understanding of culture encapsulates observing the entity to be constantly interacting with the evolving society to emerge in new and changing forms. In essence, culture has the ability to keep shifting its physical embodiment, to remain uncontained despite repression, to burst out in growth like the roots of a tree that is denied its natural space. This is how African culture survived by taking “refuge in villages, in forests and in the spirits” of the oppressed. It seems almost convulsing and tactile, unpredictably changing shape, moving in and out of sight and never dying- unless the humans who experience it are obliterated.

The constant movement and evolution therefore suggests the continuity of an interaction between cultural elements and the “social and political realities” of its environment. Essentially, culture emerges as ever growing, eternal and ever changing because the place of its manifestation is also the place where resistance to colonial rule emerges. This co existence gives culture a “dynamic synthesis” and the “seed of the continuation of history.” It creates a link between culture and the “mind” of society- the mind, with its capability to engender responses, reactions and perceptions that characterize this perpetual interaction, rather than the body, the “color of skin” or the “shape of the eye.” Moreover, the social mind then consists of many minds, all with different perceptions and experiences- a fact that Cabral shows that Liberation efforts absolutely must understand. It is the reality of shades of culture that enables the existence of “several Africas” at the same time as when Portugal has difficulty in acknowledging the existence of even one Africa. Distinguishing between superior and inferior cultures is then an illusion- the only reality is the cultural interactions that shape human encounters.

The point where culture is realized as an all-encompassing, nuanced human experience, is where Cabral thinks, “the importance of culture is reached.” It is an experience that is characterized by degrees of similarities and differences amongst perceptions and actions, by constant variations with time and space, by encounters with conflicts and means to reach solutions, and by integration in the living environment. This point of importance, therefore, is also the point of unpredictability and infinity.

However, when the cultural outgrowth of resistance becomes a National Liberation Movement propagating armed struggle and a liberated future, the struggle imbibes the dynamics of culture. The understanding of culture as an entity in constant motion now serves to amalgamate cultural commonalities to mobilize for the sake of armed struggle. It is the struggle which now must be equipped well enough to deal with the inconsistencies and differences which will emerge from it itself. The armed struggle becomes the “builder of culture.” In an effort to convey what a successful National Liberation Movement must do, Cabral almost lists down a set of requirements including “developing a popular culture”, creating a “national culture grounded in history and on the victories of the liberation struggle itself” and the “development of a universal culture.” Culture is then crafted, shaped by human minds- the requirements are concrete, specific, and stagnant in time. They show a sense of a fixed history, time and thus identity, as a means to unite the oppressed and give them courage- not to remind them of a culture they already experience themselves, but to engender a very specific, monolithic response. It becomes finite.

In essence, liberation freezes culture at a specific moment in time for specific causes. There is nothing dynamic, mercurial or interactive about “national culture.” It becomes like an unchanging spoken and heard story. And yet, the reality of cultural interaction cannot be destroyed- it will still hide in the villages and forests, it will still sprout out in the form of differences to this one story that most generations know and will be told. The construction of popular culture does not change the existence of shades in culture, and thus they must exist side by side- a tension that is seen when one observes culture to not only give birth to liberation movements but also pay the cost of becoming its subject.

It is in Moscow, the new heart of the world, that Dada Amir Haider truly discovered something new after having sailed twice all across the oceans. It was not the new land of the Soviet Union, or the celebrations and pomp of revolution, but a new spirit and education- an emotional and intellectual fulfillment, that gave a true meaning to years of travel and observance. This new way of envisioning the world and human experience obliterated known geographical borders and social limitations. The universities in Moscow, which had always served only the “chosen ones”, now, served people from all around the world, enabling diversity and education as an instrument to spread socialism. Dada was one of many flocking to their new home, breaking with the “old world” every second of their journey. Reaching home, however, was just the first step. Dada’s real journey was yet to begin. It was a journey of becoming literate for not just the sake of the global communist vision, but for the sake of becoming a new person, someone that he himself could believe in- an embodiment of the Soviet Poster “Literacy is the path to communism.” A path that would begin with a “rechristening” of all those who were coming home.

The importance of this path equaled that of its ultimate destination. Dada’s reverential and yet explanatory tone in, Chains To Lose, his travelogue, showed that the journey and its preparation would be sheer hard work, just like that done by farmers, workers and soldiers. The Soviet Union had to “build socialism”- each new human’s endeavors and experiences had to create its reality. Thus, Dada embraced this knowledge, and Lenin’s words, the only way forward-

Hasha Zdatcha Yeat- Do Tichissa, Do Tichissa

“Our task is to learn, learn and learn.”

It is this very thought that “Literacy is the path to communism” reflects, showing knowledge and its distribution as the necessary building foundation for the new world. Education would now be a source of power rather than new technology, territorial control and expansion or class and racial differences. Thus, the red Pegasus, the winged horse, occupies the entire space of the poster, carrying the distributor of knowledge- whose raised torchlight and open book overcome the viewers with a sense of a victory of education and consequently, communism. The creature flies above the industrial land depicted below, the continuity of its buildings and smoke reflecting the continuity of the revolutionary ideals. The hammer and sickle emblem of the communist party is placed below, next to the slogan- the very tools of hard work that would now “build socialism”. Yet, along with the human tools of farming and labor, the presence of the supernatural carrier of the message shows knowledge as a force capable of producing power above any one human or entity- the power of the communist ideology. The poster would have invigorated Dada and his companions, showing them how their knowledge was a means of truly experiencing the revolution and transcending into the new world.

Questions of the nature of this education are overshadowed by the powerful narrative of its victory over the abusive systems of the world, its ability to enable humans to find themselves and a chance to live once again. Pegasus leaves no room for any other experience to be felt- one is almost swept away by the power and strength of its body, wings and flight. Literacy would carry ideals of liberation and diversity as long as it resembles the courses in language, Economy and Geography that Dada studied- the only other way of becoming free of the oppressions of the world. And thus, Dada and many others fell in love with their home, where they had found themselves and each other. After living in America for years, it is here that Dada remembers sobbing at the death of a black female companion. After sailing the world twice and discovering various lands and peoples for years, Dada was no longer a bystander, no longer an observer of the world. He had felt the rushing wind caused by the beating of Pegasus’s wings; he had found a meaning of his existence in the Soviet land. Most of all, he had discovered that he would remember it all, unlike even his childhood and birthplace. With Soviet education, Dada had discovered his own story and was now setting out to change the story of the world.