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Existentialism

“I think we’re always responsible for our actions. We’re free. I raise my hand – I’m responsible. I turn my head to the right – I’m responsible. I’m unhappy – I’m responsible. I smoke a cigarette – I’m responsible. I shut my eyes – I’m responsible. I forget that I’m responsible, but I am. I told you escape is a pipe dream. After all, everything is beautiful. You only have to take an interest in things, see their beauty. It’s true. After all, things are just what they are. A face is a face. Plates are plates. Men are men. And life…is life.” Nana Kleinfrankenheim in My Life to Live by Jean-Luc Godard11010984700?profile=original

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OK Thom Yorke

By: Javier Blánquez

The charismatic Thom Yorke takes a break from working with Radiohead to focus on Atoms for Peace, his new futuristic pop project.

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"Are you really going to record the interview with this?". On the breakfast table in the Barcelona Arts Hotel where Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich eat from a platter of strawberries, purée, juice, and cups of cappuccino, there is a Blackberry...mine, in fact, and defenseless against their arrogant-looking iPhones. They both look upon it as if it were a dog's fecal matter and erupt into noisy bursts of laughter. "I would never have the courage to do anything with a Blackberry. I commend you," adds Nigel.

It may seem humiliating, but there couldn't be a better way of beginning my talk with the frontman and producer of Radiohead. This reaction, one that's along the lines of amusing and harmless fair play, defines them in a single moment like refined connoisseurs of technology. This is especially in the case of Thom Yorke, who, at 44 years old, takes time to live almost on the other side of rock, feeling more comfortable with a computer between his hands than playing a guitar. In fact, when he doesn't have to stay in charge of Radiohead, a band with a balance of power more complicated than that of the protagonists of Game of Thrones, Yorke dedicates himself to being a leisurely tourist in a spacious field of experimentation.

...

When did you have this epiphany, or rather, the moment when you came to understand how to use technology as a vehicle for creating music?

THOM YORKE: I first became aware of it around OK Computer (1997).

NIGEL GODRICH: That's why it's called OK Computer (laughs).

TY: Nigel mixed the album for us on a computer using programs like Pro Tools. I then became tremendously curious about it. I'd never learned how to work a mixing desk that had multiple tracks, but a computer program...shit. It was able to learn on its own. I also began to buy Aphex Twin's albums at the time. I suppose all of that was part of the epiphany: understanding that we could change the way we work and make the entire recording process into something more surprising and fun.

Do you consider yourself addicted to technology at this point?

TY: I don't know. I still enjoy sitting at the piano in order to write a song. But when I'm milling around pieces of junk that are hard for me to understand how they work, I need to solve those puzzles and end up sleeping on it. I almost never figure it out, but that in itself is good. From luck and error come great ideas.

When you first released OK Computer, that album conveyed a sense of uncertainty. It wasn't exactly clear if it was criticizing a capitalist world reinforced by computers or if the title of the album implicated blind faith in technological progress.

TY: The change that we noticed then encouraged us greatly. We saw it as an incredible opportunity to gain creative independence and harvest better communication. On occasion, we would go on fansites with chatrooms and introduce ourselves: "Hi, we're Radiohead, and we're in the studio recording an album". No one believed us. That was when demanded to EMI that we set up our own web page like Massive Attack. We learned how to program html and all that.

It seems like everything you do is a continuous learning experience where you adapt without halting to a world that's always changing. Is that easy for you, or has it gotten more difficult with age?

TY: It's a daily struggle. It's a lot harder to learn how the Internet works now. Social networking sites...shit, each day brings a new problem. When you've adapted to Twitter, it suddenly becomes Instagram and so on. You never know what kind of real impact they have, nor do you know how to reach the public through them. On top of that, you feel helpless. They're mounted tools for someone who is getting rich by channelling private matters to people. I may be showing my age, but all of this has become problematic to me.

A few weeks ago, you participated in a sentimental advice session for the website Rookie, which is geared towards adolescent girls. Did you do it to try to connect with today's youth or to understand it better?

NG: It piqued our curiosity. It's one of those methods of unexpected promotion that comes your way and normally you would say no to that, but this was something so peculiar that we had to say yes. We had heard about it from Tavi, a 16-year-old blogger who runs the page.

It seems that the generation gaps are much stronger than before. Now there's hardly a difference between each year and there seems to be little in common between those in their 40s and the "millennials".

TY: Do you have kids? I'm sure that if you were to have kids, it would be a lot easier to understand. What are the millennials, by the way?

It's the generation of kids who were born at the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s. They reached their adolescence at the turn of the century. It's the generation that's portrayed in shows like Girls.

TY: Oh, I get it. I take back what I said. My kids are a lot younger than that.

NG: I don't have children of my own, but I have friends who have them at that age. It's true that it's hard to connect with them on a cultural level, but I also feel that we still have that youthful spirit at our age. Our work still allows us to keep in contact with a younger audience.

Now you're even working on a DJ side project.

NG: Thom was a DJ even when he was still going to university. He took a shot at it at parties on Friday nights.

TY: Yes, but now it's something entirely different. I want to create a kind of live hybrid that could result in throwing in unexpected things at the drop of a hat. I'm fascinated by the kinds of shows that artists like Flying Lotus and Modeselektor put on. Everything is under their control, but at the same time, it sounds spontaneous. With Atoms for Peace, we're attaining this effect a lot of the time. People come to the shows and dance while we give them an incredibly abstract experience.

AMOK is like a continuation of The Eraser, yet the album sounds stronger and more complete. Thom's first solo album was precisely that: a single person making a lot of noise. What kind of effect have you been looking for now?

TY: I had to be something more distinct. It's been seven years.

NG: At the time, Thom was going through a strange period in his life. It was very disoriented because he was learning new ways of making music without the help of his bandmates from Radiohead. But neither Thom nor I like to work alone, so we brought a lot of people to play in the studio. We then filled the studio with more sounds and ideas so that the process would seem more dynamic. We didn't plan anything. Their strengths came about naturally.

Why the name "Atoms for Peace"? Putting together the words "atoms" and "peace" makes it sounds like a criticism on ecology or something along those lines.

TY: The truth is that there wasn't any sort of intention like that. We picked "Atoms" because it seemed like a good idea. It describes particles of sound that create energy.

But AMOK isn't a peaceful album. It's dynamic and overwhelming.

TY: Yeah, you have a point. I don't know. But it's an album made of atoms! But here the band worked to share their own ideas. It's much more distinct than working with Radiohead, where Colin and Jonny Greenwood would also have a say in the matter and their own perspectives on things. How can those clashes be mediated when it comes time for them to record the material?

NG: I don't know how it's done, but I have to do it. Jonny and Thom are the two most prominent composers in the band. They bring in their ideas and finally, I have to piece together the puzzle. With Atoms, we only had to recruit the people that we needed. Radiohead is something more complicated. There isn't much room for improvisation. You have to plan so a lot of people are satisfied with the results.

Of course, we're not talking too much about a certain anniversary, since this year marks two decades since the release of Pablo Honey.

TY: Ugh!! (Thom fakes some coughing and choking sounds)

I'm sorry, I know that you don't think too fondly of that album. But that was how you got your start even though you're a different musician now. What's one thing you could have never imagined to become reality 20 years later? 

TY:  It's precisely that, that there was such a thing as a future. At first, we didn't know what was going on or what was happening. All we knew was that something wasn't going right. We hoped that we would be signed to EMI and that they would help us all the same, just like they did with Pink Floyd or The Beatles. But we soon discovered that those big corporations have a very sinister side to them. They only wanted money. We knew that something had to happen so we wouldn't be eaten up by that awful system. Then we wrote "Creep" (1992) and since that moment, the managers came, shook our hands, thanked us, and said, "Boys, from now on, you do what you want". And you think, "That's fucking great!". But that was a stroke of luck. Without that stroke of luck, I wouldn't be here. 

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Source:

http://www.metropoli.com/musica/2013/04/26/517a455a6843410f43000003.html

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Nathan Fake's photo on twitter


Find more photos like this on w.a.s.t.e. central

more photos on my Tumblr

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Vine from jason fosco

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Atoms For Peace - Thom Yorke & Nigel Live Ingenue @ Gaité Lyrique, Paris (19/04/2013)

Atoms For Peace - Thom Yorke & Nigel Live Black Swan @ Gaité Lyrique, Paris (19/04/2013)

Thom+Nigel (Atoms for Peace) - Black Swan - Paris 04/19/2013


Atoms For Peace - Thom Yorke & Nigel Live Before Your Very Eyes... @ Gaité Lyrique (19/04/2013)

[Stuck Together Pieces] Atoms For Peace (Thom Yorke + Nigel Godrich) live at La Gaîté Lyrique 2/3

Thom Yorke & Nigel Godrich (Atoms For Peace) - Dropped / Live @ La Gaîté Lyrique - Paris

Atoms For Peace Paris Gaite Lyrique Harrowdown Hill[+Default] 16mins. really great work!!

[Default] thom yorke + nigel godrich / atoms for peace 

*front row*Thom Yorke + Nigel Gordich - AMOK (live at Gaîté Lyrique, Paris)

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via misspearly

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via misspearly


Find more photos like this on w.a.s.t.e. central

more photos on my Tumblr

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Vine from Alejandro Lopez “dance Thom, dance!!”

Vine from Alejandro Lopez “Dancing Thom made my day!”

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AMOK & Before Your Very Eyes en directo en Razzmatazz, Barcelona 2013


Thom Yorke - Marvin Gaye - Azealia Banks - Razzmatazz Barcelona

*thanks to http://ripley312.tumblr.com

Black Swan, Atoms for Peace Thom&Nigel DJ set Barcelona 17.04.13 front row

Atoms For Peace - Dropped - directo en Razzmatazz (17 abril 2013, Barcelona)

Dropped Atoms for Peace Thom&Nigel DJ set Barcelona 17.04.13 front row

[The Eraser] Thom + Nigel [Atoms for Peace]-Live Amok- Barcelona, Razzmatazz (17/04/2013)

[Amok] Atoms for Peace @ Razzmatazz, Barcelona, 17.04.13

AMOK Atoms for Peace Thom&Nigel DJ set Barcelona 17.04.13 front row

[Amok, Barcelona] Atoms for Peace. Hearing.

[S.A.D.] Atoms for Peace - Barcelona. 17 April 2013

S.A.D. - Thom Yorke & Nigel Godrich - DJset @Razzmatazz, Barcelona

Harrowdown Hill - Thom Yorke & Nigel Godrich - DJset @Razzmatazz, Barcelona

[Stuck Together Pieces] Thom + Nigel [Atoms for Peace] Barcelona, Razzmatazz.(17/04/2013)

[Atoms For Peace] Atoms for Peace @ Razzmatazz, Barcelona, 17.04.13

Atoms for Peace Thom&Nigel DJ set Barcelona 17.04.13

Atoms for Peace (Thom + Nigel) - Atoms for Peace @ Razzmatazz, 17th April 2013

Atoms For Peace - Default (live) 

[Default] Atoms for peace @ Razzmatazz Barcelona [17.04.2013]

Default Atoms for Peace Thom&Nigel DJ set Barcelona 17.04.13 front row

[Default] Atoms for Peace. Barcelona. 

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01. Ingenue
02. Black Swan
03. Dropped
04. The Eraser
05. Amok
06. Before Your Very Eyes…
07. S.A.D.
08. Skip Divided
09. Harrowdown Hill
10. Atoms for Peace
11. Stuck Together Pieces
12. Unless
13. Default

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THE WAY WEST GOT LOST

Welcome, dear Sir, to our store!

Your need will be met to full extent!

But how much do you have?

Oh, just a dollar?

Well...have this small box of rice

and a plastic bag to go with it.

Oh, you have around ten bucks?

The story is different with you!

You can have this large box of rice,

some tomato sauce with grated cheese

and a bag of chips,

just so you can feel better about yourself.

And you have 100 certified bills?

Well done, kind Sir, you are somewhat above,

fill your basket full of our goods,

feel our love embrace you, we love you enough

to give you our quality stuff.

The stuff most can only dream of...

You're a millionaire???

Aaah, you're our favorite, our special customer,

we'll give you a special parking place, close the store

and bring out the goods most mortals never try...

caviar, rare wines and champagne, truffles and so on

so you'll know you're above everyone,

culturally, intellectually and morally.

YOU HAVE NOTHING? No currency at all?

We'll leave our food to rot before we give it to you,

you're much too unimportant and irrelevant for us.

Unless... 

Our friends can give you some cash 

and you'll give it back in a months time, 

twice as much, of course,

but you'll be able to afford what you want at out store!

If you can't bring back the money in time

we have a special room for you

from which you won't be free to leave.

You will get three meals per day

and you'll work hard labor jobs for nothing in return.

Sound familiar? 

You interested?

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natural disasters

limbothe blue coastsome placeinbetween two placesthe sea-sidewearing a dress ofpale blue, almost white,slightly turquiose,over a black sackwith a little string of redstrungfrom my breaststomy neck.like a nooseis my saftey net.walking alongthe "promenade"walking along the wallbetween a cliff...and...the expanse ofwhere water meets the sky;enclosure, and freedom...all in one walk.the windhad been blowing hardcarried on it's wings a message:..."he is near"... it whispered.and then...i saw... this man...walking with....noticed him from afar off...he had beenturning around the bend...the curve of the sea-shore,i noticed him instantlycouldn't look awaywatching himwondering at him,in the wayyou would muse at a paintingor a song...there wassomething beautiful and familiarabout this stranger,and at the same timealmost, other-worldlyand yet,of my world.watching until he got too close,looking down as he walked by,too shy to look him in the eye.once hewas at my backthe thought hit me, hard...

"turn, turn, turn, turn around and look at me...turn now...turn...turn now"...i just had to look back.i had to.stareing back...over my shoulder...he was lookingback at meeyes lockedhe had this look on his facei will never forgeti will never forget!that feeling,the reality oftwo worlds colliding.seeing and feeling the impossible!"my world does not fit with yours"...i thought,..."and yet it does! "......"your with your children...your children"...i thought all these things,a flash through my mind.with just one glance.i couldn't even look athis children.just him,i tried to say: "hello" and "goodbye"as quickly as i couldwith my eyes...i tried to say all of this to himwith just one glance."thank-you"it was hard to turn away...andwords are thin...turning my gaze towardsthe rocks of the cliffabove mei admired them,there,tucked away,safely behind their nets...i thought..."i wish this mountain would fall,fall right on top of me!i wish every rock would crumble,as it should,into the sea!"ohwhen worlds collide!there are rocks behind nets....and, yes, all things do rise to fall...the landscape said it all.man made precautionsman made protectionsa permenent illusion of safety.i could have thrown myselfinto the seathat day.but like the rocksbehind their nets...i have my safety...i have my noose.and he...was just asvulnerableas i.a vulnerableencounter witha stranger.maytwo worlds everbe as one?i think not.

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Friends

I have mixed feelings about old friends.  On one hand, they're great companions and stick by me no matter what, and I've had some great times with them.  On the other hand, after being around them for so long I start to notice their flaws more than their virtues, and they bother me more and more.  It's like being married to like 5 different people, every day is more abrasive.  It makes me want to venture out and make new friends.  So I do.  But then I have a longing for the old, their holes draw me back, begging to be filled.  I don't even know what to do about it anymore, perhaps a road trip.

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ED O' BRIEN  BIRTHDAY  TODAY!!! 

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CONGRATULATIONS!

CHEERS ED!

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YEAH, TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY!

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THANKS A LOT, DEAR FANS! 

GOD BLESS ED  WITH PEACE, HAPPINESS, LIGHT, GOOD THINGS!

THANKS FOR ALL, ED!

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YEAH!!!

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WE ALL LOVE YOU!

natercia(Planet Ed O' Brien)

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My personal Hell.

So I was given the choice by an owl, do you choose hell?  And I chose hell.  Now, I am living with my mother and her husband in the middle of nowhere with only one friend and a loneliness that never ends.  I am committed and must take medication or otherwise face permanent institutionalization.  I am bipolar and suffer from depression.  This is in reaction to the post previous.  I know how you feel.  It would be lovely if the people you met on here could be your friends in real life because then I might not feel so alone.  But the truth is I fall asleep every night hoping for a dream in which someone will hold me and hoping for a true love that can never exist.  I have had very spiritual experiences but they amount to nothing.  They have become just memories of voices I once heard when I was lonely.  The voices go and I am all by myself again waiting for their return waiting for my audience.  I don't know what to tell you, except suicide is painful and you will rarely succeed.  I don't know if life is beautiful or if beauty is what you need.  I see beauty but it just makes me feel vacant and disconntected like there is no one to witness this with me.  I hope you are well and that you are not alone.  I wish I could be with you.

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My personal hell....

been gone from here for a while... been obsessing. been depressed. been my usual chronically depressed/anxiety disordered/neurotic/OCD self... but i'm still here! i'm still trying. i'm still praying. i'm still hoping. i'm still trying to keep the faith. i don't go as low as i used to. i don't question my existence. i don't stay stuck for months on end. i am making progress. i am not self medicating. i take my medicine. i take my vitamins, herbs, nutrients. i am doing more than just surviving. i am actually attempting to live life again. so many memories come to mind of my life before.... so many thoughts of what could be...

thank you mr. yorke. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3wGbBRxcZQ i know he understands!  i know he is pulling for all of us who suffer from depression. i feel comforted and blessed that i found Radiohead music. thank you ruby blue, your blog touched my heart this evening. i have hope today!11010981074?profile=original

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Cultural diversity is a combination of two complex concepts which make up for an even more complex one. From an anthropological point of view, culture and diversity are intrinsically related, given that culture is a characteristic of human beings and human beings are unique, therefore culturally diverse (Laraia 1986). Nonetheless, since 1970, society has been changing in such a fast pace and in so many ways, that some critical theorists began to wonder what would be the consequences of all these changes (e.g. Hall 1992; Bauman 2005; Giddens 1990). The global market that was seen by many free trade negotiators as the  key to development began to be perceived as a dangerous cultural obliterating process (UNESCO 1999; Álvarez 2005).  

Given the unequal socioeconomic distribution of wealth in the world, the concern of critical theorist is that trade liberalization is disadvantageous for developing countries which cannot protect their markets from the competitive commercial strategies of developing countries (Beltrame 2005). In fact, the validity of this argument lies on the asymmetrical relation amongst countries and the potential of some specific countries to control and manipulate the means of production. What social theorists have been arguing is that local markets and developing countries are not able to compete with the ones from developed countries, and, because capitalist liberalism prerogatives are based on consumerism, the more globalization advances the more societies will have to adapt themselves to the global market rules, leaving behind their local culture, their traditions and their customs (Segovia 2005).   

Since, asymmetry  is a characteristic of contemporary society, this competition for the market share will soon lead to the substitution of the old processes and systems of meanings for the globalized ones, in an mutative adaptation process which will slowly obliterate local culture and tradition or not (Hall 1992). Some theorists have been defending this argument and promoting debates about the damages globalization has caused to society by commodifying culture, goods and services and homogenizing creative processes and cultural values (UNESCO 1999; Álvarez 2005). It is noteworthy that this argument has a strong economical appeal, for it  is focused on the issues of globalization and free trade as the two major dangers to cultural diversity. but it doesn’t give much evidence about how cultural diversity is being obliterated or how society is being homogenized or if this process is actually perceived by society as harmful. 

As mentioned in the first paragraphs, cultural diversity is an intrinsic characteristic of human nature. Therefore, why is “society” concerned that globalization or free trade is going to obliterate cultural diversity? Better yet, what society is worried about it? It is important to understand that critical social theorists often use the term society without  providing a clear definition to which society they are referring to. 

My argument is that societies have different characteristics, sometimes as many characteristics as individuals. Therefore, it is important to indicate the society that is being investigated in order to verify if the assumptions above are true in each context they take place. For this reason, this research proposes to analyze two countries that regard the issue of cultural diversity as a key element of their public policy, that is: Brazil and Canada. 

Both of these countries have taken the issue of the defense of cultural diversity as a major concern of their cultural policy and has demonstrated their concern in the national level as well as the international (Álvarez 2005). Given the cultural diversity of both countries, it will be interesting to examine in which arena the concerns about cultural diversity arises and what part society takes in the construe of the axis of these concerns. As stated before, globalization and free trade is often appointed as the evil cause of the cultural obliterating process. In the case of Brazil and Canada, do these concerns arise because of globalization and free trade or do these societies have other concerns when it comes to protecting cultural diversity?

 

LITERATURE REVIEW

Globalization is one the most important phenomena of the twentieth century. It refers to those processes that take place in the global scale and pass national boundaries integrating and connecting communities and organizations in new combinations of time-space making the world, reality and experience more interconnected (McGrew, quoted in Hall 1998).  It is part of the socioeconomic evolutionary process started by  mercantilism and followed by capitalism (Giddens 1990). But, since 1970, when the global integration rhythm spiked accelerating the flow and bonds amongst nations. Many concerns have been raised about globalization, including the necessity to protect culture and national identity (UNESCO 2001). 

As observed by Marx and Engels, modernity “is a constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social relations, everlasting uncertainty and agitation (...) All fixed, fast-frozen relationships, with their train of venerable ideas and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones becomes obsolete before they can ossify (...) All that is solid melts in the air” (1973: 70). This mutative, rapid changing process is most often perceived as the evil machinery behind the cultural obliterating process. As indicated by Giddens “in traditional societies, the past is honored and symbols are valued because they contain and perpetuate the experience of generations” (1990: 37-8). As opposed to modern societies which are, “by definition, societies that are constantly changing, rapidly and permanently” (Hall 1992: 599). 

The intense process of liberalization triggered by international efforts to build commercial frameworks to regulate free trade such as the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT 1947) and the Free Trade Agreement  (FTA 1988) brought up many concerns about the consequences of this intense process of world exchange would be, especially in terms of cultural values and national identity (Goldsmith 2005, Thiec 2005; Neil 2005). 

Stuart Hall (1998) points out that we are as post-modern as our world. The changes that occur in society reflects in the individual and vice-versa creating a symbiotic flow.  In this sense, globalization wouldn’t bring much consequences as for the processes of construing cultural values or identities as such, because if it disarticulates stable traditional identities of the past, on the one hand, it also creates new opportunities for new identities to and new subjects in this continuous permanent flow of changes, on the other (Hall 1998). As pointed out by Roland Robertson “globalization leads to increase cultural differentiation, not homogenization” (cited in Mitchell 2000: xiii). For society is not an “unified and well-bounded whole, a totality producing itself through evolutionary change from within itself, like a daffodil from its bulb” (Laclau quoted in Hall 1992: 600).

This can be argued from a cultural point of view, that perceives the dangers of globalization for individuals when construing their identities, languages, symbolic values, national traditions. From a socioeconomic perspective, on the other hand, globalization is perceive as an evil to be defeated especially in terms of cultural industry (Goldsmith 2005). In terms of the production of cultural goods and services, the discussion about the consequences of globalization for cultural diversity is a major concern of countries, such as: Canada, France and Brazil (Álvarez 2005; Thiec 2005; Neil 2005). 

Canada was the first country to retain the right to protect its cultural industries, during the negotiations of the Free Trade Agreement - FTA, in 1987 (Álvarez 2005). A similar approach was introduced by France in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations in 1993 (Thiec 2005). Since then, these countries together with UNESCO have promoted many meetings and discussions about the issue of cultural diversity and the necessity to protect it (Álvarez 2005). Clearly, there is a distinction between the discussion about the danger of globalization as an obliterating force of identity and symbolic values, and the danger of globalization for the economic sector called “cultural industries”. 

In relation to the first issue, Stuart Hall points out three possible consequences: “the disintegration of national identities as a result of the growing cultural homogenization process, national identities and other local identities are being reinforced as a resistance movement of this globalization and national identities are in a decline, but new identities - hybrid - are taking its place” (1992: 69). The second issue has a political appeal and it seems to be drawn from economic purposes focused on the production and consumption of cultural goods and services (Thiec 2005; Neil 2005). It seems that the discussions that led to the establishment of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Cultural Diversity Expressions have little to do with the issues concerned by Hall and other critical theories (Goldsmith 2005).

 

Hall (1994) investigates the impact of globalization on the symbolic perspective in relation to identity and society. His main concern is how individuals are represented in such a mutative globalized world. Goldsmith (2005), Neil (2005), Thiec (2005) and Alvarez (2005) are also concerned about globalization, but from the economic aspect in relation to the impact of free trade for cultural production and consumption. My major concern is about society and what part it plays in it. I take globalization from the citizenship perspective, in which I question if individuals are aware of the rapid changing process Hall talks about and if they act upon this changing process by resisting it or by embracing it. In other words, is cultural diversity a demand from the Brazilian and Canadian societies or is it a political discourse?

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IDENTITY AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY

As an assessor for international affairs of the Ministry of Culture of Brazil, I became involved in the discussion and elaboration of a pluralistic and transversal agenda for cultural policy, based on the principles of decentralization, cultural diversity and democratic participation. My involvement in this process inspired me to ask questions I have never thought of asking before, for instance: why cultural diversity is so important? why should the government promote a decentralized agenda? why participation should be encouraged? In my ‘naive’ view of the world, there was no need to protect cultural diversity, because, as Laraia has argued human beings are cultural beings, diverse by nature and unique in themselves. However, as I got involved with the governmental agenda for culture in my country, I came to realize I had a narrow view of the issues I was working with. 

For this reason, I decided I needed help in understanding some of these issues and I sought the academic sphere to help me unwind many of the questions I could only begin to ask. My main questions were about cultural diversity and the involvement of society in the formulation of cultural policy. I wanted to understand how society got involved in the discussion of cultural diversity and if cultural diversity was a demand of civil society or a political discourse to justify the interest of certain groups. My curiosity in understanding these issues led me to two sociologists who have been discussing the relations between identity in post-modern society, Stuart Hall (1992) and Zygmunt Bauman (2004). 

Bauman has argued that identity is a fiction “born out of the crisis of belonging” (2004: 20) in the eighteenth century, when modern society went through important changes. In the same vein, Edward Said (2000) points out that the decline of old institutions such as family, religion and dynastic bonds allowed the rise of invented memories as a coherent identity for people who adopted these narratives as symbolic references of belonging. At this point, I started understanding the importance of national identity for the discussion of terms such as identity and cultural diversity. 

Stuart Hall (1992) states that there is no ontological conceptualization for identity. Identity is an unconscious process that starts at birth and continues throughout our life as we try to find our “I” in the “view” of others. Identity exists as something imaginary or fantasized. It lingers incomplete, it is always in “process” of “being formed”. This way, Hall argues that instead of talking of identity, it would be more accurate to talk in terms of identification, and regard it as an ongoing process. As I read the arguments and assumptions of these two sociologists, I started to question the conceptualization of cultural diversity from a different perspective. I understood that I should be asking ‘why’ are we protecting and promoting cultural diversity in a pluralistic, democratic and decentralized way, but ‘who’ is we and why is this issue so important for ‘us’. 

In my search for these answers, I couldn’t find a suitable response on the sociological approach to the issue. The macro analysis of the issues of identity and cultural diversity often draws conclusions based on a ruling elite that establishes discourses and narratives, but it doesn’t explain how these discourses are included in the vernacular creating the divisions between pariahs or outcasts and the citizens or nationals. For this reason, I decided to take the Memory/History and Reconstructions of Identities course in the Anthropology department. From the brief description of the course, I felt most of my questions could be answered from an anthropological perspective. 

For my surprise, this course has taught me more than I expected. Once more, I felt I should revise my questions about identity and cultural diversity. Instead of questioning who is ‘we’, I learned from the literature on memory and identity that I should first ask who am ‘I’ in relation to ‘we’. As I dove into the literature, I began to question the silences and absences in the discourses and the narratives of the ever-changing identity formation process. I realized that I was not interested in discussing identity and cultural diversity as two intrinsically related issues, but that my goal is to find out the missing pieces or the silences in the cultural diversity and identity discourse. 

At first, I thought I should explore the involvement of civil society in the formulation of the cultural diversity discourse and policy as way to show how this process is a top-down strategy of elite groups to promote their interest. But the literature on memory and identity has changed my view of the issue. As I read Radstone (2000), Gupta and Ferguson (1992), Sassen (2008), Sharma (2006) and Said (2000), I realized that ‘identity’ is has become a reified concept in post-modern society with no clear definition; a venue for justifying the domination of certain groups over others. Although I adopt Hall’s definition of a fluid and open-ended process of identification, I also realized I should explore how the issue of identity is included in society today in relation to the nation, especially in terms of citizenship. 

Through citizenship, nation-states legitimize national identity and, as a consequence, their autonomy over its territory and people (Mavroudi 2010). They separate who is the insider and the outsider by controlling the territorial boarders. In other words, the nation-states create the illusion of a natural and essential connection among people, place and culture (Gupta and Ferguson 1992) through which they include or assimilate the desirable peoples and exclude and repressed the unwanted ones.  In this sense, citizenship becomes a venue for legitimizing a discourse of nation-ness or nationality. At the same time, this process also creates silences and marginalization considering that the elaboration of a national discourse is usually based on the narratives of the conqueror and not the the weakest (Mavroudi 2010), the heroes and not the masses (Said 2000).

At this moment, I started to question the discourse of citizenship in the light of cultural diversity, in other words, which people are not considered citizens of a nation and why. I became especially interested in minority groups and their claims for affirmative actions. The most important contributions for me was the work of Said and Sassen. Based on Said’s article on Memory, Invention, Identity, the issue of human social spaces brought to my attention the question of pre-colonial civilizations and their dimly recognized role in the discourse of national identity, especially their claims and demands for recognition and human rights. This brings me to Sassen’s discussion about the emergence of centrifugal multiplication of particular/specialized assemblages of Territorial, Authority and Rights (TAR) that unsettles the existing normative arrangements and produces a new type of segmentation in the state apparatus. 

Sassen contends that there has been a proliferation of new normative orders which was once ruled by the state and the dominant logic of centripetal unifying normative framing. However she argues that these new normative frames can coexist with older orderings, but they bring consequences that may be strategic of the larger normative questions. She does not dismiss the role of the state as an normative body, but she argues that these assemblages are unsettling the older national frameworks in an complex and illegible way.

Sassen’s approach is particularly interesting when analyzing the issue of national identity, specially if we consider that the changes that occur in society reflects in the individual and vice-versa creating a symbiotic flow (Hall 1992). If the changes in modern society created national identity as a substitute for traditional institutions as argued by Said (2000) and Bauman (2004); the changes suggested by Sassen will also have an impact at the individual level. My intent is to look at the discourses of affirmative action of contemporary society in relation to cultural diversity to see what is being registered as memory and what is being silenced. 

 

REFERENCES

Bauman, Z. 2004. Identity. Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity.

Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson. 1992. "Beyond "Culture": Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference." Cultural Anthropology 7(1):pp. 6-23.

Hall, Stuart. 1992. A identidade cultural na pós-modernidade; tradução Tomaz Tadeu da Silva e Guacira Lopes Louro: Rio de Janeiro: DP&A.

Laraia, Roque de Barros. 1986. Cultura: Um conceito antropologico. Ed.14. Rio de Janeiro. BR: Jorge Zahar. 

Mavroudi, E. 2010. "Nationalism, the Nation and Migration: Searching for Purity and Diversity." Space and Polity 14(3):219-233.

Radstone, S. (ed.) 2000. Memory and Methodology, Oxford: Berg. Read “Working with Memory: an Introduction”, pp. 1-21 

Said, E. 2000. “Invention, Memory and Place.” Critical Inquiry 26 (2): 175-92.

Sassen, S. 2008. “Neither global nor national: novel assemblages of territory, authority and rights.” Ethics & Global Politics 1 (1-2): 61-79.

------. 2006. Territory, Authority, Rights : From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Sharma, A. 2006. "Introduction: Rethinking Theories of the State in an Age of Globalization" in Aradhana Sharma & Akhil Gupta. 2006. The Anthropology of the State: A Reader. Ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

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a boy

he is waiting
at the edge of my bed
this little boy
holding a broken guitar
he constructed
himself
a song to play
he looks at me inquisitively
with those bright eyes
and asks me
"would you like me to play you a song?"
"yes, please!" i respond
he starts to play
hands fumbling over strings
tiny fingers grasping at thin air
weaving sounds together
he pulls out the notes
humms along with a melody
my mind wanders
far far away
getting lost in the sound
then
when he is finished
i ask him "why have you stopped!?"
he says to me
"you're tired, now, go to sleep
i will play you a new song
tomorrow"
i close my eyes
and wait
he meets with me there
the little boy
in the out-grown
red tracksuit
he sings me to sleep
and laughs with me
there
in dreams
the next night
i await his
return

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"Creep"

Creep

january 4th 1986 is my birthday. when i turned 19 years old, i was in south korea. i went with my father, and his wife darcy to a private kareoki bar to 'celebrate'.

the one birthday i will never forget...19 years old...south korea...
singing: "i'm a creep, i'm a weirdo, what the HELL am i doin' here, i don't belong here
i don't belong here"...

i had been really excited to get to know my father better. had saved up my teaching money from working in beijing to take a visit for two weeks to see them. after this experience, i didn't care to know my father anymore.
the argument my father and i had gotten into was over music. i had sang only two songs at the kareoki bar, the first had been "hero" by mirriah carrey, he had no problem with that song, haha....

and the second song...was "creep" by radiohead...i did not think much of the choice of song, i just sang it because it was one i knew, was simple enough to follow, and really...is one of the funniest songs i've ever heard!... and singing it for kareoki, to me, was a bit of a joke. in the sense that i'm talking about myself as a creep and a weirdo...which i am. i accepted this part of myself way back in elementry school, and to me the lyrics are a joke at myself. having the ability to laugh at myself has helped me get through hard times. and really, who has not felt out of place in this world in certain moments in life? in that sense, i think most people love this song, because almost EVERYONE can relate with the feeling of not being good enough, for some thing, or some one. the truth is...i was singing this at my father. i had always felt i was not good enough for him...for his love and acceptance of me. this time proved...once and for all...that i had been right...

singing this song had made him really...really angry with me!
after the song was finished i was beaming! smiling ear to ear, proud of myself for how well i had sung it. thinking my dad would be laughing with me but instead his face was stern and he gave me a look that made me feel ...

"oh, god, this was a bad idea, stupid, stupid, idea"...

my dad said very calmly, but very firmly, at first...

"that song is evil. this music is garbage! how can you even sing such words as that?! do you know that those words will go into your head and make you believe it one day! you have to understand the effect music can have on you!.'

i held back a laugh, meanwhile, my eyes were, just, buldging out of my head in disbelief!!!

"here we go..." i thought. "i should have known...better."

my dad had given my sister the same lecture about music when he had found out that she listened to Nirvana. he broke her CD's while yelling at her...skaking, like he does when really angry..boiling over, face red...

"this shit should be burned, it's from the DEVIL!!!!"

i remember him saying this to her. the image of his angry face seared into my memory.

my sister, no less than i, had been crying.... i never understood this, at the time, i had been way too young to understand why any of this had been a big deal at all!

"it's just music!!" i had thought...

but maybe age doesn't matter and a lot of the things that didn't make sense to me as a child, still don't make sense to me, now, as an 'adult'....

on a side note, i remember the day that kurt cobain died, i walked into my sister's bedroom and she was crying more than i had ever seen her cry before. wailing! it was like her heart had been ripped into two pieces...i had asked her what was wrong!! she replied through sobbs

"kurt cobain died today!, he's DEAD, he's DEAD, oh my god, he's dead..you can't understand!"...she said.

my sister loved him so much...poor girl.
i was way too young at the time to understand the significance of this news. to me he was just some other rock star... i had only heard a couple of the songs, 'teen spirit', in particular... which i liked, how could i not?!! such a catchy tune and a soulful voice...of...of understanding... also, i had liked everything my sister did. i wanted to be her. and this news... it broke her heart and so it broke my heart just watching her cry. in that moment i wished i could understand her better, wished that i could feel the same way about his death, but i only cared because she had. it was only later on in life...that i really understood...what she saw in him...why she cried so.

"how could she have loved some one so much, that she never, even, knew, in real life!?"

.... i had wondered at this back then...but, now, i know what she must have felt
...because my heart will break when Thom Yorke dies.


but, back to where i was at...my dad yelling at me, cramming bullshit dogma down my throat....
my father was going into this lecture, the same old, of how music and lyrics are important, and he was saying that if i listen to music like this...it will affect me on a spiritual level. he simply did not understand what the song meant to me...he simply did not understand how much sarcasm there was, for me, in those words "i'm a creep, i'm a weirdo!" he went into a rant about how he knows his children think that he is a weirdo, but the truth is, he said,
'MY CHILDREN ARE THE WEIRDO'S"...

"well thanks'...i thought to myself..."you just contradicted everything you were just saying, dad!"

i started trying to explain to him my point of view... agreeing with him to a certain extent...that i understand music does have some effect on us psycologically and even, maybe spiritually. . .but that...lost for words...because...he simply didn't...couldn't understand...didn't even get to complete one full thought with him without being interrupted....

trying to explain this to an 'old-school-evangelical-bible-thumping-hick' is impossible...his...mind already closed, already decided... simply....impossible...i realized all too late. after about an hour of arguing in the kareoki...i was broken down by him. word by word. he lashed out at me. most of which i forget. something just slowly closed down inside me and past a certain point i just blocked what he was saying to me "out"...my mind deleted it as if it were information into a computer that has no value, no service...to the higher understanding of the program. my mind simply said "delete, erase"...and the brain slipping into autopilot, survival mode.

... but i remember this part very clearly...he had said...

"you better SHUT UP or i will give you something to cry about!!"

my father yelled this at me as we walked away from the bar, back to his apartment. i knew that he meant to slap me. give me a nice good old fashioned wake up call. i had been sobbing uncontrolably. could hardly breathe. my first panic attack, ever. after he said this to me, i shut up, right away. was silent for the rest of the walk back to his place. darcy was silent too. she knew, maybe better than i did, that it's never a good idea to talk back to some body like my father. i stopped crying, took a deep breath, and i remember breathing in and breathing out...focusing, really focusing in on my breathing...and...trying to calm myself down from my hyperventalation...thinking to myself,

"i don't want to know you, anymore...dad"...and after that thought...i could breathe, again.

but i would never say that out loud, knowing what the concequenses would have been for back-talking.
...something died inside my heart that night. my father killed something in me, saying what he said. given, he had been a bit drunk, and my father was always prone to saying stupid things when he was drunk...and doing even more stupid things.... i took this into account...but no matter how much i tried to mentally justify his emotional outburst at me, it did not stop my heart from closing towards him. i turned into stone. from that moment on, i looked through my father, like i was looking at a wall that i had, in that moment, very deliberately built and that wall is still there to this day. i do not think i will ever break it down; it's higher than the great wall of china and i know that he will never try to break it down, either. it's too high, it's too old, and it's too strong..

i thought to myself...

"my father will never know me"...

i was just waiting for him to pull out the bible when we got back...start thumping on the words of god. he would do this, in a way, as if he thought he could be able to drill it through my head. sure enough, that was the first thing he did after our walk back to his place. but what he didn't realize is that, i was no longer listening to him any more...after he said what he said to me...i closed completely. i saw his lips move, but no words came out....i stared into my father's face blankly; hollow, empty, and cold.

he didn't even notice that i was no longer there with him...i was far far away...in my heart and in my mind i was miles away from his world, and he would never know mine.

i got the closure i needed from that last visit. never went out of my way for him again. i understood better my mother and what her trials must have been with him...what must have turned her into...how she became... found a greater understanding, a greater forgiveness into her mistakes with us children.
i realized in that moment, that my dad had really broken her... like a wild horse, he broke her spirit. i decided that night that my father would never break me. i'm too strong and i'm too free. i'm more of a horse than i am human. no one can break me. i am wild, forever,

he could never break me, like he did my mom... i would never let him close enough to do that to me.

i forgive my father, because i realize that it's his loss, not mine. i forgive my father because...in his own way he is really quite innocent in his ignorance and narrow minded stupidity. i forgive my father because i realized a long time ago that hate is a waste of time...and bitterness ends up eating you alive.
that night before i went to sleep, i whispered to myself a prayer for m y dad

"forgive him father, for he knows not what he does..."

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