Representing ourselves
Type de matériel :
64
As a young Romani woman, I have experienced the injunction addressed to anyone born a Roma in modern societies: hide what you are when in public, and be what you are only in ghettoes hidden from Gadjo society. As a consequence, we only have two options for our public appearances. The first is dictated by self-hatred: hating your Romani being as much as the Gadjo hates it, and thus ceasing to be the former in order to look like the latter. The second option involves putting on the degrading mask of majority representations of the Roma in the hope of some benefit. Both options confine our political participation to the role of minors, just like children or until recently women—deprived of sovereignty, speaking or acting only under the tutelage of the majority perspective. My response goes against the grain of claims of a status as historical victims, and as a nation before the state, borrowed from majority concepts that alienate us. We should try to build our political and symbolic participation starting from the re-appropriation of that which represents us in ways that are consistent with who we are actually: a multiplicity of people historically committed to strategies of resistance against the various attempts at destruction experienced in our collective history—slavery, genocide, and mass incarceration.
Réseaux sociaux