Left Ruins in Ethiopia: Imagining Otherwise Amid Necroepistemic Historiography

• Authors: Surafel Wondimu Abebe

Title variants

PL

Lewicowe ruiny w Etiopii: Inna wyobraźnia pośród nekroepistemicznej historiografii

Abstracts

PL

W artykule wykorzystano pojęcie nekroepistemologii, aby opisać proces zabijania Innego przez neoliberalną historiografię w Etiopii. Odwołując się do dialektyki negatywnej Frantza Fanona, autor poddaje krytyce ahistoryczny i zdematerializowany przedmiot badań oraz uniwersalizację historii praktykowaną w oficjalnej etiopskiej historiografii, która posługuje się absolutyzującą koncepcją czasu, przestrzeni i materii. Celem krytyki jest ujawnienie metod stosowanych przez tę historiografię, by marginalizować aktualne kwestie społeczne i odrzucać nowe wyobraźnie jako dzieło globalno-lokalnej lewicy. Szukając przeciwwagi dla tej praktyki, autor powraca do etiopskiej rewolucji socjalistycznej z 1974 i do inscenizacji etiopskiego socjalizmu jako krytycznej transnarodowej refleksji nad podejściem do człowieczeństwa w tym kraju. Jednocześnie, przyglądając się codziennym zmaganiom aktorek zarówno w przestrzeni imperialnej, jak i rewolucyjnej, przypomina, że praktyka rewolucyjna, która niosła nową wizję człowieka jako istoty społecznej, zakończyła się naznaczeniem ciał performerek jako niebezpiecznych dla ruchu socjalistycznego. Esej ukazuje współpracę i walkę aktorek z męskim rewolucjonistą, kończy się zaś wezwaniem do odpowiedzi na obecną sytuację nekroepistemiczną, aby zwrócić uwagę na bezbronnych ludzi, którzy umierają w Etiopii tu i teraz.

EN

This essay uses the notion of necroepistemology to expose the killing of the other as executed by the neoliberal historiography in Ethiopia. Utilizing Fanonian negative dialectics, it critiques the ahistorical, immaterial, and reified object, as well as universal history, promoted by the official Ethiopian historiography’s absolute time, space, and matter. It does so to reveal the ways in which the enduring social questions and new imaginations are dismissed by this historiography as the work of the global-local left. To counterbalance this practice, I return to the 1974 Ethiopian socialist revolution and to the staging of Ethiopian socialism as a critical transnational rethinking of the human in the country. At the same time, attending to the everyday struggle of women performers in both the imperial and revolutionary spaces, the essay reminds us how the revolutionary practice, which had envisioned a new social human, ended up marking female performers’ bodies as dangerous for the socialist movement. Revealing the ways in which women performers collaborated with and fought against a male revolutionary figure, this essay ends with a call to respond to the current necroepistemic moment to draw attention to the historically vulnerable people who are dying in Ethiopia in the here and now.

Keywords

PL

nekroepistemologia; historiografia; neoliberalizm; wyobraźnia; nowe człowieczeństwo; gender; seksualność

EN

necroepistemology; historiography; neoliberalism; imagination; new humanity; gender; sexuality

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Sztuki PAN
• Journal: Pamiętnik Teatralny
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 70
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 161-182

Dates

published

2021

Contributors

author

Surafel Wondimu Abebe

• The Africa Institute of Sharjah

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Identifiers

DOI

10.36744/pt.992

Biblioteka Nauki

32083634