The reason of it all: Love

Dealing with a part of my positionality through the politics of love.

Allow me to tell you a story. A very personal one. One which has, nothing, and everything to do with the purpose of this project. A story that happens to explain, and perhaps justify, why I ended up doing anthropological research in the Eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

I often catch myself asking: why do I have such a strong curiosity? Interest? Tendency? Fascination? Affination? Appreciation? for ‘the African’- the music, the fashion, the food, the philosophies, the languages, the landscapes, the ancient history, you name it. I mean, how the heck did Afrofuturism end up being my favourite literary genre?

It is a question that intrigues me on a personal level, but it is also a question that I have to answer recurrently to people in order to justify why me, a white, man has chosen to dedicate himself to research Africa and the human beings living over there, instead of those over here, closer to him.

[A personal thought: It is a shame that I have to justify my interest for 'all things African' and my passion for researching in the continent due to historical and ethical reasons, but that’s just my heritage, and a cheap price to pay for my privilege (read as global power). No real complains here. Still a shame though. In a utopian world where 'us and them' does not entail a hierarchy of power I would not have to- and may the daughters of your daughters live to see the moon in such a world.]

So, Why do we like the things we do? Why do I like rice more than couscous, Rugby more than football? Pink more than green? Funk and soul more than pop and rock? Why do I care more about global social justice an the colonised ethics of humanity than about mental health issues, or the domestic politics of my own country? It is hard to find an accurate answer for these questions, but I usually attribute at least part of the reason to the processes of socialisation (the making of oneself through experiencing and relating to the world around us, a.k.a. Living) that I have gone through during my life. So, although there is not scientific proof, whatsoever, of what I am about to tell you, I believe it to be true in my heart:

My interest and affinity for 'the African' comes from the same place that this blog does: Love.

Love in a galaxy far, far away from now. Back when the blueprint of what I am today was still on the making. A young Pedro who was not yet aware of global history nor conscious of the processes of racialisation and hierarchisation that came with it. A young and clueless Pedro who happened to fall in love. I was about 14 when I felt in love with Lisa, a slightly older and mixed race girl that worked with me. It was my first time in love, and the first time had the opportunity to truly interact, get to know, and build a relationship with a person of colour. Beautiful coincidence don’t you think?

Back then, for Pedro, Lisa was just another pretty and intelligent Spanish girl. Little mattered that she was mixed- no big difference, just some physiological differences. Young Pedro didn't see colour yet, for it did not understand it. Lisa sure did, and one way or another she cured me from my colour-blindness at an early age. I mean, although I was still in school, it was not in school that I remember learning about what colonialism really was and what it did to the world (and Spain has an important bit of its history attached to it; and I sure did study history... like... every year actually), it was the curiosity for 'the African' that Lisa somehow awoke on me.

These days Lisa and I enjoy nearly 20 years of friendship and going strong, but the love I had for her the first years of our relationship, was of the intimate type; the kind of love that makes you want to know more about the other person and her environment. Inevitably, by spending time with her I was exposed to the part of her culture that was unknown to me: African and black culture. Equally inevitable, by loving Lisa I made myself ready, eager even, to take an interest, learn, and like elements of the African culture; something that has grown organically and apart from Lisa since then, but these were my teens, a key point on my personal formation.

I know in my heart, that loving Lisa shaped my life in crucial ways, for it really directed the things I was starting to like and care about. Social (in)justice and an appreciation for 'the African' are two of them.

Importantly, there was a point in our relationship where our love could have materialised beyond the platonic, and the only thing stopping Lisa and I from being together was the fact that she was mixed and I was white. I doubt this will happen nowadays, but back then we were still young and what was simply a physiological difference for me, clashed with Lisa's way of life, her people, and her social world. In a way, it was the idea of 'us and them' that prevented me from being with the first person I ever loved in a intimate way. How could two persons who loved each other could not be together for something as silly as having ancestors from different parts of the world? physiological differences? I know now that is more complicated than that; but long story short:

I came to despise the idea of 'us and them' and its genesis (colonialism) from a very early age.

Now, I will not trace back 20 years of my life in order to explain how I can pinpoint in my head the ways in which meeting and loving Lisa influenced some of the most important educational and extracurricular choices I made in my life until ending up becoming passionate about both, fighting the colonized ethics of humanity, and researching and wanting to spend time in the African continent. But take my word for it: the academic and professional choices that have led me here today come from a place of Love.

I believe that love is the higher form of politics there is (me, doctor King, and Bell Hooks among others). I believe love to be the opposite of 'us and them'. In fact, I believe love to be the cure for 'us and them'. And that is precisely the overall goal of this project; to break with this binary (or at least the elements that make it evil). I purposely decided not to research those armed conflict dynamics taking place in the D.R. Congo, but instead 'simply' the everyday social existence of those who live through it, in order to challenge this 'us and them' binary.

Importantly, this 'us and them' differentiation was not constructed in equal, nor factual, terms; after all, racism is an ideological tool that originated as part of a process of essentialising the other as inferior in order to justify their conquest and exploitation. A process of essentialism that continues to sustain a system of global injustice partly via the way we talk, think and construct the other, in this case Africa:

Africa as an homogeneous country, Africa as the underdeveloped jungle, Africa as the heart of Darkness, Africa as the place of an undivided mass which acts in base of the most fundamental, Africa as a place of hunger, starvation, political instability, endemic violence and armed conflict.

'Africa as the other', 'Africa as usual', and by no means the 'Africa' I know.

While doing research in a conflict zone, at its core, my research investigates 'simply': what does it mean to be human under the social condition of war; which one way or another, entails bringing up front the things that we have in common, not those that make us different.

All in all, this blog comes from a place of love; it comes from a place of love because it aims to de-essentialise Africa as usual through dismantling the colonial tropes of 'us and them' that sustain the idea that there is something intrinsically different between us.

My real hope? That, may one day the daughters of all daughters get to love each other in peace without having to justify themselves; as equals.