quarta-feira, 22 de julho de 2009

Stranger in the City

Isaac Julien, "Paradise Omeros" , 2002.


"Why are we afraid of globalization, that is the dissolving of the state frontiers monitored by armies of adequately equipped specialized police bodies? We are afraid of globalization because strangers will be constantly trespassing into our neighborhoods and lurking on our street-corners!

The next question then is: Why are we afraid of strangers? I am afraid of strangers because they might harm me. I am afraid to be assaulted and killed by strangers. This is why I feel safer with state-monitored frontiers.

And this leads to the third question: Were foreigners always considered dangerous and the well-guarded frontiers always necessary? Here we stumble on an intriguing diversity of attitudes: not all world civilizations consider strangers dangerous creatures. Where the 1930s Hollywood movie-makers put two pistols in the hands of the cowboy to make sure that the treacherous stranger who appeared at the frontier had no chance to escape death, the ninth century Baghdad story-tellers who crafted the Sindbad tales, made the Iraqi crowds love foreigners, because this hero gathered fabulous wealth by taking risky trips to India and China's faraway islands. "

Fatema Mernissi, Why Are We Afraid of Globalization


Sem comentários:

Enviar um comentário