WORD Christchurch: Politics of Fiction and I and I and I

WORD Christchurch: Politics of Fiction
WORD Christchurch: I and I and I – Charlotte Grimshaw

As elsewhere this weekend the political is explored as the personal and the ways in which we make sense of the world and seek to make it better were explored by Julie Hill in conversation with Brannavan Gnanalingam, Pip Adam and Rajorshi Chakraborti.

I left the sessions on Alt America and The House of Islam with nagging questions about the ways that the politics of the world and the fictions of fascist and radical propaganda are impacting on individuals, and the way that personal fear is driving people towards destructive ideologies. I’ll not go so far as to say I found the answer to all those questions in this session, but the work of the authors here felt like a powerful example of the way that humanity can respond with empathy and thoughtful care, even in the face of terror and misinformation.

There was an echo of the discussion between Kate De Goldi and Charlotte Grimshaw in I and I and I here of the exploration of the ideas of truth and self in Grimshaw’s Mazarine, which looked at the microcosm of the family, truthfulness, communication and power, alongside the macrocosm of the world of “fake news” and a rising tide of facism.

Grimshaw discussed the experience of growing up with a father who wrote, and seeing the events of their lives fictionalised over and over again, and through her protagonist (an author herself) raises the question of where the self resides and whether and how we exist. Grimshaw discussed how her personal creative process is anything but introspective, that she writes almost as if the stories are being told to her by aliens, though De Goldi’s responses showed the degree to which her work does inspire introspection, investigation and reflection in the reader on the existential matters at hand.

Rajorshi Chakraborti spoke of his interest in writing stories of the ‘existentially incompetent’ – Grimshaw’s work seems to move towards further layers of abstraction in terms of existence, while Chakraborti, Gnanalingam and Adam all spoke in their own way of using their fiction and indeed the political act of living day-to-day to take people who suffer disenfranchisement and oppression from the abstract and into the consciousness of those who engage with them. If fascism and extremism arrive out of the dehumanisation of Others, there was a sense in The Politics of Fiction of the way that we can tell stories and live our lives in a way that reminds us of each individual’s humanity and how precious that is.

Reviewed by Brett Johansen

 

WORD Christchurch: Juno Dawson Gender Games

WORD Christchurch Juno Dawson: Gender Games

Given the subject matter at hand, a 10am Saturday session with Juno Dawson could easily have been a dark and morose affair – addictions, mental illness, gender and sexuality are all key themes in Dawson’s body of work, though it was ultimately a light and enlightened session, which has encouraged me to look deeper into her work.

Dawson has published work in both Young Adult and Non-Fiction. Conversation for a time moved around the way that Young Adult, as a category, is often very liberating for writers in terms of genre, with romance, horror, fantasy or drama all ultimately ending up in the same place in the bookstore. This has allowed her writing to shift between styles in a way that Adult Fiction’s more rigid genre divisions wouldn’t allow. Dawson’s background is in education, though she deliberately doesn’t use her fiction as a means to try and educate young people, there is a wonderful sense here of the ability to create worlds where the hard discussions and intensely personal feelings of youth around identity and substance (ab)use and sex can be raised and thought about and considered in a safer way by locating them in fiction.

Of note also was discussion on Doctor Who (Dawson has been commissioned to write the first novelisation of the Dr) and of the transformative power of the Spice Girls, for those who were of the right age in the 90s. I can only look back hazily on the world before those 5 iconoclasts entered, but it doesn’t seem too much of a stretch to consider their important part in making the world a safer place to be queer or questioning as a teenager than it was before.

Reviewed by Brett Johansen

WORD Christchurch: The House of Islam, with Ed Husain

WORD Christchurch: The House of Islam, with Ed Husain

It was established from the outset that there was something more rigorous than the advertised “conversation” on offer, with host, journalist Donna Miles-Mojab challenging Ed Husain immediately on matters pertaining to the Iranian government’s theology. Husain’s book The House of Islam is, he has explained, written with a western, English speaking audience in mind, and for those of us fitting that description there was a period of time in which we found ourselves perhaps a little disoriented by this discourse, though it was ultimately a session which cast light on the ideals of open, challenging discourse and the importance of this, while adding a layer to conversations raised elsewhere this weekend.

Husain’s book is a beautifully written, detailed and thorough exploration of Islam which I devoured enthusiastically a few weeks ago, and as I read it, I was struck often by the way that he shows what commonality there is between societies steeped in Christianity and Islam and between the religions and their Abrahamic cousin Judaism. Husein emphasised this in terms of both the theology and ideals of the religions and in a more modern context, in terms of the similarities between the Imperialist West and the Ottoman empire.

Husain also notably explores the way in which the concepts of Shariah have become twisted to become totalitarian in radical Islam (and in the western Islamophobic understanding) though illuminated the way that ultimately the same values which brought western law to being are present; and indeed that for a modern, western Muslim, the laws of a country such as New Zealand fulfil all the key values of Shariah. There is far more nuance to this than our blunt, binary discourse in the west often allows space for, and fear has taken over where misunderstanding lives.

There was a bristle amongst the crowd at Miles-Mohab’s approach as a facilitator, though I applaud her and indeed the organisers for allowing this to be something more than a feel-good tour of Islam for the uninformed. Without the context that Miles-Mojab ensured we were aware of, it would have been all too easy to miss the way in which Husain’s analysis at times arrives in places that read very much alike the Conservative or Republican side of the western political battlefield. There’s far more at play in terms of the political spectrum, our collective values and the flow of ideas and information than I could hope to sum up here, though I appreciate the way the session allowed the threads of this conversation to be teased out further, rather than left hidden.

The way we arrive at personal beliefs and the way we seek to make our global society safer and fairer are matters which won’t be resolved at WORD Christchurch this weekend, though it was hard to put the echoes of American Fascism brought to mind by David Neiwert’s session the previous night to the back of the mind when looking at the questions of radicalism within Islam – Husain’s own journey through accepting and then rejecting radical Islam was not touched upon in great depth today, though there was discussion of the similarities and differences between alt America and radical Islamism.

Husain at this point argued very strongly against relativism in understanding the two fringe groups which have wrestled great control in the world, suggesting that radical Islamic terror was a far greater threat to the globe than right wing America, though the way in which this same idea feeds the thought process of the fascistic right in the west is an affront.

The hour long format meant that all these worms were just tipped onto the table at the point of us moving to the next event, but I am grateful to Ed Husain and Donna Miles-Mojab for bringing the can and the opener.

Reviewed by Brett Johansen

Ed Husain will also appear on Saturday, this time with Denise Mina, in Disunited Kingdom – 1pm, at Philip Carter Family Concert Hall, The Piano

WORD Christchurch: David Neiwert – Alt-America

WORD Christchurch is on from 29 August – 2 September.

David Neiwerts body of work as a journalist centres on the radical right wing in the United States of America, and the discussion here was centred around issues brought forward by his latest book Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump.

The USA, and by extension the world, sits on the edge of an apparent historical precipice; Neiwert remarks that America has been very lucky when it comes to Facism and Authoritarianism, in that a movement has not emerged with a singular, charismatic leader. Until now.

Donald Trump has risen to the top of a movement mired in the fascistic elements which have long been a part of the American psyche, but those elements have become emboldened begun to draw together in a way that has not previously been seen. The emergence of Trump as a right-wing populist demagogue has taken the country to the precipice of authoritarianism in unprecedented manner, and it is – Neiwert argues – on the back of the emergence of an Alternative America where people’s connection with reality, truth, compassion, empathy and reason have been eroded by a relentless stream of misinformation and hateful rhetoric. A counterfactual culture driven by Fox News and Infowars, emboldened to take to the streets and behave violently. American Fascism has its leader now, and the mid-term elections and 2020 presidental race are ultimately pivotal in the success or downfall of the regime and the ideology.

New Zealand in the past has tended to ultimately be dismissive of America and its influence on us, othering the American as a brash, arrogant, imbecile who is ultimately little more than an annoyance, though events since 2001 have changed this perception, and there was a sense palpable among those present that the politics of America are in 2018 of great concern to us here in New Zealand. With our neighbours in Australia unapologetically legitimising authoritarian mistreatment of refugees and migrants, the trajectory of politics in the USA and the ability of this to influence the lives of people here in the South Pacific is clear.

Neiwert’s analysis does not initially inspire a great deal of confidence that the movement of people’s thinking toward the extreme right can be halted. He talked of the way that those seduced by the ideals of the alternative right are generally immobile in their thinking, driven by gut fears and paranoia, and discussed the ways in which debate – both public and personal – tends to have the result of hardening the beliefs of the radical right wing.

He talked repeatedly of the individuals who are consuming and producing the hateful rhetoric of this alternative universe as being “down the rabbit hole” of white supremacy and anti-semetic conspiracy theory, remarking on how rare it is for people to be shifted in their beliefs once they are established in their profound denial. The apt comparison was made with the mentality of religious cults producing self-fulfilling prophesy over and over, though religious fervour is replaced by paranoid beliefs about minorities and a belief that the white way of life is under threat. Crystallised by the election of Barack Obama in 2008, the movement has gone from fringe groups of militia, tinfoil conspiracists and internet trolls all the way to control of the Republican Party and the WhiteHouse.

Neiwert’s suggested responses are not necessarily direct, but the encouragement of empathy and compassion in our society and encouraging participation in democracy from all quarters is hard to argue against. Faced with the potential emergence of global authoritarianism, it is vital that we take the in-depth understanding that David Neiwert has dedicated himself to and fight these ideologies, lest the lessons of the horrific atrocities of the 20th century be forgotten and repeated.

Attended and reviewed by Brett Johansen

David Neiwert: Alt-America
WORD Christchurch, Thursday 30 August

Buy the Book – Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump
by David Neiwert
Published by Verso Books
ISBN 9781786637468

WORD Christchurch 2018: Free Radicals

Free Radicals, with Dr Erin Harrington

A musical exploration of Women in the history of Science and Technology, Free Radicals is held together by the narration of Dr Erin Harrington of the University of Canterbury’s English and Cultural studies department. It is through Dr Harrington’s engaging presence that the stories and inspiration behind the diverse music presented are illuminated, and the ostensibly disparate threads of sound and performance are tied together. The song cycle moves deftly from melody to dissonance, with instrumentation from traditional Māori instruments through to prepared piano, digital synthesisers and computers.

The show begins at the melodic end of the musical spectrum on display, with the taonga pūoro or traditional Maori instruments of Ariana Tikao’s Behind the Black opening the musical proceedings before the exquisite vocal harmonies of The Swan Sisters. Through discussion of Rosalind Franklyn’s crucial, but systematically under-appreciated and overlooked contribution to the understanding of the double-helix structure of DNA, the ideas and tension that influence the performance begin to be unpacked.

From delicate beginnings, the concert moves deftly through Jazz influenced sounds towards contemporary composition from Glenda Kean and electronica from Misfit Mod. There is joy and beauty here for the audience, alongside challenging sounds and music, contemplation and experimentation. Melody and dissonance seem to be in constant tension throughout the song cycle, and this is evocative of the purposes of the concert as a whole. The stories here of the women who have contributed to our understanding of the universe are a celebration of their achievements, while New Radicals also seeks constantly to illuminate the extraordinary misogyny which these women have had to contend with, and the unending nature of that struggle against the short-sighted and oppressive behaviour of the men who have acted as gatekeepers to knowledge.

The show’s finale, In Femenia Forma by Rosa Elliott was performed by a number of vocal performers joining together in a choral circle, some facing the audience and some with their backs to us, all facing each-other. The final song in the cycle moves between beauty and chaos, and draws the range of ideas and feelings evoked by the diverse parts of the concert together into one piece. The performers showed the singularity of purpose in-spite of opression which those whose stories are told here have had, while showing solidarity and strength through their communality and identity as Women.

A limited number of tickets are still available for the repeat performance of the show tonight on the 30th of August.

Reviewed by Brett Johansen on behalf of Booksellers NZ

Free Radicals 2 is performed tonight from 6pm
RECITAL ROOM, UC ARTS IN THE ARTS CENTRE