Ecologies of Affect: Placing Nostalgia, Desire, and Hope

10. Virtual Resurrections: Che Guevara’s Image as Place of Hope

Virtual Resurrections Che Guevara’s Image as Place of Hope MARIA-CAROLINA CAMBRE Thus a window is a window because a region of light opens out beyond it; hence, the window giving this light is not itself “like” the light, nor is it subjectively linked in our imagination with our ideas of light—but the window is that very light itself, in its ontological self-identity, that very light which, undivided-in-itself and thus inseparable from the sun. But the window all by itself —i.e., apart from its relationship to the light, beyond its function as carrier of light —is no longer a window but dead wood and mere glass. (Florensky 1996, 65) Looking is also an action that confirms or modifies … “interpreting the world” is already a means of transforming it. (Rancière 2007, 277) Introduction In 2006, while reading news on the Internet, I came across an image of Hindu women demonstrating in the streets of Tamil Nadu, Chennai.1 The special correspondent describes the crowd and its demographic composition under the banner “Expressing Solidarity” and reports on the reasons they have publicly gathered to protest. The caption under the photograph reads, “Student activists from Assam taking part in the procession to mark the beginning of the national conference of the AISF in Chennai on Tuesday.” I read on in an effort to better comprehend this image: 217 10 218 HOPE They came from Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra , Orissa, West Bengal and different parts of Tamil Nadu. And they marched along Anna Salai and Wallajah Road on Tuesday in traditional costumes , raising slogans in different languages. But the young girls and boys, who participated in the procession to mark the beginning of the 26th national conference of the All-India Students Federation (AISF), had a common mission: oppose “all attempts to commercialise or communalise education.” (“26th AISF National Conference Begins” 2006, n.p.) Questions boomeranging in my head, I peered at the image and hunted through the text while conscious that I was not exempt from what Jacques Rancière tells us in the second epigraph: each time we witness we know something; when we try to think of what that might be, we are transforming it by interpreting it. Confirmation that I was seeing what I thought I was seeing came in the form of the correspondent’s descriptive note: “The activists, carrying AISF flags and portraits of Che Guevara and freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, P. Jeevanantham and K. Baladhandayutham, raised slogans … [and] called for effective measures to stop collection of capitation fee in schools and colleges” (my emphasis). Odd but true, in ancient Tamil territory , southern India, near the Bay of Bengal, it is Che Guevara’s posterized face (multiple copies) born aloft by sari-clad women. I cannot discern other “freedom fighters” in the photograph, and it really looks like Che alone is accompanying these protesters. The textual confirmation serves only to make the image that much more bizarre: Why Che and not Gandhi or someone local, or perhaps a more relevant figure? Why here, and what is the link with India or any issue in Hindu education? The sight of Che’s posterized face in this photograph was like an inexplicable anomaly, compelling my disoriented eyes to contemplate it. This image has not only appeared in Chennai: in countless situations and places around the world, Cuban photographer Alberto Korda’s iconic face of Che Guevara is an image that goes beyond T-shirts, key chains, and other knick-knacks, beyond being a brand appropriated by one or another movement , and beyond being a symbol of some type of rebellion. The demonstrators in Figure 10.1 have a dream not just for themselves but for a better education for their community; it is a hope in the sense that it is not a case of “us” or “them,” but “we.” My wonderings about this and other such experiences led me to a phenomenological approach. Phenomenology enables me to conjecture why this image accompanies the people in the photograph . Why here? Why now?2 How is it being experienced? In the spirit of Gabriel Marcel’s method of concrete description and personal invocation , I adopt an approach or “methodology that has been called d’après Heidegger , ontological-phenomenology” (Grady 1970, 56). While mindful that particular lived-experience anecdotes may provide reflective understandings of phenomenological topics, I study them...