Violence & Prosperity: A Tragedicomedy in Pieces
John Fitzpatrick Killeen
Author of the Critically-wounded Faux Pas
"The Ghastly Section 4 of Hans Morgenthau's
Politics among Nations"
And also the love story
"Chilean poetry of the 1970s,"
for which the Author received an A-
ACT I
Scene i, in which the Chorus sets the scene, shooting from the hip...
Good evening.
This is a paper about what prosperity is.
And what it is not.
Imagine that I have something you do not.
It is a golden calf lapel pin.
I am thus prosperous.
You kill me and take it away.
Perhaps you sell it.
I am not prosperous anymore.
You are now prosperous.
Scene ii, in which you become less prosperous all the time; the notion of prosperity gets confused...
You killed me and sold
My golden calf lapel pin.
When you sold it, the merchant
That bought it from you
Gave you a bad deal-
Half the calf's worth.
He became more prosperous
You became less so.
Scene ii, part b
But, having sold the lapel
Pin at half its worth,
You were still more
Prosperous than previously
And certainly more prosperous than I,
Who am no longer prosperous being dead.
And having bought the pin,
The merchant is more
Prosperous too.
He will sell it at 150%
Of its actual value-
Becoming most prosperous.
You split your earnings
And send half home,
Making your folks
More prosperous still than I,
Who am at that point
Still very much dead.
Scene ii, part c
Instead of sending the earnings
From the sold lapel pin home,
You kept it at the last minute.
You invested half the money
In a maquiladora and
With the other half
Bought a gun,
Increasing by far
Your potential prosperity.
You used your gun
To become kinetically
Prosperous once more.
And the maquiladora be-
Came prosperous in the meantime...
It must be noted here that the "protagonist" of "Violence and Prosperity" evidenced, in part b of Section ii, a sustainable and non-hegemonic role. By balancing the proceeds of his work (the violent murder of me) between his folks back home in the countryside and his own pocket, he is engaging in a positive socialist alternative to liberal or neoliberal development.1 However, in part c of the very same section, the protagonist delves headlong into those very modes of development which neglect the rural development of his folks for the increased "prosperity" of the city. The further growth of the assembly plant will mean new jobs and increased output, but his folks in the country have been forced to mortgage the goat farm to cover payments. This will certainly drive the folks, eventually, into the city to work in that very assembly plant.2
ACT II
Scene i: Can I call you Prosperous?
I, who have been manufacturing
Golden fishes for many years,
Am appalled at your living conditions.
I first realized my sympathies
For you and my desire to help
When you refused
To buy my fishes.
And then I offered them
To you in trade for
The women of your village,
Who would have been
Very helpful laborers
And at low cost to me.
Scene i, part b
What sort of humanity
Values not a Golden Fish?
Scene ii, in which my values are superimposed on yours...
Because you are uncivil,
I began showing you how
To manufacture these very
Little fishes.
You learned very quickly,
And I was affirmed that
Even in such beasts there lurks
Some gaseous quark
Of humanity...
Here, we must take exception to the flowery, if adequately cruel, language of the author. It is certain that he takes liberties in this, even as much of the remainder of his speech is precise and unpretentious.
In addition, we must note how it is seemingly within reason to expect a "beast" from the rural, kin-based society to be interested in a gewgaw like a gold fish. This ignores the needs and modes of obtaining those needs that prevailed among "undeveloped" people. The just approach, according to Arturo Escobar, would be different. Such an approach "must reverse the [here quoting Maurice Godelier] spontaneous impulse to look in every society for economic institutions and relations separate from other social relations, comparable to those of Western capitalist society."3
With the appropriation of the savage laborer, the protagonist has incorporated that Other into the economic mode prevalent in civilized circles. To the savage it may be-indeed is-entirely irrelevant; but to the protagonist, there is only beneficence in this act, not only because the savage thus enters a context which makes sense to the Westerner, but because he can also thereby gain from his low-cost, if not cost-free, labor.
The dilemma thus becomes manifest. The protagonist fails to see the mode of production already functioning in the underdeveloped society.
ACT III
Scene i, in which the savage speaks of not being savage...
The maquiladora shut down
When the sports shoe market dropped
Because all the American children
Didn't like the way you employed me.
And then the labor law passed,
And I could not be hired.
I wonder what would have happened
To me before...
They say the Westerners
Have lost money in the plants.
I cannot sell a goat today,
But I have milk, and I have
Meat.
My house belongs to my family and...
Instead I am in the street
Picking scraps.
There is no money
Anymore,
And I don't own
Anything.
The intrusion into the sequence of the verses, ostensibly by one or another of the savages, marks a coup in the verses, which are otherwise in the civil voice. And in its brief passage, this voice reminds us of what the protagonist had referred to as the "gaseous quark,"4 the living vibrancy that separates him, the former savage, from the commodities he had been manufacturing. Thus the true protagonist is brought to the fore, while early on he had been lying dormant beneath the contempt of the colonial developer. The protagonist testifies wearily that the assembly plant is shut down because of consumer protests of labor conditions. The irony is, without a doubt, quite obtuse in his perspective; "American children" didn't approve of the way (presumably) American adults abused third world labor, resulting in an even more dire circumstance, further digression into squalor. And now that the protagonist is functioning within a transformed capital-driven society, he is unable to rely on kinship security measures. While it is certain to Western critics such as ourselves that kinship societies faced potential famine and drought,5 the protagonist daydreams of again being outside the economic transformation, able to milk a goat or else slaughter it and survive. The harsh reality, however, cannot be evaded. In the new order of things, his survival is contingent upon his ability to either sell himself as a labor commodity or sell the tin, paper and what-not he scavenges in the streets.6 Undoubtedly, on slow days, our protagonist eats from the streets, too, if there is substance to be eaten.
In the final Act of the work, under the heading
Let's all eat cake and act quizzical...
three simultaneous voices confront the reader with hypothetical scenarios. Each, within the ideological and emotional context proffered by the alternating speakers, elaborates the destiny of he who we now know is the true protagonist.
...I gave you a job
Lifting packing crates
At the harbor.
You were happy
To once more evade
The night sweep of
Police...
...[he] scratches the walls
and only there is blood
no food.
There is a child
in the bedroom
with a man...
...You organized to petition
The government and demand
Fair reward: something like
Sustenance.
Something like
Survival...
...When you returned
Home with your pay
You sent half home
To your folks
Who have a goat farm...
...[he] does not send the letter.
The gun feels large in his hands.
The child is in the bedroom
with a man...
...after the protests, they loved you
And you ran for public office.
You promised reform
And to fight Congress
And to spit in the hand
Of the West...
...You pushed the door open
And I saw your weeping
From where I lay
With your child.
You raised your hands slowly...
...[his] body shook so violently
he could shatter any moment
and so quickly fired
there were pounding sounds,
and the child cried again
but worse...
...When you were elected,
The military swarmed into
The plaza.
Notes
- Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 99.
- Robert H. Bates, Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development (New York: Norton and Co., 2001), 32.
- Escobar, 61.
- Admittedly, a vulgar phrasing of what is "human." George Clinton is sure to nod in approval since, indeed, we do all come from the funk.
- Bates, 38.
- DeJesus, Carolina Maria. Child of the Dark (New York: Putnam, 1962).
Bibliography
Bates, Robert H. Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development. New York: Norton and Co., 2001.
DeJesus, Carolina Maria. Child of the Dark. New York: Putnam, 1962.
Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development: The Making and Un-making of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.