AICE 2004
VIII Congresso Internazionale delle Città Educative
Un'altra città è possibile. Il futuro delle città come progetto collettivo
Plenary session IV
Saturday November 20th
The invisible city. The future of cities as networks of collective projects
Speakers
- Luigi Ciotti
Priest committed to the fight against social marginalization, founder of the Gruppo Abele of Turin (Italy) - Michael Singleton
Anthropologist, University of Louvain (Belgio)
1. Luigi Ciotti
The value of doubt and the importance of being illiterate
I would like to start from the end. From saying, first of all to myself, that another city is possible if we let doubts cross our minds, with no fear. I believe that being aware of what the limits of our boundaries are is the great resource that allows us to know the limits and boundaries of others. As we go on, our strength consists in letting doubts cross our minds. I am suspicious of those who understand everything, who know everything, who praise everything. Next year Gruppo Abele will celebrate its fortieth anniversary. This association, which originated on the street, in the belly of a city like Turin, has offered me the privilege of being in a position to choose to sleep for three years on the trains of Porta Nuova station together with that invisible, marginalised, labelled, excluded world that lived there during those years. Moreover, it gave me the privilege of promoting, along with others, with many others, paths of hope. In these forty years I have always felt that those doubts, that since the beginning have crossed my mind in dealing with the experiences of the people who inhabit our streets, are a resource, a value. If I can wish something, and I would have done this towards the end but, as I have been stimulated by the professor, I do it at the start, I always wish to myself to be illiterate, and I wish you the same. Never feel settled, never fulfilled, never certain despite field experiences. It is important to keep studying, verifying, questioning. This is the VIII International Congress: people haven't stopped at the first steps, at the first moments. The willingness to be stimulated and to stimulate, to discuss, to study and to research has been kept alive. That is how I understand being illiterate. Never give up challenging oneself. I am scared of those who have stopped and have remained prisoners of their past and of their experiences. The importance of being stimulated, of discussing, of mutually listening to one another, of listening especially to the people of our cities, is our barometer. It is what invites us, stimulates us, indicates the directions of change.
Working together with an eye to the ands, with a healthy squint and a healthy rage
The third aspect that I regard as important, that you teach me, and that for me in other fields too has become both important as well as crucial, is that our present and our future are built on a small word: the conjunction "and". In order for "another city to be possible", as you have experienced it - the papers and discussion of the last few days, but also of the last few years, testify to it - it is necessary to work together, to build together. Different worlds, such as the public and the private sectors, politics and universities, those working to help on the street, the various types of operators, and the people, the citizens. While always keeping that squinty look, with an eye to one's own city and reality, but also one to the world. That is why our future needs “ands” rather than “ors”. This is the key. Then we can go on discussing for days. But, without doubting, without the awareness of the importance of an on-going research, unless we are illiterate, unless there is the “and”, which means “together”, another city is not possible. Equally, I believe that an operator, a politician, an administrator cannot afford not having a store of rage, of anger. Because you know rage is a movement of the soul, a strong emotion. It is a deep feeling. Rage, which is sometimes anger, sometimes indignation, sometimes fury, is an act of love, of great love. Because indeed, we cannot help getting angry at many situations which we experience first-hand within our realities. In front of the faces of those who struggle, of all kinds of poverty, of injustices. This healthy rage is important. It is impossible for an operator, a teacher, not to feel such anger, meant in this sense, as an act of deep love. And if, when you meet someone who talks about someone else's problems, you don’t see this passion inside, then you don’t feel that another city is possible, because the development of a community precisely needs our passion which is made of reason, intelligence and heart.
Focus on surprising so as to avoid our work becoming a trade
Another aspect is that (and I say this to myself, mind you, I am the first one who has to ask himself questions) reasons are not so obvious once and for all. The reasons that led us, maybe yesterday, to act, to commit ourselves, to join the fray of our cities, with different roles and abilities, need to be constantly updated, newly motivated, and new training is needed, because ours cannot become just a trade. We cannot afford it to become routine. And do you know which is the yardstick? Often people make mistakes, they have to start all over again, not all is simple, not all is easy…But one thing is important: our small yardstick is when we are no longer surprised. When there is no more surprise. One does something, but it all becomes routine, it all becomes a “trade”. Then, allow me to say this - as an undertaking to make another city possible - let us constantly update reasons. Sometimes one also needs to stop and look inside oneself, in order to verify them. In the course of these years I have not only worked in the world of marginalisation and exclusion, but also in the world of inclusion, because that of committing oneself only within the world of marginalisation, is a mistake, a big mistake. Because indeed, unless that resource of a face-to-face encounter with people’s story also translates into proposals, stimuli and projects with the world of inclusion, no change will be possible. There will always be two worlds in contrast with one another. There is the need to work with those “ands” that I mentioned before. Our groups have learnt, sometimes making mistakes, that it is not enough to fence oneself in the world with generosity and commitment. It is necessary to live this on-going transfer, in order to use that patrimony and those experiences to assist in bringing up a world of insiders. Otherwise, there will always be confrontation. It is necessary to mutually raise the level of knowledge and awareness among people, using languages, using method. Otherwise another city will never be possible. There will be delegates dealing with the world of the outsiders and the excluded, then there will be the world of the included. No, these realities need to commit and build together. And this is what I try to do with many friends. Many people often say: “That guy deals with the marginalised, the fight against the Mafia, the poors, the convicts, AIDS, drug, prostitution…”. No. One stands by people so that everybody is a true citizen, everybody. And during these forty years, if I may share hardships, hopes, mistakes as well as the concrete nature and, hopefully, the coherence and continuity of a commitment, the story about meeting face-to-face with people, both insiders and outsiders, has taught and given me four keys, which should never be lost, as they are fundamental. Then can we decide methods, paths, strategies, networks, and so forth, but these four keys cannot be lost.
The first key: meeting people and facing problems
The first key is that we are called upon to meet people and face problems, not vice-versa. Unfortunately today many face people, they face the convict, the senior person, they face the migrant. One meets people, any kind of people. Problems are faced and, in order to face problems, one has to know them. It is necessary to read their changes and transformations. Thirty-five years ago the drugs I learnt about were amphetamines, which people drank, they made the bomb with, then heroin came about, and after that chemical and synthetic drugs. Years ago nobody talked about another form of addiction, like anorexia and bulimia. Nobody would have talked about forms of addictions such as those affecting young people clicking every day for hours on end in complete solitude. There are people who experience this form of addiction in total solitude as they are lonely. Or they play video-poker. New expressions that yesterday we would have never imagined. In order to face problems and meet people we need to know what the new problems are. Within our cities, we are called upon to set our minds on it.
The second key: accompanying and not taking
The second key is that of accompanying and not taking. It might seem banal, but often the risk is that a world of others will carry out projects and indicate the way, which is indeed quicker, apparently there are more tools available. However, as you teach me, otherwise we would not talk of educating city, accompanying means exactly building together, planning together. This means that our boys and girls are not containers to be filled but they are protagonists, capable of true participation. During the last few years, as in the last few days, we have listened to some wonderful, tangible and down-to-earth experiences that feel and live all this, that accompany, and accompanying is much costlier than taking one's own idea and project.
The third key: technical answers are not enough
And the third key, which we too have learnt here, is that technical answers are not enough. In some contexts you hear people say: "We build sports facilities for the young, we open gyms, we create nice gardens". Of course technical answers are important too, i.e. those spaces. But if one does not fill them in with relations and contents, what aren we going to do with them? Our young people need to have points of reference in addition to technical answers; they need relations, face-to-face encounters, relationships. These are the things that many cities present here live and experience. But we need to reaffirm this with more emphasis. This commitment to do more must belong to everybody because as years go by there is the risk of getting thoroughly confused, overwhelmed by a thousand events.
The fourth key: never start from people’s problems, but always from their needs
And the fourth key, which to me has always been very important, consists in never starting from people’s problems, but always from their needs. There are those who start from problems. As far as I am concerned, over these years it has been important to start from knowing the problem of alcoholism, of addictions in all their different forms, of prison, of the experiences of the people of the street and of the homeless, as well as of the various forms of exclusion and marginalisation. Of course you start knowing the problem, and knowing it, engaging in it, studying it in depth is a duty. But then our actions, aimed at building another possible city, start from the needs while taking into account the problem. And needs are the same for everybody on the face of this earth, they are exactly the same for everybody. Over the last few years, and I have been seeing this happen more and more in people’s story, four elements shamelessly require our actions in a certain way.
We don’t need safe cities but, rather, more liveable cities
The first strong element today is that of safety. However, not the safety of our cities, which is an obsession that is tricking us all. We do not need safe cities but, rather, liveable cities. The degree of liveability of a city is measured on the ability to form human and social relations. That is when cities become safe. This does not mean that one should not defend a right to safety that all citizens have. In fourteen municipalities of the first belt of Milan, marked by sometimes even tragic events (the killing of a jeweller during a robbery, and of a tobacconist), some good mayors but also some good players have joined forces to try and create a dimension of liveable city involving all associations and movements, from magistrates to law enforcement agencies, from schools to retailers, from residents to churches. A liveable city therefore needs the contribution of all, rather than the shortcut that entails someone else to be responsible for it, in the name of safety. And the route of the educating city joins this dimension together. But there is another kind of need for safety that people’s story has taught me – that has taught you as well as me and that I take the liberty of repeating loudly, as this cannot be forgotten –. People, our youth especially although not only them, are asking for another kind of safety, i.e. security, that is the feeling of counting, of being important to someone. This is what our young people are asking for. Starting from the security of counting within the family, at school, in the territory. There is a strong need to feel recognised by us adults, to be valued, welcomed, involved, made protagonists. To feel that we trust them. It is not just our youngsters who ask for this. Of course what the young ask is to be accompanied towards a path leading to autonomy, and you teach me that there is no growth without exercising freedom and there is no assumption of freedom without the assumption of risks. Therefore parents need to be helped today accompanying this process of growth, let's not look at yesterday, but rather today, in today’s context. And in today's context, if there is one entity that has greater difficulties this is precisely the family, those who have an educating role and responsibility. Many times in many contexts there is a lack of accessible references capable of assisting families right at the level of guidance. Not when a serious, difficult and heavy problem has exploded, but within a completely normal, everyday life situation.
Educating to take responsibilities
And the other great need, which you experience first-hand and teach me, is giving our boys and girls a hand to take responsibilities, which is a goal that goes through the experimentation of freedom and autonomy. However, responsibility cannot be preached, nor can it be taught: it is witnessed. And responsibility is not the simple adjustment to parental and social rules, but rather a growth path and these young people are asking for references which are adult, coherent, credible and colourful. They are asking for coherence, credibility and, above all, continuity. They are not asking for projects and paths that are carried out as a result of funding for a one or two-year project, because there is some administrator who believes in it and invests in it and then if this person changes everything stops. This is disgraceful; this is making a mock of local players.
The invisible city
Moving onto another aspect, I would like to talk about the invisible city. Ours is a two-faced world: one face with positive features and one showing suffering and difficulties. Indeed, we all know of relities and people that, in a great silence, give themselves and believe in what they do, they fully commit, they are a source of excitement in the social fabric, they operate quietly and they don't cause a stir. There is a lot of solidarity, there are a lot of positive things, sometimes organised, sometimes not. The faces of an invisible city can be found even there, sometimes. It’s a city that exists, that is not noisy, that does not create a sensation, that is quiet, but which we have to help function through the "ands", not the "ors", we have to help emerge, and it seems to me that this is extremely important.
I am well impressed that Genoa, the hosting city of this Congress, during the last few days has talked about creating a social participatory plan, not so much regarding well-being, but, rather, being, with reference to all that one can be within the city. This being is being “with”. There are these positive actions and presences, sometimes invisible, that can move in this direction, and I believe it is important to strongly emphasise this. Let me tell you a good story. I was in Bagheria, yesterday, in Palermo, for Libera, a network of 1200 associations in Italy, sometimes even completely different worlds, that got together to say: we too are contributing to the fight against crime, against the Mafias, in a country like Italy where, this year, compared to last year, people killed by the Mafia have increased by 85%, going completely unnoticed. But be careful! This is a war that is being fought every day in our country, within people’s indifference and often in situations of exploitation. And we, after the killings of Falcone and Borsellino, who were Sicilian magistrates, together with their escort, more than twelve years ago, we managed to put together many groups, both small and large, from the North to the South of this country, to say: being outraged is not enough, let’s all pull our weight, starting from making our cities liveable, creating social ferment, social empowerment, creating paths to mutually educate to assume responsibilities and to be real citizens. I know this will not change the world, but at least something has changed as thousands of young people have started following different paths, the assets belonging to the members of the Mafia have started to be confiscated and to be used socially, collecting millions of signatures to force Parliament to pass a law that enrages crime and the Mafias, as it takes away power, money and strength. In the territories that belonged to the Mafia – that’s how another city is possible - we have opened the first cooperatives of real work by young people. And this is the biggest humiliation one could cause to the Mafias because it is the young living locally who now work in those areas and produce pasta, oil and wine. One could argue, these are only small things, which however show us that if we work on the “ands” this is possible, even in difficult contexts. While in these days the focus is on Naples and on the continuous killings carried out by Camorra, on violence, fifteen days ago we were at Palazzo San Giacomo meeting that good mayor, Rosa Jervolino, and Tano Grasso, in Naples, where for the first time (one year ago there was nothing like this), the coordination among the first three Anti-racket Associations was set up. What does this mean? It means that retailers are beginning to find the courage and to report those who want to use them, exploit them, those who blackmail them for money, power and possession: unthinkable one year ago. This is an area that is awakening but that needs everybody’s awareness and participation. They cannot be left alone as this cannot be done by lone sailors. But let’s go back to Palermo, a peripheral suburb of a beautiful city where, sure, there is a strong criminal presence of the Mafia, but there is also a school, and look at the value of this school in the area, that tells us how another city is possible. A good head mistress, good teachers. The story dates back to four years ago but I will tell it again. Nice things that haven't caused a stir, the eight o’clock night news have never reported this. But this is a nice story, that shows us that our young people are present, when they find true adults. In this school called “Antonio Ugo", in February four years ago, a deaf-mute girl arrived. A back-up teacher was requested straight away, which is important but also extremely dangerous. The risk was delegating the teacher to take care of the deaf-mute girl, because the others had their programmes, their projects, their school. “…It is already February, Easter will soon be here, there are a lot of things to do…the presence of the girl slows down our paths…parents complain….” But no, for many years in this school legality has been implemented, rather than theory, the practice of citizenship and responsibility. The arrival of the deaf-mute kid mobilised all teachers because this method was there, and children too were asked to think about what they would have proposed to the school in order to come closer to their school mate, and to avoid labelling her even further. The bottom line was that seven hundred children of a suburban area, who for many orthodox thinkers are all labelled, well at the end of the school year, THEY proposed to open the following academic year with a new additional subject, reducing their free time for playing, in agreement with their families. A great work which has been carried out, for convincing the headmaster as well, coping with bureaucracy and problems. But they made it, very quietly, they made it. And for a full year, because they wanted it, they looked for it, they proposed it, the whole of seven hundred children of a school in the outskirts of Palermo learnt sign language, as they understood that it was time for them to put themselves into play in order to go and meet their school mate. I find this to be an extraordinary example of possible city, which turns our invisible cities into the protagonists of the good things that there are, that need to be learnt about, that need to emerge, to be found, to be voiced loudly sometimes. But there is also the invisible city of those who struggle on, who have difficulties. That is when I think of Orazio, in this kind of Italy. You read it in the newspaper, in only a few of them, a couple of days ago, that he died of hunger and malnutrition at the age of 78 in a town in our Southern Italy. But we can think of many other stories that happen locally, where we live. But how is this possible? How is this possible? Of course I think of that long list, although I don't need to, of people who struggle on and have difficulties. We all know them. These invisible cities, full of stories that upset us, that ask questions of us, that provoke us. And at Christmas last year, in Turin in Via Po, a sixty-year-old man, belonging to that people of the street, the homeless, you know what he did? In his style, which may be questionable, but is part of his language which is up to us to grasp inside our cities, he wrote a big placard. He put it next to the cardboard box where he sleeps, a big placard with the writing “I suffer more because of your indifference than because of my empty stomach”. But you understand that this is not begging. The need for that form of giving is also there, but it is a message in the city which says that being good is not enough, being just is necessary. These are the expressions to be grasped of that invisible city that is fully present with all its faces inside our cities. Today, in Italy, but I should also say Europe (I apologise with all our friends coming from other countries, witnessing other paths, other experiences that go in this direction, but what I show here is our country, I show Europe), the people of the invisible city are on the rise; the poverty groups, with their different forms of expression, grow, they fuel themselves.
But in our country, in Italy, let me say this with great respect, with great emphasis, the worrying fact is that rights are being questioned in our Constitution, as our article 3 of the Constitution states a great value which is that of equality. It is not a technical issue, that reduces some forms of social protection in our country. Rather, it is a cultural problem because for many, in terms of cultural dimension, let’s call it this way, equality is no longer a value but a disvalue which stops a certain kind of development. Therefore less is spent for a certain goal, some rights cease to be considered important and may no longer be demanded. But rights cannot be at the mercy of any kind of political majority, whatever this might be, and by the same token they cannot be at the mercy of economic variables because if the right is linked to the economic aspect it is a non-right, it is a fragile, weak right that cannot be demanded. So today, here, our uneasiness towards the invisibles that keep growing consists in the fact that the current situation is characterised by less investments being directed towards them. This does not mean that there are no good administrators inventing anything and doing everything they can. There are good mayors, good councillors. But this is the general trend of a country: they come and tell you that there are no funds and immediately the weakest links pay the highest price, while we might be inaugurating an aircraft carrier. The money for the aircraft carrier is there, but for the elderly, for many policies in favour of the young… This is not rhetoric: those of us who, every day, have to deal face-to-face with people’s story experience first-hand this injustice and feel this anger which is made of deep love. The invisible city then with its different faces and with today’s uneasiness, but also the invisible city with its great expressions that we all know well. In the invisible city there is however a world of young people asking me a lot of questions. They are the peripheral ones, those who have the periphery in their head and live that malaise in apparent normality. Peripheral are those young who study, do things, who do not cause a stir, who do not disturb anybody - because they ask silent questions, not aggressive questions -, who spend long hours talking on a bench, sometimes about nothing, who go in search of virtual centres. Who intercepts them? Our cities must read this today and invest in it, through peer education for instance, with all that ferment within the territory that, where it was experimented, gave extremely positive results. The situation is different for those who have the periphery in their head. Those, as I mentioned before, who surf the Internet for hours in complete loneliness. It is that loneliness and that virtual reality that worry us - without generalising, without forgetting also the positive aspects of certain tools. I would like to quickly add a couple of things. The first: we have to be aware of the fact that it is the social context, the cultural perspective, the adult world, the city as a place of relations and projects, that need to be able to educate themselves, and ask themselves questions. We keep saying this but we have to state it again, now more than ever: prevention, not in terms of "defence from" but rather as "promotion of", means valuing people, the young, who are an intellectual resource, who are proactive people; it means “enabling”, that is to say guaranteeing at social level resources, investments, policies, social opportunities, economic as well as working prospects. Because in certain areas where we work, if those conditions of change are not created, if those spaces, those opportunities and those resources are not created, all discussions will become vague. We have to reinvest in social relations, but we also have to deeply invest in the future of our young people.
We need real policies, not virtual ones, and a personal and social ethic
I would now like to turn to an issue that I have at heart: there is the need for tangible, real and not virtual policies and answers. But be careful, policies should meet the requirements of the educating processes, they should not replace the educating processes. Policies should support education, rather than laying a claim to education only in principle, as someone has the presumption of doing in his head. Law by itself does not educate. And in Italy we need to say this now, it is not through legislation only that education can happen as someone thinks, it is not legislation against use that reduces the use itself (for example the legislation on drug use). It is necessary to equip those in charge, so that they can inform and create paths. The very last aspect: the responsibility of those playing a public role. Today we live in an environment where messages are very ambiguous. What I mean is that justice, legality are not simply personal virtues, but rather, virtues, values with a social dimension. Those playing a public role, myself, you, the politician, our country’s Prime Minister, mayors, administrators, men of the Church, intellectuals, in short those playing a public role and having a public responsibility cannot mock legality, they cannot play tricks for personal gain, they cannot ridicule justice, they cannot neglect observing the rules, making a mock of them. They cannot because the evidence of the positive things that one does has a symbolic dimension. If you trample on the good things you create a bad example, but exactly because it is an example you create an imitation. And when we help those boys and girls, in tough areas, to grow up and take the responsibility of observing the rules, that start from small things, they are then bombarded by messages that delete and sweep everything away. It is hard because they have these references. Those playing a public role are not bound to honesty only as ethical subjects who answer to their own conscience, but also because they represent the social system and are called upon to build the common good through the instrument of the law. Therefore, there is a personal as well as social ethical expectation. Those who do not respect this create a wound in the whole of the community. And this is very important because on the one hand we want to build paths of coherence, credibility and continuity and, on the other hand, bad examples sometimes do not help to assert these values and these contents and these hopes.2. Michael Singleton
[Abstract: the whole text is only available in Italian]
Nomadic and natural, nomadic is natural!
“The nomadic city”: this statement seems at least a paradox if not a contradiction in terms. Indeed, both in the spontaneous imagination and in the speculative ideology of the West, the City, insomuch as institutionalised embodiment of the accomplished sedentary existence of anthropogenesis, seems to establish itself as the absolute end of a primitive nomadic existence. The cave dweller, the peasant, the citizen – they are not just three different types, but rather, three phases. Indeed, the city appears to be the “ultimate end” meant, at times, as the point of arrival of a process which started four million years ago from the first step of the evolutionary scale, and above all as the sheer and superior meaning of human evolution. Forced to perpetually wander during childhood, as an adult Homo Sapiens can at last rest intra muro, within walls, waiting for eternal rest. Quiet and disquiet are key-words not only in philosophy but also in the theology of a teleological Western Project, aimed at (im)mobility.
However, even outside the Christian world, a substantial stop seems to nowadays be the aim of the Whole. The utopian dream turns out to be urban-related. The Great Wall had already turned the whole of China into a metropolis. The earth itself becomes that cosmopolitan village foreseen by McLuhan in the Sixties. And even though this city is no longer sacred, but rather secular, so much the better, according to Cox and other theologians of (post)modernity [1]. Whether it is in the North or in the South, the last nomads are disappearing under our eyes. Gipsies park their ramshackle Cadillacs in the shacks in Bari [2], the Blue Men in the Sahara no longer go on dromedary’s back, but drive air-conditioned 4x4 of white tourists.
From now on the city represents an ideal nec plus ultra. And we may hope, we should actually work towards making this better world, which is synonymous with development, available long-term to all the citizens of the earth. Such a conception of the city consisting of inevitability (“don’t stop Progress”) and idealisation (urban utopia[3]) induces in many citizens a compassionate and negative idea of the nomadic phenomenon. “Poor nomads, forced to wander without being able to put down roots, and to feel at home in any fixed place”. Being sedentary would be a Human Right. The future – terrestrial and/or celestial – will be urban or won’t be! Revelation states it, Reason repeats it!
And this diagram illustrates it:
Humanity was born four million years ago in the African triangle. Increasingly pushed forward by hunger, it went out of Africa upwards towards the European square where, for the first time, it could stop for a while in the caves before settling down, around twelve thousand years ago, in the circle of modest houses of the first sedentarised farmers. From then on, it was an upward movement from village to village, city to city, in the same direction towards the final ceiling of a world megapolis which essentially no longer moves. Of course, the citizen knows social mobility and spatial movement. However these phenomena, which are more or less positive (the seasonal exodus of tourists, changing home because the family has grown or reduced …), or ambiguous, and even negative (forced migration, industrial delocalisation…) are not interpreted as residual survivals or new forms of genuine nomadism, because they always occur within the backdrop of an ideal of sedentary existence. But, above all, (because our idealised nomadism will at that stage take place in the spirit), one should not confuse exponential acceleration of technical and scientific Progress with always going ahead and to end up somewhere else, which we identify with the nomadic intention. In actual fact, according to Modernity’s common opinion, after an eventful movement uphill, Progress, once started, always follows the same direction.
It is for this reason that our title “nomadic city” may sound like an oxymoron (especially if the word “natural” is added), when settling down on the earth and stopping in heaven represents the normal and nowadays normative goal of human existence. Yet, the deep identity of nomadic people may represent a permanent project; actually nomadic intention may embody, well beyond its historical manifestations, and beyond the developed sedentary nature [4], the most long-lasting future for all of us. This is, at least, a possibility, something I am convinced of, and that I am going to explain in-depth below.
What kind of nomadic existence is this? Models of nomadic existence may be created a priori between the two abstract poles of absolute sedentariness, on the one hand, and of perpetual movement on the other.
The square represents both people imagining that they have always been there where they are at present, and that they will never have to go elsewhere (I am thinking of the Yoruba people in Nigeria who thought that their ancestors had come out of the Earth’s belly button into the holy city of Ife); and people convinced of having reached their destination (one could think of the arrival of the People of God to the Land promised by Him, or of many Westerners unable to think not only of an afterlife of their Kingdom of God, but also of their City of Science). The second line in the diagram represents, for most of the civilised world, the typical nomad: the desert’s Bedouin. There are two types of ethnic groups that keep going forward. The first one tends to look after a territory travelling around it, moving from one centre to the next, following pre-established paths. The most nomadic nomads, instead, go ahead almost unintentionally. They know where they have come from (grey circle), but they do not have any interest in going back. As to the direction to go tomorrow (white circle), they do not think of it today and nobody thinks of it for them. What matters the most for the perfect nomad is being together in the very present (black circle). Are there nomads who are so authentically nomadic? There are numerous peoples getting close to this theoretical pole of pure nomadic existence. My chosen people, the Wakonongo in Tanzania, could be considered amongst the purest nomads of the earth. I do not think that the Wakonongo had always lived as I found them at the end of the Sixties, and maybe one day they will change the way they are [5]. At that time they acted as real nomads. They lived amidst a huge open and welcoming forest. The forest gave them not only plenty of land, but also the vital raw material (wood, remedies, honey and fruit, game and fish…) and in periods of famine a bare subsistence level of herbs and edible roots. The heads of the family built modest houses, always leaving roughly fifty metres gap between them, scattered here and there amongst fields under crop. In the village of Mapili where I used to live, there was no focal point, no centre with public buildings (a town-hall, church, school, shops…). Power (not be confused with the power implying the physical force to inflict a punishment) - which we divide into economic, political authority, law enforcement, the judiciary, and religious power – belonged to the elderly who formed an informal gerontocracy. In this kind of community, the older one gets the higher the public usefulness of a player. These elders gathered together at night in the courtyard of the old Jakobo Kasalama, the one who first cleared of trees the region of Mapili. This fact, however, did not turn him into a tribal chief, he was only a respectable and respected elder. But nobody within the community had the power to rule over the others and anybody could go and live somewhere else.
I had to hastily leave my friends at the end of 1972, but I had the opportunity of visiting them again in 1986. Although almost all of them were still alive, they were on the edge of the forest a couple of kilometres ahead, still scattered in their homes amidst their new fields under crop. Behind them, the bush, before going back to its previous state of forest, was regaining its rights: my small modest house and my little garden no longer existed, invaded by saplings. And I was the only one to cry for their death. The Wakonongo, calmly immersed in their daily activities, had already forgotten the past (which, in any case, had been materially, morally and metaphysically the same as their present) and they did not think of their future, neither the near nor the distant future, which again would have simply been a repetition to the letter of their current situation.
Is this resigned fatalism, before an always unpredictable and sometimes cruel Destiny? Or is it congenital laziness of the native and his unconscious lack of forecast? Far from the truth! My Wakonongo were not at all blissful optimists nor were they pathological pessimists, they were simply serene realists. They appreciated the brave working man and, particularly, the adult who was fully in discrete control of himself; they despised noisy, domineering, and restless people.
We have to get to the core of the matter, i.e. the morals and the mentality which are strictly related (and contribute) to the material environment, with the pragmatic reproduction manner of nomads.
When one knows that he will soon have to be somewhere else – and forever – he is not attached to gathering or moving all heavy and superfluous things. The travelling light of the nomads goes hand in hand with a minimalist metaphysical “baggage”. The separation from earthly things, which takes the ascetic from the middle-class many painful years, is spontaneous for the nomadic spirit [6]. I started my field research in the ethno-historical branch thinking that other topics – such as magic or metaphysics – would have been either too secret or too speculative. Much to my surprise, the Wakonongo openly spoke about witch-doctors and spirits. However, the Konongo history did not interest my counterparts much. They knew where the founders of their clans had started from, a few generations back, to get to the point where they were today. But when I asked, having in mind the homesickness felt by some of our migrating peoples for their origins, “don’t you ever feel eager to visit your home place?”, they stared at me with an astonished look. As the point of departure was absolutely identical to the current point of arrival, what was the point in visiting an abandoned village? As for moving in the future, everyone cut or burned everything they could or thought would be enough to meet their immediate needs in relation to tillable land. The Wakonongo lived 99% in the present, without second thoughts or regrets for a perfect past, nor concerns for the future.
As I had always been convinced that my Wakonongo were only and essentially “cut and burn farmers” (the possibility that they were nomads had never crossed my mind), I never linked their way of material production with their mentality. The only thing that had struck me was the permanent and omnipresent recurrence to ritual and magical remedies to solve immediate problems, such as causing rain, making corn grow or game appear again, to cure an illness or chase a witch away. My elder interlocutors did not have much to tell me on an African God (or Devil), on the existence of an individual and immortal soul. And in particular I was struck by the almost complete absence of myths – little on the Creation of the world and nothing on its End. Only recently have I realised that this relative absence of what I expected, in an ethno-centric manner, coincides with the presence of a philosophy and of a world practice which are absolutely logical, as they express the choice of a nomadic Project. Nomads do not have anything to do with a certain God of our eternal philosophy and even less with the gruelling God of Manichaean monotheism. If nomads think of a supreme symbol, of a transcendent being, this takes the shape of an absolute Being, of an Afterlife of Good and Evil, which has more to do with Levinas’ Infinity or Nietszche’s A-morality than with the God of Tridentine Catechism or of Neo-Thomism. As they live in the present, nomads do not have to deal with a primeval past and a definitive future. By going on from present moment to present moment, nomads are not at all willing to share the boundary with Infinity. Certainly, amongst the unexpected and, in a sense, adverse effects of an old-fashioned nomadic existence, there is this lack of interest before what is new or even the refusal of innovation. This, however, was not the case for my Wakonongo. Indeed, they were convinced that there was always someone that had a remedy for any kind of problem [7]. This conviction allowed them to go on without any hurry nor fear. If, on the one hand, there were great religious spirits such as Teilhard de Chardin, who could not imagine going on for a human being other than going upwards and towards a way out, on the other hand, there were philosophers who were as great as the previous ones, however agnostic, such as Camus, who insisted on it being possible to become a lay saint despite the absurdity of the journey - think of Grand, the hero of The Plague. From the philosophical point of view, the nomadic phenomenon does not only characterise the pre-modern world. Indeed, also in our post-modern world it is possible to keep wandering as a nomad in good speculative company. This reference to moralists such as Camus and Monod allows us to go from metaphysics down to morals. That of the sedentary person tends, at times, paradoxically towards a solipsist individualism and a substantial naturalism. As to the latter, I would like to make one first remark. The West considers its Law as a reflection of the essence itself of cultural and natural elements. Belgium, for example, self-proclaimed itself defender not only of its notion of human nature, but also of Human Nature as such, defined in a univocal and universal way. Similarly, phenomena such as science, development or the economy, which can neither originate nor exist out of a specific culture, are proclaimed objective substances, characterised by intrinsic meanings. But what interests us the most here is the complete individualism of the contemporary citizen, whether this egotism stems from the heart of the Church or within the State. The Catholic Church treats its followers as many atomic souls who have to be saved through their own personal compassion. At the most, the children of God can gather together forming pious associations to pray “together” (actually kneeling one next to the other) or get together for “community” events (actually like monastic pilgrims in front of the grotto of Lourdes or lost in the crowd of Saint Peter’s Square) – but they cannot create syndicates to claim united their rights against the hierarchical authorities (for example, in the case of women’s claim to become priestess). What is even better (or worse!) is that in the celestial City collective activities are not foreseen; after death and, in particular, at the End of the World, everybody has to be content with lying blissfully still in front of the Eternal contemplating it forever. And everyone knows that the celestial City works as the archetypical configuration of the terrestrial one. But if globalisation wins, this spiritual sedentariness will be already experienced in advance on the Earth, secularised thanks to the invisible Hand of the common Market, i.e. where human relations (according to liberal thinkers from Rousseau to Rawls including Renan) will ideally bow to contractual reasons of individual interests. If there is something ambiguous in globalisation it is exactly reducing the bonds with otherness to secondary (in principle, an individual in the natural state would have been able to fend for himself) and egocentric choice (as my obligation towards others is completely artificial, I have the right to break the contact off as soon as I don’t need the other any more [8]). In today’s City, both in that of God and in that of Man, the social dimension, i.e. being together, far from representing an organic objectivity, an ontological obligation, appears as an epiphenomenon which is completely optional, superficial and even superfluous. The grief coming from the urban anonymity, from the fact of being a mere administrative number, is not just a temporary and superficial situation – the sedentary existence, by its nature, reduces the other into nothing, whereas for the nomad the other is part of oneself. The nomad cannot be born nor exist without the other being inside him. And this dualism of the self and the other is not the duel of the ego against all!
A crucial distinction should be made between the thinkers of individualism in relation to reality, on the one hand, and in relation to the evaluation of collectivity, on the other. Some have not done much of it, either because, from the philosophical viewpoint, they were unable, like Descartes, to reach their physical body a fortiori, therefore that relating to the social dimension; or because, they were indifferent, ascetic, misanthropist, turned in on their solipsism, they did not want to hear talking about social issues (this could actually raise in them an even more revolting feeling than their own damned flesh in which they felt imprisoned); or, lastly, because anything, whether individual or collective, appeared to them so insignificant compared to ideal Destiny (Eternity or Nirvana). The others, despite their fundamental individualism, resigned themselves or were happy to see the Global (the species, the Invisible Hand, the Spirit…) triumph. Adam Smith, Darwin and Hegel, each in their own way, thought that, by letting individuals’ self-centred interests “take their course”, allowing everybody to continue their own private and even depriving project, the Whole too, would in the end prevail over everybody and accomplish the common Good!
It is impossible to list all the features distinguishing the nomadic pole from the sedentary one. Here are some of the most marked ones. To start with one that echoes the “self-serving” acceptance of asymmetry, when I asked my friends their name, or when we talked about them, the counterpart did not tell his name, but called himself “child of”. Apart from these individual identities, which are however related to the parents (the same happened in the West a long time ago – “Johnson, Smithson…”), there was a word, mtu, to indicate the human in general. But I underline “in general” as mtu did not indicate the abstract notion of our eternal philosophy, denoting a human nature common to all human beings despite their accidental differences (in terms of age, sex, culture…), but rather only a general feature which could be opposed to other generalisations such as nyama (the animals), mapepo (the spirits). By uttering these words the Wakonongo did not have in mind any quintessential element, but only a whole series of typical individuals – animals but not animality, men but not humanity.
When the civilised sedentary meets someone in the city, he proceeds the opposite way to the nomad – especially if he meets someone of a different colour and creed from his! “He is undoubtedly a man and therefore he has the right to Respect recognised to any Human Being (even though he would most probably be an illegal immigrant), but he is also a Black, maybe an African even a Muslim Senegalese”. The nomadic city, contrary to ours today, is not populated (in the best case scenario) by anonymous citizens, essentially identical and formally similar before the law, but instead by particular characters, by recognisable interlocutors who are recognised for their “personal” relation (contribution) with the network of local mutual exchange.
“Personal” not because of the product they produce (more or less, the nomads all produce the same things) but because of their own personality that they reproduce in their particular relationships. The citizen thinks he has done the most he can when he respects the fundamental rights of the individual as such and dreams of doing his best by establishing a universal allocation for each human being. The nomad thinks he has done the most he can when he allows the head of a family to fulfil his duties and dreams of doing his best by assigning to each human group the means to realise their collective identity.
This nomadic overestimation of people and of their contribution to the community in addition to any possible individual products or productivity were something I understood thanks to the Wakonongo, when I was working on a report on the story of the establishment of Christianity.
At the source of museums materiality there is not the cultural void, but the moral solidity.
Again the contrast with the sedentary individual can be huge. The citizen, spontaneously (actually by terrible pre-programming), feels obliged to continuously display both old and new stuff even when he has friends as guests and not just when he takes care both directly or indirectly of tourists. I have been coming to Genoa occasionally in the last few years, and it is true that on each visit there is always something to (re)discover, to visit. It really is an educating city. But what I like the most is that Genoa appears to be an educated and polite city. As a nomad, I prefer the Genoese to Genoa. The old town is big, but it is made up of many small things. “Small” is not just “beautiful”, it is also good. The fast-food self-service is not just a dietary disaster but it is, above all, and in its solipsism, a social suicide. Being able to provide services (even against honest payment) is human, having to or being able to serve oneself, far from representing a remarkable progress, is a way to subdue the isolated individual to the accelerated and aggressive consumerism of “advanced” capitalism – which however only advances, at its best, the business of anonymous shareholders, and at its worst, the undeserved fortune of a handful of unfairly privileged people.
I had therefore everything to learn from my Wakonongo. The elderly have taught me how and where to hoe, how to treat myself with plants and how to collect honey, how to behave with women and during arguments… After some months of initiation, some elders who got emotional but not more than me, told me: “you are the first White (Father) to whom we were able to say something sensible, give something useful – all the others that fell upon us, even the young ones, treated us as stupid and superstitious savages. You have really become not just an authentic Mukonongo, but above all our son”.
It is not that I did not have anything to give or say, but what I gave and said was given and said according to that spirit and that system of asymmetrical reciprocity that constitutes the intentional identity of the nomadic existence. In the nomadic city everyone knows that he will always get more than what he will give… and he does not take offence. The basis for nomadic relations is not so much the (Maussian) way of exchange where the giver feels he is prejudiced if he does not receive, sooner or later, the equivalent of his gift in return, but it is rather the completely free gift. Rather than the English “thank you” (too much related to reasoning as it belongs to the family of *tong “to think”) or the French “merci” (too mercenary – “merces” = salary) or even the Italian “grazie” (too subservient or supernatural in an exaggerated way) the nomad uses the Portuguese way of thanking: obrigado – the free gesture bonds, creates a link which, however, is not lived in terms of credit or debit to be settled as soon as possible. Although the nomadic city foresees services for those who cannot serve themselves (the young and the elderly), it allows everyone, in particular, to serve the others up to the end… and in the afterlife, as the “cult” of the ancestors simply is the endorsement of the growing public usefulness of seniors, which is a clear fact to everyone. Amongst the nomads, there is no need to act in order to please the young and the old, making them think that they are useful to something. Indeed, the former, actually help their parents and the latter really continuously contribute to the common good.
One last paradox is that the nomadic city is also, allegedly, natural. If there is a word and an ambiguous notion, this is exactly that of nature! When we say that the nomadic city is natural, we do not want to identify it with a presupposed “urban essentiality” and even less with an archetypical City! We are only trying to refer to the typically nomadic relationship between Nature and Culture.