BODY OF EVIDENCE

I am posting this here, hoping the incredible philosopher/teacher/writer/thinker/activist/scientist (and so forth) Azfar Hussein might come across this letter, as I have not been able to reach him via email. You see, I read that he finds it quite amusing to google himself and I hope that this letter will show up when he does. I know it's quite unlikely, but hey, its worth a try.

Dear Azfar Hussein

I am a post grad student based in South Africa, completing my Masters degree in Fine Art. My dissertation is part praxis (cultural production) and part theory. I am of Indian descent, making me 5th generation Indian South African. We came to South Africa as indentured labourers during British rule.
My fathers anti-apartheid work in the Black Consciousness struggle, forced us into exile in Denmark in 1978. After fourteen years in exile we returned 'home' (to S.A.).
The impact of exile was/is all defining. And subsequently resistance struggle, exile, racism/sexism and other socio-political subject matters have become central in my work.

About two weeks ago or quite recently, I stumbled across an article in Literatti, I have only had the pleasure of being introduced to a very limited amount of your writing and some interviews.

One of the articles you wrote in Literatti was side splittingly funny and profound...........and made me recall my first encounter with postmodern theory.
I remember thinking:
There's my life translated into aesthetic theory.
But, why isn't the connection visible between liberation struggles, activism, resistance, black consciousness, anti-imperial literature and contemporary academic theory?
Is 'appropriation' a word that legitimizes plunder, theft, stealing, robbing, larceny, pilfering etc.?

And then to my astonishment I was being questioned regarding the 'authenticity' of my identity, from all sides of the camp...either I was to 'black' in Europe or to 'white' in Africa and to ‘unconventional’ amongst the larger Indian community, to Indian for the Africans, in general my identity seems to be to much of the ‘other’.

In addition, I find it preposterous to be questioned about the subject of authenticity and language...English was not something I 'appropriated' or chose, as it's part of a violent colonial annexation and loss of (my) 'land', (my) 'labour', (my) 'language', and (my) 'body' -Powerful words from your mouth, which you seemingly identified with ease and contextualized rightly (in my humble opinion) by locating land, labour, language and body within a 'economic' context, given the bizarre and deeply perverted fact, that people of color (or ‘post’-colonial subjects) are paying dearly for the burden of colonization. This is not to disregard the importance of keeping the (respective) mother tongue alive. Though for some of us (like me) identity is marked by the many ruptures and dislocations left enroute of the particular Diaspora. Due to spending my formative years in Denmark I learnt to read and write in Danish. Regarding English, it was the language we spoke with our parents and which they insisted we keep alive to be able to communicate with relatives and friends left in South Africa. It was near impossible for my parents to teach us Hindi (which they only learnt as ‘kitchen Hindi’), or to teach us Zulu (which my father had learnt as a child on the farm where he grew up), because firstly both languages (Hindi and Zulu) had been acquired orally, and secondly the hardship of integrating into a new society is a struggle and all consuming, hardly leaving any strength to contain and maintain all the fraction of ones identity. The tiresome labour of having to justify and verify ones existence (to either side/s of the fence) is hopeless, as returning to the past is unattainable.
The politics of land, labour and language is embodied in my skin, a testimony of flesh, a body of evidence.

....Which (eventually) brings me to the original intent of this letter, I wanted to enquire about the publication of your book "Toward a Political Economy of Land, Labour, Language, and the Body", as I tried to google it but only found mention of it in its preliminary process?

It has been an exceptional and profound pleasure to have been acquainted with your thoughts, especially in consideration of the trouble I am having with 'legitimizing' my experience as a valid form of knowledge, without having to apply a “Western/European methodology, that in any case has been 'appropriated' (and altered) from the South.
I found it disconcerting and that hardly anything has changed since the publication of Bill Ascroft's ‘THE EMPIRE WRITES BACK’. But faith was reinstated when I read your work. It has unlocked a thousand silenced thoughts.