Police
I got stopped in the street by one of Hiyoshi's beefy black and white cop-cars (with the big English words POLICE written down the side- sure this is no mere stylistic flourish), the window rolled down to let out the sizeable limbs of a fat ageing police flagging me down. He asked where I lived and informed me he'd been to my house, and noticed that the door was unlocked. And proceeded to tell me off in the middle of the street, telling me that there are lots of robbers around. I know for a fact this is bollocks. And if there were, there's nothing in my house they'd be vaguely interested in stealing. My L-size t-shirts? Rusty frying pans? Broken TV? Buckled guitar? I do have good taste in incense sticks, I guess, and a bookshelf of delicious English books to satisfy his intellectual curiosity during the long swathes he is neither employed nor energetic enough to commit a robbery during daylight hours.
Everytime I start the latest Kitsune Maison compilation mix whilst driving in the car, the police sirens that punctuate the first section give me thumping adrenalin and force me to check every mirror and take my speed down to the ridiculous 50km/hr limit.
Yesterday my friend, who is a Floridian of Indian descent, was stopped by a cop whilst out jogging in his rural town and asked for his name and address. Two friends in Kumamoto were approached by two cops while parked in a convenience store car park and, after being interrogated and failing to show their Alien Registration Cards, were escorted back to their homes to get the documents. Show me your papers.
At Recife last Saturday, a visit from a local copper was followed by a Fuck The Police chant, which ruffled the feathers but clearly incited our Japanese drinking buddies to expel a previously supressed distain for this bloated institution.
I've been watching the galleries of photos of protests to greet the G20 summit in London yesterday. Against the faceless strength of stony grey columns that both show off the splendour of the financial sector's dominance and hem the activity into prison-cage-like public spaces, police with batons and uniforms meet protesters with skinny jeans, cans of Strongbow, painted faces, slogan t-shirts and banners of varying intelligence. It's a surreal picture that, with a little imaginative interpretation, takes us to the bare bones of relations that are always bubbling below the surface. Why am I so scared of the police? Yesterday, blood and smashed windows and rage were met in other places with engagement- Chris Knight, editor of Radical Anthropology and ethnographer of laughter, telling an unusually bright bobby that he doesn't want to commit violence, but to make theatre, to communicate what he thinks it means to be human. Why am I scared? I am referring to Benjamin, Graeber and Agamben for answers. Defining the limits of sovereignty, the monopoly of violence and need to imagine an unexistant alternative, and Graeber's anarchist anthropology which draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives on power (see his article on Revolution in the aforementioned journal- http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/journal_01.pdf - an interesting look at the unequal thoughtwork undertaken by the oppressed ). I have friends working for the police, am friends with some policemen and do not wish to alienate my relations with them by assuming some kind of birds-eye superiority of analysis. But I am trying to regain some placing in my current nihilism and reacquaintance with arguments about human rights (Costas Douzinas in the Guardian), the existence of climate change and green politics (Joss's piece in the Observer- ouch!, Presteigne's landscape=class war over the wind farms) and education (working out what makes a good teacher, and relating the power relations involved in education to the relations possible within these bureaucratic institutions- thanks Jacob for the John Holt!)
Everytime I start the latest Kitsune Maison compilation mix whilst driving in the car, the police sirens that punctuate the first section give me thumping adrenalin and force me to check every mirror and take my speed down to the ridiculous 50km/hr limit.
Yesterday my friend, who is a Floridian of Indian descent, was stopped by a cop whilst out jogging in his rural town and asked for his name and address. Two friends in Kumamoto were approached by two cops while parked in a convenience store car park and, after being interrogated and failing to show their Alien Registration Cards, were escorted back to their homes to get the documents. Show me your papers.
At Recife last Saturday, a visit from a local copper was followed by a Fuck The Police chant, which ruffled the feathers but clearly incited our Japanese drinking buddies to expel a previously supressed distain for this bloated institution.
I've been watching the galleries of photos of protests to greet the G20 summit in London yesterday. Against the faceless strength of stony grey columns that both show off the splendour of the financial sector's dominance and hem the activity into prison-cage-like public spaces, police with batons and uniforms meet protesters with skinny jeans, cans of Strongbow, painted faces, slogan t-shirts and banners of varying intelligence. It's a surreal picture that, with a little imaginative interpretation, takes us to the bare bones of relations that are always bubbling below the surface. Why am I so scared of the police? Yesterday, blood and smashed windows and rage were met in other places with engagement- Chris Knight, editor of Radical Anthropology and ethnographer of laughter, telling an unusually bright bobby that he doesn't want to commit violence, but to make theatre, to communicate what he thinks it means to be human. Why am I scared? I am referring to Benjamin, Graeber and Agamben for answers. Defining the limits of sovereignty, the monopoly of violence and need to imagine an unexistant alternative, and Graeber's anarchist anthropology which draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives on power (see his article on Revolution in the aforementioned journal- http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/journal_01.pdf - an interesting look at the unequal thoughtwork undertaken by the oppressed ). I have friends working for the police, am friends with some policemen and do not wish to alienate my relations with them by assuming some kind of birds-eye superiority of analysis. But I am trying to regain some placing in my current nihilism and reacquaintance with arguments about human rights (Costas Douzinas in the Guardian), the existence of climate change and green politics (Joss's piece in the Observer- ouch!, Presteigne's landscape=class war over the wind farms) and education (working out what makes a good teacher, and relating the power relations involved in education to the relations possible within these bureaucratic institutions- thanks Jacob for the John Holt!)