What does it mean to have, to demand, the right to narrate? Usually associated with Edward Said and the Palestinian experience, this concept ultimately speaks to a widespread feeling among those who are racialized, those who are gendered, those who are displaced. It reflects a more generalised need to reclaim something that feels stolen.
In this episode, I sat down with Laura Vidal, a Paris-based Venezuelan writer and researcher. Laura recently wrote an essay in Spanish entitled “¿Quién tiene derecho a contar nuestras historias?” (“Who has the right to narrate our stories?”) With our respective experiences as former regional editors for Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa respectively for Global Voices, as well as our mutual engagement on this question throughout the years, Laura and I explore the interrelated topics of identity, displacement, trauma – and the right to narrate.
Why do those who are displaced regularly get deprived of the right to narrate their own experiences? What is ‘Venezuelan-splaining’? Is it a form of gaslighting to downplay the experiences of those who are seen as having ‘made it’, by which I mean those who now live in relatively ‘stable’ cities/countries? How do those who are displaced deal with survivor’s guilt?
How do Venezuelans disillusioned with Chavismo navigate accusations of being ‘elitist’ thrown at them by non-Venezuelans? That latter point is especially interesting to me because Laura mentioned that it’s a common attitude among Arabs she’s met. They would regularly dismiss Chavez’s authoritarianism as long as he called himself ‘Pro-Palestine’. This is eerily similar to what I’ve been complaining about for years, with so many ‘pro-Palestine’ Assadists using the Syrian regime’s rhetorical support for the Palestinian cause as a carte blanche to excuse crimes against humanity.
Recommended by Laura:
Websites:
- La Vida De Nos (+ English)
- He Got to Know the Jail of the Revolution in Which He Was Born by William Urdaneta
- Caracas Chronicles
- Global Voices’ Special Coverages on Venezuela
– What Is Happening in Venezuela? (2017)
– A timeline of Venezuela’s political deadlock (2019)
Novels:
- Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Non Fiction
- Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny by Amartya Sen
- Impostures interculturelles by Fred Dervin
- The Other by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Podcasts
Featured image is an illustration by Gonzalez Illustration, originally used for a Global Voices article. Support their work at gonzalezillustration.com
The Fire These Times is a production of the From The Periphery media collective. We are worker-owned media collective that centers radical and peripheral voices, struggles, and ideas. If you like the work we do, and want to see more of it, please consider heading over to Patreon.com/fromtheperiphery. For as little as 5$ a month, you get:
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Transcriptions: Transcriptions are done by Antidote Zine and are available on the website.
Credits:
Elia Ayoub (host, producer, sound editor, episode design), Rap and Revenge (Music), Wenyi Geng (TFTT theme design), Hisham Rifai (FTP theme design) and Molly Crabapple (FTP team profile pics).
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