Mario Blaser
Assistant Professor in International Development Studies
York University, Toronto
"My Home, Our Home Or Your Home!!?: Placing the Modern Subject"
The Indian (Indigenous, as of late) and its counterpart, the Modern subject(s), co-emerged in a trans-Atlantic relation where notions of freedom and unfreedom have had much to do with their mutual shaping and reshaping. Tropes of freeing the Indians, from the devil, from barbarism, from underdevelopment has always run side by side with the Modern subject claiming a stake, and a home, in the places where his Other(Indian/Indigenous) dwells. But more recently, tropes of Indigenous peoples freeing the transplanted (and even the ‘original’) Modern subjects from the environmental and social doom of the ‘iron cage,’ (tropes inscribed in laws, constitutions, governmental programs, international covenants, etc.) seem to have moved things in a different direction. Might a common house be constructed? In this paper, I critically explore this question by keeping up-front that the co-emergence of Modern and Other has been marked all along by power asymmetries whereby the ‘Other’ of the Modern hardly has a home of her/his own because, from 1492 onwards, the Other has been forced to mostly dwell in the ‘master’s house,’ or so it seems. Drawing on my experience with the Yshiro people of Paraguay I will, firstly, discuss the significance that for modern selves has had the transformation of Indians into Indigenous; secondly, I will address how new notions of freedom (as a common multicultural house) have emerged, and finally, I will speak of how some of us, Moderns, are pushing these boundaries but might still not be really ready to engage in a dialogue marked by the idea that the Other has a house of her/his own, a house where she/he might be ready to be a host rather than a guest.