Simmi Dullay, The Motherland & What country are you from? (a movement has begun)

Simmi Dullay

Simmi Dullay is a scholar and a visual artist based  in London. She spent the last year as a visiting lecturer at various universities from Mauritius to Scandinavia. She lectured in Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology at the University of South Africa (Unisa). She is currently a doctoral candidate. Her academic background covers a variety of fields, ranging from Critical Theory, Art History & Visual

Arts, Post colonialism, Gender, Race and Exile/Race studies. She obtained her MFA, (Cum Laude) from the Durban University of Technology, in 2010. She investigates exile using interdisciplinary methods based on visual methodologies, Black Consciousness, decolonial praxis, auto-ethnography and memory work. Her research draws productively on art, cultural and gender studies, critical philosophyand sociology. Dullay taught at the University of Kwa Zulu Natal inEducation, Social Justice & Diversity as well as Philosophy & Sociology in Education.

I first met Dullay in a cafe in Vesterbro, Copenhagen almost a year ago.  We hit it off the moment we met. Dullay is originally from South Africa and her father was a part of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in the anti-apartheid struggle, though upon Biko’s assasination in 1977, they were prompted into exile as BCM was absorbed into the African National Congress (ANC) who organised their escape. It doesn't take long when speaking with Dullay to recognize that she is a true child of decolonisation, that she doesn't just talk about Black liberation, but lives it. After meeting her the first time, I invited her to be on the panel for the 2nd Women of Color that was held in Copenhagen as I had felt that her background in activism and her scholarship would be an asset, and I was right.  Dullay identifies as Black, as defined by Steven Biko (founder of the Black Consciousness Movement) who stated:

We have defined blacks as those who are by law or tradition politically, economically and socially discriminated against as a group in the South African society and identifying themselves as a unit in the struggle towards the realization of their aspirations.

This definition illustrates to us a number of things:

Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.

Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.

From the above observations therefore, we can see that the term black is not necessarily all-inclusive, i.e. the fact that we are all not white does not necessarily mean that we are all black. Non-whites do exist and will continue to exist for quite a long time. If one's aspiration is whiteness but his pigmentation makes attainment of this impossible, then that person is a non-white. Any man who calls a white man "baas", any man who serves in the police force or security branch is ipso facto a non-white. Black people - real black people - are those who can manage to hold their heads high in defiance rather than willingly surrender their souls to the white man.

 –Biko 1971

See more at: http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/definition-black-consciousness-bantu-stephen-biko-december-1971-south-africa#sthash.ef7prcdi.dpuf

Dullay writes:

I was born into the South Asian diaspora in South Africa in 1973 during the height of Apartheid. My family arrived in South Africa as part of the indentured labourers five generations ago. In 1978 we were forced to leave South Africa and go into exile in Denmark as a result of my father’s anti-apartheid involvement in the Black Consciousness Movement, spearheaded by the charismatic revolutionary leader Steve Biko.

I had the privilege of meeting both her parents and her sister, Sureka Dullay- and have experienced their commitment to fighting white supremacy for social justice and Black liberation. Dullay, a rebel at heart, seems to dive in head-first into controversy. She always however, comes back up with pearls.  And this is what exactly happened at a small cafe in Berlin, together with Nazila Kivi, who I also intend to write something about in a little more depth in another post. 
 

The controversy this time was in a word. Cunt. In her scholarship and art Simmi explores decolonisation,  race, gender exile, aesthetics, cultural politics, mythology and more. She describes her visual art as an integral part of knowledge production, in which, through an intuitive process and upon reflection leads to revelations and insights that later informs her theory. In the particular piece ‘Love in Exile’, exemplified in ‘The Motherland’ Simmi begins to explore the black female body as a site of power, both in terms of colonisation and its cartography, and in terms of the linguistics used to signify women’s bodies, from being consumed to empowered, recovering how the word cunt is derived from the Goddess Kali and shares the same root as Country and Kin.

detail from Dullay's "The Motherland"

When I was growing up in Trinidad, the absolutely worst word you could say and call someone was cunt. The ultimate of curses was calling someone, "yuh mudder cunt!" (your mother's cunt).  It's also a word that for many years I believed myself to be the worst of worst- never uttering it myself and tensing up whenever it was heard.  How could it be that one of the worst words for many of us is actually just a word that means vagina- that tunnel of birth that without which, humanity would not be here?

"Maybe if we didn't perpetuate the idea that vaginas are disgusting garbage dumps...women would finally be considered fully-formed human beings, instead of off-brand men with defective genitals." (Linda West, Shrill) http://www.motherjones.com/media/2016/05/lindy-west-talks-abortion-fat-shaming-trolls-and-rape-culture

At the cafe, Dullay was relating a story about the reactions she get when teaching about power and language and the subversion of the word "cunt."

In one of the conversations around the written text Love in Exile, Simmi writes:

I read a story i wrote about rebellion in sex & the importance of how sex & revolt defines us. (especially for the exile who belongs to the other, belongs to kin, instead of place), someone in the crowd pics up on one sentence in which i speak of girlhood, sex, fucking, rebelion, naming and self determination, and does not take into account that i speak of ideology rather than confessions. I had just explained to the same person, that the word Cunt is derived from kali/cunti and shares the same etymological root as country and kin. The person kept responding with 'what' 'what' 'what'? Until i had to shout 'cunt' which virtually reverbated off the walls of the gallery.

artist Simmi Dullay

In conversation with me, Dullay spoke about how the phonetic sounds of 'Cunt' and 'Countrie' being similar, which I picked up on as 'Cunt-Tree'.  

As in what familial tree of cunts are you from? 
As in, what is your maternal line?

It is important to note that I am not necessarily suggesting a etymological relationship here -  I am working with phonetics. In my New American Oxford Dictionary it states that 'country' derives from: 

Middle English: from Old French cuntree, from medieval Latin contrata (terra)‘(land) lying opposite,’ from Latincontra ‘against, opposite 

Love in Exile, by Simmi Dullay

This is powerful. Most pre-Abrahamic cultures were matrilineal.   When I write about Abrahamic religions I mean Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Most pre-Abrahamic religions honored the female and revered the life-giving properties that are exclusively feminine.  Most indigenous cultures around the world passed property through the matrilineal line.  Most understood that the health of a people depended much on the health of the mother.  It is interesting that in our very patriarchal society the m/other has become othered.

Patriarchy is the antithesis of life.  Patriarch celebrates death. Patriarchy is a perversion of life. It is the perversion of sex. Of land. Of water. It is the system at work that excuses the arrogant cutting down of centuries old forests. It is the arrogance of taking and claiming ownership of what has been given to all of us, processing it and selling it back to us with the bodies of our dead families. If we are seeking liberation, part of the process is turning it on its head and shaking it down for all of the hidden, sick ideas that currently parade around us and that is tacitly accepted in our present-day cult-ture.  You cannot talk about any liberation without talking about the liberation of women.  You cannot talk about Black liberation without talking about the liberation of the women and the land.

 It is under the watch of patriarchy that militaries arise to protect the raping and plundering of our land and our people. It is patriarchy that protects the rapists, the pedophiles and the men who rule the world. It is patriarchy that has its boot on our wombs, on our children, on our mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers. It is patriarchy that locks them up and murders them and that has no regard for life.  Do you want to know the true extent of human power?  Back engineer patriarchy and dismantle it. For every step in patriarchy, ask yourself not only what is the absolute opposite, but what is the most humane? That is the path of liberation. 

 It's funny because many assume that matriarchy is the answer as it is the complete opposite of patriarchy. But I'm not talking in binaries here. I'm not talking in extreme polar opposites that encourage us to think in dualities and neglect the powerful sector of life that actually lies in between. Matriarchy is just patriarchy upside down. It will be women in power and men without. But is this what we want? No. Hierarchical power breeds inequality.

There can be no revolution without women, Simmi Dullay

I often work as an editor and one of the books I had the privilege of editing was a thesis  The World of the Sumerian Mother Goddess: An Interpretation of Her Myths by Therese Rodin of Upsalla University, Sweden (2014).  It was in editing this book that I discovered that in ancient Sumer, although there was goddess worship there was also a deep understanding that there was not much to be had if we did not see the divinity of both male and female energy.  For example, I believed for many years that of course the feminine is the most powerful. We are the conduit of life. 

But through working on this book I came to appreciate the fact that the idea that one has to be more powerful than the other is a symptom of patriarchy. Let me explain. In ancient Sumerian texts, creation was seen  as a collective act and places itself outside the binary equation. Their creation myths did not star a man. It did not star a woman. It featured both. How do we propagate life? Through the coming together of male and female energies. So the creation myth involved the watering of fields. The fields signify female energy. The water, that which causes, together with the earth, the seed to sprout, signifies male. Each energy needs the other. Yin and Yang in its entire complexity beyond Western limitations of binaries and gender roles.

"The Motherland" by Simmi Dullay 

So, I ask you now, reader-- what cunt-tree are you from? 

What tree of cunts do you descend from? 

What is your maternal lineage? 

Who are  the women who came before you, 

what are the names that you cannot remember? 

Or perhaps you do? 

Stitch your lineage back together again. 

Who is the woman through whose body you passed 

between the unseen to the seen? 

And who was the woman through which she passed? 

And over and over again, all the way back
to the creation of the universe. 

And if you do not know - 

how does that play into perpetuating the powers-that-be? 

How does it play in strengthening patriarchy? 

Why is it that the mother has been othered? 
Why is it that the mother has been smothered? 

Why is it that you know not your mothers? 
Find out what gets in the way of that
knowledge. 
And destroy it. 

I think of the children torn from mothers. 

I think of the children whose mothers were raped. 

I think of the women whose lives are not valued. 

Who are the women who came before you? 

What are their stories? 
What are their names? 
Say their names. 
Smash patriarchy with their names. 

Cunt-trees have no borders. 

Cunt-trees have no flags. 

Cunt-trees have no military.
Cunt-trees have no visas. 

Cunt-trees have no passports.
From cunt-trees we do not flee.

They are in y/our blood. 

What is your cunt-tree? 

--So, the next time someone asks you, 
What cunt-tree are you from? 

Answer with the name of your mother. And your mother's mother. And if you should not know them, name the name of the woman/women who have mothered you. And if you are without that, invent them from the very fabric of mythology that have come before you, so that in your utterance they become real and present. 

I believe it is in the answering of this question that paves the road to liberation. 

Special thank you to Simmi Dullay & Nazila Kivi & the inspiration they endow. 

Biko, Steve, 1987. 1946-1977 (1946-1977) Stubbs, A. (fl. 1978) (ed.) I Write What I Like: Steve Biko. A selection of his writings. Oxford. Heinemann

Dullay, S.2010. Exploring Exile as Personal and Social Transformation through Critical Reflection and Creative and Artistic Expression.