Le Merle – Allocution

This issue of Le Merle, clad in the colour of alarm and menstruation, reflects on the struggles affecting the arts, education, and the everyday. On the rhetorics that confine them and what that they, in turn, undermine: the curtailing of public space, the curtailing of the “professional” arts, the unpaid work that supports this art, the acts of care invariably seen as a disadvantage—always dis-advantaged. Edited by Edith Brunette & François Lemieux.

I have an art practice in painting and especially poetry, which I believe to be legitimate — well, that’ll be for you to judge later on. But still, when I was asked to say something about the current situation of cultural politics, I drew a blank. I make art, I know art history, the sociology of art and aesthetics. I have thoughts and opinions on the best way to cook potatoes, on the postmodern transformations of late capitalism, on the inclusion of marginalized women within feminism, on everything and anything, really. But cultural politics … nothing at all. It’s pretty disheartening!

I am supported by marginalized communities — small, penniless, invisible communities where, together, we try to make life less miserable for everyone. We organize events, and that’s where I exist, artistically speaking. Cultural politics do sometimes bring about good things, but sometimes they lead to total shit as well. But it must be said: without exception, I experience cultural politics as variations on a world that excludes me.

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We like being touched by the life of a trans woman as presented by the media, a trans woman who has been carefully selected, who is friendly and conforms to a specific pre-existing discourse. But how many trans women are truly represented, how many trans women are truly able to create representations of their own lives and aspirations — because we have so much more to impart than just accounts of our lives as trans women. I talk about trans women because that’s who I am — replace “trans woman” with any marginalized person, and the same is true. Letting the diversity of life nourish art means more than just exhibiting a few marginalized individuals. It means letting us make art, letting us disseminate the art we’ve made, art that doesn’t fit neatly into a preconception of who we are and what we do. But more than anything, it means just letting us exist.

When we’re aren’t healthy, in the broadest sense, not socially healthy, we can’t make art, or not much art. It’s impossible to create without certain basic material conditions. When the government makes cuts to social services and social assistance (no, I’m not going to call it “last resort assistance”), when housing rights organizations are forced to close, when the police harass minorities, when doctors refuse to adapt services designed for the hetero-white middle class — and when these decisions end up killing us —, it’s once again the artmaking of marginalized groups that suffers. Suppressing social diversity suppresses artistic diversity.

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In closing, and to follow up on yesterday’s shitty, misogynistic and racist joke by Éric Salvail ¹, and given the class action suit of 41 cops against CBC/Radio-Canada for speaking out about police abuse of Indigenous women ², it seems to me now more than ever necessary to point out that we live on unceded Indigenous lands.

When the dominant culture breeds colonialism and sexism, when the Rozon empire is built on “humour” that is misogynous, racist, homophobic and so much more, when the culture is one of rape and domination, well, I don’t want to be cultured either.

Tv host Éric Salvail had compared menopause to the absence of «rules» in a native’ reservation [«rules» in french: «règles» meaning «periods», ndt].→
41 police officers sued Radio-Canada following a reportage by the «Enquête» tv show revealing the abuse of native women by police. Following the show, inquieries have been initiated against eight police officers.→