Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks: Language Politics, Digital Media and the Making of an International Community
- Автор: Fians Guilherme
- Год: 2022
- Язык: русский
- Жанр: Культурология
Электронная книга - «Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks: Language Politics, Digital Media and the Making of an International Community». Краткое содержание книги:
And there I was. On a one-month break from Paris, I conducted part of my fieldwork in the four-storey building erected in 1887 (contempo- rary with the creation of Esperanto) at Nieuwe Binnenweg 176, close to Rotterdam downtown. This address, known by Esperantists across the world as the headquarters of the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) and the World Esperanto Youth Organisation (TEJO), is among the few places where Esperanto is spoken on a daily basis, as these associations' working language.
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The month I stayed there was a busy one, since UEA is the main organiser of the Universal Congress of Esperanto, whose 102nd issue would take place three months after my arrival. After I exchanged e-mails with the president and the general director of UEA to negotiate access to the associations' archives and staff members, the general director, gave me permission to stay as a researcher. Yet, when faced with the hustle of the preparations for the congress, she promptly asked me to combine my research with other tasks, which included assisting Andrei, the office worker responsible for the bookshop. Our job was to collect, price and pack the books and materials that would be sent to South Korea, where the forthcoming congress would take place, in late July. Andrei, a 61- year-old 'professional Esperantist', who had been working at Esperanto associations since 1989, explained the task to me. With the witty tone and light-hearted mood of someone who knew he would no longer be left alone to do this manual labour, Andrei asked for my help to pack seventy boxes with books, separating them by category and size, to be dispatched to Seoul and then put up for sale at the congress' bookshop. Breathing heavily, he emerged from the narrow storage room in the semi- basement of the associations headquarters carrying a pack of worn-out cardboard boxes. Leaving them by the table that he had temporarily set up in the corridor between the book storage and the library, he wiped the sweat off his forehead, combed his long white beard with his fingertips, pointed at the boxes and said:
We're going to reuse these old boxes. They are the same we used to trans- port materials for the bookshop in Nitra last year [in Slovakia, where the previous congress was held] and most of these boxes had been used many times before, at many other congresses. Some of them have already been to two or three continents, five or six countries, and travelled more than many people here!
Smiling and epically proclaiming 'alright, may our work begin', Andrei was to be my work partner, and that semi-basement, my workplace for most of my stay in Rotterdam. His talkative manner and passion for the books he works with resulted in us having excessively long conversations about his personal experiences involving Esperanto congresses, literature and work.
In following how books in Esperanto—written by authors worldwide and translated from and into several languages—were packed into boxes that 'have travelled more than many people', this chapter follows the circulation of things to help us learn more about the circulation of Esperanto speakers and understand what it means in practice to be an Esperantist. In addition to reading literature, attending local meetings and using the language online, engaging with Esperanto entails practices of mobility in which, even when Esperanto speakers are not circulating and travelling, their ideas, letters, online messages and cardboard boxes are. Furthermore, reading literature and using the language online also entail making things circulate, for the Esperanto book or online message that one reads is likely to be an outcome of several Esperanto-mediated connections, networks and translations.
In examining practices that involve circulating and making people, things and ideas circulate, this chapter analyses the very meaning of circulation in the constitution of the Esperanto community. In this unbounded and dispersed community, mapping and territorialising Esperantujo help Esperantists and non-Esperantists alike to grasp its reach and spread. Ultimately, in trying to map out Esperantujo through making sense of the circulation of people, things and ideas, such prac- tices of circulating and mapping end up producing this community. Lastly, thinking about the amount of labour involved in locating and constantly recreating this community around a landless language also requires a methodological consideration on how to approach Esperantists ethnographically.
3.1 The Social Life of Cardboard Boxes
The offices of UEA and TEJO employed sixteen on-site staff members. Due to European visa requirements, they were all European citizens, but came from different countries of origin and used Esperanto regu- larly as their working language. UEA and TEJO operate as hubs for the Esperanto community, responsible for organising major interna- tional Esperanto meetings and festivals every year, as well as for editing Esperanto magazines and producing and selling books, CDs and DVDs.
They are also the heart of the Esperanto movement, building coali- tions with other associations, NGOs and international bodies, producing leaflets and materials to advertise Esperanto in several languages, and coordinating action with local and national Esperanto associations. Since TEJO is a youth-oriented association, most of its staff members are young volunteers on one-year contracts, with expenses covered through programmes such as the European Voluntary Service. By contrast, most UEA staff are middle-aged or older full-time and part-time office workers.
Andrei started building a career in Esperanto in 1989. After leaving Romania, his country of origin, for reasons he never talked about, he moved to the United States, where he worked at the Esperanto League for North America (ELNA, the US affiliate of UEA at that time). In 2002, he moved to the Netherlands, where he had been the main person responsible for UEAs bookshop for over fifteen years. This seemed to be the right place for someone so enthusiastic about books, languages and translation. He had already read plenty of the books he sells and, as a side occupation, he also wrote Esperanto learning books for Roma- nian speakers and translated novels and poems, mostly from Romanian into Esperanto. While the upper floors of the associations headquarters housed offices and a conference room, the semi-basement was where he made himself at home: that floor accommodated the bookshop, with glass windows displaying Esperanto books to passers-by in the street. To the rear, there were the associations' refectory, library and three rooms that Andrei used for book storage. Despite the messy piles of books and cardboard boxes, as well as staplers, pencils, financial statements and lists of book titles scattered around those rooms and along the tiny corridor that connected them, Andrei knew the location of everything by heart.
Andrei showed me the list of books to be packed and, while he tried to teach me how to navigate those busy rooms, I asked him about how he chooses which materials should be sent to the bookshop at these congresses. Holding a book in one hand, a catalogue in the other and with a pencil behind his ear, he answered:
the results will be like... And I also adapt the content of the bookshop according to the country and the region where the congress takes place. Since this one will be in Asia, I'll send more books translated from Asian literature, books about subjects that may be more appealing to Asian Esperantists, language teaching materials oriented to speakers of Asian languages... For the same reason, I always check the congress' registra- tion list, to see the attendees' nationalities and think about the kinds of books they might be interested in buying.