Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks: Language Politics, Digital Media and the Making of an International Community
- Автор: Fians Guilherme
- Год: 2022
- Язык: русский
- Жанр: Культурология
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This ethnographer faced, then, another conundrum: once I started tracing networks and following actors, where should I stop following them—or, in other words, where should I cut the network? After all, as Marilyn Strathern notes in relation to kinship ties, 'in practice one does not trace connexions for ever' (1996: 530). Strathern offers ethnogra- phers some comfort by arguing that our objects of study are rendered stable during our reflection on them (1996: 522)—meaning that the writing of research outcomes is a way to interrupt the flows and cut the network. Regarding cutting networks in the field, Matei Candea (2010) came across a similar issue. When beginning his fieldwork from a village in Corsica, 'the village'—which appeared to constitute a coherent entity, a stable and fairly obvious single field site—turned out to be a place from where many traces and flows started. This remark led him to assert that 'the difficult thing was not so much to be multi-sited, as to be "sited" at all' (2010: 16). Following in Candea's steps in attempting to establish a location from which my long-term study could begin, many factors directed me to Paris. More specifically, to Paris-based Esperanto associa- tions, which are normally in charge of promoting the language, running language courses, meetings and debates, organising annual congresses, publishing books and magazines, and selling Esperanto-related materials, thus being hubs from where several instances of circulation and mapping begin and from where my approach could start.
As described in the previous chapters, the significance of France in general, Paris in particular, to the history of Esperanto turns this city into a microcosm where multiple approaches to Esperanto and profiles of Esperantists gather. In addition, Paris-based Esperantists were among the first to endorse Zamenhof's proposal to stabilise Esperantujo through institutionalising it. This led to the foundation, in 1898, of the Societe pour la propagation de l'esperanto (Society for the Dissemination of Esperanto), the creation of the magazine LEsperantiste and, in 1905, the establishment of the internationally-driven Esperantista Centra Oficejo (Esperantist Central Office). In 1933, SAT moved its headquarters from Leipzig to Paris, which was followed, in 1945, by the foundation of SAT-Amikaro, the French-speaking wing of SAT. For all these reasons, the French influence in the international Esperanto community and movement is discernible, with scholars and Esperantists alike talking about 'the French period' (Saladin 2017), 'the French resurgence' (Garv^a 2015: 77—83) and 'the French leadership of the Esperanto movement' (Lins 2016: 24; Schor 2016: 89). Consequently, this yielded a substan- tial influence of the French language over Esperanto vocabulary, as well as in early Esperanto literature, with Hachette being the first well- known publishing house to edit books in Esperanto and to advertise the language in its catalogue (Forster 1982: 79).
The passion with which French Esperantists defended the language in heated debates, contrasted with a wider political and diplomatic dismissal of it within the country, made the controversies involving Esperanto in France reach far beyond Esperantujo. As a consequence, Paris became my core 'bounded field site' (Candea 2007, 2010: Chapter 1), which would enable me to map out particular enactments of Esperantujo in detail and to loosely territorialise certain aspects of this community, without losing sight of its international character.
3.4 On the Move, in the Making
Even today, Paris remains important for Esperantujo, and the diver- sity of Esperantists in the city is largely expressed in its Esperanto associations. SAT and SAT-Amikaro (the latter standing for Union des Travailleurs Esperantistes de Langue Fran^aise, Union of Esperantist
French-Speaking Workers) remain headquartered in the city. The Esper- antist Central Office merged with UEA and moved to Rotterdam, while the Society for the Dissemination of Esperanto stayed in Paris, changing its name to Union Fran^aise pour l'Esperanto and, later, to Esperanto- France. This association's headquarters also host meetings of other asso- ciations, such as the relatively inactive Franca Katolika Esperanto-Asocio (FKEA, French Catholic Esperanto Association) and the Junulara Esper- anta Franca Organizo (JEFO, French Esperanto Youth Organisation, or Esperanto-jeunes). From 1949, the Franca Fervojista Esperanto-Asocio (FFEA/AFCE, French Association of Esperantist Railway Workers) was added to this institutional plethora and, in 2003, the political party Europe Democratie Esperanto (EDE, Europe-Democracy-Esperanto) adopted Paris as its official address.
The networks formed by such Paris-based associations also encom- pass non-Esperanto-related institutions. A number of local Esperantists managed to garner the official support of the association Citoyens du Monde (Citizens of the World), as well as to establish collaboration with the association Amies et Amis de la Commune de Paris 1871 (Friends of the Paris Commune 1871) and with Mundolingua, the Parisian museum of languages and linguistics. Local Esperantists also hold a weekly Esperanto-French bilingual broadcast at the Federation Anarchistes Radio Libertaire; offer a regular Esperanto course aimed at university students at the Ecole normale superieure; and participate weekly in the Parisian Cafe Polyglotte.3 In addition, Esperantists in Paris regularly hold stalls at annual events such as the Forum des Asso- ciations (Association's Fair) held in every Parisian district, and at the Salon Europeen de l'Education, as well as at the left-leaning festival Fete de LHumanite. Network-like Esperantujo also transcends institu- tional frameworks, with informal debates and language practice gather- ings taking place in various locations around Paris, from Antony and Versailles to Bondy, covering the French department of Ile-de-France in nearly every direction. These networks are further expanded through digital media, which include groups, pages and forums on Facebook, Twitter, Meetup, Ipernity, Mastodon, Reddit, Telegram, WhatsApp and Amikumu.
Faced with such limitless fieldwork possibilities, I found myself in a position to explicitly set the limits of my field site. Making analytical decisions to circumscribe my field led me to set Paris as my arbitrary location (Candea 2007). If 'real Esperantujo' only comes into being once a year, in week-long congresses that stand for the short-lived, ever mobile capital cities of Esperantujo, any attempt to stabilise a field site for a long-term ethnography of Esperantists will inevitably draw on arbi- trary choices about where to set boundaries and cut networks. Likewise, while such choices may be arbitrary, they are hardly fortuitous. Just as Paris offers solid historical grounds for a hub for Esperantists and for this research on language and political activism, a focus on Esperan- tists in Rio de Janeiro would likely result in a study about the links between this language and religion through the trope ofhuman solidarity (Pardue 2001). Similarly, bounding my core field site in Beijing, Tokyo or Sapporo would involve covering how discourses about Esperanto in these places convey the language as an index of Western modernity and, in certain instances, a tool for political resistance (Muller and Benton 2006; Lins 2008; Rapley 2013).
Setting Paris as my arbitrary location implied exploring its bountiful- ness while also questioning the coherence of the Paris-based enactments of Esperantujo. This means that, within Paris, I was in constant motion, going from one meeting place or association to another, having Google Maps and the RATP (the company responsible for the Parisian public transportation system) as my best friends. In attempting to 'follow the native', in the strict sense of the expression, I followed people, things, ideas and practices. However, the curious detail here is that these 'natives' were not native speakers of Esperanto. Thus, maybe 'following the non- native' would be the most suitable expression to denote what such ethnographic approach entailed.