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:
Associations were also decisive for the Esperanto movement and, to a certain degree, they remain the core of it. Coordinating the efforts of those who want to work for Esperanto, as well as for other causes through Esperanto, they act as hubs whereby Esperantists gather around common interests and goals, thus providing stability, steadiness and cohesion for this social movement.
Esperanto associations in France are chiefly maintained by annual membership fees. These entitle members to receive the magazines that most associations edit, to attend language courses and other activi- ties, as well as to benefit from discounted prices on their bookshops or on congress registration fees. At SAT-Amikaro, all activities are run by benevoles (unpaid volunteers), which means its functioning depends entirely on the time and energy invested by its most active members. However, returning to Dominique's and JoPo's comments, from 2014, the monthly La SAGo became a bimonthly publication and was, subse- quently, discontinued. The SAT-Amikaro congresses, formerly annual, became irregular in recent years. Some language courses—such as the one Yassine would teach that day—were cancelled due to the lack of students and volunteer teachers. The association's annual general meet- ings (AGMs), which traditionally congregated numerous members and took place during the congresses, started being held in a modest scale at the association's headquarters, with members' interventions being reduced to few late responses at SAT-Amikaro's mailing list. Furthermore, due to people's lack of interest, the executive committee, once composed of ten members, was reduced to two members—which required the same person to hold more than one administrative position so that the association could conform to the French Law of Associations (France 1901). Deprived of its regular congresses and its magazine, the associa- tion's activities were mostly limited to what happened at its headquarters, making SAT-Amikaro nearly invisible to its members living outside Paris.
According to the archives of SAT-Amikaro, the association reported having more than 600 members (in francophone countries overall, but mostly concentrated in France) in 2009. Yet, in a conversation, Marcel (the previous treasurer) told me that, when he became the associations treasurer, he found that that list was outdated, as it included from deceased people to former members who had not renewed their member- ship. In 2010, having reviewed the list of fee-paying members, Marcel reached the figure of 490, which came as a shock to many members attending that year's congress. From 2010 to 2017, the membership decreased further to 192.
Faced with this, Dominique and JoPo, like other long-standing SAT- Amikaro members, were worried about the future of their association. After all, how would they continue fighting for a cause when the association where they diligently volunteered was facing such setbacks? What did it mean, for their everyday volunteering, to have a decreasing membership? What else was being lost alongside the loss of members?
If associations are historically important for Esperantists, the same holds for the French more broadly. In 1791, politics and associationism were significantly transformed in France with the Law Le Chapelier, which banned guilds, workers' organisations of all sorts and the right to strike. Only in the following century, in 1868, would the French recover the right to organise and join public meetings—provided that such meet- ings were announced to the concerned authorities in advance. However, in a country with a well-established tradition of fighting for civil rights, the climax of these freedoms and rights was reached only in 1901, when the Law of Associations was promulgated, allowing lasting congregations of people to 'be formed freely without prior authorisation or declaration' (France 1901; my translation). As a consequence, associations came to be perceived in France not only as spaces for people to share common interests and ideas, but also as bastions of freedom, political participa- tion and civil rights, enabling the French to fully express their citizenship via engagement citoyen (civic engagement) (Bartolone 2015; Cottin-Marx 2019).
The strong presence of associations in French social life is sometimes referred to through mockery. In a conversation in French with Sebastien and Nicole, two middle-aged Esperantists from Paris, Nicole told me: 'Associations are quite a big thing in France. If you ask some people — ask Sebastien, for instance — he's probably going to tell you that he's a member of more associations than his fingers can count! Am I right, Sebastien?' He replied:
Yes, I think so. Let me see... I support a lot of Esperanto associations, a lot of naturist associations, many associations for gays and lesbians... Indeed, I think I'm a member of more than ten! But, of course, I'm not a real member in some of them, because there are some in which I only contribute by paying the membership fee, but don't really take part in practice. I became a member of three more associations since the beginning of the year—and the year began just a couple of weeks ago!
Nicole added, laughing: 'there are so many associations here that, if you come across three people in France, probably at least one of them is the president of an association!' Even though Nicole's statistic was exaggerated, there does seem to exist a strong popular engagement with associations across French territory. According to Thierry, Mallet and Bazin (2016: 4), in 2016, 25% of people over the age of 15 living on French soil were engaged in associations as benevoles—which does not include those who were only regular fee-paying members.
In sum, the extraordinary significance of associations in France comes precisely from the fact that they are an ordinary part of everyday social life. Thus, reaching back to the shrinkage of SAT-Amikaro, if associa- tions are so important for both Esperanto's and France's history, perhaps SAT-Amikaro's decreasing membership and inactivity are not only a matter of diminishing support. It reveals a much broader issue, in which the ways whereby Dominique, JoPo, Yassine and several other left-wing Esperantists engage with left-leaning debates in Esperanto appear at risk.
This is not something affecting SAT-Amikaro exclusively. For several reasons, the French associative milieu has gone through a radical transfor- mation in recent years. To point just a few aspects of this transformation, as Sebastien and Nicole highlighted, one's checkbook affiliation (Putnam 2000: 157—158) often involves a financial contribution to a cause that does not necessarily translate into practical commitment to it. This kind of membership, increasingly common in contemporary France, plays a role in economically sustaining an association, but does not contribute much to its dynamics. Furthermore, associations nowadays have to compete with less institutionalised social networks, with the Internet providing the ultimate example. Through digital media, people can gather around shared interests—and, in this case, organise polit- ical debates in Esperanto—in highly international environments without having to pay membership fees. In this sense, the Internet has replaced, more than reinforced, these spaces of socialisation and collective action (Fians 2020) for people born in the late 1980s onwards, as these generations had more access to such communication technologies.
Parallel to this generational change, the previously mentioned survey byThierry, Mallet and Bazin (2016: 4) on rates of engagement in associ- ations in France from 2010 to 2016 shows that the lowest percentage of participation is among 15—35 year-olds,[25] while the highest rate is among those older than 65. At SAT-Amikaro, this became manifest in Yassine and I being the only members of SAT-Amikaro under 35 years old who were frequently present at their activities—which, to older and long- standing members, was a sign that the continuation of the association over time might be compromised.