>[!INFO]+ Meta >Area:: [[South Project]] >Date::2016 >Tags:: #text #south ## The day they discovered earth Thursday 7 December 1972. The American story is reaching its climax. Richard Nixon has just been re-elected with a mandate to bring victory for democracy in Vietnam. Watergate is just the name of another Washington hotel. The world is humming to the jingle 'I'd like to buy the world a Coke'. Locally, Don McLean's pop ballad 'American Pie' creates an epic drama out of the nation's popular culture. That Thursday, as the strains of 'Silent Night' begin to be heard on cold street corners, three Americans have been projected into space, on course for the moon. It will be the last of the journeys that have done more than anything else to plant the American flag in global consciousness. This mission will complete a missing, but essential part the picture. While the previous moon landings themselves had been the subject of much documentation, the reverse view of earth has been strangely overlooked. In 1963, Buckminster Fuller had coined the phrase 'Spaceship Earth' to evoke the image of one planet whose shared finitude helps transcend national boundaries. This idea would be key to the kind of ecological consciousness behind ventures such as Stewart Brand's *Whole Earth Catalogue*. In 1966, Brand sat on his roof terrace in San Francisco, noticed the curvature of the earth and considered the impact of a photograph that would encompass the world as a whole. His subsequent campaign 'Why haven\'t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?!' finally realised its goal as Apollo 17 left the earth's orbit and found itself floating above Africa. So here was the final chance to capture the image that could present the world to itself. With the earth slowly shrinking into the distance, the Apollo 17 crew saw a planet completely bathed in daylight. Gene Cernan was still ruing the earlier loss of images from a spacewalk in Gemini 9 that floated into outer space. At around 5am, he proclaimed, 'I know we\'re not the first to discover this---but we\'d like to confirm, from the crew of America, that the world is round.'[^1] It seemed a good time to take a photograph. The three astronauts fumbled around, changing lens and passing the Hasselblad back and forth for the next few minutes while the earth is in still in frame. Two weeks later, NASA released a photo from the Apollo 17 reel that will forever epitomise the apogee of global optimism. What became known as the 'Blue Marble' revealed a variegated blue and ochre ball covered in white streaks, sitting alone in the dark void. The realisation that this little ball was the entire domain of an individual's possible horizon helped generate a global consciousness that continues to define the idea of collective hope in a divided world. But it's the wrong image. It's not really the same earth that the three Americans saw through the lens. The astronauts were in reality 'upside down'. What they actually witnessed was an Earth where Antarctica was at the top, rather than its usual position at the bottom of the world. From outer space, the vertical alignment of north and south was irrelevant. But when the image came back down to earth, it had to be 'corrected'. Why? At first, the question seems so obvious it hardly bears answering. After all, North is up and South is down. The USA is above Mexico. It's just a correction. That seems obvious when looking at a map on a wall, where gravity forces the issue of having to stand erect and maintain a constant vertical orientation of north and south. But when looking at the actual planet from outer space, beyond the pull of earth's gravity, there is no fixed orientation. We can imagine that in this trifling correction is embodied the global project initiated by Ptolemy to align the world vertically. Verticalism is part of a massive operation to create a global centre, to which the world's resources can converge. What would the astronauts have seen if there'd been able to zoom into the life on the ground in that part of the world? Trouble was brewing. In Latin America, the fraught regime of Salvador Allende was coming to a close. Soon he would be overthrown in a violent coup as planes attack the national parliament. Chile would join other right-wing dictatorships in Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay, in an anti-communist campaign that would see 50,000 people murdered, 30,000 disappeared and 400,000 imprisoned. The situation was no better across the Atlantic. In Africa, Nelson Mandela was languishing in Robben Island Prison. Each day brings grim news of riots and murders, as the South African government seeks to forcibly impose its Afrikaans culture on all races. In Uganda, Idi Amin has commenced his notorious purges of real and imagined opponents, estimated up to 500,000 by the end of his reign. Even in that island of the north in the south, Australia, government officials were forcibly removing light-skinned children from their Aboriginal parents. The South is at war with itself. There was little reason for countries of the South to join together. South Africa faced a world boycott, and in countries like Europe they were hearing horror stories from political refugees of Latin America. It was a time when comfortable first world nations would look with dread at the tinpot dictatorships, the banana republics and basketcase economies of the South. Jump to the present and it's a different story. No longer does the world revolve around the United States of America. On 1 March 2004, the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez addressed a summit of the G-15, heralding the end of neo-liberalism. He concluded with a poem by the Uruguayan Mario Benedetti: "THE SOUTH ALSO EXISTS" With its French horn and its Swedish academy its American sauce and its English wrenches with all its missiles and its encyclopedias its stars war and its opulent viciousness with all its laurels the North commands, but down here close to the roots is where memory no remembrance omits and there are who undies and who unlives and thus, all together work wonders be it known: the South also exists. On 8 October 2007, leaders of seven South American nations met to begin planning a Bank of the South which would provide a source of loans alternative to the IMF. First item on the agenda is a gas pipeline from Argentina to Venezuela, via Brazil and Bolivia. On 4 November 2006, the President of the People's Republic of China Hu Jintao addressed a summit of African-Chinese relations, involving 48 leaders of African nations, where he promised to 'enhance South-South cooperation and promote North-South dialogue'. He claimed 'Both China and Africa are cradles of human civilisation and lands of great promise.'[^2] No longer is Africa an exclusive concern of the collective west, seeking to save its inhabitants from poverty, violence and disease. The leading economies of Asia---India, China and Japan---are all keen to do business with African countries. Their pragmatic interests contrast with the moral responsibilities felt by many nations of the West. The South seems to have legs. Strengthening democracy and economic growth averaging 5% has opened up the South as never before. Leaders are moving freely on the world stage, forming south-south alliances such as President Lula's BRISA (Brazil-India-South Africa) triad. Yet while the political and economic ground is shifting, habits are hard to shift. The expectation that anything of value necessarily is in the North is hard to break. The Argentinean designer Laura Novik describes this affliction as *tortícolis*, or 'stiff neck' from always looking up. North is where to look for new trends---the fashion from Paris cat walks or design from Milan fairs. It's where to pitch ambitions---to accept an Oscar in Los Angeles or a Nobel Prize in Stockholm. This condition is conjured by a number of images. The Panopticon was a prison system invented by Jeremy Benthem whereby inmates were equally visible from a central tower while unable to see any other fellow inmates in the cells around it. Such architecture prevents any conspiracy between prisoners while setting up a hierarchy of vision from the centre: they can see you, but you can't see them seeing you. With colonial deference to the northern centres, South cultures face the challenge of a concentric world, each focusing its aspirations on the centre while unable to learn of the parallel bondage experienced by other countries of the South. Worse, there develops a sense of exceptionalism in which a country of the South is seen as an honorary northerner. Australia's 'big pond mentality' sees itself as alone in the South. The pride within Argentina of Buenos Aires as 'Paris of the South', or Chile as 'London of the Pacific', distinguish these countries from their less civilised neighbours. Aspirationalism casts its shadow across the South. When southerners read about their neighbours in the daily newspaper, all they find are stories of violence, corruption and crime. We have pop concerts from international celebrities---they have censures from world leaders. So the waters of colonisation recede, exposing the barriers between countries of the South. It raises questions about what exactly these countries have in common, and what kind of conversations they might have with the North. ## The idea of... This book is about the 'idea of' South, rather than its history as a concept. There has been much written about the history of the antipodes and the politics of the developing world. When framing things in purely historical terms it's difficult to avoid deeply embedded structures of space-time. 'The idea of...' is a leap into thought. In the South there are now volumes on the *Idea of Africa* and the *Idea of Latin America*. These conceptual journeys are designed to investigate basic assumptions that govern how we see the world. The purpose of this book is to bring together the diversity of meanings associated with South in order to think again about its position in the world. The Souths under investigation are purposefully diverse. It includes the rudimentary notion of the Southern Hemisphere, as half of the planet demarcated by a line drawn across its centre. Reaching far into the northern hemisphere is the Global South, which encompasses China and India. There are also Regional Souths that exist *within* different nations, such as the more barbaric realm of Sicily in southern Italy, or the lost Moorish world of southern Spain. Throughout the first world is not the Diasporic South, consisting of immigrants and contract labourers from poorer countries, creating a symbolic equator between those who drive taxis and those who take them. Finally, there is the South that resides within each individual, providing a symbolic divide between northern mind and southern body. This approach is difficult to place within the concept of area studies. Rather than a specific region of the world, South is used in the sense of a direction, which is relative to the scale of its application, whether that is global, economic, national, political or psychological. There is no reason to believe that placing this kind of diversity into one picture is like to produce a single theme that links them all together. This South is viewed as part of an *a priori* understanding that is necessary for the world to be meaningful in the first place. The divination of north-south can be seen as a means by which the operations of space and time take shape in our world. 1. Needs a good join here When applied to the cardinal points, 'the idea of...' involves an abstraction beyond those regions colloquially denoted as 'west' or 'south' in order to consider the broader meanings evoked by those directions. Such moves are often aimed at locating the identity of that direction in the preconceptions of the subject rather than the region itself. Edward Said's *Orientalism* is a classic instance of the identity of a region as determined by the imperial aims of the Western subject, rather than any inherent qualities in the east itself. The feminine nature of the orient may thus be seen as a product of the 'idea of East' in Occidental culture. The 'idea of South' is likely to combine the imperial readings of orientalism with the discourse on periphery---an intersection of East and North. The 'idea of north' has been the subject of much work thus far. Glenn Gould's romantic cycle for radio *The Idea of North* evoked the uppermost regions of Canada as spaces of isolation from which individuals contemplate emptiness. Peter Davidson's study *Idea of North* looked at the Western perspective on the region of Vikings and Arctic adventures: > Everyone carries their own idea of north within them. To say \'we > leave for the north tonight\' brings immediately thoughts of a harder > place, a place of dearth: uplands, adverse weather, remoteness from > cities. A voluntary northward journey implies a willingness to > encounter the intractable elements of climate, topography and > humanity.[^3] Davidson's 'everyone' is a relatively uncomplicated subject, largely already located in the North, such as Europe or North America. For such a subject, the idea of South is potentially the inverse of the North---a region of abundance, balmy days and relaxed lifestyle. But once our gaze is turned South, it is immediately implicated in a bipolar world, with an historically asymmetrical relationship between imperial powers and their colonial subjects. How we view the idea of South is like to be quite different depending on whether it is seen from above or below, from behind or in front of the tourist camera. This book attempts a 360 degree idea of South, attempting a view not only from the Western perspective, but also from the alternative empires to the East and from the South itself. Given the nature of the archive, the Occidental perspective is the most easily accessed. Whoever, the 360 degree method is premised in an equal measure to the different directions towards South. It is not expected that a singular identity will arise from these different vantage points. The most plausible aspiration is to identify a common subject of speculation. ## Keeping up with things In 1946, when Juan Peron came to power, the writer Jorge Luis Borges received a promotion from his position in the Miguel Cané Library to become an inspector of Rabbits and Poultry. Rather than take up this honour, Borges became actively involved in the intellectual opposition to the Peronist regime, particularly its attempts to purify Argentinean culture of foreign influence. His writing responded to this growing absolutism in a typically obtuse fashion. By 1951, the Peronist movement in Argentina was reaching its apogee. Legislation had enabled Peron to take up the Presidency for life, and there were calls for his wife Evita to be vice President. From this suffocating political environment emerged an essay by Borges which helps us begin to think about the idea of South. 'Pascal's sphere' opens with the proposition, 'Perhaps universal history is but the history of several metaphors.'[^4] Borges traces this metaphor back to Xenophanes who proposed a single god as an eternal sphere. By the time this metaphor reaches Pascal, though, it seems empty of meaning, 'a frightful sphere, the center of which is everywhere, and the circumference nowhere.'[^5] Borges developed a metaphysical theme that reflected the terrifying ambition of Peron. While co-extensive in space and time, the eternal sphere still does have a nominal shape. Its ideal symmetry is lost once we introduce a point of view. When viewed in context, this form has an up and a down, a before and an after. The default position for South is *below* in space and *before* in time. These are not neutral dimensions, but reflect deeply ingrained hierarchies which condemn South to a lesser status. This status is economically illustrated by the idiom 'keeping up with things'. This phrase combines the dimensions of space and time: the vertical axis of aspiration and the temporal axis of progress. These dimensions represent the twin concepts in the dominant view of the South: verticalism and developmentalism. These concepts indicate the challenges ahead for a journey South. ### Verticalism In recent times, the vertical dimension has become a common metaphor for hierarchy itself. The 'silo mentality' is contrasted with 'horizontal' structures such as clusters. The vertical has become the antithesis of the network age, which operates best in flat structures enabling fluid rhizomic connections. The vertical is targeted because it is a natural symbol of authority. Its negative value today does not imply that it has been transcended as an organising principle. For art historical Rudolph Arnheim, the ascendency of vertical is partly to do with gravity. When opponents meet on a horizontal plane, they are evenly matched. Whereas on a vertical axis, the higher opponent will have the advantage of gravity. In the development of painting, the transformation of the world into a vertical plane also had the effect of detaching the object from the immediate world. > Upright things, be they paintings on the wall or a person standing > before us, are seen head-on, which means they are seen well. We see > them without distortion and from a comfortable distance. This permits > us to scan the object as a whole and to grasp its visual organisation > on its own terms.[^6] Following Arnheim's logic, we can see that a horizontal surface such as the work bench is physically connected to the viewer, whereas the vertical world presented in formats like the computer screen represent a mirror of the world. Our contemplation of the vertical, whether on painting or screen, subsumes our engagement in the horizontal. With the development of painting also comes the culture of the map. The map renders a horizontal world that we experience in our immediate environs into a vertical representation, with an up and a down. As the convention is to elevate North, we speak commonly of going up the map. If you're in Pretoria, you go 'down' to Johannesburg. Melbournians travel 'up' to Sydney. Cariocas in Rio pop 'down' to São Paulo. The expression 'up' or 'down' is rarely related to an incline in the journey. This vertical dimension is purely symbolic. As the astronauts in Apollo 17 will testify, longitude has little to do with our immediate experience of the world. Consequent to this is a deeply embedded association of South with 'down'. If we take as our compass the Oxford English Dictionary, this South has a subsidiary relationship to its master, North. Open the OED and the first definition of 'south' is 'directly opposite to the north'. So, it would be reasonable to assume that when you look up 'north' you find it defined as 'directly opposite the south'? No, 'north' is defined as 'the direction of the part of the horizon on the left-hand side of a person facing the rising sun'. So why isn't 'south' the 'right-hand side...'? Why does our reckoning start only with the north? History is not kind to 'south'. Most established references for 'south' in the OED can be reduced to a point on the compass. However, in recent times it has developed a negative idiomatic use. The term 'south' to describe the developing world is first cited in an *Economist* article from 1975.[^7] At the very same time, the direction 'south' becomes associated with economic decline. A 1975 article in *Business Week* included the phrase, 'If the market is headed South... there is a point beyond which information and growth prospects are meaningless.' Recently, 'south' has been used idiomatically for any downturn, including marriage going 'south' (R. B. Parker, 2003) and a night scene that is 'south of anemic' (N.Y. Times, 2006). It may seem a minor conceit. This use of \'south\' is metonymically related to the downward trajectory of financial graphs at times of economic decline. But it is clearly a powerful idiom given its generalisation to all situations of decline. South as a metaphor for decline has particular power in the USA, whose powerful economy sits above poorer societies below. Here the idiom is defined as 'to lose value or quality.'[^8] The phrase \'going south\' refers to someone who absconds with money gained illicitly at a poker game. The allusion is to someone who has escaped to Mexico, beyond the reach of the law. In Australia, a politician is vulnerable to a time when the 'public sentiment goes south.'[^9] In Canada, the association between North and superiority creates an untenable situation for residents of Newfoundland, who are forced to talk about going 'down north to Labrador'. [^10] Sometimes, the usage is merely implied, as in the phrase 'jobs are going South' to refer to the move of IT employment from the US to India, or industry to Mexico.[^11] South can be thus seen as the victim in the dominant view of the world, which imposes a vertical hierarchy that distinguishes the superior realms above from the base world that lurks below. While there is abstract sense of injustice that South should be cast as nether region of the world, there is an even more fundamental absurdity in the use of a vertical dimension to describe what is a fundamentally horizontal experience. A similar issue arises with time. ### Developmentalism Developmentalism seems almost as ingrained as verticalism. The coupling of time and progress produces a sense of being 'ahead' or 'behind' the times. This was particularly acute in the modernist era which privileged an avant-garde elite who were seen to work at the cutting edge of history. This internal Western temporal divide is reflected in the cleaving of the world into the backward and advanced halves. Such a difference is implicit in the terms 'first' and 'third' world, but more pronounced in the other common differentiation of 'developed' and 'developing'. The assumption is that history is a single track built by the West for other nations to follow in varying orders. The eighteenth century enlightenment philosopher Marquis de Condorcet argued that Europeans are able to teach the rest of the world principles of progress, which enables them to progress more quickly because 'they will learn from us all those things that we had to discover for ourselves'. > All the peoples whose history is recorded fall somewhere between our > present degree of civilization and that which we still see amongst > savage tribes; if we survey in a single sweep the universal history of > peoples we see them sometimes making fresh progress, sometimes > plunging back into ignorance, sometimes surviving somewhere between > these extremes or halted at a certain point, sometimes disappearing > from the earth under the conqueror\'s heel, mixing with the victors or > living on in slavery, or sometimes receiving knowledge from some more > enlightened people in order to transmit it in their turn to other > nations, and so welding an uninterrupted chain between the beginning > of historical time and the century in which we live, between the first > peoples known to us and the present nations of Europe.[^12] Developmentalism helps lay the ground for colonisation, not only confirming the superiority of Western powers but also casting the intervention as a progressive move. While previous practices such as religious conversion are now seen as oppressive, recent examples such as *Make Poverty History* operate on the same paradigm, no matter how benign they may seem. Understandably, this relegation of the world has been the subject of criticism. Post-colonial theorist Dipesh Chakrabarty described societies that are consigned to the 'waiting room of history'.[^13] William Easterly argued for its bias against poor societies: 'Poor societies are not just poor, the experts tell us, they are "developing" until they reach the final stage of history.'[^14] While we can counter the vertical with the horizontal, it not so straight forward in the case of developmentalism. Developmentalism has its obverse in fundamentalism, the return to the origins, but this merely reverses the hierarchy, rather than abandons it. In linguistics, the diachronic axis describes the historical development of language, as opposed to the synchronic understanding of its structures. This reflects a similar difference in Saussure's concepts of *langue* and *parole*. While structuralism posits a synchronic reading of cultures, it is specific to a Western system of understanding. The alternative to developmentalism may be a plurality of time scales. ### Inferiority The reason for exploring the idea of South does not rest only on the need to understand the dominant time-space structures. These structures are co-extensive with major challenges faced by those who find themselves in this region. How the idea of South affects you depends directly on where you are placed. If you are down below, the only way to look is up. The material correlate of space-time orientation is a 'drain' of human resources. The 'talent drain' is particularly dramatic in African education, where nations are effectively subsidising the skills shortage in the first world. 80% of Ghana's doctors leave within five years of graduation.[^15] There are said to be more Malawian nurses in England's second city of Birmingham than in Malawi itself.[^16] In sport, this has been termed a 'brawn drain'[^17] northern clubs and universities seek the muscle power of African nations. In Australia, the colonial cringe has historically been associated with deference to the North. The national poet Henry Lawson complained that to be recognised as a writer in Australia 'You must fly to Northern cities who are juster than our own. ' Those with any ambition in Australia are encouraged to pitch their ambitions at the Northern centres: actors to Hollywood, businessmen to New York, academics to London, fashion designers to Paris, furniture designers to Milan and writers to Tuscany. While this generates good copy celebrating the success of local stars, it casts a shadow on those whose ambitions are confined to other parts of the world. This demotion of the South is not limited to the southern portion of the globe. The various nation-building projects of the modern era have entailed an internal division between a civilised North and a primitive South. In Yugoslavia, there is a proverb, *Sto juznije to tuznije*---'the further south, the more deplorable', which underpins the cascading snobbery of the Slovenians who look down on the Croatians, who despise the Serbians, who loathe the Albanians.[^18] This extends to the black Africans of Southern Sudan, the primitive Sicilians, the violent Chechnyans... South can become a term of almost phobic dimensions. The *New York Times* can use 'Africa' as shorthand for economic problems, 'South America and Central America now risk becoming another Africa.'[^19] When raising the spectre of Indigenous issues, well-meaning Australian activists can raise the question 'A third world future?'[^20] This phobia finds material expression in structures such as the Mexican Wall, separating the USA from hordes below threatening to overwhelm its prosperity and values. The South evokes 'tin pot dictatorships', 'banana republics', and 'failed states'. While not discounting the presence of violence and corruption in many Southern countries, it must also be admitted that such knowledge does confirm the superiority of the North. This blinked view screens out more positive stories that could provide the same kind of counterbalance that celebrity news does to conflict in the North. ### Asymmetry The underlying injustice of this 'idea of South' rests in its asymmetry. This asymmetry situates the South as a pale imitation of the North. This is particularly evident in the very aspirations common in the South itself. A common boast in the South is to be the 'biggest in the Southern hemisphere'. Googling this phrase in English reveals 3,840 instances on the Internet (by comparison, 'biggest in the Northern Hemisphere' is only mentioned 8 times, mostly icebergs). The subjects of this claim include cultural activities (Scottish Highland Festival, temple and casino), sports (rodeo, triathlon and marathon) and man-made structures (desalination plant, drive-in and telescope). Southern aspirationalism is also reflected in the desire to resemble a city of the North. Besides the New London's, the 'Paris of the South' is a common ambition, claimed mostly by Buenos Aires, while Melbourne has traditionally claims a 'Paris end of Collins Street'. More broadly, there are many 'Venices of the South', including Newcastle in Australia, Dubrovnik, Sitangkai in the Philippines. However, it is almost impossible to find a similar ambition in the North. The only equivalent that I have been able to find was a concern about Toronto as a 'São Paulo of the North.'[^21] Far from an aspiration, this was a source of apprehension. The idea of a Melbourne or Johannesburg of the North would seem satirical. The same kind of aspirationalism with time would seem too self-evident to be worth mentioning. What nation would not want not want to be the most advanced, the least backward, the most progressive and ahead of the times. Latin American scholar Walter Mignolo gives this developmentalism a twist with the following thought experiment: > ....the Maya had arrived in Europe and encountered an unknown > continent and unknown people, it is not sure that the Maya would have > interpreted the differences in conceptual frameworks in terms of > different stages in time, in such a way that less civilized was > equivalent to \'back in time\'.[^22] The lopsided framework of 'keeping up' is increasingly irrelevant. A world facing the challenge of climate change must organise itself in terms of partnerships rather than hierarchy. How do we develop an alternative understanding of South that still recognises its difference from the North? ## South Approaches South is essentially a direction. As such, it involves moving not only *towards* a destination but also *away* from its opposite direction, North. In terms of what might constitute the field of Southern Studies, it is possible to identify four different relationships between North and South. ### North\>South - postcolonialism The colonial project provides much energy in approaches to the South. In *Orientalism*, Eduard Said established a critical theory which interpreted the West's image of the other as a device to justify conquest. The same approach is generative when focused on the South. An example of this is Walter Mignolo's *The Dark Side of the Renaissance*, which critically examines concepts such as the book as part of an overall structure designed to legitimate the claim to the New World. An alternative methodology rests with comparative studies. Here the focus is on the impact of movements such as modernism as they influenced the development of cultures of the South. Critically, the underlying message is that modernism is not a homogenous movement that can be reduced to its source culture. The understanding is that host cultures such as Brazil and Australia interpret modernism quite differently. An understanding of modernism should require not just its roots in Western culture, but also its various incarnations in different times and places. The postcolonial approach fits quite well with existing critical strategies and networks of knowledge. However, it does position South in a relatively passive position towards the North. It is represented as a construction of the North, serving northern interests. Could the North be seen instead as a product of the South? ### South\>North -- hermeneutical In the opposite direction is a hermeneutical approach which attempts to demonstrate the Southern roots to Northern culture. This approach follows other hermeneutical methods, such as Marx and Freud, which reveal the source of commodification or sublimation in the very energies it denies---labour and desire. A key text in this vein is Martin Bernal's *Black Athena*, which claimed a debt in Greek thought to the Phoenician and Egyptian cultures. Highly controversial, Bernal argues the presence of a systematic denial of the antecedents to Greece as the 'cradle of civilisation'. Recently, this approach has surfaced in the field of New Southern Studies,[^23] which is primarily a platform for understanding the cosmopolitan influences in the American South. Themes in literature, music and social life can be traced back to their sources in African or Hispanic cultures. For instance, in Keith Cartwright's *Reading Africa into American Literature*[^24] he interprets idioms of modern American culture within the context of the cultures brought over in the slave trade. To the lubricating idiom of the jazz age, 'OK', is identified as part of a Senegambian call and response dialogue. There is the opportunity to speculate from this that African values played a key role as a social lubricant in the intense cultural life associated with modernism in Western centres. Similarly, the South plays a critical role in the addiction to coffee that is a condition of life in urban centres, orchestrated by the swaying rhythms of Bossa Nova in cafes. Similar influences of Southern goods such as chocolate and spices are now common in the single issue studies now emerging on bookshelves. The hermeneutical approach is particularly suited to musicology, where the African influence may be discerned particularly through rhythm. It has the potential to undermine the North-South hierarchy in the manner of Hegel's master-slave dialectic, showing that the power of the dominant partner is dependent on its victim. As with the postcolonial, the hermeneutic approach also finds readymade critical strategies in the humanities. But like the wily slave narrative, the position of South in this instance is still subservient. ### North \| South -- separatist The approaches thus far have been relatively north-centric. To counter this directly, there is the critical project of identifying those concepts that are unique to the South, and thus represent source of authenticity. This strategy approximates feminist moves to identify values that exist separately to the dominant patriarchal structures. In the broad movement of the African Renaissance, there are concepts that are seen as unique such as the value of Ubuntu, or humanness. As we will see later, there has been much activity in connecting Ubuntu to cognate non-Western values, such as Islamic and Indian traditions. The collective nature of Ubuntu is seen at odds with Western individualism. In Mexico, the muralist Diego Rivera promoted the concept of *indigenismo* as an alternative to the European tradition of painting. The Zapatista movement similarly bases its revolutionary tactics on local mythology, such as Mayan fables. While the separatist position does also finds its corresponding critical strategies, it is liable to the criticism of essentialism. It is assumed that the influence of colonial cultures can be reversed and it is possible to return to the pure culture that existed previously. Separetism offers the obverse of the very position that the previous strategies attempt to undermine---South as a pale imitation of the North. Though in this case, the South has a morally superior set of values that much be purified from the corrupting influence of the North. This perspective does not account for the way cultures define themselves in dialogue with each other. ### North = South -- metaphysical An alternative approach is to abstract the idea of South beyond any particular region. One place to start is phenomenology. Here the basic issue is to understand the way perception is conditioned by its location within the human body. While the vertical dimension may not be a given in the grid view of the world, it is a necessary element in the business of deploying a body in the world. This creates a natural division between head and feet. Understanding how this informs our view of the world as a Kantian a priori, is one element of the idea of South. There are two existing frameworks that may serve an understanding of South. #### Moral topography One framework for this is 'moral topography'. Opposed to the Kantian universal moral imperative is an understanding of ethnics as an essentially contradictory field. Such moral dilemmas resist universal solutions. There is both a time to care for others and a time to look after oneself. The conflicting nature of these aims makes it impossible to revolve them by reference by abstract principle, as might be learnt in a book. 'Life experience' is an exercise in navigating between such conflicts. One way of conceptualising a heterogeneous moral field is to distribute values spatially. Charles Taylor's concept of 'moral topography'[^25] was developed as an abstract concept designed to register the level of spatial integration of self. It references the experience of being 'out of joint'. From this concept is it possible to consider the distribution of national stereotypes as a global language for self. Rather than confining the French within the category of 'romantics', it contributes its singular moral quality to a repertoire of values that cover the range of options in human endeavour, alongside the ambitious Americans, the efficient Germans, the easygoing Brazilians, etc. While the particular national values is subject to much conjecture, it is possible for an idea of South to postulate a vertical axis for self that maps the opposition between head and body onto the regions of North and South. Jon Hassell is a composer who identifies his music as 'fourth world', combining traditional musical forms with recombinant technologies. His coffee-coloured classicism attempts to bring North and South together without literal references to particular instruments or rhythms. > I think of North and South not only in global terms, but also for > example, within the body. So the equator is at the belt line, and the > Northern people spend most of their time above the equator, and > Southern people have a more balanced, or perhaps maybe over-balanced > lean towards the other side.[^26] Hassell moves towards a metaphorical South, where the North-South divide can be seen as parallel to the Mind-Body split. Rather than the primitivist strategy of stripping away self-consciousness, Hassell aspires to a more dialogical relationship. It can be argued that this approach to South is limited to the globalist first world, whose experience of difference through travel and media is privileged. While the specifics might be relative to particular strata, the general principle of a spatialised moral order would still hold across cultures. It is towards this that an idea of South might address. #### Chronotope While moral topography addresses the position of South in a spatialised understanding of self, this does not account for the temporal dimension. Self is inevitably subject to the narrative structure of life, from its beginnings in childhood to its end in death. To this end, Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of *chronotope* provides a way of understanding how South might be positioned within a sequence as either interlude or return. Bakhtin employs 'chronotope' (literally 'space-time') as a way of 'materialising time in space'.[^27] Most frequently, the street is cited as a space where characters experience narrative turbulence that tests their qualities, leading to eventual realisation. The concept of chronotope assists us in thinking of South not in isolation, but as part of a broader framework related to journey and return. Whether this South is the exotic destination or the home is irrelevant for the time being. Such an approach offers a much more complex reading of time than in linear positivism. It may thus be possible to identify a chronotope in which South features as a step back in time as part of a overall narrative of self-realisation. ## Method Each of the four methods has its place. They can be seen to vary along a spectrum at one extreme is a radical subversion of the North-South hierarchy and at the other is relevance to existing theoretical discourses. The field of Southern Studies is partly constituted by the contest between these different approaches. Given the nature of the South, it is natural that social justice informs much of the theoretical work. The postcolonial approach fits with this. However, it is important to also work at the conceptual level in order to keep this approach open. Without alternative approaches, it can too easily close the discussion down to a logic of victimhood. This book begins with a broad survey of different concepts of the South as might be located in the West, North, East and South. These cardinal points are designed to open up the idea of South beyond the colonial story of Western dominance. The four-fold approach to South is the critical methodology by which a global idea of South might emerge. This idea of South should go beyond dominant images, such as the island paradises of the South Seas, and reveal the shadows and undersides of South from alternative directions. By this means, we might begin to think about a post-South era, where a more reciprocal dialogue might emerge between the two halves of the world. By examining the differences in South that emerge, it is possible then to determine an idea of South that might hold. The remainder of the book explores how this idea pans out on the political and cultural stage. It is likely that any idea emerging from this process can in turn be read within the other three perspectives, as either a source of western primitivism, or southern denial. While this will inevitably limit the scope of this idea of South, hopefully it will contribute to a growing development of understanding in this new field. [^1]: \'Science: Portfolio from Apollo\' Time Magazine, 8 January 1973, <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910523,00.html#ixzz1OD9Upu00> [^2]: Beijing Summit & Third Ministerial Conference Of Forum On China-Africa Cooperation <http://english.focacsummit.org/2006-09/20/content_647.htm> [^3]: Peter Davidson *The Idea of North* London: Reaktion, 2005 [^4]: Jorges Lois Borges *The Total Library: Non-fiction 1922-1986* Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1999, pp. 351-53 [^5]: Derrida uses Borges' reflections on the sphere metaphor to consider the ubiquity of light as a metaphor of knowledge (Jacques Derrida \'Violence and metaphysics: An essay on the thought of Emmanuel Levinas\', in *Writing and Difference* (trans. Alan Bass) London: Routledge, 1978 (orig. 1967), p. 92) [^6]: Rudolph Arnheim *The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts* Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983, p. 13 [^7]: *Economist* 18 Oct. 103/2 'North-south dialogue\... This week\'s preliminary get-together \[between\] the west and the oil and non-oil developing nations.. illuminated the snake pit ahead.' Cited *Oxford English Dictionary* [^8]: <http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/south> accessed 20 May 2008 [^9]: The Age <http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/01/29/1106850158094.html> (1/02/2005) [^10]: \"Down North\": A Historiographical Overview of Newfoundland Labrador by Melvin Baker and Robert H. Cuff, originally published in the *Newfoundland Quarterly*, vol. LXXXVIII, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 1993), pp. 2-12, <http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~melbaker/labrador/labrador.htm> [^11]: Charlie de Duff 'As the Jobs Go South, the Hope Goes With Them' <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/us/30album.html> 30 October 2006 [^12]: Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet *Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind* (trans. June Barraclough) London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson General, 1955 (orig. 1795), p. 8 [^13]: He said: We cannot say that the republican tradition is foreign to the genius of this country. We have had it from the beginning of our history."° What else was this position if not a national gesture of abolishing the imaginary waiting room in which Indians had been placed by European historicist thought? Needless to say, historicism remains alive and strong today in the all the developmentalist practices and imaginations of the Indian state. Much of the institutional activity of governing in India is premised on a day-to-day practice of historicism; there is a strong sense in which the peasant is still being educated and developed into the citizen. Dipesh Chakrabarty *Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference* New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 10 [^14]: William Easterly 'The Ideology of Development ' (1/07/2007) [www.foreignpolicy.com/story](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story)cms.php?story_id=3861 [^15]: David Macfarlane 'Africa staffs the west' *Mail & Guardian* <http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=323224&area=/insight/insight__africa/#> (28/10/2007) [^16]: Richard Dowden \'What's wrong with Africa \' *Open Democracy* 26 July 2005 \<http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-africa_democracy/history_2701.jsp\> [^17]: Andrew Simms & Matt Rendell 'The global trade in muscle' 9 August 2004 \<http://[www.newstatesman.com/site.php3?newTemplate=NSArticle_NS&newDisplayURN=200408090017](http://www.newstatesman.com/site.php3?newTemplate=NSArticle_NS&newDisplayURN=200408090017)\> [^18]: Vladimir Arsenijevic 'Our negros, our enemies' 17 October 2007 \<http://[www.signandsight.com/features/1582.html](http://www.signandsight.com/features/1582.html)\> [^19]: Nicholas D. Kristof 'The next Africa?' *New York Times* 10 December 2002 \<<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/10/opinion/10KRIS.html?todaysheadlines>\> [^20]: GetUp email 19 March 2008 [^21]: Sao Paolo\'s Of The North: The Effects Of Mass Immigration On Canada *Immigration Watch Canada* 7 July 2006 \<<http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/index.php?PAGE_id=594>\> [^22]: Walter Mignolo *The Darker Side Of The Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, And Colonization* Anne Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003, p. 327 [^23]: *American Literature* 'Global Contexts, Local Literatures: The New Southern Studies' Volume 78, Number 4, December 2006 [^24]: Keith Cartwright *Reading* *Africa Into American Literature: Epics, Fables, and Gothic Tales* Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 2004 [^25]: Charles Taylor \'The moral topography of the self\', in (ed. S.B. Messer, L.A. Sass & R.L. Woolfolk) *Hermeneutics and Psychological Theory* New Jersey: Rutgers, 1988 [^26]: <http://www.jonhassell.com/world.html> Mon Apr 28 2008 [^27]: The image of man is always intrinsically chronotopic. It is precisely the chronotope that provides the ground essential for the showing-forth, the representability of events\...Thus the chronotope, functioning as the primary means for materialising time in space, emerges as a centre for concretising representation, as a force giving body to the entire novel. All the novel\'s abstract elements \-- philosophical and social generalisations, ideas, analyses of cause and effect \-- gravitate toward the chronotope and through it take on flesh and blood, permitting the imaging power of art to do its work. Mikhail Bakhtin *The Dialogical Imagination: Four Essays* (trans. M.Holquist & C. Emerson) Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981 (orig. 1941), p. 85