Gadjopticon
Europe's most unifying racism as spatial practice
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This is not an essay about Gypsies – or Roma, or whatever term one should use, depending on where in Europe one speaks, to designate them. A few months ago, like the vast majority of Europeans, I knew nothing about Gypsies but hearsay, rumours and legends. As a result of this enquiry, I still know nothing about Gypsies, but I learned a few things about us.
Us means the gadjé. In Romani, a "gadjo" is a foreigner, a stranger, commonly speaking a non-gypsy. Us means also the citizens within European States – since the Gypsies, de facto, don’t count as such. Us, finally, is as vague a group as the Gypsies. Neither one nor the other refers to a clear-cut ensemble of people, who could be circumscribed according to a set of criteria, whether ethnic, cultural, socio-economic, territorial, or administrative. For this reason, us and the Gypsies are improper terms in press articles or political discourses – let alone in academic writing. Nonetheless, with all their vagueness, their secrecy, those are the terms that are used, whispered or yelled, by hundreds of millions of Europeans. And their private circulation, least of all a problem of political correctness, both reflects and breeds a very tangible reality of hate and aversion, of fear and phantasm, of repression and withdrawal, of appearances and disappearances, of gazes and screens. Above all, us and the Gypsies find their fluid meaning in their reciprocal exclusion. How does this customary racism partakes in moving people, producing places, transforming cities, and constructing a space we call Europe?
April 2011 - Essay + Photographs
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Gadjopticon [pdf - EN]
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Selected photographs:
