Festivals and social movements— festival as alibi

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“Such general considerations are important when considering what is ‘new’ about the recent movements. One of their distinctive characteristics is the unstable pattern of their membership. The attributes of the actors are defined almost entirely by the action itself. This means that the energies and resources that actors invest in the construction of their collective identity are an essential part of the action, and not simply an accessory or ‘expressive’ dimension. The weakness of an exclusively political view centred on the ‘instrumental’ dimension of action is that it considers as ‘expressive’ or residual the self reflective investments of the movements. But these investments in self-reflection are crucial for understanding the effects of movements on the political system ”
(Melucci 1989, 73-74).

Again, I want to start by noting that the choice of a festival, instead of, say, a parade, a demonstration, an assembly, or a riot, was a fortuitous one, both because of the location of the community, and because of the structural support that a festival form can give to this task.

In Kyoto, city/state run festivals, alongside those managed by the hundreds of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, make the production of some form of festival an everyday event with Kyoto. For this neighborhood of Koreans and buraku-dwelling Japanese to make their own festival, in the midst of all the other neighborhoods that make theirs, seems at once reasonable and proper. And so, for the City (through its neighborhood associations, or through the PTA of the school, or though the district office [kuyakusho]) to deny this neighborhood its festival while allowing virtually every other neighborhood in the city their own festival, would be to flatly admit an official program of cultural discrimination aimed at Koreans and/or Japanese living in buraku areas of the city.

And as much as the City touts its desire to be Japan’s most international city, to then act against the only “international” cultural event in the City would also potentially damage this image. The City might still manage to shut down the Madang (see also: Dis-association Trouble). But until it finds a way to deflect the suspicion of its desire to shut down this festival because of who controls it, the event will continue to happen.

“It is obvious that neither social movements nor self-help groups are necessarily democratic in their aims; some such movements and groups, after all, have been dedicated to discrediting the whole framework of democratic institutions. Social movements are sometimes led by demagogues; such leaders may create a mass emotional identification that is the very antithesis of dialogic democracy”
(Giddens 1994, 120).

However, even if this were the only cultural festival in Kyoto, the choice of a festival form offers many practical and strategic advantages to the neighborhood as a medium to organize a social movement. In fact, such event-centered social movements are becoming one of the more popular modes for social movement formation: returning to an embodied, performative community as the basis for identities not formed from (or making) an imagined community, but rather resembling (and re-assembling) a new, performative “village”. This village is both a local neighborhood and a member of a globalized community.

Melucci (1989) has noted how new social movements are, in fact, new, in the sense that they have acquired the self-reflexive information and membership practices of late modernity:

“What is new about contemporary movements is first of all that information resources are at the centre of collective conflicts. Conflicts shift to the codes, to the formal frameworks of knowledge, and this shift is made possible by the self-reflexive capacity of complex systems. The self-reflexive form of action is thus another specific characteristic of recent movements. The decline of movements as ‘characters’ signifies the dissolution of the ‘subject’ and an increase in the formal capacity for self reflection. Finally, the global interdependence or the ‘planetarization’ of action profoundly alters the environmental conditions in which actors are formed and act: the field of opportunities and constraints of action is redefined within a multipolar and transnational system.” (Melucci 1989, 73-74)

All of these contours of action are visible within the Higashi-kujo Madang: 1) it acts as an information center, and a site for challenging symbolic domination; 2) it is relentlessly self-reflexive in its artistic production, constantly interrogating its expressions and search for those meanings that best reveal the forms of misrecognition applied by the state to this community; and 3)it views itself as a player in a global struggle for human rights and civil liberties, and it critiques the Japanese state on the basis of global information sources.

Madang Dinner Video
NOTE: this is a time-lapse view of an entire evening: Please preview this video by holding down the Fast Forward [|>] button. The first 4 minutes show the pre-dinner period, when groups volunteered to place posters in all of the stores of the neighborhood. The remainder is an entire evening of talking, eating, reports from all of the committees, and an acknowledgment of the cooperation of all of the neighborhood leaders. While many of the food service practices show a gendered separation of tasks, the leaders of the Madang committees are from both genders. The meal was paid for from the Madang budget.
September 1994, Matsu no Ki Machi Danchi, Higashi-kujo.

In this sense, “madang” is a most appropriate term for this collective, as it symbolizes a cultural commons, a place and an activity of shared expression and collective identity. After looking closely at the festival practices of the Madang in the next chapter, we will explore the forms and referents for the identities assembled through this event. But for now, I want see how a festival¹ can be an event at the center of a radically democratic social movement.

There is an entire argument that can be made concerning the place of carnival laughter within festival, and festival as a return-of-the-grotesque that structurally dismantles social distinctions, and so reveals their artifice. For the purpose of this work, I will not be delving into this particular argument. Such an argument would attach in several places to my notion that A festival counters the dominant..., as this logic is precisely that which is punctured by carnival laughter.

“The concepts of efficacy or success could be considered, strictly speaking, as unimportant when considering this type of collective action, because the conflicts within the realm of collective action take place principally on symbolic grounds. They challenge and overturn the dominant codes upon which social relationships are founded. These symbolic challenges are a method of unmasking the dominant codes, a different way of perceiving and naming the world”
(Melucci 1989, 74-75).

Although ludic moments are many within the Madang, here too is a festival that has not developed all of the creative sides made available to it. In this case, the unveiling of the grotesque has not been a central theme. In part this restraint comes as a response to the dominant cultural code: the Japanese Ministry of Culture loads its cultural spectacles with a great dollop of seriousness, and, by homology, this counter event acquires a more serious self presentation (at this point in the event, parody of Japanese culture would be politically risky). However, the event offers a thick arena of intimacy, and within this there are opportunities for a shared social therapy.

When I propose that A festival is a space of social therapy, I am looking at the Madang in Kyoto as an engine for shared intimacy in public, and at this sharing of intimacy as the practice that enables a new form of membership: a type of emotional commensality (the eating together at a common emotional table, so to speak) occurs that is the rite of passage for belonging, while it also articulates the meaning of membership. Again, The festival performs what it proposes.

“The function of contemporary conflicts is to render visible the power that hides behind the rationality of administrative or organizational procedures or the ’show business’ aspects of politics. While visible power disappears from complex societies, it expands and is dispersed throughout the whole society. Even though power comes to play a crucial role in shaping all social relationships, it is difficult to pinpoint it within individuals or institutions”
(Melucci 1989, 76-77).

Belonging means taking on the work of the festival, and the work of the festival means constructing an entire counter-culture against the dominant code of nationalized Japaneseness in Kyoto. The goal is reaching in the performance of the collective action of the event itself. As Melucci noted: “In contemporary collective action, the organization has acquired a different status. It is no longer considered as a means to an end, and it therefore cannot be assessed only in terms of its instrumental rationality. The organization has a self-reflexive character and its form expresses the meaning (or goals) of the action itself. It is also the laboratory in which actors test their capacity to challenge the dominant cultural codes. Finally, the organization directly governs the visible forms of mobilization; the present movements’ pursuit of an external objective is no longer separate from their internal forms.” (Melucci 1989, 74). The collective action of the Higashi-kujo Madang cannot be evaluated by some direct response by the Kyoto government. It succeeds through its performance: liberating its members from being simply subject to the dominant code. They acquire through this cultural laboratory, the means to resist being hailed as Koreans in Kyoto and a spotlight to shine on the powers arrayed against their participation in local society.

Now we need to look directly at this event...

¹I tend to use the term Festival in a more restricted manner than this is commonly used. Like “culture” and “community,” “festival” is not a very useful technical term because of its expansive uses and referents. However, I also hope that by restricting the use of the term, or by using restrictive adjectives (such as “pseudo-” and “spectacle-”) with the term when these serve to front problematic uses of this term, that an increased reflection over what is and is not a “festival” might be stimulated among readers.