By Christos Karystinos
Oppression in the West
Let’s go back to the roots of ToO and question ourselves, who are the oppressed now? When Boal lived in the 60’s in Latina America, globalisation and capitalism were only starting to raise to their full potential as they are now. They did rule the global economy but yet the ideas and the attitude of capitalism have not yet reached every last person in the rural areas. Nowadays through internet and through enterprise, modern businesses which work with capitalist structure and motives, capitalism have reached every single corner of the known world influencing people’s thoughts and stands about life and particularly against power. We are living in the era when the oppressed as defined by Freire or the working class by Marx, lots of similarities between them, are very much alienated by the rest of their class and by their own identity as part of it.
This creates the need for a new definition of the 21st century oppressed. Which are the ones to use ToO and which is the revolutionary mass that ToO will empower to revolt against their oppressors? Well my political analysis cannot reach a global perspective, little do I know about the world’s oppressed people, so I can speak only for modern Europe as this is what I have experienced in my life and in my travels. Living in Greece and getting involved in various political groups in Athens during the crisis has shaped my perception of oppression. All kinds of different political ideologies are very vibrant at this time in Athens, making me familiar with anarchism, communism, fascism, immigrants and state and police violence. Maybe if I would be living in another part of Europe, my perspective would be different concerning which are our modern oppressors. However, during the crisis our oppressors were very apparent and not hard to distinguish, as Boal counter-argues about Europe in his journey in France in the 70’s. Police brutality, imprisonment of innocents, racist assassinations, unemployment, destruction of social welfare by the state and authoritarian oppressive education would give you plenty of oppressors to chose from. The oppressors were not in our heads.
This contradicts the overall shift of ideology seen in Europe’s grassroots movements after the May 1968 resurrection, to three things: First, the internalization of our oppressions, creating the cops in our heads, secondly, “changing the system from the inside”, creating NGO’s etc that reform the system and thirdly, “creating another system”, create a parallel economy/structure that will replace the current one. The “old” way of fighting against the system was abandoned as a failed strategy. This shift, done by the grassroots movements themselves and not by a political theorist or philosopher, affected the way the oppressed perceive themselves in the current capitalist system. The elite took advantage of this shift shifting at the same time the responsibility of this failing capitalist system to the oppressed themselves and as equals, who are equally responsible for the oppression. So all these factors combined with the alienation of the individual, led to a shift in the oppressed philosophical and political stand.
I believe we live in a time when very little people consider themselves as oppressed. This is not the same as a working class person not considering him/herself as such, it is different. I am talking about people not feeling politically oppressed in a sense that they blame someone reach for being poor for example. The status quo is rarely challenged even intellectually. So this brings us back to the question, which are the modern oppressed, according to Boal’s definition of it? A person who experience injustice, wants to fight it, but cannot find a way/ fails to “solve” it, according to ToO theory.
