Ailton Krenak

«There is no safe that can hold life»

Ailton Krenak on nature and neutrality

In Milo Rau's "Antigone", Ailton Krenak plays Teireisas, the infallible blind prophet - Teiresias' prophecies are always aphorisms and never wrong.

Introduction

Neutrality is a prison into which Switzerland has taken refuge, said Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt in 1990. The Swiss felt free in their prison of neutrality. Is that still the case today, 175 years after the Swiss Federal Constitution came into force? How free are we in this country that is more internationally networked and economically active than ever before? How can the concept of "neutrality" be reflected within the context of a Switzerland that wants to use its "good offices" to help prevent conflicts and solve the world's current major challenges?

The climate crisis is the greatest challenge of the century, probably the greatest challenge of mankind. Human activities are the driving force behind climate change, and the responsibility for this situation lies with affluent nations and individuals who are responsible for further increasing CO2 emissions, i.e. also with us. When faced with this catastrophe, how can Switzerland uphold the principle of neutrality in its foreign policy? Sometimes it helps to look from the outside to understand how Switzerland's neutrality is perceived from the outside - especially by those whose lives are particularly dependent on our decisions.

Therefore, Kaserne Basel asked Ailton Krenak, indigenous activist and philosopher of the Brazilian Krenak people: Have we lost our relationship with nature? What responsibility arises from our understanding of a neutral country when the climate crisis fuels future conflicts, migration movements and inequality in the world?

On nature and neutrality

Text prepared from a transcription of a Zoom conversation between Ailton Krenak, Anna Dantes and Madeleine Deschamps, in May 2023, in response to a prompt by Tobias Brenk^[1] regarding Swiss neutrality in the face of the global climate emergency

I was quite intrigued when Tobias Brenk, artistic director of the cultural center Kaserne in Basel, asked me to consider the subject of Swiss economic—and to a lesser extent, political—neutrality. He was so precise in diagnosing this particular moment that I felt drawn make a sort of journey back through time to an age in which the separation that produced the idea of neutrality had not yet been demanded of anyone. Back to a time when human communities, regardless of which continent they lived on, could create plural relations with that which today we call nature. These relations were so fluid that in many languages there is not even a word for nature.^[2] The term emerged out of the relations that humans constructed with what came to be the invented concept of nature.

There were authors in the nineteenth century who were able to identify the moment in which some societies defined what nature was and instituted a sort of separation, a radical division between culture and nature. Within the realm of culture reside the political and economic spheres. Culture includes both economics and politics and nature is that which is left outside.

The possibility of establishing a neutral tradition of thought in relation to politics and nature is a product of history. It was probably only within the last 200 or 300 years that human communities were able to produce this abstraction. Yet no one can be neutral about anything. We are all profoundly implicated in everything that happens. Of course, we can claim neutrality in relation to certain areas of life. We can be neutral when it comes to politics, meaning that we do not want to participate in a particular political ideology. We can be neutral, for example, in the face of conflict. In the Second World War, Switzerland was neutral. The country stayed out of the global conflict, and many people saw this as a positive thing. For a long time, Switzerland has built an identity as the standard-bearer for neutrality. It seems that the Swiss have felt very comfortable occupying this place and have created a justification to remain there, in a state of neutrality.

But it so happens that this neutrality also produced an exclusive privilege, that of being able to keep secrets and be, in a certain sense, the guardian of open, protected, and neutral relationships with a variety of actors in the world. We all know about the troubled origins of the many global fortunes that have ended up in Switzerland. The country has been a haven for unfairly accumulated wealth. Many people with incalculable fortunes stashed their money in Switzerland. This is public knowledge, everyone knows that Switzerland is a safe that guards the neutrality of those who are not one bit neutral, because the dictatorships all over the world hiding their money in Switzerland are not neutral, they are greatly consequential in the lives of their people, leading to domination and global totalitarianism. Today, this political and social injustice coincides with a climate crisis, which presents a new challenge for the concept of neutrality: the fact that no one can enjoy impunity in the face of climate change.

Neutrality, when it comes to the Earth, to what we call nature, is a fiction

When the temperature of the planet reaches unsustainable levels for everyone, it will be impossible for anyone to be neutral. This body cannot be neutral, it will also be affected by the changes that are happening around us, in our terrestrial ecosystems, but also on the psychological plane, the mental plane. We are already aware of the fact that today, people are falling ill much more frequently. Under great amounts of stress, they are losing the ability to comprehend the things that happen to us, events in which we are all implicated. If a majority of people globally are suffering from this discomfort, it is impossible to claim a position of neutrality. Neutrality, when it comes to the Earth, to what we call nature, is a fiction. It is not possible to hold such an abstracted view that one cannot see that the icebergs are melting, that the bear who was white has become brown from so much pollution and that the air we breathe on our planet is sick. Neutrality is not possible in the face of overwhelming evidence that some parts of the planet are melting and others are being scorched by severely elevated temperatures.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has alerted us that the countries of northern Europe could experience increasing instability due to migration and refugees from elsewhere in the world. These refugees are going to knock on our door, on your door, on my door, and there will be no neutrality when they are knocking on our door, just like in that Bob Dylan song that goes “knock-knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door.” Meaning that even if you created a neutrality that is so exemplary, so complete that you are able to live as if you were a deity, at some point you will awake to a crowd knocking on your door and singing a Bob Dylan song.

It is not just about income redistribution, it is mostly about the distribution of feelings and affection

It is important to grasp the reality of the global emergency that confronts us. It is not just a climate emergency, it is also a humanitarian one and a matter of justice. Today there is a consensus that we need to create mechanisms to apply what is often called “restorative justice.” Restorative justice means taking away privileges from those who have too many and minimizing the suffering of those who have suffered too much. This means that it is not just about income redistribution, it is mostly about the distribution of feelings and affection. We need to have feelings about our existence, about our life experiences, and those come from the Earth. It is the Earth that teaches us this. Mother Earth. Stepping lightly upon the Earth is different from neutrality, instead it is a form of engagement.^[3]

The idea of neutrality is a product of a long history of humans building economies centered around a belief in developmentalist progress. It is the idea of development itself. Now, we are being summoned to the project of engagement. Engaging ourselves by extending good feelings and affection to others, regardless of the borders that separate our countries. These borders were necessary for a long time, but now we are being challenged to evolve beyond them. We need to evolve and evolving means surmounting borders, be they geopolitical, economic, or cultural. We have to engage with the planet, engage with the Earth, engage with the terrestrial ecosystems that are the source of everything that we have. We can only have wealth if the Earth continues to live, in full health so that she can provide prosperity to humans.

A neutral place does not produce any wealth, but only accumulates it

The Earth is our only mother, the only source, the only provider of wealth. It is impossible to produce such wealth from a neutral place. A neutral place does not produce any wealth, but only accumulates it. There was a poet named Ernesto Cardenal who is no longer with us. He wrote a wonderful poem that speaks of unjust riches, and it concludes by saying that all material wealth is unjust, because it is nothing but accumulation.

If you create an experience of neutrality supported solely by egoism, you are hastening the end of the world. If we want to postpone the end of this world in which we live, we need to extend its borders through solidarity, with compassion, and a collective sense of belonging to the Earth, where humans feel less affiliation to a national flag, to a national border, and more to Mother Earth herself. We are children of the planet Earth. If we are not able to restore this connection, we will find ourselves in an abyss. It is a cognitive abyss, one that lacks a sense of the experience of life. This is because the experience of life is constituted by relationships, relations with others. We have to relate to all beings, including non-human ones. Our life experience cannot be constructed within a manmade prison.

The cocoon of the human, this body that carries us through life, cannot be transformed into an instrument of isolation. It has to animated by all the senses of life so that we can experience what our dear Emanuele Coccia calls metamorphosis, meaning, the leaf, the tree, the lizard, the butterfly, all of this is life in different bodies. They are different cocoons carrying life, or rather it is life animating all those bodies, all those things. Life itself cannot be contained, it does not stop anywhere. There is no safe that can retain a finite measure of life. So if you create a neutral place in the world thinking that you will accumulate life, you are mistaken, because you have engaged in the worst of the human experience, necropolitics, a politics of death rather than an experience of creation, of the production of life.

The idea of neutrality is perhaps a type of sensorial abyss

Producing life means entering into a flow, it is being part of a current, it is belonging, not isolation. The idea of neutrality is perhaps a type of sensorial abyss. Those who live neutrally have an atomizing experience of the ego, of egoism. We must leave this behind. We must leave this behind just as a bird leaves the egg from which it hatches. If a bird gets stuck in an eggshell, it dies. It needs to break the eggshell in order to fly. And if we can invite others to fly with us, this will be better than having an experience of neutrality.

I felt compelled to respond to the statement that there is a place in the world that has chosen to build its strength around neutrality. I do not know where the inspiration for this came from, whether it is an anthropocentric vision, the idea that man is the center of everything, or if it comes from an impulse to exclude based on a racist worldview, which would be widely denounced as structural racism.

Ailton Krenak is a thinker, environmentalist and one of the principal spokespeople for indigenous thought in Brazil. He created, together with the publisher Dantes Editora, the program Selvagem—ciclo de estudios sobre a vida (Wild - Cycle of Studies About Life). He lives in the Krenak village, on the banks of the Doce River, in the state of Minas Gerais. He is the author of the books Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo (Companhia das Letras, 2019), O amanhã não está à venda (Companhia das Letras, 2020), A vida não é útil (Companhia das Letras, 2020), and Futuro ancestral (Companhia das Letras, 2022).

Translated by Meg Weeks, July 2023

^[1] In a message to Krenak, Tobias Brenk, artistic director of Kaserne Basel, wrote that “Switzerland, a country that has always presented itself as neutral, is a major player in terms of its ecological footprint, due to the international companies based here and the Swiss money that is invested all over the world. The Swiss see themselves as perpetually in harmony with nature, but within an environment that is made by and for humans. We have lost our natural way of being part of and coexisting with nature, and this is why we are not more active in reducing our emissions and our impact on the natural environment. Our country avoids any type of progressive statements, and when it comes to reforms to combat climate change, economic interests are as important as the opinions of scientists and philosophers. Furthermore, political initiatives are insufficient to fundamentally change our relationship to nature. Is neutrality a capitalist idea of not taking a stand, yet still taking advantage of all opportunities to make an economic profit? What does this mean for our coexistence with nature? Can we think about the term “neutrality” in a different way? In September of 2023, a season of artistic programming will open at Kaserne Basel, a theater and cultural center in downtown Basel that serves as an important political and social space for activists and artists. In September, we will exhibit Milo Rau’s “Antigone,” a theatrical production in which Ailton Krenak plays Tiresias, the blind seer. I think that Ailton’s work could have an important impact here in Switzerland. With this text, I hope that reflections emerge that bring new energy to the debate, as was the case with other collaborations with Selvagem: Ciclos de estudos sobre a vida.

^[2] In particular, many indigenous languages do not have a specific word for nature.

^[3] The original Portuguese term is envolvimento, which is closely linked to the word desenvolvimento, meaning development.