This Can Have a Name and It Might Be: Barbarism
HAVANA TIMES – A friend of mine, every time he passes by the place where I sell books, shouts a greeting at me while speeding past on his scooter. He always says the same thing, loudly from the street: “Lien, no words!” I, standing where I am, knowing perfectly well what he means, respond just as loudly: “No words!” That’s because when we Cubans feel ashamed by a reality, an event, or someone’s behavior, we often end up saying things like: “No comment.”
But there are situations or processes in which you’re asked to name what bothers or affects you so that it can be healed. That may be the only way in human reality. When you go to a psychologist, for instance, and you don’t know how to name your feelings or emotions, because you have no idea what’s happening to you, the specialist helps identify what you’re experiencing: whether it’s anger, helplessness, grief, anxiety, or some other kind of suffering.
In other types of therapy, you’re also taught to recount your experiences as fully as possible. In Alcoholics Anonymous, Neurotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Addicts to One Woman or One Man… the first thing you learn is to identify your afflictions and call them by name and surname. That way, you can examine them closely, become aware of them, and begin to resolve them.
In the feminist movement, the first thing women are taught is also to recognize themselves within society. To begin using inclusive language in order to see themselves as fully alive and to fight—from that place—for dignity, rights, justice, equity, and to claim all those values in our Western society that have only been afforded to half of the human race: men. The understanding is that what isn’t named doesn’t exist.
In journalism, too, there’s a belief that reality is reconstructed and transformed through words. This is true in many cultures as well. What is named exists. That’s why science names everything. When we open the Book of Genesis—the first book of the Holy Scriptures for Jews, Christians, and Muslims—it begins with the story of how God, the Unnamable (the only thing in life that cannot be named because humans cannot define it), gives a name to each element of creation. And once each thing is called by its name, it begins to exist.
If things aren’t named, they simply don’t exist; they’re not part of reality. They come to life only once we’re able to name them. In Cuba, because there’s so much confusion, helplessness, and agony, the first thing we often say is: “This has no name.” And from that state of astonishment, we fall into a kind of learned helplessness, a social inertia that crushes us, erases us, neutralizes us. In doing so, with our thoughts and expressions, we hand over all our power to those who, as they prove daily, refuse to relinquish even the slightest control over the country.
A government that instills the same attitude in all of us. As if constantly saying: You will never know how to choose another option, another narrative, another way of thinking or living, outside of the one we dictate— we, white, heterosexual, powerful, military men, who know exactly what to do with our weapons, like repressing anyone who dares to name what they’re experiencing in their own words, either personally or as a community, without our permission or without agreeing with us.
The moment that women and men in today’s Cuban society living on the Island under this regime, become conscious and brave enough to express what they feel, think, and believe without fear of contradicting those in power, and begin to name the world they want to build, reality will begin to move toward real transformation. Without a doubt. As long as the fear of expressing ourselves, of naming things, of saying what we think, continues to reign, we can be sure that the chains will remain, firmly fastened to our feet, though we may not see them, and to our souls, even if we don’t notice at first glance.
As a people, we must reclaim a sense of responsibility. Become aware of the power of our words and speak them as we believe we must, faithful to what we want to eliminate or create. As long as we continue surrendering this power to a single caste, in this case, the rulers, we can be certain there will be little we can do to bring about real change that improves our quality of life and grants us a dignified existence.
As a joke or in jest, saying “No words,” “No comment,” or “This has no name” may be a valid response. But not in the construction of a better life.