We are living in an untimely period. Goa does not seem to have seen these times before. Hurt and pain have been our lived experience, but today we seem to have begun to claim being hurt to resolve wounds that may be real or imaginary. But claiming hurt was never in vogue in Goa. Hurt is making its presence felt through several technologies of staging in our public sphere. We seem to have stepped in an age of unreason where we are willing to embody hurt and even take the law in our hands or run to the police at the least pretext.
We have been people who valued peace and harmony above everything and have put up with worse trauma and pain through the dramatic past of our society. Filmmaker Shyam Benegal regretfully described ‘India is… a great republic of hurt sentiments…’ I like to think that Benegal is wrong but some events in Goa in recent days seem to have set us thinking. These events seem to suggest that we have taken the road to hurt sentiments.
The demand for hurt sentiments appears to be rising and seems to have become a convenient way of addressing people and their views that are unwelcome to us. The reigning condition seems to have fractured our belonging to India and Goa. Living at a time of mass-mediated outrage may have led to a condition that Benegal describes as a republic of hurt sentiments. This is why while distancing from the contemporaneity of the claims to being hurt in its finer details, maybe we have to discuss the state of hurt in general and examine how it raises emotions that call for revenge, reparation and even violence. Maybe we have to also examine the politics of claiming hurt.
We may even ask: are we more hurt than ever before? Or are we more conscious of hurts today? We may even have to ask: Has claiming hurt become a way of making political capital? Is such a political capital strategically produced, circulated and mediated in our society to benefit a political elite? Maybe it is time that we discuss the place of hurt sentiments in our political as well as public life.
Hurt is a felt sentiment and produces pain that can cripple our lives but claiming to be hurt that might fuel politics of hurt is never a therapeutic option. Wounds cannot be healed by wounding the one who wounds. This is why the claim to being hurt though may appear reasonable at first sight has to be viewed as a dangerous excess. It fosters a sense of victimhood that can fracture peace and harmony of a society.
Some scholars view the claim of being hurt as staying within the architecture of censorship like the ‘ obscene’ , the ‘offensive’ , the ‘ hurtful’ and the harmful’ employed by the power elite in any society. This is why they challenge us to critically examine populist mobilisation of hurt. This problematises both the agents as well as affected addresses of hurt. Affective economies of hurt circulate within all spheres of life and humanity has great strength and resilience to cope with them. Hence, a hermeneutics of hurt might generate empathy and enable forgiveness that will heal the one who hurts and one who is hurt.
The fact that the hurt gets visibilised in the claims to being hurt and produce hurt politics, we need to seek ways of dealing with it to give peace and harmony a chance in our society. In the reigning market of outrage, we cannot simply add to the decimals of hate by our own outrage against outrage. What we need is to work to produce a discourse that will enable us to understand how we have reached a point where we find ourselves today.
In this context, where there are several possible reasons that may explain why we have the state of affairs that afflict us, I find Slavoj Zizek’s view profoundly insightful. He teaches that we today, live in a society that wants coffee without caffeine or beer without alcohol or meat without fats, etc. Such a society also desires the other without his/ her otherness. The minority is desirable as long as he/she sheds his/her otherness. He/she has to become like the majority. Everything seems to become worthy of embrace as long as it is deprived of its substance or otherness.
It is the demand for a decaffeinated other that gives credence to the discourse of claims of being hurt and itself justifies the discourse and actions that hurt others. We, therefore, have to revisit our sentimental sovereignties and demonstrate courage of understanding and forgiveness that gives peace the first opportunity. Our sentimental sovereignties demand censure and exclusion from a filiative and intersubjective ‘polis’, that we call as Goa to those that are deemed as hurtful. This exclusion amounts to cutting off our own limbs as Goans. The demand, therefore, for censure and exclusion of the hurt inducing Goans is decaffeinating Goan-ness and depriving it of its substance.
Real Goans have a large heart and have put up with great pain and trauma in the past without claiming victimhood. We cannot amputate or expel hurt, we can only heal the hurt otherwise the chain of violence and hurt will spiral and we will indeed become a republic of hurt sentiments. Goans can indeed break this chain of hurt.
Just in case the claim to hurt was simply a pretence to silence and marginalised voices of dissent, we have the challenge to move from this decaffeinated state to authentic humanness as well as Goan-ness. Goans cannot let peace be a failed performative. Sovereignty of Goa and Goan-ness is certainly above what we may call sovereignties of hurt.
It is by Goanising that we become Goans and radiate Goan-ness. Goan-ness is fragile. It is produced by all Goans together. It is not an essence thrusted upon us. We have collectively produced it. It is deeply decolonial. Hence, we can certainly settle the unsettling claims to being hurt made by some in a peaceful dialogical manner. Moreover, there is a huge gap in giving and taking offence or insult. Our refusal to take offence can take the sting out of those who wish to build a republic of hurt sentiments and benefit from it. We do not have to intro-ject or extro-ject hurt. Just take what is deemed as hurt in our stride. If we invest too much energy in what is deemed as hurt, we might not be able to rise above the hurt. Escaping from hurt is not an option but addressing it and letting it go is the way ahead. Letting go is the Goan susegad way to freedom.
(Fr Victor Ferrao is an independent researcher attached to St Francis Xavier Church, Borim, Ponda.)