When I lived in Mauritius, I and three other persons organised a demonstration against the use of pesticides on food. For many years, I had been curious about private citizen activism: frowning at motorists when they litter, marching in the rain to the State House in support of the #BringBackOurGirls movement. It was unsurprising then, that I had found myself in another country, still charged with that refusal to be silent, to speak up on the things I am passionate about; to defend my beliefs with action.
It was a May Day in 2017, the weather ripened by the sun, turning the sky into a violent blue. The protest was targeted at the institutional silence and hegemony exerted by the Mauritian government in relation to the high rate of cancer in Mauritius which has been linked with deregulated use of pesticides. Emphasis was strong in the context of food contamination and health crisis management, and our strategy was to execute a silent protest: saying nothing, doing nothing, standing with face masks and placards in one of the busiest markets on the Island in Quarte Bornes. People walked by; some paused to stare and others captured the moment on their phones.
Analysing the image projected by a silent body involved in protest speaks to the ways the human body is often controlled by regime, place, and power structures. Because an encounter with a still body is uncommon to a marketplace, it blurs the social construction of space and response, all the while rendering the body as a critical vessel for resistance. I spent a lot of time thinking about this form of protest, and how much of what we were doing that day was reinforcing our freedom just by doing nothing.
Freedom was represented in the protest through the complete disregard of the dominant knowledge that a market space is concerned with everyday commerce, and by utilising that space for our performance as an act of corporate resistance, I was expanding the social construction of the very space itself. The apparent “uncommon nature” of this then becomes a democratic agent when employed in protests- which is to say that discourse is merely presented in a non-violent setting, and the audience is required to make sense of it themselves.
In choosing to occupy a market space, I was experimenting with celebrated Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s theory of counter-hegemony with the intent to re-educate and activate individual consciousness. Although we were subjected to several kinds of responses from sellers, we occupied their place of power and demonstrated the anti-hegemonic strategy intended against the corporatization of the food industry in Mauritius.
Through the hours spent silently holding placards, standing in our own human authority, market sellers would challenge us, yelling “Should we eat salt?” or “Go and tell it to the corporates”, and “leave our market”. In the same light, some other sellers requested more information on alternatives. While this showed public approval to an extent, the negative responses directed at us referenced not only the pesticide debate itself but also what was implied to be a deeply rooted anger at our decision to occupy the market. Of course, the deliberate selection of place and time – that is, deciding to execute on a Saturday, the market day of the municipality which witnesses a strong crowd – was another way to include the local agencies concerned in the discourse, but to expose the conversation to a public audience, coercing them to contemplate their position in the debate, all without even saying one word.
