To a Head
So, is your head your head even after you're dead?
Right now, the French are arguing about that. They've got a Maori man's tattooed head. The mayor of Rouen wants to give it back to the Maoris in New Zealand, The ministry of Culture in France is saying that the head should stay, because it's "Art", and Art belongs to the state. The Ministry fears that other body parts, like Mummies, for example, may be returned to their countries of origin. Now, keep in mind how this head might have come to be in Rouen: a Maori slave might have been forcibly tattooed, then, decapitated, so that French spectators could gawk at it. This transition of person to "it" seems at the heart of the matter, forgive the bad joke. If you're a person, regardless of whether you're alive or not, you have certain rights, don't you? Wouldn't you at least have the right to determine what happens to your body? But, if so, what about prisons? I'm sure prisoners would like their still-living bodies to reside outside of prison, right? So, at what point do you become an "it"? Surely death would be such a point, wouldn't it, if crime counts enough to remove your rights?
While I couldn't presume to come up with a law, I could say that I think they should give back the head, even if it means every body part, everywhere, has to be returned to the ground. It just seems a greater right that we control our bodies than the right of a State to warehouse them.
Part of this comes down to death, I suppose. In Dallas, this week, somebody bought about 100 strands of Ernesto "Che" Guevero's hair for $100,000. The hair came with finger prints, and photographs after Che had been executed by CIA operatives. I doubt that hair and fingerprints and ugly photos would be worth nearly as much if Che had not lived the life that he did, and I suspect that were he alive, he wouldn't be selling a lock of hair or a fingerprint at an auction. I think the only way that such a thing could happen is if his ability to speak for himself was taken away, just like the only way this Maori man's head could only be in a museum by his death. So, is it any more right if it's just hair, as opposed to a head?
Part of this comes down to slavery. Can a person ever be "owned" by another? The way our history has happened, I suspect there's a debate on that. To me, it's no question: you cannot own anyone. But, I suspect that people make exceptions. Maybe they have to dehumanize the other person first? But, maybe they don't. Maybe they see their wants and needs as greater than other people's. So, if you can own a maori, then, you can use them however you will. Even if that means taking some 17 year old, holding them down, violating every cultural taboo they have, and tattooing their face to indicate that they are some they most definitely are not, and then, as soon as the face is set, hacking their head off. It's no different than carving your initials in a tree in your backyard, right? Then, 150 years later, you still own that head, just as you owned the person, just like you still own that tree; your initials are carved right into it.
But, if you, like me, are not OK with that, and think it's an evil mindset, what about your persian rug? There's a good chance that how it came to be involved a story something like this: a very poor pakistani family gets a "job' for their 7 year old son, with a rugmaker. The terms are this: the family is given about 100 bucks (quite a large sum of money) and the boy will go to the rugmaker. At the rugmakers' the boy will be chained to a loom. He will be fed, and will sleep a few hours every few days. The rest of the time, he will be expected to weave rugs. The light will not be good, and eventually, he will go blind. At that point he will be 'fired'. His back will be bent from years at the loom, and he will have difficulty walking. So, blind and crippled, he'll become a beggar, and most likely will die before his 20th birthday. Now, nobody will call that 'slavery' but when you buy that rug, haven't you bought that boy, really?
It goes farther than that, though. Very likely, the things you own were created using sweatshops, or other forms of near-slavery. Not everything you own, but some things. Maybe you think that such things are OK, because you don't know, exactly, which items were created by which sweatshop, and really, isn't a sweatshop job better than starving to death?
Yeah, it's exceptionally hard to stay 'clean', isn't it? I certainly am not. I'm certain that my life is predicated on other people's suffering. So, do I don a hairshirt? that wouldn't do any good, either.
So, all I can do is to say that while I think it's wrong to own people, even after they're in a condition that they cannot speak for themselves, but I cannot claim to have the moral authority to make a law.
Even with all that, you know what? maybe we should start displaying French heads in our museums, and Ronald Reagan's hair should be sold to a Nicauraguan. Maybe we should start chaining people who own persian rugs to their rugs. Maybe we should all spend a year working in a sweat shop. (I've already done three months of my time. I worked in a 'fufillment center' which is a fancy way of saying "sweatshop"). Would that make it right?
