Romani Liberation

Abstract

I have known Jan Selling for many years but came closer to his work while presiding on the board of the Roma Archive, an experience I value greatly.Getting to know him better, both personally and later through his work, while at the same time having discussions within the framework of the Roma Archive, I came to understand his position better.He is one of those academics with a high capacity of self-reflection on his position, not only as a researcher but also as a white, middle-class male.We sometimes used to joke about this mixture of privileges while I was listing my intersectional dis-privileges.Knowing his wife, Solvor, longer than him, I understood why they came together and what brought and has kept them together: humanism and self-reflection on power, being some of the most wonderful aspects of their relationship.So, the lines I write here are more about my emotions, which have developed in 30 years of activism a conscience for the recognition and acceptance of what and how we feel when we read, talk, and revendicate our history.This book brought me emotions of all kinds, including anger and sadness.As a fan of Papusza, the Polish Romani poet, I am including here some of her verses from the poem "Tears of Blood," the story of the Holocaust, so meaningful for the work Jan has done in this book: ….All the birds are praying for our children, so the evil people, vipers, will not kill them.Ah, fate!My unlucky luck!Snow fell as thick as leaves, barred our way, viii Foreword such heavy snow, it buried the cartwheels.One had to trample a track, push the carts behind the horses.How many miseries and hungers!How many sorrows and roads!How many sharp stones pierced our feet!How many bullets flew by our ears! 1 Later, we drew closer during all the heated public debates regarding the writings of another generation of non-Romani researchers, writings which across the years, with the cooperation of Romani scholars, have contributed to the power of non-Roma in academic spheres.These kinds of academic and power attitudes towards Roma are the best expressed in the work of the Gypsy Lore Society.This power has defined who we are, what we should wear, how we should behave, and what the policies of the state should be for our "integration" and "civilization," because we, Roma, "poor us," are unable to say a word.Their colonial attitude toward Roma, unfortunately, still exists even today.I, as a Romani civil rights activist, feminist, and academic, have at the same time faced the criticisms of the worlds surrounding these roles, faced with the criticism of being either a nationalist, a de-constructivist, or not being objective enough to be a real researcher, and I could go on and on with this.In reading this book, we may feel it become very personal, in a strange way.Even though I have read, used, and practiced strategic essentializing, and have contributed to the politics of memorialization and the pioneering of critical discourse studies, the lines in this book make me understand where I am and why: a Romani woman living in this century who identifies with her ancestors and their struggles.It is like a trip through my own history.One of the aspects of my discourse is the statement that we are a people without power, who have not practiced the institutions of power, and have only recently through our own self-organization come to learn some of this.However, even though lacking access to institutionalized power, we have achieved so much!This book is like a record of the struggles for emancipation, intellectual autonomy, and decolonialization.One thought haunted me while

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