Walking the line

I have been mulling over the seeming impossibility of really talking about what it is to be adopted, and the feelings related to being adopted, with some people who are invested in the system to such a degree that they simply refuse to listen. Those who have read my blog over the past year are aware of "debates" about the primal wound, or ways in which adoptees are demeaned in "conversation" through various epithets I've mentioned: "bitter," "angry," "angsty," "ruined by a bad childhood." And of course, the parting shot: "MY adoptee won't grow up to be like YOU." The same tired arguments are rehearsed, over and over, in which adults (namely adult adoptees) are robbed of our agency by those who speak for adoptees they claim they know, or for their rights to be parents at all costs, or for "science."

I have been engaging in discussion with Daniel Ibn Zayd, an activist adoptee living in Beirut, about the difficulties and frustrations in trying to work within the existing framework of the hellagon and dominant culture, and he has agreed to let me post some of our conversations on my blog as food for thought. I would love to hear what other adoptees have experienced in terms of trying to be heard; what works, and what doesn't. How do we change things? How radical do we need to be?

For more information about Daniel, his projects, passions, and thoughts, visit his blog. Join the dialogue!

"This is because the native intellectual has thrown himself greedily upon Western culture. Like adopted children who only stop investigating the new family framework at the moment when a minimum nucleus of security crystallizes in their psyche, the native intellectual will try to make European culture his own." Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

Kara: I have been thinking much about the quote from Fanon that you shared, and I think it resonates deeply with the problems that we encounter in online discussions with APs, first parents, other "advocates," and even with other adoptees. 

At the time of our adoptions, we are stripped of our histories, our identities, everything. In your case, also of your culture, your language, and your religion. So (most of) us cling to the structure/language we're given to make sense of our experiences. This is the ideology of the dominant society, controlled by the industry, and in which our APs and first families function (or are encouraged to function). This is the world of Positive Adoption Language, the "good" adoptee, etc. It is the place in which we will be secure if we do as we are told. We can make this our own, and use it, but if we challenge it, we lose our paternalistic "protection" and our Otherness is immediately called into question. We are labeled as being "out of line," "different," and "aberrant." The "Not Us." If we have our own needs and and wants, or if we assert our own rights as adopted individuals, these are seen as non-existent, precisely because we are defined as Other. At most we are granted the "right" to our OBCs, but even that is suspect to many.

For example, I recently engaged in a feminist discussion about adoption and the rights of our (supposedly closeted) mothers were again and again seen as trumping the rights of adult adoptee WOMEN. How could this be, unless we were Other, and thus outside the circumscribed limits of the society in question? 

Those adoptees who are feted and rewarded are precisely those who adapt and praise and use the language and social customs and terms and social codes provided by the dominant culture. In order not to be rejected by the "family of man," so to speak, they agree to play within the given rules. While I concede that some adoptees may certainly feel happy to live within the existing paradigm, the existence of these happy adoptees isn't a reason to sanctify the existence of a failed structure that actively harms other adoptees by pathologizing their experiences.

You have, elsewhere, suggested that it is impossible for us to engage in true, productive dialogue because with an offhand remark, those in power, those unwilling to admit the power they have, are able to denigrate our position. There is no level playing field. Such is the ploy of labeling adoptees in discussions. The end message is that we are outliers, and that "normal, decent" adoptees don't grow up to be like us. It isn't in their interest to talk to us as equals, and so they don't. There isn't room for it in the model we have.

There is no listening. It is intensely frustrating. What are your thoughts? Are we too bound up as commodities to have voices?

Daniel: You've summed up our condition to a T. This is endlessly upsetting to me. I see it even beyond our condition, for example, in the thesis papers my students are forced to write they must conform their way of thinking to the dominant norm. This is a game of controlling output. I see it like constantly being patted back into position, as if we were wind-up toys. As long as we head in the right direction, then all is well. But the more we persist in trying to get away from the norm, and here what you are saying is really astute, ***knowing all the time that our very movements (our words) do not have a potential for freedom*** because we are still "controlled", the more we are knocked back into place. With time, that reaction just becomes increasingly violent.

I think what I resent most is the fact that I was removed from one group and placed with another, and by virtue of being raised with them, cannot communicate with anyone but the latter group. As I assimilate more (assimilate is not the right word; integrate perhaps) I am more and more loath to engage with the latter group, but this is where my job is, this is where my family and friends are, this is the language of the Internet and all of my communication is stuck there. I don't want to live one more bourgeois moment of my existence, and this is killing me. Because to truly step down from my position would mean completely severing myself from the world I have known my whole life.

For Ramadan I am reading this really great book on the Imam Ali (pbuh), called Justice and Remembrance. I'm more and more into liberation theologies, these places where radical ideas intersect with reality on the street. When I first got here, I used to use Marxist terms with the guys in my neighborhood, and the were immediately tagged onto political parties--"only such and such a group talks like that". When I match these terms with relevant terms from the Qur'an, then something interesting starts to happen, and a discussion is opened.

I guess what I am saying is that if we spend all our time trying to "walk out of line" like a little wind-up toy, we are going to go crazy. We need to seek out those who are outside of our circumstance and this structure if you will, and engage in order to get ***their*** voice heard. In doing so, our voice will be lifted as well.