<html><body><P><FONT style="FONT-FAMILY: arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size=2> <BR>The Leonardo fund was to help post graduates move around Europe and do work experience, and so it seemed like a good idea that someone could come and get some money to do a self defined project with a publishing company. Basically the company provided the headed notepaper etc, and everything else was left up to the person coming. They would get about €3,000 for 5 months. (I think this was an EU programme so it mightv well be available in the accession states now.)</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>We had a about three people come from Bologna without any problems . . . but then we had a young Sardinian come - a successful academic who had studied Aristotle at great depth and wrote moving poetrty. However her experience in London was not so happy. She had a dark mediterranean appearance, and found herself becoming subject to racist abuse - things like being called a paki in the streets, but no actual violence. A bit later she moved into a flat with some Englishmen, who had no trouble for abusing her for being Italian.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>The project she was developing was to work on a booklet about Palestine, which she visited, travelling through Israel. Here she found that when she kept her mouth shut, most Israeli soldiers etc assumed she was an Arab. She was subject to surveillance and and had her computer seized by Israeli security. The surveillance continued after she returned to London and triggered a mental breakdown, eventually gher mother coming to take her back home.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>This was very traumatic for those of us around her, as she felt completely lost and paranoid. (Those who have been under surveillance will know the probelm of being able to distinguish between when someone is watching us and when it is something which has no relation to us.) The depth of the trauma was undoubtedly stimulated by the direct oppression she was experiencing, but another part of it was that her self-identity was being challenged by the racism she experienced in England and Palestine. Those of us trying to be supportive to her had all experienced racism from childhood, so we had to try and imagine how it was for her . . . and we had no experience of what goes on in Palestine.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>It made us question more this idea of identity, particularly how what it means to consider oenself a European - which in the Former British Empire means "White" - has so many different ramifications for different people in different ways. Seeing this in the raw process of someone having a mental breakdown took it well out of the usual abstractions which these matters are usually discussed in. It certainly made me want to deal with these issues more seriously, even if it did not produce any ease one line answers.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>That's the story for what it's worth.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>Fabian</FONT></P><br> <br><hr>Get email for your site ---> http://www.everyone.net<br></body></html>