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PAUL KINGSNORTH
NON-FICTION
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What does that incident carry for me? Only this: some sense of reciprocity between a people and the place they live in. Some sense of belonging. That first book of mine, written when I was a young, fiery activist, dedicated to bringing down global capitalism and ushering in a regime of worldwide economic justice—it turned out to be a little misleading in the end. It was supposed to be a travelogue, a series of visits to the heartlands of resistance to economic globalization. But I kept moving the goalposts, widening my search so that I had an excuse to spend time with people like the Papuans, or landless Brazilian farmers, or Indigenous people in southern Mexico. The middle-class Europeans blockading summits and waffling about Negri and Fanon bored me to tears. They were rootless; they were as lost as me. They came in by plane or train from some other European city, they put on their black masks and Palestinian scarves, shouted at some fat cats, got tear-gassed and then went home. Empty gestures, empty words, and I was empty too. But in the Baliem Valley in Papua or the Lacandon jungle in Mexico I found something else; something older, deeper, calmer and very much more real. I found people who belonged to a place. I had never seen this before. Where I grew up, there was nothing like it. It had—it still has—more meaning to me than any other way of human living I had seen. I wanted to know: what would that be like? And could I have it?
My family is from the lower middle class, the most derided class in England. Not callus-handed and romantically oppressed like the working class. Not classy or rich like the gentry or the aristos. Not possessed of degrees or home libraries or big wine glasses like the haute bourgeoisie. Not exotic and in need of stout liberal defence like the migrants. We are the class snickered at in Roald Dahl books. We come from suburbs and have family cars and watch the telly in the lounge and live in medium-sized towns in unfashionable places and have never been to the theatre and regard the Daily Mail as a good newspaper. I’m not speaking personally. I don’t regard the Daily Mail as a good newspaper, though I do think it has quite a fetching logo.
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