Ħamalli And Non-Ħamalli: A Tale Of Two Public Spheres

Why we dismiss experiences of people whose tastes and behavior do not fit the accepted norms.

by Bernard Cauchi

Collage by Isles of the Left

 

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he starting point of this article are two photographs. Both feature women taking part in political activities.

The one on the left is a photograph of a middle-aged woman expressing her emotions at one of the Labour Party’s electoral campaign events in 2013. She seemed to have managed to infiltrate the carefully-doctored PL’s public relation activity aimed at putting other, more fashionable and youthful, individuals in front of the camera. The picture on the right portrays women who took part in the widely-reported event #OccupyJustice (dubbed as #OccupyCastille). These (mainly) female activists ‘occupied’ the space outside Castille for a number of days to protest against the institutions’ failure to protect the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Both cases drew public attention.

The picture representing the woman on the left was widely circulated and commented upon in popular media. The reaction of many on Facebook, and in the comments’ section of blogs like Running Commentary, was to poke fun at her and to label her as ‘ħamalla’. The commentators seemed to believe that the woman in question invaded a playground where she did not belong—politics—and that her presence downgraded the activity in which she took part. The insulting comments received no noticeable public condemnation.

[beautifulquote align=”left” cite=””]The contrast between the publicised public reactions to the protagonists of the two photos could not have been starker.[/beautifulquote]

However, the lack of disapproval was certainly not the case when Tony Zarb, the former General Secretary of the GWU, resorted to the misogynist language and innuendos on Facebook in response to the #OccupyJustice activity. The presence of the women in front of the office of the Prime Minister was accepted and respected by a larger group of the population, hence Zarb’s comments were followed with outrage and were widely (and rightly) condemned.

The contrast between the publicised public reactions to the protagonists of the two photos could not have been starker. In what follows, I offer some reflections on why people labelled ‘ħamalli’ are deemed inferior, compared to other members of society.

In his Il-Miklem Malti, Erin Serracino-Inglott claims that the roots of the word ‘ħamallu’ are in the Arabic word ‘ħamel’ which entered the Andalusian dialect as ‘alhamel’ and the Sicilian as ‘camàlu’, all of which described a stevedore, or a person who loads and unloads ships, but with connotations of an uneducated and vulgar person. This seems to confirm the historical processes which transformed words such as ‘vulgari’ and ‘pastaż’ from descriptions of common people from particular backgrounds to derogatory labels.

Ħamalli were always present in the political sphere in one way or another. In a short story set in the interwar period, Juan Mamo mentions how a Nationalist village activist was invited to a mass meeting and was requested to bring with him a number of ħamalli to applaud and raise their hands in order to create an impression of a well-attended event, even if they would not have been moved by the contents of the delivery.

[beautifulquote align=”left” cite=””]In the post-war era, many people from the lower classes started attending mass meetings, street demonstrations, protest marches and other political gatherings.[/beautifulquote]

In the post-war era, owing to the working class roots of the Labour Party, many people from the lower classes started attending mass meetings, street demonstrations, protest marches and other political gatherings. Though this fell short of having lower class people substantially represented in parliament (there were a few; today there are none), in itself popular participation symbolised a democratic victory, as politics became an ‘object of interest’ for everyone and not just the elite.

In the past two decades, in an attempt to attack the political base of the Labour Party, sections of the media used to feast on the presence of people from the lower classes at the PL’s political events.

The media would focus on the participant’s facial expressions and body language, seemingly implying disdain at their tastes and manners. These would apparently differ from the dominant and accepted bourgeois tastes, attitudes and values. In due course, especially when Labour drifted further to the right of the political spectrum and sought to appeal to the wider sectors of the local middle class, the party’s media started to respond in kind.

Andrea Brighenti refers to this ‘super-visibility’ as a form of human and moral invisibility. Some groups of the population are rendered invisible—in terms of not being accorded the same human and moral consideration as others—by, ironically, being over-portrayed. Everything they do “becomes gigantic to the point that it paralyses [them].” A case in point are media representations of immigrants. If the media continuously associates immigrants with crime, immigrants become ‘supra-visible’ as criminals. Their presence/existence creates ‘moral panic’ in other sectors of society. Something along these lines applies to how ħamalli are portrayed locally.

Consider labels the media reserves for people whose tastes and behaviour are deemed inappropriate.

[beautifulquote align=”left” cite=””]Some groups of the population are rendered invisible by, ironically, being over-portrayed.[/beautifulquote]

Journalists of various media groups have portrayed people of this group as an ‘uneducated lot’. It is common for a journalist, attending political manifestations, to single out individuals who fit the stereotype and to ask them questions regarding their allegiance to the party, the state of the economy, and other topics. Their (reported) answers would then be framed as a confirmation of the already presumed intrinsic ignorance of the subject. Anything uttered (and not uttered) is considered a sign of their ignorance and closed-mindedness. Similarly, the archetypes of ignorant, badly dressed, vulgar people are repeatedly objectified in other ‘everyday’ sites which manufacture opinions—entertainment shows, recurrent jokes, online blogs and videos.

Caricatures of ħamalli have become common and ubiquitous. Consider the comment left by a follower of the late Daphne Caruana Galizia:

[beautifulquote align=”full” cite=””]Wherever one goes you will meet ħamalli. Ħamalli here and ħamalli there, ħamalli everywhere. Boys and girls showing off their tattoe (sic) covered bodies. And these do not come only from the south. […] With money in their pockets they become dangerous cause they do not know how to use them in order to better themselves. So the basic is education.[/beautifulquote]

The quote above testifies that the presence of ħamalli is portrayed as encroaching, downgrading, if not outright threatening, to ‘respectable’ members of society. They are dehumanised and need to be saved from themselves. Those who hail from the socio-cultural background of the late author usually insist on paternalist solutions, demanding to ‘educate’ these individuals.

The reference to the need to educate ħamalli implies that there is a universal cultured, accomplished and rational way of relating to the world, thinking, narrating history and expressing oneself (including aesthetically). This assumption of existence of the one and only correct way is juxtaposed with “the ignorant, the residual, the inferior …and the non-productive” (as argued by M. Callejja in ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’). The ways which do not fit the dominant and accepted ‘correct’ way would, by definition, be invalid, irrational and worthless. They are “disqualified and [considered] unintelligible or discardable.” Hence, the need for ħamalli to abandon these practices in order to elevate themselves culturally and rationally, as well as in human and moral terms.

The a-priori dismissal of experience and opinions of people labelled as ħamalli goes against the ethos of democracy.

Judgments of taste are related to social position, or more precisely, are themselves acts of social positioning. The least we can do is to question the ethics behind these labels which mirror the social hierarchy. A democratic society ought to be aware of the experiences of people whose behaviour might not fit to the common perception of propriety. Moreover, a truly democratic society should seek to overcome the social hierarchy and move beyond assigning social roles to individuals according to their tastes and manners.