Some Reflections from London on Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth

Among the many unsavory biographical sketches presented in Judges, Jephthah comes out particularly poor. Born the son of a prostitute in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, his rash and violent personality has its lasting showing in this infamous conflict with the Southern Ephraimites, wherein after a major victory against the Ephriamite army he succeeds in massacring the retreating stragglers.

Jephthah captured the shallow crossings of the Jordan River, and whenever a fugitive from Ephraim tried to go back across, the men of Gilead would challenge him. “Are you a member of the tribe of Ephraim?” they would ask. If the man said, “No, I’m not,” 6 they would tell him to say “Shibboleth.” If he was from Ephraim, he would say “Sibboleth,” because people from Ephraim cannot pronounce the word correctly. Then they would take him and kill him at the shallow crossings of the Jordan. In all, 42,000 Ephraimites were killed at that time. (Judges 12, NLV)

Of course, Jephthah was probably not the first to use language pronunciation as an identification tool, and he was hardly the last. This US War Department produced comic was intended to instruct soldiers stationed in China during World War II (and really, it's worth a glance):

Most unique about Jephthah's “shibboleth” (a simple word meaning stream or flowing water) is how the idiom was picked up and developed into a relatively common word in the English language meaning a word or phrase which is used to distinguish groups of people, or simply a word or phrase unique to a given group. In fact, I heard Hillary Clinton toss it out the other night on Meet the Press. So it was particularly interesting to me when I heard the new exhibit which would occupy the Tate Modern's large Turbine Hall concourse was called: The Shibboleth.

Salem, my brother and narrator this fine video, visited me in London at the beginning of 2008 and it was then he shot this little clip. The Shibboleth is essentially an artificially constructed crack in the concrete floor of the concourse, running some 500 feet. For the artist, Colombian Doris Salcedo, the crack represents racism as the "dark side of modernity," stretching along the length of its development. Her work wants to call into question "the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built." In a recent interview she remarks:

The presence of the immigrant is always unwelcome. The presence of the immigrant is seen as jeopardising the culture of Europe. Europe has been seen as a homogeneous society, a democratic society that has learned, through centuries of development, has learned to resolve the issues through dialogue. And if that is the case then where do we place these outbreaks of racial hatred?...

...As you look in you can get the feeling of catastrophe in there but nonetheless outside it is quite subtle and I wanted a piece that intrudes in the space, that it is unwelcome like an immigrant that just intrudes without permission, just gets in slowly and all of a sudden it’s there and it’s a fairly big presence...

A closer inspection reveals the jagged sides of the crack are inlaid with a sort of wire mesh. Says Salcedo:

It was a Spanish invention actually. The first one was built in Cuba in 1896 by General Arsenio Martínez Campos. Then the British began to use concentration camps in the Boer War, followed by the Germans of course. Now it has come back full circle to Cuba, with Camp Delta in Guantánamo Bay. Fencing is so normal nowadays, it's everywhere, it's literally embedded in our lives and we don't even notice.

I have to say, I was tremendously impressed and found yet a bit of room in my heart for modern art. Well done, Doris. While the art is tremendously worthy of discussion in and of itself, yet I found myself thinking more about the inspiration behind it.

It is instructive that of all the places for the birthing of such a concept, the Bible was chosen. How clearly has the Bible itself been both a vehicle of salvation and a device of the wicked, a message of hope and a tool of indoctrination, quoted to start wars and quoted to cease from them. Maybe it is because the Bible so clearly presents to us our own humanity: our humanity with all of its brokenness and violence, right alongside of our greatest hopes and joys: "sorrow and joy flow mingled." Alongside Jehu, there is Jepthah, by the apostle John walks Judas. Maybe it is because in reading the Bible we are confronted by our own condition and even short biographies presenting obscure figures from the ancient Near East need not great amounts of inspiration for us to find in them an appraisal of our own tendencies. I for one, won't shy from pledging my allegiance to these words as sacred scripture, and aligning my hopes with those of the ancient Israelites: I look forward to and hope in and work towards "the day of the Lord" when the Son of Man will come again and heal our divisions and wars and prejudices, and once and for all remove the "shibboleths" from mankind's vocabulary.

Cheers from London,

Noah