Renegotiating Identities and Cultural Legacies Chapter Twelve Be(com)ing Uzbek

Private versus Public
Gal contends that private and public are not particular places, domains, spheres of activities, types of interaction, or distinctive institutions and practices, but instead mutually informative communicative cultural categories that are always relative; a part of their referential meaning depends on an interactional context of their usage. The public/private distinction is also fractal and nested.⁴⁸ It refers to complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales, and whatever the local content of the dichotomy, the public/private distinction can be produced repeatedly (or replicated) by projecting it onto a broader or a narrower context and into different social objects and interactions. Hence, as a discursive phenomenon, the private/public distinction “can be used to characterize, categorize, organize, and contrast” any kind of space, institution, group, activities, interactions, and relations.⁴⁹ For example, in Uzbekistan, the street is considered to be a public space and the house—a private one. Separated at the threshold—at the gate (eshik)—these are “two spaces charged with different sets of social expectations about who belongs and how to conduct oneself”; the actors’ social relations not only “play out” these expectations, but also are “constituted” by such spaces.⁵⁰ Liu shows particularly well the intricacies and differences of individuals embodying these spaces and the associated expectations.⁵¹
One can also distinguish between private and public parts within the house, such as the bedroom (yotoqhona) and the living or guest (mehmohona) room. In the case of Tursun-oi’s “new school,” a room where she met with her students would be considered public, while her bedroom would be considered private. At yet another scale of this fractal distinction, through indexical gestures, such as whispering, one can have a private discussion during a public event in a public part of a house. For instance, at Tursun-oi’s, the students can discuss personal matters during the lesson.⁵² Then, they can rejoin a Quranic recitation or a discussion of a particular verse’s historical context, thus eliminating this particular iteration of the private/public distinction. Therefore, depending on participants’ perspectives, private in public and public in private can be situational and can be fleeting or lasting.⁵³
An otinlar’s public life in private spaces is not exceptional or novel, and it needs not be subversive.⁵⁴ At best, it is surprising, since fractal subdivisions of the public/private distinction can be hard to notice for both the participants and the observer. Yet these subdivisions are oddly familiar to all of us. Just like us, the public life these women lead inside individual homes is situational, fractal, and indexical; it is not bonded onto individuals or places, but linked to the occasion and can be grasped through signs.⁵⁵ Let me provide examples of some of these signs.
On one chilly Tuesday in January 2003, Jahon, an otin mentioned above, and I walked up the stairs of a panel block apartment building in Hovliguzar. We entered an apartment on the third floor, where, in a tiny hallway, several women greeted us and offered water for a hand-washing ceremony, in which water was poured over our hands three times before we dried them with a towel. Then, we took off our shoes and walked into the living room with a lavish dasturkhon (meal) set on the table in the middle of it. After greeting the other women already gathered around the dasturkhon to participate in a propitiatory ritual Bibi Mushkil Kusho (the Lady Solver of Difficulties), we took our places. ⁵⁶ On our way to this event, Jahon had told me that the ritual was expected to ensure the hostess’s husband and her friends would have successful trips to Russia—“to open up” seasonal migrants’ “road.” Before the ceremony commenced, the hostesses asked Jahon to lead another propitiatory ritual aimed at receiving blessings from another female mediator, Bibi Seshambe (the Lady Tuesday) for the elderly women who gathered in an adjacent room, her children’s bedroom.⁵⁷ While Jahon was gone, we discussed my reasons for visiting Uzbekistan and my personal history, including my growing up in the Caucasus (a region in the south of Russia), their careers—some of them worked a local kindergarten, others were seasonal migrants to Russia—and Uzbekistan’s and local economic development. After finishing the Bibi Seshambe ritual, Jahon returned to the living room and sat at the head of the table. The Bibi Mushkil Kusho ceremony then began.
In this example, we can observe that both rituals were public events; these social gatherings took place in an individual’s home, a private space. More specifically, they took place in the hostess’s living room and her children’s bedroom. On this occasion, the children’s bedroom was transformed into another mehmonhona (living room or guest room), a public part of the private space. During this public event, the women in attendance discussed private matters, such as my personal history, and public matters, such as the insufficient salaries of local teachers and their hopes for economic prosperity, when Uzbekistanis would no longer have to engage in seasonal migrant work in Russia. They discussed these matters publicly and privately. By lowering their voice and moving closer to each other they (could have) made comments about my story or their personal issues; these comments were aimed at their interlocutors, not at all participants in this event. Amid these discussions, upon settling in a seat at the head of the table, a respected place signaling one’s sociospiritual importance, Jahon, a private individual, became an otin, a public figure, who then officiated at this public event taking place in a public part of private space. Hence, at this event, private affairs and public matters, spaces, and institutions, were intertwined in complex ways; an index, such as an individual’s gesture, level of one’s voice, and body language and/or its location, created a different, new contrast set. From this perspective, on this occasion, private/public were not separate domains with associated beliefs and practices, but cultural communicative categories. There was no contamination, or blurring of boundaries, or a continuum between private and public. Rather, the repeated re-creation of these categories, and their embedding into one another, was a nested process, even if the event participants would have probably erased this nested process in a post-effect articulation.
According to Gal, since public and private dichotomy is linked to other dichotomies, we can apply similar fractal analyses to such categories as political and personal. Let me briefly exemplify the workings on this distinction, which is also situational, fractal, and indexical, and its nested recursions that are often ignored by the participants. Even though Jahon’s statement about “good” or “bad” government, mentioned in the beginning on the chapter, was addressed to me but aimed at social change—at the “we”—if I were to ask her to classify this statement in terms of public/private and political/personal, she would have probably chosen “private” and “personal.” Hence, even though the actors themselves do not see their conversations and behaviors as political, they are and can be read as such by others. I do not mean that these conversations and behaviors are necessarily oppositional to the existing Uzbek government; they can but do not have to be. The meaning of “political” is not limited to resistance. Private opinions voiced during public events in private spaces can, in fact, reiterate public messages produced by the government’s representatives, while the government’s agents can suspect any large social gathering of breeding political dissent.⁵⁸