By Samarth:
When I’m a red light, I’m bad.
When I’m a green light, I’m good.
I’m between good and bad.
I’m an ambulance.
My nephew is very interested in knowing who the good guy is and who the bad guy is. Amazingly, however, he is already willing to acknowledge that there are people who are “between good and bad.”
Nephew: 1
Most adults: 0
Weinbaum - “Interracial Romance and Black Internationalism”
Weinbaum, Alys Eve. “Interracial Romance and Black Internationalism” Next To the Color Line: Gender, Sexuality and W.E.B Du Bois Eds. Susan Gillman and Alys Eve Weinbaum. Minnesota UP (2007): 96-123
Project:
“This essay suggests how a Du Boisean obsession with interracial romance became constitutive to the substance and success of his antiracist, anti-imperialist, internationalist politics in the 1920s” (97).
“The aim of this essay is thus twofold: first, to demonstrate the centrality of representations of interracial romance to Du Bois’ political project during the 1920s; second, to demonstrate Du Bois’ repeated deployment of “the stuff of Romance” as a form of propaganda that conjures a black imperialist response to both U.S racism and Euro-American imperialism” (101).
Weinbaum rereads and recontextualizes Du Bois’ famous passage from “The Criteria for Negro Art” in which he declares, “all art is porpoganda and ever must be.” In so doing, Weinbaum reads that statement as a culmination of a larger argument for internationalist solidarity, especially through miscegenation. There is also a distinction between “romance” and “Romance” to be made; Du Bois leaves the former term “uncapitalized and thus colloquial,” while the latter is capitalized and elevated “to the status of a literary genre with roots in narratives of heroic conquest, and back further still in the chivalric tradition” (100). The latter, Weinbaum argues, is the key genre in which Du Bois articulates a larger project for interracial international solidarity.
“Of all the generic forms that he might have elected as his principal vehicle for propoganda, Romance is the logical and natural choice. Romantic themes and Romantic forms are germane to expression of black life in the United States and black insurgent activity in the world. Romance is the idiom and romance the content in which black life is expressed and lived in rebellion against Jim Crow and imperialism the world over” (100).
On Darkwater:
“As he suggests, the whiteness produced in the context of U.S. racial nationalism is part and parcel of a world straddling imperial whiteness that seeks to establish itself as a world economic power” (102).
A close reading of the stories “The Comet,” in which heterosexual union trump race to give birth to “the race to be,” and “The Princess of Hither Isle.” The latter presents imperial conflict “as racial conflict that is in turn subtended by sexualized racial violence such that the consummation of interracial romance amounts to the symbolic resolution of global race war” (107).
On Dark Princess:
The text “gazes outwards toward emerging struggles for decolonization, while simultaneously working to position African Americans as participants in such historical world events” (108). The focus is now on those factors that prevent solidarity between various colonized peoples, namely the “color line within the color line.”
Weinbaum’s close reading of this text reaches a peak when she reveals an “affective logic” to black internationalism, one that refuses the symmetry of Pan Africa and Pan Asia but sensitive to the shared structure of feeling; “they together reveal the lineaments of a form of consciousness that connects all the world’s darker people into a single, world shaping force” (112).
Du Bois’ suggestive articulation of this affective logic is unprecedented in his writing, Weinbaum continues, and sheds new light on his thinking through international solidarity movements. Indeed, these thoughts are shaped by and intervene in the communist debates that linked both the “Negro question” to the “colonial question.” Weinbaum finds traces of this context in the novel’s language.
The Problems:
Thankfully, Weinbaum does not close the essay without noting the elephant in the room. In Dark Princess, Du Bois glosses over centuries of “Brahmin caste prejudice against blacks,” posits elitism and heterosexual reproduction as the means to overthrow imperialism. The novel relies heavily on Orientalist tropes rather than undercutting them and uses “ a form of legitimation by reversal––a mere revamping of the racial nationalism that undergrids an array of propagandistic works of art produced in the interwar period by nativists, restrictionists, eugenicists and white supremacists…”
Noting these limitations is a scholarly responsible move, but one that unfortunately restricts the stakes of her essay to a slight rethinking of Du Bois scholarship. Unlike the high point of the essay, when Du Bois seemed to offer an affective axis of solidarity, its conclusion points to the treacherously essentialist ground one treads in thinking through these issues. Dark Princess, it seems to me, is more notable for its limitations and as an index of a particular historical moment; it reminds us how not to think.
The Relative Universality of Human Rights
Donnelly, Jack. “The Relative Universality of Human Rights” HRQ 29 (2007): 281-306
Thesis:
“I defend what I call functional, international, legal, and overlapping consensus universality. But I argue that what I call anthropological and ontological universality are empirically, philosophically or politically indefensible. I also emphasize that universal human rights, properly understood, leave considerable space for national, regional, cultural particularity and other forms of diversity and relativity” (281).
Thirty years deep into this field, Donnelly provides a rigorous examination of basic tenets through a sociological-legal framework; the list of secondary sources offered in the footnotes alone is worthwhile. He begins by distinguishing conceptual and substantive universality. The former, he argues, are implied in the idea of human rights itself. Conceptual universality points to rights that “one has simply because one is human,” and that these rights are universally applicable to all humans (282). This universality, however, does not answer central questions: 1) are there such rights? 2) what are they? These latter questions are central to contemporary human rights debates, especially when the rights in question are those specified by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and make up substantive universality.
Either frame of universality, Donnelly continues, relies on sovereign nation-states to defend/ protect human rights. Although there are “internationally recognized human rights” and “norm creation has been internationalized,” this does not mean there is a universal enforcement of such rights. That is still left of sovereign states.
In his most polemic sections, Donnelly rejects that human rights have always been defended (historical universality) and that every civilization can trace human rights norms in their own cultural practices/ history (anthropological universality).
“Such claims tot historical or anthropological universality confuse values such as justice, fairness, and humanity need with practices that aim to realize those values. Rights––entitlements that ground claims with a special force––are a particular kind of social practice. Human rights––equal and inalienable entitlements of all individuals that may be exercised against state and society––are a distinctive way to seek to realized social values such as justice…” (284).Donnelly explicitly locates the creation of human rights as a concept and practice in the seventeenth century. Before that, he argues, all societies––especially Western––had no such working concept. Donnelly goes through a small genealogy of the pre-modern and even early-modern bases for individual rights. “Divine commandment, natural law, tradition, or contingent political arrangements,” not human rights, shaped both the conceptions and daily functioning of an individual within society. Finally, and quite astutely, Donnelly argues that although claims for anthropological universality are rooted in desires to demonstrate cultural sensitivity and coevalness, “they misunderstand and misrepresent the foundations and functioning of the societies in question by anachronistically imposing an alien analytical framework” (286).
Sartre’s 61 Intro to Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth
Located at: http://www.tamilnation.org/ideology/fannon.htm
This one is a bit more scattered and hurried.
Sartre’s introduction provides a context, namely the colonial structure of feeling in France, for Fanon’s groundbreaking text. Contextualizing Fanon is also an extension of his project because, argues Sartre, The Wretched of the Earth is not addressed to Europeans; indeed, this is part of the text’s scandal. “He speaks of you often, never to you” (3). If Sartre’s astute observation is correct, then Fanon has replicated, and reversed, the colonial structure of address; we speak about you, even for you, but never to you. Replicating imposed methods but reversing them in the name of subversion and freedom, argues Sartre, is precisely Fanon’s goal. That is, the violence exhibited by anti-colonial movements is not the exhibition of an inherent savagery but of lessons learned too well from the imperialists themselves. The opening pages of Sartre’s introduction, accordingly, are spent in reviewing certain colonizing methods.
––Creation of native elites, as a bourgeois buffer between metropole and colony: Transfer of European humanist ideals without noting the inherent contradiction of colonialism relative to them: dehumanization: physical violence:
3: “Europe has multiplied divisions and opposing groups, has fashioned classes and sometimes even racial prejudices, and has endeavored…to bring about and intensify the stratification of colonized societies”
5: “Everything will be done to wipe out their traditions, to substitute our language for theirs and to destroy their culture without giving them ours.”
But then Sartre offers a different logic, one based on labor and production. Slavery requires bodily and spiritual suffering in order to properly subjugate its victims. By doing so, however, “you reduce his output, and however little you may give him, a farmyard man finishes costing you more than he brings in” (5). Constrained by the profit-motive, the settlers “are obliged to stop the breaking-in half-way; the result, neither man nor animal, is the native” (5). Sartre’s move here is impressive. By tracing the roots and limits of physical violence to market pressure, he places capitalism as the master of the colonial enterprise. Neither colonizer nor “native,” then, are granted subjectivities prior to their location in capitalist logic. Such a genealogy also allows Sartre to locate hope in capitalist logic. “Because he can’t carry massacre on to genocide, and slavery to animal-like degradation, he loses control, the machine goes into reverse, and a relentless logic leads him on to decolonization” (5). We must be careful to note Sartre does not equate decolonization with freedom from market logics, but rather with their realization; implicit here is our always already implicated position in the market.
Weirdly, Sartre then moves to strange psychologizing that posits a depth model of subjectivity and anti-colonial violence as “the same [settler] violence thrown back upon us as when our reflection comes forward to meet us when we go towards a mirror” (6). The logic is strange and almost replicates imperial epistemology; we know how they work and they are essentially higher order monkeys who are good at emulating us. Perhaps I am not being fair to Sartre, but we move on.
A quote that may be useful for the Rwanda project:
6: “In order to free themselves they even massacre each other. The different tribes fight between themselves since they cannot face the real enemy –– and you can count on colonial policy to keep up their rivalries; the man who raises his knife against his brother thinks that he has destroyed once and for all the detested image of their common degradation, even though these expiatory victims don’t quench their thirst for blood.”
Notes on the French Left:
7: “The Left at home is embarrassed; they know the true situation of the natives, the merciless oppression they are submitted to; they do not condemn their revolt, knowing full well that we have done everything to provoke it.”
“They would do well to read Fanon; for he shows clearly that this irrepressible violence is neither sound and fury, nor the resurrection of savage instincts, nor even the effect of resentment: it is man re-creating himself. I think we understood this truth at one time, but we have forgotten it –– that no gentleness can efface the marks of violence; only violence itself can destroy them.”
Although I deeply disagree with the last sentiment, Fanon’s move to link anti-colonial movements to the French Revolution (the forgotten truth) is an interesting and provocative one. He does not conflate but merely alludes, perhaps in the service of the larger Hegelian claim for historical teleology that he closes with.
8: “This book has not the slightest need for a preface, all the less because it is no addressed to us. Yet I have written one, in order to bring the argument to its conclusion; for we in Europe too are being decolonized: that is to say that the settler which is in every one of us is being savagely rooted out.”
Gotta love the language of that last clause!
What makes Sartre so interesting in this introduction is the complicated, and sometimes contradictory (dialectical?), way he oscillates between granting agency to the actors involved and subsuming them within larger forces (markets, Man—transhistorical subjectivity, movement of history etc).
9: “Try to understand this at any rate: if violence began this very evening and if exploitation and oppression had never existed on the earth, perhaps the slogans of non-violence might end the quarrel. But if the whole regime, even your non-violent ideas, are conditioned by a thousand year old oppression, your passivity serves only to place you in the ranks of the oprressors.”
Is this how Humanities scholars or their projects percieved?
Edwards, Brent Hayes. “Langston Hughes and the Futures of Diaspora” American Literary History 10.3 (Fall 2007): 689-711
“I will argue that the archives of internationalism can be read for a sensibility––or more precisely, a poetics––that allow diaspora to serve as a critique of the totalizing pretensions of globalization. I will focus, in particular, on the ways that interwar internationalism might be read as a reformulation of diasporic eschatology…, especially through a range of bilingual or multilingual practices in literature” (691).
Edwards locates his project in several contexts, including contemporary debates on diaspora(s) and globalization. He begins by reexamining the Jewish scholarly tradition around diaspora, one that he says has been sadly ignored, to disorient the term’s connection with historical remembrance only. Rather, Edwards recovers a tradition connecting “the diasporic condition to futurity” (691). Through a close reading of Hughes’ “Letter from Spain,” Edwards demonstrates that the future may not be redemptive but does hold “a potential internationalist solidarity” among what is now called the global South.
Edwards’ argument rests on a close reading of the aforementioned Hughes text. Attention to the poem’s form, genre, rhyme scheme and structure of address is interlaced with historical details form the poet’s life. Deploying biographical details but not limiting himself to them, Edwards lays out the various contexts within which the ballad is written: the Spanish Civil War, Hughes’ work for various newspapers and a translation of Federico Garcîa Lorca’s Gypsy Ballads. These contexts shape Hughes’ text at the level of content and form. Unlocking both is the key presence of salud closing the poem.
Outlining various readings the presence of this word allows, Edwards argues that it calls for a “diasporic responsibility [that] can only be signaled here at a distance, in the specific instance of encounter, through the specific interface of communication: the war in Spain and the particular Spanish idiom it engenders” (697, his emphasis). This particular vernacular moment consolidates the rest of the poem whose narrator is a black soldier writing home about his encounter with a dying enemy Moor soldier. The encounter is narrated in an English vernacular that is the “formal parallel”––not direct emulation––of Garcîa Lorca’s style. Content, context, form and structure of address intersect so that, suggests Edwards, “the singular idiom of “Salud” is grafted into the letter in a manner not just to carry over and commemorate that singular instance in Spain, but also thereby to transform the contours of English, and of “brotherhood” at home” (697, his emphasis). The poem is not a redemptive gesture, a healing, but the keeping open of a wound––the conscription of darker peoples in the logic and wars of European powers––and thus the possibility of solidarity at home with an internationalist consciousness.
A version of this brilliant and elegantly written essay was delivered a lecture during the 2006(?) Humanities Center Globalization Conference at Wayne State University. At the close of his talk, Professor Ken Jackson––himself very invested in “the religious turn”––prodded Edwards on both the overt and implicit “religious” logic his argument presents. The question was not taken as seriously as it should have been. Edwards’ claim that diaspora can, and indeed already has in the Jewish tradition, have an intimate tie to futurity parallels Derrida’s argument of the radical Other “to come.” The poem is, as Edwards repeatedly says, not redemptive but holds open the possibility of a new/ renewed diasporic consciousness; is this not solidarity “to come?” More importantly, Edwards seems to follow Derrida in an attempt to keep both the transcendent and immanent in play simultaneously. In Edwards’ argument, the poem is absolutely located in its historical, spatial and linguistic moment. And yet, the text attempts to transform a distant place (America), though a different language (the Spanish idiom) in the service of imagining a diasporic responsibility that is not yet available (i.e. that may yet come to be). The poem, in other words, takes uses its immanent context to build a bridge that will transcend the oceans.
And why not? I see nothing embarrassing in such an endeavor and I certainly don’t think that an elucidation of this logic undermines Edwards’, or Hughes’, project in any way. In fact, it may allow for a greater conversation between diaspora studies as articulated by both Jewish and global South scholars. Thinking through immanence and transcendence is difficult enough without limiting our tools and, as Edwards’ essay brilliantly demonstrates, one has to be immersed in the immediate contexts to even suggest possibilities to come.
This is the first post under the new category "Reading Notes." As I move toward my Qualifying Exams and narrow my focus, creating these brief precis of important or thought provoking arguments will be a standard intellectual exercise. I will post them as I complete them, although many will not be in the full prose form that follows below. (I also have to do this for one of my final classes; the timming could not be better!)
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Cheah, Pheng. “Posit(ion)ing Human Rights in the Current Global Conjuncture. Transnational Asia Pacific: Gender, Culture, and The Public Sphere. Eds. Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Larry E. Smith, Wimal Dissanayake. Illionois UP: 1999: 11—42
Cheah argues against Human Rights normativity based on a Kantian transcendental “regulative idea” or the Hegelian notion of the state as the concrete embodiment of the universal. The former is rejected as blind to the historical forces shaping and transforming “norms,” and as operating at such a level of abstraction as to have no valuable effects on the “cultural, institutional context in which meaningful action can take place (14). Such a philosophy, moreover, is ostensibly backed by the presence of an international public sphere that acts something like humanity’s conscience. Cheah argues that claims for a “transnational political morality are implausible because they are grounded in a rationalist conception of normativity that the actually existing capitalist world-system renders untenable" (16).
Neo-Hegelian bases for Human Rights, meanwhile, miss the real normative force international human rights discourse has. This philosophy, like Kant’s, is predicated on the presence of rational actors behaving according to rational obligations (15). Again, Cheah argues that the current world-capitalist system renders such faith in rationality naïve because based on a transcendental human subjectivity (32). Cheah points to Asian governments, especially those NIEs (Newly Industrializing Economies), as deploying the Hegelian-statist model for Human Rights, justifying their authoritarian rule as necessary for national economic development, which in turn will provide the material grounds for human rights.
“Rather, the task is to rethink the normativity of human rights claims within the original contamination and violence of global capitalism, that is, within ineluctable historicity” (32). To this end, Cheah uses Derrida to call for a justice that “must be immanent and transcendent at the same time” (34). “Justice ought not to be exhausted by rational action in the present. But at the same time, it must have an effect on the present through rational action” (34). That is, the norms and ideals we use to defend human rights are born from the “shifting field of historical forces” that makes up a given present. Simultaneously, the possibility, “the ineradicable promise of ethical transformation” remains open precisely because these forces are always in flux, “and cannot be captured by the hegemonic forces of a given historical present” (34). So, pace Kant, norms rise out of concrete historical situations, not absolute human rationality. And, pace Hegel, the nation-state is not the sole manifestation of Geist (Spirit) because it is located in and accountable to a greater field of forces (global capitalism) that may radically alter its duties.
I find this to be a brilliant attempt to think through the need for both historical materialism and transnational normative ideals. I would push this project by prodding further the source of human rights’ normative power. Although Cheah locates norms as being produced out of particular historical-material contexts, there does seem to be a world public opinion based on an implicit Kantian idealism. Witness, for example, the popularity of various (and admittedly problematic) “Save Africa” campaigns. Explaining the presence of such movements does not need recourse to a transhistorical human subjectivity, but a renewed sensitivity to historical residue. To borrow and deform Benjamin, there may be futures we have not yet forgotten. That is, the normative force of human rights claims may not reside totally in either the present’s play of forces or a transhistorical idealism. Rather, we are carrying the debt of previous generations whose ideals––themselves arising out particular historical moments––are with us as regulative norms. These norms seem transhistorical because they have become internalized in institutional discourse, literally taught in schools. This may all seem rather obvious, but it is a useful reminder and perhaps a complication of Cheah’s ‘ethical transformation to come’ move borrowed from Derrida.
No proper historicist would argue that the “field of forces,” especially economic forces, have not significantly (radically?) transformed since Kant, Hegel, Marx and the French Revolution. Yet, as the normative power of human rights attests, their revolutionary ideals linger in the very language we use to prosecute our world. The presence of these traces seems to severely undercut the hope implied in the claim that “contextual conditions are subject to radical mutability” (35). Radical changes have emerged, become dominant and left as residue their norms. Perhaps there is no transhistorical subjectivity, but neither is there a subject made up entirely in the present.
Prefatory Aside:
I don’t remember who said it, but a professor told me that once the highest complement one can receive from a colleague is that you are open to critical feedback. Trying to live up to that ideal is quite the challenge, however. I have just received my papers from last semester with my teachers’ comments; they are spot on. Both papers received similar comments, that the argument is “suggestive” but “incomplete.” This is mild criticism, hopeful in tone and helpfully calling for greater thought. My confidence, however, took a slight blow and for the past few hours I have been trying to stabilize. Why such a reaction to such mild feedback? Well, partly because graduate students are neurotic and depend on praise like insulin. More importantly, it is a reminder of how much I don’t yet know, how much of my own extrapolations and theorisings have already been written down. This is, I remind myself, a part of the process. But knowing that you don’t know stinks.
Kim:
I assigned myself this text over the break to move my “Basic backgrounds” project. These are readings that everyone is familiar with, that are often alluded to and are a part of the general cannon of my ‘field,’ which is yet to be specified. Kim, I thought, is going to be an exercise in controlling my gag reflex as I am forced to ingest all the orientalist tropes. And there are plenty of those, even when clothed as Oriental-philia. The text, however, is much more nuanced and interesting than I anticipated. What follows are a few excerpts and my ruminations on them. Considering the canonicity of this novel, I assume that much of what I will say is, as one professor recently remarked about a paper, “ground well tread upon.”
“ ‘If I live and God is good, there will be a price upon my head, for I am a Son of the Charm—I, Kim.’
A very few white people, but many Asiatics, can throw themselves into amazement as it were by repeating their own names over and over again to themselves, letting the mind go free upon speculation as to what is called personal identity” (181)
Even a cursory reading of the passage must note the use of the essentialist identity categories, “white people” and “Asiatics.” That such terms are deployed in a paragraph contemplating identity itself is an interesting phenomena, one ripe for (auto)deconstruction. I want to focus on Kim specifically, “the orphaned son of a drunken Irish sergeant and a nursemaid mother, [who is] brought up by a Eurasian opium eater” (xix, intro to B&N edition). The dark skinned youth is able to pass easily for a ‘native,’ while also dawning the costumes of a Sahib (Englishman), Muslim, Hindu & Tibetan monk, amongst others. His ability to perform all these identities is key to his espionage practices.
“Perform” is, of course, the key word here. I wish I were better acquainted with Butler and those who take up her argument to offer a solid gloss on ‘performativity’. Instead, let me say how I think this is working in the text. Kim’s identity performance is always adjusted to the needs of the situation. His language, clothing and manners are, generally, adjusted to match his interlocutor so that he can be deferential, equal, or authoritative as needed. There are interesting exceptions where Kim thinks in either Hindi or English despite the exigencies of the situation; following these up would require more time than I can offer at the moment. Despite Kipling’s frequent use of essentialist identity categories, then, Kim sometimes slips into the wrong identity. That is, there seem to be multiple essential cores within Kim, none of which are entirely under his control, if those eruptions are any evidence. Given the vagaries of his birth, childhood and profession, moreover, Kim often asks himself “What is Kim?” Framing this question as a “what” rather than “who” is part of the answer. As I began to say earlier, Kim is an unfixed performance, a “what” not a “who.” Language is a key to Kim’s performance, but it also unlocks the syntax of identity.
In the passage quoted above, Kim is enamored with the thought of being hunted (becoming something of a prize, another ‘what’) and joining in the “Great Game” of espionage. He makes two distinct identity statements. First, “I am a Son of the Charm,” referring to the locket he and fellow spies wear. This mode of belonging has a certain existential weight to it, at least if we pay attention to the phrasing. “I am….” His rebirth as a spy, the son of a network, is a mode of Being, an all-permeating professional existence. Except to his four direct superiors, however, only a number marks this professional identity. Imagining people introducing themselves like that, “I am E.24,” is strange and a kind of existential self-negation, the denial of a ‘soul’ even while identifying with it. Second, and more accurately, there is this articulation of identity; “I, Kim.” The absence of the “am” negates the kind of existential identification he made with his profession. The “I” and “Kim” are not necessarily linked, allowing the proper name “Kim” to become an identity without Being. This, I think, is Kim’s understanding of performance: identity without Being. I like this phrase; it has a certain sexiness to it. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it actually means anything. First of all, it could be tautological. I am trying to argue that Kim’s identity is a performance, but define performance as identity without Being. Weird. Second, using a philosophical term like ‘Being’ without invoking Heidegger, or the volumes of thought before and after him, is blasphemous. The phrase could hold value but needs much more thought in its account.
Still, performativity is often invoked as a way to escape fixed identity categories and the epistemic pressure to see “what you really are”; this is especially true when negotiating gender and sexuality. More broadly, performance is a way of negotiating power as exerted by discursive regimes. In Kim, power manifests as full-fledged orientalism. The whole espionage plot line is guised as knowledge-seeking of the innocent scientific variety, ethnography and mapping. There is, of course, nothing innocent about a drive to ‘map’ the natives into their proper places, and Kipling’s text overtly links these tools to the imperial project. Indeed, the semi-climactic event has Kim stealing maps and geographical surveys away from a French and Russian duo; the mission is said to be in the service of protecting the colony. Given Kim’s ‘nativism’ and abhorrence of rules, shaping him into a disciplined spy is a difficult project, an elucidation of which gives us an insight into how an imperial sensibility reproduces itself.
Kim’s formal schooling, away from the master spies Hurree Babu, Mahbub Ali, and Lurgan, takes place at St. Xavier’s, the eminent private school for colonial elites. He shows a “great aptitude for mathematical studies as well as mapmaking” and wins a book as a prize, The Life of Lord Lawrence, a biography of the first Baron, viceroy and governor general of India (160 + footnote). That is, Kim’s excellence in those skills necessary for his espionage specifically, and imperial sciences generally, have earned him the right to closely study the life of a great imperialist. How wonderfully incestuous! He is then deployed––“ ‘removed on appointment’ ” (161)––on some safe training missions with Mahbub Ali. They journey to “the mysterious city of Bikanir” (166). Kim uses a rosary to keep track of distance, a compass for orientation, and a “survey paint-box” to illustrate his surroundings. Mahbub Ali asks him to make a written report as well, telling Kim that, “It must hold everything that thou hast seen or touched or considered” (166). The arrogance of this request is striking and instructive. Kim’s whole experience can, and must, be transcribed, transmitted and received as it is to his superiors. Language, and writing specifically, is not representational here, it is a transparent carrier of meaning. This is precisely the logic behind colonial travel writing, or written reports of the ethnographic and geographical societies; language can not only represent mere landscapes and city architecture but also “the temper and disposition” of the native peoples (166). Kipling again, and I think quite consciously, links such ‘scientific’ missions to their military counterparts.
Mahbub tells Kim that his report must be treated with great care, as much as if he knew it was going to the Commander-in-Chief coming “by stealth with a vast army outsetting to war” (166). Kim laughs that no army greater than a thousand men could come through the area, due to the lack of water sources. Mahbub tells him to write that down as well. Indeed, the ethnographic mission is the stealth army, a reconnaissance mission gathering data appropriate to the imperial project.
I must close this because other (graded) projects wait. A couple of closing thoughts I wish I could have followed up on:
First, returning to Kim’s performativity, his ability to conduct these missions stealthily is based on his ability to pass for ‘native.’ It is not, unlike his French-Russian counterparts, based on his privileged position as a wealthy Sahib, but as a poor disciple to Tashoo Lama. There are two thoughts here. Despite all the language of essentialism, Kim’s ability to ‘be’ a native is no more than emulating a series of surface level features: clothing, colloquialisms etc… I said something of this above. The category “Native” becomes nonsensical, or at least staves off essentialism. Second, Kipling’s text is a reminder that colonialism requires local help. Creating native elites as a buffer between the metropole and the colony is an old idea, but one that plants the seeds of revolt. The hesitant solidarity between the Hindu/Atheist Hurree Babu and the Muslim Mahbub Ali is one indication of this.
Finally, there is another knowledge-seeking mission throughout the text, Tashoo Lama’s search for Enlightenment. When, in the final few pages, he finds (or achieves) it, the experience is described in transcendental terms or, rather, a transcendence that is immanent everywhere. “I saw them at one time and in one place; for they were within the Soul” (277). The Lama experiences a release from his body, from time and space. Within this experience, however, he also experiences every body, every time and space. I’m not sure what to do with this but it bears further thought.
I was given a generous invitation by kuffir to write a post on Blogbharti, an Indian blog aggregator. Here is the link to the post; I hope it generates some responses.
Writing the Nation/ Marginal Worlds
I begin with Benedict Anderson and Salman Rushdie for reasons I have already articulated.
Moving to Tropic of Orange will bring us back to the Americas and continue the magical-realist writing style. Yamashita’s Americas, however, include no white-male perspective, despite the use of seven character perspectives. If Saleem Sinai drives toward nationalism despite innumerable fissures, both in his own body and in the society he attempts to represent, then Tropic is a rejection of Saleem’s mission. That is, the book’s fragmented and marginal perspectives never allow one to settle on a single story of the nation. We are, instead, given multiple, semi-autonomous storylines; they are threads that sometimes knot together and sometimes just rub. This formal layering of narratives and narrative styles––the shift in prose structures in remarkable––performs a critique of the drive toward the national story generally, while also taking on NAFTA specifically. Indicting the Trade Agreement for maintaining systemic poverty, Tropic rejects one’s ability to think the nation without locating it in a transnational world system. I am not sure I would trust my ability to communicate all of this to my students, but I have our Detroit surroundings as a tragically ready example.
If I have succeeded in the past two sections, then transitioning into Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient should not be too disconcerting, despite shifting in time to WWII and the location to an Italian villa. There are, at least at present, two key thoughts I want to continue into this book. First, I want to continue to think through marginal spaces, those disavowed, even temporarily, by all nations. The title character was once a desert explorer whose friends were limited to those interested in the same work. These associates, however, belonged to many different countries, all allegiances to which were forgotten in that arid landscape. Such unacknowledged spaces, then, need not simply be tragic if we can see their ability to create bonds among different peoples. The hospital/ villa in which the story is told performs a similar role. Secondly, we can use Ondaatje to think through how a seminal event in American history, WWII, and the dropping of atomic bombs, can be written through a marginal perspective. I am thinking specifically of Kip’s reaction to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We will, hopefully, be able to tie space and narrative perspective together to see the forgotten stories of WWII and write the spaces left in its wake.
Finally, and perhaps most adventurously, I want to bring my students to Murambi, The Book of Bones, a narrative about the Rwandan genocide. Saleem, and his drive to write a nation, will have become something of a punching bag by this point. The aim now, however, will be to recover that project in the guise of this statement: If we posit the Rwandan Genocide, through Diop’s text, as a misrecognition of fellow citizens, then perhaps more nationalism isn’t always a bad thing. We must be careful here not to slip into a sloppy relativism (“nationalism is sometimes good sometimes bad”) and consider how group identity is formed in the text. Is there a Hutu nation posited? How does the “Hutu” identity come to be historically, and how do its militant advocates narrate it?
I offer this book as the final one despite, or probably because of, my own investment in it; I will be writing a paper on the text, which is to be delivered at NEMLA. For the class, however, I want to channel my student’s emotional investment into a greater intellectual sensitivity. If the class has been successful, then we will have to think Diop’s text through an attention to Anderson’s argument, layered and disjunctive narrations, marginal spaces and their colonial inheritance, and our transnational connection to butchered children.
The best reply so far can be found here. My counter argument follows. Since it hasn’t been posted by NYSun yet, I might have to trim it down and resubmit. Anyway, the whole of it follows below.
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There are several important arguments you bring forward and I would like to address them in the order you make them.
First, the Maxim gun. You are absolutely right to state that there is no obvious military advantage to producing a “false” image of one’s enemy. Indeed, as you note, such misunderstandings have created protracted conflicts, including those you mention. However, my use of the phrase “false picture” was provisional and merely took on the terms Mr. Warraq used. That is, the “false” picture is not merely distortion for the sake of making those producing it feel better, i.e. more civilized, about themselves, although that is one entailment. More important for me, and for Said, is that the proliferation of Orientalist discourses helped dehumanize the Arab world so that doing violence to the people is not doing violence to human beings as such. They are flattened to targets, obstacles preventing the spread of rational civilization proper. This is not a direct military advantage, one that helps strategize the battlefield. Dehumanization, rather, is how one gets to the battlefield in the first place and I just described one path to get there. The “false” picture is, rather, something akin to an ‘ethical’ advantage––ethics is not the appropriate word but it is the only one that comes to mind at the moment––one that oddly allows for the eschewing of ethics altogether. That is, if the enemy we are fighting is not human but more like a plague, a virus that produces barbarism, then it is our duty to fight such a force. We, in turn, are allowed to use any means necessary to fulfill this duty.
Although I allude to mass bombings and atomic weapons in my last clause, it is very important to remember this (ill)logic is not the sole property of the ‘West’. Indeed, the Rwandan genocide and its use of machetes to cut down the Tutsi “cockroaches” is a tragic reminder that dehumanization and its consequences are not so easily isolatable.
Second, the rise of Eastern economies: While I disagree with your overall assessment of both the historical and contemporary economic landscape, you do usefully point to a huge gap in Said’s analysis, namely the lack of attention to economic forces. Said is not blind to their influence, but does subsume them into a larger argument focused on particular discursive strategies and their affects. Scholars, even those sympathetic to Said’s basic project, have often noted this flaw and a lot of important, original work has been done to think through this gap.
My disagreement, however, does not rest there. Rather, your reading of the Meiji Restoration presumes some kind of voluntaristic decision made on the part of the Japanese imperial court. The presence of weapons was less a mark of Western superiority with which to contend than, say, a case of realizing Western belligerence in the sake of promoting economic interests. Indeed, there were already places in the world that served as living lessons for those who would doubt the possibility of economic colonization; Africa and India come readily to mind. My knowledge of American relations with Japan, and Japanese history is bare so that is all I can offer at the moment.
In regards to India specifically, and the rise of “developing world” economies generally, your argument rests on a similar assumption of voluntary action. They see Western superiority and are attempting to catch up with it, having learned from Japan. Of course, choosing not to follow this lead is not really available as a choice. The density and power of the world economic system overdetermines––that is, shapes them with pressure from multiple angles––national decisions. Governments must contend with world trade, find a way compete within it, or see their citizens languish in poverty. Even attempting to compete, however, produces poverty; producing cash crops, for instance, rather than basic nutritional foods for the local population is an all too common world reality. Lastly, economic development within these nations does not necessarily mean a cultural overhaul as well. That is, most nations in the midst of this process, and India specifically, are also battling to indigenize and adapt industrial logics to their cultural situations. They are not, in other words, simply kowtowing to “Western superiority,” but negotiating world economic pressure.
Finally, Iraq. Your assessment of the Neo-Conservative position and its opposition is interesting. There is, indeed, a logic in play that they are or could be “just like Americans;” overthrow the dictator and all will be well. There is, however, another logic behind this one. The presence of the dictator is a clear sign of the Arabic backwardness, which can and must be modernized/ civilized into a democratic sensibility. Of course, this quickly forgets the ways such regimes are and have been supported by the ones who heroically topple them. Arguing that these regimes are necessary to control some inherent Arab cruelty forgets that Iraq’s national boundaries were formed by the United Kingdom after WWI. Forget these histories and, yes, Iraqis are waiting to reveal their true American core.
All of this is, of course, a counter position to the NeoCons that does not rely on the Orientalist tropes you described: Islam is not fit for democracy, it’s “different” etc. But like the gunboat diplomacy you mentioned earlier, democracy isn’t really being offered as a choice. If absolute democracy were offered, my guess is that you would see three separate states, two of which look to Islamic law for guiding principles. No, this is not a possible choice. The only choice, to use your phrasing, is a “western-style democracy.”
I have recieved two more replies. Here is the first, and my response follows.
How is thinking about violence, both epistemic and bodily, a utopian project? And what is the teleology of this project, or postcolonial criticism generally?
My post at the New York Sun prompted a response accusing me of being an apologist for the "inherent" curelty of the Arab world. Here is my response, which was an interesitng way to start my writing for the day.
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To argue against you, Mr. Kaltenberg, I hope you won’t mind that I quote you quoting me.
"...The argument is reductive insofar as it denies the long and continuing history of Western involvement…."——thus whining is considered to be a valid proof of not whining?
If I understand your counterargument correctly, I am contradicting myself by reproducing the very critique I am attempting to debunk. Taken out of context, this would seem to be true. However, that sentence particularly, and a major part of my argument generally, was about locating the blame on Said alone. Hundreds of years of history cannot be laid aside for the sake of one scholar’s book that is a mere 40 years old. Said did not invent imperialism, or it’s bloody fallouts; rather, he describes one self-reproducing mechanism that allows for conquest without guilt. I am not sure how remembering, and articulating, the various histories that bring us to our present moment is “whining”?
On the subject of vocabulary and sentence shaping, I happily admit my own inadequacies, but also ask you not to use infantilizing words like “whining” to describe a heated political situation.
But returning to the argument proper: Historical amnesia is clearly not something you are in favor of either, if your invocation of “the western apologists of Stalinist purges and the American & Brit supporters of the nazi regime” is any evidence. Aside from its polemical force, a comparison between “the inherent and inexcusable cruelty” of the Arab world and systematic slaughter by Stalin or the Nazi regime is hyperbolic and inaccurate to say the least. Strangely, the use of these examples gives us an insight into a counterargument used by various Islamists, militant or not. Their argument, or my approximation of it, goes like this: “You say we are backward and you are modern, that we are lacking and need to catch up. If, however, being modern allows for the rise of concentration camps, atomic weapons, and other forms of mass violence, then perhaps we don’t want to be modern.” The argument is pertinent and one that greatly troubled the greatest “Western” minds of the early 20th century. What does it mean to be “modern”? Is there really such a thing as historical “progress,” if forward movement in time has just created more elaborate means of destruction? These are key questions “the West” must ask itself to understand why “backward” peoples continue in their “inherent and inexcusable” ways.
The opposite side, one where I sympathize with you and Mr. Warraq, recognizes in liberal democratic societies a greater distribution of civil liberties (never inherent, always battled for), and greater access to advanced medicine. I use “greater” as a qualifier because I don’t believe that these traits are inherent products of Western societies; claiming so would forget the battles fought to gain such rights.
My own position is still in the process of being formulated. I have no desire to see human rights abused, in the Arab world or otherwise, but I cannot claim to sit on an impossibly clean throne from which I can decide the innocence or guilt of others. If I apologize for anything, it is simply for not being able wholly to laud or condemn “East” or “West."
I am writing final papers right now and in the rhythm of writing. The New York Sun, unfortunately, felt a part of these drum beats as I posted the following respone to this article reagarding one of my intellectual heros, Edward Said. The one available there, unfortunately, is not formatted properly.
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Let me respond first by noting that Said’s influential book is indeed deeply flawed, and in Terry Eagleton’s apt phrasing, is a "flawed classic." The fact that it is a classic and spawned, as noted in the article, the vast field known as Postcolonial criticism is, for Mr. Warraq, a major problem. Many scholars sympathetic to Said’s project have noted most of the basic problems that Mr. Warraq points to, those of historical accuracy etc. Moreover, Postcolonial theory and criticism has moved well beyond Said’s text; the newer iterations of these projects would provide more fertile ground for thinking the contemporary situation. That is my first point.
My second point is that there is, at least in this article, a deeply flawed understanding of what Said’s argument is. "If Orientalists have produced a false picture of the Orient, Orientals, Islam, Arabs, and Arabic society… then how could this false or pseudo-knowledge have helped European imperialists to dominate three-quarters of the globe?"
Producing a false picture is precisely how the imperial project was accomplished. That is, Said is concerned with the ways conquest is justified, or even more perversely, thought to be helpful. A part of his argument, then, is ‘Orientalizing’ the Arab world meant dehumanizing its population, casting them into particular types such as the lascivious harem female or the equally perverse despot. Such debased creatures obviously need the help of Enlightened European empires whose universal rationalism will clearly see beyond their opium-induced irrationality. This is merely a gloss of the argument, but one that I hope illustrates the ways imperialism comes to be justified as, what Said calls, "the civilizing mission." One does not need much imagination to see how such dehumanizing logics–––based on sound epistemological practices no doubt–––duplicate themselves in the genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africas, et al. Such logics, moreover, are not merely the scars of history but the present’s still bleeding wounds; the justification offered after invading Iraq, for instance, is a contemporary iteration of the ‘civilizing mission,’ namely the ‘democratizing mission.’
My final point, however, is less firm and more sympathetic to Mr. Warraq’s concerns. The question of how one avoids ethnocentrism without also collapsing into a toothless cultural relativism that remains mute to the persecution of women, homosexuals, and others, is a very serious one. Claiming, as Mr. Warraq does, that it is Said who paved the way for the Arab world to cry victim and hide cruel persecutions behind those tears is both reductive and historically inaccurate. The argument is reductive insofar as it denies the long and continuing history of Western involvement, often of the military kind, in the Arab world. More significantly, at least for Said’s case, is that a better part of the 30 year career following Orientalism was spent as an intellectual and cultural liaison. One article in particular, published in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, entitled "The Other America," admonished his readers to shatter their crude one dimensional images of America, or the West generally. In that same article, Said also describes his lifelong efforts with Arab premiers to think more complexly about the West, lest they replicate the same dehumanizing gestures he spent his lifetime critiquing.
Teaching and Thinking the Nation
The class will begin with a short story from Zora Neal Hurston in order to foreground the relationship between language and identity. By situating her in the Harlem Renaissance and the rise of Black letters more broadly, we will ask why she chooses to use black vernacular in her writings? Specifically, what are the political limits and enablments of such an aesthetic practice?
My polemical aim is to place alternative vocabularies and grammatical structures in conversation with “Standard English,” hopefully denaturalizing the latter. Given that the class is for Education majors, my goal is to make these future teachers reflect on their profession so that what they teach is neither given nor unsullied by political implications.
The second round of reading will be the introduction to Anderson’s Imagined Communities. This is an obvious starting place for thinking about how national identity is thought. (I concede that a proper examination of “nationalism” could/ should begin with earlier writings, but I am limited by the potential reading difficulty of such texts and, more importantly, my lack of comfort with those materials–––recently ordered edited collections and readers on the topic should help my understanding). After discussing Anderson, however, I am unsure how to order the texts and what follows is an attempt to think through my options.
Within National/ Continental boundaries:
Midnight’s Children: Considering Anderson will be fresh in our minds, Saleem’s psychic connection with his nation-state seems like a good starting point. We would be forced to think through the ‘birth’ of a nation, and national consciousness, and the violence proper to such an event. Indeed, the simultaneous arrival of East and West Pakistan may help me disenfranchise the nation as the natural telos of particular spaces and their constituents. (Perhaps assigning the film Gandhi will help build an affective relationship to India and its struggle for independence. Perhaps too, America’s founding fathers can also be rethought as the “revolutionaries” they were in these conversations). Saleem’s psychic ability also has the merit of attempting to unite an incredible range of languages, classes, religions, castes, and political situations. His endeavor’s problems and successes should help us approach a central problem of national identity; how are multiple realities framed so that fellow feeling and even solidarity is possible?
(A secret benefit for me: I am working on a paper about Midnight’s Children and will have recently finished it when this unit begins).
At a very practical level, the girth and difficulty of Rushdie’s text will scare off those looking for easy ways to fulfill credit requirements. Also, saving a text of this magnitude for the semester’s end, a possibility if I organized the readings temporally, will add lead weights to our legs as we try to sprint to a finish.
Third Section: Thinking Modernity and the Colonial Project:
The political reading for this section is yet to be determined, although Said, Bhabha or Lenin would do well.
Henry James’ short story “The Real Thing” will introduce the aesthetic readings for this section. The narrative, as I will frame it, helps understand the political and social ruptures created by modernity. Most importantly, I am concerned with a disappearing aristocracy, the flow of peoples across borders, the reevaluation of Englishness (or the metropole more generally), and the ways one can represent such changes. All of these issues are available in James’ story and will set up Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness well.
I will use Conrad’s work to demonstrate the logic and vocabulary of the colonial project. In terms of nationalism, I will probably frame this as both the (English) civilizing mission and defining the Self in opposition to the Other. Following James’s work, we can also see how colonial administrators and the goods they are pillaging/ exporting belong to a rising middle class, defined both economically and culturally. Administrators, like Kurtz, can have bright futures by helping manage the periphery and their success will allow them comfortable living when they arrive home. Moreover, the goods they procure, ivory in this case, are part of consumption practices based on imports that are alive and well today. Finally, I would like to assign “Apocalypse Now” to bring the discussion “home.” Putting Iraq, Vietnam, and the Belgium Congo into conversation should be an interesting way to interrogate notions of ‘national progress’.
We can also use this conversation to discuss the value and limitations of comparisons, both the ahistorical models deployed in mainstream media and the historically grounded analysis modeled by the class.
On consideration, perhaps a reading of “race theory” or the “hierarchy of nations” from the late 19th/ early 20th century will give us a taste of the intellectual milieu in which these texts operate. Then again, I have to keep in mind that the class’ reading level and my own desire may not synchronize.
Fourth Section: Expatriate/ Comparative Nationalisms
Again, I am uncertain which political text to use or if there should be one at all. Although the frame for the class is nationalism, I would like to provide my students with narrower and historically particular lenses through which they can read the text. Considering the primary reading for this section is Claude McKay’s Banjo, I would do well to get advice form Af-Am specialists.
So, Banjo: I’m excited about teaching this text because student perspectives will help me think through the work. Amongst the many strands to be teased out, first is the return to a focus on language. Like Hurston, McKay’s language vocalizes a particular political project; returning to this issue will be particularly interesting after reading Conrad and interrogating colonialist vocabulary. Second, there are voices for diasporic consciousness within the text, many of which are Garveyite; the “race man” then envisions solidarity along particular lines but, according to a few voices in the text, the ultimate aim is to create an independent nation. Here is an opportunity to compare race solidarity and nationalism.
Thirdly, Banjo also questions how marginalized peoples relate to different nationalisms. The protagonist vagabonds (itself an interesting term) are expatriates of various nations or colonies and are bombarded by French citizens deluded with their own claims of tolerance. These claims cannot be entirely dismissed but, like the condemnation of American culture that accompanies them, cannot be swallowed whole either. Exploring the tension between these competing visions will, I hope, provide us with a transnational perspective that holds multiple nations and multiple modes of unity in view. Again, I am interested in foregrounding the various Americas the text offers, including different understandings of the United States (“United Snakes” according to one character) and the “Americas” writ large––Ray, after all, is West Indian.
The Daily Show on US funding practices in the Middle East:
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=91998
I stand at the crossroads of theory and practice, between a universalizable conception and its particular instantiations, between utopian hopes and tragic visions. Yes, and I arrived at this singular (albeit repeating) moment through…
…a haircut…
Ever since moving down (south) to Detroit proper a few years ago, I’ve been going to the same barber (hair stylist). I never quite know what she will do to my hair, despite the repetition of the same requests, which adds unneeded excitement to an already unstable life. Off-center, uneven, too much thinning out–––I have very thick hair–––water down my back when washing and the most irritating thing, which happened again today: dull tools. Come on! Get the scissors sharpened, oil the clippers before customers come so that you won’t accidentally spray them into solidarity with sea lions after a tanker spill–––and give them alliterative fodder for their blogs. The clippers bit today; actually, they gnawed on my neck until even she saw the need for an alcohol wipe and aloe vera.
I’m done. Fuck it. I tried, I lived with the discomfort of excessive force and recurring nightmares for haircuts, but damn it, I’m done.
Here, however, an ethical angel lands on my shoulder (just a few inches from my sensitively red neck) and reminds me of a few things. Slight discomfort and vanity, the idealistic angel says, are small prices to pay for helping a local neighborhood business stay alive. The prices shrink even further when one thinks of her (my barber’s) circumstances, knowing that she has few if any regulars whom she can rely on. I, of course, am under no delusion that I am this woman’s guardian angel–––sitting in an adjustable chair rather than on her shoulder–––nor do I want to posit (loyalty to) local endeavors as the panacea to globalization.
However, life in a post-industrial city has a significant impact on one’s politics. So, if I simply stop going to this barber, which is precisely what I am going to do, am I being disloyal? If not, how did such affective ties to a business build so that I still feel disloyal? Are such affective ties, especially when they dictate one’s purchasing, necessary for larger political projects such as revitalizing a neighborhood, a state’s economy, or the redistribution of a nation’s wealth? What are the global consequences of thinking along, and feeling within, these affective relationships?
Is being an academic conducive to generating such questions out of a bad haircut?
Bruce Robbins has an interesting insight into the ethical implications of protesting capital’s flight form a particular space, precisely the phenomena I am participating in by leaving my current barber. I paraphrase, “a job lost here is a job gained elsewhere.” True. ("and the job that was here was also a job that came from somewhere else")
So, I am literally in search of a compromise, a new barber in Detroit.
I just paid a visit to the Department of Homeland Security. Multiple forms of identification were checked, forms filled out and fingerprints recorded––both hands, all fingers. Yes, I just went to the USCIS office: United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. No, I am not a citizen and had to renew my green-card. The new card will arrive in a few months with a new picture underneath the familiar block letters “Resident Alien.” Familiar—Strange.
The building is anonymous, embedded within a strip mall a mile east of the downtown plazas. “Application Support Center” reads the simple white lettering on the door; there is no sign above the building. Rather, one can locate the door by first finding the “Armed Services Center”—a recruiting office––then walking a few feet past it. The door opens with a beep, a military sound reminiscent of the metal detectors at the airports. The various immigrants occupy an open, clinically clean space, and watch your entrance; they have little choice because their chairs face the door and a fellow alien is more compelling than the movie Robots playing without sound in a corner. I walk through a delineated aisle and greet a large Hispanic man seated in front of a sparse cheap table. I present papers and ID. I am given a form to fill and asked to return on completion. When I return, I have to present two forms of ID, my driver’s license and my 10-year-old green card––I am a chubby fourteen in that picture.
“Please come back when your number is called.”
I take a seat and try to choose between watching the movie or the door. When a cute blonde walks in, the choice is obvious. Hope for a conversation is broken, however, as she is quickly processed and practically finished by the time my number is called. I assume she simply has a simpler process to go through. Meanwhile, I overhear a conversation behind me.
A stocky, spectacled man in white shirt and tie comes out of his office and greets one of the aliens, a heavyset man with wheezy breath.
“What is your nation of birth sir?”
“Yugoslavia”
“Yugoslavia doesn’t exist anymore. Where are you from?”
“Kosovo”
“Well Kosovo is a…..still a province of Serbia, so your card will say Serbia—Montenegro. Remember to use Serbia—Montenegro on all official forms.”
“Ok”
With a smile, “And if Kosovo ever becomes independent, you can put Kosovo”
“Number 11”
I bring my attention to the woman calling my number, go to her and am passed off into the hands of a technician browsing the web. He, Antonio, walks me over to a station and slowly puts on latex gloves, sprays a cloth with cleaning fluid and wipes down a small glass surface. We begin with my right hand and scan four fingers together. Then my right thumb. The same for my left hand.
“Step over here please,” Antonio says quietly.
Each finger of my right hand is scanned independently. Each finger is rolled from right to left. On the screen, my print looks like a map, a purposefully flattened image of a round object. Each finger. Index. Middle. Ring.
“Relax”
“Oh, sorry”
Pinky. Thumb.
“Step over here”
The process repeats for the left hand.
“Have a seat please”
“Look over here.”
My picture is being taken but I don’t have my picture face on. Antonio shows me my picture and asks if I like it. I ask if we can redo it and he obliges. I ask if I can smile and he answers in the affirmative. I sit, I smile.
“You can smile, but without teeth showing.”
The picture is taken. I approve of this one. He rechecks all the information, rescans some of my fingers, then writes his identification number on my form. The screen says it is his ‘quality control’ number and lists his name next to it.
“You’re all set. Have a good day.”
“Thank you so much. You too.”
As I approach the exit, I notice again the tall heavyset security officer standing next to the door.
“Have a good day.”
“Thanks. Good luck with everything” she says.
A humanizing, if sentimentally written, article; a reminder of proportions
Suicide bombings often stop clocks nearby, throwing the delicate mechanisms out of balance. The minute hand freezes the moment that the bomber detonates, and cleanup crews find clocks hanging crookedly on walls hours later, with the moment of loss fixed forever on the clocks’ faces.
Announcing the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld following the Republican Party’s heavy poll losses in the United States mid-term elections earlier this month, George W Bush described the Defence Secretary as "a patriot who served our country with honour and distinction." Within a week of his resignation, a criminal complaint was filed against Rumsfeld and other top US officials, charging them with war crimes.
"Our clients—people who were the victims of horrific abuse and torture—have not yet seen justice," Bill Goodman, legal director of the New York- based Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represents many of the Guantanamo Bay detainees, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "The United States government has not only been unwilling to investigate and prosecute its high-ranking officials for the torture that they authorised and supervised, but it even attempted to immunise Americans from such prosecutions through the passage of the Military Commissions Act 2006."
Full article here
“Nevertheless, people whose duties occasionally make them yawn may be less boring than those who do their business by inclination. The latter, unhappy types, are pushed deeper and deeper into the hustle and bustle until eventually they longer know where their head is, and the extraordinary radical boredom that might be able to reunite them with their heads remains eternally distant for them”
“If, however, one has the patience, the sort of patience specific to legitimate boredom, then one experiences a kind of bliss that is almost unearthly….Were this passion—which shimmers like a comet—to descend, were it envelop you, the others, and the world—oh, then boredom would come to an end, and everything that exists would be…”
I wish I could annul all citizenships, all belonging to any Nation-State whatsoever. I’ve remarked previously about my reluctance to engage or self-identify as “Indian;” at least in any way that marks me as that exclusively.
After reading this amazing article by Arundathi Roy, I remember all those small, painful, relatively insignificant but ideal crushing moments I associate with India. However, learned critical tools blunted by sharp empathy have enlarged my disassociate tastes; I want to carry the world’s violence one step further to complete violence: complete disassociation.I would love to say “disengagement” but there’s no outside to misery, deceit, jingoism, or fucking lunacy. No. However, there is the space of voluntary delusion; “there’s nothing wrong with the world…I have nothing to do with all that…in fact, don’t even tell me about any of that…”
The words are trite but the theory is pure violence. Disassociate completely. Repress absolutely. Drink. Do anything that excludes the bloody Real.
It’s noon in Mumbai (Bombay for the nostalgic)
Although I’m more partial to Hockey and the Red Wings, Detroit sporting success is always shared—even if it is underappreciated by us bandwagoners. Anyway, Ryan was remarking recently that the Tigers have a distinctly working class feel to them because anyone is able to buy tickets for $8 and go watch them on any given day. Then I read this...
During the Oakland series, Jones spoke eloquently about the recent trying times in Detroit, with massive job losses due to problems in the auto industry. The Detroit players derived some satisfaction, Jones said, from giving the team’s blue-collar fans a three-hour respite each day from weightier, real-life issues.
Leyland, predictably, got emotional after Ordonez’s homer. But he wasn’t the only one at Comerica Park to pull a Dick Vermeil.
"You can’t go anywhere in this city without Tigers fans talking about their pride in the organization and the team,’’ Rogers said. "As players, maybe we don’t understand it completely, but we surely appreciate it. This is something we’ll take with us for a long, long time.’‘
All that’s left now is to seal the deal. As far as the Tigers are concerned, it’s two celebrations down, and one to go.
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