Uber bloggers DailyKos and Wonkette will be in Bethlehem, PA tomorrow night for a panel discussion on political blogging. A conservative from Powerlineblog -- never heard of it -- will be there too. It will be happening at Moravian College, which is just up the street from Lehigh.
I'm psyched... I hope I can get into the hall where it's happening... If I can, expect a report on the event.
(Thanks for the tip, Anjali.)
"Just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else." --Toni Morrison
Chinua Achebe rejects award
According to BBC, Nigerian author Chinua Achebe has rejected a high honor from his government as a protest against the government's failure to stabilize the country.
Olusegun Obasanjo has been in power for five years, and was hailed as a huge step for democracy when he came into power. But things have not turned out exactly as planned:
Olusegun Obasanjo has been in power for five years, and was hailed as a huge step for democracy when he came into power. But things have not turned out exactly as planned:
"Nigeria is a country that does not work," he said: "Schools, universities, roads, hospitals, water, the economy, security, life." There was a four-day national strike last week over a rise in fuel prices, while more than 10,000 people have been killed in communal clashes since Mr Obasanjo was elected in 1999.
Motorcycle Diaries micro-review; Che Guevara on the web
We saw Motorcycle Diaries last night. It's a lyrical film about self-discovery, but its also a bit strange, in that its "Che as tourist" angle is also an excuse for the film itself to engage in some cultural-historical tourism.
One probably shouldn't watch it entirely seriously. For one thing, the actor playing Che Guevara is way too good-looking. At certain serious moments in the film, when he puts on his ponderous, 'something's not right', thousand-yard stare, he reminds me of nothing other than a male model -- Abercrombie and Fitch, not Guevara and Castro. Granted, I know that Che in real life was incredibly dashing, but it's probably not quite what Walter Salles was aiming for.
On a more serious note, I have to say my earlier liberal, warm-and-fuzzy appreciation for charismatic revolutionaries has given way to that dreaded sign of adulthood, anti-charismatic pragmatism.
Also testing my faith in Che is Paul Berman (author of Terror and Liberalism, and one of the more influential and interesting liberal hawks) whose trashing of Che in Slate pulls no punches:
Yikes. I didn't know about these later statements of Che, or the firing squads, or... really very much of substance at all. The Che Guevara I've been exposed to is mainly the punk rock t-shirt, "stick it to the man" variety.
On the internet, I did find a quote or two verifying Berman's point about Guevara's turn to the party line. He started saying things like this, for instance:
Maybe that sounds stirring, but the lyricism is grotesquely misplaced. Whenever poets start to praise the "singing of machine guns," I start heading for the door.
I have to admit I've never read the Diaries (you can get them pretty easily on Amazon and in bookstores). Berman has a definite advantage here, when he says:
Pro-conquistador? The film glossed over this pretty egregiously.
As much as his critiques ring true, perhaps Paul Berman overreaches just a bit at some points in his essay. This is a film about human fellowship and the discovery of the largeness of the world (and of injustice in the world). It's not explicitly a film about ideology. You don't need to be a Marxist to enjoy Motorcycle Diaries, but you do need to have some idealism left in you.
Despite my real reservations about the politics of the film, I still recommend it. It certainly made me want to close the lid of the copier (the copier is an excellent metaphor for the tedium of academic life), put the books back on the shelf, and go out and do something proactively and concretely helpful in the world. Helpful in the interest of making a small but actual difference -- certainly NOT in pursuit of a rigid ideological line or economic abstraction.
Some links
Wikipedia site on Che. Quite thorough.
A detailed chronology.
An archive of mainly speeches by Che.
Recently Declassified information on the death of Che. (Not sure if this is 100% believable).
Che Guevara quotes
One probably shouldn't watch it entirely seriously. For one thing, the actor playing Che Guevara is way too good-looking. At certain serious moments in the film, when he puts on his ponderous, 'something's not right', thousand-yard stare, he reminds me of nothing other than a male model -- Abercrombie and Fitch, not Guevara and Castro. Granted, I know that Che in real life was incredibly dashing, but it's probably not quite what Walter Salles was aiming for.
On a more serious note, I have to say my earlier liberal, warm-and-fuzzy appreciation for charismatic revolutionaries has given way to that dreaded sign of adulthood, anti-charismatic pragmatism.
Also testing my faith in Che is Paul Berman (author of Terror and Liberalism, and one of the more influential and interesting liberal hawks) whose trashing of Che in Slate pulls no punches:
The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"— and so on. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a guerrilla movement that had failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. And yet he succeeded in inspiring tens of thousands of middle class Latin-Americans to exit the universities and organize guerrilla insurgencies of their own. And these insurgencies likewise accomplished nothing, except to bring about the death of hundreds of thousands, and to set back the cause of Latin-American democracy—a tragedy on the hugest scale.
Yikes. I didn't know about these later statements of Che, or the firing squads, or... really very much of substance at all. The Che Guevara I've been exposed to is mainly the punk rock t-shirt, "stick it to the man" variety.
On the internet, I did find a quote or two verifying Berman's point about Guevara's turn to the party line. He started saying things like this, for instance:
Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people's unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America. Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear, that another hand may be extended to wield our weapons, and that other men be ready to intone our funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine guns and new battle cries of war and victory.
Maybe that sounds stirring, but the lyricism is grotesquely misplaced. Whenever poets start to praise the "singing of machine guns," I start heading for the door.
I have to admit I've never read the Diaries (you can get them pretty easily on Amazon and in bookstores). Berman has a definite advantage here, when he says:
The movie in its story line sticks fairly close to Che's diaries, with a few additions from other sources. The diaries tend to be haphazard and nonideological except for a very few passages. Che had not yet become an ideologue when he went on this trip. He reflected on the layered history of Latin America, and he expressed attitudes that managed to be pro-Indian and, at the same time, pro-conquistador. But the film is considerably more ideological, keen on expressing an "indigenist" attitude (to use the Latin-American Marxist term) of sympathy for the Indians and hostility to the conquistadors. Some Peruvian Marxist texts duly appear on the screen. I can imagine that Salles and his screenwriter, José Rivera, have been influenced more by Subcomandante Marcos and his "indigenist" rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico, than by Che.
Pro-conquistador? The film glossed over this pretty egregiously.
As much as his critiques ring true, perhaps Paul Berman overreaches just a bit at some points in his essay. This is a film about human fellowship and the discovery of the largeness of the world (and of injustice in the world). It's not explicitly a film about ideology. You don't need to be a Marxist to enjoy Motorcycle Diaries, but you do need to have some idealism left in you.
Despite my real reservations about the politics of the film, I still recommend it. It certainly made me want to close the lid of the copier (the copier is an excellent metaphor for the tedium of academic life), put the books back on the shelf, and go out and do something proactively and concretely helpful in the world. Helpful in the interest of making a small but actual difference -- certainly NOT in pursuit of a rigid ideological line or economic abstraction.
Some links
Wikipedia site on Che. Quite thorough.
A detailed chronology.
An archive of mainly speeches by Che.
Recently Declassified information on the death of Che. (Not sure if this is 100% believable).
Che Guevara quotes
Ron Suskind's damning quotes
Has anyone read this long New York Times piece by Ron Suskind, author of The Price of Loyalty?
The things he quotes George Bush as saying are pretty horrifying. I'd never seen most of them before. My "favorite" is probably the following:
Yes, folks, that is your President talking.
The things he quotes George Bush as saying are pretty horrifying. I'd never seen most of them before. My "favorite" is probably the following:
In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with a few ranking senators and members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats. In those days, there were high hopes that the United States-sponsored ''road map'' for the Israelis and Palestinians would be a pathway to peace, and the discussion that wintry day was, in part, about countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The problem, everyone agreed, was that a number of European countries, like France and Germany, had armies that were not trusted by either the Israelis or Palestinians. One congressman -- the Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress -- mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.
''I don't know why you're talking about Sweden,'' Bush said. ''They're the neutral one. They don't have an army.''
Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: ''Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They're the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.'' Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.
Bush held to his view. ''No, no, it's Sweden that has no army.''
The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.
Yes, folks, that is your President talking.
Big win for secular/left parties in Maharashtra
The Congress-NCP alliance in Maharashtra has done quite well in the recent state elections there. The two parties together have 141 seats, just shy of a majority. The pundits (the real ones -- the Indian ones) are reading this as a positive development for the Congress, and for the Manmohan/Sonia government. Maybe they'll still be in power a year from now!
The BJP and Shiv Sena parties both lost seats. Most of the national coverage (on Outlook, for instance) has focused on this as a defeat for the BJP. But one news article I found suggests that the bigger question is the future of the Shiv Sena.
One should probably note that a loss of three seats in Mumbai is not quite a rout.
Gossip, folks. Isn't it more interesting than predictable headlines like "BJP Scratches Head" or "Singhal Blames Departure from Agenda of Ethno-religious Hatred for Loss" ?
The BJP and Shiv Sena parties both lost seats. Most of the national coverage (on Outlook, for instance) has focused on this as a defeat for the BJP. But one news article I found suggests that the bigger question is the future of the Shiv Sena.
The Hindu radical Shiv Sena won only 62 seats in the 288-member state assembly, down seven from its previous tally. The party's electoral rout in state capital Mumbai, its traditional stronghold, came as a major blow. It won only nine seats in this city of 14 million people, billed as the country's financial and entertainment hub, as against 12 in the previous state polls in 1999.
One should probably note that a loss of three seats in Mumbai is not quite a rout.
The stakes were particularly high for Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, who was looking for a win to stem squabbling within his party that is threatening to erode his authority. Many Shiv Sena leaders had quit the party in recent months and fought the poll as rebel candidates. Experts said the discord between the two heirs to the Thackeray throne -- his son Uddhav and nephew Raj -- would only intensify in the days ahead with the Shiv Sena failing to do well in the elections.
Once known as the most powerful man in Maharashtra with a fanatical following, Thackeray -- referred to by his acolytes as "Tiger" -- is also fighting a battle to prove that he may be physically frail but the roar is very much in place. Poor health had forced Thackeray, 78, to cut back on his election campaign. He addressed only two public meetings in the run-up to the polls to boost the prospects of the Shiv-Sena BJP combine. The Shiv Sena was trying hard to regain its base in Mumbai as it searched for a leader to take over the mantle from Thackeray, a cartoonist turned politician.
Gossip, folks. Isn't it more interesting than predictable headlines like "BJP Scratches Head" or "Singhal Blames Departure from Agenda of Ethno-religious Hatred for Loss" ?
Censorship in India: Documentary filmmakers condemn the CBFC
I got this Press Release ("Campaign Against Censorship/Films for Freedom") from SACW. They do make some attempt to balance their criticisms of Kher and the BJP when they also criticize the censoring of Prakash Jha's film on J.P. Narayan (which is critical of Congress, naturally).
I haven't had time to verify their version of Kher's role in the censoring and then (this was a surprise to me), the ultimate approval of The Final Solution. However, quite apart from Kher's culpability, the CBFC looks both profoundly corrupt and seriously incompetent in this account, especially with the "regional panels."
At least one thing in the above seems a little fishy to me. How do we know whether Kher was involved in the attempt to disrupt the film festival?
I haven't had time to verify their version of Kher's role in the censoring and then (this was a surprise to me), the ultimate approval of The Final Solution. However, quite apart from Kher's culpability, the CBFC looks both profoundly corrupt and seriously incompetent in this account, especially with the "regional panels."
Mr. Anupam Kher led one of the most repressive censorship regimes of recent times . Under the short one year tenure of Anupam Kher as Chairman, the CBFC already mired in controversy, has gone through one of its darkest periods. The targeting of films that dealt with the Gujarat massacres of 2002, which the previous government had in particular a vested interest in stopping, exposed the partisan, authoritarian, and irresponsible use of the powers given to the CBFC. Mr. Kher and other officials of CBFC were directly responsible for the harassment faced by Rakesh Sharma (dir. of Final Solution). Final Solution went through a bizarre process of preview by CBFC. To begin with it was not even being accepted for preview on various pretexts; then it was denied a certificate for public exhibition with Mr. Kher making statements to the media defending the denial of certification and asserting that the film could not be publicly exhibited. The film was finally reviewed under immense public pressure and a certificate with no cuts was granted and now Mr. Kher claims it was his intervention that got the film a certificate! There are many other films that are still stuck with the CBFC.
The process began when the Regional Panels of the CBFC were stacked with political appointees with direct political links to the party in power (and mostly with no connection/interest in cinema). There was harassment of filmmakers at the censor board, and eventually the unprecedented step of the CBFC taking an aggressive and proactive stand in stopping screenings of "uncensored" films, often in collusion with right-wing political fronts. All of this happened with the knowledge of Shri Kher, if not at his behest. Mr. Kher was personally involved in attempting to disrupt the Films For Freedom festival in Bangalore earlier this year. He was aided in this attempt by members of the Hindu Jagran Manch who also claimed to be members of the regional board of the CBFC.
At least one thing in the above seems a little fishy to me. How do we know whether Kher was involved in the attempt to disrupt the film festival?
We also condemn the political censorship being imposed by Prasar Bharati on film-maker Prakash Jha's recent film on Jayaprakash Narain (especially regarding those sections in the film that have critical references to the Emergency that was imposed by the Congress government). This clearly reiterates our belief that important public institutions like the CBFC and Prasar Bharati have been stripped of their independence and continue to be used by political parties to simply further their narrow agendas.
To ensure freedom of expression and to strengthen democratic institutions there is therefore an urgent need to totally review the censorship laws under the Cinematograph Act as well as the functioning of the CBFC.
Indian Film Censor Board chief fired; threatens to sue
After the Indian Communist Party made some disparaging comments about Anupam Kher, the veteran actor who runs India's film censorship board, Kher was summarily fired.
Kher is threatening to sue Harkrishan Singh Surjeet and the CPI for accusing him of being an "RSS man." But the Communists have responded by saying that they never called him an RSS man. They simply want him out because he was appointed by the BJP; his removal is part of "de-saffronization."
Michael Moore fans should be pleased; Kher and the censor board recently decided to ban Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 in India (not that it isn't already available everywhere as a 100 Rupee VCD!).
Kher is threatening to sue Harkrishan Singh Surjeet and the CPI for accusing him of being an "RSS man." But the Communists have responded by saying that they never called him an RSS man. They simply want him out because he was appointed by the BJP; his removal is part of "de-saffronization."
Michael Moore fans should be pleased; Kher and the censor board recently decided to ban Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 in India (not that it isn't already available everywhere as a 100 Rupee VCD!).
'Who you callin' a lesbian?' Bush-Cheney team wins post-debate spin
Bush and Cheney have dominated the post-debate spin with a weird, fake outrage about Kerry's invocation of Mary Chaney's sexual orientation. Fake it may be, misplaced too. But even with the mysterious nature of Kerry's offense (their problem is that he mentioned her at all, not what he said about her), Bush and Cheney -- with normally trophy-ish wives transformed into supporting attack-dogs -- have owned the post-debate story. If you check news.google.com's stories about the most recent debate, a clear majority are about the Cheneys' outrage about Kerry's use of the word "lesbian."
Bush and Cheney are playing a little with a slippage in how conservatives and liberals talk about this issue. Non-homophobic people ("liberals") use words like "gay" and "lesbian" objectively, value-neutral. Homophobes don't do this. To say the word "lesbian" is for them always a slur, and so Dick and Lynne Cheney can accuse Kerry of insulting their daughter in the debate. Kerry thought he was merely describing her, reminding America of her existence. Bush and Cheney have efficiently capitalized on this linguistic gray zone.
(Where is Mary Chaney, by the way? I wish she would step forward and say something)
Granted, Kerry was still probably wrong in mentioning Mary Chaney. The invocation of a personal connection can be a useful way to blunt the edge of the rampant homophobia of Conservative Christians, but that's not what Bush was espousing in his response to the 'is homosexuality a choice' question. Bush was talking about respect and dignity, (even if he didn't mean it), so Kerry's statement seemed to come out of the blue. And mentioning family members is always a little stinky. Kerry must have been aware that there's a difference between Edwards' reference to it with Cheney across the table, and his own reference to it out of the blue.
It's depressing, because after re-reading the transcript of the debate, I'm feeling more and more that Kerry did a good job. But in the national print-media especially, I'm seeing very few references to Bush's huge "I never said I didn't care about Osama Bin Laden" flap. Sorry, Chris Suellentrop, wrong on this one. No one except a few thousand bloggers here and there seem to have noticed. In small and medium-sized papers all around the country, the story is "Cheney says, 'Kerry, how could you?'"
The absurdity of Bush on several other subjects has been quickly forgotten in the national consciousness. No one is talking about his stupid response to the loss of jobs question (more "Education"!), his lame excuse for not signing an assault weapons ban, and his freaky justification for defacing the U.S. constitution with a hateful, bigoted amendment banning gay marriage (it would have "the benefit of allowing citizens to participate in the process. After all, when you amend the Constitution, state legislatures must participate in the ratification of the Constitution.").
It won't help that 50 million people watched the debate despite the lure of watching Pedro Martinez prove yet again that the Yankees are his daddy. It won't help that 50 million Americans saw a bit of spit lingering on the President's lip for 90 minutes. It won't help that Kerry "won" the debate, because the other side has successfully -- if spuriously -- have ruled the follow-up.
Bush and Cheney are playing a little with a slippage in how conservatives and liberals talk about this issue. Non-homophobic people ("liberals") use words like "gay" and "lesbian" objectively, value-neutral. Homophobes don't do this. To say the word "lesbian" is for them always a slur, and so Dick and Lynne Cheney can accuse Kerry of insulting their daughter in the debate. Kerry thought he was merely describing her, reminding America of her existence. Bush and Cheney have efficiently capitalized on this linguistic gray zone.
(Where is Mary Chaney, by the way? I wish she would step forward and say something)
Granted, Kerry was still probably wrong in mentioning Mary Chaney. The invocation of a personal connection can be a useful way to blunt the edge of the rampant homophobia of Conservative Christians, but that's not what Bush was espousing in his response to the 'is homosexuality a choice' question. Bush was talking about respect and dignity, (even if he didn't mean it), so Kerry's statement seemed to come out of the blue. And mentioning family members is always a little stinky. Kerry must have been aware that there's a difference between Edwards' reference to it with Cheney across the table, and his own reference to it out of the blue.
It's depressing, because after re-reading the transcript of the debate, I'm feeling more and more that Kerry did a good job. But in the national print-media especially, I'm seeing very few references to Bush's huge "I never said I didn't care about Osama Bin Laden" flap. Sorry, Chris Suellentrop, wrong on this one. No one except a few thousand bloggers here and there seem to have noticed. In small and medium-sized papers all around the country, the story is "Cheney says, 'Kerry, how could you?'"
The absurdity of Bush on several other subjects has been quickly forgotten in the national consciousness. No one is talking about his stupid response to the loss of jobs question (more "Education"!), his lame excuse for not signing an assault weapons ban, and his freaky justification for defacing the U.S. constitution with a hateful, bigoted amendment banning gay marriage (it would have "the benefit of allowing citizens to participate in the process. After all, when you amend the Constitution, state legislatures must participate in the ratification of the Constitution.").
It won't help that 50 million people watched the debate despite the lure of watching Pedro Martinez prove yet again that the Yankees are his daddy. It won't help that 50 million Americans saw a bit of spit lingering on the President's lip for 90 minutes. It won't help that Kerry "won" the debate, because the other side has successfully -- if spuriously -- have ruled the follow-up.
Forget Ideology -- it's classroom politics time.
I think Michael has a point about the importance of tone, style, voice, image...
This isn't about democrats or republicans, it's about 6th grade classroom politics. Kerry is the kid who did his homework; Bush is the affable slacker. Who does the rest of the class like more? It comes out 50-50.
This election will probably come down to random exigencies like voter-turnout, and tiny victories and losses in swing-states. If Bush wins, he will probably again lose the popular vote. Unless something major happens, I think we are looking at another nail-biter.
Still, I did think Kerry finally made some noises that will energize his base, particularly among women and African-Americans. He'll need that to get people to care a little more.
Then again, maybe none of this matters. Weren't most people watching the Yankees-Red Sox last night? (Fortunately, neither New York nor Massachusetts are swing states! Interesting...)
This isn't about democrats or republicans, it's about 6th grade classroom politics. Kerry is the kid who did his homework; Bush is the affable slacker. Who does the rest of the class like more? It comes out 50-50.
This election will probably come down to random exigencies like voter-turnout, and tiny victories and losses in swing-states. If Bush wins, he will probably again lose the popular vote. Unless something major happens, I think we are looking at another nail-biter.
Still, I did think Kerry finally made some noises that will energize his base, particularly among women and African-Americans. He'll need that to get people to care a little more.
Then again, maybe none of this matters. Weren't most people watching the Yankees-Red Sox last night? (Fortunately, neither New York nor Massachusetts are swing states! Interesting...)
The Real Cardinal Sin-- Jaime Sin
Imagine that you are a Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. Now imagine that your last name is "Sin."
You are imagining the fate of this real person.
In all seriousness, I hope he gets well soon. Anyone who helped to overthrow Ferdinand Marcos gets props from me. In honor of him, I am thinking of changing my name to "Cardinal Singh."
Let us hope that the rumors that Cardinal Sin is in fact mortal are greatly exaggerated.
You are imagining the fate of this real person.
In all seriousness, I hope he gets well soon. Anyone who helped to overthrow Ferdinand Marcos gets props from me. In honor of him, I am thinking of changing my name to "Cardinal Singh."
Let us hope that the rumors that Cardinal Sin is in fact mortal are greatly exaggerated.
Poll: India lags behind in sex, too
A recent poll by the condom company Durex has India way behind Europe and the U.S. in copulations per annum. France is #1, with 137 per person. The U.S. is at 111. India is way behind, with 46.
My punchline: How long before some joker Economist will find a correlation between GDP and "SDP"?
My punchline: How long before some joker Economist will find a correlation between GDP and "SDP"?
Githa Hariharan: Honor Killings still a problem
See this op-ed in a recent issue of the Calcutta Telegraph, by Githa Hariharan, one of India's important novelists.
Not only are they still a problem, there is no good way to estimate how widespread they are, since deaths are often concealed. It's a problem that people like Urvashi Butalia and Ritu Menon talked about in their respective books on partition, but the essential social structure that fosters honor killings (rigid social boundaries between castes and ethno-religious groups, firmly entrenched patriarchy) is still prevalent in rural India. And while the violence is usually directed against women, men are also frequently targeted by the families of their lover or spouse.
Hariharan makes the connection between past (partition violence) and present especially clear in the following paragraphs:
Not only are they still a problem, there is no good way to estimate how widespread they are, since deaths are often concealed. It's a problem that people like Urvashi Butalia and Ritu Menon talked about in their respective books on partition, but the essential social structure that fosters honor killings (rigid social boundaries between castes and ethno-religious groups, firmly entrenched patriarchy) is still prevalent in rural India. And while the violence is usually directed against women, men are also frequently targeted by the families of their lover or spouse.
Hariharan makes the connection between past (partition violence) and present especially clear in the following paragraphs:
It is a useful thing to perpetuate a tradition of martyrdom, especially when women's bodies are vulnerable to being viewed as the vessels of national honour. It was this unholy honour that provided the motive for otherwise "normal" men to kill their own sisters and wives and mothers during the Partition - "disappearances" and murders which have been covered by a conspiracy of silence, and by the more acceptable belief that these women were abducted or killed by men from the other side. In her book The Other Side of Silence, Urvashi Butalia takes on this myth that the perpetrators of violence were always "outsiders". She writes about a man she interviewed in Amritsar, Mangal Singh, whose family killed seventeen of its women and children. He refuses to use the word killed; he says they became "martyrs" in keeping with Sikh pride. The women, he says, were willing to become martyrs. "The real fear was one of dishonour." But, asks Butalia, who had the pride and the fear? It is not a question Mangal Singh was willing to examine. Similarly, in Borders and Boundaries: Women in India's Partition, Ritu Menon records the account of a partition survivor, Durga Rani. In this account, two types of honour killings occur: one in anticipation of dishonour; the other as a way to cope with dishonour. Consider, on the one hand: "In the villages of Head Junu, Hindus threw their young daughters into wells, dug trenches and buried them alive. Some were burnt to death, some were made to touch electric wires to prevent the Muslims touching them." On the other hand, Durga Rani gives us an idea of what happened to many women who had been abandoned after being raped and disfigured. They could not be "kept" any longer because their "character" was now spoilt. In some cases, as in that of a girl who was raped by ten or more men, the only way to deal with the dishonour was murder; the girl, says Durga Rani, was burnt by her father.
All these years after Partition, this dishonourable honour still stalks the land, wreaking its barbaric violence on both men and women, but preferably on women. Most cases are reported from Punjab, Haryana and parts of western Uttar Pradesh. The statistics are disturbing; twenty-three such murders were reported during 2002 and 2003 in Muzaffarnagar alone. Thirty-five young couples were declared "missing". And in Punjab and Haryana, one out of every ten murders is an honour killing. In most of the cases where the girl is from an upper caste, the boy is the target of violence, usually by the girl's family. Often, girls who are murdered for "destroying the honour of the family" are cremated without any legal formalities and the deaths concealed.
Judith Butler's Obituary of Derrida: Lamenting the failure to communicate
[UPDATE: The Butler obituary I quoted appeared in the November 4 issue of the London Review of Books. I've cut all but the first paragraph I quoted.]
I received an obituary of Jacques Derrida authored by Judith Butler in an email. The subject line is "Judith Butler on Derrida for the German newspapers." I don't know whether it has already appeared in the papers yet, or where it is likely to come out.
I'm only excerpting the first paragraph, out of respect for the LRB. I like this piece by Butler because she's taking stock of Derrida on his own terms and in his own tone -- a tone I call Derrida's perpetual lament. And, contrary to what is commonly thought, that tone did not first appear in the last few years, though it did become more urgent then. It's there even in the early, major works in the 1960s and 70s.
Q: What was he lamenting? A: Fundamentally -- sort of -- the impossibility of communication. Communication is impossible because of the opacity of language itself as a medium (which is nevertheless inevitable), because of the opacity of subjectivity, and because of the inevitability of death. We never understand each other just right, his argument goes, and therefore we never really understand each other at all. Sometimes Derrida is talking not about the communication attempted between and amongst individuals (whether in private or in public; the two were always intimately intertwined in Derrida's writing), but other times he is talking about a philosophical abstraction referred to as the Other. In his essays, Derrida slipped back and forth between the two.
I myself only saw Derrida speak once, at the American Academy of Religion conference in Toronto in the fall of 2002. Derrida's recent turn to "religion" elicited considerable interest and excitement amongst religious studies scholars, led by a Villanova theologican named John Caputo (who has written two impressive books on Derrida). The room was packed -- probably upwards of 1000 people were there. I responded probably the way most people responded -- intense interest, curiosity, and occasionally a sense of awe. But he went on too long, and was too confusing. I couldn't stay focused; people began filtering and then streaming out of the lecture.
And Derrida sidestepped (would we expect anything else?) Caputo's repeated questions (the "lecture" was technically an "interview") about his -- JD's -- personal relationship with God, and with "faith." It seemed that Derrida was saying that deconstruction and theology are simply not compatible methods of thought; he would not accept God as an ontologically whole entity with whom human beings can "communicate" (and I mean that in the Catholic as well as the linguistic sense). Indeed, to have done so would have been profoundly incongruous with his philosophical project of nearly 40 years. The work of deconstruction is simply not -- and cannot be -- the work of theology, even negative theology.
I should also mention that I taught a class called "How to Read Deconstructively," where I assigned a few Derrida classics, including Of Grammatology and Limited Inc. A bare-bones syllabus is here. I tried to structure it so that students who had had no previous exposure (initiation?) to deconstruction could enter into the arguments. I assigned Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Austin, and even a little Cavell.
* * * * *
So then, here is Judith Butler on Jacques Derrida:
[For the rest of this piece, go to the LRB]
I received an obituary of Jacques Derrida authored by Judith Butler in an email. The subject line is "Judith Butler on Derrida for the German newspapers." I don't know whether it has already appeared in the papers yet, or where it is likely to come out.
I'm only excerpting the first paragraph, out of respect for the LRB. I like this piece by Butler because she's taking stock of Derrida on his own terms and in his own tone -- a tone I call Derrida's perpetual lament. And, contrary to what is commonly thought, that tone did not first appear in the last few years, though it did become more urgent then. It's there even in the early, major works in the 1960s and 70s.
Q: What was he lamenting? A: Fundamentally -- sort of -- the impossibility of communication. Communication is impossible because of the opacity of language itself as a medium (which is nevertheless inevitable), because of the opacity of subjectivity, and because of the inevitability of death. We never understand each other just right, his argument goes, and therefore we never really understand each other at all. Sometimes Derrida is talking not about the communication attempted between and amongst individuals (whether in private or in public; the two were always intimately intertwined in Derrida's writing), but other times he is talking about a philosophical abstraction referred to as the Other. In his essays, Derrida slipped back and forth between the two.
I myself only saw Derrida speak once, at the American Academy of Religion conference in Toronto in the fall of 2002. Derrida's recent turn to "religion" elicited considerable interest and excitement amongst religious studies scholars, led by a Villanova theologican named John Caputo (who has written two impressive books on Derrida). The room was packed -- probably upwards of 1000 people were there. I responded probably the way most people responded -- intense interest, curiosity, and occasionally a sense of awe. But he went on too long, and was too confusing. I couldn't stay focused; people began filtering and then streaming out of the lecture.
And Derrida sidestepped (would we expect anything else?) Caputo's repeated questions (the "lecture" was technically an "interview") about his -- JD's -- personal relationship with God, and with "faith." It seemed that Derrida was saying that deconstruction and theology are simply not compatible methods of thought; he would not accept God as an ontologically whole entity with whom human beings can "communicate" (and I mean that in the Catholic as well as the linguistic sense). Indeed, to have done so would have been profoundly incongruous with his philosophical project of nearly 40 years. The work of deconstruction is simply not -- and cannot be -- the work of theology, even negative theology.
I should also mention that I taught a class called "How to Read Deconstructively," where I assigned a few Derrida classics, including Of Grammatology and Limited Inc. A bare-bones syllabus is here. I tried to structure it so that students who had had no previous exposure (initiation?) to deconstruction could enter into the arguments. I assigned Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Austin, and even a little Cavell.
* * * * *
So then, here is Judith Butler on Jacques Derrida:
"How do you finally respond to your life and your name?" Derrida raised this question in his final interview with Le Monde, published in August 18th of this year. If he could apprehend his life, he remarks, he would also be obliged to apprehend his death as singular and absolute, without resurrection and without redemption. At this revealing moment, it is interesting that Derrida the philosopher should find in Socrates his proper precursor, that he should turn to Socrates to understand that, at the age of 74, he still did not quite know how best to live. One cannot, he remarks, come to terms with oneâs life without trying to apprehend oneâs death, asking, in effect, how a human lives and dies. Much of Derridaâs later work is dedicated to mourning, though he offers his acts of public mourning as a posthumous gift, for instance, in The Work of Mourning published in 2001. There he tries to come to terms with the death of other writers and thinkers through reckoning his debt to their words, indeed, their texts; his own writing constitutes an act of mourning, one that he is perhaps, avant la lettre, recommending to us a way to begin to mourn this thinker who not only taught us how to read, but gave the act of reading a new significance and a new promise. In that book, he openly mourns Roland Barthes who died in 1980, Paul de Man, who died in 1983, Michel Foucault, who died in 1984, and a host of others, including Edmund Jabes (1991), Louis Marin (1992), Sarah Kofman (1994), Emmanuel Levinas (1995) and Jean-Francois Lyotard (1998). The last of the essays, for Lyotard, included in this book is written six years before Derrida's own death. It is not, however, Derridaâs own death that preoccupies him here, but rather his "debts." These are authors that he could not do without, ones with whom and through whom he thinks. He writes only because he reads, and he reads only because there are these authors to read time and again. He "owes" them something or, perhaps, everything, if only because he could not write without them; their writing exists as the precondition of his own; their writing constitutes the means through which his own writing voice is animated and secured, a voice that emerges, importantly, as an address.
[For the rest of this piece, go to the LRB]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)