Dworkin on the manipulation of language and Marilyn Waring on economics and human rights

Dworkin offers some fascinating criticisms of language and frames that are worth contemplating. These too are from her book "Scapegoat" with page numbers noted after each quote.

"It is hard to use language to convey meaning; it is laughable to try to use language to search for truth; the truth itself is laughable, a partly visible stage on which clowns slip on banana peels. Language has ceased to be human, or part of the human endeavor toward self-determination and dignity" (135).

"In the United States, language exists in a vacuum as if it were isolated from any community of values or actions. A recent thirty-year reinterpretation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects speech, assembly, and religion from government sanction, fetishizes all expressive language: words become sacred totems, untouchable, an archeology of immutable ruins. Pulled away from its context, surgically excised by literalist courts of law, language is the dead corpse at the party--murdered, but by whom and so what?"(136)

"It is not hard to see how words determine human destiny: "The Auschwitz syndrome: the enemy must be wiped off the face of the earth," writes George Konrad. "And the enemy is anyone who has been declared an enemy" (136).

"The line between the violence of words and the violence of crowds is sometimes real; but more oftensuch a line is a product of jurisprudential artifice and fictive sociology. Indeed, it is hard to imagine violent acts surrounded by silence: riots without words; mobs without slogans; threats so quiet they remain unheard; mute masses of vandals. These actions happen but there is no sound. In Argentina under military rule the language was simply tranquilized, flattened out, a strategy that helped cliche emerge as political principle: "We were defrauded by democracy, which was not what we had expected";...Timmerman explained that there was no state censorship during the tyranny. Instead, writers disappeared. He called it "biological censorship" (137).

"Instead of recognizing the power of language, which is complex and difficult to untangle or understand, the notion that words have consequences is ridiculed; any attempt to try to understand the linguistic dimensions of hate is treated as if the effort itself were
a form of fascism" (143).

"There are bad words. Words become bad precisely because or when they cannot be separated from the shedding of human blood. The delusion of separation is, of course, consoling" (143).

"The Nazis also photographed and filmed the torture and eventual murder of German officers who tried to depose Hitler and failed... Goebbels's idea was to take the movie footage and make a propaganda film, which he did. It was shown once in Berlin. Full-dress Nazis were nauseated and made physically ill. It was fine to photograph Jews being clubbed to death in public; but watching adult, Aryan, military men die was another thing altogether, which suggests that torture as entertainment requires dehumanization of an enemy and that enemy's stigmatized powerlessness...Enjoyment in the debased photographic object requires that the viewer never identify with the victim so that, whatever his future, the viewer knows that he will never be that abject and soiled" (164).

"International law is extremely important to the future of women. Crimes against humanity are inevitably crimes against women and children as well as stigmatized men; and inside countries and racial or ethnic groups--in which women and the internal enemy and men are the rapists and rulers--human rights must be framed to free women from male domination, especially from the systematic violence of male dominance. The androcentric heart of religions must be faced. The harm of objectification and dehumanization must be recognized as prelude to normalized violence" (337).

These the last quotes here are from Marilyn Waring's film: "Who's Counting?"

"The international trade in arms is the biggest growth industry of all.
The five permenant members of the security council are also the 5 leading arms exporters of the world. War is the perpetual market for these five countries who sell and make the bulk of weapons. It has been in the U.S.'s interest to sustain war and political tensions in the Persian Gulf region since the oil shock of 1974 and 1975. War is marketable and contributes to growth and development."

"Economics is a tool of people in power."

This quote from Warring is paraphrased:
Female sexual slavery is also a major growth industry worldwide in which ten year olds in the Phillipines are available for sex to tourists, despite sexual slavery being "illegal."

equality in the capacity to do violence?

The title for this comes from Andrea Dworkin's book "Scapegoat" where on page 126 she contemplates women's relationship to violence, arguing
"equality may be found in the capacity to do violence if not in the doing itself. Women appear to experience social coercion into so-called good behavior and want to break those bonds by so-called bad, or brazenly sexual behavior; but this is not an either/or system"
I bring this up here with regard to a recent article titled "A uterus is no substitute for a conscience" whose author I cannot remember though the title alone kept me thinking, of course it isn't. Why should it be?

I remember the argument against women in combat was chiefly two-fold:
First, that women would be more likely targets of sexual violence that "naturally" occurs during war (i.e. rape and assualt) and second, that women, because they are "naturally more nurturing" would make lousy killers, thus lousy soldiers who by the nature of war, must at the very least be ready, willing and able to kill. So bring this argument up to the present torturing of Iraqi prisoners by female soldiers. Both men and women argue that these incidents are isolated acts carried out by a few "sick" individuals (this is also the official stance of the military) and yet I can't help but wonder if the actions of these female soldiers was at least in some small part inspired by their desire to be seen as one of the boys, equally capable, ready and willing to participate in the "usual business of war." Think about it.
In Iraq alone you have the aforementioned argument (however stupid it sounds): you have the woman as target in Jessica Lynch, now the celebrated iconic "soldier/hero" nevertheless rescued by a man but you also have the female torturers who turn the idea of the naturally nurturing thus less violent woman on its head: the women who went out of their way to prove their toughness and their willingness to "obey orders" and brutalize the enemy. Either way, neocons are trying desperately to use this as "proof positive" that women should not be in the military thus averting our collective gaze from the question that needs to be asked: why are such images and stories shocking? Is it because torture and sexual objectification is shocking to see (though considered, despite the Geneva convention, the usual business of war)or is it because it disturbs us to think of or witness women as torturers and voyeurs? Torture and sexual objectification is nothing new in war or pornography for that matter. Why should atrocities committed by women (whether it be killing ex-boyfriends out of "jealous rage" or abusive husbands out of "self-protection", their children, or torturing prisoners and killing as soldiers in war) be any more shocking than that committed by men in similar circumstances? Or to put it another way, when do we get to differentiate between murder, murder, and murder or torture as a crime against humanity and state sanctioned torture for the purposes of "interrogation" and the protection of "national security?"

Dworkin offers several stories of women's violence against women (female SS guards torturing and murdering women to the point of "shocking" their male collegues for example)and cites specific witness accounts of the violence perpetrated by women to be "worse than that of the male wardens" (129). Yet we do not get to the answer of why.
Dworkin suggests that this is women's attempt at becoming equal with men, of one-upping other women and even men through the convienent outlets of racist scapegoating. So, DOES violence offer women the opportunity to be at least at the time, perceived as equals to men? Should it? Can it? Why? Why not? Maybe we need to ask not if it does, but who gets to determine this,in what ways will the context vary, and why?

Sorry, this is a heavy issue I know, but these questions has been on my mind alot lately. Feel free to respond with any opinions or enlightenment. The purpose of this post is certainly not to dredge up or excuse the gross actions committed but to argue that the framing of the questions surrounding these issues has been manipulated yet again to avert our gaze and thus contemplation on the more pressing questions, those that if asked, could potentially undermine the "logic" of war itself.

peace!

cultural myopia, "memorial day," democracy and speaking

I have never explained what I meant by "cultural myopia" and I thought today would be perfect for doing so. The term for me, refers to the America-centrist perspectives of patriotic propaganda that really do color world views even in human rights work. That said, I DO appreciate all who have died (Civilian and Military!) in war and sacrificed their lives (often for the stupidity and ego of those in power) so that I can 'have the freedom to say such things.'

What I think is missing though is the question why? Why do we have to clarify, justify, explain our thoughts if they might offend someone,
if we truly do have freedom of speach does this not include the freedom to disagree and to not maintain a monopoly of historical,political and social consensus? What about freedom from speech and freedom from religion? What does the word freedom mean? Does the definition vary depending upon who is asking and who is telling, thus defining?

Do people really choose to die for their country or are they dying for a dream of the freedom immortalized in our (mis)understanding of U.S. history? Or is it for ecomomic freedom and the chance to go to college and the dream of (as the ads say) "seeing the world?" Why can we not ask these questions? Why is there a fear of speaking in a democracy? That is why I love Galeano's "Global Fear" (see other post)so much, particularly the line "Democracy is afraid of remembering and language is afraid of speaking" Why not ask the question, what is it that what we are supposed to officially remember today is the sacrifice of lives and not the stupidity of war in general, the stupidity of having to sacrifice lives in the first place? This is ESPECIALLY true with regard to the often very young soldiers dying and killing in Iraq and Afghanistan right now and all of the others in places the media forgets to mention and thus renders unnewsworthy. Forgotten? Only momentarily...but isn't that the point of remembering? Of honoring? Of promising to "never forget?" What good is memory in the face of official silences and language the renders people's lives, expendable (though regrettable) tragedies?

peace!

Galeano and Bertolt Brecht quotes

This Galeano quote is taken from Paul Farmer's (aforementioned book) Chapter 1 "On Suffering and Structural Violence: Social and economic rights in the global era" pg 29:
"Where do people earn the Per Capita Income? More than one poor starving soul would like to know. In our countries, numbers live better than people. How many people prosper in times of prosperity? How many people find their lives developed by development?" Eduardo Galeano

This Bertolt Brecht quote is from Farmer's book pg 251:
"The more there are suffering, then, the more natural their sufferings appear. Who wants to prevent the fishes in the sea from getting wet? And the suffering themselves share this callousness towards themselves and are lacking in kindness toward themselves. It is terrible that human beings so easily put up with existing conditions, not only with the sufferings of strangers but also with their own. All those who have thought about the bad state of things refuse to appeal to the compassion of one group of people for another. But the compassion of the oppressed for the oppressed is indispensable. It is the world's one hope." Bertolt Brecht

peace!

Eduardo Galeano on Global Fear

This is from Galeano's book: "Upside down A Primer for the looking glass world" pg 79.
"Global Fear"
Those who work are afraid they'll lose their jobs.
Those who don't are afraid they'll never find one.
Whoever doesn't fear hunger is afraid of eating.
Drivers are afraid of walking and pedestrians are afraid of
getting run over.
Democracy is afraid of remembering and language is afraid of speaking.
Civilians fear the military, the military fears a shortage of weapons,
weapons fear a shortage of wars.
It is the time of fear.
Women's fear of violent men and men's fear of fearless women.
Fear of thieves, fear of the police.
Fear of doors without locks, of time without watches, of children without television; fear of night without sleeping pills and day
without pills to wake up.
Fear of crowds, fear of solitude, fear of what was and what could be, fear of dying, fear of living.

"our enemies are the very air in disguise"

Lately I'm adding one more crazy subject to my list of shit to learn.
I want to understand economics but not to further the notion of free market capitalism as a blessing (because it isn't!). Rather, I want to try and figure out the exact point to which human beings are translated into terms such as "GNP or GDP", "productive" or "non-productive," "viable or non-viable." The title of this particular blog refers to Ani di Franco's song "looking for the holes" but the song of hers I've been lovin lately has been "brief bus stop" from the same c.d. "not so soft" I especially love the lines: "but i said i don't know if i can wait for that peace to be mine and she said, well we've been waiting for this bus, for an awfully long time"

Life sometimes feels like a "brief bus stop" in which you want to hold on to experiences, people, love, whatever but you can't. They have their own things to do, and perhaps the point is not to simply catalog each moment in your heart and mind wherever you can find room but to cherish them NOW because you never know when this person or that person might leave "too soon"

For some reason, the ("brief bus stop") song reminds me of my mom and the many times in my childhood we went without food only to spend the little money we did have going out to eat. It was her way of trying to make it seem like we had the world! So we'd go for "Mexican" or "Chinese" and come home to a trailer without heat and food. As a child I was really (oddly enough) very practical and though that if we just saved money and worked more, we could pay our bills and live like everyone else(so I thought). Now I wish my mom was here so I could hug her and say thanks for trying your best to make the best of stupid situations and endless medical bills and the sorrow of your child (my six year old brother) dying in your arms. As a teen, I blamed her when I had to work 12 hour shifts my senior year in high school, damn near failing. I hated how we could somehow always afford her drinking and smoking habits via living on ramen noodles and pepsi and how I couldn't afford clothes that actually kept me warm in cold months. I think about how hard it must've been for her having to beg my stepdad for grocery money and be beaten for begging. I remember vowing to never beg anyone for anything because of it. Now, I just wish she were here so that I could say I love you for everything you did and every tiny encouragement. My mom is the only person who has always believed I could do anything and who taught me how to "make-do" until I could do better and how to be humble and proud all at once. Her unending social commentary on the stupidity of "reagonomics" and the absolute bullshit people with AIDS suffer through, has always inspired the social critic in me. I think this is why I gravitate toward courses at BSU that are taught by teachers willing to push, to question, to criticize and not just reiterate "socially acceptable" knowledge. My mom, a human being that some jackass in D.C. will never see as "productive" or "economically viable" even though she works sixteen hour days welding trailers. She is still a statistic in that she remains in her seventeen year marriage with a man who prefers to hit her rather than kiss her. And so, distance has become a survival mechanism for me.
I walked away from her and the craziness of her life after her husband threatened to hurt my son and I have never gone back. School affords me ample excuse but I don't know if I could go back. I haven't resolved my hatred of my perceptions surrounding Alabama or for her situation itself and the judgement that comes up every time I think about both. I do say I love you as often as I can in every letter and I hope that one time it will actually get through but perhaps the most important lesson my mom taught me is that you can't save people from themselves nor can you truly "walk in their shoes" despite the many times you might feel inclined to give them yours. :)

We can always see the flaws in others but how often can we learn from our own, how often do relationships offer us that mirror moment to see ourself as the Other, as the begger, as the batterer, as the victim?
I argue often about how much I hate elitist thinking and yet, it is so easy to look down on or judge people whose lives are distant, different and incomprehensible to me. I think THAT is the moment where people are translated...in the silence, in the safe distance from white picket fence SUV-ville to that rat and cockroach infested trailer or park bench with the no-loitering sign or the guy who stands out on the corner with his need money sign religiously, as I turn up the radio in my brain and hurry by.

If we can't bridge the distances that keep us comfortable how can we hope to turn structural inequality on its head?? Can't we move to a space of gratitude? I want to say to someone, anyone,everyone, hey you are so much more to me than an afterthought. I am always aware even if I don't say it. I am aware of you and I think despite whatever society might think, you are truly beautiful. Thanks for your time. Thanks most of all, for simply being you. Oh and I don't really care how utopian that might sound. I think the fact that to fear the slam of thinking/acting/dreaming "utopian" is yet another excuse, another fence that we need to bulldoze straight through.

peace!
jen

"I think my body is as restless as my mind and I don't know if I can roll with it this time" --"roll with it" Ani di Franco

"We can't sit back and let people come to harm. We owe them our lives"
--"looking for the holes"--Ani di Franco

voyeurism vs. "bearing witness"

I was so happy today to read Paul Farmer ("Pathologies of Power")picking up this topic as well. I should say, that he struggles with the notions of "bearing witness" and voyeurism and the relationship of "observation" to "silence" and oppression. How can you not struggle with it, really? I mean look at Amnesty International's fantastic magazine they put out. The images hit you (as they are intended to do) but how different are these images from those lovely late night commercial marathons about "starving children" in (take your pick) "third world" country? My point here is that anything taken in isolation out of its cultural context can be exploited/manipulated/capitalized upon and for what purpose? Perhaps to solicit a nation (and other nations)into war????

One of my favorite points Farmer makes so far is that those of us belonging to powerful nations (who call ourselves human rights activists) must be able to see our role in global inequality. That is, he does not blame those belonging to powerful nations, rather he explains "International human rights organizations...also need to turn their gaze back toward the great centers of world power in which they reside. Only through careful analysis of transnational inequalities will we understand the complex social processes that structure not only growing disparities or risk but also what stands between us and a future in which social and economic rights are guranteed by states or other polities" (18). I will post more on this topic later.
peace!

the neverending story of research...

I'm simultaneously working on and putting together research for my proposal for the creation of a human rights studies minor at BSU and it is as fun as it is tedious. So far (in the past few hours) I've made a questionare for faculty and for students to gauge interest and support, I've researched the hell out of different major, minor and graduate programs for human rights studies throughout the U.S. (the great bulk of which are at law schools it seems) and attempted a rather skeletel model of what a minor plan here might encompass.
The next step will be to email these different programs to gather more data (to be compiled later) on enrollment numbers/program success etc.

On a side note, my summer classes start in one week so I'm trying to cram all the fun reading and research projects I can into this week and next week, while working incessantly at my job just so I can pay for summer school! It's actually really cool to see just how many programs are offered! Too bad most are on the East Coast with the exception of the power house that is UCBerkeley! Peace!~

summer reading (fun!)

I have now a total of thirty books checked out for "fun" reading. Today I picked up "The Little School" (about the disappeared in Argentina), "Leave none to tell the story" "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families"(both about the genocide in Rwanada) "Revolution and Genocide" (about the Armenian genocide) and three books by Eduardo Galeano "Upside down" "Guatemala" and "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent"
This on top of trying to read Andrea Dworkin's "Scapegoat" Trinh Minh-ha's "When the moon waxes red" and Paul Farmer's "Pathologies of Power"
I am reading all of this trying to answer questions for myself by learning the history behind the words such as the way that the word "genocide" gets used, when, by whom and in what context, particularly when politicians and diplomats refuse to use the word until they are forced to recognize what (typically Non-Governmental Organizations or NGOS)were reporting to be genocide all along. I am also interested in when military intervention becomes "necessary" and how economic sanctions really do hurt countries, not the power elites in those countries mind you, but people who are often made even more powerless as a result.

one last thought for today

The previous posts have all been grappling with my perspective.
I wanted to end today though reflecting on a dharma talk by the bellmaster of Beginner's Mind Sangha. He spoke last wednesday on right view, right concentration and right mindfulness (elements of the Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path for the cessation of Suffering). The bellmaster shared with the Sangha (spirtual community) how he struggles to avoid the spectacle of war images and the anger these evoke in him by choosing what to focus on and in this way he demonstrated for us the inseperable nature of right view,concentration and mindfulness. He also shared stories of how he has to choose not to correct his mother's failing memory as she struggles with Alzheimers and how he must choose to concentrate on his wife's health not how and when it might fail because of her Multiple Sclerosis and finally how he works to maintain right mindfulness of his own emotions while remaining selectively engaged in protesting war, while refusing to consume the images and conversations of war. I am always humbled in hearing what thoughts weigh heavily on others and the similarities and differences in our experiences/perceptions of our individual reality AND shared humanity.

the bog of warspeak

The rhetoric of war, especially the rhetoric of current "conflicts" is always worth analyzing for its unbelievable ability to reduce people to statistics. The rhetoric itself is dehumanizing and this dehumanization is the first step (I think) toward creating soldiers who can kill and still live with their actions. First, a disclaimer...I am not arguing that soldiers are mindless drones the military creates/shapes/orders to kill innocent people. What I am arguing, is that the highly crafted propagandic rhetoric of war creates the space of fear, hatred, cultural myopia, distance, and detachment necessary for non-psychopathic human beings to justify murder, torture, "carpet-bombing" and civillian casualities are just the every day business of war. That said, while the pictures of acts most Americans would not associate with "normal warfare" i.e. torture which as Susan Sontag pointed out (see "Regarding The Torture of Others" New York Times Magazine 4/23/04)includes by definition, "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted..." Why, if not for the spin doctoring rhetoric, do these acts "shock and awe" whereas the massive devastation caused by "smart bombs" "razing" and "carpet bombing fails to illicit similar outrage? Why do pictures of individuals abusing other (Othered) individuals warrant international outcry when international policy (often carried out in "normal warfare")creates (and has created) the chaos that birthed every genocide of the last century? Do we perhaps differentiate because to think critically on the ever twising rhetoric requires reflection on what it means to be both a "great democracy" AND THE LAST REMAINING "superpower" arguably singlehandedly capable of world domination/destruction? Where can/does the line of responsibility be drawn to legitimately seperate the actions of some vs the ignorance and complicity through silence of many? Will the inevitable "lessons of Iraq" teach us to keep Power in check or, will they (as the "lessons of Vietnam") simply teach us how to strut even more proudly with an even bigger stick/bomb/cause/propaganda campaign?

Eduardo Galeano and Paul Farmer

Recently I have had the great pleasure of reading incredible works by these two men. Paul Farmer's book, "Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor" is so incredible to me, I am bogged down still in his introduction, fighting the temptation to underline every other sentance! Farmer's book also introduced me to the work of Eduardo Galeano whose book "Upside Down: A primer for the looking glass world" I plan to pick up later today. May I suggest to anyone interested in human rights, please check these two authors/activists out. The following Galeano teaser comes from http://buffaloreport.com/030326galeano.html titled "The War":
"Just think. In the middle of last year, when this war was still only gestating, George W. Bush stated that 'we have to be ready to attack in any obscure corner of the world.'; ergo, Iraq is an obscure corner of the world. Does Bush really believe that civilization began in Texas and his fellow Texans invented writing? Has he really never heard of the library of Niniveh, the tower of Babel or the hanging gardens of Babylon?" "Who elected him president of the planet anyway? I was never asked to vote in any such elections. Were you?"

perspectives 2

I intended this site to be human rights focused so what might a cancer patient's (or my feelings about working with her) have to do with that?
Well, consider for a moment the comfort in distance, in being safely removed emotionally or emotionally numbed enough to consider prisoner torture "funny?" (This, I read, was Lynnddie Englands' public response to the question "Didn't you know what you were doing was wrong???")
I think it is very difficult not to Other. By this I mean, not to further the obvious divide of differences/spaces/perspectives between you and I or us and them or however you want to break it down. So, my last post was my attempt to explain and explore the raw emotionality of a situation, of a reality, that is similar to bearing witness. Working on a cancer ward, you often witness what most people would certainly rather not: a helplessness to stop suffering and the impossibility to stop death. In this way, I think of those service members suffering and dying in Iraq, Afghanistan (and other places)and just how far "normal war" dehumanization can go in the face of helplessness and massive systemic Othering of said/chosen "enemy."

perspectives via the cancer ward

With regard to shifting frames (and limits to the field of vision)...
last night I spent time with a cancer patient, a woman who could care less about politics. Her worldview consisted of making it from point a to point b without vomiting and without unbearable pain. I say I spent time because to me, saying "took care of" or "cared for" feels more and less adequate. I care for her but in a limited way, a way that allows me to look, to be present, to hold her hand as she walks, to reassure but also to keep from crying when she cries and to keep from vomiting when she does. Still, I care beyond that, as I worry for her wellbeing and am a bit lost in the jargon of "failed reductions and failed chemotherapies" and there is an everpresent sense of gratitude that I am not there, I am not her, sitting in a cold room, sad but hopeful, hurting though laughing, tired, tired, tired but always able to smile and ask how someone else's day is going. We (as the job requires) maintain this illusion of distance, this mental/emotional retrenching that allows us to go home and not cry at every red light at the seeming unfairness of illness, the seemming arbitrariness of distance, of proximity...and of the importance of courtesy, of contact, of kindness.

a different vision (introductory post)

The title comes from an article I read by Howard Zinn, where he writes, "I suggest that a patriotic American who cares for his country might act on behalf of a different vision. Instead of being feared for our military prowess, we should want to be respected for our dedication to human rights." (from "My country: The World, by Howard Zinn--Tanbou/Tambour, Summer 2003: http://www.tanbou.com/2003/summer/MyCountryHowardZinn.htm)


This blog is inspired by my recent research into the way that human rights ideology/expertise is framed. I am always intrigued by the way the discussions and those discussing relate (or fail to relate) to those being (Beings) discussed/portrayed. Wouldn't it indeed be wonderful if the rhetoric of America was matched by action regarding dedication to human rights? Wouldn't it indeed be evidence of our greatness if our unilateral action centered less around military action and brute force and more on renowned compassion backed up by compassionate action, not nicely written words...