[Reader-list] Politics of American Un-civilization

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Avinash and Vivek,

I have been following with some interest the discussion on the veracity 
of the Abu Ghraib videos and images following from the posting of the 
'lokvidya' piece on the same.So much so that I am provoked to gather the 
courage to make what is for me a rather rare posting (nowadays) on to 
the Reader List.

I cannot but help thinking whenever Abu Ghraib is referred to about two 
other pieces of imagery that I have seen that have always left me with a 
lot of questions. Let me talk about them a little. Perhaps even in an 
unforgivably cursory fashion.

One is a set of images of public executions in the Islamic Republic of 
Iran, that I sawpresented in a sit in by Iranian political refugees in 
Frankfurt this summer, and another is the video that some of us in Sarai 
and Delhi university have seen of the video footage of the 
police/paramilirary/army violence meted out to demonstraters in the 
north eastern Indian state of Manipur. In both instances, what has 
struck me is the theatrical, almost scripted quality of the violence 
that both these sets of images seem to contain. In the images from Iran, 
I have seen young men and women being hung from cranes with their eyes 
open, facing death, as a mullah stands watchful. In the Manipur footage 
I have seen men of the security forces (it is not always clear whether 
they are police, paramilirary or army personnel) routinely humiliate and 
terrorize the population with a horrible banality. In both these 
instances, I am left wondering, who took these images, and why.

Of course, they may also have been taken by sadist Indian or Iranian 
people in power, and of course they may have a certain utility in 
terrorizing those that they seek to terrorize (the Iranian opposition to 
a deeply violent regime, or to those Manipuris who resist the violence 
of the armed occupation of the security forces of the Indian state). If 
this were true (and it may well be true) then their nature mirrors the 
reality implicit in the charge contained in the  Lok Vidya text's take 
on the Abu Ghraid images  - the one that  suggests that the Abu Ghraib 
videos only demonstrate the depths to which US government and military 
procedures can plummet . And that they are a part of a deliberate US 
government strategy to terrorize the Iraqi people. So too, the Manipur 
videos must be a deliberte attempt to scare the Manipuris, and the 
Iranian execution images a state sanctioned means to silence dissent. 
Their usage by Iranian and Manipuri opposition groups complicates this 
assumption a little, but let us leave this aside for the moment.

But, if we are prepared to accept this, there seems to be little point 
in saying that the US government alone does this. I find little 
justification in attatching the tag - 'American' to the expression 'Un 
Civilization', It seemse to me about as pointless as saying  - 'Iranian 
barbarians' or 'Indian brutes'. I find labels like 'Indian brutes' 
offensive, even though I know that the Indian state acts in a brutal 
fashion, all the time. I want to argue for a distinction between the 
actions of the state and the propenstities of subjects. Every act of 
violence in the North East or in Kashmir, is undertaken ostensibly in 
the name of all Indian citizens, and that includes me, and the writers 
of the Lok Vidya text. If we want to say 'American Un-Civilization' then 
let us at the same time, and in the same breath, take responsibility and 
complete, personal, moral responsibility, as Indian citizens for the 
enormous violence and humiliation that Indian nationalism and the Indian 
state have visited on many people in South Asia. Let us stand up and be 
counted as brutes in our own backyard. Some may reject this imperative 
as absurd, and I would not disagree with them. But one cant have it both 
ways, you cant absolve yourself and blame others for the same offenses.

Most governments in the world have acted with appalling violence towards 
those that they have had the opportunity to rule, including those like 
the Iranian government, who make a loud noise about how they are opposed 
to US Imperialism, or the Indian government, which is always happy to 
have folk dances from the north east on Republic day annotate the 
torture cells and sophisticated methods of militarized repression for 
the north easterners - as part of the same uncomplicated and wonderful 
reality that is the day to day practice of Indian nationalism.

On the other hand, we may also specualate that just as there are people 
everywhere in the world who are horrified and angry at the violence of 
their own governments, there are people in Iran, the North East (and 
hopefully the rest) of India and in the US administered prisons of Abu 
Ghraib (as well as in the United States) who act as conscientious 
whistle blowers, who want to let people all over the world know what 
happens in the name of American democracy, the Islamic revolution in 
Iran or the ideology of Indian nationalism...It may be possible that 
they are also part of the networked chaind of authorship and viewership 
that devolves on to the Abu Gh'raib images, the Iranian execution 
photographs and the Manipur videos...

The Lok vidya text, in designing a grand strategem in which the images 
are only a mechanism of mastery, seems to rule out this possibility, and 
seem to suggest that there can be only one explaination for the 
authorship and the reception of such images, and that explaination 
always only points in the direction of the imperatives of power, 
especially what is considered to be the functional imperatives of the 
'American' hegemon.

Reality may be more complicated than the comforts of Indian or third 
worldist Anti- Americanism may allow for (and let me make it clear here 
that  I am no apologist for the American, or for that matter what is 
called the Indian or Iranian master narrative)

Perhaps the writers of the Lok Vidya text might do well to consider that 
just as all those who happen to have American passports might not 
automatically endorse the actions of the United States administration at 
home and abroad, so too, some of us who may be Iranian or Indian or 
Chinese or Russian citizens may not be always in agreement with the 
violence our states visit on to Kashmir, the Indian North East, in Iran, 
in Tibet and China or in Chechnya (or elsewhere in the territorities 
they make fragrant with their sovereign powers) . If you look at the 
videos from Manipur, you can see that Abu Gh'raib is only one more place 
in the world where people are robbed of dignity. Something not very 
different also happens, and happens as a part of routine state policy, 
routine military conduct, within the territory of the Indian republic on 
a fairly routine basis.

I feel the kind of hysterical anti-Americanism that the title 'American 
Un Civilization'  suggests leaves us, the rest of the world, - the 
Indians, the Iranians, the Chinese, the French, and all the rest - on a 
moral high horse that I am not at all comfortable about riding. 
Perehaps, as a conscious denizen of a messy world,  I have never been 
able to achieve the pristine innocence that riding that moral high horse 
seems to require as a pre condition.

What I am aware of is the sensation at the pit of my stomach, that 
informs me that  the Ashwamedha Yagya (the Imperial Horse Sacrifice) of 
Indian nationalism is as sickening  as is the excess of the violence of 
the current US mandate in Iraq, or, the history of the  lethal and 
murderours intensity of Ba'athist Iraqui Nationalism under the Saddam 
Hussein dispensation. Lamenting the violence of one, cannot blind me to 
the other. And this inability not to see the networked-ness of violence, 
makes it difficult for me to accept the explainatory or ethical value of 
judgements like 'American Un-Civilization'.

Most importantly, it does violence, - immense and enormous violence to 
those millions of Americans who took to the streets of American cities 
in loud and visible disagreement,  against the war in Iraq, and who are 
continuing to make their dissent known in many different ways.

Perhaps Lok Vidya rides their high horse better  than I do, but I am 
more comfortable with an obstinate and lowly mule that never trusts the 
motives of any master, least of all its own...

with regards

Shuddha

 

-- 
Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Raqs Media Collective)
The Sarai Programme
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS)
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India
Phone : + 91 11 23960040
Fax :     + 91 11 23943450
E Mail : shuddha at sarai.net
http://www.sarai.net
http://www.raqsmediacollective.net