[Reader-list] Politics of American Un-civilization

[Avinash Jha]

First of all, let me point to a misunderstanding which can be cleared by
even a cursory reading of the text that I posted. No claim was made that if
there is a leak, it has to be deliberate. Or, if pictures or videos of
torture come to light they must be deliberate in order to terrorize people.
The claim is about a specific episode. Actually all responses to the piece
display this misreading. If I were to claim that some misreadings are
deliberate, it will certainly not mean that all misunderstandings are
deliberate misreadings. There certainly are whistleblowers and they take
great risks. In fact, I was looking for the whistleblowers in this specific
case, and finding none. I don't rule it out even for this case, even now.
But there certainly are deliberate leaks too, as there are deliberate
misreadings.

If other images of such violence also seem to display a theatrical, scripted
quality, then certainly my observation that the theatrical quality in Abu
Ghraib videos points to something deliberate about it is invalid. And I am
not about to embark on a comparative analysis of these images. People can
judge it for themselves and I am not desperate to prove this claim. It is
not so important.

The problem with Shuddha's mail begins from what follows these readings -
"if we are prepared to accept this [that Abu Ghraib videos, Manipur video
and the images of Iran executions are deliberate attempts to terrorize
people], there seems to be little point in saying that the US government
alone does this." Who says that the US government alone does this? My
neighbourhood goonda may also e doing it. When I talk about my neighbourhood
goonda, to the exclusion of all other oppressors, because he is the one I
want to deal with now, no one can come and tell me that I must talk about US
imperialism, Indian imperialism. Nor does it mean that my neighbourhood
goonda or my national dictator is as powerful and as important for the whole
world as the US state. The point is not talking about this and that in the
same breath. One is not dealing in oppressions, one is trying to deal with
specific oppressions. What does one deal with, at what moment, in what way,
is not subject to some general prescription.

To say, as Shuddha does, that "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,...", in this
context, is either meaningless or dangerous. It is the same argument Indian
state uses for encounter killings of naxalites and militants or Hindutavadi
extremists make about Muslims. "They are oppressing their own people, so
they can be eliminated". This is what the US said about Saddam Hussain's
regime. The argument in this form is dangerous. If one is saying that most
governments have acted with appalling violence so why talk of America - the
argument in this form is meaningless. Let's fight against all states!
Certainly. But the US state has a special relation with all states. The US
will let you fight against some states and not against some other states.
Some states are more equal than others in the global society. Even an
ordinary American with an ordinary American passport enjoys privileges all
over the world. And even innocent Americans land up paying a price for this
privilege. European passport fetches a little less privilege. Indian
passport even less. But more than many others. And certainly more than those
who have no passports.

If he wants to "argue for a distinction between the actions of the state and
the propenstities of subjects", he must. Experience of many white people on
the streets during the Iranian revolution or at a massive angry gathering on
the occasion of  Steve Biko's funeral showed that many common people make
that distinction. Examples can be multiplied from various contexts and
surely this is not limited to non-Europeans or non-whites only. Of course,
there will be as many examples of occasions when the distinction between the
state and the people is blurred or vanishes completely. People who are
subject to and complicit with racist, militarist political entities are
likely to fail to make this distinction. The piece from Lokvidya Samvad
argues that the political force that the US represents and especially the
force that Bush represents survives and grows by arousing the 'egotistic and
animal insticts' of American people and such people are likely to fail to
see that distinction between people and states which is so important to
Shuddha and to many more people. This is perhaps one sense in which this
force is also a force of un-civilization.

Actually, it is not the claim that the original 'Lok Vidya Samvad July 2004'
piece that I translated and posted makes, which is in question. The very act
of making such claim and doing so using the language of 'American
Un-civilization' is being identified with "hysterical anti-Americanism" and
much more. You will think twice before making any similar claim on this
list. Not that being hysterical is necessarily something I will always deny.
There are so many things in life that make one hysterical.


What does the piece in question state? It says that the US is adopting a
strategy of terror. "The way US went ahead to start a war in Iraq solely on
the basis of its military strength in opposition to global resistance,
spurning the sentiments of people everywhere, and by completely disregarding
the United Nations, brings to light the current US policy and strategy. The
policy clearly is to rule the world and the strategy is terror."  Note
"current policy and strategy". Then it goes on to argue that the leak of Abu
Ghraib was part of this policy of terror. Further, that this policy of
terror is also necessitated by the electoral needs of Republican Party. "The
republican party cannot trounce the democratic party by paying lip service
to democratic values or by talking about international cooperation. Only way
Bush can win is by arousing the egotistic and animal instincts of the
American people." It may be right or wrong but is it disrespectful to
American people? Does not the statement imply that a political force of this
kind can be built only by arousing the egotistic and animal instincts of
people, wherever it may be. Is this equating state and people? Only argument
that Shuddha offers against the specific claim made in the article is that
genuine whistleblowers do exist.

Is he reading subtle, elusive sub-texts and wants to alert us all. Actually,
he seems to be doing much more. He starts by referring to 'lok vidya piece',
goes to 'lok vidya text', to 'writers of the text', and finally, in the last
paragraph it is 'lok vidya' itself which "rides the moral high horse".  To
the readers of this list, lok vidya has been presented, described,
interrogated, and fixed as displaying 'hysterical anti-Americanism', as an
entity which does not flutter its eyelashes at the brutality of Indian,
Iranian and Iraqi states, one which cannot see the difference between states
and their subjects. The article or the argument is not contested in a
dialogue of equals, as was done by Vivek (please note, readers, that the
posting is addressed to both "Dear Avinash and Vivek"). It has to be framed,
discredited and destroyed because it talks in a different language - the
language of 'un-civilization', of 'egotistic and animal instincts'. And the
same tiresome anti-American politics. Nip it in the bud. The world is
populated either by globalists like himself or nativists/nationalists as
constructed by himself.

Lok vidya literally means 'People's knowledge' or 'Worldly knowledge'. Lok
vidya Samvad is a journal and a group which wants to engage in a dialogue
about people's knowledge. So, obviously, the writer who writes in Lok vidya
Samvad cannot speak on behalf of lok vidya. People's knowledge can not be
identified with the voice of any One. People's knowledge is grounded in
ordinary life. No One or no theoretical construct has the authority or the
power to go beyond ordinary life to reconstruct life according to its
dictates. There is knowledge dialogue always going on in life, sometimes
less, sometimes more. We (meaning every one) can participate in the dialogue
but cannot place ourselves above the dialogue.

If Shuddha is aggrieved by slurs we sometimes indulge in when we talk about
the naivety of Americans, or their self-importance, their ignorance of the
world and so on, he is justified in his irritation. Often it is accompanied
with a feeling of superiority, the kind Europeans feel regarding lack of
culture and civilization in America in contrast to Europe. This indeed is
deplorable. But this is certainly no way to fight those attitudes.

Let me end with a joke. Gandhi was once asked - "What do you think of
Western Civilization?" He replied - "It is a good idea".

We are waiting.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Shuddhabrata Sengupta" <shuddha at sarai.net>
To: "Avinash Jha" <avinash at csdsdelhi.org>; <reader-list at sarai.net>
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2004 12:03 AM
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Politics of American Un-civilization


> 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
>
>


__________________________________________________
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.