Features

Vivienne Jabri – Human Rights, Sovereign Rights, and the Potentials of Conflict Resolution

Richard E. Rubenstein – Education in Conflict Analysis and Resolution:  The Coming Turn Toward the Goal of Radical Transformation

Sara Cobb – Liberal Peacebuilding as Zombie:  Workaround Strategies

Kristin Dorage – Understanding the Pro-Drone Discourse

Derek Sweetman – Realism Isn’t Real:  The Need for Fantasy in Conflict Resolution Education

Voices

Irakli Kakabadze - I am with you, Chubik!  Faces of Georgian AlterModernity, Modernity, and Anti-Modernity

Banter

Matthew Johnson – The Anti Anti-Movement:  Why Occupy D.C. Stumbled

Sabith Khan – Humanitarian Aid and Faith-Based Giving:  The Potential of Muslim Charity 

Oliver Eagleton – Double Standards and Diplomacy:  Addressing Iran’s Nuclear Program

Bill Goldberg – Humanitarian Assistance? Development? Peacebuilding?

Michael D. English – The New Normal:  America in the Age of Permanent Emergency

Michael Loadenthal – Work:  Capitalism. Economics. Resistance. (Book Review)

Right Hemisphere

Irakli Kakabadze – Decolonizing Self 

On the 25th of November, 2009, 20th Century Fox released Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s short children’s novel of the same name.  The film is primarily the story of Mr. Fox, a reformed poultry thief who is living with his family and writing a column for his local newspaper.  He is still haunted by the memory of his earlier life and, after buying a new home in a tree overlooking the three largest farms in the area, run by three men described by the local children as:

Boggis, Bunce, and Bean.  One fat, one short, one lean.  Those horrible crooks.  So different in looks.  Are nonetheless equally mean.

Mr. Fox returns to his life of crime, aided by the opossum handyman Kylie and his nephew Kristofferson.  The farmers come together to capture Mr. Fox.  This rapidly escalates as the farmers blow up the new tree and start digging for the foxes and all of the other local animals, who are understandably upset at Mr. Fox.  After a brief respite during which the animals live in Badger’s flint mine and steal even more from the farmers, the farmers flood them out with apple cider and they are forced to move to a damp sewer, without access to food.  Kristofferson is taken prisoner and the animals decide to fight back through a detailed “go-for-broke-rescue mission.”  They succeed, but are still stuck living in the sewer with little food until Mr. Fox finds a grate that leads to a grocery store that conveniently closes early on weekends.  The foxes and Kylie rejoice as we are taken outside to realize that the store is part of Boggis, Bunce & Bean.  Although Mr. Fox has won this battle, the conflict between the animals and the farmers is in no sense resolved.  In addition to this overarching conflict, we see conflicts between Mr. Fox and his wife, Mr. Fox and his son, Ash, between Ash and Kristofferson, Ash and the school bully, Mr. Fox and the rest of the animal community, and more.  Most of these do achieve some form of resolution or transformation.

Conflict Resolution Education traditionally relies on some combination of conflict analysis and conflict resolution skills, balanced differently depending on the topic of the course.  Students are expected to be able to speak and write authoritatively about conflicts as well as choosing and implementing an appropriate intervention, either during or after the conflict.  Although we have never been accused of being on the cutting edge of pedagogical innovation, there has been a recent push for the inclusion of experiential learning as well as service learning in conflict education.  In part, this is a response to the Graduate Education and Professional Practice in International Peace and Conflict report issued by the United States Institute of Peace in December 2010.  That report concluded:

To better prepare peace and conflict professionals in the future, graduate education must align itself more closely with the expectations of employers in the field.  The rapidly evolving and frequently unstable global environment demands that international actors devote more financial, human, and technical resources to international peace and conflict efforts. [1]

Setting aside the question of whether employers should be driving academic education decisions, service learning activities that involve taking students into the field have been a good response to this call. However, experiential learning is still underdeveloped.  Since we cannot simply drop students unchaperoned into a real conflict and yell, “Learn!” the predominant approach to experiential learning has been through simulation, role-play, and media response.  These activities focus on replicability and the realistic representation of actual conflicts.  These kinds of activities are well-suited to the traditional approaches of conflict analysis that focus on conflict mapping and the application of developed models, but less so when the expectation is not to produce the analysis of a conflict, but to produce a meaningful interpretation, one of many possible approaches.

When film is used in the context of experiential learning, it is often to illustrate a “real” conflict to which students can run apply the instructor-provided models.  For example, a popular fiction film for conflict programs is John Sales’s Matewan, a 2 hour, 15 minute depiction of the 1920 mine strike in West Virginia.  When documentary film is used, the particular films are often chosen for their applicability to the model or analysis tool being promoted.  The result of this is a closed process that rewards predictable student outcomes.

There are two primary drawbacks to the reliance on realist and documentary film in this setting.  First, it produces an experiential learning activity with a pre-determined learning outcome.  There is no difference between completing this kind of analysis on a film or a pre-written case study.  There is a small range of correct outcomes and a large range of incorrect ones.  There is no room for what Jack Mezirow called “reflective action” [2] in this kind of activity; there is nothing upon which to reflect.  Without this reflection, the activity is just an exercise in skill-practice, not learning.

The second drawback is that such simulations and role-plays are not suited to the newer approaches to conflict resolution that focus on meaning-making and the intervention in discourse or narrative.  For these approaches, including narrative mediation and insight mediation, “conflict” is a discursive and conceptual position, not an actual thing in the world.  As such, questions about cause and effect are pushed to the side in favor of questions of perception, insight, and story.  Close-ended, realist-oriented film activities are not well suited to such an approach, but there is an alternative.  We can create an environment where students need to rely on creativity and can have diverse experiences, leaving them open to high-quality reflection.  To do this we need to turn away from realist film and instead focus on the decidedly unrealistic.

My solution to this problem was to introduce the film Fantastic Mr. Fox into two of my conflict classes.  The first of these was a course for non-majors offered through New Century College. That class focused on interpersonal and intergroup conflict analysis and resolution.  To set the stage and prepare the students for the assignment, I put together a list of the concepts and approaches we had covered up until that point and asked the students to produce their own analysis of the conflicts in the film for discussion, based on the concepts we had discussed, other coursework they may have completed, and their general approach to conflict.  I stressed that I wanted to see their analysis, not any particular analysis, reminding them that this was what professionals in the field are asked to do.  I was surprised at the quality of work that I saw in both the analyses and their reflections.  Many of the students came up with reasonable explanations I had not considered, or focused on aspects of the conflicts I would not have expected.  The exercise was much more successful than I had anticipated.

I believe there are some characteristics of Fantastic Mr. Fox that make it particularly useful for a project like this, especially in a non-major classroom.  The first of these is that the film itself was not written or directed to teach about conflict.  This cannot be overstated. Fantastic Mr. Fox is open to many more conflict readings than a film attempting to represent a historical conflict, like Matewan.  While it may be possible to read Matewan intentionally from an alternative conflict perspective, I expect these readings would be uninteresting and unconvincing.  With Fantastic Mr. Fox, there is no expected reading and few hints as to what the film wants viewers to think about conflict, the students are able to bring creativity to the exercise.

This is closely related to another important characteristic.  The film itself is non-threatening. It is (arguably) a children’s film and the characters speak a little more pointedly about their feelings, intentions, and expectations than realist film.  As a result, Fantastic Mr. Fox presents more of a welcoming sandbox than an intimidating puzzle.

This sandbox, however, is held together by a story that promotes complex thinking about social and community conflict.  Interpersonal, intragroup, intergroup, intracommunity, and intercommunity conflicts are not only evident, but the film represents them as interconnected.  Tensions between Mr. and Mrs. Fox contribute to Mr. Fox’s drive to steal, which opens the conflict between the Foxes and the farmers, leading to the conflict between the animals and the farmers, and so on.  Additionally, the film’s representation of conflict is at odds with its tone in an interesting way.  At the end of the film, it is clear that Mr. Fox has been triumphant.  He is the hero of this story and has vanquished the farmers, provided for his family and community and, probably, learned a little bit about himself.  However, as we draw back from the joyous animals dancing in the supermarket, we realize Mr. Fox is stealing from Boggis, Bunce, and Bean once again.  Narrative resolution is not the same as conflict resolution.

The animal characters themselves contribute to this complexity.  Mr. Fox is extremely likable, but not necessarily admirable.  Our sympathies lie with the more innocent characters like Mrs. Fox or Kristofferson, who are the products of their circumstances.  Other animal characters are not one-dimensional caricatures, but they bring their own perspective to what is going on, especially Mr. Fox’s lawyer, Badger, and Kylie the Opossum.

The humans are represented with far less nuance.  The farmers and Bean’s wife are uniformly evil toward the animals, and Bean’s son is a gluttonous idiot.  Supporting human characters are limited to their role, with the exception of Petey, who sings a song about the hunt for Mr. Fox before being disciplined back into blandness by Mr. Bean.  “That’s just bad songwriting. You wrote a bad song, Petey.”  While it is possible to see this as a weakness in the film, from a conflict perspective it is exactly what we would expect to see.  Each side in a destructive conflict dehumanizes and oversimplifies the other. The fact that this is the perspective in Fantastic Mr. Fox just lets us know that the film is presenting Mr. Fox’s perspective, not the objective “truth” of the conflict.  The farmer’s initial reaction to a fox stealing from them is understandable, although their escalation of the conflict is less so.  The film evidences the self-awareness that Mr. Fox himself develops to recognize that this isn’t a simple good-vs.-evil conflict.

Empowered by the success in the non-majors course, I incorporated Fantastic Mr. Fox into one my community conflict and conflict resolution course section.  This course is required for all conflict analysis and resolution majors and in it I can presume a much greater awareness of conflict theory.  The course also seeks to help students define and practice their own “professional voice,” the particular approaches that is the outward expression of what Lang and Taylor called their “constellation of theories.” [3]  I decided to change the assignment and make it a much larger component of the class, serving as our mid-term exam.  Again, I prepared a list of what I thought we had covered, in class and in our readings, and provided a little more guidance. In this case, the students were directed to take a community conflict approach to the film, and to avoid focusing exclusively on interpersonal conflicts.

I chose this mid-term for two primary reasons.  First, I felt it could provide a better assessment of my students’ ability to perform convincing conflict analysis, as opposed to being able to regurgitate particular models or definitions.  Second, I felt this film was closer to a real-world experience than a controlled case-study or realist depiction of a conflict.  I appreciate that it appears counterintutive that a film about talking animals could be closer to conflict practice than a documentary, but my concern was not for the realism of the conflict presented, instead it was the extent to which the assignment represented true conflict work.  In the field, especially when doing community work, you are not asked to apply a particular model or analytical tool to a conflict, but instead to step in and figure out for yourself what is going on.  Additionally, community conflicts are rarely reducible to a single, named conflict.  Instead, just as we see in the film, interpersonal, intergroup, and community conflict coexist.  One of the primary skills, then, is to separate and identify the conflicts most relevant and design interventions to address these.  Fantastic Mr. Fox is a better representation of this than any single-issue film.

Second, I wanted the mid-term activity to be in itself an opportunity for learning, not just a lost week.  A more traditional test can either be broadly focused, so that students study everything in a shallow way, or more directed at a particular concept or approach, so that what is being assessed is knowledge about only that part of the course.  I am not arguing that it is impossible to write excellent tests, but that in general undergraduates do not learn through that traditional test approach.  With Fantastic Mr. Fox, the goal is not to assess specific knowledge, but to assess the students’ ability to deal with ambiguity and bring their own perspective to the problem.

I was again surprised by the quality of work I received from the students.  I was pleased to find that it clear from the submissions which students were engaged and learning and which were less so, which is the purpose of assessment, after all.  As an additional benefit, we were able to refer to the conflicts in the film as a common pool of awareness later in the course.  This assignment also figured prominently in the students final reflections for the course.

Fantastic Mr. Fox was not a complete success.  I have some concerns about this approach to assessment and experiential learning. First, while most students enjoyed using the film, there were a few in my community conflict class who did not take the assignment seriously.  I expect that the characteristics that made the film approachable to most students made it seem childish and unrealistic to others.  The film is both childish and unrealistic.  Additionally, some students said they did not know how to prepare for a mid-term like this.  I am hoping to avoid this in the future by incorporating short film early in class to increase the students’ comfort.  The Looney Toons cartoon The Three Little Bops has been useful in this regard.

The one difficulty no amount of preparation seems to avoid is what I call the “Call of the Wild” effect.  Students who were introduced to basic narrative analysis in high school learn about narrative conflict, often through the Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Himself approach.  When they see another piece of fiction these students begin to write about “intrapersonal conflict,” in this case, Mr. Fox’s “conflict with himself.”  No amount of preparation seems to convince the students that they are writing about Mr. Fox being conflicted, and not participating in a literal conflict (especially not a social one).  Since our field is concerned with social conflicts, those with at least two parties, I try to encourage them to make the same observations under the category of psychological preconditions of the conflict, but more than a few still try to argue about “intrapersonal conflict.”

The risks of using fantasy, and specifically fantasy film, in conflict classes are outweighed by its benefits.  I have become something of an evangelical for the film in conflict classes, but this is just because I found something that works. Fantastic Mr. Fox is one solution to the problem of realism in conflict class films, but there must be others.  We need to identify and incorporate these into our experiential learning activities.

Notes:

[1]  Nike Carstarphen et al., Graduate Education and Professional Practice in International Peace and Conflict (United States Institute of Peace, 2010), 11–12, http://dspace.cigilibrary.org/jspui/handle/123456789/29492.

[2]  Jack Mezirow, “On Critical Reflection,” Adult Education Quarterly 48, no. 3 (May 1, 1998): 185–198, doi:10.1177/074171369804800305.

[3]  Michael D. Lang and Alison Taylor, The Making of a Mediator: Developing Artistry in Practice, 1st ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000).

[*]  This article is a revised version of “Engaging and Sometimes Ridiculous” – Teaching Conflict Analysis and Resolution through Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was presented at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association conference in Washington, DC on March 28, 2013.

1.  There is no longer the space, let alone the obligation, for reporting facts in the mass media.  Regardless of news network (CNN, MSNBC, FOX), all are equally guilty of generating wild speculation and fear mongering.  Far from presenting useful information that might help a confused and terrified public, these networks seemed to do everything they could, including dragging out Bush 43 officials, to make Boston a sequel to 9/11.  CNN’s John King certainly took the most heat for this, but he was far from alone in the rush to pass off hearsay as fact.  A former Bush official went so far as to state on CNN on the day of the attack that the public should not be afraid to keep shopping.  Whatever the mass media have become in our new normal, it is clear that it is no longer necessary to even present the façade of objectivity to the viewing public.  Viewership is the only metric that matters.

2.  Perhaps even more disconcerting in terms of objectivity was the absolutely transparent relationship between the media and security apparatus of the state.  Reporters and commentators repeatedly expressed to viewers that they were running on a tape delay as if this was somehow to protect viewers from scenes of violence.  Monday it was blood, body parts, and human suffering.  Friday a sterile filter was applied for what can only be assumed as a mask for the potential violence about to be unleashed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev by the forces of the state.  This should not be confused with the right of the state to use force to apprehend a man wanted for criminal activity, presumed to be armed and a threat to public order.  Instead, it is the agreement between the media and the state to frame types of violence in particular ways.  Terrorist violence must be shown repeatedly.  It is the brutal realism of harm done to human bodies.  State violence remains abstract and largely unseen though the viewer is well aware the destruction of human life is possible.  The distinction in some sense remains artificial; violence to the body is violence to the body no matter its point of origin.  However, to make visible certain bodies and not others is a political decision.

3.  While the perceived threat of the Brothers Tsarnaev to public safety warranted increased assistance to the police effort in the Boston area, just how militarized the United States has become was on full display.  Intelligence failures will be debated endlessly, but there is no chance officials will accept the conclusion that the bombing was impossible to prevent.  More security, not less will be the future.  Additional arguments will be made as to whether or not the estimated 9000 additional officers, agents, and troops played a significant role in the capturing of the younger Tsarnaev.  That an observant resident noticed something amiss in their backyard led to the manhunt’s conclusion and not the door-to-door warrantless searches of homes in the area by armed tactical teams should give us cause for reflection.  Questions over legal rights and due process no longer carry the same significance once ascribed to them.  The designation of terror now allows the state to act outside of law as if the constraints of the law would prevent it from achieving its objective or safeguarding the public.  To borrow from Walter Benjamin, we live in a time of permanent emergency.

4. The cost of operations in Boston will be in the millions.  The state is willing to spend whatever it takes to capture or kill people who commit acts of terrorism, yet as Waco is already starting to reveal, the state is equally unwilling to prevent other types of deadly tragedies.  If given the option of analyzing which of these two tragic events was almost 100% preventable, it is most surely Waco.  Initial reports suggest the company knew it was violating the law and over capacity in its stores.  Regulation and proper inspections are fairly inexpensive activities in comparison to military and intelligence spending.  Yet the absence of such interference by the state in corporate life is another sign of the new normal.  We know intrinsically that the owners of this factory will not be pursued with same vigor as the Brothers Tsarnaev and it is unsurprising that the suffering of Waco is unable to penetrate the terror frame.  Death at the hands of capital, to borrow from Judith Butler, is part of the precarity of modern life and somehow acceptable in a way that death caused by individual actors is not.  The lack of attention given to Waco should reaffirm the disproportionate role terrorism has taken in public life, underscoring how the irrational (fear of death by terrorist attack) has come to dominate the rational (death in a work related or traffic accident).

5.  Finally, there is much to be analyzed and written about in terms of the role of technology and social media.  The pervasive spread of mobile devices and digital cameras allowed for images of the two suspects to be captured and shared globally.  Police and federal agencies unquestionably benefited from access to both public and private footage.  While the obvious point of reflection is on the way in which this technology allows for total surveillance, it is the disciplinary side of the process, specifically through the use of social media that deserves the most attention.  If the Arab Spring gestured at the power of social media to help organize a challenge to the state, the events in Boston demonstrated the power of social media for citizens to police themselves and each other.  Threads on Twitter and Reddit were the sites of continuous activity throughout the week with users conducting investigations of their own, outing potential suspects, broadcasting information from police scanners, and creating a level of paranoia that paired nicely with the mass media.  To watch the mass media and social media feed off of each other in real time was to witness the utter chaos of information without analysis.  Yet real analysis (not the armchair or talking head kinds) is the very thing facing the most resistance, while being the very activity we are in most need of.

The editors of Unrest Magazine asked me to write briefly about the future of education in the field of conflict analysis and resolution – CAR for short.  But I find it impossible to do this without inquiring more generally into the future of the field, which incorporates both an academic discipline (or disciplines) and a practical profession (or professions).  These diverse but related forms of collective activity can be described as an ensemble, in Michel Foucault’s language, as a “discursive formation.”  Despite their diverse, polymorphous, often inconsistent forms of expression, such formations contain cross-cutting ideational correspondences and resonances – conceptual themes, if you like – such as Foucault’s “docile bodies” and “biopolitics.” [1]  Moreover, the knowledge that new disciplines generate and deploy bears a complex, inter-determined relationship to power which Foucault labels Power/Knowledge.  New academic or professional fields subtend new fields of power, and vice versa.  

The evolution of CAR, one might think, would provide a particularly dramatic and revealing example of the P/K relationship.  There is general agreement that the field emerged as a recognizable discipline in the period following World War II, and that it has since spawned several successive “generations” of theorists and practitioners, each aiming to reconfigure both power and knowledge. [2]  The founding figures, scholar-practitioners like John Burton, Johan Galtung, Kenneth Boulding, Elise Boulding, Herbert Kelman, and Adam Curle, wished to found an applied “science of peace” that would generate practical, non-violent methods of resolving serious international and inter-group conflicts. [3]  From the outset, they engaged in conscious field-creating activities motivated by a desire to alter prevailing ideas and practices in the areas of international and inter-group relations.  Strangely enough – or, perhaps, not so strangely, given the reluctance of both academics and professionals to theorize their relationship to structures of power – there are virtually no studies describing CAR’s evolution in P/K terms.  But without such analysis, how can one foresee the discipline’s future, much less the future of conflict resolution education?  This short piece represents a tentative start in the direction marked out by Foucault and his successors in their studies of psychoanalysis, medicine, penology, public administration, and other modern professional disciplines.

Embarking on this path, one notices, to begin with, a problem in applying the Foucauldian conception of Power/Knowledge to an emergent field like ours.  The rise of the new epistemes that he studies is associated with a more general social and cultural transformation –  the same thoroughgoing, systematic change that others have analyzed under the heading “modernization.”  In Foucault’s work, this transformation seems both irresistible and irreversible.  Who could possibly stop the movements from folk to scientific medicine, from public exemplary punishment to the prison, or from princely sovereignty to biopolitics?  Ultimately, in the philosopher’s eyes, the transformation proves more disciplinary than liberating, which is another way, perhaps, of asserting that it is in some respects not total.  Modernization, as the Critical Theorists show, redefines the agents and forms of domination rather than subverting the principle of domination itself.  But if we ask why the transformations Foucault describes stop where they stop, or what further transformations are now possible or necessary, the answer is . . . . silence.  The “father of postmodernism,” who died much too young, seems to have ended not so much a post-modernist as an end-of-modernist, expressing by his very silence a critical version of Hegel’s backward-focused “end of history” thesis.  This means that we must go beyond him to foresee the future of a late-modern discipline like conflict analysis and resolution.

Consider again the concept of transformation – an idea that now threatens to become a mere “buzzword” – one of those incurably vague terms that seem intended to pacify everyone by authorizing as many interpretations as there are interpreters.  This vagueness springs from the fact that the word implies both thoroughgoing qualitative change and a describable shape or coherence – a “rationality” that involves rough consistency with other epistemes as well as internal consistency.  But this also implies some sort of continuity between the transformed entity or system and prior systems.  The transformation that Foucault describes makes everything new, but it does so in a patterned way that conveys a whiff of organicity despite his avoidance of organic metaphors.  To put this differently, cross-cutting concepts like governmentality and biopolitics suggest that the modern disciplines and professions are subject to integrative forces, stronger than those tending toward disintegration, which tend over time to produce one episteme out of many.   E pluribus unum.  Obviously, this integration is not seamless; what medicine considers a disease (drug addiction, say) the law may treat as a crime.  Even so, the overall tendency described by Foucault is conservative in the sense that an episteme or praxis once created tends to preserve itself and to harmonize with other epistemes/praxes coming into existence at the same time.  In his work, at least as I read it, there are no Hegelian or Marxist “contradictions” driving a process of further qualitative transformation.

The implications of these ideas for CAR seem to me momentous.  If there is an irresistible tendency towards socio-political and epistemic integration – i.e., if CAR is essentially a “modern” field – the discipline will hold together but become integrated into the existing system of power relations.  It will affect those relations to some extent, but, practically speaking, it will accept the intractability of conflicts involving dominant or hegemonic elites.  If, however, the forces of systemic integration are unable to resolve or overpower genuine social and discursive contradictions, the field, reflecting those contradictions, may well divide, with the adherents of radical social transformation refusing to accept their status as auxiliaries of the U.S. government, the global corporations, or other center of elite power.  In this case, conflict resolution education may well differentiate, or even experience a schism, as educational institutions have often done in cases of intense social conflict and rapid change.  In medieval Europe, the legal profession originally created by the Catholic Church split between secularists and canonists, with law schools reflecting their founders’ and professors’ views of who should be the law’s primary clients.  In the United States, religious movements like the Great Awakening of the 18th century produced new universities dedicated to evangelical ideals and refusing to accept the intellectual or moral authority of existing elites.

The field of conflict analysis and resolution came into existence in three forms, each reflecting and instantiating a different degree of integration with previously existing systems.

(1) Alternative dispute resolution proposed “third party” processes like mediation, arbitration, and hybrid procedures that would serve as occasional or temporary alternatives to litigation.  The primary educational locus of ADR training has been the law schools, and this for good reason: from its inception until now, ADR has been conceived of as a supplement rather than a general alternative to more formal legal processes.  That is, the overall tendency has been to integrate it with the legal system, a movement that, to be sure, transforms law to some extent, while profoundly limiting the further transformation and extra-legal uses of ADR.   (The same thing may be said, mutatis mutandis, of related processes like Public Dispute Resolution and Regulatory Negotiation.)  A famous early example of this sort of self-limiting transformation is the rise of Equity in English law, which changed existing legal institutions by injecting certain Church-derived, conscience-based principles and practices into the legal system, but at the price of subjecting those praxes to the fundamental assumptions and methods of legalism.  A similar issue of the possible advantages and likely costs of integration is at the heart of many current debates in the CAR field, such as current disagreements over whether working for the U.S. government “transforms” the government more than it co-opts the CAR scholars and practitioners.

(2) Principled Negotiation proposed a facilitated, nonviolent alternative to military action as a method of pursuing national interests and discovering bases for multinational cooperation.  Of course, interest-based negotiation is a technique as old as war, to which it relates (as in the case of ADR) as a temporary supplement rather than a permanent substitute.  CAR theorists and practitioners like Roger Fisher, Jacob Bercovitch, and Daniel F. Druckman proposed to improve the effectiveness of negotiation and to increase its appeal to governments and international organizations by studying it as a science and proposing new and improved processes.  A famous example is the Pugwash Conference dialogues that helped Soviet and American representatives develop the terms for several nuclear arms control agreements.  Again, strong integrative tendencies made themselves felt (indeed, the “clients” for these approaches were often government officials), and the notion that negotiation, principled or otherwise, might substitute for war rather than supplement military activities was written off as utopian dreaming or translated into a hope for long-term incremental transformation.  The leading proponent of this approach outside the CAR field proper is probably Joseph S. Nye, Jr., the originator of the ideas of “soft power” and “smart power.” [4]

(3) Analytical Conflict Resolution was intended to take a step beyond Principled Negotiation by devising theories (such as the theory of Basic Human Needs) and processes (such as the Analytical Problem-Solving Workshop) in order to resolve “non-negotiable” conflicts arising out of systemic failures to satisfy people’s basic needs and vital interests.  In the minds of theorists like John Burton and Johan Galtung, conflict resolution processes were intended as alternatives, not merely supplements, to power-based negotiation, power politics, and war. [5]  In the praxis of others, however, integrative tendencies were more pronounced, and CAR was conceived of exclusively as a method of assisting conflicting parties to resolve disputes in the international arena, or in other contexts where no generally recognized system of collective decision making existed.  Again, a key issue for the field was whether those attempting to play a conflict-resolving role should operate independently of governments, including the U.S. government, or whether they should accept integration into existing systems of power and influence in the hope of transforming these structures from within.  As the generation of conflict resolvers that came of age during the anti-system mobilizations of the 1960s and 1970s aged, and as government interest in and support for certain CAR theories and practices increased, there emerged a tendency for Analytical Conflict Resolution to move in the direction of Principled Negotiation.

(4) This tendency became even more marked with the advent of Peacebuilding, a recent form of CAR praxis which proposes to combine conflict management with international development work in order to promote reconstruction and reconciliation, especially in “post-conflict” environments following a civil war, invasion, or campaign of counter-insurgency.  In its current forms, Peacebuilding heightens the contradiction between integrative and radical transformation, since the sponsors and funders of such efforts are frequently governments attempting to restore order in societies subject to their hegemony or influence — societies that have been violently disrupted either by internal conflict, Western military intervention, or both. [6]  The tendency of this praxis is to turn conflict resolvers into government-sponsored researchers and government contractors, a status accepted by some of our colleagues on the theory that this will permit them to alter the policymakers’ attitudes and influence their actions in the direction of nonviolent conflict management or resolution.

On the other hand, this high degree of integration has predictable consequences.  Conservative Peacebuilding frames CAR as a fusion of negotiation and international development, ignoring the field’s potential domestic uses outside conventional ADR practices.  It integrates the field into American imperial praxis as a form of “soft power,” subordinating the resolution of conflicts between warring parties to the settlement of disputes among U.S. allies.  (A prime example: the U.S. Institute of Peace, with the support of many CAR professionals, creates a program to resolve disputes among member organizations of the anti-Assad Syrian opposition.  It does NOT attempt to resolve the underlying civil war pitting supporters of the regime against its enemies.)  Furthermore, it prioritizes post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization over conflict prevention and resolution, and, even on the terrain of post-conflict reconstruction defines CAR in terms acceptable to U.S. or European policymakers.  According to the U.S. State Department’s website, “The Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO) advances U.S. national security by breaking cycles of violent conflict and mitigating crises in priority countries. We engage in conflict prevention, crisis response and stabilization, aiming to address the underlying causes of destabilizing violence.” [7]  This is undoubtedly sincerely meant, although it is perfectly clear that where the U.S., its allies, or allied groups are parties to conflict, the “underlying causes” of violence are generally ignored in order to obtain a settlement favorable to the favored party.

In response to this development, but even more in response to the continual production of violent conflict by dysfunctional socio-economic, political, and cultural systems, some CAR theorists and practitioners are now proposing a different sort of effort altogether – one that would mobilize the field’s conceptual and practical and skills to seek system-transforming solutions to congenital social problems shared by industrial and less-developed societies alike.  These problems include persistent, trans-generational poverty; growing social inequalities; intense cultural and religious strife; ecological devastation; corporate control of the economy; and the global violence generated by empire-building.  By contrast to conservative Peacebuilding, transformative CAR involves a conscious resistance to socio-political and epistemic integration.  It conceptualizes the field as a multi-disciplinary praxis aimed at helping transform domestic as well as international environments that generate violence.  It calls attention to the need for developing and employing new theories of social and psychological change and new approaches to knowledge, communication, organization, and collective action.  It opens the door to the study and practice of new forms of social action, political in the broadest sense and independent of existing power structures.  And it proposes to use the profession’s convening and facilitating skills to assist groups in conflict to develop new processes of participation, consensus-building, and democratic decision making.

The effects of this new movement on conflict resolution education will be profound.  On the theory side, it will involve a more intense focus on social structures (economic, sociopolitical, psychological, and cultural), how they change, and how people can change them, than the CAR curriculum currently features.  The revised curriculum will be designed to develop students’ skills in envisioning new systems as well as in analyzing existing ones; in this sense, it can be described as fostering “usable utopianism.”  On the practical side, while continuing to emphasize the utility of certain third-party processes, it will involve studying and practicing a variety of activities relevant to constructing and participating in socially transformative movements at all levels from the local to the global community.  And in the field of third-party processes, it will help develop independent institutions capable of offering CAR services to parties in conflict regardless of their relations with the U.S. or European governments.

Certainly, radical peacebuilders (if we want to use this language) will seek allies in other academic and political institutions in the West and around the world – and they will find them!  Unrest Magazine, in my view, is an early manifestation of this effort to take the field in a new, much-needed direction, and to create a community of scholars/activists dedicated to radical (non- integrative) social transformation.  I am pleased to be a part of this burgeoning movement.

Notes:

[1]  Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language. Vintage, 1982.

[2]  Accounts of the field’s origins and stages of development vary.  See, e.g., John Burton, “History of Conflict Resolution,” in Nature and Society Forum, March 1988. Retrieved 4/5/13 at http://www.natsoc.org.au/publications/papers/6.-history-of-conflict-resolution and compare Kevin Avruch, “A Historical Overview of Anthropology and Conflict Resolution, Anthropology Newsm 48:6 (Sept. 2007). Retrieved 4/5/13 at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/an.2007.48.6.13/abstract

[3]  These figures and others are interviewed on video by Drs. Christopher R. Mitchell and Johannes Botes as part of their “Founders of the Field” series, available from the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University (scar.gmu.edu).

[4]  See his The Future of Power (PublicAffairs, 2011).

[5]  See Burton’s essay, “Conflict Resolution as a Political System” (George Mason University, Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution Working Paper No. 1, 1989), which proposed CAR processes a substitute for adversarial forms of government, and Johan Galtung, Peace By Peaceful Means:Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization (Sage, 1996).

[6]  See Vivienne Jabri, “Human Righs, Sovereign Rights, and Conflict Resolution,” Lynch Lecture presented at School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, Ocober 24, 2012, http://scar.gmu.edu/event/24th-annual-lynch-lecture-human-rights-sovereign-rights-and-potential-of-conflict-resolution (accessed April 16, 2012)

[7]  http://www.state.gov/j/cso/  (accessed April 16, 2013)

As this recent (IRIN) article points out, at the low end of the estimate, this is 15 times more than global humanitarian aid contributions in 2011.Given this massive potential of Zakat money, the question to ask is: Why is this not being used effectively and what are the impediments to the flow of money to appropriate projects/locations? Are there social, religious, legal or organizational constraints that are stopping this money from being utilized effectively?

Global humanitarian efforts and the faith-based relief agencies

Given that there are ongoing conflicts and humanitarian disasters in several areas with Muslim majority populations i.e., Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Horn of Africa, there is an overwhelming desire among Muslim nations to cater to the needs of fellow brothers in faith i.e, Ummah. This kinship rallying is evident in humanitarian relief work too, as Jonathan Benthall and others who have studied this phenomenon point out. While the number of relief agencies which are faith-based is growing, some with explicitly proselytizing agendas ( the evangelical church groups for instance), there is a growing concern among Muslim Faith based Organizations ( FBOs) to counter this trend, not only to save their fellow brethren from disasters and starvation, but also from converting to other religions. Muslim faith-based organizations primary emerged in the 1990s’ as organized entities, to fill this gap of catering to other fellow Muslims.

As Masood Hyder points out in this article in the Tufts Journal article, published in 2007, there is no consensus among the recipients of aid themselves about whether or not the aid should determine policy and other aspects of social life. He points out:” The question of an economic or social reform agenda as part of a program of assistance is an issue about which Muslim recipients of aid are themselves frequently divided. Some groups, who could be labeled pro-western or progressive, welcome it, and even ask for it; others are exceedingly hostile. Where and how to find the golden mean is far from easy since Muslim societies are themselves not in agreement on many of the issues involved, including the impact of aid and western influences on Muslim societies generally, and specifically on such issues as women’s rights under Islam, the implementation of Muslim personal law, or the limits of tolerance.”

These are some of the challenges that many of the Muslim FBOs’ are facing, as they navigate the humanitarian relief space. Despite their recent emergence in the field and lack of institutional memory as in other agencies such as Catholic Charities or Save the Children, which have been around for much longer, the Muslim FBOs’ seem to be making in-roads and working across national and cultural boundaries, forming alliances, partnerships and setting up new projects and initiatives. 

Terrorist financing in the U.S – gaps between rhetoric and reality

One of the key challenges before Muslim faith-based organizations is the discourse around GWOT and the resulting scrutiny that most organizations have been put under, especially post 9/11, as mentioned by several reports, which have studied this phenomenon.

An American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU) report titled “Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity”  points out that the federal legislation that came into effect in the U.S post 9/11 to block terrorist funding has been used selectively and resulted in due-processes being avoided to many Muslim charities. The report adds :” The terrorism financing laws provide executive branch officials with practically unfettered discretion in targeting groups for designation as terrorist organizations, and the federal government’s enforcement of terrorism financing laws has disproportionately affected Muslim charities. Of nine U.S.-based charities whose assets have been seized by the Department of Treasury, seven are Muslim charities, and two are Tamil charities that provided humanitarian aid in Sri Lanka. In the majority of these cases, the government has not brought charges; only three designated U.S.-based Muslim charities have faced criminal prosecution, and only one has been convicted.”

Another report by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding ( ISPU), a think-tank focused on issues in the Muslim world ( and American Muslims) titled “Charitable Giving Among Americans: Ten years after 9/11,” points out that :” The passage of both USA PATRIOT Acts, the closing of several Muslim charities, and the curbing of civil liberties beginning with the Bush administration and continuing through the Obama administration have caused contributions to Muslim American charities, especially those with an international scope, to decrease by up to 50 percent in the initial years.” It further points to other Muslims and non-Muslims who have stopped giving to Muslim organizations and are instead giving to “secular” organizations, for fears of being investigated by the FBI or Department of Treasury for alleged “terrorist” links.

The threat of militant Islam is also another factor that has contributed to several of these investigations and also put several western governments on the alert, when it comes to receiving Humanitarian aid. While this is a legitimate concern, often the discourse has taken on a subversive turn and organizations which are doing good work have been shut down, as the ACLU report points. Speaking of the legal constraints and additional ordinances passed, which impact the Muslim FBOs’, the ISPU report adds that: “The government has sought to safeguard national security by curbing alleged linkages between (Muslim) charities and terrorists through the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the USA PATRIOT Acts, Executive Order 13224, the Anti-Terrorist financing Guidelines, and other legal measures.”

The primary critique of these laws and ordinances is that they do not give the accused due process of law and also that secret evidence can be used to convict them. This is a violation of constitutional as well as human rights.

Global giving patterns and the ‘returning to religion’

As scholars such as Jonathan Benthall have argued, secular humanitarian organizations emerged from religious ideals and have “religiod” notions of humanitarian aid. In Returning to Religion, he makes a compelling case for religiously inspired charity to be accepted for what it is, while not trying to critique it for its “religious” orientation. From the time of Dutch jurist Grotius’ On the Law of War (considered the primary Humanitarian law document) to present day notions of humanitarian aid, the notion of faith-based giving has been strong. Even if religion leaves through the door, it flies back through the window, asserts Benthall.

In the context of Islamic charities, it remains a very strong focus, as Charity is one of the central tenets of Islam and countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others are at the forefront in terms of providing aid, globally. While the fact remains that religion is making a come-back in public life and the Muslim diaspora is engaging with causes and humanitarian crises, which are global in scale, there is an increased tendency among some of these donors to be overtly cautious in their approach. As the ISPU report on Charitable giving points out:” Various Muslim American leaders argue that post-9/11 governmental policies on charitable giving disproportionately target Muslims on the basis of their religion. They note that the federal government has applied the SDGT label only to Muslim American organizations. According to one such leader,“Churches [in America] don’t face the same problem. Other faith groups supporting dubious causes abroad are not under investigation. We [Muslim Americans] are being targeted.”

This view is countered by some, who say that perhaps this fear is exaggerated. “This may be also be the perception of fear and not justified,” points out a highly placed Muslim official, who works for the U.S Federal government.

Whether justified or not, there are definitely many issues that are impeding the work of Muslim FBOs and charitable giving. Given that there is a new wave of humanitarian action arising from Muslim faith-based institutions such as Islamic Relief, International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), Muslim Aid and others, who often work hand in hand with other secular and faith based international relief agencies, there needs to be greater sensitivity and awareness on part of the governments and international NGOs’ who have a longer history in this area.  While partnerships, collaborations are happening both on-ground, as well as at the strategic level, there is some reluctance on behalf of the secular NGOs’ to work very closely with the Muslim FBOs’ for the above mentioned reasons, points out Benthall. The element of competition among these organizations, in an era of constrained financial resources cannot be denied.

Also, considering the potential game-changing impact that these institutions can have, given their religious affiliations and cultural in-roads, perhaps we need to re-look at the discourse on GWOT and some of the statues of the terrorist financing laws, lest we alienate this segment of donors and humanitarian aid workers.

At some point in late fall 2011 the momentum shifted, and the movement began its decline. There are many possible explanations for this — some competing and some complementary — but for the purposes of this paper, the focus will be on explanations relating to internal problems in the movement, leaving examinations of police repression and media backlash for another paper. The focus will also be mostly limited to the Occupy Movement in Washington, D.C., which, while unique because it was once split into two separate camps, is also somewhat representative of the movement due to the number of Occupiers coming from other cities, in some cases after their home encampment was broken up by police.

The analysis will stretch from its beginning in early October 2011 (about two weeks after Occupy Wall St.) to late March 2012, when NOW D.C. was promoted as the next phase of the movement — dubbed the “American Spring” by some supporters. [2]  I should disclose that I was deeply involved with the movement — contributing five to ten hours of my time each week — in D.C. during this period as an outsider-insider: I viewed myself as someone who believed in the movement and wanted it to succeed, but I did not camp outside or make other noteworthy sacrifices. This was somewhat intentional because of the need to maintain a level of professional distance in order to better serve as a mediator or facilitator during conflict situations. Nonetheless, this critique is not meant to disparage Occupy from without but to improve it from within, and I believe that my particular position allowed me to view it with both empathy and acumen.

Explanation One: Rugged Individualism

Setting aside the infamous “one cause, one objective” argument that Occupy’s external critics repeated ad nauseam, [3] if there is one thing that is clear from the literature on nonviolent activism — whether one focuses on the spiritual elements associated with Mohandas Gandhi or the pragmatic elements associated with Gene Sharp — it is that success is predicated on masses of people uniting around particular goals. [4]  Occupy began as such, particularly in New York, but gradually became atomized. A good illustration of this was Occupy activists speaking for themselves when interviewed by the media and often saying things that were not representative of the movement. [5]

It is conceivable that an individual acting alone can be nonviolent and have popular and important goals, but it is far less conceivable that one individual acting alone will achieve them. As noted journalist Thomas Frank mentions in his recent critique of Occupy, the same lack of respect for rules that guided Wall St. banksters in their corruption guided at least a significant part of the Occupy Movement. [6]  If the people in a movement are not moving together, it ceases to be a movement — or, at least, it loses any sense of direction or clarity of purpose.

Explanation Two: Lack of Respect for/Faith in Leadership

Another characteristic of Occupy was its lack of distinguishable leaders and centralization. This was strategic at first, modeled on past and concurrent movements, [7] but in the case of the Occupy encampments in D.C., leadership became synonymous with “usurper” or “elite.” [8]  It seemed as if one of the implicit goals was to abolish all forms of authority. This, of course, contradicted other goals associated with the movement — namely the government regulation of Wall St. — and contributed to other problems, such as the holding of everyone’s ideas on nonviolent direct action (for example) as equally legitimate despite the real differences in the amount of training, experience, and commitment between activists. This led to renegade actions — those not consented to during General Assemblies [9] but carried out anyway — internal bickering, baseless accusations of co-optation or treachery, and ill-advised improvisation in many aspects of the movement. [10]

Explanation Three: Internal Divisions

Lack of trust in leadership, in turn, led to internal divisions. While some divisions were over substantive matters such as whether to use nonviolent or violent tactics, [11] many divisions were due to minor differences of opinion or grudges pre-dating Occupy. [12]  The divisions in D.C.’s Occupy at its peak could be classified based on careful observation as follows: anarchists vs. progressives, liberals vs. radicals, campers vs. non-campers, and local activists vs. outsiders.

The first two divisions are related and involve differences in political orientation. A large minority of Occupy identified as anarchists and viewed attempts at listing demands or fighting for reforms as cooperation with the state, which they consider inherently authoritarian, and therefore, evil. [13]  This put them at odds with reform-minded progressives and liberals alike. Liberals, in turn, were challenged by everyone further to the left in the political spectrum within Occupy due to their support for capitalism and the Democratic Party. Some of those who camped in the “occupied” public spaces sought to bar non-campers from certain decisions and treat them as outside the movement, and a similar phenomenon occurred between local D.C. activists and those coming from elsewhere in the country to join the protests.

Explanation Four: Internal Oppression

Internal oppression is distinguished from internal division due to the power dynamics implicit in the word “oppression.” The Occupy encampments in D.C. were often criticized for excluding people based on race, class, and gender. Some activists even argued that the word “occupy” invoked colonialism and ought to be seriously re-examined if the movement wanted to be truly inclusive and consistent with mass liberation. [14]  Others, particularly white men, dismissed concerns of oppression while suggesting that any Occupier who raised the issue of race or gender was playing “identity politics” and selfishly dividing the movement. [15]  Women felt particularly threatened due to sexist language and outright sexual violence from men. [16]  These tensions led to various caucuses within Occupy made up exclusively of women, people of color, or members of other disadvantaged groups [17] as well as calls for “Occupy Justice.” [18]

Explanation Five: Lack of Training and Discipline

Although the works of Gene Sharp could be found in Occupy’s libraries, the aging nonviolent theorist’s emphasis on training, preparation, and discipline (not to mention clarity of tactics and strategy) was largely not present in the D.C.-based movement. [19]  As a matter of principle, the encampments welcomed virtually everyone into the movement and allowed them to participate in any and all actions without preconditions. Even when it became clear that certain individuals were intentionally provoking the police into violence or putting the movement at risk in other ways, those individuals were seldom asked to change their behavior and were almost never barred from the movement. The presence of veteran activists with ample training in nonviolent direct action and other areas of relevance allowed for impromptu learning opportunities and occasional formal trainings but did not significantly affect the general character of the movement. The consequence of this lack of training was not only the use of tactics that were violent in spirit, if not action, [20] but the failure to draw on the full potential of mass nonviolent action, [21] which inspired the world in early 2011 by bringing down the entrenched regimes of Egypt’s Mubarak and Tunisia’s Ben Ali in a matter of weeks. [22]

Conclusion: Why Self-Criticism is Important

If the Occupy Movement in D.C. and elsewhere hopes to regroup and produce the results its critics and supporters have been seeking, it will have to be willing to learn from its mistakes. Honest and fair self-criticism does not condone attacks on the movement from those who seek its destruction but represents the first step toward constructive solutions that will foster its growth and prosperity. Self-criticism does not hinder progress — it ensures it.

Notes

[1]  White, Deborah. “Declaration and Manifesto of the Occupy Wall Street Movement.”About.com US Liberal Politics. About.com, n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2013. <http://usliberals.about.com/od/socialsecurity/a/Declaration-Manifesto-Of-Occupy-Wall-Street-Movement.htm>.

[2]  Zeese, Kevin, and Margaret Flowers. “NOW DC.” NOW DC. N.p., Mar. 2012. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. <http://www.nowdc.org/>.

[3]  Dietz, David. “Occupy Wall Street Six Months Later: Why OWS Failed and How It Can Be Revived.” PolicyMic. N.p., Mar. 2012. Web. 19 Feb. 2013. <http://www.policymic.com/articles/5601/occupy-wall-street-six-months-later-why-ows-failed-and-how-it-can-be-revived/122668>.

[4]  Johansen, Jorgen. “Nonviolence: More than the Absence of Violence.” Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies. Ed. Charles P. Webel and Johan Galtung. London: Routledge, 2007. 144-59.

[5]  Frank, Thomas. “Occupy Wall Street and Its Evil Twin, the Tea Party; Yes, but What Are You For?” Le Monde Diplomatique [Paris] 01 Jan. 2013.

[6] Ibid.

[7]  Gautney, Heather. “What Is Occupy Wall Street? The History of Leaderless Movements.” The Washington Post 10 Oct. 2011.

[8]  Creighton, Scott. “Kevin Zeese: Turn the Occupy Movement into Obama’s Serve America Act – Yeah, That’ll Show the Fat Cats.” American Everyman. Willyloman, 11 Dec. 2011. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. <http://willyloman.wordpress.com/>.

[9] For an introduction to the structure of the Occupy Movement and consensus decision-making by one of the its intellectual founders: Graeber, David. “Enacting the Impossible (On Consensus Decision Making).” Occupy Wall Street. The Occupy Movement, 29 Oct. 2011. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. <http://occupywallst.org/article/enacting-the-impossible/>.

[10] Occupy DC Resist Police Order to Take Down Structure. Perf. Occupy D.C. Activists.YouTube. N.p., 04 Dec. 2011. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggJ4P1gjKkc>.

[11]  O’Brien, Sean, Phil Lawson, Matthew Edwards, Kazu Haga, Melissa Merin, Josh Shepherd, Paolo, and Starhawk. “Tikkun Magazine.” Tikkun Magazine. N.p., 29 Mar. 2012. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. <http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/nonviolence-vs-diversity-of-tactics-in-the-occupy-movement>.

[12]  Somers, Meredith. “Occupy D.C. Camps Divided, Don’t Want to Be United.” The Washington Times 19 Jan. 2012.

[13]  Graeber, David. “Occupy Wall Street’s Anarchist Roots.” Occupy Wall Street. The Occupy Movement, 30 Apr. 2012. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. <http://occupywallst.org/article/occupy-wall-streets-anarchist-roots/>.

[14]  Brady, Miranda J., and Derek Antoine. “Decolonize Wall Street! Situating Indigenous Critiques of the Occupy Wall Street Movement.” American Communication Journal 14.3 (2012): 1-10.

[15]  Beaudreault, Therese. “People of Color Caucus.” Personal interview. Jan. 2012.

[16]  Queer Femme, Clutzy. “Occupy Sexual Assault.” Web log post. Empower for Peace. Google, 2011. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. <http://empowerforpeace.blogspot.com/2011/12/occupysexualassault.html>.

[17]  Video Featuring the People of Color and White Allies Caucuses at Occupy K Street. Perf. Jamal Gray, Dany Sigwalt, Vasudha Desikan, and Zach Mason. Decolonize DC. Occupy DC, 8 Dec. 2011. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. <http://decolonizedc.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/video-featuring-the-people-of-color-and-white-allies-caucuses-at-occupy-k-street/>.

[18]  Johnson, Matt. “Occupy Justice.” Waging Nonviolence. N.p., 8 Dec. 2011. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. <http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/occupy-justice/>.

[19]  Sharp, Gene. The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Boston: P. Sargent, 1973.

[20]  Occupy DC Glitter Bombs Joe Lieberman. YouTube. N.p., 28 Jan. 2012. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2giZjYuLZY>.

[21]  Johansen, Jorgen. “Nonviolence: More than the Absence of Violence.” Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies. Ed. Charles P. Webel and Johan Galtung. London: Routledge, 2007. 144-59.

[22]  Andersen, Kurt. “Person of the Year 2011: The Protester.” Time Person of the Year. Time, 14 Dec. 2011. Web. 09 Mar. 2013.

CrimethInc.’s 2011 book, Work: Capitalism. Economics. Resistance., is an analytically rich text designed to diagram late capitalism within a critical context, exposing the hierarchical relationships that produce structural oppression, while alerting the reader to strategies to not only create ruptures for one’s emancipation, but also provide insight as to the formation of a movement-level push against capitalism’s advancement.  Like all of CrimethInc.’s books, the authors’ identities are concealed within a mysterious collective moniker, this infamous “CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective.”  Work’s anonymous authors are keen to acknowledge that they themselves are not scholars, economists, philosophers or ‘experts,’ but that the analysis of capitalism is a task anyone can interact with.  In their introduction, the authors write:

This project is the combined effort of a group of people who have already spent many years in pitched struggle against capitalism.  What qualifies us to write this?…all of us have lived under capitalism since we were born, and that males us experts on it.  The same goes for you.  No one has to have a degree in economics to understand what’s happening: it’s enough to get a paycheck or a pink slip and pay attention. (2011, p. 7)

This style of non-expert, expert analysis permeates the entire book and serves to make the text accessible, informed, and extremely approachable.  The examples are drawn from ‘average’ human experiences infused with the generalized anti-capitalist critique.  In a sense, the book says, ‘Even if you don’t know what capitalism or wage slavery is, you know oppression because you know the frustration, alienation and drudgery of work.’  In this manner, CrimethInc. asserts that every individual is a philosopher, every worker a economist, and every annoyed consumer an insurgent.

The book is broken down into four main areas.  First, the authors provide a broad stroke exposé of the structure of capitalism, wage labor, the changing nature of the economy, and the structuring of the physical environment as it pertains to communities.  Following this introduction, the book shifts structural gears and begins the “Positions: Where We Are” portion which examines the hierarchy of employment fields from the owning and political classes at the top of the pyramid, all the way down to the natural resources exploited for production at its base.  In this section, the authors explore nineteen areas including “bosses,” “middle management,” “self-employment,” “factory workers,” “students,” “the service industry,” domestic labor,” “police and military,” “migrant labor,” “prisoners,” “unemployment and homelessness” as well a those that fall outside of the formal economy.  Each of these fields is addressed in a mini vignette where their social, economic, and political (or lack there of) relationships are examined in terms of power, control, and avenues of exploitation.  The hierarchical ranking of these fields provides a contextual framework for the furtherance of CrimethInc.’s larger thesis, namely, the diagramming of late capitalism via a pyramid structure with owners and politicians at the top, and migrant labor and prison labor at the bottom.  They lead the reader towards their tagline summation, displayed prominently on the book’s accompanying poster, which reads: “capitalism is a pyramid scheme.”

Following the industry-by-industry breakdown, the authors shift their analysis to the “mechanics” of capital accumulation, examining the role played by a host of social institutions including the media, banking, taxes, inheritance, religion and gentrification.  Sprinkled throughout these mechanistic explorations are discussions of manners of resistance such as “vertical alliances,” “illegal capitalism,” “theft,” and “subculture.”  It is through these small windows of utopianism that the authors lead towards the fourth and final section entitled “The Resistance.”  Predictably, in this section, the authors not only provide suggestions for the formulation of a mass opposition, but also critique piecemeal and reformist measures typically offered by social movements.  The “Resistance” section begins with the heading, “We Don’t Have to Live Like This,” and offers exciting avenues of conjecture with accompanying images of riots, destroyed property, and subcultural counter institutions and artifacts such as squatted buildings and ant-capitalist street art.

The nature of the economic, social, and political critique offered by CrimethInc. is nebulous and sometimes difficult to succinctly pin down.  On the one hand, the analysis is a classical Marxist structural critique, heavily influenced by the post-anarchist tendencies of the French Situationists, eco-primitivists, anti-Statist communists, and insurrectionary theorists.  In a broad survey, the authors break the system of capitalism into three distinct classes, then capitalists, the exploited, and the excluded.  Here, the capitalists are those directing the manner in which capital is created, owned and managed, while the exploited include all manners of laborers—from office workers and students to service workers and educators—that do not control either the products of their labor nor the methods of production.  The capitalists “profit from others’ labor” (2011, p. 42), while the exploited’s “activity turns a profit for others.” (ibid.)  In this pyramid diagram seen throughout the book, this exploited class is the largest unit and constitutes most of Marx’s category of proletariat.

What CrimethInc. adds uniquely, is a third category beyond bourgeoisie and proletariat: the excluded.  In their description of the excluded, the authors write that members of this class “are left out of the equation and have to survive on the fringes of the economy.” (ibid.)  While a traditional Marxist analysis would lump the excluded within the category of the exploited (proletariat), CrimethInc.’s model differentiates these workers through their lack of interaction in even the regulated economy of wage slavery.  Included in this category are sex workers, soldiers, those who make money from illegal theft and drug sales, and those waged workers existing at the very bottom of the hierarchy, such as ‘undocumented’ workers and those whom are incarcerated and labor within the prison system.

In examining the uniqueness of CrimethInc.’s addition to the classical Marxist narrative, we can explore their treatment of “the sex industry” as a category of exploited proletariat labor.  In this chapter, CrimethInc. draws from post-modern feminist theory by arguing that prostitutes and other sex workers are “demanding payment up front for things everyone else sells in a roundabout fashion.” (2011, p. 123)  In this manner, CrimethInc. begins their positioning of sex work as simply another industry of production, one in which the commodity being traded is service work, the service of sex.  Contained within this discussion is a nuanced examination of the flow of sex work profits beyond the individual street workers, and upwards towards the sexualized sale of Hollywood products, commercial pornography, and other manners in which sexual production is commodified and sold.  In their latter analysis, the authors pay tribute to intersectional theory (e.g. Judith Butler, Anne Fausto-Sterling) and discuss how the sale of sex interacts with gender construction and the physical sexing of the body.  In their treatment of the sex industry, CrimethInc. pushes the argument that this exploited worker is not unique, but rather yet another waged employee within an unregulated economy.  In this logic, the exceptionalism of prostitution and pornography is removed in an attempt to show the uniformity of exploitation, alienation, and abstraction found in all waged labor from those who produce car batteries to those that produce orgasms.

In establishing the limitations and pitfalls of Work, one can point to the opacity of its representation of the intellectual traditions from which it draws from, as well as the hidden constitution of its authorship.  The CrimethInc. writing style is one of cryptic references and subcultural innuendo drawn from its roots in the late 1990s hardcore punk and anarchist scenes.  Following CrimethInc.’s rise to visibility that proceeded the 1999 World Trade Organization riots in Seattle, the network’s publications have taken on a certain mythical character amongst the contemporary anti-authoritarian left.  Beginning with their introductory book-length work, Days of War, Nights of Love published in 2000, the anonymous authors of these insurrectionary texts have been careful to pen revolutionary prose while removing references to the intellectual forbearers.  For the anonymous CrimethInc.ers, such intellectual antecedents can often be understood as mired within the ideology of philosophy and the products of dead, irrelevant, old and stagnant theoreticians.

While CrimethInc.’s obfuscation of these foundational authors is an intentional practice that creates a very readable text, for those seeking to read backwards, and to trace the roots and journeys such ideas took, the book leaves a great deal absent.  The absence of such citations is so glaring, that in an unusual head nod to their unorthodoxy the authors include a “bibliography” where they write:

We’ve chosen to forego formal citations for this project; in the Google era, it should be easy enough to follow up on any of our claims.  This opens a host of questions that usually go unacknowledged in texts about economics.  How do certain forms of corroboration benefit from and reinforce academic legitimacy, itself a currency of power?…Who benefits from this, and whom does it silence.  We’ve drawn on more sources than we could enumerate, but here are a few good starting points. (2011, p. 372)

In pointing the reader towards their ‘sources,’ CrimethInc. avoids citing the traditional characters and instead directs the reader towards Guy Debord the French Situationist, Silvia Federici the autonomous feminist, Eduardo Galeano the Uruguayan journalist and historian, Upton Sinclair the infamous muckraker, and even Prole.info a class struggle, anarcho-Marxist website.  Excluded from this list are the typical leftist classical economic critics one would expect such as Marx, Engles, Lenin, Luxemburg, or contemporary anti-capitalist economists such as Michael Albert, Robin Hahnel, Noam Chomsky and others.  In penning this bibliographic aside, the authors acknowledge their ‘unacademic’ and ‘unverifiable’ approach, and cite its basis in a rejectionism of the academic discipline’s reliance on measures of legitimacy.  In this sense, the choice to present an intellectually rich argument devoid of intellectual markers can ether be seen as a destabilizing attempt to challenging traditional scholarship, or an attempt to pass off centuries of criticism as neo-anarchist propaganda.  The decision on which goal is the authors’ intention is left up to the reader.

To cite a single (glaringly) obvious example of this tendency, the book is designed to function in tandem with an accompanying poster visually displaying the book’s thesis via a hierarchical pyramid of workers-atop-workers.

CrimethInc. “Work Pyramid”

IWW’s “Pyramid of Capitalist System”

While the authors’ acknowledge that their poster is a reinterpretation of a piece of 1911 propaganda produced by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) under the title “Pyramid of Capitalist System”, CrimethInc. shares this linkage without identifying the economic theories that inform it—in other words devoid of the more fundamental base/superstructure, bourgeoisie/proletariat, capital owner/worker taxonomies.  While the visual adaptation is apparent in the book’s display of the IWW poster (on page 44), the book is noticeably without an examination of the surrounding theories.  The effect of this writing style is the following: a reader is exposed to the concepts of alienation, commodity fetishism, worker-boss hierarchy, exploitation and the eventuality of revolutionary structural change, but they are denied a roadmap which traces such ideas back to their source texts.  CrimethInc. accomplishes this task with brash honesty and pride in this style of intellectual anti-copyright.  By not attributing the ideas to Marx, Luxemburg and others, the authors encourage a new generation of revolutionary readers to consider what is presented as fresh ideas.  This serves to reinvigorate the discourse and not simply present it as yet another attempt to explain a revolutionary agenda that has failed to produce revolution.  In this sense, CrimethInc. succeeds in ‘selling’ the ideas as novel, but in another sense it fails the reader in concealing a century and a half of intellectual struggle and debate.

Now what is that journey?  As you know and as you have seen from the publicity for this lecture, the title is Human Rights, Sovereign Rights, and the Potentials of Conflict Resolution.  In a sense I see a challenge that’s being presented to us now in the 21st Century and that challenge is that we are witnessing the extremes of violence going on across the world.   The challenge is, how do we respond intellectually and, if you like, praxiologically?  How do we respond?

The journey I want to take you through starts from Syria, present day Syria.  I will not say much about what is going on.  We are all witnessing what is going on there.  So the journey takes us from Syria, or at least it starts from Syria, and ends in a little place called Sant’Egidio, which is just outside of Rome.  However, that journey takes us via a rather complex route and I am hesitant to tell you what this complex route is but I’m afraid you are going to have to sit there and listen, because it’s very important and it’s at the heart of what I am going to say.

The route takes us via Immanuel Kant, Jurgen Habermas, and Michel Foucault, because these three characters, and I apologize to my feminist sisters for the fact that there aren’t many men [women] mentioned here, but as you’ll see at the end of my talk a very valiant and important woman comes through in the conceptualization and theorization that I’m providing here, namely Hannah Arendt.  Because Arendt is most significant here, as you’ll see.

So from Syria to Sant’Egidio via Kant, Habermas, and Michel Foucault and then ending up with Hannah Arendt.

What does Kant teach us?  What does he provide us?  He provides us with, in a sense, the very beginnings of what we might call today critical theory.  He teaches us that human beings have this capacity to self legislate, to be self-reflexive, to think about their environment and to think about what they say.  So it was in that sense that Michel Foucault pays tribute in his “What is Enlightenment” to Michel Foucault [Immanuel Kant] as being the first critical theorist.  And so we’re here today exactly to reflect on what we have to say about conflict and conflict resolution.

Kant teaches us something else much more important in my view.  He had a cosmopolitan imaginary and as such was concerned with the idea of the human being as rights bearer.  The human being as rights bearer for Immanuel Kant suggested that the human self is also or can also be a suffering self.  In other words, much harm can be done to the human being.  And we know that to be the case. Kant’s cosmopolitan imaginary enables him to think of the distant other and to reflect on the potentials of the cosmopolitan ideal in rethinking what we would refer to today as international relations. However, Kant’s cosmopolitan imaginary is confined to the extension of ‘hospitality’ to the stranger. However, if Kant was asked the question, “what is it to have a political system or an international system that is indeed based on this cosmopolitan imaginary?”, his answer would argue against a cosmopolitan formation of the international.

There is here a paradox for Kant. To recognize the rights of the individual self in a sense presented the opportunity to transform relationships internationally.  However, he argued against the translation of  the cosmopolitan imaginary, into something much more, into something positive, namely cosmopolitan law.  For Immanuel Kant law is the great pacifier.  Law pacifies the internal community of the liberal, republican, modern, secular state.  However, to convert a cosmopolitanism of rights into a legal system meant for Kant the transformation of the international into empire.

Here we have exactly that original critical thinker, reflecting on his own imaginary and the political implications of his imaginary.  So the paradox for Immanuel Kant, is that just as he recognizes the human self as rights bearer, he limits the potentials of cosmopolitanism.  He puts the breaks on what cosmopolitanism can do and he wishes to retain the notion of the sovereignty of the state.  But this was a paradox for Kant, because if you like, the primary element in his philosophy is exactly that autonomous being, and the Enlightenment idea of the individual self as being capable of self-reflection, on their cultural and phenomenal context.  But as I say, Kant absolutely reiterates the limits that should be placed exactly on the ambitions, if you like, of the cosmopolitan imaginary, because ultimately the ambitions of the cosmopolitan imaginary is to extend the law, and specifically the force of law, internationally.

And so in this journey we come to Jurgen Habermas.  When Habermas writes about developing this Kantian perspective, he talks about revising Immanuel Kant, as he puts it, ‘200 years later’.  The challenge for Habermas and the rest of us is that we do live in a globalized world.  The conflicts we see are transnational conflicts.  Conflict in late modernity is no respecter of state boundaries, so what do state boundaries mean in this late modern context?

For Habermas the Kantian cosmopolitan imaginary has to be given positive force, in other words, if we look to the two elements of rights that I am talking about: human rights, sovereign rights,Habermas argues that the latter, sovereign rights, have to be trumped by human rights. And I don’t think any of us in this room would disagree with that.  I don’t think we would.  Hands up whoever disagrees with that statement.  So how do we challenge Habermas in his formulation?  What is he saying?  What perspective on peace is Habermas providing that Immanuel Kant does not provide and does not help us with?

For Habermas, the notion of ‘perpetual peace’ is only possible through the design of a cosmopolitan arrangement.   What he wants to see is exactly the pacification of the sovereign state.  The pacification, and as he puts it, the ‘domestication’ of the international.  The international arena is an anarchical context, but it is in late modernity increasingly subject to all sorts of regulations Globalization as a process is not some mad, chaotic process going on out there.  There’s actually a lot of regulation.  But what Habermas wants to see is exactly the pacification of sovereignty as such.  In other words, political sovereignty,   the juridical, political sovereignty of the state.  He wants human rights to trump the sovereignty of the state.  And so, how does Habermas help out in relation to conflict, and especially violent conflict in an already globalised context?  For Habermas peace is the manifestation of a positive conception of human rights, rights that at once both tame and trump sovereignty.   Ultimately, this taming constitutes the pacification of sovereign power in the service of the rights of the individual human self.  Where Kant places limits on his cosmopolitan imaginary, Habermas confers it positive force, thereby translating the Kantian imaginary into the force of law, Cosmopolitan Law.

But what are the implications?  Habermas is not the only advocate of such a transformation of the international.  We might argue that Habermas’s philosophical discourse is articulated in policy circles by, for example, Kofi Annan, and before Annan, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, both  UN Secretaries General.  During the 90s and into the 2000s both were arguing exactly for that taming of the sovereign state on the grounds that, across the world, the most extreme forms of violence were being  perpetrated against populations by their very own regimes or by militarized factions of those regimes.

So Kofi Annan and Boutros-Ghali were expressing a conception of peace that’s actually very Habermasian.  In other words, the idea of peace as being the equivalent of human rights and the positive force of human rights.  So peacebuilding comes to be a dominant form of response to conflict and begins to take over from diplomacy and conflict resolution.  Now the alarm bells need to start going right now in all our heads.  Because in this room we are interested in conflict resolution.  And there’s a good reason for that, right?

So peacebuilding comes to take over all sorts of interventionist practices involving the  UN non-governmental organizations, and states.  A kind of international civil service at large comes to constitute a peacebuilding apparatus that is mobilized in response to conflict situations.  In and out of countries, peacebuilding, state building, institution building, governing .  As peacebuilding comes to occupy a dominant position suggestive of a consensus, conflict resolution, or diplomacy, comes to be undermined.  I want to suggest that this shift from conflict resolution to peacebuilding might be read as a move away from Kantian limits and towards a Habermasian understanding of the cosmopolitan.

Over and above peacebuilding, we are seeing the manifestation of Habermasian visions of cosmopolitan law.  We now have an International Criminal Court and war crimes tribunals where individuals such as Mladic can be up in front of the criminal court.  I’d like to see many people in front of such court, for example Blair or the former president of this country.  Habermas considered the invasion of Iraq an illegal act.  So in the Habermasian context, you know his dream of a cosmopolitan law, is indeed coming to fruition gradually, because gradually things that people do out there in other people’s countries can come back to haunt them in the future.  Miolsevic.  Mladic.  Karadzic.  All of these guys.  Charles Taylor in Liberia is another example.  The people who perpetrated the Rwanda genocide another.  And so on and so on.

So there is a process of transformation going on juridically in the international arena.  And this is transforming the international into a kind of cosmopolitan space.  But it’s not a cosmopolitan space in the sense of cosmopolitanism as conviviality, as the recognition of difference and diversity.  Rather, it is very much a juridical understanding of cosmopolitanism, and this makes a difference.  Because it’s underpinned by what Jacques Derrida would call the ‘force of law’.  And so let’s start our critique of Habermas.  His heart is in the right place by the way.  He is also, by the way, very generous.  One year many years ago, my students went to one of his lectures and when he’d finished asked, “Can we have a photo with you?  You are always mentioned by our professor!”

In Habermas, law indeed becomes the third force.  The great pacifier of nations.  So from the Kantian imaginary we’ve now moved in this journey to the force of law.  What are we talking about when we talk specifically about the force of law?  We are talking about violence as being constitutive of that law.   The spectre of Walter Benjamin hovers over us as we talk about cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan law.  For Walter Benjamin, law is indeed constituted by violence.  When Habermas supports the intervention in Kosovo, the military intervention in Kosovo, he in effect argues that every military intervention that happens in the name of human rights is one further step in the institutionalization of cosmopolitan law.  And so violence plays a part.

Hence the force of law.  Every instance, every instantiation of law, that very first step of law is a violent step.  A sovereign has to speak.  Every intervention is a decision made.  There is always a sovereign who speaks and in that speaking, the law comes to be constituted as such.  Including cosmopolitan law.  And so even in Habermas there is violence at play.

So I’ve brought up the specter of Walter Benjamin and now I bring the very real specter of Michel Foucault.  And he’s not just spectral because we engage with him very much in this context.  So what does Michel Foucault do that others don’t?  He enables us to ask the question, “Where is sovereign power?”  Now in the title of this talk there is the idea of human rights and sovereign rights and we might think of this combination in terms of the human individual self as against a sovereign state and its leaders.  Let’s say the individual Syrian citizen as opposed to Bashar al-Asad as the sovereign leader of a sovereign independent state.

But I think a better way of dealing with this notion of sovereignty is exactly to ask in our late modern times where does sovereign power actually lie and how does it articulate itself? So where lies sovereign power?  In other words, who decides?  And it’s this question of ‘who decides’ that muddies the waters of the cosmopolitan imaginary.

For Michel Foucault power is better understood in terms of a triptych, sovereign power, disciplinary power and biopolitical power.   He suggests that sovereign power might be understood in terms of the decision about who may live and who may die.  It’s a very powerful decision.  It’s often a decision that’s publicly enforced.  In Michel Foucault’s, Discipline and Punish, he tells the story of the public execution.  The sovereign has to enact a public execution because he has to have an audience. He has to have an audience to actually manifest and perform his sovereignty.

But the analysis of power we find in Michel Foucault doesn’t simply stop there.   Liberal societies become more and more sophisticated.  And so Michel Foucault writes about disciplinary power.  Those minute moments of power where the individual self comes to be . the target of control;  disciplined, subject to calculation and to shaping, and redesign  So disciplinary power seeks to, in a sense, produce a particular kind of person.

In Michel Foucault, in modern times, from the 18th Century right up to the present, we’re shaped, we are taught to be, in a sense, free individuals.  But because we are subject to pedagogical interventions of that sort we are not actually free.  We are forever subject to surveillance practices.  We’re forever through those surveillance practices subject to a kind of pacification regime. In the Foucauldian perspective, there’s no such thing  as an internal, civic peace.  The kind of peace Immanuel Kant and Jurgen Habermas write about.  He argues that there is a ‘roar of battle’ going on within society as these practices of pacification and surveillance manifest themselves upon the individual human self.  And so he highlights the violence of these practices.

The third element of the triptych, the most sophisticated form of power, is biopolitical power.  In other words, where populations, and not simply individuals, are the subject of that power.  And so in late modernity we are living in a biopolitical age, one where the survival of humanity as such becomes the target of operations of power.  For Michel Foucault, when wars take place,  they do so purportedly in the name of humanity at large.  In the name of the human.  However, if biopolitical warfare takes place in the name of humanity, who is the enemy?  Who is excluded from that humanity?

Who is outside?  Who is the ‘abnormal’ in this condition?  For Michel Foucault, wars of a biopolitical age tend to be genocidal wars.  They can start with the little massacres here and there and they end up being genocidal wars.    He mentions the colonial era  and the Holocaust as examples, but this aspect of his writing is merely suggestive   However, what does this mean for the international?

Foucault spent his life writing about liberal societies.  France and  Britain especially.  All of his work is based on these societies.  He ventured out onto the international context when the Iranian Revolution happened.  I have a piece on that, actually very critical of Michel Foucault in that context.  I don’t intend to  say much on that in our particular context.  You can ask me about it in the discussion.  What is interesting though is that the ‘international’ as such does not particularly engage Foucault.  It’s post-Foucault Foucauldians who do that for him.  People like me.  So I’ve seen it as my job to ask myself the question, “What would happen if we internationalized Michel Foucault?”  What would happen, in other words, if we used his analytics of power, but applied them internationally?  What would we come up with?

In this internationalizing of Michel Foucault we come up with a transformation of sovereign power and the location of political authority.  Sovereign power comes to be globally articulated.  Remember that public execution happening in some square in the middle of Paris?  The story that Michel Foucault tells in Discipline and Punish;   that sovereign power has to have an audience in order to be constituted as sovereign power.   I have suggested elsewhere that the very same process is now globally rendered.  We’re all the audience.  The whole world is the audience to the enactment of sovereign power wherever that sovereign power manifests itself.

Then in relation to disciplinary power and biopolitical power, these have come to be manifest exactly in the transformation of our discourses on peace into discourses and practices variously on peacebuilding, statebuilding, and the government of populations.  Michel Foucault writes about liberalism as  as productive, through techniques of power, of self-government.  The production, in other words, through all sorts of matrices of power, of the liberal subject.

If we transform that idea  to the global setting what we come up with, indeed what we observe, are practices that can be understood in terms of Foucault’s triptych; sovereign decisions relating to intervention and the utilisation of violence in combination with a panoply of pedagogical and training exercises geared towards the re-shaping and re-design of other societies. Peacebuilding, in other words, as the government of ‘other’ societies.  This is where the problems lie.  Indeed, this is where our problems actually begin to happen.  I’ve already mentioned the violence that underpins that initial move.  This is why Immanuel Kant was so right to be hesitant, to actually be quite modest with his cosmopolitan imaginary, because Immanuel Kant foresaw the dangers that we see today.

So peacebuilding becomes the government of populations.  And guess what, it’s other people’s populations, located in other countries.  So what the societies that Michel Foucault engages with went through throughout the trajectory of modernity, now we want to  apply to other societies   However, who decides?  Who is the sovereign in this context?  Michel Foucault writes about biopolitical war as being possible because of the racial divisions of populations.

Now in the present,  and in our globalized context,  some would argue that state boundaries are being diminished.  We can see that in many contexts.  However, we can also see that boundaries become manifest once again,  corporially, in the very bodies of the other targeted.  So the borders of populations come to be racially manifest in the racialisation of other peoples’ cultures, a racialisation that reproduces a hierarchical ordering of the world, the governing and the governed.

So from peace to peacebuilding and the government of populations.  Peacebuilding seeks to reshape and redesign other populations,  and in so doing, can undermine processes that underscore the recognition of conflict, grievance, and political agency; processes that define the practice of conflict resolution.  So in the last few minutes of my talk, I want to come back to this potential that conflict resolution might have.  I want to reclaim a space for conflict resolution as a response to conflict that is distinct from peacebuilding, that does not seek to govern others nor to depoliticize conflict in the name of ‘our’ security.

What are the choices for conflict resolution?  One choice  that does not fit the conflict resolution perspective is to  seek to govern, to redesign other societies.  So what’s happened in Syria suggests the assumption that we are  able to govern the very process of transformation that’s taking place there;  to govern the imaginary of the revolutionaries in that country.  The West has started arming the rebels with a view to potentially, maybe in the future or even now, governing the revolutionary process in Syria and the rest of the Middle East.  To shape its directionality, in other words.  That’s one choice.  And by the way it’s already been made.  The shaping and redesigning of populations to make them amenable.

But the other choice is politics; the recognition of the conflict in Syria as a location of political contestation, not simply a conflict with the regime, but a complex internal conflict that is currently being articulated not just within Syria, but in the region, and internationally.   Here, the journey  takes us to Sant’Egidio.  That first choice, the government of populations, is informed by a colonial rationality.  It has to be.  It is   informed by the idea that we can shape and redesign other societies.  The second choice, politics, in a sense takes us to a post-colonial rationality.  Not a cosmopolitanism of intervention or of government, but a cosmopolitanism of recognition; of politics and of choices relating to solidarity.  What choice do we make?  And whose side do we take?

If you recognize that there are actually many sides in this revolutionary process that is going on in the Middle East;  the challenge in a sense is to provide for the recognition of all sides, but at the same time to reflect on the consequences of certain choices made.  It’s a tough choice.  Life’s business being the terrible choice, as Robert Burns puts it.  That’s the dilemma.  That’s the paradox.

And so what happened at Sant’Egidio?  Not so long ago a group of Syrian opposition spokespeople, women and men, were invited to Sant’Egidio [the Dean of S-CAR, Andrea [Bartoli] is involved with that community].  These opposition groupings, the non-violent ones, put out a statement.  What did that statement say?  What was significant about that statement?  It was that there is diversity.  They do want respect for human rights and democracy, but they were opposed to a violent expression of that, of their struggle.  They were also opposed to intervention in Syria, because they valued the postcolonial sovereignty of the Syrian state.  These are postcolonial populations.  They’re constituted by memories of the colonial era.  They know a colonial rationality when it faces them like this.  They may call for political solidarity, but wish this solidarity to be in their own, independent, terms and not terms that govern their aspirations.

So we have a choice here between two rationalities.  A colonial one that imagines the liberal self extending ever outwards, seeing the world as their oyster, committing not just epistemic violence to quote Gayatri Spivak, but also actual physical violence.  A violence aimed at the government of populations, one that is often framed in terms of humanitarian rescue. Being framed in the language of human rights, this first choice might be seen as a product of the cosmopolitan imaginary, but one sees  the liberal self being able to govern other societies and determine and shape their futures.   We can interpret this first choice in terms of  the sovereign power to decide who may live and who may die.  But the second choice, that of conflict resolution, is the political choice.  It’s being able to provide for that voice that speaks up postcolonially, in that and in this post-colonial context;  where the anti-colonial struggles of the past are very much in the memories of those target populations.

So the choice is there and that’s why I want to come back to the problem of Syria, because in a sense, it is imperative upon us to reflect on what is going on there. however, the aim in this journey was to show that we’re not the first to think about these issues.  That we have  powerful historic and philosophical antecedents, voice of reflection that enable us to critique hegemonic and dominant discourses and practices related to responses to conflict.

So lastly, and by no means finally, I want to bring in Hannah Arendt.  For Hannah Arendt it’s the political that matters.  But what understanding of the political does she bring to our discourses here. For Arendt politics means the insertion of presence.  The insertion of self into the  public arena thereby constituting that arena as distinctly political.

Arendt was very much an admirer of the founding fathers of this country [the USA].  Very much an admirer of the American Revolution.  And she is very controversial in her writings.  Everything she wrote has been subject to much controversy, and deservedly so.  Any great philosopher has to be so subject to controversy, debate, and discourse.  For Arendt, politics was not about basic human needs, it was about the claim to politics.  The idea that we actually have a voice and indeed can have a voice.  So the political for Hannah Arendt is that moment of insertion into the public arena, that claim made to politics  But the claim can easily be captured by the forces that seek to govern.  She knew that.  She recognized that danger.

The Arab Spring that we’ve all witnessed, when it started and when it was happening especially when we were watching the Egyptians on streets, at Tahrir Square, these were joyous events for all of us. These were moments of solidarity with those who sought to claim politics, the right to politics. The extension of such solidarity, for example, by my students towards the students of Tahrir Square, was an articulation of a cosmopolitan imaginary, but not one that sought to govern.

In an Arendtian sense that was the moment of politics.  That was the revolutionary moment that could enable a space for the constitution of political community, one that would enable politics as such, but that moment has somehow evaded the revolutionaries.  In my opinion, what’s happened is that we are back into that space of governing.  ‘Governmentality,’ to use a Foucauldian term,  seeking to shape other people’s revolutions. That’s what happened in Libya and this is what’s happening right now as we speak in Syria.  So the moment of joy is now not so joyous after all.

This is not a pessimistic ending.  I have been accused of being a pessimist.  I’m not a pessimist, but nor am I an optimist.  I am much more of a realist with a small r.  A realist with a small r in the Arendtian sense.  Arendt provides much that is to be celebrated, but she writes a cautionary tale.  And I hope that what I’ve said is a cautionary tale.  In  that tale and in this journey that I’ve highlighted, I hope you can see that there is  a need for conflict resolution and even good old-fashioned diplomacy to come back into the frame.  Because it’s good old fashioned diplomacy and conflict resolution that provides that moment for recognition.  The recognition of the other and the idea that we cannot shape, ever, other societies.  Thank you.

[*] This lecture was delivered at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution on October 24, 2012.  Michael D. English transcribed this lecture exclusively for Unrest Magazine.  Full video of the lecture including a question and answer session can be accessed here.

“It does not make any sense to get involved in those bitter arguments between Modernizer-Colonizer Liberals and Anti-Modern Conservatives.  I don’t see any difference in them.  They all agree on hierarchical structures and are fighting for power and resources.  That’s it.  I want to focus on creativity, something that gives much more power than those senseless arguments.  I create a different world.  Less hierarchical, than liberal or conservative world.  And that is where I find my happiness.”

Nino Chubinishvili in her class on interdisciplinary arts.

Very eloquently said.  Chubik does certain interdisciplinary arts, which is participatory.  She includes and involves her students in creation of new work.  Everyone is co-creating – and therefore creating peace.  Peace of mind – which is so difficult to find in contemporary bourgeois discourse.   Participation is something that is lacking around us.  The new discourse is a language of complete exclusion.   Chubik’s approach is inclusion.  When her students and participants of workshops come,  she treats everyone with same respect and gives them a chance to show their talent in ‘building a new world’, but very different one from the mainstream culture.  It is not easy – but it is pleasurable.  This is a different road to take – and it gives participants much greater joy than following already taken paths of careerism.    That is why many people are attracted to Chubik.  They just want to go to “Mukha Tsakatukha” and watch her smoke, talk and work.  Her life is art-work in action.  That is truly a face of Georgian Altermodernity.  One of the most creative faces of this movement.

But there is also a very strong and financially very much backed modernizer-colonizer movement, that is also operating within the Georgian society and proliferating very different values from Nino Chubinishvili’s creativity.

Leader of “Angry-Bird’ coalition of Georgian Modernizers Tamara Chergoleishvili.

Tamara Chergoleishvili (above), known in Georgia as an “Angry Bird” after the cartoon character, with her magazine “Tabula” is considered one of the most ardent protagonists of Western Colonialism and Modernity.  Her narrative is close to contemporary neoconservative+neoliberal circles in America.   Militaristic modernization and instituting the notions of “Republic of Property” (Hartd&Negri) are main features of her magazines writings, where leading Georgian Neoconservatives Ghia Nodia, Levan Ramishvili and others publish their opinions.   Russian Oligarch, Kakha Bendukidze, who moved to Georgia right after ‘Rose Revolution’ is also aggressively promoting right wing libertarian ideas in style of late Milton Friedman and Austrian School.  “Tabula” and “Agrarian University” led by Mr. Bendukidze are backed by large financial base, mostly accumulated by the National Movement Oligarchs such as Mr. Kezerashvili, although Mr. Bendukidze has earned his fortune in Russia long before 2003.  Their ideological allies are also in the Ilia State University, led by another Neocon, Gigi Tevzadze.  The discourse is very clearly articulated agenda of Georgia becoming part of the West.  Members of the ‘Angry Bird’ political clan do not hide their preference towards Western Imperialism in style of Dick Cheney (former American Vice President).  In fact, Dick Cheney is considered a good example of state building by the “Tabulistas”.

‘Angry Bird’ coalition is acting like a Western Corporation, it uses resources and establishes franchises everywhere it can.  It proliferates a simple and easy to grasp message of Bourgeois Success,  that is attractive to middle class.   “Angry Bird’ is also flirting with left wing liberals.  Their alliance is based on their joint anti-religious and namely anti-Orthodox appeal.   This coalition of intellectuals is what Frantz Fanon calls colonizer-collaborators, local women who are trying to be more Western than Western women.  And because of that some Western women have some criticism of “Angry Bird’ as too aggressive bunch, who is not hiding their desire to give in to imperialism.

By September, 2012, when another scandal erupted around Saakashvili government where tapes surfaces where prisoners where tortured and raped by police guards, Saakashvili’s modernizer government lost support even by allied identity groups such as Women and Homosexuals.  His party narrowly lost the election, October 1, 2012 and the eclectic coalition “Georgian Dream” became the majority in Georgian Parliament.  This coalition that is led by billionaire, Bidzina Ivanishvili, is comprised of different political forces, where Conservatives share the power with Social Democrats, Republicans, Free Democrats and People’s Party.  This coalition of liberals and conservatives has some elements of anti-modern coupled with more or less progressive Social Democrats and Republicans and pragmatic Free Democrats.

So who are the anti-modern forces in Georgian politics?

Anti-Modern movement in Georgia is mostly based on traditional notions of resisting spiritual corruption brought by globalization.  This movement is not entirely new, since there were anti-modern sentiments starting from 19-th century when the serfdom was abolished by young reformers in Russian Empire.  Corruption of Spiritual values is opposed by the forces allied with an Orthodox Church and ethno-nationalist groups.  In some points they have some very legitimate concerns about the effects of modernization.  In a sense, like Hardt and Negri suggest anti-modern forces here are clearly anti-colonial, but they lack their positive agenda for the future.  These forces are looking into the past – and that is why conservative forces in Georgia are always losing the battle for creative ideas for the future of Georgia.  One of the examples of their failure is their large campaign against identity cards, based upon the false premise that those electronic identification cards contain the sign of a Satan.  In the end the leader of Georgian Orthodox Church came out in public to suggest that this was not true and asked everyone to make his or her own decision on this matter.  Lack of creative thinking is crippling conservative movement in Georgia and therefore is making it more vulnerable to ridicule from its opponents.

One of the leaders of Anti-Modern Conservative Forces in Georgia, Gubaz Sanikidze.

Anti-Modern movement has its popular leaders, such as Zviad Dzidziguri and Gubaz Sanikidze (above), who appeal to large parts of Georgian population.  They do have a chance to succeed if they adopt more creative ways of addressing their constituency.  But in general, Anti-Modern, Anti-Colonial Movement is not going to succeed if it is not going bring creative, new ways of continuing life in this multi-ethnic and multi-religious country, that has a tradition of coexistence lasting thousands of years.  Tradition of coexistence sounds like the best tradition for conservatives to find the ways out of their ideological impasse.

Anti-Modern forces usually rely on the votes and support of subaltern population that is the most disenfranchised part of the Georgian Society.   It is very well known that different reactionary ideas are mostly popular and easy to sell in these parts of the population.  Leading modernizers however successfully compete in some cases for the votes of Georgian subaltern appealing to the ethnic nationalism, especially during and after the war with Russia colonizing forces of Saakashvili were able to significantly cut the number of Anti-modern supporters.  Saakashvili was also able to successfully use conspiracy theories about “Russian Spies’ thereby arresting number of people on unsubstantiated charges and getting general support from the very poor population that is usually anti-modern.

But when was the contemporary Alter-modern Georgian art and lifestyle born?

In 1960s the new authors and artists came to the scene in Georgia, who have shown the vision for alternative world.  Film director Othar Ioseliani, Theater Director Robert Sturua, Writers Guram Rcheulishvili, Erlom Akhvlediani, Jemal Karchkhadze, Philosophers Merab Mamardashvili, Zurab Kakabadze, Tamaz Buachidze and others started to articulate the vision for the new Georgian ‘Alter-Modern’- that was not saying no to progress in general, but was not talking the element of love completely out of occasion.  Georgian alter-modern was constantly struggling with “Deinstitutionalization of Love’ that was one of the main features of technocratic Soviet reality.  Even since Lenin’s time this was called a “Bourgeois Sentimentality’ and was downgraded.  Georgian ‘Alter-Modern’ started to reconstruct the notion of love within the industrial society and it proved to be quite successful.  The works of Ioseliani, Sturua, Mamardashvili and their partners became well known through the world.  Brechtian hero, Georgian Judge Azdak (below) became one of the main escapes in Georgia’s reality of State-Capitalism in 1980s.  This was truly Delleuzian notion of escape from Capitalism through arts – or for that matter through Bakhtin’s notion of Carnival.

Great Georgian Actor Ramaz Chhikvadze playing ‘Azdak’.

In 1980 Georgia resisted Soviet authoritarian system through Bakhtin’s Carnival and Brecht’s Azdak played by late great Georgian Actor Ramaz Chhikvadze (above), but in 1990s and 2000 different reality required a different alternative.  That is where the group of writers led by Naira Gelashvili started to publish a magazine called ‘Alternative’.  Edited by Shota Iatashvili, this publication also became one of the niches of Georgian Alter-Modernity.

It could be argued that Alter-Modern artistic and scientific narrative was more responsible for bringing Soviet Totalitarianism down than Anti-Modern forces of reactionary Churches or Ethnic Nationalists.  Alter-Modernists played a very important role in deconstructing Soviet hierarchical system.  Unfortunately their voice became less important during and after the Velvet Revolution of 1989.  As we have said, either Anti-Modern forces of isolationist religious nationalism or modern forces of colonialism occupied the whole stage leaving very little space for creative vision of society.

Now, at “Mancho’s Place” and “Mukha Tsakatukha” Georgian Alter-modern is gaining strength.  It is creating a new life – a new carnival against careerist consciousness.  Nino Chubinishvili with her friends is one of the champions of this new narrative.  Just like Algerian women during a revolution, sometimes she has a veil and sometimes she is undressed like a European woman.  But what is the main point in her creativity is that she is never a hostage to liberal-conservative dichotomy and to new neoliberal colonialism.  She has a power to strike with her art that is more dangerous than any political party.  It is a creative and unexpected strike, which is driven by creative spiritual values.

Notes

[*] A version of this piece appeared in ARCADE on January 31, 2013 – http://arcade.stanford.edu/i-am-chubik-0