Nino Chubinishvili has created her own Alter-Modern world in Tbilisi. She is not self-described adherent of Deleuzian Multiplicities or Hardt and Negri’s Multitude. She has just created her own world. Sometimes this happens at her own studio in Arts Academy, in some cases in her own house on Mtatsminda region, or sometimes even at “Mukha Tsakatukha” Café, where many alternative artists visit and chat. She smoking a flower like an Eastern woman and is dressed like a Western Woman. But she does not identify with any of those worlds necessarily – she has created her own. One can’t help but think of Frantz Fanon’s “Algeria Unveiled” – the protest of women, who sometimes hid behind the veils and sometimes dressed totally like European women in order to confuse colonizers. In the face of liberal cultural colonization of Georgia, Chubik (as her friends call her since childhood) has discovered her own identity, which is different.
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We submit to the peaceful production of the means of destruction, to the perfection of waste, to being educated for a defense which deforms the defenders and that which they defend. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (1964, ix)
The inner dynamic of capitalism . . . necessitates the revival of the radical rather than the minimal goals of socialism. Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972, 5)
Capitalism has long been armed with its own theories of work and wealth; labor has not. In order to build an alternate vision for labor, this essay will attempt to re-think a critical philosophical analysis of work, the origins of wealth, and the human condition, including the contemporary propensities toward war. Given recent global economic dislocations, the time is ripe to produce a revitalized theory of society grounded in a critical understanding of human working, wealth-building, activity.
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In May, 2010, Private First Class Bradley Manning was arrested for providing vast amount of classified data containing at least 260,000 sensitive diplomatic cables and a video of a helicopter attack by US forces in 2007 to the whistleblower site Wikileaks. After Manning’s arrest, he was imprisoned in a cell at Quantico Marine Corps Base. His treatment there was described as “ridiculous, counter-productive, and stupid,” by State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley in March and has been the subject of domestic and international criticism.[1] In The New York Review of Books, Bruce Ackerman and Yochai Benkler published a letter signed by over 300 legal scholars that described Manning’s treatment:
For nine months, Manning has been confined to his cell for twenty-three hours a day. During his one remaining hour, he can walk in circles in another room, with no other prisoners present. He is not allowed to doze off or relax during the day, but must answer the question “Are you OK?” verbally and in the affirmative every five minutes. At night, he is awakened to be asked again “Are you OK?” every time he turns his back to the cell door or covers his head with a blanket so that the guards cannot see his face. During the past week he was forced to sleep naked and stand naked for inspection in front of his cell, and for the indefinite future must remove his clothes and wear a “smock” under claims of risk to himself that he disputes.[2]
Criticism of these conditions was sharp and after eleven months Manning was moved to Fort Leavenworth and by all accounts his treatment has drastically improved. He has still not been tried for the leak.
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In August of 2010, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) released a special report titled, “Graduate Education and Professional Practice in International Peace and Conflict.” The report details findings from a study conducted to measure the level of academic preparedness of graduate students and professionals looking to establish careers within the field of international conflict. The results of the study do not bode well for graduate students or their academic institutions. In fact, Carstarphen, Zelizer, Harris, and Smith (2010) state, “Graduate-level academic institutions are not adequately preparing students for careers in international peace and conflict management” (p. 1). And this is just the first sentence of the summary.
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This was originally published in the November 2010, ICAR Newsletter.
Unrest Magazine is the product of certain historical conditions and institutional constraints. The project began in October of 2009 as a reaction to what was perceived as a lack of attention to critical theory in the field of peace and conflict studies. We felt a proper critique of capitalist society was necessary to understand contemporary conflict and the field needed a venue for this discussion to take place. While Unrest is unique in its birth at ICAR, the magazine is part of a rich tradition of philosophical questioning and praxis aimed at liberation. The magazine envisions itself as a vehicle for reestablishing the radical foundations of the conflict resolution project through the use of critical conflict analysis and critical conflict engagement. Since its inception, Unrest has received unwavering support and encouragement from Professor Richard E. Rubenstein. His guidance provided Unrest with the confidence to pursue a line of inquiry that we recognized from the start might not be met with flowers and chocolates. Unrest is currently hard at work on its third issue due out in January of 2011. Those interested in working with Unrest, either as a contributor or collaborator, are encouraged to contact the Editorial Cell.
In the summer of 2009 I published a book arguing that conflict resolution and peacebuilding practitioners needed to work alongside business, both local and multinational, to address contemporary violent conflict. What felt like a innovative approach at the time has rapidly been taken up by organizations and the amount of business-based peacebuilding has been increasing quickly – likely not directly attributable to my work, but longer trends in peace and development work. This can be seen in the work of groups like International Alert, collaborative organizations like UN Global Compact, and the growing literature on conflict-sensitive business practices. In spite of this, I have found myself apprehensive about the very cooperation I was encouraging, in a way that I was not able to fully explain until I spent a semester in a seminar working with Richard E. Rubenstein and joined the Unrest crowd.
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