cfp – Terror and the Inhuman

Call for Papers [Deadline: June 30, 2012]
Terror and the Inhuman Conference
Brown University
Department of Modern Culture and Media
Providence, Rhode Island
October 25 – 27, 2012

Keynote Lectures to be delivered by:
Adriana Cavarero (University of Verona)
Jared Sexton (University of California, Irvine)

This conference seeks to develop new lines of exchange between “terror” and “the inhuman,” two diverse – yet inescapably interrelated – figurations and theoretical concepts. We ask: What critical work are “terror” and “the inhuman” doing for media studies and cultural theory? How does terror traffic in and through the inhuman? What distinguishes terror from other anxious forms of affect such as panic, fear, horror, and shock, and from other modes of political violence such as war, revolution, and insurgency? And finally, how do literary, photographic, televisual, cinematic, and digital media represent the inhuman as well as focalize and mobilize anxieties over the inhumanity and terrorization of technical media as such?

We invite papers that will revisit and rethink the various kinds of links — of complicity, inseparability, causality, opposition, or even incommensurability — constructed between these terms by politicians, the media, philosophers, artists, and critical theorists from various disciplines. Recent considerations of the inhuman as techné, as animal, as thing, as woman, as Black, as terrorist and as queer prompt us to ask what precedes and what exceeds the human. They compel us, in other words, to confront the political, ethical, and theoretical task of critique in the face of permanent war, transformations in aesthetic practice, (bio)technological development, and ongoing political and epistemic (in)security. To our conference participants, we also wish to ask: what does it mean to value terror now and from an inhuman perspective? What is the history of this valorization? How does it account for the stasis or the shifts in contemporary global politics and nodes of power? What are the limits of the ideological work performed by the disciplinary divisions, mediums, and examples used in these formulations? How important is the role of historical and geographical specificity in this pro-revolutionary resurrection of terror and the inhuman? What is its link to the popular: why do mass audiences increasingly find themselves enthralled by representations of war, rape, torture, and international terrorism as well as by quotidian and seemingly banal forms of “terror” and “the inhuman”? And, last but not least, how should we pose the issue of “human rights” against or within the realm of inhuman terror?

As the Department of Modern Culture and Media is a thoroughly interdisciplinary program, we welcome papers from a variety of disciplines including but not limited to: Film and Media Studies, Critical Theory, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Native Studies, Feminist and Queer Studies, Art History and Visual Culture, Literature, Science and Technology Studies, Area Studies, and Philosophy.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Counter/terrorism, War, Insurgency, and State Violence
• Racial Modernity, Settler Colonialism, and Histories of the Inhuman
• The Inhuman as “Posthuman”: Cyborgs, Networks, Swarms, and Virtual Lives
• Mediating Terror (Print / Photography / Film / TV / Digital Media / Animation / Theater / Performance / Music)
• Theoretical Anti-Humanisms (Semiotics, Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction)
• Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology
• Genre Criticism: Horror, Sci-fi, Fantasy, Gothic, Detective
• Posthumous Celebrity, Spectacle, and Fandom
• Animal Studies
• The Figure of the Child
• Bodies of Terror
• Sexuality and the Inhuman
• Technology and/as the Inhuman
• Globalization, Revolt, and Terror
• Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights
• Figures of Gendered and Raced Monstrosity
• Postcolonial Terror
• The Sublime in Aesthetics
• Radical Empiricism and the Turn to Affect
• Biopolitics and Necropolitics
• Disability Studies
• The Global Prison Regime and U.S. Empire
• Affect, Value, Capital, Labor, and Measure
• The Inhuman and the Law
• The Ethical Turn and the “New Humanism”
• The “Inhumanities”: Terror, Justice, and the Academic Industrial Complex

Submission and acceptance to the conference will be based on blind peer reviews of your 250-300 word abstract. Faculty members, graduate students, and independent scholars interested in submitting a paper proposal should email an abstract, paper title, 2-3 sentence bio, affiliation [if applicable] and contact information to terror.inhuman.conference@gmail.com
by June 30, 2012. Presenters will be informed by August 1, 2012.

human security and war

“Indeed, even though the military versus developmental approach is often presented in terms of entirely different ‘world views,’ they have in fact both proven to be complementary strategic facets of a Liberal way of war that has been maturing for some considerable time. Not without coincidence, one of the clearest indications of this strategic compatibility first appears in the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report 1994, which introduced for the first time the developmental term ‘Human Security.’ … ‘The battle for peace has to be fought on two fronts. The first is the security front where freedom spells freedom from fear. The second is the economic and social front where victory means freedom from want. Only victory on both fronts can ensure the world of an enduring peace.’ What this report therefore promotes is a ‘dual strategy’ which involves the elimination via military means of those atavistic (barbaric) elements that take advantage of the failed political environment, along with a need to bring the conduct (developmental capacities) of ungoverned and hence failing populations within the longer-term strategic remit.

Throughout the 1990s these dual strategies were gradually brought into a more coherent strategic framework. … Emphasizing that violence was a complex process which could (in potential) affect all sectors of the society, it was argued that the discourses and practices of militarism, security, and development, needed to be brought together to provide lasting solutions to the complex social interactions which were exacerbated by a world of radical interconnectivity. Thus firmly moving beyond the Clausewitzean respect for sovereign integrities, sustained engagement was now demanded so that the potential for violence could be permanently ameliorated by building ‘lasting capacities for peace.’ The implications of this rationality should not escape us. With collective violence no longer written in political terms, i.e. local conflict was no longer understood to be a reaction against some colonial system of oppression, but was now the direct result of exclusion and abandonment for the benefits of globalization, new justifications could be given for pacifying borderland populations. To put it another way, since power relations were completely removed from the analytical arena, then new political forms of Liberal interventionism could be effectively detached from any previous colonial baggage, and benevolently repacked in such a way that they could be devoid of any imperial historical ascriptions.”

Brad Evans – “The Zapatista Insurgency: Bringing the Political Back into Conflict Analysis.” pp. 501-502.

politics as a war machine

A consistent problem of Western political theory has been the confusion of politics (the political) with the problem of organization. Historically, to be political has been to be organized. We can see this from the Greeks (the polis) through the Latins (civitas, cive), and into modern liberal politics (social contract, the citizen).

However, these are figures of organization, not politics. It is not to say that these figures cannot become political,  but they should not be confused with politics as such.

Politics, instead, is an absolute exteriority (what Deleuze and Guattari call a war machine). Various forms of organization (including the State apparatus but also the Party, social movements, etc) must seize apparatuses that embody specific power relations that we see as political institutions, political power, sovereignty, the citizen, the partisan, and so on. This ambiguity is what makes genuine politics so dangerous to contemporary forms of organization and why police (n the Ranciereian sense) is preferred to politics.

This is not an argument for the autonomy of the political in the sense of Schmitt or various phenomenological understandings of politics (see Arendt). It is instead an acknowledgement that politics is a force of exteriority that serves to force apart milieus of interiority formed through the double articulation of conquest-pacification, which is the State apparatus.

Politics, then, is not an operation of consensus, it is a differentiation machine, constantly interrupting the process of consensus production/maintenance.

back to it

Exam writing is over! I have my candidacy defense next week on May 17th. I’m feeling remarkably zen about the whole thing right now, which I’m sure will change by this weekend…

Interesting news from out in California, where the Academic Workers for a Democratic Union slate of candidates completely took over the Joint Council of the United Auto Workers local 2865. News here and here.

Also, apparently US Republicans are trying to declare perpetual war on no one. At least the post-9/11 declaration explicitly stated the US was going after the perpetrators of 9/11. More here.

And the North African to EU migration flow is heating up; both Italy and France have made some waves lately. And now it seems that NATO, the Italian Coastguard, and others are letting migrant-filled boats sink (here).

american identity through its war films

I’m preparing a course for next quarter at Ohio State; my first course in my new department – Comparative Studies. Below is my first draft of my syllabus’ opening statement. I’d love some feedback. Below that is a list of the films I’m considering for the course.

*****

CS710: American Identity in the World

The Construction of American Identity Through its War Cinema

Instructor: joshua j. kurz

Introduction:

What is a national identity?

In the context of a nation-state that encompasses millions of square miles that were formerly the domain of thousands of distinct native groups, and now includes citizens with roots in almost every other country in the world, what does American identity mean and how is it performed?

This course opens with a few key assumptions:

1) There is no singular American identity, and this has been a constant problematic (although not necessarily a problem) since European colonization in the Western hemisphere began.

2) The particular matrix formed by the intersection of race, social class, gender, sexual identification, and so on, drastically change how one ‘reads’ American identity.

3) National identity is a discourse that most often operates as a technology of boundary creating. In other words, the notion of an American identity functions so as to delineate an inside and an outside, a normal and an abnormal, a friend and an enemy.

We will explore American identity as a performative, transitive, fluid concept. In particular, we will view a number of American war films and discuss how these films portray the past, comment on the present, and project a vision of the future. We will focus on popular films which portray various conflicts in which America was involved, including: the colonial period and revolution, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, Vietnam, and the contemporary conflicts of the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s. Most importantly, we will seek to understand how these films have helped shape American identity, or perhaps various American identities.

We seek to understand:

1)    the “knotty” issues of patriotism, nationalism, and identification;

2)    conceptions of race, class, gender, and sexuality;

3)    problematics of representation, narrative, and history;

4)    the construction of identity and otherness.

The primary goal of this course is to produce a work of writing that deals with these issues.

*****

Films under consideration (suggestions are most welcome!):

Colonial Period to the Civil War	WWI	WWII	Vietnam
The Last of the Mohicans	Johnny Got His Gun	The Thin Red Line	Platoon
Glory	All Quiet on the Western Front	Hart’s War	The Green Berets
The Patriot		Saving Private Ryan	We Were Soldiers
Revolution (1985)		Flags of our Fathers	Tigerland
Pawnee (1957)		Sands of Iwo Jima	Born on the 4th of July
Arrowhead (1953)		Empire of the Sun	Good Morning Vietnam
The Searchers (1956)		Pearl Harbor	Apocalypse Now
		Patton	Rescue Dawn
		Miracle at St. Anna	Casualties of War
		Tuskeegee Airmen
		The Longest Day
		The Devil’s Brigade
Unconventional Warfare	The Red Scare	Contemporary Conflict	Satire/Parody
The Delta Force	Red Dawn	Black Hawk Down	Full Metal Jacket
Navy Seals	The Hunt for Red October	Jarhead	Catch-22
		GI Jane	Tropic Thunder
		Rendition	Dr. Strangelove
		Lions for Lambs	Inglourious Basterds
		The Hurt Locker

powerpoint and knowledge

So last summer I noted briefly that the US military was beginning to crowdsource its war fighting efforts by importing the logic of wikipedia into writing its manuals.

Now, it appears that the Army is saying some relatively interesting things about the nature of knowledge based on the popularity of the Microsoft Powerpoint technology.

There isn’t much substantial here in terms of strategy or tactics, but there are a few comments in the original New York Times article on the nature of knowledge that I find somewhat interesting, especially as they are being said by officers in the US military, one of the bastions of Taylorist, Fordist thinking.

The idea that knowledge can be cut up, parceled out, and made manageable got a major boost by co-developing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in both universities and the military. Now, however, high ranking officers are saying otherwise: one said, “Powerpoint makes us stupid;” another noted, “It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control…Some problems in life are not bullet-izable.” (see the full story here)

I just can’t get over the weirdness of a military officer thinking this way, since so much of military culture and the fighting of wars seems to fly in the face of such statements. I mean, we’re still talking about winning wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by controlling territory and holding elections. Then again, I can’t get over the Israeli military’s use of Deleuze and Guattari to go after Palestinians either. It’s hard to argue that we’re in a postmodern world when explicitly anti-Statist and perhaps anarchist theory is used to fight better wars by nation-states.

Anyway, I just had to post the photo that came with the article and my surprise at the clash of theories of knowledge going on in the US military right now.

Crowdsourcing War

Today has just been chock full of interesting stuff to post on.

In the New York Times business section (of all places!), a headline reads: “Care to write army doctrine? With ID, log on“. Noam Cohen writes:

“In July, in a sharp break from tradition, the Army began encouraging its personnel — from the privates to the generals — to go online and collaboratively rewrite seven of the field manuals that give instructions on all aspects of Army life…The goal, say the officers behind the effort, is to tap more experience and advice from battle-tested soldiers rather than relying on the specialists within the Army’s array of colleges and research centers who have traditionally written the manuals.”

In some ways, this article reminds me of this, from Frieze Magazine, which explores how the writings of popular philosophers, from Deleuze to Debord, are influencing the tactics of the Israeli army (and I assume others as well).

What are the implications of crowdsourcing war?

War crime in Iraq

If you can’t read the text, it says: “haiji kids + chocolate laxatives = great idea”

Also, notice the irony of such a statement under the “you should never underestimate the predictability of stupidity” banner he’s got written at the top.

I’m calling this a war crime because it basically amounts to a racially motivated abuse of power including chemicals that alter the biological state of a person. This may seem like a harmless prank until viewed through the lens of Abu Ghraib, torture, and the unwanted colonial occupation of Iraq. It’s clearly part of a culture in the military, not just one idiot acting like one.

Update:

It should be pointed out that I do not know whether this act was actually committed or not. However, it took something like 36 hours to get a denial and an apology out of the soldier posted above. This may be due to the time difference and/or conditions in Iraq, but I suspect it’s because he didn’t really think this was a big deal until some people started talking about the possibility of court martial. Also, there is the added problem that in the initial post captured above he makes no effort to deny it, instead he’s “ROFLMAO.”

Update II:

Predictably, this post generated a lot of conversation on facebook and directed a lot of traffic to this new blog (which, of course, has dropped off greatly). The soldier in question has denied actually following through on this; supporters of said soldier categorized this as “satire,” or “dark humor” but largely denied that even the act of posting these thoughts constituted a wrong. I have to concede that he has every right to be a racist and to fantasize about commiting what counts as a crime against children in war (therefore… a warcrime?). However, as other posters on facebook pointed out, American servicemen and women do not actually enjoy the rights they are called upon to “defend” (scare quotes because we know Iraq had nothing to do with national security). So, as an American abroad, this soldier actually has a higher standard of discipline because not only is he fighting a war there and trying to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, he represents me.

Still, it is unfortunate that the facebook post has been deleted by the author (a friend who has decided to accept the “goodwill” of this soldier). The comments were quite fascinating. This soldier’s wife began by defending his actions by claiming that we who were critics had no idea what really went on over there and what “those kids” do to our soldiers. At one point she wrote the following:

“you guys are a bunch of pigs…. you have no idea what thos “kids” do to out soldiers….and to THINK about playing a harmless joke is perfectly normal when these asshole kids walk around with pistols and try to shoot at them!!!! so get off your high horse”

This is obviously an attempt to demarcate between which children count as those it is acceptable to think about harming and those that aren’t. Much later in the comments (after talk of court martial and reporting to the press) the wife begins to claim that her husband is actually a good man and understands the consequences because he has a young child already and another on the way.

This is a great example of what Judith Butler talks about in her new book Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?.

The grievability of a life, or degree of grievability, determines whether we can kill or not. For some the boundaries of kinship serve as convenient and/or unquestionable demarcations. Those that qualify as family are always already grievable and are therefore not to be harmed. However, this leaves an awful lot of the world open to harm. Numerous justificatory frameworks have been developed over the years that allow us to shrink the category of the ungrievable; but, when it comes to war, a hard line of friend/enemy is drawn. The soldier above betrayed one of the ways in which these children were ungrievable (by using the term haiji) and his wife betrayed another (that “those kids” do things to our boys and are therefore open to being killed).

What makes this facebook post so incredibly wrong is not that this soldier thought about committing a pretty despicable thing, or even that he followed through on it (which, again, I cannot know for certain either way). It is that he is guilty of dehumanization and casting these children (indeed, the enemy in general) as ungrievable.