This post is an attempt to flesh out Edward Said’s postcolonial theory of Orientalism:”(When set off in italics, the term “Orientalism” will refer to the book by Said, when merely capitalized; it will refer to Said’s theory.)”:. It has drawn from Said’s best-known work, Orientalism and incorporated several articles written in response to or are reviews of the work. These articles included “Orientalism Reconsidered” by Edward Said, and “Review of Books: Orientalism” by C. Earnest Dawn. These articles were utilized to help add clarity to a complex theory.

The four central claims of Orientalism are as follows. First, while Orientalism presents itself as an objective field of study, it was used to justify the political domination of the East by the West. Secondly, Orientalism was actually more about defining itself through the mirror of the East than it was about objectively studying it :”(The very terms “East” and “West” are rejected by Said as valid descriptions; however, they will be used as terms of convenience for the purposes of this paper.)”:. Third, points one and two are produced and reinforced by viewing the Orient as a homogenous group. This essentialist thinking was a false way of viewing people groups and their culture. Said also rejects the validity of the terms Orient and Occident, but employs them because this is how the argument has been framed by the Orientalists:”(Edward Said, “Orientalism Reconsidered,” Cultural Critique, No. 1, 1985, p. 90. )”:. Lastly, the Orientalist scholars are the product of the system they come from. Due to this, they cannot help but to misrepresent the “Other.” Therefore, what is needed is for the subaltern to speak for itself. (more…)

A polemicist is someone “who argues in opposition to others.” Try to think of the opposing talking heads one sees so much on quasi-news programs. These people are in such direct opposition to each other that they become entrenched. They do not fight for truth for its own sake, but for their view.

“The polemicist , on the other hand, proceeds encased in privileges that he possesses in advance and will never agree to question. On principle, he possesses rights authorizing him to wage war and making that struggle a just undertaking; the person he confronts is not a partner in search for the truth but an adversary, an enemy who is wrong, who is armful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat. For him, then the game consists not of recognizing this person as a subject having the right to speak but of abolishing him as interlocutor, from any possible dialogue; and his final objective will be not to come as close as possible to a difficult truth but to bring about the triumph of the just cause he has been manifestly upholding from the beginning. The polemicist relies on a legitimacy that his adversary is by definition denied.”

Besides his very practical advice on the polemicist, Foucault’s most intriguing concept is the Panopticon. Upon first reading, Foucault and Bentham’s Panopticon is a terrifying construct. Anytime power is wielded with such cool efficiency and detachment, one is reminded of the dehumanizing effect on the subjugated and as a consequent on those that administrate this power. The idea of the Panopticon as a laboratory is an especially heinous notion as the idea of human lab-rats it the highest expression of dehumanization.

However, the Panopticon differs from the more overt uses of force and control that one is used to. It is easy to rally against a tyrant-king or a slave master, but the Panopticon is quite different from these concepts. Instead of constant brute force enthralling a subject, the Panopticon trains the subject to be one’s own master; it grafts the tyrant-king onto the vassal, creating a compound subject. This is done, by my understanding, by the constant threat of supervision, via the transparency of the subject’s surroundings. The unverifiability of the Panopticon serves to make the system feasible, since it would be impossible to actually monitor for deviance and administrate force to correct deviations.

Before investigation, this process smacks of oppression. In Bentham’s version of the Panopticon, this is surely the case. However, one does need to ask if the subjects in Bentham’s Panopticon are deserving of this oppression. If they are prone to violent acts and have injured members of society, then perhaps is it perfectly justifiable to mold their behavior and graft onto these individuals the tyrant-king. Panopticon is really terrifying when Foucault projects the idea of the Panopticon onto all of society. It strips one of their humanity and reduces one to a potential lab-rat. It also strips one’s spouse, one’s mother, one’s brother, all of one’s friends into lab-rats; a very sour notion indeed!

Once this machine of molding has been discovered, the first question one is lead to ask is, “Who is doing or benefiting from this power over me?” In Bentham’s Panopticon, it is the owner or operator of the prison/lab that wields the power and can have an array of uses, from the beneficent to the treacherous. When applied to society at large, as Foucault does, there is no one that one can point to as wielder of the power. It is diffused throughout society; it is present everywhere with no centralized nexus of power and administration. Therefore, no one can point to the oppressor. If there is no oppressor that can be pointed to, how can one be oppressed? Likewise if there are no actors or agents to morally evaluate, how can the system be judged from a moral standpoint of just or unjust?

Foucault describes this network of discipline as a physics of power. This physics of power can be likened to the force of gravity that binds us all to the earth. Just like gravity serves as a bind on all of humanity, stripping them of certain freedoms. It is inescapable and there is no way to rebel against it. Even in jumping and flight, one is still bound to its ruses and is using the rules of the game to play in another way. Similarly, Foucault’s Panopticon is a description of the new physics of power that has developed. No one is free from the system nor can they be set free. There is nothing to be set free from, as any change, political, personal or relational is merely a change in speed or location, not a change in the way power is administered. Therefore, this method of power administration is not to be evaluated morally, as it is merely a statement of condition.

For my final research paper on Post-Colonial Comparative Religions, I want to study the make up of what can be loosely called the “Jihad Movements” through the lens of Post-Colonialism and give a view of their alternate structure.

This draws off of a number of curiosities I have.

1. When talking about Islam, Islamic Terror, the Moderate Muslim, the various sects in Islam, ect, it is very important to get one’s terms right. In this paper, I want to survey the religion and try to sort out all of the terms that get jumbled together.
2. I want to explore how the situations the common people throughout the world interplay with the varying theologies and political aspirations of Islam present to them.
3. In the Post-Colonial critique of the current Western Heavy power structure of the world, much is said about the evils, past and present of the West towards the Rest. What I have trouble finding are alternate views of how the world should be set up. The few western voices I have read give a West-lite view while denouncing any attempt of imposing values on other cultures. I find that to be a bit hypocritical and weak-sounding.
4. I get a sense of the a alternate view of the world power structure in some of the claims of various Islamic groups, claims of the Caliphate. I want to look at this as a viable alternative to the “satellite-west” that the West is trying to impose on the rest of the world.
5. Often one slips into dichotomies when trying to talk about the West, Islam, the Third World, ect… I want to try to navigate some of these dichotomies and see how far they are true and how far they can be fragmented.

This paper will seek to explore the relationship between those in power that abuse it, otherwise known as the oppressors, and those that were the recipients of that abuse of power, affectionately known as the oppressed. More specifically, this paper will look first at a particular case of this relationship, the case of the bombing of Hiroshima by the American military with an atomic bomb. Then it will look at a wide-scale nuclear war in general. Three main sources were used in this limited inquiry; John Hersey’s Hiroshima, Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth, and lastly the academic paper Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities by Albert Bandura. The grid of oppression will be looked at as it applies to the case, incorporating elements from Hiroshima and The Fate of the Earth. The grid of oppression is a collection of five ways that oppression can work according to Marion Young in Justice and the Politics of Difference. They include exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, violence, and environmental injustice. Finally, the cases will be examined in light of the social cognitive theory put forth by Bandura. While the bombing and aftermath of Hiroshima was not a clear-cut example of postcolonial strife, there are elements that pervade the reading. The Fate of the Earth details the consequences would be if the powers left over from the postcolonial world ever took the step and started a nuclear holocaust. |inline

I must have missed page 113 in Postcolonialism, A Very Short Introduction. It outlines the grander scheme (directly quoted with bouts of paraphrasing):

1. P/C stands for the right to basic amenities - security, sanitation, health care, food, and education - for all peoples of the earth, young, adult, and ages; women and men.
2. Resists all forms of exploitation (to humans and to the environment)
3. Politically speaking, P/C seeks to assert the right of autonomous self-government of those who still find themselves in a situation of being controlled politically and administratively by a foreign power.
4. Once this independence is achieved, the nationalism that founded the state is transformed and is not used against the minorities and seeks to establish minority rights, women’s rights, and cultural rights, within a broad framework democratic egalitarianism that refuses to impose alienating western ways of thinking on tricontinental societies.
5. While encouraging personal authenticity of sincerity and altruism, it questions attempts to return to a national or cultural ‘authenticity’ which P/C regards as largely constructed for dubious political purposes.
6. It considers the most productive forms of http://unsoundargument.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=115thought that that interact feely across disciplines and cultures in constructive dialouges that undo the hierarchies of power.

Some thoughts on these points:

I don’t know anyone that would deny 1) in the West to others at present. The question of how to get that to people is the question for westerners. I think that most in the West don’t want 2). The historical question is another matter. That is one of the horrible legacies of the West. It is what got us into this mess. However, there are bad eggs dispersed through the world. The love of money does lead to evil. You find that in all economic systems. It has not been the solely the bane in the West. The first two I understand and I think that there is a lot of work to be done so that there is no more exploitation and rights are enforced.

Now it gets interesting, for me at least. Take number three and especially number four. How can one “refuse to impose alienating western ways of thinking” is they are going to make sure that the state is set up with a system of rights for everyone within a democratic egalitarianism framework? Is not a system of rights for everyone within a democratic egalitarianism framework the very hallmark of the West?

All in all, while I recognize the problem, what Young outlines on page 113 seems to be a cut and paste of Western values that Young likes (or that the P/C likes). I am not sure how that is much different from other models of Western intervention… when presented from the “other.” On the other hand, Young says that all he presents is directly from the “other”, the oppressed, and the people that are in the vacuum of postcolonization. I am with him on the problem. I am still unsure where to do from there. But, alas, I am only a few days removed from first contact. I’ll have my thoughts from class up later.

In my Postcolonial Comparative Religion class we had to write a maximum two page response of our impressions of the book along with questions that arose durring the reading. I could seriously write ten fold about what I read in Postcolonialism, A very Short Introduction by R.J.C. Young. So that is shy this is so short and underdeveloped.

This week’s reading was my first taste of the postcolonial. As a westerner, on top of that, as a white male westerner, the issues brought up have not affected me. Since they don’t affect me, I have not thought on them. In reading the work a swirl of issues flooded around me. Many of them centered on basic assumptions about things, the others flowed from the outworking of those assumptions. Like the book suggests, they are hard to put in an eloquently structured form. Here are some of them. |inline

The following is a sketch of Revolution, as presented by Anthony Alioto in my Philosophy of Revolution class at Columbia College.

What is Revolution? Some maintain that is it a new change, a return to an older system. Others maintain that is a clean break with the past. Many revolutionary leaders have taken the second view.

It is necessary to distinguish rebellion from revolution. Rebellion is remembered as an event within a system, while revolution fundamentally changes the system. A paradigm shift, if you will.

6 Traits common to revolutions:

1. The Idea and the faith in it.
   • i.e. the sun is the center of the system.
   • from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.
2. The faith is first held in the minds of the intellectuals and it sounds almost like a religious faith.
   • Marx
   • Galileo
3. Simple message and slogans - the revolution spreads through effective propaganda.
   • Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
   • Peace, Land, Bread
   • Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to loose but your chains and the whole world to gain!
4. Heavy use of symbols
   • Fire - burns the old system away and provides the energy for the new system. There is a bit of the phoenix myth present here.
   • The circle - used in the revolutions that talk about bringing about a return to the old utopia.
5. The Prometheus myth - the primal act of throwing off the unjust authority.
   • Prometheus brought fire from the gods to man. This was against the will of the gods and Prometheus was eternally punished for this.
6. The Pythagoras myth - a secret society of revolutionaries. They alone see the reality beneath the surface.
   • Smoke filled rooms filled with men discussing the needs of the revolution

A while back Dave made a pretty good chart:”The Mindful Mission(Political Parties on Pro-life issues)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/03/23/pro_life showing the pro-life stance of three parties. I agree with most of his assessments of what stance is pro-life, excepting a couple therefrom. They were euthanasia, war, and poverty.

I want to use two of these areas to highlight what I consider pro-life.

What do I consider the guiding principle behind being pro-life? I can tell you what it is not. Pro-life is not simply being against death in any form or context. People die. It is a natural aspect of the human condition. I do not look upon old age as an evil, even though it brings one close to death.

Instead, it is the freedom to choose that makes our lives valuable. It is why slavery is evil. It is why totalitarism is evil. Freedom is why we shudder when we place ourselves in Kira Argounova’s:”Wikipedia(We the Living)”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_The_Living or Winston Smith’s:”Wikipedia(1984)”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four shoes.

When I apply this concept of freedom giving life its value to the common pro-life issues I am forced two conclusions; abortion is morally impermissible and euthanasia is morally permissible. The killing of an infant takes away all possible choices that person could every have. Euthanasia on the other hand is the supreme enactment of choice. It is the choice whether to continue to make choices. Surely to rob a person of that is morally impermissible.

So while an anti-abortion and a pro-euthanasia stance might seem morally inconsistent to some, it is still possible.

John Rawls, in a Theory of Justice:”A Theory of Justice(link to Amazon listing)”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674000781/, tries to arrive at a just society. He does this by selecting a pool of people from this future society and he has them try to create a system that would allow them to prosper. However, each member of the committee does not know what his lot will be, so Rawls thinks they will create a system that will allow anyone to prosper.

What would really happen if Rawl’s experiment took place? Democracy 2.0 hints at what might happen. Democracy 2.0:”Democracy 2.0(homepage)”:http://hundiejo.com/philosophy/index.php/all/2005/12/07/wiki_law_craft_the_government_1 tries to create a nation’s laws from scratch, very similar to what Rawls wanted to do. Instead of the veil of ignorance, in D2.0 there are people from all walks of life participating.

It will be interesting to see the final set of laws and compare them to what Rawls thought the committee would arrive at.