I have an assignment in my Postcolonial Comparative Religions class to compare the experiences of the victims of Hiroshima to the grid of oppression that we were given in class. Here is the grid:

1. Exploitation
2. Marginalization
3. Powerlessness
4. Cultural Imperialism
5. Violence
6. Ecological Injustice

I have just finished the book Hiroshima; here are my initial thoughts.

There are two possible levels of oppression going on here. The first is the most obvious, the conquerors to the conquered. Secondly, there is the hibakusha (those affected by the A-Bomb) being ostracized by the non-hibakusha. Oddly enough, the second level is where I found the most injustice. It seemed that the conquerors felt horrible for the victims of their aggression and were trying to make up for it in the rest of the book.

Exploitation - the only real exploitation that I found in the reading was the GI’s use of prostitutes during the occupation and Korean War and perhaps Mr. Cousins constantly going over the head of Tanimoto in his efforts to establish a peace center. Other than that, I did not see a lot of exploitation going on in the book.

Marginalization - Again, I did not get a real sense of marginalization from the Americans to the Japanese. There is however a lot of marginalization by the non-hibakushas towards the hibakushas.

Powerlessness - The hibakushas had almost everything ripped from them by the A-bomb. Their health, their family, their dignity, their livelihood, their memories - all of it was scared by the bomb. It took years and years for those that attained happiness to grasp it again.

Violence - here is an interesting one. Aside from the violence of the A-bomb itself, and the inital looting in its aftermath, there was not a whole lot of violence at all, on either level.

Ecological injustice - Again, I am not sure on how to answer. Going solely on the book’s account, it seemed that there was not a whole lot of ecological fallout besides the initial violence of the explosion. I am thinking mainly of the lingering radiation and its effects on the environment. The Japanese scientists cleared the city for human repopulation mere days after the attack. That was surprising to me. Now, with that said, the damage was done in a city, a place where the ecology is already unnatural. So, again, I am not sure that the ecological damage was that great. Perhaps this is because the bomb was not nearly as powerful and the weaponry we have today.

With these levels of oppression, there are corresponding levels of freedom. For the six surviving hibakushas that Hiroshima follows, there was an extraordinary level of obtained freedom. They responded to their plight in an amazing way. Each of them forged ahead and was wildly successful at what they ended up doing. Against the odds, they carved a place for themselves. That is what I took from the book was the tenacity of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable horror.

Discussion Outline - Week 2 Intro to Religion

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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