Monday, January 31, 2005

We're All In The Machine, But Some Are More In Than Others?

Both sides in the debate over Ward Churchill's 9-11 comments--calling those who perished in the WTC "little Eichmans"--have a preference for hyperbole over science. While there is a place for outrage over both the "efficient" destruction wrought by capitalism and the barbaric "kill-em-all-and-let-god-sort-it-out" tactics of Islamic terrorists (and both east and west alternate between efficient and barbaric killing as it suits them), both sides of the debate are guilty of talking largely out of their butts when it comes to making points about scale, magnitude, intent, and tactical justification. Even those who also condemn both Al Qaeda and
American imperialism don't always do so consistently or carefully. It seems as if everyone (and I am not excusing myself for the past couple of years) is off-the-cuff across the board at a time when it would greatly benefit all of us to rigorously study the relationship between a system and its subjects. Indignant hyperbole, the reduction of a mass of people to an emotive label like "Eichman," and conservative blather about leftist professors ought to be transformed into informed comparisons, serious confrontation of the spaces we all occupy, and fair-minded criticism of Churchill's blind spots.

Although few activist-writers are as disciplined as Ward Churchill when it comes to recording the history of colonialism's crimes, and the Native American case for recognition and reparation are irrefutable and immediate, Churchill's failure has always been in coherently describing the enemy, and in so doing, tying the indiginist struggle into the larger struggle against capitalism. There are reasons for these limitations beyond his own rhetorical and political choices, and even with those choices, he is a valuable political ally, and his writings are invaluable resources especially for people from all walks of life who are just learning about the magnitude of colonialism. But as I read Churchill's "little Eichmans" phrase, and the entirety of the work in which it appears, I can't fight the feeling that such deliberate phrasing is symptomatic of a rhetorical commitment that is judgmental, presumptuous, and bourgeois. The phrase itself is an inaccurate metaphor. What is worse is that its composer likely knows it to be so.

[Churchill may reply, has replied, that he doesn't give a crap about tying the indigenist struggle to other struggles. He and M. Annette Jaimes* and others have eloquently pointed out that the indiginist struggle is unique, a foundation for other struggles, and requires an indigenous vanguard. I sympathize with all those arguments, but Churchill has always made the choice--a valid choice--to enter into dialogue with others on the left, and it was Churchill himself who once said that all peoples are and were colonized. More importantly, it's as foolish for indigenists to take other struggles for granted as for those on the anti-capitalist left to ignore indigenous struggles.]

As
Andy Liu pointed out, many of the so-called Eichmans weren't even in the building yet, but many poor working people were. Now, there is a certain type of trendy lefty who delights in being harshly dismissive about this fact, displaying a kind of hardheartedness that seems impressive to the cadre; they get to appear tough on "collaborators" at little personal and political cost. But for me, our struggle makes little sense if we don't look at how innocent conscripts and custodians and couriers are casualties in 1944 Berlin, 1991-2003 Baghdad, 2001 New York City, etc.--and how unacceptable that always is. One gets the impression that Churchill wouldn't blink if he learned that some of those who died cleaning the offices of the alleged little Eichmans were poor, indigenous workers. There's a war on, he'd say, people are gonna die if they take jobs working for the bad guys. The problem is that the other side is saying that too, and in both cases it's true: War is what happens when powerful people--whether renegade sons of rich Saudis or rich transplanted Texans--make casualties out of the powerless in order to make money and promote regressive, distopian visions.

Still, to say that Churchill's declaration is insensitive and unwarranted (and bad for the cause of righteous resistance) is not to excuse or affirm the predictable conservative condemnation of that declaration. It's even more ignorant to simply dismiss all questions of the way citizen-subjects are constituted in the dialectic of hegemony and resistance, to just say "Can you believe it, that commie called 'em all little Eichmans...for shame!"

Questions of culpability and collaboration seem like a distraction to me unless they are contextualized by serious inquiry into who is truly culpable. The relationship between capitalist/colonialist exploitation and terrorist forms of resistance is relatively simple: When one side oppresses, it allows and invites cynical manipulators to align themselves with the oppressed and commit further destruction. Both sides are scoring their points on the backs of the poor and powerless. Both sides have successfully brainwashed large segments of their populations into carrying out their dirty work. Being brainwashed doesn't make someone an Eichman. Stepping into the shoes of the poor and powerless--whether those be fireman's boots, the shoes of Iraqi conscripts, those of Afghan women, or the kids from Wyoming who've died in Iraq--may not always yield comfortable ideological lines, but it is an absolute prerequisite to fighting for a world in which people are treated as means and not ends.

And somewhere, under all of this, there's a way of thinking, a radical understanding of how precarious we constituted subjects are, that says even little Eichmans are victims. That kind of radical love may not be historically possible, but it wouldn't hurt to allow its impossibility to haunt us a little.


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*"For the great mass of non-Indian Americans, those who wish not to be Nazis or heirs to Nazism , and whose collective conscience might bestir itself to compel some positive alternation in the colonial relationship were the facts known to them, our present realities remain as far from sight and mind as the history upon which they are predicated...we are mutually confronted with the specter not of simply a present determined by the unrelenting horror of America's past, but a future dictated by the never-quite-acknowledged ugliness of America's present. ...To a very real extent, the key to reversing this process may be fond in achieving the liberation of Native North America, the empire's first victim and in whose ongoing victimization the empire finds the cornerstone upon which the whole of its continued existence ultimately rests." (M. Annette Jaimes, "Sand Creek the Morning After," The State of Native America, 1992)

7 comments:

Matt J Stannard said...

Jason writes: "Academics may do ideologically what capitalists do economically."

But the economic overwhelms the political, the ideological, the academic. We may all be dominators and dominated, but some people's domination has more social weight than others. I am dissatisfied with relativistic, levelling gazes across the spectrum of domination, because that doesn't reflect my understanding of material reality. I agree that academic freedom is vital across the board, and that ideological domination in academia is bad, but the magnitude of capitalist hegemony is just much worse (and besides, concern about one and the other is not a zero-sum game for me).

As for what all socioeconomic systems have done, you might want to study a little more about what oppressive systems have in common before you use economics as an instance of the diffusion of power and oppression. Checks and balances in politics are good. Checks and balances on economic power would be equally good, and are very possible. In other words, socialism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and only partially tried.

Matt J Stannard said...

Actually I take back the second paragraph. I didn't mean to sound so smug or confrontational. I'll stick with just saying that the economic overwhelms everything else and that sucks. I just think it's a cop out to say power is inevitable. I agree that there's plenty of culpability to go around. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Matt,

You write, "But for me, our struggle makes little sense if we don't look at how innocent conscripts and custodians and couriers are casualties...and how unacceptable that always is."

So it's unacceptable to kill "the working man" at the World Trade Center. Do you mean to imply that it is acceptable to kill anyone other than "the working man" at the WTC? That it would be acceptable (if it were possible) to destroy the buildings with no loss of life, but billions in economic loss (including putting a hell of a lot of "working men" out of work)?

From what you've written in the past, I would assume that you would condemn the attacks on the WTC flatly, without carve-outs or qualifications, just as you've done with the attacks on Hussein's Iraq. But, if that's the case, your condemnation of Churchill's comments should be broader than just noting his callousness to collateral damage in the WTC.

Hoping you're still the pacifist I know and love,

Scott

Matt J Stannard said...

Scott:

I must confess that I do care more about poor people than rich people, and I am not a "pacifist" by any definition that would satisfy authentic, self-declared pacifists. Revolutions and armed resistance are justified responses to oppression, occupation, and colonization. But in a larger sense, the use of violence is always an implicit (albeit usually unintentional) admission of strategic and moral failure. Assertions of its inevitability usually beg the question. There is a better way. And this is not to say that even a better way would make our hands clean, as Gandhi's boycot of British cotton, eg, led to the malnutrition of children in Manchester.

The way you phrase your question--whether I think "it's acceptable" to kill anyone other than workers, tempts me to ask you to define "it's." My argument in the context of the Churchill post was that Churchill's "little eichmans" phrase was innacurate in a way that reveals an internal inconsistency in his own reasoning. That is to say, EVEN IF lauding the death of those who consciously play a determinative role in the deadly machinery of capital is acceptable, shrugging off the corrolary deaths of those who are economically coerced into going along with it is neither acceptable nor politically sound.

You write: "From what you've written in the past, I would assume that you would condemn the attacks on the WTC flatly, without carve-outs or qualifications, just as you've done with the attacks on Hussein's Iraq."

I have not only condemned the attacks on the WTC, but have been open about the reasoning behind such condemnation. I have noted that BOTH the Islamo-Fascist rulers and the U.S. rulers use ordinary human beings as pawns and consider the large-scale loss of life acceptable, whether through terroristic catacalysm or multiple other ways...hidden or exposed, slow or fast. Capitalism places everything in its reach --including humans-- under exchange value, which is a kind of thinking that makes genocide possible. Religious fascism merely replaces material exchange value with a caveman mythology that justifies human sacrifice. A pox on both houses is the best response as I see it.

As for knowing and/or loving me, I would consider it a genuine act of love if you would ever join me in such across-the-board condemnation. You could start by publicly condemning the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

matt

Anonymous said...

Colorado's Republican governor Bill Owens issued the following statement, apparently without the least hint of irony:

"I appreciate the fact that the C.U. Regents have taken the necessary first step in the formal evaluation of Ward Churchill's employment status. However, I deplore the behavior displayed by some students at the Regents' meeting. Their abhorrent behavior underscores the culture of violence that can be spawned by inflammatory speeches and essays, such as those by Mr. Churchill."

Anonymous said...

Matt,

I condemn the US invasion of Iraq.

Thanks for the further explanation.

Scott

QcynqSWG said...
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