Kathryn Sears - Khalili, selections from Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies

Kathryn Sears - Khalili, selections from Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies

            In the first chapter of Laleh Khalili’s Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies, “The Forebearers: Imperial and Colonial Counterinsurgencies” begins with a discussion of asymmetrical war, which “was crucial to the conquest of the Americas, Africa, and Asia.” (12)  Her description of asymmetrical notes the fact that asymmetry does not exactly refer to numerical superiority of the colonizers, rather to the military advantage—such as weapons, disease, etc.—that caused them to have a greater negative impact to the colonized.  While asymmetrical war, once defined, seems rather obvious, Khalili’s discussion is important in how she frames “their access to superior arms and often savage methods of warfare, their utilization of divide and conquer in aligning with local factions (often via economic incentives), their cunning use of treaties and laws on which they reneged unscrupulously, their immediate establishment of centralized governance regimes and intuitions that codified their systems of intimidation and that in nonsettler colonies were mostly successful when deployed via local intermediaries or clients, and their capacity for ruthless suppression of any resistance in war or to their new regimes of rule” in the ensuing chapter does a creates a picture of the power that asymmetrical war had in colonizing and undermining counterinsurgencies (12-13).  Her case studies illustrate the repeated effect of asymmetrical war, the power of more advanced technologies, and how colonization is so difficult to unravel.  It is a multilayered, yet resilient form of oppression.

Discussion Question: How are such tactics of asymmetrical war being utilized in the twenty-first century within the media and the current administration in order to incite fear and hatred of the world outside of the United States?

Delbello - Feldman

This week’s readings tie in with those of last weeks, tackling issues related to American liberalism and how its ideology is so pervasive that reaches and connects different and seemingly disparate fields. Feldman argues that a construction of liberalism has been indispensable to provide a justification for imperialist wars and cultural motifs, and to produce a narrative of civilization together with Israel in the attempt to colonizing and “civilize” Palestine. In articulating his idea of racialization he argues that “Racial liberalism names the ideas informing the US state’s official commitment to the national integration of African Americans. Legal and discursive commitments to Black integration were seen to evidence US-led liberal capitalism’s capacity to dispense freedom and serve as a moral guarantor for a globalizing Americanism (p.27)”

Feldman traces this debate back to the creation of an ideological project for American imperialism vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, especially in the early Cold War and later in the support for Israeli, in an attempt to “donate” democracy to the “Muslim world.” It also worked as a US counterbalance to Soviet Union’s social program.

Mark Mazower calls this issue “liberal antiracism of human rights,” which really is an “imperial internationalism,” a perfect disguise for projects of domination.

Feldman also reminds us about how Moynihan and his trip to Israel were one of the fundamental moments in which Israel was associated with the “metaphor for democracy.” This is an argument which is tangentially made by Puar when talking about queer theory and a connection to the US imperialism. Queer bodies are included in imperialist discussions if they fully accept project of US colonialism.

So some of the questions would be around the use of such a methodology and the ways in which we can incorporate a critique to Imperialism. I think that an analysis of what liberalism is, back to its Lockian roots, is very urgent and needed, as Lisa Lowe correctly argues in her “The Intimacies of Four Continents” and Rod Ferguson’s point of capitalism being a progressive force while destroying and colonizing everything. How do we talk about how liberalism works in creating identities that act as a “neoliberal progressive” power? Should we then, as already stressed in class, talk about ontology and not only about epistemology?

  

Collier- Feminism and War

The readings this week investigate the relationships between liberalism, neoliberalism, and US imperialism.  With different foci they examine how violent practices like incarceration, counterinsurgency tactics, and settler colonial erasures are constitutive of the liberal nation-state and transnational “special relationships.”  Khalili and Feldman examine how these imperial tactics and knowledges rely on processes of racialization and connect to racial capitalism.  The selections on feminism and war add an analysis of the gendered and sexual components of US imperialism.

In the introduction to Feminism and War, the authors note the mobilization of “women’s rights” and claims of expanding democracy to rationalize imperial expansions.   Much like the discussion of homonationalism and queer liberalism last week, the application of “women’s liberation” for war provides another example of US exceptionalism.  Mohanty and the other authors center on US imperialism as, “it is impossible to understand ‘feminism and war’ on a global scale without understanding the specificities of the racist, heterosexist, and masculine practices and ideologies mobilized by a USA in pursuit of economic and political hegemony”(2).  The focus on anti-imperialist feminist projects allows for important critiques of carceral feminisms as well as the ways that US empire functions domestically and internationally.  These links are demonstrated particularly well in the dialogue between women of color who have served in the US military.  While PaintedCrow and Bhagwati discuss very different motives and histories that shaped their enlistment, they both described the complexities of belonging or not belonging to the "American way of life," and how existing racial and gendered hierarchies are magnified in the military.  They both challenge the notion of liberal violence as an aberration, connecting this to domestic projects of incarceration, sexism and racial othering, and consumption, explaining, “we are born and bred in the same country, inside the same system that preaches the notion of empowerment and respect through the use of violence”(Mohanty et al 98).  Their critique of empowerment as it connects to liberal feminist discourse demonstrates the challenges of multicultural assimilation into existing violent institutions and the importance of anti-imperialist feminist critiques and alternatives. 

These readings are useful for revealing relations and contradictions between domestic and international manifestations of US imperialism.  The turn to history in this methodology is also important for recognizing the US’s sustained relationship with war and violence, but through the different packaging of these technologies of control.  We’ve discussed issues of representation in research over the past several weeks.  This week’s readings, particularly Feldman’s project, provide important tools for analyzing the cultural work around empire and the politics of representation as they relate specifically to US hegemony.  

Feldman and Mohanty et al describe the implementation of racist, gendered, and xenophobic threat-production through permanent war and the rhetoric of “saving the nation”(Mohanty et al 4), which we are seeing with new vigor under the Trump administration.  How could we use these methodologies to describe and challenge the fear tactics, threat production, and capitalist expansions at work under the trump administration?

March 8th, 2017 Provost

Randi Provost

March 8^th, 2017

            In the readings for this week, the focus has been empire and the U.S. role of imperialism in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both Feldman and Khalili give us frameworks for understanding how the U.S. produces and re-produces the work of colonialism and imperialism in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as it’s function in war, more generally. Mohanty then gives a fuller context to the ways in which gender, class, race and sexuality has been enlisted in these projects.

            These frameworks outline the ways in which the U.S. liberal narrative, specifically, justifies the involvement in war, and imperial projects for the sake of civility. This outlines the savior narrative in both how to “save”, for example, Muslim women or similar to last week’s example saving queer people are living in U.S. deemed homophobic countries. This weeks readings interrupt the savior narrative that is being perpetuated by the liberal justifications of war, policing and imprisonment.      

            In relation to my own work with young people it is difficult for me to conceptualize this applicability of the methodology employed in these readings. Perhaps this is a useful methodology when thinking about systems as a whole, for example, similar to my question last week about how to stay away of co-opting a movement and working to not re-create structures that my work or potential research would work to interrupt, such as colonial and imperial projects.

            One example, I can think of where this methodology may serve well, is the in a the case of youth-based programming that is developed by the U.S. and implemented in non-Western countries and the implications of that work. Further, in looking at that type of programming, what does it mean for the folks who are utilizing that programming, for better or for worse, to survive? Similar, to the non-Western critiques of the work we read last week. Out of that my questions would be:

1)    How can we utilize these methodologies in youth-centered, programs or evaluations?

2)    If this methodology is employed in research, what does the acknowledgement mean for the young people who may benefit from the imperial project? For example, the programs mentioned above?

Empire and Imperialism - Jozi Chaet

Relevance to the Text Generally

Over the course the readings for this week, the information presented throughout the articles has largely focused on the imperial project of the West, and particularly of the United States, through detailed discussions of the involvement of the United States in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the mid-twentieth century, as well as other imperial and colonial counterinsurgency efforts. Additionally, the articles discussed the impact of the engagement of the United States in those projects, drawing particular attention to the intersections between feminism and the participation of the United States in a number of armed conflicts following the conclusion of the Second World War. While the following post cannot successfully engage with the specificities of all of those complex discussions, this post attempts to think through one of the primary concepts embedded with the work presented by Mohanty et al., Felman, and Khalili over the course of the readings – namely, the way in which the study of imperialism, or the involvement of the state in imperial projects, can contribute to an understanding of the lived experiences of particular individuals or groups. In turn, this post aims to explore the implications of that analysis, with a particular focus on the conversation concerning the women’s issues and feminism, and endeavors to address the potential ways in which that work relates to my emerging research.

Throughout their discussion concerning the complicated ways in which “those in pursuit and justification of [United States] wars continue to use gender, sexuality, race, [and] class” (Mohanty et al. 2008:2), Mohanty et al. reflect on the relationship between imperialist actions and feminism. Specifically, Mohanty et al. suggest that the United States has “gendered, racialized, and sexualized” (Mohanty et al. 2008:3) its practice of imperialist wars, or wars fought “through military and economic policy to advance and consolidate the profit-driven system of capitalism” (Mohanty et al. 2008:3), in an effort to justify the involvement of the country in conflicts both at home and abroad. In particular, Mohanty et al. state that the attempt to save women and civilize men of color has become the rationalization for the involvement of the United States in armed conflicts throughout the Middle East, including Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the persistent war on drugs. Effectively, through the use of discourse that valorizes the impetus for the initial and continued participation of the United States in those conflicts, the nation is able to legitimize its involvement in those endless wars (Mohanty et al. 2008:4). In turn, Mohanty et al. posit that in order to understand the impact of the imperial projects initiated by the United States, and specifically the impact upon women, it is necessary to first examine the “power dynamics and relations of rule that constitute the globe and specifically an imperial [United States] within it” (Mohanty et al. 2008:5). Consequently, it is important to contend with the effects of the imperial wars waged by the United States across the world in an effort to make sense of the way in which “women of many races, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions around the world…experience war” (Mohanty et al. 2008:5). In many ways, the argument made over the course of the introduction to Feminism and War: Confronting US Imperialism echoes the assertions made by Lila Abu-Lughod in her article “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?”, in which she suggests that the United States justified extended involvement in the Middle East, broadly writ, beginning in the early 2000s through the presentation and depiction of women throughout the region as ‘repressed’, ‘oppressed’, and ‘backwards’ (Abu-Lughod 2002).

Application to Real or Imagined Project(s)

The discussion presented by Mohanty et al. concerning the effect of the imperialist involvement of the United States upon the lives of women, the understanding of gender, and feminist issues and engagement is useful in the context of my own developing project. My emergent research is focused on female activist organizations in Jordan, and the relationship between the development of the modern Jordanian state since the mid-twentieth century and both the historical and contemporary capacity for female advocacy organizations throughout the country, through the lens of extant legal provisions in the Jordanian Penal Code (Articles 98, 340) that allow perpetrators of so-called honor crimes to receive mitigated sentences. In beginning foundational research for this project, I have come across several sources which have suggested that the emergence of female activist organizations engaged in the conversation regarding honor-based violence throughout Jordan in 1945, which coincided with the nation’s independence, was a lasting vestige of Western imperial involvement throughout the region and a reflection of a Western perception of the treatment of women in the Middle East, and was consequently not a true representation of the opinions of  majority of Jordanian women. While I have not done anywhere near the amount of research that is necessary to provide an analysis of that particular analytic framework one way or the other, the methodological framework presented by Mohanty et al. provides a foundation for the assessment of the impact of the involvement of the West in the formation of Jordan in the mid-twentieth century, which will serve to compliment the analysis concerning the role of the Jordanian state in the emergence and operation of female advocacy organizations throughout the country.

Discussion Question(s)

In what ways can this methodology be applied? Is it enough to acknowledge the possible impactions of United States imperialism, and how does that acknowledgement shape or impact the research that can be accomplished/how does it alter the way in which research is done?

Spill-over Questions (from last week)

I think that someone brought this up at the end of class (and I apologize for not remembering who as well as for the fact that I might have interpreted that final question incorrectly) –

The articles from both last week concerning queer identity and American exceptionalism and the articles from this week regarding gender identity, feminism, and the involvement of the United States in armed conflicts abroad focused on the imperialism of the United States and the way in which the country justifies its participation in foreign wars, and while I do not disagree with the fundamental argument made by the articles in any way, I have been thinking about how one can, for example, struggle with claiming a queer identity and through the process of coming out without potentially perpetuating the perception that such a process is embedded within the imperialist projects of the United States or the notion of exceptionalism that serves to justify United States imperialism. I don’t know if this thought really makes sense yet, but it is something that I have been mulling over, and felt like this would be an appropriate place to voice questions concerning the ambiguous implications of the readings.