Short version of my essay published on the NGO-website www.caucasusforum.org. It criticizes current uses of the body as potent sign for having replaced politics and calls for the re-instatement of dialogue and civilian perspectives.
Femen, the feminist group from the Ukraine, have been able to draw widespread attention to their protests only after stopping to argue about sexual exploitation and instead showing what a sensation-oriented public wanted to see: naked female bodies. While I was still wondering and trying to figure out whether theirs was an extremely clever and subersive strategy to expose the hypocrisies of the Western male, their activism quickly devolved into parading naked bodies as such, claiming their “right” to be naked everywhere, anytime. What seems to have gotten lost in the process of gaining attention are the original political demands. In what can be deemed a classical case of phatic communication (Slavoj Zizek), the body itself has become the message.
Northern Caucasians initially expressed shock and disbelief that 'someone from them' could commit such an outrageous act. As more details come to light, these feelings seem to give way to annoyance and frustration. Anger and fear at the criminal acts of two individuals which may now lead to the stigmatization of Northern Caucasian communities as a whole, fear that this might undo all the patient work of Northern Caucasian grassroots initiatives. What I for my part feel by looking at Western media is extreme irritation at the fact that a bomb has achieved now what democratic, peaceful and transparent work has not: to get the simmering Russo-Caucasian conflict and enduring Russian human rights abuses into the media and back onto our agendas.
(…)
Once taking for granted that no one enters this world as a terrorist, and also assuming there was no set-up, there must have been a point in Dzhokhar's life where he strayed from the right path, some moment at which he was seduced by a vision of the power he would hold over other people's lives. It seems to me that this course has been set less than two years ago. At seventeen, Dzhokhar contacted a professor of Islamic Studies as he had felt an urge to learn about his Chechen origins. With Dzhokhar being an eager, bright and achieving student, this could as well have been the beginning of a promising academic career. How did, what began as scholarly interest, end up with a violent blast, ruining both the lives of random victims and his own?
Brian Glyn Williams**, the university professor Dzhokhar contacted upon recommendation of his school teacher, is not your ordinary scholar, and he is certainly not the bewildered civilian as whom he comes across recent statements to journalists. Mr. Williams is a specialist on Jihad and has offered his expertise to organizations like the CIA and Scotland Yard. Prof. Williams is involved in Guantanamo as he is involved in Agfhanistan, he conducts “fieldwork” in Kosovo, the Caucasus and the Middle East. In short, all the hotspots of American foreing policy interests and military intervention are within his range of action. What kind of model, I ask, could a professor with such a background have possibly been for a boy looking not only for a sense of belonging but also for ways of expressing himself - personally, politically? One of the questions that has to be asked in my opinion is which kind of civilian perspective – be it political activism or academic scholarship – could and should have been pointed out to Dzhokhar by his mentors.
(...)
To the contrary of the image transmitted at home, the CIA and related US foreign policy institutions conduct not a policy of eliminating terrorism, but of alternately supporting and combating “Islamic” fundamentalists. The genuine paradoxon of the Boston bombings is thus, it seems to me, less that Dzhokhar planted a bomb in his home town of Boston instead of aiming at the Russian side. The real irony consists in that, had Dzhokhar indeed joined al Qaeda or a local Northern Caucasian militant group, he might not be lying in a hospital in Boston right now, wounded and being interrogated by FBI, facing death penalty, but might instead be sitting safe and sound somehwere else, having a comfortable chat with Mr. Williams on one of the latter's missions.
(...)
There is, in short, no safe civil space reserved for academic scholarship and/or peaceful activism in Northern Caucasian issues, and no fourth estate to act as corrective. The civilian room in which to discuss Northern Caucasian issues - it is not there, it must still be created. In the meanwhile organizations like the Jamestown Foundation are busily undermining civilian efforts, sewing distrust and strife wherever they go.
(…)
In a situation where official gratifications are lacking, who, which teacher, professor, mentor, would have been in a moral or intellectual position to point to Dzhokhar that quiet, patient struggle has its own merits too - quite apart from and even opposed to official recognition and social or financial incentives? Mr. Williams has made his choices in life too. He openly tells that after 9/11 he was one of those accepting the new kind of “job offers” coming in, because “it's sexier to work on those kind of topics, drones, terrorism”, that is, much more exciting in comparison to the painstaking, slow and tiring work with archival documents. Both his teachings and writings make him appear much more like a militarist than a humanist. The professor of Islamic History thinks that although Islam is “not the sole explanation”, “Islam is a subtext for much of the violence and terrorism” taking place. What Williams explains to his students is that there are two alternative responses of “Muslims” (the Muslim?) to US-attacks: a) revenge or b) giving up upon Jihad in the face of superior might. The enemy is not made and unmade, the enemy has to be discouraged and wiped out. Loyalty and appartenance to one's own group in its turn is demonstrated by taking bodies from the “other” side: in Mr. Williams' depiction, Barack Obama himself has, by actively supporting the liquidation of Osama bin Laden, proven to the American public that he is not a secretive Muslim in the most clever of ways.
(...)
How, I ask myself, would it have been if Dzhokhar had hit upon a professor from “those who like equivocations in their academic discourse” in contrast to Williams' preference for “blunt but revealing” opinions? Could Dzhokhar not have been offered a positive way for connecting to his roots, by teaching him anti-essentialism, peaceful conflict solution and intellectual criticism, instead of setting his mind upon a war described in religious terms?
Dzhokhar, if indeed proven guilty, has slipped. The scenario of a democratic and peaceful West against an aggressive, Islamic East should have been analyzed, commented upon and criticized, and not acted out. The bombings' “message” again consists in bodies, bodies as replacement for other, faraway bodies, thus bringing visions of violence home.
(…)
While the brothers were preparing their dirty, home-made bombs, Mr. Williams has been juggling with numbers in order to prove that American drones thousands of miles away strike precisely, that America's war on terror is “clean”. The lack of political visions and voices is, it appears, a very general one. Femen, for their part, have just announced to expand their “topless Jihad” and “hound Islamic leaders across the globe”.When, I ask myself, will we stop parading our naked and dead bodies in front of each other, when will we refrain from reckoning up each other's corpses? Zygmunt Baumann has called this the end of politics. We have to start talking and listening to each other again.
Read the full version of this article at the NGO-website Caucasusforum at:
http://www.caucasusforum.org/silent_citizens_screaming_bodies_what_femen_cia_boston_bombings_have_in_common/
Irma Kreiten
24./25-4-2013
**I owe the insight into Prof. Williams professional background to Nartan Mefewud and his well-researched article series:
Nartan Mefewud: ''ABD'nin Çerkes aşkı” (The Love of the USA for the Circassians), Circassian monthly newspaper “Jineps”: part 1, Jineps No. 46, December 2012; part 2, Jineps No. 47, January 2013; part 3, Jineps No. 48, February 2013; part 4, Jineps No. 49, March 2013 (Prof. Williams is discussed in part 2).
Northern Caucasians initially expressed shock and disbelief that 'someone from them' could commit such an outrageous act. As more details come to light, these feelings seem to give way to annoyance and frustration. Anger and fear at the criminal acts of two individuals which may now lead to the stigmatization of Northern Caucasian communities as a whole, fear that this might undo all the patient work of Northern Caucasian grassroots initiatives. What I for my part feel by looking at Western media is extreme irritation at the fact that a bomb has achieved now what democratic, peaceful and transparent work has not: to get the simmering Russo-Caucasian conflict and enduring Russian human rights abuses into the media and back onto our agendas.
(…)
Once taking for granted that no one enters this world as a terrorist, and also assuming there was no set-up, there must have been a point in Dzhokhar's life where he strayed from the right path, some moment at which he was seduced by a vision of the power he would hold over other people's lives. It seems to me that this course has been set less than two years ago. At seventeen, Dzhokhar contacted a professor of Islamic Studies as he had felt an urge to learn about his Chechen origins. With Dzhokhar being an eager, bright and achieving student, this could as well have been the beginning of a promising academic career. How did, what began as scholarly interest, end up with a violent blast, ruining both the lives of random victims and his own?
Brian Glyn Williams**, the university professor Dzhokhar contacted upon recommendation of his school teacher, is not your ordinary scholar, and he is certainly not the bewildered civilian as whom he comes across recent statements to journalists. Mr. Williams is a specialist on Jihad and has offered his expertise to organizations like the CIA and Scotland Yard. Prof. Williams is involved in Guantanamo as he is involved in Agfhanistan, he conducts “fieldwork” in Kosovo, the Caucasus and the Middle East. In short, all the hotspots of American foreing policy interests and military intervention are within his range of action. What kind of model, I ask, could a professor with such a background have possibly been for a boy looking not only for a sense of belonging but also for ways of expressing himself - personally, politically? One of the questions that has to be asked in my opinion is which kind of civilian perspective – be it political activism or academic scholarship – could and should have been pointed out to Dzhokhar by his mentors.
(...)
To the contrary of the image transmitted at home, the CIA and related US foreign policy institutions conduct not a policy of eliminating terrorism, but of alternately supporting and combating “Islamic” fundamentalists. The genuine paradoxon of the Boston bombings is thus, it seems to me, less that Dzhokhar planted a bomb in his home town of Boston instead of aiming at the Russian side. The real irony consists in that, had Dzhokhar indeed joined al Qaeda or a local Northern Caucasian militant group, he might not be lying in a hospital in Boston right now, wounded and being interrogated by FBI, facing death penalty, but might instead be sitting safe and sound somehwere else, having a comfortable chat with Mr. Williams on one of the latter's missions.
(...)
There is, in short, no safe civil space reserved for academic scholarship and/or peaceful activism in Northern Caucasian issues, and no fourth estate to act as corrective. The civilian room in which to discuss Northern Caucasian issues - it is not there, it must still be created. In the meanwhile organizations like the Jamestown Foundation are busily undermining civilian efforts, sewing distrust and strife wherever they go.
(…)
In a situation where official gratifications are lacking, who, which teacher, professor, mentor, would have been in a moral or intellectual position to point to Dzhokhar that quiet, patient struggle has its own merits too - quite apart from and even opposed to official recognition and social or financial incentives? Mr. Williams has made his choices in life too. He openly tells that after 9/11 he was one of those accepting the new kind of “job offers” coming in, because “it's sexier to work on those kind of topics, drones, terrorism”, that is, much more exciting in comparison to the painstaking, slow and tiring work with archival documents. Both his teachings and writings make him appear much more like a militarist than a humanist. The professor of Islamic History thinks that although Islam is “not the sole explanation”, “Islam is a subtext for much of the violence and terrorism” taking place. What Williams explains to his students is that there are two alternative responses of “Muslims” (the Muslim?) to US-attacks: a) revenge or b) giving up upon Jihad in the face of superior might. The enemy is not made and unmade, the enemy has to be discouraged and wiped out. Loyalty and appartenance to one's own group in its turn is demonstrated by taking bodies from the “other” side: in Mr. Williams' depiction, Barack Obama himself has, by actively supporting the liquidation of Osama bin Laden, proven to the American public that he is not a secretive Muslim in the most clever of ways.
(...)
How, I ask myself, would it have been if Dzhokhar had hit upon a professor from “those who like equivocations in their academic discourse” in contrast to Williams' preference for “blunt but revealing” opinions? Could Dzhokhar not have been offered a positive way for connecting to his roots, by teaching him anti-essentialism, peaceful conflict solution and intellectual criticism, instead of setting his mind upon a war described in religious terms?
Dzhokhar, if indeed proven guilty, has slipped. The scenario of a democratic and peaceful West against an aggressive, Islamic East should have been analyzed, commented upon and criticized, and not acted out. The bombings' “message” again consists in bodies, bodies as replacement for other, faraway bodies, thus bringing visions of violence home.
(…)
While the brothers were preparing their dirty, home-made bombs, Mr. Williams has been juggling with numbers in order to prove that American drones thousands of miles away strike precisely, that America's war on terror is “clean”. The lack of political visions and voices is, it appears, a very general one. Femen, for their part, have just announced to expand their “topless Jihad” and “hound Islamic leaders across the globe”.When, I ask myself, will we stop parading our naked and dead bodies in front of each other, when will we refrain from reckoning up each other's corpses? Zygmunt Baumann has called this the end of politics. We have to start talking and listening to each other again.
Read the full version of this article at the NGO-website Caucasusforum at:
http://www.caucasusforum.org/silent_citizens_screaming_bodies_what_femen_cia_boston_bombings_have_in_common/ Irma Kreiten
24./25-4-2013
**I owe the insight into Prof. Williams professional background to Nartan Mefewud and his well-researched article series:
Nartan Mefewud: ''ABD'nin Çerkes aşkı” (The Love of the USA for the Circassians), Circassian monthly newspaper “Jineps”: part 1, Jineps No. 46, December 2012; part 2, Jineps No. 47, January 2013; part 3, Jineps No. 48, February 2013; part 4, Jineps No. 49, March 2013 (Prof. Williams is discussed in part 2).
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