Mary Renda Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism. 1915-1940 Prologue, Introduction, Chapters 1,2,3,4, (skim 5, 6 and 7)
Sherene H. Razack Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair. Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism Intro, Chs 1, 2, 3
Aaronette White “All the Men Are Fighting for Freedom, All the Women are Mourning their Men, but Some of Us Carried Guns: A Raced-Gendered Analysis of Fanon’s Psychological Perspectives on War,” Signs Vol 32, No 4, 2007
1. Last week we considered how photographs by women may (or may not) convey their gender identity. That is, we questioned if a photograph taken by a woman was always gendered female and if we could always tell from simply looking at it. Turning to both of these readings, violence is primarily gendered male. How is looking at the issue of violence (and in this case, particularly colonial violence) tied to gendered notions of this violence as masculine? In other words, what shifts or changes when this type of violence is characterized by its 'masculine' nature?
ReplyDelete2.Razack deconstructs the label of 'peacekeeping', particularly within the context of Canadian military operations. Since the mid 20th century, Canada's identity as 'peacekeepers' has become fully entrenched within national values. How does the label and assumed ideology of 'peacekeeping' benefit the Canadian nation? What does a work like Razack's contribute in the breaking down and challenging of such labels? Does this impact the manner in which 'peacekeeping' within the Canadian context is understood historically?
1. Within Taking Haiti, we briefly read of the hyper-sexual culture of that the Marines developed, as a mode of contest between one another. This culture included both hetero and homosexual practices, but interestingly attached a stigma to neither. As long as the Marines were engaging in some form of sex - albeit, as a dominant initiator - there was no "threat" to their heterosexuality or masculinity. What factors enabled such mutable sexual constructs? Or more importantly, what has changed in the past century that has caused male understandings of sexuality (for instance, DADT, in the current US armed forces) to be so strictly divided?
ReplyDelete2. Razack laments that "history is evacuated" when commenting on the almost systematic first-world response to third-world crisis. Why do media, politicians and news focus so intently upon what is "wrong" with places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, instead of investigating how they how they came to be "that way" in the first place? Is it merely the willful ignorance of not wanting to examine a painful, if not embarrassing colonial past, or something deeper?
3. Is our national Canadian myth on the verge of changing, especially in light of the recent release of the Canadian Immigration Handbook? Could we be trading the myth of "noble peacekeepers" for one of "heroic warriors"?
1. In light of the Razack reading, it seems to me that Canada is caught in somewhat of a Catch-22 when it comes to peacekeeping. During the Rwandan genocide, the North was widely condemned for their failure to prevent atrocities from taking place. However, soldiers in Somalia and, more recently, Afghanistan are rightly called out by Razack and others for atrocities they commit themselves. If we agree that peacekeeping is an important part of the Canadian national myth, it's arguable that it's not going anywhere any time soon despite heavy criticism. From a strictly practical standpoint, is it more constructive to continue, as Razack does, to critique peacekeeping as an institution in hopes that some of these obstacles can be overcome or should we be focused on being the most effective with what we've got i.e. preventing another Rwanda?
ReplyDelete2. In her chapter on peacekeeping as trauma, Razack discusses Keith Krause's argument that Canada should stick to "maintenance-of-order" missions because "it is not Canada's job to articulate an overarching vision of a New World Order" (37). Since, according to Donald Gordon, "Canadians are members of a white, 'have', North American complex," (33) does our image as being outside of this, as being a go-between, strengthen or weaken the structure of global power relations? Arguably, by pretending that Canadians are somehow different from the big, bad United States, we abandon our own history and preclude a discussion of what exactly it means to be a white, colonial, Northern country.
1. In Razack's work, she mentions Canada's unique stance as a middle-power nation; "peacekeeping mythology goes far in convincing Canadians that they are in fact noticed internationally." (33) Could the United States be seen as a middle-power nation during the early stages of its occupation of Haiti? Does this change the way violence on both accounts can be analyzed?
ReplyDelete2. I was intrigued by the concept of "going native" that Renda touches on in Taking Haiti. "The experience of going to Haiti, living and fighting in the occupation, and grappling with the conflicting dictates of paternalism and violent repression had profound effects on the marines' racism: bringing it to consciousness for some, reinforcing it for others, challenging some aspects of it for many." (180) Is "going native" LOSING those aspects of racism, or gaining them? Although "going native" seems to have inspired more violence, it conjures up images of understanding the plight of the "native" rather than rejecting it.
1. Renda sets up an admittedly messy dichotomy between discourses of true “paternalism” and of material/economic concerns in the historiography of the US occupation of Haiti. Does the motivation underlying paternalist rhetoric shape its impact on the United States and on soldiers? Does it mean the same thing, for example, for masculinity? If we could somehow prove that the United States never cared about the best interests of the occupied country, would that cause a “rupture” of some sort for soldiers or for US Americans more broadly?
ReplyDelete2. I hear echoes of Renda's account of Woodrow Wilson's liberal, paternalist rhetoric within Razack's description of the discourses of Canadian peacekeeping. Were the hierarchies of racism and sexism as embedded in the concept of 'Canadian' in the 1990s as in the 'US American' of Wilson's day? Are the implications of this kind of national identity different from those of a more overtly war-loving one?
3. “Rather than restoring their dignity through war, participation in
violence has subjected some women combatants to shaming practices that
challenge their integrity. Thus participation in anticolonial warfare may restore male combatants’ dignity precisely because it reinscribes dominant
conceptions of masculinity." (White, 20)
Is White arguing that violence is necessarily masculine, and that the empowerment that Fanon sees possible in revolutionary violence is necessarily just the result of masculinity affirmed? Or do the examples that she raises simply point out that anti-colonial uprisings do not necessarily mean liberation for women (and that, given this, they reproduce the same gendered violence that other combat situations do)?
In Razack, the words peace keeping and peace enforcing are used to describe two different activities. Enforcing requires a more muscular violence and is justified by racist notions. Expanding on this notion, what else differentiates peacekeeping from peace enforcing? What concepts do these different terms evoke?
ReplyDeleteIn White's article, she discusses the constructions of authoritarian manhood that underlie all armies. It seems as if she is drawing this concept from European armies and applying it without discrimination to all armies of the world. Is there a certain authoritarian manhood in all armies? Is the structure of revolutionary armies somehow differently constructed than European armies?
Considering the impact that the occupation of Haiti had on US culture (plays, books, memoirs, etc), there were several areas that presented racialized flaws. This is not unique to this book. Most representations of 'other' countries are heavily subject to critique. Is there a such thing as a positive representation from an external being? Is a memoir that presents a racial other still an accurate mode of self-representation for someone who went into Haiti with paternalistic values?
1. All three readings for this week stress the importance of personal psychology/mindset in rationalizing (violent) imperialist acts, or in responding to them with equal violence. To what extent do emotive descriptions or accounts of imperialism, be they historical (Renda) or contemporary (Razack) serve to obfuscate the “facts”? On a related note, can there ever be an objective account of an imperial encounter, or is every story bound to have at least two sides that rely heavily on psychoanalysis and emotion to convey the full gravity and trauma of the event?
ReplyDelete2. How essential is the portrayal of Canada as “different from America” in the evolution of the peacekeeping myth? Is the violent reality of contemporary peacekeeping enough to even the score between the two national narratives in terms of their involvement in the “new imperialism”? If Canada is not a peacekeeping nation, what is the (evolving) purpose of the Canadian military internationally, and how does it affect our definition of Canada as a nation that practices internal and external colonialism?
1. “Spectacle is the best means by which an official story is formed and is a superior mechanism for guaranteeing its longevity. Spectacle offers signs, symbols and images that are more pervasive and persuasive than print which can smoothly parody thought.” This quotation from Toni Morrison in Razack’s book speaks to the discussion in last week’s seminar in which the use of visual images was argued to have serious cultural, political and social consequences. How do the images used by both Razack and Renda fall into this discussion? More specifically consider the photographs on pages 102, 174, and 152-53 of Renda- how do these photos add to, or detract from the overall argument of the book? How do the trophy photographs discussed by Razack complicate notions of the audience of these visual images since they were meant to have a restricted viewership? How does this speak to a particular communal identity and psychology among marines, peacekeeping troops, etc?
ReplyDelete2. Does the original intention of the mission hold any moral weight in terms of its reception by the international community? For example, does it change anything that the Canadian mission was deemed a peacekeeping mission while the U.S mission in Haiti was deployed for the purpose of economic stability and to bring an end to caco rebellion? Is there any legitimate way to frame an intervention? Does this change when we consider that anti-interventionist policy is likely the hope of dictatorial governments?
Is Haiti as important for later “U.S. American” race relationships as argued by Renda? Is the national history focus on the civil rights movement as a wholly domestic creation, or at its most international, a movement spurred by WWII, to blame for this treatment? Or did Haiti appear only in a few cultural sources, as an interesting but not pivotal example of American race paternalism?
ReplyDeleteHow long does the hyper masculine identity reinforced by revolutionary war linger over a society? Is this identity sustained by a collective memory of these wars, a memory that focuses mostly on male contributions?
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ReplyDeleteThe question of whether ‘a few bad apples’ are to blame or the group as a whole has come up numerous times in these readings. Though authors such as Razack have argued that overarching modes of thought, military culture and beliefs are to blame, does the ‘bad apple’ argument contain any merit whatsoever? Why is it used on almost a daily basis in the global media in relation to such a wide variety of events?
ReplyDeleteRenda states that, ‘American Soldiers in Haiti were able to experience their nation in new ways when thrown together with fellow American’s from near and far’. Can this phenomenon be transcribed onto more contemporary events such as the Canadian role in Somalia in the early 1990’s? Does Razacks concept of ‘out whiting the white guys’, apply to this notion?