1. How does Razack's contention that "communities without the right to have rights are significantly different from communities who are merely discriminated against" affect our reading of Kinsman and Gentile?
2. Is the security state just another form of imperialist domination, with queers filling in for the typical racial minority “colonized”; or is that too simplistic a framework?
3. What do we make of Kinsman & Gentile’s suggestion on page 23 that “the Cold War was centrally a war against Third World liberation movements and for neocolonialism.”? Is that too simplistic a statement? How does it compare the arguments made in other works that we’ve read about imperialism the Cold War context?
1. In reference to chapter one, is it fair to critique Razack by saying that despite her attempts to re-historicize the relationships between Muslims/Arabs and the West post-9/11 she actually succeeds in depoliticizing history? During her discussion of security certificates, detainments etc, the agency of Muslim men in this process is never discussed; they are implicitly portrayed as nothing more than victims of Western racism. What if they actually are guilty? By only discussing the possibility of innocence, the notion of wrongdoing can't be problematized, precluding a discussion of whether the Muslim community has a legitimate right to be angry, what led to this anger, and what can be done to get to the root of the problem. Razack seems to think the racism is the cause of the problem, but what if it's only a symptom? 2. Kinsman and Gentile break a lot of methodological norms (i.e. use of quotations, blatant political agenda, inserting themselves into the story) in their work, both because it's primarily meant as a type of healing tool for the Canadian queer community, and because they see a lot of major theoretical flaws with accepted ways of doing social history. What are the implications of this? Do they run the risk of being dismissed within academic circles for stepping too far outside the box? Is having a good reputation within the academy necessary for changing the discursive paradigms that govern the way certain topics like queer history are read, written, and studied?
1. I will break out perhaps a bit of an obvious, but rather complex question at the same time... What are the connections/relationships between 'national security' and sexual orientation vs. 'national security' and race/ethnicity? And, what happens when, like in last week's readings, race and sexual orientation intersect (in opposition to national security)?
2. Perhaps a bit of another obvious, but once again multi layered question. Returning to our previous discussions of violence within the colonial context, what do these books contribute to the discussion of violence within a contemporary security state? What are the relationships between other types of violence we've considered and the modern lingo of 'national security'? And, how can we characterize the resistance to this violence in relation to other forms of resistance we've examined?
1. As we saw within Carter's The Importance of being Monogamous white, middle class hetero-normativity is anything but a societal "default position", and requires a constant and at times violent form of maintenance. Thinking along these lines, did the RCMP actually believe it was making Canada any safer by pursuing the course of action that it did? It seemed to be more of a token gesture, as blackmailing hundreds of sterling military personnel would surely not topple the USSR, just as arbitrarily detaining the "Toronto 17" or Maher Arar for indefinite amounts of time would crush all anti-Western sentiment in the Arabic world.
2. Have the former anti-homosexual sentiments within state agencies, such as the state police, or local law enforcement actually been reformed, or have they just become more hidden? On that topic, admittedly this is a generalization, but what is it about armed service and policing that lends itself so well to homophobia?
4. What are we to make of Ishrad Manji, the 30-something, urbane and out muslim commentator, in Razack's text? Although I hesitate to use such words, there is an element of opportunism, at least insofar as Razack presents her. Does she truly espouse the views that are attributed to her, or was she merely writing at the right time, in the right place, and telling a confused nation what it wanted/needed to hear? Not to discredit or demean her, but I am wondering if the meteoric rise of her and her scholarship - at least in the mainstream - could/would have happened a decade ago, prior to 9/11?
4. How does a nation that prides itself on being a free, liberal and democratic state square the entirely Stalinist, if not totalitarian measures that it was "forced" to take, in the name of protecting liberty. While perhaps my commentary on Stalin borders on hyperbole, it is striking that the "free" West was participating in certain security measures that were easily indistinguishable from what the Soviets were apparently up to.
1. Pages 10-11 of Kinsmen/Gentile note that Canada was much more secretive than the US about its "war on queers". What accounts for this difference? It is an interesting observation and does not receive much attention from the authors past their statement of it as fact.
2. Razack's conclusion at the end of chapter 3 sets a somewhat proscriptive tone. She notes that feminists in the west will "have to refuse to come into being as subjects against women constituted as culturally different" as a cultural framing "has prevented the serious exploration of the roots and nature of human suffering" in the Arab world. What does that mean for feminist organizations? Does Razack give those groups a way to continue their involvement in these areas of the world in a responsible way?
3. Razack notes that the law has been much more focused on prevention rather than punishment in general since 9/11. Do we agree with this given what Kinsmen and Gentile argue was the driving force of the "war on queers" (the government's stated desire to prevent blackmail)?
1. Do we buy Razack’s belief that we should talk about race, gender, and class as interlocking rather than intersecting relations? (p.62 – 63)
2. Is there a value of critique three books—Fallaci, Chesler, and Manji--that “did very well in sales” over more critically and academic complex works written post-9/11? The choice seemed to lessen the impact of Razack’s analysis.
3. Razack writes on page 93, Charles Taylor “is particularly concerned that the Left has engaged in a kind of ridiculous ‘moral equivalence’ between American acts of dominance and contemporary terrorism and has been so mesmerized by multiculturalism that it will not criticize those cultures that oppose freedom.” Adding, “To understand the work that racism does in Taylor’s narrative, it is important to track his deployment of the idea of culture clash.” Really?
1. I'm really interested in Kinsman/Gentile's methodology, especially their use of long oral histories. As someone from a journalism background, I see the merit in using interviews to illicit candid information despite potential inaccuracies. What can this work tell us about oral histories and their uses?
2. Razack too uses many journalistic conventions, especially in her talk of tabloid style. How/when are newspaper and media sources useful, especially when race/religion/stereotypes are on the line? Is Razack using tabloids as an easy target?
What does Razack's distinction between discrimination and exclusion mean? Did Canadian queers ever inhabit any kind of 'Camp'? Are there patterns of discrimination that are systemic/structural but do not mean an absence of the 'right to have rights'?
Does the Canadian security state, Cold War and contemporary, act more out of xenophobia or out of fear (rational or not) of Communism/terrorism? Are there real and imagined threats to national security? Or only imagined? (obviously none of us think that they are all real...)
Should Western feminists say anything about Eastern women? Can any international solidarity be built on an explicitly “feminist” premise, or does this necessarily rely on a Western conception of both womanhood and liberation? Can any movement be global and originate in the West without falling into the trap of these narratives of rescue (and therefore of empire)?
(This is Rachel, I'm on Greyhound Bus wifi and it won't let me log into a google account.)
1. Do women really identity themselves more clearly according to their race rather than their gender (Razack, p. 77)? Is Razack once again asking race to provide an explanation for everything when in fact gender might be the more useful framework from which to understand the sexualized violence of Abu Ghraib?
2. How does Razack's argument about "sleeper cells" as a biological representation of degenerate/diseased Muslims men advance her argument? Are we convinced that this kind of analogy plays a role in people's reflections on, and understanding of, terrorism?
3. How does race complicate Razack's focus on Muslim men and women, especially when considering the discussion of issues such as the Israeli Palestinian conflict where religious identity and not race is what divides? Despite the fact that anyone, no matter their race can be part of a religious community, are we meant to assume that there is always an implicit (and sometimes explicit) connection between race and religion with Christian and Jewish identities being read as 'white' and Muslims as 'non-white'?
4. How should we talk about difference? Or, should it be ignored or downplayed?
1. How does Razack's contention that "communities without the right to have rights are significantly different from communities who are merely discriminated against" affect our reading of Kinsman and Gentile?
ReplyDelete2. Is the security state just another form of imperialist domination, with queers filling in for the typical racial minority “colonized”; or is that too simplistic a framework?
3. What do we make of Kinsman & Gentile’s suggestion on page 23 that “the Cold War was centrally a war against Third World liberation movements and for neocolonialism.”? Is that too simplistic a statement? How does it compare the arguments made in other works that we’ve read about imperialism the Cold War context?
1. In reference to chapter one, is it fair to critique Razack by saying that despite her attempts to re-historicize the relationships between Muslims/Arabs and the West post-9/11 she actually succeeds in depoliticizing history? During her discussion of security certificates, detainments etc, the agency of Muslim men in this process is never discussed; they are implicitly portrayed as nothing more than victims of Western racism. What if they actually are guilty? By only discussing the possibility of innocence, the notion of wrongdoing can't be problematized, precluding a discussion of whether the Muslim community has a legitimate right to be angry, what led to this anger, and what can be done to get to the root of the problem. Razack seems to think the racism is the cause of the problem, but what if it's only a symptom?
ReplyDelete2. Kinsman and Gentile break a lot of methodological norms (i.e. use of quotations, blatant political agenda, inserting themselves into the story) in their work, both because it's primarily meant as a type of healing tool for the Canadian queer community, and because they see a lot of major theoretical flaws with accepted ways of doing social history. What are the implications of this? Do they run the risk of being dismissed within academic circles for stepping too far outside the box? Is having a good reputation within the academy necessary for changing the discursive paradigms that govern the way certain topics like queer history are read, written, and studied?
1. I will break out perhaps a bit of an obvious, but rather complex question at the same time... What are the connections/relationships between 'national security' and sexual orientation vs. 'national security' and race/ethnicity? And, what happens when, like in last week's readings, race and sexual orientation intersect (in opposition to national security)?
ReplyDelete2. Perhaps a bit of another obvious, but once again multi layered question. Returning to our previous discussions of violence within the colonial context, what do these books contribute to the discussion of violence within a contemporary security state? What are the relationships between other types of violence we've considered and the modern lingo of 'national security'? And, how can we characterize the resistance to this violence in relation to other forms of resistance we've examined?
1. As we saw within Carter's The Importance of being Monogamous white, middle class hetero-normativity is anything but a societal "default position", and requires a constant and at times violent form of maintenance. Thinking along these lines, did the RCMP actually believe it was making Canada any safer by pursuing the course of action that it did? It seemed to be more of a token gesture, as blackmailing hundreds of sterling military personnel would surely not topple the USSR, just as arbitrarily detaining the "Toronto 17" or Maher Arar for indefinite amounts of time would crush all anti-Western sentiment in the Arabic world.
ReplyDelete2. Have the former anti-homosexual sentiments within state agencies, such as the state police, or local law enforcement actually been reformed, or have they just become more hidden? On that topic, admittedly this is a generalization, but what is it about armed service and policing that lends itself so well to homophobia?
4. What are we to make of Ishrad Manji, the 30-something, urbane and out muslim commentator, in Razack's text? Although I hesitate to use such words, there is an element of opportunism, at least insofar as Razack presents her. Does she truly espouse the views that are attributed to her, or was she merely writing at the right time, in the right place, and telling a confused nation what it wanted/needed to hear? Not to discredit or demean her, but I am wondering if the meteoric rise of her and her scholarship - at least in the mainstream - could/would have happened a decade ago, prior to 9/11?
4. How does a nation that prides itself on being a free, liberal and democratic state square the entirely Stalinist, if not totalitarian measures that it was "forced" to take, in the name of protecting liberty. While perhaps my commentary on Stalin borders on hyperbole, it is striking that the "free" West was participating in certain security measures that were easily indistinguishable from what the Soviets were apparently up to.
1. Pages 10-11 of Kinsmen/Gentile note that Canada was much more secretive than the US about its "war on queers". What accounts for this difference? It is an interesting observation and does not receive much attention from the authors past their statement of it as fact.
ReplyDelete2. Razack's conclusion at the end of chapter 3 sets a somewhat proscriptive tone. She notes that feminists in the west will "have to refuse to come into being as subjects against women constituted as culturally different" as a cultural framing "has prevented the serious exploration of the roots and nature of human suffering" in the Arab world. What does that mean for feminist organizations? Does Razack give those groups a way to continue their involvement in these areas of the world in a responsible way?
3. Razack notes that the law has been much more focused on prevention rather than punishment in general since 9/11. Do we agree with this given what Kinsmen and Gentile argue was the driving force of the "war on queers" (the government's stated desire to prevent blackmail)?
1. Do we buy Razack’s belief that we should talk about race, gender, and class as interlocking rather than intersecting relations? (p.62 – 63)
ReplyDelete2. Is there a value of critique three books—Fallaci, Chesler, and Manji--that “did very well in sales” over more critically and academic complex works written post-9/11? The choice seemed to lessen the impact of Razack’s analysis.
3. Razack writes on page 93, Charles Taylor “is particularly concerned that the Left has engaged in a kind of ridiculous ‘moral equivalence’ between American acts of dominance and contemporary terrorism and has been so mesmerized by multiculturalism that it will not criticize those cultures that oppose freedom.” Adding, “To understand the work that racism does in Taylor’s narrative, it is important to track his deployment of the idea of culture clash.” Really?
1. I'm really interested in Kinsman/Gentile's methodology, especially their use of long oral histories. As someone from a journalism background, I see the merit in using interviews to illicit candid information despite potential inaccuracies. What can this work tell us about oral histories and their uses?
ReplyDelete2. Razack too uses many journalistic conventions, especially in her talk of tabloid style. How/when are newspaper and media sources useful, especially when race/religion/stereotypes are on the line? Is Razack using tabloids as an easy target?
What does Razack's distinction between discrimination and exclusion mean? Did Canadian queers ever inhabit any kind of 'Camp'? Are there patterns of discrimination that are systemic/structural but do not mean an absence of the 'right to have rights'?
ReplyDeleteDoes the Canadian security state, Cold War and contemporary, act more out of xenophobia or out of fear (rational or not) of Communism/terrorism? Are there real and imagined threats to national security? Or only imagined? (obviously none of us think that they are all real...)
Should Western feminists say anything about Eastern women? Can any international solidarity be built on an explicitly “feminist” premise, or does this necessarily rely on a Western conception of both womanhood and liberation? Can any movement be global and originate in the West without falling into the trap of these narratives of rescue (and therefore of empire)?
(This is Rachel, I'm on Greyhound Bus wifi and it won't let me log into a google account.)
1. Do women really identity themselves more clearly according to their race rather than their gender (Razack, p. 77)? Is Razack once again asking race to provide an explanation for everything when in fact gender might be the more useful framework from which to understand the sexualized violence of Abu Ghraib?
ReplyDelete2. How does Razack's argument about "sleeper cells" as a biological representation of degenerate/diseased Muslims men advance her argument? Are we convinced that this kind of analogy plays a role in people's reflections on, and understanding of, terrorism?
3. How does race complicate Razack's focus on Muslim men and women, especially when considering the discussion of issues such as the Israeli Palestinian conflict where religious identity and not race is what divides? Despite the fact that anyone, no matter their race can be part of a religious community, are we meant to assume that there is always an implicit (and sometimes explicit) connection between race and religion with Christian and Jewish identities being read as 'white' and Muslims as 'non-white'?
4. How should we talk about difference? Or, should it be ignored or downplayed?