Refractions off empire: Untimely comparisons in harsh times

Radical History Review

Volumn 95, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 93-107

  Stoler, Ann Laura ^a   Bond, David ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33845239365     PISSN: 01636545     EISSN: 15341453     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/01636545-2006-95-93     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. See papers from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) conference, "Lessons of Empire," New York, September 26-27, 2003;
2. Harry Harootunian, The Empire's New Clothes: Paradigm Lost and Regained (Chicago: Prickly Pear, 2004);
3. Ann Laura Stoler, "Degrees of Imperial Sovereignty, " Public Culture 18 (2006): 117-39.
4. Arif Dirlik, "Historical Colonialism in Contemporary Perspective," Public Culture 14 (2002): 611-15;
5. see also Dirlik, "Empire? Some Thoughts on Colonialism, Culture, and Class in the Making of Global Crisis and War in Perpetuity," www.anthropology.emory.edu/FACULTY/ANTBK/PDFs/AAA-02-Dirlik.PDF (accessed September 7, 2005).
6. Frederick Cooper, "The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Colonial Studies, 1951-2001," in his Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 33-58.
7. David Scott, "The Social Construction of Postcolonial Studies, " in Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, ed. Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton, and Jed Esty (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 401-22.
8. See Ann Laura Stoler, Carole McGranahan, and Peter Perdue, "Reassessing the Terrain," in Imperial Formations and Their Discontents, ed. Stoler, McGranahan, and Perdue (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research, forthcoming).
9. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1979), 131.
10. An undercurrent of scholarship is moving in this direction. This is the theme of papers at a forthcoming conference: "Scarred Landscapes and Imperial Debris," Department of Anthropology and Center for Historical Studies, New School for Social Research, May 2006.
11. See Stoler, "On Degrees of Imperial Sovereignty."
12. See my preface in Ann Laura Stoler, ed., Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
13. See "On Vernacular Comparisons: Toward a Critical Area Studies and Its Emergent Forms" (paper presented at the Canadian Council of Areas Studies Learned Societies, Montreal, April 27, 2005).
14. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978).
15. See Martin Kramer's essays on this issue for the Washington Institute for New East Policy, among them, "Can Congress Fix Middle Eastern Studies?" www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/HR3077 (accessed September 7, 2005) and "Arabic Panic," www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/ ArabicPanic.htm (accessed September 7, 2005).
16. See Vicente Rafael, "The Cultures of Area Studies in the United States," Social Text, no. 41 (1994): 91-111;
17. Vicente Rafael, "Regionalism, Area Studies, and the Accidents of Agency," American Historical Review 104 (1999): 1208-20.
18. Kathleen Gough, "New Proposals for Anthropologists," Current Anthropology 9 (1968): 403-7;
19. see also Dell Hymes, ed., Reinventing Anthropology (New York: Random House, 1972);
20. Talal Asad, ed., Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (London: Ithaca Press, 1973). On the debate Eric Wolf spearheaded in anthropology, see Eric Wakin, Anthropology Cocs to War: Professional Ethics and Counterinsurgcncy in Thailand (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 153-277.
21. Scales writes: "Intimate knowledge of the enemy's motivation, intent, will, tactical method and cultural environment will prove to be far more important for success in the advisory phase than smart bombs, aircraft and expansive bandwidth. A successful advisory effort depends on the ability to think and adapt faster than the enemy. Soldiers must be prepared to thrive in an environment of uncertainty, ambiguity and unfamiliar cultural circumstances. This war will be won by fostering personal relationships, leveraging non- military advantages, reading intentions, building trust, converting opinions and managing perceptions, all tasks that demand an exceptional ability to understand people, their culture and their motivations." "Human Intel vs. Technology," Washington Times, February 3, 2005;
22. see also Scales, "Culture-Centric Warfare, " Naval Institute: Proceedings, October 2004, www.military.com/Content/MoreContenti?fiIe=NI-1o04- CuIture-P1.
23. Australian Land Warfare Studies Centre, Senior Officers' Professional Digest 30 (2005): 2.
24. For more on strategic culture, see Colin S. Gray, "Comparative Strategic Culture," Parameters 14 (1984): 26-33;
25. Alastair Iain Johnson, "Thinking about Strategic Culture, " International Security 19 (1995): 32-64;
26. Elizabeth L. Stone, Christopher P. Twomey, and Peter R. Lavoy, "Comparative Strategic Culture Conference Report, September 21-22, 2005" (Monterey, CA: Center for Contemporary Conflict, Naval Postgraduate School, 2005), www.ccc.nps.navy.inil/events/recent/ ComparativeStrategicCultureSep05-rpt.asp (accessed November 30, 2005); for more on intimate knowledge, see Scales, "Human Intel vs. Technology."
27. Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 138.
28. Jennifer Chandler, "Why Culture Matters: An Empirically-Based Pre-Deployment Training Program" (master's thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 2005).
29. Suggesting that anthropology has become "hermeneutically sealed within its Ivory Tower" of self-reflexivity and irrelevance, McFate argues for the appropriation of anthropological modalities and methods for military practice and rule in "Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of their Curious Relationship, " Military Review 85 (2005): 24-38.
30. McFate writes elsewhere, "Across the board, the national security structure needs to be infused with anthropology, a discipline invented to support warfighting in the tribal zone ⋯ To confront an enemy so deeply moored in history and theology, the U.S. Armed Forces must adopt an ethnographer's view of the world; it is not nation-states but cultures that provide the underlying structures of political life." "The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture," Joint Forces Quarterly 38 (2005): 42-48;
31. "Know your enemy" is the title of one of the sections in McFate and Andrea Jackson, "An Organizational Solution for DOD's Cultural Knowledge Needs," Military Review 85 (2005): 18-21.
32. George W. Smith, "Avoiding a Napoleonic Ulcer: Bridging the Gap of Cultural Intelligence (or, Have We Focused on the Wrong Transformation?)," Marine War College, Independent Research Project, 2004, www.mcu.usmc.mil/rncwar/ irp/Documents/CJCS%2oEssay%2o-%2oSmith.pdf (accessed September 7, 2005).
33. Ralph Peters, Fightingfor the Future: Will America Triumph? (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1999), 21, 58.
34. Michael T. Kaufman, "What Docs the Pentagon See in 'Battle of Algiers'?" New York Times, September 7, 2003.
35. Department of Homeland Security, "TOPOFF 3 Frequently Asked Questions," www.dhsgov/dhspublic/interapp/editorial/editorial-o6o3.xml (accessed September 7, 2005).
36. See Daniel Pipes, "Saving Mideast Studies," New York Post, September 18, 2003.
37. On the cultural and political work done by the term homeland, see Amy Kaplan, "Homeland Insecurities: Reflections on Language and Space, " Radical History Review, no. 85 (2003): 82-93.
38. See also the Web site for the Centers for International Business Education and Research on Congress's Findings concerning Title VI, ciber.centers.purdue.edu/title-vi.html. See Stephen Burd, "House Approves Bill on International Studies That Worries Some Academics," Chronicle of Higher Education, October 23, 2003, chronicle.com/daily/2003/1o/ 2003102301n.htm;
39. Robert Scholes, "An Advisory Board to Be Wary Of, " Chronicle of Higher Education, May 14, 2004, cl1ronicle.com/prm/weekly/ v50/136/36b01301.htm; "Legislative Alert," American Association of University Professors, September 23, 2003, www.aaup.org/govrel/hea/2003/9- 23alert.htm; "Security and Threats to Intellectual Freedom, " Social Science Research Council, August 18, 2005, wvw.ssrc.org/Threats-to-Intellectual- Freedom/index.page and links.
40. Scholes, "An Advisory Board."
41. For one of the many detailed summaries of the Department of Homeland Security's university programs from June 2004, see its Web site, www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?theme =27&content=3856 (accessed September 7, 2005).
42. Department of Homeland Security, "DHS Takes First Step to Select Homeland Security Centers of Excellence," July 23, 2003, www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/dispIay?content=1o86;
43. "University of Southern California Chosen as First Homeland Security Center for Excellence, " Department of Homeland Security, www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/dispIay?theme=43 &content=3018 (accessed September 7, 2005).
44. Department of Homeland Security, "Department of Homeland Security Announces $12 Million Funding for Social and Behavioral Scientists to Study Terrorism, " press release, July 6, 2004, www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/ display?content=3803.
45. Michael Kennedy is not alone in this critical reformulation of area studies. Arjun Appadurai calls for a replacement of "trait-based" geographies-bound and predetermined by place-with those geared to the dynamic movement of people who make them. Gayatri Spivak urges a turn to a potent mix of area studies and comparative literature, arguing that literature surprises and incites the imagination, and sights emergent forms in ways that history cannot. For one of Michael Kennedy's many pieces on this issue, see "A Manifesto (of Sorts) for Area Studies, " Journal of the International Institute 4, no. 3 (1997), www.umich.edu/∼iinet/journal/vol4no3/kennedy. html.
46. See also Arjun Appardurai, "Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination," in his Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 1-21;
47. Gayatri Spivak, Death of a Discipline (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).
48. Timothy Eagan, "Wanted: Border Hoppers; And Some Excitement, Too, " New York Times, April 1, 2005.
49. See Michel Foucault, "For an Ethics of Discomfort, " in The Politics of Truth, ed. and trans. Sylvère Lotringer (New York: Semiotext(e), 1997), 135-46.
50. Sec Chalmers Johnson, "America's Empire of Bases," Common Dreams, January 15, 2004, www.commondreams.org/viewso4/0115-08.htm.
51. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
52. Amy Kaplan, The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 12.
53. See Ann Laura Stoler, "Haunted by Empire: Domains of the Intimate and the Practices of Comparison, " in her Haunted by Empire: Race and Colonial Intimacies in North American History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
54. See Mateo Taussig, "Sacrifice, Gift, and Contrast in U.S. Immigration Detention Camps, " (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2005).
55. Michel de Certeau, Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 154-55.
56. On the sexual service for empires military barracks, see Hanneke Ming, "Barrack Concubinage in the Indies, 1887-1920, " Indonesia 35 (1983): 65-93;
57. Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex, and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and their Critics (New York: St. Martins, 1980);
58. Cynthia Enloe, "It Takes More Than Two: The Prostitute, the Soldier, the State, and the Entrepreneur, " in The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 142-60.
59. Irene Silverblatt, Modern Inquisitions: Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized World (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); see also Michael Taussig, "Culture of Terror, Space of Death, " Comparative Studies in Society and History 26 (1984): 467-97.
60. See Ann Laura Stoler, "Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers, " in Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 79-111.
61. Department of Homeland Security, "Threats and Protection: Home and Community, " www.dhs.gov/dhspubIic/disp!ay?theine=32 (accessed September 7, 2005).
62. Department of Homeland Security, "Remarks by Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge Announcing the Emergency Preparedness Guide for Homeowners," Washington, DC, January 26, 2005, www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/ display?content=4315.
63. Homeownership Alliance, www.homeownershipalliance.com (accessed December 7, 2005); Department of Homeland Security, "Emergency Preparedness Guide," www.homeowiershipalliance.com/documents/emergency-final-ooo.pdf (accessed September 7, 2005);
64. see also DHS Press Release, January 26, 2005, www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/ interapp/ press-reIease/press-releasc-o6o5.xml.
65. The Department of Homeland Security's "Emergency Preparedness Guide" features a photograph of six young children selling lemonade; www.homeownershipalliance.com/documents/emergency-final.pdf (accessed September 7, 2005);
66. see also "Ready Kids" at the DHS-sponsored Web site, www.ready.gov (accessed November 30, 2005);
67. FEMA for kids, www.fcma.gov/kids (accessed November 30, 2005).
68. See Jackie Orr, "The Militarization of Inner Space," Critical Sociology 30 (2004): 451-81.
69. On social etymology, see Stoler, McGranahan, and Perdue, "Reassessing the Terrain."
70. Michel Foucault, "Two Lectures," in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 82.