humanitasThe Bulletin of the Institute for the Humanities Volume One: Spring 2002 S I M O N F R A S E R U N I V E R S I T Y humanitas

Staff

Don Grayston, Trish Graham, Director Program Assistant

Humanitas editors Jerry Zaslove Trish Graham Donald Grayston

Layout and design Eryn Holbrook Program Information, Continuing Studies

About the Institute Steering Committee The Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser Donald Grayston University, now almost twenty years in existence, Institute Director and Department of Humanities Faculty, initiates, supports and promotes programs devoted Simon Fraser University to the exploration and dissemination of knowledge Stephen Duguid about the traditional and modern approaches to the Department of Humanities Faculty and Chair, study of the humanities. Simon Fraser University The Institute sponsors a wide variety of community- Mary Ann Stouck based activities, along with its university-based Department of Humanities and English Faculty, academic programs. Simon Fraser University

Ian Angus Institute for the Humanities Department of Humanities Faculty, Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University 8888 University Drive Tom Nesbit Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6 Director, Centre for Integrated and Credit Studies, Fax: 604-291-5855 Continuing Studies, Simon Fraser University

2 Table of Contents

5 Director’s Letter Director, Donald Grayston

6 Humanitas: A Commentary Director Emeritus, Jerry Zaslove

Issues of Peace: Violence and its Alternatives

9 Make Sense Not War: Lloyd Axworthy Receives Thakore Visiting Scholar Award excerpt from Lloyd Axworthy, The Globe and Mail

10 Thakore Award 2001: Lloyd Axworthy John Doheny

12 The Thakore Award for the Year 2000: The Narmada Struggle Don Grayston

13 Walking the Land: the MIR Centre for Peace Myler Wilkinson humanitas 15 Violence on Bowen Island, September 2000 Steve Duguid Acknowledgements 16 Systemic Violence—Typicalities and Peculiarities of The Institute for the Humanities Violence in Our Time acknowledges the support for excerpt from Wolf-Dieter Narr its programs received through the Simons Foundation, the J.S. 18 Violence and Love: Changing God’s Mind Woodsworth Endowment fund, (Metanoia) Joanne Brown and the Simon Fraser excerpt from John O’Neill University Publications fund. 20 Joanne Brown Symposium on Violence For further information contact and its Alternatives: October 2001 Donald Grayston at [email protected], excerpt from Steve Levine’s: “Mimetic Wounds: Trauma and telephone 604-291-5516 or Trish Drama in Pyschotherapy and the Arts” a review of Trauma: A Graham at [email protected], telephone Genealogy by Ruth Leys 604-291-5855. Visit our website at www.sfu.ca/humanities-institute/ Human Rights and Democratic Development

22 Human Rights at SFU Humanitas Bob Russell Bulletin of the Institute for the Humanities 24 A Just and Viable Peace? The Facts on the Ground Volume 1 – Spring 2002 Jane Power © 2002, Simon Fraser University 25 Ed Broadbent Conference excerpt from Democratic Equality: What Went Wrong? 3 Table of Contents

Humanities and Community Education

27 Our Own Backyard: a Participatory Community Project Tammie Tupechka

29 Critical U: An Experiment in Utopian Pedagogy Marke Coté, Richard Day and Greig de Peuter

31 Ever Since Sociobiology: Evolutionary Psychology, Human Nature, and Public Policy and Private Decisions Charles Crawford

Humanities and Modern Culture

33 Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Domestic Space Kathy Mezei

33 Denise Riley at the Kootenay School of Writing Ted Byrne

34 The Humanities Department M.A. Stouck

34 Gavin Bryars: Visual Art Collaborations Petra Watson

Books Future Events

35 A Cell of One’s Own? 41 Classical Leanings Wayne Knights Reviews Stephen Duguid’s David Mirhady Can Prisons Work? The Prisoner as Object and Subject in Modern Corrections 43 Myrna Kostash: Grace MacInnis Visiting Scholar Program, 39 AlanWhitehorn: First J.S. Woodsworth Chair Spring 2002 Trish Graham, with an excerpt from Alan Whitehorn’s and Ian Angus Lorne Shirinian’s The Armenian Genocide 45 Canada Day 2000 40 Anarcho-Modernism: Toward a New excerpt from Myrna Kostash, Critical Theory The Globe and Mail Editor, Ian Angus

4 Director’s Letter education; and our awareness of A Valediction Forbidding Mourning this reality will also colour how we see the work of the Institute as an organization concerned not only If this, as we hope, is an annual first, that violence will be with us for its own projects, but for the bulletin, and if I survive any for the foreseeable future (earlier whole humanities enterprise in our vicissitudes which may come to me we used the phrase “Alternatives to University and our society. between now and the solemn date Violence,” but dropped it because To conclude, a word of personal (September 1, 2004) on which my it suggested a too-immediate introduction. I have been teaching retirement is already inscribed in the transcending of violence; this is a Religious Studies at SFU since 1989, Great Book of Pensions, this will be long haul we are all in for). Second, fulltime since 1993. The topics of my the first of three general reflections it suggests that there are alternatives course offerings convey to a large through which I will be reaching out available to us for the resolution of extent my intellectual and research to you, our friends and associates the disputes and struggles which interests: world religions, Gandhi, the at the University, in the city and keep so many people in our society Holocaust, Thomas Merton. A new beyond. from fullness of life. Of the other venture in 2002 will also be offered projects of the Institute alreay under In so doing, the first thing I want in the Graduate Liberal Studies way or envisaged you will read to do is to salute Professor Jerry program as well as the Humanities elsewhere in this bulletin. Zaslove, founding director of the Department, a course on pilgrimage Institute. I gave this reflection the It needs to be said, however, that the and anti-pilgrimage (by this latter title I did (from the poem by John importance of this human vision is term I mean our observed desire Donne, which is about Donne and not acknowledged by all, notably to visit such places as Hiroshima his wife—no connection to Jerry, at the governmental level. In an and Auschwitz, both of which I but a great title!)—because this op ed piece in The Globe and Mail visited during my study leave which newsletter, although in some sense a (August 30, 2001, A11), Thomas concluded at the end of August). valediction, a saying of farewell, does Axworthy delineates the shape of As an Anglican priest, I am a kind indeed forbid mourning and invites the federal government’s view of of throwback to an earlier time in celebration because Jerry has left us higher education as exemplified in England and elsewhere in which so much to celebrate. the recent commitment of funding scholar-clerics comprised the largest to 2000 new research chairs. These He has laboured for 18 years to build proportion, in some cases the are being allocated according to an Institute on what he has called entirety, of the professoriate. That how well universities have done in a public-sphere and public-service time is past; but in experiencing the attracting federal research council critical model; and this model is the generous acceptance of my two- grants, an approach which favours gift he now hands on to me and to all hatted vocation by my colleagues, I large universities with medical and of us. Those of you—faculty, steering am encouraged to believe that space engineering schools. One-third committee members, associates, exists in humanist discourse in both of these new chairs will go to the event participants—who took part the university context and that of the University of Toronto, UBC and in such searching enterprises as the wider society for engagement with McGill; the next third to the seven Legacy Project, The Spectacular State perspectives from Religious Studies schools next-ranked as recipients or the Joanne Brown Symposium as such, as also from the living of research grants; and the last on Violence and its Alternatives, communities of religious faith and third to the remaining schools. The to name only three, will recognize practice which in our multicultural government’s formula also dictates in these titles the vision which has and multifaith society are struggling that the natural sciences will receive consistently animated Jerry and his to take part in discussions of public- 45% of the chairs, the health sciences colleagues over these past years. sphere and public-service concern— 35%, and the social sciences and Jerry, thank you, and all good things the very focus of the Institute. humanities only 20%. If, however, to you in—retirement? The language the chairs were to be allocated on the Vale then, to Jerry; ave to you our will need a new word! basis of existing full-time faculty in readers and supporters. I look I fully support this model for the these three divisions, the percentage forward to working with many of you work of the Institute, and I invite you of chairs given to the social sciences in the ongoing work of an Institute as readers of this bulletin to get in and humanities would, according to with a distinguished past and a future touch with me if you have ideas of Axworthy, more than double. This is both engaging and engaged. how it may be developed. In acting unlikely to happen; but Axworthy’s on this vision and model, we will bringing of the situation to our Donald Grayston, PhD continue to explore the demanding attention reminds us that we cannot Director, Institute for the Humanities issue/complex of issues which we take for granted understanding have been calling Violence and its of and adequate support for the Alternatives. The phrase suggests, humanities in Canadian higher 5 Humanitas: A Commentary — Jerry Zaslove

This edition of Humanitas introduces when the public can have a jaundiced and expansion. But demands for the new bulletin of the Institute eye about universities that are trying results and fears of rocking the boat for the Humanities. It follows to be all things to all people. Our might be more a part of the picture upon several previous newsletters, Institute has a unique mandate in than ever before. In the knowledge which also featured reports from this regard: to support initiatives and industries, speed of change is no less events that we have programmed. develop and reinforce programs in remarkable than the obsolescence Humanitas reviews many of our human rights and social justice, peace of forms of knowledge. Fashion is programs that open the humanities studies, community education, and not only the provenance of mall to various communities of scholars, the arts in society. Easy words to write, boutiques. The Institute itself—along organizations and citizens. difficult to sustain! with many new programs—grew at a time when expansion was This edition of the bulletin celebrates However, it is clear that universities controversial. Our success depended the many years of co-operation are at a socio-economic crossroads— on the good will and support of with the J.S. Woodsworth Chair in perhaps they always have been. But several Deans and administrators who the Humanities, the Humanities the times have changed in my own 35 had the time to be curious and open Department—a vibrant addition to years at Simon Fraser. The crossroads about new mandates. A chair named Simon Fraser’s Faculty of Arts—and of intellectual work and research after J.S. Woodsworth and an institute the many community groups and interests intersect wider avenues with our mandate had to take risks individuals who have participated and the traffic is more congested. in exploring controversial issues with in Institute programs, and who have The struggle for new intellectual different audiences. provided inspiration and critical programs is sometimes against, response to our activities. sometimes in accord with older Our programs have varied, and yet departments and disciplines. This maintain a coherence that I am very Simon Fraser’s Institute for the is an old story: the new story is that proud of. All programs and events Humanities is unique in Canada universities today must take stock of are not directly reported on here. because we are connected to an the formidable new demands from Programs range from challenges to academic department and an the public, industry, governments and the Canadian welfare state in the endowed chair, which gives us a research bureaucracies or they will context of social democracy and mandate that allows us freedom be labelled as obsolete, delinquent, equality to recognition of human to explore many different ways parasites. We hear cries for new forms rights issues. One example is our to work with social and cultural of competence, and new problem- recent support of an exhibition of organizations and individuals. When solving techniques push older John Humphrey’s life and work on we began in 1983 there was only forms of knowledge to the edge of the birth of the declaration of human one similar institute in Canada. extinction—witness the elimination rights—Humphrey was the Canadian Now there are several. At that time, of departments at many universities, author of the UN’s Declaration many American universities began to including Simon Fraser and the of Human Rights. From Chief Joe develop institutes and centers for the University of British Columbia. Senior Gosnell’s inspired representation of humanities. Some have been inspired administrators must be all things to all Aboriginal rights and the controversy by new orientations to social and kinds of people—knowledge brokers, over the Nisga’a treaty, to a one-day cultural criticism; some are heavily fund-raisers, anti-bureaucratic conference on the nuclear arsenals endowed. Most exist at the crossroads bureaucrats as well as academics and and arms threats between India and of departments and faculties—often financial soothsayers. Students pay a Pakistan at the Surrey Arts Center—at taking on Hermes-like poses in order heavy price for being at a university which human rights speakers from to tease out new critical positions that may itself not see what it is. Since Pakistan, India and Canada spoke— and ideas. Like us, they are inspired 1965 when I arrived at Simon Fraser the community and the Institute by the need to define cultural and University, a small university has gone collaborated to bring a rights-based intellectual problems in new ways, or through a rite of passage that tested its vision to the public. This particular to search for new shelters for thought legitimacy as an academic institution event accompanied a curated or to provoke universities to examine that could go fifteen rounds with the exhibition of compelling photographs themselves and take action on critical heavyweight Canadian universities. from India by Hari Sharma, professor social issues. Some are fashionable, It seems to have achieved a level of emeritus in sociology. The connection some not. Universities have respect that allows that it is no longer to the history and cultures of announced their desire to find new a fledgling university, or a dissident Southeast Asia comes to SFU with the ways to develop public participation one. This means it is troubled (and Institute’s annual co-sponsorship of and enlarge public discourse in times graced) with the problems of growth the Gandhi peace and

6 alternatives to violence program on of a Labor Studies Archive and have Roman Onufrijchuk of the Knowledge October 2. We have also sponsored or worked with Mark Leier in History Network. collaborated with other organizations and the Archives’ recent benefactor, in supporting rights-based initiatives; Margaret Morgan of the Margaret The mandate (and sensibility!) of for example, the South Asian Network and Lefty Morgan Endowment Fund, the Institute’s proximity to the J. S. for Secularism and Democracy and to further a labor and community Woodsworth Chair was recently its speakers on diaspora and social education project that is close to the tested by the controversy over the justice. We have supported several spirit of the Woodsworth legacy and appointment of David Noble, social programs that raised challenges to the Institute’s programs in social historian at York University, to the the exploitation of East Timor by justice. Chair. The controversy is symbolic of the Indonesian state and military. current controversies—symptomatic See the commentary by Bob Russell The Institute is also an important perhaps of the times—over the in this issue (page 22) among other university resource and has changing norms of the ideas of commentaries. collaborated with, and sought advice academic freedom. and assistance from departments and The humanities is a subject area, individuals from many disciplines: Professor Noble, who is well known but it also studies methods about history, political science, geography, nationally and internationally for how we explore and represent communications, women’s his written and spirited public—and modernity in artistic worlds. That is studies, psychology, sociology, and one should add humanities-based— the fate of the humanities everywhere criminology. criticism of the uses of technology today—to be cross-cultural and to for the “brave new world” of the critique ethnocentrism and cultural A new and important venture was Internet-boom, weathered criticism monomania, yet to study classic texts undertaken several years ago with the from various administrative bodies and authors. Why? The end of the Knowledge Network. The Institute and faculty members after his century has loudly proclaimed itself and the educational television station appointment was recommended by as harboring the end of just about produced and aired six 30-minute the Humanities Department after everything and the beginning of the programs entitled “Conflicting a sanctioned search for a Chair. A new. New urbanized audiences in Publics.” The interviews were with second review was returned to the Vancouver are asked to struggle with seven distinguished social theorists department, only to be rejected once notions of the communal as well who have changed our understanding again by the Dean of Arts and the as its new-found identity in urban of what constitutes the idea of the University Appointments Committee. modernism—a topic at home in the “public” today—John O’Neill, Axel The controversy was so fraught with humanities from the time of the polis Honneth, Jean Elshtain, Ernesto tangible implications for academic to the various religious and utopian Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Arne Naess, freedom and university governance ideas that inform our Canadian and George McRobie. They have that two outside reviews of the culture. Cultures in transition will been aired often on the Knowledge procedures were undertaken—one by tend to resurrect ideas of community, Network. The program concept was the University President, and one, at and today the troubles of nation-state a collaboration with Ian Angus, lead the request of David Noble, by the politics downloading services to the interviewer and writer, me, and private and community sectors affect local traditions and choices. This is why it has been important for the Institute to participate in initiatives where museums and galleries are opening up avenues to new audiences and to support voluntarist initiatives. We have worked with the Vancouver Art Gallery, Presentation House in North Vancouver, Burnaby Art Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery, The Roundhouse in Yaletown, Britannia Community School, Britannia Community Services Center, SPARC, and Simon Fraser’s continuing education programs under Mark Selman and Debbie Bell. The Institute has supported books on prison education published by New Star Books, and edited by Peter Murphy of the College of the Cariboo. We have supported the development

7 Canadian Association of University of these issues and there have been committed Director, and his Teachers. other similar cases in Canada. colleagues—are eminently qualified to help us think through Wherever one stands on this serious As I write, the violence of global these issues. I wish to thank my controversy—some see it as the warfare has superceded the colleagues and friends for the intrusion of “global order” politics many existing civil wars as well as opportunity over the years to be into the University’s right to initiate continuing the old cold war by other a public intellectual where one and support criticism without means. Paramount: the way the can say, without too much piety fear of offending segments of the wealthy and powerful “West” faces in a world that is full of pieties, public. Others see Professor Noble’s the parts of the world that live by local that academic freedom is not scholarship and his public persona and community logics, not only by just about being free to be an as an issue about his “collegiality”. free trade and old moneyed powers. academic, but is the freedom to Issues of academic freedom have The technological revolution, which test the limits of academic life once more stirred awareness of how a affects ordinary people, legislators and to participate in the life of the university can handle difficult issues and power-brokers who live in wider community by distributing that arise over corporate identity and symbolic, ideological and religious knowledge in what Hannah what constitutes the appropriate way worlds, has made the world smaller, Arendt described as the vita for controversial humanities issues not larger, and at the same time activa. Put another way, the future to be presented to the public. This more overwhelming. Not least is the of the world may well be about may be the real issue today—that inability of the rich world to convey the “clash of cultures” but not the university is not an ivory tower. and represent its “universal”—that is knowing the implication of this It engages the public by acting as a geopolitical and liberal—principles idea may create the conditions for social movement in a restless liberal for social justice, diversity and having no future at all. society. However, if the society itself tolerance to premodern economies is searching for an identity that it and cultures and, yes, to its own poor. may have lost, both may mirror The new “clash of cultures” (as Samuel each other’s wandering in the global Huntington names and describes it wilderness. The coercive forces that in The Clash of Civilizations and the limit or whittle away at autonomy Remaking of World Order, 1996) brings are not always clearly known even to the ends of the earth right up to our those of us who work here. Funding doorsteps. Finally, as the shadows education, finding meaningful of a “New World Order” creep over employment for humanities students, us, what are the priorities for the judging the confusions about the humanities? Inner exile? Engagement? difference between training and Cynicism? Retrenchment? Or education determine whether this is engagement with the world of an enclave of, by and for academics ideas-in-the-making? Who decides? and students, or is an enclave of other In times when the whole picture is social forces. One hopes it is a public overwhelming one yearns for the facts resource that frames civic competence and news that is not managed. by describing fearlessly and openly Jerry Zaslove how these pressures, interests and My colleague, Don Grayston—the Director Emeritus forces work. The Noble case raises all Institute’s new and steadfastly Institute for the Humanities 8 Make Sense Not War Lloyd Axworthy Receives Thakore Visiting Scholar Award

The 2001 recipient of the Thakore Visiting Scholar Award was Dr. Lloyd Axworthy, Canada’s foreign minister from 1996 to 2000. What follows is an excerpt from an article published in The Globe and Mail (September 17, 2001, A17). In it, Dr. Axworthy expressed many of the same thoughts at the address he gave at SFU on October 2, 2001 and in the seminar to which he spoke on October 3. It should be noted that this was written, and his addresses given, before the bombing of Afghanistan started on October 7—an initiative taken without, in the view of many, the “bona fide international mandate and ... clear culpable target” which he posited as a requirement for Canada to join in any military action there.

The Thakore Visiting Scholar Award is presented annually to an outstanding public figure who in some way carries forward the legacy of Muhatma Gandhi. The award is co-sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities, the Thakore Charitable Foundation, and the India Club.

Excerpt from “Make sense, not war” by Lloyd Axworthy, The Globe and Mail, this. There are three promising signs: First is the September 17, 2001 recognition that existing defences don’t work and that even the United States, with all its military As rescue workers continue their painful search might and far reaching intelligence network, through the debris, as families of victims move was penetrated by a disciplined ring of zealots. from shock to private grief, as the media resumes Second is the rallying of support by friends and regular coverage and sporting events return, the allies conveying the message that we are all in this shock waves from the surprise terrorist attacks together. Third is the initiative put forward by the against the United States continue to reverberate Bush Administration for an international coalition around the world. to fight terrorism, a clear departure from its previous postures eschewing collective responses The foundations that are being shaken are to global issues. NATO’s decision to invoke Article not those of cement and steel. They are the Five, the collective security clause that considers assumptions, practices and policies upon attack against one member as an attack against all, which our international reinforces this approach. security system has been based: inviolate borders, One could see such The foundations that are being sovereignty, defence of “coalition building” as the nation state. Now, it shaken are not those of cement and a ploy to gather support is human security that is steel. They are the assumptions, for a military strike. at stake …This changing practices and policies upon which But, Prime Minister global character of the our international security system Chretien got it right security threat is not a has been based: inviolate borders, when he indicated that recent discovery. It has this solidarity was not a sovereignty, defence of the nation been on the agenda at blank cheque for quick international gatherings state. military intervention. His for several years. The prudence should prevail. G8 has had annual Only if there is a bona fide discussions on a global international mandate response to terrorism, and several major treaties and a clear, culpable target, should Canada join in have been negotiated and ratified under UN any military action. auspices. But the rhetoric has far outweighed Issues of Peace: Violence and its Alternatives the commitment to collaborative international What is also in the offing is the opportunity for a action. The prevailing attitude has been that number of nations to work together to apprehend the human security challenge could and should the guilty parties. While it may not serve the same be managed primarily by domestic measures visceral urges for revenge that a military action such as tighter controls at borders, or through provides, the coalition would better serve the conventional military responses such as surgical battle against terrorism by using due process under bombing strikes. Multilateralism of an effective international law to bring the culprits to justice. We kind was simply not a priority. have the mechanisms, we need only the will to use them, as we have in Rwanda and the Balkans. The aftermath of Tuesday’s attack may change 9 agreements setting out More than that, this international responsibilities of governments Canada can play an active role in coalition is in a position to begin and individuals on such issues as shaping this agenda. I suggest we constructing a highly integrated world harbouring suspected terrorists, promote the idea that the Statute of wide system of intelligence sharing, financing their activities and Rome establishing the International police coordination, passport control, cooperating on arrest and trial. Those Criminal Court be amended to include travel surveillance and judicial countries found to have aided and terrorist attacks against civilians to be a enforcement against terrorists and abetted terrorists will be named, crime against humanity. their supporters. shamed and sanctioned. And even our closest allies must understand the This must be based on a new need to have no truck nor trade with framework of international those who feed terror.

The Thakore Award: Lloyd Axworthy

—John Doheny

The Honourable Lloyd Axworthy, PC, travelling across the country speaking, speaking out against the possible PhD, received the Thakore Visiting consulting and listening. uses of nuclear weapons in the light Scholar Award for his initiative and of NATO activity and International accomplishments as Minister of His initiative for a Land Mines Treaty Law, urging the elimination of such Foreign Affairs. While in that Ministry, gained enormous support. One weapons on both moral and legal he created the Canadian Centre for hundred and twenty-seven countries grounds. Foreign Policy Development and signed on initially and the total has brought citizen participation into the now reached 139; $500 million have All this activity is part of the emphasis political process through a variety been donated for removing land on human security and universal of peace building consultations: mines. He and his Ministry began peace as well as the struggle to avert conferences including individuals, to expose, in an effort to stop, the crimes against humanity which are international organizations, growing use of child soldiers. His being pursued every day. Human like-minded governments, non- lecture concerning Emma points security involves a “shift of security governmental organizations and out the horrors of a continuing concerns from those focused on representatives of his Ministry inhuman practice. Emma was a national interests to those affecting the kidnapped child who was forced to individual [which] offers a different become a child-bride, lens through which to understand and was trained as a soldier implement policy. It gives a way of to kill her own family, translating post cold war trends into a and became a single framework that suggests responses of mother in the course a global kind and does challenge the of this inhumanity. She assumptions of a state based system, escaped her enslavement emphasizing the need for international to a refugee camp cooperation and governance.” 2 and traveled briefly to Canada to plead for help The UN charter on cross border and for changes in the aggression by states notes that “of 174 way children are now million people who have lost their lives abused in the world. Hers unnaturally at the hands of others, 34 is “a story heard every million died in traditional wars, 140 day,” he says, “around the million died at the hands globe.” 1 of their own pathological governments.” 3 Clearly, these bleak Dr. Axworthy also speaks statistics indicate a necessity for global out often in lectures and action, a shifting of international interviews on the effects focus. “This focus on the security of of war on women and the individual not the state became the The World’s Fair children—the innocent basis of the foreign policy approach of “All men are brothers.” victims—as well as Canada, what we called 10 our human security strategy—efforts he earned his PhD in Political Science contemporary global phenomena at developing partnerships with from Princeton University with a “assume a number of different NGO’s and like minded governments dissertation on Federal Urban Policy. forms… Each is the consequence to secure the safety and security of recent human activity; each of people. It led us into the Ottawa In 1973 Dr. Axworthy was elected to now influences humankind in process on land mines, taking a the Manitoba Legislative Assembly. unprecedented fashion. The attention lead on the International Criminal He taught as Professor of Political of the Liu Centre will be focussed on Court, developing a protocol for Science at the University of Winnipeg the causative factors of that influence, the protection of civilians in UN until 1979 when he successfully ran not upon the products.”6 Dr. Axworthy peacekeeping missions, a prohibition for the Federal Liberal Party. Except for expects the Liu Centre to be “a on the illegal transfer of small arms a sabbatical from politics in the late junction point of ideas and action.”7 and a covenant proscribing the use of 1980s when he went to Nicaragua “and in which professors, graduate child soldiers.” 4 discovered first hand the devastating students and people of action work impact of land mines and how the together to affect policy for human Born in 1939 in North Battleford, Contra war, a surrogate war, was security and universal peace. Saskatchewan, Lloyd Axworthy grew destroying the lives and hopes of up in Winnipeg, Manitoba where his simple people,”5 Axworthy remained Though Lloyd Axworthy is receiving father was an insurance agent and his in office until 2000 when he decided the Thakore Award for his activities mother was active in United Church not to run again. Upon retiring from as Minister of Foreign Affairs, it might groups devoted to helping others. governmental politics, he became the also have been extended for promise These early influences led the young Director and Chief Executive Officer of in the future of continuing and Lloyd Axworthy to become active in the Liu Centre for the Study of Global expanding these and similar activities such groups, and his parents and his Issues at the University of British concerning human security—the religion played a major part in the Columbia. environmental problems in the development of his personal ethics, world and universal peace, involving, as he argued in a recent TV interview. “Working within governmental politics perhaps, declaring against the While religion remains part of his is not good enough since politicians militarization and consequent personal ethics, he insisted in the seldom have time to know enough weaponization of space—in his interview that it was never a part of about the world as they should,”5 new centre. Now unrestrained by his political action to push religion. Axworthy claims. “The Liu Centre was political party and governmental launched on the premise that scholars considerations, he can allow his early When he did turn to politics, Lloyd and practitioners, working together feelings of individual independence Axworthy joined the Young Liberals in collaborative interdisciplinary to carry the research and analysis because he enjoyed the debates fashion, are able to produce fresh, more deeply into the causes of the among those on the left of centre, at coherent policy-relevant studies of dilemmas leading to more effective the centre, and on the right of centre, value to the governance function.” ideas, proposals and action than where one’s own ideas were refined The current world has changed nation-state government allows. or changed—all with the hope that radically from what it used to be. these ideas would lead to political and The old methods of governance social action. and dealing with problems are too limited. According to Axworthy, In 1961 Dr. Axworthy earned a BA in Political Science from United College (later renamed the University 1 University of Victoria, President’s Distinguished Lecture, “An Encounter with Emma.” of Winnipeg) and an MA from Princeton University in 1963. Until 2 “Notes” for a lecture. 1979 he balanced his academic 3 Lecture, Duke University, “Humanitarian Intervention.” activity, intellectual development 4 Lecture, Duke University, “Humanitarian Intervention.” and politics. During that period, he taught for a year at Middlebury 5 Telephone interview, 11 June 2001 College, Middlebury, Vermont. He 6 Liu Centre Programme. was teaching and studying at the 7 Telephone Interview, 11 June 2001. University of Winnipeg from 1965 to 1967 when he went to Ottawa to work for the Liberals and John Turner. From 1969 to 1973 he was professor at the University of Winnipeg where his main function was as Director of the Institute of Urban Studies. In 1972

11 The Thakore Award for the Year 2000: The Narmada Struggle —Don Grayston

On October 2, 2000, the Thakore of the Supreme Court buildings, as It is taken from her statement to the Award was presented to Medha a result of which the NBA leaders, court (one thinks here of Gandhi before Patkar and Sri Baba Amte, longtime including novelist Arundhati Roy, the British courts in India) in response Gandhian activists. It was accepted were charged with contempt of court. to the contempt charge: in person only by Medha Patkar, In response to this charge, a number inasmuch as Baba Amte was of prominent Indian activists, as “I have worked for the last 16 years prevented by age and infirmity from well as thousands of village-level for the cause of … people, tribals being present with us at Simon Fraser. supporters, asked to be named as co- and peasants, who will be adversely Those of us who were there heard defendants. affected by the Sardar Sarovar Project an address from a woman with the and other gigantic projects in the heart of a tiger, “burning bright,” as In another incident, Medha Patkar, Narmada Valley and elsewhere. I William Blake said, a woman utterly Arundhati Roy and another colleague, have raised the issue of such mega- committed to her struggle. in an entirely fabricated set of projects, the development, planning, charges, were accused of assault, democratic and human rights and What then is the Narmada struggle public drunkenness, the uttering of economic issues, and the consumption in which Medha Patkar and Baba death threats and the employment of monetary and natural resources by Amte have been involved since 1985? of goon squads to intimidate the such projects. I have also suggested just It involves the projected building proponents of the project. Clearly and sustainable alternatives in water, of a huge complex of dams on the their opponents, powerful politicians energy and other sectors. Most of Narmada River, the Sardar Sarovar and industrialists, are trying to those that I work with in the Valley are Project, initiated by three state exhaust their movement by tying the going to lose their lands, their homes, governments in the northwest of leaders up in costly court cases. Other their forests, their communities, their India. The dams are understood by incidents of defamation, intimidation culture and indeed their very identity their proponents in terms of the and the killing of activists have because of this project. I have taken vision of former Prime Minister followed. up their cause because I can feel their Nehru, who saw them as the key to loss; I can identify with them—they are India’s economic growth. In fact what In response, the NBA organized a indeed like my family. I will continue has happened is that the project parikrama, or village walkabout, in to fight for them in every forum and has become a sinkhole for public which activists moved from village to in every way that I can. I will continue money, a context of corruption and village in the basin of the Narmada, to challenge the unjust system that power-grabbing by local politicians, organizing teach-ins and celebrations deprives common people, especially and, worst of all, the cause of the through dancing and singing of the those in the natural resource-based destruction of a way of life lived for cultural importance of the Narmada, communities who pay the cost for thousands of years by the people who seen in Hindu tradition as a goddess the benefit of those who already have have lived in a peaceful relationship and mother of the region. It has also much more than they. I will continue to with the great Narmada River. Some successfully organized a dharna or help them raise their voices in protest 35,000 of these people, many of sit-in at the Tehri Dam, which is being against this system even if I have to do them adivasis, or aboriginal people, built in a seismically highly sensitive so against the Judiciary and the Courts. have already been displaced from location, not far from the epicentre of I will continue to do so as long as I their homes, and the many political the January 2000 earthquake in Bhuj. can, even if I have to be punished for promises of rehabilitation and contempt for doing that.” resettlement unkept. Here in Medha Patkar’s own words (from a recent email) is what is A number of events have transpired happening in the Narmada struggle. since Medha Patkar’s visit to Simon Fraser last October. In November the Supreme Court of India ruled against the Narmada Bachao Andolan (the After Medha Patkar’s visit to SFU, a Narmada support group was formed in the movement inspired by Medha Patkar Lower Mainland (contact Gunwant Shah, 604-421-4744). Anyone interested and Baba Amte) and authorized the in receiving updates on the struggle can write the Narmada Bachao Andolan state governments to proceed with the directly at [email protected] and ask to be placed on its mailing list. Given damming project. The NBA protested the strength of both sides in this struggle, strength of very different kinds, we can this by means of a rally held in front expect it to continue without letup well into the foreseeable future.

12 Walking the Land: The MIR Centre For Peace Castlegar, British Columbia —Myler Wilkinson

The Kootenay region of British Columbia lies about 350 miles due east of Vancouver in the narrow mountain valleys of the Selkirk range. The region is both physically and psychically distant from the major urban centres of the province. It has always been a place of retreat, often enough of exile, for the peoples who have found their ways here: the First Nations who followed the Columbia and Kootenay river systems as traditional fishing grounds, the Japanese Canadians who were interned in “ghost towns” in the early 1940s, the young American war resisters of the 1960s and 1970s and members of the counter culture from many nationalities who came here seeking simpler more sane existences, and of course the Doukhobors who began coming to the Kootenays almost 100 years ago now and developed one of the most impressive communal-pacifist societies in North American history.

Our story, and the brief history of the MIR Centre for Peace, is bound up with all these peoples and their histories, embedded in the many layers of history which make up the social reality of this unique area of British Columbia. But in order to understand what the MIR Centre for Peace stands for, and what it might become, we must first move back from the larger levels of public history and begin with a personal story.

For as long as my wife, Linda, and I have lived in the Kootenays and taught at Selkirk College, we have been fascinated by the physical setting of the College—situated on a point of came to an land which overlooks the confluence end. This of the Kootenay and Columbia rivers. place above A particular kind of genius of place the two emanates from this geography—lands rivers, still where First Nations have gathered alive with the ghosts for millennia, where Doukhobors of native peoples and the settled and began to create a flowering Doukhobor community, may communal life rich with the knowledge be the single most beautiful and of growing things and traditional culturally significant spot in the craft, and where, most recently, Kootenays. was constructed the site of the first community college in the province. It happened that one afternoon in the early autumn of 1999, as For as long as we have known this we were walking over the land magical place, my wife and I have along this route, a sudden and taken a particular walk through the blindingly clear insight revealed landscape whenever the world has itself to us: that this was one of become too much with us: down the the last remaining Doukhobor hill from the main campus, through a communal buildings in forest to a meandering ox-bow created something approaching an by the Kootenay river, across a meadow original state, that the elderly resonating with meadow larks, blue birds Doukhobor woman who was and other wild creatures, up a hillside living in the house (at the pleasure path to a bluff which spectacularly of the College which owned the overlooks the Columbia river, and property) would not last here many finally along a winding dirt road to more winters, that something needed an old Doukhobor communal brick to be done to save this landmark, and home surrounded by an eighty year old “that something” should be a Centre orchard of apple and pear trees—still for Peace, a living memorial to past flowering two generations after the belief and future practice. Doukhobor communal experiment Soon after this walk, the word MIR 13 became increasingly important in community leaders such as John seminar and meeting activities, and our understanding of what the Peace Verigin Jr. of the USCC Doukhobors, potentially one space which would Centre might represent: MIR—an and Marilyn James who represents be dedicated to cultural and spiritual ancient and complex Russian word the Siniixt people of this region. reflection. Our plan is to create a which means at one and the same Increasingly there has been interest living museum and educational space time, peace, community, and world. in the Peace Centre from community with courses in peace and social Its original meaning emerges from groups who want to offer their skills justice studies, conflict resolution and the Russian village where the mir and financial support freely without healing, international cultures and was the smallest unit of community any demand for public recognition. literatures, environmental analysis agreement and consensus arrived at The British Columbia government, and community institutes. In addition freely by the people. through the B.C. Heritage Trust in to learning spaces, we have completed Victoria, has been very generous in architectural drawings which include This was our starting point for providing initial funding for structural space for a small library, a few offices, imagining a site for peace based feasibility studies of the building, as well as a kitchenette which would in community experience and and then for the complete heritage allow for more informal community consensus but reaching out to larger renovation of the roof just prior to first gatherings. worlds—a centre for “understanding snowfall last winter. and building cultures of peace” which We have learned a few indelible became our most basic philosophical The physical structure now has been lessons as far as we have come with principle. Very soon, too, we realized secured, and we are beginning to the MIR Centre for Peace: we know that in addition to being based in the work on the next phases not only of now, even more clearly than we did historical and cultural experience of the heritage reconstruction of the before, of the importance of taking our place, any successful Centre for Doukhobor building, but also in walks, of staying close to the earth Peace would need to be “vertically carefully defining the philosophical, but not fearing to raise one’s eyes integrated”—in other words that old pedagogical and cultural goals of the upwards. We have found that many methods of understanding peace and Peace Centre. This is exciting and other people walk the same paths, or social justice and healing were often necessary work, which will require want to; that many others, when they enough sectarian in their approach, not only the skills and insight of our raise their eyes, see the same portents seeking one major path or goal; we working group but also assistance written in the skies above them. soon reached consensus that many from like-minded communities such paths to understanding and building as the Humanities Institute at Simon peace would need to be followed— Fraser University. Professor Jerry from questions of personal, spiritual Zaslove, then Humanities Institute and family understanding, to issues Director and a friend, visited the site of cultural and artistic importance, of our MIR Peace Centre earlier this to challenges of conflict resolution year and we began to talk of ways in based in community, global and which we might work together (one environmental arenas, and finally to of them being my agreement to serve the lived experiences of peoples such as an associate of the Humanities as the Doukhobors, First Nations and Institute over the next three years). others whose historical experience of peace, conflict and the need for We would be happy to communicate healing go far beyond the merely with all people from the SFU theoretical. These voices needed to community who have an interest be listened to with seriousness, the in the idea of the MIR Centre for threads of their stories drawn together Peace. On a very practical physical and shared with other communities. level, the Doukhobor communal home will be renovated with a Events moved quickly following these strong fidelity to its original heritage initial insights: we received absolute structure, though we will be creating support and commitment from spaces and technology for modern the upper levels of administration education and communication. This at Selkirk College—people such will mean among other things: two as former President Leo Perra spaces for traditional seminar and and current President, Marilyn classroom activities, at least one or Luscombe—but also from other two other spaces for more creative

14 Violence on Bowen Island September 2000 —Steve Duguid

In September 2000 thirteen people ideas both informally and in ad hoc “…pervaded by a sense of sadness, of trekked to Bowen Island for a two- sessions. personal hurt…” as people recalled day seminar on violence. The first their own memories of life in the of what is to be an annual “Joanne In such a ‘hothouse’ atmosphere a schoolyards, neighbourhoods and Brown Symposium” (named for a wide range of ideas and perspectives streets of their youth. generous benefactor of the Institute are generated, especially since, as for the Humanities) was held at the Margaret Jackson pointed out, this In the post-mortem (!) of the Lodge at the Old Dorm on Bowen, just first symposium was meant to be a symposium two points seemed a short walk from Snug Cove. From “painting of the landscape.” Crudely to be salient in terms of where Thursday evening until Saturday summarized, John O’Neill offered a the symposium should go in its afternoon the participants enjoyed philosophical and aesthetic look at commitment to engaging with the that most pleasurable of academic violence with, as Ian Angus pointed issue of systemic violence. First, pursuits, the discussion of and out, a focus “…on violence as there was the feeling that such a debate about complex issues in an suffering, on the phenomenology of phenomenon cannot be understood environment abstracted from offices, violence as seen by the victim.” Wolf in the abstract. While it is important electronic mail, and interruptions Dieter-Narr’s contribution turned our that we attempt to create and sustain from the usual suspects. Host Dan attention to state violence and the a theoretical perspective on violence, Parkin provided gourmet meals, the structural dimensions of violence and, that attempt needs to be enriched weather was suitably benign (non- as Larry Green noted, the implications by analyses of specific types or case violent) and the living room-cum- of culturally imposed “bloodless studies. Second, we must be aware seminar room seated thirteen in abstractions” as commonplace of the danger that ‘understanding’ intimate comfort. What better place as “personalities reduced to job violence can often lead to excusing to engage with “Systemic Violence: descriptions.” Finally, Debra Pepler or condoning it and hence the very An Interdisciplinary and Comparative brought the discussion to the very practice of studying violence with the Approach to Understanding, particular case of schoolyard violence, aim of understanding can have violent Experiencing and Responding to bullying and the other oppressions implications. Violence”? of youth. The discussion of Pepler’s work, as Ian Angus noted, was Three individuals were asked to prepare papers for the symposium; John O’Neill from York University (Sociology), Wolf Dieter-Narr from the Free University of Berlin, and Debra Pepler from York University (Director of the LaMarsh Centre for Research on Violence and Conflict Resolution). These papers along with the introduction to the seminar by Jerry Zaslove provided the substance around which the discussion and debate took place. The format meant that each paper could be presented and discussed at length and the speakers had the opportunity to prepare responses to the discussion. The informal setting, ample time for discussion, communal meals and evening visits to local establishments gave each participant the opportunity to explore issues in depth, ask questions, and present their own

15 Systemic Violence Typicalities and Peculiarities of Violence in Our Time September 2000

Excerpted from a presentation by Wolf- astonishing silence about violence Dieter Narr, Free University of Berlin at the end of the twentieth and the To give a hint for a possible proof beginning of the twenty-first century of the general assertions I just Violence is everywhere. It is a —at least in Western societies and have made: if one would try to universal phenomenon. Vertically and their social sciences. Or to put it more summarize most of the literature on horizontally: Urbi et orbi. It seems to correctly: according to the established all kinds of global trends and global be almost an ontological given, an mainstreams of thought and their transformations, one would have to essential part of the human condition formulas of power, violence is always state two facts. First, the lack of any related as it is between natality and a phenomenon of the generalized analysis of the inbuilt violence in mortality. and the specific other. Violence is regard to the main factors and driving the expression of the individual forces of globalization; second, Violence is everywhere today. It is and/or the collective outsider, or of all indications in regard to the big implicit and lurks explicit in all kinds marginalized people here and there. problems ahead notwithstanding, of aspects, configurations, dimensions Therefore it has to be criminalized an overwhelming “new positivism” and contexts. It ranges from collective and punished either by humanitarian exists, as I call it, of the will to power violence in the extremes of wars, “interventions,” the present day of “positive thinking”. It goes without i.e. mass murder and genocidal just wars for example against the saying that this kind of “positivism” “purges”… to violence in cities and “rogue states,” or by criminal law is part of the almost structurally families, particularly and especially procedures of various kinds, that is to deceptive (pseudo-) politics in apparent in the violence of male say as the defense of given normalities these media times. But this kind of “people” against female “people.” against the permanent threat of the “positivism” is part and parcel of the challenges of abnormal, i.e. anomic, mainstream of the social sciences This extensive and intensive behaviour. too, which encompasses about 99% universality of violence of all kinds of activities that could be notwithstanding, there is quite an Do utopian dreams of non-violent labeled social scientific. Insofar one behaviour patterns become true? could safely state: “we”—of the West/ The slow, but steady expansion of North, of course, are living in safe civilization in a civilizing manner quarters in the middle of our cities seems to be nothing else but the and faculties—“we” are all positivists implementation of human progress now. hoped for since paradise lost. Taking as a symptom the astonishingly What about “violence“? (from another point of view, the Equivalent to its universal chameleon depressingly) joint language of the and Proteus-like expression there political personnel at large, and the is no term “violence,” let alone (therefore) influential representatives a concept, which could be used of the social sciences, there can comparatively distincte et claire. As be no doubt: “We,” the “West,” the soon as one begins to determine “North,” the OECD countries, these the term, and as soon as one tries wonderful tandems created out of to be precise, to limit its aspects, liberal democratic constitutions and dimensions and meanings, one freewheeling capitalism, move ahead faces the danger of covering up, of —always—in the right direction. It accepting quite a few non-decisions, is risky of course, but with risks to i.e. premises which have to be taken be taken, to pursue the golden path for granted and which make one of global growth and its worldwide accept as given the dominant or welfare dividends. “We” are moving opposing concept of “reality” and the toward a “global civil society,” its advantages or disadvantages of this individuals competing for higher and “reality”. It is not by chance that in one higher achievements. The Olympic of the leading German dictionaries Games are both a metaphor and a the overview about the various “reality,” the real thing at one and the meanings and the multitude of uses of same time. the term “violence”—in German

16 Gewalt—is probably the longest one to violence as an extraordinary nowhere? (Cf. Deutsches Wörterbuch of Jacob mediated phenomenon. The levels und Wilhelm Grimm, Munich 1984 and escalators of mediation increase My last criticism of a catchall Vol.6, pp. 4910–5234). quite a bit in the process, which is criticism, which becomes acritical, called modernity or civilization. links the first with the second As a political scientist and someone objection, i.e. the “postmodern” analytically and primarily concerned There are quite a few dangers implicit one. If almost all social events have with the modern state (and its in the use of the term violence in such something to do with violence, if “monopoly of the legitimate use of an undetermined manner. First, as everybody has to construe his or coercive power/or physical violence”) a vague term it becomes acritical. It her concept of violence him-, or and normatively oriented to what I cannot be used for analysis, which herself, why care about it? Everybody call a materialistic concept of human has to specify some conditions, if not construes his/her own term and rights, I tend to focus primarily on causal factors, more than the other deconstrues all the other ones. violence as a “physical fact”. But as ones. Otherwise “the man without What a joyful game of irrelevant soon as I limit my focus on violence qualities” (Robert Musil’s novel) terminological tennis. Everybody wins to its physical expressions only, I will be matched by an oxymoronic and loses at least once in a while and would not be able to conceive of analysis without qualities, i.e. according to the circumstances. the meaning of the modern state its exclusion. Michel Foucault’s and its pretension, to possess “the universalization of the term “power” This postmodernist stance misses monopoly of the legitimate examining itself as could be use of physical violence.” I proven epistemologically would fall into the trap of even on its own premises. the—seeming—immediacy Asked what we would have to criticize, The latter are naively kept of physical violence. All its secret—the pretentious we cry, “power”; asked what our criti- mediations and cover-ups, attitude of reflection all its institutional, even its cism is all about, we cry again “power.” notwithstanding. No doubt, structural preconditions and Then why should we care about it, if Nietzsche has definitively contexts would escape my power is everywhere and, therefore in taught us these dangers. sight. Out of these extremely a way, nowhere?… This postmodernist There is no recognition sketchy thoughts so far let me stance misses examining itself as could possible without a specific pose a necessary cautionary “subjective” and even a be proven epistemologically even on conclusion that might be an personal perspective. But adequate beginning: there can its own premises. The latter are naively what we face as “reality,” as a be and there should not be a kept secret—the pretentious attitude of “natural” and as a “cultural” clear-cut definition of what reflection notwithstanding.” one is not just arbitrarily violence is all about. Such a composed. It cannot be clear-cut definition would construed just as we like it. not enable us to come to To use an Orwellian phrase: grips with the multi-headed, all phenomena of violence labyrinthine-like intriguing is in danger of having such an effect. are equal, but there are some phenomenon of violence. It would It enables us to discover all kinds of violences, their conditions and their make us insensitive and indolent power everywhere. That’s an enormous effects, which are more violent and toward violence—even in its physical analytical progress. At the same time, more “equal”—that is, influential than expression, and especially in regard it disables us to point out specific the other ones. And this inequality, power relations in order to give a rank this hierarchy between various forms order to them. It tends to make us of violence —that is it what counts, “Polyphemic”. Asked what we would analytically as well as normatively. have to criticize, we cry, “power”; asked what our criticism is all about, we cry again “power.” Then why should we care about it, if power is everywhere and, therefore in a way,

17 Violence and Love: Changing God’s Mind Metanoia: The Two Loves of God and Neighbor September 2000

Excerpt from a presentation by genocide in the family murder—the cousin marriage where the avunculate John O’Neill, York University, Toronto death of a child or parent or of a relationship assigns to the brother spouse prescribed by the male ritual power of life and death over The scandal of religion is that it appropriation /envy of female his sister’s child as the one to whom is a force both for war and peace, procreation. Obviously, genocide is he is most certainly kinsman. for justice and injustice, for life not a uniquely Biblical imperative. Thus patriarchy satisfies both and death. The Bible is clearly a But where colonization and genealogy psychosexual rivalry and the politics text obsessed with “making” and are identified in a tribal or national of intergenerational identity. “unmaking” bodies, as Elaine mission then genocide is the ultimate Scarry puts it in her extraordinary aim of political conquest. We have Regina Schwartz (1997:116-117) comparison of the Judeo-Christian to ask why parents kill their children remarks on the “metaphysical scriptures and the writings scarcity” that characterizes of Marx. The structure of Hebrew monotheism driving belief operates through it towards particularism and the bodily wounds What the master challenges as I see it, exclusion rather than universal inflicted upon living is the laborers’ capacity for fraternity. inclusion. God’s gifts set off creatures by their Creator: What they risk in the name of justice is rivalry and violence because “wounding re-enacts demanding that the master treat them they involve expropriation, i.e. the creation because it an identity staked at the cost equally but as exploited labor! Here, then, re-enacts the power of of another’s loss of identity alteration that has its first is the old sacrificial logic of collectively (Genesis 12:12; 13:14–17). profound occurrence in (mis)recognized violence. Territorial identity, however, is creation” (Scarry, 1985: easily destabilized by kinship 183). The Hebrew God is identity. In other words the the Lord of the Weapon purity of Israel (Leviticus 20:26) who commands belief cannot be achieved without and destroys infidelity. His Voice in order to “understand” why other a precarious juggling of insider/ demands loyalty and promises people’s children, women and men outsider marriages. Here woman blessings or immeasurable suffering are killed. The Biblical family is becomes the figure of instability, according to the people’s response. passionate because its Divine Father disorder and betrayal. Israel herself The reverberation of Biblical violence has singled it out over other families becomes a whore among the nations, becomes a visceral response to the whom He can destroy in favor of the unfaithful to her Divine husband vicissitudes of Israel, until, as we shall family whose line He blesses. Divine (Jeremiah 3: 2-3) who finally resolves argue, God Himself experiences a adoption is the model of patriarchal to replace this stone Law with a new “change of heart” (metanoia), laying control over maternity, i.e. of the Law of Love written in Israel’s heart down the weapons of the God of male gift of sperm and the priestly (Jeremiah 32: 39-40) to which I return Pain, to assume in His Son a life of reinscription of circumcision that later. Behind the figure of woman’s compassion for us fellow beings. redeems the first-born son of man disorderliness, however, there lies God’s Law requires innocent children (Eilberg-Schwartz, 1990). Freud’s male envy of woman’s procreativity to be slain as a preface to the Exodus. oedipalisation of the question loses (God is parthenogenetic). When Yet Israel’s Divine adoption is part of its intergenerational context, i.e. it male envy is translated into kinship, God’s “controversy” with Israel (Micah ignores why Laios wished to kill his adoption rules birth, i.e. the father 6:1–16) and is coupled with the threat son, Oedipus. In Freud’s model, the can prefer/reject sons and wives. of abandonment and slaughter in sons envy the father’s possession of Patriarchy I would argue underlies the response to Israel’s unfaithfulness. the mother. But the male envies the scarcity of love observed by Schwartz female’s procreativity, i.e. mimetic because its arbitrariness is intrinsic I am setting aside the seductive rivalry is not homoerotic but to its control over offspring regarded generalization of mimetic violence heterosexual (Scubla, 1985). How is as the continuation of the male line (Freud, 1960; Girard, 1977) as male procreative envy structured? (patrilineage). We may think of the an account of Biblical violence. It is structured intergenerationally, rituals of sacrifice and circumcision as This is because I think it misses as we have shown, through cross- male memory systems that erase the intergenerational structure of

18 maternal origin. The arbitrariness of (metanoia) His first performance to Here we have a formula for the paternal love rules the “naturalness” become the God of Love. The moment separation of Church and State that of mother love. Behind this God withdraws the family privilege of rejects equally the history of the convention lies the sanction of the chosen people he has cancelled State as Church and Church as State. inheritance, i.e. the bequest land the law of genocide as its sanction. Christ’s formula is not, however, which identifies kinsmen and people. In effect, the God of Love suspends a formula for doubling our social The father’s word and not the mother- the family in favor of a non-sacrificial obligations. Rather it enunciates a body, is the source of male sibling fraternity. We can then envisage an lexical order (Rawls, 1972: 42-45) rivalry. But neither are brothers in a ethical covenant in which the Law of that suspends any sacrificial relation homoerotic struggle to seduce the Love prescribes the exclusion of the between society (state, economy) father, as Freud claimed. The father’s least one among us. By commuting and the least individual. Consider the preoccupation is with heterosexual the violence of ethnic, class and parable of the laborers in the vineyard envy, the desire to abrogate the gender difference into the violence of (Matthew 20.1–16). parthenogenetic power of woman unjustifiable difference, we inaugurate (with a little help from supernumerary a secular covenant of social justice How are “we” to hear this story? We sperm, or to avoid anachronism, from and personal inviolability for which might take the viewpoint of any of males no more significant to women we alone are responsible (Mizruchi, the individual laborers each of whose than are women to men!). 1988). ordinary sense of justice (equal pay for equal work) is violated by the René Girard separates Old Testament The figure of Christ’s Two Kingdoms master. In turn, even the master violence from any reflexive restates the political paradox of might attribute his dealings with the formulation of its aporias until its Israel’s largely unsuccessful kingdom laborer as directed solely by his right sacrificial logic is exposed in the New on earth by reattaching it to a of ownership, underscoring it by Testament. I think it is necessary to kingdom in heaven just when the rejecting the egalitarian interpretation show that the critique of sacrificial conquering Roman emperors were in allegiance to Derridean autonomy logic underlying religion, politics and becoming divine! At this point, Jesus of the gift (Derrida, 1991; O’Neill, society is continuous from the Bible, inaugurates the double contract that 1999). What the master challenges through the Gospels to Hobbes, Kant structures political modernity: as I see it, is the laborers’ capacity and Rawls (1972). In short, I shall try for fraternity. What they risk in the to elicit the anti-sacrificial logic that is Render to Caesar the things name of justice is demanding that the underlying principle of civic peace that are Caesar’s and to God the master treat them equally but and social justice. I want to argue that the things that are God’s as exploited labor! Here, then, is the it is the God of violence who “repents” (Mark, 12:17) old sacrificial logic of collectively (mis)recognized violence. However, the master’s act is not simply the prototype of Rawlsian social justice because the master’s model is Divine Mercy (Grace) rather than the secular inclusion of the least advantaged in any calculation of welfare. The Two Commandments are not subsumable to yield a Derridean ethics without religion. Rather, we must retain their “lexical order,” giving priority to the fore-gift of mercy and forgiveness.

19 Joanne Brown Symposium on Violence and its Alternatives Bowen Island, October 2001

This year’s symposium featured Stephen K. Levine from the Faculty of Social Sciences and the program in Social and Political Thought, York University. Professor Levine brings a background in social thought, arts therapy, philosophy and anthropology to the questions of violence and poesis in the arts and trauma in life. His background in poetics and the theatre provided a foundation for fifteen invited academics, psychologists and social praxis individuals to discuss violence and its alternatives. His paper written for the symposium is entitled “The Coming of Dionysos: Trauma, Mimesis, Poiesis”. A selection from his review “Mimetic Wounds: Trauma and Drama in Psychotherapy and the Arts” (a review of Trauma: A Genealogy, by Ruth Leys, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2000) is printed below.

If we recognize the dramatic the “same” work; indeed, successive requires knowledge of what is, not origin of mimesis, then perhaps performances of the same production the imitation of what only appears to our understanding of the mimetic will always differ as well. be. The fact that Plato was unable to character of trauma can itself be re- banish mimesis from his own thought configured. In drama, mimesis is both Mimesis is not identification. The (since, among other things, he gives conscious and enacted; there is thus same is not the identical. Mimesis what purports to be a mimetic re- none of the opposition between blind cannot be thought within the logic presentation of Socrates’ dialogic enactment and conscious recollection of identification in which one is encounter) is evidence enough that that structures the trauma discourse. either oneself or another. If there this distinction, on which the very In fact, one might say that trauma is is a concept which can capture the project of philosophy in the classical a form of failed mimesis; in trauma, essence of the mimetic process, it sense is based, is itself suspect. The imitation is reduced to identification, is that of resemblance rather than advent of phenomenology was merely and the distance which is necessary to identification. This means that a the last step in the restoration of the recognize the mimetic performance is mimetic or imitative act is neither realm of appearance, a restoration abolished. identical with nor different from its which was already present in every work of art. The distinction between imitation and identification is important, The discourse of trauma The discourse of trauma is for it leads to a new alternative is traumatizing because it traumatizing because it repeats the for therapeutic practice. Rather traumatic structure: the tear between repeats the traumatic struc- than having to choose between being and knowing in which no abreaction and recollection, ture: the tear between being mediation is possible. Leys herself between a blind enactment which and knowing in which no unwittingly repeats (as trauma “repeats” an identificatory act mediation is possible. invariably does) the terms of this and a specular representation discourse by her “close reading” of which claims to “integrate” the relevant texts. As Borch-Jacobsen the traumatic event into the was later to say about his own early conscious narrative of one’s life—an “object” (and of course without the analysis of Freud: “…this is what impossible alternative, as Leys logic of identity there can be neither the strategy of deconstruction is all shows—there emerges the possibility subject nor object, at least not in the about: you take a theory and use its of conscious enactment, in other traditional sense of these terms); own conceptuality to highlight its words, the dramatic re-presentation rather it is like what it imitates. The internal contradictions, aporias, etc. of the traumatic event, its shaping mimetic performance resembles But when you engage in this kind in artistic form. Artistic or poetic its object; it thus obeys the logic of parasitic activity, you obviously mimesis is always a kind of shaping. of resemblance rather than that of run the risk of becoming yourself a Mimesis is in fact an interpretative identity. victim of the conceptuality you feed practice; its “repetition” is always a upon” (Borch-Jacobsen, 1997, p.216). “re-interpretation.” This is clear to This is, in fact, the basis of Plato’s Though genealogy is not exactly anyone who has worked in theater; well-known rejection of mimesis. The (not mimetically) deconstruction, it is absurd to think that theatrical poets must be banished from the just this description applies to Leys’ performance is a literal reproduction city, since their poiesis is based on analysis as well. Despite her critique of anything whatsoever. Moreover, seeming rather than on being. That is, of memoro-politics, she repeats the each production “differs” from every the mimetic basis of poiesis renders theoretical aporia contained in the other even in the performance of it the antagonist to philosophy, which traumatic conception of mimesis.

20 Her discourse is in fact constituted than when it is conceived in terms by an opposition between a “close of a philosophical analysis based This is not a recommendation reading,” in which she identifies with on the logic of identity. Poiesis has of primitivism nor an attempt to her texts, and a critical analysis, in a logos of its own. The poetic is not return to the Greeks (or turn to which she maintains the specular without thought; but its thinking is the Orient). Such an identificatory distance necessary for the practitioner embodied. Thus the corporeal logic of mimesis can only end in unwitting of genealogy. poiesis requires the bodily presence of self-parody. Rather we need to look performance in order to be realized. at post-modern performance and To go “beyond” the structural Poiesis is performative. That is why the performance of post-modernity opposition of mimesis and anti- we can speak of the performance of to see how poiesis “repeats” itself mimesis, it is necessary to “restore” healing; for poiesis to occur, it must today. In this sense, the critique of the original place of mimesis as the be enacted. the metaphysics of presence needs essence of poiesis. Thus conceived, to be continually repeated, if we are not only must trauma be envisioned The difficulty, it seems to me, is to develop a poietic phenomenology, differently (and perhaps even the that we continue to conceive of free of all fundamentalisms, that concept of “trauma” will have to be mimesis in terms of identification. can lead to a theory, a way of seeing, incorporated within a broader capable of responding to the trauma category of social suffering) but of our times. therapeutic practice will have The key to a therapeutic prac- other alternatives than the mere To be neither victim nor executioner, “pragmatism” of techniques tice based on the arts lies in a we need to move into the middle which Leys’ demonstration of the re-thinking of the concept of realm in which we can play out our inadequacy of trauma theory leads mimesis which is at the heart of lives differently. Trauma is not only her to recommend at the end of poiesis. How can we understand a mimetic wound; it is a wounding her book. mimesis without reducing it to a of mimesis itself. The identificatory incorporation of suffering can form of identification? Mimesis/poiesis/catharsis—the only be overcome by a mimetic ancient terms need to be embodiment in the performative or “repeated” and therefore playful mode. Drama and trauma are understood differently in order to thus indissoluably linked. Trauma is become the basis of contemporary itself drama but in the form of a blind therapeutic practice. enactment of suffering. To overcome One way for this to happen is to As long as we operate within a logic it is not to achieve a specular re-vision the healing practices of of identity in which thought and differentiation which provides a traditional cultures from the point of being, mind and body, self and vantage point from which trauma can view of an understanding of dramatic other, stand in opposition, we will be surveyed and mastered. Rather, performance as enacted in Greek always fall back into the antinomies the catharsis of healing comes only tragic theatre. There is a relationship of blind identification and specular through a poietic mimesis in which (of resemblance not identity) between representation, immediacy and I can enact my suffering without traditional performances of healing distance. The whole project of becoming it. and dramatic enactment on the tragic contemporary thought is to overcome stage which enables the concept these antinomies by developing a If psychotherapy has indeed been of catharsis to be used in both a mode of thinking differently, a way of wounded by the discourse of trauma, therapeutic and a theatrical sense. thinking the middle realm “between” then we need to re-play this discourse The mimesis of poiesis produces the oppositions of traditional differently. Otherwise therapy itself catharsis—the classical formula holds philosophical logic. The works of such will indeed become the trauma from true, provided we do not interpret thinkers as Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, which we seek to escape. It remains it within the antinomies of classical Derrida, Serres, Lacoue-Labarthe to be seen whether therapeutic thought. and Nancy could all be thought discourse can regain a poietic of as performances resembling dimension or whether it will remain The key to a therapeutic practice each other in the staging of a post- hostile to the arts. In that case, we can based on the arts lies in a re-thinking representational world, a world only hope that the spirit of poiesis of the concept of mimesis which is which “repeats” (differently) the pre- will find another stage on which to at the heart of poiesis. How can we philosophical worlds of traditional perform its healing act. understand mimesis without reducing cultures in which poiesis is recognized it to a form of identification? Perhaps to be a form of knowing, the tragic if we think it from the point of view of wisdom achieved only through an poiesis itself, it will appear differently acceptance of suffering which leads to responsibility.

21 Human Rights at SFU

—Bob Russell

Through small amounts of financial support, in the form of matters in East Timor, but while our friend Dr. of an honorarium or a partial payment of travel expenses, Robinson was to survive the ordeal in Dili, as you know, the Institute is often able to play the determining role many East Timorese did not. in bringing human rights activists to SFU to give public lectures. Over the past two years, I have been involved in A short time later, on October 25, 1999, we were organizing several such events. fortunate to have an important individual from East Timor, Reverend Arlindo Marcal, past moderator of For the last ten years SFU has been involved in a very large the Protestant Church of East Timor, visit SFU. In ($50,000,000) international project, the Eastern Indonesia the March 1997 “Symposium on Human Rights and Universities Development Project (EIUDP). For much of Democratic Development: the Case of East Timor and that time, Jerry Zaslove and I have expended considerable Indonesia,” which the Institute had held primarily effort questioning the judiciousness of SFU’s involvement in conjunction with the Government of Portugal, during the Suharto’s rule, largely because of human rights Reverend Arlindo Marcal was scheduled to participate. concerns. The EIUDP’s influence on campus has been large; so it is not surprising that Indonesia has been a Unfortunately, there was strong intimidation by strong influence in human rights activities. the Indonesian Government, and all of the East Timorese living inside of East Timor or Indonesia, As some background on activities in which the Institute including Reverend Marcal, were forced to cancel their has been involved, I quote from a message which we sent participation. Several Indonesian security agents and to sfufa-forum (the faculty email forum) in September of private citizens sent by the Indonesian Government did 1999: attend our events on campus in order to disrupt some of our events. For these reasons, Reverend Marcal’s Several years ago the Institute for the Humanities visit was all the more significant. He participated in conducted a forum on the condition of human rights in a forum entitled “East Timor: What Now?” Sponsors Indonesia and Simon Fraser’s opportunity to influence included the Institute for the Humanities and Amnesty Government policy there. Subsequently we hosted with International. Its timing was particularly opportune several North American universities a forum in Vancouver given that on October 20, the Indonesian parliament which the Nobel Laureate, Jose Ramos Horta, attended. had renounced all claims to East Timor, and a UN He is now in the news, as you know. One of our speakers transitional administration was to be put in place at both of those events was Geoff Robinson, a Canadian soon. It was also relevant to members of the university who was for many years the Amnesty International expert community because there was an upcoming review of on Indonesia in London and who is now a history professor the EIUDP which had been approved by Senate. at UCLA. Geoff has recently been with the Political Office Staff of UNAMET (United Nations Assistance Mission Soon after his informative talk at SFU, Marcal returned in East Timor) in Dili. It has recently been reduced from to a very difficult situation in East Timor. I received a staff of 20 to 4, with Geoff being one of those, and we moving accounts of his activities over the next several have been informed that there is considerable concern months. Several follow-up activities occurred on about his safety. After the second Forum and when it campus. For example, in November I talked to an SFU appeared that Indonesia was opening its eyes to democratic student East Timor group who, determined to bring changes, with the help of Chris Dagg of SFU’s Eastern forward its concerns about SFU’s role in Indonesia, was Indonesia Universities Development Project, the Institute formulating a response to SFU’s “Internationalization and other SFU organizations, we invited many teachers for the New Millennium” paper. and journalists from Indonesia to discuss the questions of democratic transition and how we could assist their efforts. Troubles across Indonesia went on. For many months, it was unclear how many East Timorese were killed Human Rights and DemocraticWe Developmentare now asking for you to use your voice in contacting or trapped in Indonesia. In December the European the individuals below in order to express your opinion about Parliament called for extension of their arms embargo Canada’s role in achieving some meaningful and permanent for Indonesia. They asked the Indonesian Government action to stop the atrocities going on in East Timor. to bring to account those responsible for violations of human rights in Aceh, the Moluccas Islands, West This message resulted in a number of faculty members Papua as well as other parts of the country, and in East writing to politicians appealing for a peaceful resolution Timor, called on all the parties concerned to

22 collaborate fully in a Governmental On March 12, the Institute sponsored one of the five universities involved investigation, and called on the a talk by Mr. John Rumbiak entitled in the EIUDP, and a number of the Indonesian Government to disband “West Papua—the Next East Timor?” EIUDP students attended the event. the special troop command Mr. Rumbiak is a leading human In addition to seeing a remarkable Kopassus. As we shall see below, rights activist in West Papua who video on East Timor during the violent these occurrences were to shape later works as program coordinator for times leading up to its referendum, events at SFU. the Institute for Human Rights Study the audience witnessed a moving and Advocacy in Jayapura. He has talk by Mr. Rumbiak. I found him to In January 2000, the Institute hosted travelled extensively to promote be a person of remarkable strength a lecture by Anto Sangaji, who works awareness of human rights violations of character and presence, with an with Yayasan Tanah Merdeka, an by the Indonesian authorities and absence of bitterness over what has organization in South Sulawesi after speaking at the UN Commission happened to West Papua. It is from opposing some of the activities on Human Rights in Geneva was on a such rare individuals that one finds by Inco, the largest Canadian pan-Canadian tour to raise awareness optimism. investor in Indonesia. INCO’s mine of these issues. at Soroako is one of the largest in Events at SFU have taken an the world and has been criticized Unfortunately, there was strong intimi- interesting turn in the past year. on environmental, human rights dation by the Indonesian Government, Although not well publicized in the and labour rights grounds. Sangaji local media, one critical situation and all of the East Timorese living is originally from Ambon but has exists at the University of Pattimura lived in Sulawesi since college. He inside of East Timor or Indonesia, in- (UNPATTI), the state university is director of YTM, an organization cluding Reverend Marcal, were forced in Ambon, Indonesia, which was which works for community self- to cancel their participation. Several burned in an attack on July 4, help development, environmental Indonesian security agents and pri- 2000. The university, one of several conservation, political advocacy vate citizens sent by the Indonesian involved in the EIUDP, was home for indigenous people, and human to approximately 10,000 students Government did attend our events on rights. He had come to Canada to and 900 faculty members. The speak on the activities of INCO, campus in order to disrupt some of surrounding housing complex where particularly the threatened eviction our events. many of the faculty, staff and their of indigenous people due to the families lived was also attacked and proposed expansion of PT Inco’s As background, West Papua (also burned. I became involved with an nickel mine. In his talk “Mining known as Irian Jaya) has been under “Indonesian Assistance Fundraising Nickel, Moving People: A Public Indonesian colonial rule since the Appeal” to raise money to support the Forum on INCO in Indonesia & at 1960s. Home to a million Melanesians people in Ambon. People involved Home,” Anto gave a moving account and forming half of the world’s were a broad coalition of people of disruption which takes place in second largest island, West Papua is across campus, from those of us who the local communities. He addressed of growing concern today. The same have criticized SFU’s involvement in detail issues regarding INCO’s sort of terror campaign that tore East with Indonesia in the past, to the operations in South Sulawesi and Timor apart (militia terror groups, project’s participants and supporters, its planned expansion to Central Indonesian troop build-up, arrest including many Indonesian students Sulawesi, as well as addressing its and killings of pro-independence at SFU, all of whom share the belief operations elsewhere in Indonesia activists) has been building in West that SFU has a responsibility to aid (Irian Jaya, Ambon, Aceh). As recently Papua. For more than thirty years, Indonesia’s citizens and universities as as last May, he was making news West Papuans have been struggling for the country struggles with its current in the Indonesian press, raising their right to self-determination. The unrest and political upheaval. concerns about effects of INCO Indonesian military has responded mining on local communities. with massive human rights violations. I feel very fortunate to be an Associate The international community, member of the Institute for the In February of this year, Jeff Halper including Canadian companies, has Humanities. I am grateful for the and Salin Shawanreh spoke in their largely ignored the situation, except opportunity it has afforded me to “Israel/Palestine Science for Peace to profit from the exploitation of West organize these events on human Tour”. I had discovered their visit Papua’s enormous natural resources. rights issues and to play some role, to Vancouver through a mailing of The university in Jayapura, West while SFU’s involvement in Indonesia, Science for Peace, an organization Papua has been one of the scenes of through the EIUDP, is coming to a in which I have been involved for mounting violence. In December, for close. some time. The presentation was example, a student dorm was attacked co-ordinated with the SFU Student by Indonesian Brimob police, with Society, who also paid some expenses the result that over 100 students were and helped advertise the event. arrested and three killed. It is also

23 A Just and Viable Peace? Against House Demolitions and the The Facts on the Ground Palestinian Land Defense Committee rebuilt the house. This third structure —Jane Power still stands.

Israeli politicians need a Palestinian House demolitions are just one state. That’s the startling hypothesis way the Israeli government is trying that Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper Giving up on legality, Shawamreh to divide up Palestinian areas, offered his audience at a February built a house. Four years later, in Halper emphasizes. Others are 2001 lecture* supported by the July 1998, as the Shawamrehs sat at the “withdrawals“ that leave every Institute for the Humanities at SFU. lunch, 200 Israeli soldiers appeared Palestinian-run town surrounded by Without a Palestinian state, Halper outside with a bulldozer. By evening Israeli military territory, the “bypass explained, Israel’s government will the Shawamrehs had joined some roads“ that slice through Palestinian face an impossible choice. If they 7,000 other Palestinians whose homes olive groves and vineyards, and the annex the West Bank and Gaza have been demolished since 1967. consolidation of Israeli settlements Strip outright, the three million His house, along with the garden and into “blocks“ that isolate the areas of Palestinians there will join the one trees he had lovingly established to Palestinian concentration. million Arabs and five million Jews soften the rocky West Bank landscape, who are currently Israeli citizens, were rubble; his wife was in hospital, To those who ask why the Palestinians compromising Israel’s identity as beaten and unable to speak; his small weren’t content with the Clinton plan the Jewish state. If Israel annexes the children were so traumatized that offering them “95 percent,” Halper West Bank and Gaza Strip without even two years later, they’re afraid to responds first that this is 95 percent giving citizenship to the Palestinians, leave their room at night. Shawamreh of 22 percent of historic Palestine the resulting apartheid will put Israel himself had been badly beaten. — Israel itself comprises 78 percent. hopelessly out-of-date by today’s Second, he notes that prisoners international standards. (Returning Shawamreh was lucky: neighbours occupy about 95 percent of the area of the territories seized in the 1967 war came out to oppose the bulldozer, a prison: it’s not the territory but the is repugnant for Biblical and strategic and Halper and other Israeli and control that counts. reasons.) A docile, fragmented foreign activists, heading for a nearby Palestinian mini-state is the solution demonstration, arrived within Halper and Shawamreh offer their Israeli politicians appear to favour. minutes. Several, including Halper, own “win-win“ solution to succeed This was their objective in the past lay in front of the bulldozers. CNN the moribund Oslo plan: an end seven years’ “peace process.” and other TV crews appeared. Their to Israeli occupation, leading to Palestinian engineer Salim footage familiarized European and productive, developing relationships Shawamreh, Halper’s team-mate on a North American audiences with the between mutually reliant Israeli month-long, cross-Canada speaking brutality of house demolition and and Palestinian (and possibly tour, has encountered firsthand the mobilized support for the family. neighbouring) states. Israeli government’s move to fragment Meanwhile, within a month, Israeli, the West Bank by dispossessing its Palestinian and foreign volunteers *Professor Bill Cleveland of SFU hosted the people. Three times in four years, the rebuilt the house. The new structure discussion, opening his History 465 class to the speakers and the University community. Israeli military’s “civil administration“ lasted barely one night. At dawn refused Shawamreh a building permit, Israeli troops destroyed it, too, and each time with a different reason, took away the Red Cross tent in while charging him a total of $10,000 which the Shawamrehs had been in application fees. living. Again, the Israeli Committee 24 Democratic Equality: What Went Wrong?

In November 1998, the Institute and the J.S. Woodsworth Chair hosted a conference, “Equality and the Democratic State”. Papers were solicited from international scholars, social activists and decision-makers. Issues discussed were the status of social, political, and economic (in)equality, with particular reference to Canada, Britain and the United States. Participants included: Edward Broadbent, Dietrich Rueschemeyer (USA), G.A. Cohen (UK), Ian Angus (SFU), Jane Jenson (Université de Montréal), Ruth Lister, Social Policy (UK), Barbara Ehrenreich (US), Armine Yalnizyan (CANADA), John Richards (SFU), Jim Standford (Canadian Auto Workers), Bo Rothstein (Sweden), Daniel Savas (Angus Reid Group) and Bob Hackett (SFU). The conference papers were edited by Edward Broadbent and were published by the University of Toronto Press.

concept of the new citizen), other important belief systems underlay the new broad-ranging political consensus on the positive role of the state. Conservatives could draw upon their idea of a ’social market economy,’ which had always distinguished itself from laissez-faire capitalism; liberals in quest of a positive notion of freedom could invoke T.H. Green, Leonard Hobhouse, and, above all others, John Stuart Mill.

It was no accident that when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, it contained not only the civil and political freedoms of the Western tradition but also the new egalitarian social and economic rights. The Canadian John Humphrey, who prepared the first draft of the Declaration, wrote that it “attempted to combine humanitarian liberalism with social democracy.” Like Humphrey, most political leaders in most democracies had come to believe that without social and economic rights traditional political and civil liberties had little meaning for the majority. And without continuing intervention by national governments in the vagaries of unstable capitalism there could be neither social stability From the introduction to Democratic Equality: nor social rights. What Went Wrong? by Edward Broadbent, University of Toronto Press, 2000. pp. xv – xviii. When the contributors to this volume consider equality as a value of fundamental importance . . . democratic governments throughout the to democracy, they have at least one reasonably North Atlantic region initiated myriad social and precise idea in mind: economic or material economic programs explicitly aimed at furthering equality in substance or in outcomes. Thus equality and security. In most of these countries, when they advocate organizing society to pensions, health care and education came to ensure that a higher degree of equality prevails, be viewed as a citizen’s right, precisely because they take into consideration the distribution they were established for all citizens regardless of of income and other forms of personal wealth, income. such as stocks, bonds and housing. They see more economic equality as being desirable for Although the most important ideology of social two reasons. First, those not separated by a equality based on citizens’ rights was social wide gap in wealth are more likely to be able to democratic (stretching back to the end of the communicate and empathize with each other nineteenth century, with Edward Bernstein’s

25 as citizens living in the same political have, the more free we are. In a market “Equality in substance” is a direct structure. Without denying the economy the rich not only have more challenge to the neo-liberal “equality of importance of other significant money, they have more freedom. Thus opportunity” favoured by most non- differences which frequently result in equal citizenship in a market-based social democratic parties and promoted other kinds of inequality—for example democracy, grounded in the notion of by the mainstream media in most liberal language, religious, ethnic, cultural, the equal freedom to make choices, democracies. What might be called the and gender differences—a significant necessarily implies that the state must weak version of this liberal notion of gap in wealth not only weakens take strong measures to achieve higher equality of opportunity emphasizes the general possibility of positive degrees of material equality than the need for formal legal equality of all communication in society citizens as they confront real but also makes each of life in a capitalist democracy. these other differences If legal equality is provided by more likely to be seen as It was no accident that when the Universal the state then any resultant sources of conflict rather Declaration of Human Rights was adopted inequalities in outcomes should than forms of positive by the United Nations in 1948, it contained be understood as just, that is, diversity. It is also the not only the civil and political freedoms they result from differences in case that most liberal original capacities or effort in of the Western tradition but also the new democracies have made the market place. A stronger significant progress in egalitarian social and economic rights. The version of the liberal theory dealing with inequalities Canadian John Humphrey, who prepared of equality of opportunity of these kinds, at the very the first draft of the Declaration, wrote that takes into account the need to time when economic it “attempted to combine humanitarian compensate for inequalities of inequality related to liberalism with social democracy.” circumstance that individuals class has been on the may be confronted with at increase. A second reason birth or that result from market for favouring greater conditions. economic equality in outcomes as opposed to the classical liberal and neo-liberal (or neo-conservative) would result from the market when left equality of opportunity, is that alone. Material inequalities cannot be economic equality is seen to be left alone if the democratic goal of each fundamentally connected to the citizen having an equal moral claim to notion of free and participatory the right of self-development is to be a citizenship. This is particularly evident reality. in a capitalist economy, grounded as it is on private property, differentials in market-based incomes, and the majority of individual choices being exercised in the context of purchasing goods and services.

In such a society, to make choices in exercising one’s talents, capacities or interests is to participate in the market place, precisely because the means of their realization has to be purchased. Whether we are talking about going to a movie, taking a skiing holiday, acquiring a television set, having music lessons or deciding to take a day off from work, the vast majority of the choices we make to give substance to the abstract notion of freedom require money. The more choices we can make, the more freedom we have. Since choices require money, the more money we

26 Our Own Backyard: a Participatory Community Project

—Tammie Tupechka

In August 1996, the Institute for the Humanities our neighborhoods and what they mean to us participated in an important new initiative—a are not reflected in traditional maps that city three-way collaboration with Britannia planners and developers use. The people of Community Education and the local community Grandview Woodlands (re)appropriated the map, around Grandview Woodlands. The project, became the mapmakers, the image-makers, named “Our Own Backyard” embarked on the documenters and documentaries of their a three-year long project in the Grandview place, their homes, their neighborhood. The Woodland community of inner city Vancouver, people of this neighborhood created images a neighborhood with a long history of social, that were meaningful to them in a variety of architectural, business and educational change. ‘map’ forms: banners, murals, photographs, This innovative and groundbreaking project paintings, drawings, collages, stories, clay tiles utilized two important community education and sculptures. Nine themes emerged out of tools: community mapping and grassroots the two year long mapping process that was community planning. These tools were then used as the basis for a year long grassroots implemented with the intention of providing a community planning process. Throughout the space for community members to voice their three-year project, over 2500 people participated, opinions, ideas, hopes, plans and understandings representing a wide range of community of the increasingly changing community. This members from elementary students to elders in inner city community, like many other inner city the neighborhood. communities across North America, has been faced with increased development pressure in the Funding for the project was received from various form of residential and commercial gentrification funding bodies. There was frequent consultation spurred on by the “status” of Vancouver as a world with the community by academics (Bev Pitman city and the pressure of global capitalism. Coupled and Nick Blomley of the Simon Fraser Geography with this have been the department) and social activists. The project continued influx of was a recipient of a three-year grant from the immigrants from prestigious Urban Issues Program of the Samuel the Pacific Rim and and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation. other areas of the In addition, the project received grants from world, contributing VanCity, the BC Heritage Trust Program and the to this community’s Vancouver City Office of Cultural affairs. “multicultural” compilation. Britannia Community Services Center provided As Jerry Zaslove administrative support and meeting and termed it, this is workshop space. The Institute for the Humanities a “community in provided grants and a research assistant rapid transition,” for the process. The four main organizers and therefore were: Karen Martin, project coordinator and the innovative community member; Enzo Guerirrero, from structure of the Britannia Community Education; Jerry Zaslove,

project as well representing the Institute for the Humanities Humanities and Community Education as the uniquely at Simon Fraser University; and myself as a collaborative research assistant on behalf of the Institute. The nature provided an important tool for community project began several years earlier when Liz Root, education and empowerment. now a city planner in Toronto, researched the possibilities for establishing a Humanities Store The project’s implementation of community Front drop-in center on Commercial Drive. The mapping involved simply asking community project evolved into the “Our Own Backyard” members what they valued about the community. mapping projects. The form the maps took goes far beyond conventional maps, which often constrain the way we see our urban landscape. Our homes,

27 Five publications or “communities’ mentioned above was used as a basis place where dialogue could begin and legacies” were created throughout for a collaborative project between differences explored by various actors the project: Stories from Our Own Simon Fraser University and Britannia coming from a range of personal Backyard: a history of the Grandview Community Education entitled positions based on class, ethnicity, age Woodland as told by neighborhood “Critical University,” (see the article in and gender. The issues that we faced seniors, was a cross-generational and this issue). in the “Our Own Backyard” project are cross-cultural oral history project still there, but from our experience that was started in Fall of 1995 with In addition, I have been conducting and the different ways we have the grade 11 students of Britannia various workshops on community shared the knowledge—phone calls, Senior Secondary interviewing mapping. For example, in April 2001 conferences and workshops across seniors in the community concerning I conducted a community mapping many realms of academia, community their experience of history in the workshop in Victoria, BC, hosted education—seem to have helped, community. This project set the by the common ground mapping at the very least, different people groundwork for the collaborative begin to both understand creation of the “Our Own the power of maps and to Backyard” project. Our Own discuss the politics of place. Backyard: Walking Tours of These three historical books were the Mapping is a tool for social Grandview Woodland, involved recipients of the Vancouver Heritage action and is becoming the creation of six walking award of merit in spring of 1998. Jour- more widely known in tours of the neighborhood that ney through the Neighborhood: Our many metropolitan areas. highlighted the local history In addition, at a time when Community Atlas, is a spectacular and contemporary issues of Universities are seeking this community. Over 180 sites documentation of all the maps created community affiliation and were researched and a booklet throughout the first two years of the seeing that they have a and audiotapes available at the project. responsibility to disseminate local library were created. A scholarship and knowledge Pictorial History: Commercial in forums for participatory Drive 1912-1954, is a historical action, “Our Own Backyard” photograph book of the various provided a creative and heritage buildings on the vibrant coalition. I was the guest speaker at critical way to understand how focal point of commercial activity, this conference and the way in which political power and cultural forces Commercial Drive. These three I was introduced exemplifies the can be represented and documented. historical books were the recipients of ongoing importance of the “Our Own Many conclusions can be drawn the Vancouver Heritage award of merit Backyard” project, to both theory and from this project and research is in spring of 1998. Journey through practice in the Grandview Woodland continuing. the Neighborhood: Our Community community and other communities. Atlas, is a spectacular documentation Throughout the workshop, I was of all the maps created throughout struck by the multiplicity of intended the first two years of the project. Two or actual mapping projects that both full colour, fold out atlases that were mirrored and moved beyond the Our created are available in the local Own Backyard process. I am library of Britannia, as well as 50 struck by how important copies of a black and white version. dissemination of The final publication was completed information is in 2001, and is entitled Hopes, in respect to Dreams and Community Action, and community is a record of over 1000 community level work. members’ participation in the Residents, grassroots planning process. teachers, government Although the major funding from the officials, Bronfman Foundation ended in the planners, summer of 1999, the project, with students were funding and participation provided together in by the Institute for the Humanities, the room, all has contined to contribute to the discussing their ongoing political process within this understanding community. In spring of 2001, the of mapping. mapping and planning document The map was a

28 Critical U: An experiment in utopian pedagogy

—Mark Coté, Richard Day and Greig de Peuter

The SFU homepage makes a bold into the broader community. Instead, sought to cut across a broader class promise: “We are an open, inclusive the collective goal was to listen to spectrum in the Grandview Woodlands university whose foundation is the concerns and interests of those area. Participation was free and open intellectual and academic freedom.” living in East Vancouver and bring our to all, and previous post-secondary This is an ideal that many in our critical and conceptual faculties to education was neither required nor University still hold dear. The struggle bear upon relevant social issues and expected. We had initially planned on to maintain an open and inclusive struggles. an enrollment of approximately 20 environment of free scholarly people, but the staggering demand inquiry and practice remains The first result of this collaboration sent these numbers ever-upwards. By alive in the critical humanities was the successful completion of the first meeting, there were 38 people and social sciences, despite the in attendance and 16 on a waiting list; challenges of neo-liberalism and the clearly this was an initiative that was corporatization of the University. long overdue. However, as departments and programs are “rationalized” and The pedagogical model for “Critical U” funding is tied to “marketability,” new followed that of the organizing affinity strategies are required for academic group. Eschewing the top-down model dissent and activism. often adopted when professional academics reach out beyond the The Institute for Humanities is at classroom, the “Critical U” seminars the forefront of one effort to expand were driven by the participants to the the University community’s critical greatest extent possible. For the pilot efficacy beyond the slopes of Burnaby project, we sketched out a series of Mountain. Beginning last summer, six workshop themes, under broad the Institute again ventured off the categories such as “Political Literacy” hill to forge ties with a number of East and “Capitalism and Globalization.” Vancouver community organizations to develop “Critical U”, a unique At the very first session in late January, community education initiative. What we knew we were in the right place is noteworthy about this alliance when one student questioned the is that it was neither initiated nor “Critical U”, a twelve-week pilot spatial deployment of bodies, with directed by the Institute or any other program in community education the “instructors” at the front, and formal SFU organization. Rather, operating out of the Britannia the “students” dutifully seated in it was the result of the combined Community Services Centre. Building the lecture hall. With our first lesson efforts of members of the University in part from the work done by the learned, we quickly reassembled in a community and several non-profit “Our Own Backyard” community large circle, a formation maintained organizations operating out of East mapping project, “Critical U” for the remainder of the course. Ideas Vancouver: the Vancouver Institute brought various sociological, were flying around the circle, as the for Social Research and Education, political-economic and cultural participants expanded and focused the the Vancouver Eastside Educational perspectives to bear upon such suggested themes in directions most Enrichment Society, and Britannia topics as democracy, capitalism, relevant to the community. Indeed, Community Education. The Institute globalization, gentrification, mass this lively discussion produced enough was an early and strong member of media and consumerism. In contrast ideas to keep us busy for several years. this affinity group, as was the Simon to other local community education Fraser Student Society. The challenge initiatives such as UBC’s Humanities for all the university participants 101 program which focuses on those was to avoid carrying pre-chiseled living in poverty in Vancouver’s tablets of knowledge from the hill Downtown Eastside, “Critical U”

29 The next step was to seek out SFU Usually, the sessions went beyond media production. Such a direct instructors who were working in the boundaries of the average SFU linkage of a critique of the mass those areas, and who would be willing lectures. For example, one night, media with opportunities for concrete and able to accept the challenges of anti-capitalist activists and corporate action to create alternatives precisely a participant-driven model. We are managers considered the moral embodied our collective goals. This happy to say that the response from status of violent action against session was noted as one of the best faculty and graduate students was private property as a means of by participants, and in the future we very enthusiastic. Indeed, several of political expression. The productivity hope to make more of these sorts of the facilitators commented on the of difference without a moment of concrete relays between the session vitality of discussion in the “Critical “integration” or “unification” gave rise topics and grassroots initiatives. U” seminars; this can be attributed to many such opportunities for critical in part, we believe, to the fact that dialogue and creative encounters For the final “Critical U” session in everyone was there because they with the “radically other.” Another early May, we asked participants for chose to be there, rather than as a night, a banjo-toting SFU labour feedback on the course, with an eye means to the distant end of achieving historian facilitated role-playing with to what we might do differently next a grade or qualification. Another key a select few as factory owners (with, time. Their comments were both factor was the wide range in the age, of course, the requisite security force plentiful and instructive. As well, experience, political orientation, and strikebreakers) sitting on one side some participants volunteered to sit race and class of the participants. of the circle, and the rest as workers in on our organizing group for a future The absence of written work, grading on the other. While the vicissitudes course, while others volunteered to schemes, and all of the regular of production led to some swapping design a “Critical U” website as a coercive apparatus of the university of chairs, the mobility experienced medium for making available reading was also crucial in creating and was enlightening for all. Later, this resources and posting event notices maintaining a sense of distance from elaborate game of “Capitalism 101” and so on. an increasingly deadened world of truly became musical chairs as the work, school and consumerism. In the facilitator picked away on his banjo in By the end of the course, the class size memorable words of one participant, a hootenanny of 19th century labour had leveled at just below 20, a number we were taking a critical step towards songs. that most participants deemed to be “lifelong unlearning.” ideal. In the feedback session, there In this sense, the “Critical U” space was a clear sense of reward expressed was truly utopian; that is, relatively by students for the intellectual delinked from the demands of challenge at “Critical U”. As well, instrumental rationality and many participants spoke positively professional performance. The on the dynamic that emerged within necessity of “unlearning” was not the group, especially in discussions. taught by the instructors, however; Indeed, most participants expressed a it was a lesson learned by all. sense of loss that the course had come Throughout the planning process, to a close. Though our group was and during the course itself, there small, and the course short, it was a was a continuous tension between glimpse at a collectivity in formation. intellectualizing about issues and Here, the utopian impulse was proven discussing tactics for confronting alive and well, and so too that the them head on via activism and critical humanities and social sciences political intervention. This tension could have a role in cultivating that was never fully resolved, nor would impulse. we want nor expect it to be. Instead, it was a vital dynamic left in play. For example, following the session on consumerism and media, a guest from the Vancouver Indy media Centre came to describe the resources they make available for independent

30 Ever Since Sociobiology: Evolutionary Psychology, Human Nature, Public Policy and Private Decisions

—Charles Crawford

From September of 2000 through Psychopathy April of 2001, the public lecture a Pathology or a series “Ever Since Sociobiology: Life History Strategy? Darwinism, Human Nature, and Implications for Social Public Policy and Private Decisions” Policy. The topics were varied, drew audiences of up to 220 people but all could trace their roots back to Harbour Centre. This lecture to the philosophy behind the lecture series was sponsored by the Institute series itself. How can a society be for the Humanities as well as SSHRC founded on moral principles, yet be and other organisations within pliable and comfortable enough for Simon Fraser University. The series people to live in so that it can persist? was organised by me and Catherine This question has perplexed thinkers Salmon, a SSHRC post-doctoral since Plato wrote The Republic. fellow in the same department. It Those who attempt to use Legalistic (Hammurabi, Napoleon, brought the following speakers and evolutionary theory to help John Rawls), religious (Moses, their topics to downtown Vancouver: contribute to solutions to social ills Mohammed, Saint Augustine), Charles Crawford, Professor of are often accused of making the economic (Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Psychology, Simon Fraser University, naturalistic fallacy: the fallacy of on Incest Avoidance and Prevention: assuming that what is, is what ought Legal and Evolutionary Perspectives; “Those who attempt to use evolution- to be (Flew, 1978). Consider two Dennis Krebs, Professor of ary theory to help contribute to solu- examples: Women, more than men, Psychology, Simon Fraser evolved as the primary caretakers of tions to social ills are often accused University, on Moral Reasoning children; therefore, they have traits and Moral Behaviour: Insights from of making the naturalistic fallacy: the that make them superior caregivers, Evolutionary Psychology; Margo fallacy of assuming that what is, is what and ought to be favoured as teachers Wilson and Martin Daly, Professors ought to be.” and nurses and “since the demands of Psychology, McMaster University, of hunting, warfare, and male- on Family Conflict and Violence: A male competition caused men to Look at the Marital Relationship; Milton Friedman), and philosophic evolve larger size, greater strength, Kingsley Browne, Professor of Law, (Karl Popper) approaches have all been and greater aggressiveness than Wayne State University, on Women considered at one time or another. women, men ought to be preferred in the Workplace: Evolutionary Darwin’s closing paragraph from The as policemen and infantrymen.” Perspectives and Public Policy; Descent of Man suggests a role for the Clearly, these statements are David Buss, Department of theory of evolution by natural selection fallacious. One cannot reason Psychology, University of Texas, in the search for an answer. from what is to what ought to be. on Dangerous Passions: Infidelity, Although on average men are larger, Sex and Why We Hurt the Ones We “Man with all his noble qualities, more aggressive and competitive Love; Catherine Salmon, SSHRC with sympathy that feels for the most than women in all known cultures, post-doctoral fellow, Department of debased, with benevolence which we cannot conclude from this fact Psychology, Simon Fraser University, extends not only to other men but that men ought to exceed women in on What Sex Differences in Erotica to the humblest of living creatures, these attributes. can Tell Us About Human Sexuality; with his god-like intellect which has Randy Thornhill, Professor of penetrated into the movements and However, the identification of a Biology, University of New Mexico, constitution of the solar system—with naturalistic fallacy can lead us on A Natural History of Rape: all these exalted powers — still bears in astray if we then conclude that the Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion; his bodily frame the indelible stamp of empirical observations leading to it Martin Lalumiere, Clark Institute his lowly origin” (Charles Darwin, The are invalid, that the state of nature and University of Toronto, on Is Descent of Man, 1871/1898, p. 634). suggesting it ought to be changed;

31 or that it can easily be changed. with this ought. Therefore, sexuality selection. Some of our concerns about Identifying the claims that men are cannot be the motivation for rape, the adequacy of communism as a taller than women, therefore, they and hence rape must be motivated social system were based on current ought to be taller as fallacious does by male aggression. Anyone putting thinking in evolutionary psychology not imply that men are not taller than forth arguments or data challenging that has mental mechanisms women, that they ought not to be moralistic fallacies can expect a producing nepotism, reciprocity, a taller than women, or that the world rough intellectual ride. Some of the sense of fairness, and cheating on would be a better place if men were greatest tragedies of history have social relationships as important not taller than women. Similarly, their origins in moralistic attempts culture producing mechanisms identifying fallacies concerned with to impose an ideology on a whole (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992). If such gender differences in behaviour do population. More than forty million evolved mental mechanisms do exist, not imply it is either advisable or easy people died because of Joseph Stalin’s they put constraints on the kind of to change the state of nature so that determination to impose communism social systems that we can expect gender differences no longer exist. It in Russia. The attempt to impose a to function well enough to persist is as fallacious to go from is to ought strict Muslim code on Afghanistan for some time. All of the talks in this not, as it is to go from is to ought. is the most recent example of the lecture series dealt with issues that costs of imposing an ideology on a have a great impact on the society in Although the naturalistic fallacy whole nation. The belief that “What which we live. A better understanding can be pernicious, another fallacy ought to be, can be” can have noxious of them can point the way toward can be equally noxious. It is the consequences when applied with making changes and in particular, Moralistic Fallacy, the fallacy of such zeal. Many Russian communists to areas where changes may be most assuming that what ought to be is or were good people who worked hard easily made and in what ways such what ought to be can be (Crawford, for what they believed. But, those changes may be, implemented. 1999). A prominent example is racial taking an evolutionary perspective on differences in intelligence ought human behaviour were not surprised not to exist; therefore, they do not when their system failed because we exist; hence, anyone finding such worried that communism was not differences must be using poor compatible with a human psychology research methods or be politically shaped in the crucible of natural motivated in their research. There are many other examples in contemporary thought. One that comes to mind is sex ought to be mutually enjoyable and personally enhancing. Aggressive sexuality is not compatible

32 Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Domestic Space —Kathy Mezei

On April 7, 2001, a workshop on “Interdisciplinary Downtown Eastside, and contemporary backyards Perspectives on Domestic Space,” a new and burgeoning in Vancouver. Disciplines represented included field of study, was held at Harbour Centre, sponsored architecture, history, anthropology, sociology, art and by the Institute for the Humanities, the Department literature, and presenters included artists, architects, of Humanities, and Graduate Liberal Studies. About novelists as well as academics. Debates continued sixty participants attended the daylong workshop. on how to represent and discuss the practice, theory Presentations ranged from nineteenth century aboriginal and history of domestic space in Vancouver and BC domestic spaces, writers’ studies and scientific Participants also discussed ways to continue the laboratories in private homes to the modern apartment, conversations begun at the workshop.

Denise Riley at the Kootenay School of Writing —Ted Byrne

Denise Riley first came to our attention at the Kootenay it returns to questions of spatial metaphor, inside and School of Writing when the poem “The Castalian Spring” outside, inclusion and exclusion, and the slipperiness of was published in Raddle Moon. “The Castalian Spring,” these categories and social facts. Here’s a taste. reprinted in Penguin Modern Poets 10 and Selected Poems (2001), is an erudite, self-mocking investigation of The ‘traditional’ family’s demise is coinciding with a lyric subjectivity, a display of the heightened “linguistic furious intensification of its variants. It’s as if one must unease” such a subject suffers, and a deployment of count as a family in order to count, while the numbers irony as a tactical response or “counterinterpellation.” of those living alone, across western Europe at least, The argument of the poem is coextensive with that of rise sharply. Yet as households of single people grow, the her latest work in philosophy and social theory, The admission of even occasional loneliness remains taboo, Words of Selves (2000). That work investigates the ways while to be without visible social ties is inexcusable… in which our identity-formations in language make liars The question ‘how single is single’ could ask: how might of us all, subject to and struggling against the control such singleness be considered neither pathological nor of an affectivity inherent in language itself. A gloss of be swept up, in an ostentatious de-pathologizing, into a “The Castalian Spring,” in fact, forms part of the central compulsive sociability?… Might a properly recognised chapter of the latter book. The book is errant, prodigal state of singleness (to wrench the notion of ‘recognition’ and wonderfully useful, seeming to speak at one and away from its usual oppressively gregarious tone) recast the same moment of poetics and language practice, or that desolate and resentment-prone metaphoricity pragmatics. It deals extensively with the poetic function of social exclusion—might it also somewhat allay the of language, its insistence within language-event, with the burden, or at least the embarrassed self-reproach, of metaphorical nature of language, particularly the spatial those who may find themselves living in solitude at the metaphors that dog the “structure” of thought, metaphors very same time as they live within the family? H u m a n i t i e s a n d M o d e r n C u l t u r e of surface and depth, inside and outside—there is an argument for, or even a practice of the surficial here— The KSW brought Denise Riley to Vancouver with but also with naming and identity and their political the help of the British Council and the Canadian fluctuations, with solidarity within difference, and with Department of Foreign Affairs. In addition to the public irony as practice. lecture at SFU Harbour Centre, she attended a session of “Stupidity,” animated a poetry anti-workshop over Some of us read The Words of Selves in the context of the several days, gave a public reading at the KSW and KSW’s ongoing seminar, presently called “Stupidity.” The talked and shopped with local poets. Denise Riley has Words of Selves expands upon the questions raised in her taught, conducted research, lectured and read her earlier book Am I That Name (1993), which dealt with poetry extensively in Europe, Australia and the US, but the category of “women” in history. During her stay in this was only her second visit to Canada. Other books Vancouver she gave a free public lecture at SFU Harbour by Denise Riley include Marxism for Infants (1976), War Centre, co-sponsored by the KSW and the Institute for in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother (1983), the Humanities. This was the third in a series of co- Dry Air (1985), Poets on Writing: Britain, 1970-1991 sponsored lectures that had previously included Barrett (1992), and Mop Mop Georgette (1993). A study of social Watten and Amiel Alcalay. Her talk was entitled “The philosophies, policies and ethical theories from 1890 Right To Be Lonely,” and consisted of an application of to 1914, provisionally titled A Condition of England, is the ideas developed in The Words of Selves to the recently forthcoming. expanding social definitions of the family. In particular, 33 The Humanities Department Gavin Bryars: —M.A. Stouck “Visual Art Collaborations” —Petra Watson

The Humanities Institute at SFU enjoys a Gavin Bryars appeared at the Vancouver Art Gallery unique reciprocal relationship with the newly on Thursday, July 5, 2001. The talk was sponsored by established Humanities Department, which offers the Institute for the Humanities and the Independent undergraduates a number of degree options in Communication Association, a non-profit society, with major, minor and joint major programs. Faculty support from the Vancouver Art Gallery. The talk brought teaching in the department take an active role in the in a large and very appreciative audience. Gavin Bryars Institute, serving as its directors and on the Steering spoke about his compositional work—its conceptual Committee; the two units also share the benefits of basis—the courses that he taught in England on the J.S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities: the Duchamp during the 70s and this influence on his work, holder of this chair has teaching responsibilities and his collaborations with visual artists. in the department and research and outreach functions in the Institute. The Institute supports Gavin Bryars is an internationally recognized, the department’s courses through an enrichment contemporary composer. Born in England, Gavin program, while the undergraduate curriculum reflects Bryars has composed for string quartets, for voice and the breadth of the Institute’s interests. Its courses orchestras. His first major works, The Sinking of the approach the humanities both chronologically, Titanic (1969) and Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971), from the classical period through the Middle Ages, have been re-released to sell over a quarter of a million Renaissance and Enlightenment to the present, and copies. thematically, through topics such as peace studies, the natural environment, and the close examination Gavin Bryars has worked on diverse projects with of particular cultures, cities and figures in the artists such as Christian Boltanski, James Hugonin, humanistic tradition. Students taking Humanities Bruce MacLean and Robert Wilson, among others. His courses are encouraged to attend Institute lectures: collaborations with visual artists was the chief focus of his in a recent senior seminar on Freud, a lecture talk at the Vancouver Art Gallery. series by specialists open to the public also formed a regular part of the course syllabus. In terms of During the 1960s, he first performed as a jazz bassist, organization, the Institute and the Department are and then worked for a time with John Cage. In 1981, he formally affiliated; both units continue to seek out founded the Gavin Bryars Ensemble that continues to opportunities for creative cooperation. tour internationally. He has composed for theatre, written a number of full-length operas, as well as collaborated with dancers, such as Merce Cunningham, Lucinda Childs and Edouard Lock. He has written about his work in Parkett, Modern Painters, and other journals. A recent commission with the London Sinfonietta will premiere at the grand opening of the concert hall in Oporto, Italy, the cultural capital of Europe in 2002. Gavin Bryars’ works are available on CD through various labels and his own, GB Records.

34 A Cell of One’s Own?

—Wayne Knights

A review of Can Prisons Work? The Prisoner The Green Mile as Object and Subject in Modern Corrections. To be fair, some people think prisons work by Stephen Duguid, University of Toronto Press, deterring people from committing crimes, at least 2000. Duguid’s book won the Harold Adams Innes when they aren’t run like holiday camps. In some Prize for best English-language book in the social instances, mostly sentimental, they might see sciences 2000-2001. some Christ-scenario working itself out amidst B o o k s the occasional injustices that inevitably arise in Can prisons work? What kind of question is prison. (And if you think the mouse in the movie this? Two centuries have passed since Jeremy was unrealistic, well, I can tell you prisoners and Bentham’s Panopticon project promoted the animals are always saving each other.) Modern idea that prison regimes could actually correct imprisonment was rarely intended as simple offenders. Is it some new perversity to propose it punishment for bad deeds or as an opportunity in the year 2000? At least since the world wars this for the meek (and the mice) to inherit the earth. kind of optimism has been dissolved in cynicism, One of the great virtues of Duguid’s book is the ideology-critique, anxiety, the celebration of short, critical history of correctional philosophies difference, and, above all, realism. Hasn’t it in Canada and elsewhere, which is an essential been clear for some time that the practical context for understanding what is at stake. enlightenment was a misguided attempt to Nor is this a dry academic account; it has the impose progress through conformity to rational feel of being told by someone who lived (and norms? Isn’t it apparent that there is little occasionally suffered) through much of it. normatively rational about social action and that intentions and outcomes are at odds with each No citizen would have reason to know this, so other by nature? Well, isn’t it? here is a potted version of some recent salient moments highlighted by Duguid. At some Apparently Duguid (pronounced Do Good) point in the postwar period, and consistent prefers the 18th century, an amusing, childlike with the psychologizing of social life (see Tony time. This is why we have tenure, to protect the Soprano in analysis), we saw the emergence of innocent from the self-evident. So Duguid can a medical model. In this version, the prisoner, persist, suggesting that prisons can work by the deviant, is sick. Fortunately, the sick can be exporting this ivory tower into the prison. Just cured by the application of a proper science of as the ivory tower implies a beautiful distancing normality. Moral, environmental, physical and from the influence of everyday social and intellectual deficits would be addressed through political pressures, so this ivory bunker can programming. One fondly remembers prisoners, resist the influence of the authoritarian, coercive asked to picture home, drawing nice middle-class environment of the prison. And both tower and suburban images in gestalt groups—as long as bunker, because of their (relative) autonomy from they were stoned. In 1974, an infamous overview their surroundings, can create the pre-conditions of 200 such programs concluded “nothing works”. for change—change of self, community, and No sooner had the Emperor been declared to ethical life. lack proper attire, the whole façade collapsed. A funding crisis helpfully underpinned this change A review must fairly summarize this argument, of heart, but there was a genuine insight as well: so let me try. In the interests of self-flagellation, the process of incarceration undermined any I should point out that Duguid, I, and several rehabilitation efforts it supported. others worked in the ivory bunker as non- commissioned officers and comrades for The next period, which tried to fly under the some time. More incriminating yet, when our banner of the “opportunities model,” was a sentences finally expired and the ivory bunker period in which Duguid, paraphrasing Mao, says was overwhelmed, I worked on the research “a hundred flowers bloomed.” This might suggest project that provided much of the empirical a rosy picture, of creative experimentation and evidence for Duguid’s arguments. There are no happily competing ideas. More accurately, a innocents. vacuum had been created. Prisoners had to do

35 something in jail, particularly as tolerant subject of the modern sentences were getting longer (this After all, this was prison. The fences world. The prison, this enthusiastic is known as “dynamic security”). were not going to come down. So once paragon of the bureaucratic and It was not as if corrections again the great question at the heart of authoritarian institutions spawned encouraged opportunities and the university’s relationship to society by the Enlightenment, is expected a new tolerance; it merely made was acutely posed: can society/prison to tolerate a “counter public-sphere” room for opportunists while tolerate the ivory tower/bunker; that in its midst, a space or interstice, the correctional professionals is, can the context allow the university where experimental transformative retreated, licking their wounds. the independence of thought and change can take place. In effect, we Prisons were invaded by new inquiry that defines it? Now this is a need prisons to embrace a potentially institutions (universities, school very complex question, and Duguid’s explosive relationship with the boards, private contractors), new book can be read as a commentary programs inside it. This won’t happen issues (black power, native rights, on this troubled issue in the largest any time soon, but in that period even inmate rights), and new sense—the focus on prison just between 1974 and 1990 sufficient faces. As Duguid says, the latter sharpens the debate. The university space did occasionally appear that came “with minimal baggage in program, like the university, ran could be exploited. The implications terms of the patterns that had are the heart of the book, but been established by prisoners, first we need to know the rest treatment staff and corrections of the history—which will not staff.” So once again the great question at disappoint those who hold to the heart of the university’s relation- the “first time tragedy second And so the university went to ship to society was acutely posed: time farce” view of things. prison, sometimes under the can society/prison tolerate the ivory guise of educational treatment, tower/bunker; that is, can the context The vacuum couldn’t last; but staffed by individuals who nature rushed to fill it. allow the university the indepen- rarely shared the imperatives As befitting the whole of the prison, who fancied dence of thought and inquiry that paradoxical exercise, themselves university defines it? theoreticians of the university instructors, and who saw program’s activities, their new students as, well, especially Duguid, found students. Some of them had elements of their work even read Foucault, identified into all kinds of obstacles, including re-surfacing in an unrecognizable with Meursault’s rebellion, inmate/student culture opposition, form, the medical model redux. dabbled in critical theory, and conventional values, issues of security (There are some humorous moments yearned to smash the state—if and conflicting philosophies. (There between the lines, brought about only theoretically. The reader have been prison wardens, I might add, by the curse of self-reflection.) will enjoy Duguid’s rich account who have understood this relationship With Maoist metaphors floating of this period, redolent of every better than some university presidents.) around, it will come as no surprise political and cultural strain from that a model of theory and practice the collapse of the dollar to the Part of Duguid’s argument is that lay at the heart of the university collapse of the Wall. It is in this the ethos of the university was program. The university program period that the university program fundamental to the distance required in BC was somewhat unique in its in BC’s federal prisons established between the program and the prison desire to theorize about the practice itself and flourished. The decline that might make a prison work—that of education and the formation of of the medical model and the is, work to turn the criminal into academic communities in unseemly vacuum it left dovetailed nicely the citizen. This citizen is conceived spots. This had resonance; maybe with ideas about programming and not as the conforming soul beloved there was something rational about education that came to embody a of the medical model, but as the observed changes. Maybe it could be contradictory relationship with the participating, possibly oppositional, generalized! Embodied in institutional prison system. hopefully democratic and mostly practices, that sort of thing. Worse,

36 there was empirical evaluation Duguid tells, although he might suggesting these theories were not recognize it in this form. The practical and could lower recidivism. inevitable demise is no surprise, nor, Nothing fails like success in a prison ultimately, is the part your own hand setting. Professional correctors began plays in it. But how you walked that to perk up. Maybe something could mile is more important than the end. be done, and much better than by So what about his analysis of the amateurs! counter public sphere at the heart of darkness? This is simplification. But as Duguid argues, making the university work The subject-object of this history in prison involves a keen awareness The mythical figure of the Subject- of the essentially paradoxical nature Object identical is a temptress, and of the activity, in that difficult to Duguid ignores the sirens’ call. The define space in which determinism uniqueness of this book resides in a and freedom play. Piagetian or deep regard of the moments when the Kohlbergian theories of educational play of subject and object, freedom and moral development might be and determinism enter into a kind employed heuristically (you are of concrete dialogue that makes going up a hill in the fog; you want occasional sense of the apparent to be sure every step is an upward contradictions between them. At step, pace Sartre), but imagine your the sharp end, prison education surprise if these theories become is the experience of paradox and codified steps to the top. What was contradiction. It doesn’t move on, it suggestive was now rational. It isn’t surpassed or overcome, it doesn’t could be reproduced, duplicated, issue in a new reality. And yet it does engineered, appropriated. move. The prison is a determinate entity, as is the past of the prisoner Suddenly, it seemed, the complex and the subculture that informs it. relationship of theory and practice Duguid describes how the prisoner became the power of positive tries to resist the identifications, roles cognitive thinking. To ensure the and labels imposed on him by the security-conscious prison got on prison, while all the while embracing board, policy makers, wedded to the those of “the life.” He makes history, new dogma of cognitive development but not always as he pleases. In that in a correctional setting, wisely gap is the play, the space in which tied career success to ideological change might be negotiated. agreement. Everyone was on board and the train was going to Dodge City. To illustrate this, Duguid borrows In the shoot-out at the OK Corral, the Virginia Woolf’s metaphor in A Room university program wasn’t okay—too of One’s Own. She insists a “woman independent, too distanced, too, well, must have money and a room of stand-offish. Besides, who needed one’s own if she is to write fiction.” university employees when your own Transposing, if the fiction is an correctional staff could be cognitive authentic self in relation to the whole, enablers. and if money can mean resources and the social connections embodied by This is the end of the real green them, and if the room is the space in mile, at least for now. Walking the which the private self can determine green mile (and the hallways are its interactions with the public sphere, still institutional green, and so are then we can begin to picture how this the prisoner’s clothes) is to walk might look. the last mile to execution. You start off, things look desperate, you get a In assessing the more successful handle on the situation, save a few experiments of this period, Duguid mice, perhaps the warden’s ass, and isolates three factors essential to finally the process re-asserts itself. the transformation from criminal You discover you are indeed a dead to citizen: “a democratic ethics, a man walking, walking on floors you diverse set of political linkages, and an cleaned every day. This is the story inevitably complex set of needs and

37 relations.” What does this mean? He the impact of the university program, possibility of realistic action. And if elaborates (I paraphrase slightly): an evaluation based on a research that depresses you, then I would urge methodology that captures the readers to look beyond the title of First, an ethical stance towards the complexity of the situation described this work. Yes, it is about prison. But prisoner, with him or her as a subject above. Without this, the book would it is about much more than that. It is rather than an object (a file, a label, be passing theoretical wind. Most about education, about democratic a type). Structurally, this means evaluations of prison settings force citizenship, about the value of a democratic and participatory complex social experience into a enlightenment and the practical value environment. Second, there need to set of boxes marked successful/not of the humanities in informing social be bonds with the conventional world; for example, bonds with action. an outside institution like the university, its students, Personally, I’ve been its staff, and its resources. Personally, I’ve been fond of an epigram of fond of an epigram Finally, a structural Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in of Max Horkheimer approach that relies on the and Theodor Adorno the Dialectic of Enlightenment. They sug- complexity of the situation, in the Dialectic of acknowledging that prisoner gest the prisoner in his isolated cell is the Enlightenment. They needs are many and unique very image of bourgeois individualism that suggest the prisoner and the intervenor’s skills modern society wishes to impose on the in his isolated cell and abilities are various and is the very image of limited. subject. I always feared that the university program participated in this imposition, bourgeois individualism that modern society The last point needs a bit that in a truly cunning way it turned the wishes to impose on of elaboration. Basically, at criminal into a nebulous social being—not the subject. I always the heart of Duguid’s book egocentric enough to be a criminal, and not feared that the university is an appreciation of the program participated irreducible individuality autonomous enough to be a citizen. in this imposition, that of the prisoners, and staff, in a truly cunning way and anyone else. This is it turned the criminal implied in the sub-title— into a nebulous social from object to subject. being—not egocentric Once we see the prisoner successful, good/bad, effective/ enough to be a criminal, and not as a subject, all the generalizations ineffective. Nothing can ever work, autonomous enough to be a citizen. and labels one might apply are because the method and the practice Duguid’s notion of what we might compromised. Evaluative studies and are at odds with each other. Not call a “cell of one’s own” points theory require generalization, but you surprisingly, this is paralleled by the a way out of that conundrum by can’t educate on the basis of these contradictory relationship between promoting an image of freedom and generalizations. Thus the university the enlightenment style object communication over the current program had a loose admission policy, (institutions) and the potentially reality of isolation and one-sided and resisted all attempts to stream enlightened subjects trying to conversations. candidates for the program or limit it live within them so typical of the to deserving or appropriate inmates. experience Duguid analyses. Thus one of its nominal incarnations: the Humanities Program (much Can this book change things? Not in preferred to the bureaucratically the present atmosphere. In a literature necessary Prison Education Program). marked by enthusiastic proponents of corrections and cynical critics of This discussion is necessarily abstract, any activity in prison, there is little which is unfortunate, because at room for a radical analysis of the the centre of the argument is a sophisticated empirical evaluation of

38 Alan Whitehorn: First J.S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities

—Trish Graham

From 1994–1996 Alan Whitehorn was the first holder of the J.S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University. During his stay at Simon Fraser University, Professor Whitehorn taught six undergraduate courses in the Humanities, appeared regularly in the local media, spoke in the community and at Simon Fraser University, and organized several public events on themes related to “Problems and Prospects of Social Democracy“ and “Women in Politics.” These public events brought many distinguished speakers in the social democratic movement from across Canada to audiences at Simon Fraser University and in greater Vancouver.

Among Alan Whitehorn’s most recent publications are Party Politics in Canada (Prentice Hall/Pearson Education, 2000) co-edited with Hugh G. Thorburn, and The Armenian Genocide: Resisting the Inertia of Indifference (Blue Heron Press, 2001) with co-author Lorne Shirinian. Professor of Political Science at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, and cross-appointed professor at Queen’s University, Alan Whitehorn is currently working on a book introducing children to international politics.

From “The Armenian Genocide: A Canadian Perspective,” The Armenian Genocide, Resisting the Inertia of Indifference

threats of military intervention… Canadian lives; while also saying Ominously in 1895-1896, about 2) that human rights of an ethnic 200,000 Armenians were massacred. One ray of hope on the Turkish people did not matter in the past This was to be, however, just a domestic front is that with increased and we should forget history and prelude to the state decreed forced emigration (and contact with other focus instead on new trade deals deportation, starvation, torture and cultures), greater public access with governments who engage in death of hundreds of thousands of (e.g. through the Internet) to more genocide denial. To allow the latter Armenians in 1915 that led to the diverse information, and with the position to prevail profoundly culmination of about one and a half passage of time, it is more likely undercuts our moral and human million dead… In addition to the that a new generation willing to commitment to peacekeeping and torture, starvation, disease, and death, challenge the wall of genocidal denial international law. We should not say homes were confiscated, property (e.g. the Turkish researcher, Taner one genocide counts, while another stolen, and churches and grave sites Akcam)… will emerge to foster the does not. We either are a world destroyed. More importantly and path of greater academic freedom, where each individual and each traumatically, a generation of children democratization, and the emergence ethnic group have human rights as were killed or orphaned. An entire of a civil society… enunciated in the UN Charter, the people were at peril—this is to say UN Declaration of Human Rights and they were the victims of genocide... If it is deemed morally necessary to the UN International Convention send dedicated and brave Canadian on the Prevention and Punishment In contrast to German actions in the peacekeepers abroad to be in harm’s of the Crime of Genocide. Or these post-war era, Turkey, in the main, way in an effort to try to stop ethnic principles do not yet prevail and was more successful in resisting slaughter and genocide in diverse the vision of justice and equality post-WW1 efforts at occupation and locales around the globe, then surely within the world community remain intervention by European powers. As it is incumbent upon the Canadian unfulfilled. a result, it was not forced by foreign government not to undermine the powers to deal in any sustained major moral and logical basis of these way with its past genocidal deeds, nor important commitments of our did it foster a flourishing democratic citizen/soldiers. We cannot and and pluralistic culture. Right up to the should not put forward two morally contemporary era, Turkish politics contradictory statements: have been characterized by political 1) that human rights of an ethnic repression, censorship, banning of people matter today and genocide political parties, and military coups or must be stopped even at the risk to

39 Anarcho-Modernism Toward a New Critical Theory In Honour of Jerry Zaslove —Edited by Ian Angus

This volume is a collection of 38 pieces unified by a combination of the playful, primitive aesthetic of literary modernism with the anti-authoritarian, anarchist praxis of radical democratic politics. This bi-polar sensibility permeates the work of Jerry Zaslove, to whom the book is dedicated.

Yet even if this sensibility pervades the book, the ideas presented here are all animated by highly conflicting attempts to articulate rigorously the anarcho- modernist stance, its literary forms and its political implications and values. In particular, all the contributors explore the fundamental tension that defines our new century—between bureaucratization and industrialization on the one hand, and the critical and autonomous individual on the other.

The five sections of the work focus on The Industrialization of Culture; Literature and Aesthetics; Public Education and Literacy; Human Rights and Politics; and Anarchism and Friendship.

Whatever holds together the anarchist solidarity represented in this collection, it isn’t a “principle,” a generality that is made to apply equally to all comers. It’s a particular relation, an affinity, that perhaps can be approached through thinking about friendship as a utopia of the near, the particular and the concrete—not as a system of generalities for all. This guiding orientation is vital for the reconstruction of a critical theory adequate for our own time. Special Institute for the The contributors are all friends, colleagues and collaborators of Jerry Zaslove, Humanities price with Talon many of whom, such as Russell Jacoby, Robin Blaser, Wayne Burns, Harvey Graff, Books: $30 (tax and shipping David Kettler, Wold-Dieter Narr, Jeff Wall and Heribert Adam, are well established included) and widely recognized in their fields. There are also many newer authors included here whose work is sure to become equally well known over time. To order, send the form along with payment to: Contributors Talon Books Heribert Adam • Ian Angus • Robin Blaser • Martin Blobel • Wayne Burns • Gerald J. P.O. Box 2076 Butler • Edward Byrne • Robert D. Callahan • Jim Chalmers • Ross Clarkson • Vancouver, British Columbia Kath Curran • Richard Day • John Doheny • Stephen Duguid • Art Efron • David Canada V6B 3S3 Goodway • Harvey J. Graff • Brian Graham • Patricia Kilsby Graham • Donald Grayston • Paul Green • Jane Harris • Russell Jacoby • Robert Hullot-Kentor • Paul Telephone 604-444-4889 Kelley • David Kettler • G.P. Lainsbury • Martha Langford • Ralph Maud • Kirsten Fax 604-444-4119 McAllister • Tom McGauley • Tom Morris • Michael Mundhenk • Wolf-Dieter Narr Email [email protected] • Richard Pinet • Derek Simons • Jennifer Simons • Peyman Vahabzadeh • Aaron Vidaver • Jeff Wall • David Wallace • Alan Whitehorn www.talonbooks.com #------

Please send me _____ copies of Anarcho ______Modernism: Toward a New Critical Theory at Name the special Institute for the Humanities price of $30 each. ______Mailing Address

A cheque or money order in Canadian funds ______(made payable to Talon Books) is enclosed. City Postal Code

40 Classical Leanings

—David Mirhady

The study of the Greek and Roman languages and one of a number of interdependent humanities cultures (classics) has been a mainstay of western disciplines, such as English, history and education. But things have changed. Latin is philosophy, as well as disciplines that may not increasingly a rarity in high school education, identify themselves within humanities, such and a familiarity with classical languages and as anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics. cultures is no longer the sine qua non of an Classics has traditionally defined itself in educated person. Moreover, the fate of classics terms of the classical languages, ancient is not isolated. The liberal arts curriculum in Greek and Latin—thus the synonym “classical general is increasingly marginalized in favour of philology”. But nowadays very few classicists are technical and above all business skills. In western actually engaged in pouring over the medieval Canada, departments of classics have recently manuscripts and ancient papyri and inscriptions been forced to merge with other disciplines, that made years of study in Latin or Greek such as history and religious studies. At the same composition a key to reconstructing fragmentary time, student interest in classical mythology and or mistakenly copied texts. Some classicists history has arguably never been higher. define themselves strictly in terms of one of the sub-disciplines, ancient history, philosophy, or Classics and Simon Fraser University archaeology. Others draw on various areas. Some F u t u r e E v e n t s It was in part that student interest that brought have seen the discipline as a whole “in crisis.” me, a classicist, to the fledgling Humanities Department at SFU in the fall of 2000. The Papers have been invited for a conference department’s course in classical mythology was (see page 42) that deal with all aspects of its biggest draw. Students are fascinated by its classical studies. They will give attention, stories, excited by its great literature, and seduced implicitly or explicitly, to how their subject by the evocative sculptures and vase paintings matter and methods may be defined within that bring the myths of the classical Greeks alive and outside the context of the humanities not only through texts and in our imaginations disciplines. Interdisciplinary panels, which invite but before our eyes. Few would argue about participation from individuals outside classics, the foundational role these stories play in are being particularly encouraged. a humanities curriculum. But they are also products of the specific cultures that created and Spartacus nurtured them. It’s appropriate that a specialist in The keynote speaker for the conference will the classical languages and cultures teach them. be Brent Shaw. For twenty years he was at the University of Lethbridge before succumbing in Before my arrival, SFU had not had a full-time 1996 to the lure of the Ivy League and a senior classicist with a regular appointment. Robin position at the University of Pennsylvania. Barrow in the Faculty of Education is actually Trained first as a classicist, he studied at one of the world’s authorities on ancient Cambridge with Moses Finley and is one of the education. But he specializes in educational world’s most important scholars working on issues, and he’s currently Dean with little time Roman social history, particularly slavery. In the for teaching. By the same token, I had never abstract for the paper he will deliver, he writes taught in a humanities department before. the following: With an undergraduate degree in philosophy, graduate degrees in classics, and teaching There can be no doubt that if there is one slave from stints in history departments, however, I had all of Greek and Roman antiquity who is known by wide experience with different disciplinary name to the wider public, that slave is Spartacus. cultures in the humanities. Now we are The Thracian gladiator who led the last of the great trying to shape the disciplinary focus of our slave wars against the Roman state in the late 70s Humanities Department. Some like the term BC has been the subject of numerous treatments ‘interdisciplinary,’ but perhaps we’re better off in the principal media of the twentieth century. As defining ourselves as “multi-disciplinary”. a popular figure, however, both Spartacus and his rebellion seem to have faded rather quickly from There is need for new considerations of the view since the 1960s. Why? roles of classics as a discipline and its place as

41 of eighteenth and nineteenth century the Humanities at SFU and the Social Part of the answer must lie in the European and American ideologies Sciences and Humanities research reasons why he was even born in the that created the basis for a twentieth Council of Canada, the conference first place, not as an auxiliary soldier century Spartacus whose life seems in is taking place under the aegis of the and a gladiator who fought for the real danger of extinction? Classical Association of the Canadian entertainment of Romans more than West (CACW). two millennia ago, but as a popular Shaw clearly has in mind the figure in the modern age. Spartacus, it enormous success of the film turns out, has a rather intriguing pre- Gladiator, which reflects in so twentieth century history that might many ways the time in which it was well explain some of the current attrition produced, just as Kubrick’s Spartacus of his image. What were the precise did forty years before. Shaw thus circumstances of a modern rebirth of betrays an awareness of the historical interest in a Roman slave, the leader of contexts of his own writing and marks a great slave war? And why should that a departure from the work of classical interest have determined the shape and historians a generation or two before. longevity of his image? In short, what is the relationship between the courses With the support of the Institute for

An Interdisciplinary Conference hosted by the Classical Leanings Conference Topics: Classical Association of the Canadian West Roundtable on the Teaching of Latin and Greek on the theme Modern Philosophy and its Classical Antecedents Modern Literary Criticism and Classical Literature CLASSICS AND THE Greek and Roman History and Culture HUMANITIES Classics and Beyond: Interdisciplinary Programs February 22-23, 2002 Presocratic Philosophy and its Modern Analogues Modern Approaches and Parallels to Greek Literature Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre Ancient Rhetoric in the Modern Classroom 515 West Hastings Street Children’s Literature and Movies Vancouver, British Ancient Science and the Modern Scientist Columbia

Keynote Speaker Brent Shaw,

For further information contact University of Pennsylvania David Mirhady at 604-291-3906 “Slavery and Freedom: or email [email protected] The Image of Spartacus”

42 Myrna Kostash and the Grace MacInnis Visiting Scholar Program Spring 2002 —Ian Angus

The Institute for the Humanities is Journalism at the University of Regina pleased to announce that Edmonton- (1989–90). She is also a frequent based author Myrna Kostash will be juror for literary competitions by the Grace MacInnis Visiting Scholar the Canada Council, the Ontario in Spring 2002. As visiting scholar she Arts Council, the Manitoba Arts Myrna Kostash will meet with students and faculty Council, the Alberta Foundation for and deliver the Grace MacInnis the Literary Arts, and the Governor- that sounds a new note of hope in Memorial Lecture. Previous Grace General’s Non-Fiction Award and beleaguered times. MacInnis visiting scholars include other organizations. She is also on the Shirley Williams (1993), Joy Kogawa board of The Parkland Institute at the Myrna Kostash’s Grace McInnis (1995), and Lynn MacDonald (1997). University of Alberta. Memorial Lecture will take its theme from the comments and debates Myrna Kostash’s writing of creative In addition, she has been active for aroused by The Next Canada and non-fiction combines reporting many years in writers’ organizations will reflect on the creative writing of indebted to New Journalism with and in the politics of writing. She the history of minority peoples and a literary concern with expressive is past Chair of The Writers’ Union critical social movements. form which sustains both intensely of Canada (1993-4), a founding personal questioning and political member of The Periodical Writers’ Kostash’s writing has always been engagement. Her work has been Association of Canada, a founding socially engaged and has contributed widely reviewed and described with member and President of the Writers’ to widening and reforming the numerous accolades. She has been Guild of Alberta, serves on the accepted view of events. Her called “an extraordinarily gifted executive committee of the Canadian celebrated first book All of Baba’s writer” by Alberto Manguel, “an Conference of the Arts, and is an Children (1977, reissued 1987) traced incisive chronicler of social history” active participant in many artists’ the history of the generation after (Globe and Mail) and “one of Canada’s organizations. Alberta’s Ukrainian immigrants and most intelligent and conscientious contributed to the construction of writers” (Books in Canada). Her work Kostash’s most recent book, The Next a multicultural history of Canada has been widely read and discussed Canada has provoked many reviews, such that she subsequently became as a model of engaged and reflective critiques and accolades. It records a major voice in debates concerning political writing. She was recently reflections on her interviews with multiculturalism. No Kidding: Inside shortlisted for the Shaugnessy Cohen young Canadians (25–35) active in the World of Teenage Girls (McClelland Prize for political writing for The artistic, political and economic life. and Stewart, 1987) revealed the Next Canada: In Search of the Future Kostash compares the views of these gender and economic constraints that Nation (McClelland and Stewart, Canadians who will influence our entrap many girls and young women. 2000). Current projects deal with future nation with the ideals of her She concluded “Two things would topics arising from her persistent own generation of the 1960s. While help her realize her possibilities: travel to, and study of, the Balkans. she records many fascinating cultural, democratic and non-sexist social and economic and political shifts, her economic institutions; and her own Myrna Kostash is the author of six main interest is in the attitude of conviction (let her be given space non-fiction books, is a frequent young people to the ideals of social and autonomy enough!) that she can contributor to periodicals and justice that dominated the sixties be and do more than she was ever anthologies, an occasional writer for and contributed to the formation allowed to imagine. Let her imagine radio and the stage, and has taught of her own vocation as a political herself bold and clever and sovereign. creative writing at many universities writer. Despite a tendency to be Let her imagine herself a woman.” and summer writing schools. She skeptical of labels such as feminism, No Kidding was awarded the Alberta has been writer-in-residence at the socialism and nationalism, she finds Culture Prize for Best Non-Fiction and Regina Public Library (1996-7), the that the new generation associate the Writers’ Guild of Alberta Prize for Whyte Museum and Gallery (1995), being Canadian with a striving for Best Non-Fiction. and The Loft in Minneapolis (1994), social justice. Across the linguistic was Ashley Fellow at Trent University divide that has come to be associated Long Way From Home: The Story of the (1996), and Max Bell Professor of with postmodernism, she finds a Sixties Generation (Lorimer, 1980) told continuity with the ideals of the 1960s the history of the formation of

43 the New Left in Canada at a time in which it was being buried by the resurgence of the Right. Kostash has a remarkable ability to tell an engaging story while undoing the settled interpretations that would relegate it to a detail. Her work is a valiant struggle for what one might call ‘minoritarian history,’ or history written by those excluded from power. The book can also be read as the story of the formation of Kostash’s own political sensibility which is expressed in her writing as the combination of personal questioning and political engagement. In Bloodlines: A Journey Into Eastern Europe (Douglas and McIntyre, 1993) she followed her own origins back before the emigration to Canada into the tangled politics of Eastern Europe. It is perhaps the most tragic of her books, since it explored the common and interwoven roots of Eastern European ethnicities just prior to the explosion of ethnic violence in that region. In the introduction, Kostash noted that “I did not know in 1988 that everything was about to change—visits to Serbia and Ukraine at the end of 1991 were a kind of coda to my journeys—and so this is not a book about the revolution. This is a book about memory.” While it has been, to some extent, sadly overtaken European dissidents that pursues desire that imprecates the most by events, it can nonetheless be and explicates a tangled relationship personal questioning with political read as a reminder that the turn of between politics, power and desire. struggles and the experiences of the events was not an inevitable result of Probing the misunderstandings battlements. Her Grace MacInnis ancient conflicts, but was a political between the western New Left and Memorial Lecture in Spring 2002 will response to the fall of communism. dissidents in Soviet-style societies, it be a memorable experience that the Perhaps this historical ‘chance’ was nevertheless wants to assert that they Institute for the Humanities is proud more than that. Throughout her had a common project of recovering to present. work, Kostash writes more of memory grassroots democracy that has been than of revolution, though she writes buried by subsequent events. This often of the desire for revolution. It remarkable book provoked Lynn is a profoundly Canadian political Crosbie to say that “Myrna Kostash Myrna Kostash will speak at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby on sensibility that guides her work: the writes like a bohemian Tosca—The March 14 and at the Vancouver Public combination of memory and longing Doomed Bridegroom is a lyrical, Library on March 15, 2002. For more for change. Looking back, looking lovesick, and compelling antidote to information, contact Trish Graham at forward: a change that would preserve the commonplace memoir.” [email protected] or 604-291-5855. as it overturns. Myrna Kostash’s work has always The Doomed Bridegroom: A Memoir been a battle with the commonplace, (NeWest Press, 1998) is her most an opening out of the flattened personal book. It describes an erotic present through memory and journey of attraction to Eastern

44 Canada Day 2000

–Myrna Kostash

Excerpt from an article written for The and the ruined hulk of the Canada deCanadianization of the FTA era, Globe and Mail Pavilion, poorly built on a wooden its careless disregard of historical frame and now become ramshackle. memory and social solidarity. It didn’t Here, in my sister’s and brother-in- The student thought he saw a group of occur to me that for another, younger, law’s Lanark County home, west squatters in residence, a sign of some generation, this constricted, mean- of Ottawa, I sit on the borderline sort of life. spirited, corporatized Canada with a between an ancient limestone plain website for an address would be the and the rugged Precambrian rock What had happened between these only home they knew, and that they outcrops of the Canadian Shield. two Expos? would love it anyway. Could there be a more Canadian place than this? I feel the literal bedrock of One evening in November 1988 I had “There is something in the ponderous a Canadian self, here where the old sat stunned in a university cafeteria stillness of these forests...” wrote an stories of First Nations and founding festooned with the brave balloons that early Irish settler in Lanark County, nations, stamped by a red maple leaf were meant to celebrate the victory of “something in their wild, torn, that does not even grow on mossy darkness.” That vivid most of Canada’s land mass, apprehension of a primeval, were first circulated in my foundational Canada was gone, schoolgirl’s brain. The stories it seemed to me, not only in were then rounded out by the Some of my interviewees felt a cer- the accelerated clear-cutting of satisfying tale of adventure of tain disquiet and uncertainty from forest—half the timber that has Galician pioneers in sheepskin the dislocations of immigration and been cut in Canada has been coats who broke sod on the logged in the last 25 years—but migration or felt themselves to be in- great plains and threshed also in the imagined notion wheat from its upturned habiting several homeplaces at once of the wilderness in which we emptiness. Finally, the tales whose boundaries of race, gender pretend to be communing with conclude in the collective and language overlapped imperfectly the wild in our semi-natural triumph of Expo 67, the with the older, fixed boundary of a parks and cedar-clad chalets World’s Fair, just in time for historical Canada. of ski resorts. The idea of a the exhilarating production wilderness has become at least of Canadian Culture in arts as important to our sense of and letters, not to mention well-being as the existence of in fervent anti-Americanism the actual forest itself. And our during the rage that was the artists dream of walking out war in Vietnam. Where is here? literary my NDP candidate from Edmonton of our cities, out the back alleys and theorist Northrop Frye had famously Strathcona in the federal election straight into the boreal forest and the challenged us, and we had answered, that brought instead the re-election caribou and the Northern Lights, even Why, it’s right here under our feet, this of Brian Mulroney’s Tories and the while most Canadians live in cities, bedrock, these plains, these stories promise of a free trade agreement emigrants away from the territorial we tell each other. “Here” even has its with the United States. hinterland that had once borne the own flag. I was inconsolable. I felt that my meaning of “here.” country had been kidnapped Thirty years later, a young art student by aliens, and I didn’t mean the Of course, for aboriginal Canadians at from Winnipeg went to Montreal Americans. I meant my fellow least, roots go so deep they cannot be and visited the site of Expo 67, about Canadians who had dreamed the pulled, as a Mi’kmaq saying goes, and which he had heard so much from familiar dream of the continentalists their artists believe they work around his parents. He took his camera. But in which we Canadians merge with a centre that does not shift with a the amusement park was closed, Americans and do away with the historical memory that remembers and, when he walked to the top of travail required to construct our own nothing older than Turtle Island itself a small hill to look around at the collective. The place I could still call —“here” has never been elsewhere. buildings he had become familiar home was no longer nation-wide but Are non-aboriginal Canadians with from photographs, he saw only only as wide as my neighbourhood of condemned to be provisional dwellers grey polygons hunkered down among kindred spirits and peers who widely of a homeplace we are not native to or seedy fun park structures, a casino, deplored the social and cultural can we somehow reel ourselves into the time before time of aboriginal

45 memory ? I mean, where else would imperfectly with the older, fixed off underground films and circulated we feel at home? boundary of a historical Canada. on computers. And leaflets copied in Where my generation experienced their hundreds at the local copy shop But these questions, I soon learned the perennial Canadian identity crisis and distributed anonymously. And from the “next Canadians” as I as a neurosis to be cured by specific Polaroids. You even can use Polaroids. met them, were not the interesting policy decisions to firm ourselves up, “Friends of mine have left Polaroids ones. Yes, there are the ones who do younger people talked of the “crisis” around the city as some kind of struggle for the actual forests but as an opportunity to develop a whole statement: I was here.” there are many who see themselves series of morphed identities. “Are as urban environmental activists— we a techno-culture, an art, a social I was here. The idea of those three reclaiming the streets for bicycles, community, or a political space?” words, metaphorically scratched say —or, more symbolically, as one wanted to know, relishing the onto fading Kodachrome and sharing metaphorical landscapes of possibilities of all at once. Some abandoned to the urban drift, communication among media or who even rhapsodize the proliferation haunted me for a long time—the insist that “here” is not a geohistorical of virtual cultures that free the pathos of the unnamed I, of the no- place, as it was until the Free Trade participant of the encumbrances of fixed address of here. But I needn’t Agreement for my generation, but a race and ethnicity, not to mention feel so sorry. Even the art student series of stories they tell each other. citizenship, the implications of which feels a little wistful about the older A young DJ in Toronto, an aficionada seem to me staggering. If identity as generation’s experience of the old of techno-urban music, even found historically grounded in collective solidarities and certainties, the One that in the subdivided world of shared experience in a common Big Narratives of time and place, the free-floating musical categories, the space is declared obsolescent, then old patriotism of the Canadian Shield culture is about “people telling their we are only here now and nothing has and Aurora Borealis, of the tales of own stories, bringing people together” happened to us. Manawaka and Batoche and Expo as though huddled around some 67, even though he knows that being digitized version of the campfire in And so my young art student in Canadian now means “celebrating” the Canadian woods. And a Cree- Winnipeg believed it: “I’ve thought doubt, inconclusiveness, fluidity speaking computer artist in Regina that the ultimate postmodern nation and improvisation. It was a dictum believes that the World Wide Web would not be based on geography of Marshall McLuhan that Canada speaks the “Language of Spiders” but on a system of networks,” he said, is the only country in the world that and allows for the incorporation of dreamily. knows how to live without an identity. the new technology’s powers into the Knowing there is no “here” anymore “living skins” of ancestral culture. He had told me that his generation on which to make a fixed, convinced of artists was up to something vastly and dedicated stance may make of Some of my interviewees felt a more interesting than the “boring the art student a more unassailable certain disquiet and uncertainty aesthetics” of the modernist suburbia Canadian than he, or I, dreamed from the dislocations of immigration to which so many of his peers had possible. and migration or felt themselves to been consigned at birth. Video art, be inhabiting several homeplaces reproducible in endless multiples, at once whose boundaries of race, excited him. So did images ripped gender and language overlapped

46 Contributors to Humanitas

Lloyd Axworthy is the director of the Liu Centre for and writes on philosophical and phenomenological the Study of Global Issues at the University of British subjects and literary and social theory • Jane Power Columbia • Ian Angus teaches Humanities at Simon is a PhD candidate in the Department of History Fraser University and writes on philosophical ap- at Simon Fraser University, concentrating on the proaches to communications, Canadian nationalism Middle East in the mid-20th century • Bob Russell and social movements • Edward Broadbent is Visiting is Professor of Mathematics and Computing Science Fellow, Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs, Car- and Director of the Centre for Scientific Computing leton University • Ted Byrne is a director at the Trade at Simon Fraser University and is active in human Union Research Bureau in Vancouver, and is a member rights movements • Mary Ann Stouck teaches Eng- of the Kootenay School of Writing Collective • Mark lish and Medieval Studies at Simon Fraser University Coté is a PhD candidate in the School of Communica- • Tammie Tupechka recently finished her MA in tions at Simon Fraser University • Charles Crawford Geography at Simon Fraser University and is ac- is Professor of Psychology at Simon Fraser University tive in local community issues • Petra Watson is a and teaches and writes on evolutionary psychology • curator, writer and PhD candidate at Simon Fraser Richard Day teaches at Queens University, Kingston, University • Myler Wilkinson teaches English and in modern sociological theory • Greig de Peuter is Russian literature at Selkirk College, Castlegar and a PhD candidate in the School of Communications also teaches from time to time at Simon Fraser at Simon Fraser University • John Doheny is Profes- University • Alan Whitehorn teaches Political Sci- sor Emeritus in English at the University of British ence at Royal Military College, Kingston, and writes Columbia and writes on the novel, politics and 19th on political ideology and political parties • Jerry century education of the poor • Steve Duguid is Chair Zaslove writes on the social and political contexts of Humanities at Simon Fraser University and writes on of European literature and art, and on the traditions prison education, environmental theory and Rousseau of anarchism. • Trish Graham is the program assistant at the Insti- tute and teaches from time to time in the Humanities department at SFU • Don Grayston is the director of the Institute for the Humanities and teaches The Mural Cover Design Religious Studies and Holocaust literature at Simon Fraser University • Myrna Kostash The mural depicted on the covers of Humanitas, “Writing, is a non-fiction writer currently residing Figures, Shelves and the Humanities, 2000” can be seen in the in Edmonton • Wayne Knights formerly Humanities Department at the southeast corner of the Academic taught in Simon Fraser University’s Prison Quadrangle. It is a life-size, digitally constructed and composed Education Program and teaches from time series of images that represent each of the faculty members to time in the Humanities department at and programs in the Humanities area. A collaboration of all the SFU • Steve Levine teaches in the Social faculty in Humanities, it is based on an idea by Jerry Zaslove and and Philosophical Thought program at Steve Duguid and is composed and designed by Jerry Zaslove, York University and writes and teaches on Department of Humanities, and Greg Ehlers, Learning and a variety of topics related to the creative Instructional Development Centre, SFU. Photography: Greg process and art therapy • Kathy Mezei teaches Ehlers, Spring, 2000. English and Humanities at Simon Fraser and writes on domestic space and women in literature • David Mirhady teaches and writes on ancient culture Institute for the Humanities and society at Simon Fraser University • Wolf-Dieter Simon Fraser University Narr teaches Political Science at the Free University, 8888 University Drive Berlin, and writes on contemporary politics, political Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6 theory and human rights in Germany • John O’Neill Fax: 604-291-5855 is distinguished research Professor at York University

47 Instituteh for umanitasthe Humanities • Simon Fraser University • Burnaby, British Columbia