Humanitas the Bulletin of the Institute for the Humanities Volume Three: Spring 2004 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

humanitas The Bulletin of the Institute for the Humanities Volume Three: Spring 2004 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

humanitas Institute for the Humanities • Simon Fraser Univer si ty • Burnaby, British Co lum bia

Humanitas 2004 cover 1 12/23/03, 11:28:11 AM humanitas humanitas Spring 2004

Staff

Donald Grayston, Trish Graham, The Mural Cover Design Director Program Assistant The mural depicted on the covers of Humanitas, “Writing, Humanitas editor Figures, Shelves and the Humanities, 2000” can be seen in Trish Graham the Humanities Department at the southeast corner of the Academic Quadrangle. It is a life-size, digitally constructed Consulting editors and composed series of images that represent each of the faculty members and programs in the Humanities area. Donald Grayston Jerry Zaslove A collaboration of all the faculty in Humanities, it is based on an idea by Jerry Zaslove and Steve Duguid and was composed and designed by Jerry Zaslove, Department of Humanities, Layout and design and Greg Ehlers, Learning and Instructional Development Anthea Lee Centre, SFU. Photography: Greg Ehlers, Spring, 2000. Program Information, Continuing Studies, Simon Fraser University

Steering Committee Institute for the Humanities Donald Grayston Simon Fraser University Institute Director and Department of Humanities, 8888 University Drive Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 About the Institute Telephone: 604-291-5855 Stephen Duguid The Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser Chair, Department of Humanities, University, now twenty years in existence, initiates, Simon Fraser University supports and promotes programs devoted to the exploration and dissemination of knowledge about Kathy Mezei traditional and modern approaches to the study of Departments of Humanities and English, the humanities. Simon Fraser University The Institute sponsors a wide variety of community- based activities, along with its university-based Ian Angus academic programs. Department of Humanities, Simon Fraser University

Tom Nesbit Institute for the Humanities Director, Centre for Integrated and Credit Studies, Continuing Studies, Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University 8888 University Drive Margaret Jackson Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University Telephone: 604-291-5855

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Humanitas 2004 cover 2 12/23/03, 11:28:20 AM Table of Contents

5 Director’s Letter Donald Grayston

Violence and its Alternatives

6 Exile as an Alternative to Violence: The 2003 Joanne Brown Symposium on Violence Jerry Zaslove

10 Gandhi Jayanti and the Thakore Visiting Scholar Award Drs. Eric Hoskins and Samantha Nutt

Violence and its Alternatives: The Continuing Series 14 The Culture of Violence and the Politics of Hope: Community Mobilization around Media Risks Stephen Kline and Kym Stewart

20 Twisting the Cross: Terrorism and the Shaping of American Society Michael Fellman

26 Violence and the Literature of War Kate Scheel humanitas

32 Weapons of Mass Destruction and the End of War? Acknowledgments Douglas Alan Ross The Institute for the Humanities gratefully acknowledges the support for its programs received through the Modernity, Secularity, Pluralism Lecture Series Simons Foundation, the J.S. 38 Overcoming Onto-theology: George Grant and Woodsworth Endowment fund and Religion without Religion Ms. Joanne Brown. Peg Peters

Becoming Non-Rational: Recent Transformations For further information contact 43 in Evangelical Belief Donald Grayston at [email protected], Bruce Hiebert telephone 604-291-5516 or Trish Graham at [email protected], telephone 604-291-5855. 49 Aristotle, Derrida, Girard Christopher S. Morrissey Visit our website at www.sfu.ca/humanities-institute/ Exploring Islam Lecture Series

51 Democratizing Shi’ism: The Theoretical Foundations of Iran’s Reform Movement Humanitas Peyman Vahabzadeh Bulletin of the Institute for the Humanities 56 The Ethical Crescent Volume 3: Spring 2004 Amyn B. Sajoo © 2004, Simon Fraser University

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Human Rights and Democratic Development 68 The Human Right to Peace Senator Douglas Roche—offered in the Leon and Thea Koerner Lecture Series

73 Peaceful Resistance in Palestine Melissa Mullan

Humanities and Community Education 75 Merton Conference Celebrates 25th Anniversary Judith Hardcastle

76 Social Justice Series: Elaine Bernard, Grace MacInnis Visiting Scholar Shanthi Besso

77 Learning in the Czech Republic: Transforming Perspectives Jessica Denning, 2003 recipient of the Institute’s Travel Study Award

Book Reviews 81 More to Academe than Making Money Derek Bok’s University in the Marketplace Tom Nesbit

82 Lloyd Axworthy’s Navigating a New World: Canada’s Global Future Nancy Harris

83 Thomas Berger’s One Man’s Justice: A Life in the Law Phil Bryden

87 2003 Publications in the Humanities Department

89 Associates of the Institute

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Director’s Letter The Humanities in a Less-Than-Humane Time

Again I am glad to be in touch with you, the readers of another dimension of our mandate. We also see the Laurier Humanitas. Many of you teach or study at SFU, some live and Institution, with its concerns around citizenship, as work in the community of greater Vancouver or elsewhere in another organization with which we hope to develop closer British Columbia, and some in the great world beyond this co-operation. Partnership and co-sponsorship, then, must province of great physical beauty and political, economic and mark our future. social diminishment. Wherever you work and think and hope, This year the Institute marked its 20th anniversary; and so we greet you, and invite you to work and think and hope with significant a milestone has moved us to approach the us as we study and act on the fourfold mandate of the University Advancement Office, and to explore the possibilities Institute: Violence and its Alternatives, Human Rights and of a funding campaign which would enable us to take a Democratic Development, the Humanities and Contemporary quantum leap from our present level of activity. I mentioned to Culture, and Community Education. Together these emphases the Faculty of Arts advancement officer that a major donor had stretch us to explore the limits and the capacities of the given our sister institute at the University of Washington $5 humanum in what I find myself calling a less-than-humane million dollars (US, sans doute!) as an endowment. When she time, a time in which the geist of the zeit is querulous, fearful calmly asked me what we would do if someone gave our and distracted. Institute the same amount (even Canadian!), I found myself If we have ever had second thoughts about our work on the launched into a process of brainstorming which will continue theme of Violence and its Alternatives, for example, the year of as 2003 ends in meetings of our faculty and community grace 2003 would have settled them for us. It was the year in associates. Together with them, and with the steering which the unelected president of a powerful nation, possessed committee of the Institute, I hope to put into the three-year by the archetypes of warrior and savior, sent the young women plan requested by the Dean of Arts, proposals both reasonable and men of the armed forces of his nation into action against a and imaginative. I offer here only one such possibility: a nation laughably weaker, in search of weapons of mass fellowship program for community activists, comparable to distraction. It was the year in which the cuneiform tablets of the Southam Fellowships for journalists, which would enable The Epic of Gilgamesh , arguably the world’s oldest narrative, them to spend six months at SFU as fellows of the Institute, were looted from the Baghdad Museum. It was also the year in nourishing their vision from the many resources which a which Canada took the road harder to travel, and declined to University of our calibre has to offer. join the coalition responsible for these travesties. In this As I re-read the letter I wrote in last year’s Bulletin, I am connection, two speakers generously funded by the Leon and gratified to realize that we have indeed taken steps in each of Thea Koerner Foundation, and offered to the community in the areas which our workshop of last December with Kathleen co-operation with Burnaby Mountain College, were Senator Woodward, director of the above-mentioned Simpson Institute Douglas Roche and the CBC’s Eleanor Wachtel, both of whom, for the Humanities at the University of Washington, had in different ways, addressed the theme “The New World Order recommended: an increase of funding, a raising of our profile After Iraq: Negotiating Citizenship.” The fourth annual Joanne within the University, a focus on citizenship and more Brown Symposium addressed the related motif of exile, which involvement in community education. Please read the rest of with leadership from David Kettler, Martha Langford and Jerry the Bulletin with these concerns in mind; and please feel free Zaslove proved highly stimulating to the 14 of us very willingly to contact me directly if you have ideas of how the Institute cooped up on Bowen Island during the heaviest rainstorm in might act upon them further, alone or in consort with other BC since 1883. organizations of like mind and heart. The mention of Burnaby Mountain College moves me to As usual, I close with greetings to the many of you with whom commend to you this nascent effort at the creation of a we have worked over this past year and with whom we hope to residential community of scholars and grad students here on work again. I also wish to thank each of you who has donated the Burnaby campus, similar in ethos to Green College at UBC. to the work of the Institute, attended our programs, served on I represent the Institute on the BMC steering committee; and our committees, worked with other associates, written for this the goals and objectives of the College so nearly approximate Bulletin, and in many other ways tried to strengthen our those of the Institute that it is increasingly clear that a strong modest efforts to nourish the human in a less-than-humane element in our future must be more joint planning and time. We welcome, as last year, and, we trust, as next year, your programming with the College. Here I would also mention the sharing in the opportunities which the Institute seeks to offer Community Education Program of Continuing Studies at you, in ways both engaging and engaged. Harbour Centre, the splendid work of which in the public program entitled “Seeking Justice: Human Rights in our Donald Grayston, Ph.D. Communities”, we have been proud to support in pursuit of Director, Institute for the Humanities

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The Joanne Brown Symposium on Violence and its Alternatives

—Jerry Zaslove

The 2003 annual Joanne Brown Symposium on Violence and its Alternatives invited three guest speakers and eleven participants to address the issue of “Exile as an Alternative to Violence”. There is a long history in the humanities on the use of exile as a way to eliminate and control violence and to banish dissidents from the state. But exile as an alternative to violence is not so clearcut an issue. From biblical times and throughout the culture of the Greek city-state, complex societies Jerry Zaslove have practiced ostracism and exile as a means of isolating slaves, intellectuals, artists, unusual a structural analysis of the concept. The exiled in personalities, misfits, tyrants and dictators. Exile is this basic sense correspond to political émigrés. not just a subject common to our epoch of In the paradigm case, exile refers to an act of nationalism when mass migrations and expulsion, a condition of banishment, and an emigrations arising from conditions of violence active orientation to return. Each element of this and persecution, economic or environmental structure can take a variety of forms and be catastrophes are common. Exile in international subject to change over time, but all types play out law does not just encompass conditions when in the realm of power and resistance, with states expel, banish, ostracize, scapegoat and violence always present, if only as possibility. isolate individuals and groups from home or Second [he says], I lay out a simple typology of native land. The term “exile” covers much ground political exile and reflect on several examples of in identifying how a society understands itself the outstanding types, notably the violent while also creating a geographical ghetto-space for confrontation in the Middle East between two those who don’t or can’t belong. At the same time, populations both constituted by narratives of the host country enables the second identity of exile. Third, I reflect on some different modes of the exile to become associated with culture- displacement, notably the contrast between exiles building and the laws of citizenship. Flight, exile, who have names and refugees who have only refuge, asylum and forced emigration was the numbers. Finally, I offer some thoughts on the framework for discussion of those premodern, appeal of exile as a trope for the situation of the modern and contemporary conditions that make artist/intellectual in a world of dislocation. this subject crucial in understanding the displacement, settlement and isolation of peoples Kettler’s presentation included reference to several of his in the contemporary world. essays on this subject. Ian Angus of the Department of Humanities, who has written extensively on philosophical David Kettler, Scholar in Residence at Bard issues related to nation-formation, responded to Kettler College, presented on “Et les émigrés sont les with a discussion of the place of exile in the formation of vaincus”. Kettler, renowned for his writing on the sociology as a discipline itself, especially in the way German sociologist Karl Mannheim, is currently ideological critique displaces settled notions of interest writing on the German-speaking exiles in the and knowledge. United States 1933 – 1945, and the continuing effect of the exile story on a generation of scholars, Martha Langford, now an independent curator, was artists and theorists. Kettler cautions “against a invited to present on how photography and the reception romantic abstraction of exile from the contexts of of photographs of violence and war in contemporary power, notably political power.” In his words, there culture could be placed within the exile paradigm. Martha must be Langford is the founding Director and Chief Curator of Violence and its Alternatives and its Violence

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Left to right: Glen Lowry, Peyman Vahabzedeh, Martha Langford, Ian Angus, David Kettler, Samir Gandesha

the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (1985- always divided into two categories, graphic and 1994) and was the Executive Producer of the Still Photography symbolic representations—the works of the journalists Division of the National Film Board (1981-1984). She has and the works of the artists . . . This division seems to written and lectured extensively on Canadian photography, break down when the vernacular (snapshots and European and North American art and architecture, cultural snapshot effects) is taken into account, but possibly theory, and museology. Her presentation combined a number not—the goal remains the same—it is dissemination of her current interests that have been explored in her through the universalizing force of abstraction. exhibitions: the photographic grotesque, the expression of Violence, summoned by collective memory, is thus memory, and most recently, pathways of spectatorial exiled to the imagination. Pictorial typology does the involvement. Many of these themes are present in her book same trick by camouflaging the specifics of place and Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in time—we are the world. If exile is to be considered as Photographic Albums, recently published by McGill-Queens a form of violence, then we might well wonder how its (2001). Her presentation of “Images of Violence in Exile” representation will fare. Is it (somehow) doubly exiled? addressed many “works of art that are supposed to be Is there anything to be retrieved from the contributing to the discourse of violence and exile.” Langford contemplation of absence besides fellow-feeling, or began her presentation with a critique of Susan Sontag, “who the guilty pleasures of melancholy before the has suggested that only the prosecutors, victims, and witnesses human ruins? of war (or, we may say, flight and exile) can understand what Adrienne Burk, who recently defended her doctoral [war] . . . is about (Regarding the Pain of Others, 2003).” dissertation on women, memorials and monuments in Langford’s presentation pointed out that Vancouver, responded with a commentary on the difficulty of artists and curators try to document, or somehow applying any degree of empathic understanding to victims of to convey these events: their immensity and violence and loss of identity through displacement. hopelessness; their internalized pain and their Jerry Zaslove, who co-edited a recent issue of West Coast Line subjects’ movements toward recovery. We should start on Cultural Memory, Photography and Community with … by looking at the pictorial repertoire of violence, Martha Langford, then presented a paper on the background

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contexts to a 2002 UN Installation in Prague on “Flight and Exile In Art.” The UN installation was sponsored by the United Nations High Commission on Refuges and attempted to show the historical if not epic sense that exile as part of our political and moral landscape cannot be avoided. In collaboration with Martha Langford’s depictions of violence, I showed a series of images, culminating in Jeff Wall’s epic portrayal of war, death and dialogical experience in Wall’s “Dead Troops Talk (A Vision After an Ambush of a Red Army Patrol Near Moqor, Afghanistan, Winter, 1986), 1992.” My presentation, entitled “’The Antigone Principle’ and Exile,” was based on Sophocles’ understanding of the post-exilic violence that accompanies intellectuals and artists whose own experiences — for example, Edward Said — are touched deeply by the consequences of the 19th century’s migrations Martha Langford and Don Grayston and emigrations, emancipations from slavery and hankering for revolution, even as exile has a prehistory embedded in ancient cultures and inquisitions, wars and persecution. I asked:

How can exile studies and refugee studies be politicized today? Statelessness is mirrored and imagined in the public sphere in the photographic history of victims of war. I call this the doubling of violence at the borders, where the state and exclusion meet at a crossroads of violence and state formation— the “Antigone Principle”. Our very definition of culture is a repository of fragile symbolic associations connected with exile. The self- organization of parallel realities to exile can be understood in the ways we negotiate the boundaries in the arrival and departure of Coleen Gold, Larry Green and Adrienne Burk groups and individuals who are dislocated and subjected to violence as the origin of their identities. For example, the origins of the classic avant-garde in Europe, England and North and South America can best be understood through the exiles’ cross-cultural influences. Exiles carry—and disrupt—their home cultures, and drive themselves into trans-national and anti-national styles of expression as culture-builders and memory bearers. The historiography of the exile movements must be related to the epical story of European modernism and its legacies, even as the conditions of “exile” change shape under the forces of mobility today, as we witness how the UN and other refugee and enclave protectorships struggle with the problems of exile and displacements. David Kettler

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Peyman Vahabzadeh, whose doctoral and post-doctoral work explores the phenomenology of violence in society, responded. He has written deeply and personally on the subject of exile—most recently in his compilation of exilic meditations and poems by Iranians who have fled tyrannical statemaking in Iran. His issue of West Coast Line has been expanded into a book-length exposition of his own exile that was reflected in his commentary on his own personal and theoretical displacement from home and language. As David Kettler remarked, “Once one raises the wider question about the cultures in which exiles figure, however, the view expands to include negotiations about the exiles in which they play no part as ‘exiles’ since they have become ‘refugees’ and then ‘citizens’. They variously figure as counters but not necessarily as players.” As it turned out, all participants realized that in their own lives they or their pasts figured as both counters and players and “strangers” and agents of change.

Jerry Zaslove is Director Emeritus, Institute for the Humanities, SFU Kirsten McAllister

Christopher Morrissey

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Gandhi Jayanti and the Thakore democratic principles strangled and Visiting Scholar Award missile programs expanded, all within two brief years. The legacy of Mahatma Gandhi has been honoured at Simon Fraser University since In the midst of it all, notions of effecting social change can seem anachronistic: the unveiling of his memorial bust in Peace Square in l970. Since 1991, The Institute better suited to another time, another for the Humanities, the Thakore Charitable Foundation and the India Club, as place, long before terrorism garnered the top spot on the political and policy co-sponsors, have presented the Thakore Visiting Scholar Award to outstanding agendas. In other words (and I have to persons who have made society’s well-being their lifetime work. give credit to Lloyd Axworthy here, as this is something he wrote on several of the policy proposals put forward by his This year the thirteenth Thakore Visiting Scholar Award went to War Child Canada staff in the Minister’s office): good idea, for its work with children affected by war. Accepting the award on behalf of War not very realistic. Child Canada was Dr. Eric Hoskins, president of War Child Canada. The following is a But if Sam and I have learned anything from our work with War Child Canada, transcript of the address he gave at the ceremonies on October 2, 2003, at SFU. and the sometimes long and difficult (Co-recipient Dr. Samantha Nutt, Executive Director, War Child Canada, was process of starting something new, it’s that idealism and activism are just as unfortunately unable for family reasons to attend the ceremonies.) necessary now as they were at any other time in our history, and making a tangible difference to the lives of those affected by war is a question of will, and It is an honour to be here tonight and to the response was unanimous: “Wow, not a question of opportunity. The accept, on behalf of War Child Canada, that’s fantastic. Those are great people! opportunities certainly are there, but the the prestigious Thakore Visiting Scholar So why are they giving it to us?” To real question is: are Canadians Award. First, I want to apologize. I which my only answer was “Well, I don’t concerned enough to ACT? And the believe many of you were expecting my know, I guess they think we’re doing answer, we believe, is YES. wife, the charity’s co-founder and something right.” Executive Director, Dr Samantha Nutt, to Providing opportunities for Canadians, I have to admit, around our office, be speaking with you tonight and that and in particular youth, to get involved particularly over the past year, we have I’m no substitute for the real thing (at and make an important difference on a spent a considerable amount of time least, that’s what she tells me), but global level is precisely what War Child watching news reports and wondering if unfortunately her father was undergoing Canada aims to do. We really have a dual in fact we are doing anything right as hip surgery today and I know you join mandate: to provide humanitarian war once again dominates our political me in wishing him a very speedy assistance to children and their families and economic landscape. I am sure recovery. in war-torn countries, and to promote many of you in this room have wondered awareness and action in support of I would like to begin by saying how truly the same thing, including people I have those affected by war. War Child Canada humbling it is for me, and indeed for a great deal of admiration for, people like has humanitarian projects in war-torn everyone at War Child Canada, to be the Jennifer Simons, to whom War Child countries around the world, working recipient of an award given to such Canada owes a great deal of gratitude exclusively with local partners to wonderful and inspiring people as Aung (Jennifer Simons, you should know, gave implement educational, health, human San Suu Kyi, Ursula Franklin, and War Child its first grant at a very critical rights and psychological support Douglas Roche, to name a few…and it early stage, and it is no exaggeration to programs, for thousands of children and would be remiss of me not also to say that without it I am not sure the youth. Our overseas and domestic mention my old boss, Lloyd Axworthy, charity would even exist today). programs go hand in hand—the passion, who as many of you may know, recently “Security” has become the permission energy and dedication of our many defected to this part of Canada. When we slip of the 21st century, in the name of youth supporters generates both read through the names of previous which wars have been launched, awareness for the cause and the much- recipients to the War Child Canada staff international laws abandoned, needed resources for the projects we’re

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involved with internationally. Such In short, I feel privileged to be involved Simply put, our common humanity projects are helping to provide skills and in an organization of very dedicated should be, indeed must be, what compels literacy training to women in people from across the country—staff, us to act, because war is the greatest of all Afghanistan, assisting with a children’s volunteers, teachers, music artists, youth human tragedies. The scars are lifelong; hospital in Karbala, southern Iraq, and leaders—and around the world who get the deaths, the damage and the providing counselling and support to up every day and are concerned enough depravity of war incomprehensible— former child-soldiers in Sierra Leone, to to act! what more reason do we need, as a name a few. global community, to strive for peace? Now, so far this evening I have talked In the past two years alone, War Child about the importance of having the will Along the same lines, and because this Canada has directly engaged more than to act on international issues, and of War award recognises Gandhi’s ideals of 100,000 young Canadians through its Child Canada’s work to effect social truth, non-violence, social justice, domestic programs. These programs change by channelling that will into religious tolerance, education and include initiatives like Keep the Beat, a action. But what I haven’t talked about ethics in politics, I want to share with non-stop music marathon and is why? you one very recent, and very personal, educational program in support story of a friend of mine caught of war-affected children that last up in the tragedy of war whom year involved more than 25,000 I believe exemplifies these high school students and will important values. launch again this November; “Just Act,” a youth leadership Two weeks after George W. program in support of the Bush declared the war between International Criminal Court Saddam Hussein’s regime and and social justice issues; and No the America-led “coalition of War Zone, an online community the willing” to be over, Sam and that provides opportunities for I knocked at the gate of an old youth in Canada, and war- and dear friend of ours, Dr affected youth involved in our Aquila Al-Hashimi, at her international projects, to work home in Baghdad. together to promote human Drs. Eric Hoskins and Samantha Nutt rights, peace and sustainable Aquila, who was from a prominent Shi’a family near development. No War Zone is a Why does it matter that an estimated 23 Karbala in Southern Iraq, held a PhD in youth-to-youth, school-to-school million people have died in wars since French literature from the Sorbonne in initiative that aims to bridge geographic, the end of World War II, or that every day Paris and was well respected among social, religious and economic barriers war kills or injures at least 2,000 Iraq’s educated elite. Although she by enabling participants to actually work children? We all know the U.N.’s worked in the Ministry and, by together on development projects and estimates of the more than 300,000 child extension, for the Ba’ath party, she was see first-hand the impact of their efforts. soldiers in the world, and of the 10,000 not a member of Saddam’s regime. Her people in Sierra Leone who experienced We also partner with teachers across primary responsibilities included amputations of their hands and feet Canada and around the world, providing monitoring the urgent food and medical because of the war in that country, creative ways, through lesson plans and needs of Iraqi civilians and negotiating which was, in large part, a war over curriculum development, to engage humanitarian aid under the United diamonds. And many of us are aware youth in their classrooms. As some of Nation’s Oil for Food Program since its that more than 3 million people have you may know, War Child works quite inception in 1998. Most of my relief work been killed in the past five years in the closely with the Canadian music in Iraq fell under Aquila’s portfolio, and I Democratic Republic of Congo. I could industry and as such has been involved knew she worked hard to secure visas go on. None of this information is really in several large music fundraising and and permissions on my behalf, new, and in my mind these numbers are outreach initiatives, the most recent of facilitating my frequent entry into the so profoundly shocking in scale that it is which was the Peace Songs CD which country on humanitarian grounds. came out in April. too easy to forget that, in the end, we are talking about people.

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One of my most vivid memories of swimming in the Aquila is from a meeting at her office Mediterranean. It one evening in January, 2001, when she is beyond their spoke to me about the Oil for Food imagination.” Program and what she called the Aquila and I had known “indignity” (you may or may not agree each other for more than with her) of the United Nations approval 12 years. I knew that amid process. Not once did she accent her the extensive corridors of speech, as most bureaucrats were apt to the regime’s intelligence do at that time for their own protection, operations she had, with pledges of allegiance to the without a doubt, been my “benevolent” or “merciful” Saddam guardian angel. It was far Hussein. By the time we finished too easy to misstep and drinking tea and catching up it was close get thrown out of the to midnight. Aquila walked me to the country, or into some front entrance of the Ministry and invisible Iraqi jail never secured a driver for my return to the to be heard from again. hotel. “It’s a question of money and In all that time, however, business”, she reflected, as we said I had never been able goodbye, “It is not about principles, this to have an honest matter of Iraq.” conversation with her. On this occasion more than two years What did she truly think later, the gate opened and a security of Saddam? Why did she guard ushered Sam and me into the choose to work for the front courtyard. Aquila emerged from Iraqi government? Why her home in her dressing gown (we did she risk rousing caught her by surprise) and she was suspicion, and possibly anxiously tightening her belt and death, on my behalf? flattening her tightly coiled dark hair. Aquila said, “I cannot tell She was fifty years of age and had never you how many times married. Aquila was so happy to see us— [intelligence officials] she hadn’t yet ventured out in the Eric Hoskins and Devi Thakore came to me about you. aftermath of the war. She lived with her What were you doing? brother and two nieces, six and ten years Then there was the “big” question. As Who did you work for? What did I know? of age, who spoke briefly in impressive someone in receipt of numerous But under Saddam, everyone suspected French, then giggled off to the kitchen to confidential documents who also the next person. You could not even have prepare tea. It was almost impossible to oversaw virtually every application to a conversation in front of your children, believe that only a few short weeks the United Nations to import goods into in case they repeated it to their teacher before our visit, this family was Iraq, she must have known, or at least or a neighbour, who might tell the hunkered down in the living room while entertained rumours about, whether or Republican Guard. The only way to get bullets ricocheted off the walls and not Saddam Hussein was in possession things done was to play the game. Apart grenades exploded all around them. of weapons of mass destruction. “I swear from Saddam’s inner circle, no one to you”, Aquila told me, “if they had I noticed Aquila’s passport was on the knew who might be ‘connected’, and at them, I would have heard about it. I was coffee table. She said proudly, “I was the lower levels of government very few in that Ministry every day until late at showing my nieces my entry stamps wanted to be responsible for making night. I overheard many conversations at from France and the United States from decisions that they could later be the highest levels. We had the weapons the 1980s. They could not believe it. blamed for. I would just say to anyone in 1991, I promise you that. Everything Since before they were born, Iraqis have inquiring about you, ‘why are you so was destroyed after the Gulf War, but not been allowed to travel because of the interested, how do you know Dr Eric? I that doesn’t matter. You will not find one sanctions. I explained to them that soon will put in the file that you are the one Iraqi who believes this was a war about they will be able to go wherever they who refused him permission to enter. Saddam’s weapons.” want—to visit the Eiffel tower or to go I think [the officials] will be very eager to hear your explanation.’”

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As we were leaving, she turned to me one of the camera shots, two little girls the homeless, whether the mad and said, “I feel like the last thirty years could be seen in the distance holding destruction was wrought in the name of have been confiscated from me. Now I hands and watching on in horror. Sam totalitarianism, or the holy name of want to live my life.” and I recognised the two little girls as liberty and democracy? Aquila’s nieces. On September 21, the A few weeks after our visit to her home, No one understood this better than Toronto Star carried a full-page interview Aquila became one of three women Aquila, and Sam and I would like to with former United Nations chief appointed by the US administration to dedicate this evening’s award to her. weapons inspector Hans Blix. From his Iraq’s 25-member Governing Council. home in Stockholm, Sweden, Blix Thank you Jennifer Simons, Simon Despite her post-war yearnings for the asserted, as many others have done Fraser University, the Thakore family, “simple life”, Aquila was not the kind of recently, that the U.S. and Britain the India Club, friends and colleagues. woman who took a back seat to the “overinterpreted” intelligence reports political process. She was an activist—a that “claimed Iraq had weapons of mass courageous champion of the rights of destruction”, adding: “They do not seem Iraqi women and children—and I know to have come up with any evidence that she would do anything in her power to [Iraq] retained weapons of mass help her country when it needed her. destruction. I’m inclined to think that What surprised us most was that it was they were destroyed (by Iraq) in 1991… widely speculated among the western the threat is not what it was made out media that Aquila was to become Iraq’s to be.” new ambassador to the United Nations. We could only assume, in view of her I am not sure if any of us will even know previous criticisms of the U.N.’s the truth or whether, at this point in treatment of Iraq, that what motivated time, it even matters, because it does her was an overwhelming desire to little to change the daily reality of Iraqi control a process that had controlled her civilians. And I am not for a minute for so long. It is not a question we ever suggesting that Saddam Hussein was not had the opportunity to ask her. the very brutal dictator everyone knew him to be (in fact, I have witnessed his On September 20th, 2003, as she left her brutality first hand). Nevertheless, on home in Baghdad, Aquila was brutally the same page as Blix’s interview there gunned down by six men firing assault was a three-paragraph insert from the rifles from a Toyota pick-up truck. She Associated Press entitled “Iraqi Council was planning to attend a key United Member Wounded.” And four days later, Nations General Assembly meeting in precisely one week ago today, Aquila Al New York four days later, at which Hashimi died at a U.S. military hospital President Bush was expected to seek in Baghdad. support for reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Her assailants were never Sometimes the amount of suffering that identified, but many theories regarding exists in the world can seem who the assailants might be were put insurmountable, but it isn’t. Sometimes forward: Ba’ath party loyalists displeased finding a way to help can seem by her association with the American impossible, but it isn’t. And while the administration in Iraq, or members of world may not always agree on whether one of a myriad of terrorist networks war is “inevitable”, “necessary”, that infiltrated the country in the “unnecessary”, “avoidable” and the like, aftermath of the war. She was hit in the there is one thing we can all agree on: right side of her abdomen, causing the need for more peace in the world. extensive injury to her liver and With more than 30 wars currently raging, pancreas. Her brother and driver were peace is not a political statement—it is also shot in the attack. Footage of the an aspiration—and one that deserves scene carried by CNN, the BBC and our constant attention and recognition. other major networks included close- Gandhi once said: what difference does ups of a roadside dripping in blood. In it make to the dead, the orphaned and

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Attention to violence and its alternatives forms a major element in the mandate of the frontier entrepreneurialism which forged the American nation. Guns in the Institute for the Humanities. Many SFU faculty and graduate students are also particular have had a special place researching specific aspects of violence and our responses to it in our culture. In the within the American socialization of militarized masculinity, not only as a Spring and Fall of 2003 the Institute for the Humanities hosted a number of lectures useful skill and a right of self-defence, and presentations on this topic. but arrogantly as the technical means projecting the Pax Americana throughout the world.

The Culture of Violence This American culture of violence, as we now call it, was amplified after the and the Politics of Hope: Second World War by the mass media. Community Mobilization Marshall McLuhan (1964) foresaw a problem emerging from the growing around Media Risks mediation of ‘war’ not only in the TV news and films, but within the ‘play’ —Stephen Kline and Kym Stewart cultures of the nation. Noting how two New Guinea tribes, the Willigiman- Introduction Wallalua and the Wittaia, had Emmanuel Kant, audacious author of transformed centuries of confrontation the essay Perpetual Peace, suggested have celebrated individual military that there are only three questions that prowess as a quality of manhood. Yet matter. The first is What can we know? there is a paradox that underlies a Video games have in fact militaristic empire’s need both to train The second is What may we do? But the added a strikingly new level third, and most difficult is What should and motivate some youth to fight the we hope? Anticipating the growing enemy, while maintaining the cultural of intensity to the culture mechanisms for control of violence and cynicism and frustration of democratic of violence, growing into movements struggling with the maintenance of order at home. To this increasingly concentrated cultural end, the values of self-restraint and a 10 billion dollar industry, obedience are also traditionally power of corporations in market society, which provides children, as Raymond Williams believed it was privileged in imperial cultures and especially important for cultural critics cultivated in families and in schools, young as seven, to experience so that the nations’ youth become and educators to remember the politics first hand the conflicts of drug of hope by envisioning the positive good law-abiding citizens, play by the alternatives to the growing hegemony of rules, and exercise control over their lords and the counter-terrorist aggressive impulses. popular culture. Those concerned with man-hunts. peace education have clearly learned “The battle of Waterloo was won on the this lesson. Frustrated by the 50-year playing fields of Eton”, proclaimed the struggle to establish regulatory policy Duke of Wellington, musing on the into a surprisingly bloodless ritual that for the media’s contribution to the successes of the British Empire in this looks like a dangerous field sport, socialization of aggression and admitting regard. Wellington believed that games McLuhan remarks: “These people… the growing difficulties of bringing new and field sports were an excellent means detect in these games a kind of model of media-like video games into the ambit of for training young soldiers mentally and their universe, in whose deadly gavotte cultural regulation, this paper explains physically—in both obeying orders and they participate through the ritual of war the rationale for our development of a in fighting the enemy. Games were an games”. Games, he notes, are not just for Canadian media education strategy effective venue of imperial socialization, entertainment and distractions, but a designed to reduce the anti-social he felt, not only because play rehearsed mass medium reinforcing collective attitudes of youth through a community- and consolidated martial skills and models “of inner psychological life”. based risk reduction initiative. trained the physical body in rugged McLuhan also suggested we must realize endeavour, but also because it fostered that there is a new dynamic of war and Paradox of Empires and Culture disciplined attitudes, team spirit and peace in the mediated global village that of Violence strategic sensibilities. And, like their reveals the important place of war One perplexing issue facing all would-be British cousins, America too has games in American culture. Underlying empires is how to recruit and train encouraged martial play cultures among this fascination for war games, he soldiers who will fight the enemy. To this boys, celebrating in games, sports and warned, was the force of mass media end, cultures from Sparta to America generally in popular culture the values of consolidating the mentality of tribal

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conflict which undermined consumption can be viewed as a significant whole child population. Several researchers enlightenment hopes for a culture risk factor in the development of aggressive have even compared the level of risk found of perpetual peace. and anti-social behaviour in children: “a in media studies to those which link substantial body of research now indicates smoking to lung cancer, where the Few heeded McLuhan’s warning: cars that exposure to media violence increases mechanisms explaining the risk are still sprouted missile wings, scientists turned children’s physically and verbally aggressive not known. their militaristic gaze to the stars, and behavior”. boys played with ray guns, robot Not all smokers get lung cancer, nor do all warriors and video games, making the Viewing media as a risk factor, they point heavy consumers of violent media become last fifty years into a period of out, does not mean that every child will instant killers. The American Psychologists unprecedented expansion of the jump up from a video game console and and Paediatricians Associations recently children’s cultural industries in the immediately shoot a schoolmate; but came to a similar conclusion noting that the entertainment economy. As the mass- rather, that boys, especially those who find cultural mechanisms by which media mediated marketplace was transformed long term pleasure in watching violence influence children’s knowledge, attitudes into the military-entertainment and behaviours are rather well understood complex, the cult of militarized —social learning, “mean world”syndrome, masculinity was augmented by action The disturbing blend of desensitization, identification and toys like G.I. Joe, and shooters like participation, engagement, modelling of behaviour. Soldier of Fortune (Kline, 2003). Video games have in fact added a strikingly rewards and practice that Although the correlations are complex, a new level of intensity to the culture video games provide is series of recent longitudinal studies have of violence, growing into a 10 billion added weight to scientists’ claim that dollar industry, which enables children, the perfect instructional violence is a too-predominant theme in as young as seven, to experience first environment for soldiers. children’s fictional programming, and hand the conflicts of drug lords and that heavy viewers of TV violence, are the counter-terrorist man-hunts. Moreover, as in army more likely to be aggressive and anti- social later in life (Murray, 1995). One War play has persisted therefore as a simulations, the repeated especially well designed longitudinal theme in children’s popular culture for shooting at targets in study published in Science recently economic as well as cultural reasons: as confirmed that young boys who watch a U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings stated the video games not lot of television are particularly recently, “Violence sells, and money only enhances weapons vulnerable to violence in media: whereas talks, and no amount of self regulation 45% of the boys who watched television and no amount of antitrust exemptions skills, but also desensitizes more than 3 hours per day at age 14, is going to change the profit incentive.” some young people to subsequently committed aggressive acts involving others, only 8.9%, who From Critiquing the Military- the horror of killing by watched television less than an hour a Entertainment Complex to turning enemies into day were aggressive later in life (Johnson Risk Reduction Strategy et al., 2002). These researchers noted that As McLuhan predicted, the triumphalism of dehumanized targets. even after controlling for other factors the Pax Americana has been undercut by known to contribute to aggressiveness in the mean streets of ‘Die Hard’, leading many young people “like childhood neglect, parents to fret anxiously about the growing repeatedly, and who identify with aggressive growing up in an unsafe neighborhood, aggressiveness at the heart of American characters, may over the long term become low family income, low parental children’s culture. In the face of rising post- desensitized to the implications of education and psychiatric disorders” war youth crime rates and violence in the aggression (U.S. Surgeon General, 2001). there remain “significant associations playgrounds of the nation, the U.S. Surgeon Most researchers recognize that media between television viewing during early General launched a research programme in violence is only one of the contributing adolescence and subsequent aggressive the 1960’s to study the relationship between factors in the socialization of aggression, acts against other persons” later in life. media and anti-social and aggressive which is why as Garbarino (2001) states, “an behaviour among children and youths accumulation-of-risk model is essential if In the wake of a number of school yard (Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Hamilton, we are to understand where televised slayings by avid video game players, 1998; Pearl et al., 1982). Acknowledging that violence fits into the learning and military psychologist Lt. Col. David the psychological processes are complex demonstration of aggressive behavior.” But Grossman became a leading US critic of and diverse, the U.S. Surgeon General in a media saturated culture, even a small the entertainment industry, arguing that (2001) recently summarized forty years of desensitization or attitudinal effect can “the main concern is that these violent research stating that heavy media have a huge impact when spread across the video games are providing military

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quality training to children” (Grossman that the weight of evidence shows that Confronting Media Risks and DeGaetano, 1999). Like the training heavy media consumption constitutes a The Canadian public has long been of soldiers, Grossman (1999) believes ‘lifestyle risk’ in our media-saturated convinced that heavy consumption of that violent video games break down the culture, reinforcing children’s aggressive violence from American media is a psychological barriers that prevent social interactions, rough play and significant ‘risk factor’ contributing to killing: “children don’t naturally kill; they acceptance of violence as a normative aggressive attitudes and behaviours in learn it from violence in the home and… solution to social conflict. Industry- Canadian children (Josephson, 1995; from violence as entertainment in sponsored critics have contested these Gosselin et al., 1997). The Canadian television, movies and interactive video findings, pointing out that children can Standing Committee on games”. The disturbing blend of Communications, Culture, and Television participation, engagement, rewards Violence concurred: “We have clearly and practice that video games provide is With the burgeoning of media, found that the violence portrayed on the perfect instructional environment the politics of youth culture television reflects and shapes unhealthy for soldiers. Moreover, as in army social attitudes. It cannot be ignored” simulations, the repeated shooting at has increasingly hinged on (Bird, 1993). In the globally deregulated targets in the video games not only these issues of violence with mediascape, however, the Canadian enhances weapons skills, but also public’s calls for action concerning desensitizes some young people to the battle lines drawn between media violence have run aground on the horror of killing by turning enemies into the opponents of perpetual shores of media deregulation. The hope dehumanized targets. In other words, that a legislative cordon sanitaire could the aggression-training effect of war and the increasingly be developed around children under 12 simulators requires that killing be deregulated media industries. years of age, who are considered, in at experienced as a game—as a pleasurable least Canadian law, to be especially and enjoyable act of imaginary The peace advocates vulnerable to marketing pressures, has entertainment. Like soldiers, and with maintained that the media’s dissolved into cynicism and frustration. constant practice, players of violent Recent policies—including Spicer’s 9 video games will eventually have constant celebration and o’clock watershed, industry self- extremely low or even no empathy promotion of militarized regulation, anti-violence advertising towards victims of their brutality. One campaigns and the V-chip—have been of the central thrusts of Grossman’s masculinity constitutes a ineffective in reducing the risks to argument is that the rise of violent video profound threat to our children. The Clinton’s Children’s gaming may be an even more risky Broadcasting Act has also had little effect medium than television. civil society: boys especially in the U.S. on the levels of violence in TV programming available (Cole, 1995), or With the burgeoning of media, the raised to identify with combative on children’s access and exposure to politics of youth culture has increasingly heroes can also direct violent and anti-social themes in media hinged on these issues of violence with (Kline & Stewart, 2000). Moreover, the battle lines drawn between the that aggression against industry has successfully kept state opponents of perpetual war and the their peers -- not to mention regulation of the Internet and video increasingly deregulated media games out of the public sphere (Kline, industries. The peace advocates legitimate authority. 2000). In spite of the convincing maintained that the media’s constant scientific evidence and continuing celebration and promotion of public anxiety, solutions to blocking the militarized masculinity constitutes a distinguish between media fantasy and flood of American violence into Canada profound threat to our civil society: boys reality, and point out that the have not been found. The most recent especially raised to identify with correlations are moderate in strength, example of the industries’ muscular combative heroes can also direct that and that the experimental evidence does approach to deregulation was the world aggression against their peers -- not to not confirm that media are the primary leading legislation for regulating video mention legitimate authority (OSDUS, direct cause of violent behaviour game violence that was fought for by 2001; Council of Europe, 1999; Eron et (Freedman, 1984; Goldstein, 2001). They a coalition opposing violent al., 1994; Kaltiala-Heino et al., 2000). The also suggest that violent fantasies can entertainment (COVE) in BC, and which constant pressure of mass media’s actually meet children’s deeper was subsequently dismissed by the unrestrained celebration of violence, psychological needs; just as folk stories Liberal government under pressure from many researchers believe, overwhelmed did, helping them to adjust to the the industry lobby. Indeed, it seems the moral forces of civility and realities of conflict that surrounds them increasingly difficult for even concerned responsibility cultivated within families (Jenkins, 1998). It is therefore unfair to Canadian parents to monitor, let alone and schools. Peace advocates point out censure children’s media.

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TV violence increased the risk of initiative involved the schools, police, aggressiveness, then “reducing the community groups, and families in an amount of time that grade-school effort to break the cycle of violence by children spend watching television and diminishing peer ‘acceptance and playing video games can make them less valorization’ of media violence within aggressive toward their peers.” In a the elementary school setting. We chose carefully controlled experiment, these elementary age children because they researchers found that at the end of this are still in the throws of regularizing eight month study, children in the their media consumption habits, are intervention group had reduced their TV viewing by about one-third and their ratings of peer-judged aggression were ...in a postmodern world, the about 25 percent lower than those at the core cultural contradiction of control school. The reduced media consumption school also engaged in capitalism lay in the tension about half as much verbally aggressive between the work ethics and behaviour—such as teasing, threatening, or taunting their peers—on the civilizing mission of the control, young children’s exposure to playground when compared with schools, and the leisure violent and aggressive contents in the students at the control school. 1 values and consumerist electronic media. Given the freedom of Both boys and girls benefited from the commercial speech provisions in the intervention curriculum, and the most cultural preoccupations of Canadian constitution, many peace aggressive students, according to the the mediated popular culture. advocates feel increasingly frustrated by study, experienced the greatest drop in the unwillingness of governments to combativeness (Robinson, 2001a). The former stresses traditional address these known risks of media Comparing students at the same school 2 industrial values proscribing culture through effective legislation. that received the media education Cultural Development through Media curriculum with those at the control a curriculum of critical and Risk Reduction: Towards the Politics school, Robinson found that the media analytic skills as the core of Hope risk reduction treatment significantly Recognizing the pivotal role that reduced the risk of obesity associated competence of the literate television and video games play in with heavy viewing of media (Robinson, subject. The later emphasizes children’s culture, Dr. Tom Robinson at 2001b). Other studies suggest using the Medical Center of Stanford media less may enhance creative play, the pleasures associated with University remarked how little effort has improve self-esteem, promote social cultural consumption and the been devoted to the reduction of ‘media skills and strengthen pro-social values risks’, through in-school programmes implying that targeting media risks may psycho-social benefits of sharing similar to those successfully employed be a very effective way of intervening in stories and social play. for drug, alcohol, and tobacco a cluster of interrelated developmental (Robinson, 2001). A risk management risks necessary for improving the health strategy, he argues, not only and safety of children (Kline, 2000). subject to peer influence, and generally acknowledges that media presents risks Robinson’s promising research indicates their parents still monitor and guide to children’s development, but implies that targeting media consumption their media use (Kline and Botterill, that reducing these risks might have through the schools may be a highly 2001). By targeting the families of significant long term benefits for effective way of diminishing the elementary children between 7-11 years, children’s health and safety. With this interacting developmental risks this preventive programme sets out to in mind, Robinson (2002) designed a associated with aggressive and anti- denormalize the culture of violence media education programme to social behaviour. With the help of the before children have fully consolidated persuade children to reduce their total Crime Prevention Community aggressive attitudes and behaviours. media use (films, TV, and video games) Mobilization Fund of Canada, we have Beyond The Canute Complex: Media without specifically promoting more launched a media education pilot Education as Cultural Judo active behaviours as replacements. project in North Vancouver which sets A media education strategy underwrites our Applying this ‘risk reduction’ out to mobilize the community around hope that we can intervene in the culture of intervention strategy, Robinson (2002) reducing the risks associated with violence: this strategy acknowledges that similarly argued that if heavy viewing of violent media consumption. The contemporary socialization is now

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change peer interactions we need to make alternatives to media, if not cool, then at least acceptable for many children. The task then must be to challenge them to change their leisure, without asking them to give up an element of their leisure activities they truly value. Media as part of Family Life: Our strategy has been based on research studying the family dynamics that surround Canadian children’s media use. profoundly influenced by the media postmodern world by developing a We know that there are many colonization of domestic space and leisure ‘media education’ strategy. Discussions circumstances in family life that make time. This means that children’s experience of programs and video games are media the easiest solution to boredom is caught between three powerful agencies becoming a topic in children’s peer and loneliness. Children develop their of socialization: the schools, the family and interactions, and need to be allowed into habits within a family dynamic, in which the peer group steeped in popular culture. the schools as well (Potter, 2001). Rather parents model and negotiate limits to Since young people on average spend more than building barriers to popular media consumption as part of the family than five hours using media daily—the culture, our media education strategy solution for a busy life. For example the imprint of popular culture is experienced welcomes media into the classroom in conflict over what to watch is resolved by within each of these domains. As Daniel order to help children understand their giving kids a TV of their own, often in Bell pointed out, in a postmodern world own current use of it, and it also their bedroom. Not only do many the core cultural contradiction of challenges them to explore what they parents not know what their kids are capitalism lies in the tension between can do if they did not rely on media so doing with media, but few families the work ethics and civilizing mission much to entertain themselves. regard TV or video games as a way of of the schools, and the leisure values and Although there are competing talking about moral and aesthetic consumerist cultural preoccupations of interpretations of how to do this, our attitudes with children. The majority of the mediated popular culture. The own position amounts to a kind of parents in our communities take a former stresses traditional industrial cultural judo. We believe that the laissez faire attitude to their children’s values prescribing a curriculum of mandate of education in the schools can media use, and never bother to critical and analytic skills as the core now only be protected by teaching kids communicate why playing or watching competence of the literate subject. The to be critical of popular culture in their too much is not acceptable. later emphasizes the pleasures lives. But it is hardly adequate to Media Risk Reduction Strategy: associated with cultural consumption deconstruct media in a way that denies Our media risk reduction strategy used a and the psycho-social benefits of sharing that children take pleasure in watching social marketing approach combined stories and social play. stories and playing games. If we only with a media education approach. The condemn their popular culture, we will For a long time, parents and educators pilot project spanned over 7 weeks, with be seen as prohibiting something that is worked hard to buffer the schools’ the final experimental question asking; fun and part of their peer culture. To educational mandate from the ‘What would you do if you turned off TV, encroachments of popular entertainments with a “check your Ninja Turtles at the door” stand- offishness. Since this approach failed, more and more educators recognized it was impossible to stop kids from bringing popular culture influences with them into the classroom. Children consume media because they share experiences and get peer support for doing so. Their influence is articulated in the drawings, stories and play of children. Many concluded that the schools had to learn to work within the changing social landscape of the

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were asked to role play either a real life bullying situation or a fictional hero versus villain conflict resolution pattern. Older students are taught to analyze the conflict resolution patterns found in the media as part of a content analysis activity. This application and analysis was based on the students’ perceptions and allowed them to examine the violence on the screen rather than ‘zone out’ and accept the violence as part of their leisure activities. Fair Play as moral principle: This lesson takes a historical approach to games by asking the children to interview their video games and PC’s for a whole week?’ related activities, from reading parents about the games their parents The pilot project enlisted the help of to chatting online. They were also played as children. This information was four elementary schools, therefore asked to report their choices of TV shared and used to develop a game list researchers access to eight classes programmes and games for that week. which the students added their current ranging from grade 2 to grade 6. A The media risk reduction strategy pilot favourite games to. The objective of this carefully constructed curriculum was project developed a five phase lesson was twofold. First we wanted the developed to allow the students full curriculum which uses learning children to brainstorm non-media freedom to express their preferences for exercises to promote further activities that might be used as media programmes and games without understanding of the role that media alternatives to media use during the judgment from the researchers. It plays in the lives of children today. Each upcoming Tune Out week. Second, we became essential that the program lesson combines critical media wanted to ask for game preferences to challenge the students to change their education and approved curriculum lead into the examination of ‘rough and habits, rather than condemning their goals, which includes research, art, tumble’ play, boundaries, rules and media-rich leisure habits. writing, social skills, math and creative regulations and elements of games that What is it that we can do to motivate problem solving. These projects and make playing fun. The unit explores the children to watch less TV? Children assignments were given in-class or as difference between conflict and spend more time with media than they homework assignments when their cooperation in games and the way limits do in the classroom. But they cannot application corresponded with current and rules promote both fair and fun check the knowledge, attitudes and in-class modes of learning. game play. As part of the game session social behaviours they are exposed to in the students were asked to develop their Heroes and Heroines: This unit examines popular culture at the school door. Since own games using five commonly found the role of heroes and heroines in the children bring their fascinations and household objects: cup, string, ball, lives of the students. In-class discussions interest in popular culture with them marbles and bean bag. The development asked children to define a real life versus into the school, media educators of games included the invention of rules a fictional hero or heroine. These developed strategies for dealing with and regulations, game playing penalties discussions were combined with written media within the framework of a as well as goals. and art work to allow the students to curriculum. The approach this project express their selection of their favourite Tune Out Preparation Week: The second is based on views media education as heroes or heroines. last week was used to prepare for the a kind of ‘judo’ that absorbs the force upcoming Tune Out the Screen of popular culture on children by Scripting and Re-scripting: This unit Challenge. Activities included making critically reframing their relationship to continues with the idea of heroes and Tune Out posters, writing stories or it in the classroom. heroines and adds a new dimension, a advertisements to encourage others to commonly seen dichotomy: hero versus A week long media diary was used to get Tune Out the Screen. The students were villain. The discussion allows for student students to study and discuss their own asked to select a level of participation in led definitions of heroes and villains and media usage patterns. Parents were Tune out week from three choices: will the examination of real life villains: encouraged to participate in the media not participate, will decrease time spent bullies. The class focused on audit to help promote discussions about with the media and the final choice was stereotyping and media contrived media use within the family. The audit to fully participate in the Tune out week resolutions of conflict as compared to asks students to estimate how much (going cold turkey). Alternatives to real life resolution. In order to fully time they spent with a variety of media media use were encouraged and the understand the difference, the student

– 19 – Violence and its Alternatives—THE CONTINUING SERIES class designed Tune Out week Twisting the Cross: Terrorism and the alternatives posters to have in their Shaping of American Society classrooms as references. Parents were asked to support their children in —Michael Fellman finding alternative activities and to promote healthier lifestyle choices. • A religious fanatic named John Brown Tune Out Week: Children were asked to rides into Harper’s Ferry, seizes the keep time diaries which will be used in national armory, thrusts the issue of race the evaluation of how well their actions incontrovertibly into the American correlate with their intended plans. Both debate, and makes the Civil War parents and children were asked to take inevitable. part in the challenge of Tune out week, • William T. Sherman burns his way the evaluation of the project as whole through the South, using his troops to and the process of altering any sections spread fear among Confederate civilians. of the program. Lives are spared but property is not. The For full results visit our website at deterioration of morale on the homefront www.sfu.ca/media-lab/risk destroys that of the troops more effectively than any cannon.

Stephen Kline is a faculty member in the • In collusion with local and state School of Communication at SFU and his authorities, a paramilitary army of ex areas of particular interest include social Confederate white supremacists uses communication of advertising and burning crosses and hangmen’s ropes to children’s culture. terrify freed slaves, and the white South rises from the shambles created by war to establish the apartheid system that Reconstruction was supposed to Kym Stewart is an MA candidate in the prevent. School of Communication at SFU who is focussing on children’s culture, interactive • During a labor rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square an unknown person throws media, and more recently New Media a bomb at the police, killing one and injuring others. The cops open fire, killing usage in South Korea. uncounted strikers and several of their own force. After a trial in which no evidence is produced linking them to the bomb thrower, seven anarchist leaders are sentenced to death for their political opinions. NOTE: A complete list of works cited in this document, but not included here, is • At the turn of the twentieth century, American troops torture and slaughter available from the editor; e-mail Filipino nationalists and bully whole towns as the U.S. picks up the white [email protected] man’s burden and openly colonizes a foreign country for the first time.

What do these five significant chapters of nineteenth-century American history have in common? Terror. For it is an unremarked yet salient fact of America’s development as a nation that what truly reordered American society yesterday, yet threatens that order today, is nothing other than terrorism. Historians are used to crediting trends like industrialization and the practical application of ideas like liberty with the coalescence of American nationhood. But it was terror that did even more to shape the nineteenth century, and it was those hundred years in which America was truly made. Terrorism is a more complicated, more expansive tool than we currently credit. We simplify it at our peril. To both utilize it and oppose it, we must understand it. And there is no better place to start than with our own past. We know that terror involves not only the use of threats and violence to intimidate, coerce and selectively destroy civilian populations for political purposes—it is also the state of fear, submission or flight such tactics produce. But what we need to accept is that while together these two processes can certainly destroy societies, they can make and shape them as well. It is certainly true that the doctrine of universal human rights, enacted both in ethics and in law, is the ideal norm of democratic governance; yet we only have to look back over our shoulder to see that terrorism has frequently been embraced as an

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alternative means both to maintain of the Tories through terrorist means, world power. It was terrorism and and to change the social order. It is not merely the defeat of the British army, counter-terrorism that lay at the root of the veritable double-edged sword, could the Constitutional Fathers sit this national establishment: terrorism commonly utilized by the state as well down in peace and sort out a binding made acceptable by the ways in which it as by those in opposition to it, in the and effective legal framework for their appealed to traditional, mainstream United States as elsewhere. Similarly, so new nation. beliefs, and terrorism that created has “counter-terror “ been the response pathways to change in our society. But the nineteenth century is the best of power-holders and the state to period to see the ways in which Start with the 1850s, and there is a clear anticipated and assumed threats as well American terrorism consolidated both trail of terror that shaped many of the as to actual acts of terror. society and state. Other historians have most pivotal events of that time. Could a Nineteenth-century America shows us clearly delineated what helped make nation claiming a heritage of freedom that terrorism is not the aberration, and them what they are today—the spread of and justice for all continue to exist half peace the norm. Rather, it reveals that liberty, industrial growth, and the rise of slave and half free? Abraham Lincoln terror can be undeniably effective in urgently asked that question in 1858, as accelerating and shaping social change. did most of his fellow citizens North and Terrorism is often an extension Moreover, it is not the exclusive province South. Abolitionists in the North and of crazy antisocial forces. Terrorism is of mainstream values and fire-eaters in the South had long fanned often an extension of mainstream values the flames of sectional division with goals by violent means: it and goals by violent means: it is a their angry words and symbolic attacks. political tool that can liberate, and a is a political tool that Threats of slave insurrection, and in the political tool that can repress. After all, case of Nat Turner in 1831, an actual can liberate, and a political in the United States, a nation rebellion in which slaves killed some presumptively based on a creed of tool that can repress. eighty-five whites (there was a reprisal liberty, equality of opportunity, and due hanging of some four hundred African- After all, in the United States, process before the law, terror has often Americans), had always underlined been used to curtail or eliminate what a nation presumptively white anxiety about the implicit threat the majority (and especially the of their black labor force. And one based on a creed of liberty, powerful) has perceived as challenges to could argue that slavery always had basic norms by other classes, races or equality of opportunity, and been based on systematic terrorizing political ideologies. In a nation based of the slaves. due process before the law, equally on civil Protestantism and But it was John Brown’s act, his raid on Republicanism, those employing terror terror has often been used Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, on October 16, have almost invariably justified to curtail or eliminate what 1859, that polarized the nation through themselves by combining universalistic terrorist means. liberal beliefs with Christian ethical the majority (and especially standards, twisting both together to John Brown, the most dramatic and the powerful) has perceived serve violent means meant to secure, in effective terrorist in American history, their view, higher ends. as challenges to basic norms was a man who, by attacking human slavery through direct action, changed I do not think anyone can argue with the by other classes, races or his society in fundamental ways that notion that terrorism has been a major political ideologies. most Americans now find positive. transformative force in American Brown’s brand of libertarian Evangelical history, in essence helping to make Christianity—his startling and violent Americans who they are. When the business class—all nineteenth- anarchist application of the dominant Europeans came to their New World, century phenomena. I believe that religious and civil values of his day—was aboriginal peoples opposed and fought terrorism was just as important. The as much a fighting faith as modern them, with both sides engaging in continued existence of the United States fundamentalist Islam. Back on May 23, protracted terrorist campaigns to as a nation, the racial order in that 1856, at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas eliminate the other. At the dawn of nation after slavery was destroyed, the Territory, he led seven men, including American national history, the darker relationship of labor to capital and the four of his sons, in bludgeoning five side of the Revolutionary War was a state, and the role of America abroad all proslavery settlers to death with terrorist campaign against Tories; in were defined in the second half of the broadswords. Three years later, at turn, British and Tory forces frequently nineteenth century in ways that Harper’s Ferry, he seized a federal employed terror strikes against the transformed a weak and disunited set of arsenal, expecting hundreds of slaves to revolutionaries. Only after the conquest states into an increasingly consolidated join him spontaneously in igniting a

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massive and bloody slave rebellion that element of civilian property and life. And would destroy the hated system. No he calculated his damage coolly, even revolution materialized, and within a while he—a spiritual agnostic—used day, Brown’s men were surrounded, heated Protestant biblical language in killed or captured by federal troops. shrewd psychological fashion, coupled But the impact of the raid had only with physical terror, to debase and begun: Brown’s words were in the end destroy the fundamental security of his even more important than his acts, enemy in ways they and his northern although his credibility was based on brethren would also comprehend. While what he had done and had intended to it is true that Sherman’s army did not do. At his trial, Brown played to both the slaughter civilians, it drove thousands idealism of northern Evangelical from their homes, often to exposure and Christians—a far broader public than death by hunger and disease, and always the abolitionists themselves—and the to depression. deepest fears of slaveholding Although Sherman—a virulent racist southerners—the threat of a massive and social reactionary—was at the slave insurrection. At his trial and while opposite end of the political spectrum awaiting his hanging, he anticipated the from John Brown, when he broadcast his enormity of the impact of his deed, religious zealot, a “borderline message of war to the southern people successfully seeking by his words to personality,” an undeniable believer in that accompanied his giant raid he too stretch the sectional divide to the the higher value of violent means, employed the language of the King breaking point. In particular, he righteously applied. He was not a James Bible, humiliating his enemy as he understood the powerful symbolism of foreigner but very much a native-born trampled them. “You cannot qualify war reenacting a Christlike death in the American, twisting American in harsher terms than I will,” he wrote to name of the brotherhood of man. As he Protestantism and republicanism to the the mayor of Atlanta, who was protesting stood before the judge who would service of a Jesus militant. Any analysis Sherman’s expulsion of the civilian sentence him to hang, Brown spoke to of him inevitably opens up troubling population of that city. “War is cruelty the nation: “Now, if it is deemed questions about the American character and you cannot refine it, and those who necessary that I should forfeit my life for and the building of the American nation, brought war into our country deserve all the furtherance of the ends of justice since it requires looking at terrorism the curses and maledictions a people and mingle my blood further with the from within and not just from without can pour out…You might as well appeal blood…of millions in this slave country mainstream values. against the thunder-storm as against whose rights are disregarded by wicked, Then there is William T. Sherman. these terrible hardships of war. They are cruel, and unjust enactments—I submit; In Citizen Sherman, I discussed at inevitable, and the only way the people so let it be done!” It was as if a new considerable length his Civil War raid of Atlanta can hope once more to live in Isaiah or Jeremiah had emerged in the into Georgia and the Carolinas, and his peace and quiet at home is to stop the Promised Land to scourge the nation accompanying, brilliant, war war, which alone can be done by of evil. propaganda. But I would also like to admitting that it began in error and is This direct physical and moral attack on align his actions with deeper American perpetuated in pride.” slavery helped convince southerners to patterns in the use of military terror, What Sherman could not foresee was the secede and northerners to fight that many of them developed in the use of some of his tactics by southern secession. Indeed, when the Republicans American military tradition of fighting white nationalists when they struggled were elected a few months later, the Indian irregular wars, a second long- to regain control of their region. After Deep South seceded in large part term mode of controlling another race losing their war for an independent because, as one prominent politician through terror, parallel to the treatment nation, these nationalists regrouped and put it, Lincoln would “John Brownize us of black slaves. As well as destroying the regained power in their states through all.” And soon enough, Union soldiers logistical base of much of the legitimate political activity closely linked would march into the Confederacy Confederate military effort, Sherman to the use of widespread paramilitary singing, “John Brown’s body lies a sought to undermine civilian morale, the terrorism. Night riding, threats, mouldering in its grave, but his truth foundation of the Confederate citizen banishment, beatings and lynching were goes marching on.” army. At this he was successful through word as well as deed. He showed frequently the first resorts of the Was Brown a terrorist or a “freedom restraint in terms of inflicting civilian clandestine branch of this political fighter?” He was an ideological and casualties, but he attacked every other movement, particularly in the Deep South where the black population was

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especially numerous. Klansmen used probably lynched—and systematic race killing at least six and probably more extremist forms of traditional Christian discrimination including violence lasted strikers. In reaction, the small (and imagery, most notably the burning cross, nearly a century, with lynching but the mostly German) anarchist movement of as they sought to purge their notional most overt form of terror. Terror was at Chicago called for a meeting at white republic of all hints of the social least as much psychological as material Haymarket Square for the following day, pollution they believed assertive black for both attackers and attacked, their leaflet urging, “Workingmen Arm people threatened to bring with them providing a force that blacks could not Yourselves and Appear in Full Force.” should they gain significant political counter. When that meeting was held, a phalanx power and social independence. This of police appeared, and someone in the One of the reasons that southern whites campaigning was coordinated with more crowd threw a bomb. The police opened could impose such a draconian caste genteel forms of political activity by fire and eight policemen were killed, system on blacks is that northerners, other white leaders, in conscious if not mostly by the “friendly fire” of their own including the Republicans, had grown always explicit collusion with the colleagues. A larger number of workers deeply concerned with immigration and terrorists. also died. Eight anarchist leaders were labor unrest in their midst. Both caused arrested and tried for murder. Though In 1871–72, the federal government was considerable strife in the 1870s and almost all had convincing alibis, they able to break the Klan in several states. beyond. Distracted, the Republicans were convicted and sentenced to be But it soon wearied of perpetual use of abandoned the southern lower orders to hanged after instructions from the judge the army and the federal courts to the “natural leaders” of that region, to the jury that the anarchists may not enforce Reconstruction. Far from focusing their anxieties on the growing have had any actual “personal disappearing, white terrorists regrouped dangers within urban industrial society. participation in the particular act,” but during the next three years, using even In 1877, a national railroad strike turned “had generally by speech and print more massive terrorist means that violent, and both the National Guard advised large classes to commit murder,” proved both indispensable and effective and federal troops were called out to put leaving the actual acts to the whim of in securing the southern white triumph down the workers. some unknown individual who listened essentially completed by 1877. The Unionization, socialism and anarchism to their advice. subsequent, decades-long formalization grew among the workers, many of them of segregation was continually This judicial violation of the most basic recent immigrants, threatening a sort of reinforced by terror. In general, white civil rights was part of a widespread class war most Americans deeply feared terror was a purification ritual carried assault on workers and the union as an insidious, foreign invasion of out in the name of a white man’s movement, much of it coming from the unassimilable peoples and un-American country—of which the Klan was one of pulpit. In a widely reprinted sermon, ideologies. several organized devices. There were to “Christianity and the Red Flag,” Rev. be about 5000 recorded lynchings in the These anxieties climaxed in Chicago in Frederick A. Noble of Chicago’s Union late nineteenth century South—in the 1886. On May 3, the police fired on Park Congregational Church took Isaiah end five to ten times that number were strikers at McCormick’s Reaper Plant, 59 as his text. “Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their paths.” This, declared Noble, “is an ancient description of an anarchist… They have said, with a fiendish tone that blood must be spilled; blood has been spilled; let their own veins and arteries furnish the further supply.” Charles Carroll Bonney, a leader of the Chicago bar, linked religious standards to civil standards in another pamphlet: “the state does not deal with religion or infidelity, as matters of belief or doubts, but only as they are concerned with morals and conduct, and so concern the peace and good order of society. If anarchy can have possession of the

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workman on Sunday, it can laugh at the importantly, the Americans pulverized we could not turn them over to France or efforts of law and order to control him the material and psychological Germany—our commercial rivals in the during the week.” structures of the Philippines as a Orient—that would be bad business and potential nation. The American State discreditable; (3) that we could not leave This first great Red Scare stemmed could present this use of force as a them to themselves—they were unfit for from an anonymous act of terror by an normal deployment of state police self-government…and (4) that there was anarchist or an agent provocateur, power, justifying a variety of terrorist nothing left for us to do but to take them which led in response to a far larger act means as legitimate suppression of all, and to educate the Filipinos, and of counter-terror. The police, the courts outlawry. And governmental leaders uplift and civilize and Christianize* and the churches whipped up popular believed that they had a moral them, and by God’s grace do the very sentiment, all defining labor obligation to bring Christianity and best we could.” organizations and strikes as alien, undemocratic and unchristian. State Of course, this moralistic policy counter-terror served to purge the Placed in an acceptable accorded with American material and threatening alien other, as power geopolitical interests: the Philippines holders imagined him to be, as a means framework (and of course never would provide a big naval base in the to try to regain their notion of law and called that by name), terror is Pacific, to help protect and expand order. Although a protest movement American trade. But McKinley was developed in resistance to the post- often useful in furthering social neither a cynic nor a hypocrite. Quite to Haymarket hangings, reprisals against and political ends, in the United the contrary, his motivations were as striking workers remained violent for much those of mission as of markets, decades to come, as those in States as elsewhere. Terror is and if his army would use water torture governmental and social power widespread; terror is common. and massacres as later Senate hearings continued to consider them to be demonstrated had been the case, essentially anti-American. But if we ever hope to abandon American idealism nevertheless was congruent with terrorist means, if the When the United States finally entered its uses, having experienced the outcome supported high American the international imperialist era in 1898 full force of its savagery, we purpose. The ends justified the means. by beating up on the Spanish and seizing most of their remaining empire, must begin to challenge its Clearly this pattern is echoed repeatedly one unintended consequence was the acceptability, even when in twentieth and twenty-first century necessity of fighting a Filipino terrorist events. The KKK was reborn in 1915 as a campaign with counter-terrorist legitimated as a means to self-proclaimed white Protestant army, methods. At first the Filipino preserve society enacting terror against Catholics and nationalists believed the Americans Jews as well as African-Americans. had arrived to help liberate them from During and after the Red Scare of 1919, the Spanish; but when they learned of dissent was suppressed, often with modernity with them in order to uplift the American determination to violent means, in defense of what was the ignorant lower race of Filipinos, a colonize their land, they took to the then called “100% Americanism.” mission that justified the use of terror. bush, using guerrilla warfare, the only Thousands of radical activist immigrants sort of military option available to Until this point, Americans had avoided were deported (while an overtly racist badly outgunned forces in such what were to them European forms of immigration policy barred more from colonialist wars. It was in fact a strategy imperialism by conquest and entering the nation), and World War I used and perfected by the American colonization. And even in 1898, veterans organized to terrorize industrial rebels in their own War of President William McKinley hesitated unions, particularly the anarchist Independence. The Filipinos used about moving in that direction. He later Industrial Workers of the World. In 1927, stealthy attacks against American told a group of clergymen, that after the the Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and soldiers and terror against their own defeat of the Spanish fleet, “I thought Bartolomeo Vanzetti were electrocuted, civilians, while the Americans used first we would take only Manila; then ostensibly for payroll robbery and terror in parallel fashions, as both sides Luzon; then the other islands…. I went murder, but really for their political fought to control the countryside. down on my knees and prayed Almighty opinions and ethnic origins. In the Though the usual statistic is that the God for light and guidance…and one 1930s, the police and private security American army inflicted 10,000 to night it came to me…(1) That we could forces battled strikers, often using 20,000 deaths, this might be not give them back to Spain—that would terrorist methods. Following the Second undercounting, but even more be cowardly and dishonorable; (2) that World War, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, the

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House Un-American Activities moral structure at the core of American to write a clear narrative braided with Committee, McCarthyism, and the society, chiefly by exploring the lives of analysis of the moral and structural execution of the Rosenbergs terrorized civilians, soldiers and military leaders meanings of homegrown terrorism. once more those alien, Communist, caught in the middle of the American This project grows from my earlier work filthy dissenters into silence. Using the Civil War. Warfare destroyed their on moral structure, violence and war in same shibboleths, the KKK and other security and fundamentally challenged nineteenth-century America, but at the white terrorist groups, often with the their value structures. Yet they were able same time it is a new and challenging support of local and state officials in the to rework those structures in ways that topic, one that will prove quite synthetic South, opposed the Civil Rights kept them sufficiently integrated in argument and composition. I see it as movement with burnings, bombings personally and socially to carry on both a culmination of my past twenty-five and other forms of terror. In Vietnam, in war and the ensuing peace. Despite years of scholarship, and as a means to American forces often terrorized and their psychic wounds, they learned to address some of the most troubling sometimes massacred villagers in a integrate their violence with received aspects of nation-building. pattern eerily reminiscent of the earlier values, to attack the alien Others while Philippine campaigns. And the response defending the True People of God, to alien terrorists after 9/11, including including, of course, themselves. Michael Fellman is Director of Graduate the stereotyping of persons of color at Through such ideological constructions, Liberal Studies and Professor of History at the borders as all potential terrorists, they justified terror as a means SFU. His lecture was derived from the earlier resembles the response of Chicago necessary to serve higher American stage of his next book project about terrorism authorities to the Haymarket anarchists ideals, thereby defending themselves and the American mainstream in the in 1886. against the viciousness of the means nineteenth century, tentatively entitled they sometimes used. “Twisting the Cross”. It is too soon to determine where the new homeland security legislation and The crucial lesson of Twisting the Cross the doctrine of pre-emptive war might is that American terror and counter- *[Ed. note: The entire Filipino lead. But with normal civil rights terror, while pushing humans population was in fact already Christian, suspended for whole categories of to the very limits of the morally just not the kind of Christians McKinley people, the state is twisting the use of comprehensible, are under the right had in mind.] police powers with new tools of secret circumstances, for most of us, a defense coercion, and, sensing potential terrorist of peacetime social values. Placed in an attacks, initiating war to head them off. acceptable framework (and of course never called that by name), terror is * * * often useful in furthering social and political ends, in the United States as Twisting the Cross throws open a new elsewhere. Terror is widespread; terror is window on American views of race, common. But if we ever hope to class, mainstream values and the state abandon its uses, having experienced by analyzing the role of terror in shaping the full force of its savagery, we must American history. I believe this begin to challenge its acceptability, even innovative discussion will provide a when legitimated as a means to preserve provocative look back at the past with society; we must look to peaceful clear implications for the present and alternative means of social change in Q the future. Some might call what I do multicultural, judicial and international here counter-patriotic, but in a time frameworks. If there is anything I hope where fear may cloud the public Americans learn from this book, it is that perspective, I believe it is essential to terror can come from “them,” and it can look at the deep structures of American come from “us.” history in a well-researched and clear- To write this book, I will analyze a variety eyed manner, the better to understand of printed archival and primary sources, terror at the root of nation building. including stories and novels, I am not new to the analysis of violence photographs and paintings in order to and American life. In my previous four tease out the relationship of terror and books I addressed many of the mainstream values. I am neither a connections between violence and the theorist nor an ideologue, so I intend

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Violence and the Literature of War smells and feelings of trench warfare. For example, his poem —Kate Scheel “Counter-Attack” begins thus: We’d gained our first objective hours before What is the appropriate response to violence? After 9/11, how While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes, should we react? What can we do to witness and acknowledge Pallid, unshaven and thirsty, blind with smoke, the trauma that it caused? In an examination of these Things seemed all right at first. We held their line, questions, I undertook to teach a 20th century second-year With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed, survey course on the topic of war literature. As a class, we And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench. looked at texts whose subjects were some of the major The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs conflicts of the century: both World wars, the Korean war, the High-booted, sprawled and grovelled among the saps Viet Nam War, and conflict in Latin America. Half of the works And trunks, face downwards, in the sucking mud, were by women writers and the majority of the authors were Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled, American; some were about battle experience and some about And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair, the trauma experienced by those more peripheral to battle, Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime some were autobiographical and some fictional. What I’m And then the rain began, — the jolly old rain! going to do today is talk about three of the authors and their texts, in particular, the experiences of violence and conflict The comparison between this poem and that of Brooke’s is they relate and what that might offer to us in terms of particularly telling. As my students were quick to note, strategies for our own experiences. Brooke’s poem treats war as an abstraction—there is no ‘blood and guts, ‘ and his focus is a somewhat sentimental patriotism. We began our study with several W.W. I poets: Rupert Brooke, Sassoon’s poem, on the other hand, describes the procedural Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Rose Macaulay and Kathleen details of an early morning counter offensive, the language M. Wallace, among others. On the one hand, it is somewhat conversational, concrete yet poetic: “We’d gained our first misleading to refer to Brooke as a war poet since he never objective hours before/While dawn broke like a face with actually made it to the war, dying of blood poisoning en route blinking eye”. While the men are “Pallid, unshaven and thirsty”, to the Dardanelles. However, his book of poems, 1914 and “Things” are still “all right,” suggesting that the norm for a day Other Poems, published posthumously, was so well read during in the trenches is a harsh one. The first 6 lines average 10 beats the war years that he is inevitably associated with the war. I a line, in a standard rhythm, but there are no end rhymes, want to look at one of those poems, in particular. which gives the lines more of a narrative quality, as if someone The Soldier were speaking. Then Sassoon begins the discussion of the digging of the trench. My understanding is that the soldiers If I should die, think only this of me: dug three parallel trenches in a zigzag formation to form a fire That there’s some corner of a foreign field trench, a support trench and a reserve trench, with connecting That is for ever England. There shall be communication trenches between them. Soldiers stood in the In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; fire trench to shoot. Typically soldiers spent about half a A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, month in the trenches during which time, they slept, ate and Gave once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam. relieved themselves there, rain or shine. Many men A body of England’s, breathing English air, succumbed to “trench fever”, spread by lice. Sometimes the Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home. trenches had boards along the bottom to prevent the soldiers from sinking into the mud. It is interesting that when Sassoon’s And think this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. This poet is nostalgic for a simple, pastoral time. Sacrifice in battle is seen as noble and necessary to protect this bucolic, yet fleeting vision of English life. The soldier’s death ensures the continuation of English ideals as if the burial of his English body, even on foreign soil, would be a Dionysian act of renewal of English culture. The traditional values that the poem supports are reinforced by its conventional structure. In contrast to Brooke, the lesser-known Siegfried Sassoon was on the battle field, and his poetry reflects the sights, sounds,

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attention shifts to the trench, the lines are indented, as a continuance of agonies which they do not share, and narrative aside. Previously given to believe that things were ‘all which they have not sufficient imagination to realize. right’, Sassoon shifts from his factual account to the shocking (Sassoon in Copp 251) announcement that “The place was rotten with dead”. The We can see Sassoon’s frustration with the public perception of trenches, which were always there, seem to have only now the war that elides the actual suffering that he has come into Sassoon’s view and he portrays them in graphic experienced, and his accusation that the government has no detail. The mud becomes animate as it tries to suck in the regard for the lives of the fighting men that are presumed soldiers who are still alive and trying to get a firm stand. The disposable since they are not officers and are therefore, lower legs of the living mix with the bodies of the dead so that you class. Sassoon expected to be court-martialed for making such can’t tell them apart. The confusion and urgency of the a statement until Robert Graves, another poet and soldier, situation is mirrored in the structure, with each line of poetry whom Sassoon had met in France, intervened at the War Office spilling over into the next. It is as if the inherited, poetic form and convinced Sassoon to attend a Medical Board hearing cannot contain the full extent of the speaker’s impressions or where it was determined that Sassoon was suffering from shell attest to the unspeakable nature of the experiences. Brooke’s shock. He was sent to Craiglockart War Hospital under the care symmetrical, rhyming lines could not do Sassoon’s experience of Dr. W.H.R. Rivers. justice. Where Brooke is reassuring, Sassoon’s anger and frustration are apparent in the sarcasm of the last line: “and Shell shock was not well understood at the time, but was then the rain began,—the jolly old rain!” There is nothing believed to occur following extreme psychological stress. Often glorious nor high minded about the there were no immediate symptoms, situation—it’s a pragmatic discussion of but once removed to safety, soldiers how to meet the objective, which in the The contrast between the would begin to have recurring end, fails. The concepts of the nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia, reception afforded Brook ‘s work “objective” and the “counter-attack” are violent outbursts, and heightened undermined by Sassoon’s insistence on and that of Sassoon reveals the sensitivity to noises. Contemporary including the personal experience of the trauma theory, as articulated by Cathy way in which the private, soldier. And the contrast between those Caruth, Judith Herman, Juliet Mitchell two segments of the stanza—both in “realistic” account of battle was and others has built on these early content and structure—disrupt and observations to argue that experiences stifled because it contradicted interrogate the sacrifice that Brooke of helplessness and terror, loss of enshrines. the established culture of war. control, fear of death, or exposure to the point of exhaustion cause, in addition From all accounts, Sassoon was a daring Sassoon’s testimonial could to physical infirmities, a psychic soldier, whose exploits earned him the only be admitted into culture wound. This wound exists because the nickname “Mad Jack”. He was wounded traumatic event so compromises our twice and awarded a Military Cross for as an artifact of mental means of survival, that it cannot be fully bravery on the field. While convalescing instability, while Brook’s pro assimilated when it occurs. Further, from his wounds in 1917, he became trauma theorists argue that the ordinary convinced that the war had shifted from patria mori and championing response to a traumatic event is to bury one of “defence and liberation” to one of of a disappearing British life was or repress it, a response that exists “aggression and conquest” and that it simultaneously with the desire to reveal was being unduly prolonged at great popular because it reinforced the vent and acknowledge the psychic cost to the troops. In his letter stating the public culture of war. wound. The dual impulse to repress his concerns, which was published in and reveal the trauma is evident in The Times, he writes: Remembering is thus dually survivors’ accounts of their experience. I am not protesting against the compromised—firstly, because Herman writes: “People who have military conduct of the War, but survived atrocities often tell their stories the nature of the psychic wound against the political errors and in a highly emotional, contradictory, insincerities for which the fighting is such that the survivor pushes and fragmented manner which men are now being sacrificed. undermines their credibility and the event out of consciousness, thereby serves the twin imperatives of On behalf of those who are suffering or represses it, and, secondly, truth-telling and secrecy.” In her clinical now, I make this protest against the practice with trauma survivors, Herman deception which is being practised because the culture refuses has noted that the survivors often on them. Also I believe that it may to acknowledge that the alternate between “feeling numb and help to destroy the callous reliving the event.” Often, the events are complacence with which the trauma exists. so traumatic as to be unspeakable. For majority of those at home regard the

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example, Mitchell has noted that the most prevalent symptom night for nearly nine months between September 1940 and of shell shock among veterans of World War I was mutism. May 1941. During the bombings, she and other Londoners would be forced out of their flats onto the streets, now covered Healing for a trauma survivor requires a full integration of the with broken glass, wondering if the shaking walls of the event into the body and the mind. This is a complex process. buildings would hold. Her survival strategy was to write, and First of all, the survivor must be assured of safety. It is she composed two texts during this period: her long poem, significant that Sassoon wrote his letter of condemnation of Trilogy and her autobiography, The Gift, both of which take up the war after having been back in England and convalescing the war, but in very different ways. It’s the for several months. Second, it is not latter that I want to discuss today. In enough to merely tell the story—there The Gift, H.D.’s reminiscences of her also must be a witness. Dori Laub childhood in the safety of Pennsylvania notes that the trauma story is “not yet are interspersed with her immediate memory” (69) —in other words, it reactions to the destruction around her. hasn’t been fully processed. In order The accounts of the trauma, however, are for it to become part of the survivor’s not foregrounded as one might expect, life story, it must be heard and but rather leak into the dominant narrative acknowledged. Within the of the childhood. Often, she makes only psychoanalytic framework, the occasional, rather oblique paragraph therapist fulfills the role of the listener. references to the war. One of the first However, James Pennebaker, in his substantial entries occurs about half-way article, “Telling Stories: The Health through the text, where the account of the Benefits of Narrative,” notes that “the war experience shifts from the background act of converting emotions and images to become the dominant narrative. I want into words changes the way the person to quote from one of these longer passages to give you a feel organizes and thinks about the trauma.” Constructing a for the strategies which H.D. uses to render her experience: narrative allows the person to integrate the emotional reaction with their existing experience. But it is not enough to recount The noise is not loud enough, the planes follow one the events dispassionately; the speaker must relay, as Sassoon another singly, so the mind is still held in the grip of does, the smells, sounds, and sights of the experience. vital terror. Tonight there may be fire, how will we get Sassoon’s recovery involved both the therapeutic encounter out? Is it better to stay in bed or crawl out to the hall in with Dr. Rivers as well as his own writing, of which we have the dark, open the flat-door and wait in the entrance, seen a sample. Unfortunately, his recovery resulted in his even run down the four flights of stairs and crouch in return to battle, although he survived to publish his poetry in the air-raid shelter? There are purely mechanical 1917 and 1918. But while Sassoon’s poetry received little questions, mechanical intellectual reactions, for I know attention, Brooke’s book of poetry, on the other hand, went what I am going to do. I listen to hurried footsteps on through 20 printings during the war. The contrast between the the pavement outside my window, the clang of fire reception afforded Brooke’s work and that of Sassoon reveals engines making off from a near-by station. There will the way in which the private, “realistic” account of battle was be interminable silence, and then that whizz and the stifled because it contradicted the established culture of war. wait for the crash, but that will be the world outside. Sassoon’s testimonial could only be admitted into culture as an artifact of mental instability, while Brook’s pro patria mori When the noise becomes intolerable, when the planes and championing of a disappearing British life was popular swoop low, there is a movement when indecision because it reinforced the public culture of war. Remembering passes, I can not move now, anyway. I am paralysed, is thus dually compromised—firstly, because the nature of the “frozen” rather, like the rabbit in the woods when it psychic wound is such that the survivor pushes the event out senses the leaves moving with that special uncanny of consciousness, or represses it, and, secondly, because the rustling, that means the final, the almost abstract culture refuses to acknowledge that the trauma exists. enemy is near. I want to turn now to a civilian’s account of war trauma—that My body is “frozen;” nerves, tendons, flesh are of the poet, Hilda Doolittle, known as H.D. Although an curiously endowed, they re-gain the primitive instincts American, H.D. lived through both world wars in London, of the forest animal. I can not move now. Like the England. The Great War was very debilitating to her; she lost rabbit, like the wild-deer, a sort of protective her brother in France, her father died soon after, her first child “invisibility” seems to surround me. My body is was stillborn, her marriage failed and she herself nearly died paralysed, “frozen.” But the mind has its wings. The in the influenza epidemic that followed the war. Then, during trick words again. It works every time now. Fate out of W.W. II, she endured bombings by the Germans almost every an old Myth is beside me, Life is a very real thing.

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Death a personified Entity. I am on my own, as at the refusals to acknowledge H.D.’s own account of her experience? beginning. I am safe. Now exaltation rises like sap in a One explanation is that while I have foregrounded H.D.’s tree. I am happy. I am happier than I have ever been, it accounts of the bombing here, they are less evident in the total seems to me, in my whole life (110). work, comprising only about 10% of the text. Another may have to do with the difficulty of the role of the witness. Laub This passage shows both the urges to reveal and to repress. It has noted that to listen to an account of trauma is to partially begins in an impersonal voice: it is not her mind but “the” experience that trauma. To “read” H.D.’s trauma narrative then mind that is held in the grip of terror. is to experience her fear and readers may elide the story to The pronoun “we” is inserted in the second sentence, where protect themselves. It is not uncommon for trauma survivors she imagines herself as part of a group of people trapped in a to be ignored when they tell their stories. burning building; the event having The final work that I wish to discuss is occurred so frequently that her ...despite what was known Dispatches, Michael Herr’s account of anticipation of it alone is fraught with about war trauma, the first the Viet Nam War. Herr’s account is fear and anxiety as she tries to decide interesting as he is there, as he says, “to in advance how to respond. Her systematic, large scale watch” (20). He’s a journalist whose goal sensory experience is auditory: the investigation of the long term was to reveal the Vietnam that was not noise of the planes, the sounds of fire portrayed in the usual media accounts. engine sirens, the explosion, and the psychological effects of war As Herr quickly ascertains, there are footsteps outside. She then shifts to the trauma was not done until always at least two accounts of any singular pronoun, “I” as she moves activity—one for public consumption from a state of hyper-arousal to one of after the Viet Nam War. Called stateside and the private reality: numbed self-paralysis. This “trick” she shell shock in W.W. I and battle has mastered of being “frozen” is one A twenty-four-year-old Special in which she dissociates from her body fatigue in W.W. II, it was not Forces captain was telling me about and moves into the safety of her mind. it. “I went out and killed one VC and until there existed a Here, she is outside of linear time and liberated a prisoner. Next day the incapable of being harmed. Her last substantial anti-war movement major called me in and told me that two sentences are joyful in her I’d killed fourteen VC and liberated that the deleterious effects complete denial of her situation and six prisoners. You want to see the her affirmation of her safety. Those last of the Vietnam war could medal? ” (172) sentences belie the anxiety she states be acknowledged. Herr opts out of the regular media scrum in the first paragraph and were we to with the military brass, which he take her final statement of joy as disparagingly refers to as the “Five indicative of her full response to the situation, we would miss O’clock Follies”… “an Orwellian grope through the day’s the impact the situation had upon her. events” (99), implying that much of the media was an Not long after the war, H.D. had a complete breakdown, unwitting accomplice to the construction of the stateside imaging that W.W.III had begun and that bombs were dropping version of the war. Unwilling to accept blindly the military in her backyard. She was hospitalized in Switzerland, her account as the full story, Herr refuses to stay with the other friends told that she had meningitis. While I would argue that media in comparative safety. He prides himself on going into H.D. was likely suffering from what we would now call post- the field with the “grunts”, the common soldiers. traumatic stress disorder, conventional wisdom has it that H.D.’s fragile, artistic temperament was overwhelmed by work, But like many trauma survivors, Herr was troubled by the which led to her illness. Her biographer, Barbara Guest, has inability of existing literary forms to adequately convey his written of H.D. that “She never expressed fear of the bombs” experiences and those of the “grunts.” As he says in an (265). Yet even a cursory reading of the original, edited version interview, we had “to find an expression for a very extreme of H.D.’s autobiography contains lines, such as: “I could experience…. We had to find this in order to save our lives” visualize the very worst terrors. I could see myself caught in (Schroeder 40). Herr utilizes the genre of ‘new journalism’ in the fall of bricks and I would be pinned down under a great which the author blends his observations with novelistic beam, helpless. Many had been. I would be burned to technique in order to present a fuller understanding of the death”(215). In a similar eliding of H.D. ‘s experience, several experience to the reader. As a result, Herr’s account is a sections dealing with her war experiences, including the one combination of the factual and the fictional, by his own that I read, were omitted from the first edition of The Gift, admission, which hasn’t prevented it from being hailed as the excised by the editors. It is only in 1998 that the entire text of “finest documentation” of Vietnam in the 1960s The Gift was restored. How are we to make sense of these (Contemporary Authors).

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Herr quickly bonds with the men in the field, switching from extreme cases felt that the experience there had been a the personal pronoun “I” to “we” about 60 pages into the glorious one, while most us felt that it had been merely narrative. It seems important to Herr, a “heavy-set” guy (54) wonderful. I think that Vietnam was what we had instead of who suffered from asthma as a child, to demonstrate his happy childhoods” (244). What Herr’s nostalgia doesn’t include ability to go the distance, to be one of the guys, even if he are the nightmares he experiences when he returns to New doesn’t intend to pull the trigger. It becomes apparent that York, awakened by dreams in which his living room is full of in the world of the ‘grunt,’ the distinction is not between dead Marines. The war trauma deepens when, a couple of male or female, but man or coward. Fighting is eroticised years after he returns, three of his journalist friends from and welcomed: Vietnam are killed. Their death triggers what he refers to as a “massive physical and psychological collapse. I crashed…. I “‘Quakin’ and Shakin’,” they called it, great balls of fire, was having these recurring post-apocalyptic war dreams, but Contact. Then it was you and the ground: kiss it, eat it, they were all taking place in New York, and it was a jungle. Just fuck it, plow it with your whole body, get as close to it going out in the streets required the cunning and skill of as you can without being in it yet or of it, guess who’s special forces.”(Ciotti 25). flying around about an inch above your head? Pucker and submit, it’s the ground….. Amazing, unbelievable, Herr was probably suffering from the delayed effects of guys who’d played a lot of hard sports said they’d never trauma. As Herman points out, despite what was known about felt anything like it, the sudden drop and rocket rush war trauma, the first systematic, large scale investigation of the of the hit, the reserves of adrenaline you could make long term psychological effects of war trauma was not done available to yourself, pumping it up and putting it out until after the Viet Nam War. Called shell shock in W.W. I and until you were lost floating in it, not afraid, almost battle fatigue in W.W. II, it was not until there existed a open to clear orgasmic death-by- substantial anti-war movement drowning in it, actually relaxed” (63). that the deleterious effects of the Vietnam war could be Herr has been lauded for his uncensored, the making of art can be a acknowledged. Just as Sassoon’s physical descriptions of battle conditions. means of transforming the protest was minimized, H.D.’s He has also been critiqued by some trauma written off as an artistic feminists as having claimed war as the experience and allowing the temperament, Viet Nam vets found great proving ground for men. I think that survivor to move the static their experiences trivialized. The both of these analyses miss the subversion first ‘rap’ group was formed by a and interrogation to which Herr subjects experience of trauma into time group of vets, Vietnam Veterans the cultural construct of war, even as he is and history, so that the survivor is Against the War, who met with two implicated in it. It is culture that teaches psychiatrists in 1970, to talk about men that war is, as Herr says, “a John no longer held hostage to the their experiences. Many of them, Wayne wet dream” (20), referenced to trauma’s haunting effects. distinguished for bravery, returned Hollywood movies where “Nobody dies” their medals as they gave accounts (46). Part of the trauma of the Viet Nam of their war crimes. The movement experience is how unprepared the green recruits are, despite spread and the Veterans’ Administration was forced to develop boot camp, because the culturally-constructed version of war an outreach program for psychological counseling. It wasn’t is so sanitized. For example, as he notes facetiously, until 1980 that post-traumatic stress was acknowledged by the The Soldier’s Prayer came in two versions: Standard, American Psychiatric Association as a medical disorder and as printed on a plastic-coated card by the Defense something which, we know now, can affect anyone suffering a Department, and Standard Revised, impossible to traumatic experience. convey because it got translated outside of language, Herman has noted that one of the final stages of healing from into chaos – screams, begging, promises, threats, sobs, trauma is to ask the question “why me?” and ultimately, repetitions of holy names until their throats were “why?” One of the reasons that experiences of trauma are so cracked and dry, until some men had bitten through disturbing to the survivors, long after the experience is over, is their collar points and rifle straps and even their dog- that everything previously believed to be solid and fixed, is tag chains. (58). now revealed to be tenuous. Survivors often find themselves Like Sassoon, Herr’s account is one of homage to what men questioning their identity, their relationships, their belief endure and rage at, the indifference of military command for systems and their faith in an orderly universe as they struggle the lives of ordinary men. But it also portrays the addict to make sense out of what may be random occurrences. waiting for the next adrenaline fix—one of “those poor Yet, in asking those questions, survivors often find ways, as we bastards who had to have a war on all the time” (243) and the have seen, in which to transform their experiences into a nostalgia, upon returning home, for the drama: “A few testimonial. And some, as Herman notes, seek to transcend

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the trauma “by making it a gift to others”, offering up their has the curious function of serving both as a testimony to a experience. In this way, the trauma may be redeemed so that traumatic event of mass proportions, allowing the public to it is no longer meaningless. We see this in Sassoon’s letter of acknowledge their grief and thus come to terms with it, while condemnation of the war, when he uses his personal at the same time, it locks the past in time so that it can never experiences as a vehicle to address social justice. And, as be forgotten. So I want to close the formal part of this H.D. writes in The Gift, it was only with the onset of a second presentation with a question for discussion—what is the World War that she felt compelled to offer her gift of a difference between grieving and fetishizing a traumatic event? syncretic religious vision of healing (166). Their work becomes what Shoshana Felman has called performative, in that it Kate Scheel is a Ph.D. candidate in the English department enables change (53). at SFU. This raises the pedagogical question of whether these poems and narratives are performative for students. Are the NOTE: A complete list of works cited in this document, but students changed? Is a topic such as war literature in itself not included here, is available from the editor; e-mail traumatizing? Several students from the class noted that they [email protected] couldn’t really comprehend the personal accounts of war that they read. As one individual put it, “Reading a novel about war is sort of like reading a novel about social life in the 19th century. While you can understand what life must have been like, you can’t truly appreciate it without the first hand knowledge.” What students can comprehend, I think, is the power of the cultural construction of war, the isolation of those who refuse it, and the need to practice discernment when confronting it. I think possibly they also develop an appreciation for the testimonial and for their own role as witness. In response, then, to the question, “What is the appropriate response to war and violence?” I am reminded of the picture of Nancy DiNovo on the cover of the Globe and Mail a few days after 9/11. She is weeping as she plays her violin at a memorial service at Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver. This picture stayed with me, more than the oft-repeated images of the twin towers. It seems to me that her actions acknowledge the pain and grief she experienced, but also transform and transcend the trauma. In this sense, her art becomes performative. It is not a soothing anodyne of forgetfulness. Rather, the making of art can be a means of transforming the experience and allowing the survivor to move the static experience of trauma into time and history, so that the survivor is no longer held hostage to the trauma’s haunting effects. But that often can’t be done without the acknowledgement of the trauma by society. 3 How we mourn as a society is a complex question. For example, the construction of the Vietnam Memorial in the United States was a political as well as a psychological process. The proposed memorial for the World Trade Centre site is even more contentious. As you probably know, the Daniel Liebeskind design is conceived such that every year on “September 11th between the hours of 8:46 a.m., when the first airplane hit and 10:28 a.m. when the second tower collapsed, the sun will shine without shadow” (www.structure.de/en/projects/data/pro117.php). There are still 19,000 body parts, including those of the terrorists, that have been recovered from the site, which are to be freeze dried and buried at the location. It seems to me that a monument

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Weapons of Mass Destruction and the End of War? of vastly larger thermonuclear weapons (typically ten to a hundred times the —Douglas Alan Ross explosive yield of the now merely ‘tactical’-size Hiroshima bomb). The The surprising and unexpectedly non- ‘game’ of interstate deterrence has been violent end of the Cold War—the simple expanded to include many covertly held collapse of the Soviet state and its arsenals of appallingly destructive associated empire without the catalyst of biological weapons (scientifically major warfare—persuaded many enhanced anthrax, smallpox, commentators that the human species pneumonic plague and so on), especially does have some real hope of escaping by those states who lack a nuclear doom from the vast arsenals of nuclear deterrent to offset that held (or thought and biological weapons developed with to be held) by their enemies or rivals, or such energy and expense during the last who fear they may be ‘falling behind’ in half of the 20th century. The absence of their arms rivalry with various principal great power warfare during the so-called opponents. But most citizens of the ‘long peace’ of the atomic and advanced industrial states have only the thermonuclear led scholars of vaguest awareness of the meaning of the international relations such as Kenneth phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction’ Waltz and John Mueller to speculate that (hereafter referred to as WMDs). all-out war had become both unthinkable and ‘un-doable’. Indeed a survey of American opinion Waltz opined that the prospect of in the 21st century as an unnecessary conducted some three years ago found nuclear warfare had become so utterly and archaic social activity.2 For Mueller, that 70% of respondents when asked to dreadful, and therefore powerfully the history of warfare suggests that war give some association with ‘Hiroshima’ deterring, that the further spread of as an institution is as much an were unable to give any response at all. nuclear weapons to governments ‘affectation’ as it is a collective affliction. I infer from this disturbing bit of beyond the original five was not cause Warfare in the industrial age has become information, as well as from the for worry. India and Pakistan with so horrific—even without the use of profound ignorance of my own students nuclear weapons would act, he believed, nuclear or biological weapons—that it is who arrive at SFU with little or no in much the same way as the Americans probable, not merely plausible, that with understanding of the history of the and Soviets had during most of the Cold respect to the future of war we may say nuclear arms race, that forgetfulness War—extremely prudently. Caution, with confidence that even if its days are and psychological denial seem to be the conflict avoidance with nuclear armed not numbered, its years surely are. Is social norm with respect to the ‘bad neighbours and mutual deterrence such optimism unwarranted? news’ of WMDs. University students would, he argued, become the standard are not alone in their lack of systematic The purpose of this short lecture is to lay widely emulated pattern of behaviour by exposure to the dark side of modern out some of the reasons why I have not ‘new’ nuclear powers.1 industrial civilization. Many of our been able to share this fin de siecle politicians seem remarkably ill-informed Mueller, another American international optimism about the human future. about the continuing risks posed by relations specialist, went even farther Where others have expressed guarded WMDs and have willfully ‘tuned out’ suggesting that even major war without hope that we may be on the verge of a periodic complaints from Washington the use of nuclear or biological weapons great ‘transformation’ in international that defence issues still matter and that had become unthinkable. War itself was behaviour that will end war, I see such there is an international community becoming illegitimate and because it is claims as more the product of wishful problem ‘out there’ with respect to the just another learned human ‘institution’ thinking than persuasive empirically continuing spread of WMDs to smaller it can be unlearned and discarded as an rooted analysis of concrete evidence. states—and an associated risk that some inappropriate, distasteful and ultimately The shadow cast by the first detonation of these devices might be conveyed to uncivilized state instrument. Like of an atomic bomb in anger at 8:15 AM organized terrorist cells for use against slavery, dueling (or smoking) such on August 6, 1945 still lingers. It has been the developed world. behaviour can be collectively discarded reinforced by the much magnified terror

1 For the most recent systematic statement of Waltz’s nuclear optimism, see Scott 2 John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Obsolescence of Major War (1989). Renewed (New York, London: Norton, 2003).

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The technologies involved in building The U.S. and its coalition allies invaded commitment to strategic ‘preemption’ atomic bombs are widely known and Iraq twice in 1991 and 2003 to halt (in fact more properly described as have been accessible internationally for further development of nuclear weapons ‘preventive war’) is the direct many years. While the vast majority of in that country. Meanwhile North Korea consequence of fears that new nuclear states have rejected the nuclear option, has moved ever closer to its first atomic proliferators might develop atomic the number of atomic or nuclear powers test, and the Iranian government has bombs and either hand them over has continued to rise: American, continued to move towards the directly to terrorists (or alternatively Russian, British, French and Chinese acquisition of an independent nuclear HEU fissile material) or might attempt to arsenals were well underway by the time arsenal. If Iraq, Iran and North Korea are covertly introduce such weapons into the the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty not seen plausibly by most Canadians as United States. (NPT) went into force in 1970. Shortly an ‘axis of evil’, they most assuredly do A crude 10 to 15 kiloton atomic bomb after it went into force, or perhaps even constitute an axis of potential nuclear could be made from about 45 kilograms before, Israel acquired its first atomic weapons proliferation—and both an of HEU shaped into two metallic weapons. In May 1974 India detonated hemispheres that when driven together its ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’. Twenty- would be about the size of a cantaloupe. four years later, ‘peaceful explosions’ Thus the contemporary Smuggling several dozen 23 kilogram gave way to a full series of weapons context for any supposed ‘cantaloupe’ halves encased in lead- development tests; a few weeks later lined containers would be certainly a Pakistan followed suit. Both India and ‘transcendence’ of war is— dangerous and risky undertaking, but Pakistan have several tens of weapons at least from my perspective there is public evidence suggesting that ‘operational’ as well as fighter bombers past Soviet governments may have and short- and medium-range missiles —decidedly unpromising. already done it.5 American borders were able to deliver them against each other Weapons of mass destruction quite porous during the Cold War and with virtually no warning. A ‘limited’ they have not been tightened nuclear war between New Delhi and continue to spread to appreciably since the events of 9/11.6 Islamabad that escalated from more countries. While the Even though the U.S. defence budget is ‘battlefield’ use at the outset, might larger than the next 12 countries’ easily kill 100 million people in a few reduction in the number military spending combined, and even hours.3 Over the past two years of actual deployed nuclear though the American military is far American analysts have worried about ahead of all other armies in the the ability of Pakistani President warheads from 1986 to 2003 development of the Revolution in Musharraf to maintain central control has been impressive...the Military Affairs (complex information over the country’s weapons and fissile processing networks for the battlefield, materials, invoking the spectre of al danger of such weapons remote sensing from satellites or robotic Qaeda sympathizers in the armed forces actually being used has aircraft, stealthy aircraft and missiles, and scientific community handing over and the acquisition of inexpensive weapons to terrorists. In October of 2001 been increasing according to ‘precision guided munitions’), American the American and Russian governments most strategic analysts. citizens are far from being safe inside developed contingency plans for the their own borders. Aerial robots, 2 billion rapid deployment of special forces into dollar stealth bombers and even anti- Pakistan to seize and safeguard the increased risk of nuclear use and a ballistic missile defences costing tens of Pakistani atomic arsenal if they judged stimulant to further proliferation by billions of dollars are irrelevant to the the risk of al Qaeda gaining control of neighbours of these three states. The threat posed by smuggled atomic some of these weapons to be high.4 current Bush Administration’s devices in the trunks of rental cars.

3 A point made by former American ambassador Richard Burt in one 5 See Joseph C. Anselmo, “Defector Details Plan to Plant Nukes in of President George W. Bush’s pre-election policy seminars. U.S.”, Aviation Week and Space Technology, 17 August 1998, p. 52. 4 A claim made by Bruce Blair, head of the Center for Defense 6 Roughly a million cargo containers a month enter the U.S. but Information in Washington. See his various columns over the only 2 to 3 percent receive any screening or X-raying, and of that last two years for the CDI at www.cid.org. small fraction only a very few are actually ‘destuffed’ and scrutinized. And despite the ‘war on drugs’ being close to twenty years old, the volume of illegal drugs entering the U.S. each year still amounts to hundreds of tons.

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A small Hiroshima-sized bomb of about catastrophe by involving some either South Korean or Japanese 15 kilotons (equivalent to 15,000 tons of opportunity to comply (at least on an decisions to move towards nuclear TNT—the 1995 Oklahoma City blast for interim basis) with the terrorist weapons status. The American comparison was roughly equivalent to 2 demands and preclude the loss of a five abrogation of the ABM treaty that for tons of TNT) detonated at SFU Harbour or ten American cities. A far worse three decades acted as the foundation Centre would have a radius of complete prospect would arise if a foreign of Soviet-American and then Russo- destruction of buildings out to about 1.5 government, fearful of overwhelming American nuclear arms control has to 2.0 kilometers. The downtown and American might and a threatened unleashed deep anxieties in Beijing to half of Stanley Park, most of East campaign of ‘regime change’, decided to the point where a new nuclear arms Vancouver over to Clark St. would be simply inflict grievous and possibly expansion is now imminent. Russian devastated. While North responses to American Vancouver would escape post-9/11 nuclear blast and thermal effects, unilateralist and the centre city would be declarations of utterly devastated across American intent to the Burrard and Granville ‘weaponize’ space have bridges south to about 4th included threats to Avenue. A terrorist once again put multiple detonation in the middle of warheads on its largest a working day of a crude rockets, the repudiation Highly Enriched Uranium of several key terms of (HEU) bomb—perhaps for START II (specifically proof-of-capability the obligation to demonstration purposes as eliminate all ‘heavy’ part of a campaign of SS-18 ICBMs), and a attempted blackmail of the decision to revive American government— nuclear bomber might kill 100,000 people flights in the high or more promptly and Arctic as well as the cause probably an equal announcement of plans number of deaths in the irreparable damage to the American will to acquire a new weeks and months that followed due and ability to intervene overseas by generation of nuclear-capable, to burns, other injuries or radiation killing several million Americans while air-launched cruise missiles able to poisoning. destroying most of the key port facilities threaten targets all across North America. Worries about an American Faced with such an act of atomic on both coasts of the continental U.S.— drive for a disarming first-strike terrorism and the then highly credible while decapitating American political capability against the shrinking Russian threat of it being repeated in many and military leadership at the same time. nuclear arsenal have also led to Russian American cities shortly thereafter, unless Perhaps a dozen HEU ‘cantaloupes’ retention of the fully automated ‘Dead Washington conceded whatever the could accomplish that horrific goal (with Hand’ nuclear launch system that was terrorists were demanding (withdrawal at least two being used to destroy the created in the mid-1980s to guarantee from the Middle East of all U.S. forces, White House, Capitol Hill and the retaliation against North America in the cessation of all aid for and trade with Pentagon), by careful siting of the blasts event that Moscow leaders were killed Israel etc.), it is not clear how the near key navy yards and civilian nuclear suddenly in a no-warning surprise attack American government would react. One reactors in or near large cities (thus to (by stealth cruise missile, stealth bomber can only hope they will never be increase a thousand fold the subsequent or by a short-warning forward deployed confronted with such blackmail. But that radioactive contamination). ballistic missile such as the Pershing II). scenario, dire though it may be, is not The tide of scientific and engineering the worst plausible imaginable scenario. genius applied to the instruments of Maintaining a Strangelovian ‘doomsday’ launch system raises the risk of an While groups like al Qaeda or elements warfare shows no sign of abating any inadvertent or accidental nuclear war of Hezbollah might think in terms of time soon. The Indian and Pakistani considerably. driving the new Anglo-American acquisition of nuclear weapons may ‘Crusaders’ out of the Middle East, that well help incite or inspire Iran or Thus the contemporary context for any at least would be subject to negotiation Indonesia to follow suit. North Korea’s supposed ‘transcendence’ of war is—at and avoidance of an absolute neo-Stalinist regime may yet catalyze least from my perspective—decidedly

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unpromising. Weapons of mass cut numbers of weapons verifiably by larger than was hoped (Russia) or destruction continue to spread to more dismantling with informally observed actually about to grow quickly (China), countries. While the reduction in the reductions in deployed warheads only, more and more high technology number of actual deployed nuclear with ‘removed’ warheads merely being investment in Japan and Europe will fall warheads from 1986 to 2003 has been diverted to a ‘hedge stockpile’). These to defence and aerospace firms. impressive (from almost 70,000 to fewer developments cannot help but threaten These developments may portend than 30,000), the danger of such the very survival of the NPT—the real something much more profound than a weapons actually being used has been foundation of the hope for controlling new round of nuclear/WMD anxiety of increasing according to most strategic and eventually abolishing nuclear the type Western nations experienced analysts. Russian control of its arsenal weapons. With much diminished powerfully during the early 1980s. of nuclear warheads is poor and ‘loose prospects for the survival of the NPT, Jonathan Schell recently posed a nukes’ from Russia or the other Soviet disturbing question for which there is no successor states may yet find their way confident, quick, optimistic reply: Is it into the hands of international terrorist In light of these discouraging possible that 2001 will come to be seen groups. Some European investigative thoughts there is a need like 1914—a year that marked the end of journalists claim that the current black- a long period of political liberalization, market price for a nuclear weapon is to reaffirm that they are economic globalization and peace and $200 million (USD). And just as NATO only possibilities. Humanity’s stability among the great powers? Are governments fear Russian ‘loose nukes’ we about to witness the collapse of the or fissile material getting into collective self-extinction is post-Cold War ‘peace dividend’ and international black markets, many only a contingent risk; it is not the onset of the re-nationalization analysts now fear that Pakistan may be of defence policies and the an even greater risk of ‘leaking’ bombs a certainty. What is important to re-militarization of many national or fissile material to trans-national realize, however, is that economies? Might 9/11 trigger a truly terrorists. In both Russia and Pakistan revolutionary shift in American (and organized crime may assist in such a failure to assess the world allied) domestic politics that sees civil a process. realistically and pragmatically liberties and democratic rights In addition to fears that the risk of can speed the world’s permanently curtailed? nuclear terrorism may be rising, the Schell’s worry list is as long and international community also is population down the path troubling as what I have laid out above: confronted by the possible collapse of of ‘doom soon’ rather the possibility of tens of millions of the major institutions that have helped dead arising from an inadvertent Indo- slow the spread of weapons of mass than ‘doom deferred’. Pakistani nuclear conflict; the destruction. In 1998 a firm American detonation of nuclear terrorist bombs bipartisan consensus in the Congress in one or several European or North voted down the proposed ratification of efforts to strengthen the Biological and American cities; uncontrollable the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Toxin Weapons Convention have also escalation of warfare between Israel and (CTBT). By 2002 many American hawks withered. The entire arms control and its neighbours such that both Israeli in the Bush Administration and the disarmament picture thus is very bleak. nuclear and Arab biological weapons are Congress were clearly eager to resume While governments in Europe, Canada, used with catastrophic effects and tens nuclear testing—especially of new ‘mini- Japan and Australia have deplored of millions of fatalities; major war on the nukes’ for possible attacks on deeply Washington’s new WMD unilateralism, Korean peninsula with the North buried and hardened targets where there is not much that they can do to Koreans killing several million South ‘rogue’ states or terrorists might have limit the damage to the international Koreans in their initial onslaught; a WMDs hidden from conventional attack. arms control regime. Both the Japanese Sino-American war arising from the The desire to resume testing was a and Europeans are now urgently buying unforeseen escalation of the China- logical corollary to American rejection of and developing missile defence Taiwan conflict leading to the use of the ABM treaty and the shelving of the technologies. With both the Russians tactical nuclear weapons against START process (via replacement of and Chinese arsenals either staying far American carrier task forces sent to aid formal, treaty-bound commitments to the embattled Taiwanese.7 Schell goes on

7 See Jonathan Schell, “No More Unto the Breach”, part I, “Why war is futile”, Harper’s March 2003.

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to note: “...the principal sources of peace is entirely real, he believes, and ever likely to publicly assent to the danger today are not, as before [in 1914] will bear fruit in terms of fostering a secession of Kashmir. Democratic the mass conventional armies and critical majority of the world’s governance does not eliminate systematized hatreds of rival great population in support of peaceful nationalism, rather it can in fact lead to powers; they are above all, the change and community enforcement of its magnification and intensification— widespread, unappeased demons of norms of non-aggression and especially if governments are unable to national, ethnic and class fury; the repudiation of weapons of mass deliver promised economic progress in prospect that a single superpower, the destruction. the short-term. United States, will respond to these Schell’s argument is appealing, but it is While the American government has dangers by pursuing a strategy of global less than convincing. While it is true that taken great pains to stress that its military supremacy and the persistence the democratization of Germany and intervention in Iraq is in no way or spread of biological or chemical Japan after World War II led to the virtual reflective of a developing ‘clash of weapons. It is impossible to civilizations’, many foreign predict how and when these observers have drawn precisely elements might intersect to push the opposite conclusion and history over the precipice.”8 have argued that American American paranoia (or actions in Iraq and the ‘war on legitimate fears), rising anti- terror’ are intensifying this American hatred across the problem. American intervention Middle East and elsewhere in in Iraq is typically excoriated by the Islamic world, and North American and British the accelerating diffusion of the liberals as an example of technologies of mass death have imperialist propaganda and created a qualitatively different mythmaking (the WMDs that geopolitical context than existed they are sure do not exist) and in the 1990s. As Schell observed, old-style economic predation so “September 11, although not that the cronies of Texas oilmen itself the point of no return gave can seize control of Iraq’s cheap, notice that such a moment may exportable oil. be approaching quickly”. Schell is not, however, a prophet of de-bellicization of their populations, Few critics of the American intervention doom—far from it. His essay argues that and while the emergence (however have given much thought to Israeli the time is now right for the halting and episodic it might be) of a nuclear weapons (about 200 of which achievement of Woodrow Wilson’s dream unified Europe portends an end to the are usually said to be available) or the of a collective security system that would risk of war emanating from that region, risk that they might be used. Both the actually work. Now the futility, the such developments cannot assure us interventions of 1991 and 2003 have in apocalyptic futility, of war is starkly that the causes of war are about to effect bought time for the negotiation of evident, and thus he declares “the bomb eliminated from the international a tolerable armistice and ‘settlement’ ruined world war by turning it into system. To be sure, the collapse of the between Israelis and Palestinians. annihilation”. And at the same time as Soviet state spelled the end of the last Without the enforced de-weaponization people worldwide are appreciating this great European territorial empire, but of Iraq, the risk of an Israeli preemptive risk as never before, there is also a this hardly can be taken to guarantee attack on Iraq would have loomed ever democratic wave rolling across societies that no other state will ever again aspire larger as an Iraqi arsenal moved towards and political systems that have hitherto to old-style imperial rule. Chechen full operational status. And any never had any semblance of democracy separatism or secessionism by other preemptive attack on suspected Iraqi at all—Russia being the most prominent minority peoples in Russia may yet, WMD sites in the 1990s or after would exemplar of this phenomenon. The through violent repression, unleash probably have entailed the use of at least spread of liberal democracies, Schell retrograde, atavistic political forces. a few low-yield nuclear ‘bunker busters’ suggests, will add to demands that an Large parts of China’s territory are in fact that would have inflamed the Middle authentic collective security system be at risk of secessionist dismemberment East and world opinion still further while established. The liberal democratic as well. And no Indian political party is politically validating a headlong

8 Ibid.

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perhaps big-brain authentically intellectual) rejection of evolutionary American policy may be precisely the experiments never sort of imperfect ‘rationality’ that leads last very long: such to regional and later global catastrophes. creatures tend to Bush unilateralism is not the only way to destroy themselves by deal with the proliferation crisis. But creating ‘tools’ they developing a coherent multilateral cannot control. alternative requires universal Intelligence may be in recognition of the gravity of the problem some fundamental and a shared willingness to assume the sense self-liquidating. financial and human costs of resolving In other words, there it. To date such a response is lacking. is little or no hope that humanity will Douglas Ross was founding director of ever come close to the Canadian Centre for Arms Control matching the and Disarmament in 1983 and served on longevity record of the national policy advisory group for various dinosaur the Canadian Ambassadors for species. Other Disarmament from 1986 to 1993. He is a philosophers have noted the many rush to acquire nuclear weapons by Iran, professor in the Political Science other ways (many environmental, many Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and so on. Department at SFU. psycho-social) in which the human The central point that needs emphasis is future might vanish almost overnight that the ‘nuclear peace’ is far from and concluded that our departure from secure—indeed it is getting more Earth’s history is not only a very real risk, insecure with each passing year. The tide it may also be very imminent.9 Species of technological innovation is sweeping mortality is a serious issue. around the world just as fast or faster than the tide of democratization. Viewed In light of these discouraging thoughts from this perspective the risk of repeated there is a need to reaffirm that they are wars in which nuclear and/or biological only possibilities. Humanity’s collective weapons are used is probably rising, not self-extinction is only a contingent risk; diminishing. And once the first true it is not a certainty. What is important ‘two-way’ nuclear/biological conflict to realize, however, is that a failure to occurs the floodgates on proliferation assess the world realistically and may really open—thus setting the stage pragmatically can speed the world’s for repeated wars of genocidal attack. population down the path of ‘doom The risk of self-induced human soon’ rather than ‘doom deferred’.10 extinction is thus also likely to be rising, Taking control of the nuclear/biological/ not falling. WMD proliferation issue is the central issue of world politics—despite the fact It is worth considering that the SETI that George W. Bush is attempting to researchers (Search for Extra-Terrestrial lead the charge on this issue. For North Intelligence) have been studying the American and European liberals and heavens for several decades without social democrats, the idea that Bush finding any evidence of ‘broadcasting’ in whom they dislike so viscerally may any part of the electromagnetic actually be right about something so spectrum. Some pessimists have fundamental is simply ‘not on’. But a ventured the depressing thought that psychological (as opposed to an

9 See John Leslie, The End of the World (Routledge, 1996). 10 Terms used by Leslie in ibid.

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In this Spring 2003 series hosted by the Institute for the to a famous passage from Heidegger where he complains that before the causa sui (a name for the Humanities three SFU doctoral candidates God of onto-theology that emphasizes the need for shared their dissertation research. an explainer that doesn’t need to be explained) no one would be tempted to pray or to sacrifice and that this God evokes neither awe nor music and dance. Onto-theology is hostile to piety. Third, having deprived the world of both its mystery and of a God worthy of worship, onto-theology opens the way for the unfettered self-assertion of the will to power in the form of modernity, namely the quest of science and technology to have everything at human disposal. In response to onto-theology, Grant offered three correctives for religion: faith, hope and love. For Grant, faith was in contrast to onto-theology and the religion of control and power; hope was in contrast Overcoming Onto-theology: to the will to power that resulted in religious violence; and love was in contrast to the propensity George Grant and Religion towards individualized and private faith that is not without Religion concerned with justice and the sense of the other. George Grant, considered one of Canada’s foremost —Peg Peters political philosophers, believed that the modern paradigm of knowledge in its silencing of anything transcendent left people empty and confused. Religion has come to an end but people are still hungry Through his teaching at Dalhousie and McMaster for spirituality. George Grant believes that western from 1950-1988, he argued that faith and religion Christianity has contributed to its own demise, were different and that western Christianity as a allowing religion to be an agent of the will to power religion needed to come to an end because of its that flourishes as modern technology. God too often associations with a certain way of thinking that has been something that we have tried to explain and Martin Heidegger called ‘metaphysics.’ Heidegger in control. Religion, which is a human practice, is always his essay called “What is Metaphysics”, wrote that the deconstructible in the light of the love of God, which is term “metaphysics derives from the Greek which not deconstructible. Using Grant as a guide, I will try to means to inquire in a way that extends out ‘over’ suggest a way forward for religion in a pluralist society. beings as such. To talk about religion today is risky. The topic is so Metaphysics is inquiry beyond or over beings, which diverse and potentially alienating that most don’t even aims to recover them as such and as a whole for our attempt to enter the waters. From discussions of grasp.”(1) For Heidegger, metaphysics stands for a personal spirituality to incidences of violence way of thinking that seeks to ‘grasp’ and stand ‘over’ perpetrated by religious believers, the air is charged and it is this way of thinking that has developed into with tension. George Grant is a Canadian prophet who modern scientific rationality or what Heidegger calls warns and guides those who would embrace the ‘calculative thinking’. Grant agreed with Heidegger mystery of the divine. Drawing from his reading of that modern science reduced all thinking to Martin Heidegger, Grant saw that much of modern calculative thought. Calculative thought is a way religion was becoming a dangerous hybrid of of thinking that construes reality as material for philosophy and theology which was destructive to human control. As such, reality becomes value-free faith. This hybrid Heidegger called ‘onto-theology.’ material. We have purposes to impose on it, but What is wrong with onto- theology in Grant’s view? it imposes no purposes on us. Grant agreed with Three things. First, it deprives the world of its mystery. Nietzsche and Heidegger that there was a Second, it makes God into a controllable being, and controlling motive behind all of our attempts to therefore not worthy of worship. Grant often referred know the world. Modernity, Secularity, Pluralism Lecture Series Pluralism Secularity, Modernity,

– 38 – Modernity, Secularity, Pluralism Lecture Series humanitas Spring 2004

The calculative thinking which metaphysics. The ontology of correctness. Religious people often fall characterizes modern science is itself beings as such thinks essentia as victim to the onto-theological tendency only possible on the basis of having a will to power. Such metaphysical to confuse themselves with God and so subject that can calculate and a “world” theology is of course a negative to threaten the civil liberties and or object which is “placed before” it, a theology of a peculiar kind. Its sometimes the lives of anyone who world that is easily manipulated, negativity is revealed in the disagrees with them, which is taken to controlled and contained. Heidegger expression ‘God is dead’? This is be the equivalent of disagreeing with called this world technology. For Grant, an expression not of atheism, but God. Some of the worst acts of violence metaphysics, calculative thought, and of onto-theology, in just that in recent history were committed in the technology were all words and concepts metaphysics in which nihilism name of religion. Grant condemns these to describe the modern paradigm of proper is fulfilled. (4) kinds of acts as onto-theological pursuits knowing which assumes that the subject of power through correctness. This (myself) is able to see everything as an only arises with an understanding of object for consumption and control. (2) The final result of religion knowing that claims certainty. This onto- theological pursuit of power and control For Heidegger calculative thinking is the as onto-theology is a is often seen in forms of religious how of onto-theology rather than the religion where the other fundamentalism. what. Onto-theology is the outworking of religion as technology in the modern is silenced and neglected. The final result of religion as onto- theology is a religion where the other world. The goal of technology is to have Religion becomes privatized, the world at our disposal. Grant believed is silenced and neglected. Religion that Heidegger’s fullest account of individualistic and ethical becomes privatized, individualistic and ethical responsibility is denied. Justice calculative thinking as placing the world responsibility is denied. at our disposal was his book on Leibniz for the oppressed is overlooked amidst called The Principle of Reason. (3) Justice for the oppressed individualistic passion for spirituality. Onto-theology is first about me, and my Calculative thinking begins as the is overlooked amidst demand for reasons and completeness. desires. It is a way of thinking that shuts Since an unexplained explainer (i.e. individualistic passion for down the other’s infinite demand on me. If the subject is ultimate then all others God) leaves things ultimately spirituality. Onto-theology unexplained, the principle of reason become merely objects over which the becomes an appeal to God as ultima is first about me, and my individual subject stands in control. All radical otherness ceases to exist under ratio, the ultimate reason. God exists so desires. It is a way of thinking that human reason can give ultimate the religion of onto-theology. Although explanations or so that God can be seen that shuts down the other’s Grant appropriated Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics and the calculative as the final explanation. Heidegger infinite demand on me... believed that the language of onto- thinking that resulted, he tried to offer theology had actually allowed the All radical otherness ceases a way of thinking about God that overcame what Heidegger termed human subject to surpass God as the to exist under the religion of supreme authority and final arbiter of ‘onto-theology’? truth. Heidegger interpreted Nietzsche’s onto-theology. In light of these three critiques of onto- notion of the will to power as the f inal theology, many have come to believe stage of onto-theology. The that God is dead, and that religion is metaphysical attempt to control and If technology is a paradigm of control, finished as a dispenser of meaning. But ground everything, albeit not in God then onto-theology is the name given to Grant asserts that it is indeed possible to but in the will of the subject, is the final that system when it enters religion. It is speak of God meaningfully after taking stage of religion as onto-theology. religion as technology. Religion where the Heideggerian critique seriously. Heidegger, in lectures on Nietzsche, the subject is in control through the Grant believes that Heidegger was wrote: assertion of the will always results in violence being done to the ‘other’ or that attacking the ‘how’ rather than the As an ontology, even Nietzsche’s which is outside the subject. Grant, ‘what’ of religion. Heidegger was not out metaphysics is at the same time again drawing from Heidegger, warns to disprove God or displace Christianity theology, although it seems far that religion can often become violent with nihilistic atheism; rather, Grant removed from scholastic because of its notion of truth as suggests that he is warning us about the

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absolutely. The ultimate implication of criticism of onto-theology. Part of this this hermeneutical practice is that requires an understanding of human theologians are to speak with humility, finitude in our approaches to avoiding the conceit that when they knowledge. Grant, drawing from speak of God, they are thereby Heidegger, speaks of faith in a way that adequately explaining the world. In one distances it from calculative thinking. He of Grant’s final essays he alludes to what speaks of faith in terms of ‘tradition,’ as he gained from Nietzsche. something to which I am first delivered, One of Nietzsche’s superb accounts of am proper to, as that to which I am modern history was that Christianity connected by way of relationship. Faith, had produced its own gravediggers. in this sense, has to do with the ‘how’ as Christianity had prepared the soil of well as the ‘what’ of me being a believer. rationalism from which modern science Religion in this sense ceases to be language that we adapt when we speak came, and its discoveries showed that ‘assertion’—what I assert is true—but of God. (5) The how under attack is the Christian God was dead. That instead is understood as prayer or as religion as technology, the man-made formula gets close to the truth of western relationship. philosophical system that attempts to history, but is nevertheless not true. The Grant sees that the violence emanating control and explain the mystery of the from religion stems from a western divine. Grant often quotes from metaphysical notion of the will. Grant, Heidegger’s ‘Letter on Humanism’, where ...theology is tempted by the like Heidegger, believes that most Heidegger writes: “With the existential western religions have incorporated into determination of the essence of man, fallacious assumption that their thinking the Cartesian subject- therefore, nothing is decided about the since it speaks of the Absolute object paradigm where the subject ‘existence of God’ or his ‘non-being’… stands over the object and compels it to Thus it is not only rash but also an error it must speak absolutely. The give up its reasons. This paradigm led to in procedure to maintain that the ultimate implication of this the Nietzschean notion of the will to interpretation of the essence of man power where the subject became the from the relation of his essence to the hermeneutical practice is that final ground for all meaning and truth of Being is atheism.”(6) theologians are to speak with therefore the one who creates values through the assertion of the will. While In contrast to religion as technology, humility, avoiding the conceit many religious people are likely unaware Grant points to the openness in the of the ideas of Nietzsche, Grant believes mystery that occurs in lived faith. Grant that when they speak of God, that the concepts have nonetheless been distinguishes faith from onto-theology they are thereby adequately pervasive in most modern expressions of or metaphysics. Often faith has been religion. In contrast, Grant sees in talked about in technological terms by explaining the world. Simone Weil’s notion of ‘attention’ a way reducing faith to ‘correctness of belief’ to think about faith and God that does which is based on a set of propositions. not result in violence. In his personal Although Grant admits that much of web of necessity which the modern journal on Simone Weil he writes: religion is guilty of the errors of onto- paradigm of knowledge lays before us theology, he nonetheless believes that Within the general philosophic does not tell us God is dead, but reminds there is still a way to speak about faith tradition the place where I find us of what western Christianity seemed that does not degenerate into writings very close to what she to forget in its moment of pride: how ‘metaphysics’. Nietzsche reminds us that means by attention is in the late powerful is the necessity which love humans are always embedded within a writings of Heidegger…When he must cross. Christianity did not provide particular perspective—we are finite— says that meditative thinking is its own gravedigger, but the means to its and thus we cannot achieve the kind of the “letting it lie before you and own purification. (7) knowledge that exists outside of a taking it to heart, the ‘to be’ of specific place or time. Theologians need Detailing what this purification might beings”…whatever that may to be reminded of this, according to look like for faith was one of Grant’s final mean, it seems to me to take one Grant, for theology is tempted by the challenges. Part of the purification closer to what Simone Weil fallacious assumption that since it process is to develop ways of speaking means by attention. Or in speaks of the Absolute it must speak about God that are shielded from the Heidegger’s writing about

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Gelassenheit, [releasement] called upon to be attentive to the other, when he points to a thinking first and foremost. without willing, one is close Weil’s concept of attention as a again to Weil. (8) corrective to violence pushed Grant to In contrast to religion as will and realize that the modern understanding violence, Grant argues that faith is about of religion was very individualistic and loving rather than willing. Grant writes, therefore tended to silence the voice of “belief or unbelief is never a matter of the other. If faith is a corrective for a choice or commitment, but of intellect religion of onto-theology and power, and attention. As the West has been and hope is a corrective to a religion of without faith, faith has often been violence, then love is a corrective to a interpreted by men of faith who wished religion of individualism. Love requires to get on with understanding as if it an acceptance or consent to the fact that finally came down to an act of committal there is authentic otherness. This by the will.” He goes on to say that ‘authentic otherness’ is that part of “religion is talked about in the West as if anything that cannot be reduced to it were some kind of choice or opting, scientific data. Without love, knowledge despite or even against the evidence.” is condemned to a scientific mode of (Introduction to Simone Weil” in Reader, knowing alone. Grant writes that “Plato character of religion is its view of justice. 251) For Grant, following Weil, a person If love is defined as consent to otherness, of faith is called to live with attention. If faith is a corrective for a then the other demands something of True attention means an emptying of the me. Grant speaks of the idea of self, a letting go of the self, whereby the religion of onto-theology ‘owingness.’ Others demand something other appears in the truth of its beauty. and power, and hope is a of me even if they are silent. To speak of justice is to speak of what one ‘ought’ to To pay attention truly is not to corrective to a religion of do and any sense of ‘ought’ implies a contract muscles etc.—but to sense that one ‘owes’ others the dignity leave oneself empty, disposable, violence, then love is a of justice. Grant says that in the modern open to that which we wait corrective to a religion of world, “Goodness is now apprehended upon…Attention is finally as a way which excludes from it all attention to the void…It is a individualism. ‘owingness.’” What is true of the modern waiting for something to appear, conception of goodness is that it does to manifest itself, to reveal itself. not include the assertion of an owed In contemplating a picture…the proclaims the dependence of claim which is intrinsic to our desiring. beauty of the picture only intelligence upon love in a much clearer Grant’s concept of ‘owingness’ is appears to us when we have way then Aristotle…the modern connected to his understanding of faith, surrendered to something apprehension of will …implies that we which posits an order of justice beyond external and real—one has to stand over against love.” (10) Grant human desire. open oneself to the void so that believes that the only response to the one can let something appear as hegemony of calculative thinking is to To ‘owe’ something or someone means itself. (9) revive the older understanding of that you are not in control of them. ‘knowing in love.’ Only love, Grant You are not standing over an object If modern religious violence stems from maintains, can counter the objectifying summoning forth its reasons; instead, disagreements about claims to absolute effects of modern rationality. The you see in that other something of the certainty, Weil’s concept of attention ancient biblical term of ‘knowing’ (11) Good that demands your response or begins from a place of uncertainty. has this deeper connotation. Grant obedience. Grant maintains that the Attention is about listening and believes that we encounter otherness idea of obedience does not close down recognizing that the other is before you. whether through sexual love or spiritual openness when it is in response to that Having faith means testifying to the love longing—we experience it as something which you appreciate and love. To of God, which for Weil must translate ultimately beyond our capacity to consent to otherness is to agree that into justice for the other. We do not live manipulate or transform. (12) you owe something to everyone you in isolation as individuals; rather, we are According to Grant, the chief defining encounter. It is here that Grant points

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to some weaknesses in Heidegger’s from the cross to his punishers, “Father, for justice. Justice, as understood by meditative thinking. For Heidegger forgive them, for they know not what Grant, leads one to obedience, but this is there was no Good beyond Being and they do.” This was one of the highest not an obedience that is blind and therefore nothing to be obedient to. expressions of forgiveness from an destructive to individual freedom. Grant says that this is precisely what is innocent victim, showing a new way of Instead it is obedience to that which is missing in Heidegger: “the greatest responding to violence. The religious lovable. This understanding of justice writer on what technique is turns his expression of love has the power to consents to otherness because it sees the back on obedience.” (13) J.S. Porter in confront our modern tendency to other as lovable. Grant writes that “for his brilliant chapter on Grant asks, privatized and individualized faith and Plato the opposite of knowledge is not “Can you think of anything more to root us in the other through justice ignorance, but madness, and the nearest bizarre to write about in our time than and grace. he can come to an example of complete obedience? To what or to whom would madness is the tyrant, because in that I have argued that Grant, drawing from we be obedient? What or whom do we case otherness has disappeared as much Heidegger’s critique of western reverence enough, stand in awe of as can be imagined.” (15) The religious metaphysics, gives three correctives to enough, to proffer obedience? What tyrant is the embodiment of onto- the practice of religion in our modern or could be more anti-historical, theological systems of power and post-modern era. By moving away from ahistorical, than obedience?” (14) It is control, a religion of violence, and a onto-theological expressions of power, only the life of faith, hope and love that self-serving religion that fails to see and avoiding Nietzschean religions of can give content to justice. otherness and practice justice. For violence and will, Grant arrives at a Grant, the best defense against the Grant pushes the idea of justice a little religion which is guided by a love that religious madness of onto-theology is further when he speaks of forgiveness. If expresses itself in justice. It is through faith, hope and love. justice is giving someone their due, what the living out of these three correctives they are owed as a human being, what that Grant seeks to create the space for a NOTE: A complete list of works and do you do when what is owed is language and understanding of the notations cited in this document, but punishment? Echoing Hannah Arendt, ‘Other’. His use of words like attention, not included here, is available from the Grant argues that punishment, which is owingness, and obedience are his attempt editor; e-mail [email protected] the opposite of forgiveness, pulls the to find a language that is not grounded strings of the social order tighter and in western metaphysical notions of tighter, locking us into narrower and control and objectification. It is in this Randy (Peg) Peters is a Special narrower constraints and blocking overcoming of western metaphysics or Arrangements Ph.D. candidate at SFU. freedom so that we are caught up in a onto-theology that Grant sees a renewed vicious cycle. The desire for retaliation place for ethics, God and the Good. By and vengeance often fuels violence rooting his thinking in love, Grant is able committed in the name of religion. to ward off the calculative reductionism Forgiveness is the way to cut those of modern science and the morally bonds, to release us and free us and neutral responses that leaves no place open up new possibilities. Forgiveness opens up or frees the past so that the past can be altered. Grant argues that sometimes what is owed a person is forgiveness and to withhold it is actually a form of violence that continues the cycle of hate. Grant often quotes from the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus says

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Becoming Non-Rational: Christianity Today And The Evangelical Response To Science

—Bruce Hiebert

The following is an excerpt from the transcript of Bruce Hiebert’s lecture of February 13, 2003, at SFU.

Transforming Beliefs

“Theology is the science of God and of evangelical conversion. Throughout the the relations between God and the United States he held large public universe.” So begins Augustus Strong’s meetings that combined entertainment 1907 edition of Systematic Theology. (1) It and an address by Graham in which he was a view that put Strong at odds with called on those in attendance to come both the opposition to science emerging forward and commit themselves to on the most conservative side of the Christ and an adoption of evangelical Western Protestant theological spectrum beliefs. After the press coverage of his and the “separate but equal” views of 1949 campaign, Graham became a In 1956, the year Christianity Today science and religion on the liberal side of recognized national figure and the began publication, Western society was the spectrum. Instead Strong argued that central figure of the new evangelical anxious about the H-bomb and the cold all science had as its goal the reasoned, movement. Building on his presence as war. Urbanization was expanding empirical understanding of God’s a public figure, he encouraged the rapidly and the US economy was objective revelation. And science was formation of a global network of booming, though there remained deep therefore the foundation for all faith and evangelical intellectuals. In order to fears of a return to the depression of the practice. (2) In the middle of the century, provide a cohesive vehicle for these 1930’s. Within science and philosophy, as evangelicals began to separate intellectuals and their point of view, the determinism of Darwin and the themselves from fundamentalism, they together with his father-in-law, L. Nelson naturalism of Dewey were being took Strong’s position to heart and used Bell, and Fuller faculty member and confronted with the indeterminism of it to hammer out an intellectual platform theologian Carl Henry, he founded Heisenberg and the collapse of Logical that separated them from their Christianity Today magazine in 1956. As Positivism. Within Western Christian th fundamentalist predecessors and Graham said in the 40 anniversary theology, the neo-orthodox works of Karl allowed them to engage the forces of issue, “Repeatedly in [the 1940’s and Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr were giving Western culture. They intended a 1950’s] I came across men and women in way to an existentialist liberalism framed carefully reasoned attack on what they virtually every denomination who were by the German theologian Rudolf perceived to be an errant and committed to the historic biblical faith, Bultmann. increasingly irrational civilization. believing it was not only spiritually vital Following Strong, the Bible was the but socially relevant and intellectually Over the next 45 years this American divinely revealed, rational, and absolute defensible. And yet they had no standard publication would face the election of a guarantee of truth and the foundation around which they could rally….” (3) Catholic President, the Vietnam War, from which a confidant evangelicalism With substantial foundation support waves of economic boom and could call North America to account. Graham and his associates set out to stagnation, the sexual revolution, produce a mass appeal magazine with environmental degradation, and the The intellectual centre of this new solid academic credentials that would collapse of Communism and the end of evangelicalism was Fuller Theological present an evangelical point of view on the Cold War. In the sciences Thomas Seminary in California. Founded in 1947 news, events and issues of the day. The Kuhn would deconstruct the idea of under the leadership of Harold J. initial publication schedule was for 25 scientific progress; Kurt Gödel would Ockenga (1905-1985), the school issues per year. Contributors, almost prove that mathematics was a “religion;” combined strong academics with a without exception, held earned astronomers would declare that the commitment to engaging American doctorates and included the Dutch universe had an “origin;” and culture. At the same time, the evangelist theologian G.C Berkouwer, the English sociologists and psychologists would Billy Graham emerged from and subsequently Canadian theologian find positive correlations between fundamentalism and into popular J.I. Packer, and the American theologian religious beliefs and personal and social American culture with a message of Bernard Ramm.

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subscribers, (4) remained its flagship science shows that while by the end publication. In 2001 its list of editors and of the century a post-evangelical contributors included leading theology had not emerged in the pages theologians and academics such as the of Christianity Today, there were clear Canadians Loren Wilkinson, John signs of major theological Stackhouse, Jr., and J.I. Packer, and the transformation. The evangelicalism of Americans Mark Noll, Thomas Oden, Christianity Today, in a move that Richard Gallup, Jr., Nancy Murphy, demonstrates the impact of the Michael Novak, and Richard John postmodernism of its cultural context, Neuhaus. had become non-rational. (7) While it continued to call a straying culture to While Strong’s rationalist, scientific truth, at play in its pages were both conceptualization of Christianity an encultured fideism (8) and a post- undergirded the initial approach of modern narrative constructionalism. (9) Christianity Today’s editors and The foundational rationality of Strong contributors, the subsequent 45 years had become only history. well-being. Philosophy moved from existentialism to deconstructionism. The locus has shifted from In the next two sections of the full text Christian liberals moved from of his paper, Hiebert examines for existentialist theologies to varieties of theoretical concerns to the comparative purposes two decades of liberation theology, to “post-liberal” practical, but still, publication of Christianity Today, what theologies. Post-modernism, only a he calls the early years, 1957-66, and bud in 1956, was in full anti- evangelicals want to know what he calls the contemporary period, foundational1 bloom by the end of where science and 1992-2001. In his concluding section, he the century. summarizes his findings, and concludes evangelical faith do and do Christianity Today changed over the with a consideration of the future of the same period by reducing its not work together. And in “evangelical project.” publication schedule from 25 to 15 both periods, the editors Transformations issues per year and becoming less Over the 45 years covered by this study academic in content and more and contributors to there are a number of obvious changes. popular in style. In part this was the Christianity Today want their Between 1992 and 2001 in any specific necessary response to a shift from issue, readers are far less likely to come foundation to advertising-based readers to read and believe across references to science than in the funding in the 1970’s. The magazine’s that there is no fundamental earlier period, 1957 through 1966. But publishers also spun off a family of those references readers do come across associated journals and magazines, conflict between science in the later period are more likely to be and eventually established a major and evangelical faith. descriptive of specific scientific web site, ChristianityToday.com. research, especially social scientific Through their home computers, by research. In addition we find that 2001, interested evangelicals could references to Christian perspectives on have a daily news update delivered; of cultural change left their mark. This science, by far the most common type of participate in web forums; buy books, is evident by the contrast between the reference in the early period, have videos and other merchandise; join a use of the concept of science in the declined by a power of 10 in the later matchmaking service; search for a job; major articles, columns, lead book period (from 114 to 15). The gross or donate to international causes. And reviews, and editorials (5) in the first ten numbers suggest that in contrast to the they could subscribe to Leadership or full years of publication (1957 to 1966), early years, it is not science itself, but another of the additional eleven with its use at the end of the century the results of scientific research, that magazines published by Christianity (1992-2001). While far from representing interest evangelicals at the close of the Today International. Along the way all of the evangelical community, or even 20th century. Christianity Today International all the voices audible within the developed its position as the leading Christianity Today (6) of this period, this However, on closer reading, this source of evangelical news, opinion, and approach tells us how the leading voices misstates the gap between these two information in the English-speaking in the evangelical world wanted periods. In looking at the results of the world. Christianity Today, with a paid evangelicalism to be perceived by its scientific research, contemporary circulation base of over 150,000 adherents. Reviewing references to readers are likely to be given the ethical

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implications of the research or told that within evangelical faith, that there is a thirty years earlier, are now prepared to the research supports an evangelical transition in the basics of the faith that publish material that posits an worldview. So while the subject matter are being reflected in the way science is unbridgeable gap between evangelical seems to have changed, in fact, the articulated. The existence of the faith and the world depicted by science. reporting is still primarily concerned complementary model of relations * * * with the relationship between science between evangelicalism and faith, in and evangelical faith. The locus has place of the earlier “theology as science” Two articles from the later period stand shifted from theoretical concerns to the model of relations, implies that the out in the clarity with which they practical, but still, evangelicals want to foundationalism of the earlier illustrate this pattern. In 2001 know where science and evangelical evangelical project is gone. By adopting Christianity Today published Walter faith do and do not work together. And a complementary model evangelicals are Wangerin’s “Small Beneath the in both periods, the editors and accepting that Christian thought is in Firmament.”(10) The article is full of contributors to Christianity Today want important respects different from references to the first three chapters of their readers to read and believe that the book of Genesis as Wangerin there is no fundamental conflict describes the connection to the land between science and evangelical faith. The pattern that can be experienced by his farmer father-in-law. Looking at the articles on Galileo in discerned within this constancy Wangerin is a minister and storyteller both periods suggest that in fact any and this story is about the truth of the opposition that is now perceived to and change suggeststhat world as God’s creation. But, at no point exist is the result of the internal something profound is does Wangerin enter into dialogue with inconsistency and confusion of rationalist, naturalist, or propositional science and not the necessary result of happening within evangelical approaches to the biblical texts he Christian beliefs. faith, that there is a transition in invokes. Instead with great power he evokes a sense of transcendence out of There has also been no change in the the basics of the faith that are the utterly ordinary. A sensitive reader way evolution is covered. In both experiences awe at the transcendence he periods it is attacked as poor science being reflected in the way finds hovering between the molecules of and poorer morality. Nor has there science is articulated. The ordinary existence. The other article is been a change in the intensity and J.I. Packer’s 1999 contribution, “Did God level of the coverage. Readers are just existence of the complementary Die on the Cross?” Packer is one of the as likely to find a strong attack on model of relations between leading evangelical, propositional Darwinian evolution in any later issue theologians, a distinguished member of as they were in the earlier period. evangelicalism and faith, in the Christianity Today editorial board, There is something about Darwinian place of the earlier “theology as and one of the few people to have made evolution that still represents a threat contributions to both portions of this to evangelicalism, despite almost half science” model of relations, study. In this late contribution, Packer a century of scientific and religious implies that the foundationalism makes a claim for the historicity of the change. of the earlier evangelical project resurrection of Jesus based upon a cross- But some things have dropped out of cultural consensus regarding life after the discourse. Significantly, no longer is gone. death. He says, “On the nature of are readers told that theology is a postmortem life there are great science. Readers are also not exposed differences, but on its reality, agreement to formal theological reflections on scientific thought. But this is not a move has been so widespread that current science, or analyses of how perspectives toward deconstructionist post- Western scepticism about survival seems on science influence contemporary modernism. Gordon Clark’s work on a mere local oddity.”(11) On the surface theology. Nor is there a significant science in the early 60’s was clearly this appears to be another empirically formal discourse on the relationship of deconstructionist but there is no based attack on the religious blindness science to western culture, though the extension of Clark’s approach in later of Western culture. But, for such a informal material on this relationship work. Instead the model adopted by the prominent evangelical to base his attack suggests that in the later period, as in the contributors appears to be something on widespread cross-cultural agreement, earlier, evangelicals perceive science as closer to critical realism: both science rather than on the basis of an a priori having a negative impact on culture. and evangelicalism speak of reality in Christian truth claim indicates that the Bible no longer functions as the only The pattern that can be discerned within ways that correspond approximately, foundational insight into reality even this constancy and change suggests that reasonably, and usefully to reality. This within the evangelical community. something profound is happening may be why the editors, unlike those of

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Even the critique of Darwinian evolution shows this transition. While both earlier and Clark or Wangerin and Packer understandings of humanity as God’s and later periods call it bad science, later reflect not alternative views about the creation and Jesus as the source of the criticism includes prominent mention of relationship between science and good life. the concept of “Intentional Design.” evangelical beliefs, but alternate This bottom-up empiricism is a strategy Intentional design is the theoretical strategies for working out the very much in keeping with the position that the planetary geological implications of evangelical belief empiricism of contemporary and astrophysical data are best made commitments. evangelicalism’s founders, Ockenga, coherent by positing an intelligent Henry, Smith, and Ramm. Both earlier designer of the cosmos who continues and later evangelical strategies accept to intervene in the development of the An evangelical community that science is an avenue for human universe at all levels in order that life perception of God’s reality. Where the may prosper and intelligent life may deploying empiricism is more recent writers differ is that, having grow. While the concept was not an evangelical community let go of the biblical foundationalism of ignored in the earlier period, its the founding fathers, science is now prominent presence in the later period seeking power. There is an used to add plausibility to the worldview suggests, once again, that a Christian a historic connection between of an evangelical community of belief. priori has given way to either a This is a sharp change from the earlier “bottom-up” empirical attempt to evangelicals and the religious period where science was true because it create a religiously directed consensus, right in the United States. (18) In revealed a world consistent with the (12) or a complementary approach world God made and revealed through where evidence from nature speaks as this context, the appearance the Bible. This explains why evolution an independent source of divine of empirical validation of remains such a point of conflict. As an information. However, as Van Till’s empirically validated meta-narrative, response to the concept of intentional evangelical beliefs supports evolution calls into question the design indicates, not all evangelicals evangelical political claims legitimacy of an evangelical community are prepared to embrace this that intellectually has come to depend approach. Van Till continues to hold within the arena of American on empirical validity. Inasmuch as the traditional priority of the biblical public life, especially when evolution is a coherent and popular, worldview. But by doing so without the non-miraculous explanation for all-that- support of an independently revelatory science is one of the few is, it is not only bad science but more nature, Van Till is supporting a new shared languages. truly evil religion. This also explains why approach to evangelical in the later period the evolutionary understandings of truth. In keeping agnosticism of an Addison Leitch and with Hengel and Burge’s responses to The future of the evangelical project the deconstructionism of a Gordon other facets of science, he places science These strategic deployments of the Clark no longer appear. Because a and evangelical faith in a hierarchical concept of science in Christianity Today specific set of scientific perspectives is relationship, with evangelical faith in two ten-year periods reveal two now the intellectual support for a taking precedence. emerging and opposed strategies for a community of belief, any questioning of The complexity of this transformation post-modern evangelicalism. The first those perspectives threatens the and the range of views encompassed strategy, based on a complementary community itself. within it, support Ian Barbour’s understanding of science and Christian Scientist and theologian John contention that applying typologies to faith, is a bottom-up empiricism that Polkinghorne has argued for a similar the conceptualizations of the looks at current science for indicators of approach to Christian theology. (14) relationship of science and religion is a the truthful nature of reality as already Based on his review of the findings of point well made.(13) The relationship described by evangelical theology. Thus science he has suggested ways of between evangelical faith a “big bang” origin of the cosmos is seen reconceptualizing traditional Christian conceptualizations and science is a as in keeping with the creatio ex nihilo dogmas so that they remain coherent in complex and not necessarily a doctrine of divine creation. The a world where science is a powerful set consistent affair. Instead the views anthropic principle is suggestive of a of practices. However, Polkinghorne has reflect religious a priori’s and a wide God who places human beings at the in the process found it necessary to range of views can be held and change pinnacle of creation. Statistical conceptualize the God who stands based not on the evangelical correlations of evangelical beliefs with behind Christian dogma in ways that are community’s study of science but on human health, marital longevity, not in keeping with traditional the range and transformation of the happiness, and prosperity, are indicative evangelical points of view. underlying body of beliefs. Thus Henry of the truthfulness of evangelical

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Polkinghorne’s God has set in motion a would dissipate and evangelicalism appears to support eugenics programs, dance of chance and necessity, a dance would become one fideism among or racism, or the use of nuclear weapons, where God takes risks. This breaks away many fideisms. or foreign wars of aggression, all actions from traditional evangelical dogmas of that are not literally opposed by the However, the political gains of this the all-knowingness of God, and, for Bible? Must evangelicals follow this strategy risk opening evangelicalism to some evangelicals, the predestined “science”? These are not actions that “natural theology.” Once scripture and nature of human life. (15) “biblical” Christians have found easy to science are seen as complementary, with resist in the past, and in the future, more At this point the evangelical community science legitimating current practice— tightly-argued “scientific” rationales does not seem amenable to the direction the balance between them can quickly could raise up these or similar terrors to of Polkinghorne, despite his affinity for shift from the “biblical” to the haunt evangelical orthodoxy. much traditional dogma. This suggests “scientific.” Especially as science that there is a fideism (16) at work expands its explanatory power and This strategy, as approached by some despite the apparent empiricism. coherence, its validating function could practitioners, also risks leading Evangelicals who confess a bottom-up become directive of the community’s evangelicalism into becoming “post- empiricism in fact have an irrational practice. Church history is littered with Christian.” The obvious attraction of commitment to a specific some evangelicals to the faith perspective, and science concept of “intelligent is a construct deployed to design,” as a hypothesis cover up this irrationalism. for cosmic and human As those familiar with the origins, suggests that this work of Michel Foucault will is not trivial speculation. immediately recognize, Intelligent design deployment is an issue of practitioners are power. (17) attempting to develop a “scientific” frame of An evangelical community reference that allows deploying empiricism is an “God” back into the evangelical community cosmos as the necessary seeking power. There is an source of what are historic connection between determined to be evangelicals and the religious otherwise inexplicable right in the United States. (18) data. But, it is a concept In this context, the that claims validity appearance of empirical without a specific validation of evangelical religious framework such beliefs supports evangelical political the remains of theologies that have as Judaism or Christianity. Therefore the claims within the arena of American suffered this consequence. “Scientific” constructed god of intelligent design, as public life, especially when science is justification for current practices is a based on the gaps in naturalist one of the few shared languages. tool that moulds its user in subtle and explanations, may ultimately have no Imagine the effect on the school science destructive ways. For example, relationship to evangelical convictions text-book debate if evangelicals were evangelical thought is currently wedded about God. (18) At that point forced to place divine creation against to a position that homosexual behaviour evangelicalism faces the choice of either not only evolution (where they claim is an absolute aberration, because it says accepting this empirically-validated god evangelicalism belongs as an empirically so in the Bible. But what happens to this and becoming post-Christian, or of verifiable worldview) but against the doctrine when the scientific research dramatically reconstructing creation accounts of the ancient indicates that homosexual orientation is evangelicalism’s meta-narrative in ways Babylonian Enuma Elish, or the Hindu in some respects a genetic trait, and thus that do not need empirical Vedas. At that point the debate would a “natural” part of divine creation? Must justification—a difficult task for a become meaningless. Similarly, right evangelical scientists work to debunk community that has refused to disclose across the spectrum of social issues, the these research results and produce its fideism. loss of the appearance of empirical science that supports traditional anti- validity would loosen the bonds between homosexual doctrines? And what if such The alternative strategy, one I call evangelicals and American culture and research results are not generated? Do narrative constructionalism, (20) is thereby significantly reduce their access evangelicals abandon their doctrine? Or found in the work of Van Till, Hengel, to political power. The shared language worse, what happens when “science” Burge, Willimon, and Wangerin, and may

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be more likely to provide the longterm modification. This will not be easy project, these new conceptual systems direction for evangelicalism. (21) By because evangelicalism was built upon a reflect not the carefully reasoned positing the Bible as the source of foundational conviction that the intentions of the founders but the non- evangelical faith and practice and Christian faith, as interpreted through rational constructs of the emerging post- identifying science as one practice the Protestant Reformation, is modern culture. within this worldview, the possibility unchanging. If the only emphasis in On the one side we see an encultured exists of creating a community that has continuity between this perspective and fideism: an ideological belief-construct integrity, plausibility and direction. (22) evangelical tradition is the text of the attempting to deploy itself as empirically The broad public plausibility of the Bible, and that in ways that would validated and therefore able to remain scientific meta-narrative, however, appear unimaginable to the tradition’s engaged with North American culture as means that science will have to be founders, then this road runs in a a normative force. But evangelicalism integrated carefully, with special direction that can only be called goes this route at the loss of the priority attention paid to the points of conflict post-evangelical. of the Bible that was the foundation of that are certain to arise. The religious On the other hand, from within this the tradition. framework within which science will be framework the possibility exists that required to function must be coherent, On the other side we see a narrative (post-) evangelical theology can work must integrate most scientific findings, constructionalism that seeks to build a creatively with science by suggesting and must be plausible at least to biblically centred community of new areas of research based on the evangelicals working within the practice. But this approach risks losing conviction of the practicing community sciences. Evolution, as the most internal coherence and abandoning that its narrative accurately indicates the powerful of science’s meta-narratives, formal engagement with the broader fundamental nature of the universe. A will need clear critical integration. culture of North America. biologist functioning from such a However, by arguing biblical precedence, perspective might start looking, based That there are two competing this point of view faces attack from three on their understanding of God’s actions conceptual systems indicates that the points of view. First, it is non-rational in through Jesus, for places where life final direction of community its core practices (23) and thus reduces forms sacrifice their existence so that transformation has not yet been its own plausibility in a conceptual new forms of life can come into selected. Given that other approaches world where modernist discourse is still existence. (24) A sociologist functioning have been tried and discarded along the prevalent. Second, the institutions that from such a perspective might look for way, neither of these may yet be the nurture science will in all likelihood the ways in which prayer changes the way forward for North American object strenuously to any efforts to place emotional make-up of individuals and evangelicalism. Regardless, their endeavours within religiously communities in constructive ways. evangelicalism over the last half of the determined perspectives. Third, the 20th century changed from being a Bible that forms its core will be subject As we have seen, looking at the way the modern to being a post-modern to deconstruction from a wide range of concept of science is used in the pages enterprise. The most conservative existing linguistic, historicist, and of Christianity Today has opened a rationalists of Western Christianity are theological perspectives. window into the way a community of now firmly, and probably permanently, religious practice has profoundly The risk also exists that the tension non-rational. modified its discourse. The evangelical between the evangelical faith and community in Canada and the United practice so enjoined and the world as States has not remained static in the face NOTE: A complete list of notes works described by the sciences and of the massive changes in Western cited in this document, but not included manipulated by technology will be so culture over the last half of the 20th here, is available from the editor; e-mail great as to make the belief-construct century. Instead it has modified its [email protected] untenable to its practitioners. While internal discourse in response to the human beings can hold together much philosophical and cultural forces at play, that is contradictory, the dissonance can Bruce Hiebert is a Special Arrangements essentially abandoning the modern become so great that one set of beliefs is PhD candidate at SFU, and a former project and exploring competing modes discarded. In order to manage the risk Mennonite pastor. of future self-articulation. Despite this approach will require great obvious similarities in the way the sensitivity to the changing world of concept of science has been used over science and the willingness to that entire period, the differences constructively modify the operative indicate that radically different understanding of biblical faith and conceptual systems are being worked practice. The community must develop out, and, ironically for a community accepted practices for theological with its origins so solidly in the modern

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Aristotle, Derrida, Girard Girard’s proposed solution, however, is the scapegoat’s diachronic deferral of that the source of human difference lies conflict, and its sacred synchronic —Christopher S. Morrissey in mimetic capacity. From mimesis, differentiation of meanings for the rivalry is generated, which creates community. Both for Girard and Derrida, The following is an excerpt from mimetic crises that are only decisively therefore, human difference is absolutely resolved by scapegoating, with the arbitrary: for Derrida, such that no Christopher Morrisey’s February 27, 2003 scapegoat being the first significant and origin can ever be made present, lecture at SFU entitled “Human sacred object, and historically the because language always already inauguration of hominization. Gans defers such an origin and offers only Difference and Religion: Girard, Derrida, observes that Girard’s hypothesis is in supplementary traces; for Girard, and Postmodern Anthropology” one sense the same as Derrida’s (Girard such that the scapegoat chosen by any cultural lynch mob is only René Girard’s mimetic theory lays the arbitrarily guilty. greatest stress on his hypothesis of the While gradual evolution Thus the absolutely arbitrary difference scapegoat mechanism as the of the human is for both Girard and generative principle of all religion and indeed occurred, evolution Derrida problematically metaphysical in human culture. While Girard claims a does not account for the nature. For Derrida, it is a difference scientific status for his hypothesis, never chosen because it is never made Girard admits he has left the sudden human transition present (only absence founds presence). philosophical implications of his from prehistory to history that For Girard, the motivation for hypothesis to others, and this is fertile scapegoating is always only relative to a ground for original research. religious myth dramatizes. The concrete historical situation. Both these To this end, my project is a re-reading refinement of the evolutionary hypotheses (Derrida’s non-hypothesis of Aristotle in the light of Girard. But hypothesis only offers a more and Girard’s generative hypothesis) are my research begins from a more recent still too “metaphysical” because, starting point: Eric Gans’ comparison accurate horizontal temporal however temporal, they stage this of Girard and Jacques Derrida. This yardstick, but it does not temporality on the representational ongoing comparison has continued in scene of language. That is, for Derrida, Gans’ most recent book, Signs of answer the question of the difference is “always already” the Paradox (1997), but it is perhaps best vertical problem of culturally deferring representation in language; articulated in Gans’ early article for Girard, difference (however “Differences” in Modern Language significant meaning, which similarly temporal, relative and Notes (May 1981), an article which I Girard, in his breakthrough, arbitrary) is nevertheless what first will draw upon here as I explain the founds representation. approaches to the problem of human argues could be generated Girard’s breakthrough is nevertheless difference made by Derrida, Girard, by the scapegoat who less metaphysical and more resolutely and Aristotle. becomes the first deity, that is, anthropological, and it establishes, Gans has observed that Derrida’s moreover, a link between religion and redefinition of human difference as the first locus of significance science with its generative hypothesis of différance radicalizes metaphysics. for the now-human the sudden origin of language. The That is, Derrida is still metaphysical in generative function of scapegoating in recognizing the problem of the origin community. culture potentially offers a scientific of human difference, although explanation of the emergence of human Derrida’s redefinition of human culture and language. While gradual difference as différance denies the evolution indeed occurred, evolution possibility of a solution to this problem is more anthropological than Derrida, does not account for the sudden human of origin. Derrida deconstructs but he is no less metaphysical, albeit in a transition from prehistory to history philosophy’s solutions to essential more radically anthropological way): in a that religious myth dramatizes. The questions (“what is X?”) and concludes word, says Gans, Girard anthropologizes refinement of the evolutionary that no solution is possible concerning Derrida’s deconstructive notion of hypothesis only offers a more accurate human difference, because language différance. Derrida’s French neologism horizontal temporal yardstick, but it cannot discover its own origin. Derrida suggests a diachronic deferral in time, as does not answer the question of the thus overlooks the possibility of a opposed to only a synchronic difference vertical problem of culturally significant generative origin. of presence. In Girard, it corresponds to meaning, which Girard, in his

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(2) to (3) is metaphysical in the generation of human difference through the recognition of significance. The distinction can be phrased this way: both transitions are transitions of mimesis, but the former as a transition of mimesis understood as imitation, and the latter as a transition of mimesis understood as representation. Aristotle’s conception of mimesis, as Stephen Halliwell argues in his recent book The Aesthetics of Mimesis is underrated and misunderstood, and it can account for both these kinds of mimesis. There is a dual aspect to Aristotelian mimesis that has not yet received adequate recognition. As Aristotle says in the Poetics, humans are the most mimetic (mimetikotaton: most imitative) among animals, yet they also breakthrough, argues could be of the violence to another?), whereas the learn (representationally: tas matheseis generated by the scapegoat who transition between the last two is the poieitai dia mimeseos) through mimesis becomes the first deity, that is, the first resolution of conflict by deferral (i.e. the (Poetics IV. 1448b4-9). The latter activity, locus of significance for the now-human fascination with the scapegoat as a deity learning, is an activity humans desire by community. is what defers the continuation of the nature and in which they take pleasure violence, because the deified scapegoat The limitations of Girard’s theory (cf. Metaphysics I. 980a22: pantes is the signifier of a restoration of peace become clear in light of Gans’ anthropoi tou eidenai oregontai phusei). and order after the aggressive discharge comparison of Girard’s différance with My own research works with Girard’s of tensions on a scapegoat). Empirically, Derrida’s. Girard’s original event of hypothesis to see how the one mimesis the yoking of these three events, while scapegoating tries to explain the birth of could anthropologically be generative of harmonious with Girard’s exegesis of human difference with his breakthrough the other mimesis: (animal) imitation as texts, especially Biblical ones, is, anthropological hypothesis of generative generative of (human) representation. however, less than parsimonious as a violence, that is, of violence that In contrast with evolutionary science, scientific hypothesis. Scientifically generates sacred meaning. But his which methodologically assumes that speaking, Girard’s hypothesis seems to original event nevertheless conflates human difference evolved gradually, require another swipe of Ockham’s razor. three things in its account of the origin and in contrast with Derrida, whose But the parsimonious solution is not to of human difference: (1) the original différance shows the absent origin of separate these three moments according object that generates a mimetic crisis human difference in language, the to the common consensus of either (e.g. meat, i.e. a dead animal as a food generative hypothesis of Girard achieves contemporary science or contemporary source); (2) the victim-as-scapegoat a notable breakthrough. Where does deconstruction: that is, either by (e.g. the member of the community human difference come from? It comes dissolving the three moments so far lynched at the pinnacle of the crisis, from a sudden event (neither a apart that they disappear into the i.e. scapegoated in the rapidly escalating metaphysical a-temporal essence nor a horizontal timeline of evolutionary communal aggression over the food); deconstructionist non-essence), an gradualism, or to dismiss outright the and (3) the victim-as-signifier-of-the- event which is the origin of language and anthropological question by turning sacred. thus of all cultural form. In the Derrida’s insight into language’s deferral postmodern era, we are just now In Girard’s understanding, these three of origins into a still-metaphysical learning how to think a hypothesis about have to be connected in one event. But dogma. Similar to Gans, I would venture this event, and to refine it. note that the transition between the first to refine the Girardian hypothesis the two defers resolution of conflict (i.e. if following way: to recognize that the hominids are no longer fighting over the transition from (1) to (2) is still within Christopher Morrissey is a Special meat, but all beating up on one member the physical realm of the animal and its Arrangements Ph.D. candidate at SFU of the community, why would the death appetitive objects (e.g. animals fighting of that scapegoat stop the continuation over food), whereas the transition from

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In the Spring of 2003, the Institute for the Humanities hosted two Deemed as potential threats to authority, all of the eleven Ja’fari Shi’i Imams were murdered by their

lectures which approached the exploration of Islam, both as an Islam Lecture Series Exploring contemporary Caliphs. The Ja’fari Shi’i line of historic religious tradition, and as a contemporary reality. succession came to a halt when, due to the impending danger that threatened his life, the infant son of the eleventh Shi’i Imam, Hassan al- Democratizing Shi’ism: Askari, reportedly went into a Lesser Occultation between 874 and 940, during which time he was The Theoretical Foundations connected with his followers through four select of Iran’s Reform Movement deputies or vakils. Upon the death of the last vakil in 940, the Hidden Twelfth Imam went into the —Peyman Vahabzadeh Greater Occultation to return on the Day of Judgement as Mahdi, the Guide of the faithful The landslide electoral victory of the moderate Shi’i cleric community. Seyyed Mohammad Khatami in the 1997 presidential The Greater Occultation not only left Shi’i believers election in Iran inaugurated a new era in Shi’i political with the problem of guidance, it forced the entire practice. Known for his leniency as the Minister of Ja’fari Shi’i theory of governance to face a profound Islamic Guidance, Khatami owed his presidency crisis, as it was based on the premise that only an primarily to Iranian women and youth who mobilized to infallible leader (the Prophet and later the twelve vote for him by the millions. While Khatami’s presence Imams) should lead the Muslim community. and the expanding reform movement his Naturally, following the Greater victory ensued must be credited to Iranians’ Occultation, the Shi’is turned to quietism will for radical but peaceful change, the very based on a recorded hadith or dictum of idea of reforming Iranian politics should the sixth Imam, Ja’far Sadeq, who conceptually be traced back to the founding recommended to the faithful total moment of Islam, or, to state it precisely, to the abstention from temporal affairs in the death of Prophet Mohammad in 632 CE. absence of an infallible leader. In the Guaranteed by the aura of prophecy, the absence of an infallible leader, a shadow uncontestable authority of Mohammad, who of illegitimacy covers over all worldly was at the same time the spiritual and activities, above all those of government. temporal leader of the community, was quickly Consequently, a doctrine of dissimulation disintegrated upon his death, for he neither emerged, making it a duty of Shi’is to feign appointed a successor nor established a religion in order to protect their Faith and method for the selection of a leader. As is well community. Until the coming of Mahdi, known, the majority of Muslims of the time there would be no legitimate authority, followed the first three Caliphs, all only force. Here one can clearly observe Mohammad’s trusted senior associates, and that the 1979 Iranian Revolution was an became known as the followers of the Prophet’s attempt at reviving legitimate authority in “narrated or documented traditions,” or the absence of the Occult Imam. Sunnis. Upon Mohammad’s passing, however, Interestingly, the absence of an infallible leader a small minority advocated the idea that the line of forced upon Shi’ism a certain separation between succession should be traced through the Prophet’s church and state, which is quite often missed or descent—that is, through his daughter, Fatima, and his misunderstood by Western scholars. This son-in-law, Ali. The followers of the “party” of the First separation should not be analogized with the Imam, Ali, or Shi’is, witnessed the caliphate of Ali (as the separation between spiritual and temporal forth Caliph) until his assassination by a member of a authorities of the Christian Roman Empire. Rather, rebellious, underground group. The two powerful this separation stems from an impasse in the Shi’i subsequent caliphates, the Umayyads and the Abbasids, political thought: while Islam recognizes that, kept Shi’ism a marginal tendency within Islam. In the although chosen, the Prophet (and the Imams) meantime, the Shi’is experienced three splits as a result were only mortal and finite human beings, the of disagreements on the line of succession. These are (1) principle of infallible leadership knows no the Zeydis or Fiver Shi’is; (2) the Isma’ilis or Sevener temporal finitude. The separation between church Shi’is; (3) and finally, the focus of our discussion here, the and state in Shi’ism stems from an unbounded Ja’fari or Twelver Shi’is. theoretical requirement that the finitude of life can

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never accommodate. One might call the proposed a more authoritative brutal, secularism dominated Iran Shi’i separation of church and state incarnation of the divine guidance, until 1979. orthodox or fundamentalist in order to which they called the “Perfect Shi’i” Born in 1902, Ayatollah Khomeini came emphasize that no secular framework —a concept that unwittingly played a of age experiencing the force of state can capture the essence of such decisive role in the unfolding of the under Reza Shah, while receiving his separation. Ayatollah Khomeini’s revivalist religious education with an emphasis on movement centuries later. Back to history: although in the sixteenth the hadith (the Tradition of the Prophet century the formidable Safavid dynasty In the 18th century, another school of and Imams) and irfan (Islamic founded in Iran the first Shi’i state, the Shi’i thought, the Usulis, or Followers of mysticism). He received his certificate doctrine of illegitimacy of government the Principles, gradually dominated the and became a mujtahid in the early still persisted in the Shi’i political holy shrines of Iraq. The Usulis 1930s, only to become a close entourage thought. However, this period witnessed revitalized the idea of emulating the of the politically-quietist Grand the rise of official rank of Shi’i clergy Ayatollah Borujerdi, the single (the ulama) that would strictly deal uncontested Source of Emulation in with issues of legality and the entire 20th century Shi’i world. jurisprudence. The emerging experts With Ayatollah Borujerdi’s death in of jurisprudence, or mujtahids, were 1960, Ayatollah Khomeini’s swift now to provide guidance for the Shi’i confrontation with the Shah in 1963 community in the absence of Mahdi. forced him to exile in the holy shrine Given that attentiveness to the of Najaf in Iraq. In the next 15 years, exigency of time stands as one of the he worked to formulate a theory of highest principles of Islam, the task the Islamic state, based on his of the mujtahids was to provide Islamic mysticism that emphasized logical proof through analytical the possible unity of the self with the reasoning for the applicability of mujtahid by the Shi’i layman. The Usuli divine. Influenced by the Sheikhi idea of jurisprudential principles. scholars came to believe that in every the Perfect Shi’i, as well as the Platonic era one cleric-scholar could be concept of the philosopher-king, The absence of infallible leaders considered as the most knowledgeable. Ayatollah Khomeini developed a necessitated the gathering and As such, they gradually expanded the revivalist concept of Velayat-e Faqih (the compiling of canonical laws or shari’a. notion of the mujtahid into a new Guardianship of the Supreme Jurist) In the 16th century, the eminent Shi’i concept: marja’e-e taqlid or the Source which he presented in a series of lectures jurist, Ibrahim al-Qoteifi, proposed the of Emulation. given in exile in 1969 and 1970. After the principle of emulation according to 1979 Revolution, the Guardianship of the which one must emulate the highest Historically, the Shi’i clerics maintained Supreme Jurist found its way into the jurist’s judgement on matters over which quietism for the most part under the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, there cannot be consensus. The three-century rule of the Shi’i Safavid along with democratic institutions such principle of emulation granted Dynasty. With the rise of the Qajar as an elected President, parliament, and unprecedented power to the Ulama. In Dynasty in the early 18th century, they city and village councils. The reaction to this new elite of Shi’i clergy received support from Qajar kings in constitutional recognition of democratic around the turn of the 17th century an return for spiritual support. The Usuli institutions under the mantel of a non- orthodox school of Shi’i jurisprudence School of jurisprudence rose to provide democratic higher office, as we shall see, called the Akhbaris argued in favour of the Qajars with clerics who would later turned out to be the Islamic the abolition of the division between the supervise over the exercise of the Republic’s worst nightmare. In 1988, the jurist and the lay Muslim, forbade religious laws, or shar’, in courts. But the ailing Ayatollah hurriedly called for an emulation, and advocated a return to Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1909 Assembly of Experts (Iran’s constituent The Koran and the Sunna. In the decades proved the internal diversity of Shi’i assembly) to rubberstamp the elevation to come, two challenges arose in the clerics who turned out to be divided of the institution of the Guardianship of shrines of Iraq against the Akhbaris. over antagonistic political visions: while the Supreme Jurist into an absolute some prominent clerics supported the The emergent Shiekhi School refuted the power supported by the buffer autocratic monarchy and some adequacy of the mujtahid, the Shi’i institutions of the Expediency Council remained quietist, a major part of cleric-scholar, to function as an (shora-ye tashkhis-e maslehat-e nezam), prominent Shi’i clerics supported the intermediary between the Shi’i that would decide the good of society, ideas of Constitutionalism, a few even community and the Hidden Imam. In and the Council of Constitutional republicanism. With the 1925 coup d’état the mujtahid’s stead, the Sheikhis Guardians (shora-ye negahban-e qanun- of Reza Shah, an autocratic, at times

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e asasi), that would ratify or refute the legality” that Islamic Constitutionalists bills passed by the elected parliament Khatami makes a distinction such as Khatami advocate, in the end, according to the Shi’i jurisprudence. between the Western and resembles a formal liberal democracy, This tightening of absolute theocratic which, in the Iranian case, faces the rule coincided with Ayatollah Islamic notions of civil society. challenge of demystifying the institution Khomeini’s death in 1989. The However, he agrees that of a self-appointed and non-democratic problems associated with the leader. transference of his charisma to the these two historically Mohsen Kadivar, an outstanding office of the Supreme Guardian-Jurist divergent concepts could reformist and scholar of Shi’i political persisted, and the new leaders thought, supports constitutionalism remained almost unaware of the converge on the outcome. based on a forceful differentiation stealth expansion of two dissimilar, Having its roots in the between the original 1979 and the but interestingly converging, amended 1989 Constitutions. While undertows that led to the reform Medina of the Prophet the original Constitution emphasizes movement, marked by the Presidency Mohammad, his Islamic civil the “constitutional and elected of Khatami eight years later. society symbolizes for all Guardianship of the Supreme Jurist,” While the reform movement does not the amended Constitution marks a constitute a unified whole, the main Muslims across the world shift toward “absolutist and appointed thrust of the moderate reformists is a pan-Islamic utopia—the Guardianship of the Supreme Jurist.” to negotiate between autocratic, According to Kadivar, the two (self-)appointed positions and spiritual place of peace and Constitutions express the dual character democratic institutions by advocating security for all Muslims of all of the source of legitimacy in Shi’i a re-interpreted, constitutionalist political thought: in the first notion of the “rule of law.” times. The arch characteristic Constitution people are the source of legitimacy, and authority is exercised For President Khatami, what is of the Islamic civil society— from the bottom up; in the second missing in the Islamic Republic is the which, admittedly, did not last Constitution God is the source of “Islamic civil society.” By tracing the legitimacy, and authority is exerted from Islamic civil society back to the beyond the Prophet’s lifespan— the top down. One, however, should not Prophet Mohammad’s rule in Medina, is the complete harmony of err by seeing a democratic tendency in Khatami makes a distinction between humanity with the will of god. the first Constitution: in both views, the the Western and Islamic notions of laws of jurisprudence override the will of civil society. However, he agrees that According to Khatami, the people, should the latter run contrary to 2 these two historically divergent citizenship of the Islamic civil the former. Kadivar also identifies concepts could converge on the another current that runs against the outcome. Having its roots in the society is decided not based principle of Guardianship of the Medina of the Prophet Mohammad, on one’s faith, but on one’s Supreme Jurist: the principle of his Islamic civil society symbolizes for republicanism. He traces the source of all Muslims across the world a pan- humanity and the inalienable contradiction back to the two Ayatollah Islamic utopia—the spiritual place of right of all humans to determine Khomeinis he identifies: the Khomeini peace and security for all Muslims of of the shrine city of Najaf in the 1960s all times. The arch characteristic of their destiny and form of and 1970s who advocated absolutism, the Islamic civil society—which, government. and the Khomeini of Paris in 1978, who, admittedly, did not last beyond the in response to the exigency of time and Prophet’s lifespan—is the complete the republican demands of revolutionary harmony of humanity with the will of Iran at the time, recognized the principle god. According to Khatami, the the new government in the 1979 of republicanism to be the foundation citizenship of the Islamic civil society is Referendum in order to achieve a civil of Guardianship, which in turn decided not based on one’s faith, but on society based on the rule of law. Thus, he necessitated a concept of the one’s humanity and the inalienable right argues, even the non-elected position of constitutionally-elected Guardian.3 of all humans to determine their destiny the Guardianship of the Supreme Jurist Kadivar acknowledges the fundamental and form of government. Reflecting on has to submit to the will of people who ambivalence in Khomeini’s theory of the the Islamic Republic, Khatami expressly brought the Leader to the Office in the 1 Islamic State, but he clearly advocates argues that the Iranian people voted for first place. The discourse of “popular the constitutional and elected jurist by

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referring to such Islamic traditions as Aghajari refers to Shari’ati’s suitable for itself. Sazgara finds both tolerance and civil society.4 In the absolutist and constitutionalist absolutist and appointed version of the distinction between the defenders of the Guardianship of Guardianship, Kadivar identifies the “essential Islam” and the Supreme Jurist as detrimental to Iran’s despotic mentality of a society with progress as a modern nation. He millennia-long history of autocratic “historical Islam.” The retrieval expressly points out the limitations of monarchies, now disguised under the of the essential Islam, which the Iranian Constitution, which he Shi’i version of a Platonic pious-ruler.5 believes, supports an oligarchic and Moving to different grounds, the contains the liberating maximalist reading of the Shi’i eminent philosopher, Dr. Abdolkarim teachings of the faith, teachings. He calls the Islamic Republic Soroush provides a radical a “complete failure” of Iranian Islamists philosophical departure from the out of the historical Islam and blames religious maximalism for traditional theories of political authority that is tainted by rulers, Iran’s isolation, terrorism, despotism, in Shi’ism. His approach is not loss of national prestige, loss of theological but epistemological. In his Shi’i clergy and blind economic and trade opportunities with controversial treaties, The Theoretical subscription to traditional the rest of the world, pervasive Constriction and Expansion of Shari’a, unemployment and the concomitant he advocates a contemporary ways of life, necessitates embezzlement, poverty, crime and hermeneutic of religion based on the the cultural project of Islamic substance abuse, and above all, the epistemological principle that human alienation of Iranians from government. knowledge is always relative to time. He Protestantism. Aghajeri Sazgara calls for civil disobedience, posits that, however spiritual, religion is obviously undermines the perceived as a process of democratic a form of knowledge, as are science or education and participation, that would philosophy. As such, religious clerical prerogative in press the rulers of Iran to accede to knowledge is subject to the same interpreting The Koran and holding a referendum and creating a epochal requirements as is, say, new constitution in the end.10 geometry.6 In fact, Soroush implicitly the tradition and makes this Dr. Hashem Aghajari draws on one of analogizes his epochal reading of formidable hermeneutical Iran’s most influential original thinkers, religious laws to the Galilean “paradigm Dr. Ali Shari’ati (d. 1977), a Sorbonne shift.”7 He writes: “Islamic rhetoric and task one of every concerned graduate in sociology who was in jurisprudential knowledge have not yet citizen of every generation... contact with Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz merged with the new knowledges and Fanon in the late 1950s. Shari’ati’s efforts have not found their deserving place in His advocacy of “Islamic at minimizing the role of Shi’i clergy, as the geometry of new knowledges.”8 humanism” places Aghajari well as his adherence to a Marxian Religious knowledge is not only notion of social justice based on the epochal, but also inevitably partial. on a crash course with the redistribution of property, made him the Such knowledge is never universal, for fundamental principles of the intellectual forefather of secular-leftist it is bound by the social, historical, Islam in Iran in the 1970s. Aghajari refers ethnic, and linguistic contexts of its Islamic Republic. Clearly, to Shari’ati’s distinction between the emergence and interpretation.9 Hence what Aghajari advocates is “essential Islam” and the “historical the necessity of constricting certain Islam.” The retrieval of the essential principles and expanding certain others nothing short of a secularized Islam, which contains the liberating to meet the demands and exigencies of Islam, an ideology and a teachings of the faith, out of the time. Hence also, the interpretive historical Islam that is tainted by rulers, character of religious knowledge, for framework for critical thinking Shi’i clergy and blind subscription to religion is a tabula rasa. Thus, Soroush and social justice. traditional ways of life, necessitates the clearly advocates an Islamic liberalism cultural project of Islamic Protestantism. based on a fundamental revision of the Aghajeri obviously undermines the Shi’i jurisprudence according to the clerical prerogative in interpreting The expectations of today’s generation. during the heights of revolutionary Koran and the tradition and makes this On more radical grounds, Eng. Mohsen uprising in Iran in 1978: that no formidable hermeneutical task one of Sazgara draws on one of Ayatollah generation should decide for the next every concerned citizen of every Khomeini’s ideas repeatedly expressed the kind of government it recognizes generation. He questions the very

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necessity of the bureaucratic supervision never become a political force. This articulated in an open letter that a of Muslim affairs by Grand Ayatollahs. In calls for a liberal interpretation of the former reformist Member of Parliament Aghajari’s words: “Shari’ati held that in Shi’i jurisprudence. Gangi’s proposed wrote to Iran’s Supreme Jurist, Ayatollah the essential Islam we have no such class “republican impulse” reflects the Khamenei: “In any event, the logical and as the clergy. The latter comes from the demands and expectations of the inevitable outcome of the failed historical Islam, [in essential Islam] we alienated younger generation, women, experience of your theocracy will be have no religious hierarchy.” His urban middle class, and secular- a Renaissance, the collapse of [this] advocacy of “Islamic humanism” places nationalist intellectuals. In the long religious state, and eventually the Aghajari on a crash course with the run, Ganji believes, republicanism will establishment of a laic and secular fundamental principles of the Islamic outlive both dominant absolutists and system that will assume the form of a Republic.11 Clearly, what Aghajari their Constitutionalist opposition.12 full-fledged republic.”14 And the mass advocates is nothing short of a boycott of the city and village council The electoral victory of the reformist secularized Islam, an ideology and a elections on 28 February 2003, in which President Khatami indeed opened the framework for critical thinking and 25 million eligible voters refused to cast Pandora’s Box of political vistas in Iran. social justice. ballots, marks a turning point in moving The continuous suppression of the in that direction. Akbar Ganji, Iran’s bold journalist, wrote reform movement and its advocates several books on the pathology of in the past several years only reports religious autocracy in Iran, before he the increased disintegration of the NOTE: A complete list of works cited in was sentenced to five years in prison Islamic Republic of Iran. Sincere this document, but not included here, for having insulted the Supreme constitutionalists such as Kadivar have is available from the editor; e-mail Jurist three years ago. He wrote The already arrived at the conclusion that [email protected] Republican Manifesto, a turning point “the separation between religion and in the Shi’i political thought, in prison institutions of state and power will Peyman Vahabzadeh is a Sessional and sent it out secretly. The text was inevitably be realized, while people will Instructor in the Department of Sociology immediately widely published on the remain faithful [Muslims].”13 Gangi and Anthropology at SFU and an Internet and warmly received by the started one of his earlier essays with a Associate of the Institute. secular opposition in Iran and in exile. quote from The Communist Manifesto In his Manifesto, Ganji refers to the of Marx and Engels—a warning about generational-historical character of the specter of communism. A few political programs in order to launch years later, the coming of a somewhat a devastating critique of all analogous specter was sharply Constitutionalist delusions and to call for a referendum to decide the future political system in Iran based on a new, secular Constitution. A self-declared devout Muslim, Gangi exposes the normative morality that links the Constitutionalists to the autocratic rulers of the country. He clearly rejects the Islamic Republic, mainly because for him a “republic” must be non- ideological to be worthy of the designation. Religion, he asserts, must

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The Ethical Crescent secular. That concept has meant that constructions of the civic, self and civic culture in the history and society. I propose to uncover from —Amyn B. Sajoo contemporary experience of Muslim images of the Other some of Islam’s own societies has been variously tied—from ideas and practices of the civic, and to “Exploring Islam” is the reverse of formal institutional to loosely quotidian show that they are driven by an ethics searching for a needle in a haystack. In ways—to a living Islam. The West defines that stems from its complex history and the Muslim world the subject has long civic culture very differently, stemming heritages. Indeed, that impetus been omnipresent, reposing in popular from its experience and understanding resonates not only with quests in the and high culture, in the public square of the Modern. It is a quintessentially Muslim world, but also with those of and the most discrete private quarters. secular, liberal view with its assumptions many in the liberal West, non-Muslim In the West, since September 11, 2001, about citizens, the State and the public and Muslim alike. and reinforced by the Iraq crisis, “Islam” sphere that fall under the rubric of “civil Durkheim remarked a century ago that is everywhere too—glaring at you in society.” Since it’s tied to the economic, “God, who was first present in all human bookstores and at newsstands, or draped political and cultural presence of the relations, pulls out progressively, leaving suspiciously from your gaze. On West in the world, there is no ready the world to men and their conflicts.”1 television, day and night, there is no escape from its impact, benevolent or Our brand of secularization today is escaping it. On streets it seems to be on destructive; it is there in all its depicted by Charles Taylor as “post- a thousand faces that are now often overwhelming weight. This view has Durkheimian,” after phases in which the subject to more than just ordinary harbored an image of the non-Western individual citizen had a formal affiliation scrutiny, when not being “profiled” by Muslim Other that in key respects with a given institutional religion security men. reflects our own discontents, especially (“paleo-Durkheimian”), and then came about ideas of the public square and the Ironically, then, Islam has become in the to freely choose an affiliation (“neo- rule of law, rationality, and violence. 2 West a “way of life”—the very expression Durkheimian”). For Taylor, the material customarily used to characterize a faith “Exploring Islam,” if it is to be a serious difference in our post-Durkheimian age tradition that straddles the sacred and exercise, is also about exploring our own is the replacement of the institutional link between the individual and religion with a strictly personal “expressivist” preference that glories in the label of “spirituality.” In Durkheim’s time, Europe was in the throes of consigning substantive ethical discourse to the private sphere linked to religious wellsprings. Laicité was enshrined in French law in 1905 to put the Catholic Church in its place— together with public spaces for moral discourse. In America, the religious conscience was deemed subordinate to the authority of the State, even as in matters such as conscientious objection to war.3 The steady erosion of institutional (as opposed to personal) links with religion in the post- Durkheimian age also means the loss of a connection through religion with the state, since their interplay defines our secularity. That dance was – and often still is outside the West – a tango for two; here it has become a solo performance by the State. The governing ethos is one of individual space, and rights-talk is

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liberalism’s civil religion, displacing the purportedly inspired aspirations of public moral discourse the attacks; hence, to and competence. question the ethics and wisdom of acts Civil society, whose modern conceivers that might have fuelled in the Enlightenment saw it as the such rage would be to edifice of ethics4—a status to which it surrender to its still had pretensions in Tocqueville’s irrationality. In its America of the 1830s—is effectively warped logic and being reduced to an edifice of law and expediency, this equal citizenship. This model enjoys in posture brings us to a our time the benefit of export by theme that runs right globalization, foreign assistance or through the Occidental outright force. I shall return to some of depiction of Islam and its discontents at home, after venturing Muslims. into the landscape of the Other that serves as the principal counter to our The Rational is post-Durkheimian vista. The Other in tied to secularity question, “Islam,” is seen to lack as a hallmark of modernity’s vital attachments to the rule modernity, defined of law and privatized ethics, in effect, to by post-Enlightenment civic rationality. experience. Rejection of that This approach to Islam may appear to secular modernity endorse the popular polarity that stems unavoidably yields from what Samuel Huntington referred a judgment of the to as a “clash of civilizations” in which irrationality of the Islam and Muslims are put in a box Islamic Other. There is destined to collide with the box of the no redemptive value to West.5 The events of September 11 have this particular embrace fuelled that perspective to the point of of irrationality, with its rendering the staple of portrayals by benighted universe politicians, the media and prominent where women are trampled on as Holocaust, the genocide of native scholars of “the stakes at hand.” Indeed, second-class citizens, adulterers are populations in grand colonial ventures, the earliest official responses to stoned, petty thieves Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and urban September 11 insisted categorically have their hands amputated, and violence whose casualty rates can rival that this was all about the integrity of despotic sultans build palaces and those of wartime. our civilization, which was being armies from an oil wealth that eludes subjected to a militant “crusade” The term “propensity” is telling. It toiling subjects. Civility is at the mercy (President George Bush’s term) which suggests a disposition, tendency, reflex— of anger in the streets. had nothing to do with the content of responses that can only be devoid of Western foreign policies.6 Violence is a pervasive characteristic of rationality. No inquiry ensues about this Irrational Other, whether in the what these are responses to, such as Officialdom was asserting not that the confines of the private sphere or the grievances about political and economic assaults were ethically odious in the public square or the domain of external hegemony, colonial occupation, the extreme and that the proffered relations. Samuel Huntington invokes brutality of secular rulers whose power rationalizations of those responsible for this “violence propensity” in his book as is underwritten by Western them could not conceivably justify the evidence of Islam’s incompatibility with establishments, and expressions of the acts. That would have been the kind Western civilization—the very crudest racism in words and acts. Nor of dignified anger on behalf of the civilization that has given us does the generalization allow for victims— who, incidentally, included intercontinental ballistic missiles, pluralism within the universe of 1.2 some 800 Muslims among the estimated advanced chemical and biological billion Muslims whose cultural heritages 3,054 killed.7 Instead, nothing more than weapons, two world wars and the are among the most complex of any the irrational rage of the Other faith tradition.

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The flipside is Huntington’s plaintive perspective is something that one “intransigent” Islam has difficulty lament about excessive diversity within encounters routinely in the popular adapting from texts to secular modernity Europe and America which he fears is media, where jihad is becoming because of “a rigid, poorly developed sapping their strength. “When shorthand for any kind of violent understanding of the world, and of its 12 Americans look for their cultural roots, tendency associated with religion or relationship to the ultimate.” McClay is they find them in Europe,” he says; the even political causes. apparently innocent of the allure of other-worldly texts to legions of more than one-third of American Yet a cursory acquaintance with Muslim influential Christian fundamentalists in citizens with roots in Africa, Asia, the scripture and teachings would indicate his own country—or of the Sufi Middle East and South America don’t that jihad is first and foremost the understandings of ultimate realities and count. For its part, Europe must cultivate striving against nafs or baser instincts, the world that continue to attract politico-cultural unity with America or the tussle of conscience and spirit at the thousands of ordinary Christian and risk becoming “an inconsequential heart of any religion. Lewis reduces this Jewish Americans. landmass at the extremity of the to jihad-as-warfare, then treats it as a Eurasian landmass.” Recall that this dominant thread that supervenes But what, one may inquire, gives an idea analysis came prior to September 11, the theology, culture, law and ethics. For like jihad—the militant version—such “war on terrorism,” and the Iraq crisis. It an enduring claim for Muslims ? requires little imagination to see Why would the likes of Osama bin how useful it has since become in Laden command the loyalty of his the rhetoric and calculus of far-flung al-Qaeda organization “Othering.” and its terrorist cohorts? The formal There is, however, a deeper layer of response from Lewis and Muslim identity in which the Huntington and others of their ilk propensity to violence has been can be captured in a word— located by scholars like Bernard shari’a. To quote Lewis, for Lewis, Daniel Pipes and Martin example: “Because war for the faith Kramer, before and since has been a religious obligation September 11. Lewis commands within Islam from the beginning, it special attention as an “authority” is elaborately regulated”—by the on Islam, despite the fact that his shari’a or religious law, that is. And corpus of writings have a proclivity for bin Laden, “this is a religious to lazy generalizations that would war, a war for Islam and against 13 seldom pass the test of serious infidels.” Huntington’s Clash of scholarship on Jewish and Christian him, Muslims are attached to a Civilizations informs us that the traditions and their implications. His millennium-old division of dar-al harb “underlying problem for the West is not latest book, What Went Wrong,8 seems (the territory of war) and dar-al-Islam Islamic fundamentalism” but “Islam, a as popular as Huntington’s Clash of (the territory of Islam or peace), with different civilization” in which “a Civilizations and purports to offer a constant warfare between the two. concept of nonviolence is absent from sophisticated appraisal of historical and Where then in this paradigm would he Muslim doctrine and practice.” The political currents in the Muslim world. fit the over 25 million Muslims living in whole matter of violence and jihad There have been spin-offs from this slim the dar-al harb of the West ? When Lewis relate finally to religious law. volume in the mainstream media to acknowledges that Muslim discontent has bona fide socio-economic causes, he The assumption is that Islam enshrines “educate” the public on what lies behind rules and norms of conduct in its shari’a, September 11, including a lecture by subsumes them under the “failure of modernization.” The bottom-line is a which has the binding force of law for all Lewis broadcast on CBC Radio under the believers—and that this legal tradition is title “The Revolt of Islam,”9 —a variation religiously sanctioned terrorist response 11 itself a defining feature of the faith and on his article in The New Yorker to that failure. 10 its civilization. This perception is magazine, “Islam in Revolt.” In other words, we are back to the clash standard in Western accounts, finding its Now the “rage” and violence propensity of civilizations. Even a scholar like way into daily media reports. Shari’a is are said to stem from the doctrine of Wilfred McClay, co-editor of an scriptural, hence its binding force and jihad, claimed to justify aggressive important recent book, Religion Returns rigidity. If punishments like the behavior by Muslims since the time of to the Public Square, quotes Lewis in amputation of hands for theft and the the Prophet Muhammad. This support of the proposition that stoning of adulterers still hold, the

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underlying code of law must surely for integrity and honor even in be fixed ad infinitum. This returns The object here is not to set adversity, to the point of physical us to the view that Islam is wedded protection for unbelievers if they pay to tradition and defiant of up a normative or historical their taxes, and not vainly giving 15 rationality, stemming not only contest among the ethical pledges of peace. from a blind avowal of tradition War is a last resort, a child not of but from the nature of religious traditions of Christianity, Islam virtue but necessity: “The requital of law. As Len Goodman puts it, Islam and Judaism. Rather, it is evil is an evil similar to it: hence gives us an ethos in which God’s whoever pardons and makes peace, commands are ends in themselves, to argue that judgments about his reward rests with God … If one is opening “the door to anti- the locus of ethics and fidelity patient in adversity and forgives, this rationalism” typical of scriptural is indeed the best resolution of legal systems.14 to them is complex in all affairs” (Qur’an, 42:40-43). Scholars To seal the modern fate of faith traditions; and seizing like Sohail Hashmi, James Turner Muslims, that irrational/anti- upon a particular episode Johnson and John Kelsay have shown rational law is replete with that the ethics of warfare as they concepts like jihad-as-war and or historical phase as evolved in Islam are parallel to the 16 other denials of reason, emblematic or conclusive just war doctrines of Christianity. nonviolence and pluralism. After Kelsay regards Bernard Lewis’s all, there are verses like the in this regard is an exercise reading of Muslim doctrine as following in the Qur’an to support in ideological manipulation. Yet contrary to the clearest evidence. this logic: “slay [enemies] wherever It is worth noting as well that the you find them!” (4: 89), “Warfare is it has potentially serious Qur’anic references to conflictual ordained for you, though it is consequences inasmuch violence pale in comparison with hateful unto you;” (2:216), and those in Jewish and Christian “Fight against those who—despite as the manipulation can scriptures. The Book of Joshua having been given revelation influence not only the drift lyrically narrates the serial slaughter before—do not believe in God nor of “every living creature” by a in the last day” (9:29). And didn’t of general scholarship in compliant prophet in the name Muhammad proclaim, “Fight in the the humanities and social of Yahweh’s vision of Israel name of God and in ‘the path of (10:28-40, 11:14). The Book of God”? Pulled out of the wider text sciences, but also the opinions Deuteronomy ordains, “You shall and the context in which these of establishment elites that destroy all the peoples ... showing injunctions are embedded, they them no pity.” (7: 16), and “You shall appear to sanction militancy shape public policy and the put all its males to the sword. You without end. general public whose support may, however, take as your booty the It requires only a moment’s they seek. women, the children, the livestock, informed reflection to see that the and everything in the town—all its Qur’an and the Prophet were not spoil—and enjoy the use of the spoil licensing but limiting the grounds of your enemy which the Lord your upon and the manner in which loves not the transgressors.” (2:190). God gives you” (20:14-15). Christians even defensive warfare could be waged. There are injunctions about harming and Jews have on occasion taken such There is an absolute prohibition on noncombatants as well as women and verses at face value against the doctrinal “compulsion in religion” in the Qur’an children, granting safe passage, counter-provisos and contexts at hand. (2:256), capped by the argument, “If your preserving religious sanctuaries, and the We have, for instance, this eyewitness Lord had so willed, all those who are on treatment of prisoners (47:4, 8:67, 2:217, testimony of the Provençal Raymund of earth would have believed; will you then 9:6)—remarkably akin to modern Aguiles on the aftermath of the First compel mankind against their will to humanitarian norms. The quote from Crusade in Jerusalem, when in the space believe?” (10:99). When fighting “in Muhammad on fighting “in the path of of three days in mid-July 1099 an God’s cause against those who wage war God” comes from a hadith—an attested estimated 30,000 Jews and Muslims were on you do not transgress limits for God report—in which he sets forth the need slaughtered:

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Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be them, pouring in from North Africa and that judgments about the locus of ethics seen … In the Temple and the Porch of as far away as Andalusia. Still, a and fidelity to them is complex in all Solomon, men rode in blood up to their narrowness tinged their gratitude: faith traditions; and seizing upon a knees and bridle reins. Indeed, it was a Jerusalem was their city, in which particular episode or historical phase just and splendid judgment of God that Muslims and Christians had made a as emblematic or conclusive in this this place should be filled with the blood home. Judah Halevi and Maimonides, regard is an exercise in ideological of unbelievers since it had suffered so men of learning who had known the manipulation. Yet it has potentially long from their blasphemies. After there pluralism of Muslim Andalusia, insisted serious consequences inasmuch as the were no infidels left to kill, the Crusaders that Jerusalem was sacred to the Jews manipulation can influence not only the washed and sang hymns—crowned by alone and the proper site of a drift of general scholarship in the the recital of liturgy around the tomb of “reclaimed” Kingdom with the Temple humanities and social sciences, but also Christ… “This is the day that the Lord Mount as its heart.19 the opinions of establishment elites that hath made, let us rejoice and be glad shape public policy and the general No doubt many would be inclined to therein,” for on this day the Lord public whose support they seek. dismiss all this as so much water under revealed himself to his people and the bridge. Jewish and Christian ethics There are two related elements at work blessed them.17 have since metamorphosed into a here in the process of depicting the Muslims, as we know, were to have an radically different mold, it might be Other. First, as already stressed, there is opportunity to reciprocate and display argued. That is not, however, the the insistent construction of a tradition the “violence propensity” and jihad-as- interpretation offered in our own time wedded to a rigid legal code, resistant to warfare spirit that Huntington and Lewis by Yitzhak Shamir before he became civility and pluralism as virtues of credit them with. But in Jerusalem: One prime minister of Israel: modernity. Second, there is the City, Three Faiths, Karen Armstrong assumption which holds that image Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish records otherwise: “when Saladin led the together, linking Muslim tradition with tradition can disqualify terrorism as a Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem on contemporary behavior in a means of combat … We are very far October 2, 1187, not a single Christian determinism—conscious or not—about from having any moral qualms as far as was killed, in keeping with the the impact of Tradition on those our national war goes. We have before us conqueror’s undertaking to rich and somehow “programmed” or “wired” to the command of the Torah, whose poor alike.” Saladin refused even to passively follow it. Together, these two morality surpasses that of any body of confiscate the ostentatious wealth of elements bring us to the central laws in the world: “Ye shall blot them out Patriarch Heraclius; “Christians argument: that the content of the image to the last man.”20 everywhere will remember the kindness of the Irrational Other that comes out of we have done them,” he insisted.18 The object here is not to set up a the post-Durkheimian West belies the normative or historical contest among play of ethics and reason in Muslim Jews were welcomed back into the city the ethical traditions of Christianity, scripture and historical experience. I will from which the Crusaders had excluded Islam and Judaism. Rather, it is to argue conclude by considering some of the

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civic implications of this angels fear to tread, the verses offer a alternative appreciation of Islam. “tender rebuke” to humans who let pride get the better of wisdom.22 The The opening words of the Qur’anic Amid political factionalism and moral and intellectual capacity to fulfil revelation, dating to 610 C.E., the splintering of once-dominant that trust is also, of course, a divine enjoin the Prophet—and by gift. Frailty, courage and humility are extension all who encounter the dynasties in the Near East and conjoined in this custodianship, which text—to “Read” in the name of a Central Asia, conservative becomes a foundational principle in God “who teaches humanity by the the development of Muslim ethics. pen … that which it knew not” (96: doctrines that opposed th 1-5). Thereafter, the text repeatedly innovation and creative legal In a graphic 10 century Arabic fable exhorts the reader with phrases from the spiritual and intellectual like “What! Would you not reason reasoning gained ground. Yet to fraternity known as the Ikhwan al-Safa out?” or “They might perchance dismiss the free thinkers as spurts (Brethren of Purity), a company of reflect!” or “Perhaps you may exert animals asks whether human beings your mind!” Argument abounds in in a history of anti-rationalism, or are superior to them, and if so, then the verses or ayat, as they are to claim as Lewis does that for why. They put this question to the King called. And the term ayat also of the Spirits—whose verdict is that means “signs,” a double meaning Muslims (and Christians) human beings are indeed superior but that is no accident. For the act of “tolerance is a new virtue,”31 is only for their higher burden as Allah’s reading the Qur’an was to be an regents and nature’s custodians: exercise in discerning the signs of to willfully misconstrue history. In ‘Let man not imagine . . . that the divine, unraveling the truths in Muslim-ruled Andalusia—as just because he is superior to the ayat. The invitation to “Read,” the animals they are his slaves. then, was emphatically not the in Fatimid Cairo and Rather it is that we are all slaves kind of exercise to be pursued Ottoman Istanbul—the scope of the Almighty and must obey without the fullest acuity or proper His commands . . . Let man not engagement of the human of accomplishment from forget that he is accountable to intellect. architecture to medicine to his Maker for the way in which For Muslims, scripture and its philosophy was matched only he treats all animals, just as he attendant civilization from the is accountable for his behavior outset signaled that aesthetics, by the culture of pluralism that towards his fellow human ethics, human and physical allowed Christians, Jews and beings. Man bears a heavy sciences, no less than philosophy responsibility. . . .’23 and theology, were exercises in Muslims to forge a genuine The Qur’an’s constant challenge to discerning “the signs,” ayat, in a social synthesis. apply intellect and faith to reading and myriad encounters with the Divine acting on its passages spawned an Intellect. The game is played by a empowering ethos in which Muslims text filled, to quote George were encouraged to see themselves Hourani, with “semantic depth, not as pawns but as players in a where one meaning leads to reads: “We offered the trust of the cosmic game. When the early another by a fertile fusion of associated heavens, the earth, and the mountains community finds itself surrounded by ideas.” As such, the scripture is less a to the spirits and the angels, but they tribal practices that violate the dignity of doctrinal or juridical text than “a rich refused to undertake it, being afraid. the individual—ranging from female and subtle stimulus to religious But the human being undertook it— infanticide and the lex talionis of blood imagination.”21 humankind is unfair to itself and foolish” revenge for killing, to the taking of An example of the dialogical, ironic and (33:72). We have a cosmic narrative from unlimited wives, hierarchies of caste, ethical at the same time is the ayat from which is derived the concept of human and usury—Islam’s response could not Medina when Muhammad and his vicegerency or custodianship of nature be one of putting up and letting be. That community, or umma, faced the (khalifat Allah fi’l-ard), a trust that would be a travesty of the lofty motives practical burdens of fostering a civic and makes rigorous demands in perpetuity. attached to faith. A social conscience not just a religious community. The text For willingly taking this burden on where was part and parcel of the larger

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custodianship of the individual because before William Harvey.27 The results social justice—the sense of fair play and included the world’s first hospitals, the balance—was simply the flipside of introduction of paper-making to the natural justice, the norms of harmony Mediterranean that allowed Gutenberg with the cosmos. to develop his printing press in the 15th

century, Arabic numerals drawing on This argument was taken to its logical Indian innovations, and the earliest conclusion by Muslim theologians as systems of commercial credit 28. early as the eighth century, when the Enormous libraries fed this quest, from Mutazili school began to argue that the Andalusia to Cairo and Baghdad, tenets of justice, both natural and social, enjoying special status in Islamic culture were universal and preceded revelation under the ethical precept of waqf, or itself. Indeed, the Mutazili philosophers endowment for public purpose. When saw no conflict between reason and European collections had at best revelation: they were intertwined in God between 500 and 700 books, Cordoba and his creation, including the mind of needed a 44-volume catalogue for a man.24 The intuitive sense of right and library of 400,000 books.29 That figure is wrong —taqwa in the Qur’an, which dwarfed by the collections of the summons time and again—required Fatimids in Cairo, which in 1171 rationality as much as piety. This is allegory made quite an impression on amounted to 1.6 million books, with manifest in the hundreds of books Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson over 18,000 on the sciences alone. authored by Al-Kindi (795-866), al-Farabi Crusoe. (878-950) Ibn Sina or Avicenna (980- Muslim ethics had become a distinct No history of civilizations, of course, is 1037), Hamid al-Kirmani (d. 1068), and and elaborate discipline by the time Ibn without counter-currents. The the greatest of the neo-Aristotelians, Ibn Tufayl wrote his allegory, in the hands of freethinking Mutazili school inspired the Rushd or Averroes (1126-98), who gave Miskawayh (d.1078), al-Mawardi Asharis, conservatives who denounced birth and ascendancy to an intellectual (d.1058) and Ghazali (d.1111)—all philosophical speculation in favour of a culture that shaped law, ethics, the influenced in one or another by neo- literalist theology. Still, their greatest sciences and arts. Europe was indebted Platonist thought as refracted by Arab figure, Ghazali (1058-1111), wrote not to them for reviving Greek learning and commentators. And Nasir al-Din Tusi (d. only the Incoherence of the Philosophers casting it in a light that fuelled the 1274) was to follow with his Persian- but also a sophisticated ethical tract, the Renaissance. language text in the Shi’a tradition that Balance of Moral Action and a splendid commentary on Aristotle logic.30 Amid A potent illustration of the impact of this had imbibed even more fully both the political factionalism and the splintering age on rational ethics comes from Ibn Sufi and the rational philosophical spirit; of once-dominant dynasties in the Near Tufayl’s (d. 1184) allegorical tale Hayy Tusi’s work became a common text for 26 East and Central Asia, conservative ibn Yaqzan, in which a child is marooned religious institutions. The values of doctrines that opposed innovation and on an island without humans. Through integrity, generosity, solidarity and creative legal reasoning gained ground. his relationships with animals and forbearance (hilm) defined the ideal Yet to dismiss the free thinkers as spurts nature the boy constructs a set of umma as both religious and civic in a history of anti-rationalism, or to norms about appropriate behavior— association impelled by humane reason. claim as Lewis does that for Muslims and proceeds eventually to develop Among the greatest beneficiaries and (and Christians) “tolerance is a new acute philosophical insights about the proponents of this rational culture were virtue,”31 is to willfully misconstrue interplay of the human and divine men of science, from al-Khwarizmi (780- history. In Muslim-ruled Andalusia—as intellects.25 Tufayl doesn’t stop there: 850) who gave us algorithms, al-Battani in Fatimid Cairo and Ottoman the boy’s physical isolation mirrors a (858-929) who first wrote of annual solar Istanbul—the scope of accomplishment spiritual loneliness and spurs a longing eclipses, and Ibn Haytham (965-1039) from architecture to medicine to for the divine, in keeping with the ideals who virtually established optics as a philosophy was matched only by the of the Sufis. When he finally makes proper field of study in the culture of pluralism that allowed contact with the outside world, it turns Mediterranean, to Ibn Sina with his Christians, Jews and Muslims to forge a out that their ethics are largely Canon of Medicine and Ibn al-Nafis (d. genuine social synthesis. Hroswitha of congruent; the world even has lessons to 1288), who elaborated on the principles Gandersheim, a Saxon writer visiting learn from the boy’s intuitions. Tufayl’s of pulmonary blood circulation long Cordoba in the 10th century, called it “the

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ornament of the world”—the title of remember how far in history the Maria Rosa Menocal’s acclaimed This is precisely the thrust antecedents go in this vein, that not all is 32 recent book on the subject. of civic reform movements reducible to a mere reacting to the West. It is no less significant, surely, to locate Another illustrious visitor to that across the Muslim world, the tides of pluralism, civility and kingdom was the Tunisian whom we rational innovation that swept through recognize among the originators of in campaigns for gender the history of Muslim civilizations long the empirical method in history, Ibn equality in Nigeria and before the modern encounter with the Khaldun (1332-1406). His ability to West—and the likes of Kemal Ataturk in see the social dialectics of his own Pakistan, for accountable post-Ottoman Turkey felt the need to faith tradition in the struggles of government rather than don a Western mask. centres and peripheries within the larger dynamics of civilizational ups clerical dominance in Iran, Historical retrieval shows, as the late and downs tells us that what makes for tolerance of dissent Fazlur Rahman argued so cogently, that his Muqaddima a classic also in the cross-currents of liberal and reflects the maturity of critical in Egypt and Syria, for the conservative forces, Muslim ethics has Muslim social thought by the 14th right to express religious failed to receive the attention that it century. Al-Farabi had envisioned in merits as the “essence” of scripture and his 10th century work, The Virtuous affinities in public spaces the civilizational endeavors flowing from 35 City, a civil society that captured in Turkey and the ex-Soviet it. After all, Muhammad is pointedly some of the elements in his own reminded in the Qur’an that he is one of milieu, whose ideals were fired by republics of Central Asia. a line of prophets in the business of Plato’s Republic yet encased within a While orthodox revivalists delivering a universal message—hudan religious imagination. Khaldun the li’l nas—in which the key moral concept empiricist was hard on the (fundamentalists/Islamists) is taqwa, the sense of right and wrong. abstractions of the philosophers; invoke the shari’a or fiqh as The ethical imperative is distinguished but like the island boy Hayy Ibn by its pluralism, religious and civic, as in Yaqzan, he allowed his astute a criterion that governments the oft-quoted verses, “We have made analysis to sip liberally from the must meet, and secular you into nations and tribes that you may wellsprings of esotericism, because know one another” (49:13), for “If God he was also a Sufi.33 The mix of politicians respond by stifling had pleased He would have made you a critical reason and faith is not human rights, the middle single people” (5:48). abandoned in a “professional” Over and over again it draws specific historical work like the Muqaddima. ground is increasingly moral lessons from universals, and I draw attention to this, and have occupied by activist universal inferences from the particular. been dwelling on historical currents, intellectuals and their In recalling the allegory of Cain and because there are pointers here to Abel, it warns, “Whoever kills a human critiques of modernity. It is tempting associates who invoke being it is as if he has killed all of to presume that the intimate and civic ethics. humanity. And whoever saves a life, it is painful encounter with colonial as if he has saved all of humanity” (5:32). Europe, and then America, has had This was never lost on Muhammad. the effect of provoking a catch-up Once when he witnessed a funeral attitude where technology and True, there has been plenty of procession while seated with his political organization are concerned, ideological Islam going around in companions and respectfully stood up, and also a retreat into the refuge of defensive reaction to the assaults of one of the others remarked that the religious tradition as the badge of Western ideological criticism. Yet in the deceased was a Jew. “Is he not a human 36 individual identity. What other refuge writings of Muhammad Iqbal (1877- soul?” was the Prophet’s reply. can there be, one may ask, when 1938), Fazlur Rahman (1911-88), Christians and Jews were part of the nationalism and regionalism and Abdullahi An-Na’im and Abdolkarim civic umma that Muhammad formed socialism failed abjectly? The answer for Soroush, for example, one finds deeply in Medina in 622 C.E., under what is many Western observers has been interlocking fidelities both to modernity arguably the world’s first formal “Islamism.” and to Islamic rationalism.34 It is well to constitution, accompanied by

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mechanisms of implementation through intellectuals and their associates who consultation (shura). invoke civic ethics. Consider the popular call by Syria’s Muhammad Shahrur for It is vital to recognize that the independent reason in reading the supposedly distinct and rigid corpus of Qur’an and for modernizing the rules law—often wrongly termed shari’a, that purport to be derived from it. His which simply means “the proper path”— 1990 book on the subject—an adamantly is actually a set of ethical guidelines.37 pluralist critique that lends itself to Neither the language nor the structure of liberal demands against governments the vast and highly pluralist norms and clerics alike—became a bestseller developed from the verses of the Qur’an for a readership in secular as well as and Prophetic guidance would serve as theocratic regimes.41 “law” in the sense of enforceable juridical rules. More specific and More directly confrontational has been practical injunctions traditionally the dissent of Hashem Aghajari, the acquired the status of fiqh, practical reformist Iranian academic who risked rules that served the rapidly expanding the death penalty for declaring, “We are realm of Islam that needed a rule of all capable of interpreting the Qur’an law.38 The mix of morality and law gave without the help of the clergy.”42 legitimacy and higher motivation to Aghajari has compared the excesses of those who lived by these norms. But as the “ruling class” with the worst excesses noted, conservative tendencies came to of the Catholic papacy. Like Shahrur, he underplay the role of creative reason locates his critique in the ethical fold of that drove the early development of this Islam, in this case Shi’i. Also in a recent tradition. Law and the wider shari’a critique of the theocratic narrowing of often became political instruments, liberal thought in Iran, Abdolkarim [T]he Islamic heritage comprises whether for rulers or clerics—the ulama Soroush appeals to the ethos of “an art- rationalist and humanistic —seeking to assert independence from loving God” against political tyranny,43 currents that is replete with State control. Such as it was, law which also reminds us how important values that complement modern overshadowed ethics. Iranian cinema has become as a vehicle human rights such as concern for a liberating cultural ethos, and the Which doesn’t mean that the humanistic for human welfare, justice, search for a post-revolutionary reason underpinning any ethical system tolerance, and egalitarianism. identity.44 Abbas Kiarostami, Majid worth the name was lost. Outside the These could provide the basis for Majidi, Bahman Farmanara and Mohsen formal bounds of fiqh, ordinary men and constructing a viable synthesis of Makhmalbaf are internationally women, as individuals and Islamic principles and 40 celebrated auteurs with their incisive yet communities, faced the daily challenge international human rights ... subtle portrayals of repression and thrown up by the Qur’an to all believers This is precisely the thrust of civic longing; official constraints on viewing to perform that which is transparently reform movements across the Muslim their films in Iran are subject to the good (ma’ruf) and to abjure that which is world, in campaigns for gender equality challenges of a thriving market in harmful (munkar)(3:104). As an in Nigeria and Pakistan, for accountable pirated videos. obligation that was social and personal, government rather than clerical this spurred rich discourses and A populist trend is also visible among dominance in Iran, for tolerance of critiques—including critiques of the Turkish activists like Fethullah Güllen dissent in Egypt and Syria, for the right behavior of establishment elites, and the Nurcu movement founded by to express religious affinities in public political and clerical, that controlled the the late Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (1873- spaces in Turkey and the ex-Soviet corpus of law.39 Whatever fossilization 1960), stressing themes of independent republics of Central Asia. While orthodox may have curtailed the development of religious thought, tolerance and civic revivalists (fundamentalists/Islamists) modern rights and obligations in the engagement.45 In a country that is living invoke the shari’a or fiqh as a criterion framework of traditional law, the down Ataturk’s legacy, it is not that governments must meet, and springboard of ethics has remained to fundamentalism that appeals but a secular politicians respond by stifling contest tradition. As Ann Elizabeth homegrown, quite liberal Islam. That is human rights, the middle ground is Mayer puts it in Islam and Human what the Nurcu and Güllen have long increasingly occupied by activist Rights,

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offered, and what the newly elected pointed to the success in the Muslim identities three or four decades Development and Justice Party (AKP) autonomous Badakshan region in ago would also have been significantly represents. Even the headscarf (türban) creating civic institutions “unique” in different from what they were a century campaign that had earlier been waged in their sustained commitment to self- ago, at least in urban areas. Responses to a robustly religious vocabulary and met reliance and volunteerism.50 Meanwhile new colonial and hegemonic Western no success in the courts or the in Afghanistan, where the rule of law has encounters that were making themselves legislature, has come to grips with a but a tenuous hold, there is again felt at the dawn of the twentieth century human rights discourse as an extension dependence on ethical norms both to were products of different mindsets on of religious affinity.46 Again, that affinity uphold order and to anchor the part of the individuals and is finding expression (and is integral to commitments to nonviolent change. communities concerned. This may seem the AKP’s agenda) in a rational ethics of Activists like Sima Samar and Nasrine axiomatic, yet the larger point is that it social tolerance, not in a demand for Gross have been speaking up not only wasn’t only the social choreography or “religious law” to be enacted. for women’s autonomy but also for a imaginings that had evolved but “Islam” broader liberal culture. itself in terms of what it means to A similar trend developed in Jordan, Muslims. The content of shari’a and fiqh when a group of civic activists sought to None of the public intellectuals or may be stable but the understanding of put a stop to the “honor killing” of movements discussed stand for a what they mean and how they influence women, which the country’s legal system merging of church or mosque and state, the experience of modernity and effectively condoned by imposing light despite their summoning of faith-based tradition, is hardly an idée fixe. Rather, punishments, if it prosecuted the killers public ethics. Nor are they exclusive in a it’s contextual, a function of time, space at all: fully a quarter of all homicides in social, ethnocultural or religious sense. and circumstance. Jordan have been ascribed to honor And in response to the question, “What killings.47 The campaign appealed not does it mean to be a Muslim?” it is To speak of “Islams and modernities” is only to human rights law but also to the improbable that any would offer a not only to underscore the experiential ethics of accountability and of “self- response that would have been and confessional diversity of Muslims educated” citizenship.48 The activists recognizable a mere three to four but also to acknowledge the reinvention made a point of not registering decades ago. Quite aside from the of tradition itself through history.52 This themselves in order to emphasize their dynamics of post-colonial and post-Cold means rejecting stock images of Muslims political and legal autonomy, yet War identity, the impact of globalization being tied to a rigid law, or as managed to get royal attention and and the new media is evident virtually permanently removed from their support—as well as international media everywhere.51 heritage of humanistic reason. Nowhere and activist interest in a cause that remains a major issue in Jordan. The appeal to civic ethics is stronger still in war-torn societies, especially where religious extremism is a factor in the conflict. In post-civil war Tajikistan, Aziz Niyazi and Daulat Khudanazarov have been at the forefront of cultural and intellectual renewal to foster a modern civic identity in which the country’s diverse Muslim groups can share. Khudanazarov (an ex-presidential candidate) happens also to be a writer and filmmaker. In a country where the rule of law remains frail, ethical tenets rooted in cultural identity, I was often told, urgently needed to be propagated in schools and mass media—a conclusion endorsed by a leading scholar, Shirin Akiner, as the main hope for civil society.49 Akiner has also

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is a deterministic perspective on Islam with secular democratic culture. less persuasive than in the West, where However, assorted human rights Muslims are a conspicuous feature of the protections from “theo-political landscape. Issues of diaspora identity coercion” in the public square are vital, and public religion have influenced and beyond the tenets of mere equality. been influenced by the law, political The discourse of human rights and civic economy and sociology.53 Globalization culture has found fresh respect among and the Internet allow the diaspora to Muslims who must depend on the interact more than ever with ancestral empowerment of citizenship for equality communities as part of what Gary Bunt and equity in the diasporas of the West— calls the “digital umma.”54 Greater but clearly also in Jordan, Turkey, Iran, access to communications technology Pakistan, Nigeria and beyond, where means that the diaspora has a vast ethical discourse meets demands for the presence in cyberspace, on satellite rule of law. So much for the rhetoric of television channels, on radio airwaves. orthodox revivalists who dismiss human The diaspora itself is as diverse as the rights as an “alien” idea, until of course Muslim world, and inhabits secular they require its protection against environments that are not uniform in secular tyrants. Or the claims of expressions of public religion and civil relativists and Orientalists who ascribe society. There is the extraordinary level pluralities rather than religious ones. to an imagined, monolithic Islam a of public religiosity in the United States, Modern democracies face a pluralist rejection of anything modern, from including a leadership that articulates its challenge beyond merely that of human rights to civil society. foreign policy in “Judeo-Christian” ensuring that legal and political terms. Jose Casanova argues that the frameworks meet the appropriate To be sure, there are limits to what the “process of the Americanization of Islam human rights standards of equality on rights to equality and free conscience is already taking place,” including grounds of colour, race and creed. In and expression can accomplish in symbolic expressions such as the France with its laicité and the constraining theo-political coercion. presence of imams at state and federal Netherlands where officialdom takes a Moreover, the secular, liberal rights functions; a Muslim chaplain is even similar position, there is the issue of ethos has been subjected to a range of attached to the armed forces.55 Yet there how secular spaces will accommodate sobering criticism from within—above is also the perspective that Muslims are expressions of public religion that are all, for polarizing the individual and an “out” group, especially in relation to different from those of the society in the quest for liberties that 56 perceived national security concerns. A mainstream. must ultimately be shared if they are to further complication, to cite Casanova A lesson from the nature of public have meaning, and which can’t mean again, is that “Islam has perhaps resisted religion in the U.S., where the everything in and of themselves. The better than any other religion the evangelical right strongly impacts discontents include voices across the modern colonial logic of racialization” politics (including violence at abortion ideological spectrum—Stephen Carter, with all its “corrosive” effects on the clinics, and a Middle East policy driven John Gray, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Robert formation of religious identity among by theological convictions that deny Putnam, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, immigrants. Muslim arrivals don’t fit into Palestinian rights), is that separation of Margaret Visser, Michael Walzer, to name a fixed geo-ethnic box or two: they’re church and state alone is not a a few. To these must be added the Afghan, Albanian, Bosnian, Chechen, guarantee against fundamentalist present Chief Justice of Canada, Beverly Indo-Pakistani, Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese, extremes.57 If this is true of a “mature McLachlin, who delivered the annual Palestinian, Somali, Sudanese, among democratic culture, it must give pause to LaFontaine-Baldwin lecture on March 7 others—along with large clusters of those who assume that institutional in Halifax, entitled “The Civilization of 58 indigenous African-American and walls are a universal panacea for social Difference.” other converts. peace. Equally, the vibrant Christian- The obsessive determination to ignore One recalls that multicultural policy in democratic parties in Europe are a our similarities as individuals and Canada, as in most of Western Europe, is reminder that formal engagement by communities and stress the minutest also based primarily on ethno-cultural overtly faith-inspired actors is consistent differences, McLachlin argues, comes

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from “the inescapable human need to ostensibly accountable governments— Africa.” Equally, we ought to recognize construct one’s identity within a social as Muslims know first-hand in the that it is Muslims we actually refer to context.” So we “discover our diaspora and in the Islamic world. when we speak of “Islam” in context— distinguishing attributes—those individuals and communities, not A landscape that recognizes the elements in ourselves, our history, and ciphers or automatons, whose identities intertwining of secular and religious, the our culture that we value,” and “bind and aspirations are as pluralist as the ethical and the legal, resonates with the ourselves to others who share these world itself. This may not please the ideals of leading Muslim activists and attributes and values.” But groups clash of civilization warriors or those intellectuals. But it will not come about necessarily exclude when they include— who persist in clinging to fixed images of by default or accident; it will be which is why we require human rights to the Other. But it would be ethically—as realizable only if a pluralist ethic of create a “protected space for difference opposed to politically—correct. inclusion and rational civic dialogue is within society; a space within which consciously pursued. The ethical communities of cultural belonging can NOTE: A complete list of endnotes cited content of this type of discourse is surely form and flourish under the broad within the text, but not included here, is an appropriate antidote to theo-political canopy of civil society.” In Canada’s available from the editor; e-mail coercion, in emergent and advanced experience the structure that protects [email protected] democracies.59 “Discourse” here is used difference is “not merely law” or some advisedly: it establishes a link to a other imposed order. “Inclusion and reflective ethics, regardless of the Amyn B. Sajoo is the editor of Civil equality cannot be achieved by mere particular secular or faith tradition, Society in the Muslim World: rights” but by “a nation’s values… anchored in more than arbitrary claims Contemporary Perspectives (2002) and accepted as a means of brokering of absolute moral choices.60 This in turn author of Pluralism in Old Societies and our differences and finding recalls the importance of the individual’s New States (1994). He has served as an accommodation.” To which we can civic and institutional moorings, advisor with various departments of the add “attitudes of tolerance, respect especially in the post-Durkheimian federal government in Ottawa, and is a and generosity.” order of liberal individualism. frequent media commentator on Islam on McLachlin’s is an appeal in which both sides of the Atlantic. For all intents and purposes, it is individual and collective dignity is becoming untenable to speak of “Islam sustained not only by law but also by and the West,” much less “Islam versus commitments to civility and solidarity. the West.” The plurality of Islams and The claim she articulates to a modernities demands that we speak of “universalized ethic of respect and “Islam in the West” compared with, say, accommodation” is meaningful because “Islam in Central Asia” or “Islam in South it finds expression not just in formal institutions and norms but in a myriad acts by citizens in varied contexts. The public spaces in which this accommodation occurs can’t be defined by discrete categories of “secular” and “religious;” they fail to capture the intertwining purposes and motivations of active citizenship that generates the social capital of civil society. Nor during heightened political tensions have rights alone protected citizens or societies from arbitrary exercises of power by

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The following is a transcript of the lecture given by Senator Douglas Roche on October 31, 2003 as part of the Leon and Thea Koerner Lecture Series entitled The New World Order After Iraq—Negotiating Citizenship

The Human Right to Peace —Douglas Roche

So overpowering is the culture of war that it discourages fostering attitudes supportive of nonviolence, many from even thinking that they could be instruments cooperation and social justice. It promotes sustainable of change. A deep cynicism and mistrust are deeply development for all, free human rights, and equality imbedded in populaces. Many who do speak up for between men and women. It requires genuine change are dismissed as idealists. Yet despite a political democracy and the free flow of information. It leads to and societal climate that supports the entrenched disarmament. culture of war status quo, there are significant signs that The culture of peace is, at its core, an ethical approach “a culture of peace” is being born. Already the ideas and to life. It recognizes that the world is experiencing a formulation of a culture of peace have taken shape and fundamental crisis. Though this crisis is often expressed been given a structural basis. A culture of peace may still in economic, ecological or political terms, it is be a goal rather than the dominant reality, but, just as fundamentally a crisis of the human spirit. It is a crisis Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King’s principles of of all humanity which, in the journey through time, has non-violence were taken up by many, so too the reached the point where we are capable of destroying programs for a culture of peace are slowly taking shape. all life on earth just at the moment when the A New Vision of Peace recognition of the inherent human rights of everyone is The idea of a culture of peace to overcome—in a non- beginning to take hold. A choice in how we will live, violent way—the culture of war was first taken up at a which path we will follow, is illuminated. The culture of conference of scholars in 1989 at Yamoussoukro, Ivory peace offers the vision of a global ethic toward life in Coast, as a “new vision of peace” constructed “by full vibrancy; the culture of war offers the prospect of developing a peace culture based on the universal values misery and annihilation. of life, liberty, justice, solidarity, tolerance, human rights When he was UNESCO Secretary-General, Federico and equality between men and women.” Mayor dedicated himself to three initiatives to develop The conference emphasized that violence is not an a culture of peace: a proposal for an International Year endemic part of the human condition. for the Culture of Peace (2000); a proposal for a U.N. Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of UNESCO then began to formulate a culture of peace as a Peace; and an initiative of the Nobel Peace Laureates’ set of ethical and aesthetic values, habits and customs, “Campaign for the Children of the World” that would attitudes toward others, forms of behaviour and ways of eventually become the International Decade for a life that draw on and express: Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of • Respect for life and for the dignity and human rights the World (2001-10). of individuals. • Rejection of violence. The centerpiece of this work is the Declaration and • Recognition of equal rights for men and women. Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace adopted by the U.N. General Assembly September 13, 1999. It is • Upholding of the principles of democracy, freedom, justice, solidarity, tolerance, the acceptance of differences, and • Understanding between nations and countries and between ethnic, religious, cultural and social groups. A culture of peace is an approach to life that seeks to transform the cultural roots of war and violence into a culture where dialogue, respect, and fairness govern social relations. In this way, violence can be prevented through a more tolerant common global ethic. The

Human Rights and Democratic Development culture of peace uses education as an essential tool in

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perhaps the most comprehensive U.N. Secretary-General Annan pointed • Respect all life: Respect the life and programme for peace ever taken up by out that, while each of these areas of dignity of each human being without the United Nations. action have long been U.N. priorities, discrimination or prejudice; “what is new is their linkage through the • Reject violence: Practice active The Declaration should be examined culture of peace and non-violence into a non-violence, rejecting violence closely to see its scope. Article 1 sets out single coherent concept… so that the in all its forms: physical, sexual, the framework for a culture of peace: sum of their complementarities and psychological, economical and social, synergies can be developed.” in particular towards the most A culture of peace is a set of values, deprived and vulnerable such as attitudes, traditions and modes of Implementing such an extensive children and adolescents; behaviour and ways of life based on: Programme of Action is a long-term • Share with others: Share my time • Respect for life, ending of violence and challenge. This is why the U.N. called for and material resources in a spirit of promotion and practice of non- partnerships to develop among various generosity to put an end to exclusion, violence through education, dialogue actors (governments, civil society and injustice and political and economic and cooperation; the U.N. system) which would work towards “a global movement for a oppression; • Full respect for and promotion of all culture of peace.” The Programme • Listen to understand: Defend freedom human rights and fundamental would be aimed at not only the 2000 of expression and cultural diversity, freedoms; International Year for the Culture of giving preference always to dialogue • Commitment to peaceful settlement Peace but at the decade that followed. and listening without engaging in of conflicts; In preparation for the year, Nobel Peace fanaticism, defamation and the • Efforts to meet the developmental and Prize Laureates drafted Manifesto 2000, rejection of others; environmental needs of present and translated into more than 50 languages, • Preserve the planet: Promote future generations; to act as a guideline for public awareness consumer behaviour that is • Respect for and promotion of the right campaigns: responsible and development practices to development; that respect all forms of life and • Respect for and promotion of equal preserve the balance of nature on the rights and opportunities for women The work already planet; and men; accomplished in the • Rediscover solidarity: Contribute to the development of my community, with The full development of a culture of United Nations system the full participation of women and peace is integrally linked to: to develop the concept respect for democratic principles, in • Promoting peaceful settlement of order to create together new forms of conflicts, mutual respect and of the human right to solidarity. understanding and international peace is one of the cooperation; The culture of peace should not be considered the technical solution to • Complying with international world’s best kept secrets. every world problem; rather it supplies obligations under the Charter of the The culture of war so the moral foundation for a better United Nations and international law. individual and global order, and a vision The Programme of Action on a Culture pervades public opinion which can lead people away from of Peace followed and defined eight that it has drowned despair and society away from chaos. areas of action: However, just as the Programme was • Education; out voices asserting that starting, chaos struck in the terrorist • Sustainable economic and social the human right to peace attacks on New York and Washington. development; is a fundamental right Since September 11, a deep sense of fear • Respect for all human rights; has pervaded the general populace. We • Equality between women and men; of every human being have been violently attacked. We have • Democratic participation; and is, in fact, the major been told that we do not know where the next attack is coming from. We must be • Understanding, tolerance and precondition for all human ready. We must prepare ourselves for this solidarity; new kind of aggression. If preemptive • Participatory communication and rights. The time has come to attacks are necessary, so be it. War against the free flow of information and emphasize that the peoples this unseen enemy must be fought. knowledge; of the world have a sacred Media relentlessly feed us images of • International peace and security. destruction and ceaselessly convey the right to peace.

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message that the military’s might is now determined “to practice tolerance and Meanwhile, attention in necessary to protect us. The culture of live together in peace with one another war was given a great gift by the UNESCO shifted back from a as good neighbours.” Article 1 proclaims terrorists of September 11. If you want as the first purpose of the U.N. the “right” to peace to the peace, the Romans said, prepare for war. maintenance of international peace The terrorists have apparently “culture” of peace. This was and security. confirmed this. easier to digest for those Written a few years later, the Preamble In this environment, the culture of peace to the Universal Declaration of Human who did not want their “right” can hardly be heard let alone obtain the Rights states, “The recognition of the political attention and government to make war impeded. inherent dignity and the equal and funding to make an impression on inalienable rights of all members of the Everyone, after all, could be electorates. In addition to being fearful, human family is the foundation of many are cynical about peace ever being for peace in general. freedom, justice and peace in the world.” achieved in such a turbulent world. The These documents affirm the right of UNESCO showed its wisdom arms manufacturers, who mount such states to peace through a “peace system” powerful lobbies in the legislative halls by treading slowly and with the primary goal being the of Western countries, discount the preservation of peace and a respect developing the concept of elements of peace as so much naiveté. for human rights as essential to the To challenge militarist thinking is to run the culture of peace into a development of friendly relations the risk of being considered unpatriotic. among nations. The fences enclosing creative thinking series of programs that are indeed high. would, at least in the minds The Oslo Draft Declaration A meeting convened by the Norwegian But the machinery of war has not in the of those who truly understood Institute of Human Rights in Oslo June past built the kind of world in which 6-8, 1997, prepared a draft Declaration people everywhere can achieve human the dimensions of the culture for UNESCO’s General Conference later security. Why can it be expected to do so of peace, prepare the that year. The Declaration’s aim was to in the new conditions? Rather, it is the broaden the human dimension of slow, painstaking construction of a new groundwork for a later peace and divide the right into three culture of peace that offers hope for a acceptance of the human interrelated components. The first better future. The values of such a defines peace as a human right, culture are well worth the time it takes right to peace. understanding that all human beings to develop them. The momentum of have a right to peace inherent to their history, buttressed by new life enhancing the U.N. General Assembly November humanity. War and violence of any kind, technologies, is on the side of the culture 12, 1984. One does not need to be including insecurity, are considered of peace. reminded of the countless deaths in “intrinsically incompatible” with the wars that have occurred in the almost human right to peace. The section calls Peace: A ‘Sacred Right’ two decades following it. Such a on states and members of the The work already accomplished in the recounting does not invalidate the U.N. international community to ensure its United Nations system to develop the Declaration; it only underlines the implementation without discrimination. concept of the human right to peace is point that this right needs to be better The second section elaborates on this one of the world’s best kept secrets. understood before procedures are task by making it a “duty” for all global The culture of war so pervades public developed to enforce it under the rule actors, including individuals, to opinion that it has drowned out voices of law. “contribute to the maintenance and asserting that the human right to peace construction of peace,” and to prevent is a fundamental right of every human The intimate linkage between human armed conflicts and violence in all its being and is, in fact, the major rights and peace was first recognized in manifestations. precondition for all human rights. The the Preamble and Articles 1 and 55 of the time has come to emphasize that the U.N. Charter, and Article 28 of the The third section elaborates the “Culture peoples of the world have a sacred right Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of Peace”—the means by which the right to peace. and the two Covenants on Civil and to peace is to be achieved. As we have Political and Economic, Cultural and seen, the culture of peace is a strategy That very sentence—“the peoples of our Social Rights. The Preamble to the that seeks to root peace in peoples’ planet have a sacred right to peace”— Charter, in stirring language evoked by minds through education and was inserted into the first operative the ashes of World War II, affirms that communication, and a set of ethical and paragraph in the Declaration on the the peoples of the United Nations are democratic ideals. Right of Peoples to Peace, adopted by

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In essence, the right to peace is a global that the peoples of the planet have a ethic of non-violence and reverence sacred right to peace, and resources for all life and offers a blueprint to released through disarmament measures identifying the roots of global problems should be devoted to the economic and and checking conflict in its early states. social development of all peoples, It is an attempt to move beyond the particularly those in developing day-to-day crises that make the headline countries. Although the resolution had news and address their deep-seated 90 votes in favour, a hefty 50 negative causes. votes (mostly Western countries and the new East European members of NATO) The power of this draft declaration is were cast against it, and 14 abstentions in its challenge to the hypocrisy were registered. Such division renders dominating the world order today, and the resolution practically inoperable. it was here that the codification of the resolution on the prevention of armed right to peace came to a halt. A When language is softer, the idea of conflict. The resolution called on parties remarkable debate on the Oslo Draft moving away from war as a means of to a dispute threatening international Declaration took place in UNESCO’s resolving conflict meets less resistance. peace to make the most effective use of General Conference on November 6, For example, in 2003, the U.N. General existing and new methods for peacefully 1997. One European country after Assembly concluded five months of settling disputes, including arbitration, another either attacked or expressed negotiations by adopting by consensus a mediation, other treaty-based reservations about the right to peace arrangements, and the International and accused Mayor of over-stepping his Criminal Court, thus promoting the role mandate. Countries from the South The proponents of nuclear of international law in international struck back, accusing the North of relations. It reaffirmed the primary weapons do indeed know wanting to protect their arms industries. responsibility of the Security Council for At the end, Paraguay stated, “This rich which way the debate on the the maintenance of international peace discussion shows that the culture of and security. And it called on Member human right to peace is peace is the central issue…and that the States to support poverty eradication Human Right to Peace is needed for headed. That is why they will measures and enhance the capacity of individuals and states.” Noting that the developing countries; to comply with use every argument they can debate split North and South, Paraguay treaties on arms control, non- added, “Perhaps peace is a greater think of, every political device proliferation and disarmament; and to concern in the South where scarce strengthen their international they can find, and every form resources are being diverted to war.” verification instruments and eradicate Failing to achieve a consensus, Mayor of intimidation they can invent illicit trade in small arms and light did not press further with the issue. weapons. The resolution was hailed as a to derail the debate. They Skepticism about the human right to landmark in efforts to move the world peace continued to echo for years after. derailed the debate in UNESCO. body away from a culture of reacting to In the informal discussions at the U.N. crises to one of preventing them from They have rendered nuclear in 1999, concerning the Draft reaching critical mass. Declaration and Programme of Action weapons abolition resolutions Though shying away from any on a Culture of Peace, the U.S. delegate at the U.N. inoperative. They implication that the prevention of armed stated, “Peace should not be elevated to conflict sets the stage for a full-scale the category of human right, otherwise it have used the tragedy of discussion of the “right to peace,” the will be very difficult to start a war.” September 11 to scare the resolution contains within it important Whether this statement was intended or elements of the culture of peace. Far a malapropism, the delegate had put his populace into believing that from being anodyne or just another finger precisely on why a human right to only gigantic amounts of resolution, it is infused with an peace is needed. obligation to the victims of violence and weaponry can head off the Efforts are continuing at the U.N., but challenges states to move from rhetoric they still lack the necessary Western terrorism of the future. They to reality in preventing violence. It is a backing. In 2002, the U.N. Social, significant step forward by the U.N. in have already caused an Humanitarian and Cultural Committee preparing the way for the right to peace. adopted a resolution calling for the erosion of civil liberties in the Meanwhile, attention in UNESCO promotion of the right to peace. The guise of combating terrorism. shifted back from a “right” to peace to resolution would have the U.N. affirm

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the “culture” of peace. This was easier to health care, education and legal, civil The debate inevitably will centre on the digest for those who did not want their and social services. These standards are deeply controversial question of the “right” to make war impeded. Everyone, benchmarks against which progress can future of nuclear weapons. The after all, could be for peace be assessed. States that are International Court of Justice has already in general. UNESCO parties to the Convention are given its view on this matter: it says showed its wisdom by obliged to develop and nations have a legal obligation to get rid treading slowly and undertake actions and of them. While the abolition of nuclear developing the concept of policies in the best interests weapons will not by itself guarantee the culture of peace into a of the child. peace, it is an elementary fact of the 21st series of programs that century that as long as nations brandish The Convention on the Rights would, at least in the minds nuclear weapons there can be no peace. of the Child is the first legally of those who truly binding international The proponents of nuclear weapons do understood the dimensions instrument to incorporate the indeed know which way the debate on of the culture of peace, full range of human rights— the human right to peace is headed. That prepare the groundwork for civil and political rights as well is why they will use every argument they a later acceptance of the as economic, social and can think of, every political device they human right to peace. cultural rights. Two Optional can find, and every form of intimidation Protocols to strengthen the Convention they can invent to derail the debate. ‘Human Rights Have Come a Long Way’ entered into force in 2002, and address They derailed the debate in UNESCO. In considering the difficulties of the involvement of children in armed They have rendered nuclear weapons enshrining the human right to peace in conflict, the sale of children, child abolition resolutions at the U.N. law, it is helpful to consider the overall prostitution, and child pornography. inoperative. They have used the tragedy progress made on the human rights The Convention is the most universally of September 11 to scare the populace agenda. Starting with the Universal accepted human rights instrument in into believing that only gigantic Declaration followed by the covenants, history. It uniquely places children at amounts of weaponry can head off the the various conventions on women’s and the forefront in the quest for the terrorism of the future. They have children’s rights, and then such universal application of human rights. already caused an erosion of civil instruments as the Anti-Personnel By ratifying this instrument, national liberties in the guise of combating Landmines Treaty, the Rwanda and governments have committed terrorism. Yugoslav tribunals and the International themselves to protecting and ensuring Court of Justice, the whole field of These proponents of militarism as the children’s rights and they have agreed to human rights has taken centre stage. As route to peace appear to operate today hold themselves accountable before the Mary Robinson, former U.N. High from the commanding heights of public international community. Every country Commissioner for Human Rights (and opinion. But against this insidious in the world has ratified it except two: former President of Ireland) puts it: thinking that war equals peace is rising a the U.S. and Somalia. “Human rights have indeed come a long new army—not of soldiers but of highly way.” Even though many governments The subject of the human right to peace informed, dedicated, and courageous do not necessarily observe human rights has clearly entered circles of discussion citizens of all countries who do see the standards, most at least acknowledge at the U.N. Some hold that it is already a perils ahead. There is a blossoming of that human rights have a role to play. component of developing international both understanding and action in the The forward-minded nature of the law. This is a signal moment because a new phenomenon of an alert civil U.N.’s work on the delineation and full discussion of the right to peace puts society calling governments to account implementation of human rights is seen a new spotlight on the age-old question for paying only lip service to their particularly in the Convention on the of the abolition of war itself. In the new human rights commitments. Buttressed Rights of the Child. The Convention is a era of weapons of mass destruction, the by the dynamic means of electronic universally agreed upon set of non- viability of war as a legal means to communication, they are bringing new negotiable standards and obligations. resolve disputes is clearly over. War energy to the global quest for peace. It spells out the basic human rights that today can lead to the obliteration of children everywhere—without humanity. Unfortunately, the world Douglas Roche is an internationally discrimination—have: the right to community, held in check by the forces recognized expert on nuclear survival; to develop to the fullest; to of the culture of war, is a long way from disarmament and arms control issues. protection from harmful influences, outlawing war. The debate on the Currently sitting as an Independent abuse and exploitation; and to human right to peace, therefore, is a Senator, he was a long-standing member participate fully in family, cultural and step forward. As it is pursued, it will of the Foreign affairs Committee of social life. The Convention protects force the political system to face up to Parliament. children’s rights by setting standards in its responsibility to at least avoid war.

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Responses to Violence: way to inaugurate the Road Map (which Peaceful Resistance in promises to ease Palestine restrictions on movement for Palestinians) than by —Melissa Mullan erecting eight roadblocks, completely sealing off all SFU graduate Melissa Mullan’s article is roads into Balata Camp? That day the activists in a powerful follow-up to Terry Gibbs’ Balata along with the local article, “Opinion Peace,” in the 2003 issue community set about removing the roadblocks. of Humanitas (pp. 39-40). In that article, With only a few donated Terry Gibbs described her work with shovels and the use of scrap pieces of metal and Occupied Palestinian Territories. I was CEPAL (the Canadian-Palestinian plastic, we dug out the large rocks, car working with I.S.M., The International pieces and other bits of trash buried in Educational Exchange), and her Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led the mound of earth. experience working with refugee camps movement made up of a diverse group of internationals from around the world Not long after beginning our work the in Beirut. It also connects strongly striving to end the occupation. During army appeared. Though the busy main with Marc H. Ellis’s “A Revolutionary my time in Palestine I was working with street of the camp was full of children, people from such varied backgrounds as women and men going about their daily Coincidence” (p. 37 in the same issue), a recently graduated high school routines, the army first used tear gas to his reflections on the present situation student, a labor union representative, dissuade us and when that failed, they and a seventy-two year old grandmother. resorted to firing both rubber coated in Israel and Palestine. I.S.M. is devoted to the use of non- bullets and live ammunition down the violent direct actions to challenge the street. Our shovels were confiscated It was six o’clock in the morning as I Israeli occupation. We also document directly out of our hands. The walked down the dusty main street of the human rights abuses in attempts to community continued to work after the the camp, here and there turning educate our home countries by telling a loss of our shovels, using only our bare sideways to squeeze through the side of the conflict that is rarely reported hands to move the earth. By this point claustrophobic alleyways. Despite the in the regular media. our gestures were largely symbolic as we early hour, the sun was shining brightly, could accomplish little without tools. Most of my time in Palestine was spent warming the empty streets. I was the However, the energy was that of in the city of Nablus, living with a family only person up at such an early hour. As defiance; we would not allow the army in Balata Refugee Camp located just I neared the end of the camp I sat down to close in the camp. Eventually the outside the city. The camp is more a and glanced towards the entrance. At roadblocks were all removed suburb of the city than an area separate first, I thought that I was seeing things— successfully with the help of a bulldozer, and on its own. Two main streets run that my eyes, still heavy with sleep, were only to be replaced again that night. through the camp; they had once been not focusing correctly. Unfortunately, Over a period of days we continued to paved but little remains of what asphalt this was not the case: what I was looking remove the roadblocks during the day formerly covered them. With a at was in fact a large, earthen mass and the army filled them in at night. population of 20,000 in an area of 2.5 blocking the entrance to the camp. The Eventually however, the army gave up square kilometres, Balata is the largest other entrance was sealed off by heavy and the roads remained open. This is refugee camp in the West Bank. It also cement blocks. Half an hour later I was just one example of the many examples has the reputation of spawning many standing on the roof of a nearby house of what non-violence achieved while I suicide bombers and resistance fighters, as an armored personnel carrier and was in Palestine. army jeep entered the camp and parked causing it to receive a large amount of directly below me. The army presence military presence. One concern in Balata Camp, and everywhere else in Palestine for that would not leave the camp completely The day before the roadblocks, appeared matter, is finding ways for the children until much later that night. the Aqaba Summit had finished in to escape from the violence and hatred Jordan and the infamous Road Map to During the spring of this year I spent a they experience in their every day lives. Peace was implemented. What better month working as a peace activist in the Conditions in the camps for children are

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dismal. There are few recreational possibilities, and schools are often closed or classes cancelled because of army activities; and for most children, leaving the camp, even for SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY an afternoon, is impossible. Death and injury are alarming normalities to these children, many of whom live in a constant state of fear. It is not surprising, then, that in these conditions there is little hope for the future. It is of utmost importance to provide the children with an alternative to the violence that surrounds them and to show them that there is more than one way of dealing with their current situation. While in Balata, along with the Palestinian leaders of the local youth center, we organized a series of non-violence workshops. Our plan was to allow children the opportunity to discuss their feelings and to teach them about the peaceful resistance used in the First Intifada, which most of them are too young to remember. A video series entitled A Force More Powerful was to be shown to demonstrate examples of how peaceful resistance had worked in other situations, ranging from Gandhi’s India to Martin Luther King’s United States. During my last semester at Simon Fraser University, I had been exposed to these videos through a humanities course on Gandhi that I took. It was impressive to see the same videos half way around the world, translated into Arabic and reaching a completely Photo of Merton by Ralph Eugene Meatyard Ralph by Eugene of Merton Photo different audience. Unfortunately and somewhat ironically, our non-violence classes had to be postponed because of an increase in army incursions into the camp, during which the safety of the children might have been put at risk. Thomas Through my course work at Simon Fraser University I was exposed to many examples of peaceful resistance around the world. It was an amazing experience to be part of this Merton movement and to see the results that peaceful resistance can achieve. Many people question the value of peaceful resistance, believing that it can accomplish little. Facing one in France of the world’s strongest militaries with few weapons of their own, the Palestinian people have little real choice but to act Prades, France in peaceful resistance to the occupation. For many of these people, waking up every day and continuing on with daily June 24–July 4, 2004 routines is in itself an act of resistance. An offering of the Pilgrimage As an international I know that my actions are having an effect because of the large number of arrests and Program, in cooperation with deportations of peace activists by Israel. Many activists are the Humanities Department not allowed entry into the country. These actions taken by at Simon Fraser University the government have made me realize that my actions are having an impact by impeding the army’s ability to carry and the Thomas Merton about its operations. Non-violent actions are possible for Society of Canada everyone to take part in, and do have a positive effect. Only with peaceful actions can we hope to achieve peace. Through non-violence the violent actions of the aggressors are called into question and become unacceptable. In the current bleak situation, non-violence has the power to mobilize people for positive change.

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Merton Conference Celebrates Vancouver conference, she delivered the 25th

25th Anniversary Anniversary Address on Thursday morning. Humanities and Community Education Concurrent sessions were diverse, reflecting the broad —Judith Hardcastle range of topics that Merton explored in his lifetime. While many focused on the conference theme— Two hundred and fifty Merton enthusiasts from Canada, Thomas Merton’s Sacred Landscapes—others the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand and presented scholarly papers on other aspects of Australia gathered at the University of British Columbia Merton’s life and thought, including interfaith from June 5 – 7, 2003 for the Eighth Conference and dialogue, poetry, technology and social critique. General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University Society. Hosted by the Thomas Merton Society of Canada, in Louisville, Kentucky, mounted a special exhibit of the conference delighted delegates and guests with its thirty-one photographs—a sampling of over 1300 richness of scholarship, its calibre of speakers, and its photographs taken by Merton—entitled The Paradox warm hospitality. of Place: Thomas Merton’s Photography. These images Major speakers included Douglas Burton-Christie, James provided a glimpse into another aspect of Merton’s Finley, Richard Rohr, and Mary Jo Weaver. The program prolific work and, along with the quotations selected featured an address by ITMS President and author to accompany the exhibition, an insight into “Merton’s Jonathan Montaldo, a panel on Merton and the East, and seeing eye.” twenty-five concurrent sessions and workshops. The Evening hospitality featured poetry readings and conference marked the 25th Anniversary of the first major music by some outstanding Canadian artists—poets Merton conference held in Vancouver in 1978 and Hannah Main van der Kamp, Susan McCaslin, organized by two graduate students, Donald Grayston, Catherine Owen, Allan Brown and Doug Beardsley, now Director of the Institute for the Humanities, and and musicians/songwriters Ian Tyson, Rob Des Cotes, Michael Higgins, now President of St. Jerome’s University Peace in the City Band, and La Candela. in the University of Waterloo. Sixteen youth scholars from Canada and the United Douglas Burton-Christie, Professor of Theology at Loyola- States, including SFU students or former students Marymount University in Los Angeles and editor of Lindsay Graham, Catherine Owen, Rani Sandhu and Spiritus, the journal of the Society for the Study of Sarah Taylor attended the conference as recipients of Christian Spirituality, delivered the Springboard Address Daggy Scholarships, offered each two years to young on Friday morning. He is the author of The Word in the people in memory of the longtime director of the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Merton Center in Louisville. Christian Monasticism as well as a forthcoming book on landscape and the sacred. The 8th ITMS Conference and General Meeting was truly a memorable event—and The Thomas Merton James Finley, who spoke on Saturday morning, was a Society of Canada acknowledges its gratitude to the novice under Thomas Merton at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser and is presently a psychotherapist in private practice in University for the generous financial support which California. He is the author of the best-selling Merton’s contributed significantly to its success. The 9th ITMS Palace of Nowhere, as well as The Contemplative Heart and Conference and General Meeting is scheduled for other works on contemplative spirituality. June 2005 in San Diego, California. Richard Rohr, OFM, is founder of the Center for Action and Meanwhile, Merton studies continue in 2004 in Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a popular co-operation with the Humanities Department, SFU speaker, and author of more than a dozen books, including International and the Thomas Merton Society of Hope Against Darkness: The Transforming Vision of Saint Canada, which are offering two pilgrimage programs Francis in an Age of Anxiety, Everything Belongs: The Gift of in 2004—Thomas Merton’s New York (April 25 – May 3 Contemplative Prayer, and Jesus’ Plan for a New World: The in New York City); and Thomas Merton in France (June Sermon on the Mount. He spoke Saturday afternoon on 24 – July 4 in Prades, France, Merton’s birthplace). For Merton and the landscape of the desert. more information about these programs, please Mary Jo Weaver, Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana contact Don Grayston at [email protected] or University, has published books on the modernist Judith Hardcastle at [email protected] or controversy, on the women’s movement within the visit www.sfu.ca/international or www.merton.ca Catholic Church, and on divisions within American Catholicism at the turn of the millennium. Most recently, Judith Hardcastle is coordinator of the Thomas Merton she authored Cloister and Community: Life Within a Society in Vancouver Carmelite Monastery. A featured speaker at the 1978

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Grace MacInnis Visiting Scholar and passionate set of theories and goals around labour rights. In addressing the In honour of Grace MacInnis and her history of social and political service as a first question she had posed at the Member of Parliament for the New Democratic Party, a Grace MacInnis Visiting beginning of her presentation, Dr. Bernard’s answer was simple and to the Scholar Program was initiated through the Institute for the Humanities at Simon point: Labourers are humans, and Fraser University in 1993. Grace MacInnis was the first woman from British Columbia therefore labour rights are human rights. to be elected to Parliament, and was the only woman in Parliament from 1968 to 1972. She explained why it is valuable to frame labour rights as a specific category She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1974; was among seven within the broader discourse of human women to be granted the first Governor-General’s Persons Awards in 1979 for their rights. The workplace is a major part of most of our lives, and is also the location work in advancing the status of Canadian women; and was honoured in 1982 by the of huge rights violations. Dr. Bernard Canadian Labour Congress with a sculpture and an award for Outstanding Service to argued that the workplace is the only space where human rights are Humanity. Previous Grace MacInnis speakers at SFU include: Shirley Williams (1993), systematically suspended. We relinquish Joy Kogowa (1995), Lynn McDonald (1997) and Myrna Kostash (2002). rights as a condition of employment, not voluntarily, but so that we may have the This year, the Institute for the Humanities was proud to honour Dr. Elaine Bernard as “privilege” of having a job. She went on to say that we give up such rights as the Grace MacInnis Visiting Scholar. Elaine Bernard discussed labour rights as human freedom of speech and association, as rights at the “Seeking Justice: Human Rights in Our Communities” Symposium held at well as some basic safety and health rights, even in developed nations such the Wosk Centre for Dialogue on November 8, 2003. as Canada, and that workplace conditions seem to be declining as unions lose strength because of what Social Justice Series: Rights in Our Communities” Symposium Bernard calls the modern day Elaine Bernard, focused on four areas: 1) Are labour Nuremburg defense: “The Market rights human rights? 2) Why set out made me do it.” Grace MacInnis labour as a distinct category in human Dr. Bernard argued that labour rights rights discourse? 3) What are the limits Visiting Scholar have a great deal to bring to human and dangers of “rights” talk in regards to rights discourse, as they have a history of —Shanthi Besso labour rights? 4) Future approaches to creating vehicles that allow workers to labour rights as human rights. both win and exercise rights. After all, Dr. Elaine Bernard is Executive Director rights do no good if they remain on of the Labour and Worklife Program at Dr. Bernard began her presentation with theoretical wish-lists and are never put Harvard Law School. The Labour and a personal reflection on the ways in into practice. Bernard gave a great Worklife Program is Harvard’s forum for which the FLQ crisis of 1970 shaped her analogy for this concept: A driver’s research and teaching on the world of professional and personal growth. She license gives one the right to drive a car, work and workers. Before being explained that when then Prime but unless there is a vehicle to drive recruited by Harvard in 1989, Bernard Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War around in, one cannot exercise that was the Director of Labour Programs at Measures Act in response to the right. Unions and collective bargaining Simon Fraser University. Bernard has a kidnappings of British diplomat James are the vehicles through which workers BA from the University of Alberta, an MA Cross and Quebec’s Minister of Labour are able to assert their human rights in from the University of British Columbia, Pierre Laporte, and the subsequent the work place. and a Ph.D. from Simon Fraser murder of M. Laporte, it was a speedy and shocking lesson in how fragile our University. Bernard’s current research Although Dr. Bernard is obviously a rights actually are. It taught her that it is and teaching interests are in the area of strong advocate for labour rights impossible to tell in advance how people international comparative labour discourse, she also offered some or organizations will react in times of movements and the role of unions in concerns around the limits and dangers crisis, and it ingrained in her a belief that promoting civil society, democracy and of using rights terminology and theory. “we” (citizens) are the sole guarantors of economic growth. Rights discourse can over-emphasize civil liberties and human rights. Entitled, “The Challenge of Labour individual rights to the detriment of Rights as Human Rights”, Dr. Bernard’s Thirty years later, Elaine Bernard has collective rights; rights are meaningless lecture at the “Seeking Justice: Human honed these initial ideals into a succinct abstractions with no ability to exercise

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themselves; and the universality of rights The SFU Field School in Prague ignores the asymmetry of power in our society. By this, Dr. Bernard was referring The SFU Field School in Prague has been in existence for ten years and owes to the co-optation of rights language much of its present form, and success, to the leadership of Jerry Zaslove. and theory by the powerful and privileged. This can be seen in the Retirement rules being what they are, Jerry was not able to continue leading the advent of such concepts and language Field School in 2003, and I had the daunting task of trying to fill his shoes. as “reverse discrimination,” and in protectionist policies enacted by First The Prague Field School runs over eight weeks from early May to early July. World countries to ensure that Third Students receive eleven credits, the equivalent of three courses at SFU, but there World countries cannot compete for trade, thus protecting the “rights” of the are actually different instructors in Czech language, visits to historical and rich and powerful. architectural sites, studies in art history, politics, literature, film, and the In the end, however, Dr. Bernard comes intellectual tradition. The program is organized through the Office of out firmly in favour of labour rights discourse, and offered some ways that International and Exchange Student Services and the Humanities Department she believes the labour movement can at SFU. —David Mirhady, Humanities, SFU contribute to the greater human rights movement. She sees the workplace as a In 2003 The Institute for the Humanities provided a stipend to assist a travel space where rights intervention can happen; where truly democratic self- study student to attend the Prague field School. Jessica Denning was the 2003 organizing can occur; where solidarity recipient of the award and the following reflects her experiences while in Prague can be fostered and encouraged; and where we can address the difficult task with the school. of focusing on economic, rather than political, rights. Learning in the Czech Republic: Dr. Bernard also believes that broader human rights discourse can bring Transforming Perspectives valuable concepts to the labour rights movement. Human rights discourse can —Jessica Denning offer lessons regarding the value of universality; it can speak from a high Vancouver, August 2003 moral plane; and human rights Now, I wake up in the morning and discourse has the power to mobilize I forget that I am the only one in the people and take action on a broader room. After spending eight weeks social and political plane than labour with a roommate, in a suite with rights on their own. three other women, and spending The lecture was not only informative, five out of seven days with twelve but also funny, passionate and thought other classmates that up until three provoking. Dr. Elaine Bernard ended, months ago were strangers, I am appropriately, with a quotation from J.S. still not used to living alone. I am Woodsworth, who, in addition to definitely experiencing some sort of founding the CCF (which evolved into re-entry culture shock, and every the NDP), was also of course Grace day I wake up I remember less and MacInnis’ father. The quotation, a Jessica Denning less what my life was like while variation on the golden rule, is a living in Prague. After searching beautiful summary of what it means to through my emails and journal entries, and scanning through my eighteen be a human rights defender: “What we rolls of film (some people are obsessive), I came to some sort of compromise demand for ourselves, we desire for all.” with myself. After returning home and having time to reflect on Prague, I realize it is unreasonable for me to provide a thorough explanation of a life changing experience; only glances at personal and specific moments of my Shanthi Besso is Event Coordinator of time in the Czech Republic are possible. Community Education Programs at SFU Harbour Centre

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Prague, May – July 2003 Strangely, the atmosphere of each place features hurtling by. Our first stop was we visit infiltrates my group, and the Baroque Theatre in the medieval Every morning I invariably wake up to depending on where we are, we often town of Cesky Krumlov. some cacophonic sound. Most mornings adopt the roles of the people who used it is the chambermaids who stir me from Cesky Krumlov is located on a merchant to live in castles, fight in battles, perform my slumber at 6am, but who, because trade route. In the sixteenth century it theatricalities for the community, or we are still sleeping in them, never was a mining town for silver and hide from the enemy. Of the many places change our sheets. Other mornings it is graphite. Almost all of the architecture is Vaclav took us, I found the greatest my roommates, awake and getting ready Renaissance, including the castle that pleasure among the arts, the ruins and for the day. But every so often, I awake to was transformed from its earlier nature. It is admittedly a strange the sound of the recycling truck picking medieval style. The Rosenburg family, combination, but it is a reflection of my up the glass bottle receptacle. No one in who had the castle transformed and entire education, and as Prague is the Prague has individual recycling were almost as rich as the Bohemian final step in obtaining my degree, I find containers, so the sound of a thousand king, built the first theatre in Cesky it fitting that the third day we spent in beer and other miscellaneous bottles Krumlov as a demonstration of their Southern Bohemia fulfilled these crashing into the back of the truck wealth. Sometimes it seemed difficult to passions, and was most inspiring. sounds like the end of the world. After grasp how old something is, and that it reluctantly gaining the strength to has miraculously survived such a long push off my lead-like pink comforter, history. It is interesting how space can I get ready and head downstairs envelop you, generating feelings of for breakfast. awe, privilege, fear, happiness, jealousy, anger, sadness, and causing Breakfast at the dorm is you to realize you are sharing a complimentary. It is very European, perspective of history with thousands with meats and cheeses, breads, fruit, that have long perished. vegetables, hard-boiled eggs, some kind of pastry, yoghurt, and various The Baroque Theatre, Zamecke beverages. Invariably every morning Divadlo, was built in 1682, and then I open the lid of my yoghurt and rebuilt in 1766. Having previously get squirted on—so much for the studied technical theatre I was able to four hours I spent doing laundry the appreciate the sophisticated level of day before. machinery still in operation. The theatre houses over five hundred and On Tuesdays after breakfast, we meet seventy costume pieces and our teachers, David and Vaclav, for a accessories, and three hundred and fieldtrip outside of Prague. I board our fifty scenery flats and decorations to OK Bus Praha, and grabbing a jahoda make thirteen complete scenes. (strawberry) candy, wave good Baroque theatre was based on morning to Michael, our bus driver. miracles, illusions and special effects. Michael used to be a race-car driver, In terms of the aural spectacle, the so once we hit the highway out of sound machines, orchestra, and use Prague the speedometer ranges of gunpowder were all integral to between 110-160 kilometers per hour. 2003 Prague field school students theatricality, and I was most impressed He is frequently on his cell phone with their technical function in scene making connections about where we changes. The tour of the theatre was Every year when my birthday comes are going, and when we return to the bus fascinating, though somewhat around, I feel it necessary to reflect on from a long day he often greets us with disappointing. The only piece of the past year and decide whether I am candies, pastries or chocolate. Vaclav machinery we were shown was the happy with my accomplishments and begins every class, standing in the aisles equipment for making a storm. Despite have met my failures with a sense of of the bus, recounting in his thick Czech the fact that I have worked backstage for humour. On May 28th, 2003, the day accent, where we will be going and what so many years, I was not allowed to before my twenty-third birthday, our we will see. He takes us to many places participate in creating the storm because group left the Chateau in Libin where we tourists never go, or know about, and the equipment was heavy and I was a had been staying—our home away from the breadth of his knowledge astounds woman. I was not only frustrated, but Prague—for a fieldtrip. Vaclav kept me every week. He always wears also surprised to find such prejudice. exclaiming that we were to pay attention suspenders. The storm equipment was surprisingly to the differences in the geographical realistic, and the machinery backstage

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had been completely restored. The and crumbled stone. A friend of mine tower, a group of us moved into the theatre, which has been under and I climbed over the sunken barrier cottage bar to have a couple of drinks renovations since 1997, will between the stronghold and the forest, and play cards before bed. A couple of unfortunately never be used again for and, grasping sticks in our hands, we games turned into a marathon and soon public performance, as it is a valuable imagined ourselves as enemies at the it was midnight. Our teacher called for a heritage site. gate, storming the castle walls. bottle of champagne to celebrate my birthday. The bartender, Filip, who had After the tour, and a lunch, we This medieval castle, built in the stayed up with us after last call, took it reconvened for the second half of our fifteenth century, was built as a frontier upon himself to celebrate my birthday fieldtrip. It began with a long drive castle for the Vitek family, from which with me in true Czech fashion. I believe through a countryside that progressively the Rosenbergs developed. The Viteks it must be a custom that the birthday became less and less inhabited until built in this area three important person to get drunk, so drunk, in fact, Michael dropped us off in the middle of fortifications—Vitkuv Kamen, Rozmberk that she does not see what is coming. the Sumava Forest. The hike was long and Cesky Krumlov. The importance of Czech humour is difficult to figure out, and steep to begin. There was a cool these castles gradually shifted from and is ironic and dark. With a language breeze in the air, and plenty of shade south to north closer to the fertile barrier, it is especially hard to translate from the sun. We stopped along the way Budejovice Basin, that is, Cesky Krumlov. the exact meaning. The most universal to have a beer (“Czech tradition” Vaclav Vaclav talked extensively about Martin jokes are practical, and Filip was a said) and wrestle with a puppy. Luther and his association with the master. After feeding me free beers for a After the refreshments, we made an Protestant Reformation. Though Luther while, he suddenly had me facing the unexpected stop at a church. The elderly had no direct connection with this group, with a funnel in my pants and man inside spoke Czech and German castle, I found it a provocative analogy cheering me on to drop a Krone from my and so was able to communicate with to speak of the decay of the Catholic head into the funnel. “Why am I doing both our teachers. After listening to him Church amongst the ruins of a castle this?” I asked myself, as I went to drop speak, Vaclav turned to us to translate: that at one time had been the most the Krone from my forehead into the “So he is a little crazy.” Apparently, this prominent in the kingdom. These kinds funnel for the second time, and Filip man, acting on divine prophecy, had of comparisons between geography, poured a glass of water down the funnel, taken it upon himself to save the church architecture, religion, and politics are soaking my pants. He called me from complete destruction after the made all the time in our classes, and it “inkontinencni vlozky” (“piss-pants”) for Second World War. He kept shouting is interesting to gain a historical the rest of the trip. Of course, my initial things like, “Discipline!” He grabbed my perspective that acknowledges how shock and anger eventually subsided, hand and placing a coin in it, showed us everything is interconnected. and I was finally able to laugh at the all where to donate to the church Admittedly, I now know more about the situation – “you got me, Filip” – we had collection plate. While examining the history of the Czech Lands, than I do another bottle of champagne in fine craftsmanship of the rafters he had about Vancouver, the city I have grown celebration. built, an unexpected, definitely not holy, up in for the past twenty-three years. Now, as I reflect on my summer, I sound came soaring up through the Sitting amongst the ruins of the castle, realize that I experienced one of the beams: “Is that the ice-cream truck listening to Vaclav, the atmosphere of the most wonderfully intellectual, positive, song?” A group of us raced down the past permeating my thoughts, I felt action- packed birthdays ever in the steep and narrow staircases to the nave extremely satisfied with my decision to Czech Republic. My summer days of the church, and sure enough, our attend the field school. It was a most were full of adventure and risk, classmate was playing “The Entertainer”, enjoyable way to finish my degree. But I and every moment I feel compelled on the church organ. Vaclav eventually hardly had time to contemplate this to acknowledge how my perspectives hustled us out of there, and was heard to thought, before the lecture was over and of the world and my position in it remark: “They will erect a sign here we were heading down the mountain, have changed. stating that this church was once back to the bus. Grabbing sticks along desecrated by a group of Canadian the way, a bunch of us ran down the students”. mountain, sword-fighting and After half an hour we were at our final screaming like children. Though sweaty destination for the day. On top of a and dirty, I was smiling and feeling alive. large hill loomed the ruins of Vitkuv Kamen. Without even waiting for the We arrived back at the Chateau in time forthcoming lecture my classmates and I for dinner. That night, after games of ran ahead to explore. The foundation of pool, walks through the forest, and the entire site was sub-merged in grass watching the sun set from the lookout

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Institute for the Humanities Travel Study Award

$1500 awarded spring or summer semester

Awarded to a third or fourth year student who has completed two Humanities courses, to assist them to attend a travel- study/field school program offered by Simon Fraser Univer si ty. Letters of application should be sent to the Director, Institute for the Humanities, SFU and must include:

• a resumé

• a copy of university transcript

• a statement describing the relevance of the program/ﬁ eld school to the student’s academic program and goals

• two letters of reference from Simon Fraser University faculty.

The application deadline is March 15 each year

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More To Academe Than financially from an increasing range of activities—not Making Money just athletic endeavours but educational and research work as well—and shows how such ventures are undermining core academic values. He details the ties —Tom Nesbit between corporations, universities, and faculty and the

growth of commercial activities in both scientific research Book Reviews However reluctantly, and educational programming. In sum, Bok finds the universities are being enterprise of commercializing the academy decidedly forced to change. Rapid risky. The promise of financial gain often leads to technological conflicts of interest, unnecessary secrecy, and corporate development allied with attempts to influence research results. Although Bok the pressures of focuses primarily on US higher education with its economic globalisation extraordinary mix of public and private institutions, his are requiring them (and overall cautions will resonate in Canada as well. Higher those who pay for their education here has also seen its share of challenges to services) to redefine the academic freedoms stemming from the clash between role and purposes of commercial and academic values (as the recent higher education in experiences of David Healy, Nancy Olivieri, and David what’s increasingly Noble will attest). being called a “knowledge” or Bok examines competing explanations for increased “learning” society. commercial activities in the academy: university No longer quiet enclaves for the pursuit of truth, far presidents and senior administrators intent upon removed from the busy world of commerce and industry, expanding the size and reputation of their institution; the universities are now closely linked with national growing influence of the market throughout society; the economic and scientific objectives. They are regarded as increased legitimacy of private enterprise and corporate the chief source of the elements essential for society’s approaches; institutional competition fostered by continued growth and prosperity: highly trained questionable but nevertheless popular magazine league specialists, expert knowledge, and scientific advances tables; a lack of clarity in academic values and a loss of that can be turned into valuable new products or institutional purpose and any mission “beyond a vague procedures. The demand for university services related commitment to excellence”; cutbacks in government to their mission of teaching, research, and community funding; and attempts by the businessmen and others service is expected to grow significantly in the next 10 who sit on boards of trustees and governors to years. In Canada, the AUCC (the principal association of commodify education and research, reduce faculty universities and colleges) projects several changes: a 20- status, and push universities towards serving corporate 30% increase in demand in student enrolments rather than scholarly interests. Bok sees all these (particularly amongst adult and other “non-traditional” explanations as influential. Yet, for him, no attempt at learners), a significant increase in research performance commercialization would bear much fruit were it not to make Canada one of the top five countries in the for the rapid growth in opportunities to profit from world for research and development, increased the production of knowledge provided by a more interactions and partnerships between universities and technologically sophisticated and knowledge-based industry, more international collaboration and economy. competition, and a tripling of gross revenues. Such Bok finds that the supposed benefits of increased growth is expensive; already costs are spiralling while commercialism—extra scholarships, more library books, financial support from governments steadily declines. new laboratory equipment, endowed chairs, faculty Clearly, new sources of revenue need to be found to pay incentives—often prove illusory in the long term. Hoped- for universities’ expanded role. The pressures upon for private amounts don’t always materialize, rising costs academic institutions to commercialize and upon their eat up anticipated gains, and the level of public funding scholars to become entrepreneurs are becoming intense. declines. He also sees threats to core academic values: These issues are comprehensively examined by former admission and educational standards are undermined, Harvard University president Derek Bok in Universities in vocationally-oriented programs are promoted at the the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher expense of more traditional liberal arts, collegiality and Education (Princeton University Press, 2003). Reflecting trust can be undermined, and the basic canons of on a lifetime’s experience of higher education independent scholarly and scientific enquiry can suffer. administration, he probes university efforts to profit These have moral and practical consequences: the

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concerns for character- and citizen-building are subjugated to pleasure. The dangers in this are readily apparent: the idea that more commercial and competitive values and the reputation there are other kinds of value than the economic eventually of universities for objective and unbiased teaching and gets downplayed or even lost. And, once essential values are research is impaired. Most importantly, the philosophical sacrificed they become difficult to restore. This remains the underpinnings and social mandates of universities suffer if single most compelling argument against unfettered academic their activities follow only what is lucrative. commercialism: envisioning universities as economic agents rather than educational institutions threatens to change their As might be expected, the rise of academic entrepreneurism character in ways that limit their freedom, sap their has not met with universal enthusiasm on campuses. effectiveness, and diminish their integrity. Although not all ties Universities’ attempts to commercialize rarely seem to meet with industry are suspect and universities need not refuse with approval from either faculty or students. Some complain every opportunity to earn financial reward from their work, that universities have turned into knowledge factories where commercial ventures are decidedly risky…not only in intellectual ideals are routinely compromised for the sake of themselves but also to the academic standards and scholarly money and senior administrators respond more to political values that universities maintain and to the integrity and and market forces than to faculty, students, and staff. For independence they hold. others, learning and research come to be valued in terms of their ability to be translated into cash or merchandise, and not Tom Nesbit is the Director of the Centre for Integrated and in other ways, such as aesthetic, intellectual, or recreational Credit Studies, Continuing Studies, SFU.

The imperatives for the use of soft power are the atrocities Navigating A New World: Canada’s committed around the world. Global Future by Lloyd Axworthy With an excellent reputation at home and on the world stage, Dr. Axworthy can now be found at the Liu Institute at the —Nancy Harris University of B.C. This is an ideal time to document an impressive public life. Still, one might ask to whom this For those who have navigational instruction is addressed. Given that Axworthy has been fortunate enough retired from politics, his opinions now might have greater to hear Lloyd Axworthy acceptance in the broad Canadian community than they did speak, his account of a while he was in public office. This is one of the problems in viable and just place for Canada. We love to find politicians incredible and hold their Canada in a rapidly ideas suspect of political agenda. If there is a challenge outside shifting global politic is the boundaries of Canada to resolve major issues without a continuation of his resorting to a partisan or protectionist politic, there is an equal regular public speaking challenge within Canada to do the same. The challenge within theme. While he Canada’s boundaries is one that could be addressed in public describes the way he dialogue. When Axworthy criticizes “Canadian academics sees us—individuals [who] tend to be detached and at times disdainful of who give shape to this involvement in the political process” (p. 32), I see an country—we hear his opportunity for universities to be part of community-based voice, consistently dialogue. While this concept might seem a natural fit for courageous and intellectual interest it must be appreciated that universities inclusive as he points have their own internal dynamics and inside/outside political out the path that runs through challenging bureaucratic mechanics that need to be retooled for a discussion intended processes, international opposition and made-in-Canada to build solutions. Many academics struggle with the partisan politics to a place where Canadians can lead with uncertainty of where to begin community-based discussions their best skills. This is not a comfortable text. It is weighed involving politics and stand mute as a result of that struggle. In down with our failure to act out of humanitarian intent. Mr. addition, it must be acknowledged that universities are entities Axworthy articulates his desire to see Canada move ahead that market a product, that product being credit courses. Any using “soft power”—advantages of wealth, good education and project involving community outreach requires funding. a generally secure stable society—to establish humanitarian A solution might be found in Dr. Elizabeth Jareg’s commentary intervention in the context of traditional state sovereignty. quoted by Axworthy. When asked if it is possible for young Defining sovereignty as the responsibility to protect must, people caught in the tragedies of Uganda to recover, she Axworthy states, become accepted international behaviour. emphasizes the “importance of being accepted back into the

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community, and then being given something useful to do” community geographically described by electoral boundaries. (page 22). A community-based initiative facilitated by an Axworthy goes into great detail building his case for the need Institute for the Humanities attached to a university might to do things differently, to change the focus of discussion so explore how the university community could discover that real solutions are developed. He builds his case as he gives something useful to do. The concept of community an account of his time in Sudan and Uganda and Bosnia, articulated by Dr. Jareg seems to have a holistic character; it Cambodia, Croatia, Rwanda; these are areas we are familiar is a collection of all people coincidentally gathered in a with from news accounts of horrible atrocities. His description particular place. Dr. Jareg is referring to a Ugandan village, of the Ottawa Process on Landmines and the challenges in with all of its integrated components. It is her hope that the getting 143 signatures on a treaty banning the manufacture, young people from this village can be reintegrated back into use and export of anti-personnel land mines illustrates the their community. In contrast, “community” in Canada can moral imperative and the confidence that that imperative can often mean a collection of people bound together by a be met. It builds in the reader a confidence that even as the particular concern or interest. We see in Canada groups of quiet neighbour to a superpower there is opportunity for people gathered to lobby various levels of government. We Canadians to have a place in the world, to participate with our also see a community of concerned individuals, own agenda. organizations, business interests, NGO’s and government The overwhelming concerns for many Canadians are issues of bodies able to raise funds to develop or re-develop autonomy given our economic, cultural and social proximity community in areas such as those described by Axworthy. to our neighbour. Axworthy points out in his discussion of Various differences in our definition of “community” create American “Treaties and Transactions: Rules or Power,” that challenges: one must ask where the Canadian community there is opportunity to negotiate sustainable solutions. Given might be. Is this “political” enough to satisfy Axworthy’s the complexities of NAFTA, the challenge becomes one of criticism of lack of academic involvement? That question can ensuring that a Canadian design would be part of this evolving only be answered when we see the discussion about North American fabric. In his account of relationships between community participation unfold with all that it entails. the U.S. and Mexico one begins to see the consistencies in From my point of view, the value of this book cannot be found Axworthy’s Canadian design. Our relationship with the US in a political or economic assessment of statements made. and Mexico must be navigated with the same skills and Canada’s ability economically to sustain the bureaucratic instruments as those required in the broader expanse of the infrastructure through which decision-making information is world stage. The choice of tools is a political one. Canadians collected and presented, maintaining Canadian consulates must make decisions at the polling station based on sound and establishing a peace keeping presence aside, the value is information regarding our country’s potential at home and in the answer to the question, does this book kindle the internationally. It is imperative to lead with what Axworthy imagination of Canadians as to Canada’s place in the global refers to as soft power because the alternative would be the arena? Key to Canada’s ability to navigate in this new world is loss of Canada to an overwhelming US agenda. an political leadership. When Axworthy states that this is the choice that Canadians must make, and then asks if we are Nancy Harris is an associate of the Institute for the Humanities ready for such an undertaking, we can identify his intended who works in the field of conflict resolution and bridge building audience. I hear Axworthy speak to me as a member of a in the development of her company, “Project Continuum.”

One Man’s Justice: A Life in the Law by Thomas R. Berger

—Philip Bryden

Few Canadians can lay claim to a legal career as remarkable as that of Tom Berger. In addition to more than thirty years of practice as a lawyer, Berger had a brief career as a politician (serving as a Member of Parliament, a Member of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly and Leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party). He spent twelve years as a justice of the British Columbia Supreme Court. He also served as a commissioner of inquiry in places as far flung as the Mackenzie Valley, Alaska and India. One Man’s Justice is Berger’s account of his life in the law, and a fascinating account it is.

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One Man’s Justice is not a conventional autobiography (if there Vancouver in the late 1950s and 1960s, the account of his is such a thing) because so little of the focus of the book is on representation of the Ironworkers Union in the strike that took Berger himself. He offers the reader occasional glimpses of his place during the construction of what is now known as the background and family life, but the book is really about the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge, and the tale of George Jones, the cases in which he appeared as counsel. Berger’s political chairman of the British Columbia Purchasing Commission, career barely rates half a dozen paragraphs in the 332 pages of who was fired by the government of W.A.C. Bennett and who text. Even Chapter 6, which is entitled “To the Bench and retained Berger to bring a successful action for slander against Back”, is less a discussion of Berger’s years as a justice of the Bennett. What particularly appeals to me about these chapters British Columbia Supreme Court than it is a defence of the is the insight they offer into the world of British Columbia law actions that led him to resign his judicial office and return to and politics. In addition to being an outstanding barrister, the private practice of law in 1983. One Man’s Justice might Berger is an insightful observer and a skillful storyteller, and well have been entitled A Barrister’s Tale, since it is mainly the his portraits of the individuals who occupied centre stage in story of Berger’s search for justice for his clients, rather than these legal dramas left me eager for a more extensive account his reflections about justice in the abstract. of Berger’s life and times. Anyone who has read One Man’s Justice will quickly come to In Chapters 4 and 5, Berger tells the story of the cases that understand why Tom Berger is so well respected as a lawyer originated his lifelong advocacy for aboriginal people and for (and also why he is so successful). He demonstrates the legal recognition of their treaty rights and title to land. Chapter barrister’s art of pruning the facts of the cases he describes to 4 is the story of an aboriginal hunting rights case, R. v. White their essential elements, while adding just enough detail and and Bob, in which Berger successfully appealed the colour to keep the reader’s interest. He marshals his legal convictions of two members of the Nanaimo band for hunting arguments with care. He is scrupulously fair in his deer out of season on the basis that they were exercising rights presentation of the arguments raised by his opponents. conferred on them by an 1854 treaty. In Chapter 5, Berger Nevertheless, he inexorably draws the reader toward the describes the efforts of the Nisga’a people to obtain legal conclusion that the courts were correct in finding that justice recognition of their title to their lands which culminated in the lay on the side of his clients (or that the courts erred on the signing of the Nisga’a Treaty in 1998. Berger was counsel to the rare occasions when they found against him). He has a way of Nisga’a in the landmark case of Calder v. Attorney General of taking complicated legal ideas and expressing them in simple British Columbia, in which the Supreme Court of Canada in and understandable terms that a law teacher like myself can 1973 first recognized aboriginal title, albeit in a split decision only envy and hope on occasion to emulate. that did not uphold the Nisga’a claim itself. Berger was appointed as a judge after this case had been argued, and his Berger organizes his reflections into twelve thematic chapters colleagues Don Rosenbloom and then Jim Aldridge took over that roughly follow the trajectory of his career as a lawyer. On the role of legal advisors to the Nisga’a during the lengthy the whole this structure works well, since it allows Berger to negotiations that ultimately led to the signing of the Treaty explore in each chapter a number of lawsuits that raise related itself. After Berger’s resignation from judicial office in 1983, questions without worrying about when they occurred during however, he did return to represent the Nisga’a (along with the course of his legal career. The decision to organize the Aldridge) in resisting then Opposition leader Gordon material in this way does, however, tend to exacerbate what Campbell’s legal challenge to the constitutional validity seems to me to be the major weakness of the book. It is that of the Treaty. while each of the chapters is interesting in and of itself, the collection of them together is unsatisfying either as a portrait As noted above, Berger writes in Chapter 6 about his years as a of Berger’s life as a lawyer or as a coherent picture of his views judge, but the bulk of the chapter is a discussion of the about justice. The book offers the reader fascinating glimpses circumstances that led him to resign his judicial office. Berger of both Berger’s life and times and his views of justice, but at had made a speech to the Canadian Bar Association in 1981 the end of the day these themes are overwhelmed by the legal endorsing Prime Minister Trudeau’s constitutional proposals, arguments Berger puts forward in championing his clients’ including their guarantee of Aboriginal and treaty rights. When causes. As interesting as these arguments are, I suspect that the Prime Minister, under provincial pressure, altered these most readers of One Man’s Justice will share my view that we proposals later that year, Berger felt he had a duty to speak out would have appreciated the opportunity to know less about against the changes, and did so in a speech at Guelph the arguments themselves and more about the man who University and an op-ed piece for the Globe and Mail. The made them. latter comments sparked a complaint to the Canadian Judicial Council, and Berger describes in detail the unfortunate My favourite chapters in the book are the first three, which manner in which this complaint was dealt with by the Council, concentrate on the early part of Berger’s career as a lawyer, and most importantly by Chief Justice Bora Laskin. This before his appointment as a judge in 1971. They include the chapter stands apart from the others. In it Berger openly story of Berger’s work as a criminal defence lawyer in struggles with the question of what a judge ought to do in the

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face of political action that he believes is a violation of Trinity Western University’s teacher education program minority rights that he is uniquely well positioned to address. because of the University’s denunciation of homosexual Were Berger’s comments an example of a judge meddling in behaviour as sinful. While these chapters provide a very politics, as Chief Justice Laskin clearly believed, or were they interesting discussion of a series of legal subjects, the material an example of a judge speaking out to defend minority rights in them is too diverse to present anything like a coherent and the rule of law? Berger reflects on the possibility that he picture of the practice of law in Vancouver in the last two was wrong to speak out, yet he ultimately concludes that he decades of the twentieth century. Berger’s observations about was right and would do it again, even though Chief Justice the environment in which he worked, which so enlivened the Laskin’s criticism of him made decide that he could not first part of the book, become more indistinct here. Likewise maintain those views and continue to serve as a judge. Berger the threads of a theory of justice that were inchoate in the early offers some deep insights into the role of a judge in a part of the book and came to the surface in Chapter 6 seem, to democracy, and momentarily steps outside his role as a me at least, to disperse in the second half of the book. barrister to give us a glimpse of his thinking about justice as Tom Berger has made an outstanding contribution to something more profound than justice for his clients. Canadian law, and his description of this contribution in One The last six chapters of the book describe Berger’s more Man’s Justice makes for interesting reading. If the book itself is interesting cases since his resumption of legal practice. In not quite as remarkable as its author, it is because the glimpses them Berger the barrister reasserts himself, though not, in my Berger offers us of his life and times and his ideas about justice own view, to such good effect as he did in the earlier chapters. suggest that he has more insights to offer than his account of Berger offers up an eclectic mix of cases in these chapters. his cases reveal. They range from his representation of Dr. Jerilynn Prior in her efforts to seek a declaration that the requirement that she pay taxes that might be used for military purposes violated her Philip Bryden is Associate Professor in UBC’s Faculty of Law. freedom of conscience and religion to his defence of the decision of the B.C. College of Teachers to refuse approval of

West Coast Line NO. 40 • 37/1 SPRING 2003 writing • images • criticism edited by Glen Lowry and Jerry Zaslove

Violence and its Alternatives: A Special Section edited by Trish Graham, Coleen Gold, and Jerry Zaslove This volume of West Coast Line contains a special section which captures some of the papers and the discussion at the 2001 Joanne Brown Symposium on Violence and its Alternatives, an annual Institute for the Humanities symposium supported by Joanne Brown. Contributors Ian angus, Brett Enemark, Trish Graham, Coleen Gold, Larry Green, Stephen K. Levine, Gary McCarron, David Mirhady, Christopher S. Morrissey, Myler Wilkinson, Jerry Zaslove Contributors to New Work in the same edition: Catherine Daly, John Cover image: Jeff Wall The Drain 1989 229 x 287 cm Doheny, kari edwards, Peter Jaeger, Reg Johanson, Lydia Kwa, Sophie Levy, Wendy Lu, Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Wolf-Dieter Narr, Natalie Simpson

– 85 – West Coast Line NO. 41 Woodsquat guest edited by Aaron Vidaver

This up-coming issue contains new writing, primary documents, images, and criticism pertaining to the Woodwards Squat action in Vancouver (14 September – 14 December 2002). The issue includes short prose, interviews, speeches, and poems by Maxine Gadd, Shawn Millar, Nathan, Kaspar Learn, Skyy, Ivan Drury, Bev Meslo, Jim Leyden, Chris Livingstone, Craig Ballantyne, Zeus, Chrystal Durocher, Ann Wilden, Toecutter, Chris Forth, Lacey Rainer, A Native Man, Claude Maurice, Insurgent-S, Roy Gladiator Archie, T. Forsythe, Lyn Tooley, Joey Only, Tony Snakeskin, Adam Murray, Hidden in Dark Well, Taum Danberger, Kathy May Lee Rattlesnake, Hazel Hoyle, Ace, Angel, David Cunningham, Jewel and Theresa D. Gray. Primary documents include letters, press statements, reports, affidavits, witness statements, and appeals by The Peoples’ Opposition, Anti-Poverty Committee, Jim Leyden, Azad & Marwan, Friends of the Woodwards Squat, Debbie Krull, Coalition of Woodwards Squatters and Supporters, Andrea Neigel, Shane Davis, Determined Housing Kara Sievewright Affinity Group, Woodwards Squat Emergency Response Team, Rev. Davin Ouimet, Woodwards Legal Defense Committee, A Squatter, Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society, Dayl Scheltgen, and Calvin Woida. Excerpts from confidential City To order or to receive further information about upcoming of Vancouver and Vancouver Police Department documents or previous volumes contact (obtained through a long process of Freedom of Information WEST COAST LINE requests) detail the particulars of the neutralization of the 2027 East Annex squat. There are over 50 images in the volume—video stills, 8888 University Drive reproductions of posters, flyers and graffiti, linocuts and Simon Fraser University photographs—as well as an 11-page comic by Trevor M. The Burnaby, BC critical essays consist of pieces on the history of the Downtown V5A 1S6. Eastside (Jeff Sommers), squatting as an organizational tool (Lisa Wulwik), the function of demands (Mike Krebs), the Telephone 604-291-4287 relation between the civic election and the housing movement Fax 604-291-4622 (Shannon Bundock), the failure of the squat legal strategy E-mail [email protected] (Noah Quastel) and media representation of the squat and Web www.sfu.ca/west-coast-line “compassion fatigue” (Diana Leung), as well as two reviews of books on the international squatting movement (Jeff Schatz; WCL is published by the West Coast Review Publishing Society Peyman Vahabzadeh).

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Humanities Department: Some recent publications and related activities

Samir Gandesha “Leaving Home: On Adorno and Heidegger,” Cambridge Companion to Adorno, Thomas Huhn (ed.) (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, in press). Jean Baudrillard, “Interview with Der Spiegel: This is the Fourth World War,” trans. Samir Gandesha, International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (forthcoming). “Writing and Judging: Adorno, Arendt and the Chiasmus of Natural History,” Philosophy and Social Criticism (forthcoming). “The Political Semiosis of Populism,” The Semiotic Review of Books. “Review of I Sell Security” Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver, Art Papers, (forthcoming). Ian Angus “La démocratie décentrée: un modèle multiculturel et “Review of Dan Graham Exhibition,” Contemporary Art postcolonial de la critique,” trans. Pierre R. Desrosiers and Gallery, Vancouver, Art Papers (forthcoming). Mark Fortier in Jules Duchastel (ed.) Fédéralismes et “Schreiben und Urteilen: Adorno, Arendt und der Chiasmus Mondialisation: L‚avenir de la démocratie et de la citoyenneté der Naturgeschichte,” Adorno und Arendt, Dirk Auer, Lars (Outremont: Athéna éditions, 2003). Rensmann and Julia Schulze Wessel (eds.) (Frankfurt am Invited Keynote Speaker. Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2003):199-233. Ian Angus, “In Praise of Fire: Self-Responsibility, “Marcuse, Habermas and the Critique of Technology,” The Manifestation,” Polemos, Circumspectionî Seattle University Legacy of Herbert Marcuse, John Abromeit (ed.) (London: Philosophy Club annual conference, 15 – 16 May 2003 Routledge, 2003).

(with Gary Genosko and Kristinia Marcellus) “A Crucible of Critical Interdisciplinarity: The Toronto Telos Group” in Topia 8 (Fall, 2002). “Review of Julian Rosefeld Asylum,” Museum für Gegenwart, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Art Papers (September/ Lynn Elen Burton October, 2002): 50. In the past year, Dr. Burton’s attention has been focussed on confirming interest in establishing the Applied Foresight “Review of Harun Farocki’s I Thought I was Seeing Convicts,” Network as an independent transdisciplinary tool for Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Papers (July/Aug, 2003): 54. addressing critical issues on the horizon. To this end, she has made presentations on Applied Foresight at the New Directions for the Humanities Conference in Rhodes Greece, the World Future Society Conference in San Francisco, and the Global Futures – Alternatives for Mexico conference in Mexico City. As well, she has prepared papers for The International Journal for the Humanities, Futures Research Quarterly, the World Future Society Conference Compendium, edited by Howard Didsbury, and On the Horizon journal.

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Donald Grayston Christopher S. Morrissey “Thomas Merton, the Holocaust and the Eclipse of Difference,” Review of Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters by Michael in Beatrice Bruteau, ed., Merton and Judaism: Holiness in Tierno,in Scope Film Journal (November 2003): Words / Recognition, Repentance and Renewal (Louisville: Fons www.nottingham.ac.uk/film/journal/bookrev/books- Vitae, 83-103. (See also Karl A. Plank, “An Open Letter to november-03.htm. ISSN 1465-9166. Donald Grayston,” 105-08.) “Oedipus the Cliché: Aristotle on Tragic Form and Content,” “Antisemitism in a Russian spiritual classic: The Pilgrim’s Tale.” Anthropoetics 9.1 (Spring/Summer 2003): 1-14. Anthropoetics Spiritus 3, 110-26. 9.1 (Spring/Summer 2003): 1-14. www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0901/oedipus.htm. “Finding ‘the great compassion, mahakaruna’: Thomas Merton ISSN 1083-7264. as Transcultural Pioneer,” in Angus Stuart and Michael Woodward, eds., The World in my Bloodstream: Thomas “‘A Policy of Selfish Convenience’: Pius XII and the Holocaust,” Merton’s Universal Embrace (Abergavenny, Wales: Three Peaks Review of The Catholic Church and the Holocaust: 1930-1965 Press), forthcoming. by Michael Phayer, in Left History 8.2 (April 2003): 405-408. ISSN 1192-1927. “Thomas Merton, Spiritual Fake,” review of Paul Hourihan, The Death of Thomas Merton (Redding, CA: Vedantic Shores Press, “Reading Mimesis Against Revenge: Girard and Mimetic 2003), in The Merton Seasonal, forthcoming. Violence,” West Coast Line 37.1 (Spring 2003): 55-66. (Violence and Its Alternatives: A Special Section). ISSN 1182-4271. Workshop: “Thomas Merton, Harold Talbott and Chadral Rinpoche: Merton’s Encounter with Tibetan Buddhism.” “Aristotle’s Hollywood Renaissance,” Article on Aristotle’s Offered at the VIIIth Conference and General Meeting of the Poetics for Screenwriters: Storytelling Secrets from the International Thomas Merton Society, UBC, June 6, 2003. Greatest Mind in Western Civilization by Michael Tierno, in University Affairs (March 2003): 42. ISSN 0041-9257. Photo by Jessica Denning

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Institute for the Humanities Samir Gandesha Associates. Affiliation and Department of Humanities, SFU. Social and political thought, with special emphasis on the relatin between art, aesthetics Humanities related interests. and politcs.

Michelle Gibson Ian Angus Psychotherapist and Broadcast Journalist. The impact of Department of Humanities, SFU. The public sphere, popular culture on societal and individual development. democracy and equality, philosophy and the humanities. Coleen Gold Debbie Bell Art Therapist. Violence and its alternatives, psychoanalysis, Community Education, Continuing Studies, SFU. community education. Community education, social change, participatory international development Donald Grayston Director, Institute for the Humanities, SFU. Teaches religious Nick Blomley studies in the Humanities Department. Violence and its Department of Geography, SFU. Community, violence and alternatives, Gandhi, Merton, Holocaust, rites of passage and contemporary culture. citizenship

Adrienne Burk Larry Green Adjunct Faculty, Dept. of Geography, SFU; Centre for Writing- Psychotherapist. Conflict resolution, art and cultural Intensive Learning, SFU. approaches to alternatives to violence.

Lynn Elen Burton Enzo Guerrerio Department of Humanities, SFU. Future studies, creativity and Director, Britannia Community Centre. Creating places for visionary thinking, activating the social movement and adult social action, places where universities and communities meet education. to discuss local and neighborhood issues

Michael Clague Bob Hackett Director, Carnegie Community Centre. Ideas of social progress School of Communications, SFU. Media research and politics. and what the arts and humanities can tell us about learning from our mistakes and our achievements. Nancy Harris Conflict resolution and bridge building in the development of Rita DeGrandis her company, “Project Continuum” which offers the co- Spanish American Literature, Comparative Literature, UBC. ordination of fundraising events and the facilitation of public Politics, ideology and the national imaginaries in Latin dialogue. America. Margaret Jackson Steve Duguid School of Criminology, SFU. Immigrant and refugee girls and Department of Humanities, SFU. The humanities and the their perceptions of violence; dialogues between academics natural world, corrections and modernity, Scottish Studies . and the community.

Paul Edward Dutton Martin Laba Department of Humanities and History, SFU. Literacy, cultural Director, School of Communication, SFU. Research, design and political history of the early middle ages, particularly the and implementation of communication/education strategies Caroligian empire and 12th century renaissance. and media around urgent and critical social issues. The colonization/exploitation of social issues in the marketplace, Karlene Faith corporate claims of social beneficence, and current and School of Criminology, SFU. Global human rights and growing trends in selling with social issues. transformative justice. Christine Liotta Barry Fleming Communications and Liberal Studies, BCIT. Community Retired Trade Unionist. Workers’ Rights, Globalization, education, liberal studies and technology education. Social Justice.

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Glen Lowry Jennifer Simons Co-editor West Coast Line. Dept Head, English Coquitlam Director, Simons Centre for Peace and Disarmament Studies, College. Canadian studies, contemporary culture and poetics, Liu Institute for Global Issues, UBC. Disarmament, Arms critical theory. Control in relation to Disarmament, International Law and Treaty Regimes. Specifically, Prevention of Weapons in Space, Marilyn MacDonald Nuclear Weapons Issues, National Missile Defence, Small Arms Women’s Studies, SFU. Community education, feminist and Light Weapons and Landmines. science studies, environmental activism and professionalisation. Mary Ann Stouck Emerita, Department of English and Humanities, SFU. Kirsten McAllister Medieval studies. School of Communication, SFU. Memory, political violence, technology and surveillance. Peyman Vahabzadeh Department of Sociology and Anthropology, SFU. Social and Gary McCarron Political Theory, Social Movements, Continental Philosophy, School of Communication, SFU. Communication and film Iranian Studies. studies; history and philosophy of rhetoric; sociology of health. Alan Whitehorn Political Science, Royal Military College, Kingston. First holder Kathy Mezei of J. S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities. Canadian Department of Humanities and English, SFU. Domestic space, political parties, comparative politics and political theory. translation studies, and Quebec literature. Myler Wilkinson David Mirhady Centre for Russian and North American Studies, MIR Centre Department of Humanities, SFU. The Greek and Roman world, for Peace, Selkirk College. The systemic potential for human especially the legal system of the Athenian democracy. interactions beyond violence, and the structural and social forms which are obstacles to thinking about peace. Tom Nesbit Director, Centre for Integrated and Credit Studies, Continuing Jerry Zaslove Studies, SFU. Adult education and labour issues. Emeritus Director, Institute for the Humanities, SFU. Humanities and modernity, human rights, violence, the avant- Anand Paranjpe garde and intellectuals, community education and the public Emeritus, Psychology Department, SFU. Cross cultural sphere, the social history of art and cultural memory. psychology, humanities and psychology, approaches to health and healing in cross-cultural contexts.

William Roberts Director of the Whistler forum for dialogue. Lifelong learning, citizen engagement, deliberative democracy, civil society.

Bob Russell Mathematics and Statistics, SFU. Human rights, science and society, and science and human rights.

Allen Seager Director, Canadian Studies, SFU. Canada, Canadian politics and labour history.

Rakesh Shankar Environmental Issues, Conflict Resolution, Spirituality.

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Staff

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Humanitas 2004 cover 2 12/23/03, 11:28:20 AM humanitas The Bulletin of the Institute for the Humanities Volume Three: Spring 2004 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

humanitas Institute for the Humanities • Simon Fraser Univer si ty • Burnaby, British Co lum bia

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