I think my enthusiasm for this course has been apparent
since day one, so I won’t take up too much space talking about how thoroughly I
enjoyed the readings, discussions, and community. I just wanted to thank you
all for being so kind, friendly, and supportive; if I could do it over again I
would in an instant!
Onto some more substantive comments:
It is interesting to me that in a course entitled the Making
of War and Peace, one of the central motifs and conclusions is that these two
concepts are both illusory to a certain extent. Through the readings and
in-class discussions, we have made a strong case for the argument that “war” is
nothing more than an amplification of the inevitable, systematic relations of
power and subjectification that characterize human society. In this sense, it
would be wrong to conceive of society as alternating between “being at war” and
“being at peace,” insofar as it is constantly and eternally at war with
itself—every individual is necessarily locked into and constituted by relations
of power and domination with the Other. The historical moments that scholars
and laymen alike refer to as “war time” are merely the consolidation and
intensification of these inescapable power relationships that make up the
network of social interactions. Ontologically, there is nothing new or unique
about war; nothing that distinguishes it from the lower-intensity, everyday
power struggles that are usually considered “peace.” Throughout the course we
have analyzed a number of situations that, although not typically considered
“war” are nonetheless characterized by the same fundamental relationships and
systems of meaning as the great wars of history. Perhaps one of the central,
unspoken inquiries guiding the course has actually been “is there something
called War that is fundamentally different from the fragmented and dispersed
power struggles that themselves produce subjectivity?”
On another note, this class also distinguished itself from
my other academic experiences through its methodology and approach to the
subject matter. I have not taken many philosophy or anthropology courses in
college, and those that I have taken
have been oriented around Ethics, rather than epistemology or ontology. As
such, most of my previous encounters with the subject of war and peace have
been focused on questions of jus in bello
and jus ad bellum. The existence
of a discrete phenomena called “war” was taken for granted, and the important
problematique was always “Can war be ethical?” This course, however, focused
instead on examining what war is and
how it is produced, rather than
taking the existence and character of such a phenomena for granted. During the
first few weeks of the course I resented this methodology, which I felt was
overly descriptive and insufficiently normative. If I remember correctly, the
Taussig and Masco readings were the first time that I realized the importance
and utility of such a deconstructive, Foucualdian approach to the subject
material. I realized that it is not enough to criticize war as unethical;
everyone knows that violence is problematic! What is truly revolutionary and
constructive is to try to understand what conditions—what particular
micromechanics of power, cultures of terror, and subjectivities—produce and
reproduce relations of war and brutality. (On
a very irrelevant and half-baked side-note: the philosopher that I am most
influenced by is Spinoza, and I can’t help but be reminded here of Spinoza’s
“blessedness,” which is not attained through some ethical distinction between
right and wrong, but through an understanding of the interrelationships between
all modes of being that define and produce material phenomena, such as war).
The course has also left me with a bit of an existential
crisis. I have wanted to be an international human rights and environmental
justice lawyer since I was 15 years old, but our discussion of secret prisons,
drone strikes, and the Gaza flotilla has made me seriously rethink the utility
of legal solutions to cruelty. It doesn’t matter whether or not we can prove
that Israel is legally responsible for hidden prisons in Southern Lebanon, or
whether the arrest of the Flotilla activists in international waters was a
breach of international law. Nothing will change until we have a better
understanding of what kinds of intersubjective systems of meaning and relations
of power produce such acts of brutality and violence in the first place. The
law is a useful tool for determining which actions and uses of force are
‘legitimate,’ but I don’t know that it will ever be able to completely
eliminate exploitation and brutality, even if it classifies them as
“illegitimate” and illegal. Perhaps the ultimate purpose and function of law is
as a check that citizens can use against arbitrary governance. For example, the
Helsinki Watch Groups in the USSR used the letter of the law (the Helsinki
Final Act) to push for accountability and change from within the society.
Nonetheless, international law doesn’t seem very well equipped for dealing with
issues such as xenophobia, hatred, racism, homophobia, etc… For example, even
if we successfully outlaw forced evictions of the Roma population in France,
there will still be a strong anti-Roma, nativist culture that will inevitably
reproduce discrimination and otherization.
In terms of the procedural elements of the course, I have
two recommendations. I most enjoyed the Foucault, Masco, and Taussig readings
(even though I still think Taussig sells Conrad short!), and I was also very
interested in our discussion of the Gaza Flotilla. Unfortunately, the Latour
reading was almost painful. I realize that Latour’s writing style is very
Tolstoyan in a sense, and that it would be hard to get a succinct and
to-the-point explanation of his argument, and what it offers us in terms of
tools for analyzing war and peace. I also recognize that certain elements of
Latour’s thought (such as the idea of alliances) are useful for thinking about
the other readings in the course. The problem is that the reading we used in
the class didn’t offer a very clear explanation of these useful elements, and
instead felt very out of place and irrelevant. Perhaps it would be better to
read some secondary literature on Latour? Or maybe there is another Latourian
with a more transparent and efficient writing style? In any case, Latour is probably
a useful inclusion in the course, but I feel like there must be a more direct
essay or excerpt available.
The second recommendation that I have has to do with the
reading response essays. The weekly comments are a good way to make sure that
students are reading the assigned texts and are able to follow the class
discussion, but in their current form they tend towards descriptive
reconstructions and summarizations of the texts, rather than critical
engagements. One recommendation that I have for addressing this would be to add
an additional requirement that each student submit two or three questions about
the text that might jumpstart the in-class discussions. In other words, the
students would submit the questions as a part of the reading response essays,
and then in class different students could be called upon to read their
questions as a starting point for the discussion. That way any time that the
conversation slows down, there will always be a reserve of insightful questions
for us to draw upon as a way of reinvigorating the conversation.
Thank you again, everyone, for such an intellectually
stimulating and highly enjoyable semester. :)
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