Taking 4/5 of my classes this semester in French, I thought I’d
really be taken out of my comfort zone and challenged academically.
Surprisingly enough, this class, and my only class in English, has definitely
challenged me the most. Studying Security Policy as one of my concentrations in
DC, I realize that this class has forced me to think about conflicts and
conflicted areas in a completely new way. GW, and DC in general, has a very
traditional approach to studying International Affairs and I’m really pleased
that this class, through political philosophy, anthropology, human perspective
and awesome class discussions, broke this mold.
On January 29, a note I took in class said the following: “To
understand something, we must deconstruct a self-evident perspective” and I
think that to get the most out of this class, that is something we all had to
do. For me, the Gregory and Khalili readings did this for me the most. Right in
the beginning of Gregory’s article, he lays out the mainstream viewpoints of
drone warfare made by the media/politicians and continues to explain why/how it
isn’t as black and white as it’s portrayed.
In the article, he talks about spaces of visibility, explaining how
certain degrees of understanding are culturally and socially created, and
shared. This is particularly evident when Gregory recounts the experience of
the drone pilots that wrongfully killed a group of civilians by prescribing
their actions to a certain ‘pattern of life’ that is necessary to “understand”
in counterinsurgency operations. The thing that is most fascinating about
Gregory’s article is the human perspective that is absent from most traditional
understandings of IA and mainstream rhetoric. It makes me think of Vice
documentaries- each one gives a voice to a human perspective that isn’t heard,
yet is important in understanding a situation further.
This theme of visibility/invisibility and the human perspective
carries on to Khalili’s article as she explains the use of black sites and
proxy-run prisons. In her article she intertwines the themes of race and gender
into her argument. I laugh now because while reading it, I was excited by her
thoughts about this and the link to 19th century colonialism in the Middle
East. In class, however, it was interesting to hear how many thought it was an
easy argument to make, how it has been done many times before, and it is not
really 21st century colonialism that we’re experiencing in Western encounters
with the Middle East. I’m glad that the class was continuously able to open my
mind after such a steadfast 2.5 years as an IA major! I realized I was
attracted immediately to the article because it was comfortable...so this is a
thank you to everyone for making me realize that.
Going back to the overall theme of war and peace, it has been
fascinating to read about, write about, and discuss the way we can deconstruct
preconceived understandings of war/peacetime. In many ways, we’ve argued
against the popular understanding that states or heroic figures control the
fate of war/peacetime. From discussing knowledge production, to “truth”
finding, to spaces of invisibility/visibility, to the role of the trickster, we
have gained valuable knowledge and tools to analytically render
information/situations/conflicts in completely new ways.
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