WARNING: Contains satire, mockery and travesty. Suitable for mature audiences only.
Reported events in Libya are very intriguing, to some extent. While one hopes that the following statements do not go too far over the top, we might say that unconfirmed allegations of loss of life may give one reason for pause. It is possible that some of us may entertain certain misgivings about the multifaceted and complex comments offered by the Libyan leader. While some may wish to argue that Col. Gaddafi is a “dictator,” a less tendentious characterization should suggest itself as the situation is neither black nor white, but grey.
It is important that the tone of discussion be kept serious, civil, and reasoned. Certainly one may express concern at the troubling reports, but what is needed is a process of broad consultation. Violence should be restrained. Commentators should respect the process by avoiding strident language, and respecting the fundamental, reflexive, and recursive ambiguity of what is a contingent and contested process.
As observers of the complexities around the social negotiation of constructed meanings, it would do us well to remember that democracy is inscribed as a gesture of erasure, that human rights exist as an absence through an erasure that is the sign of their own creation. What we urgently need then are less of the over-determined portrayals of reality that lead to debased forms of point scoring– “dictator!” “murderer! “bastard!”–and more sophisticated treatments of the contingency of discourse, while tacking back to the free floating signifiers that constitute the flows of democracy instantiated in the reflexive negotiation of identity best understood as friction where the practice of inscription is embodied but ever perched on the border with the simulacra of memory qua narrative.
Our colleagues in the diplomatic corps, working with the best of intentions and under the most pressing of circumstances, should be held in high regard. For while one may state in the strongest possible terms that events may be deplorable, one does not want to preclude the possibility for dialogue. Is it important to stress that Col. Gaddafi may be a confounded ne’er do well? Perhaps. But such intemperate and highly inflammatory polemics could jeopardize difficult but necessary ways of restoring calm, for what Libyans need now more than anything else is stability. Democracy cannot be achieved overnight. Hopefully, through a series of reforms brought about in an orderly transition, we can look forward to the moment when, like ourselves, Libyans may enjoy the fruits of civilized discourse.
And this is why we need nuance.
thanks
23 February 2011
This, shall we say “refreshing” sentence, reminds me of all that is wrong with anthropology (my discipline). I’ll quote only half of it, as that’s all I could bear:
“…while tacking back to the free floating signifiers that constitute the flows of democracy instantiated in the reflexive negotiation of identity best understood as friction where the practice of inscription is embodied but ever perched on the border with the simulacra of memory qua narrative.”
What, exactly, does this mean??!
Anyone?
Anyone?
Bueller?
marc thibault
24 February 2011
I would be sure to understand your post.So,your council to the stupid mob is to go home and let sérious personn do the job because democraty is not for now .If I read cautiously I don-t find anything arguing Khadafi isn’t a sérious personn and by déduction a good leader.
Quelle est la marque de ta bouteille de whisky? Urgent d’en changer.But perhaps do you know the khadafi foundation for social sciences ? Do you know this guy ?http://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin-r-barber/libya-gadhafi-future_b_826718.html
Is it your brother in unlaw ?
marc thibault professor of philosophy Bourges France
Maximilian Forte
24 February 2011
You people are the best!
Douglas Smith
24 February 2011
A Nuanced Approach to Cracking Eggs
Bingo! A good Swiftian kick in the backside, precipitating reflexive horror and outrage. My first response: Either Max has lost his mind, or somebody has bought him off. My contrite apologies for even briefly entertaining such thoughts. For those new to your site, a tiny, inconspicuous disclaimer might be added in a day or two, assuring the innocent reader that you piece – beginning with the dreary oxymoron “unconfirmed allegations” – is a parody of reactionary elder-statesman balderdash. (Upon re-reading the thing, I recognize that the fun actually begins with the phrase “…very intriguing, to some extent.”)
Maximilian Forte
24 February 2011
Thanks Douglas!
No apologies necessary because as we both know there are some who can be bought off. The fact that this essay was met with almost absolute silence for a day, “retweeted” by no one, recommended by none–unlike anything else on this site–shows that others too must have been stunned and worried, having a mighty big WTF moment.
It was a real pleasure writing this satirical piece, and the fact that anyone took it as a serious statement shows just how accustomed we have become to this kind of crap from both academics and government authorities–the sarcasm is lost on some precisely because there are so many people who say stuff like this, with a perfectly straight face. It also shows how it is expected that one’s writing should be sharp, powerful, and critical when dealing with something heinous–a point that is altogether lost on those who gasped out loud about my writing on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and my criticisms of HTS. If it matters to you, you want the writing to be a punch. So many articles contained concerns about “tone”–as if that mattered more than anything else–that they made me sick. Then there is the occasional person who will shriek when I call the State Department a bunch of fucking hypocritical assholes, because their view of an academic is a composite of a eunuch-pious priest-mealy mouthed waffler who dances around the issues afraid to offend no one, because universities, apparently, are to serve as obedience training schools, focusing on the regurgitation of data and the recitation of important people who are authorized to have opinions.
This is not a straw man either: my university periodically gets written complaints by people who hate my opinions, and believe I should be sacked for having them. The letters are a testament to the infantile submission of some, and others’ totalitarian impulse to enforce conformity–no debates from people in universities, no dissent or disagreement (gee, I wonder how “science” happens?), and no impolite writing against those in power. Incidentally, the letters get totally ignored 75% of the time, and the rest of the time the complainers are reminded that the university is a place for freedom to explore many different ways of thinking–because apparently that freedom is alien to the rest of the society. But slaves and tyrants keep writing them, thinking that I am ever going to be daunted by them, as if my university were a stern nanny, there to vet everything we say, to audit each of us, and “correct” us if we should be “too troubling.” They want a university that is a komissar, a proof reader for the rich and powerful. The shit you read in the article is the shit many consume and say “Yum!” after swallowing it.
It’s not just Gaddafi that needs to be overthrown and blown out of his throne, we have plenty of dictators and oppressors right here at home.
On the other hand, the protest signs should have given it all away, that this was a joke.
Jeremy
24 February 2011
I think I need a new pair of glasses. Is this zeroanthropology.net ?
:)
Jeremy
24 February 2011
Oh and only now do I see :
“deeply concerned”
LMAO !
Jeremy
24 February 2011
Sorry for the spamming, but this is enormous :
“one may state in the strongest possible terms that events may be deplorable”
^^
martin
24 February 2011
hehehehe, reading the reactions at least i can feel proud of myself. i was the second one who “voted” 5 points under this essay. ufff, it is a good sign that i did not lose sense of humour. well done, max!
R.A.
24 February 2011
HL Mencken and Mark Twain would be proud of this one, Max. But, of course, I mean that in the most nuanced and complex way possible. You know that…
ra
R.A.
24 February 2011
I am going to cite you in my new book, Max:
The Innocents Abroad 2.0: The Pilgrims’ Discursively Constructed Progress in Libya, and other stories.
Available soon at your local WalMart, right next to Sarah Palin’s newest geopolitical masterpiece.
ok, im done now.
ra
Maximilian Forte
25 February 2011
Even better, when the article gets republished by others…time to insert that warning as recommended by Douglas.
CM
25 February 2011
Good one. When I first read the title I thought that someone had kidnapped you and put an alien in your place.
From one of the signs:
“What do we want? Restraint! Calm! Dialogue!”
To be followed by “When do we want it? Can I pencil you in for 4:30 next Thursday afternoon?”
Neil Kitson’s blog Canadians in Afghanistan quoted George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” today in his post Obama, George Orwell, and international “norms” .
Frightening how Orwellian ideas surface more and more often these days.
Maximilian Forte
25 February 2011
Thanks CM. Things are starting to take another turn now, as if the answer to “do you want intervention?” is “OK, then let it be NATO intervention!” I am seeing the left becoming divided by the stances taken by Ortega in Nicaragua (unabashed support for Gaddafi), to Fidel in Cuba (more ambivalent, but sees a NATO plot), to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (denounces foreign intervention, backs Gaddafi…but his party, the PSUV, apparently does not). Here are some links to trace the evolving brawl:
On NATO for Libya:
http://www.diigo.com/user/openanthropology/Libya,%20NATO
On Libya, Chavez:
http://www.diigo.com/user/openanthropology/Libya,%20Chavez
On Libya, Cuba:
http://www.diigo.com/user/openanthropology/Libya,%20Cuba
On Libya, Nicaragua:
Gadhafi’s LatAm allies show solidarity, caution
(links will not open a new window/tab, sorry)
ryan a
26 February 2011
what always gets me is how so many pundits and politicians–left and right–talk about “freedom,” but what they actually mean is “control.”