Media Bias on Fort Hood Tragedy

This isn’t particularly surprising.

American civil liberties get massacred during such crises. Instead of calling Major Hasan an ‘alleged’ shooter till he is confirmed guilty by a court of law (Fifth Amendment), speculators have already gone judge, jury and executioner on him.

What’s despicable is that allegations of Islamic terrorism are already in the media spin and public discourse over this gruesome incident. The mainstream media wasted no time in linking a minority religion to a mass murder simply due to our preconceived notions of who commits ‘terrorism’ or ‘jihad’ for that matter. As a response to this unjust heterogenous racial interpellation, Muslim organizations were quick to come out and condemn the attacks. As a response to backlash, many will back away from the interpellation (I am not a Muslim) rather than condemn all violence.

United States national identity has always predicated on a phantasmic threat of an internal or external Other, from indigenous peoples to slaves to USSR during the Cold War to immigrants and anyone that can be marked with an old Orientalist trope. Often, labels create a self-fulfilling prophecy that reinforces a bi-polar world-view. The case of Major Hasan might just be one of those self-fulfilling prophecies hidden beneath moral panic.

I’ll share my preliminary thoughts when I heard about this incident. One, Fort Hood happens when the state deploys people to take part in a war that it cannot justify. A little known fact from Vietnam was that by the end of the war, American soldiers threw bombs at their own. While there is no active draft in place, there are certainly backdoor drafts and socio-economic conditions that tempt unwilling participants to give their lives for this country. It’s certainly an unpopular thought but it is not xenophobic and bigoted like the thoughts of those who immediately jumped to the conclusion that this was a ‘Muslim terrorist’ attack.

I ask everyone to pray (in their own way) for the families of the victims. But also keep in mind and pray for the victims of the unwarranted backlash that may just intensify against Muslims and people of color in this country.

Video Courtesy: Al Jazeera

I believe that these critics are largely unaware of the extent to which politicians, in league with those who employ terror as a tactic to push a racial supremacy and corrupt agenda, had become a threat to the safety and security of our people. Terrorism has become a global issue and it impacts Fiji as well. We are fully cooperating in the international effort to control and contain this scourge.

The full speech is here, courtesy Coup 4.5

Commodore, you are reigning over Fiji with the military, using force and terror tactics. What does that make your regime?

That security is socially constructed does not mean that there are not to be found real, material conditions that help to create particular interpretations of threats, or that such conditions are irrelevant to either the creation or undermining of the assumptions underlying security policy. Enemies, in part, “create” each other, via the projections of their worst fears onto the other; in this respect, their relationship is intersubjective. To the extent that they act on these projections, threats to each other acquire a material character.
-Ronnie Lipschutz, UCSC

Kim Jong-Il wants attention. And now he has it. He won’t go in our ‘Morons of the Week’ column and certainly scores points for knowing how to misuse national resources to get international attention.

Our problem with MSM coverage of the North Korea ‘missile threat’ is with the purported hegemonic discourse. Hegemonic discourse does not pertain to just speech; it refers to whole narratives, with a hero and a villain, and us and them that we must defeat and overcome. The point of hegemonic discourse–in this case the discourse of the United States on demonizing North Korea and drawing attention to its nuclear activities—is to subjugate and oppress the counter-discourses of a race-war, nuclearism and anti-capitalism.

(1) Race war discourse

While this is not a clash of civilizations, it is certainly a race war in that the entire discourse revolves around preventing certain kinds of people from acquiring and using nuclear weapons.  Would the United States use the same tactics in France? Or even India? No, in fact it looked the other way on outrageous French nuclear testing in the Pacific and supports India’s nuclear program despite the fact that it is not a signatory of the NPT!

Ronnie Lipschutz has some fine lines for us in On Security:

To be sure, the United States and Russia do not launch missiles against each other because both know the result would be annihilation. But the same is true for France and Britain, or China and Israel. It was the existence of the Other that gave deterrence its power; it is the disappearance of the Other that has vanquished that power. Where Russia is now concerned, we are, paradoxically, not secure, because we see no need to be secured. In other words, as Ole Waever might put it, where there is no constructed threat, there is no security problem. France is fully capable of doing great damage to the United States, but that capability has no meaning in terms of U.S. security.

On the other hand, see the Iran nuclear ‘crisis’ as an example. The United States has demonized Ahmadinejad at every opportunity and conjured him up as an Islamic fundamentalist and nationalist who will defy non-proliferation at all costs. On the other hand, Ahmadinejad cheekily asked the United States to join the rest of civilization in worshipping God. That is the discourse of race war but it is concealed by juridical discourse—the hegemonic discourse.

To borrow from Michael Foucault, the United States is using the juridical schema of nuclear non-proliferation to conceal the war-repression schema. North Korea is the historical Other, the terrorist, the threat against whom the world must be protected in the juridical schema. Yet, under the war-repression schema, North Korea is a sovereign nation with the right to develop nuclear and communications technology. And this latest action is really nothing more than a plea for economic help.

(2) Nuclearism discourse

Tied to the race war schema, is the discourse of nuclearism, which refers to the ideology that nuclear weapons are instruments of peace. Nukespeak in the form of MAD or the hype over so-called precision weapons by our leaders has had trickle-down effects to the point of achieving a mental-wipe or historical amnesia of the U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This discourse effectively represents a war on history and subjugation of knowledges about the horrors of nuclear war and fallout.

Closely related to nuclearism is the issue of whiteness around nuclear weapons, the paternalistic presupposition that Western powers are the responsible and rightful leaders on the issue, the racist ideology that nuclear weapons in the hands of an Islamic country or “terrorist” spells end to world peace or catastrophe while it is perfectly alright for France, Britain, the United States, Russia, China and now India, to have nuclear weapons.

The epistemological assumptions of nuclearism are dangerous, besides being racist and morally repulsive. The formation of a “nuclear club” and an exclusive right to possess nuclear weapons makes them a forbidden fruit and an issue of prestige, thereby encouraging proliferation. Indeed, discourse around the North Korea and Iran nuclear buildup denotes that these countries see a successful completion of the fuel cycle or the launching of a rocket as an issue of great prestige. There is absolutely nothing prestigious about owning weapons of mass destruction, weapons that can end civilization. However, countries like North Korea and Iran can be forgiven for their nuclearist mentality; after all, it is an implication of the discourse that has been perpetuated by the West, a discourse that has become common knowledge and culture.

Nuclearism must be addressed and put on the table to move past the current impasse over nuclear negotiations and the non-proliferation regime. Without denouncing nuclear weapons and facing our moral conscience as the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons, we cannot hope to avert nuclear proliferation and prevent ‘rogue states’ from going that route.

(3) Anti-Capitalism Discourse

Truth be told, much of the world is suffering from the dire effects of an international economic system that does  not benefit them. All the signs of desperation are present. They come from the rallies and burning of effigies around the world. The violent protests against NATO and the G-20 summit. The high prices of food. They come as small requests from students on whether anyone is listening. And even the scapegoating of the Other (be it gays, Muslims, liberals, undocumented immigrants) is really an ignorant response to our unwanted troubles, thoughts and desires.

The problem is not North Korea or Kim Jung II. The problem is an international system of haves and have-nots, where people without institutional power vie for attention. In this scenario, a nuclear missile from an impoverished, wretched country helps garner more attention than protests, rallies and suicide. How else can North Korea hope to get the help that it desperately needs?

Foolcracy is hits the nail on what might happen next:

What else of those “consequences” besides the expected veto of proposed UN sanctions?

It probably means that a deal will be made with North Korea for food and other essentials. In return, North Korea will “give up” part of its nuclear or rocket program and…then, in a couple of years, they will go back to the same game of spitting in the face of the world in exchange for food and other essentials. In other words, its a bit like a dysfunctional family that likes to play with guns.

The Obama Administration has scrambled to battle anti-Americanism with new euphemisms. It is not the ‘global war on terror’ but a ‘global contingency operation.’ Not likely to catch on anytime soon. The people living in dire states and conditions, ravaged by war, poverty and hardship, know precisely what it is–an attack on their existence predicated by the United States and its allies.

We have seen and read the master narrative before of demonizing a country, bringing about regime change and killing, colonizing and repressing more peoples while doing it. By unearthing these counter-discourses, we can hope to move towards a ‘solution’ to the North Korea issue. Again, the ‘problem-solution’ is not the missiles, but the manner in which North Korea is seeking help and attention. Finding common ground requires discovering and deconstructing the cultural and discursive constructs. However, the window of opportunity is quite small, as seen by positions and interests of the parties involved. I don’t doubt though, that North Korea will cease to be an entity sometime in the near future and become into Korea again.

The appointment of Janet Napolitano to the top Homeland Security post has elicited a diverse number of reactions. In a New York Times article, some immigration hardliners are calling it a travesty, NumbersUSA thinks that President-elect Barack Obama could have done worse, while ‘liberals’ think that Napolitano represents a balanced and constructive view, given that she is in favor of a comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes 12 million undocumented migrants. Conservatives in Arizona are happy that finally power might shift towards them with the election of Jan Brewer to Governorship.

Few are questioning the rise of ‘immigration’ as a matter of national security to the point where debates over the chief post of Homeland Security now include major immigration groups. Is this a failure of the imagination, ignorance or just plain historical amnesia? Discourses surrounding the appointment of Napolitano simply serve as polemical devices to achieve political ends while doing nothing to actually address the epistemological and ontological flaws in the actual nature of the Department of Homeland Security.

Writing for the Washington Post, Edward Alden is one of the few mainstream and liberal commentators who comes close to hitting the nail on the head with this statement in ‘Close Minded on the Border:

Instead of continuing to embrace the massive flow of talent, energy and initiative that the rest of the world has long offered the United States, we launched an expensive, futile experiment to see whether we could seal our borders against the ills of the world, from terrorists to drugs to illegal migrants. This effort has betrayed both our ideals and our interests.

Yet, he notes that Janet Napolitano has a rare opportunity to set the nation back on track—to improve security without sacrificing American values and ideals.

On November 25, 2002, President Bush signed into law the Homeland Security Act of 2002 which created the Department of Homeland Security that effectively took over the INS (now CIS). This reorganization blurred the line between immigration policy and terrorism policy to the detriment of many immigrants in the United States – immigration policy became an issue of national security, widening the nexus of security concerns, and hence, granting more policing power to the State.

This incorporation of immigration as national security has far-reaching implications—apart from the fact that immigration is now treated as a security concern rather than an economic and cultural benefit, the dehumanization and scapegoating of undocumented immigrants has proliferated out of control. From local enforcement and state laws to election battles, the unnamed and othered ‘illegal immigrant’ is the big bad bogeyman against whom we need protection.

Under the DHS, the Constitution has taken a hit. Forget the Fourth Amendment; border agents can search laptops and other electronic devices without cause, without reasonable search and seizure standards. Forget the Fourteenth Amendment and equal protection of the laws; non-citizens suspected of violating immigration law can be jailed for months or even years without due process of law as they await deportation. Psychotropic drugs are given to detained immigrants awaiting deportation, raising questions about the Eight Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Ask DHS, what part of ILLEGAL don’t you understand?

‘Illegal’ is associated with criminal even though the majority of ‘out-of-status’ immigrants have committed no crimes (mere illegal presence is not a crime). Innocent children of undocumented immigrants are subject to hatred and insult by short-sighted spiteful nativists while some in Congress want to change the Constitution to strip children born here of their birthright citizenship. Even U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, detained and almost deported mistakenly, have not escaped the scathing effects of the increased militarization of immigration. And of course, ‘race’ serves as a proxy for criminality or wrong-doing—most of the citizens and legal permanent residents targeted by ICE have been disproportionately non-white and this has also trickled down from the DHS to local police enforcement of immigration. A blog reader comments:

My brother was working construction to make extra money. Police in Greenwood, Indiana came up to him, and asked him for his green card. He laughed, because he didn’t know he was serious. It got serious fast when he was pushed to the ground, and handcuffed. When his friends/coworkers told him he’s from Alaska and American, and that he had ID, they finally called off the additional policemen requested. I guess it is illegal to have dark skin in America.

What is Obama telling us by keeping the DHS and appointing a ‘border governor’ like Napolitano to the post: that ‘illegal immigrants’ are a national security problem requiring a ‘state of emergency?’ That we are (only) threatened as a country from unknown enemies across our borders? That a militaristic, get-tough approach to humanitarian disasters and attractive immigration innovation works best? That family-sponsored visa petitions, widowed-spouses of U.S. citizens, undocumented students, farm workers, American citizens who happen to be racial minorities, are a threat to the national security apparatus?

Coming to the actual ‘security’ problem faced by the United States:

Our perception of what and from whom we need to be secured is not based on the actual threats that exist, but on the threats that we are told to perceive by the state. Thus, terrorists, drugs, illegal immigrants, “Third World” dictators, rogue states, blacks, non-Christians, and the Other, are considered as threats to the national security apparatus, and consequently, as threats to the individual American. This state construction of threats pervades our minds, causing a trickle-down effect that encourages a culture of fear, where the only limit to the coming danger is our imagination. Lipschutz (2000, 44-45) concludes in After Authority: War, Peace, and Global Politics in the 21st Century, “the national security state is brought down to the level of the household, and each one arms itself against the security dilemma posed by its neighbor across the hedge of fence.”

In On Security, Ole Waever, a senior researcher at the Center for Peace and Conflict Research, notes that “in naming a certain development a security problem, the state can claim a special right, one that in the final instance, always be defined by the state and its elites” (1995, 55). This process is termed as “securitization,” which simply means treating an event or issue as a problem of national security rather than first questioning whether it should even be treated as a security issue. Such an act serves the interests of the state and its elites, starting with the discourse of security by the state, which constructs and perpetuates state identity and existence. Immigration policy under the DHS has hence undergone unwarranted securitization, serving the interest of the state (and private detention) apparatus.

Forgetting political theory for the moment, given the ineffectiveness (one need not look any further than FEMA and the current border fence woes), widespread criticism and lawsuits against the DHS, it is a wonder that more people are not writing about simply dismantling the agency. The DHS was dreamed into existence after 9-11, it can (and should) be legislated out of existence if we really want change we can believe in, change that restores some sort of integrity into the American system of justice, especially in regards to immigration policy.

Forget Napolitano. Dismantle the DHS.

i wait for you in this caged room
we’ve never met and yet
[you feel familiar
i feel like i've known you before]

shadows mill past me
moving slowly, drudging and digging
futures ploughed within these timeless walls
you see me waiting and yet
[i can’t get to you,
i feel stationary much like before]

what is this feeling
fluid and fragmented
but immobile by design
so close and yet so far
[you slip away again
i feel betrayed, more than before]

i tell myself that i believe in you
i tell others to understand you
[i truly do believe in you,
in the DREAMs of you]

-DreamActivist

October 24, 2007. That is the date of the stamp on our Dreams Deferred.

Categorically denied even before debate, subjected to another indefinite wait, deferred dreams have a crippling effect on morales and ambitions.

20 million — that is the estimated number of us all over the world. Picked and tucked into the battle for our lives–Sorry, you don’t get guns and armor. Thrown into the deep end of the ocean so swim or you will drown–Sorry, no swimming lessons available. Underprivileged and underclass–sorry, no financial aid available. Illegal in our homes, legal away from our land–sorry no relief available.

Like the farmer that waits for the drought to end, like the mother that eagerly waits the birth of her child, like the student that cannot wait to turn 18 and gain ‘freedom,’ like the many American people who can see no further than ‘change’ with a new Administration, we too have been in for a long haul, a long stay in these waiting rooms of history

To DREAMers across America — I know this wait is the hardest time. I know life in limbo is harsh like life in a prison, only you have committed no crime. But remember, we have the power to make this wait productive, to take this time as a test–a character-building exercise– and to end this wait. Take each defeat as a learning lesson, as a challenge to do better and get better till you beat every test.

Do not despair. Do not be afraid. Do not give up. Stay true to your DREAMs.

]]> http://prernalal.com/2008/10/in-these-waiting-rooms-of-history-the-dream-of-u/feed/ 2 http://prernalal.com/2008/09/wall-street-collapse-another-crisis-of-capitalism/ http://prernalal.com/2008/09/wall-street-collapse-another-crisis-of-capitalism/#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:03:57 +0000 Prerna http://prernalal.com/?p=459

I wish I had the ability to be shocked when I hear about a ‘deep crisis’ that can cause staggering losses (a cyclical crisis of capitalism), a $700 billion bailout for private sector cronies and John McCain canceling a 2-3 hour debate appearance as a publicity stunt to resolve this crisis (as if, his presence would make a difference. Admittedly, he has a weak economic understanding). But I digress.

It’s not like a major financial crisis was unexpected in the near future. Political economists have been making predictions about the fall of the U.S. dollar for quite some time; this Wall Street financial collapse is just a start. Oil prices are dropping, Asian markets are coming down even immigration is down (ALIPAC must be happy; they are happily blaming immigrants for the meltdown too). Actually forget the contemporary political economists and politicians trying to pinpoint the source of this crisis; revisit the blog favorite Karl Marx, who held that the internal contradictions within capitalism as a system would create cycles of boom and slump, that over time would become more untenable as social forces opposing it built up, eventually leading to an overthrow of the system. What are these internal contradictions?

1. The tendency of the rate of profit to fall

2. The concentration of capital

3. Rise in unemployment

4. Overproduction or Underconsumption (crisis of realization)

5. Collapse of credit

6. Bigger firms buying out smaller and weaker firms (in this case, the government bailing out)

7. Crisis ‘solved’ till the next inevitable cycle

Do these predictions of more than 150 years ago sound familiar?

With incredible balance of trade deficits, deficit spending on a permanent war economy that created little general demand for goods and services, a tightened money market, less money for investment and lending, rising inflation rates combined with subsequent job and income loss, inability to buy or payback loans … It doesn’t take one to be a Marxist or an Political Economy expert to state that ‘the economy’ is not in a good health - a discourse that I have problems with as I will explain soon.

As a temporary fix to this crisis of capitalism, the government will probably buy distressed mortgages at deep discounts from banks and other institutions. Band-aids do wear off eventually.

Under the internal contradictions of capitalism, Marx proposed that there is a tendency at some time in the capitalist process for the rate of profit to fall. Given that, firms try to cutback leading to a rise in unemployment. This does little to solve the problem given that more numbers unemployed means mean more people with less buying power leading to the problem of overproduction or under-consumption, collapse of credit and downfall of weaker firms.

The gambling on Wall Street is explained not only by greed, but by the need to break from the falling rate of profit and salvage failing industries like real estate. Obviously, when you strip people of their buying power and tighten the money supply at the same time leading to little credit availability, goods and services that are produced won’t be sold, which only results in a business and industry downfall.

In my personal opinion, the U.S. recession should be allowed to run its course. America needs to seriously reconsider its priorities. A permanent war economy with MASSIVE CONSUMPTION ON BORROWED MONEY, with wealth concentrated at the top, is not sustainable. For example, the drop in oil prices comes as a result of less consumer demand, or rather, perceptions of inability to consume Oil. But in the long run, that is a GOOD thing — we need to move towards alternative energy for the sake of this planet and if a few bankrupt companies is what it takes to reverse course, count me in! As Baudrillard would argue, ‘postmodern’ society consists an explosion of signs and symbols that encourage an individual to merely services the needs of the productive system while believing in the illusion that s/he is servicing her/his needs and wants. Wake up! It is about time that the 5% of the world’s population that uses the most energy and creates the most waste, learns through experience and cuts back on consumption that is eating it alive.

But an economic and trade re-alignment and balance of power shift is still some ways off. As long as developing nations like China are manufacturing economies, they would come to the rescue of the U.S. dollar as they depend on U.S. (over)consumption for its own gross profits. Anyone else think this interdependency is a tad-bit problematic?

That was my short PE take of the current on-goings.

A central problem with this ‘crisis of capitalism’ and how it is portrayed and spoken about lies with discourse. ‘The economy’ is treated as some sort of independent sphere, that has feelings, mood-swings, given an invisible spatiality recognized only through symbolic gestures and institutions. It is merely seen a system that organizes production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, treating human beings as isolated species who are not part of the process. Speech acts and utterances reduce the complex web of inter-relationships–human relationships–to matters of financial transactions. Such a reductionist and alienated approach allows for questions of value in terms of HOW much but never questions its own central assumptions as to WHY? Poverty is a mere by-product as is environmental pollution. The second-shift of women is never part of GDP calculatons. Things have value in an economy only so far as they have exchange value. Rendering ‘use value’ as ineffective allows for a more estranged and alienated governing of laws.

And to thrown in Foucault just for the sentence, since the judges of normalcy are everywhere, guess what? A crisis of capitalism cannot be normal. The economy is treated as a person that is ill, in need of medication or else it would face certain collapse. The U.S. government then acts as a ‘superhero’ doctor to save the economy from this collapse, making some potions to prolong an ailing organism.

Given below is a short summary of how the Feds have tried to fix the crisis of capitalism in terms of business cycles time and again. And failed miserably each time.

Bailouts that have failed (Courtesy: Times of India)

The 1907 panic
In October that year, a run on the Knickerbocker Trust after it failed to corner the market in United Copper shares caused panic on Wall Street. Stocks plummeted, threatening major banks with failure. The calming influence came not from the Fed—which did not exist—but from banker John Pierpont Morgan, who organized a consortium of bankers to provide funds to prop up banks and buy up stocks.
Great Depression, 1930s
Some 9,000 banks failed after a stock market collapse triggered severe restriction of credit, massive loan failures and “runs” by depositors to withdraw funds. President F D Roosevelt’s first act after his 1933 inauguration was to declare a 3-day bank holiday to cool things off. He later signed into law the Glass-Steagall Act, creating Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC), to restore depositors’ confidence in banks.
Commonwealth Bank, 1972
This was the first bank with over $1 billion in assets to be bailed out. Being essential to Detroit’s inner city, so FDIC provided $36 million in loans—never to be repaid.
First Pennsylvania, 1980
Established in 1782 as one of the first US private banks, First Penn was among many banks in the 1970s made insolvent by high deposit interest rates that outstripped earnings from loweryielding assets. It was FDIC’s first large-scale bailout.
Continental Illinois, 1984
Once the seventh-largest US bank, Chicagobased Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust was deemed “too big to fail” and remains the largest commercial bank taken over by the Fed and FDIC. The $40 billion-asset bank became insolvent due to bad oil and gas exploration loans.
Bear Stearns, 2008
US Fed and treasury brokered a weekend deal for JPMorgan Chase & Co to buy Bear Stearns at a rock-bottom price, with the Fed agreeing to guarantee $29 billion in Bear Stearns assets taken on by JPMorgan.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, 2008
The government seized control of mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stabilise them after massive falls in their share price made it impossible for them to raise needed capital to sustain mounting mortgage losses.
AIG, 2008
Fed stepped in to rescue AIG, one of the world’s largest insurers, with an $85 billion injection of taxpayer money. Under the deal, the government will get a 79.9% stake in AIG

black/white, straight/gay, women/men, left/right, us/them, American/Un-American, nativist/humanist, legal/illegal, liberal/conservative anti-corporate/anti-labor, capitalism/communist, butch/femme, inside/outside, developed/undeveloped, top/bottom, public/private…

Our world is tainted in simplistic, dualistic undertones since we are young and we grow up conditioned to think in this manner. It starts from the household where pink is for girls and blue is for boys going all the way to the President where you are either with him or against him and there is no middle ground, no space to negotiate and intervene.

This blog is a reflection of my personal and political philosophy. I am not concerned with whether anyone subscribes to it or not; for me, it is about building a space without the pervasive duality and dichotomy of everyday discourses. And if that space is only occupied by the presence of few, that is fine with me as well. The point is to make ruptures and disruptions in these hegemonic continuous, cyclical modes of thinking.

The intellectual work that tested my limits was Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject.

Saba Mahmood rejects secular liberal feminist theory and practices that cast religion (in this case, Islam), as opposed to the interests of women. Through her particular field study of the grassroots women’s piety movements in the mosques of Cairo between 1995 and 1997, Mahmood aims to provide a stark contrast to the often secular liberal depictions of women’s movements. In doing so, she questions the age-old ethnocentric notions of secular liberal feminism that requires feminism and women’s movements to be framed as opposed to structures of patriarchy and power i.e. religion and going a step further, the nation-state project. Mahmood does away with these notions of ethical norms, agency and freedom, thereby posing conceptual problems for secular feminists who would otherwise continue to push for the liberation of women from Islam and actual structures of power in order to achieve their warped-up notions of liberal emancipation of women.

I wrestled for days with this book. Essentially Mahmood was saying that feminism and being political need not denote the emancipation of women from patriarchal structures like religion and the nation-state. Women do not have to completely reject structures of power to actually carve a space and voice for themselves, and thereby work towards transforming it as the women in the piety movement carved spaces for themselves within a traditionally male sphere. I finally realized that juxtaposing Mahmood’s text with secular liberal feminism need not mean that I had to choose or submit to one. I did not and neither do you. Sometimes the questions are more enlightening than the answers to them.

So when I read comments like “how can you be anti-corporate and still pro-exploitation of cheap labor from the Third World?” it is immediately marked as spam. Maybe I should take the time to respond, to expose conditioned minds to different ways of thinking about issues, to bury the either/or in an intellectual manner. Then again, the title of the blog should be clue enough — I do not do either/or and will not submit to that discourse.

You do not need to choose between being pro-amnesty and pro-American. You need not choose between an “illegal alien” and a U.S. citizen. And you definitely do not have to be pro-migrant or anti-migrant. Focus on the becoming, not the being.

When I speak about bridges, I am referring to a metaphor for fluidity, change, channeling, multiple levels of positioning that culminate into a meeting point. I am not speak of ONE compromise or middle point–I am comfortable with no resolutions. Call it folly or postmodern emancipation. I am comfortable in-limbo; after all, that is my conditioning, no?

I realize I am flawed — There are certain categories I hold dear that I did not choose for myself. At times my patience is tested and I do slip up with the anti-_______. And I will not offer love or compassion to those who hate me because of some category, label, classification, documentation, physical feature, or preference. No, I am not a Gandhi or MLK and do not wish to go down that path. It is a tit for tat when it comes to me. But I will agree to disagree heartedly.

• Don’t make claims without warrants.
• NEVER fall for dualities and binary modes of thinking i.e. black/white, either/or. As a longer example, juxtaposing the gathering of women in a patriarchal space to secular liberal feminism does not mean we stop questioning oppression no matter how narrow the space. We don’t need to submit to either non-liberal contestable agency or First World secular feminism.
• Get rid of certainty of knowledge and any broad generalized claims to truth – questions are better than statements. DECONSTRUCT AWAY!
  
• What? Who? – I.E. What is criminalized? Who is the incarcerating regime? Keep your units of analysis clear.
  
• LET THE SUBALTERN SPEAK – It is not the place of a secular, liberal and privileged scholar (albeit outsider) to tackle and analyze unfamiliar structures and discourses. Lets not assign agency to people who do not see themselves as agents, situating them in movements that they don’t consciously identify with.
• Don’t obsess over categories, labels, boxes
• Sympathize with the becoming, not the being
• Never ignore the specific social and historical configuration within which the research is situated.
• Keep this at the back of your mind – Ideas and assumptions do not exist outside the material conditions of life. Go to the root of the matter if you need to.
• Don’t ignore the importance of minor acts and inconspicuous transformations – they may be the start of something more. Footnote them if possible.
• Value narratives and experiences. Don’t shy away from feeling and emotions. They are oftentimes more powerful than empirical evidence.
• Aim for discontinuities and ruptures in meta-narratives
• Make notes of contradictions
• Keep in mind: agency/structure without the binaries. It is a reproductive and cyclical process.
• Do not disregard the importance of space – Colonial globality? Autonomous space? Hate-free zone? Sanctuary-sphere? Nuclear-free zone? — What space do we inhabit?
• Never approach an issue in a uni-dimensional manner. It is not just nationalism, not just sexism, not just racism or classism  i.e. the gendered impacts of a globalization that has disparate impact on the rich/poor/ethnic minorities of developed, developing and underdeveloping countries. Try and see the broader linkages between ISMs, systemic patterns if possible while always being careful of meta-narratives.
• Be a tragic-comic — Humor helps.
• Question/Critique everything, including the self.