Sunday, April 3, 2011
Colonizer and Colonized
This video is violent. Real violence. It is not heroic or justified. It is systematic.
Perhaps this incident is an indication of the relatively mundane aspects of the machinery of military. Technology and politics fuse their ties in military conflict more than they do in scientific endeavors. As an academic, though hesitant in practice, I am convinced of the structure in which I participate. That is exists. This gun-camera obfuscates the relationship of colonizer and colonized, but in its abstraction to us, lays down a broader abstract scope. It might be characterized as a tragedy, but it is imperative to the relationship between these soldiers and the bodies of those on the ground. It reaffirms their practices and their boundaries.
This is my perspective as an American taking stock in the dichotomy of violence at home, or within the bordered regions of the mind, and the thirst for it abroad. The reality of living in disciplined surroundings, in a white American middle-class skin, straight identified in theory, affords me a place in the "colonizer's" system. My awareness of this space is dependent upon the systematically unbalanced body of the colonized. I need to maintain this identity by reaffirming my distance from these bodies. This desire is a theoretical fine line. It is the line crossed when learning about the human body as the site of authoritarian discipline and observation. It is the line observed in time and space as the body of the colonized, especially at home (for the colonized are next door too). Their struggle for recognition informs their collective identity as colonized. Family takes on a hazy balance as they attempt to gain some amount of dignity. Fear shakes the boundaries between group and theory, usually by reinforcing them afterward. I say to myself, at least it is not me. The colonized say, just wait.
Where can a dialogue exist? It must lay in a restructuring of borders in mind. It will take time, but more importantly it will take belief in the human-ness of the other. There must be something other than what there is now.
This incident is not that. It is evidence of distance. It is evidence of separation.
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Alex, I just watched the video. Intense. We definitely should talk about this video in relationship to the ethics of "seeing" violence, particularly after the SFMOMA trip. What kind of ethics does this video ask of us?
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Fanon, I began to think about the role of the military in colonial relationships; specifically the inquest to military maneuver by rationality and academic discourse. The abstract notions of theory are ultimately encouraged by the interests of the colonialists, since the discourse is separate from the need for "bread and land", and mystified by the colonized as reductive to their identity. The language of the colonizer becomes militarized, tied directly to the maneuvers of its forces and economic interests. The violence in this video is incidental to this behavior and the terminology found in the logic of the colonizer. I would venture to say that the language used by the "gunner" in the "gunship" is the language of the colonizer, however banal or shocking it might be. The violence is separated from reality; literally, figuratively and linguistically.
ReplyDeleteAlex, I am glad you brought up this idea of language. Maybe we can talk about what it means "to engage" and call humans "birds" and so on. If we have time in class, perhaps we should incorporate this video in class discussion.
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