A Hail from the Panopticon

The Hail

In his essay, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," Louis Althusser argues that ideology constitutes "concrete individuals as subjects." We learn to accept as true and obvious that which is ideological and at work in service to the state's authority by recognizing ourselves in its terms.

To make this argument, Althusser uses an analogy. A busy public street, a police officer who calls out, "Hey, you there!", and a random citizen who answers. In the easy "rituals of ideological recognition," he argues, we "guarantee" our constitution as "concrete, individual, distinguishable and (naturally) irreplaceable subjects" of the state's authority.

From the Panopticon

In "Panopticism," from Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault describes philosopher Jeremy Bentham's architectural designs for a prison. The design allowed prison staff to observe prisoners without detection. Over time, it was effective not merely in allowing for reduced staff but because the prisoners, anticipating surveillance, would police their own behavior in order to avoid further punishment. The guard, in other words, no longer needed to hail the prisoner.

The War on Terror

Several images from Boston, Watertown, and Cambridge were striking reflections of the unique kind of police state the U.S. has become.

The bombings at the Boston Marathon resulted in a staggering display of police and security resources--including an overwhelming number of local and state police, SWAT teams, and FBI agents all heavily armed and equipped. Their redeployment to Watertown and Cambridge, following the shoot-out at MIT and "manhunt" that followed, was an equally impressive display of force and resource. At one point, news reported over 900 officers were present, not counting FBI agents, all armed with high-powered rifles, surveillance technologies, and vehicles.

What was particularly impressive about all of this was not the ability of the state to marshall so many armed and equipped officers and agents--given the funds diverted from every other area of the federal budget to create just such an ability--but the willing cooperation and then celebration of that force by the public. Not just in Boston, Watertown, and Cambridge, but from around the country.

We have, it would seem, accepted the police state as our current reality--in the name of our collective safety and security against our collective enemies. We are now at the point of not even needing the guards in the tower. We have answered the hail, emptied the streets, and partied over the graves of our freedoms while waving the American flag. So thoroughly have we answered the hail, that we are punishing one another in the interests it represents and calls us to recognize. Already, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate crimes are, again, on the rise.

A Letter Regarding Navajo President Shelly's Trip to Israel

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April 3, 2013

The Honorable Ben Shelly President

Navajo Nation PO Box 7440

Window Rock

Navajo Nation 86515

Dear President Shelly:

We are writing as a group of American Indian, Native Hawaiian, and other Indigenous scholars to express our grave disappointment in your recent trip to Israel. As Indigenous educators, we find your support for the state of Israel to be in complete contradiction to our values and sense of justice. Israel has illegally occupied Palestine for decades. Your public and political engagement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials sends a message that you endorse the continued occupation of the West Bank, including construction of new Jewish settlements there, as well as the ongoing settler colonial situation for Palestinians residing within the 1948 boundaries asserted by the Israeli state, and exclusion of Palestinian refugees from reclaiming their homes and homeland after being violently expelled during the nakba (catastrophe) when Israel was founded. All of us have endorsed the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which is part of an international effort led by Palestinian civil society to draw attention to the brutality of the ongoing occupation of Palestinian homelands.

Like the Diné people, our various peoples (Osage, Choctaw, Dakota, Lenape, Kanaka Maoli, and Pohnpeian) have suffered through the process of settlement, colonization, or militarization of our homelands. Thanks to the wisdom of our ancestors, we have persisted. But our prospects as peoples will never be as full or complete as they might have been had those who colonized us been just and honest in their dealings with us. A similar process has unfolded for Palestinian people over the past half-.‐ century. Indeed, Israeli demolition of the homes of Palestinian families is not all that different than the Long Walk your people endured in 1864. Your collusion with the Israeli government is a betrayal of that shared history and of the wisdom that has helped all Indigenous peoples survive for centuries.

We ask that you rethink your partnership with a flawed and corrupt state and seek out international relationships that better reflect on all of us as Indigenous peoples.

Very truly yours,

Robert Warrior (Osage), PhD, University of Illinois

On behalf of:

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui (Kanaka Maoli), PhD, Wesleyan University

J. Noelani Goodyear-.‐Kaopua (Kanaka Maoli), Ph.D. University of Hawaii, Mānoa

Noenoe K. Silva (Kanaka Maoli), Ph.D. University of Hawaii, Mānoa

Lisa Kahaleole Hall (Kanaka Maoli), Ph.D. Wells College

Vicente M. Diaz (Pohnpeian), PhD, University of Illinois

Jacki T. Rand (Choctaw), PhD, University of Iowa

Kimberley TallBear (Sisseton-.‐Wahpeton Oyate), PhD, University of California, Berkeley

LeAnne Howe (Choctaw), MFA, University of Illinois

Joanne Barker (Lenni-.‐Lenape Delaware Tribe of Indians), PhD, San Francisco State University

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"Indigenous Scholars Oppose Navajo President 'Becoming Partners' With Israel"

Indian Country Today

Gale Courey Toensing

April 06, 2013

A group of prominent scholars has written to Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly expressing disappointment at his support for Israel and urging him to pursue international relationships that mirror indigenous values and justice....

Shelley met with Netanyahu and other officials at the Knesset [parliament] including the Deputy Minister of Development.  “I want to work with your people. I know that Israel is self-sufficient, what we need is your expertise, what can we share,” Shelly said in a Navajo Nation press release December 12, 2012. “What I read of you—you were no different than we are. How did you survive while moving forward in technology, greenhouses — I am interested in that and becoming partners.”

On February 1, 2013, Shelly met with Israeli diplomats and members of the Arizona Israel Business Council in Arizona to follow up on his December visit to Israel and in March Israeli farmers visited NavajoNation to speak to Navajo farmers at a two-day conference....

All of the scholars who signed the letter to Shelly have endorsed the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which is part of an international movement led by Palestinian civil society to draw attention to the brutality of the ongoing occupation of Palestinian homelands....

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"Navajo President is bully pulpitted by Native Scholars"

The Navajo Post

Navajo Post Reporter

April 15, 2013

Recently, the Navajo President was bully pulpitted by Native scholars for his partnership with Israel, the educators claim that Israel has illegally occupied Palestine for decades.

The President even has local Navajo community organizers blasting him over the visit. As for President Shelly, his press releases he seems to remain steady and only went to Israel for Agricultural technology-

Last year, extreme conspiracy theories sites attack the President for traveling to Israel, calling him a ‘war machine.’

Robert Warrior, the Director of American Indian studies fired off a letter to Shelly, opposing his visit. “As indigenous educators, we find your support for the state of Israel to be in complete contradiction to our values and sense of justice. Israel has illegally occupied Palestine for decades…” Indian Country Today reported.

Some readers even expressed outraged for the hatred of Israel in the form of a comment, “It’s very disconcerting when I hear the hate in the hearts of Native Americans for Israel and by inference, all Jews. For some years I’ve been directing a major historical revision on the iconic Jewish artist, Mark Rothko….” said Noah G. Hoffman, Director of The Mark Rothko Southwest History Project.

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Further Reading:

"Navajo President meeting with Israeli Apartheid government"
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
December 10, 2012

"Shelly at agriculture conference: Navajo lands can 'bloom' like Israeli deserts"

By Alastair Lee Bitsoi

Navajo Times

SHIPROCK, April 11, 2013

In Honor of Jane Doe: The Decriminalization of Rape in the U.S.

The Case

Alexandria Goddard stayed up all night taking screen shots and notes on a series of Twitter posts -- including video and still shots -- from two high school football players. The players -- Trent Mays, 17, and Ma'Lik Richmond, 16 -- carried around an unconscious woman -- Jane Doe, 16 -- from party to party. Throughout the night, they boasted on Twitter about raping her, tweeted jokes about her being a drunk whore, and bragged that "some people deserve to be peed on #whoareyou” and “you don't sleep through a wang in the butthole." The Twitter talk was supplemented with a 12:29 minute long video and numerous pictures. During the video, another rape on an April night was mentioned.

The next morning, most of the tweets, videos, and photos were deleted off the web but remained in circulation via social media and personal phones. In fact, a computer forensic expert documented tens of thousands of texts on 17 phones seized during the investigation. So, while Mays and Richmond worked to remove the evidence from public view, the media and technology made it impossible for them to do so.

Meanwhile, their football coach allegedly learned of the "incident" and suspended them from one night's game. They were charged, however, with digitally penetrating Doe (first in the back-seat of a moving car, then at a party, and then in the basement of a house). Mays was also charged with the illegal use of a minor in nude material.

The defense tried to establish at trial that Doe was so drunk that consent was not an issue. Their witnesses claimed that Doe, though drunk, knew what she was doing and that that implied her willing consent.

On March 17, the Judge issued a guilty delinquent verdict. They will serve their 1-2 year sentences at a juvenile detention facility.

Following the verdict, Doe has received death threats and been further publicly maligned by local football fans.

The Decriminalization of Rape

News commentators, bloggers, and social media status-holders from around the country have reacted strongly to the delinquent guilty verdict -- registering a range of emotions, including CNN's shameful empathy for Mays and Richmond to Anonymous and Roseanne's support for Doe.

What I continue to find so disturbing about all of these reactions is the way the verdict disguises the decriminalization of rape in this country. Arguing over its legitimacy distracts attention to the need for justice.

The tweets, photos, and video demonstrate that Mays and Richmond felt not merely legal immunity for their actions but that they were emboldened by the complicit support they could assume from their friends and community for their attitude and behavior. So much so that they could even drop stories about a previous rape into their video recording of their current rape as if it were all common knowledge and no big deal. So much so that they could write vile remarks about Doe as they were raping her and be egged on to continue. So much so that by the end of the evening, tens of thousands of texts on 17 phones were in wide circulation--locally, regionally, and nationally. The majority of which, like the bar crowd in The Accused, were cheering the rapists on and denigrating Doe's body and character.

Obviously rape is no longer considered a crime (was it ever?). It has become, like high school football, a sport one plays to cheering crowds (has it always been?).

What the case, and its verdict, want to do is suggest that we live in a society based on justice and fairness. It wants to turn Mays and Richmond into criminal deviants and punish them accordingly. It wants to save Doe from herself.

But what the case and the verdict represent is that rape is not an individual criminal act, though being raped is an individual's experience. Rape is a culture of violence against women and girls condoned by a public connected abstractly and sometimes anonymously through the internet, participating as crowds cheering on the violence with impunity. The future is now and it is not the hunger games we are fighting.

Besides those who participated via social media that evening, I can't help but wonder about the party-goers at the three different homes that Mays and Richmond stopped at along the way. They must have carried Doe in and out of the homes, raping her and tweeting and photographing her in their bedrooms and basements. And not one single person said anything to them? Not one single person tried to intervene on Doe's behalf? Not one.

Rape culture is a culture in which violence against women and girls is condoned and participated within by action, ignorance, and indifference -- directly and implicitly. We need to get over ourselves for living in "a democratic society" and start addressing the actual culture of violence against women and children that we live in. 

For Jane Doe.

Dealt With That: On Oscar's Eve

Quentin Tarantino's Djanjo Unchained--a mixing of the spaghetti western, blaxploitation, and action film genres--takes place in 1858 Texas and Mississippi as the story of a freed slave's attempt to rescue his wife from a brutally violent plantation owner. While promoting the film, Tarantino has spoken about "America's two holocausts."

America is responsible for two Holocausts: for the destruction of native Americans and for the slavery of African Americans.

He has also claimed that,

I've always wanted to explore slavery ... to give black American males a hero ... and revenge. ... I am responsible for people talking about slavery in America in a way they have not in 30 years.... Violence on slaves hasn't been dealt with to the extent that I've dealt with it.

This talk has generated a passionate range of concerns and interests in the film, including everything from acidic criticism of Tarantino's problematic license with the history of slavery and race politics in the U.S. (Tavis Smiley) to his reputedly uncritical celebration of violence and reverse racism (Chris Tokey) to sober praise for his creative brilliance (Peter Bradshaw).

Deflecting the less favorable of these concerns, Tarantino has repeatedly and very proudly reassured his critics--particularly his American critics--of the historical importance and social relevance of the film to/for them:

We’ve dealt with the Indian Holocaust, the Holocaust of the Indian American. We haven’t been dealing with the Holocaustic aspects, the Auschwitzian aspects of the slave trade in America.

Americans are, in other words, in need of just such a film as Django Unchained in order to help them "deal with" "the Holocaustic aspects, the Auschwitzian aspects of the slave trade in America." In meeting this need, Tarantino has marshaled his not-insignificant professional resources to put Django Unchained to film and secure its Oscars' Best Picture nomination, calling upon the very real presence of African American actors Jamie Foxx (an Oscar winner), Samuel L. Jackson (Oscar nominated Best Supporting Actor in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction) and Kerry Washington to confront the American public with the truth about the history of slavery that they have failed to deal with.

To indigenous peoples, Tarantino's claims go in a very different direction.

Tarantino claims that the "Indian Holocaust" is an historical fact--a fact of the past. And Americans get that--have long since gotten that they whipped out the Indians. So deeply have they accepted this tragic fact of history that they no longer need to recognize it or deal with it. The history, like the people, can be left in a history of wrongs--including bad Hollywood westerns (including Dances With Wolves and Avatar)--as Americans move on to more pressing issues of collective introspective work through their denial of slavery and violence towards African Americans.

Dead Gone

America's "dealings with" indigenous people in film and television go in a very different direction than Tarantino suggests. Because in Tarantino's narration, Hollywood, like America, has already "dealt with that" stuff about Indians.

Steven Speilberg's Lincoln, for example, is another film about slavery in the Oscar nominated Best Picture pool of 2012. But Abraham Lincoln was for indigenous people the president who ordered the largest mass execution in America's history -- 38 Dakota men were hung in Mankato, Minnesota in 1862 on the orders of the president to end the Dakota War (see, instead, Dakota 38).

The erasure of this history in Lincoln is the precondition and possibility of Lincoln's continued hero-ization but also of America's continued denial of indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. It doesn't matter because it can't matter that Lincoln ordered the public hanging of 38 Dakota men to conclude a war over U.S. treaty violations and corrupted federal dealings with the Dakota people in Minnesota any more than it can matter that African slaves were agents of their own emancipation. It can't matter that Dakota have legal claims to unceeded lands today because to honestly deal with histories of indigenous treaty rights and land dispossession and genocide or of African slavery and economic conditions would mean something very different for America's exceptionalist narration of itself as a nation of democratic freedoms and civil rights.

But while slaves and emancipation continue to be valued subjects in these historical representations, indigenous peoples are dead and gone. So thoroughly dead and gone that they don't even have an afterlife.

Take the first season of FX's "The American Horror Story: Murder House." The story centers on the Harmon family. Ben, a psychiatrist, has had an affair with a much younger woman. Vivian, his wife, and Violet, their teenage daughter, struggle with issues of trust, resentment, and depression. In an effort to heal his broken family, Ben moves them from Boston to a restored mansion in Los Angeles. The mansion has a notorious history of murders that have earned it a place on local Hollywood-type tours of the city but also made it relatively affordable for the Harmons. The audience, along with the Harmons, are slowly introduced to the mansion's history through the ghosts of those who have been murdered in it. These ghosts include members of the Langdon family, former residents of the mansion whose lone survivor has moved next door. Constance, an overbearing woman of two dead children, Tate and Addie, and an ex-husband, the badly disfigured Larry Harvey, tries to both protect and manipulate the Harmons into staying in the house and staying alive, so keeping it safe for her children's ghosts to wander.

No where in AHS's imaginative tale are there any of the Tongva people indigenous to Los Angeles. While the mansion's history of dead includes an eclectic diversity of white and Mexican doctors, gay decorators, and rich folk, indigenous people are no where to be seen--ghostly or dead. Apparently, when you're indigenous dead, you are dead forever. Gone from the landscape of even an imagined afterlife.

This dead gone of indigenous peoples is, for Tarantino, further evidence that America has successfully dealt with its genocide of indigenous peoples. For Speilberg it is altogether irrelevant. In either direction, it is about perpetuating a history of American exceptionalism that serves U.S. dominance of indigenous peoples today. In either direction, indigenous people have no treaty rights, no legal claims to territories, no viable governments and cultures. And apparently, no ghosts to haunt you with.

Are You Queer?

What's In A Name?

Historically, Lenape did not tell people outside of their family the birth name of their children. The birth name was considered a reflection of the child’s true identity and purpose—making the child known to spirit beings. To protect the child’s identity, and to protect the child from enemies, another name was given and used. This name might change over a person’s lifetime

Label Makers

I write this on Valentine's Day, the annual eve of my birthday.

This year, being 50, single, and without children during these particular 48 hours makes ever-present in my mind my personal experiences of those oft posed and rarely solicited remarks and questions about my identity, sexual orientation, and mental health.

• Some Conservative Christian family members have assumed I am gay and too ashamed or afraid to tell them. There was a long time, mostly in my 20s and 30s, when they regularly initiated the "I hate the sin but love the sinner" conversation with me--usually over the holidays and always framed by painfully uncomfortable reassurances that would go in one of two directions: 1) if I just told them that I was gay they would still love me; or 2) "as long as you're not practicing...." it would be okay if I were gay. In either direction, I was and still am fated as the "lost gay sister" they pray for.
• Some colleagues at the campus where I work and on all sides of the racial-ethnic-national-class spectrum of self-definition and self-perception have assumed that I am a “lesbian” because I do not have a "family." (Stronger but not only in the College of Ethnic Studies where my department is located.) I am regularly introduced by colleagues on campus to the "other one" in their department in a not-so-subtle hope of match-making us into some marriage or civil union bliss that looks like a family to them.
• Some peers have asked me if I am gay or lesbian, as though there are no other options, and then become painfully uncomfortable when I do not answer them. Or answer them but then ask what they mean by those terms. "Can you only be x or y?"
• Some have asked me straight-out, "Are you queer?" And when I say I don't understand the question or what they mean by the term, are shocked and confused. (After all, queer is the more radical identity.)
• I cannot tell you how many people have assumed I have never married because I suffer from some kind of psychological disorder (like depression) that prevents me from developing a "healthy, long-term relationship."
• I cannot tell you how many people have assumed I "can't have children" because, obviously if I could, I would have them. At least one.
• Many, many people assume I must be lonely. Deeply, inconsolably lonely. All the time and in some horribly unspeakable, tragic way. So horrible that they never ask. They just feel bad for me.
• Many indigenous people believe I must not be "traditional" because I do not have children (at the least) or a family (at the most).

In each of these instances, people want me to be something that they know. A label, any label, that would make sense out of my being 50, single, and without children. Because a label would mean that they know me. They could recognize me. They could find me.

Freedom, In Quotes

Of course, claiming and exercising the freedom to say, or not to say, who one is and is not is a privilege of political context and cultural significance.

Many indigenous peoples have not been able to say who they are--have been hidden or lied about by family members trying to protect them from imperialist militaries and local militia that were publicly torturing and killing them for being homosexual, or gang raping women to humiliate them and "their men."

Many have paid for their lives, even in our "modern," progressive world, for saying who they are and who they love.

For these any many other reasons, self-identifying or being identified as a woman and/or a non-heterosexual (for those biologically male or female) is a defiant political act worthy of respect and honor.

What If I Were Normal?

I write this on Valentine's Day on the eve of my 51st birthday. Private messages of condolence and "check in" on my mental sense of well-being abound. And so I respond with this:

What if being a woman, at 50, single, without children were considered normal? What would that world look like?

Ageists would be so outdated. Maybe even having come to value all body types and shapes, faces and wrinkles, grey hairs, gravity butts, and age spots. Maybe they wouldn't even think about themselves and one another in the standards of physical beauty reflected in icons of youth and anorexia.

Monogamists would enjoy all types of relationships. Maybe even stop trying to force every person on the planet into a life-long contract about protecting property rights within "families" and make space for those who value the experience of many different loves and desires and pleasures.

Marriage advocates--heterosexual and non--would be ashamed to admit it. And constitutional, civil rights would not be confined to and by any particular form of marriage or family.

Parents would calm down. Yes, having children is a blessing and important. But there are many other kinds of blessings in this world--for women who are not only important because they can bear children.

Women could relax. They would be honored for who they are. They would not have to fear physical violence.

Homophobes would get over themselves.

In that world, labels would work differently. I and others who have made unconventional choices about their lives and identities wouldn't have to worry about our status, safety, and well-being. We wouldn't have to make excuses or defend ourselves. And we wouldn't be socially humiliated by family and friends for not conforming to their expectations of what happiness looks like (though I remain deeply unconvinced that happiness should be a goal).

Until I live in that world?

Am I queer? My only answer can be this: why do you ask?

When Radical Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

In a recent blog entry by the self-titled Tenured Radical, issues as complicated as the academic and cultural campaign for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel, the "abandonment of poor people in the United States," the "collapse of funding for public and private education," and “half a dozen others connected to the triumph of a corporate vision for the world” are not only collapsed into all kinds of political equivalences, they are made into a kind of fashionable potpourri of causes for academics who will, ultimately and maybe even tomorrow, leave them all behind for another go at the proverbial buffet table: "Today the special is poverty. Tomorrow it will be the Sudan."

"Perhaps it is because I don’t fully understand why I would privilege one horrendous humanitarian crisis over another," the Tenured Radical laments, and then excuses herself from any kind of accountability to any one of the ongoing instances of imperial violence and colonial practice she names as occurring throughout the world ("the continued colonization and immiseration of the Haitian people; genocide in the Sudan; or ongoing French interventions in West Africa"). This dismissal, she explains, is on the grounds of her high moral principles: she will not be forced to pick just one of these causes as though they are the most important by joining up with their campaign--like the BDS. An act of alliance that she will obviously, ultimately and probably even tomorrow, leave for another. Nor will she be forced to take sides on any one of the "hundreds of thousands of small tragedies that few of us who live in the United States ever have to encounter."

Indeed? "Small tragedies" in the US? I suppose not having to join international campaigns excuses one from knowing one's own history or political moment. Like the systemic structure of imperialism indigenous peoples in the US confront everyday, one that systematically denies them their rights to self-determination in ongoing acts of genocide and dispossession.

One can, instead, write political dribble for the nation's top rated journal on the academy and call it being radically engaged. And I suppose the lack of accountability in that dribble extends to how this kind of blog is going to be used by pro-Israelis (Zionists), in the US and internationally, who proclaim victory over Palestinian human rights every time someone minimizes the relevance of the BDS.

Idle? Know More

The biggest problem confronting tenured radicals everywhere is the presumption about and by them that they are already educated. And, apparently, being educated is the e-ticket ride out of political responsibility to anything one knows.

One of the things that has differentiated Idle No More (INM) from Occupy Wall Street (OWS) -- a movement it has been incorrectly compared to from the beginning -- has been its insistence on the pedagogical importance of and within the movement towards bringing about the changes it envisions. Even the four women who founded the movement did so through an all-day teach-in at Station 20 in Saskatoon that they called "Idle No More" -- education towards the action needed to reform Parliament's anti-First Nation rights measures.

The continued centrality within INM's efforts of developing its own pedagogy is not merely about "being informed" for the sake of being able to argue with someone at a bar about First Nation treaty rights or Inuit land claims or how they are related to American Indian and Alaska Native legal rights (for instance). INM's -- pedagogy has been about an education that builds interpersonal and social relationships of responsibility -- you cannot know without being responsible, within the unique but related contexts of your relationships to one another, to nonhumans, and to the lands and waters and ecosystems in which you were born and live and on which you depend for life. A pedagogy interconnected with INM's dancing and singing--reflecting, honoring, and reinforcing relations of responsibility with one another and the earth with a view to changing those laws and social conditions that undermine them.

This is so far removed from the kind of position the "tenured radical" assumes as to be that "far far away" galaxy in Star Wars. Apparently in that solar system you can know and not be responsible.

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See David Shorter's reply.