On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 10:00 AM, Emeagwali, Gloria (History)<emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:"I just follow the big brains of our times, most of the time: people like mbembe or Mudimbe or Spivak. I admire spivak's adherence to justice and the ordinary people whose cause she insists on espousing. That is why I wrote Trash"harrow
That text "Trash" is not a blueprint for Black freedom, Ken. I don't see it as some kind of out -of this-world testimony of justice or commitment to human rights.
It is actually insulting for some of us.
I don't think that Mbembe and Mudimbe are ideologically similar, and frankly speaking, your constant reference to them is somewhat tiresome. Mudimbe is definitely not some kind of guru for a lot of us.
Enough said.
Professor Gloria EmeagwaliProfessor of History
History DepartmentCentral Connecticut State University
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 10:11 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - human rights issues--Biko
You are taking me out of my field. I am an amateur in your domain. I do not believe that class analysis suffices any more: I think of proletariat and bourgeois denominations are old fashioned. Yes there is a dominant class in society, but it cuts across many lines, and is no longer defined simply in industrial class terms. So the application of those notions to justice strikes me as dated.
The concepts you are reaching for, I can agree with. I don't idealize any grand notions like ubuntu or "the people" or racial identities, no more grand narratives for me, and increasingly any reference to race, except as the social construct, puts me off. I don't believe in them as identities. So I look for justice or the rallying cry for action in much smaller circles. I like collaborating with black lives matter because its calls to action, locally here, are what I want to address. I don't believe globalization can be reduced to older notions of capitalism; we have neoliberalism, to be sure, but the forms of ownership and labor and alienation have shifted enormously, and tactics have to change with them. I believe in the spirit of the revolution, like derrida the spectre of marx, but certainly not the party, which is totally dead, or the 19th century notions of vanguardism etc.
I just follow the big brains of our times, most of the time: people like mbembe or Mudimbe or Spivak. I admire spivak's adherence to justice and the ordinary people whose cause she insists on espousing. That is why I wrote Trash; I adhere to the same ideals as she does.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday 26 April 2018 at 07:59
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - human rights issues
Keep digging Ken and you may discover the theory of the withering away of the law in socio legal studies. There you may discover the work of Pashukanis, the Soviet legal jurist who critiqued the ideology of commodity fetishism in bourgeois legal forms. According to him, under capitalism, the ruling ideology is based on the supreme importance of the commodity form of exchange. This fetish is expressed in the law by demanding that punishment should be calibrated to equal the harm done by the crime and is often called the payment of debts to society. Marxism Leninism theorized that the proletarian state will abolish bourgeois law and replace it with socialist law to protect the revolutionary state but that the revolutionary criminal law would wither away along with the socialist state when a classless society emerges and there is no longer any need for one class to oppress another with state power. Then only administrative law will remain to apply the New Testament principle of from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs. Unfortunately for Pashukanis, Stalin did not find his critique of the retention of commodity fetishism and its expansion through harsher punitiveness under socialist law instead of allowing this to wither away as promised. He was accused of being a reactionary and executed in his 30s.
The point that you made about defending the revolutionary state is important but internal criticism permits us to question why the revolutionaries embrace the peculiar institution of capital punishment even for corruption and drugs offences when bourgeois law has abolished that form of punishment as barbaric in many jurisdictions.
Why did Cuba execute General Ocho who commanded the heroic forces in Angola just because he was convicted of drug trafficking when revolutionaries should support an end to the war on the masses in the guise of the war on drugs and use education to get people to say no to drugs while the health service offers treatment to addicts?
On that count, help me to commend Sachs for the decision of the Constitutional Court to abolish the death penalty in SA even while the assasins of Chris Hani awaited trial. Support for the commodity form of legal punishment is often support for more repressiveness against the masses rather than against the ruling class who rarely face trial and rarely pay the ultimate price when convicted. Terrorist states do not get hanged even if the Nuremberg principles allow the execution of a few symbolic figures.
Firgiveness of the unforgivable is part of the Africana tradition that did not seek revenge for the unspeakable crimes of slavery, colonialism and apartheid but instead seeks reparative justice. No punishment would ever be calibrated to fit such crimes. Derrida reflected on the origin of forgiveness and concluded that the Abrahamic traditions fall short by reserving the right not to forgive the unforgivable whereas Africans appear to be willing to forgive everything. Desmond Tutu responded that nothing is unforgivable. Punituve justice is not the only form of justice and healing through Ubuntu could be more effective than punitive expeditions. This is one of the greatest contributions of African civilization to the theory of justice in my humble opinion.
I salute you
Biko
On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 6:23 AM, Kenneth Harrow
<harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
Hi biko
I have to dig through this a bit to figure out my take on it. My understanding was that the trc set a limit of what was forgiven, with egregious crimes still susceptible to punishment.
I disagree that crimes against humanity are not liable to punishment. Just the opposite: there are laws, and under the right circumstances, those crimes are punished and punishable. I don't distinguish individual crimes vs state crimes where by some revolutionary rhetoric we can apply punishments to one and not to the other. We work toward a future in which state abuses are punished, even if it takes time. We don't always succeed. Idi amin whiles away his millions in Saudi arabia. Dictators are coaxed out of countries so that peace might come to ravaged countries. I understand the logic, even if I am left hungry. But to call justice a fetishism of bourgeois law means, to me, that you are ensconced in an ideological viewpoint I don't share. My own ideological commitments include a notion of justice grounded in both legal and moral values, and ideally inscribed in some legal frame. But I put the moral imperatives pretty high, when laws that don't seem just remain in place.
Ubuntu means collective values, not injustice.
Justice for me doesn't mean forgiving the unforgivable. I suppose I could sacrifice justice for peace, why not? War is probably worse than injustice for most people, and the point of justice is to serve the needs of the people, all the people.
The interesting point in your comments, as I wish to translate them, is the impunity of the state. not all states can get away with it. Eventually the Chileans were able to call in the chips on the horrible govt that replaced Allende with torture and murder. State terrorism should be the term we use, not abusively, but with precision to attack the major powers in the world today who use "terrorism" to justify their abuse of power, while using "collateral damage" to mystify their use of state terrorism. Obviously I am thinking of drones, bombing to assassinate opponents, which murder innocent people, like the wedding party in yemen only a day or two ago, bombed by Saudi or u.s. planes. State terrorism.
I want to use my complaints from earlier postings to apply here: same logic.
In the end, I am trying to also protect the very thing you accuse me of attacking: the revolutionary state, the state whose goals are to end injustices, be they class based or race based. How can the revolutionary state be protected from self-destructing by abusing its power? That is the question of the 20th century. Maybe in our age ofg globalization it will become as irrelevant as states. States, not ubuntu or states that preach ubuntu while practicing biopolitics.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 25 April 2018 at 20:21
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - human rights issues
Ken, no one who believes in fundamental human rights will disagree with your assertion that torture, slavery, apartheid, and genocide are indefensible especially as state policy or the policy of freedom fighters.
The disagreement arises from your implied punitive policy versus the philosophy of Ubuntu and the forgiveness of the unforgivable. Since the state that carries out torture, slavery, apartheid, and genocide enjoys almost total immunity against penalty, why should we buy into the commodity fetishism of bourgeois law by attempting to make the punishment fit the crime to make individual offenders pay a calibrated price when no punishment would ever fit the crimes against humanity?
The answer is that the same impunity granted the criminal state should be extended to individual law breakers the way that the TRC did in SA to pave the way for the withering away of the law as the best response to deviance under capitalism.
Help us to ask Sachs why he did not support the legalization of dagga when he sat on the Constitutional Court despite the fact that the prohibition law was made under apartheid to protect monopoly commodities that kill millions of people worldwide while dagga never hurt a fly? Ask him whether he would support justice for the victims of slavery and apartheid by advocating reparative justice given that punitive just desserts are deplorable and undesirable? Above all, extend our hearty congratulations to the scholar-activist on his deserved honorary degree. Yi Africa.
Biko
On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 1:12 PM, Kenneth Harrow
<harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
Hi all
In a recent thread, where I was inveighing against torture and human rights abuses, moses ochonu spoke to the Eurocentric issues involved in basing an argument on enlightenment values, and instruments like the un conventions on human rights.
He is right that those notions were framed during the enlightenment in states that sanctioned slavery, although we could trace notions of human rights law back to the ancient period.
He is right that the ideals were contradicted by actual practice.
But I do not want to concede that they are not crucial for Africa, or anywhere else, no matter how imperfectly they are administrated. The international criminal court has indeed focused on African miscreants, although the Balkan leaders came in for their knocks too.
But I would want to argue that regardless of their original, they are absolutely crucial for us, today, in any country.
In my university, albie sachs is about to visit. The announcement says,
We are writing to offer you and your students a rare opportunity to meet one of the keenest legal minds in South Africa and arguably one of the most important architects of its 1994 post-apartheid Constitution. On Friday, May 4, we have arranged a faculty-student conversation with Albie Sachs, retired judge and author, who will be on campus to accept an honorary degree from Michigan State at the Spring Commencement celebration. Please share this invitation with your colleagues and students interested in Southern Africa, human rights, restorative justice and constitutional law.
Albie was one of the architects for the legal instruments that gave us one of th most progressive constitutions in the world, that of south Africa.
Regardless of how one thinks about gender issue, sexual orientation, individual rights, the limits on the state, etc., this constitution is the essence of what should be adopted everywhere, and it matters very little that it was framed in south Africa rather than in another country.
I would not call rights universal, but general; not god-given, but human crafted, and therefore in need of constant revision given changing needs and times.
But, but, who would argue that torture, extrajudicial killings, and the like ought to be banned?
That the laws are applied unequally doesn't mean we abandon the ideal of applying it, but that we fight for the long run to institute them.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
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