"The uncertainty of the colonial god": and the new revelations about CIA torture techniques
I am at the moment reading Wael Hallaq's book, The Impossible State. In the early chapters in which he talks about the characteristics of the modern state, I realized that he described the state in a manner not unlike my own conception of it below a year ago in a response to a Stoler's Along the Archival Grain. Apparently, many have seen and understood the state as resembling god in the manner it is conceived in modern nation states, just as I tried to argue below. When I came to the same conclusion, without reading these works, I thought I was a little bit exaggerating this and the professor of the class made note that I should change 'god' and 'ungodly' with 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate' respectively. Seeing that Hallaq and others have used the same frame to portray it, I feel vindicated at some level. Now I repost this to indirectly comment on the new revelation about torture in the US. The point here should it be lost on my dear reader is that in revealing its past ugliness, a nation is indulging in a more sophisticated form of brainwashing its intellectuals and public (whether it cares or doesn't at all care) into believing that this is its past and therefore passed albeit lamentable. The reality is that the present is usually uglier. But outraged by the ugliness of past acts, the intellectual gaze is distracted from seeing the present ones.
Ann Laura Stoler’s work Along the Archival Grain, is a sustained effort to illustrate that colonial governance—contrary to the view that it was driven by unshakable commitment to, and belief in instrumental rationality—was fraught with uncertainties, and fear that such uncertainties might become exposed to an elusive adversary, the nature of its threat seemed in a constant metamorphosis. Unlike “ a Weberian model of rationally minded, bureaucratically driven states, outfitted with a permanent and assured income to maintain them, buttressed by accredited knowledge and scientific legitimacy,” Stoler contends that a key feature of colonial rule “is not reason, but what might be misconstrued as its very opposite: namely, a discursive density around issues of sentiment.”1 From this lack of reasoned certitude stems, according to Stoler, two colonial state habits—habits that were evident in the archives she examined. 2 These are secrecy (classification of materials as state secrets) and state commissions whose ‘investigative’ tasks might entail exposing these very state ‘secrets’.
In the following paragraphs, I discuss these two habits and offer a few notes. These notes are not meant to be a critique of Stoler’s work but rather an attempt to further dissect the concepts, assumptions and beliefs that mold state comportments—these are not unique to the colonial state but central to the conception of the nation as an autonomous soul and the state as its incarnation. Stoler intimates to us that in the process of making secrets in the colonial archives, secrecy is not always awarded to that which is known to threaten the state, but rather to that which the state agents were unable to comprehend or unsure how to confront. This recognition allows her to rightly conclude that “rather than secreted truths about the state, they [state secrets] point to sites of unease, anticipatory warnings of emergent movements among subject populations...of resentment that may not yet have had a name.”3
Stoler provides an apt description of these sentiments, but she doesn’t identify their source. Why the state—colonial in Stoler’s case—is such a paranoid entity obsessed with the desire to know and the need to conceal the limits of its knowledge or its interpretative faculty, is a question that Stoler does not seem to ponder. This question may perhaps lie beyond the scope of her work, but it is nonetheless necessary to understanding these features and other aspects of state comportments. True, Stoler alluded to Frederick Barth astute observation that “secrets do more than just sanctify,” noting that “they invoke deeper secrets of their own.”4 These ‘deeper secrets,’ which Stoler does not identify beyond a cursory reference to state’s desire to refrain from acknowledging them, is what needs to be revealed. Once known and taken as a priori, the affective nature of state comportments becomes an expected outcome, not a mystery that needs demystification.
Indeed, the state is afraid of not knowing, and its biggest trepidation is of others (particularly its subjects, whether citizens or colonized) coming to grasp of that very fact. It is also true that its conducts are largely driven by these sentiments: the fear and the fear of its exposure. These sentiments often supersede, but seldom compete with, moral imperatives, rationality and science as determinants of state behavior. But how is this the case? To understand these aspects one has to turn to the essence of the power that the state (being the embodiment of the nation) yields. The nation, which is the soul of the state, is conceived as an indivisible, omniscient, omnipotent self. It is this conception (claim) that invests the nation with the holistic identity that supersedes all other claims to identity, but more importantly the moral power and agency, which the state—as its embodiment—uses to usurp those of everyone else under its jurisdiction.5
Having its moral authority resting on these God-‐like attributes, the state holds an absurd contradictory existence, real fiction. In other words, it is a fiction that has a real presence. The state is keenly aware of its absurdity. This is not only because it is not not that all-‐ knowing or that all-‐powerful, but essentially because it is many—it is made of many individuals, agencies and interests (which although supposed to complement one another are in a constant competition, if not outright conflict). As such, the state is in a constant endeavor to mask the discord between its fictitious essence or and its real life. The worries and the anxieties, the misunderstandings and the discord between its various components have always to be kept in check or the ‘god’ they represent will look intellectually promiscuous, physically frail and morally confused.
Of course, it is impractical to mask the contradiction between the conception and reality of the state forever. Therefore, states resort to a more pragmatic solution: if the state cannot be maintained as eternal God, then its must be maintained as a contemporaneous one. Its current ungodly attributes should be masked, and if necessary, be revealed as a past reality to prove its current godly stature. Here is where the secreted documents and the investigative commissions fit. The exposure of indecision, incompetence, scandals, future plans and the speculations about the embarrassment that such prospect may represent threaten to reveal the ungodly nature of the state. The act of archiving as secrets is the act of denying events a contemporaneous presence. Those events which eluded the state control and gained a contemporaneous presence of their own need to be quickly relegated to past. State investigative commission is the quickest way to deprive current embarrassing moments of their momentary nature. The commission investigates and investigation is about the past. Yes, investigation might reveal wrongdoing, an ungodly attribute of the state—but the state is a god who is not afraid of his ungodly past, as long as it is the one who paints it.
++++
1 Stoler, p.58. The distinction here is expressed throughout her work as one between the effective and the affective. The latter is in her view what characterizes the colonial administrative process. Of course, Stoler is aware that one’s view of what is rational cannot entirely be separated from his/her emotions. The line separating these two is often blurred. Still Stoler saw the affective or the sentiment as the dominant forces that radiates from the colonial archives she studied. She was perhaps unaware, or unwilling to acknowledge that the sentiment is the rationality of someone whose right to reason has been usurped by a more temporally and technically superior sentiment.
2 Stoler discusses more than just these two. 3 Ibid, p. 28
4 Ibid, p. 28.
5 It should be clear that I am not claiming this to be something new. It exists in the literature on the nation and source of its moral authority. What I arguing here is that the state comportments as affective should be expected once these aspects as taken for granted.
Ann Laura Stoler’s work Along the Archival Grain, is a sustained effort to illustrate that colonial governance—contrary to the view that it was driven by unshakable commitment to, and belief in instrumental rationality—was fraught with uncertainties, and fear that such uncertainties might become exposed to an elusive adversary, the nature of its threat seemed in a constant metamorphosis. Unlike “ a Weberian model of rationally minded, bureaucratically driven states, outfitted with a permanent and assured income to maintain them, buttressed by accredited knowledge and scientific legitimacy,” Stoler contends that a key feature of colonial rule “is not reason, but what might be misconstrued as its very opposite: namely, a discursive density around issues of sentiment.”1 From this lack of reasoned certitude stems, according to Stoler, two colonial state habits—habits that were evident in the archives she examined. 2 These are secrecy (classification of materials as state secrets) and state commissions whose ‘investigative’ tasks might entail exposing these very state ‘secrets’.
In the following paragraphs, I discuss these two habits and offer a few notes. These notes are not meant to be a critique of Stoler’s work but rather an attempt to further dissect the concepts, assumptions and beliefs that mold state comportments—these are not unique to the colonial state but central to the conception of the nation as an autonomous soul and the state as its incarnation. Stoler intimates to us that in the process of making secrets in the colonial archives, secrecy is not always awarded to that which is known to threaten the state, but rather to that which the state agents were unable to comprehend or unsure how to confront. This recognition allows her to rightly conclude that “rather than secreted truths about the state, they [state secrets] point to sites of unease, anticipatory warnings of emergent movements among subject populations...of resentment that may not yet have had a name.”3
Stoler provides an apt description of these sentiments, but she doesn’t identify their source. Why the state—colonial in Stoler’s case—is such a paranoid entity obsessed with the desire to know and the need to conceal the limits of its knowledge or its interpretative faculty, is a question that Stoler does not seem to ponder. This question may perhaps lie beyond the scope of her work, but it is nonetheless necessary to understanding these features and other aspects of state comportments. True, Stoler alluded to Frederick Barth astute observation that “secrets do more than just sanctify,” noting that “they invoke deeper secrets of their own.”4 These ‘deeper secrets,’ which Stoler does not identify beyond a cursory reference to state’s desire to refrain from acknowledging them, is what needs to be revealed. Once known and taken as a priori, the affective nature of state comportments becomes an expected outcome, not a mystery that needs demystification.
Indeed, the state is afraid of not knowing, and its biggest trepidation is of others (particularly its subjects, whether citizens or colonized) coming to grasp of that very fact. It is also true that its conducts are largely driven by these sentiments: the fear and the fear of its exposure. These sentiments often supersede, but seldom compete with, moral imperatives, rationality and science as determinants of state behavior. But how is this the case? To understand these aspects one has to turn to the essence of the power that the state (being the embodiment of the nation) yields. The nation, which is the soul of the state, is conceived as an indivisible, omniscient, omnipotent self. It is this conception (claim) that invests the nation with the holistic identity that supersedes all other claims to identity, but more importantly the moral power and agency, which the state—as its embodiment—uses to usurp those of everyone else under its jurisdiction.5
Having its moral authority resting on these God-‐like attributes, the state holds an absurd contradictory existence, real fiction. In other words, it is a fiction that has a real presence. The state is keenly aware of its absurdity. This is not only because it is not not that all-‐ knowing or that all-‐powerful, but essentially because it is many—it is made of many individuals, agencies and interests (which although supposed to complement one another are in a constant competition, if not outright conflict). As such, the state is in a constant endeavor to mask the discord between its fictitious essence or and its real life. The worries and the anxieties, the misunderstandings and the discord between its various components have always to be kept in check or the ‘god’ they represent will look intellectually promiscuous, physically frail and morally confused.
Of course, it is impractical to mask the contradiction between the conception and reality of the state forever. Therefore, states resort to a more pragmatic solution: if the state cannot be maintained as eternal God, then its must be maintained as a contemporaneous one. Its current ungodly attributes should be masked, and if necessary, be revealed as a past reality to prove its current godly stature. Here is where the secreted documents and the investigative commissions fit. The exposure of indecision, incompetence, scandals, future plans and the speculations about the embarrassment that such prospect may represent threaten to reveal the ungodly nature of the state. The act of archiving as secrets is the act of denying events a contemporaneous presence. Those events which eluded the state control and gained a contemporaneous presence of their own need to be quickly relegated to past. State investigative commission is the quickest way to deprive current embarrassing moments of their momentary nature. The commission investigates and investigation is about the past. Yes, investigation might reveal wrongdoing, an ungodly attribute of the state—but the state is a god who is not afraid of his ungodly past, as long as it is the one who paints it.
1 Stoler, p.58. The distinction here is expressed throughout her work as one between the effective and the affective. The latter is in her view what characterizes the colonial administrative process. Of course, Stoler is aware that one’s view of what is rational cannot entirely be separated from his/her emotions. The line separating these two is often blurred. Still Stoler saw the affective or the sentiment as the dominant forces that radiates from the colonial archives she studied. She was perhaps unaware, or unwilling to acknowledge that the sentiment is the rationality of someone whose right to reason has been usurped by a more temporally and technically superior sentiment.
2 Stoler discusses more than just these two. 3 Ibid, p. 28
4 Ibid, p. 28.
5 It should be clear that I am not claiming this to be something new. It exists in the literature on the nation and source of its moral authority. What I arguing here is that the state comportments as affective should be expected once these aspects as taken for granted.
تعليقات
إرسال تعليق