This year is the 100th anniversary of Korea becoming a Japanese protectorate (it was fully annexed/colonized in 1910). Apparently the two governments are declaring this a year of friendship between them, which is probably a good first preemptive strike in the war of date symbolism. I found interesting the image that a Chosun Ilbo article used to symbolize friendship between the two. In the background, you can see the popular (if somewhat dated) Japanese cartoon character “totoro” and the Korean actor “Yon-sama” (Bae Yong-joon) who has become a demigod in Japan.
Category: Current Events
Tsunami
The only news that I have heard while here in OK is of the terrible disaster unfolding in the Indian Ocean. Wikipedia is collecting information about it on their article. There is a blog where you can track relief operations, casualties, and most importantly, various entries updating the many ways that you can to contribute to the various organizations that are trying to face the disaster’s aftermath.
Without seeing enough of the images of the aftermath and movie clips, this is one of those events which are just hard to fathom by reading online news articles. We see the numbers, and I can compare it to previous events and see how large these numbers are, but it is much harder to get a grip on the huge suffering involved and how huge the impact this will be on thousands of whole communities on the Indian ocean rim. There a note here on the historical perspective, but this is completely regional disaster of a huge scale.
Another Salvo: Kim Hee-sun’s Father
The accusations of the national betrayal and collaboration of relatives in South Korea’s politics continue with “confirmation” that the father of Uri party Kim Hee-sun’s father was a special operative working for the police in Japanese controlled Manchukuo (see older stories on this via Google News). The Uri party has been most aggressive in favoring a government investigation into collaboration in the colonial period. The anti-Uri Chosun Ilbo has, at least in the English edition which is all I can read at this point, been leading the way in reporting these charges in a Korea which is charged with emotions about its difficult history as a colony of Japan.
The claims of legitimacy by linking oneself to Korea’s independence movement (Kim Hee-sun apparently claimed to be the “daughter of the independence movement”) and the taint of treason that comes with being connected in any way to those who cooperated or worked for the Japanese colonial administration are powerful currency in the politics of the ROK. Only in the last few years, however, has this really bubbled to the surface in mainstream political discourse. Again, I can’t wait to get my Korean up to a level where I can plunge into looking more closely at the history of treason in the aftermath of the colonial period.
South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Law
I have been watching the development of South Korea’s fascinating “Truth and Reconciliation Law” very closely. The leading Uri party is digging up old skeletons by looking at the pro-Japan collaborators during the colonial period. This is especially interesting to me given my interest in the uses of treason in East Asia. In addition to a genuine desire to look into the dark aspects of the colonial period and point a few fingers, there are very powerful political motivations at work. Also, this law has actually caused some tension in ROK’s relations with Japan.
The most recent news is that the Uri Party have completed their final draft of the law. While I’m getting plenty of information on this through Korea’s English language media, I can’t wait until I can read more about this in Korean…unfortunately my language studies progress only slowly…
Derrida is Dead
Derrida, the renowned philosopher and one of the rogues who is partly responsible for screwing up my nice little analytical philosophical world, just died today. The BBC article on his death begins the third paragraph with, “Fellow academics have charged that Derrida’s writings are ‘absurd’ but his mark on modern thinking is undisputed…” The NYT concludes that his “approach was controversial.” I wonder if it might be more accurate to say, “His approach has been hijacked and used by everyone in amazingly diverse ways and his challenges to the field of philosophy, the practice of reading, and the art of writing have contributed to a veritable civil war in the humanities which continues today.”
I like how the BBC article quotes him in a documentary made about him:
At one point, wandering through Derrida’s library, one of the filmmakers asks him: “Have you read all the books in here?”
“No,” he replies impishly, “only four of them. But I read those very, very carefully”.
All of these articles refer to him founding a “school” of “deconstructionists”? Is this true? I know his work, which include the idea of deconstruction, has been amazingly influential, but are there people out there who call themselves “deconstructionists” and does anyone in literature or theory think there is a school which thinks it is “doing what Derrida does”?
Anyways, it was strange to hear this news today since I just started Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida which is the first time these two very different philosophers have agreed to be published together. I don’t know that much about Derrida’s work. I never made it through Spivak’s introduction to his On Grammatology. However, I really liked the book Derrida by Christopher Norris, all of whose work I really respect, and also Jonathan Culler’s On Deconstruction, which I think does a decent job of explaining the idea.
UPDATE: There is a longer obituary in the NYT I didn’t see earlier. I like one quote especially:
“Many otherwise unmalicious people have in fact been guilty of wishing for deconstruction’s demise – if only to relieve themselves of the burden of trying to understand it,” Mitchell Stephens, a journalism professor at New York University, wrote in a 1994 article in The New York Times Magazine.
UPDATE: Enowing has a nice entry on this, which points to an article at the Chronicle which doesn’t refer to the “deconstructionism” that I puzzled over above. Also enowing has a great quote which cracked me up:
Avital Ronell recalls being with Derrida when a new edition of a French dictionary is released, and it includes the word differance with an a. Avital wants to organize a celebration of this historic occasion. Derrida’s mom, who’s been sitting at the dinner table listening to this conversation, turns to Derrida aghast and asks, “Jacky, you spelt differance with an a?”
You Forgot Poland and its 0.02% Contribution
Someone commented on my debate posting with a quote from the Polish president which was critical of Kerry leaving Poland’s sacrifice out. I think it is obvious that Kerry knows that Poland (2,460 troops at time of invasion?) and other countries have made a sacrifice. That is so not the point. During the debate he emphasizes what often gets lost in the long list of smaller nations in the so-called “coalition of the willing”: that the top three contributors, the US (130,000 at time of invasion?), Britain (9,000) and Italy (3,000 at time of invasion and not what Kerry claimed, Australia, which had only 800?) make up vast majority of the soldiers actually contributed. While it will usually be the case that the US is the majority contributor in an international “coalition” conflict like this, it doesn’t change the fact that Poland is less than 0.02% of the contribution of troops in Iraq. (assuming the numbers on the web page above is accurate). Why should Kerry be obligated to list every country which makes a contribution of less than 1% of the troops in a debate when he is trying to point out the unilateral nature of this?? The sad truth is that this war was fought by the US, Britain, and reluctantly, whoever else we could drag into it. As I quoted in my original posting, Poland’s president now admits he was deceived and apparently, they are pulling their troops after Iraq has its election.
The Infamous Tubes
You have heard about the infamous 16 words about the yellowcake from Niger included in Bush’s speech. You may have heard that the only other major piece of evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons development program were some aluminum tubes. Together with evidence of biological and chemical weapons, the case for a nuclear threat was a powerful motivation for the US to go to war in Iraq.
Today the New York Times has an extremely detailed article on the tragedy of the tubes and how the US time and time again claimed they were for centrifuges when there was plentiful evidence that they were for regular conventional rockets. In fact it shows time and time again that the only evidence that it might be used for centrifuges rather than rockets is countered in several ways throughout the article by America’s own Energy department and defense department. This is a very important read because it shows how intelligence information and disagreements between intelligence can be ignored by our leaders. Once pride, or national credibility is on the line, sometimes the path of least resistance is onward to war.
UPDATE: The article will eventually require payment for access. Kerim has some passages from it in his summary of the article.
Denazification and Iraq
I went to an interesting talk yesterday on “Denazification in Theory and Practice” given by Rebecca Boehling at the Center for European Studies. She opened with a discussion of how she got involved in doing more detailed research on the process of denazification in the early postwar occupation of Germany. She was apparently contacted before the occupation of Iraq by Ali Allawi, now the Iraqi Minister of Trade. Allawi knew about her research on the German occupation and wanted to get her technical consultation on policies for Iraqi de-Baathification. This is apparently well before the invasion, and they began a correspondence. He read some of her research on why the denazification process was a disaster. Initially, he showed her plans to go forward, in Iraq, with what was essentially the same flawed procedure the US used in early postwar Germany. After going back and forth, she claims that she managed to convince him why some of the US policies failed.
While at one point there was an offer for her to become a full technical consultant for an interim Iraqi government, apparently their correspondence died off after she asked his opinion about some of the infamous figures like Chalabi and others who were in the émigré community and he had replied that two of them she mentioned, including Chalabi, were relatives.
Apparently, Allawi didn’t end up in charge of the de-Baathification policy and the proposal they had worked on didn’t get implemented. However, after the invasion of Iraq, Professor Boehling discovered, “How much worse an American occupation could really get.” I wish I had some time to outline some of her critique on the post-WWII denazification process but I hope her work, which is still in progress, will soon be out in a paper or book form.
Cliopatria: Swift Boat Historiography
Jonathan Dresner has a great posting over at Cliopatria on how interesting it would be to think about the Swift Boat issue from the perspective of historiography.
Historiographically, how would we balance contemporary documents against decades-removed oral history, if it were not a partisan issue? When is absolute certainty justified in the face of contradictory sources? What bigger questions does this connect to (i.e., is this really an avenue worth pursuing) or are there analyses that need to precede asking the questions we’re asking?
He concludes by asking how close historians need to get to the “truth” of history.
Do we, as historians, really need to answer these questions, or is it enough to note the “interesting” vagaries of sources and leave it at that?
This kind of question is one that also deeply troubles me, just as I am about to begin a PhD program in history. I hope Dresner will have more words of wisdom on this in his future postings. My feeling right now is that how “vague” we leave contested moments that find their way into our narratives will depend ultimately on the questions we posed in our work. For example, the Swift Boat veterans, and those who seek to reveal their contradictions at least both seem to agree that the questions are “Was Kerry a liar?” Or more broadly, “Is he ‘unfit for command.'”
The shift of public debate to this kind of question marks a significant “historiographical” coup for supporters of the Bush campaign insofar as Kerry’s military record was previously approached with questions like, “How much does his military service make him a better presidential candidate to lead a country at ‘war'” or at worst, “Does Kerry’s activism following his service in Vietnam show a profound disrespect for America’s men and women in uniform?” While I personally find all these questions completely uninteresting, it is easy to see how the latter two allow a historian or commentator of any flavor to leave the vagaries of his months of service alone. Jonathan Dresner really brings up some important issues in postings like this one but to his, “Do we, as historians really need to answer these questions?” I would add one more query, “Do we, as historians really need to ask these questions?”
«Skrik» er stjålet fra Munch-museet
Helt utrolig! Norges mest berømte malerier («Madonna» var og stjålet) kippet ned fra veggen i Munch-museet på søndag morning. Sirka 15 minutter før politiet kom til stedet – for sent. Bildene gikk i bakken minst to ganger på veien ut av museet. Minst en of ranerne snakket norsk . En annen versjon av «Skrik» var tatt en gang før i 1994 og deretter var sikkerhet skjerpet.
E: Munch’s famous “Scream” has been stolen – clipped down from the wall in broad daylight by armed thieves. After some careful consideration, the Minister of Culture has come to the conclusion that Norway’s “national treasures” are poorly secured, although tightened security at the National Gallery after another version of the “Scream” was stolen in1994 apparently wasn’t enough. I can thank Kerim for waking up to this news this morning even before I had hit my browser.