Itinerary for Becoming an Intellectual

Haiti: Making Sense of Catastrophe

2010-01-26T23:35:00.000-08:00

I was recently watching one of the Slovenian philosopher Savoj Zizek's entertaining movie critiques, in which he (when talking about "The Birds") makes the point that -- to some extent -- it's useless to talk about catastrophes as a part of reality:

It is not enough to say that the birds are part of the natural setup of reality, it is rather as if a foreign dimension intrudes that literally tears apart reality. We humans are not naturally born into reality. In order for us to act as normal people who interact with other people who live in the space of social reality, many things should happen, like we should be properly installed within the symbolic order and so on. When this, our proper dwelling within a symbolic space, is disturbed, reality disintegrates.

But this disintegration is only temporary; once the event ends, we have to reintegrate the experience into our day-to-day reality. To some extent, we might think of such terrifying events as an inverse to the more positive disintegrations of reality experienced in religious experiences or in the profane illumination of hallucinogenic drugs.

How does this help to think about the catastrophic earthquake that, by some recent estimates, killed 2% of Haiti's population? There was a horrific loss of life; for the people of Port au Prince, reality has disintegrated. Any decent human being sees images from ground zero of the earthquake and reacts with horror and empathy; and then what? The normal reaction is to try to integrate the horrific event into our already entrenched ideas about reality. And that can lead to people saying some fucked up shit about pacts with the devil or Haiti's entrenched cultural inferiority. It can also lead to genuinely moving acts of human solidarity. Sometimes, people do both at the same time, like the Queen of Benin.

The Point...

There are a few points I am hearing (0r reading) consistently in much of the American news coverage of Haiti. The first is the endless rumination over the flimsy houses in Port au Prince's sprawling shantytowns, like Carrefour. The city's horrific poverty has been (in a somewhat voyeuristic manner) paraded before the cameras, devoid of context.

Perhaps realizing obliquely that they are speaking of a country with a rich culture and history, a few talking heads have brought up instances from Haitian history. The most common one I've encountered is that Haiti is the only country in the world founded by a slave revolt (Robertson, in his reptilian way, touched on this). This is true. But coupled with the coverage above, I think that it creates the impression that Haiti's current impoverishment is the the result of it being founded by former slaves; that perhaps, the founders of the Haitian republic were not as competent as the slave-owners who founded our own. And this is misleading

The Haitian Revolution

I feel that the Haitian Revolution was the first real, substantial attempt a decolonization in the Western Hemisphere. I don't think that you could honestly say that about the early United States, which in many ways remained a colonialist settler state even after independence. Toussaint L'Ouverture promised to found a republic in which no one had the right to own another human being (though, admittedly, not a republic in which all human beings had the right to vote). And that idea scared the piss out of the countries involved in the slave trade.

In the decade following the initial slave revolt, the newly independent country fought off invasions by Spain, Britain, and France. The final peace treaty with France required that Haiti pay 150 million gold Francs in reparations. Writing in 2004, Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano estimated that, in today's currency, that would be about $21.7 billion, or 44 times the Haitian government's 2004 budget. Haiti would be paying off their debts to France well into the 20th century. Haiti, for most of the 18th century, had been the most lucrative colony in the Caribbean; it began the 19th century devastated by a decade of war, saddled with a mountain of debt, and diplomatically isolated.

The specter of Haiti continued to haunt the southern United States for another six decades after President Thomas Jefferson refused to acknowledge the country's independence (a policy that would continue until the presidency of Abraham Lincoln). It helped to inspire a dramatic spike in slave revolts in the first two decades of the 19th century, particularly the major uprising of French-speaking slaves in Louisiana in 1811. And it was not forgiven for this. A century later Woodrow Wilson, the son of a slave owner and vocal KKK sympathizer, sent US Marines to occupy Haiti. The occupation lasted for almost twenty years, during which the Haitian national bank was handed over to the City Bank of New York, racial segregation was imposed for the first time in Haitian history, and a system of forced labor eerily similar to slavery was created. The occupation lasted until FDR's "good neighbor" policy temporarily ended direct American military intervention in the Caribbean.

Port au Prince

After the withdrawal of the Marines, Haiti was ruled by a series of military regimes, most famously Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier (who, together, executed somewhere around 30,000 innocent people). At the time, Haiti had a population of about 6 million, and was overwhelmingly rural (75%-ish). Metropolitan Port au Prince was still a rather sleepy town of less than 750,000 inhabitants. The ubiquitous corrugated tin shacks of Carrefour and Cite Soleil were basically non-existent. Haiti had suffered a lot since independence, but the bulk of the rural population were still small farmers, mostly growing rice and other staple foods. Even under the early Duvalier dictatorship they enjoyed the protection of tariffs and a trickle of subsidies.

But the 70s and 80s were a shit time for small farmers in the global south. All over the so-called Third World, neo-liberal economists from multilateral lending institutions such as the IMF encouraged debt-ridden countries to slash social services and drop tariffs. Rural Haiti, like the rest of the developing world, faced a dramatic economic and infrastructural crisis. As people lost their farms (many of which had been in their families since the revolution), they fled to the cities. The Duvaliers were both unprepared and unwilling to deal with this influx, and virtually no investment was made in accommodating it. Prior to the earthquake, the population of the Port au Prince metro area was estimated to be at least 2 million people, with some estimates going as high as 2.5. Shantytowns like Cite Soleil have a level of population density "comparable to [a] cattle feedlot" (Davis, 92).

In Conclusion

I think that if I make this any longer it will get unwieldy, if it is not so already. But Haiti's history is much more complex than that of a perpetual victim or national schlimazel.

Yarns

2010-01-26T22:49:00.001-08:00

The above clusterfuck of string and paper represent my attempt to visually articulate the interconnectedness of my project. It was, as far as I can tell, a good idea that floundered in implimentation. In my mind's eye, I can see the ways in which Taussig's use of the concepts of discourse and otherness are developed (to a large degree) from Said, who of course learned a great deal from Foucault. Or how the forms of community organization described in Desai's book are developed from the global growth of slums that Davis describes. So I drew stickfigures and taped them to a foam board, and then tacked on color coded yarn to represent different types of interconnectedness.

But the goddamn board couldn't fit that much yarn. The spirit was willing, but the yarn was weak. Now that that travesty is completed, get ready for some discussion of South African grassroots politics.

On the Shelf: Seeing Like a State

2009-12-12T18:44:00.000-08:00

Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: Why Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

First, let it be said that Scott's book is brilliant. Second, this is a book that has been reviewed numerous times before, so a lot of what I say won't be anything new.

Seeing like a State is a wide ranging and very convincing analysis of the shortfalls of state-initiated plans for development. It begins by setting forth what Scott views as the significant common features of several major disasters in 20th century development projects. It proceeds to examine specific cases, such as the construction of Brasilia (and modernist city planning generally), Soviet collectivization, and villagization in Tanzania. As a point of departure, Scott posits two key points: that these projects were motivated largely by genuine humanistic and egalitarian impulses, and that they were horrific failures on both human and economic terms. It was refreshing to read a text on the failures of state planning that didn't degenerate into either tortured left-wing apologetics or an exultant paean to unrestricted capitalism. However, like other reviewers, I feel that there are definite flaws with the book that a responsible reviewer should address.

Scott asserts that the four key ingredients in a truly disastrous development project are:

A modern state with the administrative capability to monitor its population, including their wealth and patterns of land distribution.
A state motivated by a high modernist ideological framework that posits a linear view of social/technological progress ultimately leading to a rationally ordered society
An authoritarian state that is capable and willing back up its high modernist vision with force
A moribund or otherwise inert civil society that is incapable or unwilling to challenge these designs.

The initiators of such large scale development projects (in either their colonialist, nationalist, or socialist forms) tended to have an unshakable faith in technocratic solutions to human problems, a faith that leads to a rather dim view of local forms of knowledge. Indeed, for enthusiastic modernizers such traditional folkways are "the father who must be killed:" ridden with backwardness and inequalities. Though some, like Mao, might praise popular initiative ad nauseum, it was mainly for initiative shown in carrying out projects mandated by specialists in the central government.

Such disregard for the existing social capital of the very people they were trying to uplift is, in a large part, responsible for high modernism's tragic downfall. Rather than building upon popular knowledge and resources, typical high modernist solutions attempted to start fresh with new collective farms, cooperative villages, or model neighborhoods/workplaces. The problem inherent in such solutions is that they are usually based on radical simplifications of what human communities need in order to function, reduced to criteria easily measured by state authorities. And while such criteria (nutrition, sanitation, shelter) are vitally important, huge components of communal solidarity and social bonding exist outside its scope. Finally, top-down development projects usually overlap significantly with classic government concerns such as tax collection, conscription, and census taking and when push comes to shove these bureaucratic interests take precedence over the plan's democratic or egalitarian aspects.

There is a great deal more to this tome; more than I can realistically cover in a single entry. I'm planning on hitting a few other points in a later entry. But before ending I wanted to note what I saw as the book's flaws. Due to the book's staggering breadth, coupled with its relative brevity, it sometimes read more like an extended polemical essay rather than a scholarly text. And while I appreciated its multidisciplinary focus, the jumps between topics were sometimes disorienting, and the analogies connecting them somewhat lacking. The comparison between diverse urban communities and polycropped agricultural practices, for example, was evocative but somewhat insubstantial. Given the book's focus on agrarian policies, the chapters on urban planning (though fascinating!) seemed almost extraneous.

Those caveats aside, this is a fucking awesome book that I would recommend to anyone with a significant interest in 20th century history, public policy, economic development, or agriculture. Whatever your intellectual beverage of choice, you are likely to find something to your liking within.

When I told one of my professors about the premise of Seeing Like a State, she asked me to see if I could apply its analysis to No Child Left Behind. In my next entry I will attempt to do so.

OLD ITINERARY; SCRAPPED OR ON INDEFINITE HIATUS

2009-12-04T09:16:00.000-08:00

Which, to be honest, it already was. Given, I mean, that I hadn't updated it for a couple months.

So, in the interest of ultimately getting a master's degree in teaching, here is a new itinerary connected to my Holes and Goals project for my Content Investigations class. There is some overlap with the previous itinerary.

100% official new reading itinerary:

1) The Invention of the White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control -- Ted Allen
2) The Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo America -- Ted Allen
3) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism -- Benedict Anderson
4) Planet of Slums -- Mike Davis
5) We are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa -- Ashwin Desai
6) Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream -- Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck
7) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison -- Michel Foucault
8) Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar -- David Graeber
9) The Death and Life of Great American Cities -- Jane Jacobs
10) The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution -- C.L.R. James
11) The Image of the City-- Kevin Lynch
12) Township Politics: Civic Struggles for a New South Africa -- Mzwanele Mayekiso
13) Dialectical Urbanism: Social Struggles in the Capitalist City -- Andrew Merrifield
14) Culture and Imperialism -- Edward Said
15) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed -- James C. Scott
16) Gender and the Politics of History -- Joan Wallach Scott
17) The ANC Underground in South Africa, 1950-1976 -- Raymond Suttner
18) Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing -- Michael Taussig
19) The Making of the English Working Class -- E.P. Thompson
20) The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces -- W. H. Whyte

Currently, I've read a few of the books on this list, and hope to continue to make plodding progress toward reading them all. The selection might seem arbitrary; why are these books different from all other books? Several of them relate to my growing interest in urban theory: an interest in how urban spaces work both from a spacial/personal perspective and a political/economic perspective. Others are about South Africa: I have not studied African history very extensively, and South Africa seemed like a good place to start. Others are classic historical works which I either have not read or could stand to be more familiar with. There are continuities (which I will elaborate on) between these books and those I read over the summer.

On another level, I generally find a broad and eclectic survey of books more fun than a focused study of a single topic. In reading such a jumble of books, intersections and commonalities inevitably emerge that would not have been immediately apparent. It is precisely these sorts of intersections that are the most intellectually rewarding.

Next Entry: "Why these books?" continued

Itinerary #1, Draft One

2009-09-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

On Critical Theory:

Rabelais and His World -- Mikhail Bakhtin

Illuminations: Essays and Reflections -- Walter Benjamin

Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, and Autobiographical Writings -- Walter Benjamin

Ways of Seeing -- John Berger

Society of the Spectacle -- Guy Debord

Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts and the Politics of the Paraliterary -- Samuel Delany

Longer Views: Extended Essays -- Samuel Delany

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison -- Michel Foucault (Reread)

Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity -- Michel Foucault

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed -- Paulo Friere (Reread)

Selections from the Prison Notebooks -- Antonio Gramsci (Reread)

Empire -- Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri (Reread)

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire -- Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center -- bell hooks

History and Class Consciousness -- Georg Lukacs

Theory of the Novel -- Georg Lukacs

Women, Resistance and Revolution -- Sheila Rowbotham

Culture and Imperialism -- Edward Said

The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays -- E. P. Thompson

On Cities:

The Arcades Project -- Walter Benjamin

Planet of Slums -- Mike Davis

The Death and Life of Great American Cities -- Jane Jacobs

The Image of the City -- Kevin Lynch

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed -- James Scott

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces -- William H. Whyte

On Villages:

Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village -- Paul Friedrich

Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance -- James Scott

Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing -- Michael Taussig

Europe and the People Without History -- Eric Wolf

Tentative Notes toward an initial itinerary

2009-08-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

Rabelais and His World -- Mikhail Bakhtin

Illuminations: Essays and Reflections -- Walter Benjamin

Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, and Autobiographical Writings -- Walter Benjamin

Ways of Seeing -- John Berger

Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts and the Politics of the Paraliterary -- Samuel Delany

Longer Views: Extended Essays -- Samuel Delany

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison -- Michel Foucault (Reread)

Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity -- Michel Foucault

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed -- Paulo Friere (Reread)

Selections from the Prison Notebooks -- Antonio Gramsci (Reread)

Empire -- Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri (Reread)

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire -- Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center -- bell hooks

The Death and Life of Great American Cities -- Jane Jacobs

History and Class Consciousness -- Georg Lukacs

Theory of the Novel -- Georg Lukacs

The Image of the City -- Kevin Lynch

Culture and Imperialism -- Edward Said

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed -- James Scott

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces -- William H. Whyte

Basically, right now it's just a grab bag o' theory. If ya got suggestions, leave them in the comments.

Summer Reading: The Initial Foray

2009-08-22T23:55:00.000-07:00

Goals: Expand my knowledge base in several areas deemed deficient, including contemporary Middle-Eastern literature, urban theory, Marxian anthropology, and US History. Also, I like science fiction.

Results: This summer, I read the following books:

Bodies of Work -- Kathy Acker
The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States -- Paul Avrich
The Last Unicorn -- Peter Beagle
The Mafia of a Sicilian Village: 1860-1960 -- Anton Blok
City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles -- Mike Davis
Neveryona -- Samuel Delany
Time Square Red, Time Square Blue -- Samuel Delany
Four Novels of the 1960s -- Philip K. Dick
Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che -- Max Elbaum

Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 -- Eric Foner
Neverwhere -- Neil Gaiman
The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a 16th Century Miller -- Carlo Ginzburg
The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist -- Emile Habiby
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression -- Robin D. G. Kelley
The Story of O -- Pauline Reage
Salvation Army -- Abdellah Taia

Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of a Limpieza in Colombia -- Michael Taussig

Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century -- Eric Wolf

Evaluation: I read a lot of books. No huge revelations, but I feel much more informed about past attempts to create interracial left-wing political movements in the US, the social structure of peasant societies, and why certain cities are the way they are. I'm thinking about posting my thoughts on some of these books later on. If you have a request for a review of a particular book, holla at yer boy.