Field Manuel

An interview on the Daily Show with a co-author of "The Counter-Insurgency Field Manuel," used by various military forces and available for sale. Most interestingly, various anthropologists, economists, and even Human Rights Watch were consulted while writing this work and "thinking through" (their phrase) new tactical challenges.

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=92011

Bruce, you're right that we ought to acknowledge the "limited but actual conflictuality" between the university and other non-identical and potentially incompatible sites.

I am reminded of Spivak's anecdote over dinner about a student who wondered why she had to read books when her father, who was an immensely successful pillar of society, didn't, and her reply that for some reason, her father felt it important to send his daughter to this school in order to read books.

I hadn't heard the language of "unfair trade practices" as a form of national comparison and blame yet, but it does sound scary, especially since it seems to draw on the "fair trade" language that suffuses "ethical consumerism."

In terms of "buying foreign," are there any movements that take up parallel messages?

I wonder if the Comedy Central's critique of Fox's fairness and balance is itself mirrored in Colbert's arguing against himself in the "Formidable Opponent" sketches:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tree_Biting_Conspiracy/The_Colbert_Report_recurring_elements#Formidable_Opponent

Terrified + Service

Update (8-26): can't seem to get the link working so here is the address:

www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n15/meek01_.html

This article is truly terrifying. It is also a strong case for State control of the military, despite all the violence that has created. I may post something on after I finish the article but this thought alone is worth considering.

‘Our corporate goal is to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did to the postal service.

Update: 4pm


The article, primarily a book review, is fairly critical of the work in question and raises many interesting issues. For our conversation, however, I would like to focus on the phenomenon of privatization of the military, not just in terms of security forces but also in 'peripheral' duties (laundry is offered as example but shouldn't be the paradigm for understanding 'peripheral'). There are two issues of particular interest here. First, my horror at the (growing) presence of such private military units is also a desire for state control of the "security apparatus." Needless to say, I find this reaction troubling and recognize within it the limited conceptual frame I have for understanding the presence and use of military forces. That is, while I entirely distrust private firms with military operations I also (generally) distrust national governments with such duties. Two alternatives spring to mind: 1) A direct referendum to the public to approve or disapprove of any particular military operation. (I am thinking of larger decisions like invading Iraq, Darfur, Rwanda etc) 2) The need for a transnational oversight on such decisions, which in our current framework would fall to the U.N. One could float the rather scary idea here of a transnational meeting of military chiefs, especially on issues like ethnic cleansing and the like. I have never heard of such a meeting and would be curious to see what kind of proposals come out of it.

(These thoughts are scaring me)

A second issue to consider goes back to solidarity and the sacrifice one is willing to make for those within that circle.

At heart, the difference between the modern professional soldiers of the US or British armies and the PMCs [private military contractors] is not that great. They are volunteers. They join up for the money, to test their courage, for the kit, for the guns, to find out what it is like to kill and to have somebody try to kill you, for the camaraderie, to impress women and to get away from them; patriotism, too, is an element, and a desire to belong to a team.

This is one of the most interesting passages in the article because it brackets "patriotism" and the "desire to belong to a team" together, virtually as afterthoughts; this is indicated grammatically by their placement after the semicolon and the use of "too" as a link between the primary reasons already offered and the current secondary one. The radical difference in scale between patriotism and teams is nullified, an intriguing move that I don't think is inaccurate. Most obviously, there is a general sense of solidarity between you and others engaged in the same aim. There is, however, a more interesting reading, one that makes fighting for one's country and fighting for one's fellow soldiers the same. In a profound conversation with a student who served four tours in Iraq, he told me that while in training one is taught to think only as a unit, a small group for which every member is responsible. At bootcamp, if I make mistakes then my group is punished. (He mentioned getting caught eating a doughnut and having to watch his unit do pushups for an hour) In actual combat, then, he would give up food rations that he himself needed so that another member of his unit would be ok. I found this, amongst many other stories he told, to be a very powerful explanation of how solidarity is thought/ felt in combat.

In talking to this student, however, it struck me that concern for one's unit subsumes patriotism so that serving the nation is only thought through concern for your unit. Indeed, one is trained to think this way. I do not, then, die for my country but rather for the soldiers I am there with.

This is a troubling thought because it narrows down, rather than expands from, patriotism and the (ultimate) sacrifices it ostensibly makes possible.

My student used my class as an opportunity to introspect on the reasons and feelings of his experience in Iraq––my syllabus focused on the mechanisms of "othering;" last time he sent me an email, he asked if I had seen a particular anti-war documentary. The decorated soldier, however, said he did not regret serving because his unit was better protected and led because of his presence.

Institutions and hope

The idea of institutions paying for dissent that whatever its content, would have to be described as genuine-- to me that's a necessary idea for anyone considering the limited but actual conflictuality that governs the relationships between different sites and sorts of power

Thanks for this insight Bruce; you’re right, this is indeed an uncomfortable thought that forces a more nuanced view of institutional power and the clashes it produces within and between these bodies. Acknowledging salaried dissent as both limited by these sites of production and real is difficult to think, for me at least, because it inverts the kind of messiness that I am used to. That is, it has become rather routine and commonsensical, unfortunately, that dissent (especially the academic variety) is always already subsumed within the machination of capitalism and/or knowledge/power. Dissent, in this view, is not only limited by sites of production but to them as well; this is a mode of radical insularity that deadens any efficacy such efforts may have.

Ah, knee jerk nihilism.

To acknowledge salaried dissent––a weird, ill-defined term––as real complicates easy cynicism and cautiously grants agency to our work. I am still uncertain, however, if conflicts between institutions open spaces of intervention. My first thought is to think of Ranciére’s advice that one needs to declare one’s rights in a situation when the very possibility of being heard (and the agency to speak) is denied. This, it seems to me, may be available when there is an overlap in authority and thus conflict. A second possibility, one that pertains to our vocations more directly, is that the creation and sanctioning of dissent in one institution (e.g. the university) puts that body in conflict with other institutions (e.g. the military). Although this is a simplistic rendering, it does offer the possibility of seeing localized dissent create ripples in other spaces.

If Comedy Central foregrounds the polarization in order to undercut ironically the possibility of fairness and balance, does this strategy open a third space that critiques polarization?

I would offer that such a strategy reinforces polarization but in such a way that one no longer claims to be “fair and balanced.” Rather, do as Comedy Central does and own up to your political bias. Secondly, and rather oddly, while obviously mocking Fox News’ slogan and programming structure (Democrat show followed by Republican show), Stewart and Colbert are the balance to Fox News. That a left-leaning (I wouldn’t want to call them liberals) comedy duo balances a news channel is a troubling gauge of political discourse at the moment. I do, however, think that Colbert’s success is a mark of hope.


Excellence/ Prestige & relation to China:

I agree with you Ray that the non-referentiality of concepts like “fair-trade” and “excellence” serve as a mode of translation that ignores historical and spatial specificity; Bruce is maddened by this as well. Two thoughts: First, the interrogation of such terms as they appear in public discourse is a key site of intervention. Questioning the use of words like “fair” and “excellence,” it seems to me, would open up possibilities for interrogating (read: blaming) particular instances of, say, American gunboat diplomacy without excusing (or praising) Chinese labor or trade practices. Obvious perhaps, but I think academics should take on such projects, especially in public forums. Second, and more apologetically, these terms are a way, albeit a poor way, to negotiate the need for universal categories of judgment without falling into the trap of ethnocentrism. That is, they are part of the accessible cultural lexicon, which we have a particular expertise with; how we change that vocabulary and to what we change it to is an open question.

Excellence, Dissent, and the Fair and Balanced.

Thanks for the link to the funnier note. The humor of it is interesting given your interest in the Colbert Report: choose Mac or Windows, choose Democrat or Republican. The alliterative genre we might call "parodic propaganda posters" highlights the either/or, the us-and-them, the binaries that are held at arm's length through parody.

Ah, parody. Like the Democrat Daily Show and "Republican" Colbert Report, the "fair and balanced" balancing act that we know from Fox News that really isn't fair and balanced. The Comedy Central parodic critique of fairness and balance. Maybe there is no fairness and balance given that both polarities emerge from the same structure: Fox fairness and balanced is as fair and balanced as Comedy Central's. Or are they?

If Comedy Central foregrounds the polarization in order to undercut ironically the possibility of fairness and balance, does this strategy open a third space that critiques polarization?

As I look at "Chepod," I am reminded of this.

When do we speak most about "excellence"? It doesn't strike me that we talk about it much within our own departments. Where it seems to pop up is when I speak to administrators, alumni, and legislators. I wonder if the concept of excellence only comes up in translation: that is, when there needs to be a universalist category for standards (which, I suppose, are at least partially universalist). We may also find the discourse of "excellence" in award descriptions ("Shashi wins the Pepsi-Cola Prize for Excellence in Scholarship") partly because these terms reify a material process that is contingent and historical rather than transcendent, as terms like "excellence" and suggest. Frank Donoghue compares it to "prestige" in terms of its lack of referent:

[P]restige, is dangerously nonreferential, eerily similar to “excellence,” which Bill Readings critiqued in The University in Ruins. Prestige is a dimension of a college’s public relations rather than its day-­to-­day practices; it is the province of development officers and enrollment
managers, not professors. ("Prestige," Profession 2006 157)

The non-referentiality of these terms and the branding of the knowledge economy may explain why, in one survey, respondents listed Princeton as one of the top ten U. S. law schools even though Princeton has never had a law school (Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook, The-Winner-Take-All-Society, 149 in Donoghue 157-158). Neither your nor my institution's law school will be able to rank as highly as Princeton's.

I like your formulation that, in terms of knowledge production, we produce dissent. You're right that it nicely dovetails with Bruce's point that tenured faculty are well-paid, professionally "successful" dissenters and that dissent may well be licensed by larger picture (capitalism? imperialism?) in ways about which we must not remain complacent.

In terms of "fair trade," I am reminded of how a Democratic Senator appeared on Lou Dobbs yesterday or the day before talking about protecting American jobs. He talked about securing borders in order to protect from illegal aliens and supported "fair trade" in a critique of NAFTA. He introduced a point by saying, "Some globalization-supporters of free-trade may call me a xenophobic protectionist, but..." I've only heard of "fair trade" as a concept in the supermarket aisle and at hippie open-air markets. Has it gained recently a kind of flexibility that allows it to be used in "securing borders" discourse?

Trading Solidarity

images that we might mistake for socialist posters are instead recuperated to sell cars.

Indeed. This is said about the appropriation of revolutionary figures and symbols into banal consumerism. I am thinking specifically of Che merchandise. Tattoos are similarly characterized as a mainstream subversion. (Here, one also sees the need for more nuanced categories or schema for understanding our world. Tattoos, for instance, may have nothing to do with subversion per se, but may be a vote of confidence in the permanence of an affective relationship to someone or something, including a particular brand of politics.)

On a funnier note, check this out.

“to whom are these representations of labor selling? Why this now? What does this move say about our historical moment?”

These are the fundamental questions, among others, that we are trying to deal with. I mean “we” in both the narrow and broad sense: this blog and its reader-participants, and also the larger intellectual community.

Thinking along the lines I drew before, let me offer that these representations of labor are being sold to labor itself. Specifically, the Toyota ad I referred to was showcasing a four-door sedan, which is more or less understood as a family car. Family, then, expands from one’s direct kin to the lager ‘family’ of fellow workers and even more broadly the nation. The car is an explicitly middle-class car spread across a ten thousand dollar range between its base model and the top end. The ‘labor’ buying this car ranges from line workers to middle management, the latter being spread across many economic sectors not merely the automotive. Labor, in its role as consumer, is being sold its own production as a mode of solidarity with other labor. Strange and brilliant (in that evil genius kind of way).

Fair trade coffee, to use an example with which I have some familiarity, seems to carry similar affective loads. ‘Family,’ or solidarity perhaps, is expanded transnationally to include workers in the developing world through consumption habits that demonstrate some desire for their well-being. Cynically, of course, one is always skeptical what ‘fair trade’ actually means to the field workers in terms of living conditions or if, like ISO9000, it is merely a purchased label that makes our coffee more palatable. Holding both conditions as valid but not entirely true, I submit that the pressure for and availability of ‘fair trade’ goods is a positive step toward what Robbins would call “feeling beyond the nation” More specifically, consuming ‘fair trade’ products is a move toward ‘cosmopolitan’ affect because it is an attempt to bring our daily lives into greater harmony with our desire for a more equitable world. At its best, and I realize I may be overly generous here, ‘fair trade’ coffee, hybrid cars and such trends hint toward the incorporation of larger solidarities into our everyday culture.

Insofar as buying ‘foreign’ cars was animated by a desire to support (fellow) labor, understood in that ad as unionized American workers, then consuming ‘fair trade’ products represents an extension of that same “imagined community” and its potential affective ties. Both are, from a generous and optimistic view, steps toward a cultural ethos that incorporates ‘global feeling’ into everyday experience.

Perhaps "production" is worth emphasizing here: the "product" of knowledge here may be linked not only to "quality" indicators as ISO 9000, but also college rankings and ambiguous terms such as "excellence" that are used by alumni organizations, state legislators, and disciplinary (and cross-disciplinary) award systems.

Damn! The hammer falls on we who are paid to dissent. (I’m thinking of Bruce during Stoler’s colloquium). I know this is part of your research and I would love to hear more of your thoughts on rewarding “knowledge production,” especially when the product is—ostensibly—dissent.

Buying Foreign and Quality Standards

Your notion of "buying foreign to support local workers" is a striking formulation. Also fascinating is your description of the "film of workers wearing UAW hardhats and badges on their shirtsleeves," which illustrates some of the ways in which labor sells: images that we might mistake for socialist posters are instead recuperated to sell cars.

One may be skeptical about the effects of representing labor to support the automotive industry. In an era in which labor seems to be losing ground--often literally, when territorially restricted by borders that regulate labor flow--to the relative liquidity of capital, to whom are these representations of labor selling? Why this now? What does this move say about our historical moment?

The ISO 9000 standard is interesting because it has been used by businesses to sell "end products and services" even though, as you quote, the standard is intended only to certify business processes. Which raises the question: is the conceptual border between "business processes" and "end products and services" a porous boundary? Is this conceptual flexibility being used to sell colleges and universities, with consequences for how administrators, students, and other stakeholders envision knowledge production? Perhaps "production" is worth emphasizing here: the "product" of knowledge here may be linked not only to "quality" indicators as ISO 9000, but also college rankings and ambiguous terms such as "excellence" that are used by alumni organizations, state legislators, and disciplinary (and cross-disciplinary) award systems.

Can you clarify how you're thinking about fair trade in the context of "Support America and American Unions: Buy Foreign"?

Buying allegiance

I would love to see or have a summary of the Consumer Reports issue you mentioned. Generally speaking, however, 'Japanese' companies manufacturing in the U.S and 'American' companies manufacturing elsewhere ruptures any easy allegiance to domestic producers, sloganized as "buy American." Although I know it will fail, let me invert the slogan for the sake of a thought experiment.

"Buy foreign:" This slogan would knot allegiance, that is affective ties to a larger social body, in all sorts of interesting ways. First, one would buy foreign cars in order to support local workers. I remember a string of Toyota ads form a few years ago that tried to localize their brand. The ad showed their top selling car, which was then second to the Ford Taurus, and the voice over announced that it was made in their new Cleveland (?) plant. Film of workers wearing UAW hardhats and badges on their shirtsleeves, smiling into the camera, were the penultimate scenes; video of the car, obviously, closed the ad.

The strategy was to breakdown a long standing prejudice of buying "imports" by demonstrating that they were not in fact imported at all. No, they are produced by fellow Americans like you and me: union boys, blue collar folks. Despite my cynicism for clothing capital in nationalism, one does have to acknowledge that those plants employ a huge number of people and help grow that space's economy. While part of the profit goes to the larger transnational corporation, part also gets reinvested into that plant, that community and into workers' incomes. One also 'supports' the unions and their hard won 'victories'––nothing can be said without scare quotes––which is also an implicit support for decent working conditions, livable wages and such. (As a contrast, I am thinking of the lack of such labor organizations––their violent suppression actually––in developing nations)

Support America and American Unions: Buy Foreign.

Weird.

I am sympathetic to some obvious objections: 1) Belonging to a Union dampens but does not end the exploitation of the working class. 2) So, what we are talking about here is a liberal-reformist argument rather than what is really necessary, an overturning of the entire capitalist system and its perpetual class antagonisms. 3) This thinking and the action it advocates––buy foreign––naturalizes (?) capitalism as the system within which one has to work, a system in which one's agency is limited to rearranging deck chairs rather than getting off the damn boat.

Yes.

I am at the limit of my ethical thought here. While I want to advocate for a revolutionary overturning of the world capitalist system, I also don't want the desire for such ethical cleanliness to handcuff thinking through the immediate and horrifyingly uneven distribution of wealth. Neither is as diametrically opposed to each other as I have just laid out and perhaps this is the space for a "double gesture," another idea I would like to think through.


Also, I find the question you raise about 'quality' to be both really interesting and something I can't quite comment on. Here are, however, some quotes form Wikipedia. The first regards ISO 9000 and the second "fair trade" advocacy.

"Certification to an ISO 9000 standard does not guarantee the compliance (and therefore the quality) of end products and services; rather, it certifies that consistent business processes are being applied. Although the standards originated in manufacturing, they are now employed across a wide range of other types of organizations, including colleges and universities. A "product", in ISO vocabulary, can mean a physical object, or services, or software."

"As have most developmental efforts, fair trade has proved itself controversial and has drawn criticism from both ends of the political spectrum. Some economists and conservative think tanks see fair trade as a type of subsidy that impedes growth. Segments of the left criticize fair trade for not adequately challenging the current trading system."

I'd have to do further investigating to find out more about what happened with Madison supermarkets.

Just some preliminary thoughts:

I like the way you frame the question of "keeping money in the neighborhood" in terms of larger questions, ones that call to question the slogan, "Think global. Buy local."

How mobile are services like haircutting?

How does the concept of quality figure into debates around ethical consumerism? How have people used the concept of quality to promote some interests over others? Perhaps more specifically, how do markers of quality, such as organic certification and ISO 9000 certification (which companies pay dearly for even though it certifies only management practices but companies have used to suggest something greater)? What kinds of power have institutions of certification gained and lost under the banner of ethical consumerism? One thinks of markers of certification in terms of the branding phenomena to which Naomi Klein draws our attention.

How do arguments over quality change in transnational contexts? Or does quality as a concept figure historically in debates around transnational markets?

You helpfully foreground the problem of automotive markets in the question of "domestic" and "foreign" cars when companies with "Japanese" names have more assembly plants inside the U.S. than those with "American" names, which have more assembly plants outside of the U.S. I'm reminded of a recent Consumer Reports I can look up if you're interested.

So further thoughts on capital & affect:

I'm not entirely sure what happened with the supermarkets in Madison. Did they decide after a year that the stores weren't profitable anymore and then bailed?

A part of this dialogue reminds me of our conversation in Bruce's class about Saving Private Ryan, the chief lesson of which was the ability/ desire to "sacrifice for something bigger than yourself." There are two things that occur to me relative to our positions and the particular items of our conversations, namely good and services.

First, should one simply accept inferior goods/ services for a larger cause (here, keeping money in the neighborhood)? The knee jerk answer for me is an emphatic YES! However, there are several things to reconsider. I'm not very sure that I would want this particular proprietor to continue if the services are that bad; that is, my stubborn support for this business could keep another (local) service provider from setting up shop. The denial of the latter possibility seems to both take away agency from local business people and grant too much power to big companies; after all, they are slaves to the profit motive and cannot rely on either the affective relationship or the word-of-mouth a more local person could, or at least could to a greater degree.

Secondly, the desire and emotion to support a local business, even if that means overpaying, seems like a luxury. Personally, my monthly food budget leaves little room for additional costs even if the desire is there. Our class conversation about organic + local produce comes to mind. Strangely, it seems that those who are most concerned and 'enlightened' about these issues are also those who generally don't have the money to support such environmentally and economically sustainable endeavors. That, of course, is a vast generalization.

Finally, and here I lay my crude cards on the table, one should also consider affective relationships to larger, even transnational businesses. For instance, I don't see myself buying, or even advocating another to buy, a domestic car. They are simply not competitive in a large set of crucial categories, including fuel efficiency. Being from a union town, however, this is both problematic and potentially inflammatory. Also, in making the "competitive" argument, I am aligning myself with a capitalist ethics, a bloody economic Darwinism which, however problematic, is also driving environmental (read: fuel efficiency) issues. In this spirit, I'm advocating my friend to buy either a Honda Civic or Toyota Prius, even if the latter is more of an emotional buy than a genuine alternative. Still, and I know this smacks of liberalism, the presence of these cars and 'green friendly' advertising does seem like a good step.

Ok...I think I shifted our conversation just a bit but that's what happens I suppose.

I like the idea of trying out affective consuming and the mobility of capital, consumers, labor, and business. Apparently in Madison big supermarket chains came in, slashed prices for a year while my friends lived on bargain basement prices, drove independent grocers out of business, and the chains closed their stores, leaving seniors with no local grocers lugging groceries on the bus for hours. I get indignant, but getting indignant almost seems too easy, begging deeper analysis. What further thoughts have you had on your ideas?

The beginnings

Ray and I (Shashi) wanted to collaborate on a project so that we could continue thinking though some of the issues raised during Bruce Robbins' seminar at SCT.

I posted these thoughts, asked Ray to respond and our brief email dialogue are the substance of the above posts. Now, however, we want to invite our friends and colleagues to join this conversation and direct it accordingly.