Friday 08.29.08 — An old new map — A discussion
Comments Off on Friday 08.29.08 — An old new map — A discussionFriday 08.29.08 — An old new map — A discussion
Contents:
1. About this Friday
2. Note from Karen
3. Some Related Articles
4. On Security and Terror
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1. About this Friday Night
What: Discussion
When: Friday 08.29.08 @7pm
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
Who: All are welcome
In 2006, 16 Beaver was invited to realize a project in South Korea. At the time, we decided to look at the status of borders within the rapidly realigning geo-political maps of the 21st century. At the time, we were especially interested in the frozen conflict between North and South Korea as a particular space where an older geopolitical map (from the Cold War) had been retained, only resignified and revamped under the rubric of defending South Korea from the “axis of evil”. We were also interested in the production and management of crisis and conflict as a strategy, mode, means of consolidating power (often states or larger regional actors).
The recent war involving Russia and Georgia is no exception to this set of inquiries.
Late last year, we hosted an event with Karen Hakobyan and Haroutioun Simonian centered around artificial boundaries and zones of conflict. As a part of the event, Karen gave a lecture focusing on the Caucasus and the use of conflicts and frozen conflicts to meet the geo-strategic goals of larger political actors.
We have received several requests from people who came to that evening to organize another event, which can address the recent events in Georgia, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Russia as well as other developments in the region, including the contested elections in Armenia.
This Friday will be an opportunity to meet and discuss these recent events. Karen will attempt to give an overview and provide some historical perspective to the situation. We would like to invite you to please pass this email along to those who may be interested to attend and contribute thoughts, ideas, questions, experiences to the discussion.
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2. Note from Karen
I was always sure, that the world is trying to bring back the geopolitical map of pre-Soviet times. No memory and no geography of communism, with the same kind of map it was in the beginning of last century.
Interesting to watch how civil society representatives and institutions play as agents for greater powers in this respect. Although i would question wether they realize the historical importance of their role. I am one of those, and sometimes, honestly i feel and know that what i am doing is going along with a power, of course mainly characterized as oppositional and critical power, but still power…
More difficult is to stay always in an active critical position, question all the gatherings and the “thousands of people” involved in events… and never believe in war and terror as a “possible” or what is even more dangerous “accepted” means or solution.
I feel it is so important to stop talking, when we see that what we are saying is almost the same thing that comes from the power i.e governments, parties, institutions… That is a signal to stop and question ourselves, where are the lies… how has propaganda found even a little bit of sympathy or refuge inside our minds.
Very difficult to be Armenian from Armenia, to believe in principles of democracy and peace and still stay critical and fair and reflective in public forums… when the Caucasus right now is in again a “hot spot”, and the whole region Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani people are suffering from not being able to influence their country’s politics, and getting again far away from an opportunity to exercise democracy in their own states … I am so afraid that while I am talking and discussing, my friends and the people of my city will be occupied, beaten and arrested not only by Armenian police but also by Russian tanks entering our streets like in 1988 (sorry, this is my fear I guess, but haven’t seen any other tanks on my streets ever)
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3. A range of articles on the situation
Militarism and a Uni-polar World
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/002601.php
Georgia and Kosovo: A Single Intertwined Crisis
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/002600.php
WINNERS, LOSERS AND JOKERS OF GEORGIA WAR
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/002599.php
From Russia with Love…
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/002598.php
US Role in Georgia Crisis
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/002597.php
The Neocons Do Georgia
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/002596.php
2 articles on Georgia
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/002594.php
Georgia after war: the political landscape
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/georgia-after-war-the-political-landscape
Abkhazia Pawns its Independence
http://www.opendemocracy.net/russia/article/abkhazia-pawns-its-independence
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4. Parting Thought
In October of 2001, we had read this among a few other texts for an evening of discussions related to September 11th. It is interesting to reconsider this text in light of the recent crises both in the financial markets as well as political events like the most recent war in Georgia and South Ossetia.
On Security and Terror (Giorgio Agamben)
(unauthorized translation by soenke.zehle FAZ 09/20/01)
Security as leading principle of state politics dates back to the the birth of the modern state. Hobbes already mentions it as the opposite of fear,
which compels human beings to come together within a society. But not until the 18th century does a thought of security come into its own. In a 1978
lecture at the Collége de France (which has yet to be published) Michel Foucault has shown how the political and economic practice of the
Physiocrats opposes security to discipline and the law as instruments of governance.
Turgot and Quesnay as well as Physiocratic officials were not primarily concerned with the prevention of hunger or the regulation of production, but
wanted to allow for their development to then regulate and “secure” their consequences. While disciplinary power isolates and closes off territories,
measures of security lead to an opening and to globalization; while the law wants to prevent and regulate, security intervenes in ongoing processes to
direct them.In short, discipline wants to produce order, security wants to regulate disorder. Since measures of security can only function within a
context of freedom of traffic, trade, and individual initiative, Foucault can show that the development of security accompanies the ideas of
liberalism.
Today we face extreme and most dangerous developments in the thought of security. In the course of a gradual neutralization of politics and the
progressive surrender of traditional tasks of the state, security becomes the basic principle of state activity. What used to be one among several
definitive measures of public administration until the first half of the twentieth century, now becomes the sole criterium of political legitimation.
The thought of security bears within it an essential risk. A state which has security as its sole task and source of legitimacy is a fragile organism; it
can always be provoked by terrorism to become itself terroristic.
We should not forget that the first major organization of terror after the war, the Organisation de l¹Armée Secrète (OAS), was established by a French
general, who thought of himself as a patriot, convinced that terrorism was the only answer to the guerrilla phenomenon in Algeria and Indochina. When
politics, the way it was understood by theorists of the “science of police” in the eighteenthe century, reduces itself to police, the difference between
state and terrorism threatens to disappears. In the end security and terrorism may form a single deadly system, in which they justify and
legitimate each others¹ actions.
The risk is not merely the development of a clandestine complicity of opponents, but that the search for security leads to a world civil war which
makes all civil coexistence impossible. In the new situation created by the end of the classical form of war between sovereign states it becomes clear
that security finds its end in globalization: it implies the idea of a new planetary order which is in truth the worst of all disorders.
But there is another danger. Because they require constant reference to a state of exception, measure of security work towards a growing depoliticization of society. In the long run they are irreconcilable with democracy.
Nothing is more important than a revision of the concept of security as basic principle of state politics. European and American politicians finally
have to consider the catastrophic consequences of uncritical general use of this figure of thought. It is not that democracies should cease to defend
themselves: but maybe the time has come to work towards the prevention of disorder and catastrophe, not merely towards their control. On the contrary,
we can say that politics secretly works towards the production of emergencies. It is the task of democratic politics to prevent the
development of conditions which lead to hatred, terror, and destruction and not to limits itself to attempts to control them once they have already occurred.