the violences of everday life
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In the documentary We are All Neighbours: Bosnia (1993) by Tone Bringa, one of the displaced villagers summarizes the civil war’s effect in simple words: “My neighbour, she used to come down from her place and have coffee with me. Now she won’t even look me in the eye. I invited her to speak with you [for this film], but she didn’t even come to the door.” In a similar poignant scene from A Child’s Century of War (2001), when a young Chechen boy is asked about what he wants for his future, he responds quietly and solemnly while choking back tears: “Revenge.”
Such stories are often lost in the retelling of war histories, but they speak much more profoundly about the trauma of war and resonate more viscerally than statistics precisely because they speak of loss at a personal level. Rhetorical questions abound: “What must it be like to be so disconnected from your community that you can’t recognize the humanity in your neighbour’s face? What must it be like to have nothing to wake up for, to have no tangible hope for a better tomorrow?”
“What must it be like to be like . . . that?”
The difficulty in intellectualizing about these issues is that one cannot remove the feeling of “missing something” in the analysis. The stories seem to be robbed of their impact, of their dignity, of their ability to stand alone, if we twist them into some relation with ‘concepts’. In some sense, they ought to speak for themselves, to us: “This is the face of human strife. These are the effects of war. What more needs to be said?” With this personal caveat in mind, and with the requisite humility the task demands, I propose to discuss the relationships between these all-too-real, all-too-human stories and some of the scholarship discussing the “forms and dynamics of social violence” and global ethnic conflict.
“Mundane.” The most striking thing about these documented stories is really their ordinariness. The Bosnian villagers are shown going about their everyday business: cooking, cleaning, going to the marketplace, discussing current events amongst themselves. The children in the refugee camps do what children do: they play, they dance around, they amuse themselves. At the same time, there is a pervading disquietude underlying the apparent “normality” of their daily lives. “Perhaps when compared to the extremes of political violence . . . cultural and social violence may seem another order altogether of violent events . . . Yet, for this very reason, the study of violences of every life is significant, because it offers an alternative view of human conditions that may give access to fundamental, if deeply disturbing, processes of social organization” [Kleinman 238]. We realize, then, that their “ordinary” is not ordinary, that it ought not to be considered ordinary, that there is something profoundly disturbing in the concept of an existence whose only sense of certainty is the inherent uncertainty “inseparable from that humdrum background of violence as usual” [Kleinman 239].
How ought we to understand the idea of “violences of everyday life”? In a sense, there is a distinct incommensurability between our and their understanding of “everyday”. Unless we ourselves experience the same trauma (and yet perhaps, some would argue, not even then), we cannot really grasp the emotions and reactions involved in that kind of existence. Even as the filmmakers document their most mundane activities, we are still very much removed from their reality. “The mediatization of violence and suffering creates a form of inauthentic social experience: witnessing at a distance, a kind of voyeurism in which nothing is acutely at stake for the observer” [Kleinman 232]. Can I even claim to relate at any level with such experiences? How could I even hope to presume to understand anything but an ‘empty’ concept of violence?
“Obvious.” How is it that larger political and national issues come to affect the everyday existences of those furthest removed from the seats of power? How is it that those everyday experiences get translated into social politics? One cannot help but attempt, in the larger context of ‘understanding’, to posit ‘explanations’ for why such phenomena occur. “Much recent discussion of international affairs has been based on the misleading assumption that the world is fraught with primordial ethnic conflict. According to this notion, ethnic groups lie in wait for one another, nourishing age-old hatreds and restrained only by powerful states” [Bowen 334]. It has become all too easy to accept such simplified explanations, perhaps precisely because we really are doing nothing more than “witnessing at a distance.” This belies the reality that much more is at work than mere tribalism. “What the myth of ethnic conflict would say are ever-present tensions are in fact the products of political choices. Negative stereotyping, fear of another group, killing lest one be killed – these are the doings of so-called leaders” [Bowen 342].
Yet, even this criticism seems too esoteric for the ordinary people in our story. Their existences seem largely removed from any such high-level political machinations. What is real, what matters to them, what they feel, is the strife and division wrought by war on their daily lives. The Bosnian villagers reminisce of a time when they, as neighbours, would greet each other in the marketplace, visit each other’s homes, break bread together, have their children play together. The refugee children know nothing or remember little of a better existence, of a life not lived in tents and transience, of schools, of being children and not having to fend for themselves. Can I really be so smug in my ‘understanding’, in my ‘education’, that I could presume to explain to them why they live in such a state? Will such explanations about the roots of ‘ethnic conflict’ (and prescriptions to stop it) make a difference to them when it is they who experience its consequences?
“Sobering.” The most personally impacting idea that comes from reflecting upon these stories is the realization that, while there may be a stark difference in our life circumstances, there is something we all share with the victims of war and conflict. Unctuous and clichéd as the concept may be, it is nevertheless true that our common humanity makes these stories personally significant. In the words of the anthropologist Akbar Ahmed, “[m]y analysis and interest in the subject are not entirely of an academic nature . . . I also approach [this subject] as someone who has had to come to terms with it in respect of my own identity” [2]. I reflect on these stories and acknowledge the circumstantial luck that has kept me away from such tragedy: as the proverb says, “there, but for the grace of G-d, go I”. This sober acknowledgement alleviates none of the existential guilt, but only furthers the anxiety about “the global community [facing a] kind of dramatic crossroad, a cusp, a critical point in history” [Ahmed 22].
We who are circumstantially furthest removed from the ravages of war and ‘ethnic conflict’ ought to be no less impacted psychologically and existentially. We all share in this ongoing history: “we need to broaden our frame of reference beyond Bosnia in order to draw universal principles and locate global explanations . . . What is certain is that the changes after Communism, the Cold War and the failure of western modernity have universal implications.” As cultural heirs and guardians of modernization, we have (and therefore, ought to act on) a special responsibility to make positive contributions to the resolution of conflicts borne of post-colonial, post-modern (or, perhaps, anti-colonial and anti-modern) ideologies. More importantly, the apparent ‘vagueness’ of this responsibility (“responsibility to who?” one may ask) ought to disappear if we force ourselves to acknowledge our Bosnian neighbours, the young Chechen boy who needs a future, and all others suffering from the violences of ‘everyday’ life.
Mundane. Obvious. Sobering. Such were my reactions to the particular set of images I have recalled from these documentaries. I share this not because I think I have experienced something profound or even to think that writing something like this will necessarily change what is happening out there in the "real world". It seems necessary to acknowledge the nihilism that breeds indifference to the seeming mountain pile of problems facing our world today. Many people choose to remain oblivious because there is the ultimate question of how much a single individual can actually do to positively affect the course of world history. I am of the ilk that soberly acknowledges the reality and presumes to bear some existential guilt at not being able to do nearly enough of what ought to be done. But I am somewhat hesitant to wax philosophic on this issue because it seems to be fruitful neither academically nor practically.
Thought experiments, with the aid of documentaries, projecting oneself into these circumstances – into the psyche of the Bosnian villager or the Chechen boy – seem to be only a small step in establishing a resolve to make positive global contributions. Engaging in academic rhetoric must be accompanied by practical efforts, great and small, in reality. “Never before in human history have the global and the local, the high and the low, the past and the present, the sacred and the profane, the serious and the frivolous been so bewilderingly juxtaposed and so instantly available to stimulate, confuse and anger the individual” [Ahmed 22]. We appreciate the intrinsic value of documentaries such as these because, in our ideal cultural rhetoric, we prize knowledge for knowledge’s sake. But let us not be immune to the inherent didacticism that frames these portrayals: these scenes, images, and transcripts are purposely arranged to impel us, not just towards esoteric discussions, but towards practical and moral action.
--------------------
"Where is the line we draw in setting out the boundaries for being responsible for others? Is it simply family and close friends? Do we stop at the frontiers of our own country? Does our conscience, our sense of right or wrong, take us as far as the crowded camps of northern Uganda, surrounded by land mines, attacked repeatedly by an army made largely of child soldiers? I believe we in Canada have a special vocation to . . . help in the building of a secure order. We need not be confined to our self-interest."— Lloyd Axworthy, Navigating a New World
In the documentary We are All Neighbours: Bosnia (1993) by Tone Bringa, one of the displaced villagers summarizes the civil war’s effect in simple words: “My neighbour, she used to come down from her place and have coffee with me. Now she won’t even look me in the eye. I invited her to speak with you [for this film], but she didn’t even come to the door.” In a similar poignant scene from A Child’s Century of War (2001), when a young Chechen boy is asked about what he wants for his future, he responds quietly and solemnly while choking back tears: “Revenge.”
Such stories are often lost in the retelling of war histories, but they speak much more profoundly about the trauma of war and resonate more viscerally than statistics precisely because they speak of loss at a personal level. Rhetorical questions abound: “What must it be like to be so disconnected from your community that you can’t recognize the humanity in your neighbour’s face? What must it be like to have nothing to wake up for, to have no tangible hope for a better tomorrow?”
“What must it be like to be like . . . that?”
The difficulty in intellectualizing about these issues is that one cannot remove the feeling of “missing something” in the analysis. The stories seem to be robbed of their impact, of their dignity, of their ability to stand alone, if we twist them into some relation with ‘concepts’. In some sense, they ought to speak for themselves, to us: “This is the face of human strife. These are the effects of war. What more needs to be said?” With this personal caveat in mind, and with the requisite humility the task demands, I propose to discuss the relationships between these all-too-real, all-too-human stories and some of the scholarship discussing the “forms and dynamics of social violence” and global ethnic conflict.
“Mundane.” The most striking thing about these documented stories is really their ordinariness. The Bosnian villagers are shown going about their everyday business: cooking, cleaning, going to the marketplace, discussing current events amongst themselves. The children in the refugee camps do what children do: they play, they dance around, they amuse themselves. At the same time, there is a pervading disquietude underlying the apparent “normality” of their daily lives. “Perhaps when compared to the extremes of political violence . . . cultural and social violence may seem another order altogether of violent events . . . Yet, for this very reason, the study of violences of every life is significant, because it offers an alternative view of human conditions that may give access to fundamental, if deeply disturbing, processes of social organization” [Kleinman 238]. We realize, then, that their “ordinary” is not ordinary, that it ought not to be considered ordinary, that there is something profoundly disturbing in the concept of an existence whose only sense of certainty is the inherent uncertainty “inseparable from that humdrum background of violence as usual” [Kleinman 239].
How ought we to understand the idea of “violences of everyday life”? In a sense, there is a distinct incommensurability between our and their understanding of “everyday”. Unless we ourselves experience the same trauma (and yet perhaps, some would argue, not even then), we cannot really grasp the emotions and reactions involved in that kind of existence. Even as the filmmakers document their most mundane activities, we are still very much removed from their reality. “The mediatization of violence and suffering creates a form of inauthentic social experience: witnessing at a distance, a kind of voyeurism in which nothing is acutely at stake for the observer” [Kleinman 232]. Can I even claim to relate at any level with such experiences? How could I even hope to presume to understand anything but an ‘empty’ concept of violence?
“Obvious.” How is it that larger political and national issues come to affect the everyday existences of those furthest removed from the seats of power? How is it that those everyday experiences get translated into social politics? One cannot help but attempt, in the larger context of ‘understanding’, to posit ‘explanations’ for why such phenomena occur. “Much recent discussion of international affairs has been based on the misleading assumption that the world is fraught with primordial ethnic conflict. According to this notion, ethnic groups lie in wait for one another, nourishing age-old hatreds and restrained only by powerful states” [Bowen 334]. It has become all too easy to accept such simplified explanations, perhaps precisely because we really are doing nothing more than “witnessing at a distance.” This belies the reality that much more is at work than mere tribalism. “What the myth of ethnic conflict would say are ever-present tensions are in fact the products of political choices. Negative stereotyping, fear of another group, killing lest one be killed – these are the doings of so-called leaders” [Bowen 342].
Yet, even this criticism seems too esoteric for the ordinary people in our story. Their existences seem largely removed from any such high-level political machinations. What is real, what matters to them, what they feel, is the strife and division wrought by war on their daily lives. The Bosnian villagers reminisce of a time when they, as neighbours, would greet each other in the marketplace, visit each other’s homes, break bread together, have their children play together. The refugee children know nothing or remember little of a better existence, of a life not lived in tents and transience, of schools, of being children and not having to fend for themselves. Can I really be so smug in my ‘understanding’, in my ‘education’, that I could presume to explain to them why they live in such a state? Will such explanations about the roots of ‘ethnic conflict’ (and prescriptions to stop it) make a difference to them when it is they who experience its consequences?
“Sobering.” The most personally impacting idea that comes from reflecting upon these stories is the realization that, while there may be a stark difference in our life circumstances, there is something we all share with the victims of war and conflict. Unctuous and clichéd as the concept may be, it is nevertheless true that our common humanity makes these stories personally significant. In the words of the anthropologist Akbar Ahmed, “[m]y analysis and interest in the subject are not entirely of an academic nature . . . I also approach [this subject] as someone who has had to come to terms with it in respect of my own identity” [2]. I reflect on these stories and acknowledge the circumstantial luck that has kept me away from such tragedy: as the proverb says, “there, but for the grace of G-d, go I”. This sober acknowledgement alleviates none of the existential guilt, but only furthers the anxiety about “the global community [facing a] kind of dramatic crossroad, a cusp, a critical point in history” [Ahmed 22].
We who are circumstantially furthest removed from the ravages of war and ‘ethnic conflict’ ought to be no less impacted psychologically and existentially. We all share in this ongoing history: “we need to broaden our frame of reference beyond Bosnia in order to draw universal principles and locate global explanations . . . What is certain is that the changes after Communism, the Cold War and the failure of western modernity have universal implications.” As cultural heirs and guardians of modernization, we have (and therefore, ought to act on) a special responsibility to make positive contributions to the resolution of conflicts borne of post-colonial, post-modern (or, perhaps, anti-colonial and anti-modern) ideologies. More importantly, the apparent ‘vagueness’ of this responsibility (“responsibility to who?” one may ask) ought to disappear if we force ourselves to acknowledge our Bosnian neighbours, the young Chechen boy who needs a future, and all others suffering from the violences of ‘everyday’ life.
Mundane. Obvious. Sobering. Such were my reactions to the particular set of images I have recalled from these documentaries. I share this not because I think I have experienced something profound or even to think that writing something like this will necessarily change what is happening out there in the "real world". It seems necessary to acknowledge the nihilism that breeds indifference to the seeming mountain pile of problems facing our world today. Many people choose to remain oblivious because there is the ultimate question of how much a single individual can actually do to positively affect the course of world history. I am of the ilk that soberly acknowledges the reality and presumes to bear some existential guilt at not being able to do nearly enough of what ought to be done. But I am somewhat hesitant to wax philosophic on this issue because it seems to be fruitful neither academically nor practically.
Thought experiments, with the aid of documentaries, projecting oneself into these circumstances – into the psyche of the Bosnian villager or the Chechen boy – seem to be only a small step in establishing a resolve to make positive global contributions. Engaging in academic rhetoric must be accompanied by practical efforts, great and small, in reality. “Never before in human history have the global and the local, the high and the low, the past and the present, the sacred and the profane, the serious and the frivolous been so bewilderingly juxtaposed and so instantly available to stimulate, confuse and anger the individual” [Ahmed 22]. We appreciate the intrinsic value of documentaries such as these because, in our ideal cultural rhetoric, we prize knowledge for knowledge’s sake. But let us not be immune to the inherent didacticism that frames these portrayals: these scenes, images, and transcripts are purposely arranged to impel us, not just towards esoteric discussions, but towards practical and moral action.
--------------------
posted by þΛųL jØŋαŦhΛŋ @ 14:45
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