°Failed states
The concept of ‘failed states’ is ubiquitous in political idiom and theory, extending well beyond its methodical appearances in global security vernaculars.
Unlike the fable of the Weapons of Mass Destruction, it rests on a political mythology that is all the more robust to the extent that, as with all theologies, it cannot be falsified. While it has, more recently, been tendered as the significant clause in the doctrine of pre-emption, the very idea of a ‘failed state’ presupposes criteria of success, boundaries and a teleology that are matters of long-standing faith in parts of the Left and so-called NGOs, just as they have been in the US State Department.
Indeed, the discourse of ‘failed states’ is a revised version of modernisation theories. And, what this revision marks is that what was always crucial to such understandings is not the posited end-point, that is to say: not the dream of a world parcellised by democracies giving harmonic expression to non-violently competing interests. Rather, what is at stake here remains the question of an originary or foundational violence that is, in important respects, neither – neither is it past nor does it return anachronistically, even as it serves as the legitimation of violence passing itself off as the dream of the creation of an infinitely non-violent space - or foundation as forgetting. Which is to say, such violence is coincident and persistent, oscillating between supposedly exteriorised and internalised expressions or, if one grants certain assumptions their rhetoric, between coherent territorial sovereignty and the segmentations of warlordism. …
[The full article is here. A fragment of a draft.]
I love it - ‘failed state’ is such fertile conceptual ground for the present moment. In the close to home sense I have wondered if the governmental discourse on the Northern Territory implies a notion of it as a ‘failed state’ (failing to be a proper part of the federation, failing to properly ’settle’); particularly in light of recent developments: its failure legitimating the ‘intervention’ and so on …
ana-phylaxis [August 24, 2007 @ 7:01 pm]
Isn’t it. It occured to me when writing this (see about halfway down) - and then, perhaps not surprisingly, I came across this quote from Brough [Minister for Indigenous Affairs] a couple of days after: “a failed society where law and order and behavior have broken down and where women and children are unsafe”. To which I added a sentence along the lines of: thus embellishing on the paternalistic (and racialised masculine) precedent of military and police intervention in the Pacific on the basis of proclamations of ‘failed states’.
The fragment above, on the other hand, is the first ramblings of a review of a couple of books, one of them Mbembe’s On the Postcolony. I doubt I can do a thorough reading in the time I have, but it occurred to me that - though Mbembe doesn’t exactly speak of ‘failed states’ - this is perhaps the concept that bullies forward so much (not least, so-called humanitarian interventions).
s0metim3s [August 24, 2007 @ 11:00 pm]
In the U.S., it’s not uncommon to hear about “failed communities,” which of course are black urban areas. The concept is very much the same as in international affairs, but it gets used more in humanitarian discourse than in law-and-order discourse (that is, more on the left than on the right). It’s usually also the prelude to a call for investment, economic development, entrepreneurship, and the like — it’s primarily an economic discourse.
Eric [August 25, 2007 @ 1:48 pm]
It is some of that, here, too - though some of the iron fist as well. Apparently under the auspices of ‘Domestic Violence Orders’, which presumably recommend whole town lockdowns and house to house sweeps …
s0metim3s [August 27, 2007 @ 11:34 pm]
sorry to drop this in on a random point. a couple of years ago, the govt and the establishment media - the australian - etc where pushing modernist housing on indig communities, property ownership as solution as part of the campaign to changes to the land rights act. 99 year leases etc. 40 years since the wave hill walk off, 40 years since the referendum, 1976 the landrights act, 2006 ? its decimation and now the race power clauses of the constitution being used for the emergency powers in 2007… interested to see how the resistance develops. so many lines of thought my head spins on this stuff everyday. perhaps later lines of elaboration/discussion. how do these changes to the land rights act and the property discourse sit with the new laws. same strategy, a new strategy. is the intention to clear the bush slums… and push to the city limits or to partly change housing and infastructure for cheap labour in mining and tourism…
dr.woooo [August 29, 2007 @ 10:07 am]
On the latter, I suspect it’s a combination of clearing the land of superfluous populations, and (less so) cheap labour (here, more I think to do with pressuring to make deals with mining co’s, etc, maybe with some crumbs throw in). That dynamic/strategy is pretty old, as is the role played by missionary do-gooders …
But, as someone who’s been highly critical of citizenship as resistant strategy, I’m hoping that people look anew at the question of how forms of inclusion (including that citizenship referendum, which was based on the ‘race power’) lay the groundwork not just for the bestowal of certain rights, but also their revocation. This has, for a bit, been a theme in migration debates, but not, as far as I know, in indig stuff.
s0metim3s [August 29, 2007 @ 12:18 pm]
~/Interview1305.cfm
dr.woooo [August 29, 2007 @ 12:39 pm]
Yes, this - “looking more towards private recognition” [in land tenure] - is key.
s0metim3s [August 29, 2007 @ 12:44 pm]
robbie thorpe makes a strong anti-citizenship arguement, saying that it was just giving the commonwealth the ability to make laws for indigenous people. aunty sue rankin also did something about renouncing her citizenship if i recall… it is a minority position but it does occasionally get voiced.
on another tangent, i heard rumours of indigenous women blocking army access on one of the roads in the NT at the meeting on the nt laws at loop the other day. ( 834a high street thornbury )
which leads me to wonder what forms of resistance are taking place or are likely and what solidarity would mean. …
i am no historian but as an interest area i may look at the connection ( how deep ) in the spirit of the times, - how connected was the wave hill walk off and the referendum… class war channelled into citizenship… i wonder…
dr.woooo [August 29, 2007 @ 12:46 pm]
This is pretty telling:
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20070828-Feds-call-shots-on-Territory-cops.html
benjamin rosenzweig [August 29, 2007 @ 1:38 pm]
It might be a good time to rethink the sense of solidarity, without for a moment succumbing to illusions of sameness (which should not be in play anywhere), but not least because some of this is a field of experimenation (eg, welfare). And the do-gooder, helping the other politics that so often informs solidarity has served no one, and is more liable to flip over (as I think it has in this) into antipathy at those who refuse to be helped.
Without a Crikey sub, only have the first para - hurrah for the return of discipline and uplift (a preoccupation in AU in the 1920’s/30s).
s0metim3s [August 29, 2007 @ 1:55 pm]
Sorry, I don’t have a subscription either - I could read the article because Pamela is sending it around (under a title like “CAN AUSTRALIANS STILL FEEL OUTRAGE?”).
So Anna Lamboys in Crikey writes about the powers of the Government Business Managers being appointed in the NT - quoting a document by Noel Mason, the new Government Business Manager at Yuendumu, which suggests these will include the authority to “direct police activities on those communities”. She says that according to this document, entitled “Yuendumu – School Attendance Proposal”:
She quotes the document itself:
According to Lamboys, these will be the only civilian bureaucrats to have this power to direct police, “let alone the power to force kids as young as five years of age to undertake enforced labour”. The easy assumption that ‘elders’ can be conscripted to this task stands out too.
benjamin rosenzweig [August 29, 2007 @ 2:10 pm]
regarding refusing the state/citizenship. interestingly i heard a left-liberal interview pearson and some other guy about a film they are co-promoting and the NT stuff came up. he made the link with the referendum and the new laws and ‘expressed regret’ - tending towards such an arguement. we all know he is only slightly to the left of the PM but i thought it was an interesting admission. on the indigenous state/citizenship thing the canadian indigenous and the mexican movements are miles ahead on this. they even have a cluster of academics and radicals who go by the identification of ‘anarcho-indigenist’ and a journal on the topic here. http://www.affinitiesjournal.org/index.php/affinities/announcement/view/4
re: soli, yeah i know what you mean, am a bit at a loss as to what if anything to do - fumbling, wondering, hoping to work something out in my head.
there is also this http://www.newsovereignities.org which is mega pricy and has too many liberals in it, but might be worth sneaking in to, to see if such arguements can be raised. what good it would do, well very little, but some maybe…
dr.woooo [August 29, 2007 @ 2:34 pm]
Full article from Crikey
Aboriginal kids to be “worked until visibly tired”.
Anna Lamboys writes: Crikey
There’s a document circulating around Yuendumu, Central Australia’s largest Aboriginal community, that suggests federally appointed Government Business Managers on Aboriginal communities in the Territory will have the power to direct police activities on those communities.
Northern Territory coppers are to be ordered to round up kids wagging school and conscript them into work gangs so they are “worked until visibly tired”.
Nowhere else in Australia is it possible for civilian bureaucrats to have that power, let alone the power to force kids as young as five years of age to undertake enforced labour.
The document “Yuendumu – School Attendance Proposal” has been drawn up by Noel Mason, the newly appointed Government Business Manager at Yuendumu.
Explaining that the kids from Yuendumu “enjoy staying away from school in Yuendumu far too much”, Mason states that “the names of children staying up late at night will be collected and those children will used to assist with the clean up the town site the next day … The aim is to make children who want to avoid school, have a busy, tiring day.”
He goes on:
Children listed will be collected each morning by Night Patrol staff and Police with the assistance of elders, questioned about why they are not at school, then moved to an area of rubbish in the town site and will be required to collect rubbish as punishment. Family elders, Police, Night Patrol staff and CDEP staff, will manage the rubbish collection. Students will be worked until they are visibly tired. Water and fruit will be available for them whilst working.
The local police will “support Night Patrol and elders collect children identified for work crews” and check on the work crews “throughout the day”.
NT Police Association Vince Kelly has already been critical of many aspects of the Federal Intervention. It will be interesting to see how his members feel about this attempt to coerce them to follow orders from Canberra civilians rather than senior officers.
liz [August 29, 2007 @ 3:30 pm]
house raids in alice camps
dr.woooo [August 30, 2007 @ 12:39 pm]
Linked up here - but more explicitly is good.
And “work crews” - hmmm ….
s0metim3s [August 30, 2007 @ 1:20 pm]