AFTER VIOLENCE: 3R, RECONSTRUCTION, RECONCILIATION ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Orchestrated violence, as exercised by armies, requires unconditional obedience, with a very asymmetric chain of command (as opposed to a guerilla movement). On the other hand there is a difference in risk-taking, higher for the soldier in the combat zone than for the ranking officer in the bunker, not to mention the politicians back home setting the parameters for the war. This was one reason why the soldiers revolted; another that neither side was winning. It was a drawn-out stalemate on French soil with the blockade wrecking the German economy at home. At stake for the military commands on either side was not only victory vs defeat but the legitimacy of warfare, challenged by the soldiers. Only by bringing the World War to an end could warfare be saved. The Germans certainly did both jobs. N rnberg and Tokyo did not change that: they are in bello, not ad bellum. We make this point in order to indicate that even if some violence survives in one form or the other, warfare is not only a social institution, but a vulnerable one. Knowledge of visible and invisible effects, including the opportunity costs to social development, may hasten its demise. But in the meantime we still have to deal with the problem of closure. In the next chapters we shall take up two examples, first how not do it, the Nanking genocide, then a possible way out: South Africa. 5. Auschwitz, Gulag, Hiroshima, Nanking: Who/What is Guilty? We are now talking about genocide, mega-violence, the intended, massive, extermination of categories of people, defined by nation, class, or otherwise, beyond strategic military consideration, in this horrible 20th century we are about to leave 35
chronologically. To the four cases mentioned more could be added, like the mass killing of Armenians, the allied carpet bombing in Germany, violence during the Chinese cultural revolution, and others (not Italy, interestingly)/40/. The basic theme is this: imagine we want to allocate a certain amount of guilt, given the horrors of genocide. Shall we allocate it to actors ("who") or to culture/structure ("what")? Nanking is less known, so let us focus on that one. According to Shi Young & James Yin/41/, the Imperial Japanese Army killed more than 360,000 civilians (369,366 according to burial records and census data (before the population was between 500 and 600,000, after only 170,000) in a frenzy of rape and bestial killing, 14 December 1937 to March 1938; "soldiers and units freed by their superiors to murder at will for what they believed was the greater glory of Japan and the Emperor". In his foreword Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, chairperson of the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission, admonishes people not to sweep facts under a carpet, like the politician Ishihara tried to do in an interview in Playboy/42/: "People say that the Japanese made a Holocaust there (in Nanking) but that is not true. It is a story made up by the Chinese." And Tutu adds "I am pleased to be associated with this book - as I believe it to be an instrument of reconciliation", with Truth as an indispensable condition. But the Japanese Ministry of Education tried to evade the issue in school textbooks, so it had to be brought to light by a Japanese historian Kenji Ono who visited hundreds of aging soldiers in the prefecture where the 65th regiment of the 13th 36
Page 1 and 2: AFTER VIOLENCE: 3R, RECONSTRUCTION,
Page 3 and 4: The institutional breakdown, the ab
Page 5 and 6: potential. Violence is not like eat
Page 7 and 8: democracy is an answer. If the cont
Page 9 and 10: [1] The impression is given that vi
Page 11 and 12: violence till the cease-fire confus
Page 13 and 14: the underlying structural and cultu
Page 15 and 16: level of participation, a rich, blo
Page 17 and 18: up to net and gross national produc
Page 19 and 20: naive, self-exculpatory German der
Page 21 and 22: There is a special aspect of the da
Page 23 and 24: e proud of. Translated into nationa
Page 25 and 26: Cold War is by now a classical case
Page 27 and 28: and property. Creativity in life-en
Page 29 and 30: discourses good deeds may lead to s
Page 31 and 32: case, substituted the verbal duel o
Page 33 and 34: Scenario 4: Z hurts both X and Y fo
Page 35: wounds to the spirit never, as psyc
Page 39 and 40: soldiers were the limbs and "we" (t
Page 41 and 42: Let us try to summarize. Who/what w
Page 43 and 44: accident. The only recourse might b
Page 45 and 46: The white lynchers, victimized or n
Page 47 and 48: massive, even collective, political
Page 49 and 50: there an underlying, universal, que
Page 51 and 52: structural specificities./55/ Thus,
Page 53 and 54: enemies into court, they did not mi
Page 55 and 56: Christian; South Africa is mixed. C
Page 57 and 58: ereaved and those who know the bere
Page 59 and 60: opportunities. There is the good th
Page 61 and 62: Restructuration: the peace structur
Page 63 and 64: exchanges of apologies and forgiven
Page 65 and 66: and traumas of the past, in a strug
Page 67 and 68: know only one good German; a dead G
Page 69 and 70: positions in a deficient structure.
Page 71 and 72: This approach only works when the v
Page 73 and 74: forgive you"? Definitely not. Some
Page 75 and 76: context, landing it in the Self-God
Page 77 and 78: victim relation is translated into
Page 79 and 80: has a system analysis epistemology
Page 81 and 82: [7] The historical/truth commission
Page 83 and 84: empirical facts: counter-factual hi
Page 85 and 86: the video and say: "This is the tur
Page 87 and 88:
model would be a village, a town, a
Page 89 and 90:
facilitating reliving on the spot.
Page 91 and 92:
outcome, never that violence again!
Page 93 and 94:
acts in the light of extenuating ci
Page 95 and 96:
y committing crimes of war, against
Page 97 and 98:
CONFLICT = ATTITUDES/ASSUMPTIONS +
Page 99 and 100:
Table 9.1. The praxis triad: DIAGNO
Page 101 and 102:
The democracy, parliamentarian appr
Page 103 and 104:
task of the peace worker is to appr
Page 105 and 106:
ecoming a permanent state of societ
Page 107 and 108:
destroy them; a contradiction, to p
Page 109 and 110:
The best way of building nonviolenc
Page 111 and 112:
during the second half of this cent
Page 113 and 114:
socialism-communism (the last trans
Page 115 and 116:
and death) specificity beyond the n
Page 117 and 118:
war. The working class British (US,
Page 119 and 120:
was also the outcome of insufficien
Page 121 and 122:
the possibility that this was the p
Page 123 and 124:
things, words and exercises? My wou
Page 125 and 126:
76. 77. I am particularly indebted
Page 127:
to your feelings, if you have reaso
show all

AFTER VIOLENCE: 3R, RECONSTRUCTION, RECONCILIATION ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?