Looks like everyone ignores me, on pen-l, for politicized reasons, so y'all, with less polemicized, monocausal methodologies, dig in... Michael Pugliese
----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Pugliese" <debsian at pacbell.net> To: <pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu> Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 7:43 AM Subject: [PEN-L:14102] Re: Re: Re: Re: Fw:[ASDnet] Abundance (was Naderism)
> Re: "Humanitarian Intervention"
> http://www.dukeupress.edu/
> Point
>
> Powerless by Design: The Age of the International Community
> Michel Feher
>
> 184 pages (October 2000)
>
>
> In Powerless by Design Michel Feher addresses Western officials' responses
> to post-Cold War conflicts and analyzes the reactions of the Left to their
> governments' positions. Sometime in the early 1990s, Feher argues, U.S.
and
> European leaders began portraying themselves as the representatives of a
new
> international community. In that capacity, they developed a doctrine that
> was not only at odds with the rhetoric of the Cold War but also a far cry
> from the "new world order" announced at the outset of the decade. Whereas
> their predecessors had invested every regional conflict with an
ideological
> stake, explains Feher, the representatives of this international community
> claimed that the crises they confronted did not call for partisan
> involvement.
>
> Exemplary of this new approach were Western responses to ethnic cleansing
in
> the former Yugoslavia and genocide in Rwanda. In order to avoid costly
> interventions, U.S. and European leaders traced these crimes to ancient
> tribal enmities and professed that the role of the international community
> should be limited to a humanitarian, impartial, and conciliatory
engagement
> with all the warring parties. They thus managed to appear righteous but
> powerless, at least until NATO's intervention in Kosovo. Faced with this
> doctrine, both the liberal and radical wings of the Western Left found
> themselves in an uneasy position. Liberals, while lured by their leaders'
> humanitarianism were nonetheless disturbed by the dismal results of the
> policies carried out in the name of the international community.
Conversely,
> anti-imperialist militants were quick to mock the hypocrisy of their
> governments' helpless indignation, yet certainly not prepared to demand
that
> Western powers resort to force
>
> Are we still in this "age of the international community?" Feher shows
that
> with NATO's intervention in Kosovo, both liberal and radical activists
> suddenly found their mark: the former welcomed the newfound resolve of
their
> governments, while the latter condemned it as the return of the
imperialist
> "new world order." For Western leaders, however, the war against Serbia
> proved an accident rather than a turning point. Indeed, less than a year
> later, their indifference to the destruction of Chechnya by Russian troops
> suggested that the discursive strategy exposed in Powerless by Design
might
> remain with us for quite some time
>
> "Powerless by Design is necessary reading for anyone concerned within the
> contemporary politics of human rights. Feher offers a lucid and incisive
> indictment of the humanitarian pretensions of the international
> community."-Robert Post, University of California, Berkeley
>
> "Extremely provocative and informative, this book should quickly become
the
> center of political debate among liberal and left scholars and activists.
> The book deftly lays out the paradox of a discourse on human rights and
> international obligations that under certain political conditions
undermines
> the very principles at stake"-Judith Butler, author of The Psychic Life of
> Power: Theories in Subjection
>
> "Michel Feher is a keen and lucid analyzer of doctrines and hypocrisies,
and
> in Powerless by Design he has given us a truly valuable analysis of the
> doctrines and hypocrisies of right now."-Paul Berman, author of A Tale of
> Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968
>
> Michel Feher is Founding Editor and Publisher of Zone books in New York.
He
> is the author of several books, including The Libertine Reader: Eroticism
> and Enlightenment in 18th-Century France
>
> Table of Contents for Powerless by Design
> Acknowledgments
> A Puzzling Chiasm
> A New Doctrine
> A Radical Critique
> 1. Misguiding Definitions
> 2. Self-serving motives
> 3. Obfuscating policies
> I. Humanitarianism
> II. Diplomacy
> III. Reconstruction
> IV. Justice
> 4. Self-fulfilling prophecies
> An Ambiguous Evolution
> An Unsettling Message
> An Emerging Polarization
> Notes
>
> Counterpoint
> The Global Gamble: Washington's
> Faustian Bid for World Dominance", by Peter Gowan (Verso, 1999).
> http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/9907/0282.html
> http://www.gn.apc.org/labourfocus/LF64.html
> http://www.google.com/search?q=Peter+Gowan+Verso
> Esp. chapter on the Gulf War and Western Liberalism. Critiques the book by
> ex-Trotskyist, Samir Al Khalil,
> on the Baathist regime, "Republic of Fear."
> www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/5735.html
> Michael Pugliese
>
>
>