[lbo-talk] How to Treat Erstwhile Enemies from a Position of Strength (2)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Apr 4 20:02:36 PST 2003


At 2:06 PM -0500 4/4/03, Doug Henwood wrote:
>from REMARKS ON MARX, Michel Foucault interviewed by Duccio Trombadori
>[Semiotext(e), 1991]
>
>Duccio Trombadori: But still apropos of polemics, you have also
>stated clearly that you don't like and will not accept those kinds
>of arguments "which mimic war and parody justice." Could you explain
>to me more clearly what you meant by saying this?
>
>Michel Foucault: What is tiresome in ideological arguments is that
>one is necessarily swept away by the "model of war." That is to say
>that when you find yourself facing someone with ideas different from
>your own, you are always led to identify that person as an enemy (of
>your class, your society, etc.). And we know that it is necessary to
>wage combat against the enemy until triumphing over him. This grand
>theme of ideological struggle has really disturbed me. First of all
>because the theoretical coordinates of each of us are often, no,
>always, confused and fluctuating, especially if they are observed in
>their genesis.
>
>Furthermore: might not this "struggle" that one tries to wage
>against the "enemy" only be a way of making a petty dispute without
>much importance seem more serious than it really is? I mean, don't
>certain intellectuals hope to lend themselves greater political
>weight with their "ideological struggle" than they really have? A
>book is consumed very quickly, you know. An article, well.... What
>is more serious: acting out a struggle against the "enemy," or
>investigating, together or perhaps divergently, the important
>problems that are posed? And then I'll tell you: I find this "model
>of war" not only a bit ridiculous but also rather dangerous. Because
>by virtue of saying or thinking "I'm fighting against the enemy," if
>one day you found yourself in a position of strength, and in a
>situation of real war, in front of this blasted "enemy," wouldn't
>you actually treat him as one?

Not if you have communist principles and discipline to abide by them:

***** Mrs. Nguyen Thanh Mai

...I saw American pilots captured. Sometimes people would come to beat them, people who had lost loved ones and were very angry. But the army wouldn't allow this. They were told, this pilot will be punished by the authorities, not by you.

Once I saw a young girl, a guerrilla, leading an American pilot. She was very small. We are small people, you see. The American pilot was very tall. She looked proud as they walked. The man kept his head down, only looked at the ground, but the girl looked very proud. We have poems about that....

Mrs. Luu

I saw a plane shot down. And when the pilot was caught, the villagers came to kill him, and were kept back by the local forces. There was a family in my village, six people were killed, four children and their parents were killed by one bomb.

The Americans had every kind of bomb. The phosphorus bomb made my brother very ugly. He has a wife and children now. He and his wife loved each other before he was burned by the phosphorus bomb, but now he looks terrible. He went to Hanoi to have his face fixed, but it is still not too good. If you stay in Quang Binh province, you will see many scars...

Mrs. Phung Thi Tiem

I AM THE HEAD of the Kham Thien Women's Union. I will tell you what happened. It was 10:20 on the evening of December 26, 1972. People had returned from work, eaten dinner, and many had already gone to bed. And then the Americans came. Many older people, women, men, and many children were killed in that bombing. They were supposed to have been evacuated, but the 24th was a Sunday and the 25th was Christmas Day. So people thought the Americans wouldn't bomb. They returned to their homes.

That evening buildings were destroyed, everything. Many people were injured and entire families were wiped out -- from the youngest to the oldest. In one family, five generations were killed together, the baby inside its pregnant mother, the son, the mother, the grandmother and the great grandmother. Mrs. Xuan, who lives next door here, lost an arm. Five people were killed there. The woman on this monument over here, with the child, was the lady of the house. She took her children with her under the staircase, to protect them, and they were all killed. In one family there were nine children, and their parents died. Now they have grown up and left the neighborhood. Families helped the wounded, and cooperatives and the Women's Union helped them, and continue to help them.

We spent that week digging out the shelters, looking for missing people. The smell of the dead was terrible. We collected the bodies in one place, and the wounded were taken to the hospital. People whose homes were bombed mostly went to live with relatives in the countryside.

American pilots dropped all those bombs, yet we were merciful. When an American pilot was shot down and brought through this very street, nobody touched him....

(Martha Hess, _Then the Americans Came: Voices from Vietnam_, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1993, pp. 30, 40, 63-4) ***** -- Yoshie

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