university veena das

7/30/2019 University Veena Das

1/23

08/01/13 15:11Responsibility in Crisis: Knowledge Politics and Global Publics

Pgina 1 de 23http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001/1:7?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

UMDL Texts home Login

Home Search Bookbag Help

Responsibility in Crisis: Knowledge Politics and Global PublicsTable of contents

|Add to bookbag

>

Universities, States of Emergency and CensorshipVeena Das

[Introduction]

I find the invitation to respond to the text on the university after

September 11th, written by David William Cohen, Michael D.Kennedy, and Kathleen Canning, is an invitation to engage inconversation that has a sense of the provisional and a sense of the

therapeutic.[1] A sense of the provisional because the meaning ofsuch an event for life in universities is not self-evidentdespite therhetoric of the world having changed after September 11th,universities have repeatedly faced such challenges both in theUnited States and the rest of the worldso the proclamation raisesa puzzle. A sense of the therapeutic not as psychological healingbut in the challenge of asking what a redemptive reading of such an

event might mean. This paper is written to join this conversationit is nothing more but nothing less, either.

On the challenges of September 11th to the university, Cohen,Kennedy, and Canning (see their paper in this volume) state thefollowing. "After September 11, 2001, the precious qualities thathad affirmed the university as a space that could be both ofand inthe world was marked as heretical...now the openness andworldliness of the university, and the values associated with thecultivation ofbroadly shared communities of learning, had become

heresies." Has this sense of malaise come about after the events ofSeptember 11th,

Page 134

or is it part of the enduring conditions of the university as aninstitution of the modern nation state? I will argue here that thetense relation between the university as a site of freedom and as asite located within the institutions of the market and the state ispart of its constitutionone that requires constant address. Thistension, I submit, cannot be resolved once and for all.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001?id=ric6.1;note=ptr;rgn=div1;view=trgthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001/1:6?rgn=div1;view=fulltexthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001/1:8?rgn=div1;view=fulltexthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001/1:7?rgn=div1;view=tochttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics?bbaction=add;bbc=globalpublics;bbidno=4726364.0001.001;rgn=div1http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics?page=homehttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001?id=ric6.1;note=ptr;rgn=div1;view=trgthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001/1:8?rgn=div1;view=fulltexthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001/1:6?rgn=div1;view=fulltexthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics?bbaction=add;bbc=globalpublics;bbidno=4726364.0001.001;rgn=div1http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001/1:7?rgn=div1;view=tochttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/text/help/search-intro.htmlhttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics?page=bbaglist;rgn=div1http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics?page=simple;rgn=div1http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics?page=homehttps://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001/1:7?rgn=div1;view=fulltexthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?page=homehttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics?page=home


2/23



The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In the first section, Irevisit Kant's formulation on the conflict of faculties taking myeducation from Jacques Derrida and Hent de Vries's discussion of

the same text. [2] Specifically, I ask, whether the formulation of thespace of the university as a sacred space represents the fantasy thatwithin the confines of the university we can somehow escape the

human conditions of knowing. Assuming that the university cannotescape (or fully escape) the fact that it is part of the institutionalset up of the nation state, the second section asks: how theproclamation of states of exception that have become prominentafter September 11th serve to limit criticism? In the third section, Iturn my attention to the everyday life of universities and argue thattropes of danger, unfinished nations, and security concerns spillinto policies and programs of universities instituting forms ofcensorship that often go unnoticed. In the final section of the paperI shall address questions of responsibilityhow are we tounderstand the relation between curiosity and freedom on the onehand, and the constraints placed on knowledge on behalf of theneeds of the nation state on the other? My reflections are formedby my experiences in Indian and North American universities butalso by pictures of what it is to take seriously the human

conditions of knowing. [3]

Kant on the Conflict of Faculties

Jacques Derrida has suggested that Kant's intriguing text on the

conflict of faculties provides an important point of departure fromwhich to engage in a discussion on some of our present concerns.Going beyond the local context in which it was first formulated,Kant's text, written in 1798, sets the tone for a reflection on theuniversity as a faculty or artifact of the state. As Derrida points out,the transformation of the university into a place in which a factory-like discipline was instituted led to a new social role for thephilosopher and intellectual who was no longer seen as an artist ora technician but became a public servant and a teacher and thus anofficer of the state. The academy in the late Middle Ages or theearly modern period in Europe was still largely a

Page 135

clerical institution and hence had no role to play in the emergingpublic sphere. Thus, it was not the space from which any criticismof absolute power, however oblique, could normally be waged. There-imagination of the university on the model of rationality

constituted the condition of possibility for knowledge both to servethe state and to monitor its power. [4] The combination of these
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001?id=ric6.4;note=ptr;rgn=div1;view=trgthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001?id=ric6.3;note=ptr;rgn=div1;view=trgthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001?id=ric6.2;note=ptr;rgn=div1;view=trgt


3/23



contradictory functions in the same institution became possiblebecause of the blueprint that envisaged a strict division of laborbetween faculties of the university. Those faculties that served theinterests of the state could be seen as imparting knowledge for theends of practical reason and those that served truth, unhindered byconsiderations of governments, could be seen as servants oftheoretical reason. The former were allowed to be represented butnot to proclaim any truths on their own behalf; the latter wereobligated to speak but their discussions were to be confined torestricted publics of scholars and philosophers. Thus, one could saythat censorship and freedom to pursue the truth weresimultaneously instituted.

In his exposition of this watershed development, de Vries puts it inthe following way. "But from Kant's day on, the scholar has aboveall been a functionarya teacher, orDozentin an officialinstitution of higher education in which the "entire content oflearning" as well as the 'thinkers devoted to it' are treated in afactory-like manner...." Yet, in its task of teaching "the totality ofwhat is presently known, the university, according to Kant, canonly be based upon the fundamental belief in the possibility of a

purely theoretical language, guided by truth alone." [5] As Derridaexplains this contradictory impulse, the possibility of upholdingthis distinction is premised upon the distinction between beingable to think and say (but for restricted public) and being able todo, act, and obey (in relation to the wider realm of the civil). The

former function for Kant was invested in the "lower" faculty ofphilosophy and the latter in the "higher faculties of theology, law,and medicine."

The correspondence between the ends of the government and thedivision of labor between the disciplines of theology, law, andmedicine corresponds to the functions of ensuring the eternal well-being of its population; its civil well-being through regulation ofproperty and settling of disputes; and finally, the physical well-being of its individual members. Yet this rational, objective order

of principles is not self-sustaining, for, as Kant says, it might beoverruled by the natural inclinations of men who would preferphysical well-being over their

Page 136

civic well-being and their civic well-being over their eternalsalvation. It falls to the "lower" faculty of philosophy to provide thenecessary critique since the higher interests of the state demandthat the "natural" inclinations of the population be kept in controlfor the long-term interests of providing a just order.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001?id=ric6.5;note=ptr;rgn=div1;view=trgt


4/23



In their functions as clergymen, civil servants and medical doctors,the officials trained in the higher faculties are forbidden tocontradict in public, the teachings that have been entrusted tothem by the government"from venturing to play thephilosopher's role." In its own turn, the philosopher's pursuit oftruth is to be carried on within the confines of the faculty and not

taken to the wider public. Thus, the search for truth is encouragedwithin an instrumentalist framework as an antidote for themembers of the higher faculty who will remain in danger ofsuccumbing to popular adulation (since their knowledge serves theinterests of the population directly), unless they are reined in bythe constant examination of their knowledge through the labors ofthe "lower" faculty.

My interest in this story is that it invites us to rethink the notion ofthe university as a sacred space as formulated by Cohen, Kennedy,

and Canning. If the idea of sacredness refers to a separation fromthe profane interests of the world or a promise of limitless freedomto pursue any kind of truth, then it is not only idealist and utopianit fails to consider the importance of limits as the very conditionfor the pursuit of knowledge. These limits may be internal to theprocess of rational inquiry, as for instance, when I limit my claimsto that which is knowable through reason, or these may be externalas when inquiry is limited by considerations of ethics. Thus, theidea of the university as the site from which a critique of thepresent could be mounted cannot be made to rest on some utopian

idea of freedom. The debate then must center on how we are todefine the limits within which a university must operate and whatthe legitimate demands are that the state can place on theuniversity. If the university is engaged in informing the state of itslong-term interests, how are these to be determined and who getsthe right to pronounce these? These questions are likely to becomemore urgent as the questions of determining the general willbecome more complicated in liberal democracies, as we shall seelater.

Here I want to touch on another aspect of Kant's argument thatinvites us towards a more subtle engagement with the question oftruth and

Page 137

freedom. In hisReligion Within the Limits of Reason Alone,[6]

Kant goes beyond the expected enlightenment struggle that would

take up the cause of reason on the battlefield of the "irrational." AsStanley Cavell[7] tells us, Kant instead, deepens the
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001?id=ric6.7;note=ptr;rgn=div1;view=trgthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001?id=ric6.6;note=ptr;rgn=div1;view=trgt


5/23



Enlightenment, by showing that each instance of the irrational is aparticular form of the distortion of reason. Kant calls the fourmembers of this classfanaticism, superstition, delusion, andsorcery. Each shows a route through which we can see reasonhaving gone demonic. From this perspective, danger comes notfrom the propensity of the population to fall into a state of nature,but from the possibility that the fanatic pursuit of reason coulditself fall into unreason.

In the next section, I consider the events after September 11th,especially the war waged by the United States against Iraq. Weknow that despite massive protests in the world and despite thefailure to get a resolution from the UN in its support, the UnitedStates has used its superior power to wage what it calls a pre-emptive war. We also know that all arguments about devising otherways of getting rid of a vicious dictator in Iraq were completelyignored by the United States and Britain. It is also evident, that thedecision to wage a war and even discussions on the companies thatwould receive lucrative contracts for rebuilding Iraq, were alreadyin place when the UN Security Council was debating the issue ofwhether inspections were yielding results in terms of destruction ofweapons of mass destruction. This is not a disorder resulting frompeople having fallen into a "state of nature." Rather the reasoningoffered in support of the war resembles the distortion of reasonthat has come about in the form of a fantasy of becomingcompletely invincible, of overcoming all dangers that are inherent

to being human, even of overcoming any uncertainty about otherminds, and thus of refusing the human. Forms of censorship arenow being invented in the North American university that derivefrom the power of the President to appropriate the right to declarewar with a kind of reasoning that seems to closely resemble thedistortions of reason outlined above. I do not think that we havemoved from a condition of free inquiry to that of completecensorship as Cohen, Kennedy, and Canning seem to suggest; butthere are important and even ominous changes that are takingplace. In order to understand why universities seem to be so ready

to be co-opted in accepting intrusions into their jurisdictions, wehave to go deeper into the normal functioning of the university.After all, the transformation of the state

Page 138

as a security state poses great threats to academic freedom butthese threats have not made an appearance all of a sudden fromnowhere like the rabbit conjured out of a magician's hat. I do notdiscount the role of contingency in these transformations butneither can we afford to ignore the trends that were already


6/23



evident in the functioning of universities.

States of Exception and Limits of Criticism

That September 11th came to be constituted as a unique event isnot in question. Although there was much debate in the academyas to how we are to interpret the meaning placed on the

uniqueness of the event, there is little doubt that it paved the wayfor the political expression of ideas that signaled a huge shift inpolicy regarding war. It also instituted new practices of

governmentality in the United States. [8] Right after September11th, several representatives of the administration argued that theworld had changed because the attack on the World Trade Centertowers had changed the nature of war. Immediately after thisevent, I wrote that "...political language slides into the idea ofAmerica as the privileged site of universal values. It is from thisperspective that one can speculate why the talk is not of the manyterrorisms with which several countries have lived now for morethan thirty years, but with one grand terrorismIslamic terrorism.In the same vein, the world is said to have changed afterSeptember 11th. What could this mean except that while terroristforms of warfare in other spaces in Africa, Asia, or Middle Eastwere against forms of particularism, the attack on America is seen

as an attack on humanity itself?" [9] The uniqueness of the event,then, lay in both the spectacular violence and in the way in whichit came to be narrated. Because other experiences of dealing with

militant and violent forms of political action were completelyeclipsed in the discourse of terrorism in the United States, manypeople came to believe that the whole world had been altered bythis act of terrorism.

Soon after September 11th, some scholars drew pointed attentionto the fact that similar acts of violence had taken place earlier. Forall the moral indignation at the terrorists, it is hardly a secret thatthe United States had itself supported dictatorships and providedsupport to those who it now considers to constitute an axis of

evil.[10] Catherine Lutz titled her reflections on September 11th,"The Wars Less Known."[11] She opened her paper as follows. "Thewars of the United states have been showered with prosesuggesting that they burst

Page 139

open not bodies, but history. War gives birth to new beginnings;the story goes, even moving the course of human events in positive,if also tragic ways. Given this belief in war's grandeur and itstectonic role, what followed September 11, 2001 had to be declared
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001?id=ric6.11;note=ptr;rgn=div1;view=trgthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001?id=ric6.10;note=ptr;rgn=div1;view=trgthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001?id=ric6.9;note=ptr;rgn=div1;view=trgthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001?id=ric6.8;note=ptr;rgn=div1;view=trgt


7/23



another good war. And because most of its victims were homefrontcivilians, it was called a war like no other. But while the hijackerswho killed so many that day might have created a new kind ofviolent spectacle, they were not the authors of one of the humanera's uniquely horrific events. For, I wearily note, we have beenhere before and we have been led to forget. Today's war withoutend began long ago, and it has produced both the corpses of battleand economic and physical causalities in other arenas."

Despite this and many other such voices from academics,intellectuals and artists, the political rhetoric has worked to createa sense of paranoia and to insist that September 11th has changed

the world, requiring a doctrine of preventive wars.[12] In theadministration's view, September 11th introduced a new kind ofwar because terrorists used such weapons as martyrdom andbecause dictators of rogue states did not care for the lives of their

people. The assumption underlying these statements is thatterrorists and leaders of rogue states are new kinds of subjectsless than humanbecause they produce killable bodies in waysthat are different from the way that killable bodies are producedunder the sign of the legitimate state. By a sleight of hand, bothterrorists and leaders of rogue states, of which Saddam Husseinhas become the paradigmatic example, have been denounced asevil. It was as if the United States had suddenly discovered thedangers of weapons of mass destructionthe entire history of how,where, and by whom such weapons were produced and circulated;

who was the beneficiary of this proliferation of chemical andbiological weapons and where did profits go, were wiped off therecord.

All of which is, I too wearily note, is well known and its repetitionwill serve little purpose. What is alarming in this picture is that themost powerful country in the world, now espouses a doctrine of itsextreme vulnerability and persuades a large public of an imminentthreat to its security. As the document on theNational Security

Strategy[13] stated, it was necessary to adapt the concept of

imminent threat to the "capabilities and objectives of today'sadversaries." As the rhetoric of preemption replaces the strategy ofdeterrence, it is becoming clear that "self defense" as propagatedby this administration is defined so broadly that any fear of anadversary is enough excuse to inflict massive harm

Page 140

on the population of countries designated as rogue states. It is notconsidered necessary for the government to show that the threat is,indeed, imminent-it suffices to argue that sometime in the future,


8/23



someone like Saddam will acquire weapons of mass destruction.Simple apprehension that a potential adversary is out there cantrigger the offensive use of force. President Bush has repeatedlystated that all Americans need to be forward-looking and to beready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend not onlythe liberty of America but also to protect its key access to worldmarkets and its position of preeminence. In other words, it seemsincreasingly likely that the state of exception is going to becomethe normal state of affairs.

And what of proof? To my mind, there is an amazing slippagebetween terrorists and rogue states with regard to questions ofproof. Terrorists operate in the dark but they resort to spectacularviolencefor the purpose of the violence is precisely to leave asignature. Suicide bombers produce their own bodies as killable in

the act of killing others.[14] On the other hand, weapons of mass

destruction that Saddam's regime is supposed to possess werepresumably hidden, but they were not immune to the searchprocesses in which the inspectors were engaged. In fact, one mayargue that leaders of rogue states are as vulnerable as otherregimes to attacks by terrorists. Therefore, why one should assumean identity of interest between terrorists and rogue states is notself-evident. Whatever evidence exists suggests that terrorists aremuch more likely to have received weapons from either legitimatestates in the pursuit of their own geopolitical interests or throughshadowy markets that operate very much within the recognized

state structures. I would argue that there are, indeed, extremelydifficult questions regarding the limits to sovereignty that thepossession and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction

raise.[15] However, this situation was calling for a legal strategythat would have allowed Saddam Hussein or other dictators to be

charged with the crimes he is alleged to have committed. [16]

Instead, the standards of proof demanded by the presentadministration seem to verge on a witchcraft trial. What promptsmy thought here is that the rage for proof is like testing for awoman's witchcraft in medieval times by seeing whether she willdrown, declaring that if she drowns she was innocent but if shedoes not drown, then she is to be put to death as a witch.

It will take many years of hard work to meticulously documenthow it happened that fanaticism, superstition, delusion, andsorcery came to be

Page 141

seen as forms of reasonable discussion of national security in theUnited States. We do know, however, that earlier projects of


9/23



empire that were also defended on grounds of national interest orof the white man's burden were similarly discussed in languages

that mimicked rational discourse. [17] My argument is not thatviolence and terrorism are like spectral presences that shadowglobalization but, rather, that the re-imagining of the world as fullof imminent threats to the United States is likely to have a serious

impact on the concrete ways that knowledge is structured inuniversities. It is important that we prepare ourselves to undertakeserious research on the way in which the routines of teaching,research and administration, as well as our relations to studentshas begun to alter under these pressuresgeneral statements willnot be enough. This is the same sort of question that we have askedabout colonialism and the subsequent Cold Warviz., how didthese political processes influence the agenda of social sciences andhumanities? The end of colonialism created a moral imperative inthe newly independent countries in Asia and Africa that research

in these disciplines should be ideally conducted under the sign ofthe nation as if this was the only vantage point from which socialsciences could be engaged. The trend came under strong critiquefrom the subaltern historians and from theorist of globalizationsuch as Arjun Appadurai: the historical events came to be woveninto social science research in complex ways. The same rigor withregard to documenting the impact of the Cold War on the

formation of disciplines was not evident.[18] But we now need tomove ahead and look at the Cold War itself in relation to a newgeography of violence within a global context, for it is likely to

reconfigure knowledge in the metropolitan centers and the so-called peripheries.

States of Emergency and the Everyday Life of Universities

One of the things that September 11th and the subsequent waragainst Iraq has done is to dismantle the distinction betweenfinished and unfinished nations. Commenting on the dangers ofthe present doctrine of preemptive war, Neta C. Crawford writes,"If simple fear justifies preemption, the preemptions will have no

limits since, according to Bush administration's own arguments, wecannot know with certainty what the other side has and where itmight be located or when it might be used...If simple fear does notsuffice, then how much of what kind of fear, justifies preemption?We need to tread a

Page 142

fine line. The threshold of evidence and warning cannot be too low:simple apprehension that a potential adversary might be out theresomewhere and may be acquiring the means to do harm cannot


10/23



trigger the offensive use of force. This is not presumption butparanoid aggression, and it promises endless war. We must-stressful as it might be psychologicallyaccept some vulnerability

and uncertainty."[19]

So, paradoxically, the universities in North America are likely tofeel the same kinds of pressures that universities in other countriesthat were designated as "new nations" or "unfinished nations" hadto face from their governments on the grounds that nationalsecurity required control over the production and especially thecirculation of knowledge. To take completely banal examples ofthese processes, universities in India were required, byadministrative fiats, to obtain permission from the Home Ministryand the External Affairs Ministry before inviting a speaker fromabroad even if there was no salary or honorarium to be offered.The way this functioned was that the rules became a matter of

testing one's strength as a university professor against that of thebureaucrat. I know that in the Delhi School of Economics, where Iworked for almost all my adult life, the rule was honored more inits breach. However, this did not mean that serious restrictionscould not be placed on research activities. For instance, during thenational Emergency in 1976, the rules that had always been inplace but were sparingly used began to be deployed to coercecompliance or punish the critics of government. Similarly in recentyears as the Government solidifies its agenda of Hindutva it hasbegun to punish universities and departments from which it

expects dissent. I do not mean to exaggerate these constraints butit seems to me that one often assumes that censorship is a problemof dictatorial polities alone. The ways in which censorship comes tooperate in democracies are different from the direct imposition inmany dictatorial regimes and may even appear to many to bebanal, but unless one is wakeful to them, one may slowly become

complicit in accepting forms of authoritarianism.[20] This is what Itake Kant to mean when he cautioned that the long-term interestsof the state might be jeopardized if the faculty of philosophy didnot have the freedom to pursue the truth for its own sake.

The erosion of liberties in universities is becoming evident afterSeptember 11th and state intervention in the conduct ofuniversities is likely to become more blatant. One consequence ofthis is the undermining of the

Page 143

building of global publics for, with few exceptions, universitieshave quietly accepted the routine intimidation of their ownstudents who come from foreign countries or have foreign


11/23



sounding names. Charles M. Vest, the President of MIT in October2002 in the President's Report, formulated these issues with clarity

and characteristic restraint.[21] He argued that new legislative andadministrative directives imposing restrictions on internationalstudents had various facetsstudent tracking, limitations on accessto curricula and research in the university, and the potential

impact on the S&E workforce. He accepted the need to providebasic directory information on foreign students-such as, whethersomeone admitted on a student visa was, in fact, enrolled in theinstitution, or what was the area of his or her study. Beyond this,he felt that the presidential directive issued on October 2001,requiring that universities determine sensitive areas of a study thatwere off limit for foreign students would seriously curtail thecapacities of the university and would constitute unreasonablerestrictions on the freedom of scientific research. In thepresidential directive the sensitive areas included nuclear

technology, robotics, advanced computers, and materials. ThePresident of MIT noted that while restricting access to sensitiveareas is not new, it was earlier applied to areas of research thateither were classified or were linked to immediate development ofweapons of mass destruction. In fact, Vest's report also drewpointed attention to the fact that over one-third of scientists andengineers in American industry were born elsewhere, with thenumber exceeding fifty percent in engineering and computerscience. Despite the clear evidence of the positive contributions offoreign students to the scientific capabilities of the United States, it

is intriguing that far from coming out in the open andacknowledging their contributions, the universities have toleratedall kinds of humiliations of these students in the name of security.

In their daily life, then, universities in the prosperous UnitedStates have become subject to the same kind of humiliation anderosion of autonomy as universities in other parts of the world.Like the corrosive power of banal nationalism to slowly eat away atthe democratic capabilities of institutions, the forms ofintimidation that appear banal or simply irritating, actually

significantly reduce the free space for thinking. [22] They promotethe distortions of reason and wear down the capacity ofuniversities to inform the state about its long-term interests. In anatmosphere of paranoia and fear the universities in the United

Page 144

States are beginning to function like universities in many other

parts of the world which are at the mercy of petty bureaucrats andself styled protectors of "national interest". To that extent, thedistinction between nations secure in their nationhood and so-


12/23



called unfinished nations has become unhinged. Instead of anabsolute distinction between despotic and democratic regimes, wesee emerging a general atmosphere of fear and a paranoid concernwith security that can bring a democracy close to the very forces ofdespotism that it seeks to fight. I have watched with concern howmany people in positions of leadership failed to demand that theadministration provide reasonable proof that Saddam's regimepossesses weapons of mass destruction or that his regime poses animminent threat to the security of the United States. Instead, theywere ready to give their approval for war because the President hastold them so and they believe in the President of the United Stateswho is the leader of civilized nations. The process bears someresemblance to the Frankfurt School's description of the fascistpersonality and fear of freedom but it is equally important to notethat it has not managed to impose total silence despite memoriesof McCarthyism.

Questions of Responsibility

Although recent events may have forced this issue on us, I believethat questions about censorship and freedom need to be addressedcontinuously. Our pictures of the boundaries between knowledge asthe pursuit of curiosity for its own sake and knowledge asinstrumental, cannot remain stable. New sites for the productionand circulation of knowledge continue to emerge, as do newstandards for what counts as evidence and what counts as proof.These are issues that Paul Rabinow has examined in depth in his

work on science and modernity.[23] I draw on his work specificallywith regard to the emergence of novelty as an aspect of bothmodernity and curiosity. I give below some excerpts of aconversation between Rabinow and Tom White, his maininformant who was formally the vice-president of CetusCorporation. It seems obvious from the conversation that thoughTom White is an industrial scientist (as opposed to a universityscientist), what seems to drive his science is intellectual curiosity

rather than clear-cut demands of industry.[24]

PR: What role does curiosity play in science?

TW: To me curiosity is an extremely powerfulmotivating factor. You

Page 145

know, food, sex, shelter, and stuff like that...you

could call it instinct or gut level, but we don't know.Henry Erlich [a senior scientist at Cetus] will justify


13/23



his work on diabetes [as having commercialpotential], and that's the right thing to do, but hejust wants to know about how the whole thingworks. He doesn't give a damn about whatever elseis involved in it.

PR: What are the limits to curiosity?

TW: Boredom. I have seen curiosity end for somescientists. When it does end it is totally recognizableelement in them.

PR: So, curiosity can die and become routine andboredom. But what about the other side: can youhave too much curiosity?

TW: Yes, some people are so curious that they never

complete a thing.

PR: But modernity faces the question of what arethe limits to curiosity? There were the Germanmedical and scientific experiments and so manyothers in the United States and elsewhere, whichobviously cross the line of acceptable research orclinical practice...Perhaps there are no self-limitingprinciples within science itself to tell you not to do aparticular experiment? Since curiosity and

modernity combine to drive endlessly towardproducing something new, perhaps the combinationof newness and curiosity's boundlessness is theproblem?

I have myself found this point of view (viz. that science cannotitself provide ethical limits) echoed in interviews with many

scientists.[25] Indeed, the emergence of such disciplines asbioethics; the routinization of IRB procedures in universities; andother related developments are indicative of the fact that we expect

limits to curiosity to be provided by some independent standardsfor which we wish to hold society rather than science to be

responsible.[26] Rabinow's work is extremely important in showingus that new sites for pursuing scientific research have emerged inthe world that have vastly complicated our pictures of industry anduniversity. What I miss in this rendering, however, is the mannerin which the very real material demands without which sciencecould not be done at all in its present mode, have changed thebalance between private and public interests in the university itself.

In recent examination of the corporatization of Americanuniversities, Masao Miyoshi draws attention to the fervent search


14/23



for project grants and license income in the top research

universities.[27] The most important concern seems to me to stemless from some idealist notion about freedom of thought and more

Page 146

from the fact that universities often end up by subsidizing thecorporate world. One may argue that the university-industryalliance leads to enhanced public goods since without this alliancethe transfer of research into usable products for the consumereither would not happen or happen at a very slow pace. Somewould argue, Moyshi says, that: "The transfer of federally fundedresearch result to industry, the conversion of non-profitscholarship to for-profit R & D might well be deemed justifiable onthe grounds that inert federal funds are being used and activated

by private developers for public benefits." However, he then goeson to show the traps and snares in this argument. Instead ofoffering wide-open access to federally funded research, he says, theclose alliance between university and industry with the relatedemphasis on patenting delays the dissemination of information orrestricts it in other ways. Second, the beneficiaries of the academictechnological inventions ultimately turn out to be not consumersbut corporations. In addition, I would argue that the models forresearch laid out in the sciences then begin to inform social scienceresearch (if not humanities) so that routine evaluation of faculty is

increasingly based on the number of grants they have received, andthe number of papers published, rather than an exercise ofjudgment regarding the quality of research. In addition, as MarlynStrathern has argued, the audit cultures introduced in universitiesare often out of joint with the temporality of teaching and research.For Strathern, the process of learning is not one of consumptionbut one of absorption so that there must a lapse of time betweenwhat has been taught and what has been learnt. Similarly, sheargues that time must be set aside for all the wasteful and dead-end activities that inevitably precede genuine findingsyet, thereis no space made in audit cultures for these non-productiveactivities as essential to the life of the university. Again, it is not mycase that research grants are not important for doing certain kindof research or that maintaining something like a long-term cohortstudy is evenpossible without fundingrather, I suggest that weneed to pay very close attention to the balance between different

kinds of curiosities in evaluating research of faculty. [28]

If one were emboldened to produce an ethnographic study on how

the evaluation of scholarship in terms of research grants andlicense income alters the academic culture of the university, onecould show the demoralization among faculty who want to work on


15/23



risky subjects, when outcome cannot be easily predicted. The kindof curiosity driven research to which Tom White

Page 147

was alluding in his discussion with Rabinow, has to be constantlyjustified to university administration in terms of its capacity togenerate grants or license income for universities. This is where thelong-term impact of the corporatization of the university may turnout to be even more pernicious than we have imagined. Havingcome to the United States from India, when I first encountered thedirectives issued to universities to provide privileged informationon foreign students from Arab countries, I assumed that the majoruniversities would simply refuse to comply. If indeed, Harvard,MIT, Princeton, California, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Columbia, or

Michigan (among many others) would jointly refuse to obey theadministrative directives that take away their own jurisdiction overtheir students, surely there would be some impact on the policies ofthe administration on these issues? It took me some time to realizethat the weak and sporadic dissent perhaps represented thatuniversities were so dependant for funding on federal grants andtheir prestige as research universities was so tied up with fundingthat opposition was not a simple matter of withdrawing

consent.[29] I remember that many academics in India learnt thatthe state could run roughshod over democratic freedoms during

the National Emergency in India in 1976 and now under theHindutva agenda of the state in India. The experiences of manyacademics with censorship around the world, both underdictatorial regimes and democratic ones, should invite us toreconsider seriously how we can redefine the legitimate interests ofthe state that the university is expected to serve? How are these tobe balanced with the pursuit of truth for its own sake? How arenew standards of research, especially in the sciences, to besupported materially? Finally, what does it mean for the life of theuniversity to be placed within these contradictory demands? Theformulation suggested by Cohen, Kennedy, and Canning, that theuniversity was ofthe world and in the world, requires a cold,dispassionate inquiry from many angles on the meaning of theuniversity. A simple scenario of before and after with regard toSeptember 11th would betray the seriousness of the crisis we arefacing.

Of Consent and Related Matters

Let us agree that political community would be impossible unless

one was willing to recognize one's own voice in that of the other. Inother words, one's willingness to be represented by someone else
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001?id=ric6.29;note=ptr;rgn=div1;view=trgt


16/23



or the ability to represent

Page 148

constitutes the conditions of a democratic polity. Given that one

cannot give consent everyday to what is being undertaken on one'sbehalf, it seems to me that the question of how a community ofdissent may emerge becomes a question of vital importance. Rightafter September 11th, I felt that the necessity to inflict punishmenton the "enemy" who was faceless, who was seen to be like aphantasm that could be anywhere and everywhere, defined therhetoric of the administration. If I may be allowed to loop back to

my earlier words, I wrote: [30]

The tremendous loss of life and the style of killing in

the present wars-call them terrorism (includingstate terrorism), call them insurgency, call themwars of liberation, all raise the issue of theodicy. Yet,while in many other countries the wounds inflictedthrough such violence are acknowledged as attestingto the vulnerability of human lifein the case ofAmerican society there is an inability toacknowledge this vulnerability. Or rather thevulnerability to which we, as embodied beings aresubject, the powerlessness, is recast in terms of

strength.[31] And thereby the representations of theAmerican nation manage to obscure from view, theexperiences of those within its body politics whowere never safe even before September 11th. Whilemany have heard arrogance in these statementstomy ears they are signs of the inability to addresspain. Consider the following passage in Nietzsche onthe moment of the production ofressentiment..."todeaden, by means of a more violent emotion of anykind, a tormenting secret pain that is becomingunendurable, and to drive it out of consciousness atleast for the moment: for that one requires an affect,as savage an affect as possible, and, in order to

excite that, any pretext at all."[32]

I was not suggesting any conspiracy theory, or that a pretext wasneeded for subsequent bombing of Afghanistan and the (then)threatened war on Iraq. What I was pointing to was the deep needto show the tattered body of the "enemy" as a rationalresponse to

the September 11th attacks. In the first instance, it seemed to methat this was the site of punishment as spectacle. Michel Foucaultclaimed, "...justice no longer takes public responsibility


17/23



Page 149

for that violence that is bound up with its practice." [33] On furtherreflection, though, it appears to me that theatrical display of

sovereign power is only part of the story. There is equally the needto replace the nagging pain of the failure of America as a moralnation by a more savage affect. The "feel good about yourself"sense, so evident on the news media in the war reportage onchannels such as Fox, seems a cover up for the fact that the "feelgood" sense is disappearing from public life, as American citizensor others living in this country face up to the horrifying images ofcluster bombs used by the alliance of the willingwhile all the timecondemning the regime of Saddam for its cruelties on itspopulation. It is similar (or more lethal) to the pain of Hindus in

today's India in witnessing the enormous pain inflicted on IndianMuslims on their (the Hindus') behalf. This is how many survivorsof September 11th asked, what relation does their pain bear to thepain of the otherswhat kind of responsibility is theirs whensuccessive regimes elected by them have supported militaryregimes, brutal dictatorships, and warlords mired in corruptionwith no space for the exercise of critical monitoring of politics inthe Middle East? If violence has replaced politics in the presentglobalized spaces in these regions, then surely it is only byacknowledging that pain as "ours" that a global civil society could

respond. Instead of replacing the pain with another more violentand savage affect, survivors and witnesses of violence would have

to engage in a different way with the pain inflicted on them.[34]

It would appear to me that, after all, there is work to be done. I amreminded in my moments of despair (seeing how ordinary peoplecan begin to take pleasure in such obscenities as the "mother of allbombs")of the figure of Gandhi and his homespun technology ofsatyagraha or the insistence on truth. It was in the work of theeverydayspinning, cleaning, writing, fastingthat Gandhi foundthe resources for his struggle against the British rule. I suggest thatwe will have to invent our own forms of insistence on truth fromwithin the everyday life of universities if the urge to fanaticism,superstition, delusion, and exorcism is to be overcome in thedarkness of these times.

Page 150

Notes

1. It is my pleasure to thank David William Cohen and Michael


18/23



Kennedy for their generous invitation to take part in the seminaron the university as sacred space held in Michigan in August 2002.I gratefully acknowledge the stimulating comments offered byparticipants and especially want to thank the graduate students atMichigan for their readiness to engage in discussions. Commentsby Ali Khan, Talal Asad, Bhrigupati Singh, Sylvain Perdigon, GyanPandey and Pamela Reynolds were most helpful in revising theearlier draft. Ranen, Saumya, Jishnu, Carolina, and Sanmaydirected me to various readings and engaged in heated discussionson what it was to do science in the university. I thank them fortheir love manifested in their readiness to offer constructivecriticisms rather than paralyzing ones.

2. Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Mary JGregory (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992); JacquesDerrida,Du droit a la philosophie (Paris: Galilee, 1990); Hent deVries,Religion and Violence:Philosophical Perspectives fromKant to Derrida (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press,2002).

3. I spent more than thirty years at the Delhi School of Economics;my experience of North American universities is much morelimited.

4. de Vries points out that Kant's text deeply influenced thedocument Wilhelm von Humboldt drafted in 1809-10 as a modelfor the University of Berlin. It is not that there are on other modelsof the university, but they were more inclined towards one or theother function rather than to the imperative of combining both. Inthe United States, for instance, the Morrill Act of 1862, set the tonefor the development of certain kinds of American universities andcommunity collegesespecially important were the schools ofagriculture, engineering, home economics and businessadministration. See also Clark Kerr, The Uses of University(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

5. de Vries,Religion and Violence, 26-27.

6. Immanuel Kant,Religion Within the Limit of Religion Alone,trans. T. M. Greene and H. H. Hudson (New York: Harper andRow, 1960).

7. Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism,Morality, and Tragedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).

8. On the way in which the crusade against terrorism strengthensthe state's sovereign claim over a monopoly on secrecy and

knowledge, see Deborah Poole


19/23



Page 151

and Gerardo Rnique, "Terror and the Privatized State: A PeruvianParable,"Radical History Review 85 (2003): 150-163.

9.Veena Das, "Violence and Translation,"Anthropological

Quarterly 75, 1 (2002).

10. The moral absolutism in the statements about the evilcharacter of the "terrorists" seems to induce a strange politicalamnesia. Prior to September 11th, the relationship between alQaeda and the Taliban was well known to the U.S. and U.K.governments (indeed, the United States failed to act on detailedRussian intelligence provided to the UN in March 2001). While theBritish Foreign Secretary invoked the obligatory comparison toaction against the Nazi regime and warned against appeasement

right after September 11th, he had no hesitation (when HomeSecretary a year earlier) in demanding the immediate removalfrom the United Kingdom of all the civilian hostages claimingasylum in Britain after their hijacked Afghani aircraft had landedat a London airport. See Jane's Intelligence Digest(2001) on howRussian intelligence on al Qaeda was ignored. On Jack Straw'spronouncements on the requests for asylums in the Afghanhijacking case, see.As for Iraq's use of chemical weapons, it is well to recall that in

1988 there was overwhelming evidence that Saddam's regime hadused chemical weapons against the Kurds. In response to thegassing, sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by the U.S.Senate that would have denied Iraq access to U.S. technology, butwere killed by the White House. Prior to that, when chemicalweapons were used against Iran in 1984, Donald Rumsfeld was theenvoy who met the then foreign minister of Iraq, Tariq Aziz. Atthat time, the defeat of Iraq was considered contrary to U.S.interests. My point is not that such complicity with Iraq on the partof the officials in the present Administration requires any kind ofpublic apology: that would be a foolish hope. We need to know ifany lessons were learned from this on the dangerous consequencesof supporting dictators by the United States that would be appliedin formation of foreign policy. Of that, there is little evidence.

11. Catherine Lutz, "The Wars Less Known," The South AtlanticQuarterly 101, 2 (Spring 2002): 285-297.

12. Let us think of the genealogy of "terrorism" as constructing aform of forgetting. Thus, if one reads accounts so lynching from thevictim's point
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stansted/article/0,2763,191495,00.html


20/23



Page 152

of view, the term terror appears frequently as a description of theaffectit is only by deleting the experienced terror of the AfricanAmericans that anyone can claim that the experience of terrorismwas something new in the United States.

13. The National Security Strategy of the United States ofAmerica (Washington, D.C.: Office of the President, September2002). The full text is available at.

14. The scholars who have dared to question the air of obviousnesswith which dividing lines are drawn to consider some kinds ofviolence as legitimate and other as illegitimate, have beenunhesitatingly castigated as supporters of terrorism. Thus, Ghassan

Hage documents the difficulties he has faced in providing ananalysis of the practices of suicide bombers in Palestine. As hesays, "I wonder why it is that that suicide bombing cannot betalked about without being condemned first. After all, we can sitand analyze in a cool manner the formidably violence of colonialinvasion without feeling that "absolute" moral condemnationshould be precondition or even a substitute for uttering an opinionabout it". Ghassan Hage, "'Comes a Time We are all Enthusiasm':Understanding Palestinian Suicide Bombers in Times ofExighophobia" Public Culture 15, 1 (2003): 65-90. With a differentdescriptive strategy, Sylvain Perdigon says that he has tried to find" words circulated in the margins of the symbolic funeral of thefirst Palestinian female suicide-bomber, and on the possibility ofan anthropological language which, in relation to this event, wouldnot bear the signature of the Israeli state or of symmetricalPalestinian claims upon the members of the Palestiniancommunity, nor be entangled too quickly in the moral debate andthe ascription of innocence or culpability. Sylvain Perdigon,"Words around an Infamous Woman," Graduate Student Paper

awarded the Hughes Prize of the Society of Medical Anthropology,2002.

15. I would like to note, though, that the unchecked proliferationof other weapons also has serious consequences for the spread ofviolence and human suffering as the new kinds of wars in parts ofAsia and Africa attest.

16. For what it is worth, my suspicion is that such a strategy wouldinevitably reveal the links between despotic states and democratic

ones in the name of geopolitical interests and hence constitute apolitical risk to the leaders of western democracies that they areunwilling to allow.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html


21/23



17. For masterly exposition of these processes, see Uday SinghMehta,

Page 153

Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth Century BritishLiberal Thought(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

18. For a detailed analysis of these questions with regard to thedevelopment of sociology and social anthropology in India, seeVeena Das, "Social Sciences and the Publics," in Oxford IndiaCompanion to Sociology and Social Anthropology, Vol.1 (Delhi:Oxford University Press, 2003), 1-32; Nicholas Dirks, Castes ofMind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Arjun Appadurai,Modernity at Large (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press,1999). I note that the interaction between global imaginations ofareas and the local mapping of these imaginaries has unintendedconsequences. In the case of India, there was a strong investmentin the idea that the emotional unity of the country could be forgedby appeals to an ancient but accommodating Hindu tradition. It isnot my case that this view was uncontested but rather that thebattles in the social sciences and humanities were fought overterrains that were concerned with questions of nation building

these battles cannot be understood through some kind of tunnelview of history.

19. Neta C. Crawford, "The Best Defense: The Problem with Bush's'Preemptive' War Doctrine,"Boston Review, 2003, 28, 1 (2003):50-54.

20. I offer one example of this. I wrote some papers on the Sikhmilitant movement using literature in Gurmudkhi, and recordedcassettes of the speeches of Bhindranwale that were banned but

freely available. Apart from some efforts at intimidation, my libertywas never seriously threatenedhowever, the possibility that my"illegal" use of this literature could constitute a legal offence wassometimes troubling to me.

21. See Charles M. Vest, Response and Responsibility: BalancingSecurity and Openness in Research and Education, Report of thePresident for the Academic Year 2001-2002 (Cambridge:Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 2002).

22. Consider the way thought is sought to be limited when in thename of civilization there are condemnations of those who arecritical of the present stance of the government as "anti-American."


22/23



Thus in a report produced by American Council of Trustees andAlumni, there was reference to a number of critical scholars as the"weak link" in America's fight against terrorism. See Jerry L Martinand Anne D. Neal, "Defending Civilization: How Our Universities

Page 154

are Failing America and What Can Be Done about It,". The group that produced this report wasreportedly funded by Lynne Cheney, wife of the U.S. Vice Presidentand Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat.

23. Paul Rabinow,Essays on the Anthropology of Reason(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).

24. Rabinow, Essays on the Anthropology of Reason, 68-69.

25.Veena Das and Abhijit Dasgupta, "The Cholera Vaccine inIndia: Scientific and Political Representations,"Economic andPolitical Weekly,35, 8/9 (2000): 633-645.

26. For an account of the debates on the practice of ethics,including the ethics of doing science in the university, see MichaelDavis,Ethics and the University (London: Routledge, 1999).

27. Masao Miyoshi, "Ivory Tower in Escrow,"Boundary 2 (2000):

7-50.

28. See Marlys Strathern, "'Improving Ratings: Audit in theBritish University System," European Review 5, 3 (1997): 305-21.See also her recent edited book on audit cultures in which thereare some fine-grained analyses of the institutional practices aroundauditing and producing a marketable professional self. Theauthors, however, fail to consider the question of materialresources needed to produce certain kinds of research that isdependent upon laboratories, equipment, large-scale trials, orlarge samples. SeeAudit Cultures: Anthropological Studies inAccountability, Ethics, and the Academy, ed. Marlyn Strathern(London: Routledge, 2000).

29. It is not that university presidents do not mobilize theirfaculties for any protest. For instance, faculty and staff at JohnsHopkins were rightly mobilized to appeal to their electedrepresentatives when there was a proposal to make furtherbudgetary cuts to the Sellinger Program in Maryland that supportsthe state's educational opportunities for Maryland students.

30.Veena Das, "Violence and Translation".
http://www.goacta.org/


23/23


31. I noted then and I emphasize again that to acknowledge one'svulnerability and that we are not omnipotent is not to castourselves as helpless victims.

32. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (New York:Vintage Books, 1969) 127.

33. Michel Foucault,Discipline and Punish: The Birth of thePrison (New York: Vintage Books 1979), 9.

Page 155

34. It is surprising that although the role of the United States inbringing Saddam to power and sustaining his regime is easy todocument, there is no address to this issue in discussions of why

innocent Iraqis should pay the price for the adventurism of U.S.policy among those who support war against Iraq. For anaccessible, clear account of the role of the United States in Iraq, seeRoger Morris, "A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making,"New YorkTimes, March 14, 2003, A27.

>

Hosted byMPublishing, a division of the University of Michigan Library.

For more information please contact [email protected] .
mailto:[email protected]?subject=Global%20Publicshttp://www.lib.umich.edu/http://www.lib.umich.edu/mpublishinghttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001/1:8?rgn=div1;view=fulltexthttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/globalpublics/4726364.0001.001/1:6?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

university veena das

Documents