Compassion Fatigue

Compassion fatigue. I think I have it...

I have spent the past two days reveling in the newest season of Grey's Anatomy on DVD. Meaningless melodrama reduced me to tears and it felt good. Refreshing, even. Academia seems to suspend time and emotions. I read about genocide, ethnic cleansing, famine, poverty and injustice everyday. For the past four months, I have been inundated with stories of human tragedy and have (somehow) allowed myself to become acclimatized. From my privileged perch in the ivory towers, I have become immune. I have avoided the economic recession wreaking havoc at home and missed the daily ups and downs felt by my closest friends and family members. 

It's funny that watching Grey's made me cry. 

I am at LSE because I am passionate - passionate about learning, traveling, and achieving.  In 2009, I am going to make sure that I don't lose sight of that. That I don't analyze the texts I am reading without remembering the human faces whose stories move me. I am sensitive and motivated. I can't let my anxiety about applying for jobs hold me back. Saving the world is within grasp. I have an important role to play. Life is plowing forward and I just need to stay emotionally in touch.

Just a Few of the Things I am Thankful for this Thanksgiving -- family, friends, live music, good coffee, health and happiness

    

   


       
           


       

    

      

  

   

I drank the Kool-Aid and was rocking Nikes. No such thing as a free lunch? Think again.

Everyday at 1:00 pm, just outside Wright's sandwich bar (on LSE's campus), the Hare Krishna food cart arrives with free, hot vegan lunch. And everyday at 1:00 pm, coincidentally, a mass of hungry students appear to receive the food from the cultish figures that deliver it-- all I can say is, the cultish figures that shovel the food onto recycled paper plates must have seen Field of Dreams. They must know that, "if you [bring] it, they will come." The line of students that waits for this food (sometimes for at least 35 minutes) astounds me. I always watch in bewilderment as economics students cast notions of opportunity cost aside and say a huge screw you to homo economicus. I laugh at the irony as these students wait, and wait, and wait for this free food as if their time is less valuable than the dubious food they're about to receive. Last week, the line was 3 people long and despite my reluctance to participate in this weird daily ritual, I decided to give it a try. I got the green goo from the men with shaved heads (save a tiny patch where a mile long braid grows) and ate it suspiciously. The food was surprisingly okay but the cart's adornment, which graphically likened the killing of cattle to the genocide of people....was not. I wonder how many people realize what those guys are striving to do? Or maybe they're well aware but are prepared to cash in on a free lunch anyway? Not sure. But I felt like I had drank the Kool-Aid.

Highlights of the Catharine MacKinnon Lecture

Catharine MacKinnon came to LSE and gave a lecture called, "Women's Status, Men's States" on October 22, 2008. She was fiery and passionate and excitable -- her energy reinvigorated my academic drive to be here. Seeing her speak was also momentous for me personally because it took what Prof. Edlin taught in Philosophy of Law and brought it to life. I won't be able to recreate her fervor, so I've decided instead to post the notes that I took while listening to her speak:

In the last 25 years we've seen women confront the denial of their own humanity on a global scale:
-Women have NO humanity when they're violated by men in sexual ways.
-Women have begun to overcome the denial of atrocities by initiating the normative process of "becoming human."
-Until now, women have been confronted with the sentiment that, "if it's really happening it isn't so bad and if it's so bad it isn't really happening."
-Even with all their set backs, women can be viewed as halfway towards the goal of "becoming fully human" -- this is because even in its aspirational form, human rights have typically only described the rights of men. Recent developments in the human rights discourse and international law has made the term "human rights" more honest (i.e. reflective of female reality).

What is meant by labeling the state "male?"
- The structures and actions of the state are centrally animated by hierarchical, sexual politics
- Important caveat: not everything men do is male; but male is taken in this context to mean, "exhibiting or contributing to male dominance"
- Given that the state is demonstrably male, is the international system a counterbalance? Or does the international system assume the role of "meta male?"
- If the state is gendered and treats women as such through the law, does the international order discourage bias or reinvigorate it at even higher levels?

Does the international system depend upon the state as it currently exists?
- It's been argued that there is a democratic deficit (i.e. that national systems are more democratic are thus better suited for the resolution of human rights violations)...but it seems the international order is more democratic when it comes to the status of women
-Others point to the "death of the state," claiming that the state has been superceded by globalization, multinational organizations, organized crime, religion etc....but from the point of view of women, this has always been the case. Maleness transcends everyday life in a multitude of ways. Is it just more visible now?

State behavior that's typically male does these four things:
1. distinguishes public from private
2. naturalizes difference as dominance
3. hides coercion behind consent
4. obscures politics behind morality (i.e. power...who has it?)

**Women's best chance to avoid violations at home is to appeal to those that are spatially distant (and presumably less biased). Men's definition of objective is "I don't identify with that man, therefore I can be fair." MacKinnon claims that the international system is more progressive than that because the distance attenuates male dominance.**

Women = a truly global group
- Gender inequality = global system
- Sovereign jurisdiction = cultural exemption of male dominance. Common argument is that if it's a cultural universal "we can't do anything about it" and if it's a cultural particularity "we shouldn't do anything about it." This means that every form of female oppression is allowed.
-Sexual violations are considered private but they are shared, they are rationalized as consensual but they're coerced...

And finally, the question I wanted to ask but chickened out on...
In Feminism Unmodified you encourage your readers to think about the experience of women from the vantage point of 53% of the population...do you worry that forcing people to adopt this mentality of shared experience will make it difficult for people to relate to those that have experienced exceptional human rights atrocities...in a distant country, during genocide or in a repressive home down the street?

PS. My friend Kaitlin took the picture.

More Pictures of London

Photos:
1. If you look closely you'll see that the window of this abandoned building says "No War"
2. The front of my residence hall
3. Blackfriars bridge (the bridge I cross each morning en route to LSE)
4. St. Paul's Cathedral
5. Views from the Millennium Bridge (you can see London Bridge in the distance)
6-8. More St. Paul's Cathedral
9. Street performer at Camden Market
10. Holborn

Insert thoughtful response to Zimbabwe power-sharing deal and Sudanese ICC indictments here

I have received several celebratory emails from student organizations at the LSE praising the recent issuance of ICC indictments in Sudan. These emails have described the court's exertion of its juridical might as a necessary step towards eradicating impunity. These emails struck me as overly simplistic for several reasons:

1. The ICC is a highly politicized legal mechanism -- its administration of justice is selective and self-serving. As Tim Allen explains in his book, Trial Justice -- The International Criminal Court and the Lord's Resistance Army, "perhaps not surprisingly, the waters are being tested in parts of the world that are politically and economically of limited significance for the major powers. All the ICC's ongoing investigations are in Central Africa" (Allen, 2). Western "Super Powers" are exempted from the ICC's far reaching, juridical power. As Professor Gerry Simpson notes in Law, War & Crime, "the ICC may have jurisdiction over crimes against humanity but this is certainly not universal jurisdiction (universal jurisdiction was specifically rejected by the delegates at Rome). Any US soldiers suspected of committing crimes against humanity in Afghanistan would not be subject to it, and Russian Special Forces accused of murdering civilians in Chechnya are not subject to it." As a result, most "alleged war criminals in most places, most of the time, will not fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC" (Simpson, 47).

2. The organization's focus on collective rather than individual guilt is misplaced. Genocide is mass participatory -- deflecting attention from the abuses suffered at the hands of many, in favor of those committed by political elites, ignores the totality of the conflict's destructive power. It might also have the unintended effect of legitimating and making martyr's out of the accused (Simpson, 21).

3. Issuing indictments in the midst of a volatile, ethnic conflict could foment further violence and disrupt tenuous cease-fire agreements (as in Northern Uganda). Professor Simpson claims that "organizations like the ICC become the enemy of politics -- calling for punishment instead of negotiation, individual guilt and blame in the face of collective responsibility, and trial instead of immunity" (Simpson, 22).

4. African countries may not be receptive to what is often perceived as a Western, adversarial mode of justice. Okechukwu Oko argues in "The Challenges of International Criminal Prosecutions in Africa," that African citizens “deride international criminal prosecutions as judicial colonialism, imperial condescension, or worse, as ersatz efforts by the West to imbricate its failure to prevent tu quoque violence that continues to disfigure Africa.” The adversarial model is viewed this way because the “elaborate substantive and procedural rules [employed] are virtually incomprehensible to the local inhabitants,” and the type of justice pursued in these geographically distant tribunals is identified as “foreign” (Oko, 366).

On the Subject of the Collapsed Zimbabwean Negotiations...

1. Robert Mugabe has rewritten electoral laws to stay in power, has violently re-appropriated land, silenced and abused the opposition. Deception and manipulation is his political forte. Why are people surprised he's done it again? Giving such a skilled dictator even a "symbolic" governmental position was a mistake.

2. Robert Mugabe's rallying cry has been and always will be "us versus them." He hasn't moved past the injustices of apartheid and skillfully invokes these memories to draw continued support from his comrades (including Thabo Mbeki).

3. CRONYISM. Robert Mugabe and Thabo Mbeki have an unsettling, historically convoluted but deeply personal relationship. Mbeki has come under fire in the past for his policy of "quiet diplomacy" in Zimbabwe. Why rely on his powers of persuasion now with Robert Mugabe for a crisis with such severe sociopolitical and regional implications?

More musings

1. I bless my liberal arts education on a daily basis here -- I feel so prepared, actually more than prepared, to tackle the readings assigned and the questions posed to me. I have developed an academic routine that works for me (digesting dense analytical texts, outlining articles, writing essays and preparing for exams) and it seems to be carrying over nicely to my work at the LSE. I am also finding that I have encountered (or at least heard of) a lot of the authors I'll be reading this year. In fact in some instances, I will be re-reading materials. For some kids coming from more vocationally focused schools, these texts feel daunting and new. I feel blessed to have at least a little bit of knowledge in a broad range of topics.
2. There's no shortage of good people in this world. I have been here for three weeks and I can honestly say that I have already made lifelong friends. Friends that finish my sentences, understand my sense of humor, have similar interests, jam to the same tunes, and are equally motivated to travel the world. Friends that I already can't imagine living without.
3. I can be myself wherever I end up. It works for me.
4. Getting used to new surroundings takes time. Although London sometimes feels like a mass of endless pavement and I am often overtaken by aggressively maneuvering pedestrians... it has so much to offer. I haven't even scratched the surface. I have a long list of things I need to conquer before I can authoritatively say I like South Africa better. South Africa was just different...and I had a team of interstudy staffers making sure my transition was seamless.