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VIBS
Volume 216
Robert Ginsberg
Foundi ng Edi tor
Leonidas Donskis
Executive Editor
Associate Editors
G. John M. Abbarno Brian G. Henning
George Allan Steven V. Hicks
Gerhold K. Becker Richard THull
Raymond Angelo Bellio tti Michael Krausz
Kenneth A. Bryson Olli Loukola
C. Stephen Byrum Mark Letteri
Robert A. Delfino Vincent L. Luizzi
Rem B. Edwards Adrianne McEvoy
Malcolm D. Evans Peter A. Redpath
Daniel B. Gallagher Arleen L. F. Salles
Roland Faber John R. Shook
Andrew Fitz-Gibbon Eddy Souffrant
Francese Forn i Argimon Tuij a Takala
William Gay Emil Visnovsky
Dane R. Gordon Anne Waters
J. Everet Green James R. Watson
Heta Aleksandra Gylling John R. Welch
Matti Hayry Thomas Woods
a volume in
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
RGS
James R. Watson, Editor
METACIDE
In the Pursuit of Excellence
Edited by
James R. Watson
~
Amsterdam - New York, NY 20 I 0
Contents
EDITORIAL FOREWORD ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
' DfTOR' S INTRODUCTION 3
ONE The Differend that is Global: Contemporary
Slavery as a Challenge to Human Rights
BETTINA G. BERGO
9
TWO The Meanness is [not entirely] in the System
THOMAS R. FL~ N
27
HREE Science and Human Nature: How to Go
From Nature to Ethics
DOROTHEA OLKOWSKI
43
FOUR To Reverse the Irreversible: On Time
Disorder in the Work of Jean Amery
ROY BEN SHAI
73
FIVE Finding Man in Der Muse/mann : The Use
& Abuse of the Walking Dead
LISSA SIUTOLSKY
93
SIX Operation Barbarossa as Genocidal Warfare
ANDRE MINEAU
117
SEVEN Feminist Philosophical Intervention in Genocide
NATALIE NENADIC
135
Seven
FEMINIST PHILOSOPHICAL INTERVENTION
IN GENOCIDE I
Natalie Nenadic
1. Introduction
I'he recognition that rape and other sexual atrocities can be acts of genocide
nnd crimes against humanity is now becoming a common sense in the
world's consciousness. Kadic v. Karadiic, a 1993 civil lawsuit in New York
' ity against Radovan KaradZi6, head of the Bosnian Serbs, first got them
recognized, in 1995, as genocide under law.
2
Then, in the 1998 Akayesu
decision, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) recognized
rape as genocide.
3
Indeed, sexual atrocities are now a part of what
Journalists, human rights groups, lawyers, political leaders, and others more
routinely investigate in situations of international conflict. We began to see
thi s even in Rwanda in the early 1990s and more recently in Darfur.
4
But this recognition is a recent development, one that appears to be
eclipsing the common sense that has prevailed from time immemorial,
namely denial in its variety of forms . The breakthrough of this
acknowledgement is the culmination of a long and arduous process, one
that began with the recent genocide in Europe. It began with on-the
ground initiatives by feminists and by survivors in Croatia and in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, by women who were responding to the events
that were suddenly engulfing them, the events of the "compelling
present. ,,5
For it is here that these crimes made their first recognized appearance,
in the Serbian campaign of "ethnic cleansing," a euphemism for variously
destroying the non-Serbian populations of the region. Rape and other sexual
;Itrocities, especially through the proliferation of camps for raping and killing
women, were a defining feature of this campaign. They were a cheap, effect
ive, low-grade technology of it.
This campaign began against Croatia in 1991 , resulting in the occup
alion of one third of its territory and establishing a template for what would
foll ow elsewhere. In 1992, it widened to include Bosnia-Herzegovina, re
sulting in the occupation of two-thirds of its territory, an occupation that
continues to this day and where perpetrators roam freely under the eye of the
136
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NATALIE NENADIC
U.N. 's presence there. As a Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) concentration ca ll1l'
survivor who just visited this area recently told me, he observed Serbs wilt ,
ran the camps as well as one who organized rapes moving freel y about, l!\ 1: 11
doing financially well for themselves. Moreover, in their midst, ordil1ll1 \
Serbs wear T-shirts with a picture of Radovan Karadzi6 and Ratko Mladi( 1111
them, architects and perpetrators of the genocide, a picture with the captlnll
"Serbian heroes. ,,6 In 1998, Serbia's campaign widened further still agai n', 1
Kosovo, continuing an attack there that first began in an earlier form III
1989. Finally, in 1999, the "ethnic cleansing" was stopped through U.S.- kd
NATO airstrikes against Serbia, in a strategy bypassing the U.N. and II
years of ineffectual response,
7
and completing the task in seventy-eight day,
Perhaps we may describe today's growing recognition of the sexlI,d
atrocity dimension of genocide with a version of a Hegelian idea, a vcrsili ll
divested of his metaphysics. Hegel draws our attention to the worldly til
"historical" sources of eventual breakthroughs in philosophy's
and in the wider human consciousness concerning matters of oppression ilJ1d
liberation from it. He notes that such breakthroughs are the culmination 01
long, complex, and painstaking developments that first take place in III
world, in a variety of concrete, more immediate areas of human endeavm
Eventually, response in these forms can create enough of a groundswell thai
percolates to affect philosophical thinking and where, all together, they C'III
precipitate a fundamental shift in the wider common sense. Hegel says 01
such shifts that they are "the product of a widespread upheaval in vari01l '.
forms of culture, thc pri ze at the end of a complicated, torturous path and 01
just as variegated and strenuous an effort .,,8
My task here is to present a brief account of that "complicated,
torturous path" that somehow set in motion a chain of events that yielded ;1
new understanding of genocide and sexual violence and is now shifting tilt'
world's common sense about them. That is, I present a phenomenology (II
this philosophical moment, where I understand philosophy in the senses sug
gested by Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Hegel.
Heidegger refers to philosophy as ontology that is possible only",
phenomenology.9 What he means is that philosophy is about pursuing till'
indications being revealed by a previously unacknowledged dimension of all
area of inquiry, a dimension that prevailing and reductive metaphysical
determinations of it have variously designated as unreal and as philo.
sophically irrelevant. Heidegger, however, considers these indications thl'
life-source of possible new and ground breaking understanding, which whcll
it occurs, is something he refers to as an ontological moment. For Wittgen.
stein, genuine philosophical problems have their source in this kind of space.
the kind where we thus find ourselves off the grid of established
understanding. Here, there is no charted map, no staked-out ground under
foot, to guide us. Such problems, he says, have the form "I do not know my
Feminist Philosophical Intervention in Genocide
way about," and as elaborated by Karsten Harries, they are born of that deep
anxiety of inhabiting this kind of no-man's land where we have to engage in
a profound questioning and rethinking of what we know. 10
Our main source for grasping this uncharted dimension is the
indications it is emitting. As per Hegel's idea of philosophy's vocation
ugain, a version divested of his metaphysics- the philosopher's work is to
gather these clues as the "thought of our time." It is to translate and express
what they are pre-philosophically indicating as timely and original
thinking." This emerging new understanding then comes, in a major way, to
conflict with a prevailing common sense about that area and can precipitate
what Hei degger refers to as a "crisis in concepts,,,12 an idea that anticipates
what Thomas Kuhn, in the philosophy of science, would later refer to as
"paradigm shifts.,,13 According to Heidegger, to think philosophically,
whether in philosophy per se or as a philosophical moment within another
area, is at heart about noticing, articulating, and thus helping to precipitate
"crises in concepts."
I present an account of the pursuit of such indications concerning
genocide and sexual violence- indications encompassing a variety of
activities whose fundamental source is survivor testimonies- that led to a
crisis in how we understand genocide and sexual violence and that is now
beginning to shift the world's common sense about them. This work is at
heart about the existence of feminism in a place where these atrocities were
happening and that could therefore identify and respond to them. It could
hold them fast and thus keep their reality from sinking back into oblivion.
This feminism existed in Croatia and, in particular, the person of Asja
Armanda, the epicenter from which the waves of this wider work emanated.
The major efforts that are part of such work of course involve the difficult
and often heroic actions of many. However, the shift in our understanding
couldn't have happened here without there being someone with exceptional
vision and leadership to recognize the crimes in their significance and to
clarify, guide, and set those enormous efforts in a specific direction. That
was Arrnanda's role, the role of an activist-thinker.
A critical part of what got caught in these waves is an alliance with
American femini sm. Through their own painstaking, on-the-ground efforts in
Ihe 1960s, '70s and '80s, feminists in North America began shifting the
general consciousness here about the reality and prevalence of sexual
violence, breaking through the ubiquitous denial about it, especially a
psychoanalytically influenced denial.
14
American feminism was thus in the
unique position of offering a developed understanding of sexual violence in
"peacetime" modem democracies, which was of great importance in
addressing its occurrence in the very different but related context of
genocide. This alliance culminated in the landmark legal action at the
beginning of 1993 in New York City against Radovan Karadii6 (Kadii: v.
138 139 NATALIE NENADIC
Karadiic). It was the first case to get sexual atrocities recognized as acts ,,'
genocide and was the first legal response while a genocide was ongolll
rather than after it.
My account is that of a first hand observer and participant in this W()I
I am someone who got caught in the waves set in motion by Asja Armand
whose reach extended across the globe to pull me from a comfortable nll d
rather insular California existence and directly into this world, one that th"11
wouldn't leave me be. One could say that my position came to inhabit SOI Ill
hybridized version of the categories that Hegel uses to describe philosophy .
relation to the historical-humanistic realm, here too minus his
These categories are the original "historian" and the person who then st l' P
back in order philosophically to reflect upon these concrete developml" If .
"as a whole.,,'5
About the fonner, more "historical" actor Hegel says that they are tlH1'r
who have themselves witnessed, experienced and lived through th,'
deeds, events and situations they describe, who have themsel w
participated in these events and in the spirit which informed them ..
[This author] works from the immediate intuitions of his experienn ',
assembling a series of separate ... elements into a composite picture, ill
order to give to posterity a representation as determinate as that wh it' li
he experienced through his own intuition or through the intuitiw
narrative of someone else.
16
In a preliminary way, this person bounds a thread around these scattered,
fleeting narratives, which would otherwise be lost and forgotten and
gives them a more coherent shape. She secures them into a "better ... s()il
than the soil of transience in which [they] grew.,,17 Then, comes the mtm'
evidently philosophical part of this work that is an organic outgrowth ot
what preceded it. With her feet still planted in these particularities,
person now gains a perch on them, a perch from which their more universal
implications come into view and that she then holds as the "thought of hl' l
time."18
To operate within this basic assumption of what philosophy does is to
reflect a legacy of Hegel, whether consciously or unconsciously and
regardless of one's actual posture towards his specific work. For the explicit
recognition that philosophy is now a more self-consciously historical and
world-involved enterprise, concerned principally with addressing COI1CTeI.
ethical challenges, is a breakthrough of his philosophy. It has colored philu.
sophy ever since, despite the problematic features and shortcomings of his
particular system. Hegel considers philosophy's task to change over time, in
ways that are affected by history. Thus, from his era onward-an era after
the natural sciences had already branched off from philosophy to form theil
autonomous disciplines- philosophy is principally about addressing the
Feminist Philosophical intervention in Genocide
humanistic realm. More specifically, it is about ethics in a post-Kantian
sense, ethics that is no longer detached from the world but grapples with
ethical challenges as they exist in actuality. Philosophy's understanding of
ethics accordingly emanates phenomenologically, that is, from the "ground
up," from people's actual experiences of oppression, which guides philos
ophy's work of helping to secure conditions of freedom in the real world.
2, The Activity of Phenomenology: Background
The phenomenological work that would result in a "crisis in concepts" and in
the growing recognition of the sexual atrocity dimension of genocide and of
crimes against humanity begins in the aftermath of the Serbian "ethnic
cleansing" campaign against Croatia in summer of 1991. This campaign was
perpetrated by the Serbian-led Yugoslav army (JNA), Serbian paramilitary
units and local Croatian Serbs against their neighbors. And it was character
ized by house-to-house killings; rapes; deportations to concen-tration camps,
where tortures, rapes, and mass killings took place; the razing of com
munities and villages to eradicate traces of Croatian historical presence
there; mortar and air pummeling of towns and cities, including the targeting
of hospitals; and the siege of major cities like Dubrovnik and Vukovar. After
months of relentless attack and destruction, Vukovar finally fell in December
1991. War crimes investigators would later find these territories littered with
mass-grave sites. When I began to work with survivors months later, I would
hear first hand accounts of what I have summarized here.
Many of the people fleeing the parts of Croatia that were coming under
Serbian occupation found their way to the Croatian capital of Zagreb, in its
many displaced persons' centers ("refugee" camps). Asja Armanda was a
resident of Zagreb, which was then also under aerial attack by the Serbian
led Yugoslav military (INA) and under sniper fire from their compounds
within the city. And like the many local and international relief agencies
there at the time, she too came to the aid of survivors. However, in one very
fundamental way, Arnlanda's approach differed from that of others. It
included specific inquiries about what was happening to women in these
occupied territories and included the ability to discern what, in their self
initiated and groping ways, they were trying to describe to her. That is, she
asked the right questions and was attuned to and able to hear what the
women were attempting to give word to.
Armanda thus went from one refugee center to another listening to and
speaking with survivors, especially women, and a pattern began to emerge
about the presence of sexual atrocities in Serbian "ethnic cleaning." It
consisted of sexual torture and mutilation, of mass rapes and killings, both in
the house-to-house attacks and in concentration camps for that purpose.
Here, Annanda also learned of the filming of these sexual atrocities as
pornography. Again, months later when she would involve me in this
in an on-the-ground manner, I too would hear these accounts first hand.
Put another way, Annanda began to see the repetition of the SIII II
pattern of atrocity in, for instance, the occupied Croatian town of Knin III
the areas around the city of Vukovar, places that geographically are far il p ill l
and are under different Serbian occupation commanders. This fact sugg('st ld
that these atrocities weren't isolated. Nor were they the result of the isol atl d
orders of a rogue commander whose atrocities happened to spill over f!"l ll!
one area onto an adjacent one. It suggested, rather, that orders to COIllII II I
them had to be coming from even higher up. it suggested that an even
command was issuing the order to commit sexual atrocities as a discrl' l
policy of "ethnic cleansing."
But, how was Armanda able to identify this dimension, especially al .1
time when international human rights and relief agencies didn't ask Sil l II
questions? When issues of sexual violence weren' t quite on their radar alld
where indeed they were in denial about it? The circumstances of her plan
and time forced Annanda to act "in the moment," as a sort of emergenl \
first respondent to a crisis that crashed into her life, to an atrocity that
was recognizing but others weren't and that therefore took hold of her to d ..
something about it. A few words on Annanda's background help situate 111I 'i
response.
Annanda grew up in the communist totalitarian state of Yugoslavia
And, in certain ways, she inhabited a kind of outsider position within il
which shaped a unique perspective and point of entry to respond to theSl'
events. A most basic way of inhabiting this outsider position is throug h
having the regime designate you as such. This it did as part of its standurd
operating procedure of sorting people on the basis of a judgment about tilli l
family background. If this background didn't pass political muster,
became a black mark that followed family members across generations, fl
sort of pox on your house that rendered all family members suspect. The
that marked her house may be encapsulated as that of holding a democratil'
or liberal-leaning political outlook.
Some of its specific features include being anti-fascist during World
War 11, which then naturally became anti-communism within the communisl
state. It includes parents engaging in "suspect" activities and holdirl/'
"suspect" ideas such as accessing foreign newspapers and journals frolll
across the border in Italy to get information about the free world. It includes
being a competent engineer, who points out the irrationality of pol itically
motivated engineering decisions by Communist Party hacks and, so, gels
expelled from his job and remains under investigation by the authorities. Thl'
family's efforts then economical1y to survive, through selling wares in a
"business" the size of a family fruit stand, now makes you further suspecl.
For the minimum amount of independence that this small economic SOurCl'
Feminist Philosophical Int ervention in Genocide
gives you makes it harder for the state to control you; it also pegs you as a
sort of "capitalist." Another problem is being a family of assimilated Jews,
where now this economic activity is furthennore seen through an anti
Semitic lens. Worse still, you become even more suspect for being Imown
supporters of the state of Israel in a Yugoslavia that, as part of the Non
Aligned Movement, was anti-Israel and generally treated Israel as if it didn't
exist. Known Jews or sympathizers of Israel became especially politically
suspect in the wake of the Yom Kippur War. Such "transgressions" cast a
shadow on an entire family and so too on Annanda.
Designated, but also shaped, in this way, Annanda entered the
University of Zagreb in the 1970s to study philosophy. She recounts that
philosophy was dominated by the mandatory and rigid Marxist ideology of
the regime, taught in a manner that was detached from the brutal reality and
context of the communist society in which it was situated, a society of state
censorship, torture, killings, and political prisons. Armanda then switched to
law, thinking that this Marxism, which functions as a denial of reality,
wouldn' t have as powerful a presence there as it did in philosophy, a
difference, however, that turned out to be minor. So she eventually settled
into the more liberal environment of anthropology, to study culture and
society in a more on-the-ground manner, one that allowed her to go directly
to the phenomena themselves, to investigate them in a way as free as
possible from the interference of pre-existing interpretations. Throughout,
Annanda had an existential and intellectual need for feminist theory,
something she understood as the product of a social movement and thus
possible in free societies and not within hers, a society that shut down such
social movements. In feminism, she saw, among other things, a democratic
resistance to Marxism and to communism, that is, a way to escape the
totalitarianism in which she was living.
The Yugoslav communist regime claimed it was solving the problem of
class inequality. And as part of this dubious assertion, it made the even more
dubious assertion that, in solving class inequality, the "woman question" was
automatically solved, thus in effect denying the reality of women's
inequality, especially under totalitarianism. The state even had its group of
female representatives who promoted and sold this official line, especially to
the West, including to women's groups there. With minor and nominal
variations, these representatives basically operated within the parameters of
this fairy tale account of Yugoslavia.
As such, they participated in the state's work of stifling democratic
movements, in this case preventing a feminist movement from even getting
started. For a feminist movement threatens the very heart of this kind of
society, that is, a communist society that is fundamentally frozen and un
moving, one in which these regime representatives were privileged tokens
and in which they had a particular stake. A feminist movement is reality
142
143
NATALIE NENADIC
based. It yields new understanding that is naturally tied to effecting I l'iil
world change. And this is something that poses an existential threat to . 1
political system that is frozen. Thus, it was impossible seriously to addll"
women's inequality in a polity that not only, in effect, denies its existl:lh I
but has the force of a police state and its political prisons for those WillI
challenge whatever its official positions are.
Perhaps we tend to forget that modernity, in addition to giving birth I"
freer societies, also produced totalitarian ones with modem trappings such ,I'.
female representatives, who, in thi s case, also p311icipate in the stale ...
oppressive agenda. Nazism is an extreme example of this phenomelloll
having perhaps the largest women's organization to date, which thus p J a y ~ ' d
a role in stifling democratic movements and in obscuring the crimes of illt
regime, including those committed by women.
19
Whi le it is an extrcIIll
example to raise in this context, it would later become more directly I I
propos, when "ethnic cleansing" and its sexual atrocities would begin alld
when women from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, like Armanda, would
try to get the word out to international women's groups and media.
For the principal contacts that international women 's groups and media
had in the region were these privileged regime representatives. The formel
would consult them to verify the reports of sexual atrocities, only to havl.'
them variousl y deny that they were happening. These regime representatiw!\
basicall y blocked these escape routes for information that local women wen'
trying to get out to the world from what had, in effect, become a great big
concentration camp. To get the word out successfully, local feminists, sur
vivors, and others would end up having to bypass the international feminisl
media and go to other sources, especially to those mainstream media jour
nalists who were working on-the-ground, that is, working "phenomeno
logically" and were willing to listen and talk to women concentration camp
survivors and do something about what they were hearing.
2o
Although Armanda lived in a system in which a feminist movement
wasn't possible, she did have access to information about feminist
movements and the theory emanating from them. For her country
geographically bordered free societies into which she could occasionally
cross and where such information was available . The cities of Graz and
Vienna, Austria were only a few hours away, with bookstores that had books
about such developments, mainly American books still in English. Austria
was thus a li fe li ne for such knowledge, something that wasn' t available in
the geographically closer cities ofItaly.
We may, in a certain sense, cast Armanda's intellectual biography and
her later actions philosophically. They may be summarized as those of
someone who, in some manner, is trying to preserve the li fe of thought and
some spiritual or humanistic light in what Arendt refers to as "dark times,"
times that in Armanda's case wou ld become even darker. They are periods
and places of strife and hardship, times of tragedy when a philosophical and
spiritual light is most urgently needed.
21
And sometimes it comes through by
way of particular individuals who exhibit a certain greatness, though not
necessarily fame , and who might otherwise slip through history. Arendt
describes the idea thus:
That even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some
illumination, and that such illumination may well come less from
theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often
weak light that some men and women, in their li ves and work, will
kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that
was given to them on earth.
22
More specifically, we may cast Armanda's story in the following way.
A feminist and, by nature, a philosopher, she sought to pursue feminist
inquiry through philosophy but came up against a metaphysics in the form of
the Marxism of the state and of its academic philosophy. In its absolutist
account of society, this philosophy shut out of view and denied the very
brutal reality of its own Marxist society, including the situation of women, a
denial upheld by the force of a police state that punished contrary views.
Indeed to respond to this predicament would have been to grapple with a
genuinely philosophical problem, but that would also have required becom
ing an exile from one' s country, an emigre.
Thus, in order to think in a manner attuned to one's world and
existentially relevant, which in Armanda's case is also a feminist manner,
but without becoming an exile, she made a "phenomenological" move to
other discipli nary areas, to law and then to anthropology. We may say that,
to an extent, she did as Hegel suggests about the pursuit of timely
phi losophy. He suggests that it requires stepping off the maps of established
or governing philosophical frameworks, including academic ones, and into
other humanistic areas to pursue what their developments are pre
philosophically indicating, something that an original thinker then translates
as timely philosophy. As per the slogan of the phenomenologists, Armanda
had to go "to the facts themselves," facts that resisted or transcended the
official absolutist account or construct (Gestelf), 23 a construct with the back
ing of a po lice state. We may say that she concerned herself with a section of
what Husserl refers to as the life-world (Lebenswelt)24 as the source for
thinking in a living and relevant way about existence in "dark times."
Armanda was thus poised to act in a thoughtful , constructive manner
when monumental changes suddenly came to her society. With the fall of the
Berlin Wall in late 1989 and with democratic elections in the countries of the
communist block, including in 1990 in Croatia, which was then part of
Yugoslavia, Armanda used the opportunity of this democratic moment to
organize the first explicitly feminist group and publication, the Kareta
144
145
NATALIE NENADIC
Feminist Group and A1agazine. Its inaugural meeting, in fact, took plan' III
her apartment. Its aim was to have women participate in democmll'
processes through integrating their concerns in them, something for wlm II
Kareta would be a vehicle.
We can say that we had here the birth of an organic, explicitly femilll . 1
movement in its first stirrings and with its own explicitly
publication as a sign of that movement. This on-the-ground initiative was III
some respects akin to the impulse and movement behind the formation. Ii II
instance, of A1s. A1agazine in the United States or the Emma
publication in Germany . In 1991-1992, this development was followed h\
the proliferation of many other women's groups in Croatia, especially relid
oriented groups, often refugee and survivor organizations, including Bosni :III
ones in exile, with which Anllanda and Kareta would vigorously work.
an outcome of an incipient, explicitly feminist movement that yielded all
explicitly feminist publication, Kareta did something new, something thai
became possible only in the wake of democratic elections.
3. A Philosophical Problem: "Loss of Way" and Action
Then, when the "ethnic cleansing" campaign began against Croatia in ] 991.
Anllanda would notice the sexual atrocities through an on-the-ground,
phenomenological approach. That is, she would bypass the prevailing
framework (GestelT) that variously denied their existence, instead paying
attention to what survivor testimonies were revealing, testimonies thaI
resisted that framework. Annanda's anthropological understanding of thl:
region and feminist background, especially her familiarity with American
writings on sexual violence, too would help her make out a shape of what
was happening to women here. Soon her work would continue with Bosnian
survivors . For in a few months, in spring 1992, Serbia would attack Bosnia
Herzegovina, creating a deluge of nearly a million Bosnian refugees who
would flood Zagreb and other unoccupied parts of Croatia. Indeed, most of
Bosnia-Herzegovina's refugees would end up in Croatia. By now, word had
spread within the refugee-survivor community that there was someone
unusual out there, someone actually interested in and asking the right
questions about sexual atrocities. Annanda became known as reliable and
trustworthy such that survivors and others actually sought her out to tell her
about the sexual atrocities.
Given that the evidence was pointing to a higher Serbian command
issuing orders to commit these crimes across different occupation regions of
Croatia, Armanda knew these atrocities would soon be repeated in that same
command' s campaign against Bosnia-Herzegovina. So, in order to stop what
was already happening in Croatia and to prevent what she saw would come
to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Annanda tried to get international relief and human
rights groups to begin investigating these atrocities. In this period, various
forms of denial, reflecting that denial that more generally surrounds sexual
violence, characterized the general consciousness about sexual atrocities in
international conflict situations. It ranged from claiming that reports of these
crimes aren' t true or that they are exaggerations to claiming that they are an
age-old part of war that happens on all sides, never mind that a campaign
targeting civilians and countries with no annies to speak of isn' t war in a
traditional sense. The latter claim assumes sexual atrocities to be a sort of
metaphysical feature of war that can't be changed, so there is no point in
trying, rather than their ubiquity giving us all the more reason finally to start
doing something about them.
We get an indication of how disconnected the international human
rights community was from these atrocities and from indigenous, on-the
ground responses to them in an experience I had in late fall of 1992, when I
was in Zagreb and a time well after news of the sexual atrocities first made
the international press. A representative of Amnesty International contacted
me. Like other major international human rights groups, it was upstaged by
the mainstream media's exposure of these human rights violations. Inter
national human rights groups are otherwise supposed to be the first to make
such revelations, with the press then reporting on these findings. But these
groups were now caught off the issue and scrambled to get on top of it. This
representative, evincing little idea about these atrocities though of course
wanting to know more, was asking me for leads so that his organization
could now begin seriously to investigate if they were happening. He
approached me at a point when Annanda and I were long past this stage. For,
we had already set in motion our plans to go after perpetrators through legal
means.
But months before Serbia's attack on Bosnia-Herzegovina in spring of
1992 and during the throes of the attack on Croatia, Annanda did go to
international relief and human rights groups to try to convince them to begin
investigating the sexual atrocities. However, these agencies were still var
iously operating within old frameworks , where such crimes weren't on the
radar of what these groups regularly investigated. Her experience with the
International Red Cross (lRC) served as a major revelation through which
she realized that international human rights justice wouldn't do anything
about these particular crimes, at least not here and not now, and that serious
response would require going through other channels.
Her experience with the International Red Cross (IRC) occurred in
winter of 1991-1992. A young woman refugee managed recently to escape
from Vukovar, a city in the eastern part of Croatia that had just fallen to
Serbian forces and that was now a place of fresh mass-grave sites. Hearing
about Anllanda through the survivor grapevine, this woman sought her out,
even tracking Armanda down at her home. The woman had witnessed her
mother being raped by Serbian forces. And she believed this was happening
146
147
NATALIE NENADIC
more widely to women under this occupation around Vukovar, wherl' 11 11
mother was still trapped and cut off from the world. The mother was III , I
place where no people or news could entcr or exit.
Armanda took down the daughter's information and then went ((I IIIi
IRC office in Zagreb, bringing the daughter along as a witness to thc ra l"
There, they told the story, trying to get the IRC to start investigating rep\\l1
of rapes in this occupied region. However, the IRe's response was thai 1\
couldn't launch an investigation into whether the rapes were actual "
occurring without first getting a signed affidavit from the mother attesting I.,
her experience, even though they knew that she was under occupation lI lid
completely cut off from the world. In this moment, one encapsulated by till'.
kind of outlandish stipulation, Armanda knew that such organizations wen' a
dead end for serious response to these sexual atrocities.
One must also remember that we are still at the twilight III
understanding and bringing greater visibility to these atrocities. Armand"
was trying to get the wheels turning on something that it would take month,.
of work before the international community would finally lumber into actioll
to begin addressing. Thus while her work would begin in response to sexual
atrocities in Croatia, recognition of them would not start until after thl')
began to rage in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Thus, in Croatia, survivors were eYl'1I
more under the weight of the denial and stigma that generally attach to nllw
in all societies, even in the best of them like the United States. In America,
recognition of the reality of rape is greater than elscwhcre. but the denial is
still so effective that only a fraction of actual rapes here are reported, with
only a fraction of those resulting in convictions.
25
Thus, with Croatia, survivors were even more reluctant to COllll'
forward, especially to international human rights representatives wholll
survivors knew didn't take the abuses seriously enough and where to repon
them thus just worsened one's already insufferable situation. For in addition
to the survival work of coping with the post-traumatic effects of these
atrocities, not to mention everything else one suffered, one then had the
additional trauma of coping with the various forms of implicit or explicit
denial. It includes such ideas that rape isn't so grave and that it is something
that women to some extent enjoy or somehow bring upon themselves. At this
stage especially, reporting one's experiences of sexual atrocities didn't trans
late into a recognition of another, deeper dimension of "ethnic cleansing."
Rather, the stigma and denial that surround rape rubbed off on other aspects
of "ethnic cleansing," functioning to minimi ze their reality, that is, in a sense
"feminizing" them. Thus, in this earlier period, many women could go so far
as to say that they saw other women being raped or otherwise knew of the
sexual atrocities, but they had a harder time admitting that it happened to
them. I remember in 1992 in my own on-the-ground work, I encountered
Croatian human rights authorities, some of who were concentration camp
survivors initially hesitant to speak about the rapes of Croatian women, not
to mention the rapes of Croatian men, which also took place in the camps.
For, among other things, to do so transferred the in-dignity of "being treated
like a woman," an indignity that includes denial of the reality of that in
dignity, to the entire national group and to all the other atrocities it suffered.
Given this climate of denial that also affected international human
rights groups, Arn1anda and others sought to get word out on other fronts. A
major initiative she undertook was organizing a survivor speak-out in
Zagreb, something she did with the Kareta Feminist Group, the Zagreb SOS
Battered Women's Hotline, and in part with the Croatian women's group
Mothers for Peace- Bedem Ljubavi. They invited feminists and repre
sentatives of women's groups from across Europe, that is, from their
neighborhood, as well as from the United States and Israel. The point was to
have them hear first hand from survivors what they had experienced, what
those left behind were still experiencing, and what the dead didn 't live to
speak about. Armanda thought that if anyone would react to this attack on
women, it would be feminists, who might then inform the public in their
respective countries, as a kind of women's lobby effort that might help stop
the sexual atrocities. Armanda also made sure that I came there as the repre
sentative from the United States.
This initiative was also informed by concerns about how the sexual
atrocities would be covered in the mainstream media. For in its coverage of
domestic sexual violence, the media often portrays it in a quasi-porno
graphic, sensationalized manner that can subtly (or not so subtly) cast the
victim as somehow enjoying the sexual abuse or as bringing it upon herself.
Similarly, it can encourage readers to identify with the perpetrator's enjoy
ment of his crime, all of which functions to diminish the reality of the crimes
and re-violate survivors. So even if one does succeed in the extremely diffi
cult work of getting word out about the sexual atrocities, there is the further
problem of how an increasingly pornographic culture will frame them. Thus,
with this survivor speak-out, there was the idea that if feminists, sensitive to
such distorting portrayals, had some say in how these sexual atrocities were
reported, the reporting might be handled in a manner more respectful of
survivors' humanity.
The survivor speak-out conference took place at the beginning of
September 1992 after months of logistical work to make it happen and as
thousands were dying in the death camps of Bosnia-Herzegovina where the
"ethnic cleansing" was now fully raging. By now, a few American journa
lists had even ventured off the beaten path to begin getting the story out
about the rapes as part of their exposure of the death camps. The women
who spoke at this event came from all backgrounds and experiences of
"ethnic cleansing." Some were from the Serbian-occupied parts of Croatia,
others from the more recent exodus of Bosnian refugees to Zagreb who were
f1eeing the Serbian atrocItIes there. Many were concentration calliI'
survivors, and others still had family members, friends, and loved ones ill
concentration camps and under occupation. This initiative sought to creak ,I
space in which survivors felt safe, one that they trusted enough to tell otl1('1
women about what had happencd. One of the speakers was Jadranka Cigcl.j.
a Bosnian Croat rape survivor of the Omarska death camp in Bosnia
Herzegovina, who just days earlier had arrived as a refugee in Zagreb and
would eventually be a plaintiff in our legal action. She stated that she needed
to let the world know because of the women who were left behind.
Though a reasonable and valiant strategy, this approach generally did
not have much effect. Eventually, we began to appreciate that an important
reason had to do with a difference betwcen Europe and North America
concerning the extent of the understanding and social consciousness abollt
matters of sexual violence. Compared with North America, less work had
been done on these issues in Europe, where the denial of them had been evcn
more effective. I got a first indication about this difference in a remark to ml'
by one of the French representatives at the survivor speak-out, a woman who
worked with French survivors of violence against women. She told me that
the cover up of violence against women in France was so effective that, at
the time, they had trouble even getting a battered women's shelter estab
lished. And given the difficulty that French women had in getting the reality
of sexual abuse recognized in their own country, she didn't think that they
would be in much of a position to help with the situation in Bosnia-Herze
govina and Croatia.
Indeed, recently a French sociologist, Eri c Fassin, has written about this
denial of sexual violence in France. Among its manifestations, it casts the
problem as an American peculiarity, one said not to exist in France. There,
relations between the sexes are said to be of a different cultural style and
more hmmonious
26
and where sex inequality is said to be solved through the
ways the social-democratic state addresses concerns of class inequality. This
claim, belied by the facts, functioned, especially in the 1980s and 90s to
delegitimize indigenous French efforts to address violence against women, a
phenomenon that cuts across class lines. And generally it made it more diffi
cult to address feminist concerns in a more autonomous manner. Only very
recently did sexual abuse become a topic of public discussion in France,
decades after it did in North America and almost a decade after news of the
sexual atrocities of the recent genocide in Europe exploded onto the scene,
making sexual violence harder to ignore, including domestically. This dis
cussion especially surrounded the release in 2003 of the first-ever French
national study of violence against women that affirmed its pervasiveness,27
and it too was met with an onslaught of denial
2 8
Because Armanda grew up in the communist block and essentially cut
off from Europe, she wasn't entirely aware of how relatively little European
feminism had addressed the issue of sexual violence, at least compared with
the way it was addressed in the American books with which she was
familiar. The latter ref1ected a body of theoretical understanding that
emanated from a movement that managed to effect enough concrete change
perceptibly to shift the consciousness of American society as a whole on
these matters. Armanda thought that at the speak-out, survivor testimonies of
extreme sexual violence would be received with a similar understanding by
European feminists . As she has described to me, the general non-response
from European feminism, shaped by this difference but also by other critical
factors, was perplexing and a great disappointment.
Armanda did get earlier indications of this problem but didn't
appreciatc it more fully until later. She recalls, for instance, trying to get
word out about the rapes at a conference at which she spoke in Venice, Italy
in winter of 1991-1992, just after the fall of Vukovar. She even brought a list
of the names of women she knew were interned in the Serbian concentration
camps and information on the numbers of women there, all of whom were of
course in dire need of help. However, the conference's promised attention
and follow-up on the matter never happened. A few months later, she got a
similar non-response at a women's conference at which she spoke in
Bremen, Germany, where she gave detailed descriptions of how women
were being targeted in the "ethnic cleansing" campaign. Such non-response
continued at other European women's conferences. In sum, starting with
Venice and culminating in the survivor speak-out, in whose aftermath the
problem of non-response would become most evident, Armanda didn't find
in European feminism the expected understanding and sense of urgency that
genocidal sexual atrocities demanded.
She recounts that among the reasons she insisted I be present at the
survivor speak-out was that she wanted someone from the place of the
feminism that she admired and in which, she says, she placed her hopes. She
recalls that as part of making her case to the other conference organizers to
have me come, she thought that if it happened, the speak-out would have
success. I might seem an unlikely candidate to come to the speak-out. For I
was then recently out of college. I was very much shaped by the American
Women's Movement but of course wasn't part of it as it was before my time.
r was, though, a major U.S. contact Armanda had, as we met a year earlier
during a trip I took to Europe and after which I began sharing voluminous
information about U.S. feminism such as new and classic books, articles,
news, etc. I recognized what a phenomenal thinker she was, like no one I'd
met before and from whom I had much to learn.
Like many in America, I was in various ways affected by the U.S.
Women's Movement of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, which on the heels of and
connected to the American Civil Rights Movement, yielded concrete
changes that rippled over time and space perceptibly to change the American
public consciousness. I thus became familiar with new terms and wuy:. .,1
thinking about age-old sexual abuses like sexual harassment, rape in lllill
riage, date rape, and pornography as these topics were "in the air." How!.:\"t,
I began appreciating their deeper insights and implications, includill F
philosophical ones, only after I began studying this testimonial,
and public policy work more systematically. This I did as a self-educat ilil l
that paralleled, and seemed to be in a parallel universe from, what \ \-,1
concurrently taught as part of my Stanford undergraduate education. It \\.1
especially at odds with what was being said about women in philo-sophicall
oriented areas of study, what in American professional philosophy we ndi: '
to as the recent continental tradition. Although my only access then to Illi,
feminist work was through self-education, along the way there were SUnil'
sources of encouragement and orientation about how to wend through Illi:.
territory. For instance, there were talks by Catharine MacKinnon at Stanford
Law School and at Berkeley, talks by Adrienne Rich, bell hooks, Sonya
10hnson, Angela Y. Davis and others as well as other such events in the Sail
Francisco Bay Area. They were important sources of infonnation, including
about important books that weren't part of the academic world.
A significant part of the American Women's Movement, a movemelll
of course emanating from the political Left, confronted the reality of sexual
violence. Because this reality cuts across class and other lines, many
feminists recognized that it therefore demanded theoretical analyses that, for
this and other reasons, are autonomous of the Left ' s class analyses rather
than entirely subsumed into and subservient to them. A posture of separation
or distinction within unity was thus more common and acceptable within
American feminism than, it seems, in European feminism and was further
more underscored by challenges brought wi thin American feminism itself by
particular groups of women, for instance, African-American feminists,
lesbians, and 1ewish women. American feminism, emanating from its own
set of experiences, thus had important theoretical tools to help recognize,
grasp, and respond to Serbian "ethnic cleansing." Specifically, it had a soph
isticated understanding of sexual violence and an understanding of the
unique ways that women of certain ethnic groups can be targeted by it.
Indeed, when I came to the survivor speak-out, which was also my first
direct contact with European feminism, I was struck by this lesser awareness
of sueh ideas, especially of intersections between sex and ethnicity (or race),
something African-American feminism and women's historical experiences
under slavery have taught us here.
[n this period, I had also become a self-taught student and admirer of
Catharine MacKinnon's work, her complex feminist and legal theory that
emanated "phenomenologically" from survivor testimonies of sexual viol
ence, especially her sex equality approach to pornography and prostitution.
To the end of studying it more systematically, I had just secured a Research
Scholar position at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor to
work directly with her, something that would tum out to be critical in re
sponding to the sexual atrocities of "ethnic cleansing." For I would event
ually bring MacKinnon into the issue, convincing her to represent survivors
as their legal counsel. So a few days before the survivor speak-out and on
my way to it, I drove from California to Ann Arbor, dropped my stuff off,
and was on my way to Zagreb.
Thus began my own direct work with survivors, work that continues to
this day. It started around the time of the September 1992 survivor speak
out, when I al so went to the unoccupied parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina that
were under attack by Serbian forces and saw there the sheer human scale of
the problem. I saw it in the flood of displaced persons who fled there from
the occupied parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina and in the faces and shakenness of
people who had just been through and witnessed monstrosities. I saw some
thing similar at the Zagreb train station where a deluge of fleeing Bosnians
arrived continuously, having just escaped by train with their lives, in contrast
with those who ended up in the cattle cars headed for the Serbian con
centration camps. I saw similar sights throughout refugee centers in the
Zagreb area, in nearby cities, and at local humanitarian relief agencies. In
this first of my numerous trips there during the war, a trip that spanned a few
weeks, a good deal of my work consisted in "tagging along" with Armanda.
[t consisted in seeing and hearing from survivors what was happening and
learning from her how to work with and assist them and, generally, trying as
best I could to make myself useful.
I was seeing here the embodied aftern1ath of a pattern of sexual
atrocities that I had actually begun to discern even from the distance of Cali
fornia. For there I was privy to press and human rights reports issuing from
Sarajevo and Zagreb in which, every now and then, there were mentions and
witness accounts of sexual atrocities though they weren't reported in a more
coherent way, that is, in a way that recognized and knew how to describe
them as a misogynistic dimension of "ethnic cleansing." These scattered
references were something that, being versed in issues of sexual violence, I
immediately picked up on such that I began compiling these instances until a
pattern revealed itself. It started to dawn on me that they were pervasive to
"ethnic cleansing," a conclusion I could hardly believe.
During this trip there, Armanda and I brainstormed about what to do. It
was clear that the human rights route was not a good use of our time. For a
variety of reasons, the European feminist route wasn't faring much better.
However, it must be acknowledged that many European women provided
enormous assistance both to survivors and in bringing visibility to what was
happening though the majority wasn't identified with feminism. Rather, they
tended to be ordinary women, who once the story broke in the news, identi
fied with survivors in a very immediate way and were located geographically
close enough to what was happening simply to get in their cars and come
down and do something.
Armanda and I realized that we had to come up with ways by which
directly to act against perpetrators, not only to react or plead with and wait
for others to do something for the situation. So, we started to think abont
pursuing some manner of legal action though we had no idea about how we
would do that. No international war crimes tribunal had yet been establishctL
and no other official venue existed for bringing a case. We thought that a
legal action pennitted us, in one move, both to go after perpetrators and thus
help stop what was happening as it was happcning as well as validate and
bring visibility to the reality of thcse sexual atrocities. We needed to prepare
the ground for this kind of response and figure out a way to realize it.
4. A "Crisis in Concepts"
The real 'movement' of the sciences takes place when their basic
concepts undergo a more or less radical revision which is transparcnt to
itself. The level which a science has reached is determined by how far
it is capable of a crisis in its basic concepts. In such immanent crises
the very relationship between positively investigative inquiry and those
things themselves that are under interrogation comes to a point where it
begins to totter.
29
A prerequisite for serious legal response is having an adequate understanding
of the crimes. And this demanded a steadfast grappling with and responsi
bility to the facts, something, which then forced us to rethink our existing
understanding, respectively of sexual violence, genocide, and war. Although
this quotation from Being and Time refers to Heidegger's notion of what
constitutes a philosophical moment wi thin the natural sciences, it is also
relevant to humanistic areas of inquiry and thus to the problem we faced.
What we can take from it and its wider context is the idea that a philo
sophical moment occurs when new, previously unconsidered phenomena
impress themselves effectively enough upon a prevailing understanding or
concept of an issue to force a major "crisis in concepts." That is, the in
dications of a new understanding or framework push themselves into view,
making an old one "totter" and perhaps eventually give way to or make room
for a better one.
In this period from September through October 1992, Armanda and I
were in vigorous conversation about how to name and conceptualize these
sexual atrocities, debating various options. For instance, we realized that to
refer to them as "rape in war" or as a "tool of war" was wrong, as it mis
represented the facts and indeed functioned as a way of denying that "ethnic
cleansing" or genocide was taking place. For it implied that this was a war in
some more traditional sense rather than, overwhelmingly, a war agai nst non
Serb civilians for the fact of being non-Serb, with sexual atrocities as a cen-
tral way of carrying out that aim. It implied that the sexual atrocities that we
were seeing and that were distinctive to this conflict were happening on "all
sides" and happen in "all wars," which simply wasn't the case. It became
especially evident that this characterization functions as a forn1 of genocide
denial when it later became the position put forth by Serbian propaganda. It
was issued by Milosevic's genocidal regime, Milosevic being the leader of
Serbia and an architect of the genocide. When the news about the sexual
atrocities finally exploded in the media, the regime's previous claims that
reports of the atrocities were lies, that they weren't happening, was now no
longer as effective. Instead its denial now adapted itself to the new
circumstances, claiming that the rapes were in fact features of war that are
the same on "all sides," making each side here equally victim and perp
etrator, a position aimed at distorting the facts and thus thwarting inter
vention to stop genocide.
Armanda and I eventually settled on naming these crimes "genocidal
sexual atrocities" or "genocidal rape." We recognized that the fact that
almost every female survivor of "ethnic cleansing" with whom we spoke had
either witncssed, been around, or herself survived sexual atrocities marked
these atrocities as a distinctive, in fact, defining feature of this particular
genocide. As Am1anda kept reminding me, perpetrators of genocide seek the
cheapest, most effective ways of carrying it out, stating that the Nazis used
Zyclon B gas, which was cheaper and more effective than bullets, while
Serbian forces used the cheap, lower-tech method of sexual atrocities. To
denote the distinctive, more prevalent sexual atrocity feature of this geno
cide, in the way that poison gas functioned in the very different experience
of Nazism, we also referred to this genocide with the term "gynocide" or
"femicide," tenns used respectively by Andrea Dworkin and Diana Russell
to refer to attacks on and the destruction of women for being women.
30
These are philosophical moments, specifically feminist philosophical
moments, in this genocide. For we had to rethink, in light of new phenom
ena, our existing understanding of sexual violence to account for its
manifestation as a way of destroying women of specific ethnic groups as part
of a campaign to destroy those groups. At the same time, we were rethinking
our existing understanding of genocide to account for the ways women are
specifically targeted. At this stage of the philosophical process, we were in a
place that I would argue is described by a Hegelian insight. At this earlier
stage of a conceptual shift or "crisis in concepts," a moment that may
eventually ripple to shift the larger common sense and thus become more
universally recognized, this more adequate way of conceptualizing a
problem is still the province of only a few. It is evident only among
"specialists." As Hegel says, it is "esoteric" before it becomes "exoteric" or
more universally secured.
31
But unlike in his teleological-metaphysics, this
wider shift isn't inevitable. Rather, as experience has taught us, it is enor
154 NATALIE NENADIC
mously more likely that a concept in this precarious, infant stage will get ih
light snuffed out. All the painstaking work and detemlination to get it to tak,'
hold doesn't guarantee anything, and if, in the end, it does take hold, it is hy
sheer luck.
The eventual general response by the international feminist community
exemplifies how impossible such a wider shift often seemed. It was also one
of the lowest points we experienced in this work. When local initiatives and
the international media succeeded in getting the news out about the sexual
atrocities in a sustained way, it finally triggcred what seemed like a tsunami
of international feminist res ponse. But what, at first, seemed like a long
awaited and much welcomed development ended up being its opposite. For
this response tended to be ideological at the expense of the facts, ultimately
misrepresenting what was taking place and doing so in a manner that was
crushing to survivors and to those working with them. A very important in
sight of recent feminism is the recognition that rape occurs in war.
32
But
instead of taking this insight as merely a source of orientation, albeit a
significant one, about understanding specific events in Bosnia-Herzegovina
and Croatia, understanding however that must ultimately be responsible to
the facts, this international feminist response tended simplistically to impose
upon this situation the grid that rape occurs in war, the same on "all sides."
Thus, in the name of accountability to these atrocities, this ideological
response ended up denying its reality, concealing rather than revealing it.
Coming, of course, from a completely different intent, this response
nevertheless converged with the "all sides" propaganda now issued by the
Milosevic regime, for which this international feminist response came as a
windfall and without this Serbian propaganda wouldn't have been nearly as
effective. However, for survivors and others, the now-monumental weight of
this denial was a nightmare and felt like a bewildering betrayal. It was a
massive weight from which we thought that the infant notion of genocidal
sexual atrocities would never unbury itself. This type of response was put
forth by those who were distant and detached from the facts and, in some
cases, as I soon learned, not very interested in them. The latter includes
known feminists as well as philosophy professors whom I tried personally to
inform of the facts; whom I offered to accompany to refugee centers so that
they could talk to survivors to learn directly what was happening; and whom
I generally implored to stop hurting survivors with a position that amounted
to genocide denial.
33
Among other things, such response exemplifies the
worst kind of Hegelianism, oblivious to facts and/or bends them to fit a
convenient theory. It thus unburdens itself of the difficult and tremendous
ethical challenge of thinking, of thinking in an original way based on a
knowledge and responsible grappling with this monstrous reality.
Feminist Philosophical Intervention in Genocide 155
5. Legal Response
Having arrived at a clearer understanding of the crimes, Armanda and I
began preparing the ground for a legal response. To this end and under the
aegis of the Kareta Feminist Group, we organized a coalition of local
women's groups and women's refugee survivor groups as well as individual
survivors. In addition to Kareta, the coalition's members were the Croatian
groups, the Zagreb SOS Battered Women's Hotline, Mothers for Peace
Bedem Ljubavi; and Bosnian groups formed in exile in Zagreb, the Bosnia
Herzegovina Women's Refugee Group "Zene BiH" and the International
Initiative ofthe Women ofBosnia and Her?egovina "Biser." We also worked
with the Zagreb-based Trdnjevka Women's Group.
As we brainstormed about a legal action and venue, we also followed
international events, including U.N. peace talks that were treating known
genocidal war criminals such as Radovan Karadzic as bona fide diplomats.
We pondered the possibility of securing some sort of jurisdiction over some
one like him while he was thus outside the territory either of Serbia (then
called Yugoslavia) or of the Serbian-occupied parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina
and Croatia. And we considered a number of options including closer Euro
pean venues like Switzerland but also the United States. Either way, we
needed a lawyer. So now, in these last days of October 1992, it became my
job to return to America to find one.
I arrived back at the University of Michigan Law School just as it was
hosting a groundbreaking conference about sex equality approaches to the
major, timely problems of prostitution and pornography. This conference
thus brought together feminist and legal experts on issues of sexual violence
against women. At this point, the matter of sexual atrocities in "ethnic
cleansing" hadn't yet reached a sustained presence in the media. So, I
informed women I met at the conference about the atrocities, which yielded
the direct participation of a number of them in the issue. In the next days and
weeks, though, news of the atrocities did slowly start to make its way in the
media such that it now began contacting me with inquiries. While I did
initially respond, in the interests of greater efficacy on this issue, I asked
Catharine MacKinnon to field these general media inquiries. At this point, I
also asked her if she would consider representing survivors as their legal
counsel and shared with her the idea Anllanda and I had about pursuing
perpetrators through legal means and apprised her of the ground we prepared
for that.
MacKinnon agreed, and so in November 1992, she began her involve
ment in this issue. Her presence marked a major turning point. Among the
ways, her role was absolutely critical in beginning slowly to tum the tide in
the sense that the philosophical breakthrough about genocidal sexual
atrocities would now become more forti fied. The dim light would become a
little brighter. I believe that without her involvement, the light might very
well have gone out. Given MacKinnon's well-known work that combinl'd
concrete knowledge of sexual violence, sophisticated theory, and social
relevance, she grasped the implications of the testimonial evidence of femak
survivors of this genocide, Moreover, she thus also brought to this \ v ( ) ) ' ~
another level of clarity, theoretical rigor, and passion, not to mention 01
course the innovative legal dimensions.
34
In this sense, her work lifted a
burden from the affected community rather than, like some theoretical work.
adding yet another burden atop everything else they suffered.
MacKinnon's role also lessened some of the more concerted denial, a ~
in a situation I personally witnessed and participated in, in late fall of 1992.
As alluded to earlier, the principal contacts that the international feminist
media had in the region were privileged representatives of the communist
regime. A major was one was Slavenka Drakulic, who had even ascended to
Ms. Magazine's international editorial board. So when women in Croatia
sought to get word out about the sexual atrocities to the feminist media like
Ms. Magazine, they got nowhere, as Ms. would refer the matter to Drakulic.
who denied the atrocities were happening. Nihada Kadic, a Muslim woman
from the Croatian Tresnjevka Women's Group decided, by chance, to give
Ms. another try at a time that just happened to coincide with MacKinnon's
entry into the issue. Ms. was aware of MacKinnon's involvement, and so
they also consulted her, as Drakulic 's various denials had started to seem
strange, especially given the coverage that the story was already starting to
receive elsewhere. MacKinnon updated the then-editor of Ms. Magazine,
Robin Morgan, about the situation. Realizing the extent Ms. had been misled
by Drakulic and also due to other major misrepresentations by her, Ms.
Magazine, much to its credit, immediately removed her from its editorial
board and masthead.
Having secured MacKinnon as pro bono legal counsel for survivors of
genocidal sexual atrocities, a few weeks later I returned to Croatia. Now my
job, with Annanda, was to get the groups and individual survivors fonnally
on board. That is, they needed to sign legal papers requesting MacKinnon as
counsel. Annanda and [ now also had to gather testimonies and other evi
dence in a fonn geared and ready for a possible legal action if and when such
a moment presented itself. Throughout, of course, there was the ongoing
work of providing humanitarian aid to refugee survivors to assist them in
their day-to-day survival and without which they are not in a position to
function, much less participate in legal actions.
Getting survivors on board was a complex process. For instance,
coming from a communist country, survivors found it difficult to conceive
that lawyers could actually defend an individual's rights rather than work for
a state hostile to the individual. We also had to familiarize them with Mac
Kinnon and her work and needed to convince them that she could do
something for them. Finally, there were well-founded security concerns.
Survivors feared going public through a legal avenue, as the genocide was
ongoing. They were afraid of Serbian retaliation against themselves but
especially against loved ones still under Serbian occupation as survivors who
went public about what was still happening there were known to have
relatives killed for that.
In January-February 1993, we noticed that Karadzic was engaged in
frequent international peace negotiations for which he was soon heading to
the U.N. in New York. We saw this as our chance to do something. On the
U.S. side, MacKinnon set the legal wheels in motion, crafting an innovative
legal strategy by which to secure jurisdiction over Karadzic in New York
City. On-the-ground in Croatia, Annanda and I worked relentlessly and
around the clock, gathering and preparing the testimonial inforn1ation that
would fonn the substance of this civil lawsuit. We found and worked with
clients who were willing to proceed with a legal action on their behalf. To
this end, the assistance of Visnja Milas of the Croatian group Mothers for
Peace-Bedem Ljubavi was invaluable. Annanda and I were in vigorous
back-and-forth communication with MacKinnon, sending this infonnation to
her from Croatia and then from the United States getting back drafts of the
lawsuit from her, which we edited and sent back again, and so on until they
took proper shape. We worked to get the last of the infonnation to her in
time for 10caJ counsel in New York to take care of necessary legal and
logistical work for Karadzic's expected arrival at the U.N. and the plan to
serve him process once he stepped off territory in New York that was under
some manner of diplomatic immunity. It was now also time for me to head
back to New York.
Unexpectedly, this part would end up being a bit dramatic. Although
the Serbian air attacks on Zagreb had, for now, waned, still occasionally the
air raid sirens went off, meaning flights out of Zagreb were somewhat
unsafe. So, I left by train for Italy, intending to fly out from there. However,
having just worked myself sick from the activity surrounding the lawsuit, by
the time I got to Italy, I wasn't able immediately to continue on to New
York. After a few days, I recovered enough to travel and went to the airport
expecting to leave, only to learn that my flight to New York was now
deJayed because of something that was happening there. It turned out to be
the first World Trade Center bombing. I made it back, but at this point had
become so sick that I had to remain bedridden. I remember, at some point in
the middle of my feverish state, MacKinnon dropping by and uttering the
words "we got him."
What she meant was that U.S. Marshalls had just served Karadzic legal
process. They personally delivered the lawsuit and verbal notice of it to him,
a lawsuit charging him with genocidal sexual atrocities. Now, amidst a sea of
angry, vocal protesters in New York City, with signs referring to him by
such appellations as "the Hitler of the Balkans," he immediately left the
country to return to the Serbian-occupied part of Bosnia-Herzegovina. I'"
remained there and elsewhere in the region, eventually going into hidill )!
until his arrest in summer of 2008 to stand trial at the international W:l1
crimes tribunal at the Hague. For the next seven and a half years, our laWSllil
went through various stages of the court process. Finally, we went to jury
trial in August 2000 in Manhattan, where we won a landmark decision alld
judgment that secured earlier developments in the case, recognizing sexual
atrocities as acts of genocide.
6. Conclusion
The road from the initial breakthrough of the concept of genocidal sexual
atrocities, a breakthrough evident at first only to a few people, to the shift \w
are witnessing in the world's consciousness about such atrocities was a long.
arduous, and painstaking path. It proceeded from the experiences of a partic
ular place, namely Croatia and then Bosnia-Herzegovina (and Kosovo) and
was aided by those of another place, namely the United States. Through
incredibly difficult, all-consuming effOlis, especially those that resulted in
our lawsuit, we thrust the concept forward, so to speak. We lobbed it into a
wider territory from the "esoteric" one it initially inhabited. doing so, as the
saying goes, "on a wing and a prayer." We did so in the romantic hope that
the concept would gain traction and take wider hold, in work that, through
out, seemed pretty much hopeless; work that felt like "chasing windmills."
The conceptual breakthrough that emanated from these particular
experiences, of course, expressed a more universal truth about our
understanding of the place of sexual atrocities in crimes against humanity
and in genocide. It reflected what happened in this particular place but
furthermore generally described something that could happen in any geno
cide, anywhere, at any time. For some reason, still hard to believe, this
concept seemed to have reached a kind of "tipping point," upon which it
acquired a momentum and took on a life of its own. That is, it is now starting
to be recognized in what took place against non-Serb women and girls in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Kosovo as well as in other places, for
instance, in Rwanda against Tutsi women and girls at the hands of the Hutus
and, more recently, in the atrocities in Darfur. It is even possible that the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia may too one day
finally move more clearly in that direction.
It is important to leave a set of sign posts or path marks (Wegmarken)
along this traversed path concerning how this kind of shift in concepts takes
place, a shift that in this case seems to be extending to the wider common
sense. For they tell us about the philosophical part of such work. They may
provide some basic direction for others doing philosophy in Hegel's sense of
a world-involved, historical ethics, though updated as a more clearly
phenomenological and non-metaphysical enterprise. It may help those who
find themselves in a related existential and philosophical position of "not
knowing one ' s way about," of experiencing a "loss of way." Without leaving
such a map behind, the philosophical part of this kind of work, this "heart of
the matter," may end up lost; that part without which none of the rest would
have happened. As in a perfect Hegelian Aufhebung, it may get assimilated
and effectively disappeared into the end product of a lawsuit or the like, as if
such things just "come out of the blue." Moreover, that would leave a record
that isn't entirely accurate. In sum, such a map resists a Hegelian impulse by
which the philosophical dimension would be entirely Aufgehoben. It resists
having the heart cut out.
Such developments don' t just "come out of the blue" any more than
they happen as Hegel's philosophy suggests they do, with the Spirit just
moving them along according to a law of history. But despite the meta
physical shortcomings of his philosophy, there is nevertheless somethi ng in
the broader strokes of his account of the process of major conceptual break
through that is particularly a propos here, especially if we supplement it with
insights gleaned from our own experience; insights that have larger
implications for addressing this shortcoming in Hegel's philosophY. Our
work tells us that this kind of conceptual breakthrough or ontological
momene
s
emanates from a rigorous grappling with previously unconsidered
or inadequately considered phenomena. But to have this breakthrough take
firmer, wider hold requires an ongoing, incredibly difficult work that most of
the time seems to go nowhere, yet with a lot of dumb luck could go some
where.
If, miraculously, the concept does take hold, then Hegel's broader
claims, as he expresses them in the Preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit,
seem remarkably on point. He suggests that now this burden of putting forth
the concept (B egrifj) , which initially weighed disproportionately on the
individual or on a few individuals, decreases as this burden starts to become
shared and sustained by the wider consciousness through more people
becoming aware of the idea. The initially much larger role played by the
individual in the concept's breakthrough, in getting it out there, thus lessens
as her part of the work now draws to a close. Her place in it now recedes into
the background. It gives way to a concept that is starting to take on a life of
its own and is becoming more universally understood. Hegel describes this
phenomenon as follows:
[A]t a time when the universality of Spirit has gathered such strength,
and the singular detail, as is fitting, has become correspondingly less
important, when, too, that universal aspect claims and holds on to the
whole range of the wealth it has developed, the share in the total work
of Spirit which falls to the individual can only be very small. Because
of this, the individual must all the more forget himself, as the nature of
Science implies and requires. Of course, he must make of himself and
160
161
NATALIE NENADIC
achieve what he can; but less must be demanded of him, just as he in
tum can expect less of himself, and may demand less for himselr.J6
Of course less is demanded in the work of the concept's breakthrough.
But it seems that now another prominent role emerges here to make a new
claim on the philosopher. Or, perhaps, we may say that her role here may
now shift. For even if a change in the common sense is more universally
secured, nothing guarantees that it will remain that way. It demands vigilant,
ongoing tending. It requires preservation from being undermined by denial,
which needs to be exposed in its ever-changing forms and confronted when
it rears its head. Like the work of philosophy in general, [his philosophical
work here doesn't abate that much, to leave the philosopher finally at rest.
Rather, the rigorous work that is demanded seems never to end.
Notes
I. Thi s essay would not have been possible without my ongoing philosophical
conversations and work with Asja Armanda. They have especially helped
me understand the context and communist backdrop to events in Croatia
and in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Simil ar conversations with Juri Armanda wcre
also extremely valuable.
2. Kadic v. KaradZi c, 70 F.3d 232, 236-237 (2d Cir. 1995).
3. Prosecutor v. Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T, par. 731 (Sept. 2, 1998);
Catharine A. MacKinnon, "Defining Rape Intcrnationally: A Comment on
Akayesu," in Catharine A. MacKinnon, Are Women Human? And Other
Il1Iernational Dialogues (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Han1ard
University Press, 2006), pp. 237-246.
4. On the attention to this issue, especially in Darfur, by the former secretary of state
Condo1eezza Rice see, "Rice Visits Darfur Camp, Pressures Sudan," The
Washington Post, July 22, 2005; Nic Robertson, "Rape is a way of life for
Darfur's women," at http://edilion.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africal06/ 19
Idarfur. rapelindcx.htm1.
5. Martin Luther King, Why We Can't Wait (New York: Signet Classics, 2000), p.
165.
6. Personal conversation with A. Demirovic and R. Demirovic, August 2, 2009. In
some cases, the caption is in English , in others in Serbian.
7. Adam Lebor, "Complicity 11'ith Evil'" The United Nations in the Age of Modern
Genocide (New Haven: Yale University Press , 2006) ; Hasan Nuhanovic,
Under the UN Flag: The International Community and the Srebrenica
Genocide (Sarajevo: DES d.o.o., 2007).
8. G. W.1'. Hegel , Phenomenology of Spirit, trans . A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1977), p. 7.
9. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarri e and Edward Robinson
(San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1962), p. 60.
10. Cited in Karsten Harries, " Philosophy in Search of Itself," in eds.C.P. Ragland
and Sarah Heidt , What is Philosophy ? (i\ew Haven: Yale University Press,
2001), pp. 60-61 ; Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans.
G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 123.
11 . G.W.F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood and
trans. H.B. Nisbet (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 21.
12. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 29.
13. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure ofSCientific Revolutions (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 2
nd
ed., 1970); Richard Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 33.
14. See, for example, Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women
(New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979); Catharine A. MacKinnon and Andrea
Dworkin cds., In Harm's Way: The Pornog!'[Jphy Civil Rights Hearings
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Catharine A. Mac
Kinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Dis
crimination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979); Florence Rush,
The Best Kept Secret: Sexual Abuse of Children (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall , 1980); Diana E. H. Russell , Rape in Marriage (New York:
MacMillan, 1982); Leslie Frances ed., Date Rape: Feminism, Philosophy,
and the Lmv (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1996).
15. G.W.F. Hegel , Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction, trans.
H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 16.
16. Ibid., pp. 12-13.
17. Ibid., p. 12.
18. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy ofRight, p. 21. I use the female pronoun even
though Hegel himself generally does not consider women capable of
philosophy, a position that continues the prevailing Enlightel1ment view.
See, for example, Ibid., pp. 207,439.
19. Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi
Politics (New York: St. Martin 's Press , 1987).
20. See, for instance, Roy Gutmann's Pulizer pri ze-winning reports for New York's
Newsday. Roy Gutmann, A Witness to Genocide (New York: Penguin,
1993).
21. Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment , ed. Jerome Kohn (New York:
Schocken Books, 2003), pp. 8-9.
22 . Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1968), p. ix.
23. Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology" in The Question
Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt, (New
York: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 3-35.
24. Edmund Husser1, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans.
David Carr (Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press, 1970).
25. Judith Herman, M.D., Trauma and Recovery: The aftermath of violence - ji-om
domestic abuse to political terror (Basic Books: N ew York, 1997), pp. 72
73; see generally Stephen J. Schulhofer, Unwanted Sex: The Culture of
Intimidation and the Failure of Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1998).
Thirteen
GENOCIDE IN THE PURSUIT OF
EXCELLENCE
James R. Watson
When we occupy ourselves with the pressing problems of the present, we
implicate ourselves in the struggle for new fonns of subjectivity.) Reacting
to social, political, and personal attempts to expand and/or revise cultural
horizons, theocratic-conservatives have characterized such struggles and
their opposition to the effects of these struggles as a culture war. For the
likes of Patrick Buchanan the godless revolution of radicals in the sixties
succeeded in establishing a hedonistic Western culture "unable to give
people a reason to go on Iiving.,,2 Thus spiritually destitute Americans and
Europeans are not reproducing at sustainable, much less growing rates. This
jeremiad has our dismal failure to populate the earth in the face of ever
increasing hoards of non-civilized and non-Christian peoples due not only to
hedonism but also to the guilt instilled by 1960s revolutionaries, some of
whom have managed to hang on and further the corruption that is their
legacy.
To the revolution, Buchanan tells us, Western history is nothing but a
catalog of crimes-slavery, genocide, colonialism, imperialism, atrocities,
and massacres-committed by nations that professed to be Christian. "The
white race is the cancer of human history," wrote Susan Sontag, a birth
mother of the revolution. "The white race and it alone . . . eradicates
autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads.,,3
Buchanan is not alone. In thirty years the backlash spawned by 1960s
radicalism has grown and established a cynical, corrupt, and idealistic anti
politics committed to the eradication of all private and public programs
struggling to undo and reverse the disastrous consequences of Western
crimes. The reaction to 9/11 and the catalog of crimes this reaction inspired
among the anti-politicos are quite sufficient to indicate the degree to which
anti-politics has been successful. Anti-politics today aims at the destruction
of a new ethics that fosters acts of kindness, thoughtfulness, and cooperation
among families, social groups, animals, and even "outsiders." This is the
"coming community,,,4 the community without- dare we say it-essence. At
its best, this was the project of the European union, a community that
294 295 JAMES R. WATSON
American evangelical patriots reference, without the slightest trace of iroll }
as "old Europe."
Anti-politics has always been genocidal, in intent if not always III
practice. Today, however, genocidal anti-politics has raised its genocidal
program to the metaphysical level, becoming philosophical in the class ic
aristocratic sense of the tern1. Distinguishing itself from older fon11S ,Ii
genocide, this new sublimated genocide aims not at the physical annihilati(111
of peoples but rather at the cultural disappearance of the morally alld
cognitively unfit. The banner hoisted by this universalized genocide read"
"The Commitment to Excellence." Almost completely displacing 19(i()"
radicalism, theocratic-conservatives have forged a university-corporate f01"l1l
of administration for their program. The business of education today is thl'
production, tmining, and distribution of a scarcity known as intelligencc ill
the service of unlimited expansion. Given the victories of anti-politics it i"
hardly surprising, as I have argued elsewhere,S that some if not many pro
fessors of philosophy are quite content and eagerly complicit with till'
operations of power under the administration of cxcellence to which thcil
respective institutions are committed.
It's painfully obvious that Americans love winncrs, ever-rising property
values, infinitc debt, and the divine financial deceptions making it all
possible. In the 1980s the infamous savings and loan fiasco featured a host 01"
America's best and brightest. Laissez les bans temps rouler reverberated ill
all fine dining rooms. One notable bankcr "dressed up as a king and servcd
lion meat to his guests.,,6 Always already, the king of beasts must be
butchered and dished up for the current kings of the human menagerie. But
for the few who truly rule this was only a petite frisson. America, which the
new rulers now dub the god-blessed land of exception, must rise to the
occasion and truly, miraculously exalt its standouts. When Wall Street
bankers need sacrifices, god-fearing people will be eager to step up to the
plate. After all, what more can commoners expect other than a belch or two
of perfumed honor in the rapture of the metaphysical lies emanating from
their masters.
In September 2008 the land of exception had a big whiff en odellI' de
saintete as the sacrificial altars began heating up. Once again excellence
demanded its inevitable cast-offs. Pension funds, stock portfolios, IRAs, and
the like plunged as the rich inhaled their bonuses for the plunder. Treasury
Secretary Paulson asked and received an $85 billion bailout for American
Insurance Group (AIG). It was taxpayer money that came to the rescue. In
appropriate haste AIG executives headed for a victory junket at the St. Regis
resort in California. In a few days they spent about $365,000 for hotel rooms,
catered banquets, hotel spas, obligatory golf, and libations at the Tavern
where they toasted the newly roasted taxpayers. Imperial Rome belches as its
Genocide in the Pursuit ofExcellence
denizens moan. Staying the course, there was no stimulus package for
workers.
Even in the corporate news, the line-up of complicity becomes obvious.
Titubates everywhere stumble over one another on the narrow and perilous
path of truth ... underway to an essential and quite esoteric language.
7
Although equally obvious that many are called while only a few are chosen,
the masses, without any outward signs of cynicism, shout "Rock and roll"!
Hysterical subjects enter the screaming zone of reality-game shows. We
watch as plurality and population variation dissipate in zero sum games
where a win for one is a loss for all others- an ecstatic celebration of
subjection to the excellence of destruction.
As if we were actually underway in some new glorious exception, we
hear the clarion call "be all you can be!" as it echoes the glorious ambiguity
of the ancient Greek arete. As soldiers, our excellence is to kill and be killed
in the execution of duty. For the many who must use fire in their labors, to
whom Plato attributed the characteristic banausia (vulgarity), excellence is
largely a matter of (b )eating (one's enemies) less one be (b )eaten. Moral
virtue, on the other better hand, is a different matter. Virtue is for better
types of men, men well underway, neither sweating nor bleating in its pur
suit. Distinction, clearly, is not for the blatherers. Yes, we hear the Blattant
Beast but only within the frame of sacrificial offerings. Nothing but sweat,
blood, and tears there.
Soldiers need neither happiness nor justice. In this sense, soldiers and
the homebuyers have the same arete. Both serve by paying off the debts
incurred by their betters in pursuit of the good life. To live well is to be
happy ... and just. Arete, excellence-true manhood-is reserved, retained
for the others whom the many serve and, with a proper tum or two, are
finally served up. And what about justice, you ask? Jedem das Seine.
Reasonable people begin with disagreements but inevitably rise to the
occasion with philosophy, wisdom, and many a fine nuance of their totems.
Echoing the greats of idealist philosophy, the theo-conservatives dutifully
subject the masses to the pure light of truth. A good blistering is the best that
can be done to and for the animals "unconscious of their universality."s As it
was and must continue to be, the unfit are assigned to the task of forging the
great chain of Being banning them from the archive. But, as we commoners
know all too well, repression forms its own archive. I say "we commoners"
to include those few who have passed all the tests, some summa cum laude,
but have never lost touch with the repressed archive:
It is a question of this performative to come whose archive no longer
has any relation to the record of what is, to the record of the presence of
what is or will have been actually present. I call this the messianic, and
I distinguish it radically from all messianism.
9
296 297 JAMES R. WATSON
Why else would a published and distinguished writer such as David
man write the book See Under: LOVE, especially its chapter on Bruiltl
Schulz, the Polish Jew shot dead by a rival of his SS employer, a chapll"1
almost incomprehensible to those out of touch with repressed archives?
The arbitrariness of an external force that violently invades the life (II
one person, one soul, preoccupies me in almost all my books.
IO
Bruno Schulz wrote a novel titled The Messiah. It was lost. For Grossmall
however, it remains an invasive external force.
After the S&L bailout with many millions of taxpayer dollars, Wall
Street rulers began to circumvent the problem of paper-thin profit margill.'
resulting from the insistence on mortgage-backed securities in the
market. By the tum of the century, the Wall Street rulers inaugurated a
"liberal" policy of lending money to sub-prime, high-risk borrowers ill
exchange, of course, for higher interest rates. No matter if these rates COIl
tinued to climb in excess of what borrowers could afford to pay, the increas,'
in their home values would always allow them to sell for more than they
purchased. Would the strapped working class buy into the next chapter of its
plmmed cultural annihilation? The result:
The private-label, subprime bond market grew from $18 billion in 1995
to nearly $500 billion in 2005. Wall Street sold subprime everywhere:
to public and private pension funds, foreign governments and financial
conglomerates, even fishing villages in the Artic Circle. I I
Inevitably, the great bubble of excellence burst. Yet most of those who had
risen above their borrowers continue to soar while eating lion meat, the
dinner of champions. And, as matter of course, pure philosophers move
ahead with conferencing as the animals suffer in moments of no imp0l1 to
the truth. A cow is a steak, no matter its history of struggle and revolt. It is
all a matter of the low- and high-lives doing what they are by nature best
suited for. It is as if Darwin never existed. Glorious creation! Evolutionists
must be removed from the cultural registers.
There are other bubbles, really big ones. Swollen to a mass of 6.8 billion
humans and committed to another 2.7 billion by 2050, the animals make way
for their masters. National ruling classes metastasize into global elites of busi
nessmen, financiers, and politicians steering supra-national organizations
such as the Americanized European Union and the International Monetary
Fund. Produced in small quantities at Harvard, Stanford, and the University
of Chicago, a new superclass arrives in customized Gulfstream jets at the
World Economic Forum at Davos, the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg
meetings, Bohemian Grove seminars, and the Carlyle Group "where finan
ciers and former presidents get together to make each other richer.,,12 As the
earth swells, inequality grows by staggering proportions. The richest 1% of
Genocide in the Pursuit o/Excellence
humans now own 40% of the planet'S wealth. Jedem das Seine. Arete main
tains its formal identity as all diversity is relegated, in true Platonic fashion, to
mere material differences. Each part of the swollen earth is now parceled out
to higher men organized in businesses for rendering all others their due. The
others? Domesticated animals of various intelligence levels: pets, cattle, all
beasts of burden, and all herded humans whose toil and trouble only brings
the redemption of cultural exclusion. The great shepherds of Being do not
chat with the blatherers.
From Plato to Heidegger, idealist philosophy metaphysically encodes
the iron clad division of ruled and rulers in the machinations of virtue. Virtue,
like essential thinking, is not for everybody. In 1973, the same year 1 began
teaching philosophy, E. M. Cioran wrote:
Anything good we can have comes from our indolence, from our
incapacity of taking action, executing our projects and plans. It is the
impossibility or the refusal of self-realization which sustains our 'vir
tues', and it is the will to do our utmost that carries us to excesses, to
disorders. 13
By the time I first read this aphorism, I knew the wise ones from Plato to
Heidegger had passed on to their wannabes a most superior judgment. I al
ready knew Walt Whitman, the bard of Brooklyn, had become a fossil of
democratic thinking. I already knew science and its insistence on the repro
ducibility of all set-ups had been subverted by amazing grace. I already
knew that under the prodding influence of priests in economic robes the
perception of reality had once again become independent of intra-active
agencies. I was, in briefs and chains, one of those who Plato called anthrop
isboi, one of the little men who have the temerity to "take a leap out of their
own crafts into philosophy." I had been attracted, as the great one noted, "by
the magnificent repute that attaches to philosophy" but since I had a body
crippled by my vulgar (banauson) arts and crafts, I could only "pursue it
imperfectly." I had, if you will grant it, a soul "maimed and disfigured by the
vulgarities (banausiai)" of my former and still practiced pursuitS.
14
Disen
chantment with philosophy's "magnificent repute" came with the dark
shadow of Auschwitz and the escalating genocides of Planet Auschwitz.
Still, within what Adorno painfully recognized as the garbage heap of
Western culture, I believed, and still do, that a radical reconstruction of the
arts, crafts, and science is capable of overthrowing the rule of masters and
their genocides. Thus, from the standpoint of idealistic philosophy, my
banality borders on the intolerable. I refuse the Good and its pursuit.
IS
Like
Cioran, I refuse self-realization, and, again like Cioran, I take no action ...
save writing otherwise than the writing of the disaster.
16
Sterilization takes many forms. Since wholesale slaughter of mental
defectives and other types of Dasein ohne Leben is no longer sanctioned by
298 299 JAAlES R. WATSON
law, not even in Texas, the problem of the unfit reproducing must be handl l'd
another way. When nature fails, culture must step in. Cultural sterilizalil Hl
supersedes biological sterilization. For the many who cannot and will IHII
excel, there will be no cultural markers. Animals do not speak in and oul III
the poverty of their world. Cultural selection insures only the reproduction III
the best. We live in "liberal" times: mental defectives are allowed to sexuall y
reproduce and even codify their blatherings within a machine called popul lll
culture, but miscegenations of popular and serious pursuits are effectivel y
blocked by a relentless refereeing process under the administration of the besl
and brightest. Cultural selection and reproduction has fallen into the very di ::;
criminating hands of a few, some of whom, once upon a time, protested
against inequality and standardization. But now, at last, they understand
excellence is not for everybody. However, the newly installed theocraliv
Open has a "liberal" character. Selection is open to all. Yes, there will b,'
those found "poor in world," but not prior to arduous but fair testing. Ani
mality has always been a matter of grading, objectively as a rational subjeel
in the flatulent scent of masters.
The excellence machine operates not on groups but on entire
populations. Genocide has been liberated from its provincial framework by
the universalization of its selection process, thereby revealing its inner truth.
Partial genocide, as all partial things must be, is false, incomplete. In this
sense the Nazi genocide of Jews was incomplete. It failed to achieve not only
the total eradication of Jews but it also failed to obtain its ultimate goal of
completely eradicating the memory of Judaism from the cultural register.
Thus, true genocide after Auschwitz does not pull up short of granting
universal admission to testing and processing. And true genocide succeeds
not by killing those who fail its qualifying tests but rather by preventing the
remembrance of these failed subjects. To realize its concept, genocide raised
to the metaphysical level of being must detennine who and what will be
remembered in the Open. Such is the differential civilizing process in the war
of culture.
The Open selects only after its cynical proclamation "we're all born
equal." By three or four years of age, pre-oedipal children have come to an
understanding of the "cut." If you make the cut of pre-school testing, you are
pern1itted to enter the Open, the rich differential world of the beginners
symbolic with its enduring but alternating memes. So, yes, there has come to
be a fear more profound than Oedipal castration. You can lose your ability to
symbolically reproduce if you don't make the cut of the cultural order led by
the excellent ones. The fear of aphanisis (disappearance) predates, for some
time now, the fears of familial jealousy and power. The administration of the
symbolic order operates earlier and far deeper than either mother or father but
whom the child will judge, with some degree of fairness, as responsible for
the cut deeper than its later Oedipal figuration.
All of us bear messages in the wounds we do not but seek to under
stand. The transition from biological reality to culture marks the passage
from animal to human, from mere existence to meaning and purpose. This
transition has been under the not so gentle God-Master effect, with the
results we know so well within the operation of anthropogenesis-the meta
physical commitment to excellence.
Ontology, or first philosophy, is not an innocuous academic discipline,
but in every sense the fundamental operation in which anthropogenesis, the
becoming human of the living being, is realized. From the beginning, meta
physics is taken up in this strategy: it concerns precisely the "meta"
designating the completion and preservation of the overcoming of animal
physis in the direction of human history-the "awesome" grand nanative of
exceptionalism. This overcoming is never completed once and for all, but
always under way-a perpetual castration, if you will. So, each individual
unit must decide between the human and the animal, between nature and
history, between life and death.17 And, then be tested. What would ontology
be without quality control!
How, then, do we the morally and cognitive unfit render inoperative
anthropogenesis? Is showing the emptiness of the hiatus separating man and
animal enough? How do we show an order invisible to those who are thusly
ordered? Does the bull know when his productive days are over, when his
sack is empty?
The chasm, the defect, the emptiness of sacrificial culture, goes all the
way down to the primal imposition called faith, all the way down to the
super ego dictates of aggression.
18
Radical Islam confronts Christianity
weakened by democratic pluralism and our faith monsters roar, reminding us
of the imposition holding our souls captive. Democratic structures are
flagrantly dismantled as the "enemy" watches the rebirth of monotheism and
its recalcitrant intolerance of pluralism. The emptiness is refilled. Our
energies are once again focused. Again, everything becomes One. Our
commitment is once again excellence. We, the exceptional ones, will stand
above the faithless idol worshippers. Our teachers will no longer be the likes
of John Taylor Gatto, who gave this splendid summation of his thirty-year
teaching experience in some of the worst schools in Manhattan:
we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experi
mentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that
corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only
incidentally; its real purpose is to tum them into servants. Don't let
your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David
Farragut Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben
Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put
himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior
today), there's no telling what your own kids could do. After a long
300 JAMES R. WATSON
life, and some thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concllllkd
that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only
we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of
men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let tlw11I
manage themselves.
'9
Gatto understands : the commitment to excellence forecloses on pluralit y
What would Gatto's students make of Heidegger's entrance exam remark')
We are capable of thinking only insofar as we are endowed with whal
is most thought-provoking, gifted with what ever and always wants III
be thought about ... the involvement with thought is in itself a rare
thing, reserved for few people.
2o
George W. Bush does not read (much) but he legislated "no child lL'lI
behind." Behind what and who? Where is this program taking us? Docs il
hint at anticipated military requirements? We all know who goes to fight alld
die in the eternal war against terrorism. What is the commitment to excd
lence in terms of the economy and war? Some of us remember what
happened to 1960s radicalism when the question of the military draft
seriously raised. To selective service a very qualified "perhaps," but all
adamant "No" to universal conscription. Only the failed have the duty (If
"serving up" their lives to God and country.
On March 12, Jonathan Rowe, co-director of West Marin Commons, a
community-organizing group in California, testified before the Senate Com
mittee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. In part here is what hl'
told the super intelligent senators:
Every time you say "the economy" is up, or that you want to "stim
ulate" it, you are urging more expenditure and motion without regard \(1
what that expenditure is and what it might accomplish, and withoul
regard to what it might crowd out or displace in the process
21
Intelligence is like the GNP. When it goes up, the news is good. For
without faith in the unbounded production of wealth with the best and
brightest at the helm, there is selection and cultural eradication. The com
mitment to excellence requires no less. As in the case of all genocides.
cultural transmission of those lost to idealist adventures can only be
recovered by careful and patient palimpsest readings in the garbage heap 01'
Western culture. Rub it again Sam'
If you are selected to enter the rigors of the Open, you learn SOOIi
enough that the fantasy driving it can never be fulfilled. You look at the
outside at the ones unfit for cultural production. You see their desire for
greater and more vivi d HD adventures of vampires and serial-killers. What is
to be done? Perhaps you will be the One who breaks the illusion of meaning
for those judged meaningless. No, give them more beer and NASCAR, what-
Genocide in the Pursuit ofExcellence 301
ever it takes to keep them working at mindless, underpaid but necessary jobs.
Cultural production for the meaningless masses is the order of the day. How
to produce pseudo culture for the failures without revealing to yourself the
utter contempt you have for them ... and the other within you-this is your
job.
Masters have very nice clothing- no standardization permitted at this
level of excellence. Good teeth, whiter than the best pearls, and fine shoes.
Taste insists on refinement in all things, great and small. Taste, discrimi
nation, excellence- in talking, running, shopping, making money, raising
children, looking good, and eating. For the dregs who eat with one hand and
bite, the detritus of the exceeding ones is more than adequate. There is, of
course, a hierarchy within the Open. A high school football coach is not on
the same level as investment bankers, but many of them now make over a
million dollars a year compared to the $40,000 average of their academic
counterparts.
The exceeded ones, the rubes, are the many who simply disappear
"without a trace." Beneath the new elect sprawl the rubes. In the 1988
allegory The Silence of the Lambs the brilliant psychiatrist and serial killer
Dr. Hannibal Lechter meets Clarice Starling, a young trainee at the F.B.I.
Academy. The setting for their meeting is Lechter's isolated cell in the
Balti more State Hospital for the Criminally Insane where he has been im
prisoned for the murders of at least nine people. Starling is there to get
Lechter to fill out a questionnaire the Behavioral Science section of the
F.B.I. has devised for infom1ation about serial killers. After Lechter ex
plains to Starling the puerility of all psychology and what the F.B.I. really
wants is information about "Buffalo Bill," an at-large serial killer, he taunts
here by confiding:
Do you know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your
cheap shoes? You look like a rube. You're a well-scrubbed, hustling
rube with a little taste. Your eyes are like cheap birthstones- all sur
face shine when you stalk some li tt le answer. And you're bright behind
them, aren't you? Desperate not to be like your mother. Good nutrition
has given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one
generation out of the mines. Officer Starling. Is it the West Virginia
Starlings or the Okie Starlings, Officer? It was a toss-up between coll
ege and the opportunities in the Women ' s Army Corps, wasn't it?22
No one faults Dr. Hannibal Lechter on matters of taste, excepting, of course,
those unfortunates selected as parts to be served up at his exquisitely
prepared tables.
In terms of anthropogenesis Dr. Lechter would have to be judged as
possessing very high standards. He regards those who attempt to quantify
him and those who simply bore him as failed animals fit only for the culinary
302
303
JAMES R. WATSON
pleasure of kings. An outstanding avatar of the "prime cut," Lechtl' l hll
made quite a few of his own fancy cuts. Officer Clarice Starling, on the ,, 1111 I
hand, comes from a public school generation that cannot read, in the Lihllil l
Arts sense; she is just out of ,the mines.
Dr. Hannibal Lechter and Officer Clarice Starling carry their
archives along with them, as we all do. Dr. Lechter is very good at exdl ill
this archive in himself and others. He knows when and how to "push om
button." But this is not why the character Hannibal is so remarkably popldoll ,
especially among those he would regard as rubes. There is a link betwc('11111i !
Hannibal psychiatrist and serial killer-and the sciclll' ( .. [
the Behavioral Science section of the F.B.I.
Each science has its object only by the fact that it selects it from lit,
uniform mass of the given by certain formal concepts, which ,II
peculiar to i t
2 3
"A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some 111\ ,I
beans and a big Amarone. Go back to school, little Starling.,,24
Do not try to quantify is the connection, the reason for I II
Lechter's popularity. All of us rubes know what is meant by "Go b,K'k I II
school." Schooling is a selection process. Children are its (idealistic) prodlll I
and the child its metaphysics and the selection of Cl:()II1'
mic concepts. Every child, every unique human being, knows this from hitl ll
experience. The only reason we don't eat our teachers is because many ti l
our teachers know full well we are unique beings which the damnah l!
system imposed by educational administration refuses to acknowledge.
Genocidal culture does not seek unity in things per se. Returning III
metaphysics in flight from the evil indeterminacies of the modem, it till d
true unity in myriad intellectual constructions held together by religious 1;,, 11 .
and the operations of universal selection to test one's fitness for CUllll lul
inclusion. The commitment to excellence is indeed "the end of history" HII.!
the reign of the "last man" as formulated in Fukuyama's idealistic paean 7hl
End ofHistory and the Last Man. Every unique child will be left behind hili
in the rapture only the best, the Children, will be remembered. The "l a' i
man," the Christian man and his vision,25 will guard the cultural archi\\.:
Cultural variations judged deviant are simply excluded in Fukuyallla
version of "universal" recognition. Who and what get recognizcd is a tlllll
tion of "democratic" selection, a simple yet inexorable function of
markets" with very high price tags.
The idealistic-metaphysical completion of genocide is taking p1a\'\'
under the covers of "the pursuit of excellence," "free markets," "unlimited
growth," and, always last, "the end of history." Propriety demands that we
call these things by their proper
Notes
I. Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power," Essential Works of Foucault 1954
1984, Vol. 3 Power (New York: The New Press, 2000), pp. 335-336.
2. Patrick 1. Buchanan, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and
immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Count, ), and Civilization (New York:
St. Martin's Press, 2002), p. 9.
3. Death, p. 55 .
4. The expression is that of Giorgio Agamben but the reference here is to Jean-Luc
Nancy, The Inoperative Community, trans. Pctcr Connor et al (Minnea
polis: University of Milmesota Press, 1991).
5. James R. Watson, "Beyond the Affectations of Philosophy," Genocide and
Human Rights, ed. John K. Roth (New York: Pa1grave, 2005).
6. Kathleen Day, "Mortgage mess villains," Arkansas Democrat Gazelle (Sunday,
June 8, 2008): \J.
7. Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking, trans. Wieck and Gray (New York:
Harper & Row, 1968), p. 126.
8. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 420.
9. Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Preno-witz
(Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 72.
10. David Grossman, Writing in the Dark: Essays on Literature and Politics, trans.
Jessica Cohen (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), pp. 13-14.
II. Kathleen Day, op. cit., 61.
12. Review of David Rothkopf, Superc/ass: The Global Power Elite and the World
They Are iv[aking, The Economist (April 26, 2008): 107.
13. E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, trans. Richard Howard (London:
Quartet Books, 1993), p. 29.
14. Republic, 495.
15. See "Facet 1: semiterate writing," Between Auschwitz and Tradition (Am
sterdam: Rodopi , 1994).
16. The reference here is to Maurice Blanchot, The Writing ofthe Disaster.
17. Giorgio Agamben, The Open.' Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford,
Ca: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 79.
18. E. M. Cioran, The New Gods, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Quadrangle,
1974), p. 22.
19. Harper's Magazine (September 2003): 39.
20. What Is Called Thinking?, p. 126.
21. Harper's Magazine (June 2008): 17.
22. Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988),
p.20.
23. Ernst Cassirer, Substance and Function and Einstein's Theory of Relativity,
trans. William Curtis Swabey and Marie Collins Swabey (New York:
Dover Publications, 1953), p. 356.
24. The Silence ofthe Lambs, p. 21.

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