Session 11: Constructions of Threat and Otherness

Session 11: Constructions of Threat and Otherness
Chair: Ranjan Bandyopadhyay

Asylum, Terrorism and the Guantanamo ‘Anomaly’: The Collapsing of Security Threats in US Asylum Discourse 2001-6
Mhairi Guild
St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Guantanamo Bay, currently holding some 380 alleged terrorists, has also historically hosted migrants and asylum seekers, primarily Haitian and Cubans intercepted at sea. This territorial convergence of securitised, criminalised and racialised ‘others’ held at State borders is more than coincidental but offers, rather, a powerful symbol of the conflation of the threats from terrorism and international crime with asylum-seekers in early 21st century Western political discourse.
This paper argues that recent years have witnessed the increasing contraction of the right to claim asylum – always subject to foreign policy and domestic interests. The asylum-seeker herself, among the most vulnerable of migrants, has been transformed from ‘victim’ to ‘threat’; a loophole in the sovereign state system, she is conflated in political discourse with both aggregate groups who share her covert mobility and uncertain identity, such as international terrorists, and more metaphorically with the threat from unpredictable globalising processes themselves. In this context, asylum is collapsed with the problems of terrorism and international crime into a broader discourse of border control as a means to fix the identity of the ‘Self’ against the amorphous face of the mobile, racialised, criminalised and securitised ‘Other’ clamouring at the gates.
Using the example of the US, I will first consider its immigration tradition and the conflicting norms that have given rise to a contradictory and vulnerable asylum regime. I will then examine how asylum has been conceptualised in American political discourse since 2001 in terms of discussion, legislation, and the shifting policies that reflect contemporary US security priorities. Finally I will turn to consider the Guantanamo Bay camps that territorialise the discursive convergence of the asylum and terrorism ‘problems’. Externalising the securitised, criminalised and racialised outsider, this institution acts as a literal ‘borderland’ for the collapsed threats perceived to emanate from a globalising world. In such a paradigm, the State is afforded a renewed relevance, diffuses domestic social unrest and asserts the right to determine the identity of those within its borders. Through evolving border controls, internal and external, states thus create the ‘Self’ they claim to be protecting from outside threats.

Smoke and Mirrors: Greek Self and Turkish Other
Janette Edwards
Defense Language Institute, Monterey, California, USA

What does it mean to be an alienated Other in the land of one’s birth?  What limits are imposed upon individual and communal development when one is widely viewed by the dominant society as an enemy-in-residence?  What are the practical implications of the tensions between Self and Other as both struggle to negotiate their histories, their present lives, and their imagined futures in the midst of globalization and rapid change?  This paper addresses these questions in the context of the lived experiences of the Turkish Muslims of Western Thrace and their majority Greek Orthodox counterparts.  In seeking a deeper understanding of the confusions and contradictions inherent in the co-existence of historical foes within the same national boundaries, this paper also seeks new courses of ethical action that might guide both sides toward new worlds of possibility.
Taking as its starting point Ricoeur’s (1992) assertions on the relational nature of identity (that is, that there is indeed no self without another), the proposed paper offers a view of the Turkish Other through the often confused and contradictory gaze of a majority Self.  The author also draws upon Kearney (2003) and Kristeva’s (1991) work on alterity, Gadamer’s (2002) philosophical hermeneutics, and her own research conversations conducted during fieldwork in Greece to examine the fear and hostility with which many in the Greek majority receive their Turkish Other.  She also shares personal stories of her Greek and Turkish informants—stories especially of forgiveness and “letting go”—that illustrate Kearney’s (2003) work on the transformational effects of the Self’s encounter with the Other.  Finally, the author discusses the risks of social belonging from the point of view of the Turkish Other, including a profound fear of the loss of identity that, for many, “assimilation” implies.

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Architectural (Con)Quests: Politics, War and Freedom (Tower)
A. Sameh El Kharbawy
College of Arts and Humanities, California State University, Fresno, USA

This paper examines and subsequently critiques the cultural discourses that shape constructions of modernity and “freedom” in the U.S. after September 11, 2001. In the aftermath of the gruesome terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C., American national identity has consistently been represented as modern, democratic and free against a vaguely defined, although clearly marke(te)d as an evil, barbaric and non-modern “other.”
Media and official discourse –to say nothing of a growing cabal of partisan intellectuals— have convinced far too many that large parts of the (Arab-Muslim) world are occupied by underdeveloped, incompetent, and doomed peoples whose cultures and civilizations are deeply opposed to the modern world and to modern values, namely democracy, liberalism and respect for human dignity and rights. Mixed in with this is the abstract proposition that an apocalyptic “clash of civilizations” (between the U.S. and those worlds) is inevitable (Huntington, 1993; Lewis, 1996.)
On the other hand, and after ruefully swallowing gross stereotyping of their history and culture by orientalists, cartoonists and columnists for (what seems to be) centuries, Arabs and Muslims around the world are now reassessing their own culture and religious practices. Allegiances that had for centuries been accepted uncritically and followed on faith are now being questioned and understood for their significance and purpose.
The result is an emerging consciousness which is giving rise to a dogmatic environment, a deeply forged and yet formidably convincing web of ideas within which certain (sanctioned) cultural expressions find acceptance and recognition, while others are dismissed and marginalized.
Nowhere has this been more evident than in the architectural competition hosted by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (New York City) to re-design Ground Zero and build Freedom Tower, a profoundly important moment in modern U.S. history.
By isolating some of the architectural strategies adopted by the designers of Freedom Tower and Ground Zero, and interrogating the ideas underlying their schemes, I will attempt to rethink both the idea of modernity as it is formulated, discussed, represented and disseminated in today’s America, while moving across different physical and theoretical domains in order to set up meaningful encounters between various levels of cultural production