Monday 12th August - Friday 16th August 2002
Prague, Czech Republic

Session 10: Trauma, Frailty and Prevention

Gwyneth Bodger - The Holocaust and Hiroshima: Representations of the Technologies of Murder
University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

In my research I am analysing stylistic and generic similarities between literary works that have emerged from the Nazi Holocaust and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, whilst avoiding a simplistic conflation of the two historical catastrophes. With this paper I will explore the justification of examining these two distinct events in conjunction with each other. The originality of my work lies in such a comparison, as traditional scholarship of these events has relied heavily upon the trope of uniqueness, thereby denying an opportunity to consider the existence of a relationship between the literatures which have emerged from these experiences. It is of course problematic, even reductive to enter into a direct comparison of the two events; indeed, an attempt to quantify and compare suffering would be futile. However, this does not mean that we should not acknowledge that there are certain characteristics which the two events have in common. From a historical perspective we can detect similarities; both are examples of mass state violence which could not have been performed without governmental complicity. Both made use of what John Whittier Treat refers to as the “technology of murder”, which enabled the depersonalisation of mass murder in a way which would have been inconceivable even fifty years earlier. Whilst being mindful of the major distinctions between the two, most significantly the aim of the perpetrators, it is pertinent to move into a literary consideration of the testimonial texts as forming a distinct genre of trauma narratives. Testimonial representations of each event demonstrate similarities in the human ability to (un)comprehend and write experiences of atrocity, for example the incommunicability of extreme trauma felt so keenly by writers such as Elie Wiesel and ?ta Y?ko. In locating such features of similarity, we are presented with the opportunity to generate a critical and analytical framework in which to appreciate and understand such trauma narratives as members of a specific genre, rather than a disparate and unapproachable conflicting mass of textual representation.

Rob Fisher - Loving the Human at the Foundations of Violence and Peace
Inter-Disciplinary.Net

Two questions form the foundations of both the causes of violence as well as the quest for peace. The first is the question of what it is to be human and the exploration of what is common to us all. Following this comes a second question: it is the question of how we are to love the human, and the exploration of what our knowledge of what we have in common actually commits us to.

I will argue that the question of what it is to be human has become ideological - literally an abstraction from the particular and specific reality that persons are. Our view of persons has become universalised. With this abstraction has arisen a new language - the language of universal human rights, of responsibilities, of obligations, and of duties. But, sadly, the reverse is also true - not only does the respect for and love of others become easy; so does hatred, violence, oppression, and extermination.

The consequence of this can be seen in our treatment of refugees. The loss of recognition of the person leads to dereliction and (sometimes literal) nakedness. The dispossession of identity leads to loss of all rights. But in nakedness comes the realisation of what it is we share in common - the body. The body of the human being is what grants equality, and is where the struggle to be human is fought.

So long as an abstract view of the human holds dominance, then rights, responsibilities and respect are the language of currency, and power and violence rule the heath (Ignatieff). Only when a concrete and particular view of human being informs the language of rights, responsibilities, and respect, will we find a way of giving all people a context in which they can be affirmed, and affirm for themselves, what it means for them to be. Then, and only then, will the foundations of peace have a firm grounding.

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Ruth Firer - Preventative Remedy: Tolerance Education
Director of Peace Education Projects, The Harry Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

The purpose of this paper is to address the question of what happened in Israeli tolerance education during the peace process period, from September 1993 (Oslo Accord) until 2002, in the midst of the Palestinian second uprising (Intifada El- Aqsa) that started in September 2000. The research question is tackled against the background of the Israeli military, political and public reactions, which demonstrated how thin and fragile was the layer of Israeli tolerance towards the “Others” proved once in a crisis situation. I analyze tolerance education through textbooks and extracurricular manuals that have been in use in Israel from the nineteen-seventies, emphasizing the period from 1993 on. I review and evaluate the explicit, the implicit and the missing curricula of the manuals using interdisciplinary methods, mainly through epistemological discourse analysis.

The following criteria have been the milestones of the present research:
(a) Characterizing the narrative of the Israeli-Arab conflict; (b) Analyzing descriptions of the peace process; (c) Referring to peace models;(d) Evaluation methods and didactics of tolerance in texts and practice (teaching and education); (e) Tackling concrete problems and achievements of the present;
(f) Imagining alternative future scenarios; (g) Basing the above mentioned components on awareness of the diverse cultural and psychological needs of the students.

These seven criteria, like others, underlie human rights values as declared by the United Nations in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
The conclusion of his article is that cease-fire, peace signing, as well as any other form of military and political agreement are not enough to sustain peace relations. Nations in conflict need a period of healing and reeducation towards building mutual tolerance in order to transform the animosity into amity. Only when tolerance education is implemented on all sides involved, on the level of the third track (people), the political first track means of resolving conflicts can have any effect. In the same time such education is a preventive remedy used transfer any aggressive conflicts and terrorism, by offering alternative means of non violet reaction and negotiation methods to the partners.

The preventive education is especially relevant after the 11th of September, when the terrorism has been proven to be the external and internal threat of the 21st century.

In this paper the data is applied mainly to Israeli publications of textbooks in the Hebrew language. Only a few references to Palestinian education are offered, as I believe that such a topic deserves a paper on its own merit, to be composed with a Palestinian partner( Firer, Adwan: 2002. Firer, Barhoum: 2002) The essay concludes with an overview of the plans of the Peace Education Committee of the Harry Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University.

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