3rd Global Conference
Monday 18th October - Wednesday 20th October 2004
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Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Session 8:
Political Modernity and Public Consciousness
Chair: Monika Riez
Terrorism in the Context
of Political Philosophy
Sinkwan Cheng
City University of New York, New York, USA
It has often been suggested
(especially after 9/11) that
terrorism has its origin in the Islam hashshashin cult. I,
on the contrary, will argue that insurgent terrorism is
actually an outgrowth of political modernity and a
perverse byproduct of democracy. The goal of my theory is
to help explain why terrorism thrived in Western rather
than Eastern Europe in the 1960s-80s, and why terrorists
in the Middle-East and Latin America are predominantly
Western-educated intellectuals or their protégé.
I. Terrorism
and Political Modernity
Modernity is the age of ideology. I will begin by drawing
attention to ideological conflicts as a crucial motivation
behind terrorism, in contrast to assassination which may
revolve around mere personal struggles for power.
Terrorism's close tie to ideology can be further proved by
how terrorist activities are often accompanied by
propagandistic wars through mass media--a favourite
apparatus of modern politicians. I will also draw distinctions between
assassination and
terrorism by highlighting the split between victims and
the "real enemy" in the latter. This split, I will argue,
is possible only with modern bureaucracy whose impersonal
structure ends up turning people into symbolic rather than
personal targets for terrorists.
II. Terrorism and Democracy
Terrorism cannot be easily written off as the opposite of
democracy. It is in many ways a child of democracy. Take,
for example, how terrorists always claim to be acting on
behalf of "the people"--specifically, on behalf of a
people's right to self-determination. Terrorism is also
carried out by people who feel deprived of their rights
under a regime they perceive to be hypocritically
democratic. Terrorism's reliance on mass media originates
from the value democracy attributes to public opinion.
III. Democracy
in Crisis--How to Democratize Democracy
The last part of my presentation is devoted to analyzing
some blindspots in modern discourse of rights which gives
rise to aberration such as terrorism. Tentative solutions
will be proposed.
Dehumanization of Public Consciousness
as One of the Causes of Modern American Wars (Results of the Sociological
Analysis)
Alexandre Fedorovski
Editor, Content & Analysis, Independent Analytical
Online Journal
The analysis of the dynamics of the functioning of
American mass
consciousness in times of international crises, over the past 53 years,
reveals the existence of a stable behavioural algorithm, the essence
of which
is a manifestation of the reaction of "ultimate support" for
the pro-war
course of the government, not only from the side of the traditional
majority
and the undecided, but also from a fraction of the "anti-war" minded
people.
One of the most relevant characteristics of this algorithm, identical
for
different generations, is its intensifying dehumanization. It is
characterized by the "washing-out" of the humanitarian component,
not
respecting or taking into account the universal right of a human being
to
live, when it belongs to representatives of a different race, culture
or
religion, from public psychology in the process of the apprehension
of the
pro-war, aggressive foreign initiatives or of the actual military operations
of the American government and of their humanitarian consequences regarding "others".
The
comparative historical analysis indicates not only isomorphic features
of the dynamics of public consciousness during corresponding phases
of
American military campaigns in different historical realities, but
also a
stable presence, expansion, and increase of the dehumanizational component
in it.
For 1.5 years the study of state and dynamics of public consciousness
of
specific groups of the American public, participants of various Yahoo
chatrooms, chosen as the objects of research by means of participant
observation, was conducted. Processing the collected data made it possible
to not only define the dispersion of the dehumanization component among
them, but also to generalize and to single out the most relevant qualitative
features of the phenomenon of dehumanization. It also made it possible
to
define the economic and socio-political factors, as well as those associated
with the technological progress in the conduct of war and in the media,
on
the critical increase of the phenomenon of dehumanization across the
vertical and horizontal lines of modern American society.
It also allowed
the drawing out of methodics to probe the state of public
consciousness in order to deduce an "index of dehumanization" of
this or
that society or its segment.
A system of organizational arrangements
and methodics to contain the process
of dehumanization of public consciousness and elimination in its breeding
grounds, as well as to prevent its further spread in the present globalized
world, is proposed as a result of the analysis of the conditions in
which
the phenomenon of dehumanization occurred and is expanding in American
society.