Introduction to Asian American Studies: Race and War
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Reading Reflection
In Edward Said’s Orientalism piece, I was particularly drawn to the idea of imaginative geography and how it helps the mind to “intensify its own sense of itself by dramatizing the distance and difference between what is close to it and what is far away”. Before this, however, Said says that these spaces “our spaces” and “their spaces” are arbitrarily drawn. If this is the case, how can we “Orientalize the Oriental”, given that Orientalism is both a geographically and categorically vast area of study?
I though that Martin Luther King Jr.’s Beyond Vietnam piece was an interesting pairing with Fanon’s On Violence piece. In Fanon’s writing, he argues that decolonization attempts are inherently violent, and that the relationship between the colonized and and the colonist are constantly embedded in an atmosphere of violence that only takes a slight trigger to break out into full blown violence. This concept is challenged by Martin Luther King Jr,’s proposal of non-violent protest to gain civil rights, and his opposition to the Vietnam War. The contradiction, as King highlights in his speech is that “Peace and civil rights don’t mix”. The African Americans in the United States are in the atmosphere of violence, where violence seems to be not only inevitable but necessary, as Fanon argues. However, King argues that the reason violence is inevitable, is because people have deemed peaceful revolution a bust. Quoting John F. Kennedy, MLKJr. writes, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent resolution inevitable.” Given the violent nature of the civil rights movement in America, however, even in response to peaceful protests makes me question whether MLKJr. was correct in arguing that peaceful revolution can be effective, even though it is something I wish were true.
Ryoo, I’m really interested in the way you’re juxtaposing King’s Beyond Vietnam and Fanon’s On Violence, because I didn’t notice it before reading your post. Now that you’ve pointed it out, though, I think there’s a lot to learn from the tension between the two pieces. Like you said, it’s possible to read MLK’s belief in peaceful revolution as overly idealistic, especially given how U.S. history has played out in the past 50 years after his speech, and to contrast it with the more pragmatic Fanon. However, I think that, on a theoretical level, two authors actually agree more than they disagree. They both acknowledge that the current state of events has been produced by a long history of violence (this is also a central idea in Said’s piece), and that surface-level “revolutions” will not create lasting change. One danger that Fanon warns against is the temptation for the bourgeoisie class in colonized regions to settle for a transfer of privilege from foreign elites to indigenous elites, resulting in little actual positive change for the “masses.” Similarly, MLK warns activists against falling into of cycle of repeatedly protesting one war, then another, and celebrating each peace without recognizing the “deeper malady within the American spirit.” MLK’s challenge to Americans, to shift from a “thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society,” is something that I think Fanon would also put forward to would-be revolutionaries. Another idea that both authors touch on is that violence breeds violence, whether it’s the colonizer showing the colonized that the “only language they understand was that of force,” or the U.S. teaching young, angry men to use “massive doses of violence to solve… problems.”
Also, I haven’t completely figured this connection out, but one other way that I have been looking at Fanon and MLK together is through the Grace Lee Boggs documentary. There are a lot of similarities between Boggs’s “revolution and evolution” idea and Fanon’s arguments, and she made hints that she started to take MLK’s work more seriously, and to find more subtleties in his arguments later in her life.
There’s definitely a lot more to be said, and it’s possible that the things I have pointed out are over-generalizing what the two authors are saying. If anyone else has thoughts on this topic, I hope we’ll get to discuss it more in class!
I thought that there were interesting and ironic parallels between MLK’s Beyond Vietnam speech and the discussion of Orientalism by Edward Said. When referring to Egypt and Asia, Balfour issues blanket statements of Oriental inferiority and European superiority as absolute facts. As a result he claims that “Egypt requires, indeed insists upon, British occupation.” Oriental cultures are seen as incapable of handling their own affairs and this belief persists in Western society. These dismissive attitudes are clearly demonstrated by the United States’ involvement with Vietnam in the 20th century.
For example, MLK mentions the independence movement led by Ho Chi Minh who even quotes part of the United States’ Declaration of Independence when demanding the right to self-government. Yet, the response of the United States was to reject their independence and to continue supporting the French occupation and eventually propping up a corrupt and violent dictator. The great irony is that Balfour justifies the colonization and control of the Orient due to their lack of self-government and “despotism.” Despite this, when a group of Vietnamese citizens demands the right to self-rule, Western imperialists flatly deny this possibility.
The Vietnamese are caught in a Catch-22, in which they require Western intervention due to their lack of self-government, and self-government is impossible due to Western intervention. One of Said’s quotes that I found particularly relevant is that “rarely were Orientalists interested in anything except proving the validity of these musty ‘truths’ by applying them, without great success, to uncomprehending, hence degenerate, natives.” The same ethnocentric and racist attitudes exhibited by Balfour still characterize Western interactions with the Orient.
AMS307 Week 8 Reading Reflection
Orientalism by Edward Said is an interesting read about the field of Orientalism. I didn’t know that the field of Orientalism was considered something to study so that the rule of the West over other countries could be ‘better’ or ‘easier’. I think that Said is trying to ask what the mechanisms that made Orientalism so powerful and lasting were, and how they were created. He addresses this by naming such mechanisms as the dialogue of powerful men like Balfour and Cromer regarding the power and superiority of the Westerners; the delineation of the differences between the two and how that contributed to inequality; and the creation of a scholarly field around the concept of difference.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Beyond Vietnam was an insightful look into the perspective of anti-war activists at the time. He was focusing more on the personal aspects of the war, like body count and home destruction, rather than the political aspects, like the different factions in Vietnam, which allowed him to paint a poignant picture of the suffering brought on by the war. I think that he was not so much addressing questions here as he was putting a challenge to the audience and to the country – stop the war. This was interesting in the context of Frantz Fanon’s On Violence, which was a look at violence as a prerequisite for colonialism overall, not just in the context of Vietnam. I think that this work was addressing questions like – is it possible to have colonialism without violence? What values must change or remain in order for colonialism to survive?
Violence is inextricably linked to racism. Racism becomes unidentifiable if uncoupled from violence. This notion is very obvious and explicit in Fanon’s text. According to Fanon, the colonized are other-ed on a strict dichotomy in a “world divided in two,” and the police and military “brings violence into the homes and minds of the colonized subject” as a means to enforce these depictions of the colonized as the “enemy other.” Fanon argues, “It is the colonist who fabricated and continues to fabricate the colonized subject.” It is this manufactured identity that is upheld through violence that creates both a physically colonized and psychological colonial subject. The violent process of colonization dehumanizes, belittles, and marks the colonized with an assignation of “absolute evil.” He is arguing that the process of decolonization, or the only way the colonized can go from being last to first, is inherently violent because colonization is both physically and psychologically violent on the colonized. The colonized must fight against physical destruction and internalized oppression; “liberation must be achieved and can only achieved by force.” He cleverly points out that, “The colonist has always shown them [the colonized] the path they [the colonized] should follow to liberation,” i.e. violent force.
This idea is nuanced when paired with Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech about the War on Vietnam. MLK is known for his belief in nonviolent protest and this speech does not shy away from those beliefs. In this speech he is discussing how he is unable to show his support for American intervention in Vietnam. He points to the unconquerable giant triplets, “racism, extreme materialism, and militarism” as the consequences of continued violence. War disproportionately affects the poor, King states, “we create hell for the poor.” He further points to the domestic issues of the war on poverty as reasons for why Black Americans should abstain from enlistment in the army. He forewarns that, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approached spiritual death.” King is saying that acts of international intervention detract from the very own issues affecting the American people, namely poor people of color, yet another systematic attack and violent mechanism of racism.
In Said’s text, he discuses the production of knowledge and power, specifically the “increasingly profitable dialectic of information and control.” According to Said, the two principles guiding the relationship between the East and the West in the 18th century was the growing body of knowledge in Europe about the Orient and the fact that Europe always remained in a position of power in relation to the Orient. Said observes that it is “knowledge of the Orient, because generated out of strength, that in a sense creates the Orient.” I see Said’s logic already embedded in Fanon’s brief discussion on the dominant role of Western journalism and their coverage of formerly colonized countries in manufacturing “international opinion.” Fanon writes, “for the colonized subject, objectivity is always directed against him,” suggesting that Western journalistic coverage frames and spreads information about the “third world” in a way that is never neutral. Fanon’s text acknowledges the dialectic of information and control that Said writes of; knowledge production can be utilized as a method of exerting power, control, and dominance. In King’s speech, he points to the potential of a specific kind of knowledge-making: “Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition.” King suggests that the U.S. Americans may have a better understanding of themselves and their role in the Vietnam War if they were able to see themselves from the “enemy’s point of view,” but from a critical perspective, I wonder if this is a useful approach or if it remains dependent on defining the self in opposition to an enemy other.
Upon reading MLK’s Beyond Vietnam, I was struck by two similar some of his wording was to Gilmore in describing the inextricable link between violence and power throughout US history. MLK describes the US as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” and in his speech, quotes a Buddhist leader who says that America is “the image of violence and militarism.” Colonialism itself is a way of maintaining power through violence as described by Fanon and thus, the revolutionary colonial subjects it spawns will not be ones who are content with peaceful protest, but ones who grew up in “an atmosphere of violence.” Is there a way of decolonization and revolution without violence?
Additionally, I have heard about and read accounts of refugees from the Vietnam War who are immensely grateful for the US intervention in Vietnam. They are often annoyed when people apologize for the US involvement for in their perspective, the US was like a savior, helping them revolt against the authoritarian, communist control of North Vietnam. Constantly judging Vietnam to be a mistake or an example of intervention or violence gone wrong casts Vietnam as weak and a damsel in distress. As Said describes, it is a framework of Orientalism, of looking at Europe in “a position of strength” attempting to help or harm the Orient which is “contained and represented.” MLK’s speech advances this dominant framework of Orientalism that casts America and the West in the center. The Americans were not the only soldiers, but they fought alongside the South Vietnamese who hoped to win back their country and save their families from the ruthless regime of the Viet Cong.
King’s “Beyond Vietnam” sounds to us now as what Dr. King obviously should/would have said about the war, but one paragraph in particular shows just how difficult it must have been for him to speak openly about these issues. “Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. “ Dr. King has clearly thought long and hard on the subject, and while the rest of the speech thoroughly details his rationale for finally speaking up, I think it is useful to reiterate just how difficult this must have been. Representing the peaceful method of achieving civil rights, Dr. King must have seen the parallels of the Vietnamese fighting against their own oppressors/enemy (the US) and felt some sympathy or understanding in their resorting to violence, even though his own stance of the struggle at home would have gone against those sentiments.
Speaking out against Vietnam too would’ve been an issue of diverting attention from the black struggle or giving the government cause to have even more reasons to not support King’s movement, which is likely what king’s other supporters were thinking when they worried about King speaking out. This raises the bigger question of how civil rights conducted on a national scale may often lead to contradictory values. The NAACP was known to “prioritize” certain groups of people within its own community or even distance itself from others that would hurt its cause as a whole (like those perceived to be degenerate or violent, even if they actually were not) which seems both hypocritical but also practically necessary. How can moving to increase the civil liberties of a whole race possibly hope to achieve this goal when race is but one broad generalization of many other subtypes of people each with their own needs?
I am fascinated by the idea that Said puts forward that Orientalism is an “intellectual power,” a “library or archive of information commonly and… unanimously held” cemented by the set of values used to distinguish the East from the West. Thus, Orientalism can be conceptualized as these particular constraints on thought and perception of the world that require a “distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority.” With this in mind, it seems that much of the (Western) power that Orientalism reinforces comes from the actual ability to define and articulate the “library” of Orientalism — perhaps secondary to this is the actual Western superiority that Orientalism alleges. The assertion of the language of Orientalism as credible and natural is the grounds from which its material effects can be built and rationalized. MLK’s speech “Beyond Vietnam” challenges this Orientalist language by, for a few moments, centering the thoughts and agency of the Vietnamese revolutionaries. King calls them the “voiceless in Vietnam,” but they are only voiceless under the constraints of Orientalism that prevent the Oriental Other from speaking out against Western intervention (or, if they do speak out, these constraints require that they must not *know* what is best for themselves).