<underfire> on disappearance

[Allan Siegel]

I find this piece by Irving Goh (16 Nov.) baffling and obtuse. As it  
is employed here, the term democracy is so facile anyone from Putin  
to Bush to Nazarbayev could use it with equal dexterity. But really,  
is this about the disappearance of people, machines or the state?  
Seems to be mainly about the disappearances of machines and/or the  
state. U2’s have been known to disappear, crash or even be shot down  
– so much for invisibility. But, I am more interested in acts of a  
state that render the ramifications of its policies invisible:  that  
cause people to disappear. For example, in El Salvador or Argentina  
where it was a whole ‘class’ of people who were made to disappear.  
Alongside these acts of ‘disappearance’ was an apparatus of  
disinformation, censorship and murder designed to negate or  
obliterate these actions of disappearing. Is this what Irving means  
by, “it is as if the State has put into effect a counter- 
disappearance to counter critical disappearance”?

It is axiomatic that alongside state acts of terrorism there exists  
an apparatus (operating with varying degrees of success) whose  
purpose is to render the objects of state terrorism invisible.  
Whether its the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis, the Armenian  
genocide , Srebrenica, Rwanda, Guantanamo or actions in the West Bank  
the organizers of state terrorist campaigns seek to cover their  
tracks and render the victims invisible. Notably, some of the acts  
have been revealed (unfortunately and mostly after the fact) before  
the traces could be completed eradicated. Yet, under the cover of  
‘democracy’ numerous acts of disappearance meld into a web-like  
apparatus of acceptable deniability - Disneyland gulags with  
starbucks at the entrance. What forms of resistance, compassion,  
discourse can be activated, energized, articulated to counteract  
(negate?) state terrorist repertoires as they expands their reach,  
methodology and objectives?

A.S.

  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://underfire.eyebeam.org/pipermail/underfire/attachments/20061117/d9384b6f/attachment.html