CIAO DATE: 11/2008
May 2006
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Professor Heike Härting has engaged in a program of research focused on the relationship between globalization and violence and how violence has tended to be rendered "normal" or "expected" in a globalizing world. This paper is part of this research program and begins with the concept of "global civil war" presented by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their recent joint work. Professor Härting argues that their conception is too limited because it fails to take adequate account of the rootedness of such war in long-standing power relations of imperialism and colonial modernity. By failing to take these linkages into account, dominant, more wealthy countries can take a position of bringing civilization to the unruly and violent practices of so-called rogue states or other failing states. Such a position, she argues, verges on hypocrisy because the very problems faced in these parts of the world are linked intimately to the violence and racialization characteristic of imperialism and colonialism that formed these states in the first place. In bringing post-colonial theory to bear upon these questions, Professor Härting also makes reference to literary works focused on the civil war in Sri Lanka by Michael Ondaatje and Jean Arasanayagam. The paper finishes up with some thoughts on why we are constantly faced with assumed permanent emergencies, a state of being even more pronounced since the declaration of war on "global terror" after the events of 11 September 2001.
Resource link: Global Civil War and Post-colonial Studies [PDF] - 485K