The Current Tragedies

[Bernard Bate]

Dear Linganth,

I agree with Ken.  I think it is important to mention to our students that
no matter who is found  responsible for this we might want to keep the
image of Timothy McVeigh's cold gaze very much in our minds.  No matter who
did it, their faces will be marked with the same steely surety and
unflinching conviction that marked his.  We have to warn against people
creating synecdochal abstractions such as 'Arab' (which can then be applied
to any particular person that may be so categorized, such as a shopkeeper
or neighbor).  Warn against synecdoche in general.  Tim McVeigh is a much
better, more concrete, sign of the kind of person we're up against here.

It was Paul Friedrich who first noted that synecdoche is the master trope
of enmity.  See his article 'Polytropy' (pp.1-55, c.f. p.36) in James
Fernandez, ed. Beyond Metaphor (Stanford U.Press, 1991).  (He mentions it
in an earlier article, too, 1979, I think; if anyone is really interested I
can hunt it down.)

See also Sam Keen's book, Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile
Imagination (Harper and Row, 1988, 1991), unfortuanately out of print.  It
is perhaps the best discussion of the phenomenology of enmity ever
written.  Some problems with it (too universalizing), but he graphically
demonstrates how such things as 'beast,' 'reptile,' 'rat,' 'barbarian,'
etc., and more perniciously, 'abstraction,' 'table,' 'number,' etc., at
least in Euro-American representations, are applied in the production of
enemy images.

Peace,
Barney Bate

At 09:04 AM 9/13/2001 -0400, Ken Ehrensal wrote:
>Richard,
>
>As linguistic anthropologists we might make the greatest contribution by
>carefully analyzing the discourses coming out of places like the White
>House as we prepare to send out our young men and women to die in the "War
>on Global Terrorism".  The metaphors and symbols about "faceless enemies",
>etc. are fascinating.  We might also analyze what is not being said, like
>the fact that no one seems to be discussing the (racist and imperialist)
>assumptions of US foreign policy that makes us enemies.
>
>
>Ken
>***********************************************
>
>AMERICA WORKS BEST WHEN WE SAY, "UNION YES!"
>
>***********************************************
>Ken Ehrensal
>Management Department
>Kutztown University (Pennsylvania)
>voice: 610.683.4599
>e-mail: ehrensal at kutztown.edu
>www: http://www.kutztown.edu/~ehrensal/
>***********************************************