On libya...a bit of "fun" directed at academia courtesy of zero anthropology...

this is hilarious...in that laughter of the damned sort of way. :)

On Libya: Why We Need Nuance

Posted on 23 February 2011 by Maximilian Forte

WARNING: Contains satire, mockery and travesty. Suitable for mature audiences only.

Reported events in Libya are very intriguing, to some extent. While one hopes that the following statements do not go too far over the top, we might say that unconfirmed allegations of loss of life may give one reason for pause. It is possible that some of us may entertain certain misgivings about the multifaceted and complex comments offered by the Libyan leader. While some may wish to argue that Col. Gaddafi is a “dictator,” a less tendentious characterization should suggest itself as the situation is neither black nor white, but grey.

It is important that the tone of discussion be kept serious, civil, and reasoned. Certainly one may express concern at the troubling reports, but what is needed is a process of broad consultation. Violence should be restrained. Commentators should respect the process by avoiding strident language, and respecting the fundamental, reflexive, and recursive ambiguity of what is a contingent and contested process.

As observers of the complexities around the social negotiation of constructed meanings, it would do us well to remember that democracy is inscribed as a gesture of erasure, that human rights exist as an absence through an erasure that is the sign of their own creation. What we urgently need then are less of the over-determined portrayals of reality that lead to debased forms of point scoring– “dictator!” “murderer! “bastard!”–and more sophisticated treatments of the contingency of discourse, while tacking back to the free floating signifiers that constitute the flows of democracy instantiated in the reflexive negotiation of identity best understood as friction where the practice of inscription is embodied but ever perched on the border with the simulacra of memory qua narrative.

Our colleagues in the diplomatic corps, working with the best of intentions and under the most pressing of circumstances, should be held in high regard. For while one may state in the strongest possible terms that events may be deplorable, one does not want to preclude the possibility for dialogue. Is it important to stress that Col. Gaddafi may be a confounded ne’er do well? Perhaps. But such intemperate and highly inflammatory polemics could jeopardize difficult but necessary ways of restoring calm, for what Libyans need now more than anything else is stability. Democracy cannot be achieved overnight. Hopefully, through a series of reforms brought about in an orderly transition, we can look forward to the moment when, like ourselves, Libyans may enjoy the fruits of civilized discourse.

And this is why we need nuance.

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