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Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks on Race Consciousness
Get PDFWhen the issue of race is approached one is either for retaining race consciousness or for working toward its abolition. There are various ways people choose to retain racial categories and various definitions and meanings of race. As well, abolitionists take on a range of stances on when and how to eliminate racial categories. Nonetheless, that one must take a stance and advocate either retention or abolition seems to be required when studying race theory or discussing racial identities in terms of questions of justice. These two positions are understood as contradictory as well as the only two options available. Using Fanon, and debates surrounding White Skin, Black Masks on this very question of race consciousness, this paper argues against expecting or requiring a clear stance on the issue or even posing it as a dilemma. Reading Fanon as employing an existential phenomenological methodology allows us to see how he exposes injustice by writing about experience and projecting a future shared community of hope and freedom without clear indication of the role our group identities might play. The paper will then show the importance of rethinking the question of perpetuating racial categories, particularly through Fanon, by analyzing three potentially liberatory projects, Critical Whiteness Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Development Studies , demonstrating how the endeavors of many practitioners who claim to already know what various identities will (should) or will not (should not) mean for us truncates these projects
Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution and Eutrophication: A Survey of Environmental Responsibility in the Federal System and Case Study of the Chautauqua Lake Watershed, New York State
No full textThis report is concerned with nutrient pollution in Chautauqua Lake from agricultural nonpoint sources (NPS) and the policies that have formed at all levels of the federal system to address this problem in public water bodies. The analysis will be helpful to a national policy audience concerned with NPS policy efficiency and effectiveness, especially with regards to agricultural sources. It will also be of special use to lake mangers and state/local policymakers who want the NPS policy problem demystified so they can make better, clearer decisions for managing their lakes, rivers and streams. For this latter audience, the paper will survey how NPS pollution has been addressed in other watersheds, what policies have been effective or ineffective, and what financial and technical support are available from federal and state administrations for watershed management.
Federal, state and local NPS policy players interact with and influence each other to produce a wide spectrum of policy solutions for impaired watersheds. Ultimately, however, federal and state policies protect only a small percentage of polluted watersheds, and local citizens and authorities are often left unsupported to bear the responsibility of pollution prevention and cleanup without the required technical expertise or financial resources. When federal executives or states fail to protect polluted watersheds, it is implicit and necessary that local authorities coordinate horizontally across municipalities or counties to centralize watershed management debates and decision-making; however, effective watershed management plans also require local authorities to initiate and sustain vertical coordination with state and federal administrations that can help provide the requisite resources.
While some state executives have expanded the coverage of their watershed management programs, this expansion has been far too limited and slow to stem the natural acceleration of NPS pollution damages. Local authorities (within affected watersheds or bordering water bodies) cannot assume, nor wait for, federal or state leadership when the problem worsens beyond a critical level. Watershed management must come from organic leadership, marshaling local, state and federal resources to begin sustainable, comprehensive remediation
Exiled in Turkey from Nazi Rule, Eminent Biochemist Felix Haurowitz Became Indiana’s Adopted Son
Get PDFThis paper discusses a dimly lit and largely unknown time in the life of a great biochemist. Felix Haurowitz survived extermination because starting in 1933, Turkey reformed its higher education by inviting many intellectuals fleeing the Nazis and for whom America was out of reach because of restrictive immigration laws and wide spread anti-Semitic hiring and gender bias at its universities. This visionary act on the part of Turkey’s government had the collateral benefit of placing in escrow an intellect that went on and helped to expand America’s view of biochemistry and immunology
The Battered Women’s Syndrome: A History and Interpretation of the Law of Self-Defense as it Pertains to Battered Women who Kill their Husbands
No full textThis paper seeks to address the role of the battered women’s syndrome in criminal court cases where battered women have killed their husbands in self-defense. A historical analysis of law pertaining to domestic relationships and violence reveals the male biases imbedded in the law and the obstacles women face in seeking equality and justice in the legal system.
After a brief description of the development of self-defense law and Lenore Walker’s “battered women’s syndrome”, court cases starting mostly from the mid-1970’s during the second wave of the women’s movement are examined. Legal criteria for self-defense are then analyzed along with important precedents that trace the emergence through a series of court cases of legal opportunities to use this psychological condition to support pleas for self-defense. In addition, important precedents are studied that have been made over the past few decades permitting expert witness testimony in the courtroom to explain this psychological theory as it pertains to the case.
The latter part of the paper deals mostly with controversies surrounding the use of the battered women’s syndrome in the courtroom and the current state of self-defense law. I conclude with a proposal for reformation of expert witness testimony and for redefining legal terms in the criteria for self-defense
Reform, Resentment, and Revolution: The Administration of Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia and Its Causal Effects on the 1948 Civil War in Costa Rica
No full textIn 1948, revolution, armed conflict, and democratic turmoil enveloped one of the most historically stable and “exceptional” nations in the Western Hemisphere: Costa Rica. While the events which led directly to the annulment of the 1948 presidential election by Congress and the following armed conflicts have drawn much attention, this article argues that the change of direction and widespread reforms attempted during the administration of President Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia (1940-1944), along with his missteps, shortcomings, and the reactions which they garnered had more of a causal impact on the ensuing conflict than any other single actor or event. While Calderón would play a direct role in the events of 1948 and beyond, the author finds that his most influential actions came during his one term in office. By laying the groundwork to which nearly all future players reacted and (sometimes) rebelled against, the administration of Calderón significantly influenced the uncharacteristic events of the late 1940s and profoundly altered the course of this Central American nation
The Greatest Show on Earth: A Study of the Red Cross' Front Row Seat at the Stage of Theresienstadt
No full textDuring World War II, the concentration camp Theresienstadt in the northern section of Czecholslovakia played an integral role in the Nazis' schemes of international propaganda. The camp became a model city for the period of six hours while International Red Cross delegates visited on June 23, 1944 in order to prepare reports to be disseminated to the public addressing concerns at the inner workings of the camps behind Nazi front lines. To date, no overwhelming synthesis of the events precluding and proceeding the day period of deception labeled the Embellishment has been construed. I attempt to collect all details of the Embellishment, even its inception, in order to produce a more total understanding of life within the camp during this period and to create a setting conducive to visualization of the play itself. The paper in many ways also seeks to understand reasons for the Red Cross' positive outlook on the concentration camp despite worldwide concern and site-specific evidence to the contrary. In the second half of the paper, I examine why the Red Cross accepted the Embellishment to such a high degree, citing Red Cross justifications as well as the single report printed on the visit written by the Swiss representative Maurice Rossel. In sum, the Embellishment created a moment of suspended time that vastly impacted members of the concentration camp and the outside world, so that even today one may be shocked at the colossal undertaking of playacting which occurred in Czechoslovakia's rural plains
The Psychology of the Handmaid: Margaret Atwood’s Novel Parables of the Possessed Canadian Character
Get PDFThe protagonists of Atwood’s novels are most often both Canadian and female, and their stories feature a common struggle for possession of themselves and their bodies, given various colonizing forces. In relation to her other novels, which I will explore in this essay, the handmaid is a symbol for Canada in relation to the U.S, which stands for “yet another” imperial power infringing upon the lives of Canadians. Atwood herself has stated that the States are extreme in philosophy, while Canadians are more middle-of-the-road. This middle-of-the-road-ness of her main characters gets them into trouble and makes them vulnerable to outside forces. Her protagonists are typically female because the female body itself is particularly open to possession—by pregnancy, rape, cancer, and the physicality of sex. Women in Atwood’s novels are also possessed by spiritual forces, including gods of the wilderness; by men who represent different nations and woo the female “territory”; and by women who represent distinct national traditions or, increasingly, the new Multicultural Canada that is displacing the British-French one. Atwood repeatedly depicts her characters as territories of others, refugees, trespassers, foreigners even on their home ground, and internally divided entities that are inhabitable by others and inaccessible even to the self. They harbor repressed memories that are foreign to their own psyches. Thus Atwood’s novels undercut the Canadian nationalist project that she embarked upon with her 1972 book on a unified Canadian literature. Her novels essentially suggest that, ironically, the uniqueness of the Canadian character lies in its propensity to be possessed
Re-Newing New Orleans: A Look at Why New Urbanism is the Key to Rebuilding New Orleans
No full textThe widespread destruction of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina represents a unique opportunity to rebuild the public infrastructure and residential landscape of a major city on a different set of principles for urban planning and design. This exploratory article reviews the social and demographic condition of the city of New Orleans before and after the national disaster, presents new urbanism as a potential framework for urban renewal, and provides a case study of the Hill District in Pittsburgh as a model for local policymakers