Ethnic Cleansing and the Essence of the Other - Essay Example

Ethnic Cleansing and the Essence of the ‘Other’ Ethnic cleansing is an extension of a problem within the human race where there is a need to differentiate between identities of cultures through targeting differences. In targeting differences, one culture can claim superiority, designating an ‘other’ for which a focus of hatred provides for a series of cultural advantages. Ethnic cleansing is the result of devaluing the existence of another culture to the point that it becomes assessed that it should be eliminated so that no other member of that culture exists (Jenne 112). In most cases, this includes dehumanizing that culture as well. The concept of the ‘other’ is central to the development of enough hatred to believe that ethnic cleansing is not only necessary, but feasible for one set of humans to commit against another. In order to create a belief system that can include ethnic cleansing as a solution for conflicts between cultures, a sense of the ‘other’ must be developed so that a belief in the dehumanization of the opposing culture diminishes any sense of committing murder against a fellow human being. According to Dirven, ethnic cleansing comes as a result of “abuses of cognitive processes (that) lead to atrocities against humanity beyond the imagination of most of us” (115). Cognitive semantics and the use of external symbols to create unity are also used in order to create a sense of the ‘other’. Those who are unified under a focused set of beliefs use the concept of those who are outside of those beliefs to create the sense of the ‘other’, the group that does not identify with the same belief systems. Dirven goes on to say that “Features or attributes of the so-called ‘outsiders’ may then be made cognitively significant through exaggerated contrast to the valued manners or behaviours of the newly identified ‘inside’ group” (114). In order to identify what concepts are unifying, there comes a balanced negative that identifies what differentiates a group from others, thus making them specifically not a part of the group. The development of a sense of ‘other’ is part of a system of identifying a sense of belonging (Morris 29). According to Oberschall “In the ‘primordial’ view, ethnic attachments and identities are a cultural given and a natural affinity, like kinship statements. They have an overpowering emotional and non-rational quality”. The nature of the need to belong is balanced by the need to identify those who do not belong. It is the nature of the individual to bond and create mutual ‘others’ that provide contrast to the superiority of their own cultural group. In doing this, the defined characteristics of the ‘other’ provide support for why a group will find reasons to isolate away from other groups and create conflict to assert their continued superiority. These methods can be varied, but one of the worst is through the policies that involve ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing involves two different concepts. Ethnicity traits that identify a group are combined with cultural traits. Groups are identified by both their physical manifestations of difference and their cultural manifestations through systems of belief. The difference between ethnicity and culture can be defined by the idea that one is involuntary and the other is voluntary. One is through physical attributes that are not a matter of control or choice. The other is through choosing to bond with others in a formed group (Cohen and Stone 67). The differences between the two are cause for different types of conflict and the line is not always considered clearly drawn. Therefore, if a person of certain ethnic attributes joins a culture that no longer associates them with the belief systems of their ethnic cultural group, this may not prevent them from being included. Joining a cultural group without ethnic markers that identify an individual with that group will also not create a safe place for an individual. The example of the Jewish Holocaust from the regime of Nazi Germany provides the clearest example of how ‘other’ can be defined by minute identifications with a targeted group. The laws reflected exactly how to identify someone who was Jewish, down to grandparent status and marriage (Baranowski 207). Thus, the involuntary aspect of the grandparents is shown combined with the social aspect of marrying into a Jewish family as some of the criteria when ethnic cleansing was used during World War II. Jenne quotes William Blake, then goes on to explain that forgiveness is based, not upon the nature of an offense that someone commits, but on the basis of forgiving the existence of ‘other’ within the individual (157). When human groups seek to find otherness, they are seeking an excuse to hate the ‘otherness’, therefore, it doesn’t matter how that otherness manifests. What matters is that there is an ‘otherness’ that is identified and a way to create distance between one’s own group and another’s. As Blake discussed, it is not actions that provide for the conflict, it is the differences that actions will support that are the core of how conflict arises. The rational thought process is not always involved in creating ethnic cleansing where ‘otherness’ is concerned. It is manipulation by forces that deteriorate the human condition of a group that allows for the idea to emerge, thus it is through the policies of diminishment that the result of ‘otherness’ can be lethal (Naimark 83). The term ‘ethnic cleansing’ was an invention of the 1980s to refer to the ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. The term has become more widely used for other periods of conflict in which one ethnic or cultural group is determined to wipe out another. The term came into the course of public rhetoric through a released statement from the Kosovar Serbs that the “Albanian majority of ethnically cleansing the province” (Jenne 2011). The term was pointed in that it more specifically provided for the intolerances and prejudices that targeted one group by another. The definition of the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ was defined during that time, according to Lerner, as “rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force or intimidation to remove persons or given groups from the area” (110). The term refers to genocide; acts that terrorize, and push out or through the murder all people of a different culture than the culture that has the power to assert their own beliefs into a homogeny of ideological and physical idealism. This is a policy of removing all of those who are ‘other’ in order to create an area that is defined by the similarities of all that dwell in that region. Although it is a relatively new term, it is an ancient means of relationship management between cultures. Policies of ethnic cleansing can be shown through proofs from history that the Assyrians in 1300 BCE used deportation to control conflicts as well as joining with the Babylonians in expelling the Jewish populations. History is full of conquering nations doing their best to displace local social groups that represent the ‘other’ (Jenne 113). Ethnic cleansing is another way of describing an event of one powerful culture attempting to suppress any sense of ‘other’ that might occur as the result of conflict. Where conflict turns to finding an end that includes the subjugation and eradication of another group, this is defined by the idea of ethnic cleansing, and this has been a part of history from the beginning of recordable history. Therefore, in considering the sense of ‘other’ and the nature of ethnic cleansing policies, the rationality of the concept is superseded through the irrational basis on which it is founded. The sense of ‘other’ provides for the dehumanizing effects, and the dehumanized individuals are then targeted for removal. According to Bax, the mistake that is often made, however, is that ethnic cleansing is solely the result of policies that have been created through authority from which the ‘cleansing’ takes place. This has not been the case, however, and it is situated within the public rhetoric that it is the responsibility of all members of a group, either through authority or through extended authority by virtue of that rhetoric, to take action against a group that is in conflict. Incidents of ethnic cleansing often messy and without a formalized sense of the law to support the actions are taken. It is accompanied by the hate and passion of citizens that help to rise up against a common enemy. There is a difference between the ideas of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Ethnic cleansing is more associated with removal of a group, where genocide is concerned with the destruction of the group (Totten and Markusen 186). The example can show how the two concepts are used in concern to promote the agenda of a specific group. The Sudanese government in Africa has two intentions in their promotion of pushing other groups out of their region. The first is in the destruction of the Fur, Massalit, and Zaghawa, which defined their intentions as genocide. The second was to drive the populations off their lands through the terror of mass murder so that they could clear those regions that the government wants reclaimed. This places both intention into the policies and intentions of the Sudanese government (Totten and Markusen186). The intention of terrorizing a population creates a cesspool of hatred and horror in which the worst possible atrocities can be birthed. Ethnic cleansing becomes an issue of feminism where rape is often a part of the terror of ethnic cleansing. Rape is one of the few things that will bring a strong group of people to their knees, watching, hearing, or getting word of the destruction of their women through sexualized terror. According to Carmichael, “scholars have also argued that in national discourse, since women come to represent the entire nation, acts of sexual violence are also the symbolic rape of the body of that community” (68). The nature of rape, although involving sexuality, is more clearly defined by its use as a weapon. In this case, the nature of ‘other’ becomes a part of gender division, women becoming the ‘other’ and target within the emotional discourse that impassions the cultural beliefs about another culture. There is a sense of the other that is compounded, women being the other in life through the relationship dynamic, targeted because they are weaker physically and used to represent the disposability of the entire community that is the target of the ethnic cleansing (Sofos 73). Women are the ‘other’ where men are concerned, and when one group comes into conflict with another, they become a specific type of target in order to disgrace and diminish the less culturally powerful of the two groups in conflict. Rape becomes “a result of the systematic cultural production of violent representations/narrations” (Giles 47). Giles goes on to say that the ‘other’ becomes further defined by the ‘other body’ which is then represented in its destruction through the violence of rape. To rape is to take the identity security, and the purity of a woman through power and subjugation. This is the symbolism of how one ethnic group will terrorize another and assert its dominance. Ethnic cleansing is a result of the rhetoric of ‘otherness’ and rape is one of the ways in which that symbolism finds a symbolic, violent manifestation of that rhetoric. The discourse of ‘other’ as it is used to encourage ethnic cleansing is “constructed through a discourse of exclusion of the ‘other’ which involved exteriorization of the ‘other’; erasure of empathy; denial of tolerance; and amnesia of a history of living together” (Giles 47). The discourse is developed by those with an agenda to manipulate those who do not necessarily share that agenda, but who will be inflamed by the rhetoric and adhere to those beliefs in order to feel superiority and find unity. The violence that follows is the result of how the ‘other’ is dehumanized and made available for less than human treatment. Because of the construction of rhetoric, it i can be said that ethnicity is also a result of constructed belief systems that support a sense of other. Cockburn, using the case of Ireland as an example, shows that the political powers “produce ethnicity” in order to support specific belief systems and create a dominance by those in support of those systems (612). These created identities that supported a sense of ‘other’ in opposing ideological frameworks were defined through a sense of how they were not the same purely through belief, not through any other type of distinction. ‘Otherness’ is a means of finding definition between people where physical or ideological differences are concerned. It is also used to define the way in which women are perceived in the general public discourse. Women are used in this respect to represent the subjugated, where men represent the dominance. This sense of ‘otherness’ allows for gender to be translated into the public realm for the use of symbolic interactions that create terror and push groups out of regions through force and intimidation. The creation of a sense of ‘other’ provides for a beginning of dehumanization of a group, that dehumanization allowing for the development of ways in which to further prove that there is a less than human element to the group that has been targeted (Frasier and Burchell). Aggression becomes permissible through the dehumanization process. In defining the way in which others are different, there is a paradigm of dominance created in which a struggle is formed. Through dehumanization, violence and terror can be used as weapons in order to drive out opposing groups whose beliefs are an affront to the dominant group. This is accomplished through the rhetoric of the ‘other’, the discussion creating an emotional state within the population that allows for acts towards displacing those opposing groups. The discussion of ‘otherness’ is the beginning and the end of ethnic cleansing as the differentiation provides the instigation of the need to eradicate what is different. Through realising that it is a decision to define difference, peace can possibly begin to emerge. Works Cited Baranowski, Shelley. Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print. Bax, Mart. Violence Formations and ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ at a Bosnian Pilgrimage Site. Ed. Kooiman, D., et al. Conflict in a Globalizing World. Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2002. Print. Carmichael, Cathie. Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans: Nationalism and the Destruction of Tradition. London: Routledge, 2002. Print. Cockburn, Cynthia. The Anti-essentialist Choice: Nationalism and Feminism in the Interaction between Two Women’s Projects. Nations and Nationalism. 6.4 (2000): 611-629. Cohen and John Stone. Race and Ethnicity: Comparative and Theoretical Approaches. Malden, Mass.;Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Print. Dirven, Rene?. Cognitive Descriptive Approaches. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2000. Print. Fraser, Colin, and Brendan Burchell. Introducing Social Psychology. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2001. Print. Giles, Wenona. Feminists Under Fire: Exchanges Across War Zones. Toronto Ont.: Between the Lines, 2003. Print. Horowitz, Shale A. From Ethnic Conflict to Stillborn Reform: The Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. College Station, Tex: Texas A & M Univ. Press, 2005. Print. Jenne, Eric. The Causes and Consequences of Ethnic Cleansing. Ed. Karl Cordell and Stephen Wolfe. Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print. Lerner, Natan. Religion, Secular Beliefs and Human Rights: 25 Years After the 1981 Declaration. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2006. Print. Morris, Rosalind C. In the Place of Origins: Modernity and Its Mediums in Northern Thailand. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. Print. Naimark, Norman M. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001. Print. Oberschall, Anthony. The Manipulation of Ethnicity: From Ethnic Cooperation to Violence and War in Yugoslavia. Ethnic and Racial Studies. 23.6 (6 November 2006): 982-1002. Sofos, S. Inter-ethnic violence and gendered construction of ethnicity in the former Yugoslavia. Social Identities. 2.1 (1996): 73-91. Totten, Samuel and Eric Murkuson. Genocide in Darfur. Investigating the Atrocities in the Sudan. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006. Print. Read More

 

Read More