Rebecca Corn

 

This change in focus demands a re-evaluation of the origins of the distinction, and especially a renewed analysis of the relevance today of ideas developed by such key theorists as Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Therefore, noting the normative basis of the question at hand, this essay will begin with an interpretation of the basis on which these obligations may be formed, examining the two very different interpretations of global society from the same period—Kant and Rousseau; whose theories, whilst remarkably similar in their basis for distinction between civilian and human obligation, are radically different in their respective optimism and pessimism about prospects for peace. Kant and Rousseau’s ideas will form the main themes of the essay, and the theoretical background constructed will then be compared to the contemporary debate, discussing obligation to citizens as distinguished from that to humans from the perspective of the development and practice of the modern state, and obligation to humans as distinguished from that to citizens from the perspective of the ‘NGO Revolution’.

There has been a vast and detailed discussion of the principles at hand, from within Political and International Relations Theory and beyond, since as noted, they represent some of the most fundamental questions of human existence; a contentious distinction between rights and duties, particularism and universalism, within the state and throughout humanity. Therefore, what follows will be a necessarily brief overview of the main ideas from key areas within the discipline, with a depth of focus toward the theories of Kant and Rousseau."

 

 

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Political Science

 

Excerpt from: 

Humanitarianism and the Rwandan Genocide - An NGO Revolution?[1] 

"In 1994 the world was stunned by the news of genocide in Rwanda. Despite repeated warnings from humanitarian organisations on the ground, the United Nations (UN) was paralysed as between 800 thousand and 1 million people were murdered and 3.9 million people became refugees and internally displaced peoples[2]. Designated as the ‘global conscience’[3], humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) responded where states would not dare to tread. Ten years on, the international community wrings its hands with guilt, vowing ‘Never Again’.

There are too many examples throughout the world today of peoples excluded from the global dialogue, in humanitarian crisis and unable to effect change, or forced to extreme measures in order to enter the world’s consciousness. Global politics is exploding as never before with a dissonance between evident dialogical structures, and possible dialogical reach. We remain governed by a war-time distribution of power of influence. Crucially, global response to ‘complex emergencies’[4], when necessarily tailored to such a framework, become increasingly inappropriate and dangerously inapplicable. Perhaps as a global community it is time to look to more appropriate structures of representation, that focus on giving voice to the affected, not simply those with the power to effect. And perhaps, a more politicised role for the ‘global conscience’, should be the first step.

The Rwandan genocide was a defining moment. Since then, the world community has made a commitment to address and change the structures of humanitarian dialogue. The most recent of these attempts is the report entitled ‘A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility’, from the UN’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which addresses prospects for change in international governance.[5] However, whilst Kofi Annan heralded the ‘NGO Revolution’[6] in 1999, and many have realised that a depoliticised humanitarian community is no longer appropriate, their afforded access to dialogue is still ‘apolitical’. This is stated in British charity law for example.[7] The recommendations of this UN report, whilst welcomingly forward-looking in comparison to anything we have seen before, are no different in this regard.

If one considers the response of Rwandan society itself to the genocide, and initiatives such as the National Youth Council, which includes the once disenfranchised youth that formed the Interahamwe killing machine in structures of governance, one finds a far more enlightened approach to dialogue—not perhaps surprising given the motivation for change. Maybe as a global community we can learn from it?

It is this question that this essy will address, beginning with a brief overview of the literature that forms theoretical premise for research; before turning to an evaluation of the role of NGOs within the dialogical structures of humanitarian response; and finally moving to a more specific analysis of the humanitarian dialogical structures at play during the Rwandan genocide, the role of NGOs, and the voice of affected peoples. This review will form the justification for further research comparing change in Rwandan political dialogue to possible change globally."

(full essay available from the author) 

 

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Creative Writing

Imagine a Small Dark Space: Diaries of Imprisonment

 

"...The space is
dark and very small, not much bigger than the crouching figure cowering
inside.

Four walls just touch a brutally bare skin shivering next to their oppression, searching for meaning in unforgiving hardness.

Cold.
Damp.
Disembodied silence.
Bereft.

A mind reels inside its imprisoned place, clawing
at memory, at time and space and reason, desperately searching for
silent order where there is only fear; a white noise of hopeless chaos..."

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Poetry

Feels Like Water...

Coarse sand, reeded bank.
Worthy substance not astounded by the ripples of reaction.
Their gaze enchanted, long grasses claw back the glass with a desperation..

Wishing only passive observance,
The same stone dislodged in clumsy footstep.
Reality loosehold - I must stoop and replace my effect.

Wait - See yet the method of meaning.
Spiraling leaf - Did you not fall from a tree with Ernest endeavour? Be not you trapped.
Move forward inevitability of change.

Aspiration envelopes.
Pulled forward in fragile floating, searching for the strength of tide, finding profundity in solitary silence. Deadened senses carried lightly on liquid skin.
Cupped in a flowing kindness but achingly empty.

Life force finds effecting rhythm neath the beuaty of rippling freedom.
Once shed of passive flow.
Not yet so fragile, but affected in careful footstep - move onward.

 

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Political Creative

As I sit on the bus this morning; Perspectives on a crisis

As I sit on the bus this morning, enduring the long trundle trundle trundle in to work. Gazing through the drizzle washed steamed windows into the blinking haze of red and amber, London morning traffic, I wonder how she is.

Is she huddled close with her children, wrapped in the material that is now the only stained remnant of a life once safe, hiding their warmth from harsh Saharan winds? As my chest feels heavy with another city cold, is hers heavy with campfire smoke this morning after a night sleeping close to the embers – no home now, just this patch of scorched earth shared by others from theirs and similar villages, sheltering soulless from the horrors of beyond.

And as I step off the bus this morning, pulling my coat around me and catching a shy glance from a fellow male passenger, what are her choices today? She will look at her children with open, dry mouths, sleeping, gasping, and she knows that they need more water. But can she? Does she have the strength? Can she bear to be raped again without losing hold of her hope altogether?

The few men left in the camp cannot leave its ramshackle limits, because for them the certainty is death. A physical death, how different from the mental deadening for her, if only she had the strength to fight them, it’s all she can do to carry the water afterwards. The children have deadened souls too, and that’s the most horrific truth of this. They eat what there is, sleep when they can, full of nightmares, exhausted, caught in a no mans land between terrors they remember and the future they once had. Bare life. Soulless survival. But thank you god, may peace be upon him, they still breathe.

At night the sound of gunfire and screaming, by day a living nightmare of rice queues, injury, sickness and dying children. She was a teacher in her village, she had been known for her smile, she had been respected. Did they not know that? – as they came and threw fire into the house she, her husband and the villagers had built with, with the big round room where the village children had gathered for lessons. – as they destroyed every place in the village like that and killed the men as they ran out of homes holding children. – as they raped mothers and daughters and little girls as babies lay helpless watching. Did they not know what they were destroying? All life there was and all hope for a future.

How can it continue, new horror stories every day. People keep saying it will finish soon. Feed your children, hold their faces and will them to forget. Survive and it will be over soon, someone will come. Someone will stop this. White faces know about it, men in uniforms know, someone must come.

But for now, she must pay for water with herself. She must hold the rotten smell of her beaten raped body in the dusty heat of the day for as long as she can because at least she can feel the anger, and that gives her some reality to touch somewhere deep down in her soul. I worry, how long will she cope with the memories? If, when, survival becomes a long term thing, will the children still have a mother, a teacher known for her smile?

As I walk along London’s streets, shining with our wet winter, looking into pre-occupied faces, I hope she has friends. Because I can, I hope. I hope that she has friends in the camp, with whom she can share glances in her search for a human meaning. Most of all I hope she has friends in the world that will risk their political comfort to fight for her future. If her not her smile, then her survival.

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Short Stories

Fairy Steps

... As she jumped off the moth eaten cushions of Rhiannon’s sofa in a cloud of dust and giggling herself into another wheeze, Robin wondered at her friend’s family, shut away emotionless in the next room.  Robin’s curious mind had always searched to the corners of life for patterns, independent of its owner’s will.  At times it led her to the gates of a paranoid world, but often darted through blossoming imaginings, kaleidoscopes of magical possibilities.  Now, plonked on the floor with Robin and Rhiannon, it began to wonder.  They had both collapsed with gleeful chirps, but much to Rhiannon’s dismay, Robin became predictably serious.  Unable to speak to explain, she knew she must sit still awhile, breathe carefully and regain control of her chest, now rasping.  The confusion disappeared from the eight year old playing host as she ran off to join her brother who was tormenting the new kitten by making scratching noises on the back of the kitchen door.

Robin sat, guiltily breathing having spoilt their game and now jealous to have been left out of the new one.  Concentrating on breathing, she began the familiar protocol of focusing on a point far away in the room; the ornate chest of drawers on the far wall, hidden between bookcases and what looked to be an old kitchen hatch. Ooh, how interesting it looked, with draws pulled out in steps toward the ceiling. Strange, the symmetry of this picture, hardly noticeable in an otherwise book-lined room. Why were the draws pulled out in this way?
She decided to investigate, getting and stepping forward unnoticed.

Just past the drawers dried flowers sat in the old hatch which was now a forgotten porthole, a small dust frosted window. Robin peeked in on the older family in the kitchen, each reading in solitary peacefulness.  Their lack of life troubled her.  Their staid greetings and guarded reactions had always puzzled, intrigued as she was by this obvious absorption into the books full of strange words, which contained some kind of protocol preventing normal behaviour.  And now, why no reaction to her wheezing?  As if in answer the two children squeeled and Robin saw the family faces flinch but not lose focus. She felt suddenly lonely as these thoughts formed, but having them had calmed her somehow. She realised, standing small beside the ornately carved wooden chest of drawers, she could now breathe without pain. And now she was on the brink of an adventure, and she felt a rush of excitement that made her toes tingle.

Her attention returned to the chest beside her. Why were the draws pulled out in this way? As she peered in, Robin could see that they were lined with faded wrapping paper, but otherwise empty. Even more clearly now they resembled steps, deliberately inviting, enticing and enchanting, a pattern to be followed once found. A magic staircase perhaps? But to where?
As she stood in front, steadying herself with one hand to the nearest corner, she lifted her knee and pointed her toe, relaxing it then so that her rounded brown leather shoe rested neatly in the bottom drawer. Should she wait until her fickle friend had become bored with the cat or should she continue? What would happen if she climbed? Such a shame that the family had not noticed these steps before, such a shame not to just see what would happen...

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 Academic Journal

 

"Dialogue" in Access to Dialogue and the Voice of Affected Peoples; an NGO Revolution

Commonly applied within the discipline to traceable strings of academic discourse, the term ‘dialogue’ is perhaps best recognised from its original use by Plato. In his ‘Dialogues’ he reduced philosophical concept to pure argumentative conversation, for purposes of rhetorical entertainment and instruction, using characters such as Socrates, to express his political beliefs[1]. This concept of ‘dialogue’ is symbolic of the narrow interpretation of political discourse that still shapes global political relations today, and does not reflect the potential for fluidity of communicative interaction, on the many different levels that constitute human existence.

 

Notably, the concept of ‘dialogue’ has also been explored in theological philosophy. Martin Buber defines dialogue as an effective means of on-going communication rather than as a purposive attempt to reach some conclusion or to express a fixed belief. Buber explores his belief that the human existence falls into two radically different relationship distinctions – ‘I-It’ and ‘I-Thou’. The ‘I-It’ relation is the normal everyday interaction of a human being with the things surrounding him, including his fellow man, when viewed as ‘the other’ from a distance, as part of the general environment, forged into chains of causality. The ‘I-Thou’ relation, which the human being enters into with his innermost and whole being, is the only real 'dialogue', and occurs when both or all of those involved invest the same of themselves, in efforts to communicate. For Buber, the achievement of dialogue, through ongoing communication, is the only true reflection of the human meeting with God. He purports this as the philosophical foundation for biblical religion; that regardless of the infinite abyss between them, a dialogue between man and god is possible.[2]

It is this concept, of a potential communication ‘across the abyss’ in politics, which prepares the most helpful foundation for the purposes of this essay. The premise has been explored throughout reflective theory, for example Immanuel Kant purports that it is

‘the differences of their languages and of their religions’ which has prevented ‘the peoples from intermingling’, although ‘as civilisation increases’, their sense of membership of the moral community expands[3]

When thinking about access to political dialogue in this sense, and the representation of the voice of affected peoples (and NGOs as representatives of those voices); David Held’s ideas, as a major proponent of contemporary thought on cosmopolitan democracy, have direct application.[4] An attempt to understand the role of NGOs in global governance must also turn to Falk’s contributions to the debate, and particularly the case he presents for NGO representation within the UN General Assembly.[5]

What is sought here ultimately, however, is a mid point between the Platonic dialogues of rhetorical instruction, which form basis for much of reflective interactions of global politics today, and the intimately honest Buber-ian communications that make possible a dialogical reach across the real and perceived ‘abyss’ between peoples. It is a point of mutual understanding that reaches beyond the traditional technical structures of representation within legal, political and economic exchange—too narrow to reflect the needs of disparate cultures, communities, environments; too adversarial to understand majority and minority at once—to a more fluid ‘dialogue’. The purpose of global political communication must be, therefore, to ensure a holistic dialogue in which as many global voices can exist in a fair exchange of experience. This can only be achieved with a drive towards fair access to this dialogue, that affects all of humanity, which of course is difficult to define, let alone set goals toward achieving. It is the hypothesis of this author that such a process must begin with the establishment of an accessible dialogue between effecting, and affected peoples and visa versa; with a real consideration of the role of non-state, non-economically dominant, non-traditional forms of critical representation: with NGOs working in humanitarian response forming the first and most critical stage of this process of recognition. Such a process would also need to examine practices of exclusion and ignorance within global dialogue, which may act to exacerbate humanitarian crisis. In this way, ‘dialogue’ will not just be represented in voting behaviour, the levels of financial transfer that take place in humanitarian emergency, a technical measurement of Human Development, or an adversarial legal or political exchange, but rather the levels of understanding that can be achieved, those that are achieved, and those that are prevented from being achieved. ‘Voice’ in this situation, will be exhibited by an ability to influence understanding; more than simply speaking or voting rights in a given assembly, a ‘dialogical reach’. For NGOs, this would be an ability to change the structures that necessitate their existence—a fairly basic privilege which is a virtual impossibility in the current political structures of separated spheres of influence.