A Welcome & Introduction to COV&R'99
Thee Smith
Religion Department, Emory University
Good morning! I'm Thee Smith, professor in the Religion
Department here at Emory. It is my privilege to welcome you to Atlanta,
to this eminent University, and to the eighth annual meeting of the Colloquium
on Violence and Religion--COV&R '99. This symposium on Violence Reduction
is being hosted by the faculty and staff of the Religion Department under
the leadership of our chairperson and colleague in Islamic Studies, Richard
Martin. But it also has the generous support of many other members of the
University, beginning with our Provost Rebecca Chopp, and with the Dean
of the College, Stephen Sanderson. Rebecca Chopp in particular supports
our efforts as a colleague who has studied the work of Rene Girard and
wanted very much to join us a participant and presenter. On behalf of Provost
Chopp and Dean Sanderson, together with our President Bill Chace, I extend
to you a warm welcome to Emory University!
All of us hope that in your travel to Atlanta, in
your arrival on our campus, and in finding your way to this conference
hall, you have already experienced some of our Southern hospitality. Please
let us know how we can be even more welcoming and helpful during your time
here.
There are others at the University who have also
helped make this symposium a remarkable occasion, and you will find a list
of them on the back of your conference brochure. But because no personal
names are listed there, I will call out one name in particular -- Maggie
Kulyk, my graduate student and my assistant in organizing this symposium.
If you have not already met Ms. Kulyk you will soon discover why I regard
her as our best resource during the last year of preparation. Please feel
free to share with her over the course of three days anything you particularly
appreciate about the organizational details of the symposium, in addition
to the needs and concerns that we expect to arise.
But I also want you to know something you may not
otherwise discover in the time we have together: Ms. Kulyk is a illuminating
thinker on the application of Rene Girard's work to issues of ascetical
suffering and self-sacrifice in Buddhist and in early Christian martyr
texts. Her comparative work on the Bodhisattva and the martyr traditions
is very promising for the interfaith dialogue that concerns many of us
in COV&R. In the best of worlds some of us would get a chance to talk
about such matters with Ms. Kulyk, in addition to the inevitable matters
of conference logistics.
Now I turn to the rest of us in attendance here today. I thank all of you for your part in creating this extraordinary program. In addition to the conference presenters and speakers, you have also committed to address the issues that we will explore in the next three days. Your sheer presence is the first reward for all our labors. And now that you are here at last, we can look forward to the many more rewards that will come as our presenters and speakers honor us with the best fruits of their research and insights.
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Before I make some practical remarks about the program
for today and tonight, as I will each morning, it is my privilege and responsibility
first to set the symposium in its intellectual and social-historical context.
This 8th international symposium on Violence Reduction represents
the latest effort of the Colloquium on Violence & Religion to bridge
the chasm that concerns so many of us in the academy today: the chasm between
theory and practice. In this connection I refer you the COV&R purpose
statement reprinted on the back of your conference brochure. One the one
hand the object of COV&R is to explore, criticize, and develop the
mimetic model of the relationship between violence and religion in the
genesis and maintenance of culture. On the other hand, the statement
continues, the Colloquium will be concerned with questions of both research
and application, and scholars from various fields and diverse theoretical
orientations will be encouraged to participate both in the conferences
and the publications.
Thus the symposium that we begin here today continues
the kind of inclusive approach to violence theory, and the application
of
theory, that has characterized COV&R since its inception at the beginning
of the decade. The present symposium is distinctive, however, in
broadening the interests of COV&R to include more theorists who link
theory and practice, and also to include practitioners as well
as scholars-- particularly practitioners whose applied research promises
to inform and advance the conference hypothesis also found on the back
of your brochure.
Let's review that hypothesis for a moment. It reads
as follows:
"The hypothesis is deliberately hyperbolic," I wrote
back as you recall, Cesareo. "What I am after is a dynamic way to push
COV&R members to consider the following possibility: that our pessimism
on this matter is actually a covert form of our own enthrallment to the
'primitive sacred' as monolithic and impregnable or intractable." And then
I concluded: "By having [some of the presenters] present a case 'for' the
hypothesis, I hope that our COV&R perspective will be clarified through
reexamination, and even through some dramatic if not entertaining contention
and contestation of our perspectives." Then I asked Cesareo if I could
include his comment in my remarks today, and he warmly wrote back encouraging
me to proceed:
I have no problem with your using those words of mine. I am genuinely
interested in finding out what the basis could be for such "hyperbolic" optimism.
Regards,
Cesareo
The basis for "such hyperbolic optimism" is praxial
and activist, and not merely theoretical and logical. It is grounded in
a pre-theoretical conviction that certain propositions of an existential
nature can not be addressed by cognitive means alone. Rather, they must
be tested by the cyclical process of theory followed by practice, and practice
correcting that theory, and then that theory again being tested by practice,
and so on and so forth. The conference hypothesis is posed as if the advent
of violence-free societies within the next millennium is one of those sorts
of things. An earlier example of such a proposition is the example of the
abolition of European and American slavery in the nineteenth century, the
likelihood of which could never have been determined on the basis of theory
or cognitive processes alone. But for a more contemporary example consider
what we would hear if Bishop Tutu were among us today. You know as well
as I that he would offer South Africa as a case study in the praxis of
human transformation. In that case, if our hypothesis had been formulated
during the reign of apartheid as little as thirty years ago, it would have
read something like this:
All the resources for a nonviolent transition to
a democratic state already exist in South Africa, ranging from traditional
religious and moral practices of civil disobedience and reconciliation,
to strategies of statecraft requiring the most sophisticated skills of
negotiation and compromise, with much more in-between, and these resources
need only be deployed in a concerted way in order that a new South Africa
can emerge to lead the world toward a non-racist, non-sexist, and inclusive
society in the next century.
"Unbelievable" we would have said in 1960, and in
1970, and as recently as 1980. "Unbelievable" we might still say today,
but much less automatically or compulsively, because we have before us
a concrete instance of violence-free resources being deployed so far persuasively.
Now what I am interested in here is not predicting the future of South
Africa or of our species in the next millennium. Rather I am interested
in our automatic and compulsive urge to preemptively deny prospective efficacy
to such violence-free projects.
In that regard the hypothesis is itself an exercise
in violence reduction -- in reducing our captivity to violence as theorists
of violence. It is crafted precisely in such a way as to expose and challenge
our own scholarly version of, or capitulation to, sacred violence.
The content of our capitulation is precisely our conviction that violence
is the perduring reality that humanity can never overcome in practice.
Now such a view sacralizes violence because it construes it as the
transcendent reality, in relation to which all other dimensions of reality
must submit as though to a god.
Notice our visceral response when we are asked to
entertain the prospect of violence-free societies in the next millennium
or at any point in the distant future. With that response we pay tribute
to the deified (and reified) power of violence in our history and in our
present. Here I offer a phenomenological intuition: we theorists of violence
have the same response as any devotee when told that his or her god is
not an absolute reality. We too are not only incredulous but scandalized,
if not outraged. For us too violence is as an ontological reality or the
metaphysical ground of being; that primal reality which was, now is, and
ever shall be.
But here, let me acknowledge again, I am being hyperbolic for rhetorical effect. With more restraint, circumspection and care, let me introduce a crucial distinction--a corollary to the hypothesis as stated. I propose a distinction between violence as a fundamental phenomenon in human origins and cultural formation--such as we treat in the COV&R colloquium, and institutionalized violence as an empirical feature of all social reality and cultural systems. With that distinction I will now proceed to clarify the conference hypothesis. Let us qualify it here together now, to refer not to violence as fundamental or ontological, or to violence as a mystical force that is somehow implacable or intractable. Rather we have in view the phenomenal reality of violence as discrete practices that are willed and performed by the individuals and groups that we know and work with; practices that are therefore accessible, and can be differently willed and performed.
In this connection I am reminded of Paul Ricoeur,
who spoke to us last year at the COV&R meeting in Paris. I would to
apply to this discussion Ricoeur's critique of Heidegger; specifically
Heidegger's ontological existentialism and fundamental hermeneutics. Ricoeur
preferred a minimalist ontology in which, as he put it, "For the short
route of the Analytic of Dasein [I substitute] the long route which begins
by analyses of language." Also with respect to Husserl's perceptualist
phenomenology, Ricoeur opposed a phenomenology of language and symbol that
retained contact with the human sciences and their interpretive methods.
By contrast, Ricoeur argued, Heidegger's "ontology of understanding" brings
about such a "revolution" that "the question of truth is no longer the
question of method." Accordingly, in a kind of manifesto for method Ricoeur
argued that:
Now with that critique before us I turn back to our
context here today as theorists of violence. Is it fair to suggest that
most of us are ontologists of violence, that is, that we are enthralled
or mystified by the view that all violence is of the fundamental
or ontological kind? Is that too simple a judgment? In any case, it is
hereby inferred that there is another order of violence that is deontological
and empirical, as it were. It is that performed or practiced dimension
of violence that our conference hypothesis gets at. And it is that order
of violence that many of our conference sessions, workshops and practicums
address by means of disciplines that treat violence as a system of discrete
practices amenable to diagnosis and treatment. Finally, it is that dimension
to which Gandhi refers in his aphorism that serves as a prophetic logos
for our conference this week:
With that Gandhian manifesto ringing in our ears,
let us turn to our symposium program and the presentations indicated in
your conference brochure. The program has been designed to display the
spectrum of resources available for violence reduction today. Some of those
resources are theoretical and some are applied or practical. Thus our symposium
begins with theory and application regarding hominization, primate behavior,
and pre-industrial tribal communities at one end-point or terminus of a
hypothetical spectrum. We proceed next to a number of concurrent sessions
that immediately extend the spectrum toward its other terminus: toward
international war and global contexts of violence. In between those two
extremes we will encounter many intermediate points of focus, involving
youth violence, biblical and literary contexts of violence focusing on
ethnicity and gender, and issues of conflict and justice ranging from workplace
dynamics to issues of law and legislation, genocide and human rights violations.
In addition we are fortunate to have included in
our spectrum both theological and religious studies perspectives and analyses.
Some of those perspectives are drawn from the mimetic model of the relationship
between religion and culture developed by Rene Girard, and representing
the special interest of COV&R members among us. It is our hope that
the symposium will provide a balance-of-discourse between COV&R's special
interest and other diverse interests represented among us. My own ideal
in fostering such a balance is that participants less familiar with the
mimetic model will learn all they want to about it, while those of us more
familiar will acquire new ways to further explore, criticize, and develop
the mimetic model as I have already begun to do in these introductory remarks.
A final aspect of the symposium has to do with its
practicums. I will ask you to render a kind of diagnostic contribution
to the symposium by performing what your conference brochure sometimes
calls "assessments." The term as printed in the brochure most often refers
to workshops or practicums. But even the lectures, which are typically
followed by the italicized word "discussion," can be assessed for their
usefulness in meeting the terms of the conference hypothesis. The charge
to the presenters in each case is in some way to display any of the resources
available today for deconstructing violence and/or fostering violence-free
societies. Your charge as participant observers of the lectures and
workshops
therefore, is to catalogue those resources and report your responses to
us both during and after the conference, whether formally or informally.
[Whereas some of you have been assigned to perform
these assessments formally, I will ask all of you to do so voluntarily
by using the evaluation forms found in your packets and on the announcement
tables outside in the foyer. Thank you for your contribution to this theory/practice
effort.] CHK!
* * * * * *
And now I have a different exercise in justification
to perform. As the organizer I feel compelled to "save the appearances"
of a conference on violence reduction in Atlanta that does not include
a presentation on the African American freedom movement in its "full spectrum"
of practices. The symposium does not, therefore, present as full a spectrum
as announced in the conference hypothesis. Such an omission is all the
more conspicuous in this city. For Atlanta has become a kind of "pilgrimage"
site for nonviolence adherents, as former Ambassador Andy Young has sometimes
declared. With the King Center on the one hand and the Carter Center on
the other, and with Bishop Tutu here this last year and next, Atlanta represents
a kind of convergence of violence reduction theorists and practitioners.
So where are these figures or their representatives this week?
Now one could easily answer that question in terms of practical challenges, ranging from my own limited organizational skills to the larger issue that the conference attempts to address: the split between theory and practice that particularly plagues our academic convocations and events. But these are prosaic and all-too-familiar challenges and problems. Instead of rehearsing them I would like to save the appearances here today in another, more creative way. I have the privilege of being one of the few native Atlantans among us, and on the basis of that status I hereby invite you to become fellow citizens with me in creating a new nonviolence 'legacy at Atlanta.'
For Atlanta itself needs a new legacy of nonviolence
here in the South, where it has been called the 'murder capital' of the
United States. And President Carter, Ambassador Young, and Bishop Tutu
need to learn what it is that will occupy us here over the next three days,
just as we have learned from them, so that they will be further 'resourced'
for their ongoing efforts. In this regard I must confess, dear colleagues
(if somewhat defensively), that we have not articulated or demonstrated
the import of our theories of violence with sufficient clarity to make
our work indispensable to such practitioners. I will mention only one example:
our COV&R colleague Fred Smith, my African American brother who for
many months co-organized this symposium with me, and who regrets that he
could not be here because of compelling events involving reconciliation
in South Africa. Fred Smith provides a good case study of our communicative
challenges as theorists in violence studies. Fred completed his dissertation
on mimetic theory here at Emory just two years ago, while working on the
staff of the Carter Center Interfaith Health program. While he continues
on staff at the Carter Center and while also teaching in our Candler School
of Theology here, Fred and I attempted unsuccessfully to present the focus
of our COV&R work in such a way that his Carter Center colleagues would
see its import for their applied work.
Here I may state my own conviction as a member of
COV&R: Our colloquium has developed a world-transformative theory of
scapegoating, alongside a mimetic model of violence, in which we see conflict
as rooted in our imitation of each other's desires on the one hand, and
in the runaway acquisitiveness and rivalry that arises from such desire
on the other. It is this impacted complexity of mimetic desire turned acquisitive
and rivalrous that fuels scapegoating and that makes it so intractable.
For scapegoating feeds on our species' abysmal desire to achieve unity
externally and internally, in the only way we have discovered to be fail-safe:
namely by targeting ourselves internally and targeting others externally.
This double-vectored operation of scapegoating renders
us subject to malignant forces in our histories and in our psyches, because
not only do we chronically target-out at others, we also chronically target-in
at ourselves; each individual compulsively scapegoating and attacking parts
of the psyche internal to her or him, and at the same time colluding in
social structures and processes that scapegoat and attack people external
to him or her. Again, what makes this complex so impacted and intractable
is that it is fueled or powered by desires that are legitimately yearning
or needful. Lest we forget--as we are so likely to do--it is a desire seeking
unity and union with others but most often having no better resources that
an imitation of the other's desire that in turn gives rise to acquisitiveness
and rivalry.
Now there are antidotes to this pernicious
entrapment. Over the millennia our species has discovered some few of them,
and in recent centuries we have rediscovered and refined those few.
[example from AJC article and the interfaith delegation
to Belgrade co-led by Joan Campbell and Jesse Jackson that returned from
Yugoslavia with the release of the three U.S. soldiers; cf. Westerhoff
conversation? cf. Kiran Bedi video: "Doing Time, Doing Vipassana?]
But what remains to be done is to clarify, synthesize,
and propagate those types of resources as normative practices for human
development and cultural formation. Such an achievement would provide the
missing keys that practitioners like Carter and Young and Tutu need to
perfect and fulfill their work. I see at least four domains in which such
resources are already available, but awaiting clarification and synthesis
for the sake of the human future. First, the domain of scholarly theories
and scientific studies such as we will experience this week. Other institutes
and institutions in this domain include the "United States Institute of
Peace" in Washington, D.C., academic conflict resolution programs such
as the one at George Mason University also in Washington, and the "Consortium
on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution" here in Atlanta that includes Georgia
State and Georgia Tech Universities. It also includes annual conferences
of theorists and practitioners such as this COV&R meeting and the more
well known National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution.
A second domain in which violence reduction resources
are available is the area of normative practices. The norms for violence-free
practices are codified or developed, promulgated and espoused, by such
practice-oriented or activist organizations as the Carter Center here and
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. More recently
this domain has included what Charles Villa-Vicencio and other theorists
and practitioners call "restorative justice." A related development is
the mediation and "community conferencing" movements that T.J. Scheff also
calls "therapeutic jurisprudence." Norms for violence-free practices are
also made available in more community related areas such as domestic violence
treatment programs--for example our own Men Stopping Violence program here
in Atlanta. A final area closer to my own work as a practitioner is the
whole area of workshop training and group facilitation, for example the
"prejudice reduction" and "conflict resolution "workshops of the National
Coalition Building Institute headquartered in Washington, D.C., and for
which I served as the local chapter director here in Atlanta for several
years.
A third domain of resources for violence reduction
is the one that Atlanta is famous for because of the civil rights era and
the Black student activist movement. This is the domain of strategic direct
action, such practiced by Martin Luther King, Jr., Andy Young, Jesse Jackson,
and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Nonviolent strategic
direct action has also, since the 1960s, been practiced in the United States
by other ethnic minorities, women's movements, disability activists, gay
rights advocates, and the anti-abortion movements. More recently the Einstein
Institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts has specialized in this domain,
promulgating new standards for such strategies as nonviolent sanctions,
civilian-based deterrence, and post-military defense.
A fourth and final domain of resources for the propagation
of violence-free societies in the future is the domain comprised by transformative
and ritual communities. These need not be religious communities, although
such communities are certainly the traditional loci for such transformations.
These loci comprise the Christian eucharist as proclaimed to be the anti-scapegoating
ritual par excellence, Jewish ethical and ritual traditions of tikkun
olam or "repairing the world," Gandhi's explicitly spiritual and tacitly
ritualized practices of ahimsa and satyagraha, Muslim and
Sufi exemplification of the "greater jihad"--which is the jihad
that one wages internally within oneself, the Buddhist model of the Bodhisattva
who links his or her own liberation from a world of suffering to a self-sacrificial
compassion for all sentient beings, and ethical humanists for whom all
societies contain resources for achieving the highest ideals of human flourishing.
This last, fourth category includes only a few examples
of the transformative and ritual domain of violence-reduction, and it is
usefully described last because it will also close our conference on Saturday
evening when we have planned an interfaith and "liturgical consummation"
of our symposium. And now, please join me in the next three days in making
this symposium a new contribution to Atlanta's legacy of nonviolent transformation
Before I turn to practical matters about today's
program, let me thank you again for joining us and for your excellent attention
to these introductory remarks. Thank you.