Representing Voilence and Othering Somalia by Catherine

[Xudeedi]

I had the opportunity to read this scholarly article 'Representing Voilence and "Othering" Somalia by Catherine, defining an alternative root cause contrary to what "pundits, journalists, and politicians, had settled upon as an explanatory scheme for analyzing the situation in Somalia". She claims that anthropologists and pundits of Somalia had long portrayed the Somali people as outright savages. These labels from the media point of view circulate on a daily basis aided by academics on assumptions that drew on "familiar evolutionary typologies, racist assumptions, anthropological models, and a popular craving for simplicity that would boost the American self-image."

 

Catherine quotes the racist remarks of several well-known diplomats and journalists.

Chester Cracker, the influential former diplomat and assistant secretary of state for African affairs in 1981-89, explained to Time Magazine that Siyaad Bare was "an old style tribal chieftain lording over Somalia's 8 million who are split into rival clans that have been battling each other for centuries."

 

In another journalistic mantra, Jennifer Parmelee, concluded that "The people of Somalia have long been fashioned along clan lines. Rivalries that were once thrashed out with spears and stones are now conducted with automatic weapons, an unfortunate legacy of the superpower rivalry."

 

"The emerging image of Somalis became one of savages who got ahead of themselves technologically; of tribesmen still out there wandering around the primordial landscape, bound by ancient ties and animosities, dutifully following the factional footsteps of their forefathers," resonates the literary representation of Somalis, Catherine claims. She attacks consistently I.M Lewis and earlier colonial writers who have portrayed Somalis from evolutionary model with racist definition on our social construct.

 

She quotes also the deputy chief of U.S embassy at Nairobi as telling the New York Times that "We could end up with Africa the way it was before the colonialists came, divided up into tribal enclaves,” to which Catherine responds to the illustration as powerful colonial assumptions of many who believe that colonialism improved Africa by creating European style nation-states.

 

The thesis of Catherine's essay is that events in the 20th century exasperated the Somali situation and made it what it is today---Colonialism, the expansion of global economy, super power geopolitics, massive development aid, hierarchies of status, class, and race(i.e. minorities).

 

 

Read the 14 page document Representing Voilence and "Othering" Somalia

 

by Catherine

 

Do you think she is right in her reasoning and coming to our rescue to at least show the world that we are not "tribesmen still out there wandering around the primordial landscape, bound by ancient ties and animosities, dutifully following the factional footsteps of their forefathers," as she claims. I believe the international powers have manipulated politcally our social plight to isolate our country and people from the world and further deprive us of the rights to govern our selves peacefully, even before the civil war.