Debra Bergoffen | George Mason University (original) (raw)

Papers by Debra Bergoffen

An interrogation of our desire to represent the representable of the Final Solution

Nietzsche sees that the abyss created by God’s death will require us to create new games. This pa... more Nietzsche sees that the abyss created by God’s death will require us to create new games. This paper asks what the new game of politics might look like once the one truth fiction and the stable identity illusion and their accompanying politics of the despised enemy are driven from the scene. It begins by taking up Nietzsche’s concept of the worthy enemy and notes the ways in which the difference between the enemy and the friend is blurred once evil enemies are no longer necessary for justifying political existence and action. In giving us a politics of worthy enemies, Nietzsche gives us the possibility of a politics that does not degenerate into a legitimation of holocausts, genocides, ethnic cleansings, fatwahs or wars against evil empires.

This paper is (pre) occupied with two bodies: the body of the last man and the body of the overma... more This paper is (pre) occupied with two bodies: the body of the last man and the body of the overman. Finding, with Nietzsche, that the overman will appear only when the last man has disappeared, it examines the body of the last man to discern what this disappearance might entail. It finds that the body of the last man, as the embodiment of the ascetic ideals of Christianity and Platonism also embodies the misogyny of these Western traditions. The body of the last man is the paradigmatic masculine body. It is a self possessed autonomous body; a body unsullied by messy materialities (these are deposited onto paradigmatic women’s bodies). It creates itself in the image of an invulnerable body, a self enclosed coherent entity that looks out onto the world but refuses to engage it on anything other than the laws of its making. As a controlled and controlling body, it knows nothing of the risks and joys of becoming. By Nietzsche’s criteria of life affirmation, it is a sick, if not dead body. How to find a way from this body to the body of the overman is the question.
Posing the question in this way, I propose the following thesis: the route to the body of the overman lies in a woman’s body divested of its stigma. Taking this route I discover that the body of the overman will live the myth of the eternal return as a riddle whose answer to the question of how to affirm the once more of life lies in an affirmation of the risks of pregnancy and its threat to the stabilities of a coherent and autonomous subjectivity, rather than in the nauseating demand that we affirm the last man’s return.

An interrogation of our desire to represent the representable of the Final Solution

Forty years ago, in 1975, Susan Brownmiller’s analysis of sexual violence – Against Our Will: Men... more Forty years ago, in 1975, Susan Brownmiller’s analysis of sexual violence – Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape – was first published. Her description of the historical pervasiveness and social ubiquity of sexual violence in war and peace shocked many, but also encouraged the women’s movement to systemically consider the phenomenon of sexual violence as a central element of women’s oppression.

The Vietnam War, and twenty years later, the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda brought the pervasiveness and persistence of sexual violence in armed conflict in sharp focus. Women and men have made their experiences of sexual violence in armed conflict public. Political and social practitioners have engaged with this phenomenon; it has been the subject of artistic and literary works, and the object of criminal prosecutions. An interdisciplinary scholarly field is now established.

Yet despite this increase of public and academic awareness, there is little consensus about the pervasiveness of this violence, it’s variations and its different forms. There is disagreement about the relationship of pre-war, wartime, and postwar circumstances, or the cultural and social models of gender that facilitate the perpetration of sexual violence. Current debates, such as ›sexual violence as a weapon of war‹, may be counterproductive since they can reduce it to a strategically implemented form of excessive violence. They often ignore the complex framework in which this violence occurs, which impedes the analysis of its broader impact and meaning. Essential questions such as the practices of gendering/ ›doing gender‹ or the intertwined nature of violence and sexuality increasingly disappear from the public political discourse. Moreover, even though many insights on the phenomenon have been accumulated, the perpetration of sexual violence in armed conflicts still continues unabated.

We still face more questions than satisfying explanations. It is time to reflect on the state of the field: What do we know and not yet know about the practices of sexual violence in armed conflict? How can we better describe incidences, motivations and responses? What kind of questions do we need to ask, and what theoretical approaches, methods and forms of communication are appropriate to shed light on these blind spots?

This international and interdisciplinary conference explores how wartime sexual violence is understood in the field and identifies the gaps in existing knowledge, with the aim of moving beyond current impasses and understanding. To do this, we aim to collaboratively develop a framework that sketches out the complex and mutable factors involved. We will do so through a reflection upon and close reading of sources, with the aim of positioning the occurrence of sexual violence in armed conflicts in the broader historical, social, and cultural context of gendered social conditions, cultural imaginations, ideas and attitudes, political strategies and power relations.

Eurozine, 2009

What conceptions of gender underlie military policy towards sexual violence? Is the specific form... more What conceptions of gender underlie military policy towards sexual violence? Is the specific form the violence takes determined by the type of warfare? To what extent is sexual violence in wartime different to that in peacetime? And what does a closer examination of homosexual violence add to our understanding? A roundtable discussion organized by the Hamburg Institute of Social Research.

Mittelweg 36, 2009

Gaby Zipfel: Empirische Daten verweisen darauf, dass sowohl Formen als auch Häufigkeit sexueller ... more Gaby Zipfel: Empirische Daten verweisen darauf, dass sowohl Formen als auch Häufigkeit sexueller Gewalt an unterschiedlichen Kriegsschauplätzen stark variieren. In manchen Konflikten ist deren Ausübung weit verbreitet, in anderen tritt sie eher als Randerscheinung auf. Sie kann im Verlauf eines Konflikts zu-, aber auch abnehmen. In manchen Fällen scheint sexuelle Gewalt ein Einzelphänomen zu sein und nur in bestimmten Kampfsituationen aufzutauchen, in anderen geht sie mit einer Eskalation militärischer Gewalt einher, die üblicherweise mit der Triade Mord – Plünderung – Vergewaltigung beschrieben wird. Sexuelle Gewalt kann offenbar sowohl Teil einer militärischen Strategie als auch Folge einer zunehmenden Missachtung von Verhaltensregeln und disziplinarischen Vorgaben sein. Militärische Befehlshaber rechnen damit, dass Normen, die die Ausübung von Gewalt kontrollieren und begrenzen sollen, sich im Kampfgeschehen auflösen können. Strategische Überlegungen können darauf abzielen, sexuelle Gewalt als Mittel der Kriegführung einzusetzen, sofern dieser Einsatz geeignet ist, Kampfziele zu unterstützen. Zugleich können Verstöße gegen die militärische Disziplin mit harten Strafen belegt werden, wenn sie diesen Zielen zuwiderlaufen.

Ist das Vorkommen oder Ausbleiben sexueller Gewalt demnach fundamental abhängig von der Art der Kriegführung? Welche Genderkonstruktionen liegen dem Umgang mit sexueller Gewalt zugrunde? Lässt sich möglicherweise gar eine kulturübergreifende verdeckte Übereinkunft beobachten, der zufolge Männer sich grundsätzlich das Recht zugestehen, auf einen als weiblich identifizierten Körper zuzugreifen, und die dem Umgang mit sexueller Gewalt in kriegerischen Konflikten als Subtext unterlegt sind?

Table of Contents in attachment, 2019

In the mid 1970s, at the peak of the women’s movement, feminist activism and research opened the ... more In the mid 1970s, at the peak of the women’s movement, feminist activism and research opened the door to questions that are still pressing today. While sexual violence has gained public awareness and become a subject in academic debate, national and international politics, efforts to understand and strategies to prevent this form of violence remain inadequate. Who are the perpetrators? How is sexual violence tied to other forms of violence? What are the consequences for individual victims and societies?
Compiled by the International Research Group ‘Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict’ (SVAC), this volume takes an interdisciplinary approach. Its enquiry employs four key relationships: War/Power, Violence/Sexuality, Gender/Engendering and Visibility/Invisibility. Through these, the authors aim to develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of sexual violence in armed conflict.

Currently available via Zubaan books (https://zubaanbooks.com/shop/in-plain-sight/ ); will soon be distributed by Chicago University Press (https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/I/bo46812960.html)