Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T12:51:03.586Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Those Who “Witness the Evil”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Abstract

For the better part of the last decade, Canadian peacekeepers have been encouraged to frame their activities in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia as encounters with “absolute evil.” Peacekeeping is seen as a moral project in which the North civilizes the South. Using the Canadian peacekeeping context, I reflect on President Bush's use of the phrase “axis of evil” in the New World Order. 1 argue that this phrase reveals an epistemology structured by notions of the civilized (White) North and the barbaric (Racialized) South. These racial underpinnings give the concept of an “axis of evil” its currency in countries of the North.

Type
Forum on September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives on Terrorism
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achebe, Chinua. 1988. An image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In Hopes and impediments: Selected essays, 1965–1987. London: Hienemann.Google Scholar
Anidjar, Gil. 2002. Introduction. In Acts of religion, ed. Derrida, Jacques and Anidjar, Gil. New York: Routledge, 2002: 1–39.Google Scholar
Apocalypse Now. 1979. Produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. 153 min. Omne Zoetrope Films. Videocassette.Google Scholar
Bellett, Gerry. 2000. Traumatized former peacekeepers will be offered counselling in B.C. The Vancouver Sun, 7 July.Google Scholar
Berlant, Lauren. 2001. The subject of true feeling: Pain, privacy, and politics. In Feminist consequences: Theory for the new century, ed. Bronfen, Elisabeth and Kavka, Misha. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
CBC National, This Magazine. 1998. The unseen scars: Post traumatic stress disorder. Retrieved 25 November 1998 from the World Wide Web: http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/ptsd/wounds.html.Google Scholar
CBC National, This Magazine. 2000. Death and Duty Interview with Romeo D'Allaire. Interviewed by Brian Stewart, 3 July. Retrieved 12 April 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.cbc.ca/news/national/magazine/dallaire/index.html.Google Scholar
CBC Newsworld. 1998. “Dying to tell the story,” television documentary on “The Passionate Eye” 23 July.Google Scholar
CBC Newsworld. 1998. “The unseen scars,” television documentary 25 November.Google Scholar
Conrad, Joseph. 1966. The heart of darkness. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
Faulkner, William. 1951. Absalom, absalom New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Goldberg, David. 1993. Racist culture. Philosophy and the politics of meaning. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Lyman, Rick. 2002. “Movie backs off addressing September 11.” The Toronto Star, 11 January.Google Scholar
Off, Carol. 2000. The lion, the fox and the eagle. A story of generals and justice in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. Canada: Random House.Google Scholar
Razack, Sherene. 2000. From the ‘Clean snows of Petawawa’: The violence of Canadian peacekeepers in Somalia. Cultural Anthropology 15(1): 127–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Said, Edward. 1992. The question of Palestine. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. 1993. Culture and imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.Google Scholar
Savran, David. 1998. Taking it like a man: White masculinity, masochism, and contemporary American culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slotkin, Richard. 1973. Regeneration through violence: The Mythology of the American frontier, 1600–1860. Middletown: Conn.: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Walker, William. 2002. “Frum no longer one of the president's men.” Toronto Star, 26 February.Google Scholar
Witness the Evil. 1998. Produced by the Department of National Defence, Canada. 30 min. Videocassette.Google Scholar