Reeyo;942670 wrote: I think Al is jealous Safferz. Poor thing you'v added to his injured heart. He was just recovering from with the public break-up with Oba. This explains a lot.

No problem Wadani, I'm still reading but that's what I'm getting so far. Theorists are always unnecessarily dense, this was a sentence in a chapter I was reading last week from Homi Bhabha's "The Location of Culture": If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to “normalize” formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality. :mad:

Chimera;942736 wrote: War slap these these poor fisherman on the wrists, record their names and then let them go, and keep your eye out for the big trawlers coming from Spain, France , China and South Korea that literally steal billions worth of fish. They catch in a minute what these poor fisherman work for a month. +1

Wadani;942714 wrote: Yara jilci this paragraph. "Homo sacer" was a figure in Roman law who was essentially a social and political outcast living in the society, but denied all rights within the political system -- so living a "bare life" in the space between law and life (he calls it the "state of exception"), and their inclusion/exclusion determined by the sovereign state. Agamben is basically arguing that this has been the meaning of sovereignty since ancient times, that life itself is governed ("biopower") and sovereignty is the power to decide who is incorporated into the political body and how ("good life"), and who is excluded and how ("bare life" in the state of exception).

SomaliPhilosopher;942696 wrote: Its a qabil thing Apophis lool no... I looked at the threads Reeyo started and I don't see anything. But my apologies if this has already been done.

Reeyo;942694 wrote: Wad, Are you serious? You want the population to explore their feelings and how they have been victimized by hebal hebal? What makes you think suppressing people's memories and histories will help matters? How can forgiveness happen without discussion and acknowledgment?

Beautiful

Alpha Blondy;942660 wrote: i'm quite sure you've got your fingers firmly wrapped around 2 scripts in the form of wadani and adams. you've gone to extreme lengths to project the idea that you're from boston. its not impressing Al...ee sida uula soco. your script effort is mighty and nothing like ever seen before on SOL. congrats. :mad: lool you really believe this Alpha?

Reeyo;942644 wrote: The only that can be done is for everyone to accept a neutral history, open a discourse and each person equipped with some tools to create an National Somali identity. Neutral history does not exist, and I find the idea oppressive. An open confrontation of our recent past and the hearing out of each other's grievances is the only way to rebuild trust in one another as Somalis and move forward.

SomaliPhilosopher;942622 wrote: These talks of romance between SP and Safferz must stop! I can no longer bear the emotional distraught caused by this love affair. The amount of clan-incited hate messages from Wadani is alarming and I truly fear for my life. Then again they say dangerous love is the best kind... hmm I agree it must stop, and like I said before, let the girl play the SOL field. I like keeping my options open, and the boys wrapped around my finger

Tonight's reading (revisiting Agamben this week for a paper): The work of Giorgio Agamben, one of Italy's most important and original philosophers, has been based on an uncommon erudition in classical traditions of philosophy and rhetoric, the grammarians of late antiquity, Christian theology, and modern philosophy. Recently, Agamben has begun to direct his thinking to the constitution of the social and to some concrete, ethico-political conclusions concerning the state of society today, and the place of the individual within it. In Homo Sacer, Agamben aims to connect the problem of pure possibility, potentiality, and power with the problem of political and social ethics in a context where the latter has lost its previous religious, metaphysical, and cultural grounding. Taking his cue from Foucault's fragmentary analysis of biopolitics, Agamben probes with great breadth, intensity, and acuteness the covert or implicit presence of an idea of biopolitics in the history of traditional political theory. He argues that from the earliest treatises of political theory, notably in Aristotle's notion of man as a political animal, and throughout the history of Western thinking about sovereignty (whether of the king or the state), a notion of sovereignty as power over "life" is implicit. The reason it remains merely implicit has to do, according to Agamben, with the way the sacred, or the idea of sacrality, becomes indissociable from the idea of sovereignty. Drawing upon Carl Schmitt's idea of the sovereign's status as the exception to the rules he safeguards, and on anthropological research that reveals the close interlinking of the sacred and the taboo, Agamben defines the sacred person as one who can be killed and yet not sacrificed—a paradox he sees as operative in the status of the modern individual living in a system that exerts control over the collective "naked life" of all individuals.

OdaySomali;942621 wrote: BUt reading fiction I would feel like I am wasting my time, reading someone's made up stories... nowadays that's how I view it. Hence why I asked what your motivaiton is? The richness of language, the thrill of a good plot? I also think the line between non-fiction and fiction is a blurry one, they use many of the same narrative techniques and literary devices.

Wadani;942613 wrote: But that's wat Somali customary law does though. Our traditional Xeer is notorious for seeking compensation (which is an acceptance of transgression on the part of the guilty party) in lieu of prosecution/punishment. I think compensation is a form of punishment too, albeit a lesser one than a lengthy prison term or an execution. When I suggested a truth and reconciliation process, I didn't mean putting people on trial.

Alpha Blondy;942597 wrote: under the guise of pseudo-intellectualism, this waxaar is posting all sorts. :mad:

Haatu;942589 wrote: I think we should bring it down to an individual level if possible. Offenders should seek forgiveness from the victims in person if possible. This is why I don't like the suggestion of using Somali customary law, which operates on the basis of group/clan grievance, mediation and compensation. Seems to reinscribe the very seem problems of clan that we're talking about here. I don't think this should be about prosecuting crimes (what the Gacaca system in Rwanda seeks to do), but about opening up a national conversation that will result in the widespread acceptance of everyone's transgressions and hopefully instill faith in the fellow Somali.

Wadani;942582 wrote: Good thread. The book seems very interesting. I hate the fact that there is so much to read and so little time. How do u choose what to read, and when to read? Both questions present their own challenges and dilemmas. Any advice Safferz? As for me, I'm currently reading Fukyamas 'The Origins of Political Order'. I have no time to read for pleasure anymore Everything is either assigned for a class, on a reading list for the four fields I'm being examined on next year, or directly related to a paper I'm working on. Averaging about 4-5 books a week right now, last semester it was a book a day.

I just finished this book this morning, good stuff: Sexual desire has long played a key role in Western judgments about the value of Arab civilization. In the past, Westerners viewed the Arab world as licentious, and Western intolerance of sex led them to brand Arabs as decadent; but as Western society became more sexually open, the supposedly prudish Arabs soon became viewed as backward. Rather than focusing exclusively on how these views developed in the West, in Desiring Arabs Joseph A. Massad reveals the history of how Arabs represented their own sexual desires. To this aim, he assembles a massive and diverse compendium of Arabic writing from the nineteenth century to the present in order to chart the changes in Arab sexual attitudes and their links to Arab notions of cultural heritage and civilization. A work of impressive scope and erudition, Massad’s chronicle of both the history and modern permutations of the debate over representations of sexual desires and practices in the Arab world is a crucial addition to our understanding of a frequently oversimplified and vilified culture.

Wadani;942541 wrote: Yes, good idea. I think we have a lot to learn from both South Africa and Rwanda. Rwanda is a bit iffy. They set up the Gacaca courts as a transitional justice system, but I read a paper recently arguing that in practice it's just been a way to throw Hutu people in prison with very little evidence and not allowing them to defend themselves.

Alpha Blondy;942531 wrote: LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL. if the humour is lost on you, i sheeg. Iol I love how whether it's London, Queen St in Toronto, or Williamsburg in Brooklyn, they are EXACTLY THE SAME.

Haatu;942329 wrote: But that's the question behind this whole argument, just who should give the apology? I wonder if something modeled after South Africa's truth and reconciliation committees after apartheid could work for us... staged public hearings to bear witness to the various atrocities experienced by Somalis (something that cut across clan and affected everyone in different ways), and grant amnesty to those who publicly admit to their crimes. The emphasis would be national reconciliation and healing by confronting our past, rather than prosecution. Just a thought.

Wadani;942518 wrote: U don't like hipsters? No. Does anyone like hipsters?

Alpha Blondy;942513 wrote: Apo is smarter and better than Saffz. she's always boasting about how intellectually endowed..... she is, ma istidhi? Saffz - what's the girth of your talents, inaar? so daa, dee. p.s - Apo, i think you're wasting your time in debating with Saffz. just my opinion. Alpha, you are the forum equivalent of those aholes in high school who go "OHHHH" when people exchange words on the yard, who then run away when punches start flying.

Apophis;942489 wrote: Nice try at shifting your intellectual inferiority this way, try again. And please, don't flatter yourself with this “ I'm in academia" nonsense. We know how the term has little to no meaning in North America. The evidence being the woeful intellect of exchange students who come to these shores. Highly embarrassing. ... except the United States has the best universities in the world :rolleyes: Wadani;942496 wrote: Lmao. Soodiga inaadeerkaa meesha ku baabiiyay. Oo illeen naxariis days baad tahay. lool it's important to pick your battles. Y'all know I can flex on SOL when I want to

lmao the Jimmy Kimmel clip didn't appear when I first commented, just watched it now. I've always wanted to go to Coachella for the bands but the dumb hipster crowds are a major turn off. Still, maybe next year...

Apophis;942469 wrote: The whole topic was created simply to give women degrees. It has no academic value and is neither rigorous nor useful in the real world. It's simply another attempt to appease bra burning feminists. Seriously, what insights does "gender studies" offer which isn't apparent to anyone familiar with psychological theories? None. Of course that isnt to say you won't find a job (entirely unrelated to the topic of course) but meh. I'm not getting into this debate, but I think it's fair to say I've gotten a much better education than you have as a gender studies major, judging by the quality of your posts and depth of your thinking. If it had no academic value, I wouldn't be in academia now.