Author: Ophelia Benson

What children in Japan learn about their own recent past:

We’ve learnt that Japan fought a war with China and colonised parts of the country. Sometimes the Japanese were a bit cruel, forcing places to adopt Japanese names and forcing people to adopt the Japanese language. But we didn’t really get into the details of what actually happened. I feel my understanding of the war is a bit thin.

Yeah, it is. It’s those textbooks we keep hearing about – the ones that infuriate the Chinese and Koreans (and Indonesians? Indians? Burmese? Thais? We don’t hear so much about that) because they radically minimize what Japan actually did when it ‘fought a war with’ (i.e. invaded) China (and the rest of East Asia). It involved a little more than forcing places to adopt Japanese names and forcing people to adopt the Japanese language. Forced labour in lethal conditions would be one item.

Turkey, Japan, Serbia; denial denial denial. Not good.

What a nice birthday present – Jesus and Mo complaining about me over the urinals. They are so sweet to say so – I’m tactless, my language is disrespectful and offensive, I’m a rude aggressive fundamentalist atheist. [dabs eyes with silken hanky] I know; everyone says that; but when it’s Jesus and Mo themselves, it means something. And then on top of it all Jesus says I have a point. I always said he was a shrewd bastard.

Terry Sanderson notes that the sums don’t add up.

The enquiry set up by Communities minister Ruth Kelly aimed at finding ways to challenge “barriers to integration and cohesion” has published an interim report, that can only be described as contradictory and counterproductive. The Commission on Integration and Cohesion’s report suggests that “faith schools” play no part in segregation while at the same time admitting that school is probably the best way to break down barriers between communities.

Well see that’s because…’faith schools’ are of course obviously a good and cuddly thing (if they weren’t they wouldn’t have the word ‘faith’ in their name) so they can’t play any part in segregation because that would be a bad uncuddly thing, and at the same time of course obviously school is the best way to break down barriers between communities because all of that is good and cuddly too so it’s good and cuddly to say so. ‘Faith’ schools don’t segregate, schools break down barriers between ‘communities,’ ‘communities’ are harmonious and unified and the source of identity and self-esteem and warmth and strong teeth, all ‘communities’ love each other because they are all so well-equipped with harmony and unity and identity and warmth so there are no problems so they have no reason not to all love each other so everything is good and cohesive. Just keep saying the words ‘faith’ and ‘community’ over and over and over and over and everything will be fine. Really. Promise. That will fix everything.

Some people have told us that they see faith schools as a significant barrier to integration and cohesion. Others, especially from faith communities have said faith schools are vital to helping their young people develop as strong and confident British citizens.

Really?! People from ‘faith communities’ tell you ‘faith schools’ are a good thing – you don’t say! So you listen intently and, being madly in love with ‘faith’ yourselves (apparently), you believe them and ignore the people who tell you the other thing. You also ignore quite a lot of recent history. [whispers] Northern Ireland comes to mind…

It is clear that the authors of this report are listening only to those they want to hear. They say that the “faith communities” have told them that faith schools are a good idea. Of course they have. “Faith schools” are the last hope of survival for “faith communities”. This enquiry will achieve nothing – indeed, will make things worse if it is to continue to be conducted in this blinkered way. If it uncovers evidence and then dismisses it because it doesn’t fit in with the government’s policy of promoting faith schools, then it is downright dangerous.

Ah yes the old ‘ignoring evidence because it doesn’t fit with what you want to do’ trick. I think this is where we came in.

A recent report from Professor Irene Bruegel of the South Bank University was emphatic that the government’s idea of “twinning” faith schools achieved precisely the opposite of what was intended. It simply increases the sense of “us” and “them” that “faith schools” engender. Sending children on occasional visits to other schools simply increased tension and suspicion between them. Crucially, Professor Bruegel’s research showed that children from different ethnic groups and religions must mix on a daily basis in primary schools in order for ethnically diverse friendships to flourish into adult life, and indeed for the parents of school children to become better integrated. This is what the cohesion report should have recommended. Sadly, it has been hijacked by religious protagonists both inside and outside government who are more interested in fostering faith than in solving the very real problems that religiously – and increasingly, ethnically – segregated schools will create.

Well, congratulations; you’re well on the way to balkanization by education. Fasten your seat belts.

I saw something unsettling (to put it mildly) on tv last night. It’s about the Burma railway, and the horrible conditions under which it was built by forced labour. I knew about it, but not enough; not nearly enough. I especially didn’t know that it was built not only by prisoners of war but also by (as the show called them) Asians – simply conscripted people from South India, Malaya, Thailand and other places. Their death rate was much worse than that of the prisoners, which was bad enough.

There was one memorable segment where the film maker and the Indian engineer who accompanies him hike laboriously through dense jungle to arrive at the top of what is revealed to be a constructed embankment. The FM gets the engineer to climb down the embankment. The engineer takes only a few struggling steps down before saying how difficult it is; the FM says ‘And remember most of them were barefoot.’ ‘They had no boots?’ the engineer says. ‘Most of them had no boots.’ The engineer struggles all the way down; the FM calls down to him ‘Now find a 20 pound rock and carry it up.’ The engineer is very miserable, but finds this heavy rock (which stands for the basket of soil the workers had to carry up) and sets off; he falls down almost at once. With immense effort, panting, grunting, wretched, he finally manages it. The FM calculates the length and volume of the embankment and the number of baskets needed to build the embankment then brightly says ‘Now you need to do that only 12 million more times.’ One trip was a nightmare, and the engineer was fully dressed, rested, well fed, and not ill or injured; furthermore it wasn’t monsoon season. The people who did the work for real were all starving, exhausted, injured, ill, underclothed, and much of the time it was monsoon season. It’s hard to imagine.

Though records are sketchy, approximately 61,000 Allied prisoners of war are believed to have labored on the railway, including 30,000 British, 18,000 Dutch, 13,000 Australian, and 700 American soldiers. An estimated 16,000 of those troops died, many of them from diseases like cholera, beri beri, malaria, and typhoid, most during an intensified period of construction known as “speedo” that commenced in January 1943. Another 200,000 Asian laborers, mostly Thai, were forced to work on the railway. More than 80,000 lost their lives.

First thing today I googled Burma railway.

The construction of the Burma Railway is only one of many major war crimes committed by Japan in Asia during the war. It is regarded as a major event in the “Asian Holocaust”, during which millions of civilians and POWs were killed by Japanese personnel.

I didn’t know there was an Asian Holocaust – at least I didn’t know it was called that, and I didn’t realize how bad it was outside China. Something else I need to know more about. The narrator of the tv show did say the death rate among the Asians is not as well known (presumably in the West) as that of the prisoners of war. Well clearly it should be. And what about those Japanese textbooks…

You did have a look at the work of Carolyn Guertin when I posted the link in News, right? Do rush to have a read if you haven’t – it’s – what shall I say – it’s quantum. That’s what it is, it’s quantum.

Quantum feminist works make no attempt to reconcile this dislocation between networked nodes and their gaps in space-time. Instead, they foreground and use this aspect, highlighting the disjunctures of the subject’s position as she is depicted and as she voyages through the text…In her essay “The Roots of Nonlinearity,” hypertextualist Christie Sheffield Sanford says that modern physics has erased the concept of absolutes in time and space and that this is evident in the texts of the new media as well. She uses indeterminacy theorist Werner Heisenberg to support her theories…

Well of course she does. Who doesn’t? Heisenberg, indeterminacy, quantum, absolutes in time and space and texts of new media; it’s all basically the same thing. Right? Right.

David Thompson comments here. And the author herself comments on this post at the Dawkins site (last comment on the page, number 50). She gives the predictable, and very irritating, defense.

Do I really need to point out that this was a dissertation written for specialists working in my field and not a work for general publication? If it were the latter, it would indeed be a different text and worthy of critique – although not this kind.

Nope. What you need to point out is what ‘quantum feminist works’ might be; what you need to point out is why you use the word ‘quantum’ to mean any old thing you feel like; what you need to point out is why you shelter behind your own specialisthood but don’t scruple to help yourself to the vocabulary of physics; what you need to point out is what is ‘specialist’ about misusing technical language for purposes of ornamenting some uninspiring observations about following hyperlinks.

Guertin has a Teaching Philosophy.

Cyberfeminisms writ large are what I call ‘quantum feminisms,’ lived as much in the scientific world as in the literary, personal as much as political. Quantum feminisms are situated knowledges interpolated by experience and embodied presence and, most importantly, are personal philosophies. As a potential pedagogical model, quantum feminisms allow me to use their own theoretical and scientific principles to produce a student-centred environment…

What she calls ‘quantum feminisms’ – why? Why not call them amyotrophic feminisms? Why not call them fermionic condensate feminisms? Why not call them Huey Dewey and Louie feminisms? Why quantum? Because – erm – it impresses the credulous? That’s my guess. My quantum guess.