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California State University, Dominguez Hills
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Created: December 10, 2001
Latest Update: December 10, 2001
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Martyrs, the Middle East, and the Death Drive

Journal entry by Angela Splane and Kenyatta White

Copyright: Jeanne Curran, Susan R. Takata, and Angela splane and Kenyatta White: December 2001.
"Fair Use" encouraged.

On Tuesday, November 27, 2001, Angela Splane and Kenyatta White wrote:

Kenyata White and Angela Splane will be discussing Sacrificial Self-Destructiveness.

The death drive was displayed by the terroist attacks on America by Bin Laden's Camp.The death drive is the willingness to die for something that a person or a group of people believe in. (Reference 1) Bin Laden's camp of people clearly displayed their disgust towards America when they took over our aircraft and crashed the aircrafts into the World Trade Center. The people that assisted Bin Laden in the unthinkable attacks on America were willing to die and kill for Bin Laden and for their beliefs. The terriost attacks were examples of "death drive." Angela and I feel that if we Americans can have the same belief system that other countries have as far as standing by a feeling or belief, America would be an even stronger country than we already are. We are and always will be adversaries to the Afigasnistan people no matter what we do. Even if we capture Bin Laden we will still have to deal with the other people that are working with him. This war is definetly far from over.
Site accessed December 10, 2001.

On Monday, December 10, 2001, jeanne responded:

Yo, guys. Absence hurts. And I think your absences hurt you in this submission. First of all, you need to think of all this within the context of the orientation of the whole class: peacemaking. There are two texts for this course. Farganis is one. The other is Fellman's Rambo and the Dalai Lama. Yet you and Angela conclude that
"Angela and I feel that if we Americans can have the same belief system that other countries have as far as standing by a feeling or belief, America would be an even stronger country than we already are."

You want the US to take up terrorism, to a greater extent than our foreign policy has already done so??? Could you both have missed all the lectures and discussions on adversarialism, obsessive adversarialism, and the dire consequences to humanity if we do not cease to wage war? I am not objecting to your disagreeing with me. I am objecting to your complete failure to take into account a major theoretical approach of this course. How can you discuss the "death drive" without linking it conceptually to adversarialism? And how, after our extensive discussions on post-colonialism, can you speak of the people of Afghanistan as a monolith, and as permanent foes?

I think you need to clean up your conceptual linking in a hurry. And I think you need to take dominant discourse, post-colonialism, and adversarialism into account in your conclusions.

References