Police Brutality and the Weaponization of Technology iv. Origin Stories of Technologies Sentinelese Tribe

origin stories of technologies a reflection on the sentinelese tribe

The Sentinelese are a tribe on the North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal. While the island is under the jurisdiction of the Indian government, the people have mostly been left alone because they are considered to be one of the very few communities globally that live a lifestyle that has been compared to the “Stone Age.” The Sentinelese tribe gathered international attention a few years ago when a Christian missionary was killed by an arrow shot by a member of the tribe. What is talked about less is how he was warned by the tribe multiple times, but he persisted to engage with them, armed with a white savior complex. 67

Only a few anthropologists have been able to contact the tribe, but the ones that have report an interesting phenomenon. While the tribe is wary of outsiders, some anthropologists were able to make contact after they brought the tribe coconuts—a fruit that does not grow on the island. They began to grow fond of coconuts and would reach the boats to collect them. Some expeditions attempted to bring them other gifts, but found that while the group accepted metal pots and pans, they rejected anything plastic and skewered the pig they were gifted. 68

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image source: forbes.com

This is an interesting topic to analyze, because it raises the question of knowledge of the original instrumentalities of technologies. The tribe does not mine metal, and their only contact with the substance has been through shipwrecks, but they were able to analyze the affordances of the material without having a prior knowledge of its origin story. This begs the question, how much of our attachment and understanding of the technologies around us stem from our awarerness of where that technology comes from and what it is made of? Would we be more accepting of radical change, if we were not attached to the normativity of use and were estranged from origin stories and intended use of the technologies around us? Where does that attachment to normativity come from? Is it conditioning to follow ideology or is what the “scientists” researching the Anthropocene would call “human nature” or “anthropocentrism?”

This thesis rejects those concepts and postulates that normativity is a product of conditioning, and that an estrangement is necessary to imagine new subjectivities.

67. Vishvajit Pandya. “Through Lens and Text: Constructions of a ‘Stone Age’ Tribe in the Andaman Islands.” History Workshop Journal, no. 67(2009): 173-93.

68. Kiona N. Smith, “Everything We Know About The Isolated Sentinelese People Of North Sentinel Island,” Forbes (Forbes Magazine, November 30, 2018), https://www. forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2018/11/30/everythingwe-know-about-the-isolated-sentinelese-people-of-northsentinel-island/.

image source: https://fromtheparapet.wordpress.com/tag/uncontacted-tribes/

Eichmann and the Banality of Evil

In 1961 when Adolf Eichmann stood trial in Jerusalem for Crimes against Humanity, his final plea included the words “I did not persecute

Jews with avidity and passion. That is what the government did. Nor could the persecution be carried out other than by a government. But I never… I accuse the leaders of abusing my obedience. At that time obedience was demanded, just as in the future it will also be demanded of the subordinate. Obedience

is commended as a virtue.” 69 Hannah Arendt, a political theorist travelling to Israel to cover the trials for the New Yorker, expected a monster, because no human could be capable of the atrocities committed by Eichmann. But after observing the trial and hearing him speak and plead not guilty, Arendt’s image of a monster was dismantled by his “normal” appearance. She coined the concept “banality of evil” and argued that the most terrifying aspect of his testimony and his actions that led to it, was his thoughtlessness. 70 As Donna Haraway analyzes Arendt’s book, Eichmann on Trial: A Report on the Banality of Evil, she observes “Here was someone who could not be a wayfarer, could not entangle, could not track the lines of living and dying, could not cultivate response-ability, could not make present to itself what it is doing, could not live in consequences or with consequence, could not compost. Function mattered, duty mattered, but the world did not matter for Eichmann. The world does not matter in ordinary thoughtlessness.” 71 Eichmann’s inability to think beyond the normative established by the Nazi regime is an extreme, but not isolated, analogue to the banality of the capitalocentric world—a limited standard human space within the larger world of the planet, and from within which that larger world “does not matter.” Such normative determinism introduces a plurality of normatives that we accept as standards and which we “obey.”. There exists a structural blindness to what may lie beyond those established narratives. Whether or not Eichmann was lying is inconsequential to this argument. What matters is that he reveals how significantly small his—and, by analogy, our—sphere of thought extends, by playing the victim and attributing virtue to the obedience to the normative of the time.

normative determinism

How do Standard Concepts of Morality Translate into Thoughtless Patronage of Law and the Construction of an Oikos?

Adolf Eichmann at his trial in 1961, Jerusalem Image Source: npr.org

69. “Adolf Eichmann’s Final Plea: ‘In His Own Words.’” The Holocaust History - A People’s and Survivor History - Remember.org. Accessed November 18, 2019. https://remember.org/eichmann/ownwords. 70. Judith Butler,“Hannah Arendt’s Death Sentences.” Comparative Literature Studies 48, no. 3 (2011): 280. https://doi.org/10.5325/complitstudies.48.3.0280. 71. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 36 72. Ibid, 35

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“What is it to surrender the capacity to think?” 72 Donna Haraway

Kashmir: Article 370 and the Systemic Burning of a Constructed Utopia

In August 2019, India scrapped Article 370 from the Indian Constitution, repealing an amendment that was put in place in 1957, granting a special status to the State of Jammu and Kashmir. This was granted because the Muslim majority population of Kashmir did not want to be a part of India after India-Pakistan partition. India won them over by incorporating Article 370 as a promise of partial autonomy. 73 In 2019, India, under the rule of Narendra Modi, repealed this article and Kashmir was put under a communications and travel lockdown. What was already a contested and highly militarized area, saw more military being deployed, leading to human rights abuses reaching new heights. This lockdown lasted 9 months, with no internet services available even after those 9 months. 74 This action comes after an exponential rise in nationalistic tendencies since the 2014 elections. A large part of the Indian population, in the face of these atrocities chooses to commend Prime Minister Modi on taking this step. They bring up Kashmiri economy, Kashmiri businesses “thriving” under the Indian law and the legality of the Article 370 at its inception. What they never mention are Kashmiri lives. Intricate details of legality and consequent attachments with morality are inspected subjectively from a privileged point of view. The needs of them are discussed without listening to them. The mindless fanatic following of “laws” in order to justify nationalistic tendencies is rooted in the virtuousness of obedience. Privilege is validated when the louder, nationalist voices resonate with deep-rooted beliefs in the preservation of power, and the dehumanization of the other is an issue separated from the self. By silencing voices in Kashmir, India presribed those lives a lower value and made themselves louder. This encouraged patriarchal systems of power to create an army of mindless, shouting bodies, who believe they are doing the right thing.

Not questioning the implications of the opinions of those that hold power leads to imaginations of utopias–utopias that will be built on the backs of those who could never benefit from it.

Military Occupation, Kashmir Image Source: Incendiarynews.com

73. “Kashmir Special Status Explained: What Are Articles 370 and 35A?,” India News | Al Jazeera (Al Jazeera, August 5, 2019), https://www. aljazeera.com/news/2019/08/kashmir-special-status-explained-articles-370-35a-190805054643431.html. 74. Ahmer Khan and Billy Perrigo, “What’s Happening in Kashmir During Coronavirus Lockdown,” Time (Time, May 6, 2020), https://time. com/5832256/kashmir-lockdown-coronavirus/.