UNIT 4- Humanitarism and NGOs

Question 1

What is a psychiatrist or a psychologist doing in a conflict?

Answer 1

Diagnosing PTSD.

Question 2

Key concepts of the “Subjectification through trauma” text

Answer 2

1. The evolution of testimony
2. Trauma as a political argument
3. Subjectification through trauma
4. Tensions in testimony
5. Dual witness figures
6. Psychiatry’s Role in Humanitarianism:
7. The Politics of Emotion:
8. Asymmetry and Neutrality:

Question 3

1. The Evolution of Testimony:

Answer 3

Traditional witnesses (e.g., the Red Cross) prioritized neutrality and silence, focusing on aid without public advocacy.

Modern humanitarian organizations embrace public testimony as central to their mission, using the “witness” role to highlight suffering and injustice.

Question 4

2. Trauma as a political argument

Answer 4

Testimony now often interprets suffering through the framework of trauma.

While trauma initially referred to clinical diagnoses like PTSD, it is increasingly employed as a political tool to highlight the psychological impacts of violence and to evoke empathy.

Question 5

3. Subjectification through trauma

Answer 5

Victims are “subjectified” (or given a public identity) through their trauma. This process turns suffering into a form of political representation.

Palestinians and Israelis are framed as victims in different contexts, shaping their identities in the global discourse.

Question 6

4. Tensions in testimony

Answer 6

The emphasis on trauma and suffering risks simplifying or erasing individual and collective histories, reducing complex political struggles to narratives of victimhood.

There is an inherent tension between advocacy (which seeks justice) and the portrayal of victims as passive sufferers.

Question 7

5. Dual witness figures

Answer 7

Two types of witnesses are discussed:

Survivors: Those who directly experience violence.

Humanitarian Workers: Those who observe and advocate on behalf of survivors, often through secondhand accounts.

Question 8

6. Psychiatry’s Role in Humanitarianism:

Answer 8

Psychiatry, increasingly present in humanitarian efforts, helps articulate the psychological dimensions of suffering. However, its application often reflects moral judgments rather than strict clinical assessments.

Question 9

7.The Politics of Emotion:

Answer 9

Humanitarian testimony frequently appeals to emotions rather than facts to mobilize public support and action. This emotional framing influences both the perception of victims and the legitimacy of the testimony.

Question 10

8. Asymmetry and Neutrality:

Answer 10

Testimony often struggles with maintaining neutrality. For example, it may depict the violence of the Israeli occupation and Palestinian resistance differently due to the asymmetry of power and context.

Question 11

The Israel-Palestine conflict:

Answer 11

• Moved from neutrality to publicly testify about the violence and suffering they observe
• it shifts the humanitarian focus from physical aid to mental health advocacy
• Mental health professionals are documenting trauma as a form of testimony –> introduced mental health programs in Palestine
• The use of trauma serves as a powerful political argument to highlight the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli occupation
• There is assymetry in the conflict and humanitarian testimony navigates this, often focusing on Palestinian suffering
• Internal debates arise within humanitarian organizations about how to portray the conflict
• Psychologists and psychiatrists highlight personal suffering, such as PTSD, to draw attention to the human costs –> however, this focus risks depoliticizing the violence, reducing systemic oppression and resistance to individual experiences of psychological pain.

-Earlier narratives of Palestinian resistance emphasized political oppression and struggles for liberation. Modern testimony often replaces these with narratives of suffering and victimhood, appealing to global compassion rather than political solidarity.

Question 12

Challenges and criticism of work in the Palestine-Israel conflict:

Answer 12

Erasure of History:
- The emphasis on trauma risks simplifying the conflict by erasing its historical and political complexities, such as the roots of the occupation, systemic inequalities, and the dynamics of resistance.

Asymmetrical Neutrality:
- Efforts to portray both Palestinians and Israelis as victims create a false equivalence, ignoring the structural power imbalance between an occupied population and an occupying state.

Compassion vs. Justice:
- Testimonies often appeal to the emotions of global audiences, focusing on suffering rather than calls for justice or political solutions.

Question 13

Why humanitarian testimony matters:

Answer 13

Moral and Political Implications:
- Testimony shapes how conflicts are perceived globally, influencing political debates and humanitarian responses.

Empathy vs. Complexity:
- While trauma-centered narratives evoke empathy, they risk oversimplifying the structural and historical roots of conflicts.

Agency and Advocacy:
- The framing of victims in testimony can empower or disempower them, depending on how their suffering is portrayed.

Question 14

MSF and MDM vs Red Cross:

Answer 14

Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde belong to the new humanitarianism.

Unlike the Red Cross, they refused to accept the silence clause that prevented them from talking about what was happening in the conflicts in which they worked.

Question 15

Example of classic and new humanitarism:

Answer 15

During WWII the Red Cross was working at concentration camps without publicly denouncing their existence.
–> Here we have a very explicit example of the conflict between classic and new humanitarianism.

Question 16

Political subjectification:

Answer 16

• the production of subjects and subjectivities that hold political significance within the framework of social interaction.
• They are figures that enable individuals to be described (by others) and identified (by themselves) in the public arena.
• They are archetypal figures with political meaning that can be applied (by others or by themselves) to subjects or subjectivities (like the stone thrower or the trauma victim).
• In that way, humanitarianism produces the victim.

Question 17

MDF and MDM became…

Answer 17

spokespeople of the oppressed to make their suffering public.

Question 18

Survivors vs victims testimony

Answer 18

The fact that today the testimony of humanitarian agents probably has more impact in the construction of political causes than the testimony of the survivors who lived through the events or of observers who witnessed them, clearly shows the change in the nature of what is being communicated.

The truth sought is not the objective truth of the events themselves, but the subjective truth of the experience of them. Thus psychologists and psychiatrists, because they have access to this subjectivity, become the legitimate witnesses who speak in the name of those who have experienced the traumatic events

Question 19

The subjective truth

Answer 19

The truth sought is not the objective truth of the events themselves, but the subjective truth of the experience of them. Thus psychologists and psychiatrists, because they have access to this subjectivity, become the legitimate witnesses who speak in the name of those who have experienced the traumatic events.

Question 20

The martyr

Answer 20

Unlike the survivor or the observer, who speak in the first or third person, the martyr bears witness without speaking: he testifies through the sacrifice of his life, and after his death through his image, reproduced in icons venerated by those who can testify to what he was.

• This is another example of subjectification of violence.

As the deadly cycle of violence and reprisal steadily accelerates, there is an unmistakable will to replace victim-martyr with the hero-martyr. ”A transformation of political subjectification is operated through this figure: where the balance of power is profoundly unequal, where negotiation has become impossible, where the nation’s future seems blocked, offering one’s life becomes the ultimate mode of subjectification in the political arena.”

Question 21

Humanitarian subjectification

Answer 21

Humanitarian subjectification blurs the image of violence—or rather, through the offices of psychiatrists and psychologists, requalifies it as trauma.

The aim is to touch people through stories in which humanitarian workers place themselves as privileged witnesses of the suffering of an oppressed people.

Question 22

Humanitarians vs historians

Answer 22

In principle, the role of humanitarian organizations is not to make statements about the past but to intervene in the present (…) Like historians, they do not observe what they report, but rather communicate what they are told (…) Like historians, they should not take sides, but profess neutrality.

However, they differ from historians in two respects. First, when they bear witness it is in the register of emotion rather than of reason: they seek to persuade rather than to explain, aiming to stimulate action rather than interpret facts (…) Second, although they attempt to remain impartial, they add that they aim to be on the side of the victims (…) it is because they speak of (and for) victims that they can (and feel authorized to) fall back on emotion. The suffering of the victims justifies the appeal to affects.

Question 23

Political subjectification has shifted from…

Answer 23

a demand for justice to the exhibition of pain. Between the two, trauma has been engaged both as psychiatric category and as shared experience.

Question 24

One sided testimony:

Answer 24

Attention focused exclusively on the experiences of people invited to express them determines and restricts political subjectivities, and that such expressions erase individual and collective histories.

Question 25

Concept of sensitization:

Answer 25

Civilians in Makeni, Sierra Leone, describe their relationship with ex-combatants as being “sensitized,” meaning they tolerate their presence but do not fully incorporate them into the social fabric.

Sensitization is portrayed as a form of acceptance for peace but is accompanied by social distancing, avoiding deeper integration of ex-combatants.