በዲ/ን ታደሰ ወርቁ
Nationalization of <shame >in Ethiopia
November 16, 2013 at 11:48am
On
the face of it, Ethiopia Government and we disagree about the political
import of shame and humiliation to our beloved country. On the one
hand, EPRDF uses the topic of <shame> to understand something
else: how the Saudi Arabia mis/understand Ethiopia Economic success. On
the other hand, we use the current Ethiopia nationalism to argue that
the logic of humiliation itself needs to probe.
The EPRDF’s
discourse marks that how national humiliation is used by the regime
leaders to mobilize populations, but these populations are on opposite
sides of the dispute: we consider nativity understanding of the Ethiopia
self, while EPRDF examines a Saudi Arabia othering of western.
The
complexity Suggested by this note demonstrates the Multi code nature of
the word <shame> .To have shame is both a virtue and a problem
along the lines of tension between having humility and humiliation. More
to the point, both EPRDF and we agree that understand and humiliation
is more complex than a simple political calculation of links between
defeat, humiliation and revenge. Humiliation thus is reframed from an
irrational emotion that need to be cured, through (social) psychology
,to a social practice that needs to understood interims of political
and historical narratives .
Indeed, shame politics of EPRDF’S
provide an interesting example how the self not only constructs the
other as enemy, but how the other constructs the self-complex ways. Yet
as #
Dr.Tewoderos Adhanom’s ETV interview point out,
shame discourse does not dominate Ethiopian images: shame is a product
of Saudi Arabia understanding of Ethiopian.
The contemporary
Ethiopian nationalism is not just about celebrating the glories of
Ethiopian civilization: it also commemorates Ethiopia’s weakness. This
negative image comes our most directly in the discourse of Ethiopia’s
decade of national humiliation.
To understand how Ethiopian nationalism works, we need to reverse #Paul Kennedy’s famous thesis about
<the rise and fall of the great powers> to examine the
< fall and rise >of Ethiopia: many of the titles of these books include the phrase
<from humiliation to glory.>
The discourse of national humiliation shows how Ethiopia’s insecurities
are not just material, a matter of catching up to the the west
militarily and economically, but symbolic. Indeed, one of the goals of
Ethiopia foreign policy has been to
The brutal
and inhuman crackdown on Ethiopian immigrants in Saudi Arabia context,
international politics has been transformed from
< conquer or be conquered> in to <humiliate or be humiliated.>
Main stream commentators, thus have declared that history is<<
strategic issue>>, especially as it informs the dynamic between
nationalism and foreign policy.
Ethiopian nationalism is a huge
field of inquiry. To gain purchase on this vast topic, it is helpful to
take an oblique view of Ethiopian identity through an examination of the
specialized field of EPRDF texts.
Finally, humiliation may still
see like an odd place to look for nationalism: humiliation is something
that you suffer, rather than promote. But as we have seen, in Ethiopia
and in china, humiliation is not just about passive National humiliation
discourse involves a very active notion of history and recovery.AS the
ancient work #Liji tell us
;<< the humiliation of a thing
is sufficient to stimulate it: the humiliation of a country is
sufficient to rejuvenate it.>> for me the day that happened the brutal and inhuman crackdown on Ethiopian immigrants in Saudi Arabia and Ethiopian
police crackdown on anti-Saudi Arabia protest following migrant worker
attacks has been ,<official holiday> called National Humiliation
Day./? However National humiliation is far from simply being an obscure
historical curiosity. In other words, the narrative of national
salvation depends upon national humiliation; the narrative of national
security depends upon national insecurity.
