The Inefficiency of Knowledge and the Limits of Explanations;the Necessity of Critique

Anne Beate Reinertsen

He surrendered willingly when the police came to the island of Utøya. Prosecutors, defenders, and psychiatrists immediately started their work. In February 2012 he was declared insane; schizophrenic paranoid. In April, another report by other psychiatrists having used other scientific methods concluded that he was not. What they agreed on however, was that ABB is a very dangerous man with narcissist personal disorders and that he is capable of repeating his actions. On Monday, April 16th the trial began. The last day in court was June 22nd. The main issue to be decided is whether he can be given a prison sentence or, if the court finds him legally insane, he will be involuntarily sectioned to a psychiatric facility, possibly indefinitely. The proceedings have been very formal, dignified, and correct: Breivik’s hand was shaken and he was released of his handcuffs each day when he attended the courtroom: There are no cages in court.

Also immediately; attempts to analyze, define, label, categorize, explain, and understand began: Attempts to find reasons and causes. Further; attempts and signs of hate, blame, and ridicule: Attempts to prove him wrong. Taking away from him his thoughts about his own originality and placing him “together with other lunatics preoccupied with theories of conspiracies against the white man: A regular Nazi is all he is. . . A Norwegian Oklahoma bomber perhaps”; Timothy Breivik McVeigh?

Psychotic or extreme, ideology or madness, paranoid or sectarian . . .The defenders ask for a prison sentence. That is what Breivik himself wants. The prosecutors ask for psychiatric treatment. The verdict is expected August 24th. Breivik has signaled that he is going to appeal any verdict implying insanity and psychiatric treatment.

According to annual UN statistics Norway is selected as one of the best countries in the world to live in each year. Low infant mortality rate. Women holding close to half of the parliamentary seats. Free schooling, free hospitalization, and low unemployment rates to mention a few things (http://data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx?crName=NORWAY. Retrieved June 17, 2012) Norway is a leading oil producing country, and money is set aside for future generations: The Government Pension Fund, a fund into which wealth produced by Norwegian petroleum income is deposited. Michael Moore once considered using the Norwegian welfare state for illustrative purposes in one of his films, but decided to leave the idea. The audience would think of it as fiction.

After July 22 some voices more than whispered about a Muslim attack. Before we realized that he was one of us , people spat on a Muslim bus driver in Oslo. Who else could be so evil? Some began marching against a mosque. . . Simultaneously however there were attempts and signs of love and taking back a feeling of security and beliefs in our systems—democracy—rule of law—humanity. Rose parades in the streets and music used and performed as therapy.

On the first day, and in accordance with court procedures, the terrorist was asked the standard questions: Name, age, civil status, and to confirm being unemployed. “I am a writer,” he said.

We abolished the death penalty in both war- and peacetime in 1979, and last time used for quislings after WWII. The police did not shoot ABB at Utøya. A fair trial is part of our system.

       77 funerals

           77

              young lives

                   77

                    no more

                        77 funerals

We seem to be in a Limbo—a country in limbo. Knowledge seems so often to be inefficient and there are obvious limits to our explanations. It is an impossibility and simultaneously we are having to find a way through. . . . . It is mezzy.

This might therefore be what an impossible limbo structure in this case/article/performance looks like. Welcome to our attempts; our words, performance, signs, and symbols:

    Him against us   Othering    Narcissism

           Trial and retribution

 Crime and punishment

               Feelings after the fact and screams perhaps

  Science and/towards society   Writing   Multiculturalism and taboos

                         All

            perhaps. . .

Oded Ben-Horin

Points of view

Questions

Opinions

Research

Drama

Ethnotheatre

Theatrical staging

Music (folk and improvisation)

Poetry

The texts presented here materialized by means of e-mail exchanges, as the four authors reside in different Norwegian cities. Much editing, reworking, and specification was achieved during the two days preceding the performance, and especially during the hour leading up to it. We tried to bring together raw material into an artistic performance-research presentation, drawing on both worlds: Meshing together styles and performance elements both dramatic and musical.

Possibilities, methods

Performative communication concepts, reasonings

Aesthetic, musical shaping of research (Bresler, 2009)

Dramatic re-presentation of data (Saldaña, 2005)

We advocate for what we want and see needed (Stake & Rosu, 2012)

And we see needed

The music performed relied on both structured, precomposed music as well as improvised music. Precomposed music included a musical prelude of a traditional Norwegian melody performed by our colleague Professor Magne Espeland from the Stord Haugesund University College, a flautist who performed on a flute built by Steinar Ofsdal, another Norwegian flautist. The choice to open the presentation in this way was decided on due to several factors: First and foremost, the tragic occurrences discussed having taken place less than one year before the presentation, the main reaction of most persons is still emotional. Commencing the performance with music rather than words served to respect that factor. The choice of a Norwegian melody (or one influenced by Norwegian folk motives) was obvious. Yet we did not choose a specific melody, but rather left that choice up to Professor Espeland.

It is my personal feeling that the high notes of the flute, in this specific case, resonated as a memory siren although that interpretation is subjective and personal. Further musical performances included improvised accompaniment of poems (mainly on the South American Cajon drum and soprano saxophone) by Dr. Walter Gershon of Kent State University. These were completely open in character and were not limited to any rhythmic, melodic, or harmonic structure. Rather, they tended to be experimental in character. Lastly, Dr. Gershon and Ben-Horin were given the freedom to improvise during the spoken presentations of the other authors. This did not take place very often, but allowing the audience to realize that it was part of the performance’s conceptual equation meant that a new dimension was open with regard to how the performers could communicate with and approach the audience. The points during which we did improvise behind the presentations, though, were exciting in that new inspiration was provided for the musical improvisations, while the setting for a research presentation suddenly included very much more. As musicians, we noticed the rhythmical qualities of the presentations.

Ann Merete Otterstad

This trial is not about sane or insane—it is about 77 people killed. As witnesses we are taken to pieces again and again. The terrorist took the innocence from us on July 22nd. He took and continues to bring us into something impossible to understand. He takes us into locked doors. He reminds us of Quisling and Rinnan, Norwegian traitors from the Second World War. A space is the room in which the killer and his mirror live. This situation is blurring, hard to understand, and important to witness. What could produce this catastrophe to happen? What is unfamiliar, unfamiliar? Telling the uncomfortable can become a collective witnessing, to something uncertain and unknown (Pillow, 2003).

I am becoming with the data material by witnessing the start of the trial on my computer, 9 months after the brutal killing of 77 people, mostly teenagers, at Utøya Island. Processes of writing are used as ways of thinking (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005) entangling an assemblage with the gruesome events on 22/7. The assemblage both refers to large collectives of objects that interact even while remaining separable from the assemblies in which they participate. The world is made of actors of all types and sizes (Latour, 2005). The human subject or Dasein are actors, but so are bodies, buildings, bombs, tears, flowers, boats, computers, and so on. Everything that exists in any way at all is an actor. I see these actors not isolated clods of substance, but negotiating with one another in networks. For Latour, everything happens only once: in one time and one place. A transformed actor is in fact a new actor—one that may be linked to its ancestors through a trajectory across time, but a new actor nonetheless. The assemblage also connects with journalists making prints/footprints/imprints by entangling the killer with networks of evil and evilness. There is no distinction between form and matter, because any actor can serve as raw material for larger actors or as the terminal form of its tinier subcomponents. Nothing is inherently reducible or irreducible to anything else. My routes are following a journey in time and space in the entanglement with the events of 22/7. A web is woven together and writing tries to unpack lines of flights everywhere, as uncertain and unknown entities.

Last week I was writing about silence and how silence can cause hostility and anger in our society. On the day of the terror attack, politicians in Norway valued love as resistance to hatred. Beds of roses became signs of openness, trust, and respect in contrast to evil and evilness. The roses are back outside the courthouse. But roses do not resist the uncomfortable to happen again.

Being witnessing the cruel murdering, evil and evilness is embedding the crime scene. I see, think, and hear about evilness everywhere: Newspaper articles, in headlines, expressed by psychiatrists, and the victims. In nearly every published text connected to the public and personal “reasoning’s” for why the terrorist terror actions on 22/July were possible, evilness become visible. The killer is becoming embodiment of evilness—his territory seems to be his bodily smile and gestures. A “stranger danger” is becoming. An outsider/in and insider/out—occurs. The evil becomes personified (Clark, 2012).

Oded Ben-Horin

There is a place where ideas, emotions, stories, thoughts and all products of mind are disposed of after being used.

Things not physical will find this graveyard at road’s end.

Philosophies arrive here when times have changed.

Many wishes belong here even before they have been wished.

Impossible to describe by name or shape, I imagine the place as a huge bubble, hovering weightlessly, within which eternities of thought collide, creating new ideas which minds will never share.

I crossed the line, slowly pushed my finger through the bubble’s surface.

At first nothing, but it soon became colder and windy around my fingertip.

Their protection now breached, sounds began erupting, distant yet noticeable.

Silent screams, long-forgotten whispers, orders and pleadings, becoming louder as I wondered if I’d put myself where I should not have?

Now a steady current of emotions, fears, excitements and disappointments, flying out ever-faster, like air freed from a huge balloon, creating a loud, deafening roar.

I looked inside the bubble. A few traces of thought which could not, or would not, escape still floated peacefully inside. They were shaped in different ways, colors and sizes, like clouds.

I dared to step inside. One foot and then another. The ideas and emotions turned to look. Some showed mild curiosity, but they did not react.

From the inside, the bubble seemed eternal, magnificent. As though the thoughts, worries and dilemmas rushing out had left all this space just for me to fill.

I began moving around the bubble, treading carefully.

I walked straight towards a group of clouds. One looked at me while circling above my head. Several others did not react to my presence. I tried to speak but could not form any words.

I later decided to return to the opening which I had torn open in the bubble, and began wondering where all the wishes and hopes which had so quickly rushed out had ended up, and when new ones might arrive?

Left in a space not inside or out, I wished to climb out of the bubble but the opening now seemed far far away. . .

Once in a while I turned to see a dream or thought knowingly watching my attempts, hiding something I was just about to realize myself. . .

Anne Ryen

Talk a bit with the cat

 Katten

 sit i tunet

 når du kjem.

 Snakk litt med katten.

 Det er han som er varast i garden.

July 22. 77 died. 319 injured.

9/11. 2 996 dead. 6000 + injured.

We all know. No words needed.

August 7, 1998:

The bomb blew off the American embassy downtown Nairobi.

Kenya.

291 died. 5,000 injured. Embassy neighbors, mostly.

Same day, a bomb blew off the American embassy in Dar es Salaam.

Tanzania.

10 died. 77 injured.

Bhopal. December 3, 1984.

In one week, more than 2,500 dead.

5 years later, 3,598.

10 years later, estimated number more than 6,000. Those who left the city after the accident and did not return, not included.

The report says,”Independent agencies estimate the number of disaster-related deaths, between 15,000 and 20,000” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster)

Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), a gas leakage.

The Darfur Conflict, began in 2003, or the Darfur Genocide.

Over five million people affected. Sudan.

The Rwandan Genocide. 800,000. First four months more than 500,000 people killed.

Total estimate, between 500,000 to 1,000,000. 20% of the total population.

Hutus and Tutsis, you remember?

Here’s my map. United States, Norway, India, East Africa.

Put a memory sticker on. No, that’s Denmark. Try again. Sudan, no that’s the Democratic Republic of the

Congo, the former Republic of Zaire. ”Oh, they have so many names down here” she said, the American researcher at the Gender conference in Kampala.

Guess Mama Crazy Horse said that, too. At Little Big Horn in 1896. “They have so many names down here.”

“A place of reflection,” it says.

So many places.

What stories do we tell? What stories are memorable?

Some places are far away. Far away from whom?

Do you know where to put the sticker? The place without a sticker. Is that a non-place? Can we symphasize with people in non-places?

“Where do you come from?” the boy asked.

“I come from Norway,” my father-in-law replied.

“No one can come from nowhere,” the boy commented.

In 1970s Zambia Norway was a nowhere-place.

Do you come from a nowhere place, one without a sticker?

Some places, people die in exact number.

July 22: 77

9/11: 2,996

Other places they die in approximates.

Bhopal 20.000. Darfur 5 million.

That’s how they die there. Every time. All the time. Lord’s Resistance Army. Mugabe. Kony.

At Facebook my student put a link to the Invisible Children’s Kony-action and reported that Ugandans urged people to stop it. “They should rather be thankful,” she was told.

Invisible children, San Diego, offers a Kony action kit. Official KONY 2012 T-shirt US$30. KONY Bracelet US$10. All donations are tax-deductable.

Official Hitler 2012 T-shirt. Hitler Bracelet. Tax deductable.

Imagine.

Thankful? http://invisiblechildrenstore.myshopify.com/

Talk a bit with the cat.

He is the most sensitive here.

Anne Beate Reinertsen

My name is Anne. We are three writers here called Ann/e. It is hardly a coincidence. We all grew up in the sixties. Norway used to be a very homogenous country: Blond and blue eyed. Today? I’ll come back to it, and also—to the necessity of critique. . . Welcome Oded.

I was in sunny Florida, USA at a conference together with my better half (to join Obama in praising our spouses). We cried and watched CNN for three days. In restaurants, shops, and at the hotel, people offered their condolences.

I am almost glad it was not a Muslim, my husband said. Now we have to look at ourselves and differently. Hopefully engage in other types of discussions and with other contents

“The Scream” by Edvard Munch was sold as Sotheby’s in May, 2012, for a staggering 107 million dollars! A world record. Probably it was the art loving royal family of the Emirate of Qatar who bought it.

This picture is one of very few other things Norway is “famous” for. It has become iconic. Munch painted four versions of the picture: Three with eyes for looking at the world and screaming. One without eyes for looking inward and screaming. Screams of horror, fear, anxiety, disbelief, injustices, the human condition perhaps . . . go on. . . Screams to . . . Screams of/about/from me and who I . . . what I might. . . what there is. . . Looking inside—looking in detail . . . honest. . .

I have chosen four inward/outward screams here, four themes, and four discussions—dimensions . . . One. . .Many. . .

I work with and in education. Autonomy in learning processes is our buzzword today: Creating individual models for teaching and learning. In particular, I work hard with trying to find out what a “Rights pedagogy” might mean and what it might take? Individualism/Individualistic rhetoric—if that makes sense to speak of—is massive. So is that of collectivism.

  Selfish—selfishness? No? Yes. . .

There are obvious tensions in the individual/collective, dependant/independent and freedom/control relationship. I am those tensions. I do such tensions. Big egos small. . . Balance . . . Agency . . . Identity. . . subjectivity. . . Me. . . Meaning. . . My fear is isolation: Children learning/being alone, not seen, not challenged. . . Until recently our main pedagogical buzzword was “Responsibility for own learning.” It did not turn out the way we hoped. Inequality and hidden curricular issues that we thought we had dealt with in the 1970s still there to be dealt with (Bakken, 2009). Are the forces that make us abandon one type of policies in any way changed when/if/before we decide on another? Forces of instrumentalism and reductionism. . . Forces of oppression. . . Normalizing forces, forces normalizing our judgments . . . ?

  Multiculturalism. . .?

Norway. Big ego small. . . Balance. . . Agency . . . Identity . . . Us . . . My fear is “blind spots,”—and then I mean blind spots—pride, and arrogance, not challenged. . . Rule of money? Norway has much.

     Narcissism?

         Megalomania Egocentrism

          Self—selfish—self-ish—

              ness. . . less. . .

Of cause I want to mean something. Of cause I am important. I want my independence, freedom, control. . .

Narcissus fell into the river. He was too preoccupied with himself. He loved himself too much. Too big!

Not Alone

In the same book/essay, he also answered the question as to the “demands which must be made of a nation, of an age and of the human race”: “Education, truth and virtue” must be disseminated to such an extent that the “concept of mankind” takes on a great and dignified form in each individual (GS, I, p. 284). However, this shall be achieved personally by each individual, who must

absorb the great mass of material offered to him by the world around him and by his inner existence, using all the possibilities of his receptiveness; he must then reshape that material with all the energies of his own activity and appropriate it to himself so as to create an interaction between his own personality and nature in a most general, active and harmonious form (GS, II, p. 117).

Autonomy

Hitler’s National Socialist Program followed such philosophies point by point (Steinsholt, 2012). Philosophy/Humbolt, but not, autonomy, but not. . . Pedagogy, but not—Done/undone. . . .—and urgent. . . In this “post-post. . .” period and if the center no longer holds, I must. A narcissist I am, must be, but not.

Ann Merete Otterstad

The terror in Oslo brings me back to 2001, a September day. The first floor neighbour opens his door, telling me to come in and watch the news. News-time is not before seven at night; however I was witnessing a plane flying into one of the twin towers. I remember saying; “I was on the top of that building two years ago”, overlooking Manhattan. About half an hour later, a second plane crashed into the second tower. Totally paralysed, I couldn’t take my eyes off the television screen. I was determined to phone a local friend to find out where she was. Who could at that time imagine the terror, discrimination, fear and hatred such a terrible action would cause.

The second moment takes me to Glasgow, Scotland. It is Friday afternoon, sitting in the lounge searching on the web; the news appears from a well-known area in Oslo—changed into a war zone. Witnessing awful actions—at the same time desperately sending text messages to near family, connected to mails and newspapers in Norway—the information couldn’t bring an overview of the situation. Two days before attending an international methodology conference in Manchester, discussing ways of dealing with neo-liberalism in European school system, time stand still. I emphasised equalities and inclusion, embedded in social democracy society—giving everybody a right to free education. Sitting in front of the television I was confused, shocked, sad, hearing and seeing terrible events linked to our society. This discomfort wonders about what went wrong? How could one of us, plan and initiate such brutal actions? Why didn’t anybody understands? What might emerge?

The first day of the trial—

With my computer online, I am listening to the killer position himself as a writer, working from the prison cell. He admits his actions but not the verdict. I am following the rolling text on the screen from minute to minute. I hear and read the prosecutors’ description of 77 killed people. Many of the murdered are born around 1990 to 1995.

The prosecutor takes a break, filling her cup with water. No. 48, is born in 1993, she was killed located in Bolshevika—some on Kjærlighetsstien and others at Stoltenberget. No. 48 dies of injuries in her head and her breast. Nearly all murdered were shot in their heads several times. I suddenly get a headache, looking at the killer, surrounded by the victims. How is their discomfort witnessing all this terror?

In-between the camera on the screen centres the killer; he is looking down sitting behind a glass wall. No. 64, born 1996, was near the shore on the south end of the island. The prosecutor takes a break again, breathing and resting. She is asking for a tissue, to wipe her nose, stops and drinks a glass of water. The killer is presented as he.

He killed 77 and injured 33 persons at Utøya island. The participants in the courthouse are listening to the gruesome details of all the murdered. They can observe his body language, his face, his eyes and his arms, registering a right-wing greeting when he arrived at 9.00 in the morning. The prosecutor is looking uncomfortable again, holding pauses, breathing, drinking water, moving her body from one side to the other and then back again. The killer is not moving; he reminds me of a monumental statue—in a mirror—seemingly in a mood he deliberately is prepared for. I wonder what these gruesome actions he has done to him. I wonder what impact these gruesome actions have had on him?

How could it happen? Why didn’t we recognize what he is saying? I listen to his choices of concepts, they seem to be taken from a digital mechanical language. Is he a virtual person, using the Internet as a learning educational platform, programmed, as a robot would? His references seem like fiction made in a logic that occurs strange and weird. His presence connects us to evil and evilness repeatedly, through his rational logic, his testimony, his ideas, and his conception. We are witnesses and are part of his crime. It is impossible to hold these shocking attacks on a distance. It is difficult to distance oneself from these shocking attacks. What might evilness become?

Oded Ben-Horin

A balancing act.

The older I get the more times you’ve readied yourself for this instant.

One day, some way it will sway in my direction.

I will be there, waiting, knowing.

Large enough to confront it.

Ripe enough to conceal it.

Enough of a visionary to see beyond it.

But not this time.

This time I’m too young.

This needle’s too sharp, the surprise is too raw, the climb’s too deep.

Anne Ryen

So many versions, how can we choose one over the other? Can we? Let me cite Denzin (1992) on the controversy over the truth in Foot Whyte’s classic Street Corner Society:

What to make of all this? . . .multiple tellings of the same event. . . accounts so different that one supposes there is no single, true telling of what “really” occurred in this place called “Cornerville.” . . .there is no final telling to be told here, just different versions of different, not the same, stories. . . . (p. 120)

Egyptian Tarek Mahmoud covers the terror case for Middle East newspapers and is interviewed by the Norwegian journalist Barstad (2012, p. 18):

Extract 1:

   . . .

A journalist interviewing a journalist in the interview society (Ryen 2011a, 2012): Doing being journalists. Norway and Egypt—“them” and “us,” Muslims and non-Muslims? Mahmoud sees “the butcher from Norway,” his description of the terrorist. Norwegian Barstad wonders about the impression of his country and we sense an expectation of the difference. It is unlikely to ask a fellow Norwegian journalist the same question.

Barstad is not disappointed. Mahmoud: “this is not handled the right way” (line 2). He is also patient and insists: “Would a Muslim have been treated differently?” (line 5). Mahmoud, a clever interviewee says: “I am not the only one to say so” with reference even to a Norwegian professor (not shown in extract 1). Barstad loves his binaries (line 21): “What if a similar case had happened in. . . .” Mahmoud seemingly tired of the binary-play, calls for a classic denominator: “My friend, listen. . .” (overlaps with Edward Said’s “Orientalism” in the background with an echo).”

  Orientalism. . .ism. . .ism. . .ism

    Orientalism. . .ism. . .ism. . .ism

      Orientalism. . .ism. . .ism. . .ism

Anne Beate Reinertsen

Inward/outward scream two about turning science towards society and looking for/with other scientific methods too

Global challenges require former methodologies and approaches to be revisited, and new ones to be developed. Happening they might in meetings between “critical humanism and queer theory” (Plummer, 2011).

Terrorism is a global challenge. Look what it has done to/for/with us . . . Revisiting writing? Taking it back perhaps?

No? . . . Yes. . . . Local? I scream. . .

By queering our practices we put to work concepts that open up possibilities to understand what might emerge in a relational field, where both human and non-human forces are equally at play in constituting becomings. Further, that data itself have a constitutive force working upon the researcher as much as the researcher works upon the data. Dichotomies dissolved.

It is a different science operating as a circular science of self-reflexivity and diffraction, and always in search of quality: Performing the self, designing myself and all sorts of “self-ish designs” (Glanville, 2010, Reinertsen, in press). Ultimately developing self-assessing recursive practices to see more, do more. . . All our possible mappings. . . . And in the shadows . . . Narcissism but not. . .

I scream about reflexive pluralism in science and turned towards society. More realistic, more human, with/in dreams, feelings and fun. Me. In every classroom. . .

Rights Pedagogies

A teacher/researcher with both an innovational and a judicial mandate working with constant anomaly pedagogical remixes: Students rights to learn how to read and write through what it might mean not to be able to read and write for the individual student and for the society the same student lives in and me.

Not Alone

Ann Merete Otterstad

When the tragedy hit us, what happens happened? Who and what shall we hate? Who is the enemy? He seems to be everywhere and nowhere. If all humans are seen as ambiguous, how can evil and evilness be connected, described, put into words. “Our ability to selectively engage and disengage our moral standards (. . .) helps explain how people can be barbarically cruel in one moment and compassionate the next” (Bandura, see Zimbardo 2007, 18). Fear, aggression, suspicion and hatred create uncertainty and doubts. Terror in a society does not appear from nowhere. It is already there, but we did not recognize it. Everybody can conduct evil actions dependent of the systems and situations in a society (Svendsen, 2001). Evilness might be demonic, instrumental, idealistic and thoughtlessness (Svendsen, 2001). Unpacking evilness open to hear and see the killer’s testimony and reasonings as a complexity of evilness. He wants to create a society without Muslims. He fights immigration in several ways, by mirroring himself as a saviour.

He says he wanted to have killed many more, his logic rationality produce a brigadier in a war, reporting to the system about his actions. Hanna Arendt (1998) describes how totalitarian societies dehumanize individuals’ access to a free will. We can all become bricks in a dominant system, reflecting instrumentalism and thoughtlessness. Nobody can escape this moral responsibility, nor the victims, the passive spectators or active participants of the gruesome event. Our dominant systems were not prepared to unmask right-wing ideology; as such we can be characterized as thoughtlessness not recognizing what was happening. If the terror actions are parted from us is he then included in the us?

He seems lonely, and also determined to fulfil his greater plan so unexpected. He will be punished either in prison or forced to psychiatric treatment. And then? If the conclusion will be insane, as a mad mans actions, nothing will be given back. The present is always already there. We are witnessing that his battle is about sanity or insanity. But the on-going case is all about 77 killed people, and we have to witness demonic, instrumental, idealistic and thoughtlessness again and again. Can we trust that our system will prevent the meaningless events we have been witnessing these on-going weeks in the courthouse? Our discomfort continues to work again and again connecting complexities of on-going networks entangled in time and space with the events of 22/7. . . . . .

Oded Ben-Horin

Come see from above

Hear what happens way high, up above

Cries of joy, forgotten days, silent screams

Come and listen, breathe and feel, come die and live again in praise of dreams

Hear the sun, the secret she knows

See the sound she makes as she glows

The skies, the heavens, the “where”s and the “when”s, the stars, the moon, the shadows

I never knew the way it feels: Free, up here, without care or fear

If yesterday just happened, could it be gone, flown away on heart and soul, on eye and ear?

Facing time’s endless forest, trees unknown

Yet time would only hand me in their leaves to show me I was the impossible

“One stands before one’s dreams as the naked child, awaken from eternal sleep

Here, sifting, I stand, electing dreams to sweep

Fly! Forever born again, forever back again, on my wings, there died

Where dreams would live a vast, eternal breaking of time’s shore against life’s tide.”

When you find me

Mind me

Hear me

Read me

Teach me

Reach me

See me

Dream me

Need me

Sing me

Find me in your dreams, in ways of sound to be

In words, softly lifting their gaze

“Dreaming of praise.”

Anne Ryen

Colonialism, postcolonialism, neocolonialism, Europeanism, Americanism (Ryen 2008, 2011b, 2012, Denzin et al 2008, Wallerstein 2005, Skeggs 2001, Stanfield II 1998, Spivak 1988, Smith 2005). Fixing the insider/outsider by reinvoking the distance and sementing the old boundary. “We” and “the other.” Coloniser-colonised. Europe-Africa.

In “Myth and history” (2008, p. 633) Stråth says that

The oevre of Derrida provides a language for theorizing difference. . .By invoking a claim to universal truth, a system of knowledge belies cultural diversity and conceals the power structures that preserve the hierarchical relations of difference. . . Binary oppositions and distinctions are central to this logocentric form of thinking. The binary juxtaposition of “Europe” and the “Other” is one case in point, and

The point, however, is:

Public remembrance and collective oblivion (what we do not talk about) reflect power relations in the definition of social problems because nations do not have memories as a pregiven characteristic. Rather, public remembrance and acts of commemoration are something developed through debate and contention. . . It is through the deconstruction of the myth that its “distortion” is revealed (Stråth 2008: 630, referred in Ryen 2009).

July 22. Repetitive acts of remembrance. Confronting, combatting evilness. Parades of roses. When the terrorist revealed his hatred to the Norwegian version of Pete Seeger’s “My rainbow race,” 40 000 met up in Oslo to sing ”Barn av regnbuen” with parallel arrangements around the country, roses and songs, not stones and bullets. Doing public remembrance. Outword/Inword scream. Context and experiences, “always reflexively at play” (Holstein and Gubrium 2004: 303).

So much evil. So many tears. Somewhere.

Dar es Salam 1998, had all the roses been exported to the west?

Not one left for the rest?

Do you hear the mourning mothers of Sudan?

Pole sana, my sister.

Making Us. We. One rainbow. Our rainbow.

Those who share his ideology—they are more than we like to think—hope for a psychiatric diagnose to show “You see? He is not one of us.”

A diagnose. A terrorist’s mass murderer nightmare.

Anne Beate Reinertsen

Monday March 19th. This year, Norwegian no. 5 mill was born or he immigrated, most likely from an East European country (Poland). From being a country of emigration (to USA), Norway has become a country of immigration. Without immigration there would be 4,4 mill Norwegians in Norway today. Because of labor immigration there is a growing surplus of men in our country. (2011: 12.000 and growing). In total 13,1% of our population is of foreign origins (219 different countries, but mostly from Europe/Sweden/Poland) . This totals 655.000. 16 years from now we will be six mill. (Numbers from Norwegian Statistic Central Bureau SSB, 2012).

Immigration is mainly concentrated in Oslo. 32% of all immigrants to Norway live in Oslo or the area around. (1,5-2 mill.) One out of four young adults in Oslo is of foreign origin. Foreign workers are overrepresented on the statistics listing workplace accidents in Norway. Compared to Poland it is nothing. . .

In Oslo Muhammad is the most popular boy’s name. Nora is the most popular girl’s name. Practically no ethnic Norwegian is called Muhammad. Nora, on the other hand has a rather Ibsian–Henrik Ibsen’s Doll’s House—atmosphere surrounding it. . .I like that . . . Humbolt consistently spoke of individual him/he/his . . .

There is a soft take on this. We work hard with inclusion and plurality issues in Norway, equal rights and opportunities. According to the UN annual comparisons again, Norway is the world’s best country to live in (http://data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx?crName=NORWAY. Retrieved June 17, 2012). On May 7th. Norway was ranked, by Save the Children, as the best country to be a mother in. (USA is nr 26. Niger is last) It is what we all say we want. We like to speak of this. But what is it, and what is detail here?

There is a hard take on this. It is about division and respect at a distance– “I can do business with you, but our children should not Romeo and Juliet marry”: A fractioning of identity policies perhaps. . .

From where I live, I have to travel early in the morning to catch a plane to the European Continent or the US. Only I and the newspaper deliveryman seem to be awake. He is a black man. He has the kind of work almost no Norwegian wants today. “Apartheid” perhaps, with a so called friendly face at work?—a possible foundation for—and creation of taboos. This might be what we to some extent seem to be doing.

In the book “A politics of division” (Stjernfelt & Eriksen, 2008) the multicultural dilemma is discussed: Leftwing multiculturalism, rightwing monoculturalism, nationalism, naivety, fractioning and divisions. . . Ultimately the need for hitting/turning/screaming both ways—all ways—always if one wishes to being/doing principals.

Norway used to be small homogeneous, blond blue eyes. . . What is detail here though?

June 23rd, 2012 a mother of two was found murdered in her families’ burned down house. The husband was accused of both the killing and arson. He came from Morocco ten years ago. “I almost cannot believe it, he used to be a perfect immigrant. Always polite and smiling,” a neighbor said to the local newspaper (Adresseavisen, June 25th.).

I have learned about Khaleeji Capitalism. It is a system based on immigrant workers and privileges for the original ethnic population. Not necessarily economic privileges but culturally. . . .

In 2022 Qatar is hosting The World Soccer Championships. Construction works is in full swing already: New airport, new roads and stadiums. . . In a rapport made by Human Rights Watch 2012 it is revealed how immigrant workers work long days and are not paid according to contracts. Neither are they allowed to leave the country unless the employer agrees. General Secretary of Trade Union Confederation, Sharan Burrows, says that ”these workers are the slaves of the 21st century” (ABC News, June 13th, 2012).

The Royal family of Qatar buying one of the screams. . . ?

Khaleeji Norway? I scream about challenging doxa perhaps. . . And not in abstract terms. . .

Anne Ryen

Both horror and our reaction to horror are outcomes not simply of political rights or not and freedom of speech or not, but also of how we make these wider contexts relevant in our lived experience. As analysts we explore into the complexity of this active world. But as Saskia Sassen wisely advises us:”Master categories are by definition blinding in their clarity and power to illuminate” (in Kenway and Fahey, 2009:120). Terrorism is the most powerful contemporary master category leaving all other suffering into the shadow unable to compete. I lost a dear friend that very same July. I told my friends. They could not hear me. They did not see me. Before Mahid died, he called me to tell me he was going home from hospital to be with his family. Here are my last words:

Extract 2:

He had slipped into another space. With Allah. Home. At last. My main informant for many years. ”But you do have the data?” my colleague commented. Horror? Pain? Ask the widow, his children, his sisters and brothers, his employees, his business colleagues. And, read Løgstrup when he says that “Sovereign expressions of life express themselves in actions, but they are not the same as actions” (Christoffersen, 2008, and read Løgstrup, 1956). Umberto Eco invites us to reflect, what do we know about pain experienced and pain expressed? My colleague was engrossed in the horror ‘ her friend had gone through after that friend’s son came home from Utøya. Just like my Tanzanian colleague Immanuel who had fled from Rwanda, lost his parents and now taking care of his younger sisters. Nobody knew. He had never told us. Maybe he had, a pain with no master narrative. Indeed, master narratives are blinding. Sassen goes on:”When I speak of digging, I mean digging in the shadows” (Kenway and Fahey, 2009:120).

Talk a bit with the cat. Tax reduction irrelevant.

Anne Beate Reinertsen

Norway is a good country to live in. Ironically that is why critique is so necessary: Critique as part of our thinking from the very beginning (Westbrook 2008 in Denzin & Lincoln 2011, p. 717). Part of thinking from the beginning of research, teaching, writing, speaking, discussing. . . . The design and performance of research;—the design and performance of me.

In detail . . .

So easy to be/stay content. . .docile. . .

Creating an ethos of negotiation we must: You know even the Norwegian Lusekofte (Reinertsen, 2008) has patterns from Turkey—I think it was.

—travelling away from but back again remember?

 What can we learn from July 22?

Again I turn to literature:

“That we have reared one of the worst mass murderers in the world. He skin is white. He has attended high school in Oslo, has been member of the Liberal Party, has worked out at Harold’s Gym, comes from Best West City Area, and dresses in Lacoste. He is like us. He is no stranger.” (Author Frode Grytten, Aftenposten (newspaper) Sept. 9th. 2011.)

I scream. . . taking back? Yes—no—

Edvard Munch showed us a long time ago

Not over—never

Having to pull through. . . must. . .

Selfish, narcissists all, but not

PS: August 24. 2012. The trial is over. Sane. A political terrorist. He is content. No appeals. An American billionaire, Leon Black, might have bought the scream. In the land of dreams and opportunity 46 million people live in poverty.

September 11. 2012: American Embassies are burning in the Middle East. A film on You Tube insulting Islam has created rage. In Norway a book is published with Breivik’s emails showing that there was much communication on the internet before the bomb and the shooting.

Virtual communities and voices. . . Hierarchies having turned elastic. . . Previous voices having turned most active. Not only as voices, but causing action. Wow—such voices will be most useful for big shots. . . .what we see is and is not what we see—“the Global as Formel 1”.

Western positions all the way into death . . .

No roses but stones and fires. In the presidential campaigns in the US, there is this new word: frienemy. . .—having to pull through. . . must. . .