Seriously? And this? What gives?

The latest issue of Harper’s includes a tongue-in-cheek proposal for a study of “weaponized irony” (not, not iron-working; the “it’s ironical” kind of irony), and development of a sort of semantic mapping technology, the “Ironic Cloud”. According to Harper’s, “Last winter, Lockheed Martin Corporation approached Princeton University with a request for research initiatives.” Sounds like a Minerva sub-contract.” In April, [D. Graham] Burnett, an historian of science, and [Jeff] Dolven, a professor of English, submitted the proposal, the cost of which they estimated to be $750,000; Princeton declined to forward it to Lockheed.” The opening para reads:

Irony is a powerful and incompletely understood feature of human dynamics. A technique for dissimulation and “secret speech,” irony is considerably more complex than lying and even more dangerous. Ideally suited to mobilization on the shifting terrain of asymmetrical conflict, inherently covert, insidiously plastic, politically potent, irony offers rogue elements a volatile if often overlooked means by which to demoralize opponents and destabilize regimes. And yet while major research resources have for forty years poured into the human sciences from the defense and intelligence community in an effort to gain control over the human capacity to lie (investments that led to the modern polygraph, sodium pentothal–derived truth serums, “brain fingerprinting,” etc.), we have no comparable tradition of sustained, empirical, applied investigation into irony. We know very little about its specific manifestations in foreign cultures; we understand almost nothing about the neurological basis of its expression; we are without forward-looking strategies for its mastery and mobilization in the interest of national defense. This project–a sustained three-year, three-pronged, interdisciplinary investigation, drawing on social scientists, engineers, and neurobiologists—will position Lockheed Martin for field leadership in a crucial new area of strategic and commercial growth.

This doesn’t really convey the satire that comes up elsewhere in the proposal, so I’d encourage readers to check it out for themselves.

Lisa Wynn at Culture Matters asks whether anyone knows “of other examples of this wonderful genre of grant proposal as parodic critique of the funding source?” There are elements of the proposal, though, that are actually well grounded in serious research. I’m thinking now of Mariane C. Ferme’s The Underneath of Things: Violence, History, and the Everyday in Sierra Leone (University of California Press, 2001). Or more recently, Maria Dakake’s summer 2006 article in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, “Hiding In Plain Sight: The Practical and Doctrinal Significance Of Secrecy In Shi’ite Islam.”

There’s a thick literature on the subject of psychosocial compartmentation, and it speaks directly to the ideas in the Burnett/Dolven proposal. Their version: “the general mechanism is clear enough: irony manifestly involves a sudden and profound “doubling” of the inner life of the human subject. The ironizer no longer maintains an integrated and holistic perspective on the topic at hand but rather experiences something like a small tear in the consciousness, whereby the overt and covert meanings of a given text or expression are sundered.”

Dakake’s work on medieval Shi’ism suggests a variation on their theme, grounded in practices of religious secrecy and dissimulation:

The doctrinal importance of secrecy in early Shi`ism parallels the importance of secrecy in other traditions, particularly mystical or esoteric traditions, such as Kabbalah in Judaism or even Sufi mysticism within Islam itself; and the Shi`ite practice of secrecy and dissimulation as a strategy of survival and self-perpetuation has much in common with similar tactics employed by other minority or threatened religious communities, such as those discussed by Hugh Urban or Paul Johnson. However, the role of secrecy in Shi`ism differs from all of these cases in that it is a historical case—that is, while active dissimulation (taqiyyah) may still be employed by Shi`ites today for a variety of practical purposes, the widespread practice of secrecy and dissimulation was limited primarily to the early, formative period of Shi`ism, when the revered line of Shi`ite spiritual leaders, the Imams, was physically present and actively guiding their community. While other scholars have argued for reserving judgment on the content of secrecy, while concentrating on the more empirically knowable and verifiable strategies and sociological effects of secrecy, with early Shi`ism, we have a case in which much (if not all) of this content is now published and widely known, and has been for many centuries. From this aspect, we are in a much better position in this case to examine and understand the relationship between the practical and doctrinal importance of religious secrecy, and between the content of secrets and the social strategies they serve, though, from another aspect, we are at a disadvantage.

Dakake, Maria. (2006). “Hiding in Plain Sight: The Practical and Doctrinal Significance of Secrecy in Shi’ite Islam.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 74 (2), 324-355 DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfj086

Imtiaz Ali’s profile of Baitullah Mehsud in Foreign Policy, “Commander of the Faithful,” raises an interesting question. In summarizing Mehsud’s deeds and accomplishments of the last few years, Ali writes

With this singular résumé, it was no surprise that Mehsud was named head of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan when the group formed in December 2007. Since then, the man known asamir(leader) by his followers has expanded his campaign by launching a remarkably effective drive to erode state writ and disassemble traditional tribal structures, both of which constitute obstacles to Taliban rule. He has ordered the murder of more than 300 tribal elders, clearing the way for Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal belt to become something of a forward operating base for terrorists.

There’s an ellided point of emphasis here that nods to what I always thought was Mehsud’s (if not the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan’s) principal vulnerability. First, he wasn’t just “named” head of the TeTP; there was a direct causal relationship between Mehsud’s murder of hundreds of tribal elders, and the ensuing leadership vacuum that enabled his subsequent leadership of the group. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan started as an umbrella of Pahstun tribal interests, with Mehsud voted in, post  tribal putsch. This raises a further question as to how much it has (or parts of it have) since gelled around Mehsud, and to what extent it remains an extended alliance of convenience or expediency. There are fissures within the TeTP, as Ali writes, but he’s also pessimistic about Pakistani approaches to the problem: “the government has met little success,” he writes, “because Mehsud has in many cases dismantled the centuries-old tribal structures in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA); there is no mechanism left to mobilize against him.” I’m not so sure: the TeTP itself is made up of individuals and groups that rely on those very same mechanisms. 

You heard it here first, folks: two new books, Counterinsurgency and The Ninth Winter, forthcoming from COIN guru David Kilcullen. Details received this morning direct from CTLab friend Michael Dwyer, Managing Editor of Hurst Publishers:

Former anthropologist, Australian army officer and adviser to Gen. Petraeus, David Kilcullen’s COUNTERINSURGENCY, based on the author’s ‘Twenty-Eight Articles’ of Counterinsurgency Warfare, and THE NINTH WINTER, the author’s new theory of competitive control, a mix of counterinsurgency, peacekeeping, counterterrorism, counternarcotics and stablization operations, based on experience in Afghanistan since 9/11 will be published respectively in Spring 2010 and Spring 2011, by Hurst Publishers London, Oxford University Press, New York, Scribe Publishers, Melbourne and Foundation Books, New Delhi.

Standing invitation to DK: conduct a symposium, on either or both books, here at CTlab.