Dead Generations: The coup is a new inflection point, a dark event with no upside, but to see it clearly is to see it within cycles of upheaval
Dead Generations: The coup is a new inflection point, a dark event with no upside, but to see it clearly is to see it within cycles of upheaval
i. Overview
Geoffrey Aung’s Dead Generations offers personal experience and insight into how to place the February 1st coup within the tumultuous history of Myanmar. He does so by complicating widespread perceptions of the coup. Rather than seeing the coup as a return to the past, he views it within the “cycles of upheaval” that have characterized Myanmar since its independence in 1948.
Mya Thwe The Khaing was shot on February 9th. She was sheltering from water cannons at a protest when a bullet pierced her skull. Wai Yan Tun and Thet Naing Win died when military forces opened fire on a protest in the Yabanabon shipyard. What brought these three into the streets? Media coverage frames the situation as dragging Myanmar back in time. However, this narrative obscures historical memory, creating a sense of amnesia that views history as a teleological march towards “progress” and liberalism. This understanding of Myanmar’s history ignores lived experience. After all, the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Myanmar’s Rohingya took place under the rule of Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar’s democratically elected government. The cruelty of the Tatmadaw is not in the past but is an ongoing event. The coup cannot be viewed as anything other than a modern phenomenon. And within this framework, nothing is certain. The coup is an inflection point, but in which direction it pivots is up to people like Ma Kyal Sin. Martyrs who stake everything on the wager that “everything will be okay”. It is not a fact, but rather a future worth fighting for.
ii. Analysis
Part of what makes this piece both intriguing and infuriating is the broad range of topics covered and ease with which the author switches between personal narrative, intimate knowledge of the coup in Myanmar, interpretation of scholarly work, and reflection on the coup’s place in Myanmar’s historical memory. I would like to see more engaged research into the topics he brings out through this piece: manipulation historical memory and time, connections between Myanmar’s past and present, and the ways in which the coup is portrayed, or obscured, in contemporary news outlets. For example, how does international media distort or flatten our understanding of the February 1st coup? Does this presentation influnece conceptions of Southeast Asia in the West?
iii. Connection to other readings
I noted a startling contrast in how death is conceptualized between the readings from this lecture. Death in this reading is a deeply personal account that connects the past to the present. While it is unequal experience—some are martyred, others are forgotten—each one is treated with a certain gentleness. Such sincerity creates a strong visual and emotional experience that provides the reader with a window into struggle in current-day Myanmar. In Prasee-Freeman and Elliott’s piece, death is constructed as one component in the supply-demand structure of Myanmar’s indispensable/expendable labor force. It is this commodification of death that produces a necroeconomy in which the mode of “production is either indifferent to human death, cannot avoid producing death, or even functions more efficiently with a manageable amount of death” (Prasee-Freemand and Elliott, 5). The pragmatic discussion of death in this serves a much different purpose: it creates the emotional separation to view death as a part of the Myanmar economy.
Questions
1. Can government’s manipulate historical memory to their benefit? If so, how would this play out in the case of current day Myanmar?
2. In what respects can the February 1st coup be seen as a continuation of politics in Myanmar? In what respects does it serve as a break from the past? What does this dynamic imply for the future of Myanmar?
Quotes
1. But the cruelty of the generals is not some vestige of a primordial past, a direct reversal of history’s calendrical movement. There are too many contemporary analogies and antecedents, not least in Myanmar, for the coup to be anything but modern.
2. For her (Ma Kyal Sin), the message—everything will be okay—is not quite a promise, even less a guarantee. It is more like a possibility, a wager; it requires action, intervention, perhaps even sacrifice.
Comments
Matthew,
My sense is that Aung’s real gripe about history and time is the basic point that people assume there is a pathway from darkness into light. That was what the dogma about “transition” seemed to assume in 2011, when all the pundits declared that Myanmar was moving towards something, as if there is a direction to things, and that direction is always “better”, “forward”, etc, etc. The piece then folds that into dialogue with social theorists who held that view of history and those who challenged it, all while refracting such theoretical debates about time and history with the real experience of state violence in Myanmar, which is clearly non-linear.
I’d like to hear more about what you found infuriating? I think you allude to it as a desire for more research, but that seems a bit vague. Me personally, I was only infuriated with the oversimplifications of Anderson, which in my mind seemed to misconstrue his points about time as being a belief in teleology, which seem to miss the mark. But I found the style and the blend between personal and historical to be effective.
I also think the frenetic, non-linear style of the writing is in some sense of purposive, intentional choice to use a form of writing that actually mimics the argument being made. But perhaps it’s just too frenetic to be clear and convincing.
The point you raise about Elliott Prasse-Freeman’s concept of death and necroeconomy differing so much from the emotional responses to death after the coup is very important. I don’t see it as a contradiction, though. From the perspective of a mine owner, there may well be a dearth of affect or emotion when a miner dies; but from the perspective of the miner’ family, that death may well be a source of great anguish and grief. Nevertheless, your point would be one these two authors should be able to address.
best wishes,
Erik