The Gift of Freedom

Making and Breaking Family: North Korea’s Zainichi Returnees and “the Gift”

“…Altruistic behaviour often has unintended effects, and a range of motivations may lie hidden beneath acts of benevolence. Kennan Ferguson (2007) discusses the 2003 U.S invasion of Iraq to show that gift giving, even when the gift is an abstract concept like freedom, inevitably comes with obligations. Ferguson argues that the givers, who are convinced of their own benevolence and immense generosity, often misunderstand such gifts.…”

The gift of war: Cash, counterinsurgency, and ‘collateral damage’

“…As he notes, on the third anniversary of the US invasion, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, with reference to the deaths of US soldiers, declared that ‘freedom is a gift, selflessly purchased by the very best and brightest among us’ (Ferguson, 2007: 46). These words echoed with those of former president George W. Bush, who, at the outset of the war on Iraq, stated that the US objective was ‘to bring freedom to others’ (Ferguson, 2007: 39). And they also persist beyond the war in Iraq (which was Ferguson’s focus) to ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ in Afghanistan.…”

“…This paradoxical duality of generous self-interest is embedded in the gift, which is not as sanguine as is usually assumed, but constituted by and constitutive of violent social and political relations. For while gift-giving is often presented as an altruistic act, it is, as Marcel Mauss (1954) emphasized in his foundational book The Gift , always already bound up in the self-interests of the giver (Ferguson, 2007: 42). Gift-giving entails an obligation, or at least an expectation, to reciprocate: to submit a counter-gift.…”

“…The gift is thus always ambiguous: not freely given, but structured in terms of indebtedness and subjugation. As feminist scholars have argued, the relationships that are constituted are gendered: the receiver is emasculated, and hence delegitimized, by being made subservient to the giver (Ferguson, 2007: 45, 48). But, if the gift emasculates, it is also an articulation of an imperial moral and political economy, past and present.…”

“…Theories of the gift attend to the discourses of generosity and benevolence in which military payments are inserted, while also underscoring the relations of indebtedness and obligation that are forged. This is especially pertinent in the context of war, for, as Kennan Ferguson (2007) and Mimi Thi Nguyen (2012) have illustrated, the gift is at the heart of Western liberal warfare, embedded as it is in endlessly deferred promises of ‘freedom’.…”