Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In Eric Garcia’s three-volume detective series, the chief investigator is none other than a velociraptor disguised as a human, Vincent Rubio. Indeed, the principal conceit of the series is that dinosaurs are not extinct. Although dinosaurs have not been eradicated as once believed, they must wander the world concealing their dinosaur identities beneath human guises. Though they be dinosaurs, they must live as if they were humans. But as Kwame Anthony Appiah has recently asserted to “live as” X does not always mean to introduce an identity as X. Dragging in human disguises, that is, allows these dinosaurs to “pass” for human, but it does not give them a human identity per se. And if living as X does not necessarily grant one an identity as X, it also forecloses, in the case of these mysteries, the possibility to live fully as one’s masked identity. The mask itself (the human drag) endangers the very possibility of being dinosaur. Or as one of one dinosaur character avers, “Every day we put on these costumes is another day we lose part of ourselves” (CR 47). These dinosaurs in human drag, I contend, precisely allegorize the construction of racial identities in the United States. Indeed, I argue that Garcia’s novels instruct us well on the stakes of forging and masking one’s identity and offer us a compelling opportunity to investigate the purchase racial identities hold in the late-twentieth and early-twenty first centuries, a time when not only are dinosaurs supposed to be extinct, but race as a scientific category is as well.
Although the ludic nature of dinosaurs guised as humans is a tantalizing narrative seduction, it works as more than just a gimic. While readers likely laugh at the craziness of Garcia’s novels, the irrationality of the United States’ racial caste system provokes no laughter. Although race is, no doubt, a biological fiction, the material effects of racism—salary disparities, divided neighborhoods, gated communities, etc.—are not. These effects of racism lead many to embrace race as a scientific category. In short, if racism exists, there must be race. While racial categories are as preposterous as the premise that dinosaurs roam the world in human drag, that is, they are infrequently seen as ludicrous.
Nevertheless, I contend that the outrageous, unscientific, utterly irrational premise that underwrites the comic conceit of Garcia’s novels is the very same premise that should lead us to look awry at the division of the human species into races that, while also unscientific, many, conservatives and radicals alike, embrace as real. Hence the outrage over Paul Gilroy’s Against Race (2000), a book that, while admittedly tendentious, only proposes that we not embrace race as a scientific category. For in doing so, we unwittingly endorse the racist hierarchy that racial taxonomies underwrite. If we step back momentarily from this investment in race, we see how Garcia’s allegory educates us in the dangers of race and the travails and joys of what Jonathan Lethem as described as “settling into one’s skin.”

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Indian Ocean littoral region encompasses a large number of areas of strategic concern (East Africa, the Persian Gulf, South Asia, and the Malay Archipelago) to the United States in its ‘long war’ against extremism. The ocean is also the host to vital sea lines of communication by which oil from the Persian Gulf is brought to market in Japan, Europe, and increasingly China and India. While these multiple strategic concerns necessitate a U.S. presence in the area, regional dynamics as well as local domestic politics combine to make a sizeable U.S. base an unrealistic option in most Indian Ocean littoral nations.

One potential anchor of U.S. presence in the Indian Ocean region is the joint UK/U.S. base at Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago. The facility at Diego Garcia received a high level of scholarly attention in the late 1970s and early 1980s as the United States considered expanding its presence in the Indian Ocean in response to increased Soviet naval activity in the region. However, since the end of the Cold War, Diego Garcia has received scant interest from scholars of strategic studies, despite the island facility’s pivotal role as base for American bombers during both Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).

This paper seeks to bring Diego Garcia back into the spotlight by examining the island’s strategic past, present and future. The first section outlines the historical importance of the Indian Ocean as both a conduit of trade as well as an enabler of maritime power projection. This is followed by a history of Diego Garcia itself, with specific attention paid to the recent history, including questions of the legality of the creation of the British Indian Ocean Territory, the controversy over the deportation of the Ilois and the lingering uncertainty regarding the facility agreements between the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States. The second section assesses Diego Garcia’s contemporary role as a base for the maritime prepositioning squadron as well as the contributions made by Diego Garcia based aircraft to OEF and OIF. The reactions of regional powers, specifically India and China, to U.S. presence in the Indian Ocean are also discussed here. The final section of the paper assesses Diego Garcia’s strategic future, assessing the likely value of a continued U.S. base in the Indian Ocean as well as taking into account considerations of the effects of global warming and the on-going quest by the Ilois to gain the right to return on the future utility of the facility.

The source materials drawn on for this paper include academic and media sources in multiple languages, official records available at the National Archives of the United Kingdom as well as interviews with U.S. Naval personnel and policy makers in Washington, D.C.

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