Jian Ghomeshi and the Dangerous spectre of “Authentic Feelings”

On May 6th in Toronto, Jian Ghomeshi hosted an event honouring Morgan Freeman in which he received a cultural prize from Hebrew University. Because such events wash Israel’s image, and because Hebrew U colonizes palestinian land in East Jerusalem, PACBI (Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) asked both Freeman and Ghomeshi to withdraw from the event. There has been a concerted social media campaign attempting to pressure the figures to not participate in this event, which is a normalization of Israel’s apartheid practices in East Jerusalem. To quote in part the letter sent by PACBI to Jian and Morgan Freeman, 

The intention of the award is to honor your work in ‘combating racism and promoting knowledge and education worldwide.’ Given that Israel practices forms of racism through its system of colonialism, occupation and apartheid, and violates the rights of Palestinians to education and life, it is cynical, and nothing short of a dishonor to your lifelong achievements to be accepting an award from a group that is in deep support of an Israeli University complicit in Israel’s systematic violations of human rights and international law.

 

The Hebrew University is specifically implicated in serious violations in a number of ways. The University illegally acquired a significant portion of the land on which its Mount Scopus campus and dormitories are built. On 1 September 1968, about one year after Israel’s military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, the Israeli authorities confiscated 3345 dunums of Palestinian land. Part of this land was then used to build the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University.

On Monday, Jian responded to the concerns:

In simple terms, this event is not political for me. I am not doing this as a product of political affiliation or to make a statement. I am doing this to honour a great man and to advance dialogue around global education. That is what I signed on for.

Jian’s reference to his own internal motivations as a response to the claim that his event legitimates and normalizes the daily crimes against the Palestinians satisfies a little less than half of those who responded by commenting on the post (it was put up on Facebook). What is interesting about the comments is that not one of them is explicitly pro-Israeli, those who Jian has convinced agree with the non-political nature of the event, and applaud him for sticking to his convictions in the face of criticism. They perceive in Jian an authenticity for sticking to his beliefs.

What is strange about all this is that normally we applaud others for sticking to their beliefs when they are challenged because we agree with their beliefs. But Jian’s beliefs here are not self-understood or represented as political, so instead of a political conflict between two sides we have a conflict between one side that denies its political nature, and another side that declares the political implications of the event.

This is special because while we are used to politics presenting itself as a-political, I can’t think of many examples where the a-political represents itself as a-political and becomes a politics of anti-politics. To be fair to Jian, he is not against ever being political, rather he is arguing for a suspension of politics. In the case of participating in the Hebrew U event, his justification is the assertion that there “will not be an easy resolution soon” to what is “a longstanding political debate”, and that he “will speak out when [he believes] the timing is appropriate”.

So, Jian, when will the timing be appropriate?

Perhaps we can take a clue from his reference to Margret Atwood, which appears at the end of his piece. After all, he said “She articulates what is in my heart…” However, upon opening the piece, we find that Atwood is making a distinction between a cultural prize that comes from a private Israeli foundation, and a prize that would come from the Israeli state or a state university:

the Dan David Prize is a cultural item It is not, as has been erroneously stated, an “Israeli” prize from the State of Israel, nor is it a prize “from Tel Aviv University,” but one founded and funded by an individual and his foundation, just as the Griffin Prizes in Canada are. To boycott an individual simply because of the country he or she lives in would set a very dangerous precedent.

Margret Atwood’s distinction between the boycott of Institutions and individuals is not a hack job, in fact, it echos PACBI’s own language on the boycott of individuals:

In its 2005 BDS Call, Palestinian civil society has called for a boycott of Israel, its complicit institutions, international corporations that sustain its occupation, colonization and apartheid, and official representatives of the state of Israel and its complicit institutions. BDS does not call for a boycott of individuals because she or he happens to be Israeli or because they express certain views.

Jian has no right to use Atwood’s piece to defend his own complicity in Apartheid. Atwood argues against cultural boycotts, but at least she argues rather than appealing to unstructured inner motivation. An argument can be responded to, can be part of a reflexive process of mutual growth and understanding. But a statement that culture is not political is not an argument, and thus what is disturbing about Jian’s remarks is not simply that he choses to stand on the right side of history, but that he chooses not to stand at all but simply hunch and shrug his shoulders, appealing to his own feelings and ignoring those who believe that when it comes to speaking out against human rights violations, there is no need to wait until “the timing is appropriate”.

Transcendence and Reflexivity in Fanon: Nationalism and National Consciousness

The key distinction between nationalism and national consciousness with respect to culture is not, as it first appears, the mere redefining of relationships. Now, you could make an argument that it is just about redefining relationships. If you did this you would say something like the meaning of inertia is stasis, relationships staying the same, whereas the dynamic culture is one in which relationships are changing, redefined. This would not require a notion of transcendence, you could think it purely in terms of transformation on a single theoretical plane, no reflexion only disruption. And perhaps the birth of national sentiment, and the initial attempts to “to reanimate the cultural dynamic and to give fresh impulses to its themes, its forms, and its tonalities” remains for Fanon on an immanent plane, not yet reflexive, not yet “conscious”. The evidence for this is that the effects of these re-animations are “nill”. If they are reflexive, their reflexivity will show up in their taking account of not having an effect. To speak simply: those who re-animate cultural dynamics in a way that merely reproduces existing power relations and acts as a pacification for settler colonialism or other forms of oppression are only reflexive insofar as they actually reflect on the political impact of their work.

 

Now, the reason why I think you need a notion of transcendence is that in order to move from nationalism to national consciousness you need a “consciousness”. The consciousness is the national culture becoming conscious of itself as having a role at reforming the culture, meaning the “whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify, and praise the action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence”, and directing that reform towards liberation and against the colonizer. This reflection is transcendental, or transcending if you want, because it doesn’t remain fully embedded in the thing it is reflecting on. You could think about it this way: if self criticism isn’t transcendental, then you could never come to any answer in self-reflection other than everything you’re doing is great, all your ideas and the relationship between your actions and your ideas and your beliefs don’t need any change, and everything you’re doing is having all the effects you are expecting it to have. This would amount to a kind of un-consciousness, and that’s I believe what immanence literally is, a kind of pure determinism. And of course we may believe that we are more determined than we think we are (i.e. Foucault especially early Foucault). But there is something weird about this – from the fact that we can criticize our self-consciousness as not really self conscious but actually secretly determined actually implies that we are even more free than we thought, because we can stand above our whole forms of seemingly free discursive production and recognize the unfreedom in it and then try to effect changes to moderate those forms of implicit coercion.

 

Using transgressive Artists as an example, there is no reason to think this reflection should be theorized only abstractly, you can as easily do an anthropology of it by interviewing artists who are criticizing their own work in terms of its political impacts, and evaluating art cultures which are collectively engaging in this self criticism. Self-criticism is a part of the struggle as important as force because force without self-criticism can probably always be contained by a counter force which is self critical (not only the revolutionaries are conscious and reflective – the state is eminently reflexive with how it responds to resistance!). And of course analysis of this self criticism can benefit from critiques like Foucault who might show that what we thought was self-criticism was actually much more determined than we thought – but again this is not an argument for the non-transcendental quality of reflexivity rather an empirical and political matter about the difficulty of such criticism – and the reflexive/transcendental attitude is the one that doesn’t give up the possibility of criticism because it is hard but faces this difficulty as a challenge.

 

There is perhaps an ambiguity in the notion of ‘dynamic’ and this gives rise to the multiple possible interpretations of Fanon’s work, if we think that dynamic just means changing then any random chaotic and/or externally determined process is dynamic. But liberation is not merely a reaction against the colonizer (anti-colonial) but also the overcoming of internal repression and inertia in which the colonized liberate themselves and become freely, actively, consciously engaged in the production and reproduction of their lives, which means, their culture. Now I’m perfectly guilty of perhaps over stressing the anti-colonial aspect of Fanon’s theory (in reaction against the notion of post coloniality), but if we take this idea of “consciousness” seriously we must admit that Fanon is not merely anti-colonial but also a theorist of beyond the anti-colonial. But this is not “post colonial”, at least not the common meaning of the term, because all postcolonial theorists ever talk about are the remnants of coloniality in the “post colony”. The true after of anti-colonial struggle is not “freedom-from” colonial oppression (i.e. defined as “after” the colonial period), but “freedom-for”, in other words a self-conscious liberated culture that determines itself.

 

Fanon’s belief in the transcendent imputus of armed liberation was probably too strong. He believed even that in places where the struggle was relatively short the fact that the people were involved in it would make them un-dupable, un-trickable, encouraging them to de-mystify their culture and take charge of their own destiny. This belief was probably justified, but not as a political philosophy but a truth which is the postulate of the militant on the barricade. No one dies on the barricade for incremental progress, and no one joins the FLN to theorize about how shitty the decolonized state will be to live in because culture won’t become self conscious, because people won’t internally decolonize, and because the armed struggle will create a culture where people believe problems can be solved by guns in which resort to armed violence is a normal part of the political process and every party has a militia.

 

Perhaps, then, Fanon’s belief in transcendence, and belief that armed struggle is a motivating source of transcendence is too strong a belief. Contestation, confrontation, maybe these forms of experience have less transcendence in them than Fanon believed. Not none, because that would be to deny the potentiality of political positive transformation altogether. But without reflexivity on the side of transgression, norms will adapt and win – and we should never under estimate the importance of security states like Occupied Palestine and in the past Ireland as laboratories in which the state uses force and reflection to strengthen its capacity and finess in responding to transformative disruptions. If those engaged in the projects of transformative disruptions, whether in non violent protest, art culture, or armed struggle, are not more reflexive, more transcendent than the state, then we may be properly be able to say that Revolutions have no future.

The Otherness of Martyrs

Last night I was speaking with Palestinian friend who grew up as a citizen of Israel, when I was viscerally overcome by the recognition of the gap that divides Palestinians living in Israel from green card Palestinians in the West Bank.

This friend went to a mixed university – Jews and Palestinians together. They were even friends with Jews – only left wing ones who refused to serve in the army. But in their classes would be zionists, soldiers getting their call on their cellphone to serve in the war against Gaza. Also in their classes were zionist students serving as spies on Palestinian professors, who would report things said in class to their political leaders, so that retribution could be threatened against any teacher who dared to speak against Israel.

But what was surprising to me, what was overwhelming, was not the thousand forms of regulation and oppression that Israel subjects its “Arab citizens” to, but the massive gap, the wall of silence, the effective class divide between someone growing up with the relative privilege of Israeli citizenship, and other Palestinians living not so many kilometers away, on the other side of the wall, in refugee camps and poor neighbourhoods. I was struck by the way this friend spoke about the poor Palestinian kids who got killed, even admitting they see them as “others”. And I couldn’t believe it when they told me that they didn’t know anyone who had been killed by the occupation. That they had been fairly “neutral” prior to the second intifada. That the focus growing up was on individual success and starting a family, not on any form of political activity. I was also heartened by talk that these were prejudices of the “old generation”, and that the youth are trying to shed these ideas and reach out to the “other”.

Why I won’t fill out any more “doodles”

Doodle is an “easy scheduling” web tool that fits the needs of modern, busy, internet-connected types who don’t share schedules but need to find times to meet up for a work or social activity. Any person can create a poll that gives a group options as to when an event can take place in the future.  Then, by disclosing their availability, it becomes clear what times the most people are available, so the event can be scheduled.

Doodle achieves a certain ideal in the world of today – it fits perfectly with our busy yet flexible schedules, it gathers exactly the information we need and nothing more, it’s a kind of parato-optimal market solution for your time.

However, doodle has a pernicious effect on the meaning of the events that it helps schedule. By making it on-the-fly, which means non-repetitive scheduling, so easy, we no longer need to commit to weekly repetitive patterns. Instead of a weekly group meeting, say on Wednesday at 8pm, the meeting can be planned weekly to fit at the ideal time for everyone in the group, even if such a meeting happens every week. This is the casualization of events which otherwise would have gained a weight, a gravity that comes from repeating a practice in a cycle of time. Monday choir practice, thursday PTA meeting, can you imagine the way the meanings of such events would change if they were re-scheduled every week?

Our weeks, our cycles of time take on significance by, among other things, the things we do in them repetitively. This is why a Thursday afternoon has a certain feeling to it, why we might feel obligated to socialize or “have fun” on a Friday or Saturday night, and why Monday is the unofficial start to the week – despite the fact calendars tend to imply that the week starts on Sunday. By hunting for those empty spaces, and being so good at it, doodle moves us towards a world where our schedules have less and less repetition, where we can less so count on the familiarity of our own lives.

If we need to schedule important events that occur most every week by a Doodle poll, because we can’t find time in our schedules to give the event a repetitive, weekly time, we might ask ourselves if we are too busy? Which means, are we committed to too many projects, are we involved in too many involvements? Our involvements take time, but they should also give us time, in the sense of give us meaningful time, time activity which satisfies us, which grounds us, and which gives the time around it an aura of meaning too. If our involvements are becoming schizophrenic, if we are mere task-oriented, focussed on the completion of imagined goals and therefore lose track of time as not merely a resource but also the time of our lives, who has time become? Or rather, who have we become, such that time governs us, rather than we give meaning to time.

So, when I say I won’t fill out a doodle poll, I don’t literally mean that I won’t fill out a single doodle poll for the rest of my life. But what I do mean is that I will resist the causalization of events, the last-minute-ification of what ought to be planned carefully out in advance. It may be the case that this resistance will result in losing-track of some otherwise completable tasks, but this is better than losing track of ourselves, of not taking care of our own time, of being attentive to the meaning of our time. And when we take care of our time, we take care of ourselves.

Remembering Rachel Corrie

Today is the 10th anniversary of the murder of Rachel Corrie by the Israeli occupation forces in southern Gaza. Last night I attended a screening of the 2009 film “Rachel” at Beit Zatoun, which also served as a commemoration, and as an opportunity to reflect on her life, her dreams and aspirations, her sacrifice, and her legacy.

Starbucks and BDS

The issue of starbucks comes up repetitively in BDS discussions, and I think it’s relevant to listen to what Starbucks has to say on the issue.

Here’s the key bit:

Is it true that Starbucks provides financial support to Israel?
No. This is absolutely untrue. Rumors that Starbucks Coffee Company provides financial support to the Israeli government and/or the Israeli Army are unequivocally false. Starbucks is a publicly held company and as such, is required to disclose any corporate giving each year through a proxy statement. In addition, articles in the London Telegraph (U.K.), New Straits Times (Malaysia), and Spiked (online) provide an outside perspective on these false rumors.

Has Starbucks ever sent any of its profits to the Israeli government and/or Israeli army?
No. This is absolutely untrue.

Is it true that Starbucks is teaming with other American corporations to send their last several weeks of profits to the Israeli government and/or the Israeli Army?
No. This is absolutely untrue.

 

The fact Starbucks puts this kind of information on their page should be seen as a victory for BDS. I’m not saying we should all go out and support Starbucks. We might as individuals supporting BDS dislike the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz who in 1998 was awarded an “Israel 50th Anniversary Tribute Award” from the Jerusalem Fund of Aish Ha-Torah for “playing a key role in promoting a close alliance between the United States and Israel”. Also, according to the Arab American News, Shultz “has championed and funded defense of Israel on U.S. university campuses.” In other words, Shultz has been actively involved in countering the work that anti-zionist activists (and even liberal-zionist peace activists) on American university campuses do when they criticize the US-Israeli relationship and ongoing Israeli colonization and crimes against humanity.

But, BDS is not about targeting individual, even if well connected, Zionists. It is not about boycotting people we don’t like, even people who try to work against us – it is about a principled and consistent economic withdrawal from companies, academic institutions, and cultural performers, who support the Israeli apartheid regime and help wash its international image. 

 

Idle No More – between reform and insurgency, the anti/alter-colonial struggle

I have been hesitant to write any commentary on the recent cross Canada first nations mobilization. Hesitant because I feel I don’t understand it terribly well, and that there are others who are better situated to write commentary on what is going on.

But I think that I now have something to say. The thing about Idle No More which is very interesting to me is the way it manages to be both a revolutionary and liberal, both insurgent and reformist movement at the same time. It is both radical and non-radical because it is at the level of principles not a straightforward anti-colonialist movement, but rather an alter-colonialist, which means reformist, paradigm. The goals are not to kick out the colonizer, but to ask the colonizer to abide by the treaties that were signed a long time ago, and which are not obeyed. The tactics are based on law, based on appeal to the legal basis of the Canadian state, based on appeals to the obligations not simply of the Canadian state but of the British crown. This is why the chiefs demand to meet with the Governor General – because, Canadian democracy aside, they argue it is ultimately the responsibility of the crown to force its local ministers to obey by the international treaties that the crown signed with indigenous nations.

The trick is – for the state to comply with these treaties would mean very deep changes to the Canadian economy, and in the end, to Canadian society. Existing capitalism, the resource economy, can’t survive without subsidies it receives from mining resources on first nations territory. So while the prescription “Obey the treaties” is liberal, its political situation is a radical one because it will take force, it will cause a rupture, for the state to comply with treaties that are damaging to its economy.

And indigenous people in Canada have the power to exert force. They know how to run blockades, they know how to occupy territory, and it is not very easy to label them as terrorists because in the Canadian situation racist slurs against indigenous people are no longer acceptable in liberal society. Indigenous people can shut down the border at Windsor, they can control bridges – they likely can’t win a military confrontation against the Canadian Forces, but the mere danger of such a confrontation has a political effect.

Of course, the use of force isn’t a magic bullet in struggle. Peaceful protest must come first, a grassroots movement must be broad-based and strong. Settlers must play a role in the movement – taking responsibility for their position as settlers, and pressuring their government to abide by the law. The most important thing settlers must do is combat the racist tendencies in settler societies to demonize the indigenous every time they demand their rights.

By being both liberal and radical, both reformist and insurgent, INM is an opportunity to mobilize a broad coalition of the political centre and the political left, those who vote NDP and those who boycott the elections. And, it is an opportunity for all these populations to participate in a single solidarity struggle, and to learn the complimentary virtues of pragmatism and hard-line commitment. The maoist left can get over its “workerism”, center-liberals can get over their allergy to community-rights, NDP supporters can deepen their analysis of colonialism, and anti-colonial activists can recognize the distinctness of one struggle against colonialism from another. And we need to; Idle No More is crucial because it is not only indigenous people in Canada who need liberation and dignity – settlers too are imprisoned by capitalism, and by the world-destructive view that short term profit is the thing of most value – even more than the survival of the planet.

Review of “From Beirut to Jerusalem” by Thomas Friedman

The problem with liberals is that, although they may have bleeding hearts, they are unwilling to confront or even denounce the existing realities of power. They search for redemption within realpolitik, rather than taking sides against it. And while they bemoan the injustices of the past, they are condemned to repeat them by constructing futures that overcome the stalemates of history simply by diverting our gaze towards the future. These perhaps overly boisterous claims express my sentiment after finishing Thomas Friedman’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem”, a journalist’s chronicle of two of the middle-east’s most contested cities over the course of the 1980s. I do not mean to denounce the book, to claim that it is simply a poor book, a book by a biased pro-Israeli journalist giving his straight-forward, communitarian take on the Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli conflicts. This is in fact a book of many virtues, a book which for the most part demonstrates honesty and sobriety in a region plunged into the quicksand of multiple myths. The problem with this book is not “bias” at all, because for the most part the bias of the author is his passion, his resolute commitment to understanding and truth – he recognizes that Israelis do themselves no favours by clinging to myth over fact. But in the end he remains trapped within his own kind of myth – not the myth of zionism, or the myth of Israeli idolatry, but rather the myth that we all live inside of in our normal political cultures: the myth that the elites can solve our problems for us.

Mustafa Barghouti speaks in Toronto

Dr. Barghouti spoke tonight in Toronto, presented by CJPME. Mustafa is the leader of the Palestine National Initiative, one of the 3rd parties in Palestinian politics. He has played the role of a mediator between Hamas and Fatah, and he is a champion of the Non-Violent resistance movement.

CJPME is a bind by bringing him on a speaking tour, because as much as Mustafa speaks about Unity, his promotion of BDS is actually not in line with CJPME’s politics. In most ways Mustafa supports at least for now the kind of settlement CJPME desires – the two state solution. But he is careful to point out that the situation in Palestine (all of Palestine) is one of apartheid, and an apartheid which maybe can not be overcome by a two-state solution. Maybe soon, such as after 1 year, the Palestinians will need to shift towards a 1 state solution.

I appreciate Mustafa coming here and telling CJPME to endorse BDS and to cooperate with campus groups which are promoting BDS. He said “you need unity here just as we need unity in Palestine”, and this is true.

However, Mustafa’s political analysis is not up to his principles. He might endorse the right of return, but says nothing about what force can bring about the return. For him I think the return is a dream, a dream which you say to keep people happy, but what does he do to fulfill this dream? BDS? Ok yes, BDS, but how BDS? What are the tensions in BDS, what are the difficult arguments, why is CJPME not already endorsing BDS?

And although Mustafa might affirm the right of the Palestinians to armed resistance, what is the relationship of the BDS to armed resistance? With the great powers like America, they use boycotts and sanctions, and if these don’t work, military force. Should the Palestinians employ a similar tactic to the one America is pursuing with Iran? Why not? But no, only simple affirmations, no analysis, no talking about the hard questions.

Finally, what about BDS within the Palestinian national liberation movement? If his party supports BDS, and he thinks BDS is absolutely essential to the achievement of the Palestinian National demands, is he promoting BDS to Hamas and Fatah? Could BDS be something they could maybe agree on, to push Fatah away from Oslo compromise, and draw Hamas away from focussing only on armed resistance?

As for his focus on non-violence, I am unswayed. Israelis treat Palestinians who resist with “non violence” with the same brutality as those who resist with violence. So what is the point? The difference is, if you resist non-violently it is very easy for the Israelis to shoot you, no one is even shooting back at them! You can argue that people in America will see the pictures and see how horrible the Israelis are and work to stop supporting them and maybe this is true, but the problem with this is it makes the Palestinian weapon against American/Israel Palestinian suffering itself, and then Israel can quite rightly say that Palestinians are using their own suffering as a political tool. Non-violent resistance for the sake of propaganda does not have the inner purity essential to non-violent resistance movements, and the evidence of this is that it does not mobilize large segments of the population to resist.

We must take Mustafa Barghouti’s talk and his declarations and move forward to make stronger our solidarity movement to support BDS in all the north american pro-Palestine groups.

BDS is the just solution to the repetitive and ongoing conflict in Gaza

I was asked to speak last night at an event organized by the Arab Student Association entitled “Gaza: Humanity’s Failure”. I was very happy to do it because it is essential to connect the ongoing cycle of violence in Palestine to western complicity and support for Israeli war crimes, and understand as students and citizens of Israeli-allied nations how our support for Palestinian rights can help alter the current power imbalance, improve the negotiating position of the Palestinians, and help them regain their rights. In the interest of reaching as many as possible, I have here posted behind the cut my rough notes of the talk.