August 3, 2009
July 20, 2009
Idioms of Inquiry
The originary hypothesis creates a “new way of thinking,” as Eric Gans has so often said. A way of thinking involves a new vocabulary and grammar; it puts words to new use, generates new questions and imperatives. Any new way of thinking would do this; all the more so must one founded upon an account of the origin of language; all the more so an account of the origin of language that sees language as constitutive of the human. It seems worth trying to generate such a vocabulary and grammar through linguistic terms themselves—all discourse must be conducted through ostensives, imperatives, interrogatives and declaratives, so the way these utterances work in relation to each other must provide us with an exhaustive account of any discourse; and if of any discourse, of all human activity. That we can do it does not necessarily we that we should—but I’m going to proceed on the assumption that it’s worth the effort.
Let’s start with a simple observation: it must be possible to read any sentence as an answer to a question. This is the case insofar as the first predication, the negative ostensive posited by Gans in The Origin of Language, is itself a response to a question. Questions, moreover, are “softened” imperatives, or imperatives cognizant of the possibility that they won’t be obeyed. Think of how far just these observations would already take us: if the sentence is designed so as to answer questions (I don’t think “answer” is quite originary enough for our purposes here, but we can leave that aside for now), then any sentence might be answering more than one—each word in the sentence could be read in terms of the question it is answering, of the anticipated follow up question it is answering; word placement could be read in terms of answers to questions regarding how to answer the question, which would in turn reveal something of the relation between the interlocutors. Which imperatives get obeyed, which get resisted, which get mistaken, deliberately or accidentally, and so on; which imperatives get prolonged into the uncertainty of the question? I would suggest that focusing on such questions would teach us far more than all the speculations and accusations regarding “power relations” occupying so much of postmodern discourse.
Imperatives, in turn, can be grounded in ostensives: following the cry of “Fire!” (one of Gans’ most used examples) we would expect “Follow me!,” “Head for the exit!,” “Stay close to the ground!,” “Call 911!,” etc. Even more commonplace imperatives (to take another of Gans’ privileged examples: the surgeon requesting “Scalpel!”) could be understood in these terms: if the surgeon needs a scalpel it’s because he realize that “it’s time!” (to start cutting). Moreover, the boundaries between these modes of utterance are fluid, with one mode often “presenting” as another, as with the rhetorical question. If declaratives can be read as, let’s say, presenting a reality (in which other imperatives might be obeyed) in exchange for the desire involved in the question, they can also be read as embedding imperatives. If someone says, “The door is open,” maybe they want me to close the door, maybe they want me to leave, maybe they want me to look over in that direction, but the sentence is telling me to do something. Any sentence is—or, if one likes, any sentence can productively and revealingly be analyzed as doing so; such commands, on one level, are those which any sign puts forth, which is to iterate the sign itself, to operate within the space it opens. Aside from the kind of practical imperatives I just suggested, iterating the sign might involve adding an adjective to the noun, suggesting an ostensive that might confirm the subject-predicate relation articulated by the sentence, along with, perhaps, attending to the next sentence, etc.—these are acts the sentence might be “telling” us to perform.
I consider imperatives to be central here because only imperatives can make anything happen beyond the centered attention effected by the ostensive—indeed, we could say that even the ostensive put forth on the originary scene might be considered unique and expansive enough to imply an imperative like “Stop!” I think that the hypothesis that verbs are originally imperatives is an extremely fruitful one, but leave that aside. More pragmatically, I would propose that the world appears to us as the effect of (indeed, created by) imperatives, with things and people telling each other and themselves what to do all the time. If you start paying attention, you can start noticing how deeply embedded imperatives are in ordinary language—it is imperative that, our imperative here is…., etc. So, if someone does or attempts something, we can analyze it as obedience to some imperative, regarding the source, aim and force of which we could hypothesize. We could also re-conceptualize our fundamental categories of thought and action, including those constitutive of GA, in these terms.
So, to get started, thinking is obeying the imperative to suspend all imperatives: in this suspension, imperatives approach or occur to one, appearing as possibilities which the thinker in his/her detachment follows; ultimately, the emergence of one imperative after another leads us to the founding imperative of thought, to cease obeying commands directing us to efface the ostensive sign. Politics, we might say, is obedience to the imperative to generate declaratives that can harmonize the incommensurable commands with claims upon us—what we might also discuss as the convertibility of imperatives and declaratives. Morality follows the command to map imperatives onto declaratives—every imperative, to pass the test of morality, must be seen as derived from some declarative (the “thou shalts” rely on “I am the Lord thy God,” or more recently, “x is wrong”). Ethics, meanwhile, follows the imperative to align imperatives with ostensives (treat others fairly is a moral imperatives, but what counts as fair in a given situation—what we will point to, authenticate, as an instance of unfair treatment, belongs to ethics); we are engaged esthetically when we obey the command to attend from one element of a sign to another, indefinitely; and so on.
We can analyze the most fundamental concepts of GA in grammatical terms. Desire involves taking a command from the object, a command to model one’s activity on the possession of that object; resentment, that refusal to accept one’s barred access to the object, might be seen as taking a command to superintend the object (if one can’t have it, one can keep one’s eyes on it; if it’s going to be distributed, one can make sure that it is done under the authority of the sign). Imitation takes the command from the model to treat that model as a source of imperatives—the model tells me what to do, and the more it tells me the more commands I demand. Indeed, we can describe the mimetic crisis in these terms: I must command the model to give me commands that would let me bridge the gap between his commanding being and the consequences of my compliance. Such commands to the source of commands create contending imperatives and turn the commanding gestures into an ostensive one indicating a common source of imperatives. Imitation is thereby converted into iteration, as the model is seen to share the same relation to its model as one has just constructed with it.
Such grammatical analyses could never be exhaustive as it is impossible to describe ostensives, imperatives, interrogatives and declaratives without orienting oneself towards the world they constitutive—indeed, even in the definitions I have just offered, a whole series of terms, like “object,” “model” and “source” could only be defined circularly, as the origin of imperatives. This circularity would remain even were we to go on and specify the object and model, but this is the point of a conceptual vocabulary—a conceptual vocabulary derived from the originary hypothesis just needs to be aware that if the world appears to us as result and source of imperatives it is because we are commanding and commanded by it to do so. Since commands are both circumscribed and fallible, this circularity is a constant source of idioms. The same is true for these descriptions I am offering, all of which aim at minimality and for that reason require (command) quite a bit of surrounding discussion.
My argument here for the generation of linguistically and semiotically grounded idioms of inquiry is part of my argument in my previous post for the sanctification of language in the post-millennial era. Using grammatical terms in this expanded way simultaneously places those terms within language, making them generative rather than descriptive. I am proposing a practice of deliberately putting language to work so as to produce novel idioms that are both means and objects of inquiry. Anyone can conduct the kind of analysis I am outlining—anyone could tell you whether the question they have just asked is really meant to function more like a command, or what they would have to see, hear or experience to better understand what you just said, or what they would like someone to do as a response to something they said, etc. And once one’s attention is directed in this way, there is always something to talk about with others, and it may become very interesting. Language itself, after all, is in the end a mode of inquiry into the kinds of representations that might defer violence.
Finally, it seems to me that such an idiom of inquiry helps us to formulate what might be an enlightening way of thinking about the political condition of postmodernity, which we might define in terms of a crisis in the imperative. One of the most significant consequences of victimary modernity, and its intensification under postmodernity, has been a continual shrinking of the sphere of operative (uncontested, understood, grounded in our tacit knowledge of others, immediately complied with) imperatives. To put it simply, no one is sure enough about whom they should listen to. The task of modernity has been to enhance the imperative force of declaratives, but the same assumptions that led “reason” to attack rather than complement “faith” set declaratives at odds with imperatives, compliance with which must contain a substantial “irrational” element. Events are always a sure source of imperatives, upon which victimary discourse relies heavily and has come to produce rather than discover, but that can never be enough. The Left is bossy enough, to be sure, but their imperatives are generated by ostensives on one side (“racist!”; “fascist!”, “homophobe!,” etc.) and formulaic declaratives on the other. “Gay marriage is a human right” is a declarative, and a very characteristic one—it presents itself, grammatically, more as a statement of fact than of opinion; it is a declarative that depends upon a long sequence of previous ones of exactly the same type (“gay marriage” simply filling a slot previously filled by other substantives), creating the reality which provides the effect of “facticity”; and its imperative force is absolute for anyone situated within that “reality” (the human rights world picture), while anyone outside of that reality is irrevocably demonized. The fetish the Left has come to make of “lying” (as a strategic accusation, at least) makes sense in these terms as well: distinguishing between truth and lies places politics completely on declarative terrain, while charging the declarative with imperative force.
In that case, the post-victimary imperative would be to create and obey together the imperatives out of which new declaratives might emerge. I don’t know what those imperatives might be or how we will come to obey them—indeed, how could any of us? The absolute and ultimately arbitrary adherence to some irresistible model which I understand Raoul Eshelman’s notion of “performatism” to be identifying as a “post-postmodernism” seems to me one productive line of inquiry. It might also help to inscribe imperatives within freedom, which we might consider obedience to the imperative to prolong the distance between the imperative and its ostensive authentification. Freedom, in other words, is not the opposite of obedience—it is obedience to an imperative to honor the imperative order by embedding single imperatives in prior, more inclusive ones and making one’s own obedience into a sign that is never completely formed. I have previously defined freedom as nobody, including yourself, knowing what you are going to do next—and isn’t that exactly what is happening as one follows an increasingly impersonal imperative through ever wider circles of consequences?
June 25, 2009
The Holy Grammar of Presence
Eric Gans’ talk at the Ottawa GA conference on June 20 (http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/vw375.htm) articulated the problem of victimary discourse in relation to the originary scene in what, I think, is a new way. Gans had already re-situated scapegoating (for Rene Girard the founding moment of the human) within the emergence of hierarchical orders, which themselves emerged as the “big man” centralized distribution as kingly priest thereby transcending the unstable and more egalitarian gifting order. Using the concept of “firstness,” Gans now situates the possibility of hierarchical order on the originary scene itself, well before such firstness could be given any institutional embodiment. Gans can now speak about two paradoxes of the human: the paradoxical relation between God and human, wherein we define ourselves as mortal by reproducing the immortal sign; and the “ethical” paradox, in which hierarchies must be affirmed in language which is itself essentially egalitarian–both the slave and slaveowner understand the words by which the former’s dispossession and domination is affirmed. The advent of victimary discourse in the post-Auschwitz era has, for the first time, subordinated the primary paradox to the secondary one, leading to the widely shared assumption that the elimination of hierarchies between subjects would abolish all conflict, thereby forgetting the need for a mechanism of originary deferral, regardless of the terms of social order. Gans concludes:
But it is the very excess of victimary thinking in the postmodern era that has provided the impetus for the return to the primacy of the transcendent, understood this time from a minimally anthropological perspective.
This is true as an account of the origins of GA, but it would be a mistake to take this “return” as one likely to be replicated socially. (Gans doesn’t seem to be suggesting something along these lines in this talk–it is overwhelmingly analytical rather than presciptive.) The victimary order has installed itself not only by reversing the priority between transcendence and inequality; it did so by “implicating” transcendence in inequality–that is, victimary thought scapegoats representations of transcendence as “alibis” for the continuance of social hierarchies. Attempts to reverse the hierarchy of human-divine and intra-human relations once again would be instantly “tagged” as calls to return to traditional, hierarchical orders: even on esthetic grounds, the notion of “elevation” implicit in “transcendence” is too reminiscent of the “heights” oppressors placed themselves upon vis a vis the oppressed.
The re-prioritization of the human paradox, then, must take on another form. I would first of all suggest that we can stop speaking of the immortality of the sign–first of all, because it’s not strictly true, as human beings could destroy themselves and leave the universe devoid of signs; second, because it leaves the human as a sort of spectator, gazing at the sign–as Gans insists, the transcendent sign is always in some relation to what has been transcended, but nothing in the notion of transcendence implies the dependence of the transcendent upon those “acquainted” with it. But the sign is, of course, thus dependent. And if the fundamental human paradox is to brought back to the center of cultural life it will have to be through an awareness of the way all of us need to contribute to the subsistence of the signs that sustain us. At the end of the event, with all the participants arrayed at the periphery, the sign and object would appear simply to be there; but, if acknowledgment of “firstness” is the initial step towards rooting hierarchy and its discontents back in the scene, we should also note that firstness simply points to the sceneness of the scene, i.e., to the fact that something happens, which means something happens first, then second, then third, and so on, until the last. And along the way each “iterates” and “norms” what the others have done–that is, each puts forth the sign in a way that both highlights the distinctiveness of an earlier emission and adds to its “contours” so as to facilitate its further assimilation by the group.
Indeed, what we can call the “transcendent” quality of the sign can equally be referred to as its iterability. The problem “transcendence” addresses is why the word “dog” is the “same” word when I use it now and when some other English speaker across the world uses it years from now (of course, words change their meanings, but that’s a distraction right now–they aren’t completely changing their meaning at every moment, so the problem I am addressing here remains). The simplest answer to the question is that signs are iterable because they are iterated. I would like to distinguish “iteration” from “imitation” here: you imitate when you follow the rules embodied in another’s activity, but you iterate when you apply the rules another is following to that activity itself. This distinction can be articulated with the one Richard van Oort (http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap1301/1301vano.htm) draws from Michael Tommasello’s study of primates and humans, between “emulative” learning, in which “the disciple focuses not on the model’s particular behavior but on the objects with which the model is interacting” and “imitative” learning where one “enter[s] into the model’s particular intentional stance toward the object.” The difference between imitation and iteration, then, can be put as follows: if imitation enters into the model’s particular intentional stance toward the object (what I just called “following the same rules”), then iteration is the next act in a series initiated by the interaction between the intentional stance and the object (applying the rules to the subject’s behavior). To put it in colloquial terms, imitation plays the man while iteration plays the ball— in activities where we must obey the same set of rules but towards opposite ends, and our roles are therefore distinct as well as reversible, I need to be able to act within the “field” your activity is generating. To return to the originary scene, the iteration of the sign is the imitation of the central object, which “attends to” the organization of the group as a whole as its collecting intelligence. By anticipating, facilitating and channeling one another’s moves we simultaneously sustain the game itself; and, since social life is ultimately more open-ended and therefore play-like than game-like, we keep playing by inventing new rules out of the anomalies of the existing ones. We keep things going, and protect the rules not by exclusion but by improvising tactics for inclusion.
So, in iterating the sign I not only do what you do but I spread what you do–I enter your relation to the object but I also recognize that the object is encompassed by that relation as well. Here the object is the social relation itself, which is constituted by the thing we let be between us, but also by the infinitely varied ways that thing can mediate our relations. Your use of the sign requires my use to be complete–if the first gesture had been ignored in the rush to the center, it wouldn’t have been a sign–and so my sign both completes yours and “requests” that another do likewise for me. The word “first,” indeed, is the superlative form of “for,” in the sense of “before,” ahead of, representative of, holding the place of–the first is the “most for,” the “for-est.” It implies, and only exists as first, if others are coming after, who will be first in a way as well since others will keep coming.
This sustaining relation towards the sign I would call “presence” rather than “transcendence.” Presence is the open acknowledgement that the central object is amongst us and we part of it. Presence was present on the scene, before its “closure,” but it would have been far too risky to make it explicit in a ritualistic order where claims of human contribution to the center would destabilize it, while introducing it would have introduced conflict into a hierarchical order, since the politics of “presence” under such conditions would be insupportably radical (of course it did emerge in the various known and unknown revolts and heresies through the ages). But now that the hierarchical order has been sufficiently pounded by the victimary barrage, while the awareness that the absolute elimination of all hierarchies can only lead to terror is widespread, ways of turning or renaming hierarchies into or as provisional forms of firstness as the inflection of presence can be freely discussed. Each of us, in some sense, has been “delegated” to watch over some region of signification at each moment, and in that region we are the guarantors or “spreaders” of meaning.
The shift from transcendence to presence, meanwhile, would further involve shifting sacrality or holiness away from specific objects, even transcendent ones, to language itself. The “linguistic turn” of 20th century, post-metaphysical thought was inextricably caught up in victimary discourse, perhaps most forcefully in Derrida’s work, where metaphysical hierarchies are transcribed into social ones, so “logo-centricism” easily flows into “phallo-centrism,” “Euro-centrism,” etc. But this need not be the case–indeed, the understanding of language as constitutive, rather than derivative of something more fundamentally human, true, or permanent, might be the antidote to victimary thinking. Victimary claims address themselves, perhaps above all to language–the source of “political correctness” is the awareness that language does constitute our shared world, while at the same time the formulation of those claims must, needless to say (or, inevitable to say) take place in that very same language. Perhaps we have a third paradox here, between the expression of resentment and the donation of that resentment to the circulating center.
June 4, 2009
Obama’s Symmetries
I hadn’t fully realized it before reading the text of Obama’s speech in Cairo but what is certainly most interesting, in my view at least, about Obama’s rhetoric is his sense no issue has been properly represented until it has been satured with symmetries. This seems to be a compulsion on the President’s part or, more productively, a habit. So, I am going start paying attention to Obama’s discourse in these terms–as the construction of a set of symmetries, across a continuum ranging from sensible but obvious, to startling and provocative, and finally to outrageous and obscene. Where and when he crosses over from one “region” to another should be telling; and it is likely that this rhetorical focus will yield insights into not only Obama’s own thinking and likely political direction, but to what he represents for so many–what those many take him to be transcending, and how. And I am happy to start here, with the Cairo speech, because despite the challenging topic and venue, it seems to me that Obama kept the portion of outrageous and obscene symmetries to a minimum.
Here’s the speech:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjNkOTI5MDIyMTRiZWNkMjFlN2JkOWU1OGU4NDVjYWU=
Let’s start with the following symmetry, offered as a cause of current “tension” between the United States and Muslims:
More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.
This is a good place to begin. “More recently” seems to cover a large period of time here–and sometimes you need a lot of time if you are going to establish an equivalence. “Colonialism” was not only quite a while ago but also actually very brief and had little effect in the Muslim world–from the middle to late 19th century until the mid 20th, and with the exception of the French in Algeria in particular, the occupation of Muslim lands was not heavy handed. What little constitutionalism ever existed in countries like Iraq and Egypt seems to have been left there by the British–and then swept away afterward. The Cold War is a little more “recent,” but with the famous exception of helping to install (or re-install) the Shah back in 1953, it would be very hard to give an example of a Muslim government that would have been very different if not for America’s insensitivity toward the wishes of the people of that country (perhaps Indonesia, where we supported a very violent suppression of a Communist rebellion in 1965–are Muslims complaining about that?). But this broad temporal sweep also enables Obama to put the Islamists’ rejection of modernity in a larger context that would, implicitly, at least, implicate the Muslim world as a whole in that rejection. So, our representation of modernity in the Muslim world has been bullying and hence gave modernity a bad name; while many in the Muslim world, perhaps because they over-generalized from those actions of ours, or because modernity and globalization are hard (for us as well), have failed to distinguish better from worse elements of modernity. Now, if we set aside all questions of truth and fairness, and just think in originary terms of the purpose of such supposed symmetries (on the originary scene, who first reached for the object, who first elbowed another out of the way, etc., is all irrelevant once the sign is extended), we must judge them as follows: can acknowledged representatives of both “sides” sign onto these provisions as a starting point, in which case their truth need not be determined until after we have tried to live up to them. From that standpoint, “we will eschew more aggressive impositions of modernity and globalization if you will determine to embrace some version of modernity and globalization that will get you into the system” seems reasonable. Of course, what will then count as “aggressive” or “destructive” versions of modernity, what it would mean to get inside the “system,” etc, would all bve open to debate, which would also be part of the point here.
So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.
But that same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America. Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words – within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum: “Out of many, one.”
Here, on one side, there are “negative stereotypes of Islam” and on the other side the “crude stereotype of America as a self-interested empire.” The President obliges himself to fight against the former “wherever they appear”; it’s less clear who is obliged to contest the latter. In other words, there is an odd asymmetry here, which Obama must have felt was needed for the larger symmetry in which each side opposes stereoytpes of the other. Perhaps the asymmetry lies in the fact that the speaker can make the initial gesture by obliging himself; he can’t oblige others. All he can do is disprove the stereoype held by the other. The extent to which this symmetrical formation holds together depends upon whether the main objection to America on the part of Obama’s audience is, indeed, America’s imperialism, or (another odd phrase) its “self-interestedness” (as opposed to disinterested empires?), which I must assume is an oblique gesture to our “materialism.” In other words, the fact that we have always tried to give meaning to our principles “around the world” must be distinguishable for that audience from the “imperialism” itself. Otherwise, Obama’s very words here would confirm the stereotype. On the other side, what will count as a “negative stereotype” of Islam–and in what sense does it fall within the President’s responsibility to fight against them? This symmetrical formation is more tenuous than the previous one, insofar as the President might be taken to be pledging to oppose those of his fellow citizens who are critical of Islam. The weakness here may lie in the opposition of “America” to “Islam”–America is a nation and can do good or evil; Islam is a religion which doesn’t “do” anything, so Muslims agreeing to see the US in more complex terms doesn’t really line up with us not saying anything “offensive” about Islam. Why, then, couldn’t Obama here have contrasted the actions and principles of Americans with the actions and principles of Muslims (as he did in the symmetry I just examined)? Here, we hit a serious obstacle: which liberatory or universalistic actions carried out by Muslims as Muslims could Obama have pointed to here? When he would, by the laws of symmetry, need to point to some complexity (good and evil) in the actions of Muslims, at least in terms of engaging the principles of the modern world, he falls short. So Obama here has to commit himself and us to something both impossible and wrong–to avoid criticizing Islam. The alternative would have been to split the “Muslim World,” and single out proponents of democracy and human rights at odds with their government, and whose existence would therefore enable Americans to arrive at a more complex view of Muslims.
Now, here is a symmetry that has already been generating quite a bit of controversy, and is well worth examining:
Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed – more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction – or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews – is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.
On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations – large and small – that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.
For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It is easy to point fingers – for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought by Israel’s founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.
That is in Israel’s interest, Palestine’s interest, America’s interest, and the world’s interest. That is why I intend to personally pursue this outcome with all the patience that the task requires. The obligations that the parties have agreed to under the Road Map are clear. For peace to come, it is time for them – and all of us – to live up to our responsibilities.
Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.
Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people. Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.
At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.
Israel must also live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society. And just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel’s security; neither does the continuing lack of opportunity in the West Bank. Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people must be part of a road to peace, and Israel must take concrete steps to enable such progress.
There is a lot to go through here. Obama begins be weighing, not so much Jewish suffering against Palestinian suffering, as the unacceptability of us today denying either suffering. That is, I don’t think he is equating what the Palestinians have gone through to the Holocaust–we need to find the point of symmetry, and not every element of each side of the equation has to line up with some element on the other side. Obama suggests that threatening Israel with destruction today is equivalent to denying the atrocities committed against Jews in the past–actually, a rather subtle and reassuring thought. Now, let’s go to the “other hand.” That the situation of the Palestinians is “intolerable” is as “undeniable” as the suffering of the Jews. (Note the way the imperative of formal symmetry works here–what holds this part of the speech together is the equivalence of “undeniability” that pertains to both Israelis/Jews and Palestinians–a rather thin thread, but it forces Obama to make the connection I just noted between “denial” and “threats.”) So, America will not reject the claims of either side. I don’t see what would prevent this from being a starting point: it is undeniable that threatening Israel with destruction or denying the Holocaust will not resolve anything; and it is equally undeniable that ignoring the situation of the Palestinians will not resolve anything. All this seems undeniable. Obama’s reference to the “humiliations of occupation” seems out of date as most of the Palestinians’ territory is presently unoccupied, but this claim is not really necessary to this equivalence, anyway.
Soon after comes the equivalence between the Palestinians and blacks in the American South and non-violent revolts elseewhere. Here, again, Obama is not saying that Palestinians are “like” American blacks, South African blacks, East European dissidents, etc., in every way–the equivalence here is forward looking and projective and therefore one it would be incumbent upon the Palestinians to redeem. That is, the comparison is not between different forms of oppression, but different models of liberation. And, yes, the slaves were freed by the “violence” of the civil war but, again, that doesn’t fall within the scope of the proposed symmetry here, which is between various “sublatern” struggles for liberation against “advanced” nations in the late modern world. In other words, it’s a salutary redirection of anti-colonial resentments toward more “post-colonial” ones.
The Israeli side of the symmetry seems to me especially weak here. Unlike his account of the Palestinians, there is no distinction between what Israel has done and what they should do; there is no proposal of another model for Israel to follow–Israel is just given orders. “Israel must” is the prevailing locution here and, with the exception of the very vague comment on “continued Israeli settlements,” Obama never acknowledges that Israel might be very willing and may even be trying to do what they “must,” but may need cooperation from the Palestinians. One consequence of the demand for symmetry here is that Obama “must” insist that Israel hold up its end all the more forcefully precisely because the Palestinians can’t or won’t hold up theirs–in other words, if both sides are in place, you can simply apply pressure wherever it’s likely to be effective.
I do like Obama’s assertion that we will say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs–I don’t remember hearing that in a Presidential speech before. I also don’t believe it, but it’s a good thing to say, if only because it provides a standard for judging Obama here (why not aim at symmetry here as well, though, and insist that all sides follow the same logic and say the same things publicly and privately? Would it have been hard to establish an equivalence between Muslims and Israelis on that score, since Israel is already as transparent as any society can be and the divergence between what Muslim governments say to their own people and to others notorious? So, is that what places certain topics off limits–their resistance to symmetrical rhetorical formulations?). But, to end this–if anyone wishes to examine other parts of the speech in the comments, I’m game–the biggest problem with symmetries is that they leave out the question, who goes first? And, in the end, that’s the only question. I can hypothesize, then, that part of the attraction of Obama is his belief that any conflict or dilemma can be framed in a symmetrical form such that the very framing appears to transcend that conflict or dilemma; and, that the other part is that the symmetries need not, indeed should not, lead to any reciprocal action. Indeed, if we take those symmetries I have portrayed most favorably, as possible starting points, where, indeed, would one go with them? Let’s say we go first and stop imposing our forms of modernity and globalization upon the Muslim world–in fact, we can read Obama’s speech as such a going first. All we will have done is leave the field open for the various competing positions on modernity and globalization to fight it out among themselves–our move ties into no reciprocal action, we can’t point to anyone going in one direction rather than others, someone whom we could join. Obama can’t even point to more productive approaches to modernity and globalization within the Muslim world–indeed, one strange thing about his speech is that he doesn’t praise anyone doing anything right now–all he does is recognize grievances and propose better models for pursuing them. To praise some would be to dispraise others, and that would be to impose. One could say that he therefore represents the Muslim World more negatively than Bush ever did, even though his explicit criticisms are usually very mild. Obama’s symmetries, then, require us to believe in mass conversion throughout the Muslim world, a spontaneous conversion, in response to Obama’s presence, with Obama himself as the guarantee that the conversion will be reciprocated (here, his bizarre pledge to commit himself to stamping out steretypes of Islam makes sense). This is the result of the rejection of the attempt made by Bush to split the Islamic world, which ended up splitting the West as well–it is the terror of those entwined civil wars that gives Obama’s symmetries their mystical force, at least for his followers in the West. For his Muslim audience, Obama’s speech can readily be translated into homilies on the need for self-improvement, but at our own pace–we are already on the way to becoming what we are supposed to be. Indeed, the proof of that would be that we are addressed by and can appreciate the speech. There is very little Muslims can do–other than support al Qaeda, deny the Holocaust, etc.–that would leave them outside one of these symmetrical formulations. And what is now gone is any sense of being monitored by an other, from within the “system”–the symmetries are reversable and allow one to shift one’s gaze back to one’s interlocutor at will.
