City Gates

"And she told him unbelievable things, she said that everyone, that the dead were everyone, and that this thing killing the children we know no reason for, this thing that kills will kill everyone." -Elias Khoury 

"In nearly 25 years of involvement with Gaza and Palestinians, I have not had to confront the horrific image of burned children – until today.

Yet for Palestinians it is more than an image, it is a reality, and because of that I fear something profound has changed that will not easily be undone. For how, in the context of Gaza today, does one speak of reconciliation as a path to liberation, of sympathy as a source of understanding? Where does one find or even begin to create a common field of human undertaking (to borrow from the late, acclaimed Palestinian scholar, Edward Said) so essential to coexistence?

It is one thing to take an individual's land, his home, his livelihood, to denigrate his claims, or ignore his emotions. It is another to destroy his child. What happens to a society where renewal is denied and all possibility has ended?" -Sara Roy  

the two terms of dissent

A'sad Abukhalil edit: by Turkish poet Nevzat Çelik (my translation)

certainly we are not that many
we are not on that side with the many
we will be kurds in turkey
armenian among kurds
asyrrian among armenians
we’ll go be turkish in germany
surinamese in holland
algerian in france
azeri in iran
pitch black in america
surely native american among the black majority
in israel, palestinian
a cat against a dog
a bird against a cat
bugs and insects against the bird
referees will always root for the opposite team
and we’ll always end up with seven players
we will be the camellia among flowers
on the side of our lesser arm,
we will be on the left
this is the first term of dissent
and there will be few of us even on the left
because while reproducing this revolution
we will be swiftly lessening into the next
and this is the second term of dissent.

New School is Occupied!

http://gothamist.com/2008/12/18/new_school.php

An Open Letter: Come Occupy a Building with Us...Now

Dear Friends,

We are writing to you from the inside of the New School Graduate
Faculty Building on 65 5th Ave. We are occupying it. Right now.
Literally.

Students of the New School University, along with our partners from
other universities and groups - like NYU, Hunter College, City College
of NY, CUNY Graduate Center, and Borough of Manhattan Community
College, have organically risen up to demand the resignation of
President Bob Kerrey, Executive Vice President James Murtha, and Board
Member/torturer Robert B. Millard (he multi-tasks). We have come
together to prevent our study spaces from being flattened by corporate
bulldozers, to have a say in who runs this school, to demand that the
money we spend on this institution be used to facilitate the creation
of a better society, not to build bigger buildings or invest in
companies that make war. We have come here not only to make demands,
but also to live them. Our presence makes it clear that this school is
ours, and yours, if you are with us.

The outside doors have been closed now, so we can't exactly invite you
in...sorry... We know you wanted a piece of the action, but we'll be
around for quite some time. Join us at 7 AM tomorrow when the doors
open again, or come now to stand outside with a sign in solidarity.
You are cordially invited to join us in any way you can. We are not
going anywhere. In the meantime, check out our Web site:
www.newschoolinexile.com. We have all night to make things
interesting, and the website will continue to be updated. Stay tuned
for the musical pieces, doctoral dissertations, and creative
finger-paintings that seem to be the natural result of 150 students
locked into a building together for a night.

We are here, making decisions collectively, doing teach-ins, listening
to music, studying, singing. We've got an upright bassist, guitarists
and vocalists (If anyone can volunteer a drum-set we'll be well on our
way...). We'll be here until this university changes, or until the
party gets boring (but it doesn't seem likely that will happen). We're
not going anywhere. We hope to see you soon, and if you really can't
wait a few hours - what the hell - occupy your own universities or
work spaces.

Come use your voice to declare loudly that this school and this world
are yours. Come use your mind to think up a better world. Come use
your body to create it, one all-nighter in the university cafeteria at
a time. Come stand in solidarity with the students, faculty, and staff
of this university. Come to write letters of support to the people of
the village of Thanh Phong whose parents were murdered by the current
President of the New School during his service in Vietnam. Come join
the struggle with the people of Iraq who are being tortured and killed
by a company funded by this university and represented on the New
School Board of Trustees. Come here to join the uprisings and
outpouring of passionate resistance currently taking place all over
this country, and all over the worlds - from factory workers in
Chicago to students in Greece. Come for yourself. Come for all of us.

In solidarity,

The New School in Exile

this will be straightforward

we know officially love finkelstein. as in not just admire his work and integrity, but are all warm and squishy inside for him. because he is that awesome.

as I bid farewell to Radical Activist U

since it is never late for a little nostalgia and often too early to start my next paper, I recently revisited this precious gem by Front Page.

I'm surprised women studies isn't in quotes, because free speech, comparative american studies and transgender are. To make the most out of this classic, I present you with this useful checklist.

Look around and check for each one of these that you frequently see:
-radical political and sexual indoctrination by the faculty and administration
-faculty and administrators helping students organize protests against their country
-sending 200 students or more to most major anti-war and anti-globalization protests across the nation
-a long history of hypocrisy on Middle Eastern policy (namely vitriolic anti-Israel teach-ins and education sessions led by Oberlin’s faculty, flyers advertising a week of pro-Palestinian propaganda by faculty and guest speakers on one hand and the president calling "zionism=racism" graffiti hurtful on the other)
-indulging in “hating whitey.”
-faculty approving an entire (emphasis mine) academic program called “Comparative American Studies” – which includes “queer studies” – the central focus of which will be how white males have oppressed all those of an alternate sex, race or sexual preference since before our country’s inception.
-orgies held on campus
-gay people. everywhere.
-a gay Muslim.
-queer activists who want to battle neo-conservative American leaders in a quest to prevent a new fascist American state. And then encourage students to have sex.

Now count your checks.

Depending on who you are, you can:
a) decide to apply to Oberlin
b) wish you attended Oberlin 10 years ago
c) realize you are not quite making the most of your RAU experience
d) congratulate yourself on not being a dumbfuck like the author of this article, or a Republican for that matter

also depending on who you are, I leave you with some good news or bad news. just think, what would Jean Pearce do?

speak with plain dialectics.

Now that the library stocks the London Review of Books I finally feel like I go to a real school. Since i've been here they've had AIPAC's Near East Report newsletter and its Cuban counterpart, Gramma Internationale so I guess that after Obama won they pretty much had no choice but accept change.

A few points:
1. The LRB is ridiculously oversized. I had pretty much been able to forget this because I've become so used to reading it online but yesterday I felt like a total asshole, showoff carrying it up to the third floor. I can't believe I used to read this thing on the subway.
2. Compared to reading the LRB online, reading the magazine in print feels kind of like going through a revolution in reverse. Before I could start reading an article by Said about his encounter with Sartre. Then, after just a few more-or-less random choices I could wind up here:

Waking to find myself a touch genocidal, I would, I imagine, be uncertain how to proceed. An unprovoked attack on my target group with whatever weapon came to hand might take out a few of them, but also bring my venture to a premature end. Reflecting that few are lucky enough to be in a position to do the job themselves, I could either confine myself to advocacy, or else embark on the difficult and protracted business of getting into a position in which I could expect others to obey my orders.

3. I guess this is kind of self-evident, but I'll write it anyway. The LRB is New Left Review for quitters.

The first thing I did after finding the review was to read Elif Bautman's article titled On Complaining.  . Yes, the article is now available online for free, but in the spirit of this post I won't link to it. Bautman's essay is a critique of a recently published Foucault, Althusser, and Derrida apologetic that seems especially dumb. I'm not going to put long quotes from the article here, although I initially wanted to, because I think that I have already done enough to spoil the fun of reading Bautman by telling you all the stuff I learned about Althusser from it.

I wasn't familiar with Bautman before reading "On Complaining." I did some research and found out a few things. 1) she has a website that is inappropriately awesome for someone not that well-known. Still, I like it, and I am happy that it exists. 2) through this website you can find out that she knew about the band Vampire Weekend before anybody else. Status aint Hood had some nice things to say about this band, so, as Status would say, 3) Bautman just finished a PHD in comparative lit. and i think I find its basic ideas intelligible. The first chapter is available for download from her website. 4) The LRB review was so scathing that I'm sure the author of the book under review will have to respond. My revolutionary subjectivity tells me that a mixtape with a cover that looks something like this

Real Talk.

Yeah, it's kind of like this.

About 3 months ago I predicted on this blog that Slavoj Zizek would start taking shots at Noam Chomsky.*Anyone who knows how competitive the contest for the title of world's most revered public intellectual is could have seen this coming. And after seeing both Zizek! and Chomsky's own Zeitgeist films produced documentary Manufacturing Consent I was shaken once again by this epiphany. A day later, Zizek did the predictably dramatic, or REAL dramatic, thing and gave this piece of wisdom away for free on the LRB website

Noam Chomsky called for people to vote for Obama ‘without illusions’. I fully share Chomsky’s doubts about the real consequences of Obama’s victory: from a pragmatic perspective, it is quite possible that Obama will make only some minor improvements, turning out to be ‘Bush with a human face’. He will pursue the same basic policies in a more attractive way and thus effectively strengthen the US hegemony, damaged by the catastrophe of the Bush years.
There is nonetheless something deeply wrong with this reaction – a key dimension is missing from it. Obama’s victory is not just another shift in the eternal parliamentary struggle for a majority, with all the pragmatic calculations and manipulations that involves. It is a sign of something more.

Blam! Blam! Ether!!**

Zizek continues with this typically thoughtful and deeply contemplative judgement:

This is why an American friend of mine, a hardened leftist with no illusions, cried when the news came of Obama’s victory. Whatever our doubts, for that moment each of us was free and participating in the universal freedom of humanity.

I wonder how Chomsky is going to respond. I don't want to push this rap beef is like the London Review of Books analogy too far, but I suspect Chomsky is gonna drop a mixtape of a lectures in which he shoots back at Zizek REALly soon. The image on the cover will probably look something like this...





*Footage not found.
** Rap jargon you won't understand. Consult your Urban Dictionary.