In a recent blog entry by the self-titled Tenured Radical,
issues as complicated as the academic and cultural campaign for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel, the "abandonment of poor people in the United
States," the "collapse of funding for public and private education," and “half
a dozen others connected to the triumph of a corporate vision for the world”
are not only collapsed into all kinds of political equivalences, they are made into a kind of fashionable potpourri of causes for academics who will, ultimately and maybe even tomorrow, leave them all behind for another go at the proverbial buffet table: "Today the special is poverty. Tomorrow it will be the Sudan."
"Perhaps it is because I don’t fully understand why I would privilege
one horrendous humanitarian crisis over another," the Tenured Radical laments, and then excuses herself from any kind of accountability to any one of the ongoing instances of imperial violence and colonial practice she names as occurring throughout the world ("the continued
colonization and immiseration of the Haitian people; genocide in the Sudan; or
ongoing French interventions in West Africa"). This dismissal, she explains, is on the grounds of her high moral principles: she will not be forced to pick just one of these causes as though they are the most important by joining up with their campaign--like the BDS. An act of alliance that she will obviously, ultimately and probably even tomorrow, leave for another. Nor will she be forced to take sides on any one of the "hundreds of thousands of small
tragedies that few of us who live in the United States ever have to encounter."
Indeed? "Small tragedies" in the US? I suppose not having to join international campaigns excuses one from knowing one's own history or political moment. Like the systemic structure of imperialism indigenous peoples in the US confront everyday, one that systematically denies them their rights to self-determination in ongoing acts of genocide and dispossession.
One can, instead, write political dribble for the nation's top rated journal on the academy and call it being radically engaged. And I suppose the lack of accountability in that dribble extends to how this kind of blog is going to be used by pro-Israelis (Zionists), in the US and internationally, who proclaim victory over Palestinian human rights every time someone minimizes the relevance of the BDS.
Idle? Know More
The biggest problem confronting tenured radicals everywhere is the presumption about and by them that they are already educated. And, apparently, being educated is the e-ticket ride out of political responsibility to anything one knows.
One of the things that has differentiated Idle No More (INM) from Occupy Wall Street (OWS) -- a movement it has been incorrectly compared to from the beginning -- has been its insistence on the pedagogical importance of and within the movement towards bringing about the changes it envisions. Even the four women who founded the movement did so through an all-day teach-in at Station 20 in Saskatoon that they called "Idle No More" -- education towards the action needed to reform Parliament's anti-First Nation rights measures.
The continued centrality within INM's efforts of developing its own pedagogy is not merely about "being informed" for the sake of being able to argue with someone at a bar about First Nation treaty rights or Inuit land claims or how they are related to American Indian and Alaska Native legal rights (for instance). INM's -- pedagogy has been about an education that builds interpersonal and social relationships of responsibility -- you cannot know without being responsible, within the unique but related contexts of your relationships to one another, to nonhumans, and to the lands and waters and ecosystems in which you were born and live and on which you depend for life. A pedagogy interconnected with INM's dancing and singing--reflecting, honoring, and reinforcing relations of responsibility with one another and the earth with a view to changing those laws and social conditions that undermine them.
This is so far removed from the kind of position the "tenured radical" assumes as to be that "far far away" galaxy in Star Wars. Apparently in that solar system you can know and not be responsible.
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See David Shorter's reply.
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See David Shorter's reply.
Here is my message to Claire Potter:
ReplyDeleteDear Claire:
Before getting ready to go to my Palestinian students to teach, I would like to address your own students, if I may, in case they are following this discussion. Since a high level of cognitive development in adults is understood to include various levels of commitments, I hope that at least some of your students would be able to weigh the views laid down here by so many concerned people and make a commitment to be in solidarity with the Palestinian people. In an online discussion with Jazz musician Stanley Jordan, Adrian Boutureira Sansberro defined solidarity in the following manner, which I hope your students will consider:
“Firstly, we are in solidarity with the oppressed, not the oppressor.
Secondly, being in solidarity entails being able to take direction from
those one claims to be in solidarity with. Learning how to take
direction, as to what is it that those we are in solidarity with wish us
to do, is a huge aspect of shifting the relationships of power between
the oppressed and the oppressor. It is also a way to really come face to
face with our own true commitment and power issues. To do as we wish,
is not being in solidarity. It is practicing supremacist charity. I say
supremacist, because even when people claim to be in solidarity, they
refuse to relinquish their own power and privilege as individuals. They
refuse to surrender their own interests. They refuse to recognize that
the collective must always be greater than the individual, or we are not
in solidarity at all. We are then independent actors who cannot accept
taking direction for whatever reason.”
We are not looking for charity - we are looking for support for our ethical choice of tactic to fight against Israeli oppression, which has been causing untold suffering here for decades - BDS.
I'd like to share here, for your readers, a comment on Tenured Radical's blog post in which she misrepresents BDS, because Tenured Radical deleted it after it was posted on David Shorter's rebuttal! Those who have read Claire Potter's article on BDS can judge for themselves whether this is spot on or not:
ReplyDeleteWritten by 'js183576'
Here is how it goes:
1) White academic decides That Thing Those Browns Are Angry About isn't really a such big deal after all. She's just not buying it, jack. But you are welcome to try and prove it to her while she sits here with her arms crossed. Good luck with that.
2) To demonstrate her new-found expert status on Brown Affairs she names several other Bad Things that are happening in the world. And they are totally important too. Because, Africa.
3) White Academic suggests compromise and engagement, instead of That Thing Those Browns Are Doing. Can't you all just get along?
4) When POC reject White Academic's false premises and point out that there is a wide body of literature she seems to know nothing about White Academic demonstrates her deep commitment to constructive engagement by refusing to engage with the people about whom she has now decided she is an expert. (The technical term for this is "Historian" although "Anthropologist" also works, depending on the context).
5) White Academic repeatedly demeans her POC critics (Insha'Allah!) but to prove she isn't racist attacks her white critics like a suburban cutter slicing into her own thigh. Frankly, she is enjoying herself a little too much.
6) White Academic immediately begins to complain that she feels "intimidated" by all these scary Browns who are "attacking" her, despite her obvious glee. (This is, for the record, the Beckiest move, ever.)
7) White Academic begins to congratulate herself for her own bravery in tackling this difficult issue, even though it has been really hard on her because everyone is So Mean. Still, the important thing to remember is that it is all about her and the way this has made her feel.
White Academic announces that she is totally Not Racist. This works because the final arbiter of a White Academic's racism is... the White Academic Herself!
9) Repeat, ad infinitum over an entire career, with zero consequences, oblivious to the rolled eyes of her POC colleagues-- taking their weary unwillingness to have this kind of interaction every single day as tacit praise.
I appreciated the reasoned responses to the OP and I appreciate this well intentioned response but I feel no need to defend BDS. It doesn't require one. It's a tactic so the only important thing for me to say about it is that it works. It doesn't matter what the Claire Potter's of the world think about BDS, because it isn't about her.