From: malgosia askanas (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Jan 19 2009 - 15:38:05 PST
Chris,
You are putting up an ill-defined strawman and then fighting it. When you say
>However, when you go into ³judeophobia², you are getting ridiculous.
>Itıs a lot like when Bill Oıreilly questions the patriotism of an
>American who does not believe in waterboarding or the war in Iraq.
, I don't think that whatever it is that you call "ridiculous" and
refer to as "it" can be found in any of my posts in this thread.
You're second-guessing me, which is an instant recipe for a boring
non-event.
But OK, I'll engage with some of what you say. First, judeophobia is
not per se about race (as it was cast by the Nureberg laws or the
laws of Tzarist Russia), or religion (as it was cast by the
Inquisition), or ideology (as it was cast in the Soviet block).
Judeophobia is Jew-hatred - however it is cast, it is simply and
solely about hating Jews. Many Jew-haters have never seen a Jew,
couldn't articulate what they mean by "Jew", and wouldn't recognize
one of they saw one; nonetheless they "know" that "Jews" are rats and
pigs, that they commit ritual murders, that they conspire to take
over the world, that they are responsible for all the world's woes,
that they defile and ruin whatever comes near them, and so on.
Second, judeophobia is very much alive in the world, and is in fact
on the rise. And, as anybody who follows current events knows very
well, it is very, very present in the current protest demonstrations
"against the war in Gaza". Slogans like "Go back to the ovens" or
"Hitler didn't finish the job"; attacks on Jews, boycotts of stores
owned by Jews - these are NOT criticisms of, or protests against, the
errors of a state or a nation - these are, plain and simple,
abominablel expressions of Jew-hatred. And you can see a large array
of such events reported in, for instance
http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=230
Given these realities, which have persisted for centuries and should
be well-known to any "cultured" individual, I would say that YES
(bingo!), anobody who thinks that it is acceptable to discourse on
the matter by burping out slogans like "Abolish the state of Israel"
or "A replay of the Warsaw ghetto" is ipso facto aligning hirself
with judeophobes. These burps are not "critiques" and they are not
"subject positions" - they are either thoughtless, ignorant
regurgitations or something worse. And usually, if you scratch,
it's precisely something worse. Always the same old worse thing.
>You argued before that you like to keep things on the level of
>³facts². But then you decide via Foucault that the other argumentıs
>subject position is unable to speak towards facts because their
>context either puts them outside of the argument altogether or, even
>worse, is some self-hating paradigm that creates an added level of
>victimization (³you canıt agree with me because your historical
>context has made you hate your own people²).
I never said any such thing.
>The problem with throwing perceived subject positions into the
>arguments is that it makes it impossible to discuss because both
>sides assume that the other person is saying something because of a
>hidden position. We then make conjectures about the otherıs subject
>position that, honestly, if actually spoken, would smack of racism.
>Me saying, ³you take this position b/c of this & this & this² and
>you saying, ³you take this position b/c of this & this & this² would
>be rather insulting and juvenile. Itıs why some of the discussion on
>this listserv has gotten out of hand.
Well, the remedy to this is: either speak from, and with, knowledge,
thought and understanding, or don't speak. People who speak from
knowledge, thought and understanding don't speak in slogans. And
with those who insist on speaking in slogans, there can be no
pactuation. They put themselves in a position to which the only
response is "No passaran".
>I would hope that one would be able to transcend oneıs
>historical/Foucauldian subject position to potentially see the other
>side (rather than bomb it).
>But even if one canıt, then I would stretch the argument to say that
>not only is the violence in Gaza (on both sides) killing bodies, but
>itıs really f*cking up future subject positions for the both of
>them. Clearly it is not the appropriate solution to the problem.
It is not a solution to any problem, but I am afraid it is precisely
what's happening.
-m
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