what does the powerless do?
recently read joe sacco's palestine and watched ararat made by atom egoyan... palestine is a work of political journalism using the medium of graphic novel... genre-bending stuff... great work of art... very interesting compositions... what attracts me most probably is the highly self-reflexive manner of narrating... as joe moves through the locales tis always in his mind that he is gonna draw ths thing, so alwys thinking abt how to get an interesting angle - in reporting as well as visually... tht makes him to stand in a certain place when a strife breaks out between israeli soldiers and palestinians... joe clearly suffers from what probably every conflict-zone journalist suffer from - the naturalisation of violence... he gets stuck betwn two worlds one in which riju is shocked and pained and dunno-wht-elsed by knowing tht pen refills are shoved inside penises to make ppl talk and sign things, and the other world in which a muslim adult male who hasnt sufferd ths is probably an informer to israeli army... such incidents of violence gradually becms commonplace for joe too and he slowly loses interest in documenting such incidents... rather the subtle moments of resistance tickles his curiosity... moments which he initialli though laughable and childish... he signs off pondering over the question "what does one do when s/he knows s/he is powerless and the opponent is omnipotent?"... now thats a question very close to muh heart ths days... but thts a subject for another occassion... ths post however will deal with my little-informed theorisation of the palestinian conflict...
the film ararat is quite a complex once and deserve a dedicated post... anyway, the issue from tht film which i want to cite now provides the film with its immediate context - mass killing of armenian population in turkey during the formation of tht nation-state... the central issue of the film i feel howver is a different one - the necessity of believing in something even if it is false, or the unbearable lightness of being witht Truth - which i shal deal wid later... anyway, coming bak to present context, armenians argues that the mass-killing was carried out by a state on its own population - a genocide... while the turkish ppl see the killing as a war agnst the armenians... the turkish argument is that having a sizeable ethnic 'other' within the boundary of the nation-state constitute a clear threat to sovereignty and hence the 'war' agnst the ethnic 'other'... ths argument follows directly from the european idea of nation-state as defined upon a certain ethno-cultural-linguistic group... whereas the armenian position is that there were no war, the state killed a part of her population citing religious difference (armenians are christian)... like any other section of the population, armenians depended upon the turkish state to defend them agnst 'external' threat... and wasnt prepared to take on the onslaught of tht very state... the denial of the genocide as practiced by turkish state however is follows structurally from the very premise of nation-state in european sense...
i saw ths film after reading palestine... what occured to me immediately is tht ths ethno-linguistic unity based concept of european nation state is at the heart of the palestine-israel conflict... whereas from a non-european perspective it seems obvious that jerusalem being the center of three religious worlds, cannot possibly be part of a state in european sense... neither possible is a vatican city like solution... its unfortunate that jews who hav faced the burnt of being the ethnic-religious 'other' within european nation states most terribly, themselvs practice similar oppression in the name of sovereignty of the same form of state... of course i am not ignoring the intricate real-geo-politik is associated wid the conflict... but tis unfortunate tht the discursive justificatn is based on tht same european idea of state which has produced anti-semiticism by its own obvious logic... once that label of 'uncanny'/'other' is imposed on the palestinians by israeli invaders, once israel adopts that european form of nation-state, the possibility of a dialogue within a democratic framework necessarily breaks down... militant stuggle becomes the only path... be it pieces of rocks thrown at israerli soldiers to answer their percussion grenades and tear-gas shells and automatic rifles...
btw, in construction sites inside jawaharlal nehru university daily-wage labourers are paid 60rs where the minimum stipulated wage for unskilled workers in delhi is 128rs... when some of them asked for a 5rs hike in wage-rate, they were sacked... when students protested agnst that and put up posters, the jnu administration ignored them and torn down and washed away the posters... next day students agitated outside the admin block and gherao-ed the registrar... the admin retaliated by suspending the students who led the agitation... in an university general body meeting students gave the verdict that the suspension has been totally unjust and shud be repealed immediately... the admin remained silent for some time... and two weeks ago it has rusticated the student leaders... an indefinite hunger strike is underway in jnu agnst ths totalitarian decisions of the jnu admin to protect its corrupt core... well, i hav lotsa criticisms abt the whole mode of protest carried out by the studnts - from lack of theoretical understanding to more pragmatic issues - but leaving that apart, the incident (which is still going on) is a very disturbing one to say the least... the question is the same one - how one intervenes when s/he is powerless against an omnipotent opposition? it is apparent that s/he does not stand still entrapped in powerlessness, s/he always intervences (be it by throwing stones or putting up posters)... but how tht can be bettered? made more effective? and applying to good senses of ppl is not an option... thr aint anyone wid tht in jnu admin... in any admin i guess... well, if one gazes into the admin, the admin too gazes into him/her...
the film ararat is quite a complex once and deserve a dedicated post... anyway, the issue from tht film which i want to cite now provides the film with its immediate context - mass killing of armenian population in turkey during the formation of tht nation-state... the central issue of the film i feel howver is a different one - the necessity of believing in something even if it is false, or the unbearable lightness of being witht Truth - which i shal deal wid later... anyway, coming bak to present context, armenians argues that the mass-killing was carried out by a state on its own population - a genocide... while the turkish ppl see the killing as a war agnst the armenians... the turkish argument is that having a sizeable ethnic 'other' within the boundary of the nation-state constitute a clear threat to sovereignty and hence the 'war' agnst the ethnic 'other'... ths argument follows directly from the european idea of nation-state as defined upon a certain ethno-cultural-linguistic group... whereas the armenian position is that there were no war, the state killed a part of her population citing religious difference (armenians are christian)... like any other section of the population, armenians depended upon the turkish state to defend them agnst 'external' threat... and wasnt prepared to take on the onslaught of tht very state... the denial of the genocide as practiced by turkish state however is follows structurally from the very premise of nation-state in european sense...
i saw ths film after reading palestine... what occured to me immediately is tht ths ethno-linguistic unity based concept of european nation state is at the heart of the palestine-israel conflict... whereas from a non-european perspective it seems obvious that jerusalem being the center of three religious worlds, cannot possibly be part of a state in european sense... neither possible is a vatican city like solution... its unfortunate that jews who hav faced the burnt of being the ethnic-religious 'other' within european nation states most terribly, themselvs practice similar oppression in the name of sovereignty of the same form of state... of course i am not ignoring the intricate real-geo-politik is associated wid the conflict... but tis unfortunate tht the discursive justificatn is based on tht same european idea of state which has produced anti-semiticism by its own obvious logic... once that label of 'uncanny'/'other' is imposed on the palestinians by israeli invaders, once israel adopts that european form of nation-state, the possibility of a dialogue within a democratic framework necessarily breaks down... militant stuggle becomes the only path... be it pieces of rocks thrown at israerli soldiers to answer their percussion grenades and tear-gas shells and automatic rifles...
btw, in construction sites inside jawaharlal nehru university daily-wage labourers are paid 60rs where the minimum stipulated wage for unskilled workers in delhi is 128rs... when some of them asked for a 5rs hike in wage-rate, they were sacked... when students protested agnst that and put up posters, the jnu administration ignored them and torn down and washed away the posters... next day students agitated outside the admin block and gherao-ed the registrar... the admin retaliated by suspending the students who led the agitation... in an university general body meeting students gave the verdict that the suspension has been totally unjust and shud be repealed immediately... the admin remained silent for some time... and two weeks ago it has rusticated the student leaders... an indefinite hunger strike is underway in jnu agnst ths totalitarian decisions of the jnu admin to protect its corrupt core... well, i hav lotsa criticisms abt the whole mode of protest carried out by the studnts - from lack of theoretical understanding to more pragmatic issues - but leaving that apart, the incident (which is still going on) is a very disturbing one to say the least... the question is the same one - how one intervenes when s/he is powerless against an omnipotent opposition? it is apparent that s/he does not stand still entrapped in powerlessness, s/he always intervences (be it by throwing stones or putting up posters)... but how tht can be bettered? made more effective? and applying to good senses of ppl is not an option... thr aint anyone wid tht in jnu admin... in any admin i guess... well, if one gazes into the admin, the admin too gazes into him/her...
posted by r i j u at 7:08 AM
1 Comments:
I could trust u with such posts... how u doing?? Great to see ya blogging...
--Loads of love,
Raji
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