history: August 2006 Archives

The trend continues:

August 26, 2006: Europe Pledges a Larger Force Inside Lebanon

[The NYTimes posts - again - a link to Maira Kalman's blog art: Heaven on Earth.]

Another bloglink, Line of Fire: A conversation about the new Mideast conflict, describes the current Israeli "inquiry time, the season in the Israeli calendar that comes after disappointing wars, as inevitable as the headaches and bruises and questions after a bar-room brawl in which everything seemed so necessary and inevitable while it was happening and so jagged in memory."

Meanwhile, Iran steps up nuclear production, the Palestinians strengthen their national government, Nasrullah continues to be heroicized. Fundamentalist Islam is radically strengthened throughout the political sphere of the Arab world. I ask my friends, "Where in your discourse have you built a foundation to blunt the gathering forces of repression and (dare I say it?) internalized, stratified oppression?"

It is good that Arab forces have established equity in international debates. It is as questionable what they will do with this power as any other world power, namely Israel and the US. Who will dissent from the inside? Who will be the anti-Islamists from within to join with the anti-Zionists Jed championed? (The Economist, btw, described those giving themselves this label as fringe groups, extremist in their own way. [reference the edition two weeks ago])

Meanwhile, can artists open dialogues that politicians cannot? "The [cartoon] exhibition is intended to expose what some here see as Western hypocrisy for invoking freedom of expression regarding the publication of cartoons that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad while condemning President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran for questioning the Holocaust."

Some friends and I discussed the cartoons published in Denmark last winter. Will the discourse about the “Holocaust International Cartoon Contest” ("Holocust"?) become another tit-for-tat reinforcer of static national and religious identities or can it function to open spaces for the genuine appreciation of different perspectives?

August 24, 2006: Gaza Captors of 2 Newsmen Pressure U.S.

August 21, 2004: Europeans Delay Decision on Role Inside Lebanon. I attend a protest in Istanbul.

August 20, 2006: Truce Strained as Israelis Raid Lebanon Site

August 17, 2006: I attend a Barenboim-Said concert that invokes much thought on the snippit of discourse that unfolded through initial responses to each other on the subject of Israel-Lebanon-Hizbullah.

August 13, 2006: I struggle within myself not to respond in kind to a discourse limiting what one can know based upon who one is. Puru posts a newslink.

August 11, 2006: I reflect theoretically on identity, home, and voice.

August 10, 2006: The post, Lebanon is responded to by Tejal and Jed.

August 7, 2006: The post, Diving in Headfirst is responded to by Amanda.

August 6, 2006: Berger on Philosophy" is a snapshot of my philosophical frame for discussing Mideast (and any other) politics.

August 2, 2006: Day 21 (Israel vs Hezbollah) is responded to by Jeff and Yasser.

Berger argues “there has rarely been a more optimistic philosopher” than Hegel because Hegel believed in history as a positive force (38). [I might need to read him!]

Then he goes on to describe Marx’s genius, which was “to prove that this force – the force of history – was subject to man’s actions and choices” (38). [Finally – a concise, pinpoint definition of Marx’s main point!] “The always present drama in Marx’s thinking, the original opposition of his dialectics, stems from the fact that he both accepted the modern transformation of time into the supreme force, and wished to return this supremacy into the hands of man” (38).

[I read this with a flutter of panic. Have I misunderstood, still, and will this destroy the argument I began to make in my comps answer for Briankle? But I think not, because Marx in use, the discourses I’ve heard of Marx, the times and moments when the term “dialectics” or “dialectical” is used, consistently refer only to the former part of his equation. If there is an implication of “returning supremacy” to persons it is buried. And buried so deeply that no one, until Berger, of all the people I’ve had this argument with, has been able to articulate the latter empowering part of the equation. If it is so seminal, why is it not easier to say? Why are there so few examples? Which is why I argue that Bakhtin’s conception of dialogics serves better – it is premised on the future, on possibility. Dialogics acknowledges the past but does not confine itself to it. I would argue, that when Marxist dialectics is invoked as the explanation for some human success over institutionalized systems, it is coopting the more precise and more accurate conceptualization of dialogics, it is trying to colonize it and claim credit for something it has not adequately articulated. In Bakhtin's terms, dialectics ıs monologic. sigh. Do you think I will be ready for my defense?]

Berger continues: Marx’s “thought was – in all senses of the word – gigantic. The size of man – his potential, his coming power – would, Marx believed, replace the timeless” (38). [No wonder he was and is so compelling. But this message is not evident to an outsider, it has been coded within a discourse that takes it for granted. Not only coded, but I would say obscured by the very term, dialectics, clearly coming from dialect, which is a variation of a particular language, a derivative, another version of the same thing (with unique, local modifications).]

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The wikipedia definition (linked above) defines dialectics as "an exchange of proposition (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses) resulting in a synthesis of the opposing assertions, or at least a qualitative transformation in the direction of the dialogue" (emphasis added).

:-) Only a step in the direction of dialogics - which puts logics into a process of exchange, not just ideas.