Eyeless In Gaza

Innumerable things, but for example, this article, or Matt's post, led to the following reflection:

We often commend in an academic way, or for reasons of cultural or literary distinction, phrases or concepts which we make no attempt to actually take at their word, let alone put into practice. How many of us, for example, will invoke the Benjaminian line about history been written by the victors, without really thinking about how this is true even now in the present, and what has to be done to wrest events away from their embodiment in official accounts, or, indeed, simply from oblivion, from willed amnesia.

The vanquished and the relatively powerless, on the other hand, denied even their own names (note the scare quotes still used by some in refering to the Palestinians) and stories (again, the nakbah of the Palestinians), are relentlessly accused of seemingly endemic mendacity and malice. The media is said to be dominated by their representatives. If a reporter or historian uses such sources he is necessarily 'biased', since he has not tried to 'verify' them - ie submit them to others who are judged capable of verification. Some time ago, I responded to one such 'unverified report' as follows:

"Who can verify these stories?" The fact that we cannot verify them (because those who would verify such stories are not granted legitimacy, because the
‘legitimate’ scribes will not grant them verification), that official accounts have no interest in their verification or even registration, that History, written by the victors, does not feel answerable to such stories and can let them spill into oblivion with impunity, that even to draw attention to such stories is met by accusations of unacceptable complicities, that one is re-directed to more 'worthy' items and suddenly deafened by ideologues screaming for 'context'- all this is of course precisely the problem.

____

'But of course, Benjamin was writing about a different era, about the 1930's, whereas today.. '

"whereas today": thus every generation slips into the arrogant and indolent belief that "there has been history, but there is no longer any," and the still incendiary ideas of the past are treated as so many antiquarian puzzles or stages in a history now complete.

enbee, An interesting exchange between Alph & Alain on the subject of the West Bank and other things here.