Sunday, April 29, 2012

Academic Subterfuge

I do not read Spanish. Well, not that well. But this article of academic subterfuge caught my attention (bear with me).

It starts with a "premise assumption" which means the author asserts a definition that is made up and goes on from there to misrepresent a reality.
Here is an abstract from an academic article from Madrid, Más allá del “conflicto”: Palestina y las estructuras profundas de la colonización global by John Collins and notice all the academic gobbledygook:

This article seeks to relocate the analysis of violence in Palestine within an alternative paradigm that emphasizes long-term processes of global colonization. Beginning from the premise that Palestine is a site of an ongoing settler-colonial project (Zionism) rather than a simple “conflict,” it views contemporary realities as overdetermined by the deep structures that this project has put in place. Using the work of Paul Virilio as a key theoretical touchstone, it explores Palestine’s microcosmic and often prophetic embeddedness in three overlapping colonial modes: exocolonization (the colonization of territories outside one’s own), endocolonization (the colonization of specific populations within the territory under one’s control in the context of permanent or “pure” war), and dromocolonization (the colonization of humanity by techno-scientific acceleration). Examination of these three modes not only sheds light on Zionism’s specific colonial practices (e.g., the exclusion and confinement of Palestinians), but also encourages us to think beyond actor-centered conceptions of politics and consider the impact of processes (e.g., militarization or acceleration) that stretch beyond the control of rational actors. In particular, we see how Palestine has become a laboratory for new forms of warfare and social control whose global implications cannot be overestimated. With this in mind, the article concludes by arguing that an exploration of the challenges and possibilities of decolonization in Palestine can help us think through what global decolonization might mean.


By the way, do you think this - "how Palestine has become a laboratory for new forms of warfare" - refers to suicide bombing?

I am assuming it is a version of this article of his, Between Acceleration and Occupation: Palestine and the Struggle for Global Justice in Vol 4, No 2 (2010), a Special Issue on Opening a Dialogue on Migrant (Rights) Activism of Studies in Social Justice.

Oddly enough, on the background of the claim of "illegal settlements" is this article there: "No One is Illegal Between City and Nation" by Peter Nyers which highlights this:

I’m illegal. So what?” — T-shirt slogan, “A Day Without Immigrants,” New York City, May 1, 2006


Although the issue is citizenship of immigrants, I found this conclusion quite relevant to the matter of Jews asserting rights in their historic national homeland:

...On the one hand, the most immediate concern is to pressure governments, both local and national, to regularize the legal status of all non-status migrants. While contesting territory within the zone of illegality, the movement nonetheless grounds its key demands within the law. On the other hand, these are clearly acts that call the law into question, and even break it. To become recognized as responsible it would seem that acts of irresponsibility must be undertaken. Street protests need to be organized; the offices of bureaucrats with authority to stop a deportation need to be occupied; claims must be made by those without the authority to speak; rights must be taken by those who have no right to have rights. In these ways and many others, politicized groups of non-status migrants are enacting themselves as citizens even when the law does not recognize them as such.

Again, we witness not only the corruption of language, the perverting of historical chronicles, the presentation of irrational logic and more but also the hypocrisy of the liberal/progressive approach to society and politics.

We Jews resident in Judea and Samaria have so much more rights to be where we are than any "illegal immigrant" but what is offered as a correct policy - adoption of illegal acts - is denied to us.

^

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