Re: <nettime> By the rivers of Babylon

[Noam Knoller via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Dear David,

There are many possible analogies to draw, although none will translate
very well. The biblical discourse occasionally employed by Netanyahu does
not function in either Israel or Palestine as it did in the context of the
Protestant culture of the 19th century USA, where individualised bible
reading functioned as a constitutive intellectual and religious practice
amongst the literati, common to both slave owners, emancipated or otherwise
literate slaves, or abolitionists. Israelis and Palestinians do not, by and
large, read the bible as a matter of daily practice, although it remains
available as one cultural reference amongst others. In fact, it would be
difficult to think about any cultural or intellectual - let alone
theological - practice that would be common to everyone in that region,
given its radically layered cultural, ethnic and religious diversity,
including a number of completely non-overlapping and largely autonomous
educational systems that do not even share a common language. The biblical
prophets are read within some of the Hebrew-language systems - but not so
much within the Jewish Ultra-Orthodox ones that focus almost exclusively on
the traditional study of the post-biblical Jewish canon - as well as in
some church schools that mainly cater to Palestinians in Israel. I don't
think mainstream Arab-language schools have any version of the bible in
their readings, but I may be wrong.

The prophets are thus not present in the cultures of the region in the same
manner. They are, however, invoked by some educated Israelis with a
particular interest in Jewish cultural tradition, usually indeed as a
source of progressive ethics. A certain ethical "spirit of the prophets of
Israel" is even enshrined as such in the semi-constitutional Israeli
Declaration of Independence, alongside a reference to "the principles of
the UN". As it happens, 15 years ago I'd edited Mieke Bal and Benny
Brunner's documentary, "State of Suspension" [1], the opening sequence of
which being a montage of critical Israelis reading out that declaration's
prophetically inspired rhetoric juxtaposed with images depicting actual
practice. I think you might detect some rage there, if you care to watch it.

Amongst Israel's human rights organisations, some do specifically draw upon
the prophets for ethical inspiration. This would particularly be true for
faith-based organisations or individual activists with a background in US
reform Judaism, which has been (at least indirectly) influenced by
Protestant theology as it developed in 19th century Germany and later in
the US. If it is rage against war crimes you're after, there are specific
organisations documenting and fighting those (most prominently B'Tselem),
as well as regular weekly demonstrations. As you rightly suggest, they are
hated by much of Israeli society, and subjected to some legal persecution,
violent threats and even actual violence, especially after Netanyahu's rise
to power in 2009 - but they do remain active and even vibrant.

Within that same progressive critical tradition you can also find scholars
and artists criticising, specifically, the instrumentalisation of the
Holocaust within state mythology. This has been, and remains, a very common
critical trope since at least the 1980s.

I'm not familiar with any of this tradition passing through Frederick
Douglas, specifically, but many if not most of Israel's critical scholars
since the 1970s have been pursuing their postgraduate education in the US
and have been applying theories and methodologies from the empire to the
local context.

-- 
Noam Knoller
*Researcher & Lecturer*
*Games & Interaction, HKU University of the Arts Utrecht*

* Founder userly.tech <https://userly.tech>+31.6.42801925 *
- Latest research project: Mission Zhobia - Validating a Serious Game for
Complexity: https://userly.tech/research/zhobia

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thAhWDx-Nzs

On Tue, 3 Sept 2024 at 14:01, David Garcia via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

>
> Frederick Douglas by the Rivers of Babylon
>
> Over the summer I’ve been reading David W Blight’s great biography;
> Frederick Douglas, Prophet of Freedom, a giant book about the giant life
> of the Frederick Douglas who was born a slave and escaped at around the
> age of twenty to become the political, intellectual wonder of the
> nineteenth century. I am ashamed to say I knew vanishingly little of
> Douglas until reading him in the Covid years. I imagine that many
> nettimers will know far more about his astonishing life writing and
> political achievements. Although we have grown rightly suspicious of
> ‘great man’ stories, its very hard to read Douglas’ story without a
> sense of awe and gratitude.
>
> The only reason I risk re-stating these truisms is because of reading
> Blight’s biography against the unbearable back-drop of the Israeli war
> crimes in Gaza. I was struck by the possible relevance of the ways in
> which Douglas drew inspiration for his patriotic rage against slavery in
> the language of the Old Testament prophets (who like Douglas were also
> persecuted by their own people) and wonder whether anyone in modern
> Israel/Palestine could find use or inspiration in Douglas’s ability to
> embody the Old Testament Jeremiadic tradition to serve a different
> progressive cause? And give them the courage to denounce their own
> people. Here are the extracts from the book that set me thinking:
>
> ‘ He (Douglas) was a man of the 19th century a thoroughgoing inheritor
> of Enlightenment ideas, but for justification and for the story in which
> to embed the experience of American slaves he reached for the Old
> Testament Hebrew prophets of the sixth to the eighth centuries BC.
> Isiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were his companions, a confounding but
> inspiring source of intellectual and emotional control.  Their great and
> terrible stories provided Douglas the deepest well of metaphor and
> meaning for his increasingly ferocious critique of his own country.
> Their Jerusalem, their Temple, their Israelites transported in the
> Babylonian Captivity. Their oracles to the nation of the woe to be
> inflicted upon them by a vengeful God for their crimes, were his
> American “republic,” his “bleeding children of sorrow,” his warnings of
> desolations soon to visit his own guilty land.
>
> Their story was ancient and modern; it gave the weight of the ages to
> his cause. Their awesome narratives of destruction and apocalyptical
> renewal, exile and return, provided the scriptural basis for his mission
> to convince the Americans they must undergo the same. […] Douglas not
> only used the Hebrew prophets; he joined them.
>
> Douglas’s use of the Jeremiadic tradition… and Jeremiah followed God’s
> call to “go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem,” so Douglas proclaimed
> anti-slavery oracles to vast public audiences in pro-slavery America.
> And as the Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel wrote, “Prophets must have
> been shattered by some cataclysmic experience in order to be able to
> shatter others” By this standard, Douglas qualified.’ David W Blight,
> Frederick Douglas, Prophet of Freedom.
>
> The potential here is that of inverting biblical language exploited by
> Netanyahu’s regime. Could a new Jeremiah in Israel emerge to rage
> against their own people’s actions, actions that shame the memory of the
> victims of the Shoah. Like both Jeremiah and Douglas himself they will
> be hated by their own people who will block their ears when told that
> they have forfeited the right to draw legitimacy for their crimes from
> the Holocaust’s bottomless well of grief. This well has been poisoned.
>
> David Garcia
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