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Witnessing Rhetoric of the International Solidarity Movement

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Witnessing Rhetoric of the International Solidarity Movement SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, SUBJECTIVITY, AND SOLIDARITY: WITNESSING RHETORIC OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT Emily Brook Wachsmann , B. A. Thesis Prepared for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS August 2009 APPROVED: Brian A. Lain, Major Professor Shaun R. Treat, Committee Member Karen Anderson, Committee Member Nada Shabout, Committee Member Alicia Re Cruz, Committee Member John M. Allison, Jr. Chair of the Department of Communication Studies Michael Monticino, Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies Wachsmann, Emily Brook. Social Movements, Subjectivity, and Solidarity: Witnessing Rhetoric of the International Solidarity Movement. Master of Arts (Communication Studies), August 2009, 137 pp., references, 84 titles. This study engaged in pushing the current political limitations created by the political impasse of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, by imagining new possibilities for radical political change, agency, and subjectivity for both the international activists volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement as well as Palestinians enduring the brutality of life under occupation. The role of the witness and testimony is brought to bear on activism and rhetoric the social movement ISM in Palestine. Approaches the past studies of the rhetoric of social movements arguing that rhetorical studies often disassociated ‘social’ from social movements, rendering invisible questions of the social and subjectivity from their frames for evaluation. Using the testimonies of these witnesses, Palestinians and activists, as the rhetorical production of the social movement, this study provides an effort to put the social body back into rhetorical studies of social movements. The relationships of subjectivity and desubjectification, as well as, possession of subjects by agency and the role of the witness with each of these is discussed in terms of Palestinian and activist potential for subjectification and desubjectifiation. Copyright 2009 by Emily Brook Wachsmann ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapters 1. THE GEOPOLITICAL IMPASSE AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS ........................................................................................................1 2. WITNESSING RHETORIC’S INVOLVEMENT WITH SOCIAL MOVEMENTS ........................................................................................................9 3. TESTIMONIES .....................................................................................................42 4. FROM HOMO SACER TO THE WITNESS........................................................85 Subjectivity and Desubjectification ...........................................................86 The Witness ...............................................................................................94 Who is the Palestinian Subject?...............................................................102 We are All Palestinians............................................................................105 5. WITNESSING WITNESSING............................................................................107 Witness, Testimony, and Solidarity.........................................................110 Shame, Anxiety, and the Subject .............................................................116 The Lacuna of Testimony ........................................................................119 Banality and Hospitality ..........................................................................121 6. THE COMPLEXITY OF OUR SUBJECTIVITY...............................................124 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................132 iii CHAPTER 1 THE GEOPOLITICAL IMPASSE AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS The election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States November 4, 2008 marked a turning point for American politics. This election, predicated on the success of grassroots campaigning and community organizing, held a special value not only because this was the first election of an African-American to the presidency, but also because it marked the end of the Bush-Cheney era of devastating domestic, foreign, and economic policy. In her November 5, 2008 article, “Uncritical Exuberance,” Judith Butler noted the much needed sigh of relief many Americans took election night as it became apparent the Bush-era would soon end, but noted that the possibility of an uncritical exuberance with which Obama’s win set in motion, eschewing discourses of dissonance or antagonism. This focus on unity over dissonance presets a limit to political possibility that Butler finds problematic (Butler, 2008). Butler argues for the necessity of Obama and his administration maintaining political momentum through the some of the probable difficulties they face. Butler highlights the importance of foreign policy on these issues, suggesting that the top three priorities for the Obama administration should be shutting down the Guantanomo Bay Detention facility, withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and a change of policy towards the war in Afghanistan. Surely Obama’s plans for a change in foreign policy efforts on these three fronts will be markedly different from the Bush administration foreign policy, but Butler hesitates at calling such differences a unity of change when there the obviousness of the “selling out” of Palestine as a changed foreign policy issued became apparent during the election campaign (Butler, 2008). The problem of Palestine and the importance of the United States political support for the state of Israel openly manifest itself soon after the election in the run up to President Obama’s election. 1 As if on cue, the Israeli government, preparing itself for an upcoming national election, launched the most brutal attack on occupied Palestinian territory in the Gaza Strip to date. Three weeks of relentless aerial bombardment, ground invasion, and merciless attack of the civilian population of Gaza began December 27, 2009, lasting until January 18, 2009, a mere three days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama, killing over 1350 Palestinians, predominately civilians, 430 of them women and children, with another 5,320 people severely injured, and over 1200 buildings destroyed (B’t Selem, 2009). To assume that this attack, on the end of the Bush administration, whose presidency was marked by an increase in military aid to Israel, including weapons shipments during the Gaza massacre, and before the shift in power to the Obama administration, whose campaign circulated on promises of change in foreign policy and increased diplomacy, was timed coincidentally would display outstanding naivety. The infastructure of the world’s poorest and most densely populated region of the world was being reduced to a walled strip of rubble; while the slaughter of over 1300 hundred people, mostly women and children, continued in Gaza, President-elect Obama remained silent on the issue (Mail Foreign Service, December 30, 2008). The President- elect provided both explanation and an indicator of his own performative contradiction in justifying his silence on Gaza as a foreign policy matter. Obama’s explanation noted that he should not comment on matters of foreign policy and interest before taking office, Obama failed to notice he had already commented on the brutal terrorist attacks in Mumbai some weeks before without hesitation (MSNBC, November 26,2008). So why the silence on Palestine? Ali Abunimah noted in his book One Country that Obama was not always silent on the issue of Palestine. As a rising politician in Chicago, he attended Arab fundraisers, one in which Edward Said was the keynote speaker, and was one of the first aspiring national politicians to 2 call for evenhandedness in U.S. policies towards Israel and Palestine, but post his 2004 overwhelming electoral victory into the U.S. Senate, his position suddenly changed and was soon condemning and blaming Palestinian leadership for violence against Israel (Abunimah, 2007, 2008, & 2009). The Palestine issue has long been acknowledged as one of the most controversial subjects for politicians, academics, and the media about which to circulate varied discourses. The U.S. position is monolithic, preserving “a deep friendship” with the state of Israel at the expense of the Palestinian population (Abunimah, 2008; 2009). Obama’s silence not only marked a tacit support of Israel but also continues to lend to an unfortunate consistency in the office of the US President, where the complete disenfranchisement of Palestinians is neither acknowledged nor discussed. Even in the much hailed Cairo speech, Obama, albeit somewhat less extreme than President Bush, displayed far from an evenhanded approach to the discussion of the conflict, not so much as mentioning the recent and ongoing devastation in Gaza by the Israeli invasion and ongoing closures, yet absurdly mentioning the rockets fired from Gaza which killed only one Israeli during the entire invasion (Abunimah, June 04, 2009). The influence and importance of the US foreign policy continues to play an important role in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and will continue to be central in negotiations for a solution, in large part because of the US relationship with Israel and American tax-funded financial support for Israel. Possibilities of a strong U.S. leader who is able shift foreign policy measures single-handedly seems improbable, no matter how charismatic that leader may be.
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