Gabriel Hartley
SAID’S CRITICAL
METHOD
A MODEL FOR CRITICAL
A N A LY S I S
As illustrated in
“Zionism From the Standpoint
of Its Victims”
MAIN
MAINCATEGORIES
CATEGORIESOF
OF
SAID’S
SAID’SMETHOD
METHOD
• MULTIPLE STANDPOINTS
• INVENTORY
• EFFECTIVE IDEAS
• HISTORICAL EXAMINATION
• GENEALOGY
• PRACTICAL SYSTEMS (for accumulation & displacement)
• HEGEMONY
• MAKING DISTINCTIONS (Role of Critical Consciousness)
• COMPLICATION vs. OVERSIMPLIFICATION (Underestimation &
Sweeping Rhetorical Denunciations)
MULTIPLE STANDPOINTS
• Zionism from the STANDPOINT of its VICTIMS
• Zionism from the STANDPOINT of its VICTORS
• Puritanism from the STANDPOINT of its VICTIMS
• Puritanism from the STANDPOINT of its VICTORS
• Americanism from the STANDPOINT of its VICTIMS
• Americanism from the STANDPOINT of its VICTORS
•
•
•
•
•
Zionism from the STANDPOINT of AMERICAN ZIONISTS
Zionism from the STANDPOINT of AMERICAN PURITANS
Zionism from the STANDPOINT of AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISTS
Zionism from the STANDPOINT of AMERICAN INDIANS
Zionism from the STANDPOINT of PALESTINIAN ARABS
STANDPOINT THEORY
According to this approach:
• A standpoint is a place (mental position) from which human beings
view the world.
• A standpoint influences how the people adopting it socially construct
the world.
• A standpoint is a position from which objects or principles are viewed
and according to which they are compared and judged.
• The inequalities of different social groups create differences in their
standpoints.
• All standpoints are partial; so (for example) Standpoint feminism
coexists with other standpoints.
(Source: Adapted from Wikipedia)
INVENTORY
“The starting point of critical elaboration is
the consciousness of what one really is, and
is ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the
historical process to date which has
deposited in you an infinity of traces, without
leaving an inventory. It is important therefore
to make an inventory.”
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks
EFFECTIVE IDEAS 1
IDEAS IN GENERAL:
• Every idea or system of ideas exists somewhere; it is mixed in with
historical circumstances; it is part of what one may very simply call
“reality.”
• One of the enduring attributes of self-serving idealism, however, is the
notion that ideas are just ideas and that they exist only in the realm of
ideas.
• The tendency to view ideas as pertaining only to a world of
abstractions increases among people for whom an idea is essentially
perfect, good, uncontaminated by human desires or will.
• Such a view also applies when the ideas are evil, absolutely perfect in
their evil, and so forth. (15)
EFFECTIVE IDEAS 2
EFFECTIVE IDEAS
When an idea has become
effective—that is, when its value has
been proved in reality by its
widespread acceptance—of course
some revision of it will seem to be
necessary, since the idea must be
viewed as having taken on some of
the characteristics of brute reality.
(15)
HISTORICAL EXAMINATION
In short, effective political ideas like Zionism need to be examined
historically in two ways:
• (I) genealogically in order that their provenance, their kinship and
descent, their affiliation both with other ideas and with political
institutions may be demonstrated;
• (2) as practical systems for accumulation (of power, land, ideological
legitimacy) and displacement (of people, other ideas, prior legitimacy).
(16)
DISPLACEMENT
GENEALOGY 1
EFFECTIVE POLITICAL IDEAS NEED TO BE HISTORICALLY
EXAMINED (1) :
• genealogically in order that their provenance, their kinship and
descent, their affiliation both with other ideas and with political
institutions may be demonstrated. (16)
• My interest is in trying to record the effects of Zionism on its victims,
and these effects can only be studied genealogically in the framework
provided by imperialism, even during the nineteenth century when
Zionism was still an idea and not a state called Israel. (26)
GENEALOGY 2
For the Palestinian now who tries
critically to see what his or her
history has meant, and who tries—as
I am now trying—to see what
Zionism has been for the Palestinians,
Gramsci's observation is relevant:
“[T]he consciousness of what one
really is ... is 'knowing thyself as a
product of the historical process to
date which has deposited in you an
infinity of traces, without leaving an
inventory. (26)
GENEALOGY 3
• ZIONISM
• EUROPEAN IMPERIALISM
• AMERICAN PURITANISM—“NEW ZION”
• BIBLICAL CONQUEST
PRACTICAL SYSTEMS
EFFECTIVE POLITICAL IDEAS NEED TO BE HISTORICALLY
EXAMINED (2) :
• as practical systems for
• accumulation (of power, land, ideological legitimacy) and
• displacement (of people, other ideas, prior legitimacy). (16)
HISTORICAL EXAMINATION
APPLIED
Zionism has hidden, or caused to disappear:
• the literal historical ground of its growth,
• its political cost to the native inhabitants of Palestine, and
• its militantly oppressive discriminations between Jews and non-Jews.
(16)
HEGEMONY 1
DEFINITION
• In Marxist philosophy, the term cultural hegemony describes the
domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who
manipulate the culture of that society—
–
–
–
–
–
the beliefs,
explanations,
perceptions,
values,
and mores
• —so that their ruling-class worldview becomes the worldview that is
imposed and accepted as the cultural norm; as the universally valid
dominant ideology that justifies the social, political, and economic status
quo as natural, inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather
than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.
(Source: Wikipedia)
HEGEMONY 2
So strong a conjuncture of powerful institutions and interests:
•
•
•
•
•
the press,
the liberal intelligentsia,
the military-industrial complex,
the academic community,
labor unions (16)
A complex network of
• Values
• Power relations
• Epistemological perspectives (17)
HEGEMONY 3
• Imperialism was and still is a political philosophy whose aim and
purpose for being is territorial expansion and its legitimization.
• A serious underestimation of imperialism, however, would be to
consider territory in too literal a way.
• Gaining and holding an imperium means gaining and holding a domain,
which includes a variety of operations, among them :
– constituting an area
– accumulating its inhabitants
– having power over its ideas, people and of course, its land
– converting people, land, and ideas to the purposes and for the use of a
hegemonic imperial design
• All this as a result of being able to treat reality appropriatively. (27)
MAKING DISTINCTIONS
• Task of Criticism or Role of Critical Consciousness
• Yet there is no getting around the formidable historical reality that in
writing about the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settlercolonialism one also abuts the entire disastrous problem of antiSemitism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the complex
interrelationship between the Palestinians and the Arab states. (18)
• To oppose Zionism in Palestine has never meant, and does not now
mean, being anti-Semitic; conversely, the struggle for Palestinian rights
and self-determination does not mean support for the Saudi royal
family, nor for the antiquated and oppressive state structure of most
of the Arab nations. (18)
MAKING DISTINCTIONS
x
COMPLICATION VS.
OVERSIMPLIFICATION
• Underestimation & Sweeping Rhetorical Denunciations (36)
• On the other hand, it would be totally unjust to neglect the power of
Zionism as an idea for Jews, or to minimize the complex internal
debates characterizing Zionism, its true meaning, its messianic destiny,
etc. Even to speak about this subject, much less than attempting to
"define" Zionism, is for an Arab quite a difficult matter, but it must
honestly be looked at. (19)
• “Racism” is too vague a term: Zionism is Zionism. For the Arab
Palestinian this tautology has a sense that is perfectly congruent with,
but exactly the opposite of, what it says to Jews. (37)
THE HOLOCAUST FROM A
PALESTINIAN STANDPOINT
AGAIN:
MAIN CATEGORIES OF SAID’S
METHOD
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
MULTIPLE STANDPOINTS
INVENTORY
EFFECTIVE IDEAS
HISTORICAL EXAMINATION
GENEALOGY
PRACTICAL SYSTEMS (for accumulation & displacement)
HEGEMONY
MAKING DISTINCTIONS (Role of Critical Consciousness)
COMPLICATION vs. OVERSIMPLIFICATION (Uunderestimation &
Sweeping Rhetorical Denunciations)