I think Ive said all I have to say on FB about Charlie Hebdo. It pains me to have to say this, but I have NOT justifying or excusing terrorism. My concern has been entirely to help provide contexts for these wholly reprehensible murders; sadly, part of such context is CHs quite extraordinary racism, and how this relates to post-colonial racism an structural violence in France. In pointing this out I am not saying CHs racism justifies or excusing the assassination of its editorial team, merely I am trying to help deconstruct the crude us-them pathologisation that cruel vested interests are exploiting to try to justify hate, securitisation, and intervention that when alls said and done is far more lethal than the events of last week. I say this as someone who: (a) in the 1970s wrote, edited and published radical publications that sought to push the boundaries of what was sayable in a situationist/anarchist kind of way; (b) a trans-cultural, trans-faith person who is a non-native user of proficient Arabic and in the late 80s and early 90s was married to a Francophone North African woman with whom I lived in the UK, Egypt, Morocco and France; (c) a higher educationalist who spent a decade 2001-11 (bracketed between 9/11 and the Arab Spring) working in humanities and social sciences in universities in the Middle East, (d) someone who put an entire career on the line to defend academic freedom (a species of freedom of speech) during a vicious (Western backed) counter-revolution, and (e) someone who has gone out of their way to shed light on and critique murderous takfeeri jihadism, in particular when it is killing those (e.g. Arabs and Muslims) whose lives seem to be less grievable in Western media and political discourse. It pains me (quite literally) to have to be made to point this out. Khalaas.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 21:10:30 +0000
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