Language and Conflict: The Interview | With Saree Makdisi
Q. What is the link between your literary and your political writing?
A. I'm primarily interested in the work of Romantic-era writers like Blake and [Percy Bysshe] Shelley who lived in times of tremendous upheaval and spoke out against the prevailing point of view, who questioned the orthodoxy. That's an inspiration for me.
Q. Which orthodoxy are you challenging here?
A. The prevailing orthodoxy that in general Israel is the aggrieved party and the Palestinians are the aggressors, whereas it seems to me that the situation is exactly the opposite. Half of Palestine's people were forced from their homes during the creation of Israel, in 1948; they have never been allowed to return although they have the legal and moral right to do so. Instead we see the continuing existence of a system that keeps people displaced and unable to exercise their full human rights.
Q. And you insist that language is central in this?
A. Think of the way language is used to describe this conflict. For example, technically, legally, and morally, there's a distinction between "colony" and "settlement." You settle your own territory, you colonize somebody else's. What the Israelis are doing in the occupied territories is colonizing. So why is an activity that the dictionary defines as colonization portrayed as settlement? Yet even I use the term "settlement" in this book.
Language and Conflict: The Interview With Saree Makdisi
A. I'm primarily interested in the work of Romantic-era writers like Blake and [Percy Bysshe] Shelley who lived in times of tremendous upheaval and spoke out against the prevailing point of view, who questioned the orthodoxy. That's an inspiration for me.
Q. Which orthodoxy are you challenging here?
A. The prevailing orthodoxy that in general Israel is the aggrieved party and the Palestinians are the aggressors, whereas it seems to me that the situation is exactly the opposite. Half of Palestine's people were forced from their homes during the creation of Israel, in 1948; they have never been allowed to return although they have the legal and moral right to do so. Instead we see the continuing existence of a system that keeps people displaced and unable to exercise their full human rights.
Q. And you insist that language is central in this?
A. Think of the way language is used to describe this conflict. For example, technically, legally, and morally, there's a distinction between "colony" and "settlement." You settle your own territory, you colonize somebody else's. What the Israelis are doing in the occupied territories is colonizing. So why is an activity that the dictionary defines as colonization portrayed as settlement? Yet even I use the term "settlement" in this book.
Language and Conflict: The Interview With Saree Makdisi
posted by temporal at 5/06/2008
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