Selective Blindness, Selective Commotion, Naturalized Narratives
To launch the new year, a text that explains the spirit of the newsletter! Expect a new text every Friday! One in two will be a chapter of the Never Ending Book on the Middle East...
What does it take for someone to see, to perceive, an ongoing genocide?
To the classic question about whether a falling tree makes a sound if there's no one there to witness it, I always responded affirmatively, not without a trace of irritation. The presumption that sound was only produced for human ears bothered me; it was, to me, a manifestation of our arrogant anthropocentrism.
If someone is nearby when a tree falls, their senses will be touched by the greater or lesser spectacle, by the thunderous or delicate sound, by the sight of the fall that begins slowly and soon accelerates, by the tremor of the ground... And soon perhaps some emotion might emerge, faced with the experience of witnessing, for example, the end of a living being... And, finally, we might be moved to reflect on the inevitability of death, or on desertification and climate change... We might even decide to do something about it.
If, however, faced with the fall, simultaneous or not, of two different trees, the same observer only hears the noise of one of them, only sees the fall of one of them, and only allows themselves to be moved and then reflect on one of the two phenomena, the explanation for this "relative blindness" must be sought in the human being who is this observer, and in the social environment in which they are inserted.
Let us return now: what does it take for someone to see an ongoing genocide or, inversely, for someone to stop seeing an ongoing genocide?
I know that the example of genocide is extreme and that there would be many things between that and the falling of a tree that could serve to reflect on blindness and on the selectivity of our senses and our emotions. It happens, however, that at the moment I write, there is indeed an ongoing genocide and few people seem willing to see it! Moreover, if I can sustain my argument for genocide, this phenomenon that, in principle, should impose itself on everyone's senses and emotions, as well as on all living consciences, then its relevance will be proven for all other things.
It is difficult to conceive of an observer who is or has been a direct witness to two processes of systematic destruction of peoples, even though they may exist, as being our typical observer. To understand the phenomenon I want to point to, we need to keep in mind the observer who receives the news of events, narratives, images, texts, films, analyses.
It is obvious, therefore, that if we want to understand the relativity or selectivity of perceptions and judgments, we need to combine what is in the socially located human being with what is, or fails to be, in the narratives that reach them.
Narratives can be diverse and can be in competition, but neither multiplicity nor conflict are immediately perceptible as such to the average observer. Somehow, there seems to be a tendency for some narratives to gain free course and be seen as being "naturally true," while alternatives are perceived as marginal, divergent, deserving of less credit.
In my personal experience, the existence of competing narratives for the prerogative of representing what would be truth became apparent very early and became a central and permanent concern. Faced with major events in international life, revolutions, wars, interventions, I invariably found two opposing narratives that claimed to be exclusively true: one circulated in newspapers and television news – and soon among teachers and schoolmates, as well as shop customers and passersby – and another dominated the family and community environment. Sometimes, two narratives were not enough, since nothing prevented the neighbor and their group from having their own truth.
Very early on, I realized that it was possible to transform the hero into a villain, the perpetrator into a victim, and vice versa, that it was possible to arbitrate the beginning and end of stories, that reasons and consequences could be inverted. All of this was problematic for someone who still had some illusion about the existence of objective truths.
But even more problematic was the effect that divergent narratives have on the location of justice.
This is how, gradually, the related themes of competing narratives, and those naturalized, of selective blindness and selective commotion became what I could call "my great question."
Some accidents contributed to these expressions becoming consolidated in my spirit and relating to each other. First, when the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo was attacked, I wanted to react in text and decided that the title should be "Selective Commotion." Many tragic things were happening in those days: an absurd war in Syria, attacks in Egypt, Tunisia, Niger, refugees drowning and appearing dead on beaches. Nothing, however, could compete, in felt and expressed commotion, with the Charlie attacks
.
One fine day, I decided to collect texts written by me and published over two or three years, and decided that the best name for the collection would be "Selective Commotion." Among the articles, more than one made reference to Edward Said, to his concern with narratives and representations of the other, an other who is not allowed the privilege of telling about themselves, and also to his reference to the specific blindness of great intellectuals and great humanists, who saw everything, or almost everything, but were incapable of seeing Palestinians as a people and their tragedy as a great historical injustice.
A good friend, an editor, read the texts with great generosity and told me that the collection could well be called "Selective Blindness" and that this would perhaps be more appropriate.
I am, therefore, indebted to friends, accidents, and exchanges that sediment in us the ideas we think we have.
And there is no doubt about the "Saidian" inspiration of my reflections. The idea of a West that reserves for itself the prerogative of representing the other, the oriental or, in general, the non-western, is an extremely powerful finding. It carries within itself the image of competing narratives, of naturalized narratives, of impossible narratives.
A small deviation, to refer to the impossibility of telling, of making one's own voice heard: if I knew how to draw, I would produce a Palestinian telling their story against a strong wind; the wind would push their words behind the speaker and no one could hear them.
The image of the blind person who sees everything except the Palestinian Question, despite seeming more banal, emerges for me as especially frightening, for being a very particular and specific case of selectivity and for afflicting critical thinkers who, in principle, have genuine concern with themes of justice, power... Suffice it to say that among the examples listed by Edward Said are names such as Isaiah Berlin and Michel Foucault.
I know, of course, that the adjective "selective" that I make accompany blindness and commotion can carry the sense of voluntary, purposeful, conscious selectivity. What interests me more, however, is the occurrence of blind spots and biases, of vision and feelings, as an involuntary phenomenon, as a natural movement, so to speak.
Of course, while we seek the reasons for what we see and what we don't see, and while we try to understand the process of naturalization of dominant narratives, and look at the observer, at the society in which they are inserted and at the way narratives reach them, we cannot discard the possibility that the results, the blindness and the naturalization, stem from an intention that is not in the observer. One cannot discard the possibility of a controlled process.
Noam Chomsky, a longtime interlocutor of Edward Said, is one of the main thinkers trying to reveal the process through which power holders produce consensus and the role that media plays in this construction.
And it was precisely in Chomsky that I found a concept related to my concerns about the selectivity of our perceptions and about the dominant character of some narrative-producing mechanisms. On one occasion, I heard Chomsky say that the idea that there was freedom in the field of political debate in the United States was an illusion. Despite the appearance of total freedom, anyone who observed carefully would see that the margins within which it was possible to disagree were clearly drawn. Those who wanted to challenge these margins would not necessarily be silenced, but would be condemned to speak to the very few, the marginalized, those excluded from the main market of ideas.
The concept I found, related to this universe of arguments, is that of the "Overton Window." Conceived by a political scientist, the window in question expresses the idea that, contrary to what one might expect, political actors do not act as bearers of their own political opinions that they submit to the electorate's consideration; they actually adjust their discourse to the political space they perceive present in place and time. The window and the borders of possible discourse and debate are given. The inescapable question, for which one can only have tentative answers, is this: to what extent is the process by which borders and limits are drawn natural, spontaneous, and to what extent is it possible for someone to determine the margins and the ideas that can circulate between them?
When thinking about this, I always had a tendency to visualize, as a definitive example of the truth of the thesis, the fact that it is practically impossible to defend communism and be heard in the United States, let alone participate in the country's political life. Today a more current example would be the impossibility of being a dissonant voice in relation to the defense of Israel.
All this places us before a set of existential questions of difficult answer: how much do we apprehend of the reality that surrounds us, and how much of what we perceive is actually reality? Is it possible to speak of truth, and is it possible to know any truth?
I know there should be limits to references made to popular culture if we insist on preserving some respectability, but I take a calculated risk here. I have in mind the dilemma that dominates the film "Matrix": to what extent do we live an illusion, or a lie, built by an architect unknown to us, and that can only be confronted at the cost of a clandestine life in gloomy basements, with rags for clothes and bland gruel for sole sustenance?
This is not a false question. In this concrete life of ours, what are the real possibilities of challenging dominant narratives? With what chances of success? At what price?
It recently occurred to me that, just as I cannot believe what those great spirits say they see who only fail to see the Palestinian tragedy, I find myself forced to question the official history of great past events since, faced with the great events of present history, I see that fictional narratives are being constructed today, under my gaze, that will serve as official history in the future.
I have in mind, when I say this, two major processes that simultaneously illustrate the phenomena of naturalized narratives, selective blindness, and selective commotion, and reveal the true face of a West that still claims to reserve for itself the exclusive privilege of representing the other and the world, for itself and for the world. I refer to the war in Ukraine and the war in Palestine (this second is a generic name that encompasses the ongoing genocide victimizing the population of Gaza, but also includes armed actions that extend beyond Palestine and involve other actors). The concomitance of the two events is especially relevant because it allowed the discovery of different weights and measures mobilized in the construction of narratives and present in the supposedly felt commotion.
Just as we can question the processes of apprehending reality and doubt the possibilities of any truth, it is worth pointing to the selectivity of our commotion, our outrage, our revolt, in the face of what we perceive as unjust or inhuman.
Ultimately, just as we ask ourselves if we are inserted in an entirely fictional life, we can also ask ourselves if we truly feel. If each of us, as an individual, can identify the instances in which, for example, our emotions and our empathic capacities are mobilized in the face of a child's suffering, and the instances in which the suffering of another child leaves us indifferent.
Our commotion, when it happens, is genuine, or at least it can be – I don't have in mind those who pretend and lie. To the extent that it manifests selectively, however, we can doubt what should be its connection with injustice, with suffering, with a sense of humanity. All this imposes itself on us when we refer to the commotion that manifests in the individual.
It is important to note, however, that we often speak of selective commotion or equivalent concepts, attributing this selectivity of weights and measures, and of feelings, to institutions, States, international organizations, courts... This is especially true in circumstances such as those I referred to above: wars, genocides, war crimes and crimes against humanity...
We say, then, that the United States, France, this or that other State, the UN, the International Criminal Court, demonstrate selective commotion. We know, of course, that these entities are devoid of feelings, and that, in principle, at least, the people who speak and act on behalf of these institutions are indeed capable of feeling. The confusion, and the imprecision with which we refer to the behavior of States and other entities, stem, at least in part, from the fact that those who speak on their behalf, despite having exclusively political reasons in mind, position themselves emphasizing arguments of a moral nature, affirming love for justice and humanity.
For a more attentive observer, the inconsistency of affirmed values becomes evident, their contradiction with behaviors, the selectivity with which they are applied. For all others, once again, the erasure of contradictions and selectivity is handled by well-constructed and naturalized narratives, narratives that do not reveal their own plot holes and that do not allow any longer-lasting memory.
As I suggested above, the coincidence in time of the wars in Ukraine and Palestine provides us with a unique opportunity in revealing the true nature of the game. And this is because the part of the world that some now call the Collective West or Global North – that is, the United States and its allies – felt forced to walk simultaneously in two contrary directions, and more, to go to the extreme in both directions: simultaneously demonizing Russia and justifying Israel's criminal actions.
It is in this sense that one can say that at this historical moment the masks have fallen. And one cannot underestimate the power of this fact. As the West's masks fall, it is not just the faces of individual actors that are revealed; this is rather the announcement of the possible undoing of the international system, created by this West in its own image and likeness, and of its institutions.
The system had, we are told, claims to universality, but the various selectivities to which I have been pointing deny any truth to this claim. Notice, looking at recent events within the UN and other international organizations, as well as in international courts, how institutional structures threaten to collapse in the face of tension between their principled orientation toward universalism and the difficulty of acting contrary to the interests of their creators.
The case of Palestine perhaps serves like no other to illustrate the themes of selective blindness, selective commotion, dominant and naturalized narratives, and the crisis of the international system built upon a set of narratives advanced by the West.
Before being an instance of a dominant narrative, Palestine is a place, geographical, mental, and symbolic, of many and diverse narratives: the biblical, as the heart of monotheisms; the historical and geographical, as part of the heart of the world and the cradle of civilizations; the biblical resurrected in Protestant Europe and European Zionism; the colonial of the great empires that divided the world among themselves...
After more than a hundred years of a Palestinian Question that could be narrated as a struggle of resistance by a people who want to preserve their territory and identity, the narrative that reigns sovereign is another: there was antisemitism in Europe and there were violent pogroms victimizing European Jews; this combined with a long history of persecution against the group; because of this, it was concluded that the group would only be safe if it had a State for itself; taking into account the biblical account, the establishment of this State in historical Palestine would be like a return to the home promised by God; the genocide of European Jews during World War II only confirmed the thesis; the territory of Palestine would not have a people and the Palestinians would not be a people; before Israel, everything was backwardness, and after, all progress; all wars were the Arabs' fault and they only lost territories because they did not accept the agreements; that today the just solution would be a two-state solution in which Palestine would be something less than sovereign...
What did not appear in the narrative, before this war in which, as was said, many masks fell, was the reality of the occupation of the territory destined to be Palestine, in principle, according to the alleged consensus, was the reality of the system of segregation and apartheid, was the reality of ethnic cleansing.
These aspects of reality were, for anyone who wanted to look, indisputable. And yet, nobody wanted to see; nobody wanted to pay the price of sustaining narratives that revealed this truth; and it seemed that nobody was willing to be moved.
What mystery will this be? I propose the following key, if not to definitively unravel the enigma, at least to illuminate our path a bit. I feel that, in truth, despite the profusion of narratives that try to prove otherwise, we haven't moved that far from the 19th century.
Essentially, the Question of Palestine belongs to the time when the so-called civilized West allowed itself the domination and exploitation of non-western, barbaric peoples. It is a typical case of colonization by settlements and population replacement. In part, then, it is because the lives of the barbarians are not worth the same as those of the civilized that they are not or need not be seen, do not deserve a narrative that tells and values them, do not make us feel and much less act. But this is part of the reason, not all of it. There is certainly more. Who dares to tell the rest?