When
Ariel Sharon goes for a walk:
Politics
of meanings at the turn of the
millennium
Aleksandar
Boskovic,
University
of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Introduction: Signs
So it all came down to a simple walk on
28 September 2000. Ariel Sharon, an ex-general, leader of the opposition Likud
party and holder of many posts in various Israeli governments (including the
one of the defense minister), decided to stroll around the good old Jerusalem.
Who could blame him? After all, Jerusalem is de facto recognized as Israeli territory, it is part of the
sovereign state of Israel, and who could blame an Israeli citizen for wanting
to stretch his feet walking through beautiful old streets?
The only problem is that Mr. Sharon chose
to walk right next to the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of the most sacred sites for the
Muslims (some of which still, despite everything, live within the borders of
Israel). And the Muslims got frustrated and angry. Many Palestinians got
killed. Some Israelis as well. And that put an end (at least, for the time
being) to the peace process in the Middle East.
Despite the anger, the violence and
frustration, Mr. Sharon is completely unimportant here. I am also tempted to
state that he is completely innocent in the most recent matter. Just like Baudrillard
claimed that between 1992 and 1995 Bosnian Serbs were doing publicly what many
Western European political leaders wanted privately (that is, "to put an
end to a Muslim menace"), it seems reasonable to say that Mr. Sharon did
not do anything out of the ordinary.1 After all, here are some
facts:
1. East Jerusalem is part of Israel.
(Most Israelis think that its status should not and cannot be negotiated.)
2. This fact (as well as the Israeli
occupation following the 1967 war) is practically recognized by the
"international community", led by the Israeli No. 1 partner and
sponsor, the US.
3. Even the current coverage of the
conflicts by the leading (mostly American) news networks tends to put some form
of balance in reporting stating that, for example, "more than 170 Israelis
and Palestinians have been killed."
The last fact is an interesting example
of applied semiology. It is not what has been said (the number and the ethnic
origin), it is how it is said and what are the implications ("the surplus
of meaning"). The statement implies that both sides are engaged in
violence (which must be stopped), and that both sides suffer casualties. The
statement does not state the discrepancy in the firepower
of both sides (tanks, armored vehicles,
attack helicopters on the one side, kalashnikovs and stones on the other), nor
the discrepancy in the actual number of killed. If 8 Israelis (mostly soldiers)
and 162 Palestinians (many kids under 15) die, the number is still 170, but the
proportion tells something about the conflict. The intended meaning is that
everybody is involved, it is everybody's fault, so everybody gets killed. The
real facts are that Palestinians are still held prisoners in their own land and
that the peace accord is not being respected. It is Palestinians that are being
killed or bombarded. The facts are also that Palestinian leadership needed this
kind of conflict in order to boost its own image among its people, and that
they did their share in keeping the "Palestinian Territory"
impoverished and underdeveloped several years after (albeit timidly) foreign
aid started to come. They also shed no tears over the Islamic Jihad bombing in
Jerusalem.
People of Bosnia-Herzegovina have
experienced the same type of "neutral" reporting and resort to the
"facts" — as the story went, both the Muslim and the Serb side had
tanks and guns, so they were all engaged in a war… The fact of the actual
discrepancy in arms did not appear until much later and far away from the
media. It has yet to appear among the (re-democratized) people of FR
Yugoslavia, who still believe that the
Balkan wars during the 1990s were everybody's fault and that they have no
reason whatsoever to apologize (after all, the FR Yugoslavia was bombed by the
NATO in 1999 as well).
But, back to the Israeli-Palestinian
facts mentioned above. The fact that the most powerful industrialized countries
tacitly support (and have done so since 1967) the Israeli occupation is the
cause of the problem. It is not Ariel Sharon's walk that caused the violence —
it is the inaction of Western countries and the impotence of the international
organizations like the UN (where the US holds a veto threat to any meaningful
action). Mr. Sharon's activity (going for a walk) was a mere sign — the
connoted meanings are: I can do whatever I want and wherever I want because I have the power and the backing of the
ones that have even superior power. If you don't like it, well, that is too bad
for you.
If Mr. Sharon would have said that he
holds contempt for the Arabs in general and Muslims in particular, that he
could not care less about the peace process (stalled as it was), and that he
thought Palestinians were just some kind of nuisance, people (especially in the
media and in the "international community") would have thought that
he was out of his mind. He did not say anything like it. He did not need to. He
just went for a little walk.
Meanings, situations, incidents
In the world that is full of meanings,
some make more and some less sense. Some are presented in full force, and some
are more implicit. The Middle East conflict has always been the site of unclear
messages, one of the most important ones was about the actual causes of the
conflict. The popular public opinion catch phrase is that people of different
religions just cannot live together ("centuries-long religious hatreds and
intolerance"). However, even a cursory glance at a map of the region (or a
travel through the region, in more peaceful times) reveals that most of the
"sacred" land held by Israelis is actually the territory where all
the strategic points are, sources of water, etc. It is not
religion, it is geography and practical
(everyday) interests.
In the case of the wars in former
Yugoslavia, violence was also frequently attributed to "centuries-old
ethnic hatreds." Which is a nonsense since the term "ethnic" did
not mean anything there.2 It was always the story of taking someone
else's land, then making excuses (Ignatieff mentions the episode of Bosnian
Serbs claiming that the Bosnian Muslims crucify Serb children and then throw
them into the Drina river). As shown in the Belgrade economist Mladjan Dinkic's
book The Economy of Destruction, the wars were waged for
money, and, surprisingly enough, over two billion dollars
"disappeared" from the total foreign debt of the SFR Yugoslavia in
1991. Someone had to take this
money.
The economic interests might also provide
the background for the recent dramatic changes in Serbia, since some cynics
claim that the amount of money available from various illegal activities
(countries subject to international sanctions are haven for all sorts of
criminals — it is only "ordinary people" who end up paying the price)
has been reduced seven times in the last few years.
With their "business interests"
in mind, various powerful groups might have decided that Mr. Milosevic's people
were not good for business any more.
This again does not conform to the image
of "ancient ethnic hatreds" that forms the basis of argumentation in
hundreds of books and articles written about the wars in Yugoslavia in the
1990s. Not surprisingly, people responded to Western journalists or bureaucrats
interviewing them in the way(s) that they perceived their responses were
expected. A typical answer to the question: "Did you always hate your
neighbor?" would be: "Well, yes, of course, just as you
say." This is a common
anthropological/ethnographic situation — when one receives a guest who is
curious, one tries to provide him/her with the answers that she/he expects — it
is the famous South European hospitality. There are very few people (like
Slavoj Zizek) who have questioned this media game. Popular stories and even
films (like the award-winning Macedonian runner-up for the Oscar in 1995, Before the Rain) perpetuate this
imagery. It is nice, neat, simple and straightforward. To my knowledge, only
two authors (Macedonian sociologist Dimitar Mircev and Croatian political
scientist working in Cairo, Ivan Ivekovic) in their analyses of the events in
former Yugoslavia examine the role of the élites and the impact that the élites
had in orchestrating the violence. Simply, the cake has gotten smaller, and
everyone still wanted a piece of it. So why not start a war?
The fall of Mr. Milosevic, the man
everyone in the West loves to hate, has been swift and surprising. He made a
huge miscalculation when he made changes to the Yugoslav Constitution in July
2000. Supposed to make easier his victory at the presidential elections as well
as his party's victory at the municipal elections, these changes were taking
into account the (then) current state of
the Serbian political scene and the
hopelessly divided opposition. However, to everyone's surprise (and with the
strong incentives from the US and the EU), the opposition did manage to unite,
and even to agree about the presidential candidate, Mr. Kostunica, who is a
nationalist (unlike Mr. Milosevic!), but who was acceptable for the large
segments of population as an alternative to Mr.
Milosevic. In fact, the fall of Milosevic
and the rise of Kostunica complicate quite a few things (it is interesting to
note that the reactions to changes in Belgrade were chill and confusion both in
Croatia and in Kosovo). What if his government really puts the West up to the
task at honoring the UN Security Council Resolution 1244? Could the West admit
that they waged a long and expensive 78-days war (and a PR disaster) for
nothing? Just to test the new weapons? Or to see that the most sophisticated
new technological toys like the F117a bomber (the "invisible" one) are
quite visible on the old radars from the 1950s?
A psychoanalytic approach would have been
best suited to deal with the western industrialized countries tolerating the
kind of behavior of Israel that elsewhere (in the case of Serbian troops in
Kosovo, which at least has been legally part of Serbia since 1913) provoked
international response. Perhaps it is all about the suppressed guilt complex
and the fact that some of the greatest defenders of Israel did nothing to stop
the mass killings of Jews at the Nazi concentration camps during the Second
World War? On the other hand, could anyone imagine a great Hollywood director
making another Schindler's List, this
time about the sufferings and exodus of Palestinians since 1947?
In the politics at the border of the
third millennium, it seems that what matters is simple power. The might is
right. But this power has to be applied carefully — for example, the US troops
quickly withdrew from Somalia after 18 of its soldiers were killed in 1993. The
best war is the "clean" war — without casualties… at least on the
part of the powers waging the war (cf. the NATO bombing campaign against
Yugoslavia in 1999 — the first humanitarian war in history). Or, as Orwell
nicely said it, "War is peace."
What this means is that simple power will
determine whose interests will be taken into consideration. Of course, in the
Balkans, things get complicated. NATO bombs the whole infra-structure of
Yugoslavia (and destroys a couple of tanks and six airplanes in the process) in
order to get into Kosovo and stops the exodus and killings of Albanians. NATO
gets there and finds, to their
surprise, that some Albanians are not
nice little victims as they are supposed to be, but that find great joy in
killing or kidnapping non-Albanians that have stayed at Kosovo (Serbs, Gypsies,
Turks). So what to do? In a world where politics is based on the script from a
good western (where in first ten minutes everybody knows who are the good guys
and who are the bad guys and what
should be expected), what happens when
the good guys are not as good as they are supposed to be? The UN Security
Council Resolution 1244 stipulates that all the citizens of the province should
return to their homes, but it is clear that neither the UN nor the NATO can
guarantee safety to the non-Albanian population. What is to be done?
Technologies of power
The giant superpowers and other
conglomerates are engaged in the game of substituting the meanings and trying
to manage the regions where their (real or imagined) interests lie with the
minimum cost. The local meanings are substituted for the more universal ones:
individual countries do not completely ruin their economies trying to hold on
to very idealistic but practically
untenable projects (like the Euro in the
EU), they readjust. Structural readjustments are key to this process which in
fact plays upon the incapacity of the underdeveloped countries to form a
unified and coherent strategy on how to deal with the great financial
institutions (like the IMF or the World Bank). Many Sub-Saharan African
countries have paid a huge price to this readjustment.3 One of my
favorite examples (and at the same time one of the more sickening ones) is the
fact that the developed countries sell to African countries the medicines that
help put HIV under control at five to ten times greater prices than the cost of
the same medicines in the US or in Western Europe. Of course, the IMF and World
Bank have gallantly offered credits for the countries that would want to buy
these medicines at astronomic prices.4
In the current political spectrum, the
most likely way is the way of the dominant powers. These powers are not
necessarily states or governments — as far as the global issues are concerned
(and they are reflect in the development strategies of individual countries),
it is much more important
what the IMF or the World Bank decide
than any particular government in Washington, Moscow, London, Tokyo, Paris or
Berlin. Concepts like "globalization" and
"multiculturalism" are thrown around with great ease and they are
used to justify new ideological projects associated with technologies of power.
The ghost of globalization is haunting
our world. By "us" I mean not only yourselves, distinguished readers
or friends (or both), but more or less each and every one interested in
understanding processes that are affecting the world we live in. This is not necessarily related to citizens of
the more developed (or western) countries — one of the main characteristics of
current trends is that current moves towards globalization are supra-national
and very far from being a matter of anyone's personal choice. In some sense, we
are all members of a globalized world – whether we like it or not. This world
is increasingly becoming global, and some trends are more obvious than others,
as French philosopher Jean-François
Lyotard remarked some time ago:
Eclecticism is the degree zero of
contemporary general culture:
one listens to reggae, watches a western,
eats McDonald's food for
lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears
Paris perfume in Tokyo
and 'retro' clothes in Hong Kong;
knowledge is a matter for TV
games.5
Of course, whether one calls this trend
"eclecticism", "multiculturalism" or something else is not
that important here – what really matters are the consequences that are
becoming more apparent. These consequences are related not only to the consumer
trends (as emphasized by Lyotard, for
example) – but also to the issues related
to the very notion of identity. Is it possible to speak (or even to think)
about particular identities in a globalized world?
Identities are under attack. On the one
hand, processes of unification (NAFTA, EU, OPEC, The Arab League, ASEAN,
MERCOSUL, SECI, CEU, OSCE, CIS), on the other of diversification and
particularization (new independent states in Europe and Central Asia after
1991). On the one side, the fight against all forms of discrimination — racial,
sexual, gender, etc. —, but on the other,
increased discrimination that is legally
sanctioned in various European countries — against the refugees, against the
immigrants, against the poor. When it comes to the gender relations, it is also
worth remembering that the effective reduction of women's rights was second in
order only to the revision of property rights in the former communist
countries. Particular identities are being remodeled (Yugoslavs of yesterday
have become Serbs, Croats or Muslims of today; Slovenians desperately trying to
convince themselves that they were never part of Yugoslavia), but also
submerged into the pool of international concepts such as "human
rights" with various universalizing consequences.
This threat to identities generates
insecurities. The reason for this should be sought in one of the most apparent
consequences of globalization. Canadian sociologists Arthur and Marylouise
Kroker mention the strategy of "bunkering in" and "dumbing
down." In words of French theorist Ignacio Ramonet: "In today's
democracies, an increasing number of free citizens feel bogged down, glued down
by a kind of sticky dogma which is in the process of surreptitiously engulfing
any contrary way of thought by inhibiting it, by disturbing it, by paralyzing
it and in the end, by squeezing it shut."6 Threatened by the
developments which goes beyond their power of understanding (and, in some cases
at least, even their power of imagination), many people choose to retreat into
their own little shelters, take things as simply and as straightforward as possible,
and just cordon themselves off against threatening influences of the outside
world. This also leads to various forms of racism and xenophobia — since any
form of otherness (especially other race or other culture) is seen as
dangerous. (Racial and xenophobic
incidents most often happen in poorer and suburban areas.) The feeling of being
threatened is carefully exploited by another new segment of the society, moguls
of the new digital era, what the Krokers call "the virtual class."7
This virtual class is a direct
consequence of the new digital revolution, and their most prevalent
characteristic is dominance of the "predatory self" — a kind of ruthless capitalism which seeks to
maximize the profit while at the same time minimizing costs — regardless of the
social or political price. Just like the industrial revolution a century ago,
digital revolution raised many hopes and promised a better society for all. If
just technology take over, we were told, machines will do most of the work,
produce more output (which will lead to the adequate increase in profit), so
the humans will have more free time (or "quality time"). Of course,
things did not quite turn out that way. People advocating new technologies
forgot to mention that they also mean loss of jobs (and loss of income) – as a matter of fact, some of the developed
countries that fully embraced new digital technologies were the first ones to
feel the unwanted consequences of the rise in unemployment rate. At the same
time, one should also remember that
[b]ack in the early nineteenth century,
the spread of the new
industrial technologies freed no slaves.
On the contrary, the
invention of the cotton gin ad mechanical
spinning machines
actually reinforced the archaic and
brutal institutions of slavery
in the Old South.
Richard
Barbrook8
To sum up, a feeling of "being
threatened" is a feeling of losing one's own identity. This
"loss" could occur whenever "us" come in contact with
"them", so any communication or interaction should be carefully controlled
at worst and avoided at best. Technology serves both in keeping us aware of
what is going on (control) and in keeping open the possibilities to stay away.
The best way of interacting with the other in the contemporary globalized world
is only from the position of power — either bombing the countries or
remote-controlling the economies.
What future?
In lines with what the CAE have written
in another context,9 I would like to say that the primary importance
of concepts and projects like the "globalization" is not in their
essence (in effect, there is none, it is all about control and power), but in
the spectacle. Globalization is a myth, a narrative thrown to the masses to
entertain themselves by being for or against it (and even when they are
against it they will end up being for it,
the logic goes). The idea and the concept are thrown in order to generate both
an elegant excuse for governments ("it is not our fault, we cannot fight
off the forces of globalization"), and to throw a bone of contention for
analysts and scholars. It can also come in handy as a potential source and
generator of conflicts, conflicts that are make people
involved in them easier to manipulate
with. The Palestianians and the Israelis will continue to depend on foreign
mediation ("conflict management"). Mr. Sharon will not.
It should also be stressed that conflicts
are important for the maintenance of the established political order. In
multicultural and multiethnic societies (in practice, all of them), one of the
most efficient strategies of governing is pitting one underprivileged segment
of society against the other. In a perfect-case scenario, such as Brazil, the
ruling élite has established a type of government that always keeps most of the
society among the underprivileged. The middle class joins in by leading
separate lives, sending their kids in private schools and, in general, trying
to stay as far away from the social reality of the country. In doing so, they
join in what Brazilians call the "social apartheid" — they live
worlds apart from the 90% of the population.
However, the strength of the modern
industrialized societies is also their potential weakness. By depending on
technology to control, govern, orchestrate and infiltrate, they are vulnerable
to the attacks from the same area — technology.
The attacks do not necessarily have to be
direct (hackers) — an interesting recent case is the process that the MPAA
(Motion Pictures Association of America) initiated against the Norwegian
teenager Jon Johanssen and his father. The Norwegians have been accused of
"breaking" the code for digital video discs (DVDs), through the
computer program that they created, DeCSS. The film industry representatives
claim that this program violates the new copyright law, Digital Millennium
Copyright Act. However, some problems appear in this construction. First of
all, the DeCSS is a driver that actually translates
the content of DVDs, so that it could be seen on any computer. The DeCSS is not
used for the copying of DVDs. This is decoding and re-formating, not copying.
Decryption and reformating is translating,
copying is replicating. No one makes
pirate DVDs today — that would be too expensive and impractical. But why forbid
people from watching them on their own computers? It seems that the panic of
international corporations and the quest for absolute control sometimes goes
way too far.
This panic is a clear sign of weakness,
and perhaps we are witnessing the emergence of the first cracks in the steel
armor of the international capital. But attacks and challenges must continue.
The ideological monopoly that has been constructed over the last fifty years or
so have engulfed the world in such a way that meanings are lost or
reconstructed at the whim of the holders of power,
embodied in the global international
capital. The fight against its monopoly
is one of the most important challenges of our times, and that is why hackers
should have all the support. Each breaking of the information and communication
monopoly is at the same time a defeat of ideological monolithism and thinking
arguing for the existence of a single and universal truth, whose authorized
owner is any state, government, or some mega-corporation.
What kind of future do we want to have?
The one where an innocent little stroll will provoke outbursts of violence? The
one where millions of people will die of AIDS-related diseases when the
medicines that effectively control the HIV are available? The choices still exist.
Endnotes
1. The same could be said
for the rising star of the Austrian politics, Mr. Jörg Haider, who
has never been out of synch with the West
European politics on foreigners and
immigration. Mr. Haider just says what
most Western European leaders do — in fact,
the current anti-immigrant laws in
Austria were brought under the previous government,
without the presence of the extreme
xenophobic right. Thus, his and his party's surprise
at the EU's reaction to the new Austrian
government is quite genuine — it remains
unclear why they should be singled out
among all the West European countries that
advocate and implement similar policies.
2. In her book Imagining the Balkans (Oxford U.P.,
1997), Marija Todorova nicely traces
the history of these prejudices in a
wider Balkan context, following the Balkan wars of
1912 and 1913.
3. I don't say all, since in the
case of Zimbabwe, for example, it is clear that it was not
any external or global process, but the
policies of the country's single ruthless ruler, Mr.
Robert Mugabe that led the country to
ruins.
4. For a rather typical western (post-colonial) image of the Africa,
according to which
everything that happens (and what
matters) in Africa are wars, disasters and famine,
and that this is the destiny of the whole
continent, see The Economist, issue
of 13 May
2000.
5. Jean-François Lyotard, "Answering the question: What is
postmodernism?", in: Ihab
Hassan (ed.), Innovation/Renovation, University of Wisconsin Press, 1983, p. 76,
transl.
by Régis Durand.
6. Ignacio Ramonet, "The One Idea System", transl. by Patrice
Riemens. CTHEORY.
(Orig. in Le Monde Diplomatique, January 1995.)
7. Arthur and Marylouise Kroker, "Code Warriors", CTHEORY.
www.ctheory.com/a36-code_warriors.html
8. Richard Barbrook, "Global Algorithm 1.5: Hypermedia
Freedom", CTHEORY.
www.ctheory.com/gal.1-hyper_freedom.html
9. About virtual reality, in their VIPER lecture in 1995.