We, the Oxford Arab Cultural Society and the Oxford Students' Palestine Society, alongside the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and concerned members of the public, held a demonstration outside starting over an hour before the talk, and lasting - audibly - throughout Peres' speech. Some of us attended the lecture and, at intervals, nine students got up and made loud statements beginning 'I represent all the Palestinians who...' One such student was bundled out of the lecture hall. Peres was visibly fazed by these interruptions and the sound of the protestors outside, while the audience were thus made aware of the point of view being stifled by Peres' presence today in Oxford, and every day in Palestine.
I think this is what happens when people take their literary theory too seriously and start viewing people as texts, which are said to repress subalterns by their presence. It is also rather insidious. What exactly are we supposed to do when someone's mere existence is said to marginalize another person's or people's point of view?
5 comments:
The logic is strange but then the Angry Arab blog is not a place to come to search for logic. Probably the only good thing about his blog was the comments section. Ever since it's gone I stopped reading his blog.
I disagree. I think it's an invaluable resource for all kinds of tidbits. If you want to know what critics of the Iraq-US security agreement are saying, or if you want to know how people argue against Israel, or you want to learn about pan-Arabism and disaffected left-wing, secularist intellectuals such as the author of that blog, it is a one-stop source of data.
Correct. I agree. His blog is a very good opportunity to get a glimpse into the mind of these people. However, would you say that after having read his blog for quite a while you are still learning something new by coming back to it? Because I was under the impression that after a while it's all getting very repetitive. He is basically recycling the same stuff. Even jokes are the same ones. You know, a picture of a child in front of a bombed out house with a caption: look at this Wahhabi extremist, or: here is another one Palestinian terrorist.
Yah, that stuff is boring. The reviews of some of the books are useful because of the detailed breakdowns and corrections. The snapshots from Arab media are worthwhile.
Also he is always giving me a feeling of a sort of loneliness or something. He seems to belong to animals that largely went extinct for the regional fauna, a kind of an Arab Don Quixote. His Arab audience moved elsewhere. He is more representative of Western leftists than the Arabs, I think.
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