Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad

Last night I finished reading Isabella Hammad’s Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative.

The first section of the book is based on her speech for the Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University in September 2023. It’s a speech that’s remarkably erudite, as Rashid Khalidi has said, with references to the work of Edward Said of course but also Aristotle, Freud, Kanafani, Wynter, Lindqvist, Darwish, Ferrante and many more. The tone is calm, analytical, cerebral. I felt immense joy reading it for I was privy to an extraordinary process of sculpting with words, carving ideas and connections ever so gently until a flawless shape is achieved.

From Between the Covers Podcast: ‘[Hammad] looks at the middle of narratives, at turning points, recognition scenes and epiphanies; which explores the intersection of aesthetics and ethics, words and actions, and the role of the writer in the political sphere; and which complicates the relationship between self and other, the familiar and the stranger.’

Certain paragraphs brought tears to my eyes, as there was a shock of recognition. For example this: ‘Rather than recognizing the stranger as familiar, and bringing a story to its close, Said asks us to recognize the familiar as stranger. He gestures at a way to dismantle the consoling fictions of fixed identity, which make it easier to herd into groups. This might be easier said than done, but it’s provocative—it points out how many narratives of self, when applied to a nation-state, might one day harden into self-centered intolerance. Narrative shape can comfort and guide our efforts, but we must eventually be ready to shape-shift, to be decentered, when the light of an other appears on the horizon in the project of human freedom, which remains undone.’

The speech was delivered a few days before October 7th, before the genocide. Earlier this year, in January 2024, Hammad wrote an afterword to the speech, which occupies a third of the book. The style of writing has changed, it’s now direct, urgent, political, based on numbers and dates. It’s full of questions. She sees the proximity of humanism to European colonialism and colonial violence. It’s as if Hammad has reached her own turning point, her own scene of recognition. I was choked with emotion as I read the last part of the book, I took many notes so I could re-read paragraphs like this:

‘In his essay on Shatila, [Jean] Genet speaks extensively of the beauty of the Palestinians, who remind him of the beauty of the Algerians when they rose against the French. He describes it as “a laughing insolence goaded by past unhappiness, systems and men responsible for unhappiness and shame, above all a laughing insolence which realizes that, freed of shame, growth is easy.” The Palestinians in Gaza are beautiful. The way they care for each other in the face of death puts the rest of us to shame. Wael Dahdouh, the Al Jazeera journalist who, when his family members were killed, kept on speaking to camera, stated recently with a calm and miraculous grace: “One day this war will stop, and those of us who remain will return and rebuild, and live again in these houses.”’

afshan noreen qureshi (1955 – 2024)

she was a hero to so many – women and children whose lives she transformed. she never said no to any woman who needed protection, help or encouragement. one of a kind, fearless, but also extraordinarily generous, a pioneer and indeed a changemaker. we will miss u dear afshan. our community will not be the same without u. may u rest in power and may god give strength to sohail bhai and the kids. inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.

From Fatima Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani writer and columnist whose analysis is very much on point. She was on Democracy Now! recently:

Well, Amy, I don’t think it’s an aberration that Trump won. I think it’s an aberration that he lost in 2020. And I think anyone looking at the American elections for the last year, even longer, could see very clearly that the Democrats were speaking to a hall of mirrors. They ran an incredibly weak and actually macabre campaign. To see Kamala Harris describe her politics as one of joy as she promised the most lethal military in the world, talking about women’s rights in America, essentially focusing those rights on the right to termination, while the rest of the world has watched women slaughtered in Gaza for 13 months straight. It’s very curious to think that they thought a winning strategy was Beyoncé and Taylor Swift was going to defeat — who? — Trump, who was speaking to people, who was speaking against wars. Whether we believe him or not, it was a marked difference from what Kamala Harris was saying and was not saying.

We’ve seen over the last year that 70% of those slaughtered in Gaza by Israel and, let’s also be clear, by America, because it’s American bombs and American diplomatic cover that allows this slaughter to continue unabated — 70% of those victims are women and children. We have watched children with their heads blown off. We have watched children with no surviving family members, finding themselves in hospital with limbs missing. Gaza has the largest cohort of child amputees in the world. And we have seen newborns left to die as Israel switches off electricity and fuel for hospitals.

So, for Kamala Harris to come out and talk repeatedly about abortion, and I say this as someone who is pro-choice, who has always been pro-choice, was not just macabre, but it’s obscene. It’s an absolute betrayal of feminism, because feminism is about liberation. It’s not about termination. And it’s about protecting women at their most vulnerable and at their most frightened. And there was no sign of that.

There was so much toxicity in Kamala Harris’s campaign. You know, I watched her laugh with Oprah as she spoke about shooting someone who might enter her house with a gun, and giggling and saying her PR team may not like that, but she would kill them. You don’t need to be a man to practice toxic masculinity, and you don’t need to be white to practice white supremacy, as we’ve seen very clearly from this election cycle. More here.

what did we expect?

it’s a special kind of moral turpitude to expect people to vote for their own genocide and for the extermination of their own families, friends and communities. it’s interesting to see people change their profile pictures to black for the first time in a year and say, ‘well, now we will all suffer.’ that’s kind of the point. with a livestreamed holocaust of racialized, unwanted populations playing in the background, did we really expect anything but a more naked form of fascism?

From Viet Thanh Nguyen

“The United States was born from a fundamental contradiction that has never gone away. On the one hand, the beauty of democracy, opportunity, freedom, and equality. On the other hand, the brutality that made that beauty possible: colonization, genocide, enslavement, occupation, and war.

So long as that contradiction is not resolved, it will return, and the country–and the world–will be haunted by the original sins that made this country and are still a part of this country. Too many Americans benefit from the contradiction. Some willingly embrace the brutality, others are willing to look away from it. That’s why the Democratic loss of its moral compass on Gaza and calling what Israel is doing a genocide was not simply a “single issue,” but a symptom of the rot within a party that hopes that the beauty of multiculturalism and diversity will somehow be enough to overcome the brutality.

Much of the blame for a Trump victory goes to Trump voters and the deep wells of racism, misogyny, transphobia, and homophobia, as well as the country’s weakness for spectacle, wealth, individualism, and anti-intellectualism. But the Democratic Party has allowed itself and the country to move ever further right, as the Republican Party has moved the center in its direction. This is a losing proposition for the Democratic Party.”

it’s not a coincidence

ok i try to be patient but no. if u post the meme with a bunch of afghan women in blue burkas, juxtaposed against pictures of afghan women in skirts, and think u are making a point about women’s liberation, i will have to say goodbye. will also part ways if u post the picture of an iranian woman in her underclothes and feign solidarity with iranian women. apparently the woman in question had a psychotic episode and was taken to a hospital. in the U.S. she might have been shot by a cop. that’s how the system deals with people having mental breakdowns. to have to see these reductive, ill-informed memes and the racist, islamophobic comments that follow, while muslim families are being starved and massacred in a large part of the world, is frankly too much. and not an effing coincidence.

Reclaiming Death: Art, Ritual, and Advocacy at End of Life

Last Friday I had the honor of spending some time with the brilliant (and extremely generous) @briannalhb who gave me a private tour of “Reclaiming Death: Art, Ritual, and Advocacy at End of Life, a group exhibition featuring Jeremy Dennis, Jenie Gao, Brianna L. Hernandez, Jonathan Herrera Soto, Resham Mantri, mk, Nirmal Raja, Denise Silva-Dennis, Adrienne Terry, and A young Yu in collaboration with Nicholas Oh. Each participating artist presents personal and culturally significant methods of relating to grief and death in ways that are healing and connected to heritage.” The exhibition challenges western ideas of death and mourning. In Brianna’s words, as the exhibition’s curator: “In a social atmosphere where death is primarily avoided or otherwise presented through platitudes and euphemisms, translating death from heritage and lived experiences is vital in honoring the vastness of end-of-life practices and our inextricably tied humanity.” Reclaiming death can be seen until November 30. Pls contact the venue to arrange a viewing. It’s at Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, a communal art space led by Indigenous artist Jeremy Dennis and based on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation in Southampton. Here are a few images but one truly needs to be immersed in this important exhibit.

the normalization of rape and torture

when abu ghraib happened, the world was aghast. there were articles in american msm. artists used the declassified documents and photographs to create powerful exhibitions about american hegemony. the site was closed and soldiers held to account – they were identified, vilified, an embarrassment. it’s always too little too late, but look how the system has adjusted. how the torture and rape of colonized brown bodies has become completely normalized. just an annoying intrusion into one’s lovely day out here in the west. this is z…ism. this is the state of isr..l. this is biden-harris and the bipartisan continuation of american empire.

early voting

we did early voting today and voted for the green party. it’s not on the ballot in ny, but one can fill in the bubble for a write-in vote, and write “jill stein/rudolph ware” in that box. i’m sharing this information for a number of reasons. 1) voting for a genocidaire, a sitting vice president who has greenlit a holocaust to which she continues to be committed (“let me be clear, i will always stand up for israel’s right to defend itself”), is not possible. 2) the electoral system/ politicians will not save us, we will have to do that work ourselves. but a multi-pronged approach has been effective in the history of social activism. 3) the two party system is a joke. it’s a gun-toting, earth-poisoning, sadistic, imperialist, one party system that will not stop until it eats itself. if stein gets 130,000 votes in ny, the green party will have ballot access for the next 2 yrs. break the two party system. 4) those who believe in the lesser-of-two-evilism theory, pls stick to facts, not imaginary outcomes. trump did not commit a holocaust of this magnitude – nothing is worse than mass slaughter. if u are worried about immigration, harris is competing with trump to be more xenophobic – a greater lover of militarized borders and walls. if u are concerned about women’s health and reproductive rights, read the lancet: “our colleagues in gaza, local physicians who face the horrors of this large-scale violence daily, report an unprecedented rise in maternal deaths, miscarriages, and stillbirths. the malnutrition that many pregnant women endure only exacerbates these outcomes…” if ur reaction is: “but that’s over there, not here,” pls look into ur stunning ability to otherize non-american, non-white, non-english speaking women. what does that say about your intersectional feminism? 5) american voters seem to opt for style over substance. consider reagan (elevated to the rank of american icon because as an actor, he could play the president quite well), clinton (who could exude southern charm and everyday greasiness while he dismantled welfare, introduced a devastating crime bill and pushed thru NAFTA) or obama (the drone president who dropped 26,000 bombs in 2016 alone and killed a ton of poor people but, hey, he was black and good at speeches). the distaste for trump is partly that – the inability of american liberals to digest his cartoonish presence. 6) i know that the words ‘crossing a red line’ have become meaningless, since so many lines have been breached in gaza. doesn’t change the fact that there should be limits (legal, political, social) to what is considered acceptable or bearable. whether one calls it morality or ethics, whatever the panorama of what one considers good or evil, some rules can never be violated. killing and torturing children, siccing dogs on the elderly and those with disabilities, gang rape, assassinating journalists, doctors and academics, starving 2 million people to death – the list is endless, israeli depravities unimaginable, and biden-harris 100% responsible. register your break from these war crimes and vote for a third party.

not interested in debating. sharing my thoughts with those who care to read.

Dissent, Democracy & Higher Education Under Attack

Yesterday I attended a wonderful event at Stony Brook University: ‘Dissent, Democracy & Higher Education Under Attack’ with Tariq Habash (former DOE employee and first person to resign from Biden administration to protest the US’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza), Rana Jaleel (Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies and Chair of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure), Danny Shaw (Latin American & Caribbean Studies Professor & Ethnographer who was doxed, harassed, fired from CUNY, and detained and interrogated by the FBI and DHS for his pro-Palestine activism) and Jonathan Wallace (longtime movement lawyer based in New York doing pro bono work to support faculty and students attacked for their support of Palestinian liberation). Good information about what’s going on and what tools we can use to resist but also a much needed space to feel collective power and solidarity. Congrats to the organizers

Two pro-genocide Z…… at the entrance passing out sheets of paper. I grabbed the sheet instinctively as it was aggressively handed to me but then I asked what it was. “More information so u can learn both sides of the story.” I gave it back and said no thanks. “It’s just so you have all the data” to which I replied I had all the data already. Then a pin to end all hate. “All hate,” they repeated. Reminded me of the Levine Center to End Hate in Rochester, NY, which is an extension of the Jewish Federation and uses this meaningless language (similar to All Lives Matter) to enter activist spaces and have known activists (many of them POCs) on their board. I said no thanks and walked in. We don’t have to engage just to be polite.

friends premiere their film

it’s been a busy weekend. with the premiere of ‘being black in america’ by @voicesproj @jackiephotographyroc at the voices rising film festival @lovewinsfilms in islip on saturday and a lovely get together/lunch at our house followed by a walk at the beach with our rochester fam on sunday. so good to see u @jackiemcgriff @bycocoarae and @taurussavant