The Wandering Who: A Study of Jewish Identity Politics (4 page)

You may wonder at this stage whether I regard the credit crunch as a Zionist plot or even a Jewish conspiracy. In fact the opposite is the case. It isn’t a plot and certainly not a conspiracy for it was all in the open. It is actually an accident. The patient didn’t make it to the end.

Chapter 3

Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts

One way to look into marginal politics is to illuminate the problematic tension between demands for equality and the maintenance of clannish or tribal worldviews. I am referring here to the difficult duality involved in wanting to be seen as everyone else while considering oneself to be different, unique or even superior. At first glance, it seems as if a humanist and universal demand to equalise civil rights would address the issue and resolve any form of tension between the margin and the centre. But marginal politics intends to defy any call for equalisation. For the marginal politician, assimilation, emancipation, integration and even liberation are death threats.

Once assimilated
²²
or integrated
²³
, the margin faces a severe ‘identity crisis’. The marginal subject is asked to renounce his or her particularity, uniqueness and singularity. Following integration or assimilation, the heroic ‘pre-revolutionary’ days of the righteous struggle for equality or civil rights are replaced by a nostalgic narrative. In its post-revolutionary phase, what had once been the margin becomes an unnoticeable entity, an ordinary crowd. Thus, we should deduce that the demand for equality is in itself a self-defeating mechanism. Once equal, one is no different from anyone else. The success of integration reduces the marginal discourse to a meaningless noise. No marginal politician endorses a political call for assimilation. Such a call would mean political suicide, a self-imposed destruction of one’s political power.

By contrast, we can easily conceive of individuals wanting to assimilate; we can envisage a member of the so-called margin searching for ways to integrate within mainstream society. A
glimpse into the social reality of pre-Second World War European Jews provides an interesting insight into the issue. For the reasons stated above, assimilation has never been presented as a Jewish political call. It was rather individual Jews who welcomed and enjoyed European liberal tendencies. The Jewish political call was inspired by different means of tribal, cultural or even racially-orientated segregation. A survey of our surrounding Western reality reveals an image of multiplicity. Our society is an amalgam in which many who were once marginal are now assimilated and integrated. Moreover, various minorities do not even regard their integration as a conscious process but rather as a celebration of being amongst others. This natural tendency to merge with one’s surrounding society is seen by the marginal politician as a major threat.

The Margin

‘The margin’ is a term that often refers to those who, somehow, live on the edge of society. It describes those who fall behind, those who cannot express their voice within mainstream discourse. The margin is often oppressed, harassed, humiliated, subject to despicable jokes, stereotypes and so forth. The margin retains its marginal qualities as long as the injustices committed against it are not addressed within the mainstream discourse. Once the particularity and the uniqueness of the margin is recognised and accepted by the crowd, the margin becomes an inherent part of the larger community, in other words, it becomes a minority group or even an integral, indistinguishable part of the mainstream.

Hence, it should be accepted that the state of being marginal is, at least to a certain extent, defined by the centre. But can the margin also be defined politically on its own terms? Is being a lesbian, for instance, enough for one to be ‘marginal’ regardless of the surrounding social circumstances? How does one decide whether one belongs to any given margin? Is being a Jew, a
Muslim, gay or an ethnic Albanian enough to make one a ‘marginal identity’?

Clearly not. We can think of many Jews, Muslims, gays, lesbians and ethnic Albanians who detach themselves from any form of marginal or identity politics. They do not see themselves as marginal, nor are they seen as such by their surrounding environment. Moreover, some of the so-called marginal groups are, by far, over represented in politics and media. Jews for instance cannot really complain about their political voice being silenced or unheard. The margin, therefore, is a dynamic notion and it is shaped by its relationship with the centre. The margin is defined in terms of negation (i.e. what it isn’t) rather than by its positive qualities (i.e. what it is). This is why marginal politics depicts reality in terms of binary oppositions.

For the gay ideologist the binary opposition is gay/heterosexual; for the feminist politician it is femininity/masculinity; for the Zionist it is Jew/gentile and
Eretz Yisrael
/Diaspora.

As soon as the centre is willing to expand its perception of itself, introducing more liberal and inclusive thoughts, the margin’s discourse confronts a threat of extinction. This is the point at which marginal and identity politics interferes and the binary opposition is introduced. The marginal politician is engaged in the maintenance of negation. This negation usually comes into play by the evocation of a conflict between the margin and the centre.

Zionism, for instance, is maintained by anti-Semitism. This may explain why Zionists are so enthusiastic about the growing statistics of anti-Semitic incidents. Similarly, gay marginal politics is fueled by homophobia and feminism thrives on the male chauvinist. Marginal and identity politics are destined to engage in an exchange with mainstream discourse. But it can never reconcile. It is there to retain negation. And yet, the question remains: can the marginal define itself by its own means? In order to address this question we must first grasp the
notion of identity.

Identity, Identification and Authenticity

In order to transform the ‘marginal’ into a meaningful notion, the marginal subject must assume that being a ‘marginal subject’ conveys a significant, real and authentic identity. An American Jewish settler living on confiscated Palestinian land must genuinely believe that being on occupied land, being involved in war crimes and breaching every possible moral code on a daily basis, while risking his own life and the lives of members of his family, constitutes the direct fulfillment of his ‘true self’. The settler must believe that he is the son of Abraham, and that this relation to his ancestor grants him special rights where Palestinian land is concerned.

Belief in an authentic identity is crucial for the realisation of the self as a genuine autonomous agent, but is authenticity possible? A phenomenological thinker may say yes. Edmund Husserl argues that we can refer to ‘
Evidez
’, which is ‘awareness’ of matter itself, as disclosed in the most clear, distinct and adequate way for something of its kind. Accordingly, one can experience a pure awareness of oneself. This notion was articulated by Descartes’ ‘
cogito ergo sum’
: ‘I think therefore I am.’ In phenomenological terms, it is the pure and lucid ‘awareness’ of ‘me thinking’ which removes any doubt concerning me ‘being in the world’, at least as a thinking entity.

Phenomenology attempts to describe how the world is constituted and experienced through conscious acts, and what is given to us in immediate experience without being mediated by preconceptions and theoretical notions. From a phenomenological perspective, one’s self-awareness can depict an unmediated, authentic form of knowledge.

It didn’t take long for Husserl’s student Martin Heidegger to expose major cracks in his teacher’s philosophical endeavour. Heidegger revealed that ‘being in the world’ might be slightly
more complex than Husserl had suggested. It was the former’s notion of hermeneutics that exposed the shortcomings of Husserl’s phenomenology. Hermeneutics deals with the subtle interaction between the interpreting subject and the interpreted object. Within his critical reading of Husserl, Heidegger exposed the embarrassing fact that unmediated awareness is actually hard to conceive. Human beings, it appears, do ‘belong to language’. Language is out there before one comes to the world. Once one enters the realm of language, a separating wall made of symbolic linguistic bricks and cultural mortar blocks one’s access to any possible ‘unmediated awareness’. Can we think without applying language? Can we experience at all without the mediation of language?

Admittedly, we are capable of feeling desire while dreaming or being overwhelmed by beauty, but then, as soon as we think it through, we find ourselves entangled in a process of naming. As soon as we name, the alleged ‘unmediated’ is lost forever. Once within the realm of language, our perception of the world is shaped by meanings and symbols that are not uniquely ours. It would seem that a comprehensive authentic awareness is unattainable. If this is indeed the case, there is no longer room to talk about identity in terms of a genuine expression of a ‘real-self’. As soon as we name, we surrender to language. Hence, looking into oneself can never reveal an authentic identity.

Alternatively, we may be able to think of identity as a set of ideas, narratives, ‘thinking modes’ or behavioural code. But then rather than really talking in terms of a genuine ‘self-awareness’, we are proceeding into a new territory. Consequently we identify with ideas, narratives, thinking modes, certain worldviews, perceptions, physical identifiers and so on. But then we must also accept that ‘identity’ refers to ‘identification’. Instead of any form of true authentic ‘self seeking,’ we are engaged in some sort of affiliation. The notion of identity, which is so crucial for post-modernists, identity politics and marginal theoreticians, is
nothing but a myth or a fantasy. When we refer to ‘marginal identity’, what we really mean is a form of identification. Thus, being homosexual is not enough to turn one into a ‘gay’. While being homosexual refers to sexual preference being a ‘gay’ is a form of (marginal) identification i.e. a powerful affinity to a group rather than to the self.

Seemingly, the marginal subject cannot define itself by its own means. It is defined by negation. It is defined by an existing symbolic order. Rather than finding a ‘real self’, it is an exchange with the world, which brings identity politics to life. When talking about identity we refer to an axis of identification: at one pole we find the elusive notion of authenticity produced by a myth of unmediated self-awareness, at the other pole we find a state of estrangement that is achieved by identification (a conceptual or symbolic affinity). Thus, the search for one’s genuine identity should be associated with utter misery: the more one searches for one’s authentic self the more one is engaged in the process of identification that will eventually lead to complete alienation. Here I turn to Lacan’s subversive twist on Descartes’
cogito
, in which ‘I think therefore I am’ becomes ‘You are where you do not think.’ If anything, thinking removes one from oneself.

Identity Politics and Marginal Philosophies

The statement: ‘I look into myself and see a Zionist, a gay, a woman, a nation, a watermelon,’ and so on, really means: I identify with Zionism, gays, women, certain politics and so on. Once we think, we are already defeated by the dictatorial power of language. Marginal communities and identity political discourses are generally very sensitive to the power of language, and this is probably the reason why a substantial amount of marginal political effort is dedicated to imposing lingual restrictions within the mainstream discourse (usually in the name of political correctness, liberalism and even tolerance).

This is also likely to be why marginal communities are so creative in their use of language. The Zionists’ relationship with the resurrected Hebrew language is a good example. Early Zionists realised that full control over language would allow them to impose their worldview on subsequent generations of Jews. But Zionists are not alone in this respect. Other marginal groups are known for their creative dialects, spelling and vocabulary. The following list presents different spellings for the word woman/women used by lesbian separatists in the 1970s: wimmin, wimyn, womyn, womin. These alternative spellings were intended to ‘prove’ that, at least symbolically, woman could be ‘complete’ even when the word man/men was taken out of woman/women. ‘We, as womyn, are not a sub-category of men.’
²⁴
The meaning defines the worldview. But then, if language has such a crucial role in marginal politics, the margin can never detach itself from the centre. Even when it establishes its own discourse, lingual signs and symbolic order, this discourse can only be realised in terms of its relationship and exchange with mainstream discourse.

The Strategies

Since the possibility of assimilation is occasionally presented to the margin by the hegemony, opportunities for integration within the centre are occasionally available to the marginal subject. Assimilated Jewish Americans, for instance, have always been extremely excited about the possibility of becoming American patriots. Many American Jews have found their way into the leading classes via the academic world, banking, real estate, the stock market, the media, politics and so on. But once they are in key positions within mainstream society, their patriotic tendencies are challenged by those they left in the margins.

Zionist lobbies in America specialise in tracing rich and influential Jews. They pressurise them to ‘come out of the closet’ and
to show greater commitment to the Jewish nationalist venture. Interestingly enough, gay marginal politicians behave similarly. Some marginal politicians seek to publicly ‘shame’ their integrated brothers and sisters.

This serves two purposes. First, it conveys a clear message that real assimilation is impossible: once a gay, always a gay; once a Jew always a Jew. This logic was reflected in a Hollywood cinematic cartoon, Shrek. Shrek and Princess Fiona were doomed to find out that ‘Once an ogre always an ogre. One can never escape one’s real identity.’ And yet Shrek and Princess Fiona are loved by their friends for being humane in spite of their being ogres.

Second, it pushes the assimilated being towards collaboration with his old clan. You will never escape who you are so you better be proud of it. The American Zionist takes this ideology one step further, telling the assimilated Jew: ‘You will never escape who you are so why not be proud of it and work for us.’ These points help us understand the impact of Jewish and Israeli lobbies within Western politics.
²⁵
Earlier on we read the words of Israeli Journalist Joseph Lapid, calling Diaspora Jews to assassinate Mossad deserter Ostrovsky for telling the truth about Israel. The marginal agitator seems to demand compliance.