Judith Butler interviewed by Ray Filar, Open Democracy
By now, Judith Butler is used to improbable accusations.
Among other things, she has been called a “useful idiot” for anti-Semites, a
supporter of terrorism and – that old classic – a self-hating Jew.
These kinds of allegations are rarely levelled against
post-structuralist philosophers. Yet the Maxine Eiliot professor in the
Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California holds a
special kind of renown within the academy. Her work on conflict, gender and the
nation-state has dramatically transformed the way we think about society.
And unlike most other theorists, she also publically
advocates for the delicate, deeply contentious standpoint of the anti-Zionist
Jew. Because of this, Butler's every public move is scrutinised and dogged by
censure. Her talk in February 2013 at Brooklyn College on the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions movement met a particularly vociferous backlash. The
stress, Butler tells me, led her to cancel speaking for a season.
Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism is
Butler's response to those who would place anti-Zionism outside of the
acceptable bounds of Jewish speech. With American secretary of state John
Kerry's attempt to revive the two-state solution in Israel/Palestine underway,
Parting Ways questions what kinds of solutions are up for discussion.
Challenging the prevailing poverty of vision, Butler instead offers an ethical
system that holds relationships with the other at the heart of what it means to
be Jewish.
Arguing for a form of binationalism, she suggests that a
move from “segregation” to “cohabitation” – however ambivalent or fractious -
is a better ethical approach to Israel/Palestine. The radical transformation
she calls for works from society to self and back again: any genuine
cohabitation necessitates a personal and societal shift in the treatment of
marginalised populations.
This is no romanticised solution. “People who expect enmity
to suddenly convert into love are probably using the wrong model,” Butler says,
“living with one another can be unhappy, wretched, ambivalent, even full of
antagonism, but all of that can play out in the political sphere without
recourse to expulsion or genocide. And that is our obligation.”
When we meet, Butler seems tired. The position she holds is
difficult and vulnerable to wilful misrepresentation. The professor who has
described herself as a “self conscious intellectual standing on the sidelines”
has nevertheless stepped into the political firing lines of one of the most
critical conflicts of our time.
RF: In the introduction to Parting Ways you say,
tantalisingly, that of course you have a personal story, a family history of
loss under the Nazi regime, and maybe you'd explore that somewhere but it's not
relevant for here. Why not?
JB: Well it's a
problem. I don't have a Jewish last name, but that's because of whatever
happened in immigration. My mother's family were killed in Hungary in the early
1940s and I grew up with that knowledge and with a fair amount of traumatic
overflow into my family of origin. On the one hand I say that and it gives me
credibility, like, oh she's a Jew, she actually grew up Jewish, she's actually,
you know, a second-generation Holocaust survivor, whatever.
But should I claim that? Does that give me more legitimacy?
Then that also makes me really angry. Why do I have to do that? I don't want to
market myself that way. I want my arguments to be good arguments on the basis
of what I actually have to say. I do situate myself in this problem of being a
Jew who doesn't want to be represented by the state of Israel, a state that
claims to represent all Jewish people and make me into a potential citizen.
Which I'm sure they wouldn't let me do now anyway.
RF: Maybe if you repented?
JB: Yes, a good
conversion narrative would get me some, like, um... well we won't go down that
road. I wanted to mark it, but I don't want to exploit it. If I haven't marked
it at all, that would also be kind of a problem. People need to know who I am
and where I'm coming from.
Very often, if you just get the question: “Well, are you a
Zionist?” if you say no, it's assumed that you want the destruction of the
state of Israel and that you're involved in some actual or potential violent
attack. But actually, you could say: “Not on this basis”.
I was born a Zionist, because I didn't have a choice about
that. It was the ether of my family life, but I certainly broke with it as I
asked more questions about it. And that doesn't mean I want to see the
destruction of a people, it means I want to see a state structure that might
embody more substantially the basic principles of democracy.
RF: Why is the theme of cohabitation such an important
thread throughout the book?
JB: Some Israeli politicians have proposed the transfer of
Palestinians out of what is currently called Israel, either into the occupied
territories, into Jordan or out into other Arab lands, with the idea that there
would be no intermixing of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis or Palestinian and
Jewish communities.
But the idea of an absolute segregation is one that I find
lamentable. And similarly, if you look at some of the language in the basic
writings of Hamas, there is that famous call to push the Israelis into the sea.
Now, I would say that most Palestinian politicians on the ground say, of course
that's not what we want, and even within Hamas there is some published debate
about that claim, but until the claim is removed, it's still noxious.
So I'm trying to think of what happens if we take expulsion
off the table for everyone, and instead think about the rights of those who
have been expelled already, which would include the various rights of refugees
who came to Israel in the aftermath of WWII, but also those from other
countries, and what rights the Palestinians have who have been dispossessed of
their lands and homes.
We need a legal and political understanding of the right of
the refugee, whereby no solution for one group produces a new class of refugees
– you can't solve a refugee problem by producing a new, potentially greater
refugee problem. As long as that is understood as a basic rule, which strikes
me as logical and clear, then that would be a starting point for thinking about
cohabitation.
It was Edward Said who thought that there was some hope for
binationalism in the fact that, although the history of dispossession and exile
for Jews is very different from the history of dispossession and exile for
Palestinians, they both have recent and searing experiences which might allow
them to come to a common understanding on the rights of refugees, or what it
might mean to live together with resonant histories of that kind.
RF: In the middle of this discussion of cohabitation you
say:
“Surely binationalism is not love, but there is, we might
say, a necessary and impossible attachment that makes a mockery of identity, an
ambivalence that emerges from the decentering of the nationalist ethos and that
forms the basis of a permanent ethical demand.”
So there is an ethical demand that we do not choose with
whom we cohabit, and also that if that produces an ambivalence, it is simply
something we have to accept.
JB: That's right. People who expect enmity to suddenly
convert into love are probably using the wrong model. I think what Hannah
Arendt meant when she said that “we cannot choose with whom we cohabit the
world” is that all of those who inhabit the world have a right to be here by
virtue of their being here at all. To be here means you have a right to be
here.
The point that she's making, of course, is that genocide is
not a legitimate option. It's not ok to decide that an entire population has no
right to live in the world. No matter whether these relationships are very
proximate or very distant, there is no entitlement to expunge a population or
to demean its basic humanity.
What does it mean then to live with one another? It can be
unhappy, it can be wretched, it can be ambivalent, it can even be full of
antagonism, but all of that can play out in the political sphere without
recourse to expulsion or genocide. And that is our obligation, to stay in the
sphere with whatever murderous rage we have, without acting on it.
RF: To extrapolate slightly, if the Israelis were to accept
this ambivalence, it would be a transformative way of thinking for them?
JB: Well I think some of them actually do. There are ordinary
spaces where people do, more or less, share neighbourhoods. In Haifa, there are
whole communities that are more or less integrated. But of course that is with
Palestinian Israelis who have, for the most part, accepted certain kinds of
cooperative models, and also accept second-class citizenship.
We have to have a very strong criticism of modes of
cooperation that entrench inequality. We want modes of cohabitation or
solidarity – some call it coexistence – that seek to transform every dimension,
so that we have real political and economic equality, and we have the end of
occupation, and we have some reasonable way to honour the right of return.
RF: So is Parting Ways a call for transformation?
JB: I think it is. There are three basic calls that I end up
making that are coming from Palestinian activists or scholars who have been
working on this issue for a long time. The first is to establish a firm
constitutional basis for equality for all citizens, regardless of what their
religion might be, or their ethnicity or race.
The second call is a call to end the occupation, which is
illegal and an extension of a colonial project. I consider both the West Bank
and Gaza to be colonised, even though Gaza is not occupied in the same way that
the West Bank is. The Israeli government and military control all goods that
pass in or out of that area, and they have restricted employment and building
material that would allow Palestinians to rebuild homes and structures that
were destroyed by bombardment.
The third call is probably the most controversial, but I do
think that a lot of thought has to be given to how the right of return might be
conceptualised, and how that right might be honoured, whether it's via
resettlement or compensation. Some plans involve a return to areas where people
have lived, not necessarily to the exact homes they lived in.
But people who have been made stateless by military
occupation are entitled to repatriation, and then the question is to which
state, or to what polity or area? Those who have had their goods taken away are
entitled to compensation of some kind. These are basic international laws.
RF: In your final chapter you cite a Mahmoud Darwish poem
that says “a possible life is one that wills the impossible.” You describe this
as a paradox – could you explain it?
JB: Well, there are people who believe in realpolitik and
who say: “There's never going to be one state, there's never going to be
equality, there's never going to be peace...don't fool yourself. If you want to
be political, get concrete and see what adjustments you can make in the current
regime”.
Then I just think, ok, what would it mean if we lived in a
world in which no one held out for the possibility of substantial political
equality, or for a full cessation of colonial practices - if no one held out
for those things because they were impossible? People do scoff when you say
right of return. I was at a meeting with Palestinians and Israelis where people
said: “That will never happen.” So I said, “well it will not be taken off the
table.”
In fact in politics, sometimes the thing that will never
happen actually starts to happen. And there have to be people who hold out for
that, and who accept that they are idealists and that they are operating on
principle as opposed to realpolitik. If there were no such ideals then our
entire political sensibility would be corrupted by this process.
And maybe one of the jobs of theory or philosophy is to
elevate principles that seem impossible, or that have the status of the
impossible, to stand by them and will them, even when it looks highly unlikely
that they'll ever be realised. But that's ok, it's a service.
What would happen if we lived in a world where there were no
people who did that? It would be an impoverished world.
