when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive
—Audre Lorde
My previous two posts (Theoretical Intifada and Material and Symbolic Intifada) gave a glimpse of the importance of putting theory to work. But now that I think about it, I never mentioned the difference between the public intellectual who sacrifices time and labor to put theory to work and to share ideas—albeit unfinished and unpolished and despite all consequences—and the careerist academic who only knows how to work for a theory (consume or critique it) without being committed to the ethical and political commitments radical theories demand.
Edward Said shed light into the complicity of intellectuals in his book Representations of the Intellectual. Without holding back any punches, he accused intellectual who remains silent on what is seemingly a “controversial” or complex topic of being complicit for not taking a clear and unwavering ethical and political position. As we have seen in the past two months, many academics who used to share on social media their articles and books on decolonization have not spoken about Palestine, called for ceasefire, or critiqued Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza or increasing violence in the West Bank. Our colleagues who like begin their conference presentations or meetings with land acknowledgments have apparently forgotten that Palestine is also about the defense of land, a liberation movement against settler colonialism, dispossession, and displacement. These same academics appear to only care about colonization and decolonization in abstract, metaphorical terms or as a historical event that is gradually receding—perhaps a colonial legacy that we are slowly moving away from as we move toward a more egalitarian liberal society. It is evident that academia doesn’t care about material decolonization. It just wants a topic—a subject matter—that refers to the distant past rather than the colonial present.
Edward Said believed that this sort of silence kills “a passionate intellectual life.” As if he were writing these words today, he pointed out that “one of the toughest of all contemporary issues, Palestine, where fear of speaking out about one of the greatest injustices in modern history has hobbled, blinkered, muzzled many who know the truth and are in a position to serve it.” As I mentioned in my previous post, risking our careers by writing and speaking back to colonial power is the least we can do “in the hour of genocide, as Fargo Nissim Tbakhi put it. We must continue to write because life depends on it, and “despite the abuse and vilification that any outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and self-determination earns for him or herself, the truth deserves to be spoken, represented by an unafraid and compassionate intellectual.”
It’s not easy to lose fear. It’s not easy to believe that one’s words should be shared with the world, to believe that our ideas do matter—that is, that they can potentially materialize or at the very least bring hope and inspire others to take collective action. As Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas inquired over a decade ago in response to Israel’s invasion of Gaza in 2008-2009: Maybe our thinking is very simple, and we're lacking the nuances and annotations that are always so necessary in analyses, but to the Zapatistas it looks like there's a professional army murdering a defenseless population. Who from below and to the left can remain silent? Is it useful to say something? Do our cries stop even one bomb? Does our word save the life of even one Palestinian? We think that yes, it is useful. Maybe we don't stop a bomb and our word won't turn into an armored shield so that that 5.56 mm or 9 mm caliber bullet…won't hit the chest of a girl or boy, but perhaps our word can manage to join forces with others in Mexico and the world and perhaps first it's heard as a murmur, then out loud, and then a scream that they hear in Gaza. We don't know about you, but we Zapatistas from the EZLN, we know how important it is, in the middle of destruction and death, to hear some words of encouragement. I don't know how to explain it, but it turns out that yes, words from afar might not stop a bomb, but it's as if a crack were opened in the black room of death and a tiny ray of light slips in.
As artists, writers, and public intellectuals committed to decolonial liberation struggles, we must try to create fissures in a seemingly indestructible modern/colonial system so that in the “black room of death” that is Gaza a tiny ray of light or hope may slip through the cracks. These modest contributions, however insignificant they may seem at first, are in fact paramount when we consider that silence and indifference is what enables colonial dispossession, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. We must refuse the silence created by a culture of fear, and recognize once again that our words—or lack thereof—do matter. As Audre Lorde succinctly expressed, “your silence will not protect you.”
In a world as fucked up as ours, in a world that has seen and continues to see the destruction of Indigenous worlds, and in a modern/colonial, racial, capitalist heteropatriarchal world that promises progress but in reality only embraces death and destruction, our words may seem like they won’t change much or nothing at all. Perhaps this is true. But what’s also true is that a world without alternative perspectives, which would otherwise enable us to read and interrogate the world, would mean that we have reached the permanent colonization of the world—a point of no return, a point where even the imagination to dream of liberation and decolonization is impossible. Yet this is not case thanks to those who wrote and spoke back to those who intended to silence them and their communities, who continued to tell stories of liberation and hope of building another future in the present—another possible world. It is thanks to them that we now have conceptual tools to see what’s behind the facade or rhetoric of modernity and its false promises. Thanks to them, we can imagine alternative futures and point to actually existing collective projects and liberation movements in the present. I hope you can now see that our words do matter and that we must put theories to work in support of and in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and beyond.
I wanted to leave a note and say thank you for this piece. As someone who went through the colonial trenches of academia for a PhD in psychology, and being approximately 1-3 years out... I would say I’m still (un)learning many ways I knew to 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑡 to through academia culture. I am just starting to write again thanks to the Global Strike called by Gaza Journalist, Bisan, and also connections to the local Palestinian advocacy community and artists/writers. Even so, I find myself internally grappling with “holding” thought before considering sharing or publishing because of the conditioning of what may be arguably material investments in the academy, that is, publishing. I am trying to find the balance. And my voice, and work through my internalized fear. I guess you can say I am trying to liberate.