Absolutism, Objectivism or Relativism?

Abstract 

This research indirectly looks at the unique ways coloniality develops within modern ontologies by examining the discourse surrounding the war on Palestine. Through the examination of popular news media on the issue, and the subsequent reaction by the Western audience, the study outlines 4 key conceptualizations of coloniality dominant within modern discourse. What is an otherwise typically understudied phenomenon in sustainability transitions is attempted to be built upon using polarizing opinions in the media to understand the tropes of ‘American orientalism’ and its consequences on ‘other worlds’. 

Introduction

By the 1930s, European colonial and ‘post-colonial states made up 84.6% of the earth’s surface (Loomba, 2015). Quantitatively alone, that means that much of the world, “through European colonialisms, coloniality: defined as – intersectional stratification and violence against other worlds – has been crucial to the making of modern societies worldwide” (Saurabh, Stirling, pg.2, 2023). Despite the so-called ‘Post’ in Post-Colonial, core states still hold hegemonic power over the periphery: whether that be through the use of economic, political, militant, or religious influence, it must be acknowledged that differently situated people will have different relationships to colonial rule (Loomba, 2015). 

Some might wonder, what does war and coloniality have to do with sustainability? I find it obvious that the destruction of the planet’s ecosystems, including humans, is interlinked with hegemonic formations of power that transmit certain values and ideas through media, education and religious institutions which are essential to the way society operates (Gramsci, 1996 (Lasswell, 1984). Global ontologies, such as neoliberal capitalism can be detrimental to sustainable development, due to their known track record of extraction and exploitation of natural resources and workers in impoverished areas (Stirling and Saurabh, p.2, 2023). In order to look at these formations of power more closely, let's contextualize the current state of geopolitics and its role in justifying the 100-year war against the Palestinian people (Khalidi, 2017). 

On October 7th, 2023, the Palestinian Militant group Hamas overwhelmed Israel with a surprise attack that has since been considered the deadliest attack in Israeli history with reported casualties of 1200 Israelis and foreign nationals (AJLabs, 2023). The ensuing discourse coupled with the response from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has since become sensationalized in the media with a clear dichotomy of opinion, with camps developing for and against the occupation of Palestine. The retaliation by the IDF was referred to in Geneva on the 16th of November 2023 as a ‘genocide in the making’ according to experts from the United Nations (UN,2023). Under International Law, Israel’s claims of ‘self-defence’ and declaration of war by Netanyahu are inadmissible, as per the International Criminal Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on Israel: “Israel cannot rely on a right of self-defence under the UN charter against threats emanating from the territory it occupies and against the protected Palestinian population” (ICJ,2004; Albanese, 2023; Liskofsky, 1997). This makes the militant retaliation by the IDF, resulting in the death of approximately 18,787 casualties in Gaza, 297 in the West Bank and counting a complete violation of international law and human rights (AJLapbs, 2023). In 15 days that number has now risen to 30,034 (AJlabs,2023). In 15 days, 11,247 people were killed by the IDF. It’s clear that despite what the law and the international community have to say, Israel, a self-proclaimed Western state, considers itself above the law.

Research Question and Objective

1) To what extent do conceptualizations of colonial modernity impact Western discourse of the war on Palestine?

Objective: Identify the dominant frames within popular medium depicting the war on Palestine.

Literature review 

In Leah Thomas’s, The Intersectional Environmentalist, she states that “We cannot save the planet without uplifting the voices of its people, especially the ones often unheard” (Thomas, p.4 2019). Leah’s work is crucial to the sustainability transition as it illuminates the fact that the communities, states, and people with a history of colonialism are facing environmental injustices at a much more alarming rate when compared to the Western and European world (Saurabh, Srirling, 2023; Thomas, 2022).

 In 1948, millions of Palestinians were forcefully removed from their homes and left ‘stateless’ in the name of the Zionist political and national movement that would see the creation of Israel, a self-proclaimed Jewish and Western state in Palestine (Stanislawski,2017). The driving force behind the assertion that the Jewish diaspora needed a ‘national polity of their own’ was the rise of antisemitism before and thereafter WWII, which reaffirmed this belief that antisemitic sentiment would become a ‘permanent and inexorable feature of European society’ (Stanislawski, 2017). 

An idea such as this, in the wake of the catastrophic events of Hitler’s holocaust, creates a powerful image that has since been reproduced in the cultural lives of Israelis, and by extension the ‘West’ in the form of Zionism (Stanslawski, 2017; Gramsci, 1996). The term itself is highly contested, and at one point in 1975, the UN voted 68 to 45 with 14 abstentions in favour of adding the word ‘Zionism’ into the text wherever critical references to racism, apartheid, colonialism, and domination appeared (Lewis, 1997; Liskofsky, 1977). The decision was later reappealed in 91’ with an official count of 111 nations in favour (Lewis, 1991).

 It is to be made very clear, that while this analysis defends the rights of Palestinian people to THEIR land, it is in no way diminishing the experiences of oppression historically inflicted upon the Jewish diaspora. With both antisemitism and islamophobia on the rise, it is of utmost importance that we do not endorse any narrative that would jeopardize the safety of the global Arabic and Jewish population. 

The situation in occupied Palestine is regarded by Edward Said as the ultimate test facing the 21st century, in a so-called ‘Post’ colonial era. He stipulates that the conflict will be crucial in determining if, as a society, we can live together in peace and reconciliation despite our differences, or if we will continue to allow fear and war to drive our relationships (Said via Jhally, Smith, Taeieia, and Watson, 2014). Drawing from the work of Antonio Gramsci, Said asks whether we can transform from a unitary identity to an identity that includes the other without suppressing differences (Said, 1998; Gramsci, 1996). 

Method

Examining the critical discourse of post-colonial theory is a complex task, as its origins lie in critical Western discourse, which means interpretations are inherently biased toward a Eurocentric ontology (Wang, 1997). This is not to discredit the work of the field, but due to the scope and timespan of the research, Saurabh and Stirling’s conceptualizations and definition of colonial modernity, which are stated in the table below, offer us a clear, ready-made and exhaustive set of indicators. 

This approach is ontologically categorized as relativism, as it acknowledges that realities are multiple and constructed within the mind of the subject (Moon and Blackman, 2014). The study is bounded by a constructivist epistemology, which will be guided by Said’s Orientalism. Edward Said is Palestinian, and as such, his experiences as a ‘subject’ are quite unique for interpreting the ‘object’ that is the oriental ‘other’ from a hybrid perspective. (Said et al, 1998; Moon and Blackman, 2014) 

The primary mode of data collection is social media and content collection. I analyze the discourse of a viral video by Bill Maher, a comedian and HBO talk show host. The video is entitled ‘New Rule: From the River to the Sea’, and at the time of analysis it had 3.8 million views and over 10,000 comments. I collected, recorded, and coded the script of the monologue as well as the first 50 comments. The 4 indicators are as follows: assertion of comprehensive superiority, militant supremacy, extension of controlling imaginations, and settler colonial ideologies. When discourse reaffirms any of these indicators within Bill’s speech, or in the first 50 comments, they will become associated with either Eurocentrism or Zionism - two settler colonial ontologies - which in this case represent the dominant frames of ‘colonial modernity.

Results

In the discourse analysis, I found that the most coded indicator for the variables Zionism and Eurocentrism in both Maher’s speech and the comments section was ‘Extension of controlling imaginations.’ See the figures below for full results. Bill’s speech had 3 instances in which a multipolar elite imagination was used to assert militant supremacy. Only one form of resistance to Eurocentric and Zionist language was identified in the speech but was the second highest measured indicator in the comments. You can find the speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP-CRXROorw&t=227s. 

Discussion

The objective of the research was to Identify dominant frames within popular media depicting the war on Palestine. Bill Maher’s monologue scored quite highly in 3 of the 5 categories, Extension of Controlling Imagination, Assertion of Supremacy, and Settler Colonialisms. As can be interpreted in the data, sentiments of both Zionism, and Eurocentrism, are defined by all 4 of the indicators, but their power is exercised most dominantly through the ‘epistemicide’ of plurality, towards a single indisputable reality (de Sousa Santos, 2007; Tilley, 2010; Grosfouguel, 2013; Saurbh and Stirling, 2023; Moon and Blackman, 2014). At 4:32, Bill refers to the chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Free’ as simply a ‘myth’, reaffirming that in his, and by extension, the West’s eyes: their reality is one where Palestine does not exist. In doing so, this denies the rational agency of the Palestinians. It also paints a quintessential representation of Edward Said’s ‘American Orient’. For Said, there were different kinds of Orientalism, for the analysis, the American placement of the Orient, that is the Middle East, is looked at.

The American Orient was much more abstract, dehumanized, and political than that of the British and French Orient. For Said, Israel regards the whole Arab world as its enemy, and this idea is also imported into American Orientalism (Said, 1998). We see this in the discourse as well, when Bill at 3:15 says ‘History is brutal…people get moved, and yes, colonized, but nobody was a bigger colonizer than the Muslim army that swept out of the Arabian desert’. Said’s interpretation of the ‘American Orient’ is one where discourse makes all Arabs out to be a violent, hostile threat - one that Bill embraces, as he quickly associates colonization with the Muslim army. Settler colonialism ranks third in Bill's discourse analysis, but second in the comments section. This means the audience reaffirms what Bill has emphasized several times, that settler colonial behaviour is acceptable, and ‘things change’ - casually insinuating that war, death, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid states are things that just happen. 

What is to come next is unfortunate, dangerous, and dehumanizing to the Palestinian people, and every other territory continuing to experience Imperial and Colonial rule in the 21st century. Maher at one point refers to the Mexican state and its loss of their land to the United States as a decision to “chose a different path. to get real. They’ve since built a country that’s the world's 14th biggest economy”. His interpretation of getting real was a subscription to global capitalism and a relinquishing of their territory, which fit into all four of the indicators. This fails to connect other metrics of sustainability and development beyond strictly financial development. It simultaneously makes it easier to justify ruling over diverse people in a conquered territory(a), insinuates an elite imagination to military(b), configures a reality in which coloniality is made normal (c), and embeds race as an organizing principle of who gets what(d).

When coding data in the comments section, saturation was reached in just the first 40 comments. Extensions of imaginaries become the default comment in the last 10 recorded indicators, insinuating that a great majority of the 10000 comments and 3.3 million views simply act as extensions of the imaginary BIll is leaning into – one of a realist ontology that ‘These things Happen” – and by things he refers to” ‘colonization’ war’, and ‘ethnic cleansing’. Our job is to simply ‘make do’ and ‘cope’ because ‘history is brutal, and humans are not good’ (Maher, 2023). Even though Resistance did have the second most indicators in the comments section, it was still recorded the same amount of times as settler colonialism, and after about 40 comments, the sample had reached saturation. What really gets to me is that the people speaking up about imperial genocide, and ethnic cleansing are minorities in the discourse…  

Conclusion

 This analysis would benefit from a wider data set from a variety of different media channels, as it’s proven that algorithms will tend to filter narratives into echo chambers that are known to reaffirm the subject’s ontology, not challenge it (Kitchens, Johnsons, and Gray, 2020).

The UN Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories refers to Palestine as a ‘modern-day panopticon’ and an apartheid state in which omnipotent surveillance, monitoring, and confinement are functional forms of control to the ends of expanding settlements (Albanese, 2023). The research question asked, ‘To what extent do conceptualizations of colonial modernity impact Western discourse of the war on Palestine?’ 

The data shows that the four conceptualizations of colonial modernity still hold quite a strong influence on the rhetoric in the United States, and the ‘west’. As I conclude, it is reaffirmed that the conceptualization of colonial modernity, and its ontological hold on our built realities, which in this study manifested as Zionism and Eurocentrism, transmits certain values and ideas that reinforce neoliberal capitalist systems. I caution that should we continue to exclude and exterminate indigenous populations around the world, our sustainability initiatives in which we hope ‘to transform the world’ are in vain. Plural knowledge systems hold the gateway to alternative forms of knowledge that can diversify the problem-solving tools at our disposal and build a more synergetic, and accessible model of sustainability.

  So… like I mentioned. this could benefit from more media artifacts. Truth is, I didn’t have enough time to look at more data sets when I was trying to hand this in for school. I also only had 2000 words, so it just wasn’t in the cards to look at more media artifacts. It’s also draining. It sucks to see how many people have just not thought critically about this, and as a byproduct of that, violence against vulnerable populations continues to be justified.

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