Entanglements
The idea and practice of non-violent coexistence are currently being put to the test. The idea of peaceful togetherness across ethnic, political or ideological boundaries, which is difficult to uphold even in rich Western societies, may sound like a pious fairy tale, not to say a mockery, when applied to other regional contexts. “Love thy neighbor? No, thanks”, as Slavoj Žižek put it quite succinctly a long time ago. Whether it is the war of aggression led by Russia, or the Middle East war triggered by the horrendous massacre by Hamas, the prospects of a lasting peace that would allow the catastrophically affected citizens to live in dignity are currently extremely slim. This does not even touch upon the dozens of other armed conflicts around the world, which may not be as present in our everyday media, but which also have devastating effects on those affected.
Peaceful coexistence beyond ethnic-national or imperial demarcations may have become a distant prospect for many people around the globe. What makes matters worse is that even when conflicts are not primarily fought out with armed force, a widely dominant and sometimes quite irreconcilable mode of polarization has taken hold. This sets in motion a fatal binary logic: the belief that one has to unconditionally support one party or the other, friend or foe, hardly ever aiming for a negotiable coexistence of everyone involved, or at least as many as possible. Naomi Klein calls this syndrome the “mirror world”, a realm full of distortions and blindness that has started to replace the real world, in which only immovable perpetrator–victim schemes have stable validity. A finding that has been true since the Covid pandemic and the ever worsening climate catastrophe, but which now becomes even more striking in view of the various war scenarios.
If one wants to reflexively counter all too simple good-and-evil polarizations, the concept of “implication” or “implicated being” comes to mind. Originally introduced by the literary scholar Michael Rothberg in his book “The Implicated Subject” (2019) and applied here to the field of memory activism in an essay co-written with Jennifer Noji, the concept attempts to take into account a simple fact: that different subjects are involved in never-ending conflicts in equally different – often incompatible, but sometimes overlapping – ways. “Entangled” or “implicated”, but hardly ever in completely the same way, as one could say.
Based on this idea, the issue asks how “implicated-ness” can help create viable attempts of mediation – beyond the demarcations and incompatibilities mentioned above. How can forms of future coexistence be envisaged, beyond all real-political separation, especially in places where there seems to be nothing but sheer hatred for one another? Can artistic approaches possibly provide blueprints that have long been lost to politics and other social actors, or that decidedly exceed their imagination? What different degrees of entanglement are there, and to what extent do they point beyond the cold dichotomies of perpetrator/victim, friend/enemy, etc.?
The issue is dedicated to these questions with a focus on the seemingly insoluble conflict between Israel and Palestine. Knowing full well that the historical complexity of this conflict cannot be adequately addressed in the given context, we nevertheless want to look at various sites of involvement in this conflict and put them up for debate. Isabel Frey and Nadine Sayegh, for example, explain the detailed backgrounds – and difficulties – of the Jewish-Arab peace initiative Standing Together Vienna, which they founded in October 2023. Renowned historian Ilan Pappe and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Nathan Thrall look at the historical course-setting required on a political level to enable a more just and dignified coexistence for all in the Israel-Palestine region. Ariella Aïsha Azoulay recalls what such a common Jewish-Arab world once looked like and identifies the factors and underlying causes that led to its dissolution. Finally, Ella Shohat presents a special case of such separation based on the problems surrounding the “Judeo-Arabic” language, from which illuminating conclusions can be drawn about the possibilities and conditions of a divided world. These contributions are supplemented by selected artistic projects, for example by photographer Miki Kratsman, which focus on the current human rights situation, however “entangled” the situation may be all around.
Even if some of the contributions contain harsh criticism of Israel’s current war policy, nothing could be further from our minds than to cast the slightest doubt on the right of those affected by terror to defend themselves, or to diminish in any way the suffering caused since October 7, 2023. As much as it is important to keep the memory of what happened alive – on all sides –, we nevertheless want to look to the future: How, so one of the relevant questions goes, can we project a coexistence that is as inclusive as possible, one that takes the credo of “Never again – for anyone” seriously and puts it into practice? What perhaps daring universalist idea is needed to renounce any militaristic or ethno-nationalist interpretation of the conflict once and for all? And how can we generally do justice to the complex modes of entanglement that the actors involved are subjected or exposed to? Questions like these form the multi-perspectival background of this issue.