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Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Columbia U. Prof. excuses suicide "resistance" - An Unanswered Letter to Columbia's Dean of Academic Affairs by Edward Alexander

Columbia U. Prof. excuses suicide "resistance" - An Unanswered Letter to
Columbia's Dean of Academic Affairs by Edward Alexander

From: Edward Alexander

To: Professor Yatrakis

Dear Professor Yatrakis, I write, as a "concerned" alumnus, to call to your
attention--in case you've not already seen them--remarks made by Professor
G.C. Spivak in Leeds in June. Their appalling evil, their poverty of mind,
their doubtful literacy ("killees"?) make one wonder whether anyone of
authority at Columbia has considered the appropriateness of continuing her
employment there. When one thinks that this woman is employed in a
department that once included such people as John Erskine, Mark Van Doren,
Lionel Trilling, and F. W. Dupee, it makes the heart sink.

Sincerely yours, Edward Alexander Columbia College, '57
--------
On June 22, Columbia University professor and postmodern theorist Gayatri
Spivak gave the keynote address at a conference at the University of Leeds
entitled "Translating Class, Altering Hospitality." The conference as a
whole was an academic playground for resentful Marxists, anti-globalization
fanatics, and assorted deconstructionists, convinced of the fundamental evil
of the West and putting forth various theories that might lead to its
swiftest destruction. I merely offer a few excerpts from Spivak's keynote
speech, on the subject of what she calls "suicidal resistance," to show what
currently passes for wisdom in academic circles:

Suicide bombing--and the planes of 9/11 were living bombs--is a purposive
self-annihilation, a confrontation between oneself and oneself, the extreme
end of autoeroticism, killing onself as other, in the process killing
others. It is when one sees oneself as an object capable of destruction in a
world of objects, so that the destruction of others is indistinguishable
from the destruction of self.

Suicidal resistance is a message inscribed on the body when no other means
will get through. It is both execution and mourning, for both self and
other. For you die with me for the same cause, no matter which side you are
on. Because no matter who you are, there are no designated killees in
suicide bombing. No matter what side you are on, because I cannot talk to
you, you won't respond to me, with the implication that there is no dishonor
in such shared and innocent death.

So, according to Spivak, suicide bombers don't really intend to kill those
they perceive as enemies. The Palestinians who massacre Israeli civilians
and the Al Qaeda bombers of 9/11 are really just ontologically confused.
Their beef isn't with the infidels they wish to slaughter--they're only
killing themselves. (Makes you wonder why they need to leave the house.)
Like Cherie Blair, Spivak parrots the ludicrous notion that suicide bombers
have no other means of communication. Moreover, she says that "there are no
designated killees in suicide bombing," although the Palestinians who
detonate their nail-packed explosives in ice-cream parlours, pizzerias, and
discotheques have clearly designated innocent Israeli children, teenagers,
and families as their intended victims. But why should reality get in the
way of another pretentious, postmodern rhapsody? Just a couple more
excerpts:

It is the history of this failure of cultural instruction [Spivak's phrase
for the indoctrination of suicide bombers] that we must question, not the
instruction itself. For that history, leading now to apartheid and
unspeakable violence in the occupied Palestinian homeland, can be so
narrativized as to persuade the young to die.

In other words, the instruction to people to blow themselves up and kill
innocents must not be questioned; the real problem is the history of Israeli
"apartheid." Finally:

It [suicide bombing] is a response of sorts to the state terrorism
practiced outside of its own ambit by the United States, and in the
Palestinian case additionally to an absolute failure of hospitality.

The conference website is http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cath/congress/2002/

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