Reading Group Week 11
Hello. Eid Mubarak and happy trans day of visibility.
This week we're starting a new book: Perfect Victims by Mohammed El-Kurd
If you haven't bought the book yet, please do that ASAP at the link above.
Readings
This week we'll just be reading the "author's note(s)" and Chapter 1: "the sniper's hands are clean of blood".
(At the end of this email I lay out the reading agenda for the next ~5 weeks, so if you like to plan somewhat compulsively, feel free to do so with my enabling)
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Reflections
Quite a few pieces grabbed me and I want to put them in front of people. I hope you'll forgive me for quoting some pieces at length - starting with this one:
And the snipers are everywhere: the underhanded journalists, the spineless bureaucrats, the inconspicuous henchmen, the philanthropists who mine our tragedies for gold, the television anchors who obfuscate those tragedies, the missionaries who find their salvation in our demise, the devil's advocates, the distractors, those who litter our roads with red herrings, the unscrupulous political advisors, the activists who act as puppet masters, the elite capturers, the elitists in our ranks who demand of us a certain dance, who imprison us in the panopticon of their gaze, the self-appointed intellectuals, the clergy who whisper when they should scream, the very well-fed weapons manufacturers and the university administrators who feed them, and the academics indulging in arrogance and willful misinterpretation, who mutilate Frantz Fanon and Walter Benjamin, deny human nature, and contest even the laws of physics in order to pathologize our resistance.
I've been very angry for some time about the practiced inaction and indifference of organizations and institutions to which many of us have volunteered an incredible amount of our time and energy.
These organizations are nothing without us, and without our work. Every university in the world, without people, is nothing. Every worker organization without its members is nothing. Every professional organization without the work its constituents put into it is nothing.
In the past, I justified working within organizations to elevate their status, doing work under their letterhead, letting them accumulate a little bit of the credit of my work - of all of our work. I did so on the tacit belief that all of this collective power they were accumulating would enable us to accomplish something that couldn't be done individually.
And it's all been bullshit. People who run organizations like SIGCHI, like Columbia and the UC system and the University of Michigan, like your workplaces - they all have no intention of reflecting your disgust and dismay at the genocides in which we're all implicated, because there are marginal profits to be made by ignoring what their partners are doing.
El-Kurd calls these people snipers. I used to call them cynical ghouls and duplicitous monsters. I struggled to find the words to convey that these people are not just murderers, but self-righteous about the way they've arranged things so that they never have to bloody their hands.
These people send police to brutalize students protesting against genocide. These people fire workers for holding a sit-in to mourn the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians. These people tell you to shut up and call you antisemitic for saying that occupation is wrong; that apartheid is wrong; that genocide is wrong.
When will we at least stop shaking hands and networking with these snipers? When will we regard them with disdain, with the contempt that they are due?
To practice a politics of appeal is to utilize all the tools made available by the institution, "the master's tools," often haplessly, though sometimes with moderate success. And always in line with the institution's logic ... in hopes to be acquitted of the crime of being Palestinian.
I had 2 thoughts to this: the first is, I'd really like to hear what people think about this idea of using "the master's tools" (a nod to Audre Lorde) given the time we spent reading Refaat's work.
I'm also really drawn to the line about it being "always in line with the institution's logic". I want to hear what thoughts, if any, people have in reaction to this. I guess this is like... part 2 of the first thought.
The second thought is, "in hopes to be acquitted of the crime of being Palestinian"... was bracingly sharp. But it's not wrong; it is the crime of being Palestinian for which we are seeing Israel implement a genocide on the open-air prison that is Gaza. This is the logic of zionism, and that we're passively accepting as though it's just as legitimate as any other notion.
I said what feels like a long time ago that it feels inexplicable by any coherent logic that the west engineered things so that Palestinians were punished for the crimes that Nazi Germany committed, and it continues to be incomprehensible. But this is the logic which yokes us to the zionist project.
i hope in some time we can acknowledge that it was at least somewhat strange that the west engineered things after world war II such that palestinians got punished for the holocaust that germany perpetrated.
— Ali Alkhatib (@_alialkhatib) January 27, 2024
... the day the judge sets the court on fire is the day "the donkey goes up the minaret."
But then again we have seen stranger things than a donkey braying the call to prayer. We have seen a nation punished for another nation's genocide. And we have seen God employed as a real-estate agent, bestowing Jerusalem houses to Brooklynites. So nothing is impossible.
I want to remind everyone that we happened to read Imagination: A Manifesto by Ruha Benjamin just a few weeks ago.
I think we should all spend a minute this week thinking about a donkey scrambling up a minaret.
Share your reflections
If you'd like to chat with me and/or the rest of the people in the Signal group chat, I'd love to see you there.
If you're open to chatting on social media, please consider @'ing or quoting the posts on social media. Bluesky, Mastodon, Twitter, whatever you prefer is good.
Otherwise, let's chat on Saturday at 12pm ET, during the weekly video call.
Other news
Reading schedule
I can offer a preview of the reading schedule/pace now if it helps. I'll also send reminders of that week's reading, so don't sweat it, but if you like to be able to plan things out, you'll have as much info as I can offer:
| Week | Reading | |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 (March 31) | author's note(s) + Chapter 1 | |
| Week 2 (April 7) | Chapters 2-3 | |
| Week 3 (April 14) | Chapters 4-6 | |
| Week 4 (April 21) | Chapter 7 | |
| Week 5 (April 28) | Chapters 8-9 + epilogue |
We'll finish reading Perfect Victims the week of April 28.
Next book
Our next book will be World War II in Hawai'i and the Making of US Empire by Juliet Nebolon
If you buy the book from Open Books, the proceeds will go to Palestinians in Gaza via The Sameer Project. If you can't buy these books via the Open Books shop, please consider donating directly to The Sameer Project.
Rümeysa's legal fund
Rümeysa Ozturk is a PhD student at Tufts University. Last week she was taken by ICE and, in a manner similar to Mahmoud Khalil's ongoing deportation case, moved to Louisiana; a judge had explicitly ordered that she not be moved to another state.
The video of ICE agents ambushing her on the street on her way to meet her friends for iftar quickly spread on social media. I should warn that the video is upsetting to watch.
She had written an op-ed a little over a year ago arguing that Tufts should acknowledge the ongoing genocide of Palestine and disclose and divest from investments in companies committed to zionist projects.
I'm reminded of Refaat's exhortation not to say "she was just a writer". She was a writer, and she was as dangerous as a whole battalion of armed militants is to an empire that wishes to wipe out the memory of an ethnic group.
Ozturk has a legal fund to try to fight the US's efforts to deport her. You can contribute to her legal fund here.
Support people in need
If you've already bought the book, or if you have extra funds, if you can donate directly to help Palestinians get food, shelter, and clothes, please donate directly to the Sameer Project.
If you have extra capacity to donate, you can also donate to Sudan Funds, a project to get money to Sudanese people.
This week, if you have spare money, please consider looking up the "mutual aid void" profile on bluesky, which boosts mutual aid crowdfunding campaigns that haven't been getting enough attention. Find a trans/nb person whose crowdfunding campaign has stalled, and help get their crowdfunding campaign moving again.
Support the reading group
You can also support the reading group if you have a few dollars to spare per month. Don't worry if you can't support, but if you can, it would help.
Thanks
Thank you for reading to the end. I'm looking forward to hearing how this book is landing for all of you. Please reach out if you have comments, or consider joining the Saturday call this weekend. Either way, thanks for reading along with me.