Universal Politics

This book claims that there is a negativity at the core of all social articulations that provides the basis for a universal politics. Drawing principally on the work of Slavoj Žižek, the book suggests that the social is punctured by an impossibility—an incompletion—that, rather than serving as a barrier to politics, lays a foundation for shared struggle. The book thus argues for a negative universality, rooted not in a positive element (e.g., identity-based politics) but a discordant one, so that under our current global capitalist system, solidarity is to be forged on the basis of social antagonism (i.e., shared experiences of exploitation and marginalization). Such a conception of shared struggle avoids the trap of both a neocolonial universalism (e.g., the rights of white men parading as universal rights) and the narrow particularism of identity-based politics. Most importantly, it foregrounds the struggles of the systematically dispossessed and excluded (the permanently unemployed, migrants, refugees, sweatshop laborers, etc.), who stand as symptom of our global capitalist order. The book compares “negative universality” with four competing contemporary versions of universalism—conservative, liberal, postcolonial, and Marxist. It also brings “negative universality” into dialogue with present-day critics of universalism—postmodernists, post-Marxists, queer theorists, decolonial pluriversalists, and new materialists. Finally, it examines what a universal politics might look like today in the context of such key global sites of struggle as climate change, the refugee crisis, the Palestinian question, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, political Islam, workers’ struggles, the Bolivian state under Morales, the European Union, and Covid-19.

The Palestine Question: From the Balfour Declaration to the Deal of the Century

The colonial framework introduced a central perspective into Palestinian studies in the context of addressing Zionism, Zionist relations with the Palestinian entity, and the creation of the question of Palestine. This chapter explores the rise and shifts of the Palestinian question from the Balfour Declaration to the “deal of the century.” Informed by a sociohistorical approach, the chapter goes through historical shifts and analyzes the Palestine question within relations of interplay and entanglement with the Zionist project and, later, with the state of Israel. It focuses on the sociological dimensions of the Palestine question at the intersection of settler colonialism, theology, and state-making, on the one hand, and indigenous resistance, national struggle, and pragmatism, on the other.

Khatibi and the Transcolonial Turn

The Palestinian question has played a seminal if neglected role in Abdelkébir Khatibi’s writings, from the central notion of a “plural Maghreb” to his musings on language, colonialism, and “pensée-autre,” an expression he initially coined in response to the massacre of Palestinian fighters by Jordanian troops in 1970. This chapter examines the central importance of the Palestinian question in Khatibi’s writings, from his 1974 polemic Vomito blanco to his exchanges with Jacques Hassoun and Jacques Derrida in the 1980s and 90s, and argues that Khatibi was a precursor in what we might call the transcolonial turn.

Izrael i Jordania – dwadzieścia pięć lat po traktacie pokojowym

Twenty-five years after the conclusion of the peace treaty, Israel and Jordan are bound by security partnership and limited economic cooperation. People-to-people relations remain problematic. State-to-nation imbalance occurring on both sides of the relationship has undermined the achievements of the cooperation so far, and the uncertainty regarding the American politics in the region intensifies tensions which grow due to the deadlock in the Israeli-Palestinian relations. The role of the United States as a hegemon guaranteeing the state of ‘cold’ peace is decreasing and this, in turn, activates the diplomacy of states comprising the region as well as other world powers. Finding a satisfactory solution to the Palestinian question conditions the implementation of regional cooperation projects, which are a necessary answer to the new trans-border challenges, such as those related to climate change, that influence the internal stability of the states and the state of peace in the region.

Israel, 1969

This chapter recounts how Nathalie Sarraute cancelled a government-sponsored lecture tour to Israel as she disapproved the French government's policy. It explains that the policy prevented Nathalie from going to Israel under the aegis of diplomatic services. It also points out that the French's condemnation of Israel was due to an attack on Lebanon by the Israel Defense Forces in December 1968, which prompted French president Charles de Gaulle to announce a blanket embargo on arms sales to Israel. The chapter implies how Nathalie continued to feel strongly about the issue in Israel, which was evident in Monique Wittig's letter to her two years later following a discussion about the Palestinian question. It also looks into Nathalie's eventual assumptions of her parents' generation and considered that there was simply no way of talking about Jewishness without raising the resurgent spectre of anti-Semitism.

Introduction to the Question of Palestinian Refugees and the Second Edition

This chapter introduces the readers to both rationale and content of the new expanded edition of Palestine Refugees in International Law. It underscores the legal and factual developments that motivated the authors to write what is in essence a new book on the foundations of the first edition. It provides an overview of its structure and key messages, the methodology and some of the key terminology used in the book (e.g. ‘Palestine refugee’ vs ‘Palestinian refugee’). It explains how international law is used throughout the book and why a holistic approach to the Palestinian question is necessary not only to effectively grant them the protection they are entitled to under international law but also to advance toward just a durable solutions to their plight.