It would be reasonable to assume that practically focused discourse would have practical and active implications. To insist that an idea is necessary, and to develop the method by which it can be put into action, would presumably have direct material consequences. Unfortunately, a persistent paradox in recent political history reveals the opposite: by a strange inversion, practical ethical discourse often sets the stage for an abstention from ethical action.
This was one of the disheartening features experienced by many protesters against the Vietnam War. Early voices of dissent against US activity in South Vietnam - actively organising protests and making demands for scaling-back US involvement - produced anything but the desired results: the major escalation of conflict known as the Tet Offensive in 1969, and the ensuing destruction of civilian and agricultural production areas across Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
The inevitable question is therefore why practical discourse frequently produces an abstention of action rather than an ethical intervention. Why, in other words, practical discourse often is thoroughly impractical. In the second book of the History of Sexuality, Foucault recognises a similar anomaly. Sexuality for the Greeks was certainly not understood as a simple desire, as one drive amongst others that human beings must make do with. On the contrary, it had a more ‘universal’ function, colouring social and political questions. It was deployed as an ethical principle inseparable from the question of virtue and human flourishing. Sexuality was regulated by practical guidelines outlining its role in various aspects of life: political office, marriage, honourable living, and the pursuit of truth. The accepted positions, frequency, and emotional significance of sexual activity were adjusted according to social status, time, season, and individual traits. Even Greek pederasty was subject to detailed rules and customs, aimed at promoting a practical and ethical approach rather than frivolity. The practical discourse on the politics of sexuality had a clear, albeit unusual, consequence: sexuality became something that was frequently abstained from, with sexual interactions being so much subject to practical presuppositions that it rarely became an actualised behaviour. In other words, opening up a topic to practical consideration often meant never in fact directly actualising those considerations.
In this sense, the difficulty faced by political activism is that practical discourse has impractical consequences. This practical approach is made up of a theoretical, speculative centre; an empty core ‘filled in’ by an immobile reflection upon its ethical intention. When practical solutions are most needed, they seem all the more ineffective. This is unfortunately the present case with Gaza. The question we should therefore be asking is not ‘what should we do about Gaza?’, but ‘how do we not talk about Gaza?’ What type of discourse about this humanitarian atrocity is required so as not to suffocate its effects in their very conception?
The body politic seems to side with Palestinian freedom to a greater and greater extent. In only four months since October 7th, British popular opinion showed increased sympathies with Palestinians, a greater percentage of people believing that Israel’s attack is unjustified and that peace talks with Hamas are becoming a growing necessity. Whilst a majority of Americans believe that Israel has valid reasons for fighting Hamas, public opinion across the West is showing a greater sympathy for the devastation in Gaza and support for Palestinian freedom. Protests and occupations calling for a ceasefire, as well as policy suggestions on how a ceasefire can be achieved with a practical vision of a resolution in the aftermath, have acted as a backdrop to Netanyahu’s rejection of a ceasefire and an escalation of military violence across Gaza.
Condemnations by Western governments are revealing themselves to be purely gestural, with a helplessly virtual recognition of popular opinion, whilst laying a far more real foundation for continued violence in the Middle East. For political activism, discourse on ‘how to do it’ appears far too often to lay the ground for not doing it, or to be received by an absence of practical outcomes. The necessity of recognising the impractical kernel of practical discourse is being thrust upon us, with the topic of ‘how to talk about Gaza’ requiring sincere reconsideration. However, when discussing Gaza, the distinction between 'theoretical' and 'practical' is becoming inadequate. Any popular ‘mobilisation’ must instead recognise the speculative component to its own plans for practical activity.
That the Gaza conflict is difficult to solve is merely a truism; the difficulty that is constantly being ignored is finding the coordinates to talk about it. This difficulty to speak is represented by the repeated failures of practically oriented discourse, which fundamentally miscomprehends its own meaning. Any practical discourse, if this term can still be considered useful, must rather embody the limitation inherent to it. It is clear that we all too often talk about Gaza as a disguise for not actually talking about Gaza - resolving this paradox is not easily achieved.
Practical discourse should extend beyond its usual boundaries to address the tensions and standard arguments used by Israel supporters, which they use to reject the practice itself. The destruction of the Oslo Accords by Hamas; starting the timeline on October 7th without acknowledging Israel's prior actions; the seemingly antisemitic stance of the Arab alliance during the early Arab-Israeli wars, lasting until the Yom Kippur War of 1973; and the failure to compare the atrocity of October 7th to the brutal excesses of Israel’s response - these are only some of the commonplace reactions to any practical activity, which are relegated to intellectual reflection. Any discourse which therefore takes its task seriously should be a discourse in which its own negations are embodied, in which theoretical reflection takes on a practical value. We cannot formally insist on an ‘act’ without framing the tendency of this act to efface itself. Practical discourse must in this sense be reconsidered for its theoretically active tendency, in order to not continually fall back upon its paradoxical impotence, and in order for us to actually talk about Gaza when Gaza is discussed.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/Tasnim News Agency & Vysotsky
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