– Anonymous
“There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another… [the historian] regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.” Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History (Thesis VII).
This quote frames the approach to teaching and learning in my Geopolitics course. The term “documents” is given a wide interpretation to include what is covered by the concepts of critical geopolitics. Documents of civilization are those associated with the oppressive practices of the Global North. When those concepts of critical geopolitics are used to brush history against the grain, those documents also expose the barbarism of the Global North vis a vis the Global South, significantly through colonialism and imperialism. The imperative to brush history against the grain includes an accurate depiction of the history of the marginalized and oppressed of the Global South, referring to counter narratives that challenge mainstream narratives and representations. This imperative is operationalized through the application of these concepts that include geopolitical architectures, identities, and objects. Brushing history against the grain by applying these concepts to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and apartheid structures and practices in Palestine are used as examples to illustrate how to decolonize the curriculum.
Decolonizing the curriculum also requires a critical examination of how various approaches to geopolitics and legacy/corporate media representations of geopolitical phenomena occur. My course focuses on media representations and draws out the implications of Global North methods of framing. Geopolitics is usually associate with Great Powers struggle and different theoretical approaches will frame this struggle in different ways. Framing geopolitics in this manner tends to marginalize those who are not in the great power camps. Even worse, those outside of those camps are subordinated to empire were their value lies only with the resources that are coveted by Global North countries and corporations. This can include generating consensus for wars against various Global South nations, something that Chomsky and Herman (1988) articulated decades ago. In justifying imperialist wars of aggression, Orientalist tropes abound, as will be discussed below. To decolonize the curriculum, these themes are addressed in the course using critical concepts.
Brushing history against the grain first requires centering the experiences of the marginalized and oppressed, which initially requires addressing legacy/corporate media representations. In the case of Palestine, the prevailing, mainstream narrative is that the war on Gaza began after the events of October 7th occurred, effectively erasing the previous 75 years of the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Zionist settler colonial project. I introduce students to the importance of context by having them read Ilan Pappe’s Why Israel Wants to Erase Context and History in the War on Gaza and an interview with Rashid Khalidi. It is worth noting that both historians recognize Zionism as a settler colonial movement and frame their discussions as such. They begin the process of brushing history against the grain by addressing the implications of erasure of Palestinian history and challenging the Islamophobic tropes that perpetuate anti-Palestinian racism. For students who are not well initiated, paring these two historians, one a Jewish Israeli and the other a Palestinian, helps to reframe this issue as an anti-colonial one rather than through the ahistorical lens of an intractable religious conflict (i.e., Muslim versus Jew).
The concept of geopolitical architectures refers to how state and non-state actors access, manage, and regulate the intersections of territories and flows establishing boundaries and borders between inside and outside, citizen and alien, and domestic and international. This also involves the international order, institutions, conventions, and laws (Dodds, 2019) . Key to the understanding of geopolitical architectures is the concept of sovereignty, which includes the ability to exercise effective sovereignty (and its recognition by other states and non-state actors) and its legal implications in the international realm. This concept helps to put into context the historical antecedents of October 7th. A Zionist contention is that because Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2006, Gaza was not occupied before October 7th, 2023. Since Gaza was not occupied, the Palestinian attack occurred because Palestinians are inherently antisemitic, or what Pappe (in the article included above) calls the Nazification of Palestinians that renders them the eternal enemy of the Jewish people. However, Gaza has been under an Israeli military blockade since 2007. Blockades effectively negate the sovereignty of the country or territory that is under a blockade: as such, it is Israel, and not Palestinians, who exercise effective sovereignty. The Gaza strip has been under siege since the disengagement with Israel having control over who and what enters and exist Gaza thus allowing Israel to impose its will on the Palestinians in Gaza. Geopolitical architectures also include Israel’s blockade related policies: Head Ride of the Water, a policy of collective punishment in which the amount of calories entering Gaza are sufficient to put Palestinians on a diet, but not make them die of hunger; and Mowing the grass, in which Israel periodically kills Palestinians and destroys civilian infrastructure in an attempt to ensure that no viable resistance is able to operate. The blockade has been devastating to Gaza’s economy, a situation made worse by Israel’s frequent bombings of Gaza that degrade an already weakened civilian infrastructure. In short, Palestinians do not have sovereign control of Gaza, a situation that is revealed by brushing history against the grain using the concept of geopolitical architectures.
The concept of geopolitical identity refers both to the construction and representation of certain identities, especially as these identities articulate differences between self and others. This can include framing the other as good, evil, or indifferent, as this framing occurs in media representations, speeches by political leaders, etc., constituting an emotional affect on the receiving audience (Dodds, 2019). It is through the concept of geopolitical identity that the structure and content of Orientalism is most usefully employed. The narrative that the October 7th attack was unprovoked, or that the war started on October 7th, fuels an ahistorical narrative that depicts Palestinians using the most horrible Orientalist tropes – blood thirsty terrorists whose inherent antisemitism leads them to commit crimes against Jewish people instead of seeking a peaceful solution. This narrative depicts good and innocent Israeli victims against barbaric and evil Palestinians. A particularly egregious example is the development and use of atrocity propaganda perpetuated by various Western media sources. The atrocities that they claim were committed by the Palestinian resistance on October 7th have little to no basis in fact but were, nevertheless, perpetuated by a compliant Western corporate media. The use of atrocity propaganda plays on the well-established Orientalist tropes noted above and prepares a Western audience for the genocidal atrocities committed against Palestinians in Gaza by Israel by providing pre-emptive justifications. Brushing history against the grain using the concept of geopolitical identities involves the historical explanation of Palestinians as displaced and a largely ethnically cleansed population, many of whom live under apartheid conditions. In this sense, Palestinians, who are struggling for their freedom and right to self-determination, are the victims of the Zionist colonial project and its imperialist backers in the Global North.
Both critical concepts can be coupled with the concept of geopolitical objects, which refers to objects that have geopolitical relevance (Dodds, 2019). The apartheid wall Israel has constructed in the Palestinian West Bank is an example, providing an entry point to examine other features of Israel’s colonial control over Palestinian lives. As indicated by several reputable international human rights organizations and Noura Erakat’s (2019) meticulous articulation and documentation of Israel’s apartheid practices from an international law perspective, apartheid is not simply a West Bank Phenomena but entails the entirety of Palestinian existence insofar as Israel attempts to exert colonial control over Palestinians. As a geopolitical architecture, apartheid refers to physical segregation and “legalized” control of Palestinians. The apartheid wall controls the movements of Palestinians, separating them from the Jewish only colonies illegally constructed in the West Bank by the Israeli state and Messianic settler movement. Apartheid is based on and constructs geopolitical identities, designating those who are considered to be fully human from those who are not allowed to exercise their human rights. It is an instantiation of the colonial, apartheid practices descriptive of Zionist colonization, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In this sense, the apartheid wall is a material instantiation and enforcer of these geopolitical identities.
The concepts and ideas that have been incorporated into my teaching have been well received by the students, who have responded with enthusiasm. Today’s students are suspicious of legacy and corporate media and sometimes lack the intellectual and critical tools to interrogate what they see and hear. This module provides them with the tools as well as the opportunity to practice using them to examine and better grasp issues of geopolitical significance.
Chomsky, N. and Herman, E.S. (1988) Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books.
Dodds, K. (2023) Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Erakat, N. (2019) Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press