The Hostage Dream
By GILAD ATZMON
CounterPunch
".....In her dream she was kidnapped and held hostage by the Lebanese paramilitary Amal. While the Amal combatants were making their final preparation for her execution, the activist made a desperate effort to persuade them that she was actually on their side. She stated again and again that she was in South Lebanon to support the Lebanese people and the Palestinian refugees. In her dream, to her dismay, her hijackers ignored her plea. She was murdered (2).
By GILAD ATZMON
CounterPunch
".....In her dream she was kidnapped and held hostage by the Lebanese paramilitary Amal. While the Amal combatants were making their final preparation for her execution, the activist made a desperate effort to persuade them that she was actually on their side. She stated again and again that she was in South Lebanon to support the Lebanese people and the Palestinian refugees. In her dream, to her dismay, her hijackers ignored her plea. She was murdered (2).
The activist’s interpretation of her horrendous dream was pretty elegant, coherent and valid. She grasped that, in the eyes of her imaginary captors, she was personally liable for the entire list of crimes committed by the ‘white man’. In her eyes she was punished for a reason. To a certain extent her reasoning is similar to Robert Fisk’s interpretation of his own personal experience in Pakistan in 2001. After being attacked by a (real) mob he said “If I had been them, I would have attacked me."(3)
Interestingly enough, it took me a day to realize that I myself had experienced some very similar dreams in the past......
The hostage dream is our reaction to our repetitive failure to attain a real comprehensive bond with our subject of solidarity. Like Achilles who is closing in on the tortoise but never manages to reach it, the solidarity activist, at least in the dream, faces his or her doomed failure to reach a true bond with his or her (political) object of desire. The more we empathize, sacrifice and give, the greater is the abyss that threatens to swallow us while we are asleep.
The hostage dream is our reaction to our repetitive failure to attain a real comprehensive bond with our subject of solidarity. Like Achilles who is closing in on the tortoise but never manages to reach it, the solidarity activist, at least in the dream, faces his or her doomed failure to reach a true bond with his or her (political) object of desire. The more we empathize, sacrifice and give, the greater is the abyss that threatens to swallow us while we are asleep.
The hostage dream should be interpreted as a genuine call for integrity. It is a moment of moral awakening. It is the mind that demands that we replace our empty symbolism with dynamic ethical awareness.
The hostage dream is a beam of truth; it is there to suggest to us that we may never understand. This is probably the real meaning of true solidarity, the acceptance of the other as a mystery......
No comments:
Post a Comment