Vienna on
12 April 2012
First of all –
fighting Antisemitism again and again is an urgently necessary
challenge.
What seems to be
the point in Edi Freudmann’s open letter is the complex debate
surrounding Antisemitism and post-colonial theory, especially in the
context of political activism. Public attacks, however, cannot
substitute for this discussion. For this reason, we hope that there
is a “desire” behind this scandalization as well, which can be
made productive. It is in this sense that we want to respond to his
open letter.
About the course
of events: Edi Freudmann confronts us with the accusation of
trivializing and concealing Antisemitic statements, in this case from
Walter Mignolo, whose text “Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing”
was published in the issue “Unsettling Knowledges” of the eipcp
web journal (see http://eipcp.net/transversal/0112).
Mignolo was invited to write an essay for this web issue, which was
intended to address the post-colonial dimension of knowledge
production, in Autumn 2010 – prior to his lecture that was
co-organized by the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (specifically the
Class for Post-conceptual Art Practices, for which Edi Freudmann
works as assistant) and eipcp.
It was only later
that we heard about Walter Mignolo’s text “Dispensable and Bare
Lives”. We decided to confront Mignolo with our criticism of the
passage at the end of the text that Edi Freudmann refers to, and we
seriously considered not publishing the text that had been invited
for the eipcp publication long beforehand and had meanwhile already
been delivered. The debates about Mignolo, which took place at the
same time in association with the Academy in Vienna and to which the
open letter alludes, without specifically addressing them, have not
been publicly articulated or discussed in any way up to the present.
Now they appear to have found a new target in those who publish texts
by Walter Mignolo.
When we finally
decided, following highly critical and controversial discussions, in
favor of publishing the text written for eipcp, we did so essentially
for two reasons: on the one hand, the relevant passage in
“Dispensable and Bare Lives” that makes use of Antisemitic
cliches is obviously disproportionate to the rest of the text, which
pursues a fundamentally different argument, namely that of a
criticism of Antisemitism as part of European Modernism (see also the
argumentation from Jens Kastner and Tom Waibel,
http://argument-wasnun.blogspot.com).
Although a critical confrontation with the author therefore appeared
necessary to us, categorically discrediting him as an Antisemite did
not seem self-evident. On the other hand, Mignolo is being discussed
in several contexts relevant to the aforementioned web issue, which
is why we found the inclusion of his essay meaningful as a basis for
discussion.
In our view, the
present debate reflects a political and theoretical lacuna, which is
not likely to be filled by apparently treating Mignolo as being
representative of post-colonial theory, when a differentiated “no
single issue” discussion about the thematic complex of Antisemitism
and post-colonial/anti-racist theory and politics is still lacking.
The eipcp has been and still is interested in a critical engagement
with the topic – and specifically beyond the narrow local context
of Vienna. We would like to conduct this discussion in multiple
languages and with participants from different, transnational
contexts and to consider concrete possibilities for organizing a
discussion of this kind.
Finally, it is
important to us to point out that due to a principle division of
labor in the production of transversal, the individuals addressed in
the open letter (editors of the web issue) were involved in very
different ways and some not at all in the processes described above.
This makes the personalization of this debate problematic – it
should be addressed to the eipcp in general.
eipcp, Vienna on
12 April 2012
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