Politics does not lie in interruption as such, but rather in a process that includes this transition. This transition does not simply reaffirm the existing logos, but must be able to restructure or modify it significantly each time. From this perspective, Lapidot’s true politics reveals its other name: translation.
Mary is anti-polarizing and liberative while not collapsing difference or homogenizing identity. Latine theology has a word for that: mestizo/a/e
Violence here is not the symmetric flipside of speech. While destroying the semblance of peaceful normality, the violence of Palestinian armed struggle “communicates” on a political and epistemic level: it violently makes violence visible.
Against the backdrop of Gaza and Europe’s muted response, this essay reflects on Elad Lapidot’s challenge to recognize the violence hidden in the language of peace.
The ability or inability of insiders to hear the silences that arise on the other side of the borders drawn by colonizing societies around themselves, to perceive them as the echo of missing voices, may constitute, for the victims of colonialism, an indication of whether they can place their hopes for a more just world in something other than violence.