THE HARVARD CRIMSON | FEBRUARY 28, 2020
PAGE 8
EDITORIAL THE CRIMSON EDITORIAL BOARD
COLUMN
A Place for Discussing BDS on Campus
Forgetting Art
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“...no happiness, no serenity, no hope, no pride, no enjoyment of the present moment could not exist without the possibility of forgetting.” —Friedrich Nietzsche
his month, two student groups — Harvard Jewish Coalition for Peace and Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine — have emerged with the aim of promoting the global Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement on Harvard’s campus. As always, we remain committed to free speech, and we wholeheartedly support the founding of HJCP and HOOP, as well as other organizations that provide an avenue for students to gather with like-minded peers and express their opinions. In 2002, before BDS’s founding, we wrote that divestment, in the case of Israel, was too blunt a tool — bearing the potential to undermine the state itself as well as people across socioeconomic, ethnic, and political divides. While our approach to questions of divestment has changed since then, we believe BDS as a whole does not get at the nuances and particularities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To put it another way, we think it’s important to critically distinguish between the ends of the movement, many of which we largely agree with, and the precision of its proposed means to affect those end. The Israeli state’s continued record of systemic human rights abuses against Palestinians is worthy of unequivocal condemnation. These abuses include enforcing severe and discriminatory restrictions on the movement of people and goods across the Gaza Strip, facilitating the unlawful transfer of Israeli citizens to expanded settlements in the occupied West Bank, and discriminating systematically against Palestinians in favor of these settlers. Campus groups that raise awareness about these issues
are right to be concerned, and should not be prevented from doing so. Accordingly, blanket accusations of anti-Semitism towards those involved with these movements are not appropriate. Of course, the issues raised here are complicated. Students exploring such issues for the first time should be careful to critically evaluate the records of those — both affiliated with the BDS movement, like BDS founder Omar Barghouti, and in Israel, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who fundamentally deny the legitimacy of the other side’s claims and needs. Neither side has a monopoly on moral virtue.
To put it another way, we think it’s important to critically distinguish between the ends of the movement, many of which we largely agree with, and the precision of its proposed means to affect those end. While anti-Semitism need not be inherent in the discourse that this movement, taken as a whole, is generating, we maintain that anti-Semitism is abhorrent and has no place on our campus or anywhere else. As to specific individuals, it must be noted that some founders of BDS, including Barghouti, who spoke at the HOOP event via Skype, have previously denied the self-determination of Jewish people and the right of the Jewish state to exist in “any shape or form.” As such, while we strive to promote free speech on campus, we sympathize with any Jewish
students who were hurt by the giving of a platform to a speaker like Barghouti. Still, automatically dismissing concerns over Israel’s human rights abuses and the BDS activists tackling this issue rather than grappling seriously with the moral challenges the movement poses is inimical to the process of open dialogue. Especially between groups with deep, lasting antipathy for one another, that process must be protected, as it will ultimately be necessary to achieving a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. We support activist work to identify potential avenues by which grassroots activist efforts can put political pressure on the Israeli government to address the systemic racial discrimination within modern Israeli society. In addition to social movements for equality in Israel and equitable peace negotiations, such measures might include more targeted boycotts, such as on all companies doing business with or in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which are immoral and a violation of international law. We recognize that the history and current politics of Israel are complicated matters that invoke deep-seated moral convictions on both sides. While we remain opposed to divesting from Israel, we acknowledge that painting either group as “the evil one” is not productive. This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.
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My Personal Re-Statement By AYSHA L. J. EMMERSON
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hen you’re applying to college, school guidance counselors tend to tell you two things: First, craft your application like it’s a story, and second, use that narrative to distinguish yourself. They ask you, what is your “thing?” What makes you special? They encourage you to narrow in on a particular quality, dimension of yourself, or a moment in time that defines who you are and the person you intend to become. During my senior year of high school, with this advice in mind, I realized that if I wanted colleges to know the distilled essence of “me” it would require telling them a story I had never before shared. The countless hours of treatment and years of struggle that defined my child-
Slowly, without my realizing it, my narrative became rehearsed; it became static. The untamed idiosyncrasies of my previous seventeen years were contorted into a story’s arc. hood form the pixels of my self-portrait and I knew my application would be incomplete without zooming in on them. Thus, writing my personal statement became an exercise in working out my life’s narrative. It became an iterative process of comparing my recollections of the truth to those of my family members and mapping these muddled memories onto the familiar framework of a hero’s journey. At the same time, I had to learn how to package this narrative for an even broader audience. After years of never sharing my struggles with mental illness, even with my closest friends, I was offered the once-in-a-lifetime platform to share my experiences with 18,000 youth at WE Day Vancouver in October 2017. In my five minutes of fame, I hoped to join my story with a larger project of de-stigma-
tizing such illnesses and nurturing a culture of kindness. My personal narrative congealed into the format of any good story. It was marked by a distinct beginning, middle, and end, concluding with a set of reflections and takeaways: I was the girl who persisted against all odds. I was the girl who had recovered. I was now using the antibodies of my recovery to try and help heal other’s wounds. Slowly, without my realizing it, my narrative became rehearsed; it became static. The untamed idiosyncrasies of my previous seventeen years were contorted into a story’s arc. Before I even knew it, I was packaging my biggest “secret,” the very nexus of who I am, into an object of exchange. For, in forming a personal narrative, an individual is forced to examine their subjectivity from the perspective of a third party. In this way, personal experience becomes an object under observation. This object is separated out from one’s life history, then sorted, analyzed, and extracted from, to produce the narrative in its final, most legible form. It takes on a specific language, interpretation, and emotional valence. Alas, when shared with others, particularly for strategic ends, the once inalienable narrative becomes increasingly distanced from the “self.” Essentially, it is rendered a commodity. Seen from this angle, when we apply to college, we partake in a kind of commodity exchange. Our narrative is given in order to be repaid with something else: a personal story traded for an opportunity. In applying to schools, individuals must formulate and present a compelling personal narrative in exchange for their acceptance — for future social and economic capital. This narrative becomes our brand, rendering us both easily understandable and distinct. This precedes a process of valuation, where admissions officers put the “worth” of our narrative into direct comparison with the worth of the similarly commodified narratives of our
peers. While any notion of self-commodification makes me queasy, I am ultimately grateful for the exchange I took part in. The small bit of myself I packaged and gave to Harvard has granted me life-changing coursework, phenomenal friends, and an abundance of opportunities. Ultimately, I feel like my application to Harvard composed an accurate picture of who I am and I would not change a word of it. Why then, in recent months, has this personal narrative felt more like a box than the item of exchange? Sophomore fall brought to light new inconsistencies in and interpretations of my plotline that I am still sorting through, and still trying to extract lessons from. When I’m ready, maybe I’ll
Why then, in recent months, has this personal narrative felt more like a box than the item of exchange? choose to share them. Or, maybe I’ll just pull them closer to me, reveling in their eccentricities, savoring them as a gift for no one else but me. Maybe they can be my little reminder that it is our lack of cohesion that gives us our three-dimensions, making us into humans not characters. My personal statement was not fixed — it is still unfolding and very much in progress. My personal statement was but one chapter in a longer anthology. It is a signpost of how I thought about myself and my life at a specific moment in time. There are dangers to sharing our most personal narratives but there is also immense value. All we can do is be patient, be kind, and offer up each day to one another as a blank page — an opportunity for re-statement. —Aysha L. J. Emmerson ’22, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Social Anthropology concentrator in Kirkland House.
Woojin Lim and Daniel Shin THE CONVERSATION
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f you visit an art museum today, chances are you will find throngs of visitors huddled around some famous oil painting or a provocative piece of sculpture, taking pictures of it with their smartphones or posing with their buddies for selfies to post online. There is nothing inherently wrong about documenting one’s visit to an art museum by photographing an artwork one found to be particularly memorable. But many visitors today seem more interested in taking photos of a cool-looking Miró, or smiling with their friends for a social media post with a Monet, than in standing back to contemplate and enjoy the artwork for its own sake.
Museum photography, more importantly, also poses an issue for the value of art itself. For one, the rise of museum photography reflects a change in our attitudes toward the exhibition of art. Rather than considering the enjoyment and experience of art as an end in itself, art has merely become a means through which we broadcast our tastes, our values, and our personal lives to the world. This is noticeably the case with the advent of social media. An Instagram post of a Botticelli fresco or a Picasso mural says as much about one’s love of Western art as it does about one’s tastes and one’s social class. It reflects the ability to appreciate and partake in what is considered “refined” and “cultured,” as opposed to what is kitsch and commercial. Of course, today’s visually saturated, digitally-mediated social media culture is not always detrimental to fine art. Often, it can be a powerful tool to bring a greater appreciation of art to the general public. Unfortunately, however, uploading the details of one’s visit to an art museum also easily comes off as an implicit demonstration of cultural capital. The danger lies in the fact that, in the realm of social media, personal life becomes an enormous exhibition, one that others can access at the tap of a screen. In such a realm, the smaller artworks that surround us become relegated to the rank of secondary exhibits and status symbols. Museum photography, more importantly, also poses an issue for the value of art itself. This argument was first brought up by the German social critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, who noted that the widespread photography and dissemination of art damaged what he called the “aura” of the work of art. The aura was the unique historical and cultural context within which the artwork was situated — the original, irreproducible facet of the artwork that lent it its intrinsic value. Benjamin claimed that the mass reproduction of an artwork degraded its aura, making it ubiquitous and valueless like a currency undergoing depreciation.
Rather, we should value a brief and intimate moment with the work of art over a picture we will merely glance at a few years down the road. In today’s museum photography culture, Benjamin’s claim that photography is deleterious to aesthetic experience can be extended beyond the concept of intrinsic “aura” to encompass our personal experience of the work of art. At first glance, this notion might seem counterintuitive. After all, by acting as a form of external memory, photography might actually be considered a means to enhance our engagement with art, since it allows the artwork to take up residence with us in our private albums and collections. Nevertheless, art derives much of its beauty, its power, and its value from the fact that it can be forgotten. It is the transience of aesthetic experience — the fleetingness of our experience of beauty, the impermanence of our encounter with something magical — that gives our interaction with art its depth and meaning. After all, why should one take a long, close look at the lines of brushstrokes on a canvas, or the play of light and color on the surface of the artwork, when one could just snap a picture of it and look at it sometime later? Why should one feel compelled to pause before the bold geometric forms of a De Stijl painting, or gaze deeply at the smoothened contours of a West African mask, or marvel at the detailed textures of a portrait by Rembrandt, when one can distill the entire experience into an image on a tiny screen? This is not to say that one cannot both enjoy the artwork in the moment and take a photograph of it as a souvenir. Rather, we should value a brief and intimate moment with the work of art over a picture we will merely glance at a few years down the road. This is why the culture of museum photography might ultimately prove to be detrimental to our ability to enjoy and value art. The problem is not that photography is inherently harmful. The problem is that we should not be afraid of forgetting art. —Woojin Lim ’22, a Crimson Editorial Editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Winthrop House. Daniel Shin ’22 is a Philosophy and Mathematics concentrator in Quincy House. Their column appears on alternate Fridays.
