page 123 meme
This has been circulating the blogs:
The rules of engagement are as follows:
a) Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
b) Find page 123.
c) Find the first 5 sentences and read them.
d) Post the next 3 sentences.
But the fact that there are those who will exploit such a critique is not reason enough to silence the critique. If the possibility of that exploitation gives reason to quell political dissent, then one has effectively given the domain of public discourse over to those who accept and perpetuate the view that anti-Semitism is authorized by criticisms of Israel, including those who seek to perpetuate anti-Semitism through such critiques and those who seek to quell such criticisms for fear that they perpetuate anti-Semitism. To remain silent for fear of a possible anti-Semitic appropriation is to keep the very equation of Zionism and Jewishness intact, when it is precisely the separation between the two that guarantees the conditions for critical thinking on this issue. (123)
Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso, 2004.
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“When we think of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida Buelle Wells-Barnett, A. Philip Randolph, Marcus Garvey, Ella Baker, James Baldwin, and so many nameless and anonymous ones, we cannot but be moved by their standards of vision and courage. They are wind at one’s back. The recovery of a tradition always begins at the existential level, with the experience of what it is to be human under a specific set of circumstances and conditions.”
From Cornel West “The Moral Obligations of Living in a Democratic Society” from _The Good Citizen_, 1999. Reprinted in _Open Questions: Readings for Critical Thinking and Writing_, by Chris Anderson and Lex Runciman, Boston: Bedford, 2005. 123.