Colonial domination works by eviscerating native agency to dictate the terms of future agreement

Evidence

Had Jabotinsky’s linguistic repertoire been accustomed to the notions of agency, he probably would have substituted the term “agency” for “hope.” The idea was to take away agency from the hands and lives of the natives, to deprive them of any course of action, of any choice of their own. It is to throw them, like “stones,” outside the system of power, the sufficient condition for eviscerating agency. And it is only when native agency is categorically eviscerated that “we” will be able to have an “agreement.” The “only way to obtain an agreement is the iron wall, which is to say a strong power in Palestine that is not amenable to any Arab pressure. In other words, the only way to reach an agreement in the future is to abandon all idea of seeking an agreement at present.” — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 394

Categorization

• SEED: The paradox — peace only via unassailable force, ‘the only way to reach an agreement is to abandon all idea of seeking an agreement’ — is a strong essay angle on negotiated settlement logic.