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EDWARD SAID throws a stone, and people notice.
When the Columbia University literature professor hurled a rock at an Israeli guardhouse from across the Lebanese border in July, he said it was an innocent, exuberant response to news that Israeli soldiers had ended their occupation of southern Lebanon.
Last month Columbia declined to punish him, saying he was protected by academic freedom. Is throwing a stone the same as a political statement? Is it an act of naked hostility? We asked two scholars for their views.
W.J.T. Mitchell, professor of English language and literature at the University of Chicago, editor of Critical Inquiry, and author of Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (University of Chicago Press, 1995):
Throwing rocks is an act of aggression, and clearly Said, like almost all Palestinian exiles in Lebanon and other countries, feels that his land has been taken by the Israelis, that the Israelis are an occupying power. So they're throwing a rock against a country. Everyone conveniently forgets the fact that he was not throwing a rock against a person. He was throwing a rock at a land, at a country. That has to be seen as a symbolic gesture.
It turns out that that has been the main kind of celebration since the Israelis gave up the border occupation. I think everyone wants to go and look at Palestine. Before, they couldn't see it because they couldn't get anywhere near the border of Lebanon. The minute the Israelis withdrew,...