The Gaza Narrative: Between Clinical Analysis and Moral Judgment

Since the events of October 7, the world has been shaken by events that are difficult for anyone to accept. And yet, almost of us have no unmediated access to these events, experiencing them as pictures in our heads, as parts of stories told by various agents, each with their own interests and points of view. In short we experience these events as narrative.

The Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School and it’s Narrative Transformation Lab hosts an event open to the whole Mason community on December 7^th in the Hub Ballroom from 12-2 PM (ET), in which we will use clinical narrative techniques to develop a more comprehensive (if not objective) perspective on the recent events in Gaza. In the session, we will formally analyze more partial and partisan statements by groups like Anti-defamation League (ADL) and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, along with the official statements made by Mason’s leaders, in order to explore how these statements work as narrative interventions and to learn together how narrative techniques could be used to redirect them if we so chose.

The goal of this session is not to established an uncontested set of facts, to come to a single political agreement about Gaza as a community, or to decide on a concrete course of collective action, but instead to discuss together the ways in which “The Gaza Narrative” speaks us, how it therefore tells our story for us, and prevents us from educating our own moral imaginations as critical thinkers. Our goal is use the university for what it is best at: telling our own stories, coming to own moral judgments and choosing our own independent courses of action in the wake of tragic and troubling human suffering.