“Ego” is a good example at hand. Ego is a Freudian construct. It does not correspond to an external reality. It signifies only itself. It has a definition, but that definition defines the term itself and not an external existence that needed to be named. The natural course of naming unnamed realities starts with the existence of that reality and follows with the perception of that reality with senses or subtleties, the need to communicate about that perceived reality, and ends with the naming of that reality. The name “ego” was created before any such existence or perception, and a whole history of psychoanalysis passed with trials to give that sign a significance.History is full of examples of names surpassing the meanings they are created for.
The “Armenian genocide” is one such name. It does correspond to shameful massacres and the forceful displacement of over a million people, but the name itself, once invented in the social vocabulary of the Armenians, surpassed the meaning signified. Armenians can forget the events of 1915, but they cannot give up the g-word. In fact many young Armenians have no idea of what happened back in 1915, but the g-word is a part of their identity-making language. The “Meds Yeghern” (Great Catastrophe) is more Armenian than genocide is, but it does not have the same resilience. Turks may face the dark pages of the 1915 events in their history, but they will never utter the g-word.
The same is true for the Turkish labeling of Abdullah Öcalan as a terrorist. Of course, in my perception as a Turk, the name “terrorist” does correspond to an external reality in the case of Öcalan. But this does not change the nature of the naming trap. Once he is named terrorist, it is almost impossible to rename him as “mister.”
Last week Israeli Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar announced that the term “nakba,” which means “catastrophe” in Arabic and is used by Arabs to name the creation of the State of Israel, would be dropped from textbooks for the new school year. Sa'ar concedes that what Israeli Arabs experienced during the 1948 War was a tragedy for the Arabs. “But the word ‘nakba,' whose meaning is similar to Holocaust in this context, will no longer be used. The creation of the State of Israel cannot be referred to as a tragedy, and the education system in the Arab sector will revise its studies,” he said.
Arabs call the 1948 war “nakba” not because it paved the way to the establishment of the State of Israel, but because it demolished the hopes of the Palestinian people to live an honorable life in their own lands. It was a great catastrophe for the Palestinians, indeed. They were expelled from their homes and became refugees in neighboring Arab countries, while those who remained are still in a miserable situation.
Will the next generation of Palestinian Arabs stop calling their national catastrophe “nakba”? The preservation of religious texts proves that what is forbidden is even better preserved. By turning the term “nakba” into a dogma, Israel may have triggered a process to load the name with extra meanings which have no external realities.
No Palestinian equated the term with Holocaust. It seems that Israeli Minister Sa'ar has already laid the first brick to turn what the term “nakba” signifies into a Holocaust-like dramatic event.
The Israeli Education Ministry responded to the criticism of their decision to drop “nakba” by reaffirming that Israeli Arabs have the right to learn about their culture and history. “But the word ‘nakba' itself is problematic,” the ministry's response read.
Why is this obsession with nomenclature? Doesn't that obsession turn all our problems into linguistic phrases with no or little touch with reality?
