Al-Ahram Weekly | 2001 | Defining 2001

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 27 Dec. 2001 - 2 Jan. 2002 Issue No.566
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Defining 2001

POINTS OF LEAST RESISTANCE: 2001 may be remembered as the year the walls came down -- not barriers of hatred and incomprehension, for those still stand, but the bulwarks of faith in a brighter future. Perhaps the millennium was reminding us of its mathematical end, driving home the death of Euclidean certainties and the erosion of categories that had once seemed entirely impermeable. Leaders of every stripe asserted exclusive monopolies on definitions of good and evil, while battles between different forces raged elsewhere, killing civilians in the mountains of Afghanistan and atop the equally forbidding peaks of the World Trade Center. Yet all over the world, people continued to struggle, with the only weapons at their disposal, for the right to be heard. Down below, on the streets, people grappled with their destinies -- in Argentina, against corruption and imposed austerity; in Palestine, against apartheid and military occupation. What can it all mean? Sometimes the face of a beloved child, killed by a sniper's bullet, wounded in someone else's war, is the only certainty -- this is wrong, all wrong. But what can make it right?

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Defining 2001



POINTS OF LEAST RESISTANCE: 2001 may be remembered as the year the walls came down -- not barriers of hatred and incomprehension, for those still stand, but the bulwarks of faith in a brighter future. Perhaps the millennium was reminding us of its mathematical end, driving home the death of Euclidean certainties and the erosion of categories that had once seemed entirely impermeable. Leaders of every stripe asserted exclusive monopolies on definitions of good and evil, while battles between different forces raged elsewhere, killing civilians in the mountains of Afghanistan and atop the equally forbidding peaks of the World Trade Center. Yet all over the world, people continued to struggle, with the only weapons at their disposal, for the right to be heard. Down below, on the streets, people grappled with their destinies -- in Argentina, against corruption and imposed austerity; in Palestine, against apartheid and military occupation. What can it all mean? Sometimes the face of a beloved child, killed by a sniper's bullet, wounded in someone else's war, is the only certainty -- this is wrong, all wrong. But what can make it right?