genesis narratives & the violence of "ex-nihilo"

what's created can also be destroyed

“ex-nihilo,” or “out of nothing/from nothing.”

One of the times I heard this phrase was sitting in the pews during a Sabbath sermon where the Pastor animatedly spoke on the inception of god’s creation story. When re-telling and giving homage to god for his ability to create the world, ex nihilo/out of nothing/from nothing, into a “vibrant,” “lush,” and “perfectly ordered world” — all within a week, it initially seemed inspiring. If you will, even a blueprint to world-making, where the rhetoric around ex nihilo and the Judeo-Christian heaven/earthside world-making creation story spoke to a god worthy of emulation.

He loomed over the space & place, fixed the already existing “chaos,” brought order to the dark, and it became.

When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:1-2, NRSV

He created beings in his image, and they continued his vision of this new world.

So God created humans in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
 male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27, NRSV

But the ex-nihilo narratives didn’t just stop in Genesis. Rather, the insatiable desire to continually create out of nothing/from nothing transformed into the necessary building blocks for god’s world and kingdom. From generation to generation, the stories laced within the Judeo-Christian text told of god and a people who received divine authority to enter “new” lands – through decreeing, declaring, praying against, and clearing out what and who already existed in that space and place. 

There began a formation of comfortability, familiarity, and unwavering support of the Israelites in the bible to kill, decimate, and establish their land, their home – all because god had foretold of the “new” lands being theirs. They were the chosen ones, the honorable & dedicated believers who would place order where there was previously “chaos.” 

Here, any people groups, any non-Judeo-Christian faiths, were fraudulent and unreal – both necessary for extermination or treated as non-human tools to fulfill god’s promise to his people. From the Great Flood, the capture of Hagar in Sarah & Abraham’s promise of nation-building, Sodom & Gomorrah, the battle of Jericho in the Israelite conquest of Canaan, and so much more. 

And, still, the ex-nihilo narratives of conquer and conquest didn’t stop there. But, this time, the illusion lifted.

Out of nothing/from nothing is the world-making guide for empire-building. And it shows itself through settler colonialism, imperialism, global capitalism, western patriarchy/Christianity, and all functioning systems of domination. 

The genesis story of the United States says that through Manifest Destiny, god gave the early settlers this land, and that was when freedom from British rule truly began. But the truth is that the United States is part of/is the world power, stabilizing itself and the Western world through settler colonialism and all functioning systems of domination. 

The only reason that the US exists as it does and how it does is because of the theft of indigenous land and Africans made enslaved. There is no ethicality or morality in the formation of the United States that would grant them authority to be the determiners of peace, justice, security, etc. All is an illusion when we look back to the genesis narratives of the US. 

Historical archives scream of the racial & sexual acts of violence by the Founding Enslavers (read, Founding Fathers) against Africans and African girls/women captured and enslaved to this country, the extermination and genocide of Indigenous people who carved roots and made homes on this land long before the arrival of the settlers, and the dehumanizing narratives created to keep these systems in place.

Since this past Sunday, the escalation of the genocidal campaign in Palestine has been horrifying. At a minimum, all the living generations of 45 Palestinian families have been killed by Israeli air attacks. Keep in mind, families could include 30+ members. From the last count, 6,000 bombs have been dropped by Israeli officials on the people of Gaza. Electricity, water, and food have been cut off from Gaza by the Zionist Israeli regime and SO MUCH MORE.¹ This violence is an all too familiar, ever-present, and unending grief also within the Black diaspora experience.

And, to be clear, what’s written here is not to describe the mass genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people as a religious or longstanding Biblical conflict. Instead, I want us to see the interconnections of geopolitical violence of Western empire-building and settler nations, wielding power through racism and fascism to stabilize itself. I want us to get closer to seeing not only the illegitimacy of Israel but also the illegitimacy of the US. And, in our upcoming letters, also see the illegitimacy of Western Christianity within the context of the Western Empire.

Remember again that the US holds no ethical backing in what it does, or promotes, or markets, nor does the international Western community (think all “former” colonial rulers). Let the reality of our history, us, as systemically oppressed people serve as the litmus test on where and how we stand on conflict. That is, as the US and Israel are both settler states, and in the worlds they create, they will always support other oppressive colonial states because they are one and the same.

written by Lucille Clifton

This week, again, the ex-nihilo/out of nothing/from nothing narratives jumped out as the Israeli Army Chief - Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian - called the Palestinians “human animals” worthy of the genocidal attacks. Alongside the theft of land and bodies, the Western empire and its building of a world require a repetitive narrative and portrayal of the “other” as nonhumans, as equal to animals, as beings void of feeling and vulnerability, to complete their project of domination.

And that’s what makes what is happening in Palestine and globally in the collective fight against imperialism absolutely horrific because dehumanization is a necessary aspect of empire-building. It’s also why narratives, truth-telling, and narrative crafting are fundamental in the face of ongoing war. Violence “cannot” be seen as violence if it is happening to the demonized “Other” because the “Other/the Oriental/the Black female/the Slave/etc.” are nonhuman. 

The ongoing project of colonization/domination would not be complete without history revision – declaring lies as truth, silencing the archive, eradicating the storytellers, memory keepers, and griots, and intentionally creating misinformation and miseducation of the masses, amping all efforts to try to wipe our memory and tell us theirs to remember.  

I’m reminded of the importance of global anti-imperial solidarity, the need for an anticolonial/decolonial Black feminist-rooted education, developing an informed international framework, and being aware and vocal about what is happening globally in recognizing the interconnectedness of our struggles. 

In Angela Davis’s Freedom is a Constant Struggle – Ferguson Reminds Us of the Importance of a Global Context, she reminds us of the uniqueness of the Black freedom struggle, the global Black freedom struggle, and the Palestinian struggle, as well as all anti-imperialist struggles towards liberation. From policing to state terror, our struggles are linked.

“Why do I say that Ferguson reminds us of the importance of a global context? What we saw in the police reaction to the resistance that spontaneously erupted in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown was an armed response that revealed the extent to which local police departments have been equipped with military arms, military technology, military training. The militarization of the police leads us to think about Israel and the militarization of the police there — if only the images of the police and not of the demonstrators had been shown, one might have assumed that Ferguson was Gaza. I think that it is important to recognize the extent to which, in the aftermath of the advent of the war on terror, police departments all over the US have been equipped with the means to allegedly “fight terror.”

What I wrote back in 2021 still rings true today.

This space amps the collective demands made that the Palestinian genocide by Israel (and backed by Western states), as well as that the normalization of Zionism and Western imperialism, must end. And, because the Western world is a created project, it also can be destroyed — it’s not completely fixed.

Here, TCW stands firm on being an anti-colonial, anti-imperial, anti-capitalist space that believes in freedom from all forms and systems of domination. Full solidarity, and always, with the Palestinian people and the struggle for freedom and human dignity. Global solidarity in our collective struggles for liberation, and may it all happen in our lifetimes. 

From the river to the sea.

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Resources:

1. Donation to the Palestinian Feminist collective and the Middle East Children’s Alliance - bit.ly/PFCxMECA 

2. Black for Palestine Collective Resources

3. Google Drive on Free Educational Resources on Palestine 

4. Reading list and general resource listings on Palestine

5. “Palestine Sounds” – playlist retrieved from Dream Defenders 

6. Free Ebooks on Palestine from Haymarket Books 

1. Source: Palestinian Feminist Collective