{"id":13891,"date":"2020-02-09T11:43:03","date_gmt":"2020-02-09T16:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=13891"},"modified":"2020-02-09T12:17:37","modified_gmt":"2020-02-09T17:17:37","slug":"judith-butler-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2020\/02\/09\/judith-butler-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Judith Butler"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Judith Butler intervew in The New Yorker February 9, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2019m not a completely crazy idealist who would say, \u201cThere\u2019s no situation in which I would commit an act of violence.\u201d I\u2019m trying to shift the question to \u201cWhat kind of world is it that we seek to build together?\u201d Some of my friends on the left believe that violent tactics are the way to produce the world they want. They think that the violence falls away when the results they want are realized. But they\u2019ve just issued more violence into the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you point out that in the liberal individualist way of \nthinking, the individual is always an adult male in his prime, who, just\n at this particular moment when we encounter him, happens to have no \nneeds and dependencies that would bind him to others.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\n model of the individual is comic, in a way, but also lethal. The goal \nis to overcome the formative and dependent stages of life to emerge, \nseparate, and individuate\u2014and then you become this self-standing \nindividual. That\u2019s a translation from German. They say selbstst\u00e4ndig<\/em>,\n implying that you stand on your own. But who actually stands on their \nown? We are all, if we stand, supported by any number of things. Even \ncoming to see you today\u2014the pavement allowed me to move, and so did my \nshoes, my orthotics, and the long hours spent by my physical therapist. \nHis labor is in my walk, as it were. I wouldn\u2019t have been able to get \nhere without any of those wonderful technologies and supporting \nrelations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acknowledging dependency as a condition of who any of us happens to be is difficult enough. But the larger task is to affirm social and ecological interdependence, which is regularly misrecognized as well. If we were to rethink ourselves as social creatures who are fundamentally dependent upon one another\u2014and there\u2019s no shame, no humiliation, no \u201cfeminization\u201d in that\u2014I think that we would treat each other differently, because our very conception of self would not be defined by individual self-interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It enraged me then, as it does now, that some lives were considered to be more worthy of grieving publicly than others, depending on the status and recognizability of those persons and their relations. And that came home to me in a different way in the aftermath of 9\/11, when it was very clear that certain lives could be highly memorialized in the newspapers and others could not. Those who were openly mourned tended to lead lives whose value was measured by whether they had property, education, whether they were married and had a dog and some children. The traditional heterosexual frame became the condition of possibility for public mourning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can also see this in broader public policies. There are those for whom health insurance is so precious that it is publicly assumed that it can never be taken away, and others who remain without coverage, who cannot afford the premiums that would increase their chances of living\u2014their lives are of no consequence to those who oppose health care for all. Certain lives are considered more grievable. We have to get beyond the idea of calculating the value of lives, in order to arrive at a different, more radical idea of social equality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If \u201cthat is just the way the world is,\u201d even though we wish it were different, then we concede the intractability of that version of reality. We\u2019ve said such \u201crealistic\u201d things about gay marriage before it became a reality. We said it years ago about a black President. We\u2019ve said it about many things in this world, about tyrannical or authoritarian regimes we never thought would come down. To stay within the framework of Realpolitik is, I think, to accept a closing down of horizons, a way to seem \u201ccool\u201d and skeptical at the expense of radical hope and aspiration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes you have to imagine in a radical way that makes you seem a little crazy, that puts you in an embarrassing light, in order to open up a possibility that others have already closed down with their knowing realism. I\u2019m prepared to be mocked and dismissed for defending nonviolence in the way that I do. It might be understood as one of the most profoundly unrealistic positions you could hold in this life. But when I ask people whether they would want to live in a world in which no one takes that position, they say that that would be terrible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We see how socialist ideals, for instance, are dismissed as \u201cfanciful\u201d in the current election. I find that the dismissive form of realism is guarding those borders and shutting down those horizons of possibility. It reminds me of parents who say, \u201cOh, you\u2019re gay . . .\u201d or \u201cOh, you\u2019re trans\u2014well, of course I accept you, but it\u2019s going to be a very hard life.\u201d Instead of saying, \u201cThis is a new world, and we are going to build it together, and you\u2019re going to have my full support.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our interdependency serves as the basis of our ethical obligations to one another. When we strike at one another, we strike at that very bond. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a couple of places in the book, you say that nonviolence \nis not an absolute principle, or that you\u2019re not arguing that no one has\n the right to self-defense\u2014you are just suggesting a new set of guiding \nprinciples. I found myself a little disappointed every time you make \nthat caveat. Does it not weaken your argument when you say, \u201cI\u2019m arguing\n against self-defense, but I\u2019m not saying that no one has a right to \nself-defense\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I were giving a rational justification \nfor nonviolence as a position, which would make me into a much more \nproper philosopher than I am\u2014or wish to be\u2014then it would make sense to \nrule out all exceptions. But we don\u2019t need a new rational justification \nfor nonviolence. We actually need to pose the question of violence and \nnonviolence within a different framework, where the question is not \n\u201cWhat ought I to do?\u201d but \u201cWho am I in relation to others, and how do I \nunderstand that relationship?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once social equality becomes the framework, I\u2019m not sure we are deliberating as individuals trying to come up with a fully rational position, consistent and complete and comprehensive for all circumstances. We might then approach the world in a way that would make violence less likely, that would allow us to think about how to live together given our anger and our aggression, our murderous wishes\u2014how to live together and to make a commitment to that, outside of the boundaries of community or the boundaries of the nation. I think that that\u2019s a way of thinking, an ethos\u2014I guess I would use that word, \u201cethos,\u201d as something that would be more important to me than a fully rational system that is constantly confounded by exceptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You talk about nonviolence, rather unexpectedly, as a force, \nand even use words like \u201cmilitant\u201d and \u201caggressive.\u201d Can you explain how\n they go together?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think many positions assume that nonviolence involves inhabiting the peaceful region of the soul, where you are supposed to rid yourself of violent feelings or wishes or fantasy. But what interests me is cultivating aggression into forms of conduct that can be effective without being destructive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A leader can defy the laws of his own country and test to see how \nmuch power he can take. He can imprison dissenters and inflict violence \non neighboring regions. He can block migrants from certain countries or \nreligions. He can kill them at a moment\u2019s notice. Many people are \nexcited by this kind of exercise of power, its unchecked quality, and \nthey want in their own lives to free up their aggressive speech and \naction without any checks: no shame, no legal repercussions. They have \nthis leader who models that freedom. The sadism intensifies and \naccelerates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think, as many people do, that Trump has licensed the overt violence of white supremacy and also unleashed police violence by suspending any sense of constraint. Many people thrill to see embodied in their government leader a will to destruction that is uninhibited, invoking a kind of moral sadism as its perverse justification. It\u2019s going to be up to us to see if people can thrill to something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tweet acts as an incitation but also as a virtual attack with consequences; it gives public license to violence. He models a kind of entitlement that positions him above the law. Those who support him, even love him, want to live in that zone with him. He is a sovereign unchecked by the rule of law he represents, and many think that is the most free and courageous kind of liberation. But it is liberation from all social obligation, a self-aggrandizing sovereignty of the individual.Advertisement<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just to be clear, you\u2019re not saying that these juries saw \nviolence being perpetrated against somebody nonviolent and decided to \nlet the perpetrator off. You\u2019re saying that they actually perceived<\/em> violence\u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014in\n the radically subjugated black body, or the radically constrained black\n body, or the black body that\u2019s running with fear away from some officer\n who is threatening them with violence. And if you\u2019re a jury\u2014especially a\n white jury that thinks it\u2019s perfectly reasonable to imagine that a \nblack person, even under extreme restraint, could leap up and kill you \nin a flash\u2014that\u2019s phantasmagoria. It\u2019s not individual psychopathology \nbut a shared phantasmatic scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judith Butler intervew in The New Yorker February 9, 2020 \u2019m not a completely crazy idealist who would say, \u201cThere\u2019s no situation in which I would commit an act of violence.\u201d I\u2019m trying to shift the question to \u201cWhat kind of world is it that we seek to build together?\u201d Some of my friends on … Continue reading “Judith Butler”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,85,115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butler","category-melancholia","category-precarity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13891"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13895,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13891\/revisions\/13895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}