Precarious Life

The reading group, which decided to tackle Judith Butler's Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, met for the first time tonight. The book, quite possibly the most accessible of Butler's writings, offers some serious reflections on the post 9-11 response. In the Preface and first two essays, Butler criticizes the lack of earnest discussion regarding the appropriate response to attack. In the Preface she writes,

"Dissent and debate depend upon the inclusion of those who maintain critical views of state policy and civic culture remaining part of a larger public discussion of the value of policies and politics. To charge those who voice critical views with treason, terrorist-sympathizing, anti-Semitism, moral relativism, postmodernism, juvenile behavior, collaboration, anachronistic Leftism, is to seek to destroy the credibility not of the views that are held, but of the persons who hold them [...] It is precisely because one does not want to lose one's status as a viable speaking being that one does not say what one thinks."

You're preaching to the choir, Judith. More interesting than her critique of the lack of true debate following 9-11 are her thoughts regarding mourning and violence. According to Butler, our inability to process and utilize our collective mourning resulted in an illogical call for a violent, vengeful response. Taking a Levinasian approach to the constitution of the subject, Bulter argues that our subjectivity is tied directly to that of the Other, that the Self is called into existance by the hail of the Other. As this is the case, our own mourning provides an opportunity to understand the suffering of those outside our First World existance. In essence, our own pain, loss, and mourning acts as the hail of the Other. When we experience tremendous loss and grief, we understand, in a disconnected sense, the pain and suffering of other people. Responding with violence, then, requires a denial of the Other's humaness, for with a violent response comes additional human suffering. We inflict on innocent Others the pain and suffering we experience. To intentionally inflict pain and suffering on another, argues Levinas (and this is a very simplistic reading of Levinas), requires a refusal of the hail of the Other. It is our ethical responsibility to acknowledge the hail of the Other; refusing the hail of the Other means refusing their humanity. Only when we consider someone less than human, or a less important human, can we respond violently. That's the crux of Levinasian ethics: our own subjectivity occurs in the responsible acknowledgment of the Other's hail. To deny another's humanity is to deny our own.

So what does all that mean for Butler's critique of post 9-11 discourse and reactions? Butler suggests that an understanding of our own pain and grief, and the recognition that similar pain and grief likely contributed to the conditions leading up to 9-11, could have opened valuable lines of dialogue around the world. Foregoing the violent response, she attests, could have enabled us to explore and understand the causes and conditions of 9-11, to understand the human Other(s), rather than plunging into a series of conflicts that have resulted in tens of thousands of civilian casualties. Every civilian casualty provides pain and grief that could become fuel for the hatred of others, just like it did here in the U.S.

Is Butler right? I don't know. I'm not smart enough to figure all of this out. What I do know is that our current means of dealing with perpetrators of violence doesn't work. Rather than solving problems, we're stuck in a violent cycle. It can't hurt to look at alternatives, right?