In chapters 8-11 of Dispossession, Butler and Anthanasiou continue their dialogue of performativity
through means of dispossession on the account of others, counting of lives, and
responsibility of disspossession. This week, I was particularly drawn to the
chapter, “Responsiveness as Responsibility.” Anthanasiou raises the question of
who is culpable and how do we prosecute incidents of racist and sexist speech.
To her question, Butler responds:
“Yes, we are in a quandary, since we
cannot say, “Pay no attention to that racist act – focus instead on the
structures of racism that make it possible”; we would then end up in a form of
dualistic thinking, separating the structure from its instance. The fact that
the structure requires its instance to repeat itself, which is why every racist
regime requires its acts of racism, its racist speech, its daily forms of
discrimination and exclusion. If we extract the structure from the everyday,
then we have produced an “inverted” world in which what happens at the level of
structure is more important than what happens at the level of the instance. The
same thing happens, as you suggest above, when we only seize upon the
instances, raging infinitely and recurrently against the instances without ever
seeing the broader institutional and political structures at issue. This is why
we have to understand structures as both temporal and spatial, since they have
to renew themselves through their instances, where the instance is also always
both a temporal and spatial matter. This is why the enraging instances have to
be taken seriously, even if they cannot remain the ultimate or exclusive
referent for political analysis and opposition.”
When reading Butler’s response, I
immediately thought about the SAE scandal that has been plaguing our news for
the past couple of weeks. There have been many who applaud the University of
Oklahoma’s immediate response of shutting down the fraternity and expelling the
two students who led the racist chant. However, sociologists and academics have
argued that rather than focusing on culpability and expelling the students,
this incident should have been the opportunity for greater introspection and
change at the institutional level. This is something Butler argues in her
response, saying that if we solely “seize” upon the instances, we will never
see the broader structures at issue. With the rise of incidents of racial discrimination
and violence, I agree with Butler’s argument in that instances and
institutional structures should not be mutually exclusive, but rather we should
take incidents, like the SAE scandal, seriously and use them as ways to bring
greater systemic change.
Avery, I always find your posts to be so interesting! The SAE incident speaks to this chapter perfectly. Thanks for bringing it up!
ReplyDeleteIm going to have to disagree though that there should have been greater introspection rather than blaming the students on the basis of the use of the word “rather”. I dont think that these two options should be diametrically opposed, an either or situation. I think that expelling the students and making an example of them is necessary for the institutional change. I can see how expelling the students could have just been an act to save face, a shallow attempt to distance the university from the act instead of a true attempt to combat racism. However an "introspective" response would've been more troubling to me. Usually, an institution is introspective not when it is looking to change but when it is looking to preserve and cover up racist practices. I think the public response was a sign of change, and even though the President's hand might have been forced, it still sparked a larger debate that has alerted the public to the racist practices of the fraternity. I think that this is a case in which, like you stated, can be used to bring greater change. I also think the word "introspective" is interesting as Butler says in the passage you quoted that when you extract the structure or system of oppression from the everyday or from the instance, there is the risk of creating an inverted world that privileges structure over instance. So I think that calling for an introspective response would've created that hierarchy which is problematic and counterproductive. I also don’t know what the sociologists and academics would propose what such a response would even look like.
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