Butler and Athanasiou: 8-11

Continuing with Butler and Athanasiou’s discussion on dispossession, chapter nine: “Uncounted bodies, incalculable performativity” stuck out to me. Butler and Athanasiou discuss how “counting” people can either aid in maintaining the political or social norms of society by dictating who counts or can be used by those being dispossessed to demonstrate their rights and existence. Even when laws do not uphold the rights of everyone, the ability to be “countable” is exertable outside the confines of the law and does not need to be state-supported, as exhibited through their example of the human rights group Btselem, which published their calculation of Palestinian civilian casualties in the last war against Gaza and was subsequently charged with treason. This example brought to mind a situation that I was confronted with while working in Belfast, NI, where there was still a debate going on about what constituted a person being a ‘victim.’ With two extreme sides that still feel the effects of the conflict fighting over who is a victim or a perpetrator, many people who died during the almost thirty years of violence are lost to politics.

Judith Butler then states that “when bodies assemble without a clear set of demands, then we might conclude that the bodies are performing the demand to end conditions of induced precarity that are not livable”(102). This reminded me of Honig’s article “Difference, Dilemmas, and the Politics of Home,” where she advocates that people must leave the comfort of their ‘home’ and address the issues of society. Honig talks about confronting and challenging our differences and forming coalitions that are not natural or easy, which I think Butler is advocating for. The dispossessed don’t need to have specific goals or agree on exactly what they want, but they need to show unification, which Honig admits isn’t easy.