Butler and Athanasiou: Dispossession

Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou’s book “Dispossession: The Performative in the Political” explores dispossession through varied conversations that range from establishing a basic definition to discussing the modern economy. I found the conversational style very approachable, and their arguments were more understandable as they built upon and questioned one another’s points. Their early attempts to define and discuss dispossession result in two types of dispossession: the first, as I understood it, being under the control of an outside source that is “necessary,” such as government and law, while the second type pertains to “a condition painfully imposed by the normative and normalizing violence that determines the terms of subjectivity, survival, and livability”(2).  These definitions and further discussions around them remind me of the early reading “Five Faces of Oppression” by Iris Young, where she describes the five types of oppression: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. Our “necessary” dependence on the government for rights puts us in a precarious position where we can easily be oppressed and dispossessed. Much of the discussion on “being” dispossessed and “becoming” dispossessed reminded me of the many small and subtle ways that people can be oppressed, as discussed by Young, and how it only takes one of the five types of oppression to be oppressed. While oppression and dispossession usually go hand in hand, I think the general consensus that if one type of oppression is present, then a person is oppressed, applies to dispossession, whether it is present for the start or an active process.