Precarious, Performative, Playful, Potential...Perspectives!

Toward an Ethics of Cohabitation

Sharon Ullman's "devastating" introduction:
the claim that "academics don't live in the real world" is a false rhetorical strategy designed to restrain their power
Butler works in "the best part of the Jewish ethical tradition: to insist on the relation to the non-Jew"
intellectuals are under a political obligation
Butler rejected a "courage" prize in Berlin, saying, "I distance myself from racism"
from her Occupy speech: "If hope is an impossible demand, then we demand the impossible"
she demonstrates the direct relation between political action and analysis
learning and intellect are devalued in the public square, and cruelty is celebrated
there are those who are "rightly afraid" of thinkers, like Butler, who inspire activism:
she helps to repair the world

Butler: "it will change my thinking and my writing that I have been here"
an ethics that heeds the fragility of life" = we accompany one another
the last two lectures explored "bodies in alliance," with-and-against Hannah Arendt,
in an attempt to enact-and-exemplify alternative forms of living together
various forms of cohabitation are central to the most vexed problems of our time
start in register of ethics, w/ political implications
1) on global obligations, near and far:
what about our capacity to respond to suffering @ a distance?
what is our ethical obligation to those we never choose, in languages we don't understand?

This semester I'm taking a class in Business Ethics. Last week we discussed the benefits and pitfalls of moral relativism versus moral absolutism. The example given in class was about the Kyrgyzstan custom of ala kachuu (translation: grab-and run). Basically, a man kidnaps a women and forces her to marry him. It is estimated that 1/3 of Kyrgyzstan brides are kidnapped this way.

The anxiety, fear, and refusal of the kidnapped women are all accepted as routine. Many fight back. But, according to this New York Time's Article 80% of women relent and agree to marriage.

Now that we've started studying global conditions of women in our class, I think it's necessary we address our own framing strategies and biases. There's something to be said for cultural relativism - to a point. It's hard to recognize the line at which one crosses over from a global to western perspective (in part because we help dominate the shaping of global values).

This is extremely important to think about in terms of activism. I know Judith Butler mentioned the importance of outside, (i.e) objective help and critical distance. But does distance give us objectivity? Doesn't it just give us another kind of bias? Would it be OK for Americans to interfere with the traditions of another country because we see them as backwards? As harmful and violent against women? What would make our interference (speaking on a personal not national level) less imperialistic?

"Rockin' In The Free World" -Neil Young

I’ve spent a lot of time in the past week thinking about Judith Butler’s second Flexner Lecture on “Body Politics and the Politics of the Street,” specifically the notion of public versus private in relation to an individual’s right to appear. This separation of space has been ever-present in my undergraduate experiences, defining at times what I choose expose about myself, the activities in which I engage, and the individuals with whom I associate.

As a first-year student learning about sexuality, I spent a great deal of time reading and learning alone. My roommate, who was homophobic and transferred after our first year, made this task somewhat difficult: how could I become comfortable with myself while living with someone who was not comfortable with me? In private, I felt that I did not have the “right to appear,” while in the public eye of our campus I began to feel more comfortable. This ties back to our discussion last week on the right not to talk about certain experiences or personal components, just as we have the right to disclose such information at will. I am also reminded of the New York Times article we read earlier this semester regarding the therapist who encourages and aides his clients in the act of remaining within the closet.

...although the link on our home page to this document by the World Economic Forum did not work for me, you can access this report on our password protected site.  Click on the "HausmanTysonZahidi" link.

Paul Farmer is speaking at the free library on Tuesday December 6th at 7:30 pm.  The link is here, but since we'll all be in class.... :(

I had my Barad "Aha!" moment in the beginning of class last week. It happened during our first Judith Butler litany and it took me by surprise. I have to admit, I was skeptical of Barad - I couldn't fathom what it might mean to experience the world like electrons do, and perhaps I don't understand the concept in the way Barad means it, but I've been feeling more electron-like by the minute...

Judith Butler's piece, "Violence, Mourning, and Politics" made me consider the ways in which each of us is both a particle and a wave (and that we are both at once, but the questions we ask - the way we look/measure - can change which "form" we focus on). Butler writes that, “one mourns when one accepts that by the loss one undergoes one will be changed” (21). This definition of mourning struck me as very “wave-like.” We bounce off each other, diffract through one another, imprint ourselves on each other in such a way that when we lose someone, the patterns will change. We are wave-like in that there is something of our presence that is not necessarily visible or finite - we change the world we live in and the people we live with. But there is also a way in which we are discrete – we have a physical presence, we are in a certain way tangible, borders can be drawn around us. I think most of the time, though, when we think about each other or ourselves we consider the wave and particle together – like electrons we are both at once.

I have been thinking a lot about Tuesday's class. I think the class had a lot of positives and a few negatives. For starters, I think that it is really important to talk about rape and sexual assault. It is important to read texts like Ensler's litany. It is important to have tense, emotionally packed discussions. In doing so, it helps to bring aware to a subject that I feel is often glossed over as something horrible and awful and so we should acknowledge its existance but keep our distance. It also helps to de-stigmatize the survivors. With knowledge comes understanding and a tool box. Of course, I am not naive enough to believe that we can outright prevent rape by talking about it, but we can fix our reactions to it. We can learn to use the right terminology (i.e survivor, not victim), we can learn about resources that exist currently, and we can learn about what we can do for ourselves and for others that we know.

Many of you, who wrote in your last set of web events about biological and sexual education, might be interested in this 11/16/11 NYTimes piece about teaching good sex @ a local Quaker high school.

As I was thinking about activism in the context of some of the readings from last class, I thought about this idea of constantly bring "awareness" to an issue. If we look at our social landscape, we notice that there are so many issues that are being brought up and the sheer amount of them makes it difficult to fully engage with any because there is just so much information. Given that we are all entangled, shouldn't we be able to unify and thus, make what we are campaigning for a little bit more integrated?

A lot of the time, many campaigns and movements, in my own personal experience, have fallen on deaf ears because there are just so many issues. This is frustrating from the viewpoint of both the people attempting to spread the word as well the audience. Where do we focus? Who do we listen to?

Also, in terms of a global movement towards social justice, I would like to see something that really integrates both the sender of information regarding a more specific cause with the 'listener'. I personally feel that there is a hierarchy within social justice movements between these two categories. Given our entanglements with each other, I think that this would be better if equalised and thus, be more integrated.