A Moment of Vulnerability
A while ago, a friend gave me a copy of Judith Butler's Precarious Life (H., I'm not sure if I ever said thank you as truly as I should have; the book is challenging and articulate, and thank you again for giving it to me). The book has been sitting on a succession of shelves over the past nine months, but I recently picked it up and opened it to the second essay, entitled "Violence, Mourning, Politics".
Without going too much into the essay, Butler sets out to consider our (itself always a fraught formulation) exposure to violence, our complicity in it, our vulnerability to loss, and the task of mourning - impossible or not - that follows. She argues that one of the things that characterizes the "human", that makes a concept like "human beings" conceivable, is a shared awareness of our own vulnerability. In a particular sense, she is responding to 11 September, but in a broader sense, she's really trying to work through the consequences of admitting a common vulnerability; not simply in the biological sense, but in a more metaphorical register, inasmuch as we are all vulnerable to a kind of loss. As she writes, "This means that each of us is constituted politically in part by virtue of the social vulnerability of our bodies - as a site of desire and physical vulnerability, as a site of publicity at once assertive and exposed."
What she is trying to argue for is a kind of social interdependence. We can never, in spite of our best efforts, function as autonomous and discrete individuals. Our bodies have a kind of dialectical nature, in that they're sites, as she writes, of both desire and vulnerability, publicity and privacy. The result is a politics of relationality and interdependence, rather than a politics (for example) of fundamental morality. She imagines a kind of utopic community that "affirms relationality not only as descriptive or historical fact... but also as [a dimension of our lives] in which we are compelled to take stock of our interdependence."
She moves on to make a key point about the relationship between dehumanization and public discourse, arguing that "Dehumanization emerges at the limits of discursive life". In other words, to speak a life is to in some sense guarantee it a kind of public existence.
And while I haven't actually finished the essay, what I have finished resonated with a couple of other recent pieces. At one point, Butler speaks of the process in which the United States must give up "narcissistic and grandiose fantasies"; that, in turn, called to mind my reaction to Palin's nomination. Now, after the fact, better pens than mine have responded to Palin (and though the fine folks at FreeDarko don't need another voice calling their name in the wilderness, Shoals' piece was cathartic), but it is worth noting that Palin's speech made full use of the myth of American self-reliance.
To another equally worthy piece, BikingInLA recently added several thoughtful posts (here and here) about the politics and (poor) planning of Los Angeles bike lanes. They're worth a read, and I just wanted to suggest two brief comments. First, it seems that any discussion of planning should involve (though for various reasons, it often doesn't) questions of use; further, planners should actually have used what they're planning. From use, I think, it's a short step to language. In other words, there's a specific language to biking in Los Angeles, and people who don't bike won't speak it. Consequently, they won't know how to plan it. Second, Butler's comments about vulnerability and interdependence might be pertinent to discussions about relationships between automobiles and cyclists. One of the privileges of driving is a feeling of independence and autonomy. In a big SUV, you can go anywhere. Cyclists have no such luxury.
Without going too much into the essay, Butler sets out to consider our (itself always a fraught formulation) exposure to violence, our complicity in it, our vulnerability to loss, and the task of mourning - impossible or not - that follows. She argues that one of the things that characterizes the "human", that makes a concept like "human beings" conceivable, is a shared awareness of our own vulnerability. In a particular sense, she is responding to 11 September, but in a broader sense, she's really trying to work through the consequences of admitting a common vulnerability; not simply in the biological sense, but in a more metaphorical register, inasmuch as we are all vulnerable to a kind of loss. As she writes, "This means that each of us is constituted politically in part by virtue of the social vulnerability of our bodies - as a site of desire and physical vulnerability, as a site of publicity at once assertive and exposed."
What she is trying to argue for is a kind of social interdependence. We can never, in spite of our best efforts, function as autonomous and discrete individuals. Our bodies have a kind of dialectical nature, in that they're sites, as she writes, of both desire and vulnerability, publicity and privacy. The result is a politics of relationality and interdependence, rather than a politics (for example) of fundamental morality. She imagines a kind of utopic community that "affirms relationality not only as descriptive or historical fact... but also as [a dimension of our lives] in which we are compelled to take stock of our interdependence."
She moves on to make a key point about the relationship between dehumanization and public discourse, arguing that "Dehumanization emerges at the limits of discursive life". In other words, to speak a life is to in some sense guarantee it a kind of public existence.
And while I haven't actually finished the essay, what I have finished resonated with a couple of other recent pieces. At one point, Butler speaks of the process in which the United States must give up "narcissistic and grandiose fantasies"; that, in turn, called to mind my reaction to Palin's nomination. Now, after the fact, better pens than mine have responded to Palin (and though the fine folks at FreeDarko don't need another voice calling their name in the wilderness, Shoals' piece was cathartic), but it is worth noting that Palin's speech made full use of the myth of American self-reliance.
To another equally worthy piece, BikingInLA recently added several thoughtful posts (here and here) about the politics and (poor) planning of Los Angeles bike lanes. They're worth a read, and I just wanted to suggest two brief comments. First, it seems that any discussion of planning should involve (though for various reasons, it often doesn't) questions of use; further, planners should actually have used what they're planning. From use, I think, it's a short step to language. In other words, there's a specific language to biking in Los Angeles, and people who don't bike won't speak it. Consequently, they won't know how to plan it. Second, Butler's comments about vulnerability and interdependence might be pertinent to discussions about relationships between automobiles and cyclists. One of the privileges of driving is a feeling of independence and autonomy. In a big SUV, you can go anywhere. Cyclists have no such luxury.
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