Blogs

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?

Since I didn't make a post for this week yet, I was looking at the talking notes for tonight and I want to respond to the two quotes pulled from the forum:

* AmyMay: I would suggest a "trigger warning" before bringing up such a personal issue in class.  This would allow people to decide in advance if the topic is something they are prepared to discuss openly in the presence of others. Personally, these are issues I want to talk about, and that I want other people to talk about.  It was very powerful for me to hear things that I feel deeply personally about come from many of the people in our class (in the "in response to __ we propose __" portion).  It was one of the few times I've felt truely understood, like my voice was being heard without me having to try to find the words.  Many of you got it.  That means more to me than I could ever say.  Though it was emotionally exhausting, by the end I felt we were bodies in alliance.

* Kaye: I too have been thinking a lot about Tues night's class and wonder if trigger event warnings would have prevented the powerful learning that took place. do we need to meet each other in our precarity if we are to have real conversations and relationships. If people knew it what we were going to do, they might not have come to class or have built up their defenses so only part of them was there.

This sort of situation has come up for me a few times:

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?

This web event describes my plans for an activism project, to be completed as my final project for this course, which seeks to change the culture around sexual violence at Haverford.  I've decided to do this web event super early because I want to be able to document my thinking at this stage in the planning process.  I've been working on this for about 2 weeks now, and I want to make sure it is clear how this project ties into the coursework (mostly Judith Butler's work) before I get too far into logistical planning.  I tried getting the video to upload but Serendip isn't having it.  So instead, I made my own youtube channel for my web event, which can be found here.  The web event is presented in three sections, which should be watched in order, from I, to II, to III.  Upon consultation with Kaye, I decided to do Web Event #3 as a video purely because the topic of sexual violence is so personal to me, I did not think I could effectively communicate my plans via written words.  I also find it appropriate to have this information delivered via a conversational video, since the point of my proposed project is to stimulate conversation.  If any of you have feedback or suggestions, please please please voice them.  I'd love to hear any ways to make my ideas better.

"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.

In case anyone's interested (the Women's Center at Haverford just received the email, and I thought someone might be interested in submitting a last minute paper...)

...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.

So, some of these questions are answerable (and some aren't) -- I will seek the answers to the answerable ones, but given that this post is late + I have a lot of things to do before Thanksgiving, I'm just going to pose them for now and work on answering them more soon (and also working on continuing to read the report, I haven't finished)... If you guys have thoughts/info on this, please comment! I bet there are a lot of people who know more about these issues than I do (poli sci majors perhaps...?).

1. WHY did it take until 2011 for the United Nations to create an agency to promote women's empowerment and gender equality internationally (UNWomen)? It seems ridiculous that this is the first report of a nascent agency - women's issues didn't just start needing addressing this past year.

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.... :(

The interview process was really interesting. I did not expect some individuals to be as honest as they were. One interviewee, without being asked, told me some very personal facts I did not expect. In addition, it felt a little odd to be interviewing students when I myself am still a student. Furthermore, when writing the essay I kept thinking about how hard it is to anaylze research I collected myself. When reading an article the author explains what they researched for you. I believe this is why this essay was particularly hard to write because I had to explain what my research meant or even what my purpose was. Overall, it was a learning process that was a little but scary but I learned a lot about how to interview individuals.