WEBVTT - Precariousness and Grievability 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:12.680 All Zone Media. Hello, Welcome to it could happen here today. 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:16.959 My episode is going to be a bit more philosophical. 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:21.320 I love me some philosophy. I don't always understand it, 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:24.439 but I do like it. And I read something recently 0:00:24.520 --> 0:00:27.600 that really stuck with me, especially in the context of 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:30.600 what is currently going on right now in Palestine and 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:34.080 the genocide and Gaza. I read something and I couldn't 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:36.239 stop thinking about it, so I thought, let's just make 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:39.280 an episode. So today I wanted to talk about this 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:45.479 word I learned called grievability. It was coined by Judith 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:49.360 Butler in this blog post from twenty fifteen, when Butler 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:54.040 is asking the question when is life grievable? In twenty sixteen, 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:57.240 Butler wrote a book called Frames of War. When is 0:00:57.280 --> 0:00:59.880 Life Grievable? And this is a quote from this book. 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:03.720 One way of posing the question of who we are 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:06.840 in these times of war is by asking whose lives 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:11.000 are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:14.800 are considered ungrievable. We might think of war as dividing 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:18.000 populations into those who are grievable in those who are not. 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:22.040 An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:25.760 it has never lived, that is, it has never counted 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:29.520 as a life at all. We can see the division 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:33.200 of the globe into grievable and ungrievable lives from the 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:36.479 perspective of those who wage war in order to defend 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:39.600 the lives of certain communities and to defend them against 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:43.360 the lives of others, even if it means taking those 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:47.920 latter lives. So that quote kind of encompasses the idea 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:51.640 of grievability. I really just thought it was poignant to 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:56.560 talk about and relevant because we are being inundated with 0:01:56.600 --> 0:01:59.920 all these numbers every day of casualties and death count 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:05.200 and collateral damage. And people accept these things because it's 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:07.840 part of being human. It's just the way war is. 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:10.760 But I really don't think we should accept that as 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:13.720 the reality. I think that makes us callous. And I 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:18.040 think accepting human death, no matter in what context, is 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:20.440 a little bit inhuman And so I think maybe that's 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:25.760 why this concept fascinated me, because tying grief to the 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:29.679 concept of being alive, it truly is indicative of if 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.919 that life is worth something to you or to the world. 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:36.519 And so we're reading and hearing about all these lives lost, 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:39.799 and we're giving these numbers and stories, and these numbers 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:42.600 are repeated every day, and they increase every day, and 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:47.320 this repetition seems endless and impossible to change. And Butler 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:50.600 is saying that we don't often consider the precarious character 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:54.960 of the lives lost in war. And Butler defines precariousness 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.720 as the following. To say that a life is precarious 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:02.320 requires not only that a life be apprehended as a life, 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.640 but also that precariousness be an aspect of what is 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:10.000 apprehended in what is the living normatively construed. I am 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:12.720 arguing that there ought to be a more inclusive and 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:17.079 egalitarian way of recognizing precariousness, and that this should take 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:23.200 form as concrete social policy regarding such issues as shelter work, food, 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:27.639 medical care, and legal status. Butler goes on to explain 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:32.840 that although this initially seems paradoxical, precariousness itself actually cannot 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:39.240 be properly recognized. Butler says, it can be apprehended, taken in, encountered, 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:42.600 and it can be presupposed by certain norms of recognition, 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:46.600 just as it can be refused by such norms. But 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:50.840 the main recognition of precariousness should be as this shared 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:55.080 condition of human life, so precariousness being a condition that 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:59.560 links human life and humans to non human animals. So 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:03.000 for nat to say that a life is injurable, that 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:07.280 it can be lost, hurt, destroyed, or systematically neglected to 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.480 the point of death is to underscore not only the 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:14.120 finitude of a life and that death is certain, but 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:18.200 also the precariousness of life, that life requires various social 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:20.719 and economic conditions to be met in order to be 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:25.640 sustained as a life. Precariousness implies that living socially means 0:04:25.640 --> 0:04:28.839 that one's life is always, in some sense in the 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:32.799 hands of the other. It implies exposure both to those 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:35.279 we know and to those we do not know, a 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:38.560 dependency on people we know or barely know, or know 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:43.479 not at all. This existential reality that everything ends and 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:47.640 everything is temporary. This encapsulates our relation to death and 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:53.040 to life. Precariousness underscores what Butler calls our quote radical 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:58.000 substitution ability and anonymity, and that dying and death is 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:03.200 just as socially facilitated a humans persisting and flourishing. So 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:05.440 Butler is saying it's not that we are born and 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:09.680 then later become precarious, but rather that precariousness is intrinsic 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:14.880 with birth itself, and birth is by definition precarious. It 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:18.520 means that it matters whether a newly born infant survives, 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:21.440 and its survival is dependent on what we might call 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:25.919 a social network of hands. Precisely because a living being 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:28.760 may die, it is necessary to care for that being 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:31.920 so it may live. I put the following sentence in 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:35.960 bold because I think it's kind of underlying what I'm 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:38.560 trying to say, even though it sounds really simple. But 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:42.000 only under conditions in which the loss would matter does 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:46.039 the value of the life appear. And again, maybe it 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:49.120 sounds simple, but I don't think we actually absorb the 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:53.000 meaning of what that means to value a life and 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:56.039 to mourn a life. And this is how we come 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:59.680 to the idea of grievability, the idea that grievability is 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:03.719 a pre supposition for the life that matters. Butler gives 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:06.920 us this example, so let's think about this. An infant 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:10.599 comes into the world, is sustained in and sustained by 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:13.400 that world as an infant, and through to adulthood and 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:18.520 old age, and finally, eventually it dies. We imagine that 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:21.560 when the child is wanted, there is celebration at the 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:25.279 beginning of life. But there can be no celebration without 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:29.120 an implicit understanding that the life is grievable, that it 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:32.160 would be grieved if it were lost, that this future 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:36.839 possibility is installed as the condition of its life. Life 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:40.799 is celebrated because it can be lost an ordinary language, 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:44.200 Butler says, grief attends the life that has already been 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:48.400 lived and presupposes that life as having ended. So the 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:53.040 value of life comes from the reality and certainty that 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:56.160 it will end. And if we think about this idea 0:06:56.200 --> 0:06:59.840 of possibility of future, this lack of possibility that has 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:03.720 happens when death happens. Grievability is a condition of a 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:08.200 life's emergence and sustenance this future concept that a life 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:11.280 has been lived is presupposed at the beginning of a 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:15.160 life that has only begun to be lived. In other words, 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:18.440 Butler says, this will be a life that will have 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:22.920 been lived. Is the presupposition of a grievable life, which 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:25.000 means that this will be a life that can be 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:29.760 regarded as life and sustained by that regard. I know 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:31.960 it sounds heady, and I really had to read this 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:36.080 multiple times to even try to comprehend it. But essentially, 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:40.080 without grievability, without the impulse to mourn a life, there 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:43.720 is no life, or rather, there is something living that 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:47.880 is other than life. This other than life thing is 0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:50.160 a life that will never have been lived in the 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:53.080 first place, because it's not mourned, and it's sustained by 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:56.960 no regard, no testimony, and it is ungrieved when it 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:00.760 is lost. The unease and anxiety and at apprehension of 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:05.280 grievability precedes and makes possible the unease and anxiety and 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:12.160 apprehension of precarious life, and so grievability precedes and makes 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:17.040 possible the apprehension of the living being as living exposed 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:20.560 to non life. From the start, to put it in 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:25.080 maybe a simpler way for me to understand even is 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:29.920 that a life is worth grieving because we already know 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:33.560 it will die, and that life is worth celebrating because 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:37.080 it has already been exposed to death or the implication 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:41.079 of certain death. From the start. It is pretty heady, 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:44.000 but maybe I'll just leave you to marinate with that 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:48.800 during a break and we can get more heady when 0:08:48.840 --> 0:09:03.720 we get back. Okay, we're back. Let's go back to 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:07.360 the idea of war. One way of posing the question 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:10.080 of who we are in these times of war is 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:14.319 by asking whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:19.400 and whose lives are considered unagrievable. War is essentially the 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:22.560 division of populations into those who are a grievable and 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:26.440 those who are not. An ungrievable life is one that 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:30.080 cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:33.920 it has never counted as life at all. And we 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:37.040 see this division of the entire world into grievable and 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:40.280 ungrievable lives when we look at the perspective of those 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:43.880 who wage war in order to defend their certain communities. 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:46.800 This is kind of reiterating the quote that I'd started 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:49.720 with at the top from twenty sixteen, but essentially to 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:53.760 defend these certain communities against the life of others, it 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:58.080 usually implies the taking of those other lives. Butler here 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:00.800 makes a reference to nine to eleven, explating that after 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:03.400 the attacks of nine to eleven, the media showed us 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:06.480 graphic pictures of those who died along with their names, 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:10.920 their stories, and the reactions of their families. Public grieving 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:14.320 was dedicated to making these images iconic for the nation, 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:18.360 which meant that, of course, there was considerably less public 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:22.320 grieving for let's say, non US nationals, and none at 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:27.360 all for illegal workers. Butler says the differential distribution of 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:32.400 public grieving is a political issue of enormous significance, And 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:36.319 Butler asks, why is it that governments so often seek 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:40.720 to regulate and control who will be publicly grievable and 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:44.760 who will not? Because it means something to state and 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:47.560 to show the name of someone who has died, to 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:50.480 put together some remnants of a life, and to publicly 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:54.600 display and draw attention to the loss. So Butler's asking, 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:57.360 in this context, what would happen if those killed in 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:01.319 war were to be grieved in such an oath? Why 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:03.400 is it that we are not given the names of 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:06.920 all the war dead, including those the US has killed, 0:11:07.440 --> 0:11:10.400 of whom we will never have the image, the name, 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:14.760 the story, never have a testimonial shard of their life, 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:19.960 nothing to see, to touch, to know. Open grieving is 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:24.400 bound up with outrage. Outrage in the face of injustice 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:29.800 or of unbearable loss, has enormous political potential. Butler draws 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:33.439 a similarity here to Plato. Apparently, one of the reasons 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.240 Plato wanted to ban the poets from the Republic is 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:38.840 that he thought that if citizens went too often to 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:42.360 watch tragedy, they would weep over the losses they saw, 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:46.319 and that such open and public mourning, in disrupting the 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:49.800 order and hierarchy of the soul, would disrupt the order 0:11:49.800 --> 0:11:54.199 and hierarchy of political authority as well. And I didn't 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:56.040 know this, but to put it in that context is 0:11:56.360 --> 0:12:00.719 really fascinating to me, because it's essentially saying that if 0:12:00.760 --> 0:12:04.959 we expose human beings to the reality of tragedy in life, 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:08.160 they might care too much and start to fuck up 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:12.160 our politics. Essentially, so, whether we are speaking about open 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:16.520 grief or outrage, we are talking about effective or emotional 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:20.880 responses that are highly regulated by regimes of power and 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:25.600 sometimes subject to explicit censorship. The blog post I'm referring 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:28.200 to that Judith Butler wrote was written in twenty fifteen. 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:31.439 So Butler uses the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:34.480 examples of what they're trying to say. For the wars 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:38.239 in Iraq, in Afghanistan. We saw how emotion was regulated 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:42.959 to support both the war effort and more specifically, nationalists belonging. 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:46.160 When the photos of Abu grab were first released in 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:49.640 the US, conservative television pundits argued that it would be 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:53.400 un American to show them because we were not supposed 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:55.800 to have graphic evidence of the acts of torture the 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:58.480 US has committed. We were not supposed to know that 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:02.839 the US had violated in nationally recognized human rights. It 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:06.440 was Unamerican to show these photos, an Unamerican to glean 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:10.280 information from them as to how the war was being conducted. 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:14.000 Bill O'Reilly thought that the photos would create a negative 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:16.520 image of the US and that we had an obligation 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:20.319 to defend a positive image of the country. Donald Rumsfeld 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:24.079 said something similar, suggesting it was anti American to display 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:29.000 the photos. Of course, these idiots didn't consider, and neither 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:31.960 did the vast majority of people in power. But the 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:35.280 American public should have a right to know about the 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:38.680 activities of its military, and it should have the right 0:13:38.760 --> 0:13:43.080 to judge a war. Understanding and judging a war on 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:46.280 the basis of full evidence is or at least it 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:50.880 should be part of the democratic tradition of participation and deliberation. 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:55.520 So what was this really saying Butler's asking they say, 0:13:55.920 --> 0:13:58.960 it seems to me that those who sought to limit 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:02.400 the power of them image in this instance also sought 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:06.240 to limit the power of effect of outrage, knowing full 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:10.040 well that it could and would turn public opinion against 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:13.560 the war in Iraq as it died it did. I 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:17.080 feel like this is especially fascinating and parallel to what 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:22.160 we're seeing now with the people in Palestine broadcasting horrific 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:24.600 images of what is happening to them because of the 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:29.160 state of Israel, and how there is selective outrage because 0:14:29.600 --> 0:14:33.120 it is almost impolite to show or proliferate these images 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:37.480 that only show reality. It really feels like people are 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:42.480 only outraged when they consider a life grievable, which takes 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:45.320 us to this whole topic. It brings us back to 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:49.600 the question of whose lives are regarded as mournable, as grievable, 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:53.400 and whose lives are regarded as worthy of protection, whose 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:56.800 lives are regarded as belonging to subjects with rights that 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:00.920 should be honored. This ties in direct to the idea 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:04.400 of how effect or emotion is regulated and what we 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:08.240 mean by the regulation of emotion at all. Butler references 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:11.960 the anthropologist Talal Assad, who wrote a book about suicide bombing. 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:15.600 In this book, the first question he poses is why 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:18.520 do we feel horror and moral repulsion in the face 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:21.520 of suicide bombing when we do not always feel the 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:25.600 same way in the face of state sponsored violence. He 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:27.920 asks this question not in order to say that these 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:31.600 forms of violence are the same or equatable, or even 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:33.480 to say that we ought to feel the same moral 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:37.720 outrage in relation to both. But Asad finds it curious, 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:41.800 as does Butler, that our moral responses, responses that first 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:46.040 take form as effect, are tacitly regulated by certain kinds 0:15:46.080 --> 0:15:50.480 of interpretive frameworks. His thesis is that we feel more 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.720 horror and moral revulsion in the face of lives lost 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:59.240 under certain conditions than under certain others. Asad explains that, 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:02.440 for instance, if someone kills or is killed in war, 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:06.240 and the war is state sponsored, and we invest the 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:11.720 state with legitimacy, then we consider the death lamentable, sad, unfortunate, 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:16.720 but ultimately not radically unjust. And yet if the violence 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:20.880 is perpetrated by insurgency groups regarded as illegitimate, that our 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:26.480 emotion invariably changes, or so ASAD assumes. Asad is saying 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:30.080 something here that is really important about how the politics 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:35.520 of moral responsiveness really feed into public perception. That what 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:38.880 we feel is in part conditioned by how we interpret 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:42.160 the world around us, that how we interpret what we 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:46.600 feel actually can and does alter the feeling itself. If 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:50.080 we can accept our emotion could be affected and structured 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.880 by things we do not fully understand, can this help 0:16:53.960 --> 0:16:56.640 us understand why it is that we might feel horror 0:16:56.680 --> 0:16:59.800 in the face of certain losses, but in difference or 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:03.680 even righteousness in the light of others. Conditions of war 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:08.880 bring something really interesting here, this feeling of heightened nationalism. 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:12.400 In this feeling of heightened nationalism, it's as though our 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:16.760 existence is bound with others with whom we find some 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:20.240 kind of national affinity for who are recognizable to us 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:24.600 and who can conform to certain culturally specific notions about 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:28.879 what the culturally recognizable human is. And sure, maybe some 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:31.000 of you are like, well, this is really obvious. Of course, 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:33.280 some people care more about people who look like them 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:36.760 or about things that directly affect them. But what I'm 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:40.800 arguing is that I can't accept that as reality. I 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:45.040 don't think we should accept humans as by default callous. 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:48.320 There's no way change happens that way. I think we 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:52.480 have to question why we unconsciously are more outraged by 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:55.480 certain losses than others, or why the public is this 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:58.800 way even if you are not. Oh, that's a lot 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:00.760 of stuff, it's a lot of information. Let's take our 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:03.199 second break. We can just marinate with all of that, 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:18.439 and uh, we'll be right back to wrap us up. Okay, 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:23.000 we're back. So we discussed the differentiation of the population 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:26.560 of the world into grievable and unagrievable lives, and now 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:29.400 we are going to differentiate between the populations on whom 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:33.640 your life and existence depend on, and those populations represent 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:36.840 a direct threat to your life in existence. This is 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:39.600 a concept that really struck me as something we don't 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:42.879 even give a second thought to that when a population 0:18:43.080 --> 0:18:46.359 appears as a direct threat to your life, they do 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:50.200 not appear as lives, but as a threat to life. 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:53.919 Butler asks us to consider how this is shown with 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:58.320 how the world views and interprets Islam. Islam is portrayed 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:01.520 and seen by our media, whether it's implicit or explicit 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:05.960 as barbaric or pre modern as not having yet conformed 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:08.919 to the norms that make the human recognizable to the West, 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:12.800 to the American. So those who Americans kill by following 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:16.320 this line of thought are not quite human. They are 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:19.439 not quite alive, which means that we do not feel 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:22.840 the same horror and outrage over their loss of life 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:26.240 as we do the loss of life that bear national 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:30.320 or religious similarity to our own. And again, this isn't 0:19:30.359 --> 0:19:33.400 a novel concept. In simple terms, it can be whittled 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:36.080 down to the reality that most people only care about 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.119 things that directly affect them or things that happen to 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:43.119 those who look like them. And again, maybe that seems 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:46.600 like an obvious realization to make about our society. But 0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:49.360 what I'm asking you to do is not just accept 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:53.080 this as part of the human condition and to question 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:56.119 why it is like that in the first place. True 0:19:56.359 --> 0:19:59.919 deep understanding of ourselves and of our humanity is to 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:04.440 dependent on us excavating ugly truths about ourselves and humanity 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:08.080 that we are not even maybe aware of. I think 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:10.919 this is something that bothers me about how Israel's narrative 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:15.400 or desion, this narrative of the conception of Israel almost 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:18.639 makes them seem sinless, they had done nothing wrong. The 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:22.440 Arabs or barbarians that didn't leave them alone. The same 0:20:22.480 --> 0:20:25.600 can be said about how American history books talked about 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:29.879 Columbus and the Native American people here. Usually history is 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:32.600 written by those who want to appear in a better light, 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:36.879 and by default I feel like this makes them sinless 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:42.440 and pure and can do no wrong. But again, better 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:47.280 understanding of humanity means accepting that sometimes it is grotesque, 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:50.240 and I think that is something we need to accept 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:54.080 and understand. I think Israeli's need to accept that the 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:57.399 Nekba happened in order to move on from it. Things 0:20:57.440 --> 0:20:59.600 like that is what I'm thinking about when I read 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:04.000 about this stuff. But anyways, tallal Asad is wondering why 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:08.120 modes of death dealing are apprehended differently, Why we object 0:21:08.200 --> 0:21:10.840 to the deaths that are caused by suicide bombing more 0:21:10.880 --> 0:21:14.160 forcefully and with greater moral outrage than we do those 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:17.840 deaths that are caused by aerial bombings. And then Butler 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.520 takes this back to how we differentiate populations, how some 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:24.960 are considered from the start very much alive and others 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:29.040 more questionably alive or as living figures of the threat 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:33.640 to life. Perhaps they're even regarded as quote socially dead, 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:37.639 which is the term that Jamaican American historian and sociologist 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:41.640 Orlando Patterson developed to describe the status of the slave 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:46.359 war relies on and perpetuates a way of dividing lives 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:50.080 into those who are worth defending, valuing, and grieving when 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:53.120 they are lost, and those that are not quite lives, 0:21:53.480 --> 0:21:57.800 not quite valuable, recognizable, or mournable. And it should come 0:21:57.800 --> 0:22:00.800 as no surprise that the death of ungrien fable lives 0:22:01.080 --> 0:22:03.960 would cause deep outrage on the part of those who 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:07.680 understand and are seeing that their lives are not considered 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:10.679 to be lives in any meaningful sense of the word 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:14.639 in this world. Butler explains that although the logic of 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:18.720 self defense portrays such populations as threats to life as 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:22.840 we know it, they are themselves living populations with whom 0:22:22.960 --> 0:22:28.880 our cohabitation presupposes a certain interdependency among us. What does 0:22:28.920 --> 0:22:34.600 that mean, Well, it's about how interdependency is interpreted and executed, 0:22:34.840 --> 0:22:38.879 and how it has concrete implications for who survives, who thrives, 0:22:38.960 --> 0:22:42.000 who barely makes it, and who is eliminated or left 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:46.520 to die. Butler writes, I want to insist on this 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:51.119 interdependency precisely because when nations such as the US or 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:55.320 Israel argue that their survival is served by war, a 0:22:55.359 --> 0:22:59.399 systematic error is committed. This is because war seeks to 0:22:59.440 --> 0:23:02.800 deny the ongoing in irrefutable ways in which we are 0:23:02.840 --> 0:23:06.280 all subject to one another, vulnerable to destruction by the other, 0:23:06.720 --> 0:23:10.920 and in need of protection through multilateral and global agreements 0:23:11.200 --> 0:23:15.639 based on the recognition of a shared precariousness. The reason 0:23:15.680 --> 0:23:18.880 I am not free to destroy another, and indeed why 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:22.439 nations are not finally free to destroy one another, is 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:26.400 not only because it will lead to further destructive consequences. 0:23:26.880 --> 0:23:30.600 That is doubtless true. But what may be finally more 0:23:30.680 --> 0:23:33.800 true is that the subject I am is bound to 0:23:33.840 --> 0:23:36.879 the subject I am not, That we each have the 0:23:36.960 --> 0:23:40.560 power to destroy and to be destroyed, and that we 0:23:40.600 --> 0:23:43.439 are bound to one another in this power and in 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:48.640 this precariousness. In this sense, we are all precarious lives. 0:23:49.560 --> 0:23:55.320 That's essentially the takeaway that I got from the article 0:23:55.359 --> 0:23:57.359 as a whole, or this blog post as a whole, 0:23:58.440 --> 0:24:01.600 kind of just unifying us into the fact that we're 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:06.280 all the same and our divisions are truly man made. 0:24:06.800 --> 0:24:10.040 Whether it's about grievable lives and ungrievable lives, or just 0:24:10.080 --> 0:24:13.960 this concept of grievability in general, I think it's worth examining. 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:17.159 I think it's worth examining how now in real time 0:24:17.400 --> 0:24:22.200 we're seeing how certain people value lives over others. This 0:24:22.280 --> 0:24:24.840 is across the board. I'm not just talking about one 0:24:24.880 --> 0:24:29.560 group of people. Grievable lives I think are this concept 0:24:29.720 --> 0:24:35.520 for me, and tying grief intrinsically to life is essential 0:24:35.560 --> 0:24:38.960 to understanding why it is life is valuable at all. 0:24:39.040 --> 0:24:41.840 It's because it can be lost. And if life isn't 0:24:41.880 --> 0:24:44.200 valuable to begin with, if that life that you're looking 0:24:44.200 --> 0:24:46.600 at isn't valuable to begin with, you won't grieve it. 0:24:47.400 --> 0:24:49.760 And I think this also can go back to how 0:24:49.840 --> 0:24:53.640 we're seeing really dehumanizing language being used to specifically right 0:24:53.640 --> 0:24:57.399 now describe Palestinians or Arabs or Muslims. This all leads 0:24:57.440 --> 0:25:01.439 to dehumanizing a group of people to make them seem 0:25:01.960 --> 0:25:06.520 inhuman and in a way unalive. So with all of that, 0:25:07.320 --> 0:25:12.600 I hope this philosophical pivot was interesting to you. And yeah, 0:25:13.440 --> 0:25:20.879 until next time, you know how it goes through Palestine. 0:25:22.040 --> 0:25:24.520 It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. 0:25:24.640 --> 0:25:27.320 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 0:25:27.320 --> 0:25:29.560 cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the 0:25:29.600 --> 0:25:33.040 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 0:25:33.600 --> 0:25:35.719 You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated 0:25:35.800 --> 0:25:39.840 monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.