Tag Archives: Martha Nussbaum

You don’t get peace by hating war: the theory of emotions

25 Apr

Some years ago I recall the Dalai Lama observing that hating war isn’t the way to find peace.

From this I took it that he meant personally entering into the territory of hatred and fear, the same emotions that fuel war, is not the most useful way to change a paradigm. I liked the Dalai Lama’s theory: that in order to effect wider change one must first start with the self. Every time we manage to overcome a negative emotion, he said, and allow it to dissipate without acting on it, we have achieved a miracle.

There’s nothing exclusive about the idea. There was a rich Greco-Roman tradition of shaping the self through commitment to self-improvement that involved, among other things, a theory of emotions and the necessity to understand them for the betterment of the self and the community. The Stoic philosopher and writer, Seneca, was an advocate of this culture of the self, later interpreted by Foucault as technologies of the self, designed to shape the subject through a set of practices that position one in critical relationship to oneself, with the goal of improvement not just for the self, but for society.

Currently, I am deep in Martha Nussbaum’s “Upheavals of Thought: the intelligence of emotions.” Nussbaum makes a powerful argument that there can be no adequate ethical theory without an adequate theory of the emotions. Emotions, far from being messy, sticky and yes, let’s not pretend otherwise, characteristically female hindrances to clear thinking, are suffused with intelligence and discernment. They are a powerful source of information, awareness and understanding.

On ANZAC Day, I feel sorrow for those who are sent to die by the State, and for those who lose the ones they love. I also feel a profound contempt for the State that slaughters its young, and the young of its enemies. I wish that what we were encouraged to remember on ANZAC Day, as well as those who died, is the vileness of war, and the tremendous responsibility we have to refrain from engagement, except in the most dire of circumstances.

However, hard as it is, I will attempt not to hate war, in the hope that any individual who manages, even for a short time, to refuse to enter the energy of hate, makes her own tiny contribution to changing the world.

Join me, anyone?

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What is objectification, anyway?

7 Jun

The following are philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s criteria for objectification, that is, the act of treating a person as an object:

instrumentality: the treatment of a person as a tool for the objectifier’s purposes;

denial of autonomy: the treatment of a person as lacking in autonomy and self-determination;

inertness: the treatment of a person as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity;

fungibility: the treatment of a person as interchangeable with other objects;

violability: the treatment of a person as lacking in boundary-integrity;

ownership: the treatment of a person as something that is owned by another (can be bought or sold);

denial of subjectivity: the treatment of a person as something whose experiences and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account.

To which Professor Rae Langton, MIT, adds the following:

reduction to body: the treatment of a person as identified with their body, or body parts;

reduction to appearance: the treatment of a person primarily in terms of how they look, or how they appear to the senses;

silencing: the treatment of a person as if they are silent, lacking the capacity to speak.

The criteria all refer to the treatment of a person. From this I understand that objectification is enacted in encounters between people, when one party behaves towards the other as if she or he is a means to an end, and not a human being who is entitled to have her or his needs and feelings taken into account.

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There’s an almost constant stream of allegations of objectification through sexualisation currently being made in Western society. These are leveled by concerned citizens against much popular culture, and based largely on images of women that culture produces. These allegations presume an objectifying gaze, that is, they insist the viewer will inevitably reduce women portrayed in certain ways to objects to be used for sexual gratification, rather than seeing them as equal human beings. Clothing, facial expressions and postures are used as signifiers of objectification, as well as language.

The signifiers chosen by concerned citizens are based on a Judeo-Christian perception of the adult female body as unruly, dangerous and indecent, and requiring concealment except in specific circumstances such as marriage and other committed monogamous relationships. Clothing that reveals too much of the body’s “private” zones is regarded as transgressing moral codes, as are postures and language that imply female sexual desire, and/or stimulate male “lust.”

Here I should note that the objectification debate is heteronormative. Apparently gays and lesbians don’t objectify each other or if they do, concerned citizens don’t include this in their ambit.

To interpret the clothing, postures and movements as indecent one must first have a particular set of moral values. Otherwise the image will be attractive, unattractive or entirely uninteresting, and it will carry no moral weight.

An image may invite the objectifying gaze. The viewer may accept. However, it’s a big leap to assume that all viewers who find an image “sexy” will inevitably progress from that opinion to objectifying a woman the next time he or she is face to face with one, and will inevitably set about finding ways to use the woman as a means to an end. This assumption imbues the image with nothing less than supernatural powers, as well as denying the viewer’s autonomy and self-determination. It also denies the viewer agency. It denies the viewer’s subjectivity and it also silences the viewer by imposing another’s values on the viewer’s gaze. According to Nussbaum, these are all acts of objectification. In other words, when concerned citizens make these assumptions, they treat the viewer as less human than themselves.

An image can invite us to objectify, but it can’t cause an objectifying consciousness to develop where it previously did not exist.

The inability to perceive others as human like oneself is a symptom of several psychological disturbances, as well as immaturity. These factors are not brought about through viewing an image, and they will not be resolved by removing an image from public view.

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The argument that women choose to display their bodies in these ways holds little credence with concerned citizens. The most frequent response is that women don’t understand they’re inviting objectification through presenting their bodies to the admiring and at times desirous male gaze.  Another argument is that society (patriarchy) has so “normalised” the objectification of women that only those policing it will notice when it’s happening.

It’s something of a leap to assert that a woman is, without any awareness or agency, issuing an invitation to men to turn her into an object when she steps in front of a camera in small clothes, or plays football in lingerie. I can think of many reasons why women choose to undertake these activities dressed in these ways, and none of them are to do with the kind of compulsive masochism implied in their critics’ interpretations of their actions.

Indeed, such an attitude towards a woman could be read in Nussbaum’s criteria as treating her as if she is lacking in autonomy and self-determination, and treating her as a person lacking in agency. It also denies her subjectivity, and attempts to silence her by imposing an interpretation other than her own on her actions. In other words, the concerned citizens are engaged in objectifying her.

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It seems to me that the entire objectification movement is an attempt to impose a particular set of moral values on society. Notions of propriety, largely middle class, are disturbed for example, by the spectacle of women playing football in lingerie. This discomfort is pathologised as objectification, and extrapolated as threatening to all women and girls, who as a consequence of the LFL will be regarded as nothing more than sex objects for male gratification. While there certainly are males who act as if this is their opinion of women, the majority do not. The majority of people understand there is a difference between personal encounters, and imagery.

The charge of objectification is a serious one. It should not be trivialized to serve a moral agenda.

It seems obvious to me that the key to accepting the human right of others not to be treated as a means to an end, lies in education and not censorship. Attempting to build a society on the assumption that all its members are possessed of an objectifying consciousness and everything possible must be done to prevent them indulging that consciousness seems to me insane, and asking for trouble. Respect and value for others as equals is an acquired skill, and we depend on caregivers to instruct our young in acquisition and practice. It’s a work in progress for the human race. Concerned citizens would do better to apply themselves to encouraging and assisting this work, rather than attempting to impose a moral code that adds nothing at all to the civilizing project. An attempt that in its practice commits the very offences it claims to vehemently oppose.

         

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Revenge, or an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind

25 May

There’s probably hardly anyone who hasn’t at some time nursed the desire for revenge against someone they feel has harmed them. Feeling those desires and acting on them are very different things, but even feeling without action can have its consequences: a life consumed by unhealthy imaginings; the destructive effects of living with vengeful longings that can’t be satisfied. Being injured is sometimes only the beginning: long after the incident is over difficult emotions can continue to disturb a victim/survivor’s equilibrium.

In such circumstances an injured party can find themselves confronted by what American academic and philosopher Judith Butler calls “the moral predicament that emerges as a consequence of being injured.”

This moral predicament is comprised of the natural desire for retribution, and the conflicting need to avoid exchanging the role of victim for that of perpetrator by acting on that retributive desire.  As Butler observes, the desire for retribution can be overwhelming, and thoroughly understandable, however, as the Mahatma also observed, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Another way of dealing with the consequences of harm must be found if a cycle of retributive injury is to be broken, on a personal and political level.

To accomplish revenge the victim has no choice but to view the perpetrator as a means to an end, the end in this case being the satisfaction and gratification of the victim’s desire for revenge. This morally dubious reduction of a human being to merely a means to an end is unfortunately what has allowed the original injury to be inflicted. What is gained, then, by further dehumanization?

Butler’s moral predicament is the conflict and tension between the desire for commensurate retribution on the one hand, and the moral need not to become a perpetrator of injury on the other. If you take revenge, are you any better than the one who’s harmed you? Are you morally worse because you’ve chosen to return injury with injury, when you had the opportunity to end the cycle of violence into which you’ve unwittingly been drawn by the actions of another?

Breaking a cycle of violence, personally and politically, is probably another of the great moral challenges of our time. We need a secular framework for this challenge, one that is embodied in the human for those of us unwilling to leave it in the hands of an imagined divine. The Christian advice to “turn the other cheek” has for me anyway, undertones of masochism: I don’t see how offering an abuser the opportunity to abuse me again is helping anyone.

It’s more difficult, as philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum and Emmanuel Levinas have observed, to inflict injury on the other if we recognize the common vulnerability and humanity we share as embodied beings, rather than seeing a stereotype. Once we see the enemy as human it’s harder to deliberately hurt them. This is what competent propagandists know – showing the human face of the enemy doesn’t encourage violence against them. The enemy has to be dehumanized. The act of dehumanization is always immoral, as it requires reducing the other to what we want them to be, and ignoring the complexity of what they are. It’s always a failure of the imagination, worse, perhaps, dehumanization demands that we turn away from imagination, that we consciously don’t allow the stereotype to be fully human in our imagination.

Combatants trained to perceive the enemy as less than human often find it difficult to see any one, even those they love, as fully human. This is a contributing factor to stress suffered by those who’ve fought a war, and their families.

There are also people who are extremely adept at separating others into human and less than human categories: usually those with whom they can make a cultural and societal identification are regarded as real. Those of different appearance and from other cultures are perceived as less than real, and therefore easier to hurt.

Butler’s moral predicament reveals itself to be complex and challenging for a victim. As well as being harmed in the first place, the victim now has these ethical and moral matters to consider if an on-going cycle of violence is to be avoided.

The urge to act and the urge to refrain from acting create a disturbing conflict. This tension creates a site of great intensity. Butler calls this site “the region of the un-willed.”  Injury has been done to me against my will and as a result I’ve been thrust into the “region of the un-willed.” But from this traumatic and unpromising site Butler argues that what she calls “…a model of ethical capaciousness…” can emerge. This ethical capaciousness, she continues: “…understands the pull of the claim, and resists the pull at the same time, providing a certain ambivalent gesture as the action of ethics itself.”

This “gesture of ethics itself” I understand to mean the capacity to simultaneously hold within the mind two widely diverse impulses, without giving in to either. This creates in most people a sense of discomfort and anxiety from which one seeks the relief of coming to a decision, one way or the other. On the one hand we are experiencing the suffering that comes as a consequence of being harmed, and on the other, we are experiencing the desire to avenge ourselves, compounded by the reluctance to become a perpetrator, or as some people put it, an unwillingness to sink to the level of our attacker.

Butler’s “ethical capaciousness” is the ability to resist the desire to escape anxiety through decision, and instead to tolerate the discomfort of ambivalence until the ethical decision to refrain from revenge can be taken.

The experience of injury is always traumatic to some degree. It’s an experience that catapults one out of the everyday, an experience that ruptures the every day, breaking boundaries that have, up to the point of the trauma, been assumed to be inviolable, if indeed they have ever considered at all. In serious trauma, people often describe a sense of suddenly becoming different, accompanied by a sense of loss of the self they knew prior to the injury. Even a sense of being diminished by what has happened to us: the ignominy of being made a victim. This is the case whether the injury is physical, emotional or both. A normal reaction to such loss and humiliation is anger, and the wish to punish those who are responsible.

Society sometimes offers retribution in the form of the law. Often it doesn’t, or what it does offer feels inadequate compensation for the suffering.

Butler suggests that “…it may be that the very way we respond to injury offers the chance we have to become human.” That is, it is in the region of the un-willed harm that we suffer that we might discover our humanity. Perhaps our humanity resides in how we resolve the moral predicament that faces us as a consequence of being injured. Perhaps in discovering the ethical capaciousness that allows us to refuse to become retributive perpetrators, we make an ethical choice that contributes to a better world.

It wasn’t uncommon for those who suffered injury or lost loved ones through the events of 9/11, and the Bali bombing, to say when interviewed that they did not wish to take revenge against the perpetrators, that the horror must stop. They wanted them brought to justice through the systems that are available, but they had no interest in retributive actions. Perhaps in making this choice they validated Butler’s theory that the experience of injury can indeed catapult one into an entirely other level of consciousness from which a new ethical capaciousness may emerge.

This isn’t to recommend trauma. It’s to observe that in our current evolution, trauma would seem to be the prime entry point into an intensified ethical consciousness, one that is desperately needed in the world, personally and politically. It seems that collectively we daily become less and less capable of acknowledging the humanity of those who are unlike us, and those we feel or fear are hurting us. We become more isolationist and insular.

Just reading the immense amount of emotional material generated by the arrival of asylum seekers in boats, for example, is enough to alarm anybody who wants ethical and moral considerations to be included in our debates. Because someone allegedly “jumps a queue” are they less human than the rest of us? It’s as if in “jumping the queue” boat arrivals have committed a grave offence against us, and our subsequent treatment of them is our retribution.

The focus of the asylum seeker debate is unsatisfactory and dominated by those who deny the boat arrivals’ humanity. The asylum seekers are reduced to a set of stereotypes that occlude their human complexity. In itself, this is morally and ethically unacceptable, yet the debate is almost entirely built on this denial, and those who want to introduce an ethical dimension are derided and mocked. When did we cease to care about the ethics of our actions?

I imagine a time when our first consideration will be the humanity of the other. People will always have to be punished for offences against others, but if we first acknowledge that we’re punishing human beings who are of equal value, then the form the punishments take will be useful and possibly redemptive.

Butler’s identification of the moral predicament we face as a consequence of being injured is like a wake up call. How can we continue to treat others so badly, in our own families and in the wider world?

“Peace must be my peace, in a relation that starts from an I and goes to the other, in desire and goodness…” writes Levinas. From this I understand that peace begins in the individual human heart and from that heart moves into the wider world. This seems to be a very slow learning process. Just when I’ve let go of one lot of uncaring impulses, another lot turn up. It’s a slog, but what else is there to do? Go out and blind everybody?

Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself. The Spinoza Lectures; Precarious Life: the Powers of Mourning and Violence.

 

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