As far as The Coming Community is concerned, I completley empathize with Grant – Agamben’s got my head spinning as well!  Nevertheless, I will take a stab at the interesting passage that Karen posted regarding the “advertising footage.” Reading that passage instantly made me think of those slick, shiny, sexy car commercials where a gorgeous,  formally dressed couple is coming out of a fancy party. A a classic, hard driving, rock n’ roll tune is playing in the background ( The Who comes to mind), and they get in the car, with that confident,   satisfied “perfect world” look on their faces. Then they drive away fast – happy shine people, in a brand new fast & nimble car.  Huh?  The point is that the car (advertised poduct)  becomes almost  beside the point; the affluent, handsome, happy (read: vacuous) couple’s lifestyle is what is for sale here, and unfortunately, this is a “perfect” identity which cannot be purchased, but one that everyone wants.   If I am not on the wrong track here, this is exactly the identity that both Agamben and Tyler Durden have contempt for. Durden addresses it by tearing down the fake facade of beauty, physical perfection, and material wealth that many of the “petty bourgeois” have invested in, and Agamben addresses it – I think – by exposing that fact that it is a manufactured identity, that is not really there. In essence,  what he is saying is that we need to refocus our “yearnings to belong” away from identities that are tied in to “product identification” and look for a identities that are tied in to the natural idosyncrasies and imperfections of the real human beings. That’s it for me. Happy Holidays to you and yours .

The Coming Community and Fight Club(What the fudge?)

Alright, I can start talking about Agamben and his theories about the “Whatever Being”, “Limbo” , or “Substitution” but seriously, I am for one going to say what the fudge? Sure I can pretend to be an idealist, I can wish that the world can be a better freaking place but guess what, it would not make it the real world. Alright, first, lets all really look at Agamben’s theory about taking responsibility for the other. Now, he uses the Badaliya who are members who have taken “a vow to live substituting themselves for someone else , that is, to be Christian in the place of the others”(24.3) as an example to proof his point. Hum okay, what the fudge? Sorry but I do not want to substitute my self for the other. Lets say one day I am minding my own business and an individual felt as if it was within his or her right to rape me, lynch me, or hey kill me but somehow, someway he or she does not go through with it, should I substitute my life for that person? Should I be Christian enough to say oh I forgive you for trying to rape me, lynch me, or hey kill me and I will forfeit My soul for yours because I am putting my needs behind because I am trying to be a Christian for the both of us. I mean, who would want to substitute theirselves “to the other as he or she is in order to offer Chist hospitality in the other’s own soul, in the other’s own taking place” (24.3) to Osama Bin Landen, Van A***hole Hitler, or Bush(Both Bushes) . You have go to be the most nicest, kindest, sweetest, forgiven, and trustworthiest person in the world, and in my 22 years of live, I have not come across that person, but hey hopefully I got 60 more to go so maybe I will meet someone like that. Now, I know reading the first section of my blog, it would seem as if I am not a fan of Agamben, Not true. It should be made clear here that I am not saying that all of his theories are arsenal because he actually does brings forth some great discussions, for instance, his theory about the coming community, but what I am saying is that he is too much of an idealist and he is asking for something that is just too hard to imagine coming true.

In this utopia of his, the coming community of course, people are not who they seem to be, they are not what categories the state tries to attach them into, they are like little maggots that turns into butterflies (hint hint), and they are in the community “without presuppositions and without subjects”(64.5). Okay, lets look at America for example. In terms of the class system, we have the lower class people, the middle class people, the rich a** class people, and everyone else in between all three categories. And then, we have all kinds of race, African American, Italians, Native Americans, and more. Now, on on personal note, being an African American and being friends with other African Americans, I actually understand what Agamben is trying to push for in his community and I do support it. I wish that a community in which a company who is looking to hire an individual would focus on the individual’s abilities instead of the race of the individual, which class the individual belongs to, or which schools the individual went to. There have been some serious morons that companies have hired just because these morons had down on their resumes that they attended Yale or Harvard, what the fudge? I mean again, I can be a realist, I get it, it is who you know not what you know, but seriously, what the fudge? Now, here comes a little thing call “dualism” with Agamben’s theory about the coming community. I am just thinking at this moment, let say everyone in America suddenly became rich. I mean some how, we all woke up one morning and instead of being blind, we are all Rich, there is absolutely no poverty, no class system, nothing, we are just all rich humans living in America, yeah I call this a great disaster. Lets see, since we are freaking filthy rich, products would not worth anything really because we can all afford to buy them, money will not be necessary, government will not be necessary because hey we got money, we can do whatever we want, screw taxes, screw work, screw everything, we are all just going to be rich, in the words of two a great lyricists, Puff Daddy and Biggie Smalls, “more money more problem”. Does it suck that I have to take out a freaking loan to pay for my school tuition because I can’t cough up the bills for it, yes, but you know what, it will make graduation and the job that I will get with the degree sweeter because of the struggle.

On the topic of a “whatever being”, hmm, I am not sure if I want to be a “whatever being” or if I want to be associated with anyone who is a “whatever being”. I like knowing that I am a 100% woman. I know what you are thinking, what is she talking about now?? Well in class on Wednesday, there was a topic about being a woman and the womaness of being a woman which, honestly, I don’t get at all. This I know, if you came out of your mother’s you know what with all the female parts without any shall we say, extra gifts, then you are a woman, if you want to be a tomboy, a Cinderella, or a lawyer, hey go ahead, you are still a woman. I don;t know about yah but I like being able to differentiate between a man, a woman, a transsexual, and an everyone else in between. It does matter to me who I wake up with in the morning, I am just being honest here, I do not want to wake up with a whatever being. I do not want to wake up with a Osama Bin Landen who is pretending to be a pastor but then switches to being a con artist, No sir. I mean lets look at Tyler for a moment since he would qualify as a whatever being. Thinking about it, so is Marla, they are both whatever beings. At the begining of the novel, they both took on the roles of individuals who have been stricken with some form of cancer and who meets in groups to discuss their trails and tribulations. There is the “Testicular Cancer Support Group”, “Above and Beyond Group”, and “The Degenerative Bone Disease Group”, all of which both Marla and Tyler pretends to belong in. There is Tyler, the renaissance man, he is a movie projectionist, a waiter, a club promoter, club founder, and of course the leader of the space monkeys. His main goal in life is to cause mayhem in the society by destroying how society has been made to what it is, he pretty much wants to turn the society up side down. Now supposedly, we are to believe that he hates the consumer culture, the filthy rich a*ss peoples who cry over the must mundane crap but the dude makes soap for money. I mean he is getting rich off his Space monkey society of which he sues these space monkeys for his own gain. The revenue he gets from selling the soaps allows him to travel all over to start different fight clubs, so he is actually a hypocrite.

I have to ask, is being an individual such a bad thing? I mean, is it bad that I don’t want to be like everyone else which is kind of stupid in itself because thinking about it there is no such thing as an individual. There are 6.something billion people who reside in this fated to doom world. How does a person who claims to be uniqie, special, or a one and only when there are 6.something billion people in the world. I am damn sure that there is someone out there who eats ice cream with beans or who chooses not to vote because they believe that the government is corrupted anyways so what is the point. I guess we all just think that we are individuals and that we are unique when we arereally not . I mean seriously, lets do a poll, who likes eating ice cream with beans?

I think it was on Wednesday when a great point was brought up in class about what the fudge Agamben’s point is with his theories. My conclusion about his theories is that they are all idealistic theories. I honestly find it hard to believe that a community described in his text can ever be possible and I am not sure if I want it to come true. I like living in a world where I know what people are, what they do, what they don’t do, their characteristics, their sexes, and again, I am just saying, I feel more safe knowing that my friends are not con artist, fakers, or Osama Bin Landens of the world, can I get an Amen?

The Coming community and Fight club (my post)

    In the Coming community Agamben proposes an “ideal” community which people could enter for the first time “without presuppositions and without subjects.”(64.5) Without presuppositions this community would not be formed around normative structures such as race, gender, ethnicity or religion. In this community the identity of the individual need not be fixed but ephemeral and changing at any given time. This community in which people can come and go as whomever, whenever will then gradually shatter our false ideals of individuality and authenticity and alleviate the damage we cause in trying to be “authentic individuals.”  Agamben’s community is comprised by the whatever being. The whatever being is an individual who has succeeded in adhering to any categories of race, gender, religion etc and vacillates among many different ones.  The whatever being’s according to Agamben are the “trickster or fakes, assistants or ‘toons, they are the exemplars of the coming community.”(10.1)  They would be the ideal whatever beings because no one really knows who or what they truly are at any given time.  Agamben further avers that the state thrives and perpetuates through language and societal structures a need for fixed identities. “ For the state, therefore, what is important is never the singularity as such, but only its inclusion in some identity, whatever identity(but the possibility of the whatever itself being taken up without am identity is a threat the state cannot come to terms with)(86.7)  Fixed identities are vital to the state because without them there would be no way of controlling mass populations, creating laws, identifying certain kinds of people and worst of all it would mean an economic downfall for the state.  Without the nuclear family capitalism would fail.

            In chuck Palahniuk’s Fight club Tyler Durden exists as a whatever being.  Tyler Durden is the alter ego of our anonymous narrator who is tired of his monotonous existence as a Product recall specialist for a car company.  He is disillusioned with his life as a typical consumer, he has a perfect apartment, perfect couch, fridge, etc. which have all become a part of who he is, his identity as a consumer. From his insomnia and perhaps his inner desires to rebel against his life, Tyler Durden, his alter ego, is born.  Tyler Durden is an anarchist who believes that the consumer culture he lives in should be destroyed and the only way to begin all over and purify humanity is by starting at zero. Tyler takes on many different identities and jobs, he is caterer, film projector, and soap maker.  His contempt for society makes him commit all kinds of acts and tricks like urinating in people food, sneaking pornographic images in movies all because he wants to shatter the false ideals of authenticity that people have and expose the materialistic ties in which they are rooted.  Tyler along with the narrator create Fight club in which the body is the only element that matters.  In fight club it does not matter who you are, what your job title is you are there to fight and in that moment you are just two bodies. Fight club is representative of Agamben’s coming community; it is for all men no matter who they are.  Interstingly Fight club is also representative of Agamben’s community because by asserting the rules 1) You don’t talk about fight club 2) You don’t talk about fight club 2) When someone says stop the fight is over, Fight club is in some way defying the rules of language and the presupposition that language makes for us.  Agamben asserts that language creates categories and identities.

Tyler also creates project Mayhem which is set to destroy the city they live in and destroy the consumer culture.  Tyler creates space monkies to carry out project Mayhem and manages to eliminate their identities but his methods are erred because in essence he is creating drones that exist in Tyler’s community as zombies dressed the same to serve project Mayhem(making soap). But ultimately at the core Project Mayhem is a consumerist project of its own and it fails. Seeking to repress Tyler, the narrator commits himself to an asylum.  I believe this element of the novel is representative of Agamben’s ideal that total destruction is not necessary for change to take place.  “It is not necessary to destroy everything nor to begin a completely new world. Everything will be as it is now, just a little different.”(53.5)  By stating this claim Agamben is asserting that if we could begin to blur the concrete boundaries and restrictions of identity things could change.  This ideal is a lot more realistic than Tyler’s world destruction but like always Agamben presents us with many problems and far off solutions: a state that perpetuates identity categories for its own benefit 2) a sheep like society that thrives to be individual an authentic without actually being so which propels violence, complications, and 3) a system of language that also perpetuates categorization and set identities that disconnect us from the real world.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

 

 

 

Post on Fight Club and The Coming Comunity

In The Coming Community, Giorgio Agamben asserts his desire for community based on the “whatever being”, or those who are not tethered by fixed, static identities. One may understand the ‘whatever being” as someone who does not identify themselves with a particular community, “ in this conception, such-and-such being is reclaimed from its having this or that property, which identifies it as belonging to this or that set, to this or that class (the reds, the French, the Muslims) – and it is reclaimed not for another class nor for the simple generic absence of any belonging” (2.1-2.2). The concept of the “coming community” is then defined as the “whatever being’s” persistent state of becoming, or their constant possibility to become. There are factors that mitigate this from happening however, capitalism tends to propel a desire to find an identity through consumerism. The only way to resist being identified is by removing yourself from the “I’m” class, and enter the realm of becoming. Those that have the possibility to constantly become are those who exist in coming community. Agamben proposes that the coming community is one where “pure singularities communicate only in the empty space of the example, without being tied by any common property, by any identity. They are expropriated of all identity, so as to appropriate belonging itself… trickers or fakes, assistants or ‘toons, they are the exemplars of the coming community” (10.1). These trickers are the essence of the coming community because they lack static identity, they may change from moment to moment. In the novel, Fight Club, the consumer culture which promotes the desire to find an identity is criticized and detested. Project Mayhem exists to destroy it and create a universal non static identity for everyone. However, the practicality of the application of the coming community is tested through the ideals of Project Mayhem but ultimately is hypocritical in its beliefs and fails to meet its goal.
In Fight Club, Tyler Durden establishes both Project Mayhem and the initial project of fight club in order to sever its member’s ties with identity and the consumer culture that established their identities. The narrator in the novel feels disconnected with society and his identity within it. The allure of fight club is that identities are shattered because it does not matter who you are in fight club, all identity ceases to exist for that brief moment during a fight. “ Who guys are in fight club is not who they are in the real world. Even if you told the kid in the copy center that he had a good fight you wouldn’t be talking to the same man” (49) The physical nature of the fights allow for the members of fight club to just exist as they are, no identities, no allegiance to any community that they may belong to, in fight club, you are just a singularity that exists, and has the possibility to become. The procedure of stripping aware identity is taken a step further during project mayhem.
The members of project mayhem, or space monkeys, are all required to dress the same and shed any prior identity and just exist as a “whatever being.” “ The applicant has to arrive with the following; two black shirts, two black pair of trousers, one pair of heavy black shoes, two pair of black socks and two pair of plain underwear, etc” (127-128). This attempt at universality is misleading. The members are supposed to be unidentifiable, by in the novel there exists distinct personalities within Project Mayhem. Big Bob is clearly different than the mechanic, who in turn is different from the narrator, and undoubtably the cycle continues. Agamben acknowledges this illusion that may exist within attempts at universality and sameness, he uses the example of the dim stocks commercial. Although the dancers in the commercial appear to be synchronized, they are in fact, single entities that operate outside the community and are only an illusion. In Project Mayhem, the members are not the “whatever beings” that they strived to become because they are engaged in capitalism, which in effect, propels the very consumer culture that they desired to destroy.
The falsified goal of “Project Mayhem will force humanity to go dormant or into remission long enough for the Earth to recover” (125), that is clearly not the case. Project Mayhem is in essence capitalism itself, “ teams of Project Mayhem guys render fat all day… other teams mix the lye and cut the bars and bake the bars of soap on cookie sheets, then wrap each bar in tissue and seal it with the Paper Street Company label” (130). The fact that Project Mayhem is actually engaged in and propelling the consumer culture that inhabits the existence of the coming community. Rather than being unidentifiable, they are ultimately identified as the Paper Street Soap Company, which sells soap for twenty dollars to people seeking to establish an identity based on their luxury of using expensive soap. This hypocritical flaw in Project Mayhem is only a microcosm for a greater truth.
There will always be the desire to profit, one can say thats it is innately human, whether or not that desire is a flaw is inconsequential. I believe that the coming community of Project Mayhem failed because of this human desire, and as long as that desire exists, the coming community is incapable of being realized. Like many of Agamben’s theories, he presents a possibility with no real answer, however, in this case I believe that the solution, or method to achieve the theory is not present because it does not exist. Until human nature changes than the coming community is an impossibility, an quixotic pipe dream.

Last Post: Wednesday, Dec. 10

For tomorrow I asked you to read to page 86.7. Rather than asking you questions, as I usually do, I thought I’d copy down some key passages and ask you to comment on them, if you didn’t comment on the last post. You can comment on what you think is being said in the passage or you can suggest how the passage might relate to some of the themes of Fight Club. We’ll also be discussing them in class.

(Don’t forget to fill out a course evaluation! I posted a link in the previous post.)

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From Agamben’s The Coming Community

“But the absurdity of individual existence, inherited from the subbase of nihilism, has become in the meantime so senseless that it has lost all pathos and been transformed, brought out into the open, into an everyday exhibition: Nothing resembles the life of this new humanity more than advertising footage from which every trace of the advertised product has been wiped out. The contradiction of the petty bourgeois, however, is that they still search in the footage for the product they were cheated of, obstinately trying, against all odds, to make an identity that has become in reality absolutely improper and insignificant to them” (64.4 bold emphasis mine).

“Because if instead of continuing to search for a proper identity in the already improper and senseless form of individuality, humans were to succeed in belonging to this impropriety as such, in making of the proper being-thus not an indentity and an individual property but a singularity without identity, a common and absolutely exposed singularity–if humans could, that is, not be-thus in this or that biography, but be only the thus, their singular exteriority and their face, then they would for the first time enter into a community without suppositions and without subjects, into a communication without the incommunicable” (64.5). Hint: I think  this passage provides something close to Agamben’s thesis for this work.

“Even if we can completely distinguish a shoe from the term “shoe,”  it is still much more difficult to distinguish a shoe from its being-called-(shoe), from its being in language…. In other words, if we try to grasp a concept as such, it is fatally transformed into an object, and the price we pay is no longer being able to distinguish it from the conceived thing” (72.3).

“According to a Platonic tautology, which we are still far from understanding, the idea of a thing is the thing itself; the name. insofar as it names a thing, is nothng but the thing insofar as it is named by the name” (76.7).

Guy Debord’s theory: “Capitalism in its final form, he argued–radicalizing the Marxian analysis of the fetishistic character of commodities, which was foolishly neglected in those years–presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles, in which all that was directly lived is distanced in a representation” (78.8).

“It is clear that the spectacle is language…” (79.9).

“What hampers communication is communicability itself” (81.2).

“Only those who succeed in carrying it to completion–without allowing what reveals to remained veiled in nothingness that reveals–will be the first citizens of a community with neither presuppositions nor a state, where the nullifying and determining power of what is common will be pacified and where the Shekinah will have stopped sucking the evil milk of its own separation” (82.3).

“What could be the politics of whatever singularity, that is, of a being whose community is mediated not by any condition of belonging (being red, being Italian, being Communist) nor by the simple absence of conditions… but by belonging itself” (84.5)?

“The novelty of the coming politics is that it will no longer be a struggle for the conquest or control of the State, but a struggle between the State and the non-State (humanity), an unsurmountable disjunction between whatever singularity and the State organization” (84.5).

“What the State cannot tolerate in any way, however, is that singularities form a community without affirming an identity, that humans co-belong without any representable condition of belonging…” (85.6).

“A being radically devoid of any representable identity would be absolutely irrelevant to the State. That is what, in our culture, the hypocritical dogma of the sacredness of human life and the vacuous declaration of human rights are meant to hide” (85.6).

“Whatever singularity, which wants to appropriate belonging itself, its own being-in-language, and thus rejects all identity and every condition of belonging, is the principal enemy of the State. Wherever these singularities peacefully demonstrate their being in common there will be a Tiananmen, and sooner or later, the tanks will appear” (86.7).

Reminder

Please fill out a course evaluation at www.qc.cuny.edu/courseevaluation

You’ll need your CAMS ID and password to fill out the form.

Thanks!

For Monday, Dec. 8 and Wednesday, Dec. 10

For Monday, please read to page 50.1 in Agamben’s The Coming Community. For Wednesday, please read to 86.7.

Note: This work by Agamben is quite different from the other texts we read by him. Read each section as a separate piece, even though at the end I will ask you to think about what thread runs through all of them or what argument they make when we read them all together.

1. What is a “whatever being”? Does it relate in any way to the realization Fight Club‘s narrator makes in the closing pages?

2. How is the whatever being separated from identity ( not part of “the reds, the French, the Muslisms” (2.1))? And what has love got to do with it (either in Agamben’s text or Fight Club)?

3. How does Agamben understand limbo? Can we say that FC‘s narrator ends up in a kind of limbo at the end of the novel?

4. On page 10.1 Agamben writes, “Tricksters or fakes, assistants or ‘toons, they are the exemplars of the coming community.” Is Tyler an exemplar of this community as well? Why exactly? And what does the exemplar mean here? (This is a difficult question, I think.)

5. What is ethics for Agamben (14.3)? Why can we understand truth only in relation to non-truths?

6. In “Principium indivuations” Agamben theorizes the relationship between the singular and the common. In other words, he’s thinking about how we might understand human life beyond individual identity. Is this what Tyler does when he organizes the space monkeys?

7. In “Ease”how does Agamben describe substitution? What does this do to individual identity? Can this in anyway give us a theory to understand Tyler and the narrator’s relationship?

8. Why does Agamben argue that the “only reason why something like an ethics can exist [is] because it is clear that if humans were or had to be this or that substance, this or that destiny, no ethical experience would be possible” (42.3)? How does this reflect on FC? Why is this position not nihilism?

9. Why does Agamben draw on the advertisement for stockings? What does it demonstrate the relationship between the generic and individual? How does it connect to the body of the whatever being? And how might in connect to the bodies of the space monkeys?

10. And finally, why does Agamben argue, “Advertising and pornography, which escort the commodity to the grave like hired mourners, are the unknowing midwives of this new body of humanity” (49)? Is FC suggesting the same thing?

Butler and Coetzee

In Giving an Account of Oneself, by Judith Butler, Butler argues that our automatic response to threat and/or violence is self preservation, essentially just creating more violence. She suggests that instead of perpetuating that cycle of violence, that we stop it by trying to understand and see things through the eyes and the perspective of the other. In doing so, we are able to be sympathetic to the others situation and needs.

In Disgrace, by J. M. Coetzee, Lucy’s decision to not go to the police after being attacked and raped was due to the fact that she chose to see and understand the other. To Lucy, the hate built due to the way that blacks were treated in South Africa during apartheid was the cause her attack. She didn’t see it as a personal hate/attack on “Lucy” as a person, but instead a hate/attack on the color of her skin. Her acceptance of the attack is the exact point that Butler is trying to make. Lucy’s objective is to break down the barriers that exist in South Africa and prove that whites and blacks can live together.  

David, her father, on the other hand doesn’t see any other than himself. Like we discussed in class, on page 18 he “invites” Melanie out to lunch, making it seem as if she had a choice in the matter, when she clearly did not. Instead he has the power and is in control because of the color of his skin.

My theory is that both David and Melanie still have the mentality of apartheid. Assuming that Melanie is colored, like we spoke about in class, it makes sense that she would give in and “help” him undress her, like we saw on page 25. She clearly doesn’t want to have sex with him but he is white, he is stronger and in control, therefore she has no choice in the matter. She is weak physically but more importantly, because of the apartheid, she is weak mentally.

If we all viewed and understood the other in the way that Lucy does, I see Butler’s ideas as a way to end all violence and essentially create world peace. So why don’t we? Take 9/11 for example, we barely had any time to mourn our losses before our president had decided that we were at war. That is due, not only to the fact that we expect revenge for the acts committed towards us, but at the same time, while we are mourning, what’s to say that the other isn’t out there regrouping and preparing for the next attack as we do so? The problem then becomes, not can we understand and see the other, but can they understand and see us?

 

 

 

  

 

Grant’s Post

In Giving An Account of Oneself, Judith Butler explores the ways in which an other holds influence over all of humanity, both positively and negatively. We are shaped by the relationships of others and these bonds between us form a collectivity in society. A social ethos emerges out of this collective but can lead to violence once the ethos changes or ceases to be. When the ethos or norms  of the past refuse to erase themselves from the present, a form a ethical violence to bound to occur. The violence is needed to maintain the prior ethos through force of the  new existing social conditions. This is evident in Coetzee’s novel Disgrace in that the story takes place in the new South Africa where Apartheid has been abolished. The character of David cannot accept his loss of control and the new ethos of South Africa, while Lucy seems determined to join the new South Africa even with her exposure to brutal violence at the hands of the black majority. In order for healing and progress to
occur in South Africa, Lucy must let her rape go unpunished to stop any cycle of violence from continuing.

Butler cites Levinas and his definition of responsibility to further her point of the relationship between one another in society and the way it shapes who we are. The vulnerability one holds to another is tied to responsibility in Levinas’ terms. Responsibility is unwilled and caused by what is done to, not by, the individual. Lucy’s actions after her rape fall in line with the Levinas definition of responsibility. She is still a victim but shares in the responsibility of her attack. She recognizes the other through her attackers as they were the ones excluded from Apartheid South Africa. Their actions can perhaps be traced to the oppression they suffered for so long under the segregated country. Lucy understands herself, the “I”, through the Other. The persecutor and the persecuted share in responsibility and form an identity through this bond. Lucy takes it upon herself, even in violation of her body, to move beyond the old ethos and stop any cycle of violence. Revenge through
violence would only worsen the already uneasy race relations in South Africa. Lucy embodies Butler’s ideal persona of humanity because she refuses to return violence, even in the face of it. To retaliate with force would provide an infinite justification for violence the way Butler discusses it on page. 101.

David, unlike Lucy, cannot see past himself and view the other on equal terms. He does not seem to be a racist but does have a set of existing beliefs of his own and he will not deviate from them. His formations of thought start and end with himself in mind. Though he loves his daughter, he is unable to comprehend her passive actions after the rape or understand her point of view of the other. He symbolizes, in a way, the old South Africa and Lucy the new in her recognition of the other and her willingness to find fault on both the black and white populations in South Africa. Unfortunately for David, his unwillingness to look beyond himself costs him both a career and a sound state of mind. He becomes a sad old man by the end of the novel with no prospects for the future. He has no problem recognizing the “I’ but cannot see the other and the bond the other has to him. David displays negative narcissism as Butler explains because of his refusal of the other and the vulnerability
Butler believes we all embody. Even when David shows signs of change an humility through his compassion for animals, his negative narcissism shows. He decides not to prolong the death of the crippled dog at the end of the last chapter but, again, his thoughts end with himself in mind. David says, “Yes, I am giving him up” (220), as if the dog was ever his to begin with. He does not see an “other” in the humble action but only himself.

The New Norms of the “I” and the “Other”

In his “Problems of Moral Philosophy,” Theodor Adorno writes, “We can probably say that moral questions have always arisen when moral norms of behavior have ceased to be self-evident and unquestioned in the life of a community” (Butler 3). Judith Butler begins her book Giving an Account of Oneself with this quotation and a discussion of JM Coetzee’s Disgrace could easily begin similarly. Here it will. With the end of apartheid in South Africa, not only were laws changed, but an entire social structure changed as well for the millions of the country’s inhabitants. The wealthy white minority remained powerful and the philosophical foundation of racist feelings was not eradicated, but the implicitness of white superiority no longer had a legally-bolstered foundation. Lucy Lurie of Coetzee’s Disgrace, a poor white woman living alone in a rural, sparsely populated area mostly inhabited by blacks, could never realistically have maintained her position of superiority for long, no matter whether or not she is ever raped. She lives in an unstructured, lawless frontier, and her pseudo-chastity is only protected by the indeterminate procrastination of her aggressors, not by any controllable virtue of her own. The “moral norms of behavior” that had once existed and protected Lucy are no longer relevant. The behavioral norms were founded upon a “universality that fails to be responsive to cultural particularity and fails to undergo a reformulation of itself in response to the social and cultural conditions it includes within its scope of applicability” (Butler 6). They were not concurrent with the nature of the people it governed and so, it could not subsist, and was so subject to “critical revision” (ibid), which in Lucy’s case would take the form of violent upheaval. At best, the law would be able to arrest her assailants and punish them, but it could never truly rectify her situation thereon in which she considered herself to be “dead” (161).

Society is an interactive network of individuals, in which each functional member, according to Judith Butler, finds his- or herself to be “already implicated in a social temporality that exceeds its own capacities for narration” (8). The “I” (ibid) finds itself in a situation wherein it must interact with other “I’s” in order to be optimally productive. As mutual benefit is rarely concurrently achievable, a system of debt is thereby necessarily instituted. For the most part, the repayment of debt involves a balanced interchange of matters, be them tangible objects, various abstractions, or a combination of the two. When a fair balance is not in place, such as was the case in South Africa throughout the apartheid, debt becomes complicated. During apartheid, the whites were able to take from the blacks most of what they whimsically desired without owing anything in return. Once apartheid ended, however, the complete sense of domination ceased and the balance of power was restructured. The blacks ceased being the Levinasian persecuted “Other,” (Butler 87) subject to the gaze of the white “I’s” and became gazing “I’s” themselves. The white minority not only owed the black population a debt that could never fully be repaid, but furthermore their oppression of the black population had been a persistent transgenerational act, and the culprit was thus the faceless mass of the general white populace.

According to Lucy Lurie, her rape at the hands of three black men and her subsequent transmission of her land to Petrus, her former black worker, were her form of reparation, even though it was forced upon her. When Lucy finally discussed the rape with her father, long after its occurrence, she speculated: “what if that is the price one has to pay for staying on? … They see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live here without paying?” (158). Lucy’s rapists were allowed to bring their hate for the white race to violent fruition against her. Petrus was able to facilely claim the land he worked from Lucy with only valueless objection from Lucy’s father. Rather than admit the rape to local authorities and pursue legal action against her assailants, Lucy said nothing through it all. Lucy understood that as society was being reformed anew, she must herself “consider how [her own] self is formed” (Butler 85). As she realizes the “self” is formed through the gaze of the more powerful, dominant “Other,” she comes to terms with her new lower rung in society, and unlike her father, feels compelled to accept it. She understands that she must repress her own “I,” as the societal structure that had once implied its predominance had been revolutionized, and now her “I” will be what the gaze of Petrus and his cohorts will decide it to be.

-Jeremy Bernfeld