Re: [-empyre-] Luck of the Draw

[Sarah Kanouse <kanouse@siu.edu>]

Michele, Ana, and Tina,

Thanks for what has been a thought-provoking discussion.  I began  
reading Agamben only recently and have found him challenging and very  
exciting for thinking as an artist and a human being.

Michele---While I appreciate your analysis of how being told you are  
"lucky" both fetishizes as authentic the experiences of the "unlucky"  
and devalues/silences the ways of living and voices of those  
designated "lucky," I'm concerned with how quickly you brush over how  
"things could be drastically worse."  Yes, there are some non New  
Orleanians who may mean to imply that you don't deserve your job,  
unflooded house, etc, but the statements could just as easily be read  
as an implicit and unspoken recognition that 'deserving' and  
'undeserving' are useless distinctions--that what separates the  
professional and jobless, the flooded out and the drylanders is often  
chance and above all the accident of birth.  I am curious how you  
respond to people when you feel silenced by them in this way.

Admittedly, it is different to embrace for yourself the idea that you  
are "lucky" than to be told it by others.  I remind myself every day  
how lucky I am to be (not only!) an assistant professor, not in order  
to devalue my accomplishments and certainly not out of a sense of  
gratitude to the benevolent university, but as an ethical practice.   
To put it in Agamben's terminology, I consider myself lucky in order  
to recognize the fragility and arbitrariness of the "abstractly  
recodified social-juridical identities" that separate me from others  
(assistant professor vs. disability aid recipient; homeowner vs.  
squatter; straight, white, HIV-, woman vs. black, HIV+, transgendered  
man) and from earlier versions of my 'self' (student, renter,  
arrestee, sexual harassment target, etc.).  As I understanding it,  
Agamben holds that the apprehension of the potential for these  
various "forms-of-life" within the self is what allows for the  
possibility for communication and intellectual thought that is the  
political project of forging a common form-of-life that does not  
enforce unity through the expulsion of, for instance, those who have  
been expelled from New Orleans.  In more old fashioned terms, maybe  
it's what differentiates noblesse oblige from solidarity.

I look forward to continuing conversation.

Sarah




On Jul 3, 2006, at 5:36 PM, M White wrote:

> Tina, I completely understand your feelings about not
> having the authority (and ironically) position in
> relationship to bare life that allows you to speak.
> However, I also think that we should avoid the ways
> culture (I hope that I am not contributing to this)
> likes to silence certain people--particularly those
> that dissent. Many of us have noticed a tendency among
> people from other places to tell us that we are
> "lucky." "You are lucky that your stuff/house wasn't
> flooded" and "you are lucky to have a job," which
> somehow suggests we don't deserve one. Certainly,
> things could be drastically worse but suggesting that
> people are "lucky" also erases the ways they live in
> these situations and silences them. The suggestion is
> that their luckiness prevents them from
> "authentically" speaking about the experience. Most of
> the people saying these things are in fact "luckier"
> if such distinctions were useful. I want to avoid a
> tendency that I noticed at a feminist media studies
> conference (and that I associate with the continued
> cultural devaluation of women) where women tended to
> use the dismissive term "just" when representing
> themselves: "I am just a grad student," "just an
> independent scholar," "just an assistant professor," …
> It seem to me that art production provides one way to
> think critically about the world and that such tactics
> and potential forms of resistance should not be
> underestimated.
>
> I also wonder, what happens when the silenced, bare
> life, and the tortured try to speak/write/be visible
> and no one answers? Our lack of reply might be guilt,
> disinterest, feeling "lucky," being told we are
> "lucky" and that the event does not apply to us, or
> fear of contamination but this lack of acknowledgment
> has serious consequences. I know that I have been
> unable to answer and that worries me.
>
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