I believe Agamben offers us a useful tool for thinking about new and different ways of creating social movements. As Agamben writes, “Whatever singularities cannot form a societas because they do not possess any identity to vindicate nor any bond of belonging for which to seek recognition. In final instance the State can recognize any claim for identity—even that of a State identity within the State…What the State cannot tolerate in any way, however, is that the singularities form a community without affirming an identity that humans co-belong without any representable condition of belonging”(85).
Agamben is challenging us to defy the State’s way of making people intelligible through identities. Agamben suggests to us that the State can only understand humans through their classifications so the only way to create social change is to disrupt the categorizations, the fixidity of identity categories. This is much in line with radical queer politics, which attempt to organize not under essentialized identity categories (woman, gay, black etc…) but instead organize around political issues like health care and poverty. Unfortunately radical queer politics while preaching a non-identity based politics has unfortunately created a non-identity “identity” based politics, which continues to locate sexuality as a primary focus. Queer politics as it was originally conceived tended to put queer at the forefront foregoing differences within its population. I think Agamben offers us a solution to this problem through the concepts of singularity within community.
Agamben discusses singularity as “neither universal nor an individual included in a series but rather ‘singularity insofar as it is whatever singularity.’ 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”(1). In this sense singularity is something that is a part of a larger group while still maintaining a sense of individuality. This holds true for the possibilities of organizing social movements where groups made up of somewhat unique individuals gather together for political issues despite their identifications. For example having people who do not identify as necessarily feminist or women organize for reproductive rights, despite the fact they may not possess the ability or desire to reproduce at all. These groups also do not have to go about organizing in traditional means either but may instead use non-traditional methods of resistance-those methods not recognized by the State not organized protests where there are barriers and police officers lining the march/rally route. Instead it may be more beneficial to hold group dinners at someone’s house raising consciousness for reproductive rights for all people (those of color, women and men dealing with forced sterilization, comprehensive sexual education complete with access to information on birth control, informed decisions, as well as information on those questioning their normative sexuality.) Then maybe through a deliberative process the group could come to some decisions and then bring the issues to the State-all people individuals yet in a group come together to support the differences within their group all while advocating an issue.
I am open to this idea-I do think we need to be careful of identity based politics as Butler argues. They lead to the potential alienation and exclusion of people not identified with that group. As Ricki Wilchins a gender and queer theorist notes "Movements and organizations become stronger when they welcome people as members instead of allies." In this sense a movement becomes composed of people focusing on an issue together as opposed to a group which needs allies because the group is comprised of common identity excluding those who vary from it.
However, I think it is naïve to think that people will not feel some sort of bond with those people who seem to have a similar experiences and positionalities. Sometimes it is only in the groups we feel identified with that we feel "at home." Maybe this is a social and cultural construction but for people who face oppression because of their marked and marginalized bodies it doesn't seem to matter because these constructed identities connect them. Maybe it is a connection of oppression as opposed to identity and I feel this is reasonable
I think we need a balance of both kinds of activism noting the need for spaces for groups of similar conceptions of their identities yet also be open to a non-identity based politics where we come together over issues and not identities. There is space for both of these types of organizing each with a different political agenda in mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment