UNREST MAGAZINE

Judith Bulter’s (2004) Precarious Life, in particular the essay “The Charge of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel, and the risk of public critique,” is worthy of reflection in the wake of the flotilla crisis.  Throughout the work Butler attempts to illustrate the vulnerability we face as social creatures dependent upon one another for the maintenance of our health and safety.  Our fear of violence drives us to place a premium on safety while failing to critically investigate the very causes of violence.  Butler focuses in a number of sections on the the anti-intellectualism plaguing the public sphere in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and the essay is a response to Lawrence Summers (now Obama’s chief economic advisor) on the ease at which being charged as anti-Semitic can lobbed against those who reject Israel’s use of violence. The comments of Helen Thomas and her subsequent retirement are a not so subtle reminder of the potential costs to a person chooses to vent their frustration over this particular conflict.  Thomas’ comments were of little critical or factual value, yet they somehow garnered a more harsh response from the Whitehouse than the actual killing of nine Turkish citizens.  While the substance of her statements was surely poor, her frustration with the situation is certainly justified.  What are we to do when faced with the continued use state violence perpetrated in the name of freedom and security?
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The subject of the study of conflict is conflict, but the subject constituted through the discourse of conflict resolution is something much different. Michel Foucault provides a model for the investigation of the subject within professional-academic discourses through his investigations of mental health,[i] medicine,[ii] and criminology,[iii] but his analyses focus on dominant discourses within society. These subjects are practically universal within the societies considered. What, then, are we to do when faced with a professional-academic discourse like conflict resolution, one that is most definitely not dominant? Within the domestic area, the dominant subject relating to conflict is determined by legal discourse. In the international arena, it is bounded by power politics and realism. Luckily, Judith Butler’s analysis of the subject created by feminism in Gender Trouble[iv] is a good guide. Like conflict resolution, feminism is a subaltern discourse, one that specifically defines itself in opposition to dominant ones. Additionally, feminism, like conflict resolution, is a regulative discourse, one aimed at controlling human behavior.
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