feminist ethics – Page 4

in honor of my 50th post!

Yes, this is my 50th post. 36,301 words, give or take a few. Not that I am counting or anything. In honor of this very “important” occasion I want to do a series of entries on my theory of the ethics of making, being in and staying in trouble. Rather fitting since making/being in/staying in trouble is the theme of this blog, don’t you think? Okay, there is another reason why I am posting these entries now. I am presenting on this subject at the Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST) conference in September and I need to start polishing my remarks. I thought working through them on the blog might be helpful.

Initially I was planning to post the entire presentation on here–in chunks of course. But, now I am thinking it would be better to pull out some troublesome bits (as in parts that I want to flesh out/clarify)and reflect on them. But in this entry, I think I will just introduce my project. Here is the abstract for the FEAST presentation:

ABSTRACT: In the 1990 preface to Gender Trouble, Judith Butler reflects on trouble and its value, concluding “that trouble is inevitable and the task, how best to make it, what best way to be in it” (Gender Trouble, vii). With this statement, Butler introduces a central theme that continues to shape and motivate much of her work: learning how to make trouble and be in trouble are important tasks of the resisting subject. In this presentation, which comes out of a larger project on troublemaking as a virtue, I argue that Butler’s opening statement about troublemaking in Gender Trouble is not only a critical and provocative intervention into feminist politics as usual, but is an ethical gesture towards the dignity, desirability and necessity of troublemaking. This gesture, which is taken up more explicitly by Butler in Undoing Gender, points to two separate but related ethical projects involving troublemaking. The first project is concerned with making trouble and being in trouble in ways that extend and rework norms so that they make more lives possible and livable. The second project is concerned with exploring what is demanded of us as moral selves as we strive to stay in trouble. I will conclude my presentation by tentatively linking the second of those projects with my own work on troublemaking as a feminist virtue.

I am exploring the ethical possibilities of Butler’s work on troublemaking. It is exciting to see the recent interest, both by Butler and those writing about her, in connecting her work with ethics. For too long, the popular (among academics, that is) understanding of Gender Trouble is that is was not only counter but harmful to ethics/ethical projects. I remember this happening a lot in grad school. Ah, grad school…On the first day of every semester you had to go around the room and give your little spiel about what your academic interests were. Although I tried to mix it up, I usually ended up saying something about the ethical possibilities in the work of Judith Butler. One time, after giving my spiel, the professor sarcastically uttered, “good luck with that.” Oh bother. Anyway, the tide has changed and more scholars are writing and thinking about Butler and ethics. Moya Loyd writes about it. So do Samuel Chambers and Terrell Carver and Gill Jagger. Butler writes about it here, here, here, and with Catherine Mills and Fiona Jenkins here.

But, even as scholars have begun to think about ethics and Butler, their attention has frequently been on Butler’s Giving an Account of Oneself. What about Gender Trouble? Does it have anything to offer to ethics, feminist, queer or otherwise? Or is it part of a different stage in Butler’s thinking? On one hand, I can appreciate the need to turn to other texts. It is true, as Samuel Chambers and Terrell Carver suggest in their introduction to Judith Butler and Political Theory: Troubling Politics, that an overemphasis on Gender Trouble (which is often the only book that some people think Butler wrote) can obscure our understandings of Butler’s contributions to political [and ethical] thought beyond gender and gender performativity (5). However, failing to consider the ethical import of Gender Trouble could be sending the worrisome (well, at least to me) message that troublemaking/troublestaying, which is first and most directly articulated in Gender Trouble, has no ethical value. And often implied in that message is the idea that engaging in the troubling of gender is something that Butler used to promote–that is before she grew up and turned to more serious matters, like ethics and morality.

This idea that Gender Trouble and troublemaking is immature and therefore unethical raises several questions for me: 1. As Butler (and her work) has grown older, has she matured beyond Gender Trouble and troublemaking? Has she replaced her “childishness” and lack of seriousness (playfulness?) with more weighty matters–like being undone, normative violence, grief?; 2. Does one have to be “serious” and mature (that is, not young and immature) in order to engage in ethics? Can we imagine ethical visions that are not predicated on this equation of maturity + seriousness = responsible/accountable and ethical?; and 3. Is troublemaking too playful, too immature, and therefore not ethical?

In my own work, I offer a very strong “No!” to this last question. Indeed, I am devoting a huge chunk of this blog to the idea that troublemaking, as a practice and an approach to life, has much to offer to feminist and queer ethical visions/projects. And in my presentation at FEAST I argue that Butler plants the seed for her future work on troublemaking as ethical in Gender Trouble. It is my contention that Butler’s recent work on ethics is not so much a turn to ethics (and a turn away from all that playful/immature performativity of her past) but a return to or maybe an extension of the ethical gesture towards troublemaking/troublestaying that she first makes in the 1990 preface to Gender Trouble.

Troubling (and queering) religion: a few sources

My academic background is in religion. Before getting a PhD in Women’s Studies at Emory University, I got a MA in Theology, Ethics and Culture at the School of Theology at Claremont and a BA in Religion from Gustavus Adolphus College. While my work has shifted away from religion/religious ethics in recent years, my early training and interest in religion has persisted and managed to remain a big influence on my thinking.

In the past few years I have felt increasingly compelled to bring that early training back to the forefront in order to give some serious attention to the connections between ethics, religion, queer theory, feminism and troublemaking. And yes, contrary to popular opinion, there are connections (and not just negative ones!). You can be feminist and ethical! You can believe in a queer God! You can even make trouble and proudly label it religious activity! What, don’t believe me? Here are just a few sources that support my claims:

THE TROUBLEMAKER
I came across this song when I was randomly googling troublemaking. I’m Learning to Share focuses on Della Reese’s version of it from 1971, but Willie Nelson also sang it on his gospel album of the same name.

Warning Spoiler Alert: The song is all about a troublemaker who had long hair, no job and refused to join the army. He and his friend were rebels who went from town to town stirring up trouble. He was eventually arrested, tried and given the death penalty. At the end of the song, he is hung from a cross. Whoah…What a twist. Jesus as a troublemaker? Okay, the song is a little cheesy, but the connection between troublemaking and Jesus-as-prophet is pretty cool.

This connection is not limited to popular music and the likes of hippy-loving Willie Nelson, however. Cornel West writes about deep democracy, the Socratic tradition and the prophets (prophetic pragmatism) in Democracy Matters. Incidentally, when I presented on Judith Butler and the virtue of troublemaking at the National Women’s Studies Association conference in 2007, my dad (a religion and ethics scholar) suggested that I explore the prophet-troublemaker connection. Thanks AEP!

QUEER CHRIST: TRANSFORMING ANGER INTO HOPE
Reverend Dr. Carter Heyward gave a sermon (I originally linked to it, but the link doesn’t work anymore–as of April 29, 2012) in 2004 at the Episcopal Divinity School. Very cool. Here is her definition of queer. A queer is someone who has an “irrepressible interest in making connections between justice struggles and making these connections public. Not hiding [their] convictions under a barrel. Not remaining silent when everyone around [them] would be more comfortable if they were…” and who does so with compassion and love. For Heyward, being queer is being confrontational and compassionate. It is to embody apparent (but only apparent) contradictions, to be angry (about injustice) and yet to love all of humanity at the same time. For Heyward, to be queer in this way is to embody Christ–who holds together qualities that only appear to be contradictions (but aren’t–and that simultaneous embracing of seemingly contradictory qualities is what makes Christ queer).

note: Since this sermon doesn’t seem to be available online anymore, here’s a passage that I particularly liked:

What makes her, my mother so queer is not simply that she is supportive of her lesbian daughter and my friends and communities; and not simply that she is at strong odds with the prevailing political culture in both the world and church in which she has grown old. What makes my mother queer is her irrepressible interest in making connections among justice struggles and making these connections public! Not hiding her convictions under a barrel. Not remaining silent when everyone around her would be more comfortable if she were sometimes a little less in their face about Bush, the war, and gay marriage. At the same time, you will never meet a gentler, kinder, more compassionate soul than my mother Mary Ann Carter Heyward.

Is she in your face about injustice? Yes.

Is she open to you and eager to know what really makes you tick? Yes.

Is she angry about the injustices we join in and perpetuate? Yes.

Is she compassionate and forgiving toward everyone she has met who has hurt her or done her wrong? Yes.

The queerest thing of all about my mother is that she is such a bundle of apparent contradictions. She is confrontational and compassionate, angry and gentle, representing for me One through whom we meet God face to face. There are many people, including many right here in this chapel, who embody Christ for me in stunning ways. But there is no one through whom I catch stronger intimations and glimpses of the Wisdom of God, Christ herself, than my own queer mother.

This is because the most dynamic dimension of Queerness – and Christ – is the holding together of qualities that only appear to be contradictions, qualities that are not in fact contradictory or oppositional, qualities that taken together are, well, simply “queer.” Each brings out something in the other, revealing it more fully for what it is: humanity and divinity, anger and compassion, the struggle for life and the letting go of it, a capacity to wrestle fiercely against the enemies of justice and to love them concretely, which means trying to do them no harm, trying not to humiliate them, respecting them as brothers and sisters, whether or not they recognize us. Like the humanity and divinity we meet in Jesus and — through him as our spiritual lens — in one another, we also can experience anger and compassion, anger and gentleness, anger and forgiveness, anger and hope not as contradictory feelings but rather as mutually interactive dynamics of human being and divine being that work together in us and make us whole.

THE QUEER GOD
Marcella Althaus-Reid wrote this book in 2003. I wanted to use it, or at least parts of it, in my Feminist and Queer Explorations in Troublemaking class this past spring, but I couldn’t find any room for it. I am still trying to figure how to squeeze in a chapter or two in Queering Theory this fall. Is this book accessible for non-theology, non-religion students? I am not sure. I need to read it more closely to make sure. Here is part of the blurb on the back of the book:

The Queer God introduces a new theology from the margins of sexual deviance and economic exclusion. …Inspired by the transgressive spaces of Latin American spirituality, where the experiences of slum children merge with Queer interpretations of grace and holiness, The Queer God seeks to liberate god from the closet of traditional Christian thought, and to embrace God’s part in the lives of gays, lesbians and the poor.

The first chapter of this book that I want to read is “Chapter 8. Demonology: Embodying Rebellious Spirits.” Seems like I might find some interesting connections with troublemaking here.

BODILY CITATIONS: RELIGION AND JUDITH BUTLER
This collection edited by Ellen T. Armour and Susan M. St.Ville was published in 2006 and offers a wide range of essays by scholars in biblical studies, ethics, theology and ritual studies on the religious significance of Judith Butler’s work. I am particularly interested in Claudia Schippert’s essay, “Turning on/To Ethics.” Schippert wrote another essay (in 1998) that I have just started entitled, “Too Much Trouble? Negotiating Feminist and Queer Approaches to Religion.” I hope to write more on this essay later. [In the process of looking up links for this edited collection, I found this queer theology bibliography. Must check some of these sources out later.]

TAKING CARE = STAYING IN TROUBLE?

I happened to be looking up trouble on dictionary.com and found this connection between trouble and care:

CARE DEFINITIONS
3. To take care, pains, trouble (to do something) implies watchful, conscientious effort to do something exactly right. To take care implies the performance of one particular detail: She took care to close the cover before striking the match. To take pains suggests a sustained carefulness, an effort to see that nothing is overlooked but that every small detail receives attention: to take pains with fine embroidery. To take trouble implies an effort that requires a considerable amount of activity and exertion: to take the trouble to make suitable arrangements.

TROUBLE SYNONYMS
1. concern, upset, confuse. 4. pester, plague, fret, torment, hector, harass, badger. 12. concern, grief, agitation, care, suffering. 14. See CARE 15. trial, tribulation, affliction, misfortune.

So, taking care = being vigilant/watchful = persistent (critical) attention = making an extra effort = not being complacent = staying in trouble.

I like this connection because it enables us to think about troublemaking as something other than disruptive and destructive; it is a form of care. For me, this connection is key for thinking about the ethical implications and import of making/being in/staying in trouble.

Word Count: 193 words

Horton the caring troublemaking elephant who not only makes trouble but stays in it

So, STA used to be surprised by the crazy connections I would make between philosophers, critical theorists and popular TV and movies or how I could interpret and express my own everyday experiences through the words and theories of Judith Butler. Not anymore. For anyone else reading this blog, I offer this entry as a good example of how my brain works. In this entry, I contrast an ethics of troublemaking (inspired by Judith Butler) with a feminist ethics of care, sprinkle in some Michel Foucault (and his idea of the caring and curious masked philosopher) and apply it to Dr. Seuss and Horton Hears a Who. Crazy? Perhaps. Unique? Always. Without further ado, I bring you Horton as the caring troublemaker…

If you can’t see it, hear it, or feel it, it doesn’t exist. Our way of life is under attack. And whose leading that attack? HORTON! Are we going to let troublemakers like Horton poison the minds of our children? When Horton tells our children about worlds beyond the jungle he makes them question authority which leads to defiance which leads to ANARCHY!

These are the words of the Sour Kangaroo (but only in the movie–they aren’t in the book) as she implores the other animals in the jungle of Nool to help her stop Horton. She condemns him as a troublemaker who is out to destroy their way of life and to poison the minds of their children. But what is it about his actions that causes trouble for her? Why is she so angry and frightened and threatened by him? It is not just that he thinks differently or that he sees and hears things (like tiny worlds on small specks on flowers) that others don’t. It is that he refuses to fall in line and obey the rule of their society (at least according to the Sour Kangaroo): If you can’t see it or hear it or feel it than it doesn’t exist.

Horton is condemned as a troublemaker because he makes a choice to disobey what he finds to be wrong (as inaccurate and not properly reflecting his own observations of people on the speck) and unjust. So, the troublemaking part of his action is not only (or even mostly) that he is open to other ways of thinking about the world–ways that are counter to common sense like little worlds or specks that talk, but that he refuses to deny those ways and defiantly claims their value and humanity—a person’s a person, no matter how small. Fundamental to Horton’s troublemaking is a sense of justice and attentiveness to others who he witnesses being treated unfairly and/or that are in need of care. In this sense, he makes trouble by getting into trouble (thinking about the world differently, seeing worlds on specks) and then by staying in trouble (refusing to ignore or deny those specks).

Consider a scene early in the movie (the chapter is titled, “Making Trouble”) when the Kangaroo confronts and threatens Horton. She commands him to stop treating the speck as if it had a world on it and to tell everyone else that he was making it up. If he doesn’t, she warns, he will be in for an ugly fight (and big, big trouble). So, he better hand over the flower and the speck. His reply:

No! I can’t give it to you. There are people on this speck. Granted, they’re very small people. But a person’s a person, no matter how small.

In this scene, the real trouble for Horton is that he refuses to get himself out of trouble even when doing so puts him in danger of being ostracized or worse by the other animals. He stays in trouble not because he is eager to anger the Kangaroo or because he is bored and wants to make life more interesting (or thrilling) for himself. No, he stays in trouble because the alternative is to ignore the voices of others and to let them perish. To get himself out of trouble Horton would not only have to turn his back on the Whos, but he would have to deny that they ever existed. This denial (that is, the refusal to recognize this other world) would strip the Whos of their humanity/humanness. For, how could they have humanity if they don’t even exist, if they are only figments of Horton’s imagination?

What I find interesting about Horton’s troublemaking in this story is how it is inextricably tied to his passion for justice and his openness to other worlds and ways of being/living. This suggests that troublemaking (as in, making trouble for those in power, for the status quo, for rigid rules) can be motivated by something other than rebellion, destruction, or deliquency. Troublemaking is motivated by a sense of moral responsibility towards/for others, by an ethical need to work for more just societies, and by a desire to care (for and about) the world and all of its inhabitants (especially the smallest).

Yes, I think that in this film Horton is a great example of a caring troublemaker. We can see this care in a couple of different ways. In one sense, he is giving care to the Whos on the speck–he cares about their world and he takes care to ensure that that world remains safe and viable. But, there is another sense of care happening in this story–a type of care that is not just about the attention and the help that Horton gives to the Whos and their speck of a world. This type of care is not about specific actions but about an approach/attitude to the world; this type of care refers to the quality of one’s character as someone who cares and is curious about the different possibilities of life that our worlds offer.

In “The Masked Philsopher,” Michel Foucault describes curiosity and the care it suggests:

[Curiosity] evokes ‘care’; it evokes the care one takes of what exists and what might exist; a sharpened sense of reality, but one that is never immobilized before it; a readiness to find what surrounds us strange and odd; a certain determination to throw off familiar ways of thought and to look at the same things in a different way; a passion for seizing what is happening now and what is disappearing; a lack of respect for the traditional hierarchies of what is important and fundamental.

From the beginning of the story (in the book and both versions–1970 and 2008–of the movie) Horton exhibits the qualities of curiosity-as-care. Here, let me break it down in terms of the 2008 version. First, let me offer a scene from early on in the movie. Horton is trying to explain to the Sour Kangaroo why he is talking to a speck of dust on a flower:

Kangaroo: That’s absurd. There aren’t people that small!
Horton: Well, maybe they aren’t small. Maybe we’re big.
Kangaroo: Horton!
Horton: No, really. Think about it. What if there was someone way out there looking down on our world right now? And to them, we’re the specks.
Kangaroo: Horton! There is nothing on that speck!
Horton: But I heard.
Kangaroo: Did you, really? Ohhoho my. Then how come I don’t hear anything?
Horton: Well…hmmm…
Kangaroo: If you can’t see, hear, or feel something it doesn’t exist. And believing in tiny, imaginary people is just not something we do or tolerate here in the jungle of Nool.

Foucault: it evokes the care one takes of what exists and what might exist; a sharpened sense of reality, but one that is never immobilized before it
Horton: Horton is interested in and attentive to the world around him and open to imagining new possibilities. His sharpened (and heightened) sense of reality enables him to hear the tiny cry coming from a small speck floating by as he is bathing in the stream. Instead of not hearing (or more common, hearing but refusing to listen), Horton listens and responds to the voice that signals the possibility of another world beyond his, a world that seems unimaginable within his world (with its empirical, physical and “natural” laws). He is not threatened or even incredulous at the possibility of a tiny world on a speck; it does not immobilize him. Instead it sparks his curiosity and his imagination about what lies beyond his own observations.

Foucault: a readiness to find what surrounds us strange and odd
Horton: Horton is ready and willing to be open to how our surroundings, such as flowers, trees, specks of dust, may not be what they appear to be. They may be strange and strangers to us (we don’t really know them or what they are).

Foucault: a certain determination to throw off familiar ways of thought and to look at the same things in a different way
Horton: Once he hears the voice and believes there that there is a small person on the speck, he is committed to never look at flowers and dust (or the world, for that matter) the same way again. He is committed to staying open to the possibility of other worlds (ones that are smaller and bigger than us).

Foucault: a passion for seizing what is happening now and what is disappearing
Horton: [a stretch perhaps?] Horton is unwilling to let the moment pass and the speck of dust and its inhabitants to perish. When he hears the small voice crying for help, he acts immediately.

Foucault: a lack of respect for the traditional hierarchies of what is important and fundamental.
Horton: Horton refuses to honor the jungle of Nool rule (at least as created and enforced by the Sour Kangaroo): If it you can’t see, hear, or feel it then it doesn’t exist. He steadfastly stands behind his (empirically unproven) claim that there are people on the speck of dust.

Now, this kind of care–the care for remaining open and interested/attentive to the world in its different permutations–is not often recognized as such. Maybe that is because care-as-curiosity is hardly ever about being careful. It is exhausting, dangerous and quite frequently gets us into trouble (and demands that we stay in trouble by being resistant to rigid rules and ready for new possibilities). But, what if we imagined the type of troublemaking and troublestaying that Horton is doing as an ethics of care? Then, could we begin to value (and honor and promote) troublemaking?

Feistiness and Feminist Ethics

STA has warned me that I need to take a break from the Brady Bunch and I agree. After all, this is not the Brady Bunch blog.

A couple of months ago, I was re-reading a great collection by Claudia Card called Feminist Ethics. In her introductory essay Claudia Card writes about feminist ethics and the virtue of feistiness. She argues that we need to stop being polite (and start getting real…arghh! Curse you MTV’s Real World). We need to cultivate insubordination as a primary practice in our ethical reflections and constructions. We need to be willing to quarrel with others instead of backing down. We need to constantly challenge the ways that ethical frameworks fix us into limited visions of what is proper or improper behavior.

I am intrigued by Card’s suggestions that the virtue that describes all of this rebellious behavior is feistiness. But I wonder, what are the differences between feistiness and troublemaking? Is feistiness to feminist as troublemaking is to queer? When I think of feistiness, my vision is (almost?) always gendered female. Actually, it is very specific: I think of someone I know — a fiery farm girl who has a glimmer in her eye and is always up for an argument. The problem is that I whenever I think of her I also always remember how her feistiness is perpetually kept in check through her limited and conservative roles as mother and wife. Maybe feisty is what happens to troublemaking girls when they grow up? Their seemingly limitless appetite for destruction (someone please stop me!) is tamed as they grow older and more proper and “responsible.” Is this what feistiness is? A muted form of troublemaking? When we (girls) grow up do we trade in trouble for spiritedness?

I want to believe that troublemaking is something that we should never grow out of. We should be able to grow older and wiser, more responsible and accountable and still engage in some fun and serious troublemaking. And, we should be able to do all of this without having to tone down our rebelliousness so that it fits in the more attractive and desirable form of feistiness (It does seem to me that feistiness is quite often represented not as a threatening or troubling personality trait or type of behavior, but as a desirable and “sexy” one. For more evidence of this claim, check out the myspace page for this “Feisty” from the Love of Ray J). I wonder what this film, “Tomboys: Feisty Girls and Spirited Women” has to say about all of this? I will have to watch it this summer.

But, wait… Feistiness could be connected to the female/feminine in ways that aren’t completely constrained by masculine norms or traditional feminine roles. I am reminded of this great paper I just read by my friend, KCF, where she talks about (among other things) the femme identity as negotiating and playing with feminine roles not just reinforcing them. Wow. So, could femme feistiness be one specific version of troublemaking? [see this and this for more on the femme identity]. What would troublemaking in this form look like?