I spent the last weeks of election season working as a poll official in my county for early voting and election day. The days were very long - we kept the polls open for 12 hours each day, and had opening and closing procedures bookending those hours as well. As exhausting as my three-day-a-week shift was, the job was what kept me sane for the last days of a campaign season that went on far too long. Election day itself I spent still helping people vote and skipped the network-TV-sponsored horserace treatment of the results. Beyond that, however, and more importantly, the thing that really kept me from wanting to move into a hermit’s cell was observing fellow citizens take part in the democratic process. The polling place is one where we set aside differences in order to work toward the common goal of choosing our elected leaders. Now, in the days following what to some came as a shocking result, I hold on to that hope that when it really matters, we can work together even when we disagree. But it’s not easy and it requires seeking that common value worth working together for.
There are the compassionate souls who are reacting to the election by seeking to understand Trump’s supporters’ reasons for voting for him. That is difficult, necessary work, but it’s only half of the equation if we are to truly heal the now obvious divides in this country. Working toward unity requires a mutual exchange of understanding among the different sides. This cannot happen if one side is uninterested in understanding the other. What I think likely to happen is that those extending the olive branch will have it slapped out of their hands. I may be wrong about that, and I hope I am, but I do not yet see evidence that Trump voters are interested in listening to anyone else. Perhaps once they feel they’ve been heard they will be willing to return the favor. I do not, however, expect this.
In his book “Homo Sacer,” Giorgio Agamben seeks to give an account of how we, humanity as a whole, allow monstrous events to continue to happen. The key lies in the existence of Homo Sacer, the sacred/taboo person, the person who has been reduced to bare life. The people others designate as Homo Sacer are not seen as full, agentive subjects with rights to human dignity. They are mere living bodies, stripped of power and autonomy. The people put into concentration camps are paradigm examples. So too, as Agamben tells us, refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean, only to be pushed back out to sea on landing. Their killers don’t think themselves murderers, because they think themselves as having only dispatched a living thing they had no reason to respect as humans, and thus no one’s human rights were violated.
The very real fear among people who dread the Trump presidency is that while he is in power, they themselves will become rendered Homo Sacer in the eyes of the law and authority. This fear is justified; attacks and threats have already begun. There are some who doubt the veracity of the reports of the myriad incidents already being compiled. Are there some false reports, or some things blown out of proportion? Maybe. But this very refusal to believe people when they say others have done or said threatening things to them is already a start to reducing people to bare life. It is telling them that their experiences don’t matter, their thoughts don’t matter, their feelings don’t matter. Keep on erasing, and you get down to: “You don’t matter. Anything can be done to you because you are not human in my eyes.” That right there is where monstrosity begins. That right there is what will make unity impossible. You cannot have an exchange of understanding with someone who refuses to see you as fully human, because they don’t think there’s anything to understand.
I, for one, vow to fight the dystopian future looming behind the next bend by vociferously affirming the humanity of all those I meet, and I hope you will join me in that mission. It will be hard to do so when it comes to anyone who would rather see me and mine as bare life, because that requires straining against every natural impulse to do as has been done to you. But it is necessary to build community, and to build a better world than the one we fear.
No comments:
Post a Comment