Ethics, Politics, and Anarcho-Punk Identifications by Edward Anthony Avery-Natale

Author:Edward Anthony Avery-Natale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

The idea Natalie is articulating here, coupled with her apparent emotion of guilt about her own privileges, was common throughout the narratives of government support. While only Natalie directly referenced Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the theme that having more things taken care of in your life could lead to more freedom to engage with radical political activity was common. This has, at times, also played out historically. For example, in the various struggles for indigenous rights, “we might say that rights can be levers of political articulation whereby a hitherto invisible or excluded constituency enters into visibility in relation to an injustice or wrong that shows a contradiction in the logic of the state structure. Rights, therefore, can be viewed as levers for hegemonic articulation in a political process whose ethical motivation is a situation of injustice” (Critchley 2012: 111). Similarly, “The armed federal guards who protected the young men and women who integrated the universities of the South preceded emotional change in the southern states. But they were a beacon of hope and a protection for the oppressed, and in this way they contributed to a gradual change of sentiments” (Nussbaum 2013: 316). In each case, we might say that government intervention, contrary to the libertarian-capitalist position, was able to precede and anticipate, even promote, changes in public emotion and public opinion. The hope here is that government welfare programs may be able to have a similar effect.

Furthermore, space again matters here. “In the broadest sense, spatial (in)justice refers to an intentional and focused emphasis on the spatial or geographical aspects of justice and injustice. . . . There is always a relevant spatial dimension to justice while at the same time all geographies have expressions of justice and injustice built into them” (Soja 2009: 2). In Natalie’s example, the geographic space of the universities and the suburbs operates as a magnificent manifestation of injustice when compared to the impoverished spaces of her clients. Similarly, Nussbaum’s description of armed federal guards also only makes sense in relation to the particular spatial and temporal contingencies of that moment.

From these inequalities, and contrary to certain Enlightenment thoughts, rights are not naturally endowed to us, but are the product of political struggle (this is the very process that Ernesto Laclau calls hegemony and to which he dedicated his radical democratic project). Rights are not simply that which we “have,” but that which we might use toward the production of a more just society. Thus, even if one opposes the institutions that grant legally enshrined rights, one may see strategic value in making use of these institutions nonetheless. Furthermore, as this process encourages greater commitments to justice and equality through hegemonic articulations of struggle, subjects may become more committed to the continued advancement of justice and freedom. In some cases, even government intervention might help to produce such advancements, as Nussbaum claims.

Often people would use such an idea to explain why America specifically did not have a stronger radical or anarchist movement when compared to places in Europe, such as Greece.

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