Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence

Writing in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Butler explores the political, discursive, and ethical climate in the United States after the attacks. Butler is concerned about both growing anti-intellectualism and censorship. It was only in 2003 that the “preemptive war” that the United States waged against Iraq after 9/11 was beginning to be criticized.

Criticism of the war was difficult for many reasons. Then-president George W. Bush proclaimed that “[e]ither you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” (2), a binary that makes it impossible to criticize both the 9/11 violence against the United States and the United States’ violent actions in waging war. It is almost impossible to question the framing of this binary.

In response to 9/11, the US government suspended civil liberties for undocumented immigrants and those suspected of violence against the United States. The US flag was presented as a symbol of solidarity with the survivors of 9/11 and with the current war, as if one could not be critical of the war and still in solidarity with the survivors of the attacks. Those opposed to this specific war or opposed to war in general were mocked, raising questions about the value of dissent in the US when it is so marginalized.

The term “acts of terror” was reserved in public discourse only for the attacks on the United States and not for any of the acts waged against other nations by the United States. The United States’ use of the term “terrorist” positioned the nation as a “victim” of violence. It is true, of course, that the United States was a “victim” of violence. There is a difference, however, between recognizing this violence and using this violence to authorize the unleashing of unmitigated violence in response.

This specific experience of violence and, more broadly, the ethical “opportunity” that arose in the experience of violence, one that the United States refused, interests Butler. There is a dominant framework for understanding violence that emerges in the experience, and this frame authorizes violence, both prohibiting questioning and functioning as a justification for violence in response to injury. Butler is interested in examining the frameworks that have enabled violence.

This “frame for understanding violence” (4) has a “narrative dimension” to it. Surrounding the 9/11 attacks, a first-person narrative sought to re-center the national self. Part of this narrative focused on the specific individuals who committed these acts, as it is easier to have an individual or specific group on which to focus than something less concrete that considers, for example, the context in which this violence occurred. American acts of violence that resulted in the killing of civilians in response to 9/11, on the other hand, were generally not covered by the American press. Journalists couched the reporting of civilian deaths in the language of a failure of technology rather than a failure of moral vision, so the “problem” was that the military did not aim its bombs correctly rather than that bombs were used in the first place. In this narrative, American violence was not considered terrorism, as Americans considered themselves only “victims” in the wake of 9/11. According to Butler, this “affective structure” of “victimhood” and crusade for “justice” must always begin with and touch on the experience of violence. The nation’s sense of self was decentered as the vulnerability of the nation was revealed, and everything that followed sought to re-center a sense of invulnerable self.

Butler’s challenge is to make meaning, responsibly and ethically, out of this decentering within the global context. The United States refused any consideration of how violence came about, as if understanding violence is tantamount to justifying it; instead, it focused on unleashing violence in response to violence. This problem was not specific to liberals or conservatives. Liberals supported the war and did not want to intellectually investigate any of the context for the attacks. Alternatively, Butler is not interested in the position that claims that the United States was entirely responsible for these acts of terrorism, as if US imperialism and violence justified these attacks. The author insists that these exonerations of the attacks are “closed explanations” (9) that still proclaim US omnipotence. This kind of thinking assumes that all originates with the US and is another narrative of US supremacy. Butler insists that there is a difference between causes and conditions. To claim that the US created conditions that bred terrorism and provided the ground for terrorism to flourish is not the same thing as arguing that the United States directly caused terrorism.

Instead, Butler wants the United States to think about how its political actions have created conditions of rage and violence in the world. To ask this question is not to exonerate those who committed these acts. Instead, to ask these questions is to consider the relation between self and environment, between acting and being acted upon, which is the space in which responsibility lies. These are where profound ethical questions emerge: People must ask what they can do within the conditions in which they have been formed and are living. Rather than refusing the questions that could be asked in this moment, the experience of suffering violence could give rise to them. Self-righteous denunciation of violence, too, eschews responsibility, as it does not participate in the transformation of the world into a better place.

Returning to the title of this chapter, one must hear beyond what is made easily available and move into a narrative that decenters the United States, refusing the assumptions of supremacy that come from both the conservative and liberal angles.