notes from judith butler’s force of nonviolence

The Force of Nonviolence An Ethico-Political Bind The Ethical in the Political by Judith Butler (z-lib.org)

* Is there a mark-able and viable interval between Anti-Violence and Nonviolence? (i know anti-violence isn’t mentioned afaik – however, the other side of violence, the Anti, may have something to say re violence and its negations?

* do violence negation moves require humans?
(we have the gods, spirits, certain apes and monkeys as well as birds – but rocks and rivers’ waterfalls.)
— in case we privilege the visibly active deliverer of forceful acts as something to do with Violence – are we engaged in some kind of violating activities to deliver the privilege?

* The lingo oriented discussion, ie what is meant and how such meanings
perform in relation to
and with violence –
does it not miss the fact that we can define violence – and possibly its negations – from the direction and perspective of bodies? (ie epigenetics)
or indeed such a suggestion misses the point that any kind of resolve
has to come via the mutable rather then some “hard evidence” that can be taken as Anti-Mutables??

* When a reality X is violent and you want to counter that realm – can that counter move be
Non-X, Un-X, or Anti-X. (with Counter in mind)

* Self defense has a prior knowledge of that self – blm and its multi cultural dimensions?

* In other words, by acting as if the use of violence
can be a means to achieve a nonviolent end, one imagines that the practice
of violence does not in the act posit violence as its own end. The technē is
undermined by the praxis, and the use of violence only makes the world
into a more violent place, by bringing more violence into the world. –
is that a curiously dualistic observation re praxis and techne?

* * * i wonder whether words fail the discussion of violence? (from jb’s call for possible new vocabularies, and the prior discussion of violence techne-praxis-just spontaneity – aka nature.)
Thats a notice to possibly orient spoken-lingo-discussion ranges, possibilities and connection to subject. Lest we get a sort of idealism of spoken lingo enforcing itself onto every subject matter?
(indeed
force and enforce?
what turns nonviolent when it’s enforced?
)

* the aesthetics of grief – traces? Grief in itself is a trace and a connection that lasts beyond one’s lifetime.
(again – epigenetics?)
(
smithson’s footprints in the spirals’ vicinity and individuality –
ie the request is dependent on numbers
)

* Grief as a force? Indeed, why question violence – can we not do full antigone and go grief?
(Causing grief, feeling grief, taking grief, etc..?)
Then, again, maybe we go into aesthetics rather than conceptions – since grief has a catastrophic sensation of some kind from a fold.
Here it might be curious to note that grief is connected with heaviness and guru which has Heavy knowledge of such and such. I
wonder if a phrase like: bring the heavies – which refer to means for doing damage onto another; can be said to offer another twist as the damage can have grief attached?
)

———————

A few thoughts re and from “Nonviolence, Grievability, and the critique of Individualism”?
I hope the following will fail to come across as an attempt to disengage from the actual text. Since hope comes easy for fools, it might still feel like avoiding the text despite my efforts – however, maybe it’s a learning process?
Indeed, it seems the processes, the way of writing coming to focus.
When stuff like Individuality comes into discussion with dividulaities, dependencies and crossed dependencies, the ideas might seem a bit re-hashed.
When stuff like Force-Fields come in context of Resistance and a conversation of equality through re-directing aggression – the ideas may sound a bit, well, almost like taken from Marshal-Arts text books and got new hashtags.
When Equality comes connected with Values rather than Qualities, it may seem a bit hauntingly wanting.
When Aggression questions come as a group oriented – states, cultures, ideologies – rather than an act, if not a practice, that can come with a breath;
one may wonder whether we begin to have a pattern here?
When There’s a discussion about Grief, Grievability after the Imaginary – is it fair to wonder how, between the lines, these may connect? Afterall, the imaginary traces an absent onto the sensible horizon, and grief traces a memory of an absent into a sensible future?

>> After pointing these seeming symmetries during the meeting, Hilan indicated that non-violence comes through absence as well, and I could not find a way to possibly connect the 3 –
Grief
Imaginary
Non-Violence
They share absence that bring them to life.
This does not mean an indication that there are Equalities in ways that values such as 1+1 come equal with 2. More like 2 apples share a connection with 2 suns in way that they are 2 and round spherical shaped. A connection, not an equation..
>>>>
>> Going back to the Non-Violence question. JB points that we get non-violence when there’s a violation, abuse that may call for a violent force in reaction. however, we make that call, the expectation, Absent through the force of making violent missing in our actions.
I wonder whether we can say, through aesthetic consideration of directions, flows, pushing and openings that non-violence comes when forces a offered a door, an exit? Non-Violence as a ViolenExit rather than Violence-expression? (I think we get the force in both compositions..)
>>>
So.. with Hilan’s point in mind.. Let’s reformulate the initial Connection between griefability and imaginary, with the non-violence added:
The non-violence traces a force of absence *through* a destroyed future, (ie force of absence, by it’s very evocation, denies/destroys the future that was otherwise anticipated?)
the imaginary traces an absence *onto* the sensible horizon, and
grief traces a memory of absence *into* a sensible future?
The
moves seem connected as the trace into a future* – they move differently ofcourse, one by Through, the other by Onto and another by Into. All three move though directly into a future that comes traced, comes into our horizon, through taking something away, by challenging something evident:
Grief challenges the fact that a mourned person will not mourn for you – nor hear you. Grief then offers a connection with the seemingly impossible – the gone. (be it death, lost opportunity, or some other clear ending?) A connection of reassurance for co-independancy among a grieving group at the very least, or even an individual who could, through the very challenge of a memory’s absent-ability – get reminded of hope, a future that overcomes present hardships?
Imaginary comes despite a reality of forces that deny it’s plausibility – how dare you, when living all your life through a reality of commodification, of turning everything you may touch – your friends, family, water, air, food, travel, and so on – how dare you perceive a reality that comes despite all commodification’s best efforts?
Non-Violence comes despite an instinctive violent reaction to harm done to us. Again, I hope it is clear that the interjection into the expected move, alters the future by way of absence..
(ie there are other ways to alter future..)

*
notice how fascistic moves always detour from a presence “lost past” through to an imaginary past into a mirage-somatic future. (Hence it seems violence is required to prop up such shaky structures..)
**

——-
However, here, these points, the noticed connections that might be grieved, might also fail to live as the focus of the text?

I think perhaps the focus is in something less traditional. Not the ideas, their strength and capturing thrusts, nor the infinite and prophetic nature of the theory being weaved.
I think – perhaps wrongly, as its a thought and based on this chapter only – that the real attempt here is to simply Write in a way that IS a force of Non-Violence.
WTF??!
OK, Check the time when JB talks of abortion. I think the bit comes out since it has a certain clarity – I think XYZ, the Pro-Life think ABC, Such and such is in fact what happens – yet, as forceful as the expression of JBs thought come, they don’t abuse the forcefulness by sliding into violence over others.
Perhaps I should show other examples?

——-

chapter 2 comes hard to read directly.. I keep stalling to wonder off.
Off into the Other such as the devil. the divider supreme. The one that offers no sympathy to certain people:

The one that could get some sympathy by words only from the Stones and many other remakes and mixes. I struggled to find a version sang by a woman that speaks of the devil as a female human rather than a male human.
Here’s an exception:

However, whether male or female human – the devil, afaik, isn’t a Human. With that otherness from humanity in mind, the Sympathy ends when considering the devil themselves. Though perhaps, i am confusing Sympathy with Empathy, to go into, move into – and indeed, let the other’s knock allow the door to open?

Another way?
I find it a kind of Joy – when enjoyment need not come pleasurable – to consider something like an N period
(?) from Grief..
Grieving with a question mark. Grieving in a social cultural manner that questions the very activity since grief has an individualized tone.
We have lost many loved and loving fellow folk recently. Are we leaving them with memories from families alone?

HOW i GRIEF
FOR u CAN
NEVER     ?

WHY CONTROL ATTEMPT
RATHER      THAN
HYSTERICALLY GRIEF?

HOW TO FALL
AND FEED
WHILE 
GRIEF
ASPECT
INSPECT
BIASES
REFLECT
?


WHEN THEY HAVE GONE
WHEN HAVE THEY GONE
WHEN GONE THEY HAVE
     HAD A GOING
WHEN?(GONGED GRIEF)

HOW     TO
FEEL    TO
GIVE    TO
OFFER   TO
DIGNIFY TO
HUMOR   TO
HUMAN   TO
MOURN   TO
UNKNOWN
GRIEF  HAS
0KNOWLEDGE
?

GRIEF AS
A CONVICT
A CONNECTED
AN ENTWINED
A WRETCHED
A CLENCHED
A FREE YELL
FROM A SOUL
LESS
LIFE ?

HOW TO 
GRIEF VIA
WAYS THAT 
KEEP GOING
WHILE
FALLING
WHILE
FAILING
FOMENTING
FUMES
FULL FROM
HEAVY GRIEVING
RECALLING THAT
SPRING INTO
NEW yOUs AND
YOU WITH THE
AN US?

GRIEF   COMES 
THROUGH LIFE
TO COME AGAIN

MOURN LIVES
A     MOVING
CATASTROPHICS
FALLING INTO
GRIEVING  TO
COME   DESIRE
GO     ITCH

the caped lines above operate as kind of diagrams that question themselves and
as such
as a way to move into wondering griefs.
ie

MOURN LIVES
A     MOVING
CATASTROPHICS
FALLING INTO
GRIEVING  TO
COME   DESIRE
GO     ITCH

catastrophics comes from multiple directions:
Lives A
Mourn moving
mourn A
Lives moving
A moving mourn lives
moving a mourn lives
and so on, as well as the obvious:
morn lives a moving

the catastrophics (kinds of falling)
bridge from the 1st 2 lines onto the last 4, that operate as the 1st 2. (ie
falling to come itch
into to desire itch
go come grieving falling
and so on..)

—————

Regarding The Ethics and Politics of Nonviolence

Here I’d like to note a few things to begin with – which – i think – maybe – could have something to do with JBs mind in the way of
myself getting influenced by the discussion of nonviolent forces.

It might be noticeable that each section here is written in a different manner. Slightly different forms, rhythms, language and indeed approach from, through and by JB’s text.

Omitting to note these different writing ways and the fact they fail to engage with the text may seem like an act of violence.

Indeed – violence rather than any kind of lack of it, may come as a legit feeling imho since there might be a sensation that engaging with an About nor a With the text come missing to the point of non-existance.
as if I, aha, read the text and may use, abuse and indeed ignore what it says and how JB means the text to Be.

I take this kind of a perspective as a plausible and fair view – since there’s not much engagement with JB’s meanings – the forces used for the texts’ directionality. The qualities of a writers’ intents.
More over, assuming the writer intended to sell the text – hence the book is sold in various venues rather than given without a numerical exchange passing –
I am reading a copy that was obtained outside of the writers’ consent. In many ways, this can be seen, if not a violation of laws, then a possible violation of ethics in a way that at the very least –
JB could be asked to offer their consent for me reading without paying money.

However, by doing an xeno-payment-reading – perhaps there’s also a question of turning into a reader that is yet to be an Other.
An Else that comes, legally predefined as a criminal.
ie my own definition – or possible number of them, if any – may not come into play here, through some plausible reliance on some other force, legal force – if not its violence.

Therefore, when ethics come to focus, how can i stand on a justified ground – talking of this chapter – while not paying much visible attention to JB’s intents so far, and when payment comes to a conversation – failing to pay money too!

Perhaps this very reading is an enactment of a nonviolent force?
Perhaps this very reading is an enactment of when a force turns violent?
Perhaps embodiment rather than enactment?

The plan was to read this chapter and, for a change, attempt to engage with the text.
After-all,
why should i not join J and H with their engagement?
J, to put roughly, tends to read the text, gather intents and apply to their own life and work.
H, to put roughly, tends to read the text with wonder and an everlasting wander about the writer’s mind, intents and possible readers.
A, to put it roughly, considers the text as waves to surf from. Each chapter a different wave to try and live through.
JB is here too, be it in a stuck form, inscribed in the statis of words that require readers for moving, reshaping, escaping, scaping and exiting too.
JB’s intentions, the readers from the writers’ mind, go flowing from between words, curated subjects, and strategies of approach.

and….?

and
? yet from between these Others’ mini conference, a confluence perhaps, we keep getting an inexhaustible flow of exiting Elses.
From the else between us all that may have a name, yet not It’s very own – through to untold elses that some of which escape into various infinities made by recurring vibrations who through moving with one another – keep going.
like
that which between the interval that escapes JB’s intents – the exit from H’s speculations and the pushes from the fact we have static words. On and on these may escape through an exit made by the very push that moved the escape and so we only go once yet the movement will repeat.
Is that description
A capture that should come with a question between force and violence?

With the above in mind, I have questions to the chapter rather than anything other than Else:

Acknowledged Loss? (p78)
Loss comes as an implied past here. What happens with people whose perception of the future is in the past? ie
use certain means of force because otherwise, I will lose. Without the force, the person thinks of themselves as already in a loss..

Preservation and destruction? (p77)
When ethical lens – rather than aesthetical perspectives – are used, how can we tell the other what is a destruction and indeed how to preserve?
Saving the Realm might seem ethical rather than manipulative through ethical minds when equality and values foreground aesthetic considerations of qualities, compositions and equity.
Indeed,
perhaps when the question turns to Graphic – there’s a hint at the need for aesthetic mind?

Life? (p78)
How do we define life – if indeed, life can come defined at all?

Copied:
“The issue cannot
quite be set aside, but this is not because there are assumptions about the
form of life that precede the domain of power. Rather, in my view, power
is already operating through schemas of racism that persistently
distinguish not only between lives that are more and less valuable, more
and less grievable, but also between lives that register more or less
emphatically as lives. A life can register as a life only within a schema
that presents it as such.”
(p82)
I wonder whether registering Race has a contemporary ring rather than a innate point re nature of power operations..

copied:
“Is that turning of the head or walking or running away actually an
aggressive advance anticipated by the police?”
(p85)
Curious about the popping up of aesthetics again. ie
a dance, a move, a turn away from.. Perhaps the discussion should include choreography?
The force through turning away from..(?)

copied:
“This technique is, importantly, not a
means designed to achieve an end. Nonviolence is not a means to a goal
nor is it a goal in itself. It is, rather, a technique that exceeds both an
instrumental logic and any teleological scheme of development—it is an
ungoverned technique, arguably ungovernable.”
(p90)
does this render nonviolence a force that turns violent through instrumentalisation?

copied:
!Against the Hobbesian understanding of the contract as a way of
resolving “natural” (pre-legal) violent conflict, Benjamin insists, in
“Critique of Violence,” that “a totally nonviolent resolution of conflicts
can never lead to a legal contract,” since, for him, the contract is the
beginning of legal violence.”
(p90)
Etherium and contract capitalism?

copied:
“This emphasis on language and translation is a moment of great
idealism; perhaps it is a linguistic idealism, or perhaps it is an ambiguous
use of the religious figure of a divine word—a word, by the way, that is
described as “divine” without any indication of a God in the background.”
(p92)
i wonder, with the divine outside of god, can we not substitute Divine with Sublime here?
..and then,
instead of divine Violence –
a sublime Violence?

copied:
“In Benjamin’s
view, legal violence regularly renames its own violent character as
justifiable coercion or legitimate force, thereby sanitizing the violence at
stake.”
(p95)
Curious possible link here with agamben’s anarchists who are the ones that set the law? they are always moving the goal posts..
However, some legal minds may claim that under
the rule of law kind of system
it is the populastion that nonviolently set the goal posts composition?

Indeed,
we could
I think
begin to suspect
perhaps from the beginning of this book I had this notion of a crime
that now I dare let to light?
Is this a detective novel in all but name?
How to detect the force
of non
violence and how such a force
when detected commits its
activities
and practices
and products
and conducts economies
of civil pockets
within legal crimes?

——————————–

Political Philosophy in Freud: War, Destruction, Mania and the Critical Faculty.

Political Philosophy in Freud: War, Destruction – Mania and a Critical Faculties

Political Philosophy in Freud: War – Destruction Mania and Critical Faculties?

Political Philosophy in Freud: War – Destruction, Mania and Critical Faculties?

Political Philosophy in Freud: War – Destruction Mania and Critical systems?

Political Philosophy in Freud: War – Destruction Mania, and, systematic systems’ systemics?

Political Philosophy in Freud: War Destruction Mania end and critique systems’ system faculty?

This may go on, However, hopefully by this point we can have an idea that elaborates from – rather than bastardizes JB’s initial title?

In case readers make their own versions’ variation – perhaps it works
else?
maybe a few more lines are required?

Is there a required number to offer a minimum for “success” to come measured-able?

There are a few trajectories in this chapter, and I’d like to pick on “Critical Faculties” which, seems to offer a link – if not a connection – with the slightly counter intuitive thread in the book as a whole;
the use of forces and that such energetic activities do not always equate violence.

In a democracy, a bit like the content meanings in the letters between Einstein and Freud – we have check power.