In Defense of Critique

I teach Religious Ethics.  This week, we are discussing terrorism - a topic that my father noted is, among other things, timely.  Today, specifically, we are reading a section of Talal Asad's Suicide Bombing.  As this book is highly critical of state power and socio-political distinctions, I felt the need to preface our classroom discussion with a defense of the practice of social criticism while many are relying on state power for personal safety.  Here is a portion of what I'll share with the class:

It’s days like these where critics get themselves in trouble because criticism of state power is often seen – or, better, portrayed – as treasonous, overly/unduly suspicious, unhelpful, and possibly dangerous.  These are charges meant to silence critique.

At times when we are told that our security – or at least the security of those who we are somehow identified with – is threatened, a corresponding idea that order and safety needs to be restored tends to occupy a prominent discursive space.  Before moving to Asad’s critique of terrorism and motives, it is worth noting what he states at the very beginning of his book:

“A brief warning against a possible misreading of this book: I do not plead that terrorist atrocities may sometimes be morally justified.  I am simply impressed by the fact that modern states are able to destroy and disrupt life more easily and on a much grander scale than ever before and that terrorists cannot reach this capability.  I am also struck by the ingenuity with which so many politicians, public intellectuals, and journalists provide moral justifications for killing and demeaning other human beings.” Talal Asad Suicide Bombing page 4

What Asad offers is not to be read as a treasonous apologetic for terrorism – it is a shift of emphasis, a re-focusing of the discourse from “who’s right and who’s wrong and how can those who are right stop those who are wrong” to “who gets to make these decisions and how? What structures are in place that divvy up the space of violence to justify some while demonizing others?  How is this done?”

Before we get to Asad’s analysis of Walzer’s “emergency ethics” I’ll briefly note two things I watched on the news this morning that deserve a different line of questioning: first, I watched appeals to the internal states of the bomber motive, states of mind, and radicalization (described as “self-radicalization,” “internal radicalization now being externally manifested,” “older brother controlling the mind of younger brother,” “religious ideas motivating action,” and “state-sponsored ideological training” – if not verbatim, all this came from CNN’s coverage).  Second, I watched what I can only describe as a small army of armored tanks, trucks, and soldiers carrying large guns.  These men were all in search of the violent perpetrator of violence.  Pause.

This is a distinction being drawn within what Asad refers to as a “sphere of violence.”  There is good violence.  There is bad violence.  The difference, however, tends to rely on appeals to the internal state of individuals.  We therefore have a vaguely defined social space where violence is occurring and an undefinable internal status that determines who is in the right and who is in the wrong.  The trick is that someone has to be in a very specific socio-political position of power to make these declarations – a position which denies such position to others.  I don’t like to analyze events as they are going on – too much is unknown, there is chaos, and there is an overreliance on speculation so I’m not going to specifically address what’s going on…now in Boston.

I will note that the definition of terrorism implies an altruistic non-terrorist.  Terrorism, however, is a very, very shifty term and yet its boundaries are tightly maintained.  I’m not interested in figuring out guilty and not-guilty or assigning blame.  I’m interested in the ideological work being done when indefinable spaces are somehow defined and loosely defined terms are rigidly fixed.  The social world – of which we are students – doesn’t have some kind of innate, inherent order.  I’m interested in the process by which this disorder is presented as order.  This isn’t treason.  It’s critique.

Thoughts are with all those within various spheres of violence.

Thanks for reading.