This past week, we focused on the first chapter of the novel Frames of War : When is Life Grievable? by American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler.
My initial reaction after the first few lines was somewhere along the lines of “bloody hell, this is going to be another reading that I will never fully understand”. But as usual, after further analysis and reading, I started to get the idea of what Butler was trying to convey : “by a cultural reflex, we mourn for some lives but respond with coldness to the loss of others” (36). That sentence really hit me and got me thinking about racial discrimination in America such as the death of African-American Eric Garner back in July of 2014 after getting choked to death by a New York Police officer.
As Butler identified the “we” as a “community of belonging on the basis of nation, territory, language, or culture” (36), it made me rethink and wonder about who is considered as an ally (the “we”) and who counts as the enemy. I then question why racial discrimination existed against the non-White communities that may have lived across the same street or even next door from the White communities. Are they not part of the same community / territory? Does that imply that non-White communities in America are not part of the “we”?
In the past, cultural reflexes have accustomed us to think of some lives being more important than others in terms of race, even if they may have been within the same community. Fortunately, societal changes have started to take a turn for the better and movements such as “Black Lives Matter” is being brought out of the darkness and into the light. Unfortunately, there is still a significant amount of racial discrimination across America today that causes the death of people’s lives. I argue that individuals must start to change their cultural reflexes towards racial discrimination against non-White communities in order to prevent the thought of mourning for some lives and responding with coldness in the death of others.
– Martin
