Complic-ated attachments
An aunty of mine reminded me of something very important the other day. I was talking about my project and my/its interest in ethics. I liked the idea of ethics, I said, as do others; because ethics are guidelines rather than rules: people don’t feel like they are compelled to rigidly conform. Ethics are more ambiguous, relying on translation and context. “I guess” she said “people like to feel like they have a choice. And that’s the small-l liberal thing, isn’t it, choice?”.
I’m going to have to think about this. For if the ethics that I write don’t go beyond the liberal project then they repeat the political gestures born of wounded attachments. Ethics posed as “the answer” to postmodern aporias is problematic. Ethics as lifestyle choice. Removing the government, but not the governmentality. I would hope the impossibility of ethics a là Derrida removes its choice. Juste rather than droit. Impossible consequence rather than chooseable consequence. Ethics of complicity, complicity as enfoldedness-in-human-being, to shadow Mark Sanders. It’s easier to demonize someone than to face up to their pain, the pain of your complicity. Not necessarily complicity as prosecutability, but complicity as enfoldedness…