Protest: Ilios Volume 2, No. 1

ILIOS An Undergraduate Journal of Political Science and Philosophy

PROTEST THEORETICAL, PRACTICAL, AND INTERNATIONAL

Volume 2, No. 1 Spring 2015

ILIOS An Undergraduate Journal of Political Science and Philosophy

Contents Letter from the Editors

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Evaluating Contemporary Liberal Society

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Corinne Osnos The American Oligarchy: The Tyranny of the Civically Disengaged Majority

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A.J. Pinto Translating Du Bois & Trayvon Martin to the Palestinian Diaspora

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Janan Burni Protest and Its Place in American Society

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Megan Aveni

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Letter from the Editors Where there is power, there is resistance ­Michel Foucault 8:05 AM. The bell rings. Thoughtlessly rising from our desks, each person places their right hand across their heart.

The words spill from my mouth without any effort, having been memorized long ago: “I pledge allegiance to the flag…”

My eyes scan the room and fall upon the one person who refuses to stand with the rest of us. His stare connects with mine and I look down on him in disgust.

Delving into the struggle of opposition against power, this issue seeks to expose the reality of protest. There is a monster in our midst that we as a society have chosen to ignore: The ghost of tyranny passed haunts our people. It is because of this that we have afforded ourselves certain inalienable rights to protect ourselves and future generations. As a child clings to their blanket, so too do we cling to these protections—crying out against anyone who dares take them away; shielding ourselves within the confines of their safety. In our haste to guard against this monster, have we blinded ourselves to the truth of our reality?

The word protest springs to mind images of signs, chants and marches. This is an archetypal protest: a mass of people whose orchestrated, physical demonstration carries a symbolic significance in the hope of translating that symbolism into “real” change. But this image of protest is a romantic one, not one based in the reality of today. We look back on those who participated in the marches, sit­ins, and rallies, and we believe that they were using legitimate means to fight for what was right. And we admire them.

The catharsis of this protest masks the extent to which it is anticipated, accommodated, and subverted. The distinction between “protest” and “riot”, “terrorism”, or “revolution” is a political distinction; there is no essential difference. To be legitimate, a protest must find a balance between what is legal and what is right. To be effective it must find a balance between what is communicable and what is true. There is no formula for resolving these dilemmas. But that is the point. To protest is not to wait for a space to appear. It is to will that space into existence. In a one­dimensional society, the only alternatives are those which we imagine. The only space is that which we create.

The articles contributed to this edition seek to explore the nuances and consequences of protest.

Several of the authors had initially presented their ideas at student conference hosted by Occidental College. The subject of the conference was Protest: Theoretical, Practical, and International, and provides this issue of Ilioshe title of this issue. From an evaluation of contemporary political society through the lens of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, to a cross­continental exploration of space, meaning, and diaspora, each article forces us to question the society of today. We hope this edition will be as enlightening for you as it was to us.

We would like to take a moment to express our gratitude to every person who contributed to Ilios.

And we particularly want to thank our academic advisor, Professor Anthony Kammas. Your wisdom, guidance and support has been fundamental to the creation of this edition.

Sincerely, Brigitte and Michael Executive Editors 2

Evaluating Contemporary Liberal Society Corinne Osnos University of Southern California

Contemporary liberal society, the poster child of the Enlightenment, is often touted as a superior breed of civilization for the degree of freedom it provides its citizens. In Discipline and Punishment, Michel Foucault offers an alternative, fatalistic view of contemporary liberal society, exposing the reality behind the illusion. Discerning whether contemporary liberal societies are merely well-disguised disciplinary dystopias requires a thorough dissection of the definition, as well as an evaluation of the three crucial ways in which the individual is disciplined according to Foucault: hierarchal observation, normalizing judgment, and examination. Foucault’s argument proves that the first two elements of the definition are satisfied, but not necessarily the third. The conclusion reached is that contemporary society falls somewhere in between a dystopia and utopia.

The critical issue then becomes not whether or not contemporary liberal society is a well-disguised disciplinary dystopia, but why a system designed in such a way is problematic.

In conjuring up an image of contemporary liberal society, certain trigger words come to mind: rational thought, individualism, social contract, natural rights, liberty, and equal opportunity.

These are the ideals that we have been indoctrinated to believe contemporary liberal society values above all. Foucault suggests that the ideals the system prides itself on are nothing more than words that sound good on paper. It could instead be argued that the ideals are not wholly void of virtuous intent, but that they are two-faced. In this sense, the ideals serve two purposes simultaneously. The ideal is used to mask the other, hidden purpose. To evaluate Foucault’s argument, a few of these ideals will be scrutinized.

Contemporary liberal society is grounded in the civilized treatment of people, what Foucault refers to as the “process of ‘humanization’” (Foucault, 7). A common justification for the modern penal system posits that the system treats criminals as rational agents, not merely using them as a means of deterrence. Punishment shows that their actions are being taking seriously but is not supposed to be unnecessarily severe. In Franz Kafka’s “The Penal Colony” pre-modern punishment tactics are demonstrated to be barbaric and unjust. The traveler, a newcomer to the penal colony who is supposed to represent the beliefs of civilized society, is both astonished and horrified that the 3

condemned man in the penal colony is ignorant of his sentence and presumed guilty from the moment of accusation (Kafka). In the criminal justice systems of most contemporary liberal societies, safeguards exist to protect against injustice, examples of which include due process rights, the right to a trial, and a required knowledge of accusation. The modern punitive system is also rehabilitative in theory, “intending not to punish the offence, but to supervise the individual, to neutralize his dangerous state of mind, to alter his criminal tendencies, and to continue even when this change has been achieved” (Foucault, 18). This, however, begs the question of whether the system actually treats criminals as rational agents or merely removes them from society like heretics.

The crux of Foucault’s argument is that human beings are entirely socially constructed. This belief flows from logic. From conception to conditioning, humans are products of social interaction.

The modern system of discipline and punishment is so effective because it is designed around social relations, which are paramount in determining thought and behavior. In Kafka’s “The Penal Colony,” a large, three-part device called the Apparatus is used to punish the condemned, by inscribing their conviction with needles on their body like a tattoo in a process of ‘enlightenment.’

The problem with this form of punishment, as well as the methods of torture, scaffolding, and execution employed in pre-modern societies, is that it acts primarily on the body and not the mind.

By branding the criminal as abnormal and removing them from society until they are ‘corrected,’ that is, made to once again fit with the norm, the modern penal system gets at the essence of a person.

In an effort to humanize punishment, contemporary liberal societies are increasingly abolishing capital punishment. In the United States, for example, the argument in favor of abolition stems from the belief that the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore a direct violation of the Constitution. To take an opposing viewpoint, however, it can be argued that imprisonment is worse than death. Removed from comforts, stripped of liberties, and quietly ignored, prisoners live a miserable and mundane existence, one that makes the alternative of not existing sound appealing. Although there is validity to the point that as a form of punishment, incarceration is more humane than torture, this is not the sole reason for its existence. The hidden intention is to extricate the criminal insofar as possible from society because of the threat they pose to the existing order. Making them effectively invisible facilitates the turning of a blind eye by the rest of society. The ‘bad’ behavior is branded but obscured, and thus marginalized. The system therefore benefits not only the prisoner, but the system itself as well.

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Foucault attacks the concept of the ‘individual’ as the greatest myth of contemporary liberal society. The model of Bentham’s Panopticon, which mirrors the modern disciplinary system, illustrates how the system is both well-disguised and disciplinary. Order is maintained in the Panopticon because "the individual is constantly located, examined, and distributed among the living beings" (Foucault, 197). Persons each occupy their own singular, enclosed cell in a large building that is under constant supervision from a nearby tower. The people in the Panopticon are aware that they are being observed, but they never know how much or when. Visibility and transparency are the means of control in the Panopticon, ironically the exact principles advocated for in modern institutions and governments. The overt intention is to maintain the integrity of these bodies.

Foucault’s scrutiny of these concepts, however, reveals an underlying purpose, as greater transparency and visibility lessens the amount of supervision necessary to preserve the system. Thus, it becomes clear that contemporary liberal societies are cleverly designed. The concept of the ‘individual’ is merely a construction of power, Foucault explains, providing a tangible body to measure against the norm. People are conditioned to value their individuality above all, driven to compete for the rewards society promises, despite the evidence, mathematical, logical, and historical, that there is strength in numbers. Society is created under the pretense of a contract among individuals, yet individuality in itself is the very thing that creates divides between individuals and facilitates manipulation by those in power. Each of the Enlightenment ideals, when carefully scrutinized, is revealed to serve a dual purpose.

Individuals in modern society, like in the Panopticon, are controlled by the potentiality of being seen at any given moment in time. The tower is intended to symbolize the institution of power, which in the case of most modern societies is government. It is important to consider, however, that individuals in modern society are not only being watched from above, but also by each other. This dual coercion is subtle but causes people to play by the rules. Visualized, the pressure from both sides limits the individual’s range of motion (behavior) to a little box (the norm).

Discipline and technology also have a symbiotic relationship. It is for this reason that the more advanced and wealthier societies are also perceived as the most ‘free’ and productive. These societies are not, in actuality, more free. Rather, these societies have the means to discipline more effectively and less blatantly. Technological advancements, in particular, have facilitated the process of supervision in contemporary liberal societies. Consider, for example, the restriction of social media in China, which is often a point of attack by Western democracies as evidencing a lack of freedom.

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The critics fail to realize that the very technology that ‘frees’ also controls. The means of supervision are merely different. Consider the extent to which the average person in the United States utilizes social media. Snapchat, Facebook, Find your Friends: all of these applications show how the individual is under constant observation by peers. The reality is that by using these technologies, the individual willfully submits to being supervised by others. Consequently, there is less of a need for the government to supervise the individual.

The system is proven to be both well-disguised and disciplinary, as it does an excellent job of keeping people in check while simultaneously keeping them from realizing the fetters that constrain them. Foucault poses the following rhetorical question to the reader: “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” (228). The prevalence of the contemporary liberal system is a testament to its efficiency. The system is capable of regulating and replicating itself. It is therefore no surprise that the model spreads rapidly from the punitive institutions to characterize how all institutions within modern society are run. There are many problems with the system that make it borderline dystopic.

The reality of politics is that power creates truth. A troubling aspect of the modern system is that it makes the illusion of freedom, what society says constitutes freedom, and not freedom itself, desirable. Foucault explains how “in a system of discipline, the child is more individualized than the adult, the patient more than the healthy man, the madman and the delinquent more than the normal than the non-delinquent” (193). This is because the discipline increases with age, exposure, and willingness to understand and comply with the system. Authentic freedom, however, decreases with the same factors. The system is constructed in such a way that being disciplined feels like succeeding because the individual is rewarded for compliance. In contemporary liberal societies, ‘freedom’ usually takes the form of capital, for example enabling a person to buy a mansion or send their children to private school. Equal opportunity is another faulty indicator of freedom in contemporary liberal society, as the opportunities granted to any given person are products of the system. A child born into poverty will never have the same resources or opportunity as the child born into affluence.

Hence, the system is one that benefits some members of society while greatly disfavoring others.

Control is maximized in contemporary liberal societies because individuals spend the majority of their time in panoptic institutions. They are kept busy under a watchful eye. Foucault explains how “the disciplines, which analyze space, break up and rearrange activities, must also be 6

understood as machinery for adding up and capitalizing time” (157). In the United States, for example, the average person spends a majority of their time working: eight hours a day, five days a week. Yet, a survey finds a job satisfaction rate of 47.7% in 2013 (“Job Satisfaction”). Rather than induce productivity, the modern system creates excess, idleness, and frustration. A society in which the amount of time working is minimized, but the effort expended maximized, would arguably be a more productive one filled with happier citizens. This is congruent with Thomas Moore’s depiction of a utopia, in which all citizens are required to participate in some form of hard labor for six hours a day; the remainder is free time. Arguably, the capitalist system employed in contemporary liberal societies causes workers to be “exhausted by constant labor like a beast of burden” (More, 61).

The most frightening part of Foucault’s argument is the depth of the conditioning. The modern system is so engrained into every aspect of life that modern society knows no other self than the one that is socially constructed. The Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments, which arguably give Foucault’s argument scientific grounding, are equally enlightening and alarming. Under the false pretenses of studying the effects of punishment on learning, participants in the Milgram experiment were instructed by an authority figure to administer shocks to an unseen subject for incorrect responses. The actual purpose of the experiment, however, was to study obedience to authority. Contemporary liberal societies teach deference to authority, perhaps explaining why 50% of the participants administered the most severe shock to the unseen subject despite obvious discomfort. In the Stanford Prison experiment, participants were selected at random to be prisoners or guards in a prison simulation intended to last two weeks. The experiment had to be prematurely concluded for ethical reasons because what started as a simulation became a reality for the participants. Guards forced prisoners to urinate and defecate in a bucket, exemplifying the extent of the dehumanization. The fact that the prisoners complied, however, is equally telling. The experiment demonstrates how readily people adopt and become the roles given to them by society.

This is particularly frightening when considering the number of atrocities that have been historically committed in the name of society; for example, the Holocaust, the bombing of Nagasaki, and the use of torture at Guantanamo Bay. The modern system reduces citizens to actors, as they are more concerned with role-playing than morality.

It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking one contemporary liberal society is ‘freer’ than another, yet in truth, any modern society constructed in the way Foucault describes is constrained.

To accept contemporary liberal society as an end point is to settle. The system, albeit not wholly 7

dystopic, is far from perfect. The heart of the issue is that we have arrived at a point where we can no longer fathom another system. This paralysis is dangerous. Foucault himself falls into this trap.

By providing no plausible remedy, he suggests that people are too far into the system to be extricated and that modern society is essentially a lost cause. There is, however, another option: keep looking.

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Works Cited

Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House, 1995. Print.

"Job Satisfaction: 2014 Edition." The Conference Board, 1 June 2014. Web. 7 Nov. 2014.

Kafka, Franz. "In the Penal Colony (e-text)." Kafka, In the Penal Colony (e-text). Vancouver Island University, 19 Feb. 2007. Web. 7 Nov. 2014.

Milgram, Stanley. Obedience to Authority. Alexander Street Press, 1962.

More, Thomas. Utopia. New Haven: Yale UP, 2001. Print.

Zimbardo, Philip G, and Ken Musen. Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Study. Stanford, CA: P.G. Zimbardo, Inc, 2004.

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The American Oligarchy: The Tyranny of the Civically Disengaged Majority A.J. Pinto University of Southern California

French philosopher Alain Badiou believed that every society is a representation of a watershed event and every person within that society is merely a piece making up that representation. With the passing of time, the true nature of this Event moves further and further out of the reach of society; at which point, society begins to reflect not the event itself but an unrepresentative phantom of the event, called simulacrum (53). Badiou argues that the Event must occur within or near a person’s lifetime, but in the case of American Democracy, I strongly disagree.

Despite more than three hundred years of history-making events, the Event of the American Revolution remains the cornerstone of American Democracy. However, as dreams fade out of memory in time, so, too, have the dreams of America faded into darkness. Now all that remains is the myth of American democratic infallibility, the fundamentals of American civic religion that convinces Americans eternal freedom and perfect representation does not depend on civic engagement. Ironically, this myth has debilitated American democracy. Many Americans believe that revolutionary blood continues to pump through their veins. Yet, they have forgotten that their romanticized revolutionaries created a society around the citizens; and without citizens, it will fail.

The consumer has replaced the citizen, and buying power has replaced freedom. Nevertheless, the dream of America was progress not replication. Looking back at what America “once was” is not and will never be revolutionary. If Americans refuse to reject consumerism, then the savior of American Democracy is a new Event, one as transformative for democracy as the Revolution itself.

The past has revealed Americans to be capable creators. It will be this creationary power, Herbert Marcuse’s Critical Reasoning, that will save American democracy.

Consumerism has kept Americans from realizing their unfreedom. Most Americans today aspire not to be the ultimate citizen but instead the ultimate consumer: to have the nicest cars, clothes, toys, house, etc. Materialism has altered ideas of freedom, whereas people feel the freest in the driver’s seat of a new Ferrari or with the iPhone 6 in the palm of their hand. This materialistic American dream is where Marcuse begins One Dimensional Man saying, “A comfortable, smooth, 10

reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress” (13). This technical progress, which he calls technological rationality, fills the void of democracy with toys and distracts Americans from tasting their unfreedom. While toys can only fill this void temporarily, by the time yesterday’s “big thing” ceases to distract the citizen, today’s “big thing” quickly comes to replace it. In the process, consumerism dehumanizes Americans to the state of a pet dog: sitting there, tongue out, just waiting to be fed by the latest consumer products. In fact, the integration of consumerism reveals just how far America has strayed from its revolutionary vision. For, in materialism, the American spirit now resides in the very British ideal that Americans first rejected in the Revolution. When our revolutionary forefathers hoisted the finest British tea into the Boston Harbor, they recognized their bondage to consumer goods and chose to be citizens before consumers. Moreover, the lives of colonial Americans revolved around teatime as the lives of modern Americans revolve around smart phones. However, if the fate of democracy rested on the American citizens’ willingness to toss their phones into the ocean, democracy would undoubtedly die. Consumerism has given Americans new idols to worship and convinced us that our livelihood depends on them.

Consumerism is the manifestation of human reverence in American civic religion. In Achieving Our Country, philosopher Richard Rorty writes, “For both Whitman and Dewey, the terms ‘America’ and ‘Democracy’ are shorthand for a new conception of what it is to be human – a conception which has no room for obedience to a nonhuman authority” (18). Walt Whitman and John Dewey believed in the limitless power of man to progress social justice and create a perfect civil society. Furthermore, they hoped that human progress would foster a religious human reverence to replace Christianity. While human advancement has transformed democratic society, it has not done so in Whitman and Dewey’s hopeful image. In fact, contrary to their beliefs, Americans have expressed reverence not by worshipping mankind as creators but by worshipping mankind’s creations. In doing so, human reverence has replaced the American citizen, who dreams of social justice, with the American consumer, who dreams of social advancement. The American consumer lives to compete and desires to have more than others, two goals that can never lay the foundations for democracy. Thus, consumerism has spoiled human reverence and foiled Whitman and Dewey’s dream of establishing a truly democratic civic religion. Movement away from a Godfearing society to a human-fearing society has led Americans on a path to complete civic apathy.

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American civic religion has interfered with American democracy. The myth of American democratic infallibility persuades its citizens that America is the freest, most representative nation in the world. While a case could be made in its defense, as every American citizen has the opportunity to vote and to be civically engaged, the myth poses a threat to democracy itself; Americans’ blind faith in the American system has impeded their role to play within it. Using voting as the clearest example of civic apathy, it is easy to demonstrate this blind faith. While some citizens do not vote out of apathy and others claim not to vote out of civil disobedience, most nonvoters do not understand their democratic responsibilities. On one hand, apathetic nonvoters tend to believe that their vote does not count, and thus, regardless of who or what they vote for, the system will continue relatively unaltered. By nature, representative democracy cannot exist without a representative voting population. Apathetic nonvoters, whether they acknowledge it or not, believe that, in the United States, a government of the people’s opinion can survive without its people’s opinions. Thus, they subscribe to the myth of American democratic infallibility. On the other hand, intentional nonvoters tend to believe that, in not voting, they are refusing to support the American government. However, by not participating, nonvoters inadvertently entrust the fate of their nation with those they claim to distrust. Thus, in dissent, they more or less blindly accept their circumstances. While civil disobedience functions properly in a totalitarian society, in a democracy, civic and political participation are the most effective forms of dissent. Thus, intentional nonvoters unintentionally subscribe to the same myth of American democratic infallibility as apathetic nonvoters. In the November 5th, 2014 General Election, according to the California Secretary of State, only 35.3% of California citizens voted (“County Reporting Status” 1). With a one third voter turnout, nonvoters make up the civically disengaged American majority and have failed democracy.

A democracy is oligarchy without a participatory majority. In Justice as Fairness, American philosopher John Rawls argues that true justice exists only in his theory of the overlapping consensus, “which includes all the opposing philosophical and religious doctrines likely to persist and to gain adherents in a more or less just constitutional democratic society” (226). Although American democracy clearly exemplifies his theory, lack of civic participation transforms democracy into oligarchy and renders his theory irrelevant. If the United States must strive to this consensus for just democracy, then Rawls wrongly critiques government when he should critique its citizens.

Rawls’ plurality of voters from all cultures, races, genders and socioeconomic classes cannot represent fair justice when members of those different groups do not participate. With only one 12

third of eligible citizens deciding to vote, where most of the vote constitutes the opinions of white middle- to upper-class women, U.S. control rests in the hands of an unrepresentative consensus. In The Democratic Paradox, French philosopher Chantal Mouffe goes one step further than Rawls, suggesting not pluralism but agonistic pluralism. She foresees the possibility of the Rawlsian society looking “very much like a dangerous utopia of reconciliation” (29). Unlike Rawls, she dictates the specific role of the citizen within plurality saying, “consensus is indeed necessary but it must be accompanied by dissent” (113). To Mouffe, the citizen must act as a political adversary, an agonist of the government, constantly critiquing and improving the preexisting government structure.

Although it is closer than Rawls’ overlapping consensus in offering solutions to problems with the government and the citizenry, Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism will not revive American democracy or democratic spirit. Being an adversary connotes that one must work within the system to achieve the dream of America. Thus, adversaries, like nonvoters, inadvertently subscribe to the American myth that contains democratic spirit and breeds unfreedom.

Therefore, the salvation of American democracy rests on the ability for the citizens to deny the myth of America. Neither nonvoters nor political adversaries can successfully recreate American democracy because both work within the system. However, Americans, as the children of revolutionaries, should strive for a better system not a better way of making an antiquated system work. German American philosopher Herbert Marcuse states, “That which is cannot be true”, meaning that everything in the present does not exist in its purest form (92). Therefore, American democracy is not the purest form of freedom and liberty. Freedom and liberty are radical needs of our nation and thus, they require radical means to obtain. Marcuse would argue that they require the power of critical reasoning, or “the subversive power, the ‘power of the negative’ that establishes…the truth for men and things—that is, the conditions in which men and things become what they really are” (93). Nevertheless, this revolution would look much different than the American Revolution. A revolution against the American government would be unwise and ineffective. The blame for the American oligarchy falls on the American citizen not its government.

Therefore, I call for a revolution against the very thing that Americans hold most dear: their possessions. The tyranny of the civically disengaged majority must come to an end. Liberation from American democratic infallibility necessitates liberation from the idolization of consumer goods.

They must give up the “comfortable unfreedom” of the consumer in exchange for the uncomfortable freedom of the citizen. Americans must recognize their material oppressors and see 13

them not as gods but as tools of utilitarian value. However, human nature will make this nearly impossible to achieve.

Only the inception of a new Event can induce this kind of transformation. The American heart has changed. They are no longer the revolutionaries but the British loyalists. Deep down the American heart desires “comfortable unfreedom,� and even if they realized their subjugation, Americans would continue to live out their unfree lives. Ironically, the United States may become the historical example for the prosperity and the demise of democracy. The revolutionaries created the first modern government where the citizens could choose their freedom, but what they had not intended was that they had also made the first government where the citizens could choose their unfreedom. From the current trends of civic and political participation, it seems that Americans have chosen unfreedom. Yet, hope resides in a transformative event. Currently, nothing is preventing citizens from complete technological reliance. Therefore, this Event must force Americans to lose everything and cause consumer goods to lose to their godlike qualities. With cyber technology becoming the most revered consumer good, a cyber catastrophe could be the Event that transforms society. As cyber warfare festers between the United States and China and the remainder forges cyber capabilities in the darkness, this event may not be far out of reach. Cyber war could deprive Americans of technology long enough to decrease their dependence and release its grip from the pulse of democracy. Only when their personal survival hinges on the rejection of their technological idols will the revolutionary spirit usurp the hearts of the tyrannical, civically disengaged majority.

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Works Cited Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. London: Verso, 2012. Print.

"County Reporting Status." California General Election Results. N.p., 5 Nov. 2014. Web. 7 Nov. 2014.

Marcuse, Herbert. One-dimensional Man; Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon, 1964. Print.

Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso, 2000. Print Rawls, John. "Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical." Philosophy and Public Affairs. 3rd ed.

Vol. 14. N.p.: Princeton UP, n.d. 223-51. Print.

Rorty, Richard. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1998. Print.

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Translating Du Bois & Trayvon Martin to the Palestinian Diaspora Janan Burni Occidental College

Introduction While studying abroad in Amman, Jordan in Fall of 2014, I made a couple trips to the West Bank. During my second trip, I visited the massive and daunting wall that completely separates the cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. On the Palestinian side of the wall are a series of breathtaking murals filled with an array of images, graffiti, and quotes written in multiple languages, depicting forms of artistic protest. A memorial to Trayvon Martin on the Palestinian Wall captured my attention. The mural consists of a graffiti portrait of Trayvon Martin in his hoody sweatshirt, and above and below the image reads W.E.B. Du Bois’ infamous quote, “How does it feel to be a problem?” from his book Souls of Black Folk. The top portion of the mural displays the quote in English and the bottom portion is translated into Arabic. Upon first glance, the image of Trayvon Martin itself is initially striking. My first inquiry was why this incident—which had become a national symbol of the United States’ continual systematic racism—would appear in Palestine. And specifically, what does it mean that the mural and Arabic translation appear on a deeply contested space, what some people even term an apartheid wall. This mural poses the following research questions: What are the political and cultural implications of using the Palestinian wall as a site for translating Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk quote into Arabic? And how does answering this question require an interdisciplinary approach? I argue that the complex interaction between Du Bois, Trayvon Martin, and the Palestinian Diaspora reveals a compelling space for solidarity and reciprocal engagement between the two groups because they share experiences of mourning and resilience.

To explore this question and support my argument, I turn to the intellectual tradition of Black Internationalism and W.E.B. Du Bois Studies. Both of these traditions deal with the Black Diaspora and international studies from a more poetic frame that goes beyond the limits of conventional Western thought. Discourses on Blackness and other poetic frameworks, on the other hand, deem this philosophical framework as egotistical and dangerous considering the history of colonization and imperialism. The “ideal citizen/man” and “discovery of the New World” necessarily renders the already indigenous populations as disposable. Contrary to this perspective, 16

the poetic is interested in ecstatic engagement rather than objective analysis. Rather than categorizing differences as a threat, it embraces difference and collective engagement as essential to life, power, and learning. Thus, by starting from a standpoint of rupture and mourning as a result of being deemed “disposable,” thinking about meaningful change and new terms of thinking become necessary. For purposes of discussing the mural, the poetic framework is crucial.

While Black Internationalism and W.E.B. Du Bois Studies are excellent traditions to consider the mural in a complex manner, these traditions do tend to primarily focus on the Black Diaspora scattered across the Atlantic basin. Until recently, there has been a tendency amongst scholars to downplay the linguistic and other differences within the Black Diaspora. Furthermore, one must contest the typical geo-political aspects of the Black Diaspora scholarship in order to consider how the Black and Palestinian Diasporas overlap. A lot of the material from these traditions remains relevant to both the past and present Palestinian Diaspora, but only considered in a tangential manner. Nevertheless, many Black thinkers have studied to some degree the intersection of Black and Middle Eastern cultures. Unfortunately, much of the work of these thinkers, including but not limited to W.E.B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis, and Ronald Judy, has not garnered widespread attention. These thinkers’ work and the Trayvon Martin mural in Palestine suggest that there lies a compelling connection between these two cultures that calls for sustained attention.

I turn to Black Internationalism and Du Bois Studies in addressing Palestine to push the boundaries of my major, Diplomacy and World Affairs (DWA). These scholarly traditions are particularly important for the DWA major because they complicate the disciplinary assumption that the nation-state structure is the necessary goal of political development and deals with state-to-state or government-to-government interaction on a diplomatic, economic, and social level. The problem with this set up is that it does not sufficiently include the populations that are stateless or are from a displaced origin—e.g., those of the Palestinian and Black Diasporas. The list of populations that do not fully belong to a nation-state is quite significant. Therefore, it is necessary to call upon other perspectives of international studies that deal with these populations. In doing so, the stateless populations not only become included, but these other perspectives provide a more honest and complex view of international relations. One can more directly identify and critique neo-colonial structures of domination, taking seriously the relationship between citizen and non-citizen in occupied land, rather than simply reduce these questions to another iteration of state-to-state politics.

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All in all, this research paper and presentation are modest attempts to deepen the research on contemporary Middle Eastern issues—in this case, specifically on the Palestinian question and its relation to the Black Diaspora—and take a new approach to research in Diplomacy and World Affairs.

Framework & Literature In order to address the cultural and political implications of the mural, I will break up my research into three key questions. The first asks, why translate this particular Du Bois quote into Arabic? Secondly, why call upon Blackness as a point of connection? And thirdly, why use this specific wall as a site of translation? To answer these questions, I will call upon works from Brent Edwards, Ronald Judy, W.E.B. Du Bois, Wendy Brown, and Frantz Fanon. Although Du Bois’ and Edwards’ work will receive the greatest attention, my turn to this diverse mix of thinkers indicates the complexity of thinking of the mural’s cultural and political significance.

Brent Edwards’ book The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (2003) challenges readers to complicate the assumption that the Black Diaspora necessarily entails complete understanding and solidarity. Rather, the Black Diaspora is comprised of a myriad of cultures and languages. Thus, Edwards urges readers to recognize that Black Diaspora solidarity inevitably depends on translation in order to recognize, respect, and learn from the differences. Edwards’ emphasis on translation conceives diaspora as an open-ended “practice” rather than a predetermined discourse or set of habits. For Edwards, translation reveals nuances in both the foreign and native cultures. Therefore, the meanings of this reciprocal translation cannot be owned by either group; rather, they are of and for both groups, who must now work to share this space of interaction, possibility, and tension. Although there are two models of diaspora that both assume a scattered population, Edwards vies for the model that does not require the population to redeem itself by returning “home.” In the case of the Black Diaspora, the transatlantic slave trade and voluntary forms of migration have undermined any possibility of returning to a home before colonial invasion by the West. Meanwhile, in the case of Palestine, many still live in the original territory but are under occupation, while other Palestinians are displaced to other states. The question of Palestine is a complex topic on its own, but for purposes of calling upon Blackness, 18

learning from the scattered form of Diaspora can be an insightful notion for the Palestinian Diaspora.

Without an origin to establish a single ideal of the Black Diaspora, black culture must therefore be known through its “practice of Diaspora” as Edwards’ title suggests and especially via the work of translation. Given the sort of reciprocal translation that Edwards is concerned with, Diaspora becomes a non-stop action or “practice” rather than a simplistic or objective transaction.

Understanding the differences within the Black Diaspora requires a full engagement as described in the poetic framework discussed earlier. Edwards presents a number of concepts that deal with this form of engagement. For this paper, I am concerned with his concept of “décalage” and “detour.”

Décalage is a French word that means “gap,” “discrepancy,” “time-lag” or “interval” (Edwards 13).

In terms of Diaspora, décalage refers to removing the artificial wedge propping up black solidarity.

By removing this wedge, décalage acknowledges the unevenness, difference and imbalance that make the Black Diasporic relationship a continuous work in progress. For this reason, Edwards resists using an English term for décalage because there is no artificial translation that can fully capture the depth of this word. Leaving the term in French, then, becomes a model of a reciprocal and honest translation.

By refusing to reduce diaspora to redemption through return to the “homeland,” Edwards’ can emphasize the concept of “detour.” Detour does not depend on a predetermined historical origin. Instead detour involves actively “organizing around a common ‘elsewhere,’ a shared logic of collaboration and coordination at a level beyond particular nation-states (Edwards 23). In this case, Palestine’s elsewhere is the Black Diaspora in America, and vice-versa. Understanding the translation of these two Diasporas can only be explained beyond the scope of the nation-state, as signified by the placement of the mural on the Palestinian wall. Blackness, for Edwards and for this research project, is not defined by phenotype. Rather, blackness is found in the in-between space of translation (like the translation of Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk into Arabic and vice-versa), in the creation of detours and common elsewheres, experienced as “a changing core of difference…the work of ‘differences within unity,’ an unidentifiable point that is incessantly touched and fingered and pressed” (Edwards 14). In other words, translation is an ongoing “practice” that accounts for points of unity and contention for a more honest interaction between two Diasporas.

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Ronald Judy’s essays, “The Threat of Islamic Humanity After 11 September 2011” and “Reflections on Straussism, Antimodernity, and Transition in the Age of American Force” help answer why the Palestinian wall calls upon Black identity as its “elsewhere.” Black identity is not some essentialist identity for Judy. Rather, this identity refers to populations that according to mainstream standards are deemed irrelevant, disposable, and extinct. In many contexts, Black identity is structurally excluded from citizenship rights or civil society. Judy explains the Negro as a population, unlike the Jew, that does not have an ancient scriptural or mythological history to predetermine or justify its destiny. In the context of weakening American power and neo-liberalism in particular, the Negro or black culture becomes an important model to learn how to survive change. Mainstream narratives of progress tend to identify black culture as that which is disposed of in times of transition. However, for Judy, Black is not the leftover of social transition, but Blackness is a form of life that thrives in transition. Of course, the American problem Judy points out—or in this case the Palestinian question—cannot merely resort to an objective, philosophical frame to learn from Black life. Only through a more poetic frame can we grasp how “the amazingly creative and artful ways in which the Negro survived that domination in force gave the world a poetic dynamic that remains sustaining” (Straussism 49). Thus, for Judy, these populations are not transitional but are populations lived in transition.

Brent Edwards’ and Ronald Judy’s understanding of blackness inform my turn to two works of Du Bois, namely, Souls of Black Folk and Color and Democracy. They provide the context for understanding both how Du Bois is literally translated into Arabic on the mural and the Palestinian question at large, as well as how using Du Bois’ work and the experience of Black life provides a better understanding of both the changing world structure after World War II and the international relations structure at large. In the same light, I will reference Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth to describe how rendering populations of the Black and Palestinian Diaspora as “wretched” or “disposable” is inherently and structurally violent. In looking at the mural, Trayvon Martin’s death becomes an icon for the violent consequences that Fanon brilliantly underlines and for all the Palestinian and Israeli deaths that have resulted from the conflict and occupation.

For the last question—why the Palestinian wall serves as a site of translation—I turn to Wendy Brown’s book Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, which is the only book about 21st century fortified walls as a global phenomenon. Brown argues that the walls fortified across the globe signify an anxiety about the breakdown of borders in an era of globalization. For Israel, the wall is both a 20

product of occupation, asserting domination over the Palestinian population and a symbol of Israel’s anxieties about state security. On the other hand, the walls can also be marked by symbols of resistance to nation-state power. This is the case in the Trayvon Martin mural, especially considering how both of the populations it addresses directly challenge the nation-state structure since they are examples of peoples that are purposefully left out. In all, from this perspective, the Palestinian wall signifies political exclusion and efforts amongst the disfranchised to find new forms of international unity.

On Translation As my framework suggests, there is a “practice” to communicating within and across Diasporas. In this light, the interaction between the English and Arabic on the mural becomes a crucial part of that practice. To understand the reciprocal nature of this practice, breaking down the translation must be done with a keen eye. Specifically, how does, “How does it feel to be a problem?” become “Arabic version”? In doing this practice of translation, it becomes clear that Du Bois’ quote, “How does it feel to be a problem?” translates to “How do you feel to be the problem?” in Arabic. At first glance the Arabic translation seems fairly straightforward. But when considering the sentence structure, dialect choice, and diction, the unevenness of the translation is full of cultural and political implications for solidarity across the Black and Palestinian Diasporas.

Prior to explicating the diction and sentence structure, it is important to note that the language is in classical or Modern Standard Arabic. Because the artist did not include internal vowel marking that is typically only present in Qur’anic text, one can infer that it is Modern Standard Arabic, which is a simplified version of classical Arabic. Choosing Modern Standard Arabic makes sense because it is the written language, as opposed to the spoken colloquial dialects of Arabic. On one level, Classical Arabic signifies a level of sophistication, literacy, and holiness, as it is the language of the Qur’an, academia, and the news, whereas dialects are only spoken. But this form of Arabic is still more inclusive because it reaches a wider audience of Arabic speakers and learners.

And for purposes of translating literature, only this Arabic could capture the language justly. In this view, this mode of translation provides a more reciprocal interaction. Meaning, the way the translator translates the English to Arabic demonstrates the level of care and understanding it gains 21

from what is being translated. This, then, demonstrates how these two Diasporas (Black and Palestinian) can learn from each other through the act of translation itself.

Considering the meaning of using Modern Standard Arabic, the diction can be better understood. At the surface level, the translation is quite literal. However, because Arabic is based on a complex root system, each word derives from a specific root that has its own meaning. Thereby, each word is some variation of a common root, and depending on how the word changes or is placed in a sentence, the definition and connotation alters accordingly. The first word of the Du Bois quote, “kaif” directly translates to the interrogative, “how.” The root of “kaif” signifies a state, condition, or mood, but for the purposes of this quote, the word is used to set up a question of “how.” The next portion, “does it feel,” is reduced to the second person conjugation of “to feel.”

There is no direct translation of “does,” thus, in Arabic the verb and its conjugation suffice as a major portion of a full sentence. This verb in particular has a strong and poetic connotation in Arabic. The most basic root literally means poetry or knowledge. In its verb form, as used in the translation, the word means to learn or understand intuitively, to perceive, sense, feel, be conscious, or even to poeticize, and versify. Using this verb, in turn, captures more than a mere tactile or emotional sense of feeling. Rather, it’s a feeling developed from both an emotional reaction and a social consciousness, which is what Du Bois intends to depict in his chapter, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” Du Bois “feels” that he is perceived as a “problem” because of his awareness and knowledge of his oppressive, social context. For Du Bois, the poem, song, and written text of the chapter provide context for the type of “feeling” he speaks of. In Arabic, however, the word itself captures this complex feeling. Here then appears the first unevenness of the translation or the implementation of décalage. The Arabic calls upon its own unique qualities to translate rather than artificially re-create the English translation word for word.

Another notable aspect of the Arabic translation of “to feel,” is that the translator conjugates it in the second person. In the English version, the person is more abstract because Du Bois describes how this is a question people ask of him without actually saying those exact words.

Nonetheless, this is a question asked of directly to Du Bois. Thus, because Arabic does not have an exact translation of “how does it feel” in the vague sense, it uses, “how do you feel” in order to compensate and account for Du Bois’ intention. Although Du Bois does not use the pronoun “you,” he still articulates an invasive question. The Arabic intensifies the invasiveness of the question by addressing the question to “you” as opposed to the more general “how does it.”

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In the second half of the question, “to be a problem,” the Arabic begins with two prepositions in order to connect the verb “to feel” and “to be.” The Arabic language does not have or use the form “to be,” which is one of the biggest initial challenges for English speakers to overcome when they are learning Arabic. Arabic does not have the verb “is” and “are,” but there is a word for “being, existence, occurrence, to happen, be created, be originated, come into existence, or be formed,” which is the root “koon.”. In order to form “koon” into a verb the two prepositions “bih,” which is always used after the verb “to feel,” and the article “en,” which is used before “koon” to construct the “to be” verb structure. With the help of these preceding prepositions, the Arabic translates “to be.” Granted, in Arabic this phrase has a deep connotation because it deals with the thought of existence—as opposed to how English uses “being” in a casual, everyday sense.

However, in the context of this quote in particular, Du Bois does intentionally emphasize what it means to be, that is, to perpetually exist, and be seen as a problem. In this sense, the poetic connotation of the Arabic words actually complements Du Bois’ intention better than the English word is capable of articulating.

The translation of the last word of the quote, “problem,” also demonstrates an interesting interaction between English and Arabic. The Arabic word “mushkilah” does literally mean “problem,” though when considering the root, it can also mean, turbid, murky, dubious, difficult, obscure, intricate, unsolved, and problematic. This word is used in classical and colloquial Arabic, and the connotation of the word differs only slightly depending on whether it is used in the former or latter. In all, it is a frequently used word in Arabic. The interesting element of the translation here deals with the use of a definite prefix, “Al,” which in English means the article “the.” The Arabic reads as “the problem,” whereas the English reads as “a problem.” One could see this as a slight mistranslation. But, it seems as though the point of emphasis for the word “problem” must be articulated differently in English and in Arabic in order for the natural sound and form of each language to be accurately presented. In Arabic, the use of the article “the” is used to emphasize the severity of one’s existence being attributed to a “problem.” On the other hand, because the article “the” is a prefix as opposed to a word that stands alone like in English, the enunciation of “Al” becomes part of the word “problem.” This is important because sound and pronunciation comprise an essential part of the Arabic language. For this reason, Arabic uses internal vowels to assist with how the word sounds and is pronounced. Deciphering the vowels requires a complex understanding of Arabic grammar, but for purposes of this quote, placing “Al” in front of “mushkilah” (or “the” in 23

front of “problem”) allows for a more poetic and natural-sounding Arabic sentence. Though the literal translation in Arabic is not precise, it does provide emphasis on the word “problem” that Du Bois intends in his literature, while still translating the quote into a natural-sounding Arabic sentence.

With this uneven translation and the poetic connotations of the Arabic words in mind, I now turn to the original context in Souls of Black Folk to investigate the poetic aspect of the mural.

On Blackness & Poetic Existence All of Du Bois’ canonical works see critical thinking as emerging out of the poetic experience. For this reason, most of Du Bois’ writings beautifully embed poetry and music to compliment his work. However, what many often mistranslate is that in many ways the poetry is the source of his theoretical concepts. For Du Bois, the poetry and music warrant the same level of consideration as the text itself. Therefore, in order to understand “how does it feel to be a problem” and Du Bois as an insightful “detour” for Palestinians—translated on the Wall as “How do you feel to be the problem?”—the poetic element must be addressed. Additionally, within this poetic context, Edwards’ concept of “detour” and Judy’s concern with a scattered origin of Diaspora come to light.

In the first chapter of Souls of Black Folk, titled “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” the key affect of the poetic experience is mourning. Du Bois begins this chapter with Arthur Symons’ poem “O Water, Voice of My Heart” and the staff music of “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” to depict a mourning soul. Interestingly, however, Du Bois does not always include the name of the song or poem because he knows that these artistic expressions are often overlooked or appear discordant.

Yet, he intentionally begins each chapter of Souls of Black Folk with a poem or song in order to indirectly urge readers to read and listen more critically. Otherwise, the misreading of these artistic pieces parallels white America’s mistranslations of the “sorrow songs” both into notoriously twisted justifications of slavery before Emancipation and into casual entertainment and profit for emergent American popular culture later on. Rather, Du Bois challenges readers to unveil the complex ensemble of the song and poem. In this light, the discordance becomes the embrace rather than the dismissal of tension. Ignoring the discordance of the song and poem means ignoring the tensions that arise from the “spiritual strivings” that Du Bois delineates. The poem and song capture the deeply emotional response of black folk during slavery and the devastation of seeing the promise of Emancipation reduced to the nightmare of Jim Crow. This mourning extends to the current day as 24

seen in the case of Trayvon Martin and what that represents for Black identity in America and its connection to Palestine.

Arthur Symons’ poem, ‘O Water, Voice of my Heart,” expresses a tremendous sorrow that he feels can only be metaphorically explained by the symbol of water. In this case, the water emblematizes the vastness and inexplicability of the speaker’s anguish. The water is the “voice of [his] heart,” for it evokes his deep sentiment more so than he could perhaps emote himself.

However, for Du Bois, the water also represents the Middle Passage or the origin of the Black Diaspora. In Black Discourse, black people are often referred to as “people of the water” because of the history of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Therefore, in this context, the water becomes the origin of a dispersed population. As mentioned before, Edwards and Judy claim that accepting this scattered state and the mourning it yields becomes a powerful starting point for change. Starting from this perspective necessarily complicates the rhetoric of a nation-state, because for many there is no specific land to yearn for or seek redemption. Rather, the mourning Du Bois addresses can only be remedied through new terms and the drastic redefinition of familiar ones. Resorting to certain Western terms cannot explain the experience Du Bois writes about, especially since some of Western philosophy deems black folk as disposable.

The incomprehensibility of Western terms for black life appears in the poem when the speaker asks, “Is it I? Is it I?” Blackness necessarily rejects oppressive category and labels and repurposes its own identity in imaginative forms (Souls 1). In the poem, the speaker can only ask whether the “mournful cry” is one’s own, if he or she was someone who does not subscribe to labels (Souls 1). Throughout the first stanza, the speaker first begins to contemplate whether the water’s cries are for the speaker or coming from the speaker’s own heart. He clearly feels a natural connection to this sorrow, but it takes him a moment to fathom it as his own. This moment of pause implies a prior denial or denied mourning. In the context of the Postbellum era, the periodization of the Emancipation as a miraculous, all-changing event by white supporters and opposition alike necessarily stripped black folks of space and recognition to mourn. Of course, the new legislation signified a great milestone for black freedom; nonetheless, the full ideals of its intent did not come to fruition. In many instances, circumstances became worse for black folk. Thus, the false championing of Emancipation did not incorporate a necessary reckoning of the sorrow and trauma of slavery. Without a public, collective mourning of the nation’s centuries worth of ill practices, black folk are left disillusioned and perpetually “late” or “delayed” in terms of full 25

emotional and psychological recovery. Instead, the formerly enslaved and their later generations continuously exhibit resilience and re-invent modes of survival. For this reason, the speaker does not initially understand that the water’s cries attempt to wedge the gap of his emotional delay, practicing “décalage” in a sense. The first stanza, thus, walks through this very transition between faint resemblances and full recognition of sorrow.

The second stanza expresses the latter half of this transitional moment of survival. It is the subsequent reckoning with the fact that “all night long the water is [indeed] crying to [him].” In his internal reckoning, he embraces the “unresting” element of his sorrow until two conditions take place. The first is to let “the last tide fail” on its own accord, which implies the need for external forces to no longer hinder the emotional unraveling (Souls 1). Secondly, “the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea” (Souls 1). Unlike the first stanza, now the crying is “like” the sea as opposed to water itself—meaning the speaker’s own heart utters his despair now. However, the poem does not conclude with resolution, as his “life long crying [is still] without avail” (Souls 1).

Rather, the poem demonstrates how the speaker survives transition by beginning to unleash and acknowledge the buried, mournful cry within.

Similar to the poem, the music plays a sorrowful tune that grapples with continual struggle and disillusionment. Yet, unlike the poem, the lyrics immediately acknowledge personal troubled experiences and that many others do not understand or even know of this level of sorrow. The title itself, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” suggests an emotional reckoning and recovery from a long duration of sorrow. While the lyric’s language may suggest an individual experience, really the “nobody” refers to this periodization discussed earlier, and the “I” represents a collective of mournful people. The song begins with a slow-tempo, powerful solo, but what follows in many sorrow songs is the call-response portion. This usually includes a chorus responding in the background through lyrical articulation or wailings and hums of sorts. The act of call-response here provides the space of communal mourning that was denied in the bellum/Emancipation moment.

Yet even in this practice of mourning, the somewhat discordant musical elements represent the complexities of this moment. The piano alternates between sorrowful chords and notes played in quick, almost joyful succession. During the slowed, grand introduction, the sorrowful chords complement the singer’s (keep Mahalia Jackson’s rendition in mind) deep, elongated hums and notes, whereas the successions play in the pauses of her singing. These alternating musical articulations symbolize the constant re-invention of survival when placed in new transitions. The 26

collision of her singing and the piano keys exemplify an embrace of tension in order to exhibit a more honest expression of sorrow and truth.

Du Bois places this poem and song—each powerful pieces in their own right—at the start of Souls of Black Folk to render a new experience. Perhaps Du Bois’ complex assortment of this poem and song loses people or otherwise exposes readers’ deep misunderstandings. Upon closer look, the connection between the two yields moments of intense collision. The expression of a delayed emotional recognition played over the sorrowful declarations of an acknowledged struggle demonstrates the tense and complex reality of how it feels to be a problem. Overall, therein lies a “second-sight” in that Du Bois recognizes his sorrow and also the element of delay in transition and other people’s mistranslation of the sorrow. This mistranslation became notorious in postbellum America, as the commercialization and popularity of Negro spirituals expanded. Many of those on the other side of the veil can faintly see the other side and even like the sound such sorrow produces. However, the reduction of these expressed experiences to that of commodity and commercial products characterizes a disgustingly dishonest display. In order to avoid such display, Du Bois urges readers to deal meaningfully with the song and poem as legitimate narration and explanation of his written concepts.

With the poem and song in mind, the question of “how does it feel to be a problem” becomes soaked in sorrow. This question cannot be asked or answered from an emotionally neutral position. Otherwise, one mistranslates the question by avoiding the existential dilemma that the question addresses. To do so would, once again, ascribe the identity of “slave” or “chattel” to black people, making them inhuman and disposable. To even approach the fluidity of black life requires new terms that no longer equate blackness with property. Thus, fluid metaphors such as “water” are more accurate terms to speak of Blackness. Re-mixed terms such as water not only account for the brokenness and trauma of black life, but also how a de-centered sense of self can become “an articulation of extinction” as Judy claims (Judy 54). In other words, rather than render black folk “a problem,” people should call upon their artistic modes of survival to learn about how to survive change in the face of immense trauma. In this light, the real question becomes: what is wrong with those who would dare to ask whether certain identities are a problem? In fact, usually black life attempts to solve the very problems that are ascribed to them.

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On the Wall: Now that I have discussed the translation of Souls of Black Folk and its relation to a new perspective as well as colonial conditions, what does it mean to put Trayvon Martin and Du Bois on a wall—specifically the wall in the West Bank? The wall itself must be considered as a site of meaningful translation between the Black and Palestinian Diasporas. In order to consider the latter, one might call upon Wendy Brown’s Walled States and Waning Sovereignty. Brown’s book is the most focused attempt to understand walls as a present-day, worldwide political phenomenon. As I state in my framework, the global phenomenon of walling signifies various national anxieties. These anxieties stem from fears of how today’s form of global connectedness threatens state sovereignty.

While the walls attempt to reassert physical sovereignty, they also represent states’ anxieties about the specific populations, resources, and ideologies that the state aims to keep out or inside a given territory. Despite her several insights, Brown cannot fully account for how the wall functions as a compelling counter-space for the oppressed. In this regard, I turn back to black thought to elaborate further on the wall’s function and symbolism. Specifically, I will look at Du Bois’ Color and Democracy to show how this text foresaw many of the issues that Brown discusses and takes her analysis a step further.

With the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, the nation-state became the dominant political structure in the West. This secular structure was meant to replace the religious hierarchies that had fomented countless wars in Western Europe. The nation-state structure has gone through many changes since then due to complicated histories of colonialism, segregation, apartheid and neo-colonialism. Wendy Brown suggests that despite these various internal and external pressures on the nation-state, capitalism has most dramatically weakened the nation-state structure in order to enhance trade, high finance, technological development, migrant labor, and consumption. This most recent evolution of the nation-state structure in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has created a global elite and broadened the reach of multi-national corporations whose investments and political influence constantly flout national boundaries. Nation-states may welcome the transnational elite for the sake of economic growth but are much more disdainful of the migrant laborers who are also crossing state lines. Xenophobes pathologized immigrants as threats to both state sovereignty and national culture. In other words, those who feel threatened by “loose” borders believe that “the detachment of sovereign powers from nation-states also threatens an imaginary of individual and national identity dependent upon perceivable horizons and the containment they offer” (Brown 26).

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Disruption of this imaginary leads to the anxiety-driven construction of walls to separate, channel, or outright block certain populations. In addition to capitalism, Brown also highlights religious violence as another key transnational actor that weakens sovereignty. For religious groups, their allegiance lies in a faith that, by definition, transcends national borders. In Brown’s view, religion continues to offer a sense of global connectedness aside from capitalist development, and state allegiance becomes secondary.

This approach can account for some aspects of the wall in the West Bank: the wall represents the xenophobia in Israel that discriminates against Palestinians, other Arabs, and even Jews from across the Diaspora who cannot claim Ashkenazi identity. The Wall can also symbolize anxieties over economic ties between Israel and other global powers. When considering the wall as a piece of Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s history, it brings to light questions of not only sovereignty but also occupation and settler colonialism. The conflict does not only reflect the global phenomena of “waning sovereignty” as Brown’s title suggests. The wall also represents “a development broadly characterized as a shift from colonial domination through administration and control of Palestinians to domination achieved through the separation and deprivation of this population” (Brown 29). The Israeli government and Zionist supporters are able to control Palestinians through the wall because it is legitimized under the guise of a temporary security measure. Brown terms this structure a “suspended political solution.” Under this notion, the wall is portrayed as a temporary measure until terrorist threats and the like cease. However, this notion instead furthers “the abrogation or postponement of political agreements and settled sovereignties, [and] underscores the literal suspending of law, accountability, and legitimacy and the introduction of arbitrary and extralegal state prerogative that occurs in states of emergency” (Brown 31). In other words, global calls to “end terrorism” are inherently perpetual though they are posed as temporary missions dealing with emergency situations. How does one know when terrorism has ended? The intention behind this security rhetoric is therefore to create permanent structures of control over targeted populations.

On the one hand, the wall represents a security measure and perhaps the financial and political legitimacy that Israel receives from powerful states such as the United States. On the other hand, as suggested before, the wall also exposes Israel’s expansionary mentality and xenophobic anxieties. In this sense the wall becomes a visual paradox. The wall is a means to exert occupational sovereignty over Palestinian territories, but it also “reveals a tremulousness, vulnerability, dubiousness, or instability at the core of what [it] aims to express—qualities that are themselves 29

antithetical to sovereignty and thus elements of its undoing” (Brown 24). In this case, the walling of the West Bank demonstrates Israel’s insecurity and the structure of its perpetual tension with the populations it aims to keep out. It is evident that no peaceful solution arises from this wall.

Therefore, its continual presence only serves as a constant reminder that tension persists between the two sides of the wall.

However, there are serious limits to Wendy Brown’s approach. Though Brown pinpoints the anxious desire to protect national sovereignty through walls, she does not consider how nations use walls to expand their sovereignty and hinder the sovereignty of other peoples. Brown cannot address this because she substitutes an emphasis on globalization for a concern with the long history of Western colonialism, including its neo-colonial expressions today. Without considering neocolonialism’s violence, one is left, like Brown, thinking that wall-building is merely a curious paradox of globalization. In actuality, globalization is, at best, a side note to or even a distraction from examining the structures supporting today’s neo-colonial efforts, which include the building of walls.

Simply put, globalization is not a threat to neo-colonialism. Placing the translation of Souls and the Trayvon memorial on the wall in the West Bank is not merely a testament to globalization being hindered by anxious wall construction. This aesthetic expression on the wall is trying to explain what Brown misses: namely, that colonialism has not ended, and that it remains a violent phenomenon that depends upon the nation-state to expand its reach. Lastly, the mural demands that we look farther back, before the term globalization had taken off in the 1990s, to understand how this neocolonialism took shape. I argue that W.E.B. Du Bois’ Color and Democracy is the best place to look in order to contextualize the wall, the mural, and even Wendy Brown’s argument.

In 1945, during the end of World War II and the emergence of the United Nations, Du Bois wrote his timely book Color and Democracy. Du Bois investigates how the disenfranchised peoples of colonies and territories are yet again not justly accounted for in the formation of the United Nations.

The power of Color and Democracy stems from Du Bois’ ability to see how the restructuring of international relations would yield a range of deleterious results in the coming decades. Just as Du Bois predicted that the color line would be the problem of the twentieth century, in the 1940s, with Color and Democracy, he forecasts the ongoing colonial conflicts that will be fostered through this peacekeeping organization. Because Brown’s argument cannot look beyond the anxieties of the wall, it is imperative to look at thinkers like Du Bois to understand the structural forces that led to the 30

walling, which is arguably part of a contemporary imperialist project. The mural, including the translation of Souls and the Trayvon memorial, must be read in this context.

Du Bois’s Color and Democracy directly analyzes the structural forces at play in the post-World War II context, which has direct consequences for the situation in the West Bank and Gaza today.

The first chapter starts off discussing Dumbarton Oaks and the creation of the United Nations. Du Bois argues that although the the United Nations has great unifying potential, it ultimately creates a new imperial structure. The primary purpose of the UN is to promote peace and security. For Du Bois, this task is impossible without completely including the disenfranchised peoples of states, colonies, and territories—the very populations that the UN structure either deliberately excludes or includes at the lowest organizational levels. The UN Security Council’s P-5 members are predominately Western states and colonizing powers, leaving no representation of African, Arab, Latin or other states. While the UN has various other organs, most of the organization’s influence comes from Security Council resolutions. Du Bois warns of the imperialist capability of the UN, given the West’s disproportionate influence on the organization, and its detriment to the disenfranchised. This is especially contradictory because World War II marked the decline of Western Europe’s power and more generally how Western societies can no longer be the only model for civilization or culture. Rather, people of color, who inhabit a majority of the globe, must have a considerable say in peace and security, especially since these are the very populations that are often targets of violence at the hands of imperial forces. However, as Du Bois outlines the discussions that took place in Dumbarton Oaks about the UN’s creation, colonies and territories alike are grossly unaccounted for in this structure. Ultimately, Du Bois argues that not fully addressing the situation of colonies is counter-intuitive because most wars have been results of the inherently violent colonial structures.

In addition to considering the political and structural elements, Du Bois relies on the poetic to fully explain the gravity of the issues. Like a grand majority of his works, Du Bois embeds poetry and music with his academic prose. At the close of the first chapter, “Missions and Mandates,” he ends with a song from the German opera Lohengrin’s Swan adapted by Richard Wagner. The song represents the sound of peace and utopia, which is the supposed goal of the United Nations. But given Du Bois main arguments, the song most likely resembles a dream or distant reality.

Interestingly, Du Bois has used this song before in his chapter “The Coming of John” in Souls of Black Folk. In that context, the opera relays the hope of transcending Jim Crow segregation. Thus, 31

we can conclude that Du Bois calls upon this opera again to demonstrate how from 1904 to 1945 the problem of the color line sadly persists, leaving only the sound of a distant peace. In Color and Democracy, the Lohengrin’s Swan expands to the whole world in the post-World War II era, which increases the urgency to address the problem of the disenfranchised. A current day example of this urgency takes place in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For the Palestinians, the unifying potential of Lohengrin’s harmony has yet to transcend occupation. Otherwise, as the mural suggests, Palestinians and people of color in the United States would not still be asked how it feels to be a problem. And considering the continuous death and discrimination of people such as Trayvon Martin or the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip at this current moment, the harmonious expression of peace remains a distant reality.

To contrast the harmonious sound of Lohengrin’s Swan, in his chapter “The Disenfranchised Colonies” he ends with Conrad Aiken’s poem “The Sound of Breaking.” This is the longest chapter of Color and Democracy and where Du Bois thoroughly outlines how the colonial system renders the colonized people of color “the wretched people” of the world, living in poverty and disease (Color and Democracy 17). Du Bois debunks the false narrative of colonial peoples being inferior to the colonizers as “influenced by propaganda, by caricature, and by ignorance of the human soul” (Color and Democracy 26). The falsity of these racist rationalizations lies in their economic ulterior motive. For example, “religion rationalized slavery as a method of saving souls, but this bade fair to interfere with profit and investment and soon was changed by the new science to a doctrine of natural human inferiority” (Color and Democracy 45). Thereby, the racist social science studies merely served to ease the consciousness of the colonial powers in order to expand their empire by exploiting bodies of color. For this reason, Du Bois highlights the criticality of listening to the voices of those grossly repressed by the colonial structure and nation-state. In other words, we must hear their “sound of breaking” as Aiken’s title suggests. In context of World War II as a moment to either extend or restructure the colonial system, the disenfranchised’s “sound of passionate heartbreak [is] at the centre of the world” (Color and Democracy 55). While the world stage as it stood in that moment suggests a perpetuation of imperial rule, Du Bois also hints at the possibility for connection in the brokenness of the disenfranchised. The unfree peoples of color comprise a majority of the Earth’s inhabitants. Meaning, there is a potential for an intense unity amongst these peoples by fact of sheer numbers and analogous sorrows. The disharmony of Lohengrin’s Swan and “Sound of Breaking” should therefore be treated, as Edwards suggests, as “the articulation of a 32

mood” rather than a final conclusion or future prediction of post-WWII colonial conditions (Color and Democracy 318). The range of artistic expressions Du Bois calls upon therefore become pieces to “the uncertain harmony of a new song” that could lead to fundamental change by understanding the historical fact of colonization and its repercussions in the current day (Color and Democracy 318).

With the contrasting tones of the Lohengrin’s Swan and “The Sound of Breaking” in mind, Du Bois in the chapter “Peace and Colonies” concretely outlines a list of wars across the globe from 1792 to 1939 by re-framing them as colonial wars. Du Bois radically re-categorizes global conflicts into the following: “rivalry for colonies, spheres of influence, colonial conquest, internal-group conquest, colonial revolt, and strife within colonies” (Color and Democracy 103). He attempts to create new terms, as discussed earlier, in order to remedy the incessant misnaming of not just black life but colonial subjects worldwide. In much of Western narratives, we do not learn about World War I or II as colonial wars. Thus, presenting these conflicts as concrete evidence for how imperial colonialism directly causes war is Du Bois’ most compelling argument. With Lohengrin’s Swan as a distant melody, Du Bois compellingly forewarns of the consequences of remaining in the status quo of imperial global structures. However, Du Bois’ intention is not for the mere sake of being intellectually provocative. By framing these conflicts through a colonial lens, Du Bois challenges us to re-purpose the way we think and learn in a more honest and complex way. This re-shifting in perspective also allows us to focus on the disenfranchised rather than partially include them, which should not be provocative but necessary if measures of peace and security are to come into fruition.

The way in which Du Bois re-categorizes the global conflicts as colonial wars is how we must investigate the occupation of Palestine. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict cannot be explained as two mutual forces with negotiable disagreements. Simply put it is a conflict between a growing neocolonial power that is militarily and politically backed by the United States and a displaced people who is stripped of land, resources, and dignity and lacks a nation-state. While both groups are responsible for violence, there is a blatant imbalance of power, making Palestinian “violence” a form of resistance against a state that wishes to eradicate them. Thus, in order to fully understand the complexities of this conflict, we must explain it via re-mixed terms on colonialism. Furthermore, using more honest terms to discuss the conflict also allows for the type of fundamental change Du Bois calls for in his critique of the United Nations. This sort of change does not come about via consensus as seen in the case of slavery in the United States. Real change requires collective engagement amongst the disenfranchised.

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The book meaningfully closes with the music notation to the famous Negro Spiritual “Go Down Moses!” In order to capture the complexity of this historical moment, Du Bois expands this Negro Spiritual to have a global reference point. The Exodus narrative is constantly referenced as a model for government in the West. On the other hand, this narrative is also a model for revolution: the Moses-led overthrow of the Pharaoh “way down in Egypt’s land.” In the context of how Color and Democracy radically re-contextualizes world history and politics, we must reconsider who occupies the roles of the oppressor and the oppressed—or the Pharaoh and Moses, respectively. In this light, we must also reconsider how certain political constructs, such as the United Nations, can reach the limits of their effectiveness and at who’s expense. Du Bois protests that “the day has dawned when above a wounded, tired earth unselfish sacrifice, without sin and hell, may join thorough technique, shorn of ruthless greed, and make a new religion, one with new knowledge, to shout from the hills of heaven: Go down Moses!” (Color and Democracy 143). This pivotal historical moment ultimately calls for a reconsideration of what counts as escape from bondage, and the only way to re-think freedom is to adopt new terms of translation.

Unfortunately, much of the ills Du Bois forewarns in Color and Democracy come to realization, which brings us back to the mural in Palestine. Given the historical context Du Bois provides, his presence in the mural and the tribute to Trayvon Martin become even more poignant. The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is a direct consequence of the decisions made by Western powers throughout the dawn of the 20th century and WWII moment, which was a crucial opportunity to change colonial conditions. Instead, the Pharaoh reappeared in a settler colonial structure in the West Bank and Gaza. Today, people of color such as Trayvon Martin or a Palestinian still undeservingly face the violent consequences of these new structures.

At the same time, however, Palestinians and other folks of color continue to resist the oppression they face. For the Palestinians, a version of this resistance is their re-purposing of the wall through protest art. The wall in the West Bank is covered with countless murals from both Palestinians and artists from around the world. Many of the pieces expose the injustices of the wall and the conflict at large, show solidarity with the Palestinians, promote peace, or just serve as artistic counter-spaces. As a result, the wall receives international attention and brings tourism. Yet the most compelling element of the occupied side of the wall lies in its resistance to making Palestine a “nonspace.” Frantz Fanon, the Afro-French psychiatrist and revolutionary, brilliantly describes the nonspace condition of the colonized—or in this case, those under occupation—as follows, “It’s a world 34

with no space” (Fanon 4). This paradoxical notion reveals the complex question of what it means to be a part of an entire world or society but to lack both physical and figurative space. The walling attempts to absolve space from Palestinians as if they are a disposable population, leaving them with less physical territory and space to exist as a people. Yet the art on the wall exhibits a resistance to being deemed disposable—or, as the Du Bois quote on the Trayvon Martin mural suggests, “to be a problem.” In this sense, the wall becomes a platform to translate these experiences both in how they differ and relate. Perhaps the most meaningful element of this mural and its placement on this particular wall is its “articulation of extinction” (Judy 54). In this articulation is also where Palestinians either demonstrate or can learn from the Black Diaspora. Although the Palestinians are stateless and under occupation, they have found ways to survive, resist, and even thrive by repurposing the non-space. The mural is only one example of this powerful re-purposing.

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Works Cited Brown, Wendy. Walled States, Waning Sovereignty. New York, NY: Zone Books, 2010.

Du Bois, W. E. B.. Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace.. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1945.

Du Bois, W. E. B., and Nathan Irvin Huggins. "Souls of Black Folk." In Writings. New York, N.Y.: Literary Classics of the United States:, 1986.

Edwards, Brent Hayes. The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge, Massachusettes: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Fanon, Frantz, and Jean Sartre. "On Violence ." In The Wretched of the Earth. New York, NY: Grove Press, Inc., 1965.

Wehr, Hans, and J. Milton Cowan. A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1961.

Ronald A.T. Judy, “Reflections on Straussism, Antimodernity, and Transition in the Age of American Force,� boundary 2 (2006) 37-59.

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Protest and Its Place in American Society Megan Aveni University of Southern California

In the democratic ideal, the right to free speech is hailed as the foundational principle of liberty and as a necessary aspect of equality. No matter who you are, what you own, how much money you make, or how much power you hold, every citizen in a democratic society has the right to speak. In theory, the citizens within a democracy—the so-called “people”—wield the power of the nation. It is by conforming to the collective will of the people that those in government—the people’s representatives—decide the course of that nation. But does the concept of a collective will actually exist in reality? What about the citizens whose will does not conform to the collective will of the “people”? The strongest voices and the popular opinions usually win out in a democracy. The minority opinions must have a way to make their voices heard, and room has been made within our American democracy so that this may be accomplished through protest. Though protest often seeks to correct or condemn our current democratic system through dissenting speech and action, it is an inherent and necessary part of a functioning democratic society. Without this form of free speech, democracy as an institution could never improve—no, even worse: democratic society would cease to exist. The inherent nature of a democracy is plurality, and protest is how those who do not agree with the standing order of things can be included in the democratic process. Protest, as a tenet of democracy, ensures the continuation of democracy as an institution.

Protest, however, is given a specific place in American society. Free speech through protest can only be exercised at certain times, in certain places, and in certain ways—all of which are stipulated by those currently in power. While these restrictions are placed with the intent to protect democracy as an institution, does this kind of protest, limited and controlled by the governing authorities, actually foster a thriving democratic and political society? Or does it merely provide citizens with a venting mechanism—one that maintains the current power structure and masquerades as true freedom of expression? In order to adequately explore this, I must first define a “thriving democratic society.” As I cannot explain all of the necessary elements of not only a functioning democratic system but also of the society such an institution is intended to foster in 37

such a small space, I will draw on the work of Chantal Mouffe, author of The Democratic Paradox, to help illustrate this concept through the understanding of “agonistic pluralism.”

According to Mouffe, a truly thriving democracy is made inherently of paradoxes—the paradox of liberty working together with equality, and also the paradox of “friendly enemies”, what Mouffe calls “agonism.” Similar to the idea of antagonism, a term we are more familiar with, agonism entails an adversarial relationship between two competing groups. However, the adversaries involved “share a common symbolic space…they [just] want to organize that space in a different way” (Mouffe 13). American politics has memorialized this relationship in the organization of the two dominant political parties. However, these parties still miss the mark that true agonistic pluralism aims for, which is to accept the inherent, messy paradox of the democratic system. We know that liberty too long considered without equality becomes uncapped self-interest. Power for the sole purpose of creating liberty can only be corrupt. However, we also know that equality without the right to personal liberty and well-being becomes masked self-interest, hidden behind the name of goodwill. Power for the sole purpose of creating equality is impossible. To accept the paradox of liberal democratic society seems to be the only way to protect our system from limitless abuses. Our current democratic system, however, finds the paradox uncomfortable and somewhat volatile. In an effort to create stability and order, we have chosen diplomacy over agonism, where each opposing side settles for its turn, forfeiting power to the other for a time—eventually creating an instability that cannot be reconciled.

With this logic forming our everyday social and political reality, how are we to understand and adopt the essence of agonism? According to Mouffe, the major flaw in our current understanding of “friendly antagonism” is how we interpret her use of “friendly.” Agonism, in the truest sense of the word, is not peaceful, nor is it necessarily civil or polite. Instead, it contains the assumption of confrontation and discord with respect to differences—an important element, since this makes room for protest within democratic society. “The domain of politics…is not a neutral terrain that could be insulated from the pluralism of values and where rational, universal solutions could be formulated” (Mouffe 92). In other words, the public sphere of politics is not protected from the thoughts and actions of the private sphere; inherently, the two spheres are connected.

Agonistic pluralism allows the institution of democracy to accept the inherent tensions found within a thriving democracy society, and therefore creates a space in politics where protest is not only acceptable, but also effective.

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As an American citizen, when I think of protest, neither peaceful demonstrations nor civil debates come to mind. “Protest,” rather, incites a picture of violence and chaos in my mind; and as a means of free speech, shouldn’t this kind of protest also have its place in a thriving democratic society? After all, if the current democratic system does not operate with agonism in mind, wouldn’t violent protest better get the attention of corrupt lawmakers? At the end of the day, the ever-present demarcations against public protest do not target intellectual debates, but rather public—and often violent—demonstrations. So, back to our original question: does the delimitation of protest prevent or create a thriving democratic society? The political theorist Max Weber suggests that such a delimitation of protest not only creates a thriving democratic society, but the delimitation also ensures the well-being, and therefore the continuation, of the democratic state. In his work Politics as a Vocation, Weber defines the state as “the form of human community that (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence within a particular territory” [emphasis in the original] (33).

Notice here that Weber is not against the use of violence within the democratic system; however, he is wary that violence outside of the control of the government could easily lead to chaos.

To Weber, the state functions as the most fundamental part of any democratic system, and violent protest exists as a true threat to that institution of democracy. Speaking to a group of aspiring politicians, visionaries, and revolutionaries, Weber calls for an “ethic of responsibility” to limit and rule their passionate drive for change; and in doing so, he seeks to balance against the “ethic of ultimate ends” that violent protest seeks to satisfy. Such an “ethic of responsibility” guides the “ethic of ultimate ends” into practical reform and transforms its goals of destruction and rebuilding into moderate change—change that allows the system to continue on as it is, while allowing for important but minor adjustments. To be honest, it sounds rather perfect. In this model, what is corrupt can slowly be handed to a new authority, and what is imperfect can slowly be adapted and fixed to suit our needs. However, it is precisely within this model of state reform that agonistic pluralism cannot exist. Within Weber’s understanding of the state, there is nowhere to be found an inherent tension of values and opinions. There exists not only a monopoly of violence, but also a monopoly of thought. In order to break free of such a monopoly, does violent protest present itself as the only solution? In other words, if Weber has given us an accurate description of our current democratic system, shall we fight fire with fire as we seek to create a thriving democratic society through agonistic politics?

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Thankfully, Vaclav Havel has provided us with another model to break us out of the monopoly of violence through an understanding of the true aims of protest. In order to define what I mean by “the true aims of protest,” I will use Havel’s Power of the Powerless. Though by writing this work Havel sought to bridge the gap between the ideals of Communism and the reality of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, the aims of Havel’s protest bear striking similarity to those citizens who protest within a democratic society: protest is the means by which the powerless wield power and enact change against the standing order through a change in lifestyle. Protest is not merely a call for change through speech; it is more importantly bringing that change into existence through consistent action—through life—that cannot be limited by the current power structure. When protest is limited, the expression of ideas that conflict with the standing order is limited. Limited protest that can only occur through specified channels and at specified times prevents “agonism” from ever taking place. In a truly democratic society, ideas, even if they are expressed through certain means that may not be considered polite or proper, must be given the same kind of respect in the political realm. Democratic politics was not designed to be orderly and clean—it is a messy process that rarely ends in clear resolution. But I want to be clear: protest does not mean revolution.

Rather, protest is a means by which reform can come about from the grassroots. Both Chantal Mouffe and Vaclav Havel describe it as such.

It is only through the living out of agonism that agonism has the chance to enter our political system. Through action, our ideals are realized. With that said, I am of the opinion that were violence to be the goal, violent protest would also be the most logical step toward achieving that goal. However, I think that for most of American democratic society—though I realize I cannot speak for everyone—violence and corruption, destruction and grief, these are not the ends to which we aspire. In order to create and sustain a thriving democratic society, we must take part in that society as though it already exists—live in our own Parallel Polis, if you will. It is through a personal decision to live in truth that makes it possible for others to do the same; and in doing so, we shall each change our democratic society and the world, one person at a time—starting with you.

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Works Cited Havel, Vaclav. "The Power of the Powerless." N.p., 1978. Web. 17 Jan. 2015. .

Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso, 2000. Print.

Weber, Max. "Politics as a Vocation." The Vocation Lectures. Ed. David S. Owen and Tracy B. Strong.

Trans. Rodney Livingstone. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub.

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