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 2 Evaluating Contemporary Liberal Society 3 Corinne Osnos The American Oligarchy: The Tyranny of the 10 Civically Disengaged Majority A.J. Pinto Translating Du Bois & Trayvon Martin to the 16 Palestinian Diaspora Janan Burni Protest and Its Place in American Society 32 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

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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. 4

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

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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,

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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 God-

fearing 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

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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

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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. 17

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.

19

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.” 22

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 re-

purposes 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.

27

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). 28

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 neo-

colonialism’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 neo-

colonialism 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

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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

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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 neo-

colonial 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. 33

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 “non-

space.” Frantz Fanon, the Afro-French psychiatrist and revolutionary, brilliantly describes the non-

space 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 re-

purposing 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.

36

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

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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. 38

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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