Foucault and Hamas

As seen through "White Fragility"

A continuing look at the bizarre support for rape, murder, and victim shaming seen through the lens of “White Fragility”. The series starts here.

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White. Triggered.

Chapter 7 of “White Fragility”

I juxtapose the title of this post with the quote from Martin Luther King Jr. because there is a tension between what he says above and what Diangelo says in this chapter.

It is important to note that this chapter, perhaps more overtly than any other so far, depends on a Foucaultian view of power. If you’ve not heard of this philosopher, Philoso?hy Talk gives a brief introduction to his theories of power. In an earlier post titled White Fragility Digression I explored some of what I believe to be the underpinnings of this book. Critical Theory (CT) was influenced by Foucault, and Critical Race Theory (CRT) depends on his understanding of power.

Probably the biggest failing in Foucault’s power theories is simply there is no room for love, or at least love is simply another manifestation of power immanent in a relationship. Hence the counterpoint from Dr. King.

I posted the title of this chapter, “White Triggers” as “White. Triggered.” because, simply, to be white is to be triggered. Why? Well because:

When there is disequilibrium in the habitus – when social cues are unfamiliar and/or when they challenge our capital – we use strategies to regain our balance.

p 103

Scratching your head? First, according to Diangelo, “Capital is the social value people hold in a particular field; how they perceive themselves and are perceived by others in terms of their power (italics mine) or status.” p 102.

Basically, if you are made uncomfortable, when you are unsure of your standing in a group or if your power is challenged, you throw a tantrum to restore things to what makes you comfortable. No, really. Here, in her own words:

…white fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress in the habitus becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves.

ibid.

These defensive moves are emotional displays of “anger, fear and guilt and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation.” ibid. This is followed by a listing that spans pp 103 and 104 of all the triggers experienced by white people. Spoiler: they involve being white and running across racial things, like black people in positions of power, or people of color talking about being people of color, or people of color being unwilling to talk about being people of color, or people of color choosing not to protect white people’s feelings about race, or suggesting that white people do not represent or speak for all of humanity.

And if you thought you misread some of that, Diangelo literally gives as examples of white triggers:

1. People of color talking about being people of color

2. People of color refusing to talk about being people of color

Under the Foucaultian understanding of power, where power resides in systems, not in individuals, and where these systems operate below our consciousness, and where power is just the interaction between groups, white fragility is simply the unavoidable consequence of interacting in any way with anyone not white. And when we feel our power threatened we restore our sense of normalcy via white fragility. The two examples given above are interpreted as:

1. Challenge to white taboos on speaking openly about race

2. Challenge to the expectation that people of color will serve us

In other words, if we didn’t ask them to tell us, they shouldn’t. And if we ask them to tell us, they should. This understanding only makes sense in a Foucaultian understanding of systems of power.

Would it surprise you to learn that I prefer Dr. King’s vision of power?

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Further on Foucault: I read and now cannot find an interesting discussion about Michel Foucault that summarized for me the fundamental world view difference between his understanding of human relations and mine. The discussion was about a room with chairs in it. Foucault, who sees everything as an expression of power would review the chairs, noting if they were high-backed that they were enforcing a sense of being upright, of being a righteous person. The arrangement of the chairs would be analyzed to determine who was in power and who was subordinate. For example, if there is one larger chair about which the others are arranged in a semi-circle, then clearly the one in the larger chair holds sway over the others.

From my viewpoint, an Aristotelian/Thomistic view, since people like to relax when talking or reading, etc., chairs are provided. Since socializing is part of our nature, chairs are arranged to facilitate conversation, or if a lecture, to facilitate the exchange of information.

You can convince yourself that anything you see is in a power relationship of some sort, and this may often be the case. But that these systems of power have taken on a life of their own, and that we are unaware of how we participate and instantiate power relationships, I question. I do not believe we are cogs in a machine, but I do believe that “White Fragility” is built on this understanding of human nature. I find this viewpoint bleak.

The biggest error that I see in this mindset has two parts. First, Foucault later in life retracted some of his statements. As noted in the article referenced in Philos?hy Talk,

All of a sudden, there were cases where apparent benevolence turned out to be—guess what?—real benevolence, not just a front for mind control. All of a sudden, there were cases where apparent self-fashioning turned out to be real self-fashioning, not just the unwitting internalization of social norms. All of a sudden, freedom was not always an illusion.

Second, the idea that systems themselves are the actual oppressors, with unwitting participants:

Most people in the 20th century still think of power in sovereign terms; that is, as located in a clearly identifiable individual or political unit (the monarch, president, central committee of the party). Foucault believed this to be 200-300 years behind the times. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the economy of disciplinary power established “the circulation of effects of power through progressively finer channels, gaining access to individuals themselves, to their bodies, their gestures and all their daily actions” (Foucault, 1980, p. 152). Disciplinary power was in many ways more insidious, more sinister, than the workings of sovereign power, being based on “knowing the inside of people’s minds” (Foucault, 1982, p. 214). At its heart were “procedures which allowed the effects of power to circulate in a manner at once continuous, uninterrupted, adopted and ‘individualized’ throughout the entire social body” (Foucault, 1980, p. 119). Disciplinary power exhibits an “attentive malevolence” (Foucault, 1977, p. 139) and is “a type of power which is constantly exercised by means of surveillance” (Foucault, 1980, p. 104). It is seen most explicitly in the functioning of prisons, but its mechanisms are also at play in schools, factories, social service agencies, and higher education. This form of power turns lifelong learning into a lifelong nightmare of “hierarchical surveillance, continuous registration, perpetual assessment and classification” (Foucault, 1977, p. - Source

The result? White fragility and support for beheading children. Bold statement, yes. How so? Well, I think it has to do with a not-so-obvious instantiation of what is called the Panopticon, which was an idea for a prison envisioned by English Philosopher Jeremy Bentham. I believe the original idea was melded into Foucault’s power theories in an unholy mess foreseen by few.

Find out next week.

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