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How useful are the writings of Arendt in helping us understand violence in…
How useful are the writings of Arendt in helping us understand violence in the 20th century?
Unpacking the question
What makes 20th century violence unique? The question talks about "violence", not just genocide!
Mass slaughter. No surrender.
Shifting beyond European borders after WWII.
Genocide.
Utilisation of technology.
Limits of Arendt - The writings of Arendt only help us insofar as we can actually understand 20c violence
i.e. The limits of the UN definition of genocide...
Narrowness: excludes certain groups; impossible to prove intention; how many deaths = genocide?
Loss of meaning: some claim Iraqi War is US genocide. Maybe Arendt's writings could be stretched to incorporate cases she wasn't talking about?
Armenian genocide as
Medz Yeghern
(Ayda, 2012: 88)
i.e. we don't understand what causes genocide
a mix between
role of elites
ideology
individual and group psychology
geopolitics
military authoritarianism
Therefore we should supplement Arendt with other thinkers.
Arendt was highly critical of contemporary genocide scholars whom she claimed over emphasised race and ethnicity. Rather, she claims, we should take the global social system (modernity) as our starting point of analysis (170).
OTOH, new evidence shows Eichmann was perhaps more anti-Semitic than assumed (Benhabib 2014)
OTOH, Arendt was not wrong about his persona (Benhabib 2014)
The Holocaust embodies the combination of multiple ordinary factors:
Anti-Semitism, and its integration into state policy; a centralised state commanding a huge bureaucracy; a state of emergency; passive population.
Studying the Holocaust allows for a further understanding of the commonalities and peculiarities of other genocides.
Genocide can also be understood through a post-colonial lense:
de-humanises the other; eliminates pre-modern way of life; means to an end
post-colonial borders have also created ethnic minorities that in the future would become victims of genocide.
the lesson is not to focus just on genocide. It is all on the same continuum of violence.
Arendt maintains that imperialism is a precursor to Nazism (170).
Early 20c colonial violence. However, this isn't genocide: colonialism was to subjugate, not eliminate.
i.e. Arendt is regularly misinterpreted
People use the Milgram experiment to uphold Arendt - this is wrong. The Milgram participants disagreed with what the authority figure asked them to do but did it anyway. OTOH, Eichmann completely agreed with Nazi policy.
Habib 2014: Arendt was not saying all people are potential Eichmanns
Western-centric. She saw totalitarianism as something that broke down the Western norm
Plan
Divide the your answer into the key concepts then apply these across 20c violence.
Conclude with usefulness of the research.
Just as Arendt emphasises the active life, her research contributes not only to theory but also to understanding how to prevent future genocide and violence. Also has a focus on psychological and sociopolitical realms and how these interact.
Invites us to stop thinking of the world in utilitarian terms (MO 169).
This renders people "superfluous". Rubenstein's development: ""by producing a surplus men take the first step in making themselves superfluous'" (G James 98)
Invites us to stop thinking of the world in Marxist and normative terms which assume there is a hidden truth to be uncovered (MO 170)
Arendt should be supplemented with other thinkers but we don't have space for that here. She drew on different schools (MO 168) so we should too.
Should also draw from the Ancient Greeks who inspired her vita activa / vita contemplativa.
Heidegger's "thoughtlessness" (Benhabib 2014)
Bauman
Introduction
Good linkage to Arendt as he also criticises academia: disatisfied with characterisation of Holocaust as Jewish history and an extreme example of something normal. It could happen to anyone.
The Holocaust as a natural result of modernity.
Human nature
Humans naturally despise violence, so there must be structural and technological processes in place to prevent this reaction...
Authorisation of violence
Bureaucracy means that people need to obey one order, distancing you from the outcome.
Functional division of labour
People become functionaries, giving commands without knowing the effects.
Compared to a hierarchical division of labour, where people become more knowledgeable towards the top, in a functional system these effects are magnified. Rather than obeying commands that come together in a final task, each task itself is completely separated, allowing the Jews to become fully dehumanised.
Bureaucracy doesn't necessitate genocide, but is a necessary feature of it.
Anti-Semitism
Not the cause of the Holocaust.
Jewish Estrangement:
Unlike other religions, Jews knew of Christ and chose to reject him. However, interaction was stable until modernity.
The idea of a nation without a geographic base made Jews threatening to the nation-state.
Racism and modernity
Racism is the modern weapon used to fight a pre-modern struggle. It posits an undesirable characteristic to a group of people as an essential element of their being that cannot be changed.
They cannot be integrated into the rational order and must be socially engineered out of it.
Genocide is
always
a means to an end.
Holocaust as the dark side of modernity.
Arendt and the "Banality of Evil"
Introduction
Good accompaniment to the Eichmann trial. Answered metaphysical questions: where does evil come from? Why is it committed? Are these people any different?
These are normal people who are simply serving the state.
Thoughtlessness
Contrary to Eichmann's claims, he was
not
just "following orders. He actually disobeyed orders when they contradicted his understanding of Nazi policy.
Banality isn't just about following orders, but is about thoughtlessness. Eichmann did not think from any other perspective. He didn't hate the Jews, he just loved serving the Nazis.
A concept derived from Kant's definition of Enlightenment as the "courage of think for yourself".
Could happen anywhere, but did not happen everywhere, i.e. Denmark.
Diner: Arendt's claims it could happen anywhere takes the onus off Germany (MO 182-3).
Arendt's thesis does, however, avoid exighophobia. The problems with exighophobic critiques are as follows:
Germans are different to other human beings (MO 184)
Germans are more racist than other Europeans.
Bureacracy
A helpful component to thoughtlessness as it allows one to be further distanced from the result of one's actions.
Eichmann was not charged with genocide against gypsies because apparently he did not know they were being transported to destruction (although Arendt maintains that he did) (BOE 96).
The problem, however, is that under bureaucracy a perpetrator is always distant from the result of their actions.
Bureaucracy does not absolve Eichmann of moral responsibility (97).
Modernity
The nation state provides protection that stateless people lacked. This is what the Jews and eventually Eichmann had in common, to his lawyer's disappointment (97).
Eichmann's morality was based around the Fatherland (Benhabib 2014)
Eichmann's lawyer insisted that it was the responsibility of German courts to hold Eichmann to account (97). Poses questions as to who holds judicial responsibility under globalised violence.
Eichmann wanted to absolve German citizens of guilt (95, 99).
Modernity abolishes the political life. Totalitarianism offers a substitute for disoriented people (MO 167).
Labour and Work realm supplanted Action realm. The latter allowed for the expression of differing views, but with its abolition came the rise of total uniformity, expressed in totalitarianism (MO 167)
Also left plenty of room for German careerism. Careerists seized Nazi opportunities (MO 168).
Anti-Semitism caused the choice of victim, but not the nature of the crime.
Sonderweg
thesis: The problem isn't modernity, but the lack thereof.
"Superfluous people"
Well complemented by Foucault's "biopower": the state is preoccupied with improving physical welfare of its citizens to increase economic productivity (MO 175).
Another outcome of biopolitics is rendering elements of the population (i.e. disabled) superfluous (MO 175).