This video emerged in June, 2010 in Seattle. It could be New Year's Eve 2009 on the Fruitvale Platform Station. It could be LA 1992; Benton Harbor, 2003; Paris, 2006. A Seattle friend recently forwarded it to twenty of his friends, many of whom defended the police officer. I wrote a basic response that I think in may ways parallels Zizek's project in 'Violence'-- it's an attempt to move from the static, immediate violence of individuals to a longer temporal scale of structural violence. If it is too basic, please forgive. A question I have in coming into this class (admittedly late) is the efficacy of using the term 'violence'-- it seems that this term operates in the moral realm: i.e. force plus morality equals 'violence'. 'Force' could allow us to talk about the possibility of 'liberatory' violence, rupture, insurrection. It seems that we find ourselves left with the (dead?) legacies of the 'violence/non-violence' identity formations assembled in 60s and 70s social movements. How to leave the moral realm? How to address and confront the violence of capital and the state asà es?
Without further adieu,
It's hard for me to take this act of force outside the context of the long legacy of state violence against minorities (I would say the euphemism 'people of color' here, but I think 'minority' is more accurate/useful in this specific schemata) in this country. Certain bodies are criminalized by the state while others are not. Criminalization means a lot of things; it means racialized incarceration rates, it means systematic exclusion from certain jobs on the one hand and unions on the other, it means long histories of displacement, it means real estate redlining, it means a cultural arena that presents your gender/sexuality as deviant, it means a racialized disparity of wealth, and sometimes it means a cop punching you in the face, or shooting you-- that is to say, direct force deployed against one's body. I'm not making this up, race informs how someone experiences an institution such as the police department.
Taking this into account, I don't think it's worth considering how scary it is to be a cop. I think we consider and internalize the point of view of the state very often-- if not all the time-- because we're convinced that we have a stake in ‘maintaining state power’/‘the social situation as is/a national stability. On the other hand I do think it's worth considering how scary it is to be pushed around by some man with a gun who represents the state (which is to say, he represents court hours, possible fines, possible jail time, the real possibility losing one's jobs, one's federal grants, one's children, etc.) for crossing the street-- just because he can humiliate her. And if she didn't fight back, as limited as it was, then it would have meant that she didn't know what the police are, but in fact, as she shows, she does. It's unfortunate to me that the others around didn't step up for her, to get the cop to leave. For me her fighting is about dignity, it's about context. We don't seriously understand what that cop's act of force is-- that is to say, beyond a 'did she deserve to be punched in the face?', which is really to ask 'didn't she ASK for it?'-- until we understand WHY she is in the position of being punched in the face by a strong arm of the state. What she demonstrates in her fighting is that she understands why. We can only hope to catch up.
It is interesting to note that this incident, especially when captured on record, is part of a series of occurrences leading up to this aggression between both the officer and the two friends. They are both attempting to humiliate the other through their places in society and return to their places of safety. For the officer, this is with other officers and for the woman, this is with her friends. The fact that this is occurring in open view of other people may be a motivating factor for the resistance shown by the women. The isolation that the officer feels, especially when he is calling for back-up must add to his adrenaline. The women are not allowing the game to be played properly while the officer is attempting to restore some amount of his own professional dignity by continuing with the restraint of at least one of the women.
ReplyDeleteThe people gathered around in this park represent the segment of society which is being invaded by the actions of the state. It is obvious that their involvement comes through their disapproval and their documentation of the event, yet also has the potential to become something more. It has the potential to become mass resistance. Does this require more people? Does it require more police?