John Protevi has posted a fantastic analysis of some of the rhetoric and debate over the “causes” of the recent shootings and assassination attempt in Tucson, Arizona (here). Protevi persuasively contests many of the linear, mechanistic notions of causality currently at play, and shows how human behavior is infinitely more complex that most pundits seem willing to accept. Protevi now has additional posts extending his analysis and in discussion with some critics: here and here.
Richard Grusin of the Premediation blog has also followed-up with a brilliant post of his own making use of Protevi’s analysis and human affect dynamics - with a Heideggerian twist (here). As Grusin argues,
I recommend you go read both posts right now.Seen from the perspective of mood or structure of feeling, the relation between Jared Loughner's actions and the violent, anti-government rhetoric of politicians and media figures on the right becomes more clear. Repeated assertions of the appropriateness of using violence against elected government officials when one is unable to use democratic measures to get one's way produce a structure of feeling and an anti-government violent mood within which individual and collective political action and affectivity unfold. We do not directly have to read or hear any particular call for anti-government violence for it to influence our actions. The totality of such violent rhetorical expressions, repeated ad nauseum in print, televisual, and networked media, provides the atmosphere or environment within which our relation to the government takes shape.
My own perspective is that the Tucon murders are a symptom of a much more extensive assemblage of pathologies within our social matrix. Rhetoric, psychological capacities, cultural processes, institutions – they all factor in. And many of our most dominant and hegemonic systems and practices are indeed so disconnected to any sense of what is most healthy for humans or other sentient and non-sentient beings that they no longer serve any reasonable purpose.
Below are some remarks I made over at Jack Crow’s The Crow’s Eye blog a few days ago (before Protevi and Grusin weighed-in):
This was a terrible event. And I don’t feel like adding too much to what I said above, or what has already outlined by Protevi and Grusin, because I think the whole network of results speak for themselves. It’s a sad politico-cultural state we hyper-moderns now live in."Incitements" and human natures co-exist: each playing off each other, in feedback loops of actualization. To excuse Palin's (implicit) call to violence, or to ignore the very real affect it had on the killer is to miss the complexity inherent to the situation Jack. …humans are not islands to themselves; we exist enmeshed in webs of significance and generate our behaviors from the confluence of social and personal realities.
Palin’s "targeting" of Gabrielle seemed to have deeply influenced Loughner. That cannot be explained away, no matter how much we want to appeal to “individualism” as the master trope of responsibility…
The poster (and website) did not "cause" Loughner to shoot - it added ideological and psychological force to his desire to shoot. "influence" is not either/or, but AND. It is the combination of factors (including his biopsychological makeup and personal history) that led him to kill… You combine Loughner, X, Y and Z - and a Palin call to target, "take out" or otherwise eliminate politicians - and the tipping point results in murder.
Again, causality is never a simply issue, especially when considering subconscious and conscious dynamics, but there are mountains of empirical evidence to demonstrate that "ideology" (and implicit signals) DO impact people's consciousness, especially unstable people, and catalyze behavior.
Palin didn't "cause" him to shoot, but her ideology and implicit signals DOES have an impact on those who look to her as their leader. …humans are not islands; we are vulnerable to myriad of influences. Rhetoric NEVER “directly causes” people to do horrid things, but it does influence.
Maybe it's the whole culture of insanity (systemic killing, random killing, bank-dominating, etc, etc, etc,.) that we are swimming in, that is beginning to reach a tipping point?
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2 comments:
Very interesting. Acknowledging that such a life-transforming choice of behavior proceeds through "thresholds" is important. Loughner was likely in a kind of symbolic trance mode for awhile before the shooting, during which he evaluated random television images, conversations, billboards, and environmental signals in a magical-mythical fashion, as suggesting to him that assassination was an optional taboo. Protevi points to Latour's article in which an agent with a planned action becomes a different agent when a firearm becomes accessible with ease. The combination of actants in Loughner's case must have struck his troubled mind as a kind of perfect storm. There is an assurance he must have felt that an assassination would make him an instant, infamous celebrity. His writings demonstrate an inclination to plow through decision-making processes using syllogisms, the cogency of the premises of which are determined only by Loughner himself. The imagined audience in his writings appears to be the worst kind of straw man. He had an immature view of who other people are, what value the world has and how to evaluate that value, and of course a distorted image of his own powers. Combine all this, again, with the actual certitude that an assassination would propel him to a legitimate global villain status, and I think anyone can see how this young man would have justified the killings to himself. Seeing his mug shot I get a sense that he feels like he finally crossed the line that determines his destiny -- he was wondering about that. Surely he felt tremendous angst and anxiety, wanting a change in his life, a radical shift, one that would have convincing effects in the world. Well, strangely, he got what he wanted. I just wish LOUGHNER'S head would've exploded before he pulled the first trigger. It's a simple moral gedanken-experiment. I cried a few times thinking about how terribly easy it was for him to take those lives. What an asshole ignoramus monster.
peace// cameron, phoenix, arizona
I couldn’t agree with you more Cameron. And I especially appreciate the comments about “thresholds”. I think this is exactly the dynamic at play. I think certain events happen when physiology, personality, cultural influences, “toxic” ambient environments and ideology reach particular thresholds and basically erupt as pathological behavior. Thankfully we have frontal lobes and certain social strictures that prevent most people from reaching critical thresholds of dissatisfaction and violence, but sometimes reality just breaks loose and freaks like Loughner fall off the edge.
And this is not to imply that the ‘moral responsibility’ shouldn’t be with the perpetrator (although I think I have a very different understanding of what morality entails than most), but that in a pathological culture such as ours things like the Tucson tragedy are almost inevitable.
Another nuance that I liked about your remarks is the idea of Loughner falling into a “magical-mythical” excitation. We can’t know for sure, but I think you are probably fairly accurate in suggesting that Loughner was most likely locked into some surreal state of anguish, outrage, and craving to be acknowledged.
And when a person in a biopsycho “state” such as that becomes mixed into a network of objects that include guns and bullets they become increasingly dangerous. “Perfect storm” indeed.
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