Toward a democratic theory of contagion: virality and performativity with Eve Sedgwick, JL Austin, Hortense Spillers, and Patricia Williams

IF 0.8 Q2 LAW London Review of International Law Pub Date : 2023-03-21 DOI:10.1093/lril/lrad002
B. Honig
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

In Euripides’ Bacchae, the 2015 film The Fits, and John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971), refusal is depicted as worryingly contagious and efforts are made to contain it. But each represents a different model of contagion. In the Bacchae, refusal breaks out all-at-once; in The Fits, a contagion passes through a community in a sequence, mutating as it travels; in A Theory of Justice, refusal is contagious but isolable. In each of these examples, efforts to contain contagion are made via ‘deformatives’, Eve Sedgwick’s term for Austinian performative utterances that shame or stigmatize gender queerness and are themselves, she says, ‘uniquely contagious’. Might their phobic contagion be reworked into a more philic form for democratic theory? Sedgwick might object since she thinks Austin’s exemplary performative is the ‘I do’ of the straight, marrying couple. But How To Do Things with Words shows Austin turning not just to the couple but also to the crowd, which may be gathered or dispersed by another recurring example—that of a bull in the field. This is the first of three counterexamples offered here of the potentially democratic and viral powers of performativity: Austin’s crowd-drawing and-dispersing bull (isolable, yet uncontainable), Hortense Spillers’ viral constitutionalism which may be made to mutate (the sequence model), and Patricia Williams’s alchemy of rights (the all-at-once model of outbreak). In all three, the power and impotence of law is explored: in the comedy of Austin’s memorandum warning about the bull, in Spiller’s constitutionalism, and in Williams’ new rights. In all three contagion is let loose. Efforts to contain it with law, whether by way of property, romance, or whiteness, are mocked, and new consideration of contagion’s democratic possibilities are invited.each virus tells its own story – J Osmundson, Virology
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与Eve Sedgwick, JL Austin, Hortense Spillers和Patricia Williams合著的《传染的民主理论:病毒性和表演性》
在欧里庇得斯的《酒神》、2015年的电影《Fits》和约翰·罗尔斯的《A Theory of Justice》(1971)中,拒绝被描绘成令人担忧的传染性,人们努力控制它。但它们各自代表着不同的传染模式。在酒神酒中,拒绝立刻爆发;在《Fits》中,一种传染病按顺序在一个社区中传播,并在传播过程中发生变异;在《正义论》中,拒绝是具有传染性的,但也是孤立的。在每一个例子中,遏制传染的努力都是通过“变形”来实现的,伊芙·塞奇威克用这个词来形容奥斯汀的表演话语,这些话语羞辱或污名化了性别酷儿,她说,这些话语本身就是“独特的传染性”。他们的恐惧传染是否会被重新塑造成一种更亲民的民主理论形式?塞奇威克可能会反对,因为她认为奥斯汀的典型表演是异性恋已婚夫妇的“我愿意”。但是《如何用语言做事》展示了奥斯丁不仅转向了这对夫妇,还转向了人群,人群可能会被另一个反复出现的例子聚集或驱散——田野里的公牛。这是本文提供的三个反例中的第一个:奥斯汀的吸引和驱散人群的公牛(孤立的,但无法控制的),霍顿斯·斯皮勒斯的病毒式宪政可能会发生变异(序列模型),帕特里夏·威廉姆斯的权利炼金术(爆发的突然模型)。在这三部作品中,我们都探讨了法律的力量和无能:在奥斯汀关于公牛的备忘录警告的喜剧中,在斯皮勒的宪政主义中,在威廉姆斯的新权利中。在这三个国家,传染病都在蔓延。用法律来控制它的努力,无论是通过财产、爱情还是白人,都受到嘲笑,并邀请人们对传染的民主可能性进行新的考虑。每种病毒都有它自己的故事——J·奥斯蒙德森,病毒学
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