Syndicate: Collective Responsibility

[McKenzie Wark <mwark@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au>]

RESPONSIBILITY IS NOT THE SAME AS GUILT
RESPONSIBILITY IS NOT THE SAME AS GUILT
RESPONSIBILITY IS NOT THE SAME AS GUILT

Sorry about the shouting, but so long as this confusion
exists, we get nowhere. Particularly when denial of
guilt gets used, by way of slippage, as denial of
responsibility. 

Responsibility means (as Levinas says) an ethical
commitment to listening to the other. To respond, in
some minimal way, to the claim the other has on us.

And what does the other speak about to us? About
suffering. About their suffering. And what is our
response? I didn't inflict that suffering. It has
nothing to do with me. I'm not guilty. Somebody
else is guilty. What concern is it of mine that
someone is suffering? Etc.

To which, as I read him, Levinas says,

NOT FUCKING GOOD ENOUGH PAL

Now, somebody may very well be guilty. Make no
mistake about that. Somebody killed. Somebody
raped. Somebody gave the order. Somebody pulled
the trigger. Justice requires that we listen,
and respond, to the claim of wrongdoing,
to the claim that someone in particular actually
caused harm. 

But just because I am not guilty does not resolve
me of responsibility. If I want to belong to the
human community, if I want to claim a right to it,
then I must also face up to a responsibility. One that
is quite minimal really -- to hear the other. But
also quite a burden, because the other tells me,
again and again, about suffering. 

One thing you get to see, in times like these, is
who the people are who understand responsibility,
not necessarily as a concept, more as a culture, as
just something you do. It's there every day in my
inbox, from syndicate and from nettime and just from
friends forwarding me things. The attempt to listen,
to hear the other. To witness. 

It may not seem like it is doing much, all this
witnessing. People still get killed. Old wrongs go
unrighted. It may not be sufficient, to bring about
justice, this practice of responsibility. But it
is necessary to it, nonetheless. There is no justice, 
there is no community, there is no belonging, there
is no identity -- without it. There is solipsism
or there is responsibility. Choose.

__________________________________________
"We no longer have roots, we have aerials."
http://www.mcs.mq.edu.au/~mwark
 -- McKenzie Wark 

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