I was very intrigued by the question in Butler’s chapter Precarious Life:

“Have the humanities undermined themselves with all their relativism and questioning and ‘critique’, or have the humanities been undermined by all those who oppose all that relativism and questioning and ‘critique’? (Butler 129)”

She answers this question at the end of the chapter after talking about humanization and dehumanization mechanisms:

“If the humanities has a future as cultural criticism, and cultural criticism has a task at the present moment, it is no doubt to return us to the human where we do not expect to find it, in its frailty and at the limits of its capacity to make sense. We would have to interrogate the emergence and vanishing of the human at the limits of what we can know, what we can hear, what we can see, what we can sense. This might prompt us, affectively to reinvigorate the intellectual projects of critique, of questioning, of coming to understand the difficulties and demands of cultural translation and dissent, and to create a sense of the public in which oppositional voices are not feared, degraded or dismissed, but valued for the instigation to a sensate democracy they occasionally perform.” (Butler 151)

In order to shape an environmentally friendly future we need to humanize and listen to all voices, not just the human ones. We need to ‘listen’ to the plants and animals and analyze their struggles for survival in a world that becomes ever more precarious. We also need to listen to each other in the way Butler describes without fearing, degrading or dismissing, but valuing the other voices. Today the humanities seem to be at the forefront of dehumanizing voices that are not in consent with main stream academia. I believe that this is the reason why the humanities have become under so much attack. The humanities could contribute so much to the environmental debate, but only if they remain open to all voices and refrain from categorizing and deflating everyone into the two groups of victims and perpetrators. The current debates in academia are resembling more a chorus of one opinion than a multitude of voices struggling to understand the world. The humanities should represent the voices of the government and of the victims in Japan concerning the accident. They should not dehumanize the Japanese government nor the victims. Only then can a dialogue between the two voices produce a knowledge of the actual needs and conflict solutions.

Throughout the semester we have heard different voices warning us about the future of nuclear energy. We heard from the victims of the two nuclear disasters and we heard from the victims of the atomic bombs. These voices need to be put into dialogue with the voices of pro- nuclear advocates. It is important to hear their voices as well and to try to understand what seems to be impossible to understand. I would have loved to listen to an interview with a pro-nuclear government official, being questioned about what he/she plans on doing with the nuclear waste. The credibility and strength of an argument comes from testing it against counter arguments. This is what need to happen more with the anti-nuclear movement, especially in Japan. I believe that the humanities should encourage public debates in Japan about the pros and cons of nuclear energy with all valid questions being ask from both side to each other.

There are also very many voices that are speaking about the future of our earth and it is the job of the humanities to place the different ideas and ideologies into dialogue with each other. This way the important questions are being looked at and tried to be answered. If we shut out the voices that we deem irrelevant we might miss important contributions towards the common cause of saving our planet.

Going forward I want to consider this responsibility the humanities have to let all voices be heard and whenever I will write something to include as many voices as possible on the topic.

Bibliography

Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, 2004.      Print.