Feisty One I'm Not!

 

The other day, at an event held at the National Poetry Library [1], I asked a perfectly reasonable question of the speakers (at their invitation). 

 

The question was pretty much brushed aside, but I was thanked for providing a feisty contribution to the evening. 

That word - feisty - irritated me at the time and has been troubling me ever since: for I am not a small farting dog looking to cause a stink and don't wish to be patronised as such [2].

 

I'm assured it was meant lightheartedly and in the modern sense. 

 

However, when middle-class people label working-class people feisty, then - even if unaware of the carminative origins of the word - it's insulting in much the same way as the word uppity is a highly offensive way of describing black people [3].

 

For the implication is given that those who dare to challenge the prevailing narrative are behaving in a manner that is just a little too rude and aggressive for polite society and next time might think twice before speaking (or even remain silent altogether in the presence of those who are clearly their superiors) [4].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For details, click here.  

[2] Etymologically, feisty means something quite different from its modern sense; relating as it does to the breaking of wind and to canine flatulence in particular. See the entry on the term in the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary: click here.  

 

[3] See the article by Elspeth Reeve, 'Yep, "Uppity" Is Racist', in The Atlantic (22 November 2011): click here.

 

[4] There's arguably also a subtle sexism operating behind this word feisty when used by a man to describe a woman. See Melissa Mohr's article of 10 September 2020, on the Christian Science Monitor website: click here. 

Get Knotted: In Praise of the Hanky as Headwear and Why I Hate the Gumbys

Steve Jones wearing an Anarchy in the UK knotted hanky 

and establishing himself as the coolest Sex Pistol

 

The fashioning of a handkerchief into protective headwear on a hot sunny day by tying knots together at the corners is, sadly, a practice that has mostly died out amongst Englishmen. 

 

In fact, the last champion of this do-it-yourself look that I can think of was Sex Pistol Steve Jones, who, by coupling it with a mohair string jumper, gave it a brilliantly avant-garde punk edge, whilst remaining true to the working class tradition from which it came.

 

Partly, this look has declined due to the triumph of the ubiquitous baseball cap and other more trendy forms of headgear. But it's also due to the continuous and contemptuous mocking of British working class culture by the media, including Oxbridge educated comedians such as the Pythons. 

 

One recalls, for example, the brick-carrying Gumbys, who would wear knotted white handkerchiefs on their heads and have shirts rolled up to the elbows and trousers rolled up to the knees. They would usually behave in a violent and oafish manner and speak as if mentally retarded.

 

Even at a very young age, it was clear to me that John Cleese and his privileged friends were sneering at men of my father's generation and background. However, rather than make me ashamed of the latter, it made me despise the former and their condescending classism; the fact that they thought it funny to punch down.

 

And so, I would sincerely encourage readers next time they venture out in the sun to knot a hanky and wear it on their head with pride, à la Steve Jones - oh, and when I say a hanky, I mean a hanky (i.e., a thin cotton square) and not some poncy attempt to reimagine and refine the hanky-as-hat for which you have to pay through the nose like a tweed pig.

 

  

No Justice, No Peace

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I.

 

No justice, no peace is a political slogan one often hears chanted during protests; particularly protests involving the black community. Its precise meaning is said to be contested, which is rather surprising as I would've thought its message is perfectly clear: as long as there is social injustice, there will always be political discord and violence [1].

 

What's interesting is how it ties ideas of justice and peace - or injustice and violence - inextricably together. And that's what I wish to examine here ...  

 

 

II. 

 

According to Byung-Chul Han, the fact that working-class children have restricted educational and employment opportunities, is an injustice, but it isn't a form of violence: "If violence is used as shorthand for general social negativity, the contours of the idea become hazy." [2] 

 

In other words, the conception of violence must be kept clear and distinct from other ideas and, indeed, not conflated or confused with the operation of power. For even structural forms of oppression in which power is embedded and codified within a system - be it a social, political, or legal system - "is not violence in the strict sense of the word" [3]. 

 

Rather, it is a rulership technique which allows those in control to "rule discreetly and much more efficiently than ruling by violence" [4]. 

 

 

III. 

 

Byung-Chul Han is not the only theorist to hold such a view; the Italian philosopher Vittorio Bufacchi, whose work is primarily concerned with questions of social injustice and political violence, also suggests that there is a need to rethink the relationship between these things. 

 

Whilst conceding that it is tempting to describe acts of injustice as acts of violence - if only to emphasise their brutality and immorality - he nevertheless argues that, ultimately, there is nothing to be gained by a polemical attempt to either replace one term for the other, or see them as synonymous: "Violence being a more extreme phenomenon than injustice [...]" [5]        

 

The thing is, however, as a working-class child, I feel myself entitled to speak of violence. And whilst I might not jump in front of racehorses or wear a BLM t-shirt, I'm also sympathetic to women who experience systemic sexism, or persons of colour who experience institutional racism, as forms of violence. 

 

For even if such violence is mostly symbolic and disguised or invisible, that doesn't make it any less real. And for academics to insist that despite the often intimate relationship between power and violence "there is a structural difference between them" [6], feels like an anaemic form of sophistry.          

 

Notes

 

[1] Obviously, I am interpreting the slogan as a conditional statement, implying that civil peace is impossible without social justice and which not only sees violence as a consequence of injustice, but arguably warns of (or threatens) such. Others, by contrast, see it as a conjunctive statement to be interpreted as saying that neither peace or justice can exist without the other. 

      Interestingly, just as its meaning is somewhat ambiguous, so is the origin of the slogan somewhat obscure, some researchers tracing it all the way back to a note written by the African-American author and activist Frederick Douglass in 1859.    

 

[2] Byung-Chul Han, Topology of Violence, trans. Amanda DeMarco, (Polity Press, 2018), p. 77.

 

[3] Ibid., p. 78. 

 

[4] Ibid. 

 

[5] Vittorio Bufacchi, Violence and Social Justice, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 2. 

      Later, Bufacchi admits that whilst the terms violence and injustice are not interchangeable, nevertheless the relationship between them is convoluted and they interact on several different levels. Thus it would be wrong to think of political violence and social justice as a mutually exclusive dichotomy, even if the former has an instrumental value and the latter an intrinsic value (i.e., violence is a means to an end, unlike social justice which is an end in itself). See his Introduction to the above text. 

 

[6] Byung-Chul Han, Topology of Violence, p. 79.