On Blaming the Victim

Cain and Abel as depicted in the  

Speculum Humanae Salvationis (c. 1360)

Whilst I'm aware of the dangers of victim blaming and of how it can be used to justify, mitigate, or excuse certain forms of discriminatory or criminal behaviour often perpetrated by those who are in a position of power or privilege, I'm afraid I do subscribe to ideas of contributory negligence and unconscious provocation and do think that the victim of a crime is always, in some sense and to some degree, complicit or partially responsible for what happens to them - even when it's a loved one who has just had her i-Phone and purse stolen from her handbag by some charming urban youth from the idyllic borough of Haringey ...

Indeed, I even find the following passage from Women in Love persuasive, if troubling in what it logically entails: 

"'No man,' said Birkin, 'cuts another man's throat unless he wants to cut it, and unless the other man wants it cutting. This is a complete truth. It takes two people to make a murder: a murderer and a murderee. And a murderee is a man who is murderable. And a man who is murderable is a man who in a profound if hidden lust desires to be murdered.'" [33]

Gerald dismisses this as pure nonsense - as, I suspect, would the majority of readers keen to secure a clear distinction between guilt and innocence and who regard all victims from Abel onwards - with the exception perhaps of many rape victims and those who lead unconventional or high risk lifestyles - as beyond reproach (whilst, on the other hand, considering the ideal perpetrator of a crime as an entirely unsympathetic character, lacking in virtue, perhaps even a little monstrous or inhuman, carrying as they do the mark of Cain).

There are also - as indicated - political and philosophical reasons for rejecting what Birkin says here. Adorno, for example, identified the phenomenon of victim blaming as one of the most sinister features of the fascist mindset; i.e., the so-called authoritarian personality that holds any sign of weakness as contemptible. Ask any Nazi even now who's to blame for Auschwitz and they'll answer without hesitation: the Jews (The Jews made us racist! The Jews were asking for it!)

See: D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, John Worthen ad Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 33. 

See also: T. W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality, (Harper and Bros., 1950). 

Agnès Gayraud: la philosophe de la pop

Agnès Gayraud / Photo: Vincent Ferrané

It's hard not to love the French philosopher and singer-songwriter Agnès Gayraud; she's French, she's a philosopher, and she's a talented singer-songwriter - so what's not to love?

At any rate, I like her (even if some of her records are a tad too arty and sophisticated - or Simonesque - for my tastes) and I'm very tempted to read her new book, Dialectics of Pop (2019), in which she explores the many paradoxes of pop music and calls for it to be recognised as a modern, technologically-mediated art form that fully deserves to rank alongside film and photography.* 

Oh, and she also delights in taking on the Frankfurt School's chief bore, Theodore Adorno, famous for his dismissal of popular culture; particularly popular music; particularly American forms of popular music, such as jazz. According to her publishers:

"Gayraud demonstrates that, far from being the artless and trivial mass-produced pabulum denigrated by Adorno, pop is a rich, self-reflexive art form that recognises its own contradictions, incorporates its own productive negativity, and often flourishes by thinking 'against itself'."

Pop music may never quite achieve the status that Gayraud wishes for it - and she may struggle to convince many of her fellow philosophers that Kylie should be accorded the serious critical attention given to Kant - but hers is an interesting attempt to make the case.   

Notes

Agnès Gayraud, Dialectics of Pop, trans. Robin Mackay, Daniel Miller, and Nina Power, (Urbanomic, 2019).

* For those less tempted to read Gayraud's 464 page book, there's a convenient 11 minute interview with the author on YouTube in which she discusses the work and summarises her main arguments: click here. 

Play: La Féline, Comité Rouge (Official Video With English Subtitles): click here. Taken from the album Triomphe (Kwaidan Records, 2017), this, I think, is a good example of her work as a singer-songwriter.