Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair

193 Pages·2016·1.08 MB·English

by  Sarah Schulman

CONFLICT IS NOT ABUSE
Copyright © 2016 by Sarah Schulman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
part by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the
publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in
Canada, a license from Access Copyright.
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Cover and text design by Zab Design & Typography Edited by Brian Lam
Editorial assistance by Linda Field LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN
PUBLICATION
Schulman, Sarah, 1958-, author
Conflict is not abuse: overstating harm, community responsibility, and the duty of repair / Sarah
Schulman.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55152-644-7 (eBook)
1. Conflict management. 2. Social conflict. 3. Social psychology. 4. Difference (Psychology). I. Title.
HM1126.S34 2016 303.6’9
C2016-904334-7 C2016-904335-5
This book is dedicated with love to Hindeleh Pivko,
who was only a little girl.
“I am grateful to the men and women who create books, and I forgive the men
and women who make books necessary.”
— VOICE AT QUAKER MEETING, Peterborough New Hampshire
“It is not only that we may not choose with whom to cohabitate, but that we
must actively preserve the unchosen character of inclusive and plural
cohabitation; we not only live with those we never chose and to whom we may
feel no social sense of belonging, but we are also obligated to preserve their lives
and the plurality of which they form a part. In this sense, concrete political
norms and ethical prescriptions emerge from the unchosen character of these
modes of cohabitation.”
— JUDITH BUTLER, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, 2013
“Shunning is so often the go-to tool of people dealing with problems or conflict
in queer communities, which only contributes to cycles of dehumanization and
abuse. It’s the easy, simplistic response too often deployed for all manner of
interpersonal and inter-community conflict.”
— COOPER LEE BOMBARDIER, Facebook post, January 2015
“I want people to be open to the little power that they do have.”
— LISA HENDERSON, personal conversation, 2015
CONTENTS
Introduction | A Reparative Manifesto
Methodology
Facing and Dealing with Conflict
Positive Change Can Happen
PART ONE | The Conflicted Self and the Abusive State
Chapter One | In Love: Conflict Is Not Abuse
The Dangerous Flirt
Email, Texts, and Negative Escalation
Reductive Modes of Illogic
Chapter Two | Abandoning the Personal: The State and the Production of
Abuse
Understanding Is More Important than Determining the Victim
Authentic Relationships of Depth vs. Bonding by Bullying
When the Community Encourages Overreaction
False Accusations and the State
Chapter Three | The Police and the Politics of Overstating Harm
The Police as Arbiters of Relationships
“Violence,” Violence, and the Harm of Misnaming Harm
Calling the Police on Singular Incidents of Violence
Calling the Police on Your Partner, When It’s Your Father Who Should Have
Gone to Jail
Chapter Four | HIV Criminalization in Canada: How the Richest Middle
Class in the World Decided to Call the Police on HIV-Positive People in Order
to Cover Up Their Racism, Guilt, and Anxiety about Sexuality and Their
Supremacy-Based Investment in Punishment
Privileges and Problem-Solving in the Canadian and US Contexts
Think Twice Before Calling the Police
The Racial Roots of Canaditan HIV Criminalization
Viral Load and the State
Being “Abused” Instead of Responsible as State Policy
Criminalizing Human Experience
Women as Monsters
Crimes that Can’t Occur
Claiming Abuse as an Excuse for Government Control
Claims of Abuse as Assertions of Normativity
In Conflict: Real Friends Don’t Let Friends Call the Police
PART TWO | The Impulse to Escalate
Chapter Five | On Escalation
Supremacy Ideology as a Refusal of Knowledge
Traumatized Behavior: When Knowledge Becomes Unbearable
Interrupting Escalation Before It Produces Tragedy
Control is at the Center of Supremacy and Traumatized Behavior
The Making of Monsters as Delusional Thinking
The Cultural Habit of Acknowledging Distorted Thinking
The Denial of Mental Illness
Chapter Six | Manic Flight Reaction: Trigger + Shunning
Trigger + Shunning #1: Manic Flight Reaction (Historical Psychoanalysis)
Trigger + Shunning #2: Borderline Episode (Psychiatry and Pop Psychology)
Trigger + Shunning #3: Fight, Flight, Freeze (Mindfulness, American
Buddhism)
Trigger + Shunning #4: Detaching with an Axe (Al-Anon)
They All Agree: Delay and Accountable Community
Chapter Seven | Queer Families, Compensatory Motherhood, and the
Political Culture of Escalation
Good Families Don’t Hurt Other People
Rethinking the Family Ethic as a Form of Harm Reduction
Queer Families and Supremacy Ideology
Compensatory Motherhood and the Need to Blame
PART THREE | Supremacy/Trauma and the Justification of Injustice: The Israeli
War on Gaza
Chapter Eight | Watching Genocide Unfold in Real Time: Gaza through
Facebook and Twitter, June 2 — July 23, 2014
The Strategy of False Accusation
When We Need to Be “Abused,” the Truth Doesn’t Matter
Conclusion | The Duty of Repair
What’s So Impossible about Apologizing for Your Part?
Feeling Better vs. Getting Better
Acknowledgments
Works Cited
Citations by Page