Vulnerability and Inquiring Into Relationality

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Vulnerability and Inquiring Into Relationality Marja-Liisa Honkasalo GUEST EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: VULnerABILitY And INQuiring into RELAtionALitY abstract This introduction provides an analytical background for the notion of vulnerability as it is currently perceived mainly in social sciences, ethics, philosophy, queer studies and governmentality. Used both as descriptive and normative term, vulnerability, along with resilience and policy management, has acquired political dimensions, which are distant from those given by the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas. In present day social and political discussions vulnerability has gained enormous popularity and seems to be a genuine “sticky concept”, an adhesive cluster of heterogeneous conceptual elements. Keywords: vulnerability, resilience, governmentality, intersectionality, racism, queer, vulnerable agency, sticky concept Introduction1 Vulnerability as a notion is neutral but it is applied in descriptive and normative ways. It has Vulnerability is about the porousness of bound­ multiple meanings that vary in shifting contexts. aries.2 This is the argument that runs through However, in scientific, political, and public this special issue. Nature, minds, humans, discussions, vulnerability has mostly taken on nonhumans, and the earth are open and a ‘dark’ character, as the anthropologist Sherry exposed to the environment and towards other Ortner (2016) puts it, because what is often beings, nonbeings and systems. In addition to emphasized is the openness to danger, disaster, vulnerability, other concepts like precariosity, suffering, and social control, or, with weakness fragility, risk, and resilience are also taken up or lack of agency. However, the core of the in the discussions (Butler 2009; Fineman 2008; argument in this special issue deviates from this: Sen 1982; Douglas 1966; Evans and Reid being exposed signifies a contingent possibility 3 2015; Brunila and Rossi 2018). The concept of openness towards the world. Vulnerability of resilience has outlined over the past two also includes the ability to become animated decades the conceptual background that makes and affected, to be able to bring things together 4 comprehensible the important cluster of their and to mobilize. Vulnerability allows contagion; mutual relationships. vulnerability touches. This special issue emphasizes suomen antropologi | volume 43 issue 3 autumn 2018 1 Marja-Liisa Honkasalo vulnerability as relational, as the capacity and it. Yet, vulnerability is a truly ‘sticky concept’, necessity to relate to, and to be conditioned by a cluster of heterogeneous conceptual elements and dependent on known and unknown others. like an adhesive tape (Masscehelein 2011: 13; Relationality is also about processes, which see also Ahmed 2014: 91). Stickiness is about consent to mediation between vulnerability as the quality of the notion that along its travel a universal, and as a specific condition shaped by across the disciplines attracts new associations its social, political, and cultural contexts.5 The and variations which, according to Masschelein twin concept of precariosity often overlaps with (2011) are not always motivated by conscious vulnerability in anthropological discussions. As or deliberative moves. In addition to embedded Tsing (2015: 29) puts it, we need to acknowledge affectivity this ensures the dynamism of the our vulnerability to others: ‘In order to survive, concept. Due to the multiplicity of meanings, we need help and help is always in the service vulnerability is an extremely powerful notion. of another, with or without intent’. In this At least five themes of vulnerability relevant ontological meaning, relationality opens up for current anthropological debates can be a view on vulnerability as its very condition. listed. First, the Anthropocene, climate change8 Along with resilience, a notion that is and rearmament; second, livable lives, global ‘equivalent but opposite’ to vulnerability, as violence, contentious politics, and resistance; Adger (2000) puts it, interest in vulnerability as third, governmentality, classification, and control; a topic has increased tremendously over the last fourth, subjectivity and agency and fifth, what is few decades, in the domains of the environment, called the ‘debate on the end of the world’ (see climate, and information technology research in e.g. Tsing, ibid.) Vulnerability as a theme runs addition to risk, catastrophe and disaster research through all of them. and their prevention practices. Vulnerability By focusing especially on the third has become a commonplace in several political and fourth themes listed above, this special and social accounts, in scientific and public issue examines relationality as how and why discussions notably in ecological, environmental, vulnerability matters. The aim of this issue is ethical, health, educational and social policy, legal to discuss vulnerability in a dialogue between politics and policies, in immigration and refugee researchers in anthropology, philosophy, ethics, issues and in global debates concerning violence and social policy and give the philosophical and and exclusion, along with resilience in crisis ethnographic approaches a space to talk to each management. other. The power of anthropological research is A search on vulnerability solely in English to study its objects in subtle and dense contexts social science databases gives a result of more and to bring detailed explorations to abstract than 189,484 entries, an increase of almost 80 % philosophical theorizing. The contributors of from the early 1990s. The search on resilience this special issue ask questions about what is gives 980,5656 entries just in the social science vulnerability. What does it do? How is it described databases alone. Anthropologists have been and what kinds of contribution do the various interested in the ways in which various kinds of descriptions provide to help us understand this vulnerabilities are performed and produced as virtual Zeitgeist we live by (Brown, Ecclestone and sets of material conditions and discourses, about Emmel 2017)? How is vulnerability used for the ‘what vulnerability is and what it does’, as the purposes of power? In what ways does the notion research program ‘Engaging vulnerability’7 puts both hide and lay bare the core cultural values suomen antropologi | volume 43 issue 3 autumn 2018 2 Marja-Liisa Honkasalo of autonomy, dependency, and power? In what [1972]) in which vulnerability as vulnus,11 ways does it work as a cultural critique? By asking a wound, is understood as a human universal, as questions such as these, the authors of this issue inherent in life. According to Arendt,12 what is want to challenge and heighten the significance of unique to the human condition is vulnerability. vulnerability both as an interdisciplinary research As exposed to plurality and unpredictability, 9 area and as a significant aspect of anthropology. vulnerability comprises the condition of action The current debates on vulnerability and thinking.13 contain a myriad controversial definitions and understandings. As a sticky concept vulnerability Because the actor always moves among may refer to a universal condition but also to and in relation to other acting beings, he is a phenomenon, policy imperative, psychoemo­ never merely a “doer” but always and at the tional trait, or to an experience at an individual, same time a sufferer. To do and to suffer are inter subjective, or a population level, and to like opposite sides of the same coin, and a political ontology. Besides being a focus of the story that an act starts is composed of concern in a variety of separate academic domains, its consequent deeds and sufferings. These vulnerability is also an interdisciplinary notion, consequences are boundless, because action, a true boundary concept (Gieryn 1983: 792) though it may proceed from nowhere, so in the meaning of negotiations between to speak, acts into a medium where every ‘demarcations of disciplines, specialties, or reaction becomes a chain reaction and theoretical orientations between and across where every process is the cause of new several boundaries within science’. My aim in processes. (Arendt 1958: 190) this introduction is to track vulnerability through the relevant literature that touches upon the Levinas’s approach to vulnerability originates questions presented above and, by doing so, give from a different perspective. Constituting the a background to the authors’ approaches. ground of his ethics, vulnerability is a call; it is In what follows, in order to give a general shared in proximity to the other’s face. Levinas background for the contributing articles, finds there the source of responsibility that is I outline an itinerary of the notion through asymmetrical and ‘extends to responsibility some of its history as well as the paths across the for the other’s responsibility’ (Levinas 2003 relevant scholarly disciplines pertinent for the [1972]: 25). Both Arendt’s and Levinas’s 10 understanding of the notion as a dispositive. understanding of vulnerability is grounded on Moreover, by asking what vulnerability does, relationality. As Robert Bernasconi concludes I sketch out the use of vulnerability in current his article, ‘To that extent my vulnerability is governmentality and policy making. the site of relationality because its basis lies in the other’s vulnerability, in her pain’. Elisa ABout HistoricAL origins Aaltola in her article adds the Levinasian idea of shared vulnerability to the discussion of The concept of
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