That… seems like a perfectly ordinary definition, actually?
Historically, in many time periods, many or even most people lacked meaningful (or, for large subsets of those, any) agency, and… this usually didn’t require violence, because it was simply how things were.
And while you can certainly consider this state of affairs to be unjust—I certainly do (to a first approximation)—nevertheless saying that having much of the population lack agency is violence, is a severe abuse of language.
Things can be bad without being violence. (In fact things can even be worse than violence, while still not being violence.)
We really need better “vocabulary tech” to talk about the natural category that includes both actually-realized physical violence, and credible threats thereof. When a man with a gun says “Your money or your life” and you say “Take my money”, you may not want to call that “violence”, but something has happened that made you hand over your wallet, and we may want to consider it the same kind of something if the man actually shoots. Reactionary thinkers who praise “stability” and radicals who decry “structural violence” may actually be trying to point at the same thing. We would say counterfactual rather than structural—the balanced arrangement of credible threats and Schelling points by which “how things are” is held in place.
On the one hand, you’re certainly right in the abstract, and I do agree that more precise terminology is desperately needed here.
On the other hand—you don’t rob liquor stores, do you? Snatch old ladies’ purses? I’ll assume that you don’t. But why don’t you? Is it ‘violence’? After all, the state can and does credibly threaten violence to perpetrators of such actions, so is ‘violence’, or ‘counterfactual violence’, or ‘structural violence’, your reason for not doing things of this nature?
A slave on a plantation in the old South has no agency at all (or close enough to none, for government work), and the reason for that slave not running away may quite reasonably be described as ‘violence’.
A slave in ancient Greece has somewhat more agency than the Southern plantation slave—though, perhaps, still close enough to ‘no agency’ for the term to be used in good faith; and the reason for that slave not running away might, with only some amount of stretch, be described as ‘counterfactual violence’.
A Jewish peasant living in the Pale of Settlement has quite limited agency, but does ‘no agency’ still describe his situation? Perhaps, perhaps not. Why doesn’t he move to somewhere else—is it ‘violence’? At some remove, perhaps, though he would be unlikely to describe it this way.
A Japanese salaryman who’s spent his whole career at the same company and has no transferable skills has distinct limitations on his agency, but saying he has ‘no agency’ would be tendentious, at best. Why doesn’t he take up a different career? Is it ‘violence’? That, too, seems like a poor description, yet we might give it some thought and note that violence of some sort is involved at some point in the chain of reasoning.
The more broadly you want to define ‘no agency’, the less sense it makes to claim that lack of agency is usually enforced by violence, or even ‘counterfactual violence’ (or any similar construction).
Therefore whether Elizabeth’s response to Stuart Anderson is apt, depends on whether we think a society that could evade the latter’s criticisms would necessarily limit women’s agency to the level of the Southern plantation slave, or the ancient Greek slave, or the 18th-century Jewish peasant, or the Japanese salaryman, etc.
Came here to say a similar thing. I’m also curious about what Said was actually referring to with the ‘most of history’ clause, because there’s plenty of things (slavery, some forms of serfdom, etc), where “threat of violence” was explicitly part of what was going on. But I could also him meaning to refer to… well, probably situations where threat-of-violence is still involved at some point, but is a couple steps removed (where maybe the threat is more like explusion from the tribe, which then increases your chance of death or harm)
situations where threat-of-violence is still involved at some point, but is a couple steps removed (where maybe the threat is more like explusion from the tribe, which then increases your chance of death or harm)
This seems like you’re defining “depriving half the population of agency” as not requiring or being violence
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That… seems like a perfectly ordinary definition, actually?
Historically, in many time periods, many or even most people lacked meaningful (or, for large subsets of those, any) agency, and… this usually didn’t require violence, because it was simply how things were.
And while you can certainly consider this state of affairs to be unjust—I certainly do (to a first approximation)—nevertheless saying that having much of the population lack agency is violence, is a severe abuse of language.
Things can be bad without being violence. (In fact things can even be worse than violence, while still not being violence.)
We really need better “vocabulary tech” to talk about the natural category that includes both actually-realized physical violence, and credible threats thereof. When a man with a gun says “Your money or your life” and you say “Take my money”, you may not want to call that “violence”, but something has happened that made you hand over your wallet, and we may want to consider it the same kind of something if the man actually shoots. Reactionary thinkers who praise “stability” and radicals who decry “structural violence” may actually be trying to point at the same thing. We would say counterfactual rather than structural—the balanced arrangement of credible threats and Schelling points by which “how things are” is held in place.
On the one hand, you’re certainly right in the abstract, and I do agree that more precise terminology is desperately needed here.
On the other hand—you don’t rob liquor stores, do you? Snatch old ladies’ purses? I’ll assume that you don’t. But why don’t you? Is it ‘violence’? After all, the state can and does credibly threaten violence to perpetrators of such actions, so is ‘violence’, or ‘counterfactual violence’, or ‘structural violence’, your reason for not doing things of this nature?
A slave on a plantation in the old South has no agency at all (or close enough to none, for government work), and the reason for that slave not running away may quite reasonably be described as ‘violence’.
A slave in ancient Greece has somewhat more agency than the Southern plantation slave—though, perhaps, still close enough to ‘no agency’ for the term to be used in good faith; and the reason for that slave not running away might, with only some amount of stretch, be described as ‘counterfactual violence’.
A Jewish peasant living in the Pale of Settlement has quite limited agency, but does ‘no agency’ still describe his situation? Perhaps, perhaps not. Why doesn’t he move to somewhere else—is it ‘violence’? At some remove, perhaps, though he would be unlikely to describe it this way.
A Japanese salaryman who’s spent his whole career at the same company and has no transferable skills has distinct limitations on his agency, but saying he has ‘no agency’ would be tendentious, at best. Why doesn’t he take up a different career? Is it ‘violence’? That, too, seems like a poor description, yet we might give it some thought and note that violence of some sort is involved at some point in the chain of reasoning.
The more broadly you want to define ‘no agency’, the less sense it makes to claim that lack of agency is usually enforced by violence, or even ‘counterfactual violence’ (or any similar construction).
Therefore whether Elizabeth’s response to Stuart Anderson is apt, depends on whether we think a society that could evade the latter’s criticisms would necessarily limit women’s agency to the level of the Southern plantation slave, or the ancient Greek slave, or the 18th-century Jewish peasant, or the Japanese salaryman, etc.
Came here to say a similar thing. I’m also curious about what Said was actually referring to with the ‘most of history’ clause, because there’s plenty of things (slavery, some forms of serfdom, etc), where “threat of violence” was explicitly part of what was going on. But I could also him meaning to refer to… well, probably situations where threat-of-violence is still involved at some point, but is a couple steps removed (where maybe the threat is more like explusion from the tribe, which then increases your chance of death or harm)
Exactly.