Language and Violence

While reading “The Precarious Life” by Judith Butler, I found her discussions involving language and justifications for violence to be very interesting. This inspection of how we use language as a means of violence was a consistent theme through out the reading. When explaining the interactions between Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and New York major Rudolph Giuliani, Butler illustrated a great example of how United States politicians as well the United States media changes the meanings of words around to create a reason for violence or use it as ammunition for their agenda. In this scenario, Alwaleed offered the Word Trade Center relief ten million dollars and stated, “the United States takes a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause” (12). Giuliani quickly rebutted this statement by refusing the money and saying the World Trade Center attacks “had no moral equivalent…” (12). What really upsets me about this interaction is that there are multiple moral equivalents to this attack. Yes, the United States itself has only come under attack less than a handful of times, and yes many innocent people died that day, but what is unfair about this whole situation is that events like this occur everyday in other place. This statement goes along with my favorite quote of the reading: “Will those hundreds of thousands of Muslim lives lost in the last decades of strife ever receive the equivalent to the paragraph-long obituaries in the New York Times that seek to humanize-often through nationalist and familial framing devices-those Americans who have been violently killed?” (12). This quote brings up the point that our self-importance as a country has greatly affected how we respond to world events. And such behaviors have caused us to ignore other countries that have suffered greater than our own. This rhetorical question also shows how language was used in the media to invoke emotion and a sense of “patriotism” within their audience. Butler also takes explains how the word “terrorist” has been consistently manipulated and misused to justify violence. The Bush administration and media has used the word make the country look like a victim defending itself. This use of language was able to manipulate most of the United States to lead them to believe that violence is the only way to defend itself.