I started thinking about these sentences this afternoon:
To define force — it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him. Somebody was here, and the next minute there is nobody here at all.Force can take the form of a knee on a neck or a vehicle aimed at human beings in uniform. It can be directed against a person or a community. It can be the work of a lone wolf, as we now say, or a larger group, or the state.
Simone Weil, The “Iliad,” or the Poem of Force, trans. Mary McCarthy (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill, 1956).
One need not be a believer to be thinking these thoughts on Good Friday.
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On turning people into things, I give you Matt Gaetz and his sharing of nude photos of women on the floor Congress. This thread on Twitter made me think of your post. https://twitter.com/IAmJenMcG/status/1378694094160072705
A useful reminder of what it means to objectify. That part of the Gaetz story made me think of the way someone might show off a baseball-card collection. And of the way so much toxic masculinity is about performing for other men (recall that Kavanaugh’s friend was in the room with him).
I am curious to see how high up the players in the Gaetz story go.
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