Exposing Exceptionalisms: B(e)aring Complicities and Framing Resistances

Abstract

Exceptionalisms are reductive, short-sighted, and often convoluted rationalizations for refusing relational accountabilities. They systematically deliver narrowly conceived benefits to some at great expense to others who are habitually held from public view and voice. In neoliberal times, excuses for ignoring damage and justifying harms are legion. Our planet is choking on the standard business practice of externalizing costs while permitting pollution, social ills, and health consequences to pile up in the lives of marginalized peoples, species, and places, with complicit nation states increasingly ill-equipped to address the fallout. Some exceptionalisms, like the “doctrine of discovery,” are perpetrated for centuries with virtual impunity, masquerading as sacred edict until the mass graves of children surfacing from residential school grounds reveal assimilative evils that are more difficult to ignore for those who have benefitted most.