Of Rebels and Disobedients: Reflections on Arendt, Race, Lawbreaking

Ayça Çubukçu

doi:10.1007/s10978-020-09271-x

Abstract

Hannah Arendt valued the unprecedented, the unexpected, and the new, yet in essays crafted at the end of the rebellious 1960s, struggled to square this valuation with a palpable desire for law and order. She lamented that criminality had overtaken American life, accused the police of not arresting enough criminals, and charged ‘the Negro community’ with standing behind what she named black violence. At once, she praised ‘the white rebels’ of the student movement in the United States for their courageous acts of disobedience. This essay explores how differential Arendt’s treatment of lawbreaking action was in an effort to understand how ‘certain sections of the population’ in the United States could appear to stand for criminality rather than civil disobedience to her mind. It examines how Arendt’s reflections on the ostensibly non-racial subjects of civil disobedience and lawbreaking were underwritten by racial, when not racist, ways of thinking. The essay also raises a larger question: to the extent that the concept of civil disobedience involves limits, how are those limits drawn to the exclusion of certain kinds of actors and their particular claims in the public realm? Pondering this question through Arendt, it concludes that in her theorization of civil disobedience, Arendt was profoundly limited by the fabulous tale that the United States is an exceptional land of freedom and democracy in the world.

Highlights

While the importance of Arendt as ‘one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century’ is well established,4 she has even acquired ‘saintly status’5 in some scholarly milieux, especially in the United States
I raise in this essay a larger question: to the extent that the concept of civil disobedience involves limits, how are those limits drawn to the exclusion of certain kinds of actors and their particular claims in the public realm?9 Pondering this question through Arendt, instead of concluding that she was ‘one of the most prescient observers of America’ (Berkowitz 2018) or the phenomenon of civil disobedience, we may learn from the ways in which she was profoundly limited—despite warnings offered by her contemporaries10—by the fabulous tale that the United States is an exceptional land of freedom and democracy in the world
It was political actors, racialized political actors, whose lawbreaking action challenged the foundational tales of American exceptionalism, whom Arendt barred from the category of civil disobedience

Summary

Introduction

While the importance of Arendt as ‘one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century’ is well established,4 she has even acquired ‘saintly status’5 in some scholarly milieux, especially in the United States. My aim is to explore how differential Arendt’s treatment of lawbreaking action was.3 This will require engagement with the conceptual distinctions she proposed—distinctions between power and violence, civil and criminal, politics and morality, opinion and interest—in an effort to understand how ‘certain sections of the population’ in the United States could appear to stand, to her mind, for criminality rather than civil disobedience.

Results

Conclusion