Thread by @shengokai

I kind of wanted to follow up on this.

I don't want to discount revenge as a valuable affect. Taking a page from Lorde as I usually do, revenge can be useful if rightly directed, if the fear of retribution is used for creative transformation.

https://twitter.com/shengokai/status/1403177251475165184

Further, revenge as motivation can lose some of its pernicious nature if we recognize, through Ahmed, that our desire for revenge in an instance of injustice does not subsequently make us just. Revenge might become just if used to transform the situation that occasioned it.

That said, there is something important to note about how revenge and justice are entangled in American society. Since we culturally privilege retributive justice over restorative justice, when this cultural inheritance is applied to social justice movements, weird shit happens.

By "weird shit," I mean the perception that calls to remedy historical injustice are grounded in a desire for revenge. On this view any call to address longstanding harms is animated by revenge, and this treatment of social justice as revenge results in an oppositional attitude.

By identifying social justice with revenge, the fear of retribution or revenge becomes primary. Those with power view things like "wealth redistribution" as, say, the "undeserving" taking what was rightfully earned out of revenge and its associated affect of spite and hate.

So, it's not just that the social justice warriors are out to come take what they haven't earned, they're doing so to "get even" with the people who have earned it and who they hate for earning it.

Thus, "social justice" becomes "social revenge," which is used as an implied motivation for social justice actions. Defund the police? Motivated by revenge. CRT? Motivated by revenge. Universal basic income? Greed AND revenge. And so on. Social justice becomes "getting back."

Now, some have said that the fear of social justice as revenge comes from recognizing that the revenge is deserved. I don't think so. I think the fear is grounded in the belief that they don't deserve retribution, that they've done nothing wrong, and that the "revenge" is unjust.

Because the revenge is unjust, it becomes mere violence. It becomes the question "why are you holding me responsible for something I didn't do?" Because the revenge that animates social justice actions is viewed as unjust, then the actions themselves are unjust. Oppressive even.

I say this because if they thought that the revenge was just, that would be an opening for transformation. Since they don't believe they've committed or been complicit in injustice, the retributive force of justice is misapplied and thus social justice folks are in the wrong.

To conclude, I don't know what the fuck would happen if someone, in a debate over the aims of social justice, just straight up said that they were out for revenge and kept it moving. I imagine it would look something like this:

I do think the "culture war" battle lines would become starkly visible, so there would be instrumental value in that. I also think that admitting of a desire for revenge would turn off many pearl clutching leftists in the same way that X's claim to the right of self-defense did.

But I also think there is psychic value in recognizing that the desire for revenge on an unjust system is a healthy response to that system of injustice. Again, drawing on Lorde: there is creative, transformative energy in revenge. What matters is the direction of that energy.

So, revenge can be a useful tool to transform a situation of oppression so that no one has to suffer again. It is also useful as a threat of escalation as oppressors also need to transform.

And transforming the oppressor is where revenge as threat is valuable as Avasarala says: