Discipline and Punish | Someone has got to do it!

[atreestump]

Don't be fooled by the title of this thread, I hate the performative actions of discipline and punishment from the state. What is of interest however, given the recent Trump exiling of illegal migrants, is that there is a difference between saying 'I am against immigration, something ought to be done', which is a performative statement (a statement that does something) and how we deal with immigration.

Sending migrants back to their countries always leads to lots of heart break, it can be problematic for the economy too. The main phenomena that is of interest here, is how some are beginning to regret endorsing Trump to perform these actions.

It reminds me of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish and his genealogy of capital punishment. Capital Punishment was not stopped in France because of how inhumane it was on behalf of the criminals, but rather, the jury sympathised with the executioner, executioners often suffered from post-traumatic stress due to their grueling duties and this is what is happening now that people can see where their performative utterances are leading to.

Following quotes from: http://www.iep.utm.edu/emp-symp/#SH4b



That was what the so-called special intervention groups [Einsatzgruppen] had to do. In addition, it is difficult to watch people suffering over so long a period of time, especially if you have insufficient bullets to shoot or gas them all immediately. This is a challenge for any approach to genocide, even after the intended victims have been marked with a yellow star or otherwise “branded,” equated with vermin, insects, and dehumanized. On the street, people still look like humans when we confront them face-to-face or even face-to-back.

The misuse of the Nazi concept of duty, which only superficially resembles a deontological one, has been often noted. It occurs again here and should never be mentioned without being challenged. Briefly, the fallacy consists in making an exception for a subset of humans, thus contradicting one’s own humanness. Even formally, the good Nazi morally contradicts himself – a consistency in shooting only one or a few types of persons (in addition to Jews - gypsies, communists, Catholic converts, gays, mentally retarded, physically disabled – the list grows tellingly) – is inconsistency pure-and-simple.


This is a form of what I call inverted empathy where duty comes before conscience.



Thus, the supposedly empathic Nazi spends the day shooting the helpless enemies of the Aryan race and feels a full measure of suffering (of the victims), because his mirror neurons are working normally; but instead of saying “Look how they suffer” says “Look how hard my work is – look how much I suffer.”