Wednesday, December 14, 2005
(10:41 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Lawsuits Among Bloggers
Last night, I was discussing one of the most recent cases of a threatened lawsuit against a blogger. Some have already remarked on the fact that such a threat, in the context of a normal conversation, raises the stakes in a disproportionate way, but in thinking further, I decided that bringing in the agency of the state is always implicitly a threat of violence. The state is defined by its monopoly on violence (and in the modern world, it would seem, only by that monopoly), and once all the appeals are exhausted, the losing party of the lawsuit has to either comply with the decision of the state or face some sort of punishment under the law.It would seem to be this violent aspect of the suit that most appeals to those filing them, because a simple glance at the history of civil lawsuits in America shows us that the intervention of the state does not always guarantee that reason will prevail. In the case of individuals or small groups suing a corporation, bringing in the coersion of the state is the only possibility of having a fair fight. In a blogging dispute, the power differential is almost always going to be negligible, and the threat of bringing in the power of the law always has the air of the absurd -- aside from the inevitable public shaming of the person by other bloggers, the very act itself shames the person bringing the suit. It represents a betrayal of the promise of blogging -- to threaten violence against a blogger qua blogging is to threaten the field of blogging itself, in which the state should finally be uninvolved.
This brought to mind a parallel in the New Testament. In one of his best-known passages (Romans 13), Paul too seems to define the state by and large in terms of violence -- the state bears the sword, so do what you can to stay out of the way. Often, this will mean obedience and fulfilling declared obligations -- taxes to whom taxes are due, etc. As is well-known, many take this passage and declare a New Testament mandate for obeying the state as such, but based on this other passage, I think there is something else going on here:
When any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unjust, instead of taking it before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels—to say nothing of ordinary matters? If you have ordinary cases, then, do you appoint as judges those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to decide between one believer and another, but a believer goes to court against a believer—and before unbelievers at that? In fact, to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud—and believers at that. (1 Corinthians 6:1-8)If the state is God's minister to do us good, then why not bring our disputes before the state tribunals? Won't they decide what's best? But here Paul is calling the judges "the unjust" (the NRSV and every other fucking English translation has "unrighteous," but I have been taught to mentally replace forms of "righteous" with forms of "just," at least as a thought experiment). And so my question here -- are they unjust because they deploy coersive force? Is it one of the distinctive marks of the messianic community to remain outside the purview of coersive force, including making every effort to avoid being the object of such force (except in the last instance, where the state requires the renunciation of faith itself)?
[If Agamben is right that Benjamin's messianism is Pauline in some sense, perhaps this kind of thing might help one to understand the enigmatic "divine violence" in Critique of Violence.]
Of course, it would be stupid to say that blogging constitutes a messianic community -- except, perhaps, to the extent that it is a community that tries to live outside the purview of law.
