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HomeUpcoming Events and SeminarsThe Politics of Indifference
The Politics of Indifference

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Dr Maria Hynes, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University

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Larry Saha Seminar Room 2175, Level 2, Haydon-Allen Building, The Australian National University

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Politics and indifference are terms that tend to sit uneasily together, evoking an attitude of neutrality or apathy deemed inappropriate to the sphere of political action. Diagnoses of our contemporary culture of political indifference abound. The moral dignity and imperative character of such discourses rest on an image of a world wrought with troubles, against which sits the figure of the egoistic individual or, worse, the apathetic culture, indifferent to the moral and political challenges of the day. This paper re-examines this notion of indifference, questioning the usefulness of the moral-political discourse to which it is habitually bound. I argue that an ontological ‘renaturalisation’ is needed if we are to understand indifference as something other than a mere subjective or collective failure. When we accuse individuals and societies of acting indifferently, we imply a failure to exercise the freedom that is considered proper to human beings. Yet, this rests on the exceptionalist assumption that humans are somehow free of the laws of cause and effect that impose themselves on the rest of nature. It assumes, too, that there is something necessary about the valuations that we make in the name of our freedom – judgments of right from wrong, good from bad – when they are, of course, human artifices, attempts to differentiate ourselves from a nature that is itself indifferent to such values.

In seeking to open up a new way of thinking about the problem of indifference, I give these more theoretical arguments focus through a brief discussion of the problem of bystander anti-racism. The problem of bystander non-intervention in racist incidents has been largely approached as a subjective and societal failure best remedied by education. I argue that a more rigorous understanding of indifference will broaden our sense of what constitutes intervention and will thus enable a better understanding of the complexities of the problem of bystander action.

 

Date & time

  • Mon 27 May 2013, 1:00 pm - 2:15 pm

Event Series

Sociology Seminar series