Provocations and complicity

Some monkeys ignoring someone being a bit provocative.

In a paper I've been working on recently, I explore the connection between complicity and speech. This topic is kinda conflict-ish; so, since I've been given an opportunity to write a post on the CFCP blog, I figured I'd talk about it.

I first started thinking about the connection between complicity and speech when I was thinking through the literature on the semantics of slurs. Slurring words are somehow able to generate a not exactly exemplary speech act when uttered; and there's a big literature on how they're supposed to do that. In this literature, people will sometimes say something like this. “Slurring acts can be really offensive. In fact, when a speaker uses a slur, bystanders are sometimes left feeling complicit.“

Usually this observation about feelings of complicity is left unexplored (with one notable exception). But it's actually kind of puzzling when you think about it. It's not the bystander who used a slur. So what exactly is the bystander supposed to be complicit in?

I've been thinking about this question a lot lately, and long story short here's basically the answer I've come to. When you have a bad ideology it can be useful for various reasons to know where other people stand with respect to your ideology. And you don't just want to know where other people stand belief-wise, you want to know where they stand action-wise. If you do something controversial, will there be pushback? Or will even people who disagree with what you've done be unwilling to take the risks necessary to challenge you?

My thinking is that this is where being provocative comes in. Provocative acts are acts where there's an expectation that people who aren't aligned with the ideology of the act are supposed to challenge the person performing the act. And because of this, provocative acts have the power of changing the significance of simply ignoring the performer of the provocation. Where for an ordinary action when you ignore the action, you don't really give much information one way or another where you stand with respect to some ideology; this changes when it comes to provocations. To ignore a provocative act is to go against the expectation that you are supposed to challenge it. And hence to ignore a provocative act is to signal that you are unwilling to challenge the ideology that the provocative act represents.

And that's how this discussion gets back to why slurring acts make people feel complicit. Slurring acts are provocative. They represent ideologies; and people who disapprove of what they represent are expected to challenge the people performing them. When you don't do that, you send the performer of the act a signal – a signal that you, and perhaps others like you, are unwilling to challenge the ideology that slurring act represents.

Ok, so that's why ignoring someone who uses a slur can generate a bad outcome. But why should generating a bad outcome leave you feeling complicit? I'll finish up this blog post by giving an answer to this. I'm thinking that when someone is provocative and you send them a signal that you are unwilling to challenge the ideology their provocation represents, you in turn have *helped them* generate that signal. They couldn't have generated the signal on their own. But the prospect of gaining that signal was part of what (from the point of view of the provocateur) is appealing about performing the provocation. This in turn means that you are complicit in something. In general, when you help someone produce a bad outcome, that means you are complicit in their production of a bad outcome.