From Hate to Political Solidarity
Mihaela Mihai · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2018
Hate is currently enjoying the status of summum malum within the common sense of constitutional democracies. Hateful acts are criminalized and hate speech tests the limits of our commitment to free expression. This chapter shifts focus away from hate speech and crime and toward the structural conditions that normalize these various verbal and physical forms of violence. Building on insights from feminist and race critical theory and the sociology of power, it points the reader’s attention to three important dimensions of structural violence only partially captured by the legal definitions of hate speech and crime: the linguistic, the emotional, and the embodied. It then sketches a proposal about the forms of political solidarity we should stimulate as prophylaxis against hate and argues that certain artworks can reveal and confront the naturalized social, political, and cultural hierarchies that underprop hate speech and acts.