Bonnie Honig, philosopher: ‘Let’s pretend Trump doesn’t exist and go about our business’

Bonnie Honig is a prominent political theorist, feminist, and professor at Brown University in Rhode Island. A staunch defender of civil disobedience and protest, she views these actions as essential components of a democracy, which she defines as agonistic — one that gives significant weight to protest.

The Canadian academic, who also holds U.S. citizenship, has published essays alongside Judith Butler and Adriana Cavarero, addressing topics such as the role of public institutions — schools, libraries, dams — in shaping our identity and the benefits of immigration. With her incisive style, she has also explored what feminist criticism can achieve, and, following Donald Trump’s first victory, she examined the blow his election dealt to the equality movement in her work Shell-Shocked: Feminist Criticism after Trump.

We meet on a gray February morning in a sterile room at the Autonomous University of Madrid, where Honig has been invited to speak on the subjects of democracy, feminism, and language. She is approachable, and like much of the world, is still coming to terms with the dystopia ushered in by Trump’s rise to power.

Question. Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office have been dizzying. Where is the resistance?

Answer. There is already some legal resistance underway, in the U.S., politics is very centered on laws. There have also been marches, but they have not been reported in the mainstream media. It is not the great Women’s March of 2017, I think that today there is concern that another march like that one will become an excuse to send in the National Guard. Small protests are being called, a march by trans people for trans people, or of Black people for Black people. We have to stay together and support each other. Silence can become complicity and empower dictatorial tendencies. Right now, going to a march, even if it is small, is really important. Did I make a difference? Probably not, but we know that demonstrating is a way to remind the world of what it can be.

Q. You defend conflict in politics. You believe that it should not be silenced.

A. Most of the work in political theory is designed to make conflict unnecessary. Rules are set and what is appropriate is established. But then, why do we need politics? It is not a good idea for us to look for ways to get rid of this tension.

Q. In Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics you turned the deliberative and consensus theory of Kant and Rawls on its head. What inspired you?

A. Reading Hannah Arendt led me to think differently. She divides the human condition into three: we are creatures that make things that last, and we are also political actors. We are different — in perspectives, gender, race — but at the same time we are the same. And this causes friction and leads us to politics. Tension is what defines who we are and what we are.

Q. Returning to the present, are there any ideas from the left that you like?

A. There is a proposal on the table to create a shadow cabinet [already in place in the U.K., Canada and New Zealand], a system that would help us see how another party would approach what the government does. A way of easily checking the difference between what is put in place and what a proper democratic government should be doing.

Q. This is being debated in the Democratic Party, which hasn’t been generating much attention.

A. It has been a hollow shell for too long. Look at the mess we are in, and we have no leadership from the Democratic Party. It is true that in the U.S. it is customary for the former president to be a bit quiet, it is not their turn to speak. But Trump did not respect this. He made a plan, and now we are seeing its impact.

Q. We are living in a dystopia. In the U.S., of course, but abroad too.

A. We didn’t understand how fast and lawless everything would be under Trump. They cut corners, they use the bare majority they have to confirm people who directly pose a threat to national security so they can have access to confidential information; although sometimes I think that this information needs to be aired. What they wanted was to be very effective very quickly. The Democrats could be doing the same, but they are not doing so. With Trump, it is about surviving, not organizing for when power is regained. He is reversing everything. From the ridiculous to the sublime. It’s like we’re a yo-yo.

Q. You have identified a rise of the most extreme patriarchy. What is it about gender that triggers so much resentment?

A. I don’t know if I have anything enlightening to say about why these currents land on gender, why patriarchy and misogyny and not some other form of domination. But I do think that in a world where the transmission of the way of life from one generation to the next is not as predictable as it used to be, where people raise their children in dying towns and then the descendants have to move away to get jobs, and the family is attenuated… It ends up generating a social fear of loss that materializes in the fantasy that someone is grooming their children to become gay, lesbian, trans, alien creatures, sexually different people. And our children are alien creatures. From the moment you have one, you’re trying to figure out what’s going on in their little heads. But sometimes they visit another place and find themselves in that community. That’s not a conversion from being straight to being gay. It’s simply accepting something that you struggle with inside and that you can’t share with your family.

Q. What will the impact be of Trump’s statement that there are only two genders?

A. It will create a permissible structure for terrible violence. They didn’t yet forbid anyone trans from appearing in public, but they will, we just don’t know when. All of this causes casualties, young people who were old enough to experience their freedom, and now it is being taken away from them... That’s very difficult to contemplate.

Q. Trump’s next attack is about to happen. How do you advise us to react?

A. You know what? Let’s pretend Trump doesn’t exist and go about our business. What if we never said his name again? And we haven’t had time to talk about the political models I admire, which have changed. Right now it’s Brazil and South Korea [which revoked martial law imposed by the country’s president, Yoon Suk-yeol, in a matter of hours]. Those are the models to follow today.

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