Something Must Be Shown

Consent, Conversation, and the End of Reasons

Abstract

This essay attempts to respond to what I see as a persistent misunderstanding of Cavellian conversation and its relation to politics as such. More specifically, I find that critics of Cavell and his acolytes, such as Davide Panagia, tend to read a Cavellian politics as dependent on a conventional sort of judgment, such that Cavell’s idea of “conversation” is overly similar to Habermas’s notion of exercising “public reason” or a more general social contractarianism. Panagia specifically contrasts a Cavellian politics with Rancière’s more actively participatory variety. Without wanting to dwell overmuch on Rancière specifically, I wish to argue that this contrast is overblown to the extent that it underestimates the stakes and confrontational nature of Cavellian conversation, and that it ignores Cavell’s own account of what happens when justifications come to an end and one’s spade is turned: something must be shown. I wish to link the kind of showing that I think Cavell has in mind to the long tradition of African American activism in the United States, culminating, thus far, in the Movement for Black Lives.