Resilience, normativity and vulnerability

DIIS Senior Researcher Robin May Schott has published a new article, “Resilience, normativity and vulnerability” in the journal Resilience; International Policies, Practices, and Discourses. The article has now been published online and will appear in the print journal in early 2014.

In her article, Schott discusses the concept of resilience, which has attracted great attention not only in the ecology sciences but in development and security debates.

Engaging with the reflections of Brad Evans and Julian Reid on the ‘resilient subject’, she endorses their normative critique of the concept of resilience. These critics argue that the concept of resilience forecloses reflection on fundamental questions of meaning, freedom, and co-existence. But she questions their ontological critique of vulnerability, which reiterates the problematic dichotomy between suffering and agency that the concept of resilience inscribes.

Schott is critical of views that either consider vulnerability as precluding political transformation – as in Evans and Reid’s approach—or alternatively as enabling political coalitions – as in philosopher Judith Butler’s approach. Instead, Schott argues for an approach to vulnerability through a critical theory of the victim which explores the interconnections between injurability and agency, rather than treating them as oppositional terms.