Last week I went to "Desfazendo Gênero", a queer event in Bahia bringing together activists and people reflecting on undoing gender. It was a tense event. Internal disputes framed by a hostile external environment in a reactionary country made it explosive. Keynote was given by Judith Butler who wise enough to sense the atmosphere and defend the rhythm of theory in a very elegant way. Theory building is slow and piecemeal thinking of alternatives and production of different tonalities. Theory construction is slower than usual activism because it can be read as slowed down territory where we can afford some attitudes otherwise difficult and rare. It can afford, above all, gestures of hospitality.
I´ve been wondering about whether we can formulate something about contingency along the lines of a principle of irreduction: aucune chose n´est par elle-même contingent ou necessaire . The principle asserts that necessity is always contingent on underlying fixed things: something is physically necessary (or contingent) given the fixed laws of nature, something is deontically contingent - allowed - or necessary - mandatory - given the fixed ethical rules (or laws of the land). Finally, something is logically necessary (or necessary simpliciter) given a fixed logic. The irreducible diversity of ethical rules, the absence of eternal laws of nature and the plurality of logical systems, if accepted, makes necessity relative to those parameters. An aggiornamento of Heraclitus would have that nothing is necessary comes what may. Surely, of couse, if there is no absolute necessity, there is no absolute contingency. We can then say that in a broader, more abstract level, things are up for grab...
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