What is Action?: An enquiry into Hannah Arendt's theory of Action in the Japanese American Internment Camps
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2009
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Haverford College. Department of Political Science
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
This thesis examines one of the most deceptively complicated concepts created by one of the most controversial theorists in the 20th century. The concept that I refer to is action and the theorist is Hannah Arendt, arguably one of the greatest and original political theorists of her time. Arendt's concept of action is worth re-examining in reference to an actual case study, specifically the case of the Japanese Americans that she mentions in her letter. My project is to assess to what extent her theory of action is able to explain a case, that she described in glowing terms as a statement of the "real freedom," in America that grew out of people's willingness to feel responsible for public life. Between 1951 and 1975, Arendt published a dozen books, journals and newspaper articles deconstructing the most basic and axiomatic political concepts. Her primary contribution to political theory is based on three concepts, "action," "politics," and "freedom," which she constantly interwove and related to each other. According to Arendt, though we use these words in daily conversations we do not truly understand their meaning. Instead, Arendt argues that these concepts, since their original creation in ancient Greece, have lost their meaning over time and ultimately have lost their significance. Arendt's larger concern is that we no longer look at the role of the individual citizen and that are too concerned with the larger, more macro-level of politics. Instead, Arendt suggests that "the macro-level of state action ... always needs to be viewed from the micro-level of citizen action" and that we must look at the ways that individuals can participate in political life. If we cannot value the role of the individual citizen, we can no longer address the modem day problems--- such as totalitarianism regimes, concentration camps, or, in our own contemporary problems like global warming or current wars. By action, Arendt meant the capacity of every individual to act politically and reveal freedom. She writes that, "the raison d'etre of politics is freedom, and its field of experience is action." The reason that people must interact, form relationships and organize politically is to have the "daily actuality offreedom." These conceptualizations go against every standard conception of action, freedom, and politics. Traditionally, we understand political action as bringing about the condition for freedom, but for Arendt, acting politically is freedom. Furthermore, in her chapter Action, she writes "[a]ction ... no matter what its specific content always establishes relationships and therefore has an inherent tendency to force open all limitations and cut across boundaries." She suggests that the capacity to form relationships, to interact with other individuals, will allow any individual to act in any situation regardless of whether if it is oppressive, confined, or restricted. So Arendt seems to suggest that because any one can act in any situation, all of us carry the potential for freedom at all times. These radical assumptions have led to a lot of academic controversies about Arendt's theory of action. While I discuss the specifics of these criticisms later in my thesis, I will propose that the common thread of these criticisms is that Arendt offers these radical construction of "action", "politics", and "freedom", yet she does not offer any case studies or empirical data to support to examine in what way or to what extent these concepts can be applied or have been utilized. In fact, she only uses examples to illustrate individual components of her larger theory of action. In this thesis, I will examine Arendt theory of action and do what she does not, that is, apply the theory of action to a specific case to see whether or not her theory of action is applicable according to her formulation. I want to test the possibilities and/or limitations of her theory by assessing whether it is applicable to every group, who are in public spaces, the context in which her action is supposed to unfold/take place. Specifically, I want to examine whether or not individuals who are relegated to a confined or interned space, are able to act in the manner Arendt predicted, so that their actions express freedom.