Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times

by Alexis Shotwell

Why contamination and compromise might be a starting point for doing something, instead of a reason to give up

The world is in a terrible mess. It is toxic, irradiated, and full of injustice. Aiming to stand aside from the mess can produce a seemingly satisfying self-righteousness in the scant moments we achieve it, but since it is ultimately impossible, individual purity will always disappoint. Might it be better to understand complexity and, indeed, our own complicity in much of what we think of as bad, as fundamental to our lives? Against Purity argues that the only answer—if we are to have any hope of tackling the past, present, and future of colonialism, disease, pollution, and climate change—is a resounding yes. Proposing a powerful new conception of social movements as custodians for the past and incubators for liberated futures, Against Purity undertakes an analysis that draws on theories of race, disability, gender, and animal ethics as a foundation for an innovative approach to the politics and ethics of responding to systemic problems.

Being against purity means that there is no primordial state we can recover, no Eden we have desecrated, no pretoxic body we might uncover through enough chia seeds and kombucha. There is no preracial state we could access, no erasing histories of slavery, forced labor, colonialism, genocide, and their concomitant responsibilities and requirements. There is no food we can eat, clothes we can buy, or energy we can use without deepening our ties to complex webbings of suffering. So, what happens if we start from there?

Alexis Shotwell shows the importance of critical memory practices to addressing the full implications of living on colonized land; how activism led to the official reclassification of AIDS; why we might worry about studying amphibians when we try to fight industrial contamination; and that we are all affected by nuclear reactor meltdowns. The slate has never been clean, she reminds us, and we can’t wipe off the surface to start fresh—there’s no fresh to start. But, Shotwell argues, hope found in a kind of distributed ethics, in collective activist work, and in speculative fiction writing for gender and disability liberation that opens new futures.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Environment, Sociology, Social Justice, Theory

264 pages, Paperback

First published December 6, 2016

About the author

Alexis Shotwell is associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Department of Philosophy at Carleton University. She is author of Knowing Otherwise: Race, Gender, and Implicit Understanding.

Reviews

[Alok Vaid-Menon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I keep returning to this book, it's such a helpful intervention. Shotwell reminds us that there is no "pure space" outside of power, there is no "primordial state we might wish to get back to." They are critical of this social construction of purity which, as they rightly demonstrate, has been weaponized in the service of eugenics and social control. Rather -- everything is constituted in a fundamental sense, despite the political performance of a magical "outside." They're blunt: "there is no food we can eat, clothing we can buy, or energy we can use without deepening...complex webs of suffering." Rather than disavowing this violence (which Shotwell describes as a function of whiteness), they invite us to start from this place: our mutual imbrication and embeddedness in that which we critique. From this vantage point: we must approach complexity and complicity as the natural orientation of everything, not states of being that we should avoid. Shotwell defines being against purity as being against any attempt to "delimit the world into something separate." In this way, the book is concerned with questions of ontology: a rejection of the arbitrary borders that colonial frameworks have created to divide everything: human from nature, us from one another, etc.

Truly the most generative part of this read is the introduction.

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think there’s a tremendous amount of things this book will hopefully get me to at least pause to consider.

[Chanda Prescod-weinstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

In addition to excellent LotR and Star Trek references, this book is a thoughtful and carefully crafted treatise on how to engage ourselves and others as a collective to create the better worlds that may be possible. I will be thinking about this every day for a while, and if folks were to read only one new non-fiction release right now: this is it.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a non-academic, this was the first book of its type I have ever read. It challenged me in multiple ways, not the least of which was "getting my academic reading-specs" on.

I found the book thoroughly illuminating. It was a welcome lens into a variety of situations, thought-orientations, and possibilities intertwined with a karmic interdependent societal environment.

Positioning myself through the vocabulicious text into the reflection, analysis, and potential futures was a delight.

[Devin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve finally figured out my problem with this book: she doesn’t take a side. While I agree that purity as a goal is not a good thing to aim for, I also know that we cannot simply throw up our hands and do nothing.

For instance, she says that veganism is a purity test, and while veganism can be done for purity reasons, there are many other reasons to be vegan. For instance: animal torture, environmental destruction, human health, etc.

For her to dismiss veganism as a game of purity is a huge red flag for me, which throws her entire argument into question. When we are faced with unlimited evil, we have to do the right thing. It isn’t about being pure - it’s about taking a moral stance in the world.

Let me say that another way: it’s not important to be pure, it’s important to do the right thing in the messy situations we are faced with.

There’s a lot of food for thought in here, but read with skepticism.

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though, at times, reading this book was like walking through deep snow, there was a lot of important and interesting things being said. Particular the importance of dispensing with voluntaristic (as in a self-grounded will) purity as we deal with wicked world problems like climate change or what we eat. "And while it might be possible to aim for personal ethical purity at the scale of the individual, when we understand our relation to the broader contexts of our embodiment, it’s clear that purity is an incoherent and impossible aim" (p.111).

"Instead, we should act in the present in a way that cares for the harms involved in being alive and that tries to open different futures for all of the beings and relations we are with" (p.135), or what she calls 'open-normativities' of action oriented towards widespread flourishing with open possibilities.

[Jan D · Rating 4 out of 5]

The basic idea, if I try to summarize, is that ethical actions are messy and can not be free of harm. Our actions can’t be purified to be harm-less and actions can not be classified as purely good or bad; the idea that they could be pure can prevent moving towards a better world.

There are some interesting connections of the book to classic anthropology (like “Purity and Danger” by Mary Douglas), Actor-Network-Theory and its impure networks (rather than clean, single actors) and Latour’s “We have never been modern” (Modern people are very busy purifying); there are references to Haraway, who discusses similar ideas and a lot of feminist, antiracist and anarchist writings.

I think the books thinking also works well with processual philosophy like Dewey’s pragmatism or Whitehead’s process philosophy, though there is no direct connection.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had some interesting themes that helped me think about my own work, in the vein of complicity and interdependence. Also had some parts that I didn't find convincing (open normativities and her approach to queer theory) or well-explained (could definitely see her chapter on eating being assimilated into Omni excuses).

I did really like Shotwell's critique of "they're turnin' the frickin' frogs gay!!!" and associated rhetoric.

[Adrianna Michell · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest I’m pretty disappointed with this one. I really wanted to like it. I’ve head so much praise for it. But I think it is both over and underwritten (somehow??), disjointed, and ineffective both structurally and argumentatively. There are two or so chapters early on that are quite effective and well done, but the later chapters are frustrating. The engagement with literary texts is superficial so I don’t see why they are included at all. There are so many threads that few get addressed thoroughly. Also this is nit picky but the conclusion ends with discussing AIDS survivors experiences (a brief engagement which I knew they say is bc it’s forthcoming research but I think ethically and intellectually it is troubling and shallow) followed by a lord of the rings reference?? Like what?? What a glib comment. Comparing AIDS survivors to Frodo in Modor. Seems careless for a book so concerned with community. But I guess you can just brush that aside by saying we’re all impure and politics are impure.. but that’s cheap to me. Anyway. I really like the frog chapter tho.

[Scott Neigh]

Another politically rich scholarly book that deserves a full review that I probably won’t end up having time to write. Dense and brilliant. I love its call to reject left purity politics, but I won’t try to offer even a quick gloss on how it gets there — it argues for understanding the world, our selves, and our politics in complexly entangled ways, and part of how that is reflected in the text involves juxtaposing and tying together a disparate array of thinkers, writing, and areas of concern, so it is not easy to summarize. That said, I certainly put it down feeling renewed vigour for engaging — imperfectly, impurely — with our messy, violent world and for working towards futures that hold expanded possibilities for diverse experiences of flourishing.

[philou · Rating 5 out of 5]

having dropped out of college nearly 15 years ago, my brain was NOT ready for this. i think at this point it has been over two years since i first picked up this book. i bought this book on a gut feeling, probably cause the cover and the title felt intriguing. and soft, in a way. the actual reading, on the other hand, felt dense, and i often wondered if it was more than i could chew. countless times, friends and comrades have suggested that i just drop it and move on to something else. "it's okay not to finish a book, you know?"

and yes, i do know that. but i didn't want to. reading a single page would often send me spiralling in thoughts and into my own, on-the-side, diy research. but that softness was always present, the book feeling like a warm smile, saying "take your time, friend. i'll be right here, no pressure." it would have been SO easy for such a book to end up feeling preachy, self-righteous in its own way, and yet not a single word from it comes off that way. rarely have i read a book that felt this honest, and embodied.

i have been dealing with disability, with chronic fatigue, with coming out as trans and non-binary, with criminal accusations following a railroad blockade in support of the wet'suwet'en and against this whole colonial capitalist nonsense. and i guess this context is all a part of my reading experience, but as challenging as it often was, this book made me feel seen. it made me feel real. and it reminded me about interconnectedness. i am very, deeply grateful to Alexis Shotwell.

(oh, also! apparently i had been living under a rock, or something, because this book is how i discovered Rae Spoon... yep. and with that, i would be making it 6/5 stars, if i could.)

[not_the_actual_frantisek_skala · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember thinking about the book and its central thesis all the time when I started reading it: Purity is a dubious concept; we are all complicit in all kinds of injustices; we should replace thinking about perfection with imperfect actions. Yeah, we work towards limiting our meat consumption and the use of plastics but then take a flight and are involved in a myriad of other planet-damaging processes (applies the same way to racism, heteronormativity or identity politics).

Personal purity won't get us anywhere anyway. Shotwell suggests these huge, complex problems are like docking a giant boat: That's a task which exceeds the powers of an individual - a whole bunch of people is needed to manoeuvre it safely into the port. Sailors need to distribute their tasks; we need distributed, not individualised ethics.

The further I got in the book, the less enjoyable I found it, though. In fact, while the introduction and the first few chapters made me spam friends with quotes, I caught myself just skimming the last ?quarter? of the book. I grew impatient with Shotwell's way of writing which constantly brings in new things, connected only by the temporal framework of the book (past, present, future) instead of building an argument. Each chapter works more or less on its own, and I missed something that would really synthesise them - in fact, the introduction is perhaps closest to some sort of complete argument. I don't know, I guess I'm just impatient!

[Josh Workman · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is difficult to put to words how deeply Shotwell’s work has shaped my thinking. As an individual imbued in a profession of Purity (engineering), Shotwell’s articulation of starting from impurity as a means for us to imagine the future is liberating and empowering. In particular, I found the discourse on how civilian naturalism and more general habits of observing to be helpful and insightful.

Much thanks to the author for this contribution. I am excited to follow Shotwell’s thinking and offerings to continue expanding my own perspectives.

[Kara Lessin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, modest, electrifying, and multivalent — this book was dense and philosophical but managed to suggest manageable personal responsive actions to the state of the world as well as larger systemic/collective shifts. Totally amazing, 100% recommend.

[Jade ི♡࿐ · Rating 3 out of 5]

The introduction goes crazy

“Being against purity means that there is no primordial state we might wish to get back to, no Eden we have desecrated, no pretoxic body we might uncover through enough chia seeds and kombucha. There is not a preracial state we could access, erasing histories of slavery, forced labor on railroads, colonialism, genocide, and their concomitant responsibilities and requirements.
There is no food we can eat, clothing we can buy, or energy we can use with - out deepening our ties to complex webs of suffering. So, what happens if we start from there?”

“We recycle but take plane trips to Alaska. We worry about global warming and turn on the air-conditioning. We think slavery is wrong, but eat chocolate and fish produced in contexts that meet every definition of nonchattel slavery. We believe that people deserve good working conditions but buy clothing produced in sweatshops and maquiladoras because we couldn't afford equitably sourced clothing even if we could find it. We cannot look directly at the past because we cannot imagine what it would mean to live responsibly toward it. We yearn for different futures, but we can't imagine how to get there from here.”

I don’t feel the conclusion offered any satisfying solutions on how DO we attempt to live ethically when we exist as the beneficiaries of a globalized inequality of mass suffering? Other than it’s not through our individual choices. I thought the metaphor of the naval ship was bonita

“with the trouble in building responsibility as a call to take seriously the idea that each of us, however situated, could do what we can—recognizing that what we can do, on its own, will never be enough”


The last two sections before the conclusion seemed irrelevant. And I’m not sure I agree with what the author says about norms? Why would we want to expand “norms” to be more inclusive instead of abolishing the “norms” altogether? Why try to expand the definition what “beauty” is instead of liberating yourself from the toil of trying to fit in within the idea of “beauty” and living as a transcendent autonomous being beyond that. Or making it easy to change the sex on your passport instead of getting rid sex listed on passports altogether. But maybe I misunderstood what she was trying to say idk. i think she just wanted to talk about the performance group she was involved with lol


I liked the section about frogs. I had never thought deeply about the chemicals in the water are turning the frigging frogs gay!!!

“think that's kind of what all of my interest in learning things and learning the names of things and stuff like that is really, just about seeing things differently and they're somehow-learning what the Latin name for a particular thing is —sort of makes you see it differently. And, it, it stands out from the landscape in a particular way. I think because you start to notice the uniqueness of the creature, the uniqueness of the species... and so, the world comes into a sharper focus.”

[Jen Bracken-Hull · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I echo others' observations that the acadamese makes it inaccessible to many of us, there's so much of value here. I particularly cherish Part III: Shaping Unforeseeble Futures and will be thinking about these chapters for a long time.

An organizer local to my area who I deeply respect often shares her mantra which is: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." Based on my reading, Shotwell might rephrase this: "If you want to feel better about the disarray in our world quickly (fleetingly), choose a personal purity project. If you want to actually change things for the better, go in the struggle together." And as I've seen by witnessing said organizer, the way you do this is by treating the people you work with well and with love.

"People doing movement work usually get lots of things wrong, which might not be such a problem if the purpose of the work isn't to be right. Instead, our purpose is to contingently make it be that something that deserves a future has one" (p. 196).

"Prefiguration politics [is the] notion that our organizing reflects the society we wish to live in--that the methods that we practice, institutions we create, and relationships we facilitate within our movements and communities align with our ideals" (p. 184).

[Philemon - · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can nature be defiled by humans? Rachel Carson and her followers have provided massive dossiers that it can. This book argues, however, that seeing nature as "pure" can be used by the dominant, oppressive social forces to strike against diversity. Come again? Well, for example, take scientific evidence that environmental toxins can turn frogs into homosexuals (no joke). This and other such data could encourage evangelicals to call Mother Nature as a star witness in their lawsuits against gender and sexual-preference diversity! Can we find a way to balance the empirical claims of environmentalism against our ideals of social/sexual diversity? Perhaps not without tortured arguments, as this book appears to illustrate.

[Liz]

…apparently this book took me over a year to read.
Mostly because I had to highlight and think about and process it. And then keep going.
I’m still thinking about it, what it means to do rather than (just) think and acknowledge the ways that we are all always already entangled. And impure.
The bit about speculative disability futures got me. But then again, so did the frogs.
It’s a book for thinking about and with, even if it’s written in what I think of as “high theory”.
I finished it, but it’s not done with me.

[Shaelyn Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book completely reoriented my thinking about politics both professional and personal. It changed the way I think about and work toward possible futures, and my obligations and commitments therein. I feel very different after reading this, and definitely for the better. Best of all, this book, in all its fierce truth and quiet intelligence, gave me a sustained hope in a time when hope is rare and fleeting. Onward!

[Ryan]

2.5 stars

[Boka]

muddled, in a good way

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly troubling (positive) and clear-sighted. Ugh. So much good stuff in such a relatively short book. Incredibly essential, though I do think the title sells the discussion itself a bit short. Sections on voluntarism really challenging for me personally, really difficult call to action

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The desire for purity - especially philosophical/ethical/political purity, is something I've found myself often pondering since the presidential campaign on 2016. So when I saw this book at the library, I knew I had to check it out immediately. This book, while not exactly what I was expecting, contained many "this is exactly what I needed to be reading right now" synchronicity moments.

Rather than spending much time pontificating over purity in abstract, this book uses purity as a lens to examine a series of specific cases: moving from past (a truth and reconciliation commission on Indian Residential schools in Canada, and ACT UP campaign to change the CDC's definition of AIDS) to present (the way many activists frame the harm of endocrine disruptors on frogs, dietary ethical issues), to future (disability and gender transformation, activism as speculative fiction). While I found all these specific cases interesting, there were definitely times that I wish Shotwell would have expanded more on some of the themes she used in examining them - the idea of "healthism" in particular.

But, I mean, seriously? That chapter on activism as speculative fiction? How could that not be more perfect for me to read right now?

Interesting, deeply challenging, definitely thought provoking.

Highly recommended.

[Alise Miļūna · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Aiming at individual purity can produce a seemingly satisfying self-righteousness in the scant moments we achieve it, but since it is ultimately impossible, aiming for purity will always disappoint. Orienting ourselves toward flourishing, toward the contingent proliferation of ways of being we cannot predict, toward surprise, opens us to the possibility that the world can go on. And sometimes this possibility is more challenging than the idea that the world is over." (203)

In her book against purity politics ("rhetorical or conceptual attempt[s] to delineate and delimit the world into something separable, disentangled, and homogenous" (15)), Alexis Shotwell argues against individualistic solutions and single stories on complex collective predicaments such as settler colonialism, mass animal exploitation, toxic pollution, several forms of discrimination, and how humans imagine our common future. Although Shotwell covers many activist movements and repeatedly advocates changing the world, the book was, to me, a thick mosaic of theoretical thought rather than practical takeaways. An enchanting read for anyone who enjoys analytical storytelling and spiderwebs of concepts, plus a good introduction to several other writers and thinkers. Just – digest slowly, if you can.

[Charo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came for the interesting premise, I bailed from frustration after several attempts. I really wanted to enjoy the book, the recognition of impurity and unavoidable connections we have with the problems of tbe world is a great starting point to the more important issue of what to do now. Unfortunately the whole book feels like a series of convoluted ideas, poorly expressed, and not organised in a way that makes any sense. Hours into reading I asked myself what of value I had learned, or whether I could express any of the authors ideas in simple language and I can't. Maybe there are important ideas buried in tbis book, if so I hope another book comes along to do them justice

[Alan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely terrible. An academic book in the worst possible way: full of unnecessarily obtuse language that dresses simple ideas into ridiculously complicated language. Avoid unless you enjoy parsing academese.

For example, here's a paragraph from the introduction I've arbitrarily selected:

> Classification and its effects are intimately biopolitical, addressing how to sort people, group them, and how to manage what effect these activities have on population and time. As I’ll discuss further in chapter 2, when classi­fications work well, they become infrastructure—­they fade out, we cannot easily perceive them, and the social relations they shape become commonsensical. The movement of classificatory apparatuses into commonsensical background knowledge and practice is one of the main reasons we need a genealogical approach, with its attempt to bring to the level of critique things that normally go without saying, alongside a continued refusal to court finality and classificatory purity, or to lay questions to rest. White supremacist logics intensify the general operation of biopolitical power, requiring standards that can reliably create group differentiation and then group people into discrete and exclusive categories.

This is a ton of words to convey some simple ideas: (1) when classifications work well, they fade into the background and remain unquestioned. (2) We will counteract this by investigating where these classifications come from. (3) White supremacy requires strict classification (AFAICT, this is a total non-sequitur? Why are we suddenly talking about white supremacy?). But instead of writing this clearly, the author adds a bunch of unnecessary complexity. I can understand using more precise academic language (e.g. perhaps "commensensical", "biopolitical", and "infrastructure" are terms-of-art), but this paragraph could be half the length and much easier to read if the author wanted it to be.

Don't waste your time trying to read this book unless you have to. The ideas are somewhat interesting, but definitely not worth parsing 200 pages of this nonsense.

[Kira · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not for the faint of heart; complex theoretical knowledge plus discourse specific language make it quite academic flavored. However, the concepts and premises of the book were quite brilliant and intriguing. I feel my brain has been very well nourished with the authors perspective that is more a collective of perspectives in relation to each other. I think the main takeaway was this concept that we are never as ‘pure’ from unethical systems, products, toxins, etc., as we have led ourselves to believe. We are immeshed in intertwined webs of suffering (on practical levels, maybe also spiritually if thats your thing), and we inhibit positive futures by the denial and self-righteousness of purity politics. The author then provides a well researched understanding of the tangled mess of social justice issues and offers up imperfect solutions that tackle large overarching issues through local collective action and solidarity.

[Preeti · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that really provided me comfort especially at a time where it feels like I'm fighting institutional battles. It argues that aiming for purity is unachievable especially given how enmeshed and complicit we are in the various histories. Aiming for purity is also irresponsible because it erases all the harm that has already been done, and we cannot talk about progress unless there is reparations. And it is only through finding our way through imperfections and impurity can we find our way to new, imagined worlds.

This is a fairly theoretical book and I could read only one page at a time at times. But it was on the cusp where it was readable enough that I was able to finish the book (and I'm really glad for it). I've taken so many notes, my review does not do it justice - but if you want to think about achievable and realistic ways of progress that doesn't lead you to despair because we are so far from the ideal, I recommend this book.

[Raven McKnight]

definitely the most academic thing I've read in a while. I just know I would be referencing this heavily if I was still in school writing papers on the reg. the most actionable thought here, for me, is in the conclusion: "I have speculated in this book that the experience of being overwhelmed by any attempt to understand the knottiness and tangle of entanglement is partially responsible for what I have called a purity politics of despair. This approach begins to interpret the world, discovers that there is no easy solution to suffering and implication, and stops at making the more manageable agential cut of personal purity practices."

as much as i appreciated this, and will be carrying the ideas into other reading, I have to wonder if it would have benefitted from a little plain-language-ification. I found myself stumbling over passages that were ultimately simple but seriously bogged down by language (or maybe I'm just that out of practice, who knows).

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

"To be against purity is to start from an understanding of our implication in this compromised world, to recognize the quite vast injustices informing our everyday lives, and from that understanding to act on our wish that it were not so. I believe that this orientation is at the heart of prefigurative, loving, social movement practices whose point is not only to interpret the world, but to change it. We cannot predict what might emerge from individual and collective practices of staying with the trouble (bold mine), except that it holds the possibility of another world, still imperfect and impure, and another one after that. The possibility of other worlds, hospitable to hosting many worlds, might be beyond our capacity to imagine. Still, such a possibility can only arise because of our imperfect attempts to make it so." --Alexis Shotwell

What would happen if we stopped trying to reject and normalize everything that didn't fit into the narrow mold of what we're told by the dominant culture is acceptable? What if we collectively decided that we're all fucking in this together and so we better learn to embrace all the myriad ways of being human in this world? What if instead of trying to forget and deny the horrors that have happened and are happening throughout our world, we accepted that we have inherited this mess, that it's our responsibility, and that we're all part of figuring out the aftermath.

Though the writing is dense and academic, this book is worth the patience it takes to get through it. Academic writing can be used to weaponize ideas and make people feel less than. It can also be used to articulate, validate and legitimize ideas and ideals that are not currently accepted by way of introducing them to the philosophical narrative shapes the undercurrent of our collective discourse. This work is most definitely the latter, and I'm very glad to have read it. I think of myself as an openminded person, but Shotwell has enabled my mental discourse to articulate things I felt but couldn't necessarily speak to. Highly recommend it.