On Consent

A comment from a Facebook thread:
‘Consent’ is a legal fiction, an individualistic artifice derived from liberal political economy. If we affirm the existence of subjective division – of an unconscious – then the subject of ‘consent’ is self-evidently problematized from the outset. The dichotomy of consent-nonconsent proves inadequate once an unconscious is in the picture. Thus, there are plenty of examples of unethical behaviour in the realm of extortion, sexual coercion, etc, which are nonetheless sub-criminal and which involve the notional ‘consent’ of all participants. The paradigmatic example for me is that of the sweatshop, in which, despite the protestations of libertarians who point to the workers’ ’consent’, we might still have some serious objections.

Advertisements