A few editorial cartoons offering a counterpoint perspective to the cultural sentiments and media portrayals that denounce the Baltimore “riots” as politically unproductive, ethically unjustifiable hooliganism have achieved viral status. One particularly prominent cartoon illustrates alternative histories in which once denied freedoms and equities were achieved without systemically disruptive uprisings (see image above). In one panel an 18th century Haitian slave cordially informs a French Imperialist that he and his fellow slaves would rather be free. The receptive overseer responding in an equally kind fashion decides to abolish the system of slavery that legitimizes his very authority. In another panel an 18th century French revolutionary asks King Louis XVI to abdicate his power as well as dissolve the monarchy to make way for democratic rule and, like in the previous example, history is comically rewritten to suggest that the powers that be were enthusiastically and progressively responsive to such a request.
These cartoons are funny because they reveal an absurd distance between the historical actualities and their reimagined counterparts—a distance which further reveals the absurdity of expecting that the existing authority will readily relinquish oppressive, self-enriching policies of inequality for the betterment of others and society as a whole.
The cartoons communicate a series of specific messages. For most observers these cartoons first and foremost communicate the naivety of assuming that progressive change of any social system is possible without some hostile disruption to said system’s order. But there is, perhaps, a more important message embodied by these comic narratives. The logic of these cartoons suggests something about the nature of communication: the condition of apparent clarity and reasonableness of a given utterance (or attempt at communication) does not necessarily elicit a systemic response. To better understand this presently vague stipulation let us turn to some theoretical insights about social systemic communication.
Niklas Luhmann suggested that the social system is, first and foremost, a system of communications. To understand how a social systemic order emerges, persists and changes, then, we must consider how communications emerge, persist and change. Looking again to the cartoons, we may recognize that these reimagined circumstances present the reader with what are in practice comically ineffective means for communicating social grievances. System’s theorists could say that such utterances never becomes a communicative act, never emerge from noise and thereby fail elicit a meaningful response.
With these stipulations in mind, we may ask the questions: Who gets to participate in systemic communication? Whose communications make a meaningful difference to the systemic order? The utterances of Haitian slaves, French revolutionaries and present day, black citizens of Baltimore emerged in their respective times without meaningful reception and response. The prevailing social systems relegated their voices of dissent and discontent to meaningless noise. Systemic disruption, however, serves as a means in which utterances may effectively emerge from systemic noise. When an utterance takes the form of flipping cars, breaking windows, and impassioned shouts, it is increasingly difficult to avoid giving said utterance your full attention.
The violence perpetuated by such disruptions is not irrational or simply aberrant; rather it demands the penultimate acts of reason-centered discourse, the emergence of dialogue and mutual recognition. The irony of discourses that fail to understand the sensibility behind the Baltimore uprisings is that they often appeal to Martin Luther King Jr’s teachings of nonviolence to justify their reservations. Yet the Green party nominee of 2012, Jill Stein, suggests on Facebook that alluding to MLK, Jr. is wholly inappropriate for such discourses. She concludes with his famous quote: “A riot is the language of the unheard.” In line with this logic, we may acknowledge that Baltimore’s turmoil will subside when grievances are addressed meaningfully; wherefore the aggrieved become a part of and meaningfully contribute to the systemic order.
James Chouinard is an independent scholar with a PhD in Sociology.