The aesthetics of the hybridization of civility: For inclusion,tolerance and an ethic of difference

Introduction

Quite tersely, the Oxford English Dictionary defines civility as ‘politeness and courtesy’. This pithy definition, however, belies the complex and complicated nature of the word, both in meaning and etymology. The ‘multivalent meaning’ of civility (Volpp, 2014: 72) has led to its characterization as ‘a notoriously slippery concept’ (Waldron, 2014: 46), a charge that captures its ambiguity (see Sarat, 2014: 1–6) and ‘deep-seated ambivalence’ (White, 2006: 448). The genealogy and figuration of the term, evinced in Norbert Elias' classic The Civilizing Process (1978 [1939]; 1982 [1939]), bears witness to this, as does Lucien Febvre’s (1998 [1930]) discussion of its roots.

Elias meticulously documents and describes how civility – as a form of thinking, acting and being – emerged in the Occident beginning in the 16th century. On one hand, Elias reads civility (as a broader project of civilization) as concerning politeness, courtesy and manners, for example. Here, what Elias narrates aligns with what the Oxford English Dictionary defines as civility. Despite these broad contours, Elias' work pinpoints what constitutes civility’s core feature. Stated directly, it is peace: civility, both as a virtue (an end in its own right) and value (a means to an end), concerns peace, that is, the absence of violence. Noting that civility is a precondition for social integration, Elias states that in the ‘civilizing process, one of the most decisive transitions is that of warriors to courtiers’ (1982 [1939]: 259; emphases in original), what he calls the ‘courtization of warriors’ (1982 [1939]: 270; emphases added). Thus, despite the ambiguity and ambivalence that constitute civility, it also appears that the notion of peace (epitomized in the absence of violence) is a key marker of what Elias has in mind with the term. That is, civility and violence can be viewed as oppositional forces and much of what Elias documents is how the Occident gradually became less violent.

While the ambiguities of civility might be averted – or at least reduced – by acknowledging its (dis)connection to (and with) violence, its ambivalences still remain. Elias admitted that what he was describing pertained strictly to the Occident and its ways of thinking, acting and being. Thus, this way of being ran (and still runs) diametrically counter to other forms of conduct, evinced, for example, in various colonial and settler colonial projects which sought to civilize so-called ‘primitive’ or ‘savage’ people via programmes of civility and civilization that Homi Bhabha characterizes as ‘sly’ (Bhabha, 1994: 93–101) because of their inherent violence (see also Fanon, 1961).

The ambivalence at the heart of civility – in meaning and etymology – is not, however, problematic, as some commentators suggest (e.g. White, 2006; cf. Waldron, 2014). I argue that in – and through – the ambivalence that constitutes civility, a space exists to further elucidate what civility looks, feels and sounds like. This permits an acknowledgement of, and appreciation for, ‘otherness’, both as an end in its own right and, as well, a recognition that it can be, when necessary, assimilated into the status quo so that the other is no longer solely constituted by its otherness – and thus made deviant or problematic. I focus on the precise point where civility and violence meet head-on, if not in actuality, then, at least conceptually. Through this specific locus, I give colour to the aesthetics of civility, thereby illuminating different ways to think about and make sense of what civility looks, feels and sounds like.

At this point of confrontation (between civility and violence), a veritable drama unfolds in the struggle to order and make sense of life. Here, the groundbreaking ethnographies of Elijah Anderson (1990, 1999, 2011) can be situated alongside, but more importantly against, the work of Elias to illuminate this. Anderson reveals precisely how and why civility loses appeal and traction and comes to have little to no value in inner-city communities across America. In such places, a street code – what he calls the ‘code of the streets’ (Anderson, 1999) – intersects with, clashes, and then replaces civility as a way of ordering life. It is not, however, that civility necessarily dies, but that it wanes, and it is precisely in (and because of) its decline, rather than its demise, that conflicts and tensions arise. Anderson describes how what he calls ‘code-switching’ (Anderson, 1999: 98–106; 1990) – the ability to be civil and streetwise simultaneously and seamlessly – is paramount to survival. In this switching of codes, a particular aesthetic is born, which serves as an useful entry point to give further colour to civility.

The site of inquiry is an emergency shelter. Among other means, the shelter is ordered by a particularized notion of ‘respect’. This is a hybrid of civility (e.g. courtesy, manners and politeness) and a street code (premised upon the threat of violence) that leads to an interesting aesthetic. Fusing the work of Elias and Anderson, I narrate and paint the aesthetic of what I refer to as the hybridization of civility. ¹ The attempt to fuse civility and a street code leads to a certain messiness that is aesthetically pronounced. This, in large part, is a product of the contrived nature of this hybrid which tends to do more harm than not. While this harm pertains to the everyday ordering of the shelter, specifically to the ways care is administered (see Ranasinghe, 2013a; 2014; 2017), the focus here is to shed light upon the psychic violence that is part and parcel of the personnel in the shelter, both clients and employees. Their efforts to create order via respect end up creating relationships that are, while not superficial, certainly highly artificial. As a result, psychic violence constitutes the lives of the personnel in the shelter.

The next section briefly discusses the shelter, including research methodology. Focus then turns to the aesthetic of respect that constitutes the shelter. Here, I explicate the place of civility and narrate the ways civility is hybridized. I focus on the contrived nature of respect and explicate how this artificiality is responsible for the psychic violence that constitutes the lives of the personnel in the shelter. In the conclusion, I locate the import of aesthetics to a deeper and broader conceptualization of civility including the ability to depart from its reductive binary logic between civil and uncivil, and explicate how such thinking can help promote inclusiveness where ‘otherness’ is assimilated into the status quo.

Before commencing, an explanatory note on the use of the term ‘aesthetics’ (and ‘aestheticism’) is necessary. It is commonly accepted that aesthetics – and aesthetic theory more broadly – concerns art, in particular the standards by which it is judged, analyse and made sense of (e.g. Deutsche, 1996). In this article, the term aesthetics is utilized quite loosely from its accepted sense. It is deployed not to analyse art but to analyse and make sense of behaviour (e.g. comportment) and disposition (e.g. character), but done so in a very specific manner and for a specific reason. This utilization draws firmly upon the notion of taste – for example, the way taste is tied to the appreciation of art or beauty – and claims that taste is closely related to concerns over behaviour, for example, where it is often claimed that the behaviour or speech in question are in good or poor taste.

There is precedence for such an endeavour. Theodore Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory (1999 [1970]) is one – albeit a somewhat stretched – example that demonstrates that concepts such as ‘beauty’ are directly tied to human experience (including behaviour) which are implicated in framing the aesthetic critique. A more germane example is David Hume’s (1882 [1742]: 280) ‘endeavours to fix a standard of taste’, which illuminates well the intellectual history and culture of such an endeavour.

In two essays – ‘Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion’ and ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ – Hume (1882 [1742]) explicates the means by which a standard for delineating taste can come to fruition. By taste, Hume refers to the bases upon which subjective matters of appreciating and judging art or beauty can be thought about, made sense of, and practised. Present purposes do not require focus upon the means by which he comes to ‘fix’ this standard – though suffice it to say that what he refers to as a ‘delicacy of taste’ is paramount to this. Rather, what is important is, first, that taste is directly related to aesthetics – that is, that the beauty of a piece of art, for example, speaks to a matter of taste – and, secondly, the quite explicit relation he forges between aesthetics and affect (commonly referred to as emotions and other sensations, but what Hume refers to as passions). It is the latter that is useful for the foundation on which behaviour, and in particular (un)civilized conduct, can be examined and appreciated through an aesthetic lens in much the same ways that art is subjected to an aesthetic critique.

Hume claims that the delicacy of taste can be thought of on similar lines as the delicacy of passion (1882 [1742]: 91–2), thereby connecting aestheticism and affect. The explicitness of this connection is evinced in his comment that ‘We are apt to call barbarous whatever departs widely from our own taste and apprehension’ (Hume, 1882 [1742]: 266), suggesting that behaviour – and the character of persons also (Hume, 1882 [1742]: 92–3) – can not only be thought of as matters of taste but analyse and made sense of as such (as will be apparent, this is visible in Elias’ analysis, where, for example, he discusses barbarity and passions as important in spawning the civilizing process). In other words, behaviour (including speech) can be thought of as tasteful or not, that is, in keeping with the generally (or commonly) accepted standards of taste, in this particular instance pertaining to the accepted rules of conduct. Similarly, I contend that rules of civility – the code of civility as Elias (1978 [1939]: 81–3; 1982 [1939]: 319–33) puts it – can also be thought of as matters of taste and subjected to such an analysis (that is, whether the behaviour or speech is in good or poor taste). It is in this manner that I speak of the aesthetics and aestheticism of civility and civilized conduct. ² Thus, while what is discussed can be discussed as affect, it is fruitful to frame the discussion around the notion of taste because this permits an expansion of the notion of violence and the street code to be thought of as tasteful, and thus civil, rather than as something that is, a priori, problematic. Making sense of conduct as such permits a better appreciation for how hybridized civility can be inclusive, tolerant and embrace an ethic of difference.

The shelter: An overview

What follows is an ethnographic analysis of an emergency shelter in a large urban city in the province of Ontario, Canada. This involved approximately 300 hours of fieldwork (observations and discussions with personnel, both employees and clients) and 16 interviews with employees (managers, supervisors, caseworkers and frontline employees) between September 2010 and December 2011.

The shelter provides services strictly to men, virtually all of whom are visibly indigent. The shelter can accommodate approximately 130 clients, and this includes nightly accommodation and three meals as well as other basic necessities of life (e.g. shower facilities and clothes). Miscellaneous services (e.g. help with addictions or counselling) are provided off-site.

Most of the clients are over the age of 25. A myriad population makes up the shelter: the homeless; persons recently released or discharged from jails, prisons, mental health facilities or hospitals; persons traveling from one city to another requiring temporary accommodation; persons who have been either evicted by their landlord or asked to leave by their spouse or partner, among others. While an eclectic clientele inhabits the shelter, what unites them is indigence. This mix of men cohabit with a mix of employees, both male and female, ranging from young (early-twenties) to middle-aged, a dynamic that has its own issues, especially pertaining to security (see Ranasinghe, 2013b).

Given this eclecticism, of both the clientele and employees, order can be precarious. While there are myriad written and unwritten rules that underline the tenor of the shelter, more so than not, order is a product of extra-legal mechanisms that unfold in interesting ways. One example is the hybridization of civility, best described as respect, which shapes everyday life.

From civility to respect

On the face of it, the parties in the shelter believe that civility is important for producing genial relations. This appearance, however, is deceptive because what each has in mind with regard to civility and how it ought to be applied is very different, and this poses many irritations in their relations. During a staff meeting a supervisor acknowledged that dealing with clients can be time consuming and frustrating. Nevertheless, the supervisor ³ was unequivocal that the employees must ‘remain calm and civilized’ (emphasis added), adding: ‘We [management] want you guys to maintain your composure’. During an interview, the supervisor further explained the import of civility:

I, often, when I’m giving grand speeches […], explain […] that […] we’re in a common space [and] there are hundreds of us, so, you know, can you act civilized […], is it too much for us to ask you to go back to some of your core beliefs in terms of being courteous, being thoughtful, be[ing] considerate? Is it too much to ask for that? (emphasis added)

The problem, however, is that not all the parties view civility in this way. To exacerbate matters, neither do they necessarily view civility as a virtue; it can be, in fact, construed as a weakness. In explaining the reaction the supervisor receives when the supervisor excoriates the uncivilized conduct of clients, the supervisor claims that the clients ‘will say, “you got to respect everybody and, you know, the code on the streets is, oh, I was disrespected”’ (emphases added). Here, the crux of the problem is illuminated. For the clients, civility does not (and cannot) speak to who they are; more poignantly, it does not (and cannot) help them navigate the difficult terrain of street life, including the shelter. Civility and civilized conduct, rather, will only leave them in a precarious and vulnerable state. They therefore imbibe and live by a street code (Anderson, 1999) where a client, according to the supervisor, cannot ‘drop his guard’ and has ‘to be so street [and] defensive.’ Thus, civility cannot easily be injected into the daily life of the shelter. Rather, a hybridized civility – civility and the street code – takes centre stage. This is evinced in the notion of respect, which is spoken about and explicated ad nauseam by the employees and clients.

Contriving respect

There is little doubt that both the employees and clients believe that respect is important to regulate everyday, face-to-face, behaviour. As one employee noted, ‘we have to respect them [clients] as human beings’. Another stated: ‘everyone deserves to be treated just like you or I [sic]’. However, because respect is a product of hybridized civility, its deployment is carefully negotiated. As one employee commented: ‘For me, respect means treating the other person just as you want to be treated’. Respect, then, necessitates treating another as an end, a premise that follows from the desire to also be treated the same. This ideal, as noble and laudable as it is, does not – indeed cannot – materialize in practice. Instead, what emerges is a space where the careful negotiation and deployment of respect results in the necessity – akin to an imperative – to treat others largely as means, illuminating the import of the street code imparting its dominance over notions of civility.

Civility, as Elias explicates, necessitates that one behave civilly (and therefore is civil) despite others’ deeds. Indeed, it was the desire to extricate oneself from a ‘barbaric way’ (Elias, 1978 [1939]: 47; see also Febvre, 1998 [1930]: 165–7) that led the courtly society to reform its ways of being and doing: ‘The term civilisation was, at the moment of its formation, a clear reflection of these reformist ideas. If in this term the idea of the homme civilisé leads to a concept of designating the manners and condition of existing society as a whole, it is first and foremost an expression of insights derived from opposition’ (Elias, 1978 [1939]: 44; emphases in original). That is, how others behaved and whether they behaved civilly or not, mattered little to the civilized man: ⁴ what mattered was that he was civil, that he behaved as such, and that through his being and doing, he defined himself as civil, and more importantly, differentiated himself from others (see Amato, 2004: 72–90; 102–3, for how the consumption of different material products or means of mobility were consciously utilized and deployed by the nobility to separate and differentiate them from others).

The civilizing process was a product of the shame and embarrassment that took hold of the ‘self-consciousness of the West’ (Elias, 1978 [1939]: 3), a consciousness about a way of life that was deeply constituted by, and entrenched in, profound violence concerning every aspect of it, and evinced not only among the nobility and warrior classes but among lay persons as well (Elias, 1978 [1939]: 191–201; 1982 [1939]). This led to the sort of ‘social criticism’ that Elias (1978 [1939]: 44) refers to, a criticism that emerged first from within the nobility and then gradually spread outwards towards the masses. This criticism was underpinned by a deep sense of shame and embarrassment about life and behaviour (Elias, 1982 [1939]: 292–300), where a sort of anxiety, produced over the ‘fear of social degradation or, more generally, of other people’s gestures of superiority’ (Elias, 1982 [1939]: 292), meant that ‘People, forced to live with one another in a new way, bec[a]me more sensitive to the impulses of others’ (Elias, 1978 [1939]: 80). Shame, Elias suggests, ‘takes on its particular coloration from the fact that the person feeling it has done or is about to do something through which he comes into contradiction with people to whom he is bound in one form or another, and with himself, with the sector of his consciousness by which he controls himself’ (Elias, 1982 [1939]: 292). Thus, what resulted is that ‘people [sought] to suppress in themselves every characteristic that they feel to be “animal”’ (Elias, 1978 [1939]: 120). In other words, with – and through – the civilizing process, ‘the individual learns to control himself more steadily; he is now less a prisoner of his passions than before’ (Elias, 1982 [1939]: 241), and thus ‘socially undesirable impulses or inclinations are more radically repressed. They are associated with embarrassment, fear, shame or guilt, even when one is alone’ (Elias, 1978 [1939]: 150; emphases added).

This is starkly different with a street code, and in particular, being ‘streetwise’, where shame and embarrassment have not only little to do with its birth, but are also inimical to its implementation and success (Anderson, 1990: 208). In other words, the street code does not lament violence, it lauds and glorifies it. This is how respect is garnered. This plays out daily in the shelter. While respect is both a virtue (an end) and a value (a means to an end), unlike civility, the behaviour of the other is crucial in its conceptualization and deployment. That is, how another behaves towards one has great implications for whether one is (dis)respected and how one ought to reciprocate. To provide respect at the expense of being disrespected is to leave oneself vulnerable. All employees, who on the one hand understood that a code of civility would not suffice to produce workable relations with clients, were also explicit, on the other hand, that they were only prepared to show respect if it was provided in return. As one employee said: ‘there’s a limit for everything […]; you need to respect me and I’ll respect you […].’ Another employee, Emma (who figures significantly in this narrative), was more vocal and vociferous and echoed the same sentiment: ‘I mean, they have tested my patience […]. I say, “don’t even try me, you don’t know what I will do. I’m respecting you, you respect me.” That’s all they need to know. […] I let them know straight-up: “you respect me, I respect you, and that’s it”’ (emphases added).

Ironically, and despite its pretention, Emma’s position does not emerge from a place of power; rather, it emanates from a subordinated position underpinned by fear. This is why her views are steadfast and her veiled threat – ‘you don’t know what I’ll do’ – is mobilized as it is. To further appreciate this, it is imperative to examine the way clients conceptualize respect. This sheds insights into how and why order in the shelter is both tenuous and messy. This also illuminates why respect is carefully and discriminately deployed.

As noted above, the shelter attracts myriad people. Thus, an eclectic crowd, often unknown to others, cohabits in a relatively small space. Given that numerous strangers cohabit in rather strange conditions, the threat of violence (though not necessarily violence itself) is always present. It would be remiss to paint the shelter as over(t)ly violent as some shelters (see Dordick, 1996). Nevertheless, like many shelters ‘crime is a pervasive aspect of shelter life’, where ‘everything is up for grabs – the resident’s personal belongings, his bed or locker, his personal safety, and his privacy’ (Grunberg and Eagle, 1990: 523). Given these threats, a client holds certain trepidations about his wellbeing. To mitigate these, a particular aura of toughness, machismo and masculinity is enacted, all of which is translated and parlayed into the threat of violence.

Thus, a street ethic or code (Anderson, 1999) constitutes the shelter and the lives of the clients. The clients are – or at least need to be – ‘streetwise’ (Anderson, 1990), a term that refers to ‘[some]one who understands “how to behave” in uncertain public places’ (Anderson, 1990: 6). Given the shelter is uncertain in the numerous ways described above, clients have little choice but to learn ‘how to behave’. Part of this adaptation is to quickly learn that civility is a mark of weakness and any such sign can leave the client in a precarious and vulnerable position both to impending threats at the hands of other clients and, as well, to have an array of requests swiftly denied by employees. Thus, a client adopts a street code at the expense of civility that garners him respect, and often, this respect is – and can only be – achieved and sustained via the threat of violence.

Street wisdom is also an absolute necessity for the employees if they, too, are to successfully navigate the uncertainties of the shelter. Thus, civility, as a tool of power or authority (Elias, 1982 [1939]: 313) that they reply upon, needs reconfiguring, and this gives rise to the hybridization of civility. Here, Anderson’s conceptualization of civility and the street code as existing and functioning on different planes is worth repeating: ‘Street wisdom and street etiquette are comparable to a scalpel and a hatchet. One is capable of cutting extremely fine lines between vitally different organs; the other can only make broader, more brutal strokes’ (1990: 231). As he puts it straightforwardly, ‘Street wisdom is really street etiquette wisely enacted’ (1990: 231; see also 1999). In the shelter, as will be apparent, hybridized civility requires both parties to be simultaneously streetwise and civilized, that is, to have and show respect.

This leads to a particular ‘ballet’, to use Anderson’s (1999: 126) description, one aesthetically visible where ‘each side [tries to] smoothly perform […] a choreographed part’ (1999: 126), but one, in the end, that is highly contrived and thus flounders. This performance (Goffman, 1959 [1956]; 1963) is problematic because, while the clients must convey a certain image of toughness – that they can, and will, enact physical violence – in reality, they cannot do so, lest the rules of the shelter take effect, resulting in their immediate (and even permanent) removal. On the streets, as Anderson describes them, violence is not only threatened but acted upon, evinced, for example, in the way two friends settled an incident over perceived disrespect with their fists (1999: 88–91). This is merely a tame example of the type and degree of violence that pervade the streets. In the shelter, physical violence can only be conveyed as a matter of threat, virtually never in practice. The employees and clients know this, and this makes the performance of violence highly contrived.

While physical violence is an aberration, other types of violence – e.g. emotional and verbal abuse – form an important part of the shelter’s ballet. Daily, the employees are subjected to such abuses, which the clients deploy to enhance their respect. This keeps the employees on edge, and in order to safeguard themselves against such abuse, they, too, adopt a street ethic, also highly contrived.

Feigning violence, performing respect: The artificiality of shelter life

Several instances pertaining to the distribution of a specific fund to the clients – the Personal Needs Allowance (PNA) – aptly illuminates the ballet in the shelter. Each client registered in the shelter and deemed eligible is entitled to $4 per day, paid in weekly instalments of $28 either on Wednesday between 1 and 2.30 p.m. or on Thursday between 9 and 10 a.m. ⁵ The money is provided by the city and administered by the shelter.

Generally, the administration of funds unfolds smoothly. Each Wednesday beginning at about 12.40 p.m., the lobby is teeming with clients who are eager to collect their money. A somewhat informal line forms where clients speak to one another and pass time until 1 p.m. At about 12.55 p.m., two employees enter a room from the rear of the lobby and open a window that faces the lobby. Roughly at the same time, one of the employees comes to the lobby, goes up to every client, who by now has firmly entrenched himself in the line, and verifies that each client is eligible to receive money for that week (this avoids delays and other problems if a client waits in line and finds out that he is ineligible to receive money). Once this process is complete, the worker returns to the room. The time has now come to administer the money. One at a time, clients come to the window. An employee scans a barcode and has the client sign that he has received his money. At this time he is provided what is due to him. It usually takes between 30 and 60 seconds for each client to receive his money. The entire process takes about 30 minutes, and by about 1.30 p.m. all those who had lined up have received their money and dispersed. The lobby is now palpably different from what it was about 45 minutes before, where calm and quietness have replaced the hustle-and-bustle. The window booth remains open until 2.30 p.m., at which time the employees close the window and exit the room.

Civility permeates the space during the proceedings, from the line-up (symbolizing that clients agree to comport themselves in a cordial manner and remain patient while waiting) to the way employees slowly and meticulously ensure that only eligible clients receive money (here, as well, clients agree to remain patient and civil while their eligibility is verified). When this process does not run smoothly, light is shone on the ballet of hybridized civility, that is, how respect unfolds in the contrived manner that is constitutive of psychic violence. I draw upon two incidents as examples.

One afternoon when the line for the PNA had subsided, a somewhat irate client, Norman, returned to the shelter and sat down in a chair in the lobby. He began complaining somewhat loudly, though not belligerently, to several clients who were seated in his vicinity. He was annoyed that he was asked to wait until 4 p.m. to collect his money (it was unclear whether he was awaiting his PNA or another allowance, for example, disability benefits, or why he was asked to wait). For about 30 minutes he continued to voice his frustrations. At this point, Norman noticed that one of the clients to whom he was complaining, Jackson, had already received his cheque. Norman asked Jackson when and where he had got the cheque. Jackson responded that he had waited until he was called and then collected his money. He told Norman that he too would be called and that he needed to be patient. Norman, now more impatient and incredulous, sprang out of his chair and walked to the window booth. Within 30 seconds he returned wearing a big smile as he had managed to collect his money. When Norman showed this to Jackson, Jackson told Norman, ‘You don’t bother them Norman; they’ll call you; you don’t bother them.’

Jackson’s comment to Norman – ‘you don’t bother them’ – could be read as a directive. However, there is another way to make sense of it, one that captures its poignancy. Jackson’s voice and tone suggest that there is an accepted protocol for collecting money – not in terms of a rule, but in terms of what it means to behave civilly. Jackson was conveying his disappointment that Norman had breached etiquette. Jackson, therefore, was reminding Norman that the receipt of what is owed to them does not come necessarily by right, but rather by a subtly crafted relationship: by showing patience and not incommoding the staff, not only would he have received his cheque but he would have received it quicker and without any (or less) hassle. As well, it is not simply the display of patience that Jackson is speaking of. More importantly, waiting patiently signifies deference, because it shows that a client is not willing to bother the employees, even to receive what is rightfully his. What Jackson is intimating, then, is that protocol necessitates deference to the employees: so doing makes things unfold smoothly, because it unequivocally underlines who has power and is in charge.

Here, Jackson was invoking civility. This does not mean that Jackson is not streetwise (Anderson, 1990). There are particular elements of the street code, of respect, that Jackson also invokes, in relation, for example, to not bothering people – to getting in their face. So doing shows enormous respect for people and the process. However, as noted above, in many instances, for clients, civility is a sign of weakness and only leads to disrespect. ‘At the heart of the code,’ Anderson (1999: 33) claims, ‘is the issue of respect – loosely defined as being treated “right” or being granted one’s “props” (or proper due) or the deference one deserves’. Norman felt profoundly disrespected that what was rightfully his was withheld until a later time, a decision he did not understand or agree with. Thus, when he saw that another client had received money, he was incensed and indignant because of what he perceived as unfairness and injustice. Thus, the rules of civility – waiting patiently, being courteous, showing deference and comporting oneself accordingly – were no longer appropriate: if he waited, he would simply countenance the disrespect he believed was levelled at him. Thus, to illustrate his indignation, he sprang out of his seat – symbolizing that he would not tolerate disrespect – and inquired about his money. The fact that he received his money is not what signified victory; victory was already achieved at the very moment he defied the order to come back at 4 p.m.

Such defiance is important because the street code thrives on respect and to be disrespected is the worst form of violence that can be leveed at someone (figuratively, though in some ways perhaps more ‘violent’ than physical violence). Again, as Anderson notes, ‘respect is fought for and held and challenged as much as honor was in the age of chivalry. Respect becomes critical for staying out of harm’s way’ (1999: 66). Thus, and by extension, ‘Much of the code has to do with achieving and holding respect’ (1999: 67), and this ‘revolves around the presentation of the self. Its basic requirement is the display of certain predispositions to violence’ (1999: 72). In other words, ‘A person’s public bearing must send the unmistakable, if sometimes subtle, message that one is capable of violence, and possibly mayhem, when the situation requires it, that one can take care of oneself’ (1999: 72). In the shelter, however, disrespect cannot be addressed with physical violence, certainly towards an employee. Norman knows this. Therefore, he took other actions and defied the order.

This example illustrates the fusion of civility and respect, that is, hybridized civility. In calling for patience – and by extension deference – Jackson underlines the import of civility. This call is a streetwise move, because he fully understands that showing – actually, feigning – deference will enhance his standing. While Jackson seeks to hybridize civility, Norman has little patience for the call for patience. He views it as disrespect and seeks to a right what is, in his mind, wrong. He enacts a modified form of the street code: rather than showing (even feigning) deference, he confronts the employees, and this delivers what is rightly his. In so doing, he upholds the street code as better suited to address problems in the shelter.

This example belies the profound psychic violence that is constitutive of hybridized civility, which is illuminated via another vignette. One afternoon, a disgruntled client, Thompson, returned to the shelter. There appeared to have been some issue with his PNA – a ‘screw up’ as he said – which resulted in him not receiving it. He let his displeasure be known by yelling and berating the employees. When asked to tone it down, he further amplified his voice and yelled, ‘I bet you they don’t screw up your fucking pay cheque, do they?’ After a few minutes of screaming in this way, he abruptly left the building, only to return within a few minutes. He continued to demonstrate his displeasure, paced up and down the lobby and, once again, left. Once more he returned shortly thereafter and this time walked up to the window booth where the employees were stationed, pulled up a chair and sat. He continued to scream and yell. An employee again cautioned him to either sit quietly or go outside. Thompson’s retort was terse: ‘Well, it makes me feel better.’ At this point, Thompson also got into a verbal altercation with another client, Don. It is unclear why Thompson did so – it appears that Don was sympathetic to his plight – but it ended when Thompson cautioned Don to ‘mind your own fucking business’. About another five minutes passed, when rather suddenly, shockingly and anti-climactically, Thompson fell into a deep sleep, replete with snoring. He awoke about 20 minutes later, only to see the window booth closed. He sheepishly exited the shelter, almost having forgotten what transpired.

The disrespect Thompson felt was met with severe reproach, bordering on, but – and importantly – not resorting to, physical violence. In seeking to a right what he believed was injustice, Thompson was fully aware that, unlike on the streets, physical violence, in any form, cannot be deployed in the shelter because it is not tolerated. At the same time, he believed that he needed to demonstrate a certain sense of toughness – in fact, violence – in order not to lose credibility. The only option available to him, therefore, was to feign physical violence, and this he engaged in unabashedly. He entered and left the building as he saw fit, moving purposefully, each step demonstrating that his anger, reaching the ‘boiling point’, might erupt in violence. His chest was straightened and protruded forward – ‘puffed-out’ – and he stared directly at the employees. He clenched his fists at times to convey that he might resort to violence against the employees, perhaps even a client. To further dramatize his seriousness he altered his voice and tone. By yelling, he conveyed that his behaviour is erratic, and this unpredictability might result in violence.

The use of profanity is significant. When coupled with belligerence it enhances and cements how dangerous the situation is – or can be. This dangerousness is twofold. First, speaking loudly, what essentially constituted yelling, coupled with profanity, violates every conceivable norm of civilized conduct, especially when, as noted before, civility is conceptualized in juxtaposition to violence (Elias, 1978 [1939]; 1982 [1939]; Anderson, 1990: 210–36; 1999; 15–16; 33; 300). Thus, if the rules of civility require that one comport oneself accordingly, then, Thompson’s belligerence eviscerates norms of politeness, courtesy and etiquette, among others. In speaking as he did, Thompson clearly indicated that the employees were unworthy of courtesy and he was, thus, unwilling to extend it to them. Thompson’s actions have two related effects: first, they run counter to norms of civility and therefore, and secondly and simultaneously, enhance his respect via the street ethic he subscribes to and engages in. The other reason why the image of dangerousness is enhanced through belligerence and profanity is that it eviscerates the supposed hierarchy governing the shelter. When Jackson counselled Norman, part of what he was lamenting was that Norman failed to adhere to an unwritten hierarchy between employees and clients, where the latter were expected to show deference. Even though this deference, at least as Jackson saw it, is feigned, doing so enhanced relations between the parties. Jackson, thus, was willing to behave as such, despite its highly artificial nature. Thompson’s bellicosity and profanity, however, unequivocally state that if there is a hierarchy that favours the employees, he is unwilling to abide by it. His words and deeds shatter it: Thompson is staking claim to this very hierarchy and stating clearly that it is he, not the employees, who is in charge. Thus, in shattering – or seeking to shatter – this hierarchy, especially in such a public manner, Thompson invokes the violence of the street code to reclaim the respect he believed he lost, and in so doing further enhanced his respect among the clients.

This example illuminates a – perhaps, the – profound paradox that constitutes the shelter and its personnel: the enactment of the street code necessitates physical violence which, however, can virtually never materialize in practice. Thus, performing this code requires feigning violence. The more credible the performance, the more credence and capital the client will garner, because despite what everyone knows, he is still able to leave a modicum of doubt as to whether he is the exception to the rule. In the same vein, this performance is highly contrived and requires that the performer engage in what he knows and understands full well to be counterfeit to his very being. That is, no matter how credible his performance is and how much he threatens violence he – and everyone else – knows that all he has to offer is a charade, which, in the end, is all he has (and perhaps all he is). This is illuminated in the conclusion of the incident: after all of Thompson’s posturing, the end is anti-climactic because the threat of physical violence is translated into fatigue (even boredom) that results in dormancy, even if only temporarily. Thus, the predator – masquerading as a violent man – has left himself vulnerable to the very violence he feigns. All this is brought to light in the way Thompson awoke from his sleep and sheepishly exited the building.

Despite all the pretences of the clients, the shelter is not the streets; it was never conceptualized as such, not even to mimic them. On the streets, physical violence is not only advertised and advocated but, perhaps most importantly, practised. A failure to follow through on a threat amounts to a loss of respect. In the shelter, the opposite is the case. The threat of physical violence is a performance, one with numerous regulations that are a priori outlined, especially in relation to the prohibition of violence. It is the highly contrived nature of this performance that epitomizes the psychic violence that constitutes the very being of the performer because he knows full well that his performance is merely that.

While the employees are largely immune from physical violence, they are subjected to a slew of verbal and emotional abuse. The employees, thus, are not immune from psychic violence. This is because the employees do not even have the ability to feign any type of violence – let alone resort to physical violence. Engaging in such behaviour would be wholly unprofessional and cost them their jobs and, by extension, their livelihoods. In explaining these limitations one employee commented: ‘we really have no protection for those kinds of stuff [violence]; [and], if you have to defend yourself […], as you know, we have a hands-off policy, we cannot touch clients, whatever they do, so that’s why I’m saying it’s […] tough.’ Thus, the employees must be civil (recall the directive of a supervisor during a staff meeting) even while enduring the threat of physical violence and myriad verbal and emotional abuse replete with profanity.

This, however, is merely one issue. Another is that all the while remaining civil and professional, as a practical matter (a matter of survival), the employees must signal that they are not weak (‘soft’ and vulnerable), lest they be subjected to further violence. Thus they, too, must be streetwise and behave as such to garner respect. As one employee said: ‘to work here, you got to have the respect [and] if you don’t have the respect you are not going to survive this kind of field. You’re done!’ All this only complicates the ballet of hybridized civility which is illuminated in its aesthetic form as messy, contrived and both ambiguous and ambivalent.

The messiness of this ballet is further illuminated through Emma – the employee who vociferously underlined the import of respect:

If you follow the rules, then, we have no problem. I won’t put up with people if [… they’re] doing wrong; if you’re doing wrong […] you’re going to get kicked out. Because, when all is said and done, it is still going to come back down to me [… as in] why didn’t I, as a worker […], step in and stop [… it]. [For example], I look at the dinner table and a guy is […] cursing. [… So I say], ‘listen guys, we don’t curse at the dinner table’ and they go ‘oh.’ I say, ‘I don’t care how other staff say or do […], when I’m here you’re eating your supper, eat, no cursing, at [least at] the magnitude [read, decibel level] [… that I can hear it’], and they are like ‘okay.’ So […] we can have a relationship […] and these guys […] know […] what I will [… and] will not accept. And, if I have to book them out, I explain […] why I am booking you out and you have to go, plain and simple.

Additionally, these expulsions are temporary, often lasting a few days. This means that not only can the client return, but when he invariably does, he carries with him a certain capital that states that despite belligerence and failure to defer to the employees, he is back in the shelter and eligible to receive services. Thus, the quest to be respected via the street code – not fully available to the employees – leaves the employees bereft of their souls because not only is the credibility of the street code they wield negligible, but what is of core to them, civilized conduct, has been reconfigured to adorn the street code which they can only wear flimsily. As well, there are other occasions when clients are not expelled from the shelter for misconduct – Thompson, for example, faced no repercussions. These instances serve as a reminder that violence is unleashed on the employees with impunity.

Returning to Emma, it is clear that despite her pretence of demanding respect, to a large extent what is demanded can only be extended as far as the clients are willing to provide it – as Thompson’s behaviour shows, often, employees are subjected to myriad abuse. As Emma explained: ‘Speak politely […], even if they are up there, you keep it down here so that way eventually they can come back down to where you are; but if you are shouting while they are shouting, it is just eventually going to explode […].’ This, however, is not a directive (or advice) that emanates from agency (it belies it because the employees cannot speak and behave the way the clients do and are, instead, directed to behave civilly). Rather, Emma’s comments are the antithesis of agency, and this leads to a position where the inability to fruitfully enact the code of the street leaves her with the need to fall back upon civility which, then, poses more harm to her wellbeing. Indeed, the contrived attempt to balance civility and respect leaves the employees open to psychic violence both because they are more vulnerable to the verbal and emotional abuse levelled at them by the clients and because in this strange hybrid, a part of their soul – their core, as the supervisor put it – is adulterated (they are neither properly civil nor ‘street’). This is what the hybridization of civility in the shelter looks, feels and sounds like.

Conclusion: Embracing multiplicities, embracing difference

This article suggests that casting attention upon the aesthetics of civility – what it looks, feels, and sounds like – provides novel ways to (re)conceptualize it by departing from the reductive binary logic between civilized and uncivilized that has traditionally dominated the way civility is viewed and conceptualized. I have focused largely on one aspect of this aestheticism, namely, sound and the auditory – e.g. spoken language, tone and volume – and what this reveals about civilized conduct. On the face of it, belligerence and bellicosity, especially when accompanied by profanity, are apt examples of uncivilized conduct (conduct said to be in poor taste), especially to an interlocutor of the times Elias discusses (1978 [1939]; 1982 [1939]) – this is also true of several incidents Anderson describes (1990, 1999). This conceptualization – via its labelling – is a product of a specific history that has important ramifications for how particular conduct is observed, thought about and made sense of. For example, in castigating the supposed masculinist critiques of (post-modern) art discussed by David Harvey (1989, 2006), Edward Soja (1989, 1996) and Fredric Jameson (1984) among others, Rosalyn Deutsche argues that such views fail to account for, and acknowledge that, the ‘aesthetic perception is not disinterested but contingent on the conditions in which art is viewed’. That is, ‘the art object does not have an autonomous meaning that remains intact in changing spatial or temporal circumstances. The meaning of art is formed in relation to its framing conditions and, as a consequence, alters with the space it occupies and the positions of viewing subjects’ (1996: 237). Similarly, I suggest that civility is not fixed or stable, but contingent upon myriad factors, which, when accounted for, provide richer, broader and deeper insights about its meaning.

The aestheticism of civility reveals its different and multiple facets. It is fruitless to view civility as a binary between civilized and uncivilized. Rather, it is prudent to view civility according to gradations, so that bellicosity and belligerence accompanied by profanity are not, a priori, uncivilized (that is, in poor taste), but rather will have different meanings given different contexts (see Hom, 2008, for a similar position regarding racial epithets). Such a position, then, allows for an acknowledgement and appreciation of – and illustrates how – gradations, built from the ground-up through the historical contingencies of participants, come to be and take shape.

The relevant issue, then, is not whether one is civil or uncivil, but rather why it is that s/he either does not wish to (is unwilling to) or cannot (is unable to) enact a particular form of civility. It is not the presence or absence of civility that is important; it is the reasons (based on agency) and/or the social, cultural and political conditions (often fixed and determined) that are relevant to shed light on the specific shades and gradations of civility. Thus, both Thompson and the employees, for example, Emma, are civil and behave civilly when viewed from the particular vantages that explain why each party is unwilling and simultaneously unable to enact a particular type of civility. Their examples show why particular persons might shed the sorts of civility lauded by the 16th- and 17th-century nobility in favour of a different sort of civility that is hybridized (for example, respect), to make sense of and govern their lives. I suggest, therefore, that ‘otherness’ and the ‘other’ is not an ‘other’ in its truest sense, but rather an extension of a norm deemed necessary because it cannot – and, more importantly, should not – be mapped onto the status quo. The premise here is that ‘otherness’ ought to be accepted and valued in its own right, but for this to materialize a paradox must be accepted: ‘otherness’ does not exist because it cannot exist. That is, it is not simply that ‘otherness’ is taken in its own right, but the very idea of ‘otherness’ itself is brought into question. ⁶

The foregoing is buoyant in its hope, but it must also recognize that even the multiplicities of civility are – or at least can be – programmes of psychic violence. The attempt to combat ‘otherness’ means that a profound sense of psychic violence engulfs the actor. This is because while the pretensions – or illusions – of agency persist, in reality, the need and desire to combat ‘otherness’ does not emerge from agency but from an already determined state. Thompson illustrates this well: no matter how much he seeks to garner respect through the threat of violence, his being is highly contrived because he only has the option to feign violence, never fully enact it. This is also true of the employees, a situation perhaps even more dire because not only are they unable to be properly civil (lest they be viewed as soft and vulnerable), but their attempts to garner respect are also contrived because, and unlike the clients, they are not even able to feign any sort of violence.

There is no way to overcome this paradox. However, it is important to recognize that even the programmes of civility Elias describes were programmes of violence because they sort to inculcate habits that were the antithesis of what was natural (Elias, 1982 [1939]: 240–6). With the hybridization of civility, despite the absence of complete agency, there is nevertheless an attempt, born from a realization for its need, to shed the chains of oppression that have bound particular groups. This realization amounts to victory, even if only symbolically. Here, Frantz Fanon’s reflections help provide some directive for the need to question the imposition of rigid forms of order: while the ‘complete calling in[to] question of the colonial situation’ (1961: 30) is ‘always a violent phenomenon’ and ‘a programme of complete disorder’, it is also simultaneously, and always, ‘successful’ (1961: 29). For Fanon, success does not only exist instrumentally, but more significantly, symbolically as well. Similarly, I claim that hybridized civility, despite its inherent violence, is a victory that recognizes and acknowledges the profound violence on the psyche and seeks to replace it with a different form.