Apologies not accepted

Last year I blogged about my experience of train delays in England. The conductor would announce:

Sorry, so sorry, massive explosions, trains delayed. Sorry. Sorry.

We hear apologies all the time (except from Republicans):

Sorry, the soy milk should be in next week.
Sorry, we forgot to note that you needed your watch by Tuesday.
Sorry, I got bogged down in the library.
Sorry, the meeting ran over.
Sorry, I overslept.
Sorry, I'm just really stressed.
Sorry, I lost track of time.
Sorry, we can't accept your article.
Sorry, we've made an offer to another candidate whom we're delighted to say has accepted.

Or, more explicitly as an apology:

I apologize for missing class.
I apologize for leaving you off the list.
I apologize for the typos.
I apologize for the ill-sent message from my Blackberry.

The thing with all these apologies is that they transfer shit from the shitter to the receiver: if you don't accept the apology, you're an asshole. It's like a massive shit exchange wherein we fail to take responsibility for our own shit--because these days apologies are not indications of responsibility but transferal of it--but deposit it with someone else. When we receive it, we don't like it. It feels bad, awful, inauthentic, like cheating. But we get trapped and can't say anything about it without becoming an ass. We would seem completely intolerant, inflexible, unforgiving, anal. WTF? Chill. The shitter is wiped clean, absolved, no longer soiled by an unfortunate circumstance. If the receiver can't deal, well, that's his problem.

How much can we take? When does it really just become a huge stinking pile covering up massive incompetence, a fantasy of productivity that disavows what has actually been produced (the shit of incompetence, error, neglect, self-centeredness, stupidity, failure)?

It seems that acknowledging failure, error, or neglect risks permanently rupturing a relationship, creating an impossible environment, declaring war.

Is there a way out? Can we reflect the apology and respond with "no, I'm sorry." Can we interject a question: "are you?" Or is it better to be mindful of our apologies and say instead, "no excuses; I'm the ass"?

Comments

[Joe Clement]

On the flip-side, what has happened to people apologizing for taking responsibility into their own hands for someone else? This is typified by the parent who when disciplining their child says, I think quite honestly, I'm sorry I have to do this to you, but I love you. Here is where the other person says "I'm sorry" and you should feel like shit for not accepting it.

"Or is it better to be mindful of our apologies and say instead, 'no excuses; I'm the ass'?"

This is even worse, because inevitably when you admit your in the wrong, you save yourself the trouble having to be scolded. You have no-shame in the double-sense of openly admitting your being wrong and by doing that taking away the wronged-person's right to shame you. It exposes their ability to shame you, and when they try they end up looking like the ass.

[mao.mimosa]

Derrida once noted that forgiveness is actually rarely forgiveness -- more often, it's a contractual exchange, where the shittee is given the authority to absolve the shitter by accepting the apology, and in exchange, the shittee does indeed absolve the shitter. And so, as you say, we're really compelled to forgive, so we can resume normalized trade and pretend that we aren't covered in shit.

That said, when I accidentally cut somebody off on the freeway, I fully expect to be completely forgiven as soon as I wave and make the apologetic face. And that guy who didn't accept my face last week? He's the ass. Seriously.

[patrick j. mullins]

I think it needs much more analysis, and that this must be sustained on this blog for at least 10 weeks if I'm to be satisfied that anybody has learned the secret of making friends with your own ass and your own shit! Gawd, what amateurs!

[Bianca Isaki]

Long-time reader, first time commentator.
You bring up an interesting function for the apology as "covering up massive incompetence" - that is, systemic disrepair. If apologies are now functioning as promissory notes, this means that we understand appropriate feelings as evidence of now, being on the right track. This relentless mining of feelings seems so ubiquitous in our political context. Maybe it should come as no surprise that sincere regrets mean nothing now.

[Jodi]

Glad you decided to comment, Bianca. Your point is a good one: disrepair and then repair via appropriate feelings; feelings constitute to the repair such that an actual repair (say, discontinuation of the practice that leads to the need to apologize or fixing the infrastructure so that it doesn't break) is unimportant. What's really important is how someone feels about it.

I like this way of putting the matter; it's better than what I wrote because it directs attention to the underlying disrepair as well as to the work done by feelings. I read Mao Mimosa's invocation of Derrida as similarly inflected with the idea of normalized trade. Is the practice/trade normal in the sense of free of error or normal in the sense that error is common. The return to normal effected by 'sorry' treats the latter as the former.

[Matt Gosney]

I think Derrida's intervention with regard to forgiveness is a bit more radical than is indicated here. It is not just that forgiveness seldom happens because it often takes the form of a contract and/or exchange; it is also that forgiveness is only possible in the face of the unforgivable. So along with the idea that, in the mold of forgiveness as exchange, the forgiver is placed in a position of authority vis a vis the one asking for forgiveness, the very Act of Forgiveness is denied by the forgivable. Something being forgivable takes away the Act-ness of forgiving. This is, of course, the Derridean formula of the possible structured by/predicated upon impossibility.

I'm wondering if the shit transfer discussed above is quite as clean (sorry) as indicated. Also, I think it's important to take note of where the transfer of shit registers. The fact that the transfer is in no way publicly acknowledged is of great importance, I think. In this way, at the level of appearances, these apologies manifest themselves as neurotic tics, symptoms of sorts, which speak volumes, but have very little to do with actually communicating contrition. So, on the one hand, the particular subject being asked for forgiveness does feel like he's been smeared w/shit; on the other, the functioning of the symbolic--which is by definition a dis-functioning--relies on these fundamentally unreadable and a-literal apologies and the mutual disavowal of the scene of apology.

Thanks for this blog, Jodi. I was a student of yours in 2000. I think I was kind of a punk. Sorry. Ha!