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Dear Mauricio, Collapsing common opposites is certainly a remedial gesture for some kinds of conflict, especially where fixed identities are claimed. We could think of racism as an example. Currently, there are, culturally and politically, two races: whites and non-whites. This creates our neat binary that helps, especially, with marginalisation of whites. On this dichotomous model, there are vastly more non-white than whites. So, watch out whitey. When we attempt to define race, we get into lots of definitional problems, some of which can be answered biologically, some of which become compounded indefinitely. For example, there is no white person whose ancestors didn't come out of Africa. This is quickly answered in a Christian way: we are all God's people. You don't have to be Christian to follow this reconciliation model. The UN is premised exactly this way. Human rights are the rights of all peoples. So, the race problem of binaries is dissolved. One world, all citizens, all equal as people. When you privilege one side of a binary then you block the collapsing of the binary. Hence, your "strong reactions to misogyny" sustain the obscure binary rather than collapsing the binary . You find misogyny "unacceptable" but make no comment about misandry. Presumably, you don't have strong reactions to misandry, or perhaps you are unaware that misogyny is actually structured, culturally and politically, as part of a binary pair, with misandry. How to design a solution using your strategy? (Yes, this posting is about a DESIGN problem.) Like the race binary, we can collapse the gender binary by complexification. There is an indefinitely large number of gender positions available (one, at least, for each person). Hence, the simple answer is, we are all gendered and any hatred of gendering is unacceptable. One world, all citizens, all equal as people. The binary that is presently causing so much strife, in the multicultural Western world, is that of victim and oppressor. We would need to go back, behind Marx, to Hegel to find any way of collapsing this binary. For Hegel, and Marx, this is not a binary but rather a dialectic. What is the difference? Binaries offer two positive terms. In computer talk, the ZERO is not a negative of the ONE. ZERO is a logical proposition just as, and equal in functionality to, ONE. In a binary system, WOMEN stay WOMEN and MEN stay MEN. They never become PEOPLE. In the dialectic, one of the terms is a negative. It is the missing aspect of the dominant and positive term. Hence, the OPPRESSOR is the positive moment in denial of its negative moment which is the VICTIM. Positive moments are readily observed in what could be called the dominant social and culture reality. The BOSS dominates the WORKER; MEN dominate WOMEN; PARENTS dominate CHILDREN etc. Hegel sees these dialectics as historical structures in the long journey of consciousness towards understanding. This dialectical journey happens at both the individual level and at the group level. I, individually might disclose to myself that I am alienating aspects of myself in an ill-fated attempt to describe myself as a fixed and unalterable positive identity against a malicious and negative outside world. This description indicates the childish nature of such an attempt. I am of the tribe BlaBla, I will never be non-BlaBla. All the non-BlaBla oppress me just by their existing. We don't have to watch much TV to find examples of this in daily news. One might argue that misogyny is a negative thing, outside me, threatening my positive identity. What my positive identity might be in this case is possibly a woman, or a person who wishes to ally themself with women who feel their positive identity, as a woman, or supporter of women, is under threat. To collapse my positive moment of identity (as a woman let's say) into its negative (women haters) is to disclose myself as a person rather than as a simple fixed identity. My gendered identity is not a hill to die on. It is a complex engagement with the world that includes understanding that what I am NOT is also part of what I AM. This realisation is comically obvious when some naive feminists have sons. Suddenly they grow a sympathy for masculinity. Their son is not toxic. We can again call on Christianity to helps us out here. To love your neighbour as yourself is to disclose that your positive identity is insufficient and in need of complement. The earliest example that Hegel offers is also the most important cultural one. He figures the MALE and FEMALE love relationship as an attempt, initially, to sustain each other as separate and positive moments in a communion. This fails and the result of the failure is a CHILD. This is the dialectical pattern of generation that haunts some current Internet cultures. There are millions of young people resisting generation in a confusion of identity that is staggering. The complexity of their resistance is worthy of a Nobel prize. In everyday terms, my current identity is radically and necessarily insufficient for today let alone tomorrow (I must take in new air and exhale old air). To move forward in time and space is to include, in my present identity understanding, that which I was not into what I have become, as a new identity. Think of a cancer patient who suddenly discovers that there is a tumour in their brain. They are no longer the identity they were before this announcement. Society often approaches this new reality of identity with hysterical calls for the VICTIM to fight the OPPRESSOR and win the battle. We often read news reports of people who fought the good fight against cancer and sadly died. This is not to suggest that cancer patients should give into their illness but rather to point out the difficult identity journey that such people experience. The same applies with all of us that have experienced significant insult and injury in our lives. In Hegel's terms, these are our own dialectical events that we are obliged to deal with, as individuals. The false binary of VICTIM and OPPRESSOR is highlighted in the case of the machinery of INTERSECTIONALITY. Rather than attempting to integrate the dialectical aspects of consciousness, those arguing INTERSECTIONALITY are asserting each pathway of identity as a positive and binary thing. I am WHITE, therefore I am NOT BLACK. This pathway means I am an OPPRESSOR of those whose INTERSECTIONAL pathway, in this binary, is BLACK and NOT WHITE. The central operational flaw with this logic is that I must associate myself with my WHITEness as a POSITIVE identity. I don't. Try as much as you will, I am a person, first, second and last. I don't enter the scene of humiliation. Of course as a WHITE person, such a claim to personhood is a political and vicious denial of the machine. I must accept that the machine wishes to chew me up because my WHITEness is positive, necessarily or else, oops, BLACKness is not a positive identity. So, in denying my WHITE positive identity, I am doubly denying a BLACK positive identity. Anyone who knows R.D. Laing's Knots will appreciate the sad silliness of this. There is no way, in this hysterical binary dialectic, of anyone avoiding the ranting children in distress. Gender, apparently, is fluid (negative) except when it needs to be fixed (made positive) for political reasons. Identity, on the other hand, is always and unavoidably, fixed and positive for intersectional folks. Strangely, to be an old man, I had to stop being a young man but hey, that's what an old white man would point out. The comedy here is, I am not contaminated by the blindness of someone asserting my current apparent identity as a fixed identity. Wishing to win the battle, today, requires making your enemy a fixed thing for the moment you wish to defeat them. But, Donald Trump, as a person, can always be different tomorrow. Those wishing to bring down the Trump they have fixed in their mind, today, are doomed to wander the streets in search of their enemy. This is not a novel insight, this is classical Christianity. This is the presumption behind truth telling and reconciliation in South Africa. Even a fixed positive intersectional identity does undergo dramatic changes (suffers). However, rather than these dramatic changes leading to revelations about the identity changes implicated in the dramatic change, these dramatic changes are simply added to the suffering of the VICTIM. Here, then, is another instance of OPPRESSION, rather than, wow, I see things differently now. If you haven't watched Nanette on Netflix, give it a go. It is the job of dramatists to design accounts of identity suffering, and resultant change, that lead to larger individual and community understandings of what it is to be people. The tragic hero comes to understand something that requires a radical reinterpretation of identity, or else it is merely a documentary. In a documentary you can die ignorant as the day you were born and have your additive and accumulative suffering taken up into the pantheon of VICTIMHOOD. No summation of suffering amounts to understanding. Also, there is no limit to human suffering. Equally, there is no necessity to take any understanding from any suffering. No one poked with a red hot poker ever saw god. Continuum, infindiuum - consciousness is structured dialectically. cheers keith On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 11:51 PM Mauricio Mejia <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hi Mattias, > > Good thoughts. I alternative way to overcome binary thinking is to frame > the opposing concepts as a continuum where neither extreme is realistic. I > would say that none of our actions, thoughts or positions are fully > masculine or feminine, they all fall in a continuum or tridimensional space > if you will. Then, we should not avoid conflict but embrace it and learn > how to resolve conflicts peacefully. For those interested, Enrique Chaux, > from my native Colombia, has great work in conflict, peace, and citizenship > (https://uniandes.academia.edu/EnriqueChaux). > > I find myself agreeing to strong reactions to misogyny. I think it is > unacceptable. Then, I wonder how we can have a more peaceful conflict > resolution, not an easy task. > > Mauricio > > -- > G. Mauricio Mejia, MDes, PhD > Assistant professor The Design School > Arizona State University > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------