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
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
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