I
So at lunch it was revealed that people did not know what sexual harassment was – they thought, as I once did, that it involved being approached baldly out of the blue, and threatened with reprisals if one did not comply, or the sort of clearly unwelcome innuendo Clarence Thomas advanced upon Anita Hill. But more cases, I have discovered, are more subtle; they involve a relationship or a seduction with which the less powerful party is sooner or later uncomfortable, but in which they then feel trapped since their partner is the more powerful one in the workplace. They often do not realize that this constitutes harassment, but believe, rather, that they are responsible for having made a poor choice and are thus now condemned to live with the consequences.
II
People do not know they are being sexually harassed, and I did not know I was being harassingly advised, but I have been harassingly advised by many. I believe I now understand this: people do not realize women can be bright. And I was caught in webs of mainstreaming advice which I did not recognize as such. Advice which was presented as helpful but intended to undermine. Advice which was based on fear. Advice which refused to consider that my divergences from certain majority views might be Illuminations and not Deficiencies.
Listening to these exhortations I always thought, what? You mean a train is about to come and mow us down, and I did not even hear it? Well, I suppose I had better listen to you. But in fact no train was coming. Or perhaps a silent, friendly train was coming upon which we might visit Paradise, and my interlocutors did not wish me to board it.
III
Yesterday I wrote the first sentences of the book I wanted to write for my dissertation. It has been disturbing my sleep these twenty years. I did not begin then, but I have begun now. My sentences are ringing sentences and they go straight to the center of the pan.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
This is the problem with a condition of sublime belongingness, within society. It is also part of the problem with individualism.
According to the first, we believe that society is really quite rational. The is because its values and ideals have been introjected as part of our souls, during our upbringing. (Looked at objectively, society is hardly rational. But from the perspective of one whose emotions follow all its structural channels of power, it is rational.
An “individual” who thinks-feels that society is “rational” will therefore tend to blame themselves for situations that turn out not to be.
Every time this has happened to me it’s been a power play.
And the propaganda is: society is rational and power plays are “choices.”
Now, this point about how society is not actually rational, and how people whose emotions are channeled in a mainstream manner believe society is rational and ‘take responsibility’ for what happens, and how these are problems of sublime belongingness and also individualism, get to the heart of the matter but would be called “over-analysis” in mainstream U.S. discourse. I have decided that “over-analysis” is often code-speak for naming what it is prohibited to name / diagnose / identify.
Actually, but in fact it doesn’t pertain to overanalysis, except if you haven’t experienced it directly. I mean, being able to come up with such an analysis is an outcome of certain types of experience, and not an outcome of analysis itself.
For instance: I came from a society which is really radically different from the one I’m in today. When I got here, I was very shocked by some of the differences I saw, but once I had recovered enough to orient myself in the materially different structure of society, I found that I still had not come to terms with the differences, (although I’d thought I had). Whereas I was behaving rationally, from the point of view of my own culturally engendered character structure, I found that others did not perceive my behaviour as rational. They had internalised a totally different view of what rationality was. Yet THEIR rationality — which seemed as obvious to them as the skin there were born in — was hardly even rational to me.
So, the way I say things might sound like overanalysing, if people have not experienced the cultural crossing of wires I am referring to. But I am just expressing a reality that they have not encountered yet (and which some would not be capable of encountering, for various reasons).
“I have decided that “over-analysis” is often code-speak for naming what it is prohibited to name / diagnose / identify.”
Well said!
I’ve also just been reading the echidne of the snakes blog, and I am enjoying her analysis of how fear and conservative politics go together.
I’m thinking, maybe one of the reasons that the shaman can “see” more than others do is that s/he’s faced their own fears (especially the most primal one, of death), and so they are able to see more — particularly how others are still being politically manipulated through their fears.
I should read Echidne more. It’s true about the shaman.
Theory arises from practice, not the other way around, it is true, and that is one more thing which is too sophisticated – not for the multitudes to see, but for the semi-elites who have so slavishly internalized … everything.
I of course think it is they who indulge in over-analysis, trying to get everything to fit into their model.
(Socially derived) Idiosyncratic normative frameworks and thus, normative dissonance when an individual is transplanted literally or metaphorically, have much to answer for.
Yes indeed. Related to this, too, is the disagreement I have with those forms of ‘therapy’ which say, just start acting right and then things will actually be all right. What if knowing how to act right is not the problem … ? … I think it is very harmful not to address reality.
It is very harmful not to address reality, yes. But the ruling class see no harm in mutilated workers. Surely it does not limit their efficiency — as workers — at all.
And yes – you have to mutilate workers in order to keep them in line. What I did not realize at all at the time was that Reeducation’s goal was to form mutilated women … and/or assumed that anyone’s goal would merely be to accommodate their mutilation better. Now I get it. I also get what it feels like to be in abusive relationship, i.e. I know the physical signs. I got them immediately upon entering Reeducation but did not know them for what they were.
Well for some reason, which I do not understand, we don’t refer to mutilations as mutilations. But Lacan kind of picks up on it, at least in terms of his idea that the social constitution of ourselves as gendered beings is also the social constitution of a lack.
Ah, yes – another reason not to totally reject Lacan, of whom I believe in being careful, but still there are things he picks up on, and things in him worth considering. I’ll link to my Lacan post for future reference:
http://sptc.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/should-we-re-study-lacan/
I replied on the other site.
And it’s a good response, too … theory-heads, visit sptc! 🙂
I started to respond here, but the comment became too long so I decided to make it an entry since I tend to neglect my blog.
Thanks for the thoughts.
I agree with you. It is hard to see the harassment until after or until it has become uncontrollable.