Yes – and I need to read Cooper more regularly, and it’s always a question of who is calling. And having recently reread Heart of Darkness I am haunted by the voice of Marlow, recently arrived in Africa and trying to figure things out. He sees some people (literally moribund due to overwork) whom he initially cannot interpret because they are “neither convicts nor enemies…”. Chilling.
He sees some people (literally moribund due to overwork) whom he initially cannot interpret because they are “neither convicts nor enemies…”.
It is interesting how much formal identity and the possession or lack thereof can make or break you in Western culture (ie. the culture which according to Gatens may actually exist!)
True. One may wonder how better it is to be criminal or enemy than to be one of the colonised. A criminal would get to stand trial, and depending on the era, an enemy might be treated with chivalrous respect.
Although these are colonized convicts and enemies, not citizens, so they don’t get those benefits in any meaningful way. An interesting compression or conflation, this is.
Well actually, I think that it comes down to the words the Dambudzo puts into Ian Smith’s mouth: “look at all of those blank faces.”
And back to my point: I do think that within the Western tradition (and probably other traditions, too — but it strikes me as a situation particularly hardened by Modernism in the Western world) there is this cultural core of thinking whereby it is very hard for people to attribute any kind of humanity to anybody without first knowing their formal identity. So, those who have no such formal category of identity can be treated any old how, or as if they were “blank faces”. Thus identity politics — a remedy conconcted in the West to treat a basically Western problem, which is the dehumanisation of those who are without formal identity.
This does seem to be true – although it has taken me all this time to figure out that that is what is going on.
It appears to be common but it is also part of an ideology I have been educated not to believe in – here in civics class from first grade on one (or at least I) was taught that that was a rude and retrograde world view and behavior that modern ideas of citizenship, equality, etc. had swept away!
(Notice how the teachers combined patriotism and a certain stripe of radicalism … the world is not in fact as enlightened as they thought.)
here in civics class from first grade on one (or at least I) was taught that that was a rude and retrograde world view and behavior that modern ideas of citizenship, equality, etc. had swept away!
Yes — it might be that the American melting pot ideology wants to transcend thes values as being quaint and European. Nonetheless I find that the imperative of Modernism, which is to deal with everybody as quickly, and as efficiently as possible, makes this kind of categorisation tendency very common.
My general experience within different intellectual streams of thought has been that those with a ‘postmodernist’ leaning tend to elide cultural differences, firmly, with a view that it is shameful not to be pretty much all the same. However, those with more ‘radical’ pretensions tend to listen more carefully concerning where I’m from so that they can take it upon themselves to assure that I mind my manners. (Because I require moral help in order to be a better person because of my retrograde cultural background.)
I guess that the capacity just to listen to a person and try to understand what they are saying, without getting the headstart of pinning them into some sort of category, is too much for most people.
And on the matter of minding one’s manners, here is a word from our sponsor:
“Wipe your nose you’re in Buckingham palace
Whitewash your race you’re in Kensington gardens
Shave your pubic hair you’re a Heathrow Asian virgin
Shoplift and run the bullet is already in your back Wandsworth
The children’s meals are cut their gums bleed with education
I said wipe your arse you’re in Buckingham Palace.”
To just listen does seem to take effort. I am trained to it I think because of studying all those foreign languages … you have to listen if you’re going to do that or if you are going to figure out (really figure out) how to live somewhere you’re not from. The majority really don’t do it, as I finally realized later in life than I might have done.
It’s sort of funny – all of this talent or skill I have in figuring out or waiting to see how other people think and the penchant for quick categorization was one of the last things I learned how to pick up on (or imagine that it existed)…
It’s kind of hard to listen, and when I introspect, I also find within myself a strand of thinking which is a Modernist hastiness to quickly recognise an object in its overall manifestations, and to come to the point. But this was never part of my early upbringing, and the capacity to move quickly in this way, into a categorising mode, was something that for many years (upon early migration) I couldn’t begin to grasp. It seemed like a way of avoiding communication. Those were the years I lived with a tightening around my throat, my heart choked off from my head, because I couldn’t speak or communicate any more.
The whole categorising thing — the Modernist insistence that “we need to know in what capacity you are speaking to us before we can know what you are saying,” is a very, very stricky metaphysical and cultural obstacle to negotiate if you haven’t been brought up to think in this way.
Insisting on categorization, it *is* a way of blocking communication. Actually, I think that is its purpose. In communication if it is real, you have to be actually open to what the other person is saying which means a whole world view. Otherwise, it is one sided, with someone trying to control the exchange like a boss. You can’t really teach like that, or cooperate at work for that matter, but most people try to function that way all the time.
My favorite time standing up to someone on this: they asked with what authority I was suggesting (strongly) that they do something. I said, “With what authority over you? None except that of a colleague in a profession whose core values I know we share, and as a colleague of one of your students to whom, in our profession, you have a responsibility. I am your professional conscience speaking to you.” It shocked the guy quite a bit, but it worked.
Yes– that sounds like it should have worked, because really categorisation is a lazy third trainer-wheel. I can see why immature minds have a need of it, but really they need to try to move beyond that.
I see the mark of maturity to be in the movement beyond that. And lately, my own metaphysical maturity has led me to the point where I see those less mature than me as kind of suffering. It cannot be pleasant for them to be caught in a kind of inbetween stage of growth, because to view others in the depleted sense that puts them into a category is also to view oneself that way.
If one allows others to be complex, then one also allows that for oneself, and seemingly, vice-versa.
YES INDEED! And it is easier if one realizes they are suffering … they become less oppressive when one realizes this. It is something I need to remember because I tend to allow people like this to take over (my consciousness) and to get mad at them, fight back at them, and it is understandable but isn’t what’s most indicated (and isn’t the most powerful position).
Yes, they become less oppressive. You realise that they have a greater enemy to fight than you — themselves.
…In the mean time I am rereading David Pattison’s bourgeois interpretation of Marechera’s writings. He sees Marechera as non-political because M. didn’t fight the good fight of identity politics. Well, in my opinion, that is a bourgeois game and orientation, whereas Marechera was an anarchist radical who wanted more to change than the advancement of those of a black race through such a fight. So Pattison’s reading of “not political” just means not bourgeois political.
But beyond that, or as well as that, we also have some really strange injunctions from Pattison, for instance that Marechera should have sought his “self as self” rather than his self in terms of socio-political circumstances. I find that Pattison’s choice of words is also prejudicial. For instance instead of saying that Marechera tries to determine the socio-political causes for his madness, Pattison asserts that Marechera “blames” [x,y and z socio-political causes] for his madness. By that slight spin, he gives the writer a totally different (non-political) orientation.
So Pattison wrestles with the writer for not being bourgeois enough (for not looking for the self that could stand apart from materialist socio-political reality) as well as for his failure in terms of a goal that Pattison also ascribes to the author (the bourgeois motivational desire to find a self that somehow pre-exists socio-political realities). Weird.
You’re right – this Pattison is very weird. Why does he feel he needs to be Marechera’s parent, as it were, tell him how to solve his problems, what is wrong with him?
I think Pattison may have had a genuine interest in Marechera, as well as selecting to write a thesis on him. The problem is that for Pattison, psychological health is defined in a very narrow way. He seems to consider that to culturally and historically uproot oneself is the way to go.
Also he uses that exact segment you posted by Marechera on the nature of words and language as an example of Marechera’s indisciplined writing. He says it is purely associative thinking with no point to it.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Marc Cooper, the blogfather! nails it again.
Yes, what happens depends as much on who’s calling as on who picks up the phone.
Hasn’t there always been the attitude that what happens in Africa is of no concern to actual human beings?
Yes – and I need to read Cooper more regularly, and it’s always a question of who is calling. And having recently reread Heart of Darkness I am haunted by the voice of Marlow, recently arrived in Africa and trying to figure things out. He sees some people (literally moribund due to overwork) whom he initially cannot interpret because they are “neither convicts nor enemies…”. Chilling.
He sees some people (literally moribund due to overwork) whom he initially cannot interpret because they are “neither convicts nor enemies…”.
It is interesting how much formal identity and the possession or lack thereof can make or break you in Western culture (ie. the culture which according to Gatens may actually exist!)
I don’t know that the identities Marlow has to hand out do their recipients any good!
True. One may wonder how better it is to be criminal or enemy than to be one of the colonised. A criminal would get to stand trial, and depending on the era, an enemy might be treated with chivalrous respect.
Although these are colonized convicts and enemies, not citizens, so they don’t get those benefits in any meaningful way. An interesting compression or conflation, this is.
Well actually, I think that it comes down to the words the Dambudzo puts into Ian Smith’s mouth: “look at all of those blank faces.”
And back to my point: I do think that within the Western tradition (and probably other traditions, too — but it strikes me as a situation particularly hardened by Modernism in the Western world) there is this cultural core of thinking whereby it is very hard for people to attribute any kind of humanity to anybody without first knowing their formal identity. So, those who have no such formal category of identity can be treated any old how, or as if they were “blank faces”. Thus identity politics — a remedy conconcted in the West to treat a basically Western problem, which is the dehumanisation of those who are without formal identity.
This does seem to be true – although it has taken me all this time to figure out that that is what is going on.
It appears to be common but it is also part of an ideology I have been educated not to believe in – here in civics class from first grade on one (or at least I) was taught that that was a rude and retrograde world view and behavior that modern ideas of citizenship, equality, etc. had swept away!
(Notice how the teachers combined patriotism and a certain stripe of radicalism … the world is not in fact as enlightened as they thought.)
here in civics class from first grade on one (or at least I) was taught that that was a rude and retrograde world view and behavior that modern ideas of citizenship, equality, etc. had swept away!
Yes — it might be that the American melting pot ideology wants to transcend thes values as being quaint and European. Nonetheless I find that the imperative of Modernism, which is to deal with everybody as quickly, and as efficiently as possible, makes this kind of categorisation tendency very common.
My general experience within different intellectual streams of thought has been that those with a ‘postmodernist’ leaning tend to elide cultural differences, firmly, with a view that it is shameful not to be pretty much all the same. However, those with more ‘radical’ pretensions tend to listen more carefully concerning where I’m from so that they can take it upon themselves to assure that I mind my manners. (Because I require moral help in order to be a better person because of my retrograde cultural background.)
I guess that the capacity just to listen to a person and try to understand what they are saying, without getting the headstart of pinning them into some sort of category, is too much for most people.
And on the matter of minding one’s manners, here is a word from our sponsor:
“Wipe your nose you’re in Buckingham palace
Whitewash your race you’re in Kensington gardens
Shave your pubic hair you’re a Heathrow Asian virgin
Shoplift and run the bullet is already in your back Wandsworth
The children’s meals are cut their gums bleed with education
I said wipe your arse you’re in Buckingham Palace.”
To just listen does seem to take effort. I am trained to it I think because of studying all those foreign languages … you have to listen if you’re going to do that or if you are going to figure out (really figure out) how to live somewhere you’re not from. The majority really don’t do it, as I finally realized later in life than I might have done.
It’s sort of funny – all of this talent or skill I have in figuring out or waiting to see how other people think and the penchant for quick categorization was one of the last things I learned how to pick up on (or imagine that it existed)…
It’s kind of hard to listen, and when I introspect, I also find within myself a strand of thinking which is a Modernist hastiness to quickly recognise an object in its overall manifestations, and to come to the point. But this was never part of my early upbringing, and the capacity to move quickly in this way, into a categorising mode, was something that for many years (upon early migration) I couldn’t begin to grasp. It seemed like a way of avoiding communication. Those were the years I lived with a tightening around my throat, my heart choked off from my head, because I couldn’t speak or communicate any more.
The whole categorising thing — the Modernist insistence that “we need to know in what capacity you are speaking to us before we can know what you are saying,” is a very, very stricky metaphysical and cultural obstacle to negotiate if you haven’t been brought up to think in this way.
Sorry, “stricky” should be “tricky”. 😦
I sort of like “stricky.”
Insisting on categorization, it *is* a way of blocking communication. Actually, I think that is its purpose. In communication if it is real, you have to be actually open to what the other person is saying which means a whole world view. Otherwise, it is one sided, with someone trying to control the exchange like a boss. You can’t really teach like that, or cooperate at work for that matter, but most people try to function that way all the time.
My favorite time standing up to someone on this: they asked with what authority I was suggesting (strongly) that they do something. I said, “With what authority over you? None except that of a colleague in a profession whose core values I know we share, and as a colleague of one of your students to whom, in our profession, you have a responsibility. I am your professional conscience speaking to you.” It shocked the guy quite a bit, but it worked.
Yes– that sounds like it should have worked, because really categorisation is a lazy third trainer-wheel. I can see why immature minds have a need of it, but really they need to try to move beyond that.
I see the mark of maturity to be in the movement beyond that. And lately, my own metaphysical maturity has led me to the point where I see those less mature than me as kind of suffering. It cannot be pleasant for them to be caught in a kind of inbetween stage of growth, because to view others in the depleted sense that puts them into a category is also to view oneself that way.
If one allows others to be complex, then one also allows that for oneself, and seemingly, vice-versa.
YES INDEED! And it is easier if one realizes they are suffering … they become less oppressive when one realizes this. It is something I need to remember because I tend to allow people like this to take over (my consciousness) and to get mad at them, fight back at them, and it is understandable but isn’t what’s most indicated (and isn’t the most powerful position).
Yes, they become less oppressive. You realise that they have a greater enemy to fight than you — themselves.
…In the mean time I am rereading David Pattison’s bourgeois interpretation of Marechera’s writings. He sees Marechera as non-political because M. didn’t fight the good fight of identity politics. Well, in my opinion, that is a bourgeois game and orientation, whereas Marechera was an anarchist radical who wanted more to change than the advancement of those of a black race through such a fight. So Pattison’s reading of “not political” just means not bourgeois political.
But beyond that, or as well as that, we also have some really strange injunctions from Pattison, for instance that Marechera should have sought his “self as self” rather than his self in terms of socio-political circumstances. I find that Pattison’s choice of words is also prejudicial. For instance instead of saying that Marechera tries to determine the socio-political causes for his madness, Pattison asserts that Marechera “blames” [x,y and z socio-political causes] for his madness. By that slight spin, he gives the writer a totally different (non-political) orientation.
So Pattison wrestles with the writer for not being bourgeois enough (for not looking for the self that could stand apart from materialist socio-political reality) as well as for his failure in terms of a goal that Pattison also ascribes to the author (the bourgeois motivational desire to find a self that somehow pre-exists socio-political realities). Weird.
patience’s end
You’re right – this Pattison is very weird. Why does he feel he needs to be Marechera’s parent, as it were, tell him how to solve his problems, what is wrong with him?
I think Pattison may have had a genuine interest in Marechera, as well as selecting to write a thesis on him. The problem is that for Pattison, psychological health is defined in a very narrow way. He seems to consider that to culturally and historically uproot oneself is the way to go.
Also he uses that exact segment you posted by Marechera on the nature of words and language as an example of Marechera’s indisciplined writing. He says it is purely associative thinking with no point to it.
That’s ridiculous. It’s rigorous. Pattison never read any avant-garde writing – where did he get his degree? – the place is deficient.
…and he doesn’t understand Marechera’s clever play in The Black Insider. He calls it a ‘play’.
Yes and the play is rigorous. Very, very sharp if you have any political understanding of what he is talking about.