Hi,
I am currently reading JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, which is so far doing a good job of humanising a person I would ordinarily not want to interact with for political, if not personal, reasons. As I read, I find myself thinking a bit more expansively about ideas and behaviours that I generally have fixed positions on. I chose this book at random, so it feels like an interesting coincidence that this week there have been a few contributions to some of my recent publications that have elicited similar responses to those the book is producing in me.
One of these recent contributions was from a disappointed member who said he hadn’t been surprised by the premise of my writing. To paraphrase him: discrimination is bad, we already know that. Find a way to tell me something I don’t know; perhaps you should try interviewing people who discriminate.
Interview people who discriminate?!
My first reaction was not a productive one. It seems quite obvious to me why people discriminate. People don’t (want to) understand human differences. People are afraid that treating all human beings justly will have a tangible negative impact on their own quality of life. People need to feel morally and socially superior to others to be able to feel good about themselves. Our extractive economies need oppressed classes to provide exploited labour, and it is easy to discriminate against oppressed classes. Violence is the only way to maintain the inequalities that produce disempowerment, and discrimination is a necessary precursor to violence.
But as I thought about it some more, I surprised myself by beginning to agree with the basic premise of the contribution. Discrimination is a small piece of a large, poisoned pie, and no matter what I think I know about it, there’s always more to learn. Perhaps some of that "more" must come from sources I wouldn’t ordinarily consider. After all, surprise – especially intellectual surprise – is generally a good idea. I would love to find surprising ways to highlight simple issues of discrimination and, even better, large-scale injustice and structural violence.
For now, I remain wary of the idea of interviewing prejudiced or bigoted people, but I’m glad to have received it. I also received a similarly surprising, albeit less unappealing, seed of an insight from some other members. These members, who seem to share an account (a detail I personally find delightful), pointed me towards Kate Manne’s critique of the entire premise of my beat. I’m going to try to study as much of her work as I can find online to see where it takes me. Hopefully, I end up somewhere that even my underwhelmed readers can find satisfying.
Please keep the contributions coming – they are much more valuable than perhaps you know. In light of my last publication, I’m particularly interested in hearing about alternatives to borders, borderless projects, or unconventional relationships that countries or towns might have to their borders.
I look forward to interacting with new members, and surprising new ideas, in the contributions section.
Till next time.
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