Postmodernist bollocks...

So there I am thinking about ‘mixedness’ and suchlike and I come across this:

Extract from 'LEVINAS, TOTALITY AND THE OTHER' BY MARTIN JENKINS

Second article in http://www.philosophypathways.com/newsletter/issue126.html

Western Philosophy and ethical systems devised within it, have practiced a methodology of systematic foundationalism. In other words, consequences and corollaries are developed and deduced from founding first principles constituting a closed, reflexive system. As phenomena are categorised and judged from within such epistemological and ontological monoliths, 'Identity' and 'Sameness' are practiced. The system is total in its explanation and account of phenomena -- hence Levinas' term, 'Totalisation'. Whatever is within the system is legitimate because defined by and identical with it. Whatever is outside the system is either incorporated into it (thus repressing its otherness and extending the violent sameness of the same) or is denied any existence whatsoever.

Existing ethics such as Immanuel Kant's Deontology[4] and Jeremy Bentham's Utilitarianism[5] operate totalisation. Kant's defence of the individual as an end in itself intrinsically deserving of autonomy and respect, practices a totalising sameness of the same in its emphasis on rationality inherent to each and every individual. Utilitarianism treats the individual as an instrumental cog in the felicific calculation of the sum total of happiness. The individual qua individual is smothered and definitively pre-judged by prior existing categories. As such his/ her Otherness to the totalisation of sameness is deemed insignificant.

Transcendence

Although totalisation is unavoidable in its acting as an operational guide for everyday human interaction, it is subject to Transcendence. The Other founds the self and society as it is the primordial and original relation. It constitutes the beginning of everything human as it is only through the Other that I can become myself, so that the event of the Other marks the beginning of language, of community and of course, the beginning of ethics. The sheer presence of the Other is unavoidable: it demands my attention by charging into my world and disrupting it in a profound way that a rock or tree does not. Although established upon the revelation of the Other, subsequent culture smothers the Other under the edifices and categories of totalised sameness.

The Face of the Other is not a physical appearance but an Epi-Phany. This epiphanic event of irruption disrupts the sameness of the self and breaks its expectation of linear totalised categories of Being constituting the world. Its revelation demands a response and the nature of the ethical is to provide the appropriate response. This event is so profound it evokes an Infinity which from its exuding plenitude, overflows and transcends the existing representational structures of totalisation. For example, the presence and caress of a lover is such an instance of transcendence. We may use a word to thematise the event and those involved but the sheer presence of the Other, as lover, cannot be contained in a mere description as a theme or event. Overflowing mere conceptual representation, it transcends totality.

This event of the Other cannot -- on pain of being re-absorbed into the existing schemas of conceptual totalisation -- be represented. It is an event of such magnitude and height that it discloses 'signification without content'.

And much as I hate the way these postmodernists write, and keen as I am to dismiss it all as waffle and mystification, I can’t help noticing that I’m thinking, oh yeah, that’s what’s going on with this new obsession with mixed race identity. What is outside the system is being incorporated into it (thus repressing its otherness and extending the violent sameness of the same). So I have to look for what else one might do… um what’s an epiphany? “A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something. A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization.” The meaning of what though, God? Oneself perhaps? I’m not too sure, but it does seem to me a little that for society at large and for the individual who is mixed race, there is something threatening and dangerous in the undefined nature of mixedness which academics and politicians are trying to control and absorb into the pervasive sameness of the liberal democratic monoculture. These strange ‘others’ must be made part of ‘us’ in order to enter the ‘same’ moral framework. The CRE conference is a desperate attempt to cope with people who somehow fail to be part of the total scheme of things. But in this case, the ‘other, as lover’ is equally keen to be absorbed into the system. It is so hard to be the constant occasion of another’s transcendence.

Graduation: a Question of Judgement.

The sizes of stones vary from the finest dust particle to enormous boulders. There is a machine which grades stones; it is like a sieve with a mesh which can be varied in size - say for building a road. The mesh size that separates sand from gravel, or gravel from pebbles is a social construction; it is arbitrary in relation to stone in the sense that the largest grain of sand is closer to the smallest piece of gravel than it is to the average grain of sand. Nevertheless, the grade is set to suit the purposes of the builder, and in relation to the builder it is not arbitrary but meaningful. No one is going to try and tell a builder that there are no such things as ‘sand’ and ‘gravel’ really, that they are just social constructions. Of course size isn’t everything, colour, hardness, chemical composition may be more significant for some purposes…

The grading of students at graduation is similarly arbitrary at the margin between, say a 2/2 and a 2/1. Students don’t divide into ‘natural’ kinds in this way, but academics find it useful and meaningful to make these distinctions as social constructions. There is an important difference from the case of stones though, that academics have themselves been through the grading process - 2/2s don’t generally ‘make the grade’ of becoming academic graders. It is as though sand itself decided what was gravel and what was sand, and gravel had no say in the matter. Academia constructs itself, or defines itself, by this recursive process.

‘Human nature’ is similarly constructed in a recursive way; the Catholic church, for instance, operates according to a ‘one cell rule’, where a fertilised egg is already human, whereas the legal position in this country is rather different. Where exactly we draw the boundaries of humanity is debatable, but whatever falls outside the boundary, has no say in the matter because ‘having a say’ is a human attribute - we do not ask chimps to comment! It seems that we have explored the limits of the world and established or decided that there are no debatable individuals as ‘races’ or ‘subspecies’. Yet we know that it could have been otherwise; Neanderthals could have survived for example, talking hairy apes might have been discovered.

The boundary of human nature is fundamental to morality in the sense that what is not human may be treated instrumentally - as an object, whereas what is human may not be so treated. This boundary has changed over time in this society, and indeed in academia. In particular, black Africans were excluded from humanity, and treated ‘like cattle’, as possessions. Women have also been excluded in this way - by the recursive process of self-definition, from that very process. We still have to remind ourselves occasionally, that ‘mankind’ includes women. It is tempting to believe that we can escape from this recursive self definition into an objective view of human nature, but my thesis is that this is impossible, and that recursive self definition is the defining feature of humanity. And there is no escape into vagueness available, because the boundary of what is human defines what it is acceptable to eat, to exploit, to have sexual relations with, etc. We cannot do without a clear distinction here. Whether one analyses philosophically or not, life decisions are continually being made on the basis of sameness and otherness, as to who/what one has to care about, take account of etc.

Ideas of Race are similar to, and closely involved with the idea of human nature; they are in a sense, (at least nowadays, and according to respectable opinion) subdivisions of ‘humanity’ and partake of the same features of recursion and arbitrariness. The one-drop rule sets an arbitrary limit on blackness; it is at the extreme end of the black/white spectrum, so that on one side the distinction is very fine (the finest sand) and on the side there are many variations (gravel, pebbles, great boulders). In South America there is a different grading system. But remember, the grader in this case, is also a stone and whatever mesh you are using, you have to jump through it too.

In this country, people do not generally eat dog or horse meat - horses are regarded almost as part of the family, human by association, and therefore taboo. Intellectual rigor gives way to ‘gut feeling’. It seems likely that notions of race are subject to similar non rational associations; what is familiar, close to me, similar to me, I am inclined to treat more respectfully. ‘Human’ always means ‘human like me’. If I could think of myself as an animal, and not morally distinguish ‘humanity’, I would, by my own definition, either be a vegetarian or a cannibal. There is an inevitable short-sightedness. If I am sand, I’m on the look out for other grains of sand, I know about sand and I am very good at discriminating. If I am gravel, I have a different point of view.

In matters of race the speaker has a (short-sighted) point of view, a race to be taken into account. When people say of other races, as they do, “they all look the same”, it’s human nature; for the qualities that are close to me are more meaningful than those that are far away. However you set your scales of difference and sameness, the chances are that you give yourself more importance. What is taken into account at the graduation of students is what is important to those who set the exams. And who is important, is who passes the exams, because who passes is who sets. And those same people, the leading thinkers, to a great extent also define the categories of thought, like race and human nature, which are the social constructs which construct society.

There is inevitably a question of power, here. Whose writ runs? The Judeo-Christian (white?) tradition has an origin mythology in which humanity is characterised by the fall from the state of nature into (self) knowledge and shame for the naked (animal) body. It is hardly surprising that the sight of Africans with different facial features, different hair, different skin, and above all shamelessly naked, would raise questions of human boundaries in the minds of the first Europeans to encounter them. Likewise, the Africans probably saw the white men as angels or ghosts. But whose writ runs? Who has the guns! The academic tradition has its roots in the monastic tradition, and follows the mythology to the extent at least of emphasising knowledge as being of primary significance in characterising human nature. The tradition long was that women were excluded from universities, and on the whole, they are still dominated by white males. And everyone ‘other’ has to prove their humanity first, before they even get to have a voice, leave alone a say, in what constitutes good, rational, human, thinking.

We like to think we have moved beyond all this now; we used to be racist and sexist individually and institutionally, but these days we are egalitarian and inclusive… but who is this ‘we’? The story is still being told by the white man, a black woman cannot subscribe to it. She would have to say that we used to be racially and sexually oppressed and excluded – and it looks like we still are.

Identity again

The Undiscriminating Seagull

If you have come here from the CRE discussion on mixedness, you might be interested in one of the essays on the left. If from elsewhere, you can find my latest little gem here
And above is a picture of the seagull mentioned in the piece.
And if you come back in 6 months I might have put something else here. Your comments welcome here or there. The seagulls here have learned to fly over your shoulder from behind you and knock your ice cream or chips out of your hand. Once it's on the floor, they know you won't want it... but they really don't care about the colour of your skin. The grey/brown jobs in the background are the adolescents, who will doubtless learn from their elders soon enough, but at the moment are both timid and stupid.

Writing Home - it's all about me!

I remember crying. I must have been six or seven when I read in the local rag that Purley, my hometown, was being amalgamated with Croydon, the next and bigger town. I felt the loss of something - my home - the separateness of it, the meaning of the name that was part of my identity - my home town. It hurt, and I remember crying. Now, I feel very little connection. Purley is a dreary middle-class sprawl, a characterless suburban nothing. I was born and brought up there, in that house look; you can just see it across the valley from the train. I used to always count the special brown and cream coaches of the Brighton Belle sitting at the kitchen table. I haven't been back in forty years, never wanted to.
When I was eleven I was sent to boarding school. We were supposed to write home at the weekend - that was the terrible thing about that school, all your life was supposed- I never had anything to say, except the thing I knew I wasn't supposed to say, which was "For God's sake get me out of this hell-hole''. School was no home, and home had sent me to school; I felt truly homeless, abandoned and alone. I ran away in the second term, terrified on unknown buses, travelling alone for the first time in my life, and eventually got back to the house. We had just moved - or rather they had just moved; I was at school - and I arrived late evening, dark, wet, and cold, in shock I suppose. All I could say was 'I didn't like it, so I came home...' standing in the living room, trying not to cry. They phoned the school, and took me back next day. My house-master had a little chat with me, and explained that I was just having a little adventure; nothing more would be said about it, on the understanding that it wouldn't happen again. So it didn't. What was the point, there was nowhere left to go. I've never really got over that time. I'm pretty much disconnected from my family; I've never felt really part of it since I suppose I'm a sort of refugee from the middle class and from the Home Counties.
I live in Wales as a foreigner and in a way I'm comfortable with that. It's a funny place, Wales; 'Welsh' is an English word meaning 'foreigner' and in some ways the place is defined negatively, as not being England. No one seems quite sure what it takes to be Welsh. You can be born here, live your life here, and still not quite fit in South Wales is another country to up here in the North; West Wales is more Welsh than the Marches (at least in the eyes of the West Welsh). Some people are, in their own words, 'Very Welsh'. Llandudno, where I live, is not Very Welsh, it's a tourist town and has been since it was built in Victorian times for presumably English holiday-makers. Even the time it was built is English - we appropriate everything in our arrogance. So even the locals are not altogether local for the most part, and in the season, there are all sorts come here, and all sorts are welcome if they have money to spend. Some people resent Llandudno as an English enclave in Wales, but although it's not entirely Welsh, it's not English either - there are too many churches and chapels for one thing. There's an air of nostalgia for a bygone age that probably never was, and a history that no one can quite lay claim to, from the Bronze Age Mines to the Alice in Wonderland Statue.
My favourite author, J. Krishnamurti, wrote that he felt at home everywhere. Feeling at home, he said, is feeling affection and feeling responsible for what is around you and what goes on. I have lived in other places, in Wales and elsewhere, and not felt like that, instead I've felt unwelcome, resented and an outsider. I'm very dependent on other people in that way, I think most of us are. Perhaps that's why I like to live here in a Victorian Wonderland, a foreigner in a foreign town in a country called foreign - I almost feel at home.

Culture and Identity: an introduction to a discussion

Map and Territory.
The map is not the territory; the word is not the thing. Here is a fundamental distinction, which can be expressed in many ways: map/territory, idea/reality, thought/existence, representation/represented. In thought and logic, division and distinction is all. “A” is not “not A”, and never the twain shall meet. Whatever is said, here or elsewhere, is going to be part of a map, a representation of “what is”. If what we say is honest, faithful and true, then we will be producing an accurate, meaningful map, but it is important to bear in mind that it is only ever a map and it takes its meaning from the territory. Everything that is said is indicating, pointing to something else, something beyond the words. We are talking about the meaning of life, but we should not expect to find it in the words we use, or the thoughts we have.
Many a good town map has a label on it saying “You are here”. Of course it’s only true when you’re looking at the map. What is always “here” is the map itself. There are two things to be noticed: (1) the map and the territory are both represented on the map; (2) the map is a genuine part of the territory. In the end, the distinction breaks down; “A” is a part of “not A” and “not A” is in turn a part of “A”. This may all seem rather abstract and confusing, and this is because what I am trying to indicate here is a limitation of thought, and that is something that thought cannot grasp.
All our thoughts and ideas, all the activity of our busy minds, is a map of “what is”. If the map is an accurate representation of the territory, it is meaningful, but if it is distorted, untruthful or imaginary, then it loses meaning. Suppose the bus company published the timetable they would like to run if they had more resources instead of the one that they could actually achieve; it would be useless, meaningless. Now one of the most persistent, busiest ideas in my mind is the idea of myself. Everything seems to get connected to this idea because the idea of myself is the map of the map, the “You are here” label. At this point thought makes an almost inevitable mistake; seeing the map of the territory containing the map of the map, it mistakes itself for the map of the map, and not the whole map. So the map and the map of the map take on an enormous significance, myself becomes more important than anything else, thought becomes the world, and error and distortion result, which leads to a loss of meaning.

Identity.
There are the facts of my life, where I was born, my upbringing, education, qualifications, occupation, habits, religion, nationality, skin colour, etc. and there is no problem with these - they are not a source of conflict. But then there is my and other’s interpretation of, and attitude to, the facts. I was born and brought up in England and now I live here in Wales – “No problem.” I say, but to some people there is a problem; “Wales for the Welsh, English go home.” The facts of my life have become an identity - I have been identified as English. I’ve lived here for 15 years, my children have been brought up here, I vote for the national assembly, but there is no point in argument pitting fact against fact. The question is, what is the importance of the facts, to me and to the other fellow. Ownership, entitlement, honour, this is where there is conflict; my country, right or wrong? my religion, right? my profession, under-paid? my people, sadly misunderstood?
Why do we adopt and impose these identities? Perhaps it is for security, not to be alone; perhaps for convenience, to take advantage of other people; perhaps we cannot bear the feeling of being nothing. Even the identity of “madman” has its uses as an excuse. There is such comfort in knowing who you are, and knowing that it is “good” to be that thing, that people will happily die to maintain it, indeed that is the very stuff of being a good Englishman or Christian or whatever.
If I am a teacher, you know not only who I am and how I’m likely to behave, but also how to respond - to listen and learn and ask polite questions. But if I am not the teacher, then you don’t know what to expect or what is expected of you. Then there is the encounter of two unknowns, and the past cannot help us.


Communication.
In this world of instant, global interconnectedness, communication skills are seen to be very important, we put it on our CVs “good communication skills.” What is communication, is it a skill, is it important? If we mean the ability to persuade people of something, to move them, motivate them, manipulate them, then advertisers, politicians, charismatic religious leaders are good communicators. This is a skill that can be learned to a great extent through the study of psychology and the practice of acting. If you want to be one of the movers and shakers, this is what you need.
But I want to talk about something quite different, something that we might do together, not one do to another. The word “communication” has the same root as “common”, which means sharing. If we can share our questions, insights and confusion without trying to convert, persuade or control each other, perhaps there may be a meeting of minds - a meeting of equals as friends. This requires something quite other than psychological knowledge or acting skill; I cannot be “better” at meeting you than you are at meeting me – that’s not meeting at all! So this kind of communication requires some humility, not someone who thinks of himself or herself as a “good communicator”. If I’m trying to persuade you, or sell you something, to get you to think or do or be something, that’s not what I mean by communication.
The quality of listening is important here; we need to listen to ourselves and to each other, not accepting or rejecting what is said, but checking it out - does this make sense, does it agree with my own understanding, am I being honest? I’m not talking about counselling techniques or any method, learned or habitual; anything, which is set up in advance, can only act as a barrier to us meeting. In listening there needs to be freedom from duty, effort and technique, and a genuine interest in the other person, in what is being said, and in one’s own response. So if I notice that I am getting bored and my attention is wandering, I might ask myself why; is it because nothing interesting is being said, or is something being talked about that I am reluctant to go into, or is there something more important on my mind? Then I might or might not want to say something, or ask something. What I hope I won’t be doing is gritting my teeth and trying to concentrate, or letting the conversation pass by in a dream, and if I find myself doing that, again I will look to see why.
We come here each with our own burden of thought, belief, fear, hope, etc. Our minds are preoccupied with our own affairs, and this is the difficulty. If our minds are already full, there is no room for meeting; there is no room for you in my mind or for me in your mind. In asking ourselves how we can make some space, there is a danger that we will arrive at a method, of meditation or of self-expression, but these things only add to the clutter of our minds, when what we need is some empty space. Can we ask the question, but refuse to answer it?

Meaning, Value, Purpose.
Purpose relates a thing to something else, something beyond itself, to a before of someone who purposes or plans and to an after of some effect or result. So if life has a purpose, it has to have a purpose to someone who is beyond and behind life, and an end result beyond death in the hereafter. There are plenty of people who claim to know about God’s plan and the hereafter, and many others who say that there is no God, nothing beyond life, and therefore no purpose to life. My position is that everything that I can see or know or experience is part of life and not beyond it, if I have some revelation, true or false, it is part of my life, so I prefer to leave all that on one side. When we are dead, perhaps we can talk about these things.
Value also relates a thing to a person, something has value to someone, and it at least invites comparison - I value this more than that. This means that life is the necessary condition of value, without life I cannot value anything, so to talk of the value of life is to talk of the value of value. Life has infinite value or it has none. To ask whether it is worth laying down one’s life for another is a wrong question, to answer it requires one again to see beyond life, it takes us back to purpose.
Meaning is a word of many slippery uses, and my reason for talking about purpose and value first is to clear a space in our minds for the word to occupy. I do not want to talk about the meaning of the word “meaning”, I want to talk about the meaning of life. Our coming together, our discussions, may have more meaning than is contained in the things we say; there may be more meaning than we intend. I don’’ say that it is so, or that it is not, but I want to suggest that to look for meaning in the sense that I mean, is to look at the thing in question and not at something or someone else. So I have a purpose in mind in starting these discussions, which I hope we will all find valuable, and that purpose is to look for meaning in life.

Creativity.
We are always looking for something new, in art, science and the media. Creative writing courses abound; television especially, is hungry for new ideas. So it is natural to ask where new ideas come from and whether it is possible to learn or teach people to be more creative. Perhaps, indeed there is nothing new under the sun, and all we ever have is a rearrangement of the old. Certainly there is a great deal of that going on, but occasionally, with Einstein or Van Gogh say, there seems to be something genuinely new, something original and creative happening. Is this something peculiar to a few individuals, or is it potentially available to everyone? I am very interested, not because I want to be famous or rich, Van Gogh had neither in his lifetime, but because being creative seems to me to be essential for life to have some real worth or meaning.
There is a very old, mythical idea of a Cornucopia, or horn of plenty, an animal’s horn that is an inexhaustible source of food and drink and all good things. The open end is a wide mouth from which everything flows like water gushing from a pipe, but the other end, the source, tapers down to nothing. It is contrary to common sense, but creativity must be something like this, because to be original means precisely not to have come from anywhere else but to start here. So the source of creativity, of anything new, is nothing and nowhere; it has to be so, otherwise it would not be new but just a rearrangement of what is old.
Now when I think about myself, I am seeing myself with the eyes of memory, all my ideas about myself are old ideas, old knowledge, old habits (habits are always old aren’t they?). If there is anything new about me, it is not that, so it would be foolish of me to say “I am creative.” I might say, “I was creative”, but that too is old, so whatever is new is not “me” and is unknown. What is difficult, because it is frightening, is to let go of the known habitual me, to let go of my ideas about time and space, or the principles of art and painting, and without letting go of the old there is no room for the new. There needs to be some emptiness, some “nothing” in my mind from which new thoughts, new understanding can come; if I am “full of myself” full of my own ideas and knowledge which are all old, there can never be anything creative.

Life and Death.
We tend to think of life and death as opposites. It’s getting hard to draw the line with modern medicine, but in general the difference is clear. I know that I am alive now and I will be dead eventually, but I prefer not to think about that very much. In fact my mind seems to slide off somehow; “being dead” is almost a contradiction - “dead” is “not being”. Death comes to us all, and yet when it arrives we are not there. Many people say that there is life after death, the body dies but we continue somehow, somewhere. Perhaps they are right, I don’t know, but that is not what I mean by death. When I talk about my death, I mean the end of me; if there is never an end of me, then I am talking about nothing.
Some things are not alive. Talk to a rock, caress it, flatter it, mock it, it does not respond; leave it alone, it does not move; there is no life in it. I tend to think of myself as continuing through time; I stay more or less the same while the world changes around me. But life is always moving, changing, responding, so this image of a fixed “me” is the image of something dead like the rock that carries on the same no matter what. Life is always new, always renewing itself, and this means that it is always dying. Yesterday’s response will not do for today, things have changed. The old bob needs to die so that a new bob can come into being. If I keep saying the same thing each week, you will all get bored and stop listening, but if I am alive to the difference in you from week to week, from moment to moment, then my thought and my talk will change responsively - we will respond to each other. It seems that life and death are not separate, but one process which goes on in me all the time, from moment to moment. If I try to postpone my death until some distant tomorrow, I am trying to be a rock; I am trying to be already dead. And this rock of unchanging self becomes a terrible burden to me that I have to protect and carry with me, the source of all my fear. So when someone says “There is no death.” I reply, “Please, God, let it not be true!” because without death, there can be no birth; death has to come before birth.

Culture.
Plato, Jesus, Shakespeare, Newton, Bill Gates; - two thousand years of culture influence what I say, and shapes the world I live in, not to mention the forgotten heroes who invented fire, metal- working, pottery, the wheel, etc. Culture is like the heartwood of a tree, the remains of previous years of growth, that no longer lives, but supports and shapes the new green twigs and leaves of our present lives.
The names I give are the ones I know, and you will know others that influence you, but we all live amongst the bones of the ancestors. Their influence is not always benign, and we do not owe them any favours. At least that is what my ancestors say; yours may have different ideas.
Indeed, the whole of this introduction is written from a particular culture which happens to have dominated and exploited half the world for the last few centuries, but which has no special claim to the authority of the truth, let alone any moral authority. It seems to me though, that culture and identity are in the end the same thing, they are history and knowledge and all that is the past, and we urgently need to be free of it all. It seems that we cannot be free by forgetting or ignoring it, because it is what we are, and what we seek to become or to escape from; perhaps we can be free by examining it together in the mirror of relationship.