What is your attitude to difference?

so, do we have something to learn from the charlatan?

i would say, yes, perhaps, from the charlatan most of all, for it is the charlatan that has mastered the appearance of being one of the others. and the appearance is more important than some kind of nebuluous reality, that is open to question anyway. for it is only from the appearance of a quality that we learn, not from the quality itself, which may not be there, it is only there because we project.

but then, do you have the problem of learning from a reality you have just projected? in which case, what have you learnt at all? (perhaps again though, the appearance of having learnt something is more important than the learning itself, after all, it is on such things that identity is constructed)

My projection and her acceptance of it were only a part of her strangeness, the 'socialised' or 'theatralised' part of her strangeness, an entry point to a real difference that it merely represented. And from that real difference I could in fact learn something, I'm sure... if I could find some way to represent it to my understanding. Some medium. (She started speaking to me when I gave her money, but in a language I didn't understand.)

s1ocki, perhaps the 'deviant' sees the conservative as the 'deviant', these are not concrete terms. thats what i was trying to get at in my first post, it isnt always very obvious who is the deviant, who is the conservative and who is the average joe. and to many, they may be the same thing

the construction of the self is as much about the other as the self. a strong conception of the other is romance itself, after all what is that, but romanticization?

Isn't there a discussion to be had here about making a real effort to abandon our own convictions to learn something in a new way, or something new?

I'm not saying it's revolutionary at all, it's capital R Romantic, as I said in the question. But I'm coming to the conclusion that the only thing worse than projecting positive values of an idealised difference onto 'the other' is not doing that. In other words, there's something cool about the exoticisation of noble savages, children, exotics, madmen, all that stuff that Romanticism did and people like Edward Said said we shouldn't do. Because 'the other' can use the perceived glamour as a corridor to us, a conduit through which it can begin to inform us of its real differences. If we throw out that glamour, we may be severing our only positive tie to difference, even if it's a somewhat patronising one.

I think this is the kind of thing David Byrne was playing with when he made 'True Stories'. 'You guys think I'm weird, but from my point of view, it's you who are truly strange.' I don't buy it, and I think the film fails because we don't live in a world of level-playing field relativism where who's strange depends entirely on position. There is still an orthodoxy, a monoculture, a definition of norms, a consensus. The normal people know who they are, and the strange people know who they are. Why, people in Japan even refer to where they live as 'the far East'! What are they far from? From the norm, which, no matter how small a minority actually fit it, can still dominate everyone's perceptions. It's not a sociological norm -- what is -- but a paradigmatic norm -- a model. In the same way that I described myself aspiring to difference, people aspire to normality.

You then get the strange -- but quite common -- situation of someone who's completely bonkers aspiring to be normal, and someone else who's pretty rational aspiring to be crazy, each making up for their perceived weaknesses rather than playng to their strengths.

i think your model works perfectly if assume people as logistical and rational, which for the most part, they probably are. but the danger is a) when they are irrational, confused, inadequately socialized, and this skews perceptions. and b) when they are romantic, and they subvert the notions of difference/normality so they dont have their rigidized societal functions, the notions of difference and normality themselves become subverted, or hybridized.

also, i think difference is an elusive concept, as one can see by the existence of stagnant cliques that found what they were aiming for.

i think difference can be like charismatically led societies, once achieved it is paradoxically defeated, difference is nebuluous, ambiguous, once it is achieved, it is formalized, and the difference disappears into air. difference can surely only be really achieved by constant change. but the appearance of difference can be achieved, and it is possible that the appearance is more romantic and important than actuality anyway, since it is only through appearance that others understand us

Many people tend to have kneejerk responses to things which are different, even before they consider them. I do this myself too, of course, I think a great deal of people do it. So yeah I agree there is something about humans which makes us crave a sort of soma, but as Tracer says (I think) if it wasn't this way perhaps the "different" things would not be different or fun or worthwhile.

I think, Momus, you want to draw up sides, say that most people are in this boring monoculture, and then there are the glamorous outsiders, those who make the world worthwhile. The artist is at the heart of this division for you, I think - you see artists as almost a different order of humanity. Obviously Shakespeare has given far more to the world than I have or ever will, but I don't believe in the artist/non-artist division - I think everyone has some artistry in them, but some have more than others. Like memory, intelligence, understanding, emotional warmth and many other qualities. I can't see childishness or deviancy or sanity or criminality any differently, either. I think labelling some as one of these and some as the converse or opposite is a bad thing, leading to binary measurements of human value, of acceptability.

Anyway, getting back at the question, I think people are generally interesting, and I find more interest generally (I'm being vague because other things in people interest me too) in those who are more different, at least in most ways.

The thing is, normality and monoculture are aspirational. They are 'elsewhere'. They are, in this sense, rather platonic. Their absence from our actual experience (has anybody actually experienced 'normality'?) doesn't stop them from being omnipresent and powerful, just as Asians might find their sense of themselves structured by the idea that they live in the 'far east', even though they're not far from themselves physically. An absent norm is structuring our lives.

(PS: When I use the word 'platonic' I'm referring, of course, to the 'ideas', Plato's suggestion that there is a realm, somewhere else, containing the ideal table, the ideal cat, the ideal tree, of which the tables, cats and trees that we observe are only more or less accurate copies. We now tend to see this realm as being in our own language and myth systems. The fact that we need them to think doesn't mean we can't see how they force us to think in certain ways, ie in binary ways.)

ii) psychopath WTF?! no feelings and a destructive bent? fuck you and all your cronies, google my fat ass* now (cf i).

iii) momus i read your article in vice (i didn't agree w. too much of that but that's beside the point, but not right beside it - if anything there's always been a disproportionately large amount of women in electronica) but the point is you chose to tag the piece with a pseudonym, importantly a female pseudonym. why? what did the 'difference' of being a woman (vagina, breasts) bring to your article and why did you go that route? obviously, man / woman doesn't break down to a simple binary of gender: penis / vagina, xx / xy - but a whole mishymashy grey of that stuff + cultural baggage, popular currency, expectations, authenticity authenticity etc. no simple binary, and momus knows even if he only 'says' it implicitly (this is both defense and attack of momus).

iv) i lost my thread in all my points again gah maybe i am a psychopath.

v) + bad difference?

*any interested ladies (that's [email protected] - c, o, z, e, n, two fs one t) i am actually quite svelt and sociable mwah

psychopath pah *mutters grinds fists doesn't feel a thing*

a lot of 'difference' is a matter of scale too. why the peripheral characters (or cartoons) in lost in translation are so different is because they're rendered at such a large scale we only see very little magnified parts of them. i don't mind this, it's manipulative sure (what was up during that whole film, coppola's obsession with the way people [everyone not just the japanese although the 'haha japanese people sure do talk funny' attitude kinda grated but i think this was meant to 'say' something whatever that means about bill murray's character]?) but it's a film ('an especially manipulative film' a.l. kennedy on films).

bring the scope in a bit, the scale down a bit and a lot of difference can be dissolved (is this part of the problem though, momus? i mean, is this 'apologising' and photobrushing or is it actually real true like true?) and we get to see people a bit more clearly and people begin to seem a lot more alike (child / psychopath: i'm sure you've read a bit of madness and civilisation and how madness is whatever kinds of thinking there will never be a history of etc etc at one scale, totally different on another)

ps can you tell i've been reading about how cartography can help us understand and read law better? can you can you?

but i don't think it's such a bad thing if people do. vive le difference. even if i do kinda associate it w. the kinda guys matos was talking about that one time ('developed-monotone' annoying dude).

†you can tell me what this defensive twitch means, momus.

Weirdo.

That's pretty weird. I wrote that for them under my own name, then they said 'Don't you think we should give you a pseudonym, after all, it's a woman's voice you're adopting here?' So I said fine. When in Rome... (half of Vice is Gavin and Jesse writing under pseudonyms, and they tend to play games like using an exotic-sounding female name for an article about how every country has its own hated racial minority, etc) But they choose to both run the pseudonym and blow the cover simultaneously!

I guess their legal department told them it could pass muster as satire (which tends not to be sue-able) only if they named the satirist. I'll ask them.

The piece doesn't say there aren't enough women in electronica (although they're still rare enough as electronica artists to pass as 'different' just for their gender), it says electronica records by women are marketed with an emphasis on the fact that they're by women (which makes them 'different from the norm') and that women are 'closer to nature'. (If you don't believe me, Google 'mileece + nature' or 'mira calix + nature'.) The article is really a commentary on the way these artists get marketed / written about and how they play along with the constructions put on them. It's very much about how we construct the feminine and the natural as 'linked differences', and the absurd and dubious places that projection takes us.

You wacky muvvafukkas! You're like, so goofy! It must be fun. burn my face off with fire

http://www.absorb.org/img/articles/mileece/mileece_2_head.jpg

http://www.absorb.org/img/articles/mileece/mileece_4_head.jpg

If we assume that Adorno has a similar opposition in mind to Kierkegaard, with a bad repetition opposed to something like a good repetition, rather than some kind of easy escape into another world, his complaint about the repetition of the same in the culture industry becomes not so much a fact as a critical given. Because the impetus of the culture industry is always towards novelty, the ‘new’ is already compromised, no matter which actual product we examine.

Difference and conformity are two sides of the same coin: the other side is defined by opposition. Similiarly, maybe paradoxically, what is new is made familiar by setting it apart from what is old.

On second thought, this may not be what Alex, or Adorno, or Kierkegaard, intended, and I may be extrapolating according to my own fancy. I can't really put my finger on this. A while back I was thinking how adults are potentially much weirder than children because the socialization and standardization imposed by work is weaker than that imposed by school, except by that time with all the life choked out of them, they can only be weird in predictable ways. But how easy it is to feel strange when you are alone! On the other hand, children, who try so hard to conform, are the only ones who can be themselves without thinking about it.

"Necessity is the mother of invention" is a stupid cliche.

The only thing worse than romanticizing exotics is not romanticizing them

A few fibre optic filaments of light string out my interest in... this job that I do, apparently. Secondhand daylight. Glamour. These spilling filaments of light can still change the picture against all the odds, like light beams reaching the film inside a shut camera, making photograms, pictograms, abstract images, rorschacht blots into which we might project the future.

The things that inspire me are Romantic, because they involve a romanticization -- and inevitably a misconstruction -- of otherness. I am mostly inspired by childhood and artists and nature and far-flung cultures, predominantly Asian ones. And though I have been a child, come from nature, am an artist, and have been to Asia, this doesn't mean I have the right to speak of these things as an insider, or to say I can speak of them without projection. I don't want to be an insider. I want to feel that these states, these ways of seeing, are just something I might be moving towards. They are different, other. It's okay -- in fact, inevitable -- to project, to put them on pedestals. What we must do, above all, is project well, project kindly, project with a big heart.

I've decided that the only thing worse than romanticizing exotics is not romanticizing them -- in other words, the only thing worse than making 'Madame Butterfly' when you send gunboats to Japan is not making 'Madame Baghdad' when you send them to Iraq. (Clearly the best thing to do is not to send gunboats at all. Does that mean that I would prefer that Japan had remained closed? Yes, as a matter of fact it does. I would prefer a world in which great differences were able to co-exist peacefully, rather than the world we have, where there are constant interferences and merely different flavours of the same system.)

The criticism 'orientalist', which implies that we ought not to construct a romantic otherness around foreign cultures, is fine in itself. But people use it as an excuse for not dealing with difference at all, for assuming that, since 'the other' is 'just like us deep down', it's okay to ignore them or certainly ignore their cultural difference from us, seeing it as a stage we went through in our own historical development, or a simple material lack.

The criticism of 'orientalism', and the objection that 'they are not so different from us, we all want the same things really', could even be used as a pretext for intervention and invasion. This is clear when the same people who object to the romanticization of the other fail to object to the invasion of the other. So this rejection of Romanticism (the good part of the 19th century) is not, in the end, a rejection of Colonialism (the bad part of the 19th century). Why, if we have neo-colonialism (and we do) can we not have neo-romanticism to go with it? Must we re-run the 19th century without its saving grace?

although even that is not so simple, because childhood as we know it is itself is a victorian construction

Whatever we may feel about Al Quaeda, they surely do have a lot of the old Romantic iconography going for them. And this stuff works.

Dying young for one's beliefs -- check!
Fighting imperial power and the status quo -- check!
(Powerful entities like the Christian Church and the USA were born in exactly such struggles with empires: the Roman Empire and the British Empire respectively. The 'Romantic' myths they formulated proved more powerful than the merely military might of the predominant imperial powers of the day, who ceded.)
The poor rising up and defeating the rich -- check!
A rich figure-head who abandons his family and nation and founds a sort of religion -- check!
(Because of his wealth, the parallels between Bin Laden and Siddhartha Gottama are stronger than those with Christ.)
Living in wild regions, going back to nature -- check!
(The caves of Afghanistan, the mountains, the wild, unpoliced border regions replace the Lake District.)
An oppressed people in chains -- the Palestinians, check!

They're weak, obviously, on non-violence, on admiring children, and on projecting their fantasies onto foreign exotics, although I have heard Japan cited by Bin Laden as a victim of the US' aggression in the form of hyrogen bombs, and it's interesting to hear it again cited as a model of valour for the kamikaze pilots.

Now, imagine a strategy meeting in Washington. 'They've got Romanticism on their side. This should not be underestimated. This is how the Roman and British empires were undermined. How can we recruit glamour and otherness and get it working for us? What about a space project?'

which is why i say that the charlatan is the most different of all, because 'we' in the title here, are looking to learn from the other, the charlatan is looking to sell the other to you

The thing about losers is, there are a lot of them about. Power and wealth are concentrated in very few hands. Losers are the majority in any system. Sure, you can placate people with 'the metonymic' -- make them feel that, although powerless, they are 'represented' politically, and you can try to ensure that, although they're losers, they 'think with the winners': although moneyless, they can at least fantasize about the 'lifestyles of the rich and famous' and feel somehow 'enriched' by the dream.

But finally these 'metonymic' sops are not convincing, and people turn to religion, Romanticism, or socialism.

We're hearing the phrase 'the battle for hearts and minds' a lot these days, and I think that's exactly what this is about. You could rephrase that as 'the battle to keep the losers on the side of the winners'. Put that way, it's clear how easily it could become a losing battle.

genius
artist
child
traveller
foreigner
outsider
rebel
dissident
deviant
madman
pervert
criminal
loser

I also especially liked Ned's "weirdo" comment. I'll have to read bits again. Momus I can't help thinking this was prompted by your frustration with "Lost in Translation" and how they didn't learn anything from the environment they were in. You seem to equate engaging a foreign place with "exoticising" it. But Murray and Johanssen don't have to romanticise their environment to learn something from it, or to change themselves in some way. All they have to do is stay awake and get along and be interested in things. If they don't, they probably don't back in New York either, or wherever. (I haven't seen it, I'm just going on your description.) To use your rules, if we must choose between exoticising and not, I'd say not, but not on the grounds that we're "all the same" - because then you might burp at the wrong time, or actually TAKE the bacon when an English person offers you the last piece - but because, well, everybody does that and you just end up having all your Reader's Digest opinions confirmed. People see what they want to see. I think your complaint is really about people who seem bored by stuff you think they ought to be excited about. I have that complaint constantly but do they listen?? Do they fuck.

This week I've been noticing plumbing. Stuff like this I'm very willing to throw down on, because plumbing, drying clothes, etc: it's something you have a very repetitious encounter with. English plumbing is a bad repetition :)

George W. Bush is a romantic like he's a Christian. Not very.

Yup. All is revealed (including the way I cannibalise the thoughts I brainstorm with everybody's assistance here on ILE and pass them off as my own in my web essays) here:

www.imomus.com/lutheranletter.html

even.

That's a bit unfair: if Momus wants to do Wilde-style quotes, why not let him? I don't think he wants to be taken at face-value; and in any case isn't he saying 'the only thing more racist than romaticizing exotics is not romanticizing exotics'?

What disturbs me -- and I cannot easily put this out of my mind -- is that there is a connection between 'centre of goodness' screenwriting and 'axis of evil' politics. It is an attitude to difference which I deplore, and which seems to me to be part of a 'concentration' mindset rather than a 'diffusion' mindset. We concentrate our attention / affection on what we know and exaggerate the danger of the unknown. But it's potentially a whole mindset.

The concentration mindset:

* saves up pleasure for the weekend rather than diffusing it throughout the week.
* concentrates the sacred in God and churches, replaces animism with monotheism.
* concenrates sexual activity on orgasm rather than diffusing it through sensuality / foreplay.
* fails to create a social structure which diffuses money evenly through society.
* looks for 'the one right person' rather than diffusing love throughout everyone met.
* uses metonymy a lot: one politician can apparently 'represent' a complex range of political decisions, just as one spouse can 'represent' all the members of the opposite sex.
* tends to concentrate and exaggerate good and bad qualities rather than present a complex portrait of someone: x is either a 'great guy' or beyond the pale.
* tends to create narratives in which there is a clear 'centre of goodness'.
* tends to listen to highly specialised 'professionals' and 'analysts' rather than amateurs.
* tends to concentrate sales charts into 'bestsellers and the rest' by buying the same book / cd as everyone else.
* tends to make PowerPoint-type lists with exactly ten bulleted points.

Momus, you had me on-side, but this boho-snootery is played: most ILX0rs me included have no motherfucking option in re: saving up pleasure. And 'LiT' is all hipster snobbery -- the only 'good' Japanese are the fashionistas. You get the feeling if Sofia 'My Struggle' Coppola made a film anywhere it would be the same: the international community of the hep.

I am not stopping Momus from doing Wilde-style quotes. I am giving the opinion of one person who has been relegated to the role of "the exotic one" as a dismissal/fetishization tactic more than once.

I don't think he wants to be taken at face-value; and in any case isn't he saying 'the only thing more racist than romaticizing exotics is not romanticizing exotics'?

I don't think that is a true statement. In fact, that statement is precisely the way that racism exhibits itself in liberal circles. I find it to be a very dehumanizing point of view.

I don't think that is a true statement. In fact, that statement is precisely the way that racism exhibits itself in liberal circles. I find it to be a very dehumanizing point of view.

I'd definitely agree with yr last statement, just didn't think that Momus was being exactly racist.

can the Coppola marriage be on the rocks?

Yeah, it's over, and the photographer was transparently like Spike Jonze. And the ditsy actress is supposedly suppoed to be Cameron Diaz. Has Scarlett's character actually read any Evelyn Waugh? Or is she just a professional snark?

I'd be interested in a film about the mutual fascination of US and Japan, ie the 'Western' fetish for the exotic (as manifested in Scarlett's trip to Kyoto), and the Japanese fetish for stars like the one Bill Murray is playing. But this wasn't it. The first half-hour was just 'let's laugh at the Japanese' far as I could tell.

But what if there is no non-racist way to relate to the other? In that case, the choice (between evils) is between a Romantic, humanist racism which puts the other on a pedestal, and the colonial or neo-colonial racism which simply invades and obliterates the other.

I thought it was one of the conclusions of your 'Are you a racist?' thread, Dan, that we all are, in one way or another. But it's that '...or another' which contains the possibility of, if not redemption, at least harmonious co-existence. The projector and the projected-upon negotiate a corridor, a partial representation of the difference of the other, and work on that. With good hearts.

Neo-colonial. If you have oil (or 'the intention to aquire weapons of mass destruction'), we invade and restructure you.

Neo-imperialism. While not gaining the rights you would have as the 51st state of our nation, you are now, nevertheless, henceforth in our sphere of influence, governed by the people we appoint, until such time as we see fit.

And no, we don't find your culture 'fascinating' or your heritage 'ancient'. We have nothing to learn and everything to teach.

Now, how useful, in the face of the naked arrogance of Bushco, for Douglas Wolk to comment, as he does upthread, that saying we do have something to learn from the other is 'patronising'? Given the choice between being possibly 'patronising' (a matter of tone, not substance) and invading, clearly respect for the difference is the other is a better choice than eradication of the other.

Douglas' objection is typical of liberal nitpicking and in-fighting, the exaggeration of small differences. It cannot be allowed to go on while the right simply marches in and takes over 'the other'.

Enrique: But (neo)colonialism *uses* (neo)romanticism, surely, Momus? British Empire pre-1856 wasn't based so much on idea of supremacy of the British race, etc etc, but on the lack of potential in the Other to govern itself. Even Kipling romanticized Indians. Doesn't stop his stuff being imperial in mindset.

They overlap in time, but I believe one is corrective to the other. The general's wife, admiring the palace, pleads with her husband not to sack it after the uprising. He agrees. The result is the difference between the British Indian Empire (ceded with relative humanity to the Indians) and the utter erasure of the American Indians.

Well, dandy enough (though shame the ceding also resulted in 3m< deaths on Indo-Pakistan border), but while not burning down the temple is better than killing everyone with guns, not ruling two-fifths of the world from London, and destroying its productive capacity, is even better.

Other person in 1930s Germany: You patronising, generalising git! You shouldn't say such things. Let them look after themselves.

My objection with the way you present your ideas is that you never actually give me a sense that you see individual people behind these cultures; in fact, the way you describe your interaction with other cultures comes across to me as being akin to collecting them like trading cards as a device for enhancing your cool factor. You often come across like the daughter from _Native Son_.

Well, this is the key point, and I think the to and fro of the argument is really just the tussle involved in negotiating the designated meeting point between cultures. 'The Foreigner' is not a foreigner at home, clearly, but it is a role he must step into and negotiate when dealing with us, for whom he is The Foreigner (in the same way that an actor is the role for the space of the film). We all know that the role is arbitrary. Yet it is necessary if there's to be communication.

I'm not sure what this means exactly, or what conclusions you could draw from it even if it were shown to be true. It may be more helpful to say that human beings are alike in some ways and different in others. The argument that humans are all alike is certainly something that is popular in the US consensus philosophy which says that if only we could teach the world about free markets and democratic government then everyone would be happy.

(xpost with Momus)

Sure, but cultures are not so similar, or at least, there's no ultimate escape from the concept of difference. Most of this thread has related that to race, but it needn't, really; I don't personally go in for the kind of fetishizing of Japanese culture that Momus advocates, because I don't think there's a binary choice here between 'fetishizing' and 'hating,' between 'Sans Soleil' and 'Rising Sun'. Gimme 'Hiroshima Mon Amour'.

xpost w/ Momus

Enrique: sure, national difference is now largely a charade, the icing on the cake of the international system (though I personally will be very, very angry if Iran gets invaded). But new forms of difference pop up in new places. Scroll back up to my photo of that weird homeless woman on the U-bahn. She is different, no doubt about it. She lives, looks and thinks differently than I do. I admire her for surviving in a world which eats difference for breakfast and sells it for dinner.

I'm not so sure about this. It seems that you are positing the existence of Jungian archetypes in a sort of collective unconscious - i.e., that there is a pre-existent figure known as the Foreigner that each one of us has in our minds. While this is a colorful notion, I don't see much in the way of scientific support for it. Where does this pre-existent figure come from? Is it in our genes? Do people in other cultures have the exact same pre-determined mental figures that we do? It doesn't seem likely.

(xpost with Dan)

Well, if you look at Momus's list of "identities" at the top of this thread, I think you'll find that very few of them have to do with the categories of "nationality, class, gender and so on" - unless you expand the notion of class to include something like an "artistic class" or a "traveller class", which is a stretch. I think Momus is getting into the fuzzier realms of human psychology and roles within a society, realms where thankfully the discussion has not already hardened into dogmatic political camps.

Here, you must be tired after you long journey, let these virgin nymphs accompany you to bed.

From Astrology website:

'Aquarius is always out of step with the rest of the world and revels in anything that is 'different'... The Aquarian personality is one of the most impersonal and detached, yet Aquarius has a deep care and concern for humanity. A progressive reformer, Aquarius is also full of humanitarian ideals, but these can be somewhat vague, giving Aquarians a reputation for keeping their heads in the clouds...

The Dark Side

The Aquarian personality can be chaotic and unpredictable, stubborn and rebellious, cranky and perverse. It is a sign which can be totally dedicated to being unconventional, whilst remaining stuck in a rigid, unrecognized pattern. It is also a sign which can become detached to the point of coldness, making it very difficult for ordinary mortals to relate to them. Aquarians do not care what the world thinks, however, so that social conventions are sometimes thrown out of the windows in favour of anarchy. The isolation this can sometimes bring can come as a surprise to them as they find it difficult to see how they might have behaved unreasonably.'

One of the Capricorn personality's most positive features is its sense of humour. This is something which often sustains Capricorn in its efforts to impose some order on the world, or wisely master its resources. Although the humour is likely to be dry, it does involve contact with other people (something that the self-contained Capricorn does not excel at). What the Capricorn personality is very good at is everything that others (excepts for Earth signs) find a little tedious. Capricorn is endlessly prudent, prudent, reliable, persevering and disciplined.

The Dark Side

Capricorns can be extremely rigid and pessimistic in their outlook; and gloomy and depressed (and depressing) in their interaction with other people. they can also be emotionally cold and inhibited. The prudent and cautious side of the Capricorn nature can be taken to extremes, too, sometimes into the unsociable realm of the miser

The under-question, I think, is what percent of society forms your attitude to differences? (yup, the old 'nature vs. nurture ques. So, sue me.)

(x-post. Clearly, I need coffee)

(Doesn't really understand the question, guesses wildly) Er, 14%?

(Dammit, I know what I'm trying to ask! Garfield was right to hate Mondays....)

I being the key term there. Could we replace it with 'Lacan' without altering the sense of the thing? Does a hermit have no identity?

Something else, kinda, just, mmm, not gonna sum up 'identity' for me in a sentence. I think 'enculturation' is a bit abstract, to be fair! Question is whether it's too abstract, ie a category completely divorced from experience.

I said: black American difference has recently had an abrupt change in status. It is no longer 'the designated Other' for the white American. That role is now filled by 'terrorists'. I imagine this is a mixed blessing for the black American community. There must be a sense of 'phew!' mixed with a certain... disappointment.

Dan replied: I think you grossly underestimate the capacity of Americans to relegate people to "The Other", Momus.

But I think there was some misunderstanding of my point. I didn't say black Americans were no longer other. I said they were no longer 'the designated other'. They are now, if you like, just A.N.Other other.

The reason I imagine some disappointment mixed with relief at this promotion / demotion is that when you're the designated other, you get to practise what I'd call an 'imperialism of otherness'. You get to snap up and subsume in your persona a whole range of differences that you actually aren't entitled to.

These differences are lacks in the parent culture, in our example, white America. Does it lack sensuality? Well, you get to incarnate it! Is it orderly and rather dull? Well, guess who's been designated an exciting gangster? The Chinese triads are going to have to work extra hard to scare people now, because, no matter how many people they kill, it's just lines in a newspaper. You're the one that gets to be feared, because you're 'the designated other'. You have every reason to brag about it in rap and hip hop records which sell in their millions to black and white alike, and no reason to practise embourgeoisement. Until the day someone comes along with an even more compelling, even more mythical claim to soak up, subsume and assume all vices and virtues in the 'empire of difference'. A challenger to your dark throne. Black people didn't demolish the World Trade Center or slam planes into the Pentagon. Therefore black people can no longer be the 'designated other', the other that is allowed to be a myth magnet or myth sponge, scooping and soaking up not just the differences to which is entitled -- relevant differences -- but any and all differences that happen to be troubling or enchanting the white majority at any given time.

I go back to this figure of the metonymn, and the idea of representation: when you're 'the designated other', you get to 'represent' all interesting differences. When you're just A.N.Other, you lose that metonymic status. In fact, some of your prized differences are even soaked up by the new Other. 'The ghetto' is now the Palestinian compound. 'The street' is now the Arab street. 'The panthers' are now Al Quaeda and 'the voice' Al Jazeera. (I'm tempted to make a joke about Fox News being the Al Jolson to Al Jazeera's jazz, but I won't. Oops!)

Patterns of activity are not abstractions; they are perceptible, real structures through which we act.

Now, you might argue that these social facts are not facts at all but perceptions of events. I would then remind you that these perceptions can be judged in terms of those events. In other words, if there is the possibility of error then this is because there is something to measure it against. If you map your office by taking measurements of the floor and measurements of the furniture, you know that you've made a mistake when the furniture doesn't fit on your rectangle.

abstract 1 theoretical rather than physical or concrete.

You can't live without theory, but there has to be some cut-off point at which there is data (your waitress' actions) on one side and perception thereof on the other. Otherwise you are making her actions an illustration of the theory, which means that you can prove anything you want. To go too far in the other direction -- avoiding theory and allowing only that data -- is equally untenable, of course.

But in concrete terms, I'm not quite seeing how we're 'acting through structures'...

I don't think this tragedy is quite on the scale of wanting to be a great artist but being a mediocre one, but be that as it may...

As for engaging with the thread - Momus says:

"the only thing worse than projecting positive values of an idealised difference onto 'the other' is not doing that."

But if you're the dominant culture, then projecting values, positive or negative, on 'the other' will in turn limit and define the self-perception of 'the other'. Why should 'the other' accept the assurances of the dominant culture that its projections are positive? It's far more likely not to be the case. There's something very self-serving about the idea that glamourisation of 'the other' will ultimately lead us to a 'real' understanding of what 'the other' is all about. It's more likely to do the reverse, and subsume 'the other' into a preexisting mode of thinking.

America has certainly romanticised the post 9/11 Arab 'other', in a rather dark yet glamourous way of course. How has this helped open up a "conduit through which it can begin to inform us of its real differences"?

not rinsing = concrete
X = abstract

lock up without trial != romanticize
invade and occupy != glamourize
lack of electricity after tomahawk strike = dark

1 out of 3 then

(In our culture there is also a huge gap between 'bestsellers' and 'the rest'. Dollars flow to the 'designated other' in vast disproportion to the number two Other, or the rest.)

Well, they kind of are. I think that the Kilroy episode is probably more indicative of common COTW attitudes towards arabs than anything involving 'glamour' conventionally understood.

Well then, you must have changed your mind because upthread you say: "'the other' can use the perceived glamour as a corridor to us, a conduit through which it can begin to inform us of its real differences."

What's the advantage of informing us of its "real differences" if it doesn't lead to "true understanding"?

I don't think you're thinking politically at all, Momus, as in what it really does to people to be designated as 'the other'. You're thinking as an artist who is interested in using exoticism as one conduit for your art. It's a game of pure subjectivity - in the same way that for Victor Hugo, to give one Romantic example, writing about medieval Paris was really saying nothing about medieval Paris and everything about himself.

You must be a professional critic - they all have this fantasy.

Satre added some interesting stuff to the concept of otherness, as did his 'significant other' (I hate that phrase) Simone de Beauviour.

There are some others, too, if you're interested. My favourites are a bunch of Jewish ethical philosophers...

I don't know how far I'd go along with all the implications of this, but it does open up some interesting ground for thinking about otherness and ethics and stuff.

xposts

...

How about this: people always make mistakes.

Behaviour isn't just about choices. Especially when you realise that choices follow patterns.

Which is the really delicate thing. Yes we follow patterns if you like, but we are not pre-destined. It's just that there are numerous pressures acting upon us. The patterns can easily change.

I will repeat: " think you grossly underestimate the capacity of Americans to relegate people to "The Other", Momus."

The fact that people are concerned that Middle-Eastern terrorists will blow up something in an American city (a concern, I might add, that is much more of an urban concern than a rural one from what I can tell; I have no real concept of how people away from cities are actually reacting to the terrorist threat but friends/acquaintences/relatives I've spoken to who don't live in a major metropolitan area do not feel like they personally are under immediate threat of attack) does not make people on the Boston subway any less afraid of the black teen with the oversized hoodie and the baggy pants sitting across from them. I see this every day. None of this has changed. You are inventing stuff to fit in with the way you want the world to work rather than engaging with the way the world actually does work.

Also, the idea that black people in the US "get to" be the big scary Other that is to be feared, avoided and shunned make work fine and dandy in a recording studio, but is really fucking stupid if you're trying to get a decent table in a restaurant or help from an employee in a department store.

what is your attitude to difference?

Do you believe we have anything to learn from:

The genius?
The child?
The foreigner?
The madman?
The artist?
The traveller?
The pervert?
The loser?
The dissident?
The outsider?
The rebel?
The deviant?
The criminal?

This sort of question contains a basic flaw, in that it implies that all those who fit into one of these categories has an identifiable value and that this value is similar to all others within the same category.

For example, I would say it is possible to learn something from "a rebel", but in some cases their lesson would be as a wholly negative example to be shunned, and in others it would be an inspiration to be emulated, if possible, depending entirely on the thing rebelled against, the reasons for the rebellion and the means through which that rebellion is expressed.

It is no stretch to describe both KKK miscreants and Mohandas Gandhi as "rebels". To believe they teach us substantially the same lesson is senseless.

everyone is different from me and I pretty much love them for it

this is an ecumenical matter.

luv this thread btw.

INDIFFERENCE.