Moments of Permanence - On differences in oppression, derailment, and the hierarchies of hurt

From: tevriel.livejournal.com Date: April 6th, 2009 12:12 am (UTC) sorry for the tl;dr reply, but this journal is the natural habitat of teal deer (Link)

I'm not sure I think that Enlightenment values are inherently wrong/imperialistic to try and spread. I mean, they were alien at the time they were introduced to European society, too, but they were influential and persuasive for a reason. Years ago the Indonesian ambassador to the United Nations cited Rousseau to argue that human rights were a Western notion and therefore it was cultural imperialism to argue against torture and wholesale murder in East Timor; it made me angry then and I still think torture and murder are wrong. Not just wrong in my Western, Enlightenment-affected worldview, wrong.

In the same way that the Enlightenment improved Western cultures without annihilating them, I think Enlightenment values can improve other cultures without annihilating them either. It doesn't have to mean the same laws apply equally and everywhere; hell, it doesn't mean that in the areas where Enlightenment thought has already spread, and never has meant that. (Oddly, that's the exact period I'm studying right now.) I genuinely believe that equality for individuals is a right and correct goal, and therefore where cultural values conflict with that, I will be hostile to those cultural values. Honour killing and FGM and slavery are and have been all cultural values of a kind, and I'm opposed to all of them. I can't and won't dismiss things I think are abhorrent as "cultural"; it's a matter of being careful about where you draw the line of "cultural".

There are no easy answers, but it would be risky if there were, because easy answers encourage intellectual laziness. Your point about critical thinking is very relevant.

Oddly, this may feed into my belief that linguistics should be more widely-taught at a pre-university level. Languages are a relatively neutral area in which to teach concepts of inherent bias, because nobody's going to find it particularly challenging to their sense of racial/cultural identity to learn that sound value perception is profoundly affected by native speaker biases.

However, once you learn that the Japanese r/l confusion is just like English-speaker non-comprehension of aspirated and unaspirated bilabials, which to native speakers of Hindi are as different as t and d are to English speakers, which are themselves sound identical to speakers of Arrernte... it's going to be easier for people to expand that understanding into cultural preconceptions.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From: arallara.livejournal.com Date: April 6th, 2009 01:02 am (UTC) Re: sorry for the tl;dr reply, but this journal is the natural habitat of teal deer (Link)

Well, thank you for the tl;dr, actually--never really a problem for me. :) And I forgot to say before, here via rydra_wong.

I just wanted to be sure I was clear that I'm not suggesting Enlightenment values are "inherently wrong/imperialistic" and should not be "spread" in any cases. In fact, I think judgments like that need to be made contextually! :)

However, I was suggesting that the particular Enlightenment value of "equality for individuals under the law" as a "universal" ideal of social justice presents a barrier to contextual thinking for some white people in cultures that define themselves by that ideal, even if it's a kind of weird, fetishized, reductive understanding of that ideal that permeates our culture. I think it's the same underlying cultural value that enables white people to argue for "colorblindness" as an an antiracist ideal.

So, no, the Enlightenment project isn't inherently evil, but the legacy of its constructs of personhood and justice sometimes makes it difficult for white people in Western cultures to think contextually, to move intellectually outside the box of the belief in universality, which in many ways remains a signifier of our un-self-aware position of privilege at the cultural "center."

Your thoughts on linguistics are interesting, and I can see the value in incorporating that perspective into our formal education, especially as the world becomes increasingly globalized.

(And that ended up more tl;dr than I thought it would, but I'm actually just sort of thinking this through as I comment.)

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

From: tevriel.livejournal.com Date: April 6th, 2009 01:11 am (UTC) Re: sorry for the tl;dr reply, but this journal is the natural habitat of teal deer (Link)

It's okay, thinking it through as I comment is how my comments end up so long. *g* And I like discussing things with interested people.

The linguistics element... well, I'm a History/Linguistics double major, does it show? ;)

You make a good point about it making it difficult for people to move outside that belief. It does brush up against something my brother-out-law pointed out more than once - often the problem in arguments is that people are operating on different base assumptions, and the argument will get nowhere until they (or a mediator) can identify the point of disconnect between their assumptions. Once you find that you can try to lead people by stages to your own point of view.

He argued, somewhat convincingly, that what the RaceFail discussion needed was not a moderator but a mediator. The problem is, people who tried to step in placing themselves as the Neutral Observer were generally victim to the exact same faults, and were trying to be moderators instead. The mediator needs to be someone who's not declaring "bad behaviour on both sides", who's not making any value judgements at all, just breaking down people's arguments until they find the assumptions on which they're based with which the other side disagrees.

Most participants in RaceFail would have agreed instantly with, say, "All people deserve equal respect." But that's a very broad assumption point, and there are a lot of ramifications of that which, patently, did not provoke agreement.

Sadly, people who are good at that kind of mediation are rare, and even rarer are people who'd be able to do it successfully in an emotionally-charged subject like this one, and I'm not sure it's even possible to do it on the internet.

(Reply) (Parent)