For what do we do this work? What are the “benefits” of creating and sustaining an other? Under what conditions we create and sustain an other? Who are “we” in such instances? What are our responsibilities towards others?
“In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction” – Audre Lorde
Readings
- Morrison, Toni. 2017. The Origin of Others. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Read Preface, and Chapter 1 and 2 (1-40). UBC Online.
- Applebaum, Barbara. “Comforting discomfort as complicity: White fragility and the pursuit of invulnerability.” Hypatia 32.4 (2017): 862-875.
- Jackson, Michael. “Preface” (1-29) The politics of storytelling: Variations on a theme by Hannah Arendt. Vol. 4. Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013.
- Truong, Monique. A Rejected “Travelogue” of Singapore, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Diacritics. Oct. 22, 2018.
The readings for this week, offer an interdisciplinary body of ideas and “entrances” and “departures.” Black author, professor and Nobel prize in literature winner Tony Morrison offers a deep insight into the working of otherness (or the way we come to construct otherness) in the every day and on the categories we rely upon to mark difference, the othering. Othering as a practice of engagement when we locate ourselves as observers – researchers of others and confront difficult ethical and ontological dilemmas because such practices impact how to access each other. So for what to consider this? Or for what do we do this work? Morrison provides some powerful considerations on what are the resources available to us for access to each other.
New Zealand anthropologist and poet, Michael Jackson enters into this dialogue by engaging with storytelling as mediating our relationship to “worlds that extend beyond us.” He explores questions on how we name these worlds and how we may negotiate a “ balance” between ourselves and such spheres of otherness.