Two things have come up that I'd like to address. First, Patick Simone, in the panel at Institute Montaigne, said something off the cuff about discrimination based upon behavior. Regardless of whatever it was that P. Simone said in specific, I began to wonder about the logical limits of discrimination and diversity. I think most people would permit that nothing morally obliges us to put up with inappropriate behavior - thus I don't chew gum at interviews. To jump tracks for a second, we've heard a few times this week that the immorality of "race"-based discrimination lies in the fact that, at least from the French, deconstructionist perspective, "race" is an artificial social construct applied to arbitrarily categorized populations and is thus inadmissible as a basis for judgements about people. Racial discrimination has no basis. An individual's behavior, however, is a legitimate basis for discrimination against that individual. What is bothering me is that, to many, sexual orientation is more-or-less a series of behaviors, not a necessary biological difference. Also, if universalism holds, and women and men are biologically but not essentially different, couldn't one treat "femininity" as a behavioral choice? This opens the door to a bigot or chauvinist feeling justified for his/her discriminatory thinking. To avoid this, I think one would need to draw lines between which types of behavior can serve as the basis for discrimination and which types can't. I imagine (hope) that there is a hole in my logic. Help me find it please.
Second thing I wanted to bring up: I read Chris's blog post about what is at stake in our discussions and I had a couple problems, but I'll restrain myself to one. And I realize that this might seem like a nit-picky point made at the level of theory, but I think it should be said nonetheless. Chris wrote: "I believe the lack of racial language is one reason for the fact that racial difference cannot be explored, and therefore cannot be addressed in any way to alleviate the experiences of the minority here." I think Chris is only seeing half the picture here. France is the land of critical theory, and Saussure held that the thoughts we think are conditioned by the language we have at our disposal. We can't think thoughts for which we don't have the appropriate language. So, on the one hand, Chris is right: if France lacks the language to explore racial differences, then indeed the discourse will be impeded. On the other hand, if the language doesn't exist in France, maybe that has conditioned the experiences of minorities in France to have actually had a fundamentally dissimilar experience than that of American minorities, even if the symptoms of their experience appear similar. I don't know if even I agree with this idea, but it might serve as a partial explanation for why I, at least, have found it so hard to comprehend what I've heard about the French minority experience.
In general, I think Americans are so steeped in the language of diversity and inequality that we might not be able to see socio-economic/race-relations in other situations outside of our internalized frameworks. Speaking personally, the notion of universalism (as opposed to a difference-embracing and -celebrating multicultural model) had never occurred to me before a week and some ago. I don't know yet if I agree with it or not, but if the French do, I think us Americans should pay more attention to how that might have actually shaped a person in the minority's lived experience of his/her minority-ness.
Martin is up for next wednesday.
-pr
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