It is not only by categorizing someone’s views as irredeemably
evil that one can avoid engaging with them. It is equally possible to do so by
treating their perspective as transcendentally right. That is, it is possible
to stultify a conversation, to nullify the possibility of encounter, not only by
insisting that we have nothing to learn from someone but by insisting that they
have nothing to learn from us. The first tactic is obvious, the second subtler,
but its mechanism is not so mysterious: if a person has nothing to learn from
us, then we have no reason to tell them what we think or how we feel, what we
have experienced, where our views diverge. We cannot (are spared from having to) defend any position or action.
Maybe we have other even subtler tactics. Maybe all our political awareness has a second hidden function as a kind of innoculation against meeting one another—just as all knowledge of the world can be a barrier to seeing it. So that it is not only encounters across political divisions that we are lacking (and secretly longing for), but also across lines of race, ethnicity, class—indeed across almost any possible divergence of deep experience.
1 comment:
Some years ago, the author of these Crumbs told me about a proposal that a pro-life group at Harvard made to its pro-choice opponents: the 'lifers' would agree that abortion was legal if the 'choicers' agreed that it was immoral. This was viewed by some on the pro-choice side as a trick, a Trojan horse, not to be responded to, and it might have been better in a less conditional formulation, e.g.: "We acknowledge that abortion is legal. Will you acknowledge that it's immoral?" That, it seems to me, is the beginning of a conversation.
Post a Comment