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In our post-moral politics, something “works” when it gets politicians elected

22 Jul

There’s much discussion about whether or not Kevin Rudd’s “PNG solution” will “work,” discussion that has led me to speculate on what the definition of “work” is in these circumstances.

One way in which it may not “work” is for the well-being and peace of the citizens of PNG. The potential problems of resettling refugees in that country are clearly articulated in this piece. I recommend it to anyone interested in the complex realities of Rudd’s grand plan.

Of course, it could be that Rudd is depending on asylum seekers deciding that the persecution, torture and death many of them face in the countries they are fleeing are, on balance, a whole lot better than being resettled in PNG, and therefore they will change their minds about getting on boats in the first place. The contempt this implies for Australia’s former colony is breathtaking. We are transporting “illegals” to that now independent country, as if we are still its colonial masters.

The plan might “work” in the sense of reducing or preventing asylum seeker attempts to escape their circumstances by boat. Work for the government, that is, and for those among us who apparently live in fear of invasion, the imposition of Sharia law, and people from other cultures who look different and don’t speak English properly and will not queue. It won’t “work” for the asylum seekers, who will still be stuck with lives that are so tenuous they are willing to risk them on dangerous journeys rather than stay where they are.

That we have contributed to the turmoil in some of the source countries is incontestable. Our slavish capitulation to US invasion and subsequent destruction of source countries leaves us bearing certain responsibilities to their citizens. In the same way, our colonisation and exploitation of PNG (see this piece in the Guardian on our vulture capitalist practices in that country) ought to cause us to think carefully before using PNG once more for our own gain, with a cavalier disregard for the effects that will have on its population.

I can attest to some of the ruination inflicted on that country, having spent several years living on Bougainville Island watching the myriad consequences of copper mining there.

The plan might “work” to get the ALP re-elected, much as John Howard’s infamous exploitation of the Tampa and the tragedy of 9/11 “worked” to return government to the LNP when everyone thought they were done for. Howard cleverly whipped up the nation’s fears of terrorists, conflating asylum seekers with those who wrought havoc in the US. Rudd’s narrative of evil is ostensibly aimed at people smugglers, however those who will be most severely affected by his PNG solution are the human cargo, whom Rudd will traffic to PNG in exchange for aid to that country. Rudd’s narrative is also one of invasion by importunate undesirables, implying that we are under such acute threat from asylum seekers we must abandon all moral principles and do whatever it takes to keep them out. Or else, catastrophe.

Quite what form that catastrophe might take is unclear. I am waiting for a politician to spell out the actual dangers with which refugees threaten us, because I can’t think of any. The existential whine about losing our national identity leaves me baffled, as does the irrational fear of a ruptured sovereignty. Both are constructs, reified for political gain.

The xenophobic panic is arrant nonsense, but Rudd is not an arrant fool. He has, however, re-calibrated his moral compass since the days he lectured us on the necessity to behave with kindness towards the stranger at our gate, and espoused in essays his love for Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It would be an interesting entertainment, if one had the inclination, to chart Rudd’s moral decline in the last six or so years.

Apparently in our post moral politics something “works” when it gets politicians re-elected. There is no place in the narrative for moral and ethical considerations.Our political and media elite have attempted to fill this gaping moral abyss with faux concern  for those who drown on the boat journey, especially babies. I say “faux” concern because they have no concern at all for the lives of these people before or after their perilous journeys. If they survive they will be locked up in indefinite detention, some of them even if they are found to be refugees. Babies, children and women are subjected to this treatment, with well-documented evidence of the psychological disasters this inhumane incarceration causes, particularly in the young. The refugees released into the community come to us not only traumatised by their experiences in the source country, but additionally and entirely unnecessarily traumatised by the treatment afforded them by Australian governments. Yet these same politicians will apparently move heaven and earth to prevent the drowning death of a baby. It is, I suppose,  sheer coincidence that this will likely persuade many people to vote for them.

There are times in the lives of nations and individuals when circumstances are so dire, moral and ethical considerations become a luxury that cannot be afforded in the desperate effort to survive. This is likely the situation of many boat-borne asylum seekers later found to be refugees. The concept of waiting in line for one’s turn can be a luxury only the comfortable can observe. Terror, desperation and the impulse to survive will override manners, and if you don’t understand that you’ve never been very afraid, and you suffer from a failure of imagination.

In no sense can Australians claim to be in such a state of terror and desperation at the prospect of asylum seekers arriving by boat, yet our politicians and those who support them have utterly abandoned moral and ethical considerations, just as if we are fighting for our survival.

Whether or not a solution is “workable” is not measured by how it best serves the needs of all stakeholders. It is not measured in terms of human suffering, in terms of decency, in terms of our obligation as human beings to treat our most vulnerable fellows with compassion and care.  It “works” if it is politically successful. That is all.

Why Julia Gillard is my sister

3 Jul

I’m not the type of essentialist gender feminist who believes every woman is my sister simply because we share biological characteristics, unlike leading public figure Anne Summers, who in this article  expresses outrage against certain female MPs who did not resign “in solidarity” with Ms Gillard when she lost the ALP leadership to Kevin Rudd last week.

I don’t usually follow the line that a high achieving woman is making things better for all of those who share her sex. That to me is a romantic idea that has little basis in reality, indeed there are women among us considerably worse off after Ms Gillard’s prime ministership, for example the sole parents shifted to Newstart, and women seeking asylum.

Summers’ test of faith I find entirely self-defeating. What would it serve Australian society if every time a woman in public office was badly treated, her female colleagues resigned? In a nano second, there would be none of us left anywhere. It’s the sort of demand a comfortable middle class feminist can make from her armchair without pausing to consider the ramifications, for individuals and the greater good of our society.

That being said, these last few days I’ve noticed a sense of relief in myself and people around me. What is this about? The cessation of sexist abuse against Ms Gillard, that’s what it’s about.

It’s only since Ms Gillard left the leadership that it’s become painfully clear just how bad and how constant the gender-based abuse was. It’s like the relief you feel when you stop hitting yourself on the head with a hammer, if you are given to that form of self-abuse.  We no longer have to witness the daily public denigration of a woman, because she is a woman. We no longer have to witness the gender war in all its frightening darkness, as fought between Ms Gillard and the sexists from all walks of life, whose first complaint against the Prime Minister was that she is female, and who viewed every other dissatisfaction through that gender prism.

We have never seen such a terrifying display of anti woman feeling in our politics, because we have never had a female leader. We couldn’t see how bad it was until it stopped. We couldn’t see how the sexist abuse distracted from the most important  task of keeping our society functioning, which Ms Gillard’s government achieved better than almost any other Western government.

There is a great deal on which I vehemently disagreed with Ms Gillard. I did not personally take to her, though as Deputy PM I thought she would one day be an excellent leader. That day came too soon, and under fraught circumstances that could not have been worse for our first female PM. That the ALP chose to depose then leader Kevin Rudd in his first term was a questionable decision. That they should seize the opportunity to install the country’s first female leader, who as well as everything else was forced to become the blood-soaked symbol of the fallen man’s “knifing” beggars belief. One can only assume that as usual, the blokes brought a woman in to clean up their mess.

Though I am wary of joining anything, let alone a sisterhood (you will not find a woman less interested in or less capable of belonging than me) every time Ms Gillard was abused because of her sex, I was also abused. The unrelenting sexist and misogynist commentary directed towards her was directed at all women, though the perpetrators would no doubt strenuously deny that. It cannot be any other way, anymore than racism can only be aimed at one individual, leaving everyone else untouched.

We should be outraged at the contempt and insult daily enacted towards Ms Gillard. At any moment it can be and is turned against any woman who falls foul of those men and  women who are so conflicted in their attitudes towards us they can only fear and hate, solely because of our sex. One of Ms Gillard’s achievements, though it is not one any sane person could have anticipated or desired, is that she has shown us, through her personal endurance, the degree to which hatred of women still flourishes in Australian society and the awful toll it takes on that society.

In sexism and misogyny, Ms Gillard is my sister.

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Knitted fruit makes more sense than politics

27 Jun

The only political event in the last twenty-four hours to provoke in me a smidgen of fleeting sadness, was the resignation of the two most admirable federal politicians in recent memory, Independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor.

While many around them succumbed (with little or no thought for the well-being of the country they were elected to serve) to bitterness, envy, misogyny,narcissistic rage  and rampant idiocy, Windsor and Oakeshott stood firm, emanating decency, integrity, and, yes, that rarest of all virtues in our 21st century parliament, common sense,  while all around them busied themselves with their daily obsequious capitulation to the demands of their lower, reptilian-brained selves.

On a personal level, I dislike Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard almost equally. But this should not matter. Ms Gillard undoubtedly achieved much while simultaneously behaving despicably towards asylum seekers and single parents. We have no idea what Mr Rudd might have achieved, since he was dumped without warning in his first term. We have now come full circle, a political ouroboros, its head devouring its body in obsessive self-absorption.

When Ms Gillard took over from Kevin Rudd after the coup, she drank from a poisoned chalice, as women in politics frequently do, brought in, as we are, to clear up the messes made by blokes. As well, we are a distraction from said messes, and make the party involved look progressive.  Oh look! We’ll make a woman PM, for the first time evah, and that will take everyone’s mind off our chaos!

The repercussions of the coup were bound to be many, and like uranium rods, they have a lengthy half-life. How much better to install a woman to suffer the fall-out than to put a man at risk!

Now patriarchal order has been restored, the woman has gone, the blokes can get back to their business, fighting an election. Mr Rudd proved himself to be exceptionally adept in 2007, let’s hope none of his gloss has faded in the intervening and humiliating years. That he can lead the ALP to victory seems as likely as me learning how to sew, but if he can save a few seats, that will be better than nothing.

I am now returning to my blog break. I’m knitting fruit, in an attempt to dissuade the  creatures that visit my kitchen every night from chewing on the real fruit in my full fruit bowl. Yes. A real woman keeps a full fruit bowl. When considering our political options, we should never forget that fact.

UPDATE ON CONVOY OF CLEAVAGE: WE ARE NOW IN THE NEW STATESMAN

Knitted fruit

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On being stoned by feminists, thank you Bob

22 Jun

They’ll stone you when you’re trying to be so good
They’ll stone you just like they said they would
They’ll stone you when you’re trying to go home
They’ll stone you when you’re there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

They’ll stone you when you’re walking on the street
They’ll stone you when you’re trying to keep your seat
They’ll stone you when your walking on the floor
They’ll stone you when your walking to the door
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

They’ll stone you when you’re at the breakfast table
They’ll stone you when you are young and able
They’ll stone you when you’re trying to make a buck
They’ll stone you and then they’ll say good luck
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

Well They’ll stone you and say that it’s the end
They’ll stone you and then they’ll come back again
They’ll stone you when you’re riding in your car
They’ll stone you when you’re playing you guitar
Yes But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned
Alright

Well They’ll stone you when you are all alone
They’ll stone you when you are walking home
They’ll stone you and then say they’re all brave
They’ll stone you when you’re send down in your grave
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

Rainy Day Woman. Bob Dylan. 

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So our Convoy wasn’t feminist? Bite me, baby.

20 Jun

See here, Convoy critics. I will do whatever I like with my breasts. If I want them in a montage of cleavage, I will put them there. I don’t care if you think this is an ineffective feminist action, or that I am not a feminist if I make it. Who are you to tell me what to do with my body?  Who are you to decide if I’m a feminist or not?

I don’t care if you think our convoy of cleavage was an ineffective protest. I never framed it as a protest. I said it was a frivolity that would achieve nothing. You imposed your own values on it, and then complained because it didn’t meet them.

We had no obligation to fulfil your expectations. Get off your arse and do it the way you want, instead of bitching and moaning that we didn’t do it for you.

I don’t care if you are angry because looking at our breasts will give guys a hard on. If you are angry about guys getting hard ons, take it up with them. Don’t tell me I can’t do what I like with my breasts because it will disturb “men.” Don’t tell me I can’t do what I like with my breasts because I’m playing into the hands of the patriarchy. Don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m doing cos brainwashed by the menz.

Actually, I think it’s the other way round. You are buying into patriarchy’s fear of women, and the myth of the power of our bodies to make men uncontrollably wild.

Personally, I have no problem with heterosexual men enjoying images of the female body. It seems pretty damn natural to me.

Years of patriarchy telling me what to do with my body, now Grace Collier and the feminists as well?

You find it sad that I can’t make a political point without using the “money [ie cum] shot?” It was my cleavage. I didn’t post an image of a man ejaculating on my face. Check this blog. See how many political points I can make. Wanna read my doctoral thesis and see how many political points I made in that? How about I send you any one of the many international conference papers I’ve presented, all of which make political points? Book chapters? Lectures? Articles? How very patriarchal of you to judge me by one shot of my cleavage, not my body of work.

I don’t know why you want to put me and all the other women involved down, for an innocuous display of our cleavage. I don’t care really, though I am an analyst  & I could give you a few theories. Suffice to say that your need to do this is your problem, not ours, and we’re not carrying it for you.

The Convoy of Cleavage was initiated and executed with an enormous amount of good will, joy, friendship, co-operation and laughter. A bunch of women, many of whom have never met, had a damn good time together, and made a point about sexism. It was a moment. It was never intended to be anything else.

UPDATE: WE ARE NOW IN THE HUFFINGTON POST WORLD SECTION.

Also in the UK Telegraph.

The Convoy featured in the UK Daily Mail, a Dutch paper and the Indian Deccan Chronicle.  Yes, we went global, and we find that very satisfying. Because of us, the sexist attacks on PM Gillard, and all women, got international coverage as part of our story. That was the icing on the cake for us.

We didn’t do it in a manner that met with your feminist approval?

Tough titty.

Convoy of Cleavage

This montage of images sent in by Twitter women who formed the Convoy of Cleavage was created and distributed by Destroy the Joint

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The Convoy of Cleavage. In which the breast strikes back.

17 Jun

After a week of astounding personal attacks on Prime Minister Julia Gillard, some of us Twitter women have decided we’re done with this shit, and we’re not taking it anymore.

The last straw (at least up to this morning) came yesterday, when AFR columnist and industrial relations consultant Grace Collier complained on ABC Radio National’s Sunday Extra that Ms Gillard had, offensively, according to Collier, revealed cleavage in the House of Representatives.

The PM had displayed too much flesh, Ms Collier declared, and in her professional opinion cleavage is inappropriate in the work place.

Bind your breasts, sisters, lest they cause any man or woman to be distracted from their tasks by that enemy of capitalism, desire.

It seems to me that if we are to stamp out this irrational horror of the female breast, (see DSM-V: Horror of and Repulsion Towards the Female Breast, A Disorder in Both Genders) we have little choice but to use immersion therapy, in which we expose Ms Collier and fellow sufferers to images of that which they so fear, in the informed hope that they may become desensitised, and return to their normal, hinged lives.

With this in mind I tweeted that obviously we must all post images of our cleavage on Twitter. This suggestion was enthusiastically received by one @MsBaileyWoof, herself a deceptively ditzy blonde with attitude who likes to sleep on picnic tables. In an astonishingly short time Ms Bailey Woof created the hash tag #convoyofcleavage which in turn was taken up by racy Twitter women who believe it’s time everyone accepted that women have breasts and got over it, to the best of their ability.

As MPs return to Canberra today, we hope women all over Australia will join us in our Convoy of Cleavage by posting images of yours, remembering of course to use the hash tag. The Convoy will be led by myself and women who have pledged to join me. (Don’t leave me hanging out there on my own, sisters. You won’t, will you?)

They didn’t!

Update: As I have now unveiled my breasts on Twitter, it seems cowardly not to do the same here. In solidarity with Ms Gillard, this is No Place for Sheep’s contribution to #ConvoyofCleavage

DSCN1988

But wait! There’s more! Understandably there will be women who do not feel comfortable making intimate images public. However, it appears that almost every one of Ms Gillard’s physical characteristics have been fair game for the loons. Please feel free to tweet images of your fingernails,your ear lobes, your hair, your glasses, your jackets, or, if you feel like it, your arse. Do use the same hash tag, in the interests of order.

Yes, this exercise is entirely frivolous and will achieve nothing. Yes, I expect we will be gored by Helen Razer (after Baudrillard) for our mindless capitulation to empty symbolism. Though as that lady recently posted an image of her own cleavage, struggling to escape an appallingly tasteless pink brassiere as she held aloft the dripping carcass of a Peking duck, maybe not.

For any of you who are uncertain about cleavage etiquette, here’s an excerpt from Seinfeld, in which Jerry instructs George on how to behave when two breasts loom.

Enjoy your day.

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Men who hate women are everybody’s problem.

13 Jun

It’s no surprise that there dwell among us packs of males, whose feelings about women are so conflicted that while outwardly conducting apparently reasonable relationships with females close to them, they display the most base hostility to women they perceive as different, and in some way dangerous.

It also comes as no surprise that this hostility is expressed in sexual terms. Our breasts and our genitals serve as a focus for the fear and hatred felt towards us by some men, all of whom have mothers, some of whom have wives and female lovers, many of whom have daughters and sisters. Our body shapes and our faces are also the focus for this hatred, and our physical characteristics are almost always the first object of complaint when such a man feels himself provoked by something we have or have not done.

What ought to really terrify us, apart from the frequently repressed fear of going about our daily lives amongst these marauding packs, fear we must repress or we’ll never get out of our front doors, is that some of them will likely soon form the government of this country.

The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has served as a lightening rod for woman hatred , but anyone who thinks it’s only about her needs to think again. Any one of us who crosses any one of those men will be treated in exactly the same way, because that is what they do. They have no idea how to do anything else, and they don’t care to find out.

These men, and the women who support them, will have control over an array of legislation that directly affects women in terms of our reproductive health, and child care, for example. If the ALP defeat is as catastrophic as is forecast, there will be little in place to curb their enthusiasm for controlling our lives. We must not have men who hate us and the women who support them, wielding such power over us. Read this piece, by Lenore Taylor, on the possibilities.

This is Tony Abbott’s statement on abortion

If the last few days of ugliness have shown us anything, it’s that there are men who hate women and women who will make excuses for them, fast heading into a situation where they will have an alarming degree of control over our bodies and our lives.

I know there are men who are disgusted and repulsed by the attitudes and actions of some of their fellows. You have to speak up. This is not just a problem for women. Anything you can do and say. Whenever you can do and say it.

It is a bizarre and isolating feeling, to live in a body that can be so vilified simply because it is female. The slurs may be directed against Ms Gillard in these latest instances, but they threaten every woman. Everyone needs to take a stand against those men who need to belittle women, in order to feel good about themselves. It isn’t fun. It isn’t just a joke. It’s a sick and perverted masculinity.

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Come September,vote with your reason not your emotions

11 Jun

Of all the scurrilous campaigns conducted by the Federal Opposition, and maniacally propagated by almost all the mainstream media, the erroneous suggestion that we vote for a leader when we elect a government in this country has to be one of the most dangerous.

Dangerous because it deliberately disguises the manner in which our Westminster political system actually works. We do not elect our leaders. We elect a party that is entirely responsible for electing its own leader. As we know all too well, a party can sack their leader, without consulting us, at any time.  Had any of us been in any doubt about this, it was made graphically obvious when the ALP defenestrated Kevin Rudd in  his first term as leader, and after he’d led them to an extraordinary victory.

Be that as it may.

I’ve heard and read of many people vowing that if the ALP now defenestrates Prime Minister Julia Gillard, they will never vote Labor again. While I can fully sympathise with this enraged despair, an expression of powerlessness if ever there was one, at the same time it is alarmingly nihilistic, and the country can ill-afford dramatic gestures at this point in our politics.

The ALP needs to get its house in order and earn back the trust it squandered with heart-stopping recklessness since 2007. It may well be doing this from the Opposition benches. Things may well have got so bad there really is no hope of them retaining government, no matter who leads them. But disillusioned as many of us are, we have to do our bit and use our heads, not our hearts. If there is any chance at all of minimising a Labor defeat, we have to take it. The alternative, a coalition government led by Tony Abbott, likely in place for decades, is simply too appalling to contemplate.

The notion that we vote for our leader is part of the Opposition campaign, which relies almost entirely on disseminating false information through the use of simplistic   narratives. The degree to which it has taken hold in the electorate is shocking. That we behave and vote as if we live in a presidential electoral system reveals a vast and profound ignorance of our reality, an ignorance the Opposition and certain sections of the media manipulates and exploits to its own advantage.

No matter how pissed off you are with those in the ALP who have brought us to this, look first to who is standing in your electorate, not to who will or will not be, temporarily, the leader. I know they don’t deserve our trust. But nobody deserves decades of a Coalition government, while the ALP languishes in greatly reduced numbers, as ineffective in opposition as they have been in dealing with their internal strife.

Come September, vote with you reason, not your emotion. And that way, perhaps the damage can be minimised.

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What a pity Tony Abbott didn’t stay in the seminary;Tony Soprano, & Moby

27 May

I woke this morning thinking of Tony Abbott, a rude awakening in anyone’s book.

What a pity Abbott didn’t stay in the seminary, and use the  Catholic church as his political playground, I thought. The rest of us would have been spared his rampant ambition, and who cares if he’d trashed the College of Cardinals if they refused him a red hat?

What a pity also, that Abbott wasn’t moved to realise his perhaps most outstanding natural talent, that of thespian.

It’s become clear  as we’ve progressed through the tortuous months since the ALP negotiated government, and since the day the LOTO failed to sell his arse in exchange for a ring of another kind, that Abbott has played whatever role his directors believed expedient.

We’ve watched Tony play the part of a highly offensive, sociopathically aggressive ambassador from the planet of negativity, whose speech patterns gave one reason to ponder whether or not the man was severely linguistically challenged.

Personally, I don’t think that role was difficult for him. It seemed to hint at his nature. Now he’s facing a far greater challenge – maintaining the role of  reasonable, statesmanlike Prime Minister in waiting. The emperor has new clothes.

I’ve heard Abbott described as “complex.” I don’t see it. Rather, I’d describe him as deeply shallow, so bereft of depth and complexity that he can easily be refashioned into the character his advisors believe he needs to be in order to win power. Abbott is an accomplished progenitor of ersatz complexity. He belongs in a Baudrillard text. I have gazed long upon this man, and I cannot find anything of substance in him. He reminds me of nothing as much as the replicants in the classic film, Blade Runner.

Complexity may well be present in Tony, deeply repressed in the interests of ambition. And in all fairness, he is not alone in his uncanny likeness to a replicant: it seems as if the only way to get ahead in Australian politics is to appear as robotic and unempathic as possible. Complexity, that richly human state, is apparently incompatible with what the majority of Australians want to see manifested in their leaders.

I predict that after six months of an Abbott government, many of us will be begging to have Kevin Rudd back. Mark my  words.

I’ve spent much of this last week bed and couch ridden, and fevered with flu. I re-watched three series of The Sopranos, including the episodes in which Tony Soprano, shot by his Uncle Junior, lies comatose in intensive care.

Now there’s a complex Tony. Even his shrink, Jennifer Melfi, is more than a little bit in love with his mercurial personality, though her own shrink, played to perfection by Peter Bogdanovich, reminds her constantly of Tony’s psychopathology, and urges her to ditch him as a patient.

Given his role in the bloody, death-strewn world of The Sopranos, Bogdanovich surprisingly wrote in 2012:

Today, there’s a general numbing of the audience. There’s too much murder and killing. You make people insensitive by showing it all the time. The body count in pictures is huge. It numbs the audience into thinking it’s not so terrible. Back in the ’70s, I asked Orson Welles what he thought was happening to pictures, and he said, “We’re brutalizing the audience. We’re going to end up like the Roman circus, live at the Coliseum.” The respect for human life seems to be eroding.

As far as our politicians are concerned, the respect for some human life seems to be eroding, while respect for other human life seems to be increasing beyond all proportion.

I had forgotten the haunting Moby song used so effectively to convey Tony Soprano’s state of mind as he wanders alone in the space between life and death. I don’t know that enjoy is the right word, but anyways:

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Justice

10 May

cixous-blog Helene Cixous

“I want to use this word: Justice. We do not think with justice. The world is not just. The  world-wide non-justice that we all know politically has spread all the way to our imaginations. It goes so far that we are not just with the earth, with the stars, with ground, with blood, with skin. In advance, and without our even being informed, everything is already ordered-classed according to a scale which gives primacy to one element over another. And power to one thing, or to one being over another. All the time. And in an unfounded manner.

So when I write…in the course of the writing, I am already in the process of shaking this all up. So that what is at the top stops being at the top by believing itself to be at the top; not so as to make the top fall towards the bottom, but so that the bottom has the same prestige, that it be restored to us with its treasures, with its beauties.

The other in all his or her forms gives me I. It is on the occasion of the other that I catch sight of me; or that I catch me at: reacting, choosing, refusing, accepting. It is the other who makes my portrait. Always. And luckily. The other is of all sorts, is also of diverse richness. The more the other is rich, the more I am rich. The other, rich, will make his or her richness resonate in me and enrich me. This is what people do not know in general, and it’s too bad…

Quint Buchholz

The world is mistaken. It imagines that the other takes something from us whereas the other only brings to us, all the time. The other is complex. He can be our enemy, and our friend. Our enemy is not necessarily bad. Our enemy also teaches us something. He does not necessarily teach us hate. He makes a sort of mysterious map of all our points of vulnerability appear.  He does not only teach us to defend ourselves. He teaches us to grow: because there are many possibilities to work with the enemy, when he is not death itself.”

Hélène Cixous. Rootprints.

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