“To call our own world post-colonial is to mask the persistence of colonial and neo-colonial relations; it is also to ignore that, just as there was always a first world in every third world, there was always a third world in every first world. Yet the recognition of this lack of distance is postcolonial, indeed postmodern, at least to the degree that the modern world was often imagined in terms of spatial oppositions not only of culture but of nature, city and country, but also of metropolitan core and imperial periphery, the West and the Rest.” (Foster, 1996; 216)
The final chapter of The Return of the Real by Hal Foster gives a critical account of poststructuralism’s relationship with otherness. Foster’s perspicacious comments are striking considering what we see happening now, described in today’s papers as, “…a 21st-century civil war. No shots will be fired, but the divisions run deep.” (Hutton, 2017) Whether or not you believe this sentiment (and I tend to), it is hard to deny that society is facing enormous conundrums to do with how the West, which has so long-lived with delusions of grandeur fuelled by a sense of superiority, learns to live with the rest many of whom are forced to escape areas no longer tenable due to a number of well-documented reasons, and in some case we might argue, are outcomes of western policy.
In The Return of the Real Foster says that western post modernism, having explored its identity crisis in relation to otherness, in fact suppressed otherness while attempting resolution. (217) With the appointment of Donald Trump, the near election of Marine Le Pen, our own politicians’ pandering to terror, what was suppressed has apparently erupted and the ‘extreme narcissism’ (216) of the west is left facing itself in abject panic. This, combined with poststructuralism’s failure, as Foster says, “to answer the Fanonian demand for recognition,” continuing, to “project the other as an outsider” (217), has resulted in tensions arising to the point of breaking. And so here we are facing a wave of fascistic sentiment which at the moment, on a really bad day, looks like it is threatening to destroy so much progress made since the Enlightenment.
Acknowledging cultural bias is perhaps one way of addressing these problems. For a long time most people would not admit to any form of ‘ist – sex, race, size etc. But the bias is deeply embedded and infects the way we all view the world (Stafford, 2017) . In terms of course work for Section 1, how one approaches asking others to be in photographs might benefit from some careful thought. Some of the ideas I have are about how to represent difference without the gaping, open-mouthed attitude of the ‘super tourist visiting natives and bringing back news of their exotic doings and strange gear’. (Sontag, 1971; 42) Last night I lay awake wondering about how to approach these projects, and this morning was delighted to read, “There is only one thing worth making art about, Alberto Giacometti has decided, and that is our common humanity.” (Jones, 2017) This chimes with some sense and ideas I have, and so the review of the Giacometti exhibition, which I cannot wait to get to since he in one of my very favourite artists, was perfectly timed. How does any of this fit in with Hal Foster’s bleak summation of post-modernism?
He discusses splitting, a term I am familiar with having read an inordinate amount about fragmented egos; ” a moral splitting, the paradox of disgust undercut by fascination, or of sympathy undercut by sadism; and a splitting of the body image, the ecstasy of dispersal rescued by armouring , or the fantasy of disembodiment dispelled by abjection.” (222) He goes on to describe the sort of mentality that we witness currently, where a society which knows so much about the unpalatable in humanity has to face up to its long-held delusion; ‘it cannot happen to me’ (222). This is what I was exploring in the images I took in Calais when I talked about non-western ‘news items’ suddenly appearing on our own shores in the form of the Jungle, which looked like a shanty town somewhere ‘foreign’. And it is perhaps why during the previous twelve months we’ve seen such extreme ambivalence towards even the most familiar others becoming ‘acceptable’.
Splitting is a “defence mechanism universally seen in people” (Eddy and Kreger, 2011; loc 197) with personality disorders that results in those affected seeing others as either all bad or all good. Difference cannot be tolerated or resolved. The self is never fully formed because the other can never been identified as a realistic separate entity. If one were to rely on Lacan’s model which describes a mirror stage we might say the sort of splitting we may be witnessing is down to a fragmented and stunted ego that never reached the possibility of individuation. Perhaps we see clear evidence of this stunted societal ego when we read through the infantilised arguments people from all walks of life engage in online. The column by Will Self which I referred to in UVC A5 includes a line that says: “Indeed, there may not be any need to tell the others where the food is in the future, because in an important sense there are no others.” (2016) He refers to the way people may be evolving beyond the need for storytelling, although I argue in my essay that language itself is evolving and while there is much to be concerned about, our evolutionary journey is by definition always evolving (until it stops and we are no longer relevant). One of the results of a fragmented and stunted ego is the inability to see and value others, common in people with a disordered personality, and there have been several books written about how our society displays behaviours and traits indicative of various disorders. Whatever faults we may find in these arguments, and of course there are some, we do appear to have entered a dark and freighting time where concern for other is overridden by fear.
As I approach the first exercises for Self & Other all of these things are on my mind. How does one represent other; what even is other; are we as a society too infantile, too unformed to envision other realistically; as we cope with the terrifying fantasy of a future-us merged with technology, have we given up on other altogether?
Eddy, W. and Kreger, R. (2011). Splitting. 1st ed. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.
Field, S. (2017). What is reality, Assignment 5 UVC. [Blog] UVC Sarah-Jane Field. Available at: https://uvcsjf.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/assignment-5.pdf [Accessed 9 May 2017].
Hutton, W. (2017). Never before in my adult life has the future seemed so bleak for progressives | Will Hutton. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/06/never-in-my-adult-life-has-future-seemed-so-bleak-for-progressives?CMP=share_btn_tw [Accessed 9 May 2017].
Jones, J. (2017). Giacometti review – a spectacular hymn to human survival. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/may/08/giacometti-tate-modern-london-review?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=225097&subid=11118875&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2 [Accessed 9 May 2017].
Foster, H. (2009). The return of the real. 1st ed. Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.]: MIT Press, pp.216, 217, 222.
Self, W. (2016). Will Self: Are humans evolving beyond the need to tell stories?. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/25/will-self-humans-evolving-need-stories [Accessed 6 Jan. 2017].
Sontag, S. (1971). On photography. 4th ed. London: Penguin Books.
Stafford, T. (2017). This map shows what white Europeans associate with race – and it makes for uncomfortable reading. [online] The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/this-map-shows-what-white-europeans-associate-with-race-and-it-makes-for-uncomfortable-reading-76661 [Accessed 9 May 2017].
SJFSelf&Other 