Hi Jerry,
i appreciate your noting the issues i wrote about here:
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>>your gestures towards empathy are not unappreciated, the "if i were...'
>>but in theory,
>>you are not anyone else than who you are, and if you are not willing to
>>reflect on that,
>>then everything else is gratuitous, isn't it?
>>if i were i white guy with tenure, i'd be a really cool person.
>>if i were black i'd totally understand ghetto culture.
>>if i were hispanic, i'd totally support Taco Bell... and J-Lo, and ...
>>whatever.
>>
>>i CAN'T know what it's like to be anyone other than who i am.
>>if "IFs" and "BUTs" were candies and nuts, we ALL would fill our pockets.
>
>I'm sorry, but this just seems too glib and dismissive to me.
yes, ok. it was glib, but the sentiment, i think, still has merit.
> In my view,
>so much important learning comes from our more-or-less successful attempts
>to "put ourselves in the position of the other" that I cannot accept,
>politically, pedagogically, or epistemologically, this counsel of despair.
i wasn't describing despair, i don't think, but rather a limitation of the
assumption
that i - or anyone _ can "put" myself in the position of the other.
what i CAN do, i think, is better understand my relation to the other,
but i can't actually know what it is like to be "that" other - i can't
know what it is like
to grow up black in America, which is not to say i can't make the effort
to understand the relations of racism,
and my relations to racism as a white woman.
but i won't ever know what it is like to be a black person.
this doesn't mean i don't feel empathy towards those who are suffering.
what i meant when writing is
that empathy is in recognizing a "feeling" in an other, in remembering
how a particular feeling feels, - but it is NOT about assuming i can
actually
know that person's feelings, i can't put myself in the place of an other.
that's an arrogance of a specific kind, really.
>
>Indeed, if we borrow a leaf from Y. Sayeki's "anthropomorphic
>epistemology", one can even come to a better understanding of the world by
>"putting oneself in the position" of, say, a particle moving at close to
>the speed of light!
this would be interesting.
it's not the same, of course, of assuming i could put myself in the place
of a Chinese refugee who has spent life savings and is suffocating in the
hold of a rusted barge,
or that i can put myself in the place of Jewish survivor the Holocaust.
it has to be about the relationship of self/other, doesn't it? not just
taking over the other
by assuming their place?
diane
************************************************************************************
"Things do not change: people change."
Henry David Thoreau
*************************************************************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
vancouver, bc
mailing address: 46 broadview avenue, pointe claire, qc, H9R 3Z2
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