Same, same but different
SHOULD we think of each other as similar or different? In
Ghanian- American philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah invites us to disrupt the “discourse of difference,” which entails treating each other in terms of our differences. This discourse promotes fragmentation; and in turn, this fragmentation constrains meaningful political action because it prevents the formation of “a coherent alternative view,” Appiah argued. Thus, he recommended freeing ourselves from the limitations of this way of thinking to enable us “to create coalitions for change.”
The “inscription of difference…” plays into the hands of the “hegemons,” Appiah argued. It’s not the oppressed that proclaims her otherness but the oppressor who tautologically uses that otherness as the basis for oppressing others.
How hegemons use the discourse of difference to perpetuate their power was eloquently expressed by Filipino philosopher Narcisa Paredes-Canilao in her series of questions in Arguing that difference is an “elitist discourse,” Paredes-Canilao argued that difference is a “one-sided, nonreversible discourse tailor-made for the imperial ego, the colonizer, the master.” Then, elaborating on her point, she asked:
“First, does the desire to preserve the alterity of the Other arise from a recognition that it is in the Other’s interest to be respected as an irreducible Other? Or is it simply motivated by the ‘supreme pleasure of swallowing an indigestible other,’ or by the desire for ‘the bottomless’? Second, does the Other also desire to be swallowed whole? Was not Jonah so terri-
whale? And would the Other prefer to be treated as different from, rather than as sharing a common humanity with, the imperial self? Which one really led to colonialism or the Holocaust or which is a more potent antidote to (wo) man’s inhumanity to (wo)man,
with the Other?”
Both Appiah and ParedesCanilao highlight how hegemons use the discourse of difference to rule over others. By fragmenting us, hegemons are then poised to conquer us. But I don’t think it’s division that drives hegemons to conquer. It might as well be that fragmentation preexisted the conquest; and that hegemons just exploited the existing difference by making it the constitutive characteristic of those they seek to subdue. Framed like that, the more pressing question then is, what underlies this drive to conquer?
As the discourse of difference constructs the otherness of the other, it also informs the narrative of exceptionality of hegemons, or to use Paredes-Canilao’s words, of their “imperial self.” Several tropes of exceptionality litter history, such as “God’s chosen people” and the “master race.”
The drive to conquer is driven by the belief in one’s exceptionality. Claim to exceptionality is born
- ence. A discourse that perceives the distance between one’s self and the other not as horizontal distance but a vertical one. In this kind of distance, one constructs a hierarchy of difference, and on top of it the imperial self enthrones itself.
difference be countered by a discourse of similarity, of an undifferentiated humanity, a universal notion of what it means to be human?
In
American political theorist and feminist Iris Marion Young exposed the failure of universal citizenship in treating each citizen as equals. Instead of delivering its promise of equality to all citizens, citizenship “operated in fact as a demand for homogeneity.” So, wouldn’t the idea of universal humanhood just end up like the universal citizenship Young argued against?
Young argued that the terms of similarity is set by hegemons. By imposing uniformity, hegemons secure their position. After all, resistance is born out of difference and not of conformity. Thus, if the discourse of difference is used to divide and conquer, the discourse of similarity is a tool to keep the conquered in line.
So where do we go from here? How can we avoid both dangers? I suggest three
First, begin with oneself. Avoiding the dangers of both discourses requires one to resist the imperial tendency of one’s ego. Remember what Socrates said: “Let him that
Second, it’s not similarity or difference that is dangerous. The danger lies not in the awareness but in the use of similarity or difference. The imperial self simultaneously wants to impose difference in vertical terms in order to construct the narrative of its exceptionality and similarity to remain on the throne of supremacy.
Resistance to subjugation must necessarily be accompanied by resistance to the temptation of being the subjugator. And this entails learning solidarity, which Portuguese sociologist Bonaventura de Sousa Santos describes as “a form of knowledge” born out of “the recognition of the other both as an equal whenever difference makes her or him inferior and as different whenever equality jeopardizes his or her identity.”
And third, instead of thinking ofourselves in terms of similarity or difference, perhaps it is better to view ourselves as the vessel of both convergence and contradiction. That entails viewing the self and the other in their totality and complexity. We are same, same but different.