tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post5213171365063525146..comments2024-03-15T00:12:57.489-07:00Comments on Covenant Zone: Waiting for Achilles Godottruepeershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-23922964957154578332010-07-11T23:53:09.717-07:002010-07-11T23:53:09.717-07:00Normalcy bias? You mean human nature? Yes, we thi...Normalcy bias? You mean human nature? Yes, we think in received norms and paradigms; and our society is presently trapped in a victimary normal that knows little else than to create ever new victims of what the powerful (who deny they are powerful) deem to be the invidiously hegemonic (white, bourgeois) "normal", with Muslims still being seen as the former and not yet as "normal" or hegemonic.<br /><br />But from whence comes the desire to offer a generally critical attitude towards normalcy, while presuming one is not oneself interested in norms? - isn't that the epitome of the romantic norm, what Rene Girard call the "romantic lie", the lie that the romantic hero alone does not suffer normalcy? You know about conformity hippies but what about anti-hippie/Muslim conformity?<br /><br />You're waiting for some hero to come and save us because all our problems will be solved one day with a few well executed thrusts at a stagnant culture? That's romantic normalcy bias, as if the sheer demographic weight of all those resentfully on the margins of the global economy can somehow be discounted if only we say so... as if we are not hamstrung by our circa 1945 knowledge of where are destructive powers and scapegoating desires can lead.<br /><br />Human beings need norms and they need also mis-takes of norms. Let us embrace both and try to understand their anthropological purposes. A new politics can only come from our rigorous pursuit of new norms by pursuing the inevitable mis-takes in articulations of the old norms under pressure of changing realities. (E.g., ask, "Just why do you demonize a Muslim woman who was denied her basic rights when, as a girl, her genitals were forcibly cut? - What are we to make of this mistake in victimary culture? It's a mis-take in terms of previous leftist-feminist thought...) We have to turn these mistakes, where potentially revelatory, into new ways of seeing and talking. That's a form of waiting, yes, but it's an active waiting, a struggle to advance real victims in the name of real human rights.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25624602.post-30628954636945157222010-07-11T12:06:35.710-07:002010-07-11T12:06:35.710-07:00It's a long piece, I know, and it hurts my eye...It's a long piece, I know, and it hurts my eyes to go through so much on the screen. I hope you all find it worth the strain.Daghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664271893389366772noreply@blogger.com