On the Feline Negation of Otherness

Selfie with Cat (01-01-20)

 

I. 

 

Many thinkers in various disciplines, including philosophy, like to affirm a notion of otherness - or radical alterity, as Baudrillard describes it. 

 

In other words, they wish to acknowledge the Other in all its difference and dissimilarity; as the alien non-self, which challenges the notion of a unified and universal identity and/or models of insular cultural narcissism based on such an ideal.   

 

The ethical proposition is that the Other is both prior and in some sense preferable to the self-same; a transcendent element whose loss seriously impoverishes the world. 

 

But my cat isn't having any of this; she happily attempts to negate the otherness of the world around her and make all things familiar and smell the Same. And she does this by scent marking ...       

 

 

II.

  

Encountering any new object in her environment, Cat will immediately mark it with her scent and, in doing so, she's not not simply declaring her own presence, but, as I say, nullifying otherness. In other words, by rubbing up against something she effecively rubs it out; it's a form of erasure more than self-expression.  

 

I like to think, of course, that when she jumps up on the desk and rubs her face against mine, she's being affectionate and that this is a form of social bonding, etc. But I'm also aware that she's attempting to rid me of my human stench (my odoriferous otherness), so that she can just about tolerate my presence in the room.

 

 

The Possibility of an Island: Reflections on the Case of John Allen Chau and the Sentinelese

There exists in the midst of time

The possibility of an island

The recent case of the American missionary John Allen Chau, killed by members of an isolated tribe, the Sentinelese, for encroaching in the name of Love on their remote island home, raises many fascinating and ethically-complex questions:

What is our duty - if any - towards these people? Should we leave them to continue living as they have always lived; or should we assimilate them into our world? Should we try to protect them as if some kind of endangered species; or should we exterminate them?

It seems to me, that since there are so few of them - probably no more than a 100 - and since they present no real threat (unless provoked), then we should let them be; particularly as they have made it very clear that they don't want anything to do with us.

Like it or not, these men and women are not as we are: they are literally savages - a word that, as Lawrence says, is not merely a term of racist reproach. For the Sentinelese are "savage with [their] own peculiar consciousness, [their] own peculiar customs and observances" and we should neither idealise them nor deny their radical alterity.      

One would hope that even those who preach globalism and universal humanism (or, indeed, subscribe to a fanatic monotheism), might allow la possibilité d'une île and leave the remnants of an older, savage mankind "to live their own life, fulfil their own ends in their own way".

For I think Lawrence is right: to be confronted with an aboriginal people such as the Sentinelese is a kind of test upon us; for they are so absolutely in our power at last. If we can't let them be and abstain from interfering in their lives, then we may as well round 'em up and put them in a zoo, or simply shoot them now ...

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'O! Americans!', The Poems, Vol. III, ed. by Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 1563-67.

Love and Hate in a Very Cold Climate

Katja Hietala: founder of the Sisters of Kyllikki

Photo: AFP/Sam Kingsley 

For idealists, driven by a will to love and insistent upon the notion of a universal humanity, the acceptance of strangers and embrace of foreignness is a desperate moral duty.  

Thus it is, for example, that the Sisters of Kyllikki in a determined effort to make migrants feel welcome and demonstrate what a kind and tolerant people the Finns are, have taken to the streets distributing smiles and heart-shaped cards that grant permission to hug and carry other positive messages. 

Quite what the women of Cologne and other German cities who were assaulted on New Year's Eve think of this one can only wonder. But I do know that despite what the Sisters of Kyllikki may believe, not everyone wants to be assimilated into a coercive system of reciprocated emotion in which they have no choice but to love and be loved; a system which is happy to generate superficial difference and cultural diversity, but which refuses to conceive of genuine otherness. That is to say, a form of radical alterity that may very well be violently antagonistic. 

Why can't privileged white liberals ever quite accept that not everyone wants to be like them? That many feel an almost visceral aversion towards them and what they represent, decisively rejecting what they have to offer. This feeling of hate might be rooted in class, race, religion or a combination of these things. But it's a profound and authentic form of passion that makes our own feelings and values look pale and feeble in comparison. 

Baudrillard understands the hate of the un-Enlightened Other better than anyone. In an interview with François Ewald, he says:

"There's something irremediable, irreducible in this. We can offer them all the universal charity we are capable of, try to understand them, try to love them - but there is in them a kind of radical alterity that does not want to be understood, and that will not be understood."

Ominously, Baudrillard warns:

"I have the impression that the gulf is hardening and deepening between a culture of the universal and those singularities that remain. These people cannot allow themselves offensive passions; they don't have the means for them. But contempt is still available to them. I believe they have a profound contempt for us; they dislike us with an irreducible feeling of rejection." 

    

Islamic terrorism is only the most extreme and overt form of this contempt; "a passion of radical vengeance, a kind of absolute reversion that's not about to subside" anytime soon. But, I would suggest, the imported phenomenon of taharrush gamea can also be analysed from the theoretical perspective of hate.      

Thus, despite the good offices of Angela Merkel and the huggy women of Finland, one suspects things are going to become increasingly ambiguous in Europe as we wake up to the fact that the world is governed not by a principle of Love and Unity, but by the irreconcilability of evil.


See: Jean Baudrillard, 'Hate: A Last Sign of Life', interview with François Ewald, trans. Brent Edwards, in From Hyperreality to Disappearance, ed. Richard G. Smith and David B. Clarke, (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), pp. 132-42. Lines quoted are on pp. 133-34.