Class 5 - The Meaning of Difference.

Welcome

Today, we’re going to explore this next chapter by Kapuściński, and we’ll be talking about the Meaning of Difference.

Check in

First, we’ll spend seven or eight minutes checking in to say hello!

Overview

Let’s look at an overview of this chapter. Kapuściński proceeds by giving a kind of historical argument about the different eras that characterise European contact with non-European Others.

1. The era of merchants and envoys
2. The era of geographical “discoveries” — or of conquest, slaughter and plunder
3. The era of Enlightenment / humanism / openness
4. The present-day era, involving three turning points: anthropology, Levinas and multiculturalism.

We’ll talk more about these turning points in a moment. But before we do, let’s have a think through Kapuściński’s arguments.

Initial discussion

We’ll now go into groups, and I want you to talk about the following questions:

1. In the passage that you just read, what struck you as interesting or insightful?
2. What struck you as problematic or simply wrong?
3. What is Kapuściński’s overall argument in this chapter?

Group Discussion

We’ll feed back in the main group.

Turning Points

It might be useful to unpack the argument in more detail. In this chapter, Kapuściński refers to three significant turning points, which are:

1. Anthropology
2. The philosopher Levinas
3. Multiculturalism

We’re going to talk about the first two of these today, and about multiculturalism in the next class.

Turning Point 1

For Kapuściński, the discipline of anthropology marked a turning point because it showed that diverse cultures were much richer and more sophisticated than we imagined.

It showed that we can’t take the Other for granted, and that human difference is complex. And one reason it did this was through a tradition of reportage that is ethnographic writing that comes from fieldwork.

Turning Point 2: Levinas and the Other

This passage in the text is complicated, and Levinas is one of the hardest 20th century philosophers to read. It will take us too far off the point to explore him in great depth. But we need to know in outline what he is saying, so we can understand this passage from our shared reading. What is radical about Levinas is that sometimes, when we think about Otherness, we think that the main ethical demand is to find common ground. But for Levinas, when we encounter another, it is their otherness that is the beginning of ethics.

To find out more about Levinas, let’s watch this video from Dr. Ellie Anderson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA8x_0wekf4&t=100s. There’s one term that is important to understand before we watch this, and that is the term “alterity”, which means the state or condition of being Other.

This is really difficult material. You may be lost or confused. But let’s do our best and see what sense we make of the passage.

Make notes on these questions as you listen.

1. What are the main arguments in this video?
2. What is totality or totalising?
3. What does it mean to say that the Other person is absolutely other?
4. What is being said here about the erotic relationship with the Other.
5. What are the implications of Levinas’s view of the other as far as you understand this view?

Turning Point 3: Multiculturalism

We’ll talk about this after the break, and in the next session.

Break!

Let’s have a tea break to rest our brains.

Breakout Group Discussion

Let’s talk through the five questions I asked earlier in breakout groups. Then we’ll feed back to the main room.

All Group Discussion: What’s up with Levinas!

We’ll try and get a sketched outline of Levinas’s point of view before we move on.

Thinking about Multiculturalism

Let’s now turn to the final topic, that of multiculturalism. If we have time, we’re going to do a short writing exercise exploring the question:

What are the limits of multiculturalism?

Homework

For your homework for the next session, I want you to read one more chapter — it’s a short one — on multiculturalism. It’s chapter 3 of the text by Kapuściński.

Please post at least one question you have about the reading on the discussion board. (Graded task). The deadline for this is by the end of tomorrow.