{"id":1162,"date":"2014-12-01T16:04:59","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T14:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/filosofille.wordpress.com\/?p=861"},"modified":"2026-05-12T09:12:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T08:12:45","slug":"qa-51-optical-illusions-the-political-economy-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/qa-51-optical-illusions-the-political-economy-of\/","title":{"rendered":"QA 51. Optical illusions, the political economy of"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"My_Wife_and_My_Mother-In-Law_(Hill).svg\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

One image that can be seen in two distinct ways, but never both at once. Faces or a vase? Duck or rabbit? Crone or maiden? <\/span>Someone shows you: See, the old woman\u2019s chin is the young woman\u2019s throat!<\/em> All of a sudden, you do see. You start to switch the two back and forth, grinning like a kid. You can\u2019t believe your eyes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In times like ours, which call on us to think differently<\/em>, the skills of vacillation are good to cultivate. Look at it this way. We are all, more or less, caught in the thrall of a particular mode of thinking and its moral order. Call it Western hegemony or what you will, this dominant perspective prizes objectivity, reason and utility, and excels in categorisation, prediction and control. It conceives of humans as self-interested and separate beings that are concerned with their own being, and as winners and losers in competition for scarce resources. It is a view that marginalises and dismisses human tenderness, vulnerability and relatedness. But it knows a duck when it sees one!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\"duckrabbit\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

And clearly, we are ducks. There\u2019s plenty evidence of our waddling and quacking. All that\u2019s left to argue about is the kind of ducks we are, and how we should conduct ourselves and treat each other. If we don\u2019t like the dominant political order, we can appeal to its reason, build counter-arguments, rip through logical inconsistencies and fallacies. We can try to change the game or win the game \u2013 but we can\u2019t get off the board<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems to me that twentieth-century struggles for social justice followed this strategy. Call it \u201cspeaking truth to power\u201d. It also seems to me that this approach, as it developed into identity-based politics, has become less productive in its effect. Black people and women, even as some rise high in the order of things, find themselves hated more virulently than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resistance to the dominant order has also embraced heterogeneity against homogeneous normativity and liberal notions of universality. All ducks deserve equal rights, but not all ducks are the same! And perhaps we are seeing a limit to the returns on \u201cotherness\u201d when we see gender-based identities splintering across the alphabet, from gay to LGBTQIA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be clear: I\u2019m not dismissing struggles for inclusion and advancement. Not at all. But I don\u2019t think they\u2019re good enough on their own, and I think that this is becoming evident in the growing levels of violence we\u2019re facing \u2013 racial, sexual, economic, national, environmental, you name it. I\u2019m also not saying that we\u2019re not ducks or that we shouldn\u2019t try to be better ducks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I am pushing towards is, first, that our duckiness is perceived from one \u2013 currently very powerful \u2013 perspective. And second: the exclusive authority of that view is an illusion. (Look, you can see the duck\u2019s bill as the ears of a rabbit.<\/em>) And third: if we conceive of identity and humanness differently, we will find ourselves in a different light. With space to move, new dimensions of possibility. With delight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One way to do this is to bring what was marginalised \u2013 our inter-relatedness and tenderness \u00ad\u2013 into the centre of human meaning. Emmanuel Levinas made this his career, pointing out that our responsibility for the lives of others is both unreasonable and irrefutable. The heart also has its reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can take seriously our identity as this unique \u201cfirst person singular\u201d, a living heart-mind-sensorium always in relation to reality and truth. Such contemplation gives rise to a self-awareness otherwise than \u2013 perhaps transcendent of \u2013 either an egoic will-to-power or the consciousness of one\u2019s class or category. Michel Foucault\u2019s work on different techniques of governance and the self is helpful here. Levinas and Walter Benjamin also help us to see language from two views \u2013 as expression and relatedness before and beyond any content the words may carry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t a case of duck-aversive wishful thinking: we need to validate this phenomenological\/ethical rabbit perspective<\/span> as rigorously and precisely as any other. We can always get it wrong. But when we need to undo the power that keeps all the ducks in a row, perhaps this other view will dispel the lie that we are this and only this<\/em>. Perhaps it will help us to recognise each other differently. Perhaps it will encourage us to acknowledge and depend on our self-reliant interdependence. And perhaps, when we do, we will find that we have been doing so all along, in the dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(With thanks to Ghassan Hage and Sasha White for recent writings.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One image that can be seen in two distinct ways, but never both at once. Faces or a vase? Duck or rabbit? Crone or maiden? Someone shows you: See, the old woman\u2019s chin is the young woman\u2019s throat! All of a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,111,142],"tags":[255,256,257,114,258,259,260],"class_list":["post-1162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-philosophy-as-emancipation","category-thinking-out-loud","tag-duckrabbit","tag-foucault","tag-identity-politics","tag-levinas","tag-optical-illusion","tag-thinking-differently","tag-walter-benjamin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2329,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162\/revisions\/2329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}