Privilege: What, me worry?

I was thinking lately how annoying most people are. Family members--they are only rarely the people you would choose to know. Work colleagues--academics generally tend to be less than socially adept. People in my town--honestly, Geneva may have an oddly high percentage of unattractive people. What I should say, after apologizing for my arrogance, is that Geneva also has a very high unemployment rate and the low rents and available distribution loci for social services render it a plausible location for much needed homes and services for the disabled. At any rate, my point is that many of the people one interacts with on an everyday basis are not ideal.

So, what do we do? Some of us look for virtual connections or connections enabled by access to the same technologies and talents. We may seek to interact with people all over the world, people more like us than the people next door. And, the more privileged surround themselves with supporters and yes men. They can live in gated communities, fly on private planes, have staff to negotiate the messy annoyances of every day life.

The less fortunate have to deal with these annoyances--perhaps the annoyances that I cause or that are caused by people like me. The secretary who has to deal with my lateness, the housekeeper who deals with my flightiness, the telemarketer who bears the wrath of my rage. People who can't move, who can't deflect the annoyances of other people--they feel what it means to lack privilege--the privilege of not being bothered, put out, or having to deal with other people.

Comments

[Craig]

I've often been puzzled by the contradiction between my professional life as a 'sociologist', my political committments to a vaguely radical left wing vision, and my private life as a misanthrope. I really bitched out a telemarketer the other day. Two, actually, one on the phone (at the cottage, so I think it was excusable) and another at my house. In my defense, the guy at my house (door to door) wouldn't leave and kept saying, "I just want to save you money." And I kept saying, "Get the fuck off my driveway."

We left Toronto because we had trouble dealing with the people and moved to a small town (about 6000). Same problems. Our next place will be on a dirt road and be a couple kilometers from our nearest neighbour.

[Mark Kaplan]

Sorry to be, erm, annoying, but i've got my old url back (it was stolen): charlotte-street.blogspot.com.

[marcegoodman]

Jodi, your post (and Craig's comment) keenly articulate a dilemma that, I would say, merits at least a week or so's attention at Long Sunday or wherever.

Zizek's anecdotal references to his aversion to sharing dishes when eating Chinese food out with others and to unpleasant encounters with "repulsive" relatives simply highlight one of his consistent theoretical preoccupations.

I am reminded of this passage from one of Rosenzweig’s letters (cited by Santner in “Miracles Happen”):

The small—at times exceedingly small—thing called [by Goethe] ‘demand of the day’ [Forderung des Tages] which is made upon me in my position at Frankfurt, I mean the nerve-wracking, picayune, and at the same time very necessary struggles with people and conditions, have now become the real core of my existence—and I love this form of existence despite the inevitable annoyance that goes with it.

For me, this is one of the most extraordinary religious statements I have ever read. When I first encountered this quote in Santner’s book on Rosenzweig and Freud, I felt the ground shift beneath me.

[pebird]

First of all it's impossible to be misanthrophic toward telemarketers.

While I normally oppose the death penalty for crimes of passion, I'm willing to consider it for those poor kids who labor for $10 / hour to call and "save me money".

For me, it's not the people per se, but the relationships they represent. In the old days, unless you were a Willy Loman type, there was a certain tongue-in-cheek from those that had to perform these anti-value services.

Now, too many of them take it seriously and it's where we encounter the late capital real, so to speak, annoying intrusive mini-traumatic encounters with people who willingly give up the responsibilities of being human and choose to harrass the rest of us. With a smile on their face. For those of us nominally opposed to the current state of things, it's doubly bothering.

I hope this sounds like whining, because it is. And the title of Jodi's post is well-thought - Privilege. We need a good long talk about this - for when we feel privilege, feel entitled, we support an inertia and oppose intrusions.

It's the reason I believe the country voted for Bush in 2004, he represented the privilege that American feel entitled to - the "promise".

As long as that is delivered in some form, we look the other way.

To go back to old-left history - the concept of privilege was the supposed reason behind why workers in the West never supported radical change. So there is a history of thinking this through - but this never resonated very deep with me.

Privilege appears simple, but it certainly is powerful - it affects us deeply. I'm wondering how it works. If there is a good set of theories out there that have addressed this, please point me to them, anything to keep from answering the door.

[Kim Dot Dammit]

I hate when telemarketers intrude in my home. I hate it, hate it, hate it. Not because of the telemarkters but because suddenly whatever company/business they are mareketing is in my house where I didn't invite them. They have invaded my personal/private space. On the other hand, I undersstand that the life of a telemarketer is not exactly the high life, so I usually just say, "I'm sorry. I know your job sucks, but I'm going to hang up now." Then I hang up on them. Now of course, 90% of the telemarketers who call me are from India where it costs a hell of a lot less (see stats on unemployment in Deleware -- former US telemarketing hub on this front) -- and I find myself so angry, frustrated, and depressed by the global economy that has led to telemarketers from India landing in my living room during dinner that I have no choice but to just hang up the phone because I am overwhelmed by the Deep Dark Hole of Political Despair. Anyway you look at it, telemarketing sucks.

[Jodi]

It would be good to have some kind of symposium on privilege. I don't know the literature around it, so we'll need to ask around for suggestions about what my be good to read to set up and interesting discussion.

I'm moved by the passage from Santner/Rosenzweig that Marc cited. What I wonder about is the status of love in the passage. Is this a love that gives life meaning or is it a kind of embeddedness in the mundane that saps one's ability to love better? or is it maybe the recognition of the mundane that is part of life and that we only attempt to transcend or overcome at the cost of a certain undeadness?

On telemarketers: I'm Kim in the hole of political dispair over global capitalism rather than setting up a bunch of guillotines. People gotta eat. Unfortunately in the US, they often gotta have a car because public transportation is lousy and cheap housing is often far away from job sites. I'd rather seize and nationalize the auto industries and force them to develop public transportation, seize and nationalize real estate holdings and force the development of adequate housing, and, while I'm at it, seize and nationalize all private wealth at, ok, I'll be conservative here, over a million dollars and begin massive redistribution. Will stuff get screwed up and misdirected during all this? sure, but it can't be any worse than what we have.

[pebird]

I'm with you Jodi - the irony intended in my "outrageous" statements doesn't always translate well in comments.

But the frustration you pointed out initially is real, or at least I also feel it (as a symptom? of what?). And I don't want to literally string people up (at least not the telemarketing workers).

But I have been thinking about the psychology of privilege and how it is constructed and reproduced (deliberately in many cases by mass culture) in order to reinforce this us vs. them pseudo-conflict within the class of working folks.

[Jodi]

Yeah--I didn't think you really wanted to kill them--and the frustration and anger is so real, like you say, we should try to consider and better understand how this sense of privilege is reproduced, how violations of it feed our anger, how our anger becomes targeted at those unfortunates who violate our sense of privilege, and how all this benefits as larger system of the very, very, very privileged.

[Craig]

I've been interested in comments like this for a weeks now: when we say, "I want to kill so-and-so" or "I'm so angry I could kill him" or when we wish an accident upon someone (there are neighbours I don't like across the street, they park their car on the road, someone crashed their car into their parked car, my only regret was that my neighbours weren't injured)... How real is this violence? How are these fantasies different from the fantasies of so-called 'homegrown terrorists' (be they in London, Toronto, Oklahoma, or, now, Miami)?

This is a serious question, even if it doesn't read like it. The so-called Toronto terrorists listed among their goals a desire to storm Parliament Hill and decapitate the Prime Minister with a hatchet. Seriously: *who doesn't have this fantasy*? Who hasn't wanted to kill a politician or shoot a cop?

I'll likely find myself on some terror watchlist for saying these things... but I think these fantasies are fundamental and are always just below the surface.

Dangerous thread: nationalization, revolution, and decapitation!

[Bibliochef]

I love murder mysteries, so I thnk a lot about fantasy killing of peoplel (I even asked the question on my blog, Cooking with Ideas -- What wouldyou kill for?)

Maybe another question is about imagining ourselves being the one killed. For example, have any of us worked as telemarketers? I have definitly been a secretary to academics in my pre-professorial life, which sometimes helps me imagine their lives better. While undertheorized, perhaps, maybe the question is not killing them but imagining them?

[marcegoodman]

Jodi,

Your questions on the status of love in this passage are very apt.

Here is a possible answer from Santner (which incidentally serves as a summary of his book):

What Freud and Rosenzweig have done, then, is to elaborate the ethical relation introduced into the world by Judeo-Christian monotheism--love of God as love of neighbor--as the basis of a distinctly modern ethical conception: my ability to endure the proximity of the Other in their "moment of jouissance," the demonic and undying singularity of their metaethical selfhood (in Freud's view, it is perhaps only psychoanalysts who--at least ideally--embody this ethical attitude). To put it most simply, the Other to whom I am answerable has an unconscious, is the bearer of an irreducible and internal otherness, a locus of animation that belongs to no form of life. To cite Freud's characterization of the Ratman, the face of the Other to whom I am answerable is one that in some form or another manifests a "horror at pleasure of his own of which he himself [is] unaware."

Googling around for the possibility of cutting and pasting the above passage landed me at this preface
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:egUjB5NJkTkJ:www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/current.issue/15.2terada.html+%22metaethical+selfhood%22%2Bsantner&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2
to this set of three essays
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/toc/pmc15.2.html
(alas only available to Muse subscribers)
grouped under the heading "Ethics and the Politics of Proximity".

Which in turn bolstered my suspicion that proximity might well be considered prior to privilege.

And here is an interview with Michael Hardt towards the very end of which he speaks (also referencing "Christian and Judaic traditions") of "politics as a project of love".

http://www.theminnesotareview.org/ns61/hardt.htm

[marcegoodman]

What I should have said was that in Googling for a cut-and-pastable version of a similar passage from the Santner book, I came across the passage cited above in the linked essay and used that instead.

[pebird]

marc - I was following your Rosenzweig’s quote as a sort of love of the details of other's lives, getting engaged with their problems in a ethical fashion. You know, love is washing someone when they are sick, changing the bandages, getting a cup of tea.

But I don't accept an unconsciousness of the Other - for me the Other has no external psychological status - it's a structure within ourselves. Now if you're thinking of Jung's collective unconscious, maybe I can go there.

But could you go into more detail on "proximity considered prior to privilege"?

I may be misreading, but are you saying that privilege is a way to free up space after we become too close, if the love of the details of other's lives becomes unbearable? A justification for withdrawal?

[marcegoodman]

pebird,

Thanks for your response and questions.

Although Santner uses upper-case for Other which has the consequence of invoking the discourse(s) of the Other which may very well may be his intent, but I believe in this instance he is speaking of actual others (lower-case).

I likewise do not grant external pychological status to the Other and believe that the unconscious happens within us and between us.

And you have read my thoughts on proximity exactly right. I will try to say more as this conversation continues and time permits.

[Virgil Johnson]

Privilege is like cancer that is in the beginning stage, where it is almost imperceptible - but it will eventually grow and spread. Privilege is individual, but and yet can be found in group strata - class distinction.

Privilege is cultivated and passed on, entire generations grow up in privilege - but to try to point this out is like trying to explain water to fish, they are awash in this state. They will argue - "I am a person of very humble means, I am not super-rich," etc. and not be aware of the priviledged lives that they lead on a daily basis. A natural concomitant to privilege is satisfaction in isolation, isolation in satisfaction.

For the state of privilege cannot, many times, even conceive of the other - and with no consciousness of the other it never becomes an issue, or it merely becomes an academic or trivial, and truncated exercise with no effective outcome (whatever one wanted to accomplish by acknowledging the other). We have no "answers" because we cannot jeopardize our position of privilege, and so it reduces to a shrug and the confession "what can we do?"

We are bombarded daily by a pervasive media which tell us that everything is just fine - it plays back to us images of the "normal" life, which is really the privileged life. So we never ask ourselves how can it be that one lives in this state over here (next door to us, in the same town, city, country, or another part of the world), while I live in this state over there. It is reduced to something inherently wrong with the other, maybe it reinforces our view of superiority - which those in power only know too well, and they reinforce it in many ways.

You might say "well this sounds like a conspiracy theory to me," and you would be completely wrong - because it is quite systemic. It is merely taken advantage of by those in power who are "supremely priviledged." Most become the layer of fat that protects the elites hind quarters, but they have little to no idea that they are being used in this fashion.

So privilege carries on, and becomes the cornerstone of empire - and lack of knowledge of how this is maintained (both at home and abroad)becomes the excuse of many. However, there comes a time when lack of knowledge can no longer be used as an excuse - when will that day hasten? What can we do to encourage it's arrival? However, having answers means nothing if it does not elicit effective action(s).

The priviledged may have viable answers, but they have no intention of losing one ounce of their own personal peace and comfort - here lies the problem. They have convinced themselves - although it might be quite unconscious, that the day will never come where they have to make choices regarding the state of (their) affairs.

Not until they are jolted (however that might be accomplished) out of their dream world, will anything ever take place. This is what history teaches us over and over again - but it also teaches us that at that point it might be too late to salvage any of those good things from their world of privilege.

[Jodi]

On killing and imagining: one of the great things about kids is how they imagine killing without guilt in a free and healthy way. Sure, it's cartoonish--like the coyote getting up again. But, it's a fantasy. I also imagine being the one killed, but that's usually by a pistol that I hold in my own hand when I've been lax on my meds. Imagining being a telemarketer isn't particularly hard--most of us (who comment here) have or have had dull, poorly paid jobs, and have likely imagined going postal while on or in them.

On proximity and privilege: I am skeptical about trying to prioritze these things. I think it likely that privilege enables us to put some others at a distance even as we become subjects in proximity to others. On unconsciousness: I'm an automaton and fully accept that the unconscious is always the unconscious of the other.

[marcegoodman]

Jodi, I agree with you that prioritizing proximity in some sort of ontological way (as I seemed to be doing) may not be especially useful at this point.

As regarding unconsciousness, what I had in mind in addressing pebird's question was more along the lines of Zizek/Lacan's "extimacy" as opposed to thinking of the other/Other as having a literal being external to us. I will also admit to still having a pretty shaky handle on these ideas.

[Jodi]

Yes--I thought you had extimacy in mind

[Arabica]

Virgil Johnson (see quote below):

Your comments sound very Freirian, and contain an optimism that is sometimes hard to accord with everyday encounters with the privileged. If they indeed can be jolted out of their dreamworld, their dreams are well-armored with reflections on what advocates of the underprivileged consider real. That is, I'm sure that the more sophisticated of the privileged do discuss Freire and others' theses on their 'dream world', and I would like to be a fly on the wall when they do.

Virgil Johnson's original quote:

"Not until they are jolted (however that might be accomplished) out of their dream world, will anything ever take place. This is what history teaches us over and over again - but it also teaches us that at that point it might be too late to salvage any of those good things from their world of privilege.

[Virgil Johnson]

Arabica, that was very a perceptive observation.

[museumfreak]

Hi Jodi,

I hadn't checked out your blog before, but you were on my friend Terri Senft's dissertation committee, and when I found it linked from Bad Subjects I couldn't resist.

However, I come over here, and I'm appalled to see you essentially saying in the first paragraph here that disabled people are universally "unattractive" and "annoying"? Is this actually what you are saying, or are you speaking in a parodic vein?

I'm very tempted to start ranting at you about ableism and not assuming that all of us are alike and theory about bodies, but I'll let you respond to this because I'm hoping that you'll say that you were being parodic.

kathy
(who has many disabilities, is generally thought not to be unattractive although can't vouch for her annoyingness, and is also annoyed by people, but mostly those who are willfully stupid)

[Jodi]

Kathy,
Parodic is not the tone I was going for; rather, it was meant to be self-disparaging, a criticism aimed at myself (and anyone who would identify with this attitude) for finding other people annoying, for being so overly sensitive that most other people seem an imposition to an all too delicate sensibility that needs, actually, to be shocked out of its self regard and self-satisfaction.

I should add that I used the term 'disabled' in a very, very general sense, not having in mind specific bodily abilities.