// from the editors //
May 18, 2015
The Distinctiveness of You
Joshua Fattal
A storm is brewing in academia, and we all stand to lose ourselves if things go wrong. There is a flood of new ideas that has pervaded our campus groups, our opinion pages, and our social conversations: solidarity, allies, hegemony, systems, silencing, rape "culture." There is a new nexus of activists, and many of our causes have begun to seep into our social circles, determining who we are and are not friends with. It is an important moment for our causes, and for our university. All of us believe that the causes we fight for—and that we stand in solidarity with—are humane, necessary, and just. But the intensity with which we support our movements calls for a reckoning of where we stand, and how we choose to go forward.
Activism treads on the phenomenally fine line between the individual and the group. The individual, we know, gains strength when he or she is part of the group. But there is something very un-individual about groupishness. Even members of the same group, who support the same causes or the same set ideas with equal fervor, are fundamentally different people, with different ideas. The way one Jew supports Israel is different than the way another Jew might do so. The way one Muslim thinks about Islam is different from that of his or her fellow believers. The way one black person has experienced his or her life in America is different than the way Martin Luther Jr. or Malcolm X did. These different experiences and approaches provide us with our own stories; more than this, they allow us to define ourselves as ourselves.
But the very identity and worth of the self is under attack on our campus today, and the root cause is the philosophy of intersectionality that is so widely in play. A late 20th century intellectual movement to combat the predominance of the idea of gender in the feminist debate, intersectionality has since spawned into a more variegated attempt to find and study the intersections between all “forms” or “systems” of oppression and discrimination. Intersectionality performs an important function: it looks at the relationships between various kinds of “Othering,” which undoubtedly all find their root in similar human fears and inclinations that should be identified and combatted.
Paying attention to the way that the experiences of one marginalized are not so different from those of other oppressed groups around the world is deeply revealing. It is not wrong for activist groups to pay attention to these similarities; effecting change occurs through the enlargement, not the minimization, of individual struggles. Painting civil rights as the problem of America, not just the problem of white people, went a long way in the struggle for racial equality. And groups on our campus, such as Prison Divest, C-SJP, and C-BSO, have powerfully tapped into this source of strength.
The intentions of using intersectionality in this way are mostly good; but the consequences are risky. By looking at racism in the context of sexism, homophobia, or other bigotry, the study of racism is diluted: it no longer prizes the specific history and personality of this movement, but seeks to identify and privilege those aspects of racism that relate to other systems of oppression. The attempt to compare one struggle to another struggle has the effect of homogenizing the heterogeneous, and it is fair to ask whether the resulting understanding of racism is any clearer than it had been before. At the very least, intersectionality intellectually devalues the particular reality of any one group of people, relegating them to only one facet of a bottom-line. Contrary to intentions, it further marginalizes the unique experiences of the marginalized.
Most historians know that it is not in the grand sweeping narratives, but in the minute details, that real causality lies. Perhaps the greatest exception to this rule is Edward Said, who in Orientalism famously neglected to call out the orientalism that even some “Orientals” have for one another. Stories of “civilizational” distinctions, of “justice” versus “oppression,” are necessarily incomplete: there is diversity within civilizations, and there is no simple binary between the oppressed and the oppressor. The danger in minimizing people, groups, and societies to such simplistic categories is severe: this trend can lead to a culture that places less value in individuality, in difference, and in each and every person’s unique perspective and consciousness.
For this Spring 2015 issue of The Current, we have decided to let go of ideology and focus on the individual. Leeza Hirt provides two in-depth profiles of Jews on campus who have had life-changing intellectual journeys; Avinoam Stillman speaks to the dangers of “Othering” in his carefully researched essay on the Jews and White Flight; an interview with Jay Lefkowitz reveals the thought process of a presidency often considered in black and white terms; Jesse Gruber’s self- interview humorously looks at how we relate to ourselves over time; and much, much more.
This issue also reflects a new balance between print and the web: for the first time, we are including both pieces we have previously printed online and new pieces written exclusively for the print. In mixing these two together, we hope to give you a lot of different kinds of pieces and ideas to consider. And in providing you with a series of voices that express a wide range of ideas, we hope to pay homage to that noble, and unpopular, tradition of valuing each and every person for their unique self.
Joshua Fattal
Editor in Chief
Activism treads on the phenomenally fine line between the individual and the group. The individual, we know, gains strength when he or she is part of the group. But there is something very un-individual about groupishness. Even members of the same group, who support the same causes or the same set ideas with equal fervor, are fundamentally different people, with different ideas. The way one Jew supports Israel is different than the way another Jew might do so. The way one Muslim thinks about Islam is different from that of his or her fellow believers. The way one black person has experienced his or her life in America is different than the way Martin Luther Jr. or Malcolm X did. These different experiences and approaches provide us with our own stories; more than this, they allow us to define ourselves as ourselves.
But the very identity and worth of the self is under attack on our campus today, and the root cause is the philosophy of intersectionality that is so widely in play. A late 20th century intellectual movement to combat the predominance of the idea of gender in the feminist debate, intersectionality has since spawned into a more variegated attempt to find and study the intersections between all “forms” or “systems” of oppression and discrimination. Intersectionality performs an important function: it looks at the relationships between various kinds of “Othering,” which undoubtedly all find their root in similar human fears and inclinations that should be identified and combatted.
Paying attention to the way that the experiences of one marginalized are not so different from those of other oppressed groups around the world is deeply revealing. It is not wrong for activist groups to pay attention to these similarities; effecting change occurs through the enlargement, not the minimization, of individual struggles. Painting civil rights as the problem of America, not just the problem of white people, went a long way in the struggle for racial equality. And groups on our campus, such as Prison Divest, C-SJP, and C-BSO, have powerfully tapped into this source of strength.
The intentions of using intersectionality in this way are mostly good; but the consequences are risky. By looking at racism in the context of sexism, homophobia, or other bigotry, the study of racism is diluted: it no longer prizes the specific history and personality of this movement, but seeks to identify and privilege those aspects of racism that relate to other systems of oppression. The attempt to compare one struggle to another struggle has the effect of homogenizing the heterogeneous, and it is fair to ask whether the resulting understanding of racism is any clearer than it had been before. At the very least, intersectionality intellectually devalues the particular reality of any one group of people, relegating them to only one facet of a bottom-line. Contrary to intentions, it further marginalizes the unique experiences of the marginalized.
Most historians know that it is not in the grand sweeping narratives, but in the minute details, that real causality lies. Perhaps the greatest exception to this rule is Edward Said, who in Orientalism famously neglected to call out the orientalism that even some “Orientals” have for one another. Stories of “civilizational” distinctions, of “justice” versus “oppression,” are necessarily incomplete: there is diversity within civilizations, and there is no simple binary between the oppressed and the oppressor. The danger in minimizing people, groups, and societies to such simplistic categories is severe: this trend can lead to a culture that places less value in individuality, in difference, and in each and every person’s unique perspective and consciousness.
For this Spring 2015 issue of The Current, we have decided to let go of ideology and focus on the individual. Leeza Hirt provides two in-depth profiles of Jews on campus who have had life-changing intellectual journeys; Avinoam Stillman speaks to the dangers of “Othering” in his carefully researched essay on the Jews and White Flight; an interview with Jay Lefkowitz reveals the thought process of a presidency often considered in black and white terms; Jesse Gruber’s self- interview humorously looks at how we relate to ourselves over time; and much, much more.
This issue also reflects a new balance between print and the web: for the first time, we are including both pieces we have previously printed online and new pieces written exclusively for the print. In mixing these two together, we hope to give you a lot of different kinds of pieces and ideas to consider. And in providing you with a series of voices that express a wide range of ideas, we hope to pay homage to that noble, and unpopular, tradition of valuing each and every person for their unique self.
Joshua Fattal
Editor in Chief