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Bataille's definition of heterogeneity (in The Psychology of Fascism), suggest that to be heterogeneous is to be excluded from society's definition of productive labour -- that is, as a productive labourer. Your work may indeed be productive (as, indeed, according to Bataille, it is human nature to work). Nonetheless, your work will not be considered to be meaningfully productive, if it is not conceived to contribute to "society" (conceived as a whole). To be heterogeneous, then, is to be part of those elements which are excluded from a connected sense of "society". On the other hand, society, conceived of as a whole, is definitively Homogenous. How interesting to me, then to discover that much which marks me, through my colonial upbringing, is a sense of unfamiliarity with that which is Homogenous in western terms. That which has been an unfamiliarity with the whole has, until recently, left me perilously at the mercy of members of the whole. My answer to the situations in which I have become endangered has been to fling myself even more thoroughly into Heterogeneity. (If I am not able to know my social world, I shall at least come to embrace my own directives all the more thoroughly.)
The typical assumption that I have encountered from those brought up in this different Homogeneity, is that I cannot not have known what is so obvious to others. An extension of such an assumption might even be that I need training in social manners, or conformity, rather than subtle and sensitive communication about how this particular Homogeneity works. (I recently discovered much about how it works by studying blogs.)
It is probably true that even in a colonial context (which was itself in a state of heterogeneous rebellion vis-à-vis the modern world) I had a remarkably heterogeneous upbringing. As I mentioned earlier in this blog, I first encountered the mystery of socially correct gender roles in preschool -- and learned nothing from this. It is significant to say that both my teachers were South Africans, and hence more modernized than us backwater colonials. Perhaps for this reason gender roles were more significant in their minds. In any case, I was dragged away from building blocks, in order to play that which was considered more appropriately girly -- "house" -- in which I flailed, failing miserably.
So, I've always been naturally extremely heterogeneous and unresponsive to the call of general social role-playing.
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I was one who was born in Rhodesia, and was forced to emigrate whilst still a child (as this was my parents' decision, not mine). Regrettably, I found my 'welcome' into the First World to be anything but. To this day, I maintain that the general level of moral reflection and self-discipline among much of the populace in my current milieu are frighteningly low. I wonder if it could cross the minds of some of the moral pontificators on the evils of colonialism that acting upon their unchecked assumptions about colonial whites could give the colonial white immigrants, to whom some denizens of the western left are pleased to give short thrift, imputing to them collective guilt. This only leads to the blindsided newcomer learning complete contempt for those who wish to punish us for nothing we had done wrong. To act to punish without even the preliminaries of an introduction to the individual whom you are punishing is quite without morality or decency, in my view.
Ashis Nandy, the Indian post-colonial theorist and intellectual cautions us against making monsters out of the ex-colonials. To do so, he says, is to reinforce colonialism as a psychologically potent force. These disempowered colonials as victims of Modernity, dwarfed in relation to the gigantic mechanisms and devices of modern warfare.
Nandy's position on colonialism lends itself to a truly moral appraisal of the colonials, who and what they were, and how they are really situated in relation to contemporary manifestations of power. The children of the white colonials are particularly vulnerable, even compared to their uprooted parents. My generation is also the victim of colonial secrecy about what went on, and religious shame, which prevents free communication, and makes us victim to both right wing and left wing propaganda.
Hastings position, by contrast to Nandy’s more enlightened position about the colonialism of the past only contributes to a highly immoral and destructive blaming of the generation of the white colonial's children, who did not play any part in the politics of the era. Hastings is reinforcing the violent psychological legacy of the colonial era, and is creating more of the anguish which the astute Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera, railed against:
"We are refugees fleeing from the excesses of our parents,” he said.
Marechera, hardly a partisan for the nativistic order that preceded colonialism, went on to say, “Tradition, on closer examination, always reveals secrets we prefer to flush down the toilet."
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"Dialogue" with my father who drops in, impromptu: [after a very long interaction with Mike about sports..} "So, Jen, what are you up to these days? Did you ever get going with that course you were going to do?" Me: Yes. I've made a lot of progress with it, actually. "Oh. The last time I heard you were waiting for something to start." Me: Yes, it's like that in academia. Always waiting for something... "I know all about that! My work blah blah blah blah blah." Me: gets up and walks off to the kitchen. Looks for something to eat. Comes back, at a leisurely pace and sits down again after 5 minutes. "So, what was the course you were doing anyway?" Me: Have a guess! "It was, er...Masters or something wasn't it?" Me: No. Try again. "...er..." Me: You get two more guesses. If you fail both, you're out!" Mike: I'll give you a clue: It's a doctorate. "Oh, a doctorate! What is it in?" Me: English and communication studies. "Ah I see." Me: Yes, I didn't expect you to already have this information, due to my small female brain!" "[softening tone as if to acknowledge the implicit truth of a self-deprecating statement]... Yes, well. [As if to imply, "but what can anybody really do?"] So!..... MIKE.....!."
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I'm taken back to my early childhood by the play of the persistent yellow sun upon the window's ledge. Space overwhelms me as I make my way over the green lawn, onto the tar-mac, down, down, to the place which sends out the tender effusion of dried daisies, rubbed into a powder, above hot polish-wax. The classroom itself is dark and lonely as an orphan, a wooden raft of polished timber darkly a-sea upon a pane of yellow light. Vigilant sun storms into the broad-ranging far window, appealing life, and imploring life to action, despite the isolation that one feels, a returning child to this classroom of yore. One is bacteria being played on by a bright primeval sunlight. One cannot help but feel lonely in this light, which both commands and beckons.
The smallness of the wooden dark school chairs, the tiny, sturdy wooden desks, set not far off from an ascetic green-board, passively abandoned now, but reminiscent of old chalkdust, recalls a hundred highly anxious days. This classroom is in darkness -- it takes a while for the eyes to adjust.
I'm organically alive and small, and take things in not just through my inquisitive nostrils, which feast on burnt or powdered daisies, but through my whole body, environmental sounds reverberate upon my skin.
I have to go out and run, or dive into the white cold and light blue - the freezing pool, which may or many not sustain me in one goal, to reach the other side of the width end in one wet, frightened piece. The grass that I had to tread to get up to the pool was soft, above the solid ground.
I know only one sensation, that is, not being able to defend myself, nor understanding any reason to do so -- yet being afraid. Everything looks larger than me. There is one place, a sloping yellow floor, next to my best friend's walk-in pantry. It emits a sense of ascetic doom, a vague feeling of sadism, as yet not named, because my friend's cook often is accused of stealing stuff from there, but really, C. has told me, she's the real one who takes the jelly powder.
There is another sensation which lurks around the primary school ablution, where the air inside rings of an evil spell of witches and sinister intent. Here "Life Buoy" soap resides, and forces up into its closed environment its pungent odour, no-one can escape.
We are all too small to escape these effects of our environments. Rather, they suffuse into our brains, penetrating us, allowing no small-boned lethargy to develop in us, no "lazy bones". The sun is intolerant, and will have us running, small legs darting over sealed colonial grounds which are green and hopeful like the very dawn of civilising power. Brought up thus, we move towards the sun, as relentless as it is fecund. While, anyone who is found "dawdling" has their legs whipped.
In the military dream last night, I followed the trail of images to the mess hall -- actually children's obscure drawings laid out on the ground in a kind of disorderly continuum. Found the tiny shack and single filed around the verandah section, past my mother who has been living there for some time. The question floating through my mind was would I be able to do the skydive, leaping into thin air, without an adequate length of psychological preparation? A panther loomed in the corner of the loosely hewn bamboo wall, as we, more routinely than obediently marched on by. "Watch out for it!" I cautioned, but a second later, it was too late as the animal had taken a whole skull between its jaws. Then I heard a fatal crunch.
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