OMG, Maha, this is not just a blog post– it’s a book on its own! I know that the essay just fires off, in a not-very-organized way, your personal/professional responses and reflections on various events and issues during a certain window of time in the past two days (?). But the post contains one bigtime thought-provoking idea after another throughout it.
This was particularly thought-provoking to me: “dissenting discourse can find a sub-community of people, and then it becomes a dominant discourse within that sub-community, and from there, it changes our view to those outside that community. … I’m not actually saying that anyone I’ve talked about above is directly closing themselves off to critique. I’m just referring to a general feeling I’m getting as I find myself engaged more and more with people who think more like me (while the majority of people do not) – it shifts my view of the world.” I agree. There’s no escape from “becoming” part of the “other”–unless we deliberately isolate ourselves from anyone new; but the moment we try to join new groups or even learn new ideas, and even as we remain aware or (self-) critical about the “othering” that happens/continues for someone else, we continue to make our own personal and social selves overlap with those who would otherwise continue to “other” us and whom we would other as well.
Of course, when ideas and identities overlap between/among mutually othering groups/individuals, yet others remain outside the overlapping circles (and their non-overlapping parts). But reading your thoughts in this regard makes me wonder if we can/should also try to flip the order of othering in terms of power. For instance, if there are those of us at the “center” that are (un)knowingly “othering” others in less connected, less dominant, less privileged parts of the world (in terms of how “we” define these, of course), then we could think about deliberately, purposefully “othering” us–those at the center–by inviting our others to “other” us! For me, the central appeal of rhizo14 is precisely this: I usually want to say things there because I know that in that venue, I can (and I want to say) say something that will “counter” my own dominant/mainstream self, as well as the mainstream/dominant scholars/educators in there. In ordinary f2f/online conversations about education, I quickly lose my confidence if I “challenge” mainstream ideas/assumptions and try to point out that we are being “parochial” about what education, critical thinking, access, etc mean/do. (Well, there are a few other places, including my own blog, where I don’t hesitate to challenge mainstream assumptions). But in rhizo (Fb group, that is), I believe that people (at least some people) will value when I point out complexities of context, perspectives, realities in different parts of the world.
That said, I am aware that even when I try (“pretend”?) to bring in the perspectives of other places, contexts, people that are not yet heard in venues like this, or at least bring in my non-mainstream experiences, I think I am othering many others outside than including them. There is a lot we can do if we could deliberately invite various others and listen to them, othering ourselves and our mainstream/dominant selves. Huh, I’m not organizing my thoughts at all– but I’m not thinking of this as a book chapter either!