Open University: Aporia

As rain sweeps across Berlin, lecturer Momus thinks about disconnections, logical contradictions, blind spots, dead ends, undecidables and other vaguely Derridean things.

[jonhillman]

i don't think boomers should be held to the fire for failing to navigate all the new minefields of sensitivity. i think they should be held accountable for all the problems their ideology of irresponsible selfishness has created in the world.

[TheKatt]

It almost feels to me that you are proposing that the "somewheres" should just eat cake. But perhaps I'm not getting it.

[robertwringham]

You know I love you and these wonderful videos but you're (willfully?) missing the point of those posters. The artist is basically saying to an audience of men: "The constant stream of questions and comments about my appearance, politically motivated or otherwise, are getting me down; they make my life more difficult than it needs to be and a lot more difficult than you probably imagine it to be, so I'm asking you now to please stop it." It's just asking you to remember 'backwards and in heels' but applied a little wider and to incorporate it into your general good manners. It's telling us that a brown woman from Birmingham is tired of being asked how often she goes 'back' to Pakistan; an ngc person is tired of having their short hair (or whatever it may be) commented upon in a snide or othering way. They're not seeking attention by being who they are; they're just trying to get on with it like everyone else.

[richiarata]

I think your characterisation of 'identity politics' is a rather simplistic one - there's no single ideology which can be named as such, and the attempt to do so tends to draw on various straw man examples which don't represent anyone's actual perspective. Ultimately I think those posters are expressing quite different messages about different kinds of identity. There is a theme of not judging on the basis of appearance what sorts of treatment beyond basic respect are acceptable. Wrt the first one, the acknowledgement of racism should never be confused for racism itself, and it's hard to see how anyone in good faith could make that confusion - it's become a right-wing trope to call anyone who calls out racism a 'race-bater', which is obviously absurd. Maybe a more useful way to interpret the messages of the poster is to consider what experiences might have generated the need for them, who the author probably was and what their intended audience is, and not to assume (as the right tends to do) that they were put there by white liberals on others' behalf in an example of virtue-signalling.

[F--B]

8:30 momus exhibiting his disdain for indigenous ways of living and thinking.