| OCR Text |
Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 463 psychologically prepared to engage in the hard work of cognitive discrimination in general. For all of the above reasons, the contemporary artgoing public is expected to be more than ordinarily receptive to the conceptual challenge presented by theoretically anomalous objects or properties in general, and, a fortiori, by theoretically anomalous persons in particular. The arena of contemporary art, then, invites examination and evaluation with respect to the goals of addressing the cognitive failures of xenophobia and redressing the moral failure to satisfy the criteria of inclusiveness proposed in Chapter X. Now return to the plight of the higher-order political discriminator, taken in by her own pseudorational attempts to eradicate awareness of her xenophobic attitudes and behavior. With its latitude in the use of media, content, and subject matter, contemporary art may offer a variety of approaches for reducing this cognitive disingenuity and enhancing selfawareness. Take, for example, mimesis: A work of art may incorporate into its subject matter these very pseudorationalizations as an ironic commentary or distancing device. These pseudorationalizations not only impose politically discriminatory stereotyping on others. They are themselves stereotypical reactions, conditioned habitual responses that are part of a behavioral repertoire as limited as that which the political discriminator imposes on anomalous others. Indeed, they embody such stereotypes even as they express them. It is in the nature of deeply instilled habits of thought and action to seem, not only deeply private and individualized; but also fixed, natural, and part of the objective order of things - so much so that voluntarily bringing them to light as objects of self-conscious scrutiny on one's own is exceedingly difficult. One scarcely knows what to question or scrutinize. But hearing or seeing them echoed back to one by an impersonal art object can make it clear to one that these phrases or habits of reasoning are not uniquely one's own, but rather crude and common slogans that short-circuit the hard work of self-scrutiny. Thus mimesis can be an effective way of distancing oneself from such pseudorational slogans, and of illuminating their stereotypical character and function. By demonstrating their indiscriminate and simplistic application to a range of circumstances that clearly demand greater sensitivity to specifics, such a work can encourage greater cognitive discrimination of particular persons and circumstances for what they are. A second device that may be useful as an antidote to higher-order political discrimination is confrontation: As we have seen, a higher-order political discriminator escapes from the meaning of his behavior into a thicket of abstract pseudorational theorizing that detaches him from the actual personal and social consequences of his actions. Because he denies the existence of the object of his higher-order political discrimination, in addition to his own responses to it, the higher-order political discriminator often lacks a sense of the hurtfulness of his behavior, or of the harmfulness of its © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
