Day 6 – THE PROBLEM OF OTHERS
Day 6:
The Problem of Others
Live Like an Existentialist
Background
“Dirty Negro!” or simply “Look, a Negro!”
I came into this world anxious to uncover the meaning of things, my soul desirous to be at the origin of the world, and here I am an object among other objects.
Locked in this suffocating reification, I appealed to the Other so that his liberating gaze, gliding over my body suddenly smoothed of rough edges, would give me back the lightness of being I thought I had lost, and taking me out of the world put me back in the world. But just as I get to the other slope I stumble, and the Other fixes me with his gaze, his gestures and atttitudes, the same way you fix a preparation with a dye. I lose my temper, demand an explanation…Nothing doing. I explode.
– Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, Ch. 5
As creatures of freedom, human beings experience ourselves as fundamentally unpredictable and unknowable. We experience ourselves in the “negative”: not by affirming ourselves as a positive thing X, but by negating ourselves as not-X. Nonetheless, one central ambiguity of human life is that we are not just “for-ourselves.” We not just a positive thing, but we are a positive thing: a body, with an appearance and a history. We experience our Selves––the thing we really are––when we negate ourselves as “not (just) this body”. And, ideally, others do too…For other people are a central problematic for existentialism. We experience our own humanity ambiguously; but we also experience that of other humans! And here is where a good life can go awry, through no fault of our own.
Today you’ll begin to turn phenomenology towards interpersonal experience. How do we experience each other? How does the way people experience you affect your own experience?
Today's Exercise
Begin today with a ten minute reflection. In front of a mirror, try to describe your experience of looking at yourself. When do you feel like your mind’s eye is really focused on you––rather than, say, the color of your hair? As the day continues, spend three minutes or so journaling about five different moments in which you realize someone is seeing you in a way that you don’t see yourself. Try to describe what you think they see. End the day with a final ten minute reflection. This time, instead of looking in the mirror, reread the day’s five reflections. Try to describe not who you see when you look at yourself, but the person you would be if all five (or, if some are contradictory, a critical mass thereof) visions were “correct.” Where exactly is the gap between these two mirror images of yourself: one “for-yourself,” one “for-others.” Does one feel more “true” than the other? Why?
Once you’ve completed the assigned exercise for today, click here to access the prompt for tonight’s reflection and to submit your 1-2 paragraph journal entry.