Oct 2024
Here be Monsters - Thoughts on othering
Trying a look for the belated Halloween celebrations of the coming weekend, because when have I ever turned down a chance to play with identity? For me, the modern superficial silliness of this once religious festival comes as a welcome full stop to the melancholy of October, a month when my mind invariably gives way to a gnawing grief as the sun sets on the vibrance of summer.
In the depths of our history this festival marked the end of the summer and the welcoming of the darker portion of the year, an occasion when the doorway to the Otherworld opened and supernatural beings were able to enter our realm. But here in the shade of the horrors of summer 2024, I’ve been thinking about the “others” of today who loom large in the collective mind of much of our society.
The “Muslims taking over our country”. The immigrants "invading" our shores. Immigration deliberately misrepresented and mistakenly misunderstood as a kind of settler colonialism, despite the marked absence of any accompanying economic, diplomatic or military powers. The conflation of Islam with terrorism. The false, misleading and inflammatory claims of the help available to asylum seekers, fanning the flames of smaller concerns to infernal proportions. The laser focus on crimes committed by those with brown skin, casually reclassified as immigrants in the aftermath of their misdeeds regardless of British citizenship by birth. “People in boats” making desperate journeys here to a chorus of “let them drown”. Spoken about as if they are rats, with no regard for their humanity.
These others are the monsters and strange creatures of our time. Not written and painted into the folklore of our history by mythographers, but fed to us as non-fictional bogey men via Machiavellian political means.
This language of dehumanization for the immigrant reaches far back beyond the living memory of any thirtysomething Brit who in 1950s and 1960s Britain would have witnessed Caribbean and Indian immigrants as the monsters spoken of in scaremongering terms. It is the place of the other to collectively take their position on the murky margins of society, lurking in the shadows as a potential threat to the purity and fair order of things. Tolerable if seen and not heard. Useful as a deflecting political scapegoat.
Othering, something we all (to lesser or greater degrees) have been guilty of at some point in our lives. The tendency to categorise is after all a deeply ingrained facet of human nature and one that has inspired so much of my practice.
Boxes, labels - nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, culture, subculture, age… How important are these things? How do they shape our interactions with ourselves, those close to us and society as a whole? Maps, territories, borders, patriotism, nationalism, jingoism, tribalism, racism, objectification, the innate human desire to belong and the greed, sense of ownership and hatred that can develop out of a desire to hold on to that. These things will forever fascinate me.
The scope for debate on the positives and negatives of identity politics is wide, but due to the way in which othering presents within the frame of our political structure it cannot be ignored that not everyone has the luxury of seldom thinking about their identity. Dominant in-groups have long constructed and/or dominated out-groups, othering through the lens of (among other things) race, socio-economic status, disability, gender and sexuality. And Europeans (and more specifically the British) have a deeply rooted relationship with the mechanisms of othering.
Within a post-colonial context, Britain stands out as a country that employed the application of otherness as it’s most powerful tool of exploitation, stabilising the European sense of self and superiority whilst keeping the colonized socio-economically challenged and subaltern. The tendency to the enactment of this still fills the very marrow of the cultural bones of this country, an incongruent mix of hierarchical confidence and a fear of loss.
So what do we do? Because despite our differences we are not separate. We are human, we have this in common. We are all so deeply connected to each other.
How do we banish the myth of the monsters and step into the light together?
We mix! However small our social networks we connect with and open our hearts to those from all sectors of society. Be it a smile for our neighbour or a friendship, we invite and we welcome. We know ourselves and who we are but we mix outside of the boxes that we or others have placed us in. We live with curiosity and receptivity, we endeavour to better understand the nuances of the society we live in by associating outside of our age, our race, our gender, our culture, our subculture, our sexuality, our socio-economic status and our areas of interest. I have always believed that this begins on the dance floor, but let's take it on to the afterparty. Let's sit on the floor of the home of the stranger we met at the club and share a drink or a story. The true monsters are our fear and disregard of the other, let's slay them and keep monsters for Halloween only.