William

Continental

Todorov focuses not on European cruely but on the multiple different ways in which human beings can be unable to recognise the other in its otherness. The philantropist is just as ignorant as the brutal conquistador.

As such he creates a 3 level typology of relations to the other. They are horizontally attached.

1. Axiological level of value judgement: the other is ’good or bad’, ’I like him or I don’t like him?’ ’He is equal or inferior to me’.

2. The praxeological level of rapprochement and distancing: submission of the other or submission to the other, with a third term which is neutrality (one can be indifferent to subjecting the other or myself).

3. Epistemic level: knowledge or ignorance of the identity of the other.

→ The recognition of the other’s otherness depends on these axes but is not reducible to them. There can still be a failure in relationship to the other, despite all being ’fulfilled’.

Hernan Cortes: Led the expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire. Bernard de diaz was a fighter of Hernan Cortes’ forces who went to tenochtitlan and so on. He wrote a memoir on the basis of his notes that he took from the first encounter of the Aztecs.

• Successful strategy of alliances with indigenous people: he understood that the Aztecs were at the top, but that there are other groupings who are subjected and repressed by them. As such he allied those who were against Montezuma rule. As such he needed to understand the society and the codes of the Aztecs, he needed to imaginarily identify with the other.

• Precise understanding and even admiration for Aztec civilisation.

• Was aware of their social and communicational differences compared to the Europeans.

Todorov saw that this was one of the problems of the Aztec civilisation: they didn’t rely on actually driving a discussion between each other. They communicated mostly with the world and interpreted natural signs instead.

But there was never any recoginition of the Aztec populations as subjects. He saw these relations only as things to use, as such, not as subjects, but as tools.

In Cortes we have: Axiological (-), praxiological (-), epistemic level (+) → no recognition of the other’s alterity.

The one who caused the most damage in Aztec life, knew the Aztecs the best.

”There exist of course, relations and affinities between these three levels, but no rigorous implication; hence we cannot reduce them to one another, nor anticipate one starting from the other. Las Casas knows the indians less well than cortes, and he loves tem more; but they meet in tehir common policy of assimilation. Knowledge does not imply love, nor the converse; and neither of the two implies, nor is implied by, identification with the other. Conquest, love and knowledge are autonomous and, in a sense, elementary forms of conduct.”

You can still try to possess the other, whilst still valuing them as someone you like.

Bartolome de las Casas: historian and social reformer, a priest.

Wrote two important works on the atrocities against the indigenous peoples. Wanted to abolish the encomienda: the right to possess conquered land and the people on that land. Took part in the Valladolid debate: to what extent can the indians be humans? Do they have souls? Are they sons of God.

The first period of Las Casas Todorov calls Christian Egalitarianism.

”There is but one God, the Christian God”: even the pagans pray to the Christian God, even if they call it something else. As such we should establish egality between different cultures by reducing the other to one’s own identity. We are all actually the same. The others are reducible to our identity.

Christian egalitarianism: axiological level (+), praxiological level (+), epistemic level (-). better than Cortes, but just as ignorant.

Love of the other, but still incapable of recognising the other in their otherness: subjecting & assimilating the other to one’s cultural identity.

The misrecognition of the other as other is totally compatible with love, friendship and understanding. As such, what we love in the other is only a version of yourself, be it better or worse.

”We have already encountered this theme of christian egalitarianism, and at the same time we have seen how ambiguous it remained. All writers of this period laid claim to the spritit of christianity. It is in the name of christian morality that catholic and for instance the early Las Casas regard the indians as their equals, hence as like themselves, and try to assimilate them, to identify them with themselves. With the same referens present to their minds, proteststans, one the contrary, emphasise the differences and isolate their community from that of the natives, when they find themselves in contact. In both cases, the other’s identity is denied: either on the level of existence, as in the case of the catholics; on that of values, as in that of the protestants; and it is absurd to ask which of the two parties goes farther down the path to the other’s destruction. But it is still within christian doctrine that the later las casas discovers that higher form of egalitarianism we are calling perspectivism, in which each man is put n relation to his own values, rather than being faced with a single ideal.”

Gonzala Guerrero:

Was shipwrecked in 1511, and he was taken a slave by the Maya. They then discovered his military skills, at which point he was freed and married the daughter of a chief, working as a military liutenant for him. When he Cortes came to Mexico, he got to hear of Guerrero and established contact with him, as he wanted him in his army. He knew the natives from the inside, and as such could betray them. Guerrero was engaged in several military missions against Cortes, and even died in battle. He is considered one of the reasons that southern Mexico resisted much longer than the north. His children are considered the first Meztisos.

In guerrero we have total assimilation: axiological level (+), praxiological level (+), epistemic level (+).

STILL, this kind of recognition of the other’s alterity but loss of former identity. We have here a showcase of a positive encounter, but only to the price of losing one’s identity. Do we have to become the same as the one we loves in order to recognise ourselves and them. How can we then create a respectful relationship to the other without losing one’s identity. He fails to construe a fruitful dialogue between both of his existences, he completely denies the old existence and hands himself over to the new, there is no intercultural assmilation.

Cabeza de Vaca: Failed Navarez expedition in 1528: slavery, and escape.

Position of indecision: works as a merchant, trader and healer, and carries goods between different indian tribes. Was respected as an autnomous individual who belonged to no tribe. He is neither assimilated nor part of his own culture, and lives only by himself. However, after living with the Floridians, he cannot return anymore to the life he had in Spain. He recognises that he is unhappy. He is stuck in a limbo. He preserves his identity, but loses all social adherence.

As such, suffers twofold estrangment: neutral image: axiological (+), praxiological level (+), epistemic level (+). As such there is possible recognition of the other’s alterity, under the condition of the evolution of a third position. It is technically nowehere, however, and as such not really desirable. ”There are no longer two parties, We (the christians) and they (the indians) and the we (empty).

”On the level of action, of the assimilation of the other or of identification with him, Cabeza de Vaca also reached neutral point, not because he was indifferent to the two cultures but because he had experienced them both form within – thereby, he no longer had anything but the others around him; without becoming indian, Cabeza de Vaca was no longer quite Spaniard. His experience symbolises and heralds that of the modern exile, which in its turn personifies a tendency characteristic of our society: a being who has lost his country without thereby acquiring another, who lives in a double exteriority.”

Learning a language is becoming other. It is handing yourself over to that other kind of identity. Every language you learn, is a kind of intercultural dimension you add to your own identity.

”For the other remains to be discovered. The fact is worthy of astonishment, for man is nveer alone, and would not be what he is without his social dimension. And yet this is the call: for the newborn child, his owrld is the world, and growth is an pprenticeship in exteriority and sociality; we might say, somewhat cavalierly, that human life is confied between these two extremes, one where the I invades the world, and one where the world ultimatetely absorbs the I in the formm of a corpse or of ashes. And just as the discovery of the other knows several degrees, from the other-as-object, identified with the surrounding world, to the other-as-subject, equal to the I but different from it, with an infinity of intermediary nuances, we can indeed live our lives without ever achieving a full discovery of the other.”

A child is thrown into the world, is swallowed up by the others there, the social existences that are already there, and as such the existence of it is ultimately lost.

In the best case, in desiring someone else, we actually desire the otherness of them, or, in the lesser good case the ideal/degraded version of ourselves. As such, it seems our desires is never actually aimed at understanding the other whilst also understanding that they are other.

Alterity exists on a lot of different levels, there is the singular (we) and the multiple singularities that this ”we” consists of. And this problem of alterity prevails on both these levels. Todorov discusses the intercultural level as an example here, but he understands implicitly that this happens on multiple different levels.

Las Casas’ late perspectivism:

How are we able to experience difference in equality? Equal, but still different. So that we know the other as other, but still value them.

Las Casas’ perspectivism. The indian God is not reducible to a version of the Christian God: the christian God is only valid for christians.

What is universal however is the idea of the divine in general: religiosity itself rather than sharing of religion. Religiosity is behaving according to the dogma, of beeing fearful of the dogma and so on. As such, the energy of the faith, and the intensity of the subject of the individual to the faith is actually what can be compared, and perhaps shared.

In this case, the Aztecs may actually be superior to the christians. For they sacrifice for God what is most important for men: human life. Las Casas overturns the idea that this is horrible, and rather shows that it is being truthful to their faith.

”Each has his own values; the comparison can be made only among certain relations – of each human beng to his god – and no longer among substances: there are only formal unoiversals. Even as he asserts the existence of one God, Las Casas does not a priori privilege the Christian path to that God. Equality is no longer bought at the price of idnetity; it is not an absolute value that we are concerned with.”

What is measured against each other are not the cultural positions in themselves, but rather the relationships, structurally, in which the individuals of these cultural positions are entangled.

”To experience difference in equality. On the axiological level, La Casas managed in his old age to lvoe and esteem the indians as a function not of his owni deal, o theirs: this is a nonunifying love, one migt even say a ’neutral’ one.”

He takes the viewpoint of the indians, in which the highest esteem to God is the human sacrifice, and then we check whether they are believing faithful individuals. From their value scale I have to acknowledge that they are faithful to their own ideals and their own values. Perspectivism is a kind of solution. We have to adopt the other’s viewpoint without being assimilated into it, and from this viewpoint we have to honestly value to the other, from the value scale that comes from the other. This is however, not a universal solution. It can only happen in a singular event: me trying to understand this other.
Each relationship with another culture requires me to enter into the value-scale of the other.