differences

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One can be post-X, thus non-X, without in any way being anti-X. One can be trans-X without any view about what post-X would be, yet without in any way being anti-X.

For instance, let X = a particular ethnicity or religious life or anthropological lineage. Charging an other with being anti-X because the other’s stance is not yet recognizable as non-X or post-X is pathogenic.

This is apparently difficult for some persons to understand. It’s especially difficult for persons likely to misread difference as opposition, complementarity as posturing; and difficult for persons who believe that German Dialectic (i.e., Negative Dialectic) is insightful or that projective identification only happens in therapy sessions and is not also a version of “critical” scholarship (also called “radical critique”).

Projective identification (always unconscious) is especially useful for holding others culpable for not showing a solution to one’s own displaced difficulties. For example, if the other claims to be working sustainably within an immoral environment (ethical duplicity vis-à-vis bureaucrats; compassionate acquiescence vis-à-vis near-and-dear others), the other might be invalidly regarded as immorally collaborationist because the other's constructive engagement (like that of a teacher, a counselor, or a diplomat) is not cogent for a reader who secretly admires martyrdom or unconstructive, if not childish, rebellion.

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This posting is part of the project “On a way of being.”

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