But as I said previously, in my attempt to achieve the Cartesian logic of cogito ergo sum, I was in my journey towards personal failure, that is, complete disconnection with my emotions, intuition and sensibility.
Previous to the end of the former quarter, I was emotionally intervened by my doctoral peers, most of them wanted to get the feelings out of me. My robotic engagement los asustaba. Shoo Shooo decia mi vibra. Too much sense, not much sensibility. And that was fine, right? Because, that is, after all how we have been schooled to think: like a man. Like a white, privileged, heterosexual (or at least, tapandole el ojo al macho), college educated, middleclassed, Protestan Christian, married, with two and a half kids, a golden retriever (the picket fence, etc.) and a complete disregard for others' ways of living and knowing (except when studying the infamous OTHER of anthropological queries, of course). And so if I followed the manual correctly, I was doing everything right. Except, I was unhappy, angry, and unempathetic. I had built a brick, sweat, tears, blood, skin, and cement wall that would disconnect my sensibility from my sense. Apathetic... disengaging... not there... toc toc, ¿Hay alguien ahí?". But frustrated. Perhaps all the years of meticulous indoctrination got to my system, there was a system overload, and my program failed.
But after all that darkness.. all that obscurity in a lonely corner, I began to slowly and progressively come out of my emotional shell. Yet, I wanted to first understand, why I had stopped being self-empathetic. And a new journey began: towards empathy.
With Empathy as my target, and "sensical" sensibility lens, I observed the world, read a variety of text, and listened to sounds and messages. And then, I stumbled upon with la güera's words. In Loving in the War Years' chapter, "La Güera," Cherríe Moraga's shares her experience trying to create empathy with a white, male, gay friend on women's subjectivity, and poses:" You are not a woman. Be a woman for a day. Imagine being a woman" (45). To which the white, male, gay friend responded to having feeling raped. For him, feeling like a woman, being a woman, was embodying la chingada. To which Moraga adds, "what grew from that discussion was the realization that in order for him to create an authentic alliance with me, he must deal with the primary source of his own oppression. He must, first, emotionally come to terms with what it feels like to be a victim" (45). And Eureka!!! I found my first clue to creating empathy: sympathize with the internalized oppression of the other (as both are mirrors of oppressions, although sometimes, we are reflecting ourselves through tinted windows).
Within that week, I had the opportunity to sit in a discussion with one of the leading facilitators of the Nashville Sit-Ins of the Civil Rights Movement, Rev. James Lawson, and throughout his narrative, I rescued and puzzled together Lawson's teachings on nonviolence, and the grand role that empathy had in the political movement's (")success("). Later, in our Chicana Lesbian Literature seminar we began to debate about "women's ways of knowing" versus male knowledge; reasons versus feelings; head versus heart; sense versus sensibility; instinct versus intuition. And I left the room and hours with that question stuck to my head.
Today, along a large group of UCLA graduate students, we had the opportunity to chat with two of the main black activists of the Nashville Sit-Ins, Lawson and Rev. Barnard Lafayette. Both shared the story of how they met, when, where and why: they were both in for the same cause, to overcome Jim Crow racism through the practice of love. And I ask Rev. Lafayette, on how was he able to create empathy with the oppressor. He responds, "Whenever that White Police Office would kick me on the face with his boots, I would search in my soul for the last ounce of love. I would think where he came from, what was his upbringing like, what white privilege meant to him. I put myself in his shoes. But always, looking at him in the eye. And little by little, he stopped beating me." I was awed by his answer, as not only he had shared a new political activist strategy (for males) through the use of sensible tactics; but he had given me a clue in my empathy quest: to allow it initially to grow from within oneself. He finalized the conversation by saying that what had led him through a painful, brutal and violent life of constant internal and external warfare was intuition.
INTUICIÓN, I translated.
But there is silence in the room. Out of the almost thirty people, nobody had a reaction to such a revolutionary loving approach to a contemporary event (in an era of increased corporatized militarization). Some of us (that is, the students of color), those who had suffered oppression and knew what being kicked in the face by the boot of dirt, sun, spit, blood, rock; punched by a fist was like, felt empathy for their experiences and were grateful for their time. For what they had taught us. For flying 5 hours weekly with a decaying body of eighty y contando. I scan around the room and instead of finding faces lit up by appreciation and gratitude, I see arrogance, petulance and boredom. As Lafayette continues to elaborate on "knowing from intuition," my fellow academic colleagues are to a near point of physical repulsion. Their bodies cannot handle what they have oppressed for so long. La olla exprés va a explotar. But before it explodes, they will try to feed on their mental judgements, congratulate for their lack of sensibility and much sense. Bravo!! Bravo!! You made it!! You have reached total disconnection (from others, but most hazardously, yourself)! And let me reiterate myself, I know so, because I did (do?) so. The academics-in-training mimicking the WASP Ivory Tower ethics, refute with their bodies and mala vibra the experiences that others have to share about the usefulness of love. The pragmatics of love.
I sit quietly after seminar and ponder, how can we do things differently? how can we all try to be happy? how can we be ourselves? how can we get to be our real serves?
So far, my limited answer is: listen. To yourself, to what other's have to say, or not say. To our pasados. To our very pasados that we sometimes ignore, but are lying underneath the cells of our bones. To the pasados we are yet to discover, like historiographers.
One way to approach a new methodology of producing teorias y conocimiento, is following our facultad. Dejándonos guiar por las enseñanzas que solo pocos se atreven a compartir o a (re)descrubrir. Pero esos pocos, como profetas incomprendidos, nos asustan porque nos ofrecen un manual para conocer a nuestra Shadow-Beast. Because we fear the pains that the Beast will inflict upon us. Because we fear vulnerability. We fear the loss of our control. Yet, we can only be in full control until we have put all the parts of ourselves into la vida. To re-member who we are.
Thank you for this post! Beautifully written.
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