"You didn't mention...I didn't hear you say..."

I often find panels on Kenya at international academic conferences frustrating because of this response.

THREAD

Here's the formula.

Someone presents a paper on Kenya. At question and answer session, you hear "comments" that follows this format:

1. Gratitude for the presentation
2. Praise for a good presentation
3. A list of what the presenter failed to talk about

Note that what the presenter talked about isn't addressed.

The most awkward part was hearing a non-Kenyan presenter take those comments in good faith, not hearing Kenya's psychic baggage.

So the presenter acknowledges that the issue is complex and includes what the commentator raised, but this is why she chose to cover the part that she did. Then she goes over again how what her paper covered contributed to the conversation.

It is often painful to watch.

Because I'm often tempted to stand up and say:

"Stop! The truth is, it doesn't matter what you say. This is what we Kenyans do. We're sadistic like that. We don't respond to people and what they say. We don't engage knowledge...."

"Instead, we sass each other to find out where you sit in the hierarchy. A hierarchy which we won't even mention because it is so embedded in us, we've stopped seeing it. We speak on behalf of this anonymous system and don't even know it. We don't speak on our own behalf."

"It's a form of bad faith which we are taught from childhood. We are taught not to be visible, not to be responsible, not to be human. We must never speak in our own names, we must never affirm a position as ours."

"So even when we want to articulate a position, we make it sound like it's not ours but like it is just out there, from some unspecified place. It's not my opinion. It's the air we breath. Or it's God who said."

"So when I list what you haven't said, it's because I didn't see you or listen to you. I was waiting for you to confirm what I think because I don't have the guts to stand up and say 'this is what I think.'

How are you supposed to know what I think? I don't care."

"But I can't deal with what you say because it means I have to deal with what I think. I have to deal with me, and me has been beaten out of me. And if you try to ask me about me, I'll tell you that we should not to 'judge' or 'blame'."

This form of discussion is sadistic.

Lewis Gordon describes sadism this way (my rephrasing):

This is a good time to rehumanize ourselves and stop this sadism. Our specificity is beaten out by the state with education and police. But now our bodies are reminding us, like they reminded Jesus on this day that we remember his death, that we are embodied and specific.
END