Did you notice how today, when we speak about tolerance, sorry, about racism, we automatically understand this as a question of tolerance. Racism means ‘let’s tolerate each other’. Let’s do a simple experiment. Look at the speeches of Martin Luther King. He practically never uses the term ‘tolerance’. For him it would have even been stupid, humiliating, to say: we blacks want more tolerance from white people. For him racism was a problem of economic exploitation, legality, traditions, ideology, not of tolerance. And that is an interesting point. Why now we reduced the problem of racism to the problem of tolerance. I think precisely because we live in this post-political cultural era where all the ideological conflicts are translated into cultural conflicts. But what interests me is this. Let’s do a brief analysis. What does it mean when I say we must be tolerant towards each other? It means: don’t harass me, don’t intrude into my space. So it means the exact opposite. It means: I don’t tolerate your over-proximity. Tolerance means: let’s keep an appropriate distance. It is so ironic how this works differently in different cultures. Let me tell you a wonderful story, which happened to me. When I was at Harvard, giving a talk at Harvard Law School, we went to have diner after the talk. We didn’t know each other and a big professor there, who presided the dinner, told each of us to present ourselves. ‘Your name, where do you work, what are you working on, your project’ and, he said, ‘your sexual orientation’. I was a little bit shocked: What is his business? This is so typically American, but I don’t think it is proximity. It was more American Puritanism. ‘So that I know where you stand’. Because at the same time I remember, when an American friend visited me in Slovenia, we went at some point to a beach on the Adriatic coast. And in Slovenia, like in all of Europe in the last 20 to 30 years, it is totally accepted that women can be, if they want of course, with naked breasts: topless. In the United States you can not do this. He was terribly shocked, perturbed by that. I think, again, that these are the levels of racism today. He felt already as if his private space was too invaded by the other. I claim that all the time when we talk about ‘communication’, ‘proximity’, ‘we should understand each other’, we really want to keep the other at a proper distance. This is why the paradoxical result of this… I claim that if you use them properly, even racist jokes can play a positive role here. I love racist jokes. What do I mean by this? In ex-Yugoslavia, when I was young, we were telling all the time jokes about the other nations. Well, not so much about other nations, we were telling to others jokes about ourselves. Each nation in ex-Yugoslavia was identified with a certain feature. We Slovenian were misers, Montenegrins were lazy, Bosnians were sex-obsessed, and so on. But how did those jokes function? Not in a racist way, but in a kind of exchange of obscenity, so that we asserted your proximity. We can talk officially, but when you tell me a dirty joke, it is a sign that now we can really be friends. This is why I was always suspicious about this politically correct fanaticism: when I tell a joke, is this not a racist cliché? I think the proper way to fight racist clichés, is to adopt them, but kind of ironically subvert them. This is for me, again, a true measure of anti-racism. For me, those politically correct people, who are obsessed all the time by hurting each other just oppressed racists. They want the other at the appropriate distance. That is the paradox today. Apparently we are totally open. You can have sex with animals, with anyone you want, but psychologically we are at the greatest distance ever.
freedom has objective conditions
Did you notice how today, when we speak about tolerance, sorry, about racism, we automatically understand this as a question of tolerance. Racism means ‘let’s tolerate each other’. Let’s do a simple experiment. Look at the speeches of Martin Luther King. He practically never uses the term ‘tolerance’. For him it would have even been stupid, humiliating, to say: we blacks want more tolerance from white people. For him racism was a problem of economic exploitation, legality, traditions, ideology, not of tolerance. And that is an interesting point. Why now we reduced the problem of racism to the problem of tolerance. I think precisely because we live in this post-political cultural era where all the ideological conflicts are translated into cultural conflicts. But what interests me is this. Let’s do a brief analysis. What does it mean when I say we must be tolerant towards each other? It means: don’t harass me, don’t intrude into my space. So it means the exact opposite. It means: I don’t tolerate your over-proximity. Tolerance means: let’s keep an appropriate distance. It is so ironic how this works differently in different cultures. Let me tell you a wonderful story, which happened to me. When I was at Harvard, giving a talk at Harvard Law School, we went to have diner after the talk. We didn’t know each other and a big professor there, who presided the dinner, told each of us to present ourselves. ‘Your name, where do you work, what are you working on, your project’ and, he said, ‘your sexual orientation’. I was a little bit shocked: What is his business? This is so typically American, but I don’t think it is proximity. It was more American Puritanism. ‘So that I know where you stand’. Because at the same time I remember, when an American friend visited me in Slovenia, we went at some point to a beach on the Adriatic coast. And in Slovenia, like in all of Europe in the last 20 to 30 years, it is totally accepted that women can be, if they want of course, with naked breasts: topless. In the United States you can not do this. He was terribly shocked, perturbed by that. I think, again, that these are the levels of racism today. He felt already as if his private space was too invaded by the other. I claim that all the time when we talk about ‘communication’, ‘proximity’, ‘we should understand each other’, we really want to keep the other at a proper distance. This is why the paradoxical result of this… I claim that if you use them properly, even racist jokes can play a positive role here. I love racist jokes. What do I mean by this? In ex-Yugoslavia, when I was young, we were telling all the time jokes about the other nations. Well, not so much about other nations, we were telling to others jokes about ourselves. Each nation in ex-Yugoslavia was identified with a certain feature. We Slovenian were misers, Montenegrins were lazy, Bosnians were sex-obsessed, and so on. But how did those jokes function? Not in a racist way, but in a kind of exchange of obscenity, so that we asserted your proximity. We can talk officially, but when you tell me a dirty joke, it is a sign that now we can really be friends. This is why I was always suspicious about this politically correct fanaticism: when I tell a joke, is this not a racist cliché? I think the proper way to fight racist clichés, is to adopt them, but kind of ironically subvert them. This is for me, again, a true measure of anti-racism. For me, those politically correct people, who are obsessed all the time by hurting each other just oppressed racists. They want the other at the appropriate distance. That is the paradox today. Apparently we are totally open. You can have sex with animals, with anyone you want, but psychologically we are at the greatest distance ever.
