"Why Paris is Burning"

[vtwahoo]

Is it not possible that Killfile merely interests me?

[Tempest]

Is it not possible that Killfile merely interests me?

Nope.

[Wandering_Mystic]

Heh, Killfile interests me. vtwahoo also, for that matter.

[vtwahoo]

Amazing. I introduce reification, a concept that I have spent a great deal of my academic career struggling to understand and teach, into a conversation about the French marginalization of their Muslim citizens and all you people care about is the identity of my spouse.

This is why everyone reads People instead of Newsweek, isn't it?

[arke]

Yes. Personally, I had never heard of the word and thank you for explaining/using it. However, how does one respond to a post such as yours? "Great, you identified the/a reason for the riots. *twiddles thumbs*." Or, as you said, you introduced a concept that you, a PolSci major, had difficulty understanding, so it's quite likely that most people thought instead "Reification? Yeah, sure, add that to my term drop list."

[Wandering_Mystic]

The thing is, though the term may be new to me, the phenomenon is not (at least not from what I understand of the short description vtwahoo has given). Everywhere I have ever wandered to (and I've been to a lot of places) contains elements that are essentially building blocks to it. It seems to be a companion development to many of the darker emotions humans can feel, and from what I understand of it, it is done relatively unintentionally and guided with a hefty helping of ignorance. To a certain extent, one of the obvious solutions might be better education about other peoples, but this is probably a million times easier said than done.

But it is not just about ignorance and fear of the unkown. It is also about the flexibility to accept new things, or the lack thereof. Humans are mostly stiff in their collective mentality, and are consequently very possessive of their cultural and societal ways. Such possessiveness makes it very hard to abandon roads that start turning the wrong way (culturally and societally speaking), and even after many people realize they're not going where they want to be, still they follow the road full speed until they hit the brick wall at the dead end. This is reflected in the way most civilizations historically have developped, expanded, and collapsed.

But what does all that have to do with alienation degradation of a subculture such as what happened with the muslims in France? Well, my point is that I see it as a symptom of a much deeper struggle.

[vtwahoo]

To a certain extent, one of the obvious solutions might be better education about other peoples, but this is probably a million times easier said than done.

But what does all that have to do with alienation degradation of a subculture such as what happened with the muslims in France? Well, my point is that I see it as a symptom of a much deeper struggle.

Truer words are rarely spoken.

We teach the process of reification in an attempt to eliminate the mystery that surrounds the horrific events of history...the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, slavery, Japanese Internment, and, more recently, the violence in France.

We have a tendency to chalk all of the things up to "There are terrible/evil people in the world. There's nothing I can do about it so there's no way to prevent these kinds of things from happening." This line of thinking takes people out of the equation. We want to put them back in.

The Holocuast did not start with the rise of Hitler in the 1930's. It started thousands of years ago with the alienation of the Jews. Across Europe the Jews were seen as "different"---no matter what they did or how completely they integrated into European society. And becuase they were different they were easier to exclude and, eventually, enslave and execute. To qoteWandering_Mystic, the Holocaust was the result of a much deeper struggle.

The recent violence in France has similar roots. A thousand years ago the Muslim Empire stretched across North Africa, throughout the Middle East, and into Europe. It was dedicated to art and literature and science, in many ways a rebirth of Rome thousands of years before the Renaissance. And yet Europeans have always seen Muslims as "different"---doubling interesting to me since they, like the Jews, worship the same God as the Christian Europeans. That perception of Muslims as "the Other" has deepened throughout history. You often hear Muslims referred to as "them." You hear that "they" don't think the way "we" do; "they" don't care about the things that "we" do. "We" just can't talk to "them" becuase "they" don't respond to logic...only passions. That's reification...we've taken a group of people and reduced them to objects that aren't like us.

The point is that we need to take the time to see different people as PEOPLE. I'm not talking about cultural relativism (that's a different discussion for a different time). What I am saying is that the violence in France emerged from the perception that the Muslims were inherently different. And becuase they were different they were geographically concentrated in the ZUPs. And becuase they were concentrated in the ZUPs it was easy to see them as (a) all exactly alike and (b) yet more different. The result: violence.

[Killfile]

Great.

Two questions:

1 - What the hell's a ZUP?

2 - Where does reification come from? I've never met 99% of the people on this forum - they are, as observable evidence would suggest, a picture that changes every-so-often and a stream of text... yet I see them as people. What makes an individual shift that perception? Better yet, what makes a million people shift that preception?

[vtwahoo]

Let me start with the first question...the second may take some time to work through.

As I said earlier (I love how closely Killfile reads...), the ZUPs are the Zones Urban Public. They are basically slums, apartment buildings that were zoned specifically for Algerian immigrants to France. They have since been referred to as "ghettos" and even "reservations" designed to separate French Muslims from the rest of the French population. They concentrate the French Muslim population thus perpetuating the perception of French Muslims as "different"---and, far too often, as "inferior."

Does that help?

[Killfile]

You explained ZUP on the previous page. I have a very short attention span when it comes to these things. I probably didn't need the expanded definition so much as the words that the TLA (three letter acronym) stood for.

But thanks - that helps a lot.