[postlink]http://newbestmotivator.blogspot.com/2009/05/differing-by-goenawan-muhammad.html[/postlink]
Every December there are always people who slowly turn the key in the door of their rooms and listen to the world asking:
are we really all the same? Every December: when people think about human rights, about the universal yet problematic in humanity, and about commonplace matters like commercialised Christmas, or, in quick succession, the changing year.
Every December there are always people who buy cards and write an address at the top: are Christmas, the month of Ramadhan and the days of Id, really witnesses to a one God and varied humanity, in a life that is basically calm, peaceful, where people can exchange greetings, write cards, declare their longing or condolences, or just send some news? Or is it one God, diverse humanity, and times that are never the same?
Every December there are always people who read page three in the newspaper and cannot reply. There are so many dilemmas outside the front door. A few weeks after December 1991, People magazine told of the murder of Tina Isa.
Tina was the daughter of a family from the West Bank in Palestine that had migrated to America in 1985, when she,the youngest child, was only around three years old. On that December day,Tina was found stabbed to death. It was not difficult for the police to find who had killed this sixteen-year-old-girl. The murderer was her own father.
The father murdered her because he believed that Tina had brought shame on the family and his own sense of honour. She worked at a fast-food restaurant, and was dating a young black man, a school friend. Zein, the father, did not allow it. He wanted to marry off Tina in the same way as he had married off his older daughters: choosing a husband was the father's prerogative. But Tina protested, resisted her father with harsh words, and finally one night, while her mother held her arms and body, the father stabbed her. Die, My Daughter, Die ! is the title of the article in People, January 20, 1992.
'Anyone growing up in the Middle East knows that being killed is a possible consequence of dishonouring the family', People quotes an anthropologist who was born and raised in Jerusalem. Could Zein be sentenced? Isn't one entitled to have authentic customary law?
To differ is what human rights are about. The paradox of human rights is that their starting point is something universal--whereas the universal can be interrogated byt the particular, which is not necessarily the same as what is assumed by that universality. If there is anything that constantly teases us, it is the matter of 'differing' and its meaning in life.
Perhaps, in the beginning, there was differing. But 'the beginning' did not appear, ready, from out of nowhere: even it was a product of differentiation,of difference. Everything that exists gets its identity through being different,and every existing being is always within a situation of comparison with the other. Differing, therefore, cannot be ensnared. In Javanese, the word beda,which is the same as the Indonesian word beda for 'differing', can mean 'differing' or 'other', but it can also mean 'tease'--a teasing that is playful and enjoyable. In other words, something that has no final purpose of having a final 'product'. It has no teleology.
About thirty years ago, Emmanuel Levinas spoke of le visage de l'autrui.He spoke of the 'face' (le visage) and how the other person, who appears before and within us in a concrete way, cannot be abstracted, cannot be formulated, because he or she always transcend what I say and comprehend about him or her. Levinas spoke of the l'autrui,or what in Javanesse is called liyan, meaning 'that which is differing' but can also mean 'the other'. To Levinas,it is in the meeting with and admission of le visage de l'autrui that human ethical moments occur. We do not meet desiring 'product'. We meet with and in something that is infinite.
But here again is a tease: in life there is the infinite, but there is also a need for the infinite, a violent one. Tina was murdered. Zein was imprisoned. Justice often demands a balance, as is represented in its symbol. Justice also demands that there be a uniform standard, like scales. Justice-on-the-scalesis halted differing. In justice, a third party will always be present.
And yer every December there are people who ask:who is represented by the judge, by the third party? It is true that she represents something that can be accepted by all parties? In other words: something universal? Or is that universal merely the victory of those who appear and do the most talking? Suddenly there is a need,a longing perhaps, for 'the same'. In Malay, the word for fellow being is 'sesama' or 'the same'. And thus we meet the world.
The world is q conversation between these differing sesama or fellow. Christmas and Id are spread wide with songs, cards, and objects that cross boundaries because of money and trade--many and varied, but yet with a pattern that has often become similar. Maybe here a relative difference that is no absolute, teases and fascinates. Not hate, anger and murder.Not for mutual indifference, mutual exclusion, nor violence to wipe out the different--to submerge infinity within totality, the submerge the infinite within that which is round, one, whole, solid, stuck, uniform, cruel.
Every December there are always people who slowly turn the key in the door of their rooms and listen to the world asking:
are we really all the same? Every December: when people think about human rights, about the universal yet problematic in humanity, and about commonplace matters like commercialised Christmas, or, in quick succession, the changing year.
Every December there are always people who buy cards and write an address at the top: are Christmas, the month of Ramadhan and the days of Id, really witnesses to a one God and varied humanity, in a life that is basically calm, peaceful, where people can exchange greetings, write cards, declare their longing or condolences, or just send some news? Or is it one God, diverse humanity, and times that are never the same?
Every December there are always people who read page three in the newspaper and cannot reply. There are so many dilemmas outside the front door. A few weeks after December 1991, People magazine told of the murder of Tina Isa.
Tina was the daughter of a family from the West Bank in Palestine that had migrated to America in 1985, when she,the youngest child, was only around three years old. On that December day,Tina was found stabbed to death. It was not difficult for the police to find who had killed this sixteen-year-old-girl. The murderer was her own father.
The father murdered her because he believed that Tina had brought shame on the family and his own sense of honour. She worked at a fast-food restaurant, and was dating a young black man, a school friend. Zein, the father, did not allow it. He wanted to marry off Tina in the same way as he had married off his older daughters: choosing a husband was the father's prerogative. But Tina protested, resisted her father with harsh words, and finally one night, while her mother held her arms and body, the father stabbed her. Die, My Daughter, Die ! is the title of the article in People, January 20, 1992.
'Anyone growing up in the Middle East knows that being killed is a possible consequence of dishonouring the family', People quotes an anthropologist who was born and raised in Jerusalem. Could Zein be sentenced? Isn't one entitled to have authentic customary law?
To differ is what human rights are about. The paradox of human rights is that their starting point is something universal--whereas the universal can be interrogated byt the particular, which is not necessarily the same as what is assumed by that universality. If there is anything that constantly teases us, it is the matter of 'differing' and its meaning in life.
Perhaps, in the beginning, there was differing. But 'the beginning' did not appear, ready, from out of nowhere: even it was a product of differentiation,of difference. Everything that exists gets its identity through being different,and every existing being is always within a situation of comparison with the other. Differing, therefore, cannot be ensnared. In Javanese, the word beda,which is the same as the Indonesian word beda for 'differing', can mean 'differing' or 'other', but it can also mean 'tease'--a teasing that is playful and enjoyable. In other words, something that has no final purpose of having a final 'product'. It has no teleology.
About thirty years ago, Emmanuel Levinas spoke of le visage de l'autrui.He spoke of the 'face' (le visage) and how the other person, who appears before and within us in a concrete way, cannot be abstracted, cannot be formulated, because he or she always transcend what I say and comprehend about him or her. Levinas spoke of the l'autrui,or what in Javanesse is called liyan, meaning 'that which is differing' but can also mean 'the other'. To Levinas,it is in the meeting with and admission of le visage de l'autrui that human ethical moments occur. We do not meet desiring 'product'. We meet with and in something that is infinite.
But here again is a tease: in life there is the infinite, but there is also a need for the infinite, a violent one. Tina was murdered. Zein was imprisoned. Justice often demands a balance, as is represented in its symbol. Justice also demands that there be a uniform standard, like scales. Justice-on-the-scalesis halted differing. In justice, a third party will always be present.
And yer every December there are people who ask:who is represented by the judge, by the third party? It is true that she represents something that can be accepted by all parties? In other words: something universal? Or is that universal merely the victory of those who appear and do the most talking? Suddenly there is a need,a longing perhaps, for 'the same'. In Malay, the word for fellow being is 'sesama' or 'the same'. And thus we meet the world.
The world is q conversation between these differing sesama or fellow. Christmas and Id are spread wide with songs, cards, and objects that cross boundaries because of money and trade--many and varied, but yet with a pattern that has often become similar. Maybe here a relative difference that is no absolute, teases and fascinates. Not hate, anger and murder.Not for mutual indifference, mutual exclusion, nor violence to wipe out the different--to submerge infinity within totality, the submerge the infinite within that which is round, one, whole, solid, stuck, uniform, cruel.