School of Europeanness by Dace Dzenovska

Author:Dace Dzenovska [Dzenovska, Dace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781501711152
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2018-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Irony and the Limits of Tolerance

Toward the end of 2006, I agreed to conduct a Latvian language focus group discussion on questions of tolerance for a policy think-tank that aimed to produce research-based policy recommendations to promote tolerance.14 I was given research questions, yet the discussion was to be open and generative of ideas and examples of “best practice.” We began with a round of introductions and a discussion of whether the people present thought of themselves as tolerant or not and why. One of the participants said: “I think of myself as generally tolerant, but then I read Bankovskis’s recent article and thought to myself: well, perhaps I am not so tolerant after all.” In the context where most invitations to rethink one’s self-ascribed virtue of tolerance were met with resentment or resistance, it was intriguing that the participant both marked a shift in the way she thought about herself in relation to tolerance and identified a specific moment that invited reflection and subsequent reevaluation of her previous stance. When I prompted the participant to tell the group more about the article and why it had had such an effect on her, she merely repeated that it had indeed had an effect, but refrained from explaining how it had worked. It seemed the effect was felt more than thought.

Following the discussion, I looked up the article she mentioned. It was published in Diena, one of the Latvian language dailies, as a commentary by Pauls Bankovskis (2006b)—a novelist who frequently contributed opinion pieces to Diena and other media. The article was titled “A Tu Neliecies” (Don’t Get into My Face) and could be described as an ironic reflection on collective virtue. Given that the piece is an essay that builds its point in a cumulative manner, as well as that it seemed to have an effect on the participant of the focus group discussion without her providing an analysis of it, I reproduce the essay here at length:

What are you looking for? Why are you staring? You think you will read this crappy little article, leaf through this little newspaper and will become smarter? That you will be the cool intellectual and the cultured individual? That you will be able to think that you are better than others? I should beat you up, you damn snob. No, I am not aggressive; in fact, I am utterly unfamiliar with aggressiveness. You simply should not provoke me. There is no need to ask for it yourself.

Like those girls in the summertime. Walking the streets nearly naked. You can see their boobs, their belly buttons, even some butt cracks, the pants are so low. But when someone fucks these prostitutes, they complain that they’ve been raped. But they asked for it themselves! That’s probably what they wanted. They should not have been so provocative.

Well, at least it’s pleasant to look at the girls. But all those mobs of pensioners, who walk around in the summer with shorts and short-sleeve shirts! They should be shot or at least deported.

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