Seeing Snakes: The Problem of Unattributed and Wrongly Attributed Harm
One of the substantive socioeconomic, sociocultural, and sociopolitical problems of the 21st century, to my mind, is that of unattributed and wrongly attributed harm. At least, this is how I see the problem in the context of my work in the emerging field of Apartheid Studies. It is a big problem; potentially the biggest. When a person does not know how he or she is harmed, suffering and injustice persist at scale. What is humanity if it cannot attribute harm?
One of the earliest and most productive lessons in identification is when a child learns to identify what in Shona is called a humha. Quintessentially, a humha is the unidentifiable thing that hurts or bites and so must be avoided. How does one avoid what one cannot identify? It is a question of patterns. Most new encounters start off as humha, until the child can learn to read patterns for himself or herself.
Evil (which I define, in Apartheid: A Manifesto, as a negotiated settlement - when God and Lucifer have an internal settlement), and all systems of domination are stabilised, and therefore persist at scale, when - and if and only if - the oppressed cannot read patterns for themselves, and so the thing that hurts and bites never appears as what it is. The whole matrix of slavery, empire, and colonialism resolves, in contemporary times, as unattributed and wrongly attributed harm. Hence, those who talk as if colonialism, apartheid, slavery, and empire can end are either insincere or misled. These harms and injustice do not end but merely resolve. It is not that oppression is dynamic or oppressors are inventive. Not at all. All oppressors are corrupt, and therefore useless. The real reason, rather, is that the oppressed themselves are dynamic and experience harm at different rates. As the oppressed move, so oppression moves.
In Apartheid Studies: A Manifesto I use the notion of sabbaticality, or oppressors on holiday, to refer to oppressors who are not present to directly supervise and command and control daily phenomena of oppression. I mean that oppressors may not be present, or they may not need to be present; the effect is the same. Essentially, oppression seeks a plateau where the oppressed themselves maintain their own oppression – not because they intend or enjoy this but simply because of how kleptoparasitic harm corrupts household expenses and circadian rhythms. A paradox is born; the colony and the plantation are such specialised niches for oppressors that they (the oppressors) do not fear crisis or apocalypse. The importance of sabbaticality is that oppressors are not seen contributing directly to oppression, and so the suffering of victims remains unattributed or wrongly attributed.
So the problem of unattributed and wrongly attributed suffering and harm remains perhaps the core problem of 21st century social, economic, political and cultural life. If a person cannot tell how he or she is being harmed, the harm is prolonged such that the person ends up living with the harm rather than ending it. This is the case everywhere where harm persists at scale in a variety of forms.
What I hope my work in Apartheid Studies can do, is contribute to the development of an attributive science, or a science of attribution, that shows how people are harmed at scale persistently, and how such harm can be shown the door. There is no way to end things that do not end. The only solution is to see them. As the ancestors say, nyoka yaonekwa hairumi.