Wherein I Wax Philosophical

I've been thinking about Gregor a lot lately. For those who don't know (or don't remember), Gregor was my philosophy teacher when I studied abroad in Uruguay. He was a German transplant, but spoke fluent, if accented, Spanish. He wore a leather vest and mud-splattered leather pants, rode a motorcycle, and had the most amazingly spider-like salt-and-pepper eyebrows. For more than two hours at a time, my classmates and I would find ourselves staring glazed-eyed at this man while he spoke rapidly and idiomatically on the subject of Latin American philosophy. I often found myself both overwhelmed and exhausted at the end of these classes, but I won't deny I learned a little something.

Gregor was certainly the first person to introduce me to some basic philosophical concepts, and in fact, to this day, there are some topics I feel more comfortable explaining in Spanish than in English. Gregor's words often come back to me when I find myself confronted with an intercultural situation. I hear his voice saying in my head "Se saca del si mismo," and I see him gesturing broadly, one hand clutching the space over his heart and then wrenching away sharply, a vivid illustration of the words he is saying. "Se saca del si mismo" -- It takes him out of himself.

He's telling the story of a reporter who is one day cheerfully trotting the streets of Montevideo when his motion is arrested by a vision: he catches sight of a large dumpster, its lid just opening, and from the dumpster emerge two small hands, tossing out a piece of cardboard. A moment later a tousled mop of hair and two round eyes appear in the dumpster opening, staring at him just as he is staring at them. For a moment, as the two exchange this gaze, the reporter feels that he is the filthy child digging in the dumpster and being quizzed by the well-dressed man out on the street. For a moment, he feels what it might be like to be a different person. The experience takes him out of himself. Se saca del si mismo.

What the reporter comes to a realization of in that moment is the very concept that Gregor is trying to explain to us: the subjectivity of the other. The self remains self-contained, imagining itself the world's only subject, the main character of the play while all others remain supporting characters. The self only understands its own subjectivity and views all other beings as objects, for study, for acting upon, for interaction with, but never subjects in their own right. Until a moment like the one this reporter had when we come into contact with another existence so different from our own that we are drawn out of ourselves and made to wonder What must be happening in that other person's head?

Once that question is asked, it becomes possible for the self to imagine itself in the place of the other. The self imagines the other's point of view, in which the roles are reversed. We suddenly realize that to everyone else we ourselves are the other. Outside of ourselves, we are merely objects for a world full of other subjects. It is a fearful, a humbling thought.

Living in another culture can feel like a sustained out-of-body experience. Every moment of every day is a potential "se saca del si mismo" moment. The self, removed from its native context, comes to know itself continually as other. The self's subjectivity is continually questioned, repressed and denied. To survive intercultural living, one must learn to accept the position of object. Whether this means being the object of giggling stares or the object of well-meaning, if rudely phrased, questions, or the object of neighborhood gossip (when you inevitably put the wrong trash out in the wrong bag on the wrong day), living outside one's own culture means learning never to take your self too seriously. Which is maybe why Gregor wore those awesome eyebrows with such non-chalance...