Does "Race" Allow for Transcendence?

What makes the presence and discussion of race in literature and in society so problematic is its arbitrary nature. According to Gates, this is what makes race the “ultimate trope of difference” (6). While we, as a people, may have initially introduced the term as a means of identifying individuals based on their origin or their biological make-up (which I’m not entirely sure is even true), the concepts implementation has reached far beyond. Race is a man made term used to categorize people as the user sees fit. There are no guidelines or determinate characteristics for assigning someone a race. We just do it. We make assumptions and we place people according to how we see them fit within our pre-existing schemas.

This is what makes race a terministic screen as well as a “dangerous trope” (Gates 5).  Burke describes terministic screens as any nomenclature that necessarily directs “attention into some channels rather than others” (45). We can easily liken a terministic screen to today’s Instagram filter. You can take the same image and apply a great number of filters to it, to alter its contrast, its brightness, its hue. By the time that you are done altering the image, you have made a new creation, an interpretation of the original image that is quite different from the original. That particular filter then changes the way you see that image. No, someone else may see the very same image and choose a different filter, this causes them to see the situation in a different experience of the same moment. Terministic screens, as Burke explains them, influence experience in a similar way. Terministic screens are a type of strategy. Often, we automatically apply situations that we have experienced in the past to new situations as they occur. So, our preexisting understandings of certain terms and concepts, like race, influence all of our experiences in life. Once we understand, or think we understand, race, we apply it to all situations from that point on. Our attention is henceforth guided down different, racially specific channels in relevant situations.

It is the arbitrary nature of this terministic screen that makes it such a dangerous trope.  The word trope is significant. Like I mentioned earlier, race is not a scientific term, it is not precise. Rather, as a categorizing people, we will this sense of its definition into our everyday formulations. We have become convinced that race is natural, that it is a justified means of understanding and organizing people, when it most definitely is not. This becomes problematic when we begin making generalizations about individuals and about races. Gates explains that “the sense of difference defined in popular usages of the term ‘race’ has both described and inscribed differences of language, belief systems, artistic tradition, and gene pool, as well as all sorts of supposedly natural attributes such as rhythm, athletic ability, cerebration, usury, fidelity, and so forth” (5) These are all things that we supposed of an individual according to how we interpret their race. When they appear to be different from us, we often analyze and attempt to understand them in terms of those differences.

As we, as a people, have tried to reform our understanding and treatment of race, we have emphasized that what make other races different is what makes them beautiful and that we should accept them regardless of these differences. We emphasize these differences as natural. Gates argues that, in their attempt to “mystify these rhetorical figures of race, to make them natural, absolute, [and] essential” writers have “inscribed these differences ad fixed and finite categories which they merely report on or draw upon for authority” (5). Even as we attempt to accept and recognize different races, we further cement the absurdity and widespread misunderstanding of the term. It is not something natural, it is not essential, not absolute. It is an invention. By classifying and addressing individuals according to this arbitrary label, we reduce entire cultures and unique individuals to a reductionistic term.

In class, Professor Graban asked us to try and embody, or imagine how one could embody, the position of the pontificating third. Burke introduces this term to describe the state in which one transcends dialectic, hearing all sides, but abstaining from bias. When an individual takes on the role of the pontificating third he or she is able to deny all polarities and deny the dialectic in order to understand the situation or make a decision in an entirely objective way. While this seems nearly inhuman, I can imagine implementing the theory in the case of a simple dialectic, perhaps in the case of two theories or two contrasting facts. It is indeed possible to imagine such a case in which termnistic screens can aid our transcendence of an issue, rather than filter content according to prior knowledge. But, as I try to understand and apply this concept to our present (mis)understanding and application of race, I struggle.

I truly do not think that such transcendence is possible, at least not now. The idea of race is so deeply ingrained to our culture, to our understanding of the world and its people. While it may not be an entirely justified or positive terministic screen, it is one that has persisted through the ages, in varying degrees. Even as we become more accepting of those different from ourselves, we still actively recognize and categorize according to perceived racial differences. We continue to define according to differences. It is Derrida’s differance embodied! We can assume the position of the pontification third once we are entirely able to perceive individuals without recognizing any difference whatsoever. The dialectic exists constantly; it underscores the way we live. When we can truly shake off this limiting termnistic screen, we will be transcendent. 

-Morgan