1. An ego-centered approach to criticism remains a puzzle to me, although I do grasp its meaning, in part. To have to overcome an ego that is both overconfident and insecure (for that state of being pretty much defines the operation of ego itself) seems like culturally limited work.
The language of ego was very foreign to me when growing up, and this differentiates me from those for whom ego was an essential part of their cultural development.
My culture was implicitly tribal, so that we kind of surged or held back as a group, depending on the mood in the wind.My cultural background made me not just insensitive, but oblivious to personal criticism. I really didn’t take it in. Comments about my progress in art, for instance, were momentarily interesting, but I considered them to be ultimately arbitrary and pointless.
I actually had no concept of self-improvement, growing up. I considered life in terms of likes and dislikes, but not in terms of being good or bad at anything in particular. My academic performance reflected this, in that sometimes I performed well in English, sometimes Art, sometimes in an entirely other subject. When I did my school leaving exam (the second year after migrating to Australia), my best mark of all subjects was in maths.
I went on to study Art, but I had no concept of Western individualism. If I’d developed any individual sense of ego by that stage, I would have called my problems “culture shock”. As it was, I had no way to conceptualize why I couldn’t draw any meaning from my situation. On a deep level, I felt like I needed a rite of passage as a transition from childhood to adulthood.
The concept of there being individual egos gradually began to dawn on me. I changed my course from Fine Arts to Humanities, and by the end of the course, I understood individualism a lot better.
I still didn’t understand how completely the ideology of ego was suffused in language in order to give language a sense of having particular reference to the individual who spoke. I felt language was more for pointing out things objectively. However, I found that when I tried to do this, more often than not, people brought the issue back to me, as if to say, “Well that is just what YOU think, but it’s only about you. Your language doesn’t actually point to anything beyond you.”
Ego eventually seemed to me a very limiting factor because of this cultural presupposition that one could not say anything that did not relate primarily, or exclusively to oneself.
2. Et moi, aussi:
Ego isn’t evil -- but it is far easier to control someone who is ego-centered than someone who isn’t. I’m very difficult to control, because my first instinct, when someone criticizes me, is to think, “Surely you are mistaken!”
I do accept criticism and incorporate the knowledge from it very easily, but I also entertain the high likelihood that there are cultural elements of error in many criticisms I received. That’s to do with the assumption that I’m necessarily saying things “about myself”, when I am making observations in an extremely detached manner.
The first fifteen years of my life, I was simply without ego, which doesn’t mean I was without hedonism.
On the good side: a wounded ego can be really useful for keeping one on a particular track. I’ve experienced that before, too. The oyster makes a pearl out of its injury. Such was my PhD.
I’ve reverted to my old ways now, where, having satisfied my intellectual thirsts, I really don’t care what people think of me. This attitude is deeply African. It’s a core part of African resilience, to be able to surge or contract without any reference to ego or identity.
STAY SANE AND SAVAGE Gender activism, intellectual shamanism
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