We must consider the violent effects of exclusionomission itself is used to ontologically damn the excludedthis card will smoke

them. Dalmiya 98 (Vrinda, teaches philosophy at the University of Hawaii. Peace Review. Palo Alto: Dec 1998. Vol. 10, Iss. 4: pg.

523, credit to Ian Wren and Scotty P) Moral culpability attaches both to our actions and to our failures to act. I may not have thrown the baby into the fiver to drown and yet I can be blamed for not jumping in to save her for fear of getting my clothes wet. In such instances, "not doings" can be as violent as some doings. It is important, therefore, to take seriously the ontological status of absences,

failures or omissions and to consider (for instance) "not attempting to save the drowning child" as having a distinct moral status. While not leaping to the rescue of the drowning child in our example, I may look the other way or walk away fast; and surely the acts of "looking away or walking fast" cannot be construed as violent. But even though the primary locus of moral evaluation may be the "negative action," the positive acts (of looking away, of walking fast) become alibis by covering up for the omission. We have here not just "turning my head the other way" but of doing it "instead of" attempting a rescue--a quite different matter. In a similar fashion, "not sayings" that lurk behind what is said or expressed can be violent. In such contexts,

what is said instead, even though independently innocuous (or even praiseworthy), becomes party to that violence. To understand this claim we need not restrict ourselves to traditional spoken or written languages, for this general thesis can encompass all kinds of sign systems and gestures ("body language"). Examples of violent not-sayings abound, from the hackneyed to the startling. A speaker addresses a mixed audience as "gentlemen." Though there is nothing obnoxious about the word "gentlemen" in itself (it is not a racial slur, for example), yet its use here covers up the failure to take cognizance of women in the group and shares in the sin (if it is one) of erasing them from the scene. The platitudinous form of address "gentlemen" thus takes on whatever moral tone that is ascribed to the act of ignoring certain people in the audience, because it is their erasure that underlies its use. It is for similar reasons that "he" or "man" are no longer favored as terms of reference for all humans; their choice may shield an unwitting misogyny. And of course, we are now familiar with this because of feminist language activism. But let us look at the presupposition in the above example. Is there a "sin" in the not-mentioning cited above? Is there any "moral" culpability attached to not explicitly mentioning/referring to women? Are not "misogyny," "hatred," "violence" too strong a characterization for what, after all, amounts just to ignoring or simply not recognizing, referring to, or acknowledging women? This might be discourteous, but can "annihilation" or "harm" that are part of the positive content of a violent encounter be detected in such situations? A short foray into the metaphysics of the self may help us understand the situation here. The Cartesian hypothesis of an independent, atomistic self has now been replaced by the notion of a "relational self." In this view, self-identity is constituted by multiple interactions with others. I not only "make myself" by interacting with others but some things about myself become accessible to me only through these relations. Thus, both the self and self-knowledge are crucially dependent on others. A direct consequence of this thesis, eloquently articulated by Charles Taylor, is

that "non-recognition (or mis-recognition) can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being." Since reference, acknowledgement, and addressing are preconditions of dialogue, and dialogue is necessary for self-construction, a "referential failure" becomes a kind of annihilation and erasure of the self. A failure to acknowledge or refer precludes the possibility of dialogue, and to that extent, stymies the realization of a potentiality of the self.