what happens at the hyphen
When I was doing the course work for my PhD I learned a remarkable lesson in Social Psychology class with Michelle Fine, one I remind myself of whenever there is a tragic gap, of injustice, discrimination, power, understanding or kindness. One day Professor Fine put a series of hyphenated couplets on the blackboard (yes the actual blackboard with chalk!). There was a list: black-white, female-male, old-young, poor-rich, …. She turned to the class and asked: What happens at the hyphen? After much discussion, and confusion, we came to realize that this was a demonstration of binary thinking, something to which we westerners have become acclimated. The hyphen had come to represent a barrier and demarcation of a difference which might not be reconciled or merged. What happens at the hyphen is discrimination. It is a place which is not to be crossed so long as power lies with the privileged side, so long as binary thinking prevails. It occurs to me that ever since that m...