I came upon this quote in Slavoj Zizek’s First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, and thought it pertained to my initial thinking with Ghana Think Tank – of course, in a much more simply expressed and experienced way. I remember thinking about how I learn the most about a different culture when I make a mistake big enough to see the difference between my assumptions and theirs, and saw a potential in that gap (/rupture) for creating new perspectives (11mb / 3 minute video). I certainly never would have used a term as sweeping as universal humanity, but,

‘… as Buck-Morss put it, “universal humanity is visible at the edges”:

rather than giving multiple, distinct cultures equal due, whereby people are recognized as part of humanity indirectly through the mediation of collective cultural identities, human universality emerges… at the point of rupture. It is in the discontinuities… that people… give expression to a humanity that goes beyond cultural limits. And it is in our emphatic identification with this raw, free, and vulnerable state, that we have a chance of understanding what they say. Common humanity exists in spite of culture and its differences. A person’s non-identity with the collective allows for subterranean solidarities that have a chance of appealing to universal, moral sentiment, the source today of enthusiasm and hope.”‘

- from Hegel, Haiti and Universal History, in Slavij Zizek’s First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

This quote came out of the context of a rupture in roles and assumptions that took place during the Haitian revolution, when what something is runs counter to what it is actually doing (and certainly extends my thinking in ‘the remains and what remains’ 140k pdf):

‘The ex-slaves of Haiti took the French revolutionary slogans more literally than did the French themselves: they ignored all the implicit qualifications which abounded in Enlightenment ideology (freedom-but only for rational “mature” subj ects, not for the wild immature barbarians who first had to undergo a long process of education in order to deserve freedom and equality . . . ) . This led to sublime “communist” moments, like the one that occurred when French soldiers (sent by Napoleon to suppress the rebellion and restore slavery) approached the black army of (self-)liberated slaves. When they heard an initially indistinct murmur coming from the black crowd, the soldiers at first assumed it must be some kind of tribal war chant; but as they came closer, they realized that the Haitians were singing the Marseillaise, and they started to wonder out loud whether they were not fighting on the wrong side.‘