Reductive defining of a group flips to define its definers one-dimensionally too.

Evidence

Jean-Paul Sartre proposed that the Jew is a person whom others define as a Jew. What Sartre must have meant was that the act of such defining is also the act of reductive selectiveness: one of the manifold traits of an irretrievably multifaceted person is hereby given prominence, rendering all other traits secondary, derivative or irrelevant. In the practice of the possessed, the Sartrean procedure is conducted once more, though in the opposite direction. The others, the non-Jews, emerge as every bit as one-dimensional as the Jews appeared in the vision of their haters. The others are not benign or cruel patri familiae, caring or selfish husbands, benevolent or malicious bosses, good or bad citizens, peaceful or pugnacious neighbours, oppressors or oppressed, objects or culprits of injustice, in pain or pain-inflicting, privileged or dispossessed, threatening or threatened; more precisely – they may be all that, but the fact that they are all that or more is of but secondary or minor importance and does not count for much. What truly counts – perhaps the only thing that counts – is their attitude towards the Jews. And the stance taken to every person who happens to be also a Jew is read out as a manifestation of, and derivative of, the attitude taken towards the Jews as such. Like hereditary victimhood, so the one-dimensionality of the worldview has a self-perpetuating propensity. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 681

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to Sartre’s definition of the Jew and to the construction-of-the-Other mechanism this reader is assembling for the Islamophobia critical-theory toolkit. — connects to: Recommendation algorithms assume people are reducible to neighborhood-defined types, reinforcing redlining logics. — , The Braided Reading EPUB: 5-Year…, 747
• DEFINE: Clarifies how the Sartrean reductive ‘defining’ procedure operates and how it boomerangs onto the definers.

Broader Connections

• Recommendation algorithms assume people are reducible to neighborhood-defined types, reinforcing redlining logics. #exemplifies (0.80) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 747