The aesthetics of the hybridization of civility: For inclusion, tolerance and an ethic of difference

Abstract

Exploring life in an emergency shelter, this article narrates the hybridization of civility – the fusion of civility and a street code premised on the threat of violence. This process does not emerge from agency, but predetermined social and economic factors. The hybridization of civility illuminates the psychic violence that envelops the shelter and its personnel. This is illustrated through the aestheticism of this hybridization (what it looks, feels and sounds like). This aestheticism suggests that civility should not be viewed as a binary between civil(ized) and uncivil(ized), but rather in terms of gradations. So doing permits acknowledging and appreciating ‘otherness’ on its own terms, and – paradoxically – recognizing ‘otherness’ as an extension of an already established norm, and thus, as existentially meaningless. The call for the ‘death’ of ‘otherness’ and championing its assimilation into the norm can sow seeds for inclusiveness, tolerance and an ethic of difference.