Exile and the undestroyable perpetuity of stigmatizations--some critical (medical) anthropological reflections

The writing of this paper has been stimulated by the observable widening dichotomy between present pluralist discourses of multiculturalism, which claim the future of mutual understanding and harmony vs. the true prevalence of a dramatically growing discordance in human relations world-wide. Given the experience of working in the long-term exile fieldwork, as well as coming from a geographically interesting and highly media-presented country, ones capacity to rethink and self-detect the modes of treating alterity seems to grow together with the imposed self-reflexivity. It remains to be seen whether the decades in which many have been on the receiving end of approaches that address the Other--the perceptual fields of "race" vs. race and visible vs. non-visible ethnicity's, etc.--will yield an output of constructive scientist voices. The potential dialogue could bring us closer to apprehending the simplistic nature of multicultural discourses, as well as expose better the reasons why they yield such slow results. Namely, we need deeper levels of understanding, and although the psychoanalytic approaches to these issues have been often discarded as reductionist, only they can orientate us, after making us painfully aware that prejudice and tolerance can present themselves side by side, and are not solely dependent on the processes of our becoming more conscious and knowledgeable citizens. The many scientists that equally engage in stereotyping, testify this claim. Thus, this is an insider's meta-narrative that joins the list of present approaches that firstly engage in tracing one's own stigmatization processes rather than solely deconstructing others.