Respicio (and other look-back stories)

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Graduated in Philosophy, Raffaele Alberto Ventura (Milan, 1983, lives and works in Paris) features a long experience in cultural marketing. His essay Theory of the non-leisure class (transl., 2017) has been a publishing case and one of the most acclaimed debuts in recent years – followed by The War of All. Populism, terror and the crisis of liberal society (transl., 2019); Radical shock. Rise and fall of the competent ones (transl., 2020), and The Rule of the Game. Communicating without doing harm (transl., 2023). Over the years, he has been an author on, among others, Repubblica, Wired, Esquire and the Harvard Business Review, as well as having participated in the launch of Le Grand Continent, together with the Groupe d’Études Géopolitiques of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He currently writes for the daily newspaper Domani and the French magazine Esprit. The 2021 Censis annual report made extensive use of his theories.

 

There’s no respect anymore.
This is the phrase muttered by the elderly for over a century, as they comment on changing times. Yet, upon closer examination, it seems that respect has never been more discussed: today, the word is persistently featured in rap lyrics, reiterated on television, and central to awareness campaigns. Could it be that contemporary society is even obsessed with respect?

Respect is, so to speak, the sedimented form of the gaze of others. Associated with the prefix re-, the verb specere (‘to look’) indicated in Latin that which is considered and reconsidered from the proper distance: in this case, the worth of a person. It is thus unsurprising that respect occupies a central role in an age where everyone, through social media, spends time judging and being judged, perpetually exposed to the gaze of others.
The obsession with respect is a by-product of our dependence on likes.

It is the culmination of a long story: in the Middle Ages, respect denoted the deference and honour owed to someone of superior rank, a feudal logic that still survives in mafia rhetoric concerning honour. In the modern era, with the evolution of ideas of equality, respect began to be understood more broadly as recognition of the intrinsic merit of each individual; whereas today, it is viewed as a universal principle which demands regard for cultural differences, extending even to nature.

Respecting has thus become a full-time occupation: respecting colleagues, respecting sensibilities, respecting minorities, respecting the environment… It is an activity that requires intricate skills, in order to avoid tragic faux pas and the risk of disrespecting someone or something. Conversely, each of us is constantly preoccupied with ensuring that we are respected in turn. It is as if our entire existence is now focused not only on looking and being looked, but also on looking at how others look at us, and even looking at how others look at us looking at them. This dizzying hall of mirrors could indeed drive us mad; but how did we get into this?

 

The shapes of respect

Let’s just focus on recent history. In 1965, the American soul singer Otis Redding released the single Respect, in which a man demands respect from his female partner. However, the song only gained national and international success two years later, with the cover sung by Aretha Franklin, who modernised its meaning.
Firstly, it is a woman demanding respect from her man, thus giving the song the traits of a feminist anthem. The cultural climate was driving towards a political reading, and Respect became a song about civil rights, those of Black people fighting against racism. Indeed, in 1960s America, the problem was no longer the laws, which on paper treated all citizens equally, but rather the factual discriminations, such as Southern whites who did not accept coloured children in their schools. The problem, in essence, lies precisely in the lack of respect: respect for federal law, respect for people.

But times do change. Decades later, Notorious B.I.G. released his own Respect, in which he describes the struggles of growing up in the hostile environment of the ghetto and the necessity of earning, precisely, the respect of his peers. Nothing to do with respect for federal law, in here: Biggie evokes the status dynamics within the rap scene, a set of survival norms founded on values like authenticity, loyalty, perseverance, and strength of character. Generally, rappers do not seek respect for their community, but rather they compete among themselves, within the community, to accumulate prestige. It is a symptom of disillusionment with the ideals of the 1960s: if I cannot be accepted by the whole society, then I will be content to reign within my narrow circle.

Thus, in a certain sense, we are back to the feudal conception of respect, conceived as the insignia of a rank. This can be discerned, listening to the songs, in certain recurring expressions, in the chivalric tones: bow down, pay homage, watch the throne… To be respected in rap means climbing the social pyramid, becoming the king or the boss, and from the pinnacle, exercising power over everyone else. A form of redemption for those from the ghetto, but also for all those middle-class youths who recognise, in this somewhat mafia-like storytelling, the metaphorical expression of their own experience. Adolescence indeed resembles a ghetto, where brutal rules prevail, and reputation is the most precious asset.

Of course, it may happen — and indeed it often does — that the logic of respect can get out of hand. For a lack of respect outside a nightclub, occasionally a stabbing occurs. In 1994, it was a gunshot that led Notorious B.I.G. to death – from dissing to dissing, the boastfulness he had accumulated to gain prestige within his faction had exasperated the rival faction. The man who shot him, arming himself with courage and taking responsibility for the crime, surely gained a reputation among his peers. Sometimes, one might kill because of respect; sometimes, one might die because of it.

 

What is respect for?

A fight to the death for pure prestige: this is the essential dynamics of society according to one of the most important interpreters of Hegel’s philosophy, the Russian-French Alexandre Kojève, master of the greatest French intellectuals of the twentieth century. When two individuals meet, each wishes to be recognised by the other as an autonomous and free being. This quest for recognition leads to a confrontation in which each risks his or her life, materially or symbolically, to demonstrate his or her superiority. The result of this struggle is the submission of one of the contenders, who becomes the servant, while the other becomes the master.
We call it master and servant, sang Depeche Mode with some sadomasochistic winks.

The longing to be respected may sound like a luxury, an artificial need, even a folly: after all, one might say, respect won’t feed you. The Baroque moralists denounced the absurdity of the race for honours, for glory, for the satisfaction of self-love. Yet, respect, indeed, can feed. The peculiarity of human societies lies precisely in equipping themselves with symbolic functions, to achieve material ends. Luxury lubricates bonds, artificial needs serve to satisfy material ones, society is a folie à deux, à trois, à dix, à mille. The great historian Ibn Khaldun understood this by observing the dynamics at the court of medieval caliphs, where every investment in prestige materially translated into power. The respect owed to each one was an essential factor in guaranteeing asabiyya, or the solidarity of the group.

This is why respect is so important on the fringes of bourgeois society, in the slums, where the logics of the primitive horde still survives: this ancestral sentiment facilitates the functioning of a micro-society within another society, providing a reputational incentive for the observance of group norms. Indeed, strict conformity to the community order is vital to enable the group to remain supportive and cohesive in the face of any threats posed by other groups, be they rival gangs or enforcers of the dominant order.

But it is no longer all about the slums. Today, the whole world increasingly resembles these micro-societies based on pre-modern logics of prestige, dissing included. On Instagram or TikTok, I can prove my worth without mediation, by donating my creations just as the natives did through the ritual of potlatch, the basis of the theorization of gift culture. This traditional ritual of North American tribes, as first described by anthropologists a century ago, consisted of the exchange and destruction of goods to assert one’s status within the community.
Similarly today, the social potlatch allows one to gain respect and thus make friends, meet love, secure a sponsor, a customer, or a job. In general, the search for approval through social media metrics — likes, shares, engagement: the shapes of digital respect — constitutes an alternative to the more traditional socio-economic indicators of a person’s worth, such as income, wealth, and educational qualifications. Likes are a parallel currency capable of generating a new order of values.

In this way, social disintermediation reshuffles the deck and shakes old hierarchies. Today, stars in music, literature, politics come from the web and as soon as they can, they monetise in the real world that kind of respect obtained in the virtual one. Problem is that a society in which everyone is given equal opportunities is also a society in which everyone stands in perpetual competition. A desperate race for respect: a dream resembling a nightmare, a paradise verging on hell. The defeated can only get the flip side of respect, namely humiliation.

 

The paradox of respect

Despite all good intentions, getting respect is increasingly difficult, because one always has to scamper through the undistinguished crowd. Despite all cautions, it is also increasingly difficult to avoid disrespecting someone. Worse still: the more we strive to be noticed, leaving our digital traces everywhere, the more we risk offending someone. By dint of looking at how others look at us looking at them, we may lose sight of what really matters. Thus, the obsession with respect risks fomenting the widespread feeling of not being enough. Sigmund Freud knew that the desire to meet others’ expectations, internalised as ideals, can lead to neurosis.

Against all individualistic views, the Diversity & Inclusion proponents instead advocate a culture of generalised respect, aimed at recognising human dignity and fair treatment of minorities in terms of culture, gender, sexual orientation and social background. Behind the good intentions, lies also a very pragmatic need: managing the tensions that can arise from a multicultural reality, where community fragmentation continually risks translating into conflict, as when rappers’ dissing leads to a deadly escalation. What some call political correctness is nothing but the communicative ethics of a collectivity willing to avoid civil war. It is hard to live together, as long as respect is not there.

In such a context, the ability to interact respectfully with others requires mastery of cultural differences and a certain linguistic caution in order to avoid stereotypes, prejudices, and offensive terms. This issue is closely tied to the notion of pride in one’s own differentness, at the intersection of uniqueness and belonging.
This issue is also key within companies. In recent years, those involved in management and human resources have indeed noticed that the new generations are seeking symbolic satisfactions alongside economic ones: beyond a salary, in fact, they are also striving for respect. Being recognised and valorised is fundamental for the well-being and motivation of employees. A culture of respect is spreading, capable of embracing women and men and non-binary individuals, persons of all ages, ethnicities, sexual orientations, gender identities, physical and mental abilities, religious beliefs, socio-economic backgrounds and languages, and then flora and fauna, geological entities, technical objects, and perhaps one day, artificial intelligences too.
Basically, a scale of values in which everything holds the same exact value.

This challenge brings forth all the paradoxes of the concept of respect. Can we still speak of a ‘scale’ of values if this scale is horizontal, like an airport treadmill? Are we truly capable of equally appreciating each and every person and thing, from the humblest of human beings to the most exotic of fish species? Or, on the contrary, behind our f ine words, does the logic of respect remain profoundly vertical, condemning us to an increasingly fierce competition to grab that scant resource that is the gaze of others? The layering of such diverse meanings cannot but generate an infinity of contradictions, in which we are immersed up to our necks.

As Marracash sings, Today everything is inclusive apart from exclusive places. Respect oscillates between a hierarchical vocation and an egalitarian aspiration, between being the organizing principle of the social pyramid or the great levelling force of a community of equals. Hence, perhaps, the quest for respect cannot be anything other than an obsession, a kind of disease, a profound but impossible to satisfy need, a bottomless pit.

Sisyphus, Prometheus, Tantalus are the mythological figures epitomising this recursive torment that Freud used to call neurosis. But what if our obsessive demand for respect is precisely the cause of its generalized scarcity? Humiliation does not exist in nature; it is the residue of the human attempt to assign a value to everything. If that is the case, then perhaps the only way to free ourselves from the fetters of respect would simply be a matter of giving up the impulse to attach a value to things. Only then, released from the burden of classifying, weighing, and judging, would gazes cease to be instruments of control and sources of neurosis, becoming instead the quiet witnesses of the world’s variety.