Imperfect and in Need of Repair

In Spelman’s Repair, we as readers are introduced to many different aspects and modes of repair. Whether it be repair, reconstruction, or conservation, between humans and objects or other humans, the need to repair is inevitable. As she nears the end of the book, Spelman reminds us of this, saying,

In any event, repair is necessary because– theological views aside– we are manifestly imperfect creatures in an imperfect world. We are reminded of this anytime something or somebody or some relationship needs fixing. You can’t bring up repair without thereby bringing up all manner of facts about humans and the world we inhabit that perhaps for the most part we just don’t like being reminded of–that we are damaged goods, that we live in a world of damaged goods. Repairers deal with the used objects of the world, with those things bearing evidence of the trajectory towards destruction and termination. As repairers, they undertake to halt the march towards extinction, but their very existence reminds us that such extinction is inevitable.

In the first line of the paragraph, Spelman mentions that we’re imperfect, and that we constantly feel the need to repair that. When I read this line, my mind immediately went to the media. In magazines or other forms of media, there are constantly photoshopped pictures, and they give people unrealistic mindsets about what they’re supposed to look like. So we as humans are constantly working towards this unachievable kind of perfection, and we’re doomed to never reach those standards because they don’t exist. As for the second line, we do feel the need to constantly be repairing things and people and relationships, because it’s just our nature. Brokenness is uncomfortable. It isn’t something anyone wants to live with when they have memories of the same thing being so much better. We constantly want to restore any given thing to what it once was. For the damaged goods aspect of the text, I can only think about the show Baggage. In the show, people compete for a date, showing three pieces of “baggage” so that the man or woman they’re competing for can decide what they can handle. It shows that everyone has some history. The older we get, we lose more and more of our innocence, we become more and more damaged.

We’re living in a world full of things that need fixing, ourselves included. We want to live by the motto, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but we’re constantly finding flaws based on what’s considered beautiful, or mainstream. Repair was published in 2002, so its crazy to think about how people still think the same way.

Reparations

The first four chapters of Repair seemed very similar to me. Spelman referenced the same people and ideas in order to get her point across. However, in the fifth chapter, she started talking about something very different: money. Right off the bat, Spelman says,

Not only is there nothing money can’t buy, there is nothing money can’t fix.

This line really grabbed my attention. Right away I disagreed with the statement, but I spent the whole chapter learning what Spelman had to say, and trying to see what made sense to me. I decided that I don’t believe that paying reparations means not having to apologize, because I’m not so sure that really repairs anything. It may help move something broken into the right direction, but it’s not completely healed. For example, Germany paid reparations after the second World War, but that doesn’t mean we’ve simply forgotten about the Holocaust. Even 71 years later, people are still hurt by the genocide. No amount of money could have healed that wound. Aside from that, there isn’t even a way that someone could apologize for something so terrible, because who could really take on that responsibility if they weren’t the one who caused that pain.

Still, Spelman had some good points, mainly regarding her ideas on apology, such as,

A genuine apology thus involves a rather raw exposure of the apologizers: Having done the deed, one now not only reiterates having done it, but strips away any suggestion that there are extenuating circumstances that could relieve one of blame; it must be clear that he regrets what he has done and feels sorrow over what he has wrought

Apologies are difficult. Even if someone is truly sorry for what they did and what it caused, the person who was apologized to may not be able to forgive what happened.

 

Repair: Women vs. Men

So far in the book, I’ve noticed that Spelman has shown a divide between the repair techniques of women vs. the repair techniques of men. I’m not sure if she did that intentionally, but I think that is an underlying message. She presented it first with Louise, Irene and Elisabeth in comparison to Willie and Fred. The three women are much more careful with their handiwork, and they can’t leave their own mark, whereas Willie and Fred can tinker away, doing whatever they see useful in order to repair or restore the car, and they have the ability to leave their own personal touches.

For example, the author of a recent book about the social and moral development of boys reports coming to recognize that when tension between him and his son get high, both he and his wife tended to rely on her to mediate, thereby not only relieving father and son of the need to figure things out on their own, but also depriving them of the chance to deepen their relationship by having to deal with fault lines in it.

In that scenario, once again the woman is working to mend the relationship without hurting anything, where the father and son duo is relying on her to fix the problem. Another way the women vs. men concept is brought up in the form of fifteen-year-old Jackie. Her mother, Ruth, sees Jackie as her daughter, not just another pregnant teenager. So her repair is going to be more focused on what’s best for her daughter. However, with the men, Spelman says,

what if her father says he’ll disown her if she has an abortion, and her boyfriend say’s he’ll break up with her if she doesn’t?

The woman in this scenario, Ruth, has a much more maternal outlook, wanting to nurture Jackie, but the men may have much more clear-cut ways to deal with the pregnancy. Once again, I don’t know if Spelman has brought up these examples for a reason, or if it was completely accidental, but there is something to be said about the different ways that women repair in comparison to men. I find the idea very interesting. In a blog post on the website Brain Fitness for Life, it says

Many men are sharply left-brain dominant, while women tend to be more evenly balanced between left and right-brain processing. Women are therefore thought to be slightly more intuitive, and sometimes better communicators. Men are often less socially adept, and are more task-oriented thinkers than females.

This can explain why men and women have a different way they go about fixing things.

9 Differences Between the Male and Female Brain