DO WE APPROACH OTHERNESS WITH CURIOUSITY - OR FEAR?

In my research for a upcoming talk, I’ve developed a bit of a crush on one of Zygmunt Baumans twin concepts for how humans tend to manage otherness.

Anthropophagic versus anthropoemic. The devouring (assimilation/integrating) - and the vomiting up (rejection/expurging).

If you don’t succeed assimilating or integrating that which differ, you reject or expurge it.

To put a bit of perspective on whom might be seen as the protagonist and/or the antagonist, it did make me wonder about who is eating whom in the context of the arcade game “Pac-Man”.

Pac-Man is the hero of the game - but the entity is also an representative of the cohesive force of the community spirit. The Ghost Gang - Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde - are the exiled nomads, forever seeking a community to belong, but every time they catch the elusive Pac-Man, the game stops and resets their search.

And the Ghost Gang, while in their ghostly version, realises the folly of their search and escapes in fear for losing their identity in being consumed.

Once caught, they cannot be assimiliated and are therefore expurged. In their safe haven they can rebuild and reinforce their lost identity, but the irresistible promise of belonging send them seeking the community spirit once again.

Is the Pac-Man or the Ghost Gang to blame for the sisyphurric work - or should the blame be placed in the normative framework of the game?