But Where Is the Ark Heading?

On Stigma Theory and Arknights

I could have plucked the stars, but realized with a start it was only a dream
And what then fell from the sky, burned to nothing by starlight,
Was the star named the Sun

For everyone with Oripathy, the Forgotten, superhumans, cyborgs, Newtypes, mutants, Coordinators, demi-humans, Naturals—and you and me.

Author’s note: Stigma theory is one of Mr. Goffman’s important contributions to social psychology. His work examines in detail how stigma comes into being as a product of social construction. It contains little quantitative data, drawing instead largely on biographies and interview records. As he himself says, it is more of an essay. My understanding of stigma theory is, in fact, confined to certain views within the social-psychological tradition; my acquaintance with other theoretical schools that have made equally important contributions is superficial. Nor do I have the ability or energy, in an article of a few thousand words and relying on the game’s vague text, to follow Goffman’s reasoning through “why” stigma is socially constructed, “why” marks of stigma deserve attention, “why” the stigmatized suffer discrimination, and “why” that discrimination should be eliminated. I can only state conclusions and pile up definitions, rather than offer the detailed reasoning grounded in the work itself that I have attempted in previous articles.

In that sense, this piece, too, is merely an essay. That is the polite way of putting it, of course. In private, I called it “an undergraduate-level patchwork that parrots its sources.” Whether fortunately or unfortunately, I began writing in a fury after midnight, driven to breaking point by the bugs in Rainbow Six, and by the time I finished, it was nearly dawn. Throughout, I was in a state of exhilaration, intoxicated by the writing; when I finished the first draft, I could not even remember what I had written. But this also made the thing something other than ordinary academic rubbish: academic rubbish with a degree of readability. This time I made no effort to suppress—or rather, could not suppress—the urge to pour out my feelings. Again, that is the polite way of putting it. More terrifying still, I have only myself to rely on for revisions. My colleagues reserve most of their love for psychoanalysts; Goffman is not their top star, and a sense of responsibility prevents them from offering comments for me to draw on. I hope readers better acquainted with this phase of the theory will offer their advice.

Long before Arknights attracted a large player base through the quality of the game itself, its many little tributes to classic works had probably already drawn considerable attention. Set aside the more obvious ones—the familiar epilepsy warning, opening lunchboxes to draw “Operators,” then killing enemies in white masks—and turn instead to the foundations of it all: Originium and Catastrophes. Anyone familiar with real-time strategy games would probably find it difficult, as I certainly do, not to make some connection with the all-but-vanished Tiberium series of Command & Conquer. In informal conversations with people familiar with both, we have even referred to the mysterious mineral and the people it afflicts simply as Tiberium and the Forgotten.

But what I want to write about today concerns neither these differences and connections nor the particular stories of the two works. After all, one is unfinished, while the other, its rights having changed hands several times, is riddled with narrative contradictions and holes. Discussing the two on those terms is unlikely to yield much of use.

What deserves attention is simply the stones and the people the stones afflict. Nothing else.

1. Originium, Tiberium—or “Marks of Stigma”

Whether the mineral causes the catastrophe—in Command & Conquer, Tiberium-rich areas are perpetually subject to extreme weather and designated uninhabitable Red Zones or barely habitable Yellow Zones—or the catastrophe brings the mineral—in Arknights, Originium is a product of Catastrophes—does not actually matter. Catastrophe or highly poisonous mineral kills those fortunate enough to die. Those who survive are left to coexist with the crystals for the rest of their short, but assuredly miserable, lives.

Those whom a moment’s natural disaster fails to kill must be left for endless human-made calamities to deal with. Fair enough.

Contract Oripathy and you are classed as an outsider; from then on, you no longer count as human. The only question is: why? Yet there seems little cause and effect to speak of, because humanity has always been this way. Humans feared leprosy a thousand years ago and recoiled from tuberculosis patients a hundred years ago; their descendants fired hepatitis B carriers ten years ago, and today turn a contemptuous eye on people with AIDS. Once again, the famous Gundam line proves useful: humanity keeps repeating the same tragedies. But all this makes perfect sense. These diseases are frightening, and the fictional Oripathy is frightening too. People who have them are unclean.

Like the words tattooed on a criminal’s face, the severed nose or legs, or the brand on a slave, the mineral fragments on a person’s body are glaring marks. Whoever bears such a mark must be a disreputable person. Perhaps that is all there is to it. A disreputable person.

It will also make it impossible for us ever to live like normal people again. The society of normal people will strip you of everything.

—Amiya¹

We can therefore say that it no longer matters whether the substance is Originium or Tiberium. It is a “stigma,” and nothing more.

Just as Originium itself is the disease itself, stigma is not merely a symbol of disgrace: it is disgrace itself. To bear a stigma is to suffer disgrace, to cease to be a whole and useful person and become instead someone deficient and blemished. Freedom from stigma grants at least a kind of legitimacy, the distinction of being a “normal.” We can perfectly well think of it as a label stuck on a “disgraceful person,” like a child’s prank: a sign that says, “I’m a disgrace.”

Let us regard them as patients for now. Let us regard all stigmatized people as patients, infected by this terrible mineral. Come to think of it, the very notion of the “normal” emerged only after the adoption of “the medical approach to humanity.” Having presumed to take the place of a cold-eyed physician, I might as well classify the patients. The result, however, will hardly be the comforting prospect of “the right medicine for the complaint.” Those who need the medicine are probably not the patients themselves.

The first kind of patient is, indeed, simply a patient. There is some bodily impairment. Visible or invisible—what difference does it make? Only how difficult it is to hide. The second kind is regarded as mentally abnormal, or even merely unpleasant in character: some very common examples are cowardice, overbearingness, or whatever else. Other people generally infer these traits from behavior. They can still be hidden. Responsibility for the third kind rests with the stigmatized person’s parents, and their parents’ parents. Nothing to be done: that is how group-level stigma works. Who told you to be born to low-caste parents or infidels? Though you may still be able to hide it well.

But why hide them? Why must these traits that make people different be concealed? As if we did not know. Unless you hide them, cover up the mineral on your body, pretend to be “normal,” how can you live among the majority? Let the slightest thing give you away, and you will be branded as not human!

Because I… am sick.

—Amiya

Returning to the dramaturgical approach, we can see that acquiring a stigma amounts to being unable to perform the social role one is supposed to perform. You cannot play the part, cannot serve the function—what use are you? Count yourself lucky if we do not regard you as a threat or an object of terror. Do you think what frightens us is that you might die and pass Oripathy on to me?

Your very existence challenges the order. We normal people are ourselves products of the social order. You are dishonored, you cease to count as human—what has that got to do with me? Your predicament was certainly not brought about by discrimination from just one or two people. The mineral does indeed come from Catastrophes; the mineral on your bodies does indeed originate elsewhere. But it is no longer merely stone. It is a socially constructed label of deviance. It is not the mere presence of a mark on your body that makes you cease to count as human. The socially constructed order has expelled that mark from the bounds of honor and excluded you from the ranks of the normal.

So here is my prescription, a short one: choose to be forgotten.

2. The “Forgotten” Who Are Constantly Remembered

Choose to be forgotten: grand words, easily spoken. In the story, those afflicted by Tiberium do indeed become “the Forgotten,” exiling themselves beyond the order. People with Oripathy, meanwhile, eke out their lives in the cracks of mobile hive cities, unable to escape the order that excludes them.

Given the Infected’s social standing, there is no way they can show their faces in the streets.

—Amiya

Yet they still long to be forgotten. They use every means available to hide their marks of stigma, to “pass” as normal. Let us not discuss these sophisticated techniques of impression management. Unless we break out of that rut, stigma theory will amount to no more than any self-help “work” on getting ahead.

One thing demands attention: these people hope to be forgotten so that they can live unnoticed among others, not to be excluded from society and thus forgotten altogether. They remain within the social order. This is the first road Goffman offers them: support that order, even if neither they nor anyone else believes they can meet its demands. The second is the Command & Conquer route: simply withdraw from the order, and from everyone who might come into contact with it, whatever the enormous cost. Such cases do exist—the leper colonies established in the past, for instance—but they are too rare to be readily studied. Let us keep our attention on Arknights-style Oripathy patients: those who long to be forgotten yet are always remembered, the “hard-to-forget.”

No, I’ve never been able to forget. I just… don’t want to remember.

—Misha

Everyone who longs to be forgotten is constantly remembered and spoken of. Everyone who conceals a mark on their body also lives in a terrible state of apprehension. They fear discrimination, fear rejection by their own kind, fear that the mark they conceal might inadvertently bring disaster—like Chekhov’s little clerk.² To understand this problem, we must consider the “groups” to which the stigmatized belong: communities made up of people in similar circumstances.

Before we begin, let us ask: what exactly is Rhodes Island to the Infected?

The “in-group” will tell you: a “traitor.” In-groups are always made up of one’s own kind. They continually suggest to the individuals within them that they belong to this group, and this group alone; no other group can ever be their true home. Fair enough. These people have suffered the same treatment. All you need do is acknowledge that the very thing that disgraces you is what you truly belong to.

But the individual does, in fact, live in society. He cannot live solely in the in-group’s incubator; he must conduct himself according to society’s norms. He listens to others’ advice and believes there is nothing different about him. This is the identity the “out-group” provides. He uses every technique he has learned in the past, or that others have taught him, to maintain what could be called a respectable life. All is well—until he discovers that his mark is still bringing him disgrace.

Everyone is… Infected. I’m… Infected too.

—Misha

He has been given two identities and cannot decide between them. He is mired in the struggle. He is always thinking about what others think of him. He does not want to be treated as an outsider, nor does he want to become a traitor to the outsiders. More terrifying still, every piece of advice he hears claims to be good for him and declares the other approaches harmful. The Forgotten never have a single day on which they can truly be forgotten. They cannot even forget themselves. They are trapped in an atmosphere of tension and oppression, facing the Invisible Storm.³

3. The Invisible Storm

I love this metaphor of Kunihiko Ikuhara’s. I once considered analyzing Yurikuma Arashi through stigma theory, then abandoned the idea when Arknights offered more explicit signs to work with. From the perspective I usually take, the Invisible Storm is the routine oppression of the stigmatized by normals.

This city, Chernobog, has already become the symbol of every rule. Expelling the Infected, eliminating the Infected, despising the Infected, fearing the Infected.

—Amiya

Those of you well versed in theories of equal rights cannot help asking why. None of the stigmas we have discussed so far has ever entered the realm of “endangering the public.” We have been talking about no more than being lame or blind, or even just having occasional seizures or a timid disposition. Try returning to Durkheim: in primitive societies, human beings established order through classification, and thereby came to understand themselves and the world. People always notice differences and work to label them. The mainstream group—if I may use that expression—and the mainstream views it holds bind these labeled people to discrediting characteristics: stereotypes, in other words. These people then suffer discrimination and cease to count as human. At this point, people are no longer being classified by their characteristics. Characteristics are being classified by the kinds of people who possess them.

Because the minerals differ in toxicity, people infected with Tiberium are so rare that they cannot possibly organize a military force of any substance. They can only play supporting roles in the story (see Tiberian Sun). In competitive Kane’s Wrath, though, capturing a few Mutant Hovels and seeking their help may very well be the key to victory (tagging Suffer here).

It is certainly a downpour: all sorts of people suffer this oppression. Perhaps the storm is called transparent because it truly has no visible form. But I suspect it is because the many people taking part in this oppression all declare that they do not discriminate.

This is another version of the classic “But I actually own a cow” story.⁴ When filling out questionnaires, subjects often deliberately give false answers. More sensitive rating scales or behavioral measures, however, reveal their true attitudes. People who declare that they do not discriminate may genuinely believe it; at the implicit level, though, they really do struggle to overcome their aversion to the stigmatized.

The Invisible Storm is so imperceptible that even the storm itself knows nothing of it. Studies of attitudes toward people with missing or impaired limbs have found that, when confronted with a stigma, normals generally go through a sequence of initial withdrawal immediately followed by warmth. The withdrawal is automatic and uncontrollable; they then immediately feel that they have been rude and compensate with excessive warmth. But this warmth is simply another form of differential treatment. On a more uncharitable reading, it is condescending charity.

Kurzban and others approach this behavior through biological evolution, arguing that fear of traits that might harm the population gave rise to a mechanism of self-purification. If that is indeed the case, today’s discussion becomes meaningless: stigma is what has enabled us to survive this far, and stigmatizing people and striking them off the rolls is as ordinary as eating bread. But society, having developed this far, ought to be a sophisticated system with room for difference, not mere ants that can survive only through extreme uniformity. Quite a few people hold this view, and so they devote themselves to the same great undertaking: making the stigmatized “normal.”

4. Reunion, Rhodes Island, the Brotherhood of Nod, or the Global Defense Initiative?

They build an ark, take all the stigmatized aboard, and proclaim that it will sail toward a tomorrow without differential treatment.

Make an opening in the iron house, and even if there is a sea of fire outside, the people inside will still shove one another aside to squeeze out.

—Dobermann⁵

Four courses lie before us: toward Reunion, Rhodes Island, the Brotherhood of Nod (Nod for short), and the Global Defense Initiative (GDI). Let us set aside whatever more secretive plots these four organizations may harbor in the stories and consider only what they declare they intend to do.

Reunion’s route resembles the in-group route discussed earlier. It demands that every patient turn toward their own people—the in-group itself—and treats any turn toward another group as betrayal. This road is full of belligerent chauvinism. They may flaunt their mineral growths, challenge people who imagine themselves committed to equality, and keep at it until they find some telltale sign that lets them proudly declare this acceptance a mere facade. If this road does not lead to the legitimation of difference, it leads to self-segregation. Experience has shown that the next generation often benefits. Yet this road merely makes difference sacred and creates new stereotypes.

Rhodes Island, by contrast, seems naive. Curing Oripathy may sound wonderful, but it carries an implicit value judgment: the features that make people different are harmful and should be cured. History never leaves us short of examples; the lobotomy may serve as a typical one. There is also the earlier persecution of sexual minorities, so often conducted under the banner of treatment. The people developing superhuman suppressants in Concrete Revolutio probably think along much the same lines. It is difficult to say that this approach benefits a stigmatized group—or, rather, that it ultimately benefits every stigmatized group. Is it beneficial to make a group uniform by removing what makes its members different? We must treat that question cautiously. In fact, the line usually taken as the protagonist’s standard adolescent grandstanding—“quenching the hatred on the thorn-covered chains”—actually touches on a viable answer: addressing the defects in the social structure.

Nod believes Tiberium will bring about human evolution and hopes to spread it across the globe. We can understand this as follows: when everyone enjoys the same mark of stigma, that mark naturally ceases to be a mark of stigma. But once a distinguishing trait has spread and become common to everyone, will the exclusion of new differences stop? And spreading stigma is not a practicable proposition. Or perhaps it represents this approach: fight stigmatization with stigmatization. For instance, regard those who exclude the stigmatized as narrow-minded and selfish; attach these stigma labels to people who look askance at the stigmatized in everyday life. Use the fear of being stigmatized as a weapon to protect the interests of the stigmatized, reinforcing the meaning of stigma itself with every use.

Is GDI reliable, then? GDI does just two things: wipes out Nod and clears away Tiberium. The first need not concern us; consider only the second. Is it possible to eliminate the mark of stigma itself altogether? Without marks of stigma, there would be no one to be marked. This differs from Rhodes Island’s approach. Rhodes Island hopes to “save” the stigmatized, whereas GDI hopes to cut off the spread of marks of stigma entirely. We must admit that this, too, rests on the premise that “difference is harmful.” Besides, since marks of stigma are products constructed by the order, it is probably not even meaningful to speak of eliminating them.

So we steer our ship toward a dead end, a dead end, a dead end—and a dead end.

Infected organizations like Rhodes Island, which makes no distinction between us and them, or Reunion, which fanatically excludes outsiders and embraces its own, are both very rare.

—Dobermann

Author’s note: In fact, both are very common.

5. Where Is the Ark Heading?

A way out? What can we do? What can you do?

—Skullshatterer

Aboard are people with Oripathy, people with Oripathy, the Forgotten, superhumans, cyborgs, Newtypes, mutants, Coordinators, demi-humans, Naturals, and perhaps a few others. About seven billion in all.

Goffman sees little point in counting the stigmatized, since their number would be “as high as one wanted to make it.”⁶ If we also include those who have not yet acquired a stigma but might, we can make an outrageous declaration: there are no “normals” left in this world.

Of course, that is not quite accurate. “Normals” and “the stigmatized” are, on the whole, mutually dependent; as we have said, both are constructed concepts. In some sense, everyone is both normal and, to some degree, stigmatized. We must therefore choose a path that will eliminate the many injustices the stigmatized suffer. Even if only for our own good.

But where, exactly, should this ark head, this ark that promises the stigmatized a better tomorrow?

We do not believe in Reunion’s chauvinism. We do not believe in Rhodes Island’s hypocrisy. We do not believe in Nod’s eye-for-an-eye retaliation. We do not believe in GDI’s wishful thinking. Where, then, are we supposed to go?

Let us reconsider this business of becoming “normal.”

Should we simply treat them normally? But normal treatment does not mean discrimination has been eliminated. It may merely mean we no longer bat an eyelid. Of course, I cannot uncharitably assume that every individual is like this. But what if we merely show personal kindness, becoming one of “the wise”—someone who understands the stigmatized? We carefully avoid the other person’s mark of stigma, while they anxiously keep it hidden. This certainly does not amount to becoming “normal.” When we avoid a particular trait, or solemnly insist that there is nothing disgraceful about it, are we not already assuming that it is disgraceful? Yet if we do not avoid it, we really do offend the other person.

Special favors are equally out of the question. They would point to an even more terrible conclusion: that stigmatized people are deficient in ability and must depend on others’ goodwill and charity to get by.

Relying on the media is more terrifying still. I do not want to list the familiar disputes over gender; you can judge for yourselves. The all-powerful media probably deserve the lion’s share of the credit for the accumulation, concentration, and eruption of these problems. Under the intense pressure of political correctness, genuinely disadvantaged groups instead become targets of attack. Their marks of stigma are brought up again and again, returning almost-forgotten differences to view until they become a raw nerve for the whole of society. Both sides lose; both suffer.

Make the public afraid of the Infected through propaganda, and when the time comes to arrest the Infected, people will naturally take it for granted—even applaud.

—Dobermann

Ultimately, stigma is a product of a social order, not one person’s fault. This means not only that the person who acquires a stigma need not have done anything wrong, but also that individuals who discriminate, and their acts of discrimination, cannot readily be identified as the principal culprits. Unless we examine and reform the order itself, simply covering the problem with “there’s no difference” cannot possibly solve it. We must acknowledge that stigma is itself an element unlike the rest: it cannot simply be made homogeneous with the whole, and it is difficult even to incorporate it into the existing system. But the question is, why are elements that differ from the rest regarded as harmful? I have spent so much time “defending” this claim of harmfulness, yet I still cannot accept its legitimacy.

Stigma means being different from “normals”; it is precisely because one differs from “normals” that one is stigmatized. People with Oripathy are different from most people, as are all sorts of other minorities. But why must this difference be regarded as harmful?

Everyone is someone who needs to be protected.

—Misha

Goffman observes sarcastically that, in one important sense, only one kind of man in America has no need whatsoever to feel ashamed: young, married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual, Protestant, with children, college-educated, working full-time, with a healthy complexion, heavy enough, tall enough, and with a recent record of exercise.

A highly structured order places all of us in danger: everyone will be stigmatized. Especially when an authority that creates stigma does, in fact, exist. I once wondered whether a highly contagious mineral such as Tiberium was an appropriate way to represent stigma. Now I see nothing wrong with it. True, stigma is not a contagious disease. It is just that its reach keeps expanding.

This ark can sail only toward the far shore of “forgetting.” But those to be forgotten are not the stigmatized, nor the marks on their bodies. What must be forgotten is the border between normals and the stigmatized.

References

1. Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Chinese edition. The Commercial Press, 2009.

2. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Chinese edition. Peking University Press, 2008.

3. Wang Qingfeng. “The Normal Deviant: Goffman on Stigma.” Hebei Academic Journal 38, no. 2 (2018): 188–194. In Chinese.

4. Guo Jinhua. “Stigma Research: The Evolution of Concepts, Theories, and Models.” Academia Bimestrie, no. 2 (2015): 99–109. In Chinese.

5. Zhang Baoshan and Yu Guoliang. “Stigma Phenomenon and Its Psychological Effects.” Advances in Psychological Science, no. 6 (2007): 993–1001. In Chinese.

Editor’s note: I must admit that, to some extent, I am dissatisfied with the author’s position. Is it enough simply to call on society to “forget,” to “make room for others”? Can we really get antisemites and Jews to shake hands and make peace? Or might this lead to a neoliberal form of tolerance? We all know how closely such tolerance agrees with its own antithesis: “I love my neighbor, but only on condition that he does not disturb me!” What this ultimately leads to is a “post-political bio-politics” wholly dependent on fear of the Other.⁷ “Tolerance” and “forgetting” are not good answers. Perhaps only the recognition and remembrance of difference can offer one.