What does it mean to transgress?
Most of the definitions have to do with violation of one kind or another, but the most generic sense is to "pass beyond." Beyond what? A limit. To where? The other side of a boundary.
Transgression is also a scientific term describing "an advance of the sea across the land."
"When you write to fulfill a task, it is noticeable because every paragraph will seem alike and as if they are only meant to complete your assignment. If you write more openly to the reader, then they will feel more comfortable and will enjoy reading it more." ~ Neil
Proofreading: "Though it may not catch every small grammar mistake, I often find argument flaws and discontinuities in my writing as I proofread, making it an essential step in my path to great writing." ~ Sharon
"I realized that while fixing my first essay I did not look up my mistakes. Instead, I just corrected what Steph had written without knowing what I was fixing and why I was doing these corrections." ~ Megan
"I realized that everything that is written in a paper, affects something else." ~ Megan
"I need to reserve a large amount of time to write good papers. I can not write an effective paper in one night; I need to reserve time over a few days to revisit my writing to make changes and corrections. I will always need to allow time to write a quality paper." ~ Nicki
"It isn't that I do not care to fix my mistakes; it is that I did not know I was making a mistake until recently....Now that I know it is a problem, it will be easier to fix." ~ Nicki
They did not eat my cat for dinner. Garam masala was mistakenly substituted for garlic and ginger and the Sound of Music reverberated through the apartment (unfortunately not loud enough to drown out the offkey chorus). I recall a crush on the Mother Superior of my high school's cast. As the only white grrl present I am clearly fortunate not to have suffered the fate of Sue in Rang de Basanti.
Don't forget to Climb every mountain!
"How do you start a conversation?" Steve asked as we settled down to lunch in the Ugly Hookah Cafe. I had been torn over which group to join - the friends I'd met the night before (who I had just dubbed "peaceniks") or these men who had clustered around the military officer who had just presented at the Dialogue under Occupation conference. "It's always random, isn't it?" I asked. "I like that, the theory of random," said Kalawai'a. Steve continued, "one just needs a pretext."
These graduate students in political science from the University of Hawai'i seduced me. I did not resist. They let me sit at the head of the table! Kuhio supplied notebook paper for me to take blog notes, declaiming, "If I'm going to be quoted, I want to be sure to speak sentences that don't make sense." The conversation included a preview of Keanu's presentation about the Hawaiian Kingdom (there's nothing like rubbing shoulders with a celebrity's cousin), some discussion of the morning's keynote by Tove as well as her question challenging the motivations of the military in taking on social agency roles that seek to mitigate some brutalities of occupation, and otherwise getting to know each other - primarily through humor. :-)
While munching, scribbling, and laughing, I compared the vibe with that of my dinner companions the previous evening. I can hardly describe my excitement when it dawned upon me that Robert was the Phillipson whose work on language policy in Europe was part of my grant proposal for preliminary dissertation research on "Multilingual Democracy: Community Interpreting and Transnational Citizenship." I could hardly contain my sense of good fortune when he expressed curiousity in my research and invited me to join the dinner party. I didn't meant to embarass Tove with my comment about hanging out with famous people, "I'm no good with that talk," she murmured, but come on! Her work has been embraced by linguistic rights activists within the Deaf community for years. Shelley whipped out the flyer for her new book, Dialogic approaches to TESOL: Where the Ginkgo Tree Grows, as I tried to place the familiarity of her name, then Ruth walked up to join us too. [Available for download, an article on "The European Union in Cyber-Space: Multilingual Democratic Participation in a virtual public sphere?"] I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. :-)
Once Larry remembered where he'd parked the car (!) and after a tightly-packed (cozy) ride, we enjoyed an outstanding Mexican meal including my first glass of horchata. Conversation ranged from defending multilingualism, through international politics (pleasure at US election results and glee over Rumsfeld's resignation, the end of Merkel's honeymoon, Putin's scariness, the recent murder of a journalist covering human rights violations), and some ins/outs of getting published. Shelley and Ruth shared notes about becoming radicalized via the student movements of the 60s, while Tove informed us that the food composing an average American dinner table has traveled 1500 miles. Laughter, comraderie, and passion characterized the conversation. (Where is that photo Robert described as "suitably compromising"?)
The last conference where I enjoyed myself this much was in Aalborg, Denmark over a year ago (August 2005): Discourse Nexus 3.0. It is not a surprise that critical discourse analysis is the common theme; those who practice it are undoubtedly 'my kind of people.'
This morning I am feeling grateful for these folk and our shared experiences. You've taught me much and shown me hope: a happy combination.
Background music: Ben Lee, "Begin"
One of my buddies from the Istanbul Crossroads conference on Cultural Studies sends his weblog link. Cool beans. :-)
He says, "I write where I am not".
This email is going around, strategically targeting interpreters by their town of residence.
The first one I received (November 18) read "I am Ben Woods . I saw your contact on (www.rid.org) Anyway, I am an English speaking man from Madagascar ." A few days ago, I received another. Besides the first line, the rest of the text is the same. What's the scam, I wonder? (But not enough to respond.)
Hello,
I am Tobbie Smith . I saw your contact on (www.rid.org) Anyway, I am an English speaking man from Malta . I will be coming over to the USA(WDummerston) precisely, from 30th of Nov to 12th of Dec with my wife.
Susan my wife understands American sign language. She has never been to the USA before and so she will require the services of an Interpreter who can assist her in the course of our stay, for 10 days ( with the exception of weekends in between) and probably about 8 hours everyday because I will not always be with her on most occasions due to other functions which I must attend to.
I will want to know if you can offer your services at these dates if possible, then I will appreciate if I can get a price quotation As we want to make advance payments before our visit so she can be assured of an interpreter during her shopping and sightseeing because this is her first visit to the in USA. An early response will be appreciated.
I Hope to hear from you soon.
Mr Tobbie Smith
I haven't been to a musical in ages. On the way in to Springfield Symphony Hall last night, I noticed a banner for Jesus Christ Superstar, a childhood favorite along with Godspell. My brother and I used to listen to those soundtracks for hours.
Music enhanced the rousing performance, adding that 'larger than life' quality to the mundane and tragic. The balance of tragedy and comedy in Rent felt right, the laughs softening me up for Angel's death and Mimi's accusation that Roger didn't want to watch her die. I felt these scenes, deep - Uncle Sam and Alec were close - along with a melange of metaphoric associations: symbolic death, potential vision, psychic plays of presence and absence.
Not knowing more than that Rent was wildly popular on Broadway, I absorbed with pleasure the multigendered characters and multiethnic cast. A money/consumption-fame/happiness schizophrenia underlies the script, subtly rebuking the notion that acceptance of diversity is in-and-of-itself a solution to the challenges facing contemporary US society.
You're cooking Thanksgiving?!! Friends and family scoffed.
Yes.
Do they know what they're in for?
No.
How will you fool them?
They're foreigners.
Ah, they don't the difference!
And so it was. I was "the man", none of us were "unique snowflakes," gender ambiguity ruled (although someone did refuse to toast balls), food and drink were consumed in grand proportion. There was a syllable contest, eastern European rivalries were pursued with vigor (e.g., Romanian jazz vs Hungarian show tunes), assistance offered optionally and authoritarian directives disseminated. (I had nothing to do with the basking of the turkey.) Dysfunctional violence was kept to a minimum (mere verbal harassment, a few hurled pickled veggies) but enacted so as to capture the full flavor of typical US holiday dynamics.
It turned out well that we couldn't locate the football game. Instead, we watched Kontroll. It seems just as well that I have missed out on Budapest's subway system both times I've been there. This debut film by Nimrod Antal is dubbed "the most popular movie in Hungary" by one who should know. David periodically commented, "Jumping in front of the subway is a popular form of committing suicide," or "That happens everyday." The still unanswered question: why are there no turnstiles?
By the way, gravy fixes everything.
While most Americans will engage in some form of gluttony today, it is an Unhappy day for American Indians. Jesus Evil Kachina distributed this article, which refers to the National Day of Mourning. Here is a history of the so-called first thanksgiving, summarizing competing claims: those of the "victors" and those of the "vanquished." As with many internet sources (noted as a caution to students), the statement is not properly supported with references (I believe they do exist; ideally they would be included for verification and crossreferencing).
One of the most stupid, insensitive, and embarrasing things I've ever done was give Jesus Evil Kachina a thanksgiving card (nearly 20 years ago) which said something to the effect of white people giving thanks for one reason and "indians giving thanks that europeans didn't come with tactical nuclear weapons." The sentiment tickled my dark sense of humor, but how painful must it have been to an Apache?
Meanwhile, for the past several years, I have been attending university in the town of Amherst, MA, which is named after "Lord Jeff, who was an early pioneer in biological warfare.
I don't advocate that non-Indian Americans feel guilty for the privileges we have (guilt is a selfish emotion), rather that we recognize the price paid for what has become our inheritance. The town of Plymouth has erected a small monument as part of their efforts at redress. The 37th annual Day of Mourning begins at noon, again calling for the release of political prisoner, Leonard Peltier.
One of my students referred to Philip Pullman; I was intrigued.
"...fighting the forms in the air, those dark intentions..." (392) "...a catastrophe of flame..." (385) "...no one thought it would ever be possible...Well, we were wrong...we had to learn to see it..." (376) "...at last there was a physical proof that something happened when innocence changed into experience" (373).
"Everything out there is alive, and there are grand purposes abroad! The universe is full of intentions, you know. Everything happens for a purpose" (330).
"But you cannot change what you are, only what you do" (315).
"We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not," said the witch, "or we will die of despair" (310).
"And how do you know where these meanings are?" "I kind of see 'em. Or feel 'em rather, like climbing down a ladder at night, you put your foot down and there's another rung. Well, I put my mind down and there's another meaning, and I kind of sense what it is. There's a trick in it like focusing your eyes" (151).
"It only works if the questioner holds the levels in their mind...without fretting at it or pushing for an answer, and just watch..." (126).
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I came across this quote posted on the commercial website of the "life on a train" powerpoint author. The idea of creating possibility is something I've come to believe; hence, the quote is a resource, if not an actual reference that might work its way into the "This I Believe" essay I'll write along with my students in English 112.
The essays will be modeled after NPR's national media project, described as "a public dialogue about belief." I began considering content a few weeks ago.
SS4 Shinobi (of DOA fame) waited in line for thirteen hours to purchase his very own wii. Not quite as hip as New York, we passed some time kicking around a soccer ball before abandoning the boys to their vigil.
Wanderer, from Hardcore Gamer, interviewed the kids (text copied and pasted below). We heard about the "rampant anti-PS3 humor" in response to the question, why the wii and not the ps3?
- "It doesn't cost $600."
- "The people at Sony suck."
- "I don't want to get shot."
These were just the answers Shinobi was inclined to tell us grown ups after the fact.
Alec's remains were buried at the Mt. Moriah Cemetary at three this afternoon. Most of the family and many friends attended. Later in the evening, we read through some of Alec's poems (A Boy, Searching, Mind or Body, When someone dies, Races, Polite… or not), cartoons (Lord Chippy versus Luke Skycrapper), and elementary school writing:
A couple of hours before Alec's final service, Kelly showed me this powerpoint presentation. It's a tearjerker. (As if I needed much help to get me started!)
The obituary was published in the Kansas City Star on 9/23/2006:
Our dear son Alec Richard Kent, age 13, passed gently into eternity due to heart failure on September 20, 2006 in Kansas City, MO. Visitation will be from 4-6 p.m. Sunday, September 24, at Red Bridge United Methodist Church, 636 E. 117th St., Kansas City, MO. Services will be held 7 p.m. Monday at the church. Private burial in Mt. Moriah Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions to a memorial fund for Alec c/o Heartland Community Credit Union, 406 E. Bannister Rd., Kansas City, MO, 64131. Born December 30, 1992 in Kansas City, Alec was known to us as the "miracle baby" after surviving the usually fatal Myocarditis as an infant. He would later become an honor student at Center Middle School and receive state recognition and membership through the Duke University Scholastic Achievement program. A musically gifted young man, he excelled not only in his studies, but also in his ability to make friends easily with his infectious laugh and sociability. An active Boy Scout in Troop 46 and member of his youth group at Red Bridge United Methodist Church, he was known by all as a compassionate and helpful young man. Alec is survived by his parents Richard and Christi Kent, his brother, Austin Kent; grandparents Ron and Denise Roberts, grandparents David and Elaine Kent; great-grandparents Woodford and Joyce Roberts, uncle and aunt Mark and Amy Roberts, uncle Nicholas Roberts, and aunt Stephanie Kent. (Arrangements: Mt. Moriah & Freeman Chapel (816) 942-2004)
The One We’ve Got by His Balls accused us of a) not knowing what power is, b) not knowing that we don’t know, and c) certainly not being able to trace its definitions.
“Are you going to blog this class?” I said no. I lied. Sortof. I meant "no" at the time. Things change, although I am still not going to blog “the class.” I’m gonna blog me in the class. Hot damn it feels good to be able to measure my own progress in de-piousification! (Yeah yeah, it’s been a long time coming. FYI – it’s not about you!) I’m still as self-righteously intent on reproduction as I’ve ever been, however I am much clearer that I’m interested in the cultivation of skills rather than duplication of choices.
Durkheim on power: the result of multiple actors behaving consensually. Social justice language, which typically frames (all) interaction in the dichomotous terms of oppression based upon social identities, understands this power in terms of collusion. My own frame of group relations broadens the basis of collusion from stereotypes of identity to include the huge range of roles (socialized, resistive, psychological, interactional) that persons take up in groups. I'm in mind of those who argue that WAR (conflict) is the most sophisticated form of social cooperation.
The tricky art of critical discourse analysis offers a means by which to trace the patterns of cooperation/collusion in conflictual social interaction. Durkheim's distinctions among force, authority, rule, and control add a framework for making sense of particular junctures in a group's discourse when the moves of cooperation/collusion can be brought into view.
Force: going along with the general will rather than one's personal/selfish will. "Durkheim, following distinctions made earlier by John Stuart Mill, used the idea of forced versus natural division of labour to illustrate an aspect of social power. The hierarchy of society is natural if individuals tend towards occupying the positions that they are best suited to. It is forced if there are barriers to people entering positions other than their abilities." (Hierarchical power)
Authority: "the right to enforce obediance." Authority is legitimized by law.
Rule: the functional harmonization of law and morality in society. Robert Merton says, "Functions are those observed consequences which make for the adaptation or adjustment of a given system, and dysfunctions, those observed consequences which lessen the adaptation or adjustment of the system. There is also the empirical possibility of nonfunctional consequences, which are simply irrelevant to the system under consideration."
Control (gleaned from the wikipedia site on Durkheim): how social order is maintained (based upon Durkheim's 1893 work The Division of Labor in Society). Control theory has grown from Durkheim's study, Suicide, published in 1897. Control theory brings to mind Tuckman's stages of group development.
Tove wasted no time sending me a link to a newsletter with several articles about linguistic rights and a pdf with info about submersion - a subtractive educational methodology that has been studied extensively in regard to indigenous and minority students. Without doing more than a quick skim right now, the first thing that strikes me are questions about the definition and categorization of "indigenous" and "minority".
Meanwhile, after reading about linguistic imperialism, Amanda sent a link to a blogpost on Sinhala Sign Language, used by the Deaf community in Sri Lanka. "Sinhala Sign Language (SSL) does not differentiate among “who?” “what?” and “how?” The sign for all three is simply shaking your fist."* A lively discussion ensues after this concerning the ethics of introducing foreign signs to accomplish the functions these lexical items serve in English and American Sign Language (among others).
I suppose this is a smaller scale example of the Karnataka decision on English instruction in Kashmiri schools? Or perhaps it is an example of a different order - pidgenizing a language is a different change strategy than blatant replacement. The Karnataka decision is also opposed; obviously the question of mother tongue or English instruction is volatile. The debate has been going on for a while. A "map" of the language policy terrain was provided in 2002.
I'll need to do more reading and thinking before I can wade further into this, but it is striking to me how politicized language is in this Indian state. I know that language is complicated throughout India (largest number of official languages of any country, right?) Why is the language contest so overt in this instance? What other factors have conspired to bring mother tongue, Kannada, and English into the academic and political limelight?
(FYI: A "fist" of one kind or another has shown up in three contexts within the last four days.)
I made many quick decisions based on brief encounters during this conference - about people's character, ambitions, and intentions. Reciprocally, many of the people I met made similar judgments about me, particularly in regard to "being blogged." This was "thin-slicing" in action.
One of the examples used by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Blink, on the ways our unconscious makes rapid decisions based upon accumulated experience is the fist produced by Morse Code telegraph operators. '''Fist'' refers to the individual style in which a ham operator transmits Morse code.' Gladwell relies on mathematical modeling from John M Gottman ("The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models"), who describes two
possible states in a relationship: positive emotion override or negative emotion override.
I haven't come across anything yet that addresses cultural constructions of emotion, and marital relationships are obviously not the same as those between friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. I do wonder, however, at the extendability of the basic dichotomy (and hierarchy) Gottman poses of five "positive" to one "negative" emotions for a successful relationship.
There was a great deal of affection evident among various groupings of people at the Dialogue under Occupation conference, and a few serious splits. Some people's "fists" became evident as the conference unfolded into the second, third, and fourth day. I'm extending the metaphor of the Morse Code fist to refer to ways I witnessed certain emotional reactions when ideas were questioned, disagreed with, or challenged. In other words, how did scholar/activists manage conflictual discourse among ourselves? What kind of dialogue was enacted under the terms of our own 'occupations'?
I am wondering if the splits I observed can be mediated by choosing discursive strategies indicative of positive emotion override. I don't mean bullshit hypocrisy (which I did not witness), but rather a 'positive' valuing of discursive engagement with those who hold counter-view, perspectives, and experiences than our own. The 'emotion' triggered by these differences might be 'negative' on its surface (or even its depth), e.g., anger, pain, perhaps even threat or fear (which I did not sense personally directed but seemed omnipresent in a vague way). Can a 'positive' overlay transform initial gut 'negative' reactions? Is there value in examining those 'blink' moments of unconscious thin-slicing?
Can we develop a discourse of critical engagement premised upon interrogating our own accumulated experiences? I propose that by doing so we can collaboratively tease out some of those instant thin-sliced convictions based on environmental conditioning and move more productively into a joint ethics that can be more effective in promoting the large-scale institutional changes many of us hope to effect.
(That is a mouthful!)
[Tangent: Pavements as Embodiments of Meaning for a Fractal Mind]
“How do you foresee the transition?”
A U.S. military commander asked this question after watching Keanu Sai’s presentation on the occupation of Hawai’i: “American Occupation of the Hawaiian State: A Century Unchecked.” I was moved to laughter throughout these three presentations today and the talk and video last night.
The evidence is irrefutable and the argument elegant. The process, however, is going to take some time, as Hawaiian Nationals negotiate “the paradox of being tied to [their] own identity.” Kalawai’a Moore (“The Discursive Struggle over Hawaiian Identity and Subjectivity “) detailed the discursive collision of subjectivities shaped under terms of “colonization” with the emerging knowledge that colonization was a deception to cover up illegal occupation. Kalawai’a revels in the postmodern irony of using state theory and the status of Hawaiian Nationals to break out of an Oppressive-Resistance relationship. :-) He invoked Lyotard’s concept of the differend as “a case of conflict between at least two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgement applicable to both arguments" (Lyotard, 1988:xi).” In the Hawaiian case the referents have been broken: “the referent evoked is now the system by which states measure their own legitimate existence and validate personality under International Law.”
While Kuhio Vogeler compared the prolonged occupation of Hawai’i with that of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (“Prolonged Occupations: Hawai’i and the Baltic States”), I was reminded of Farida Vis’ presentation yesterday (“Resisting Occupation: The Palestinian Suicide Bomber and the Western Print Media”). Kuhio was speaking of path dependency (the tendency for initial policy choices to persist: policy/practices can change with much political pressure), and Farida emphasized how the Israeli media machine is always first out with stories concerning events in the Middle East, necessarily framing any response that comes next as a reaction “to” or “against” the version already disseminated. Kuhio’s discussion of path dependency and critical junctures (after the fact, one can argue there must have been sufficient force to produce movement away from equilibrium/inertia because a change did occur) also had me thinking about this conference as a discourse event. I’ve been doing that already – although somehow I do find myself realizing these things after the trajectory is set in motion.
I told Tove at the start of today’s lunchbreak that I’m a troublemaker, she assured me that meant she would like me. :-) But, I qualified, “I make trouble in all directions.” Tove’s urgency to make change effective now is vitalizing: I am inspired by her clarity of vision. Children and their parents should be informed about the long-term effects of mother tongue medium instruction, which is more effective at ensuring fluent acquisition of English than early educational exposure to English. This is a slightly different issue than Rakesh Bhatt’s insistence that learning English early will not have an adverse effect on mother tongue fluency and linguistic persistence (“Colonial Dis-course, Alter-native Ideologies, and the Politics of Linguistic Nostalgia”). I was pained, listening to Tove and Rakesh’s debate, because I sensed more areas of agreement than disagreement. It seemed to me that Rakesh “heard” Tove saying Kashmiri children should be denied English, which is far from her point. She and Robert were both arguing for the best possible conditions for teaching English to them (and anyone).
Socioeconomic class definitely is at play within the (microsocial) debate and the (macrosocial) realities. Those without material and tangible resources want and need hope and skills now: a little is immeasurably better than nothing. Rakesh wants to respond to that need now, and – really! – so do Tove and Robert. There is a definite difference between the careful construction of language policy and local solutions to immediate needs. Perhaps, however, the two approaches do not need to be mutually exclusive?
My new pal Stephen worked on Kimcoco Iamoto's election to the Oahu Board of Education.
Post election radio and text interview (added 14 November 2006).
I watched with dismay as the “peaceniks” broke off into a huddle after Fred Odisho’s presentation on “Discourse During Insurgency/Counterinsurgency: The Importance of Achieving Communication Superiority in Gaining the Support of the People.” In the front of the room was another huddle – all men, most of them big – talking with this Iraqi military officer. I joined the huddle up front. “You’ve got guts,” I said to Fred, “an army man coming to talk in a nest of peaceniks.” He gave me a wink, “Someone’s got to do it,” he said, “otherwise people only get what CNN gives them.”
I’m not convinced that the academics gathered here only get their news from CNN, but it was obvious to me that here was a split in the conference body. Ruth opened the questioning of Fred, his father Edward (“The Iraqi War: A Typical Example of Cultural and Linguistic Dis-course”), and Russell Zanca (audio report May 17) (“Losing Hearts and Minds in Iraq? Cultural Competence and War”) wondering how it is that people who are otherwise so smart could have made the mistakes detailed in this panel. Tove continued: ” are we as researchers, in some way supporting the occupiers to become “nice occupiers” through training in intercultural communication?”
I took her question seriously. I share her frustration. Every time I hear someone mention Iraqis killed because they didn’t understand English and thus couldn’t follow directions, I am reminded of similar tragic incidents with police and people who are deaf. One can’t “stop” or “raise your hands slowly” if you don’t hear the words. Tove invited me to join the gang for lunch...I hesitated over whom to join because I had already been engaged in banter with the Hawaiians. These were the guys I’d observed in “hypermasculine homoeroticism” with the Iraqis. NO! Not really, but it is a good line, isn’t it? :-) (Not my line, alas, hence the quotation marks.) I told Ruth I was going "to infiltrate the enemy."
The blatant gender division (five-on-five) was disrupted only by (husband) Robert in the peacenik huddle and the comment by a woman in the audience who had noted that the military might explicitly want not to promote intercultural understanding because such capability humanizes the enemy, making them harder to kill. In this regard, she suggested that intercultural training conducted by/for the military is actually quite subversive. Is this as simple as men vs women? I don’t think so, but gender is difficult to dismiss completely. Tove’s morning keynote addressed “Kurds in Turkey and in (Iraqi) Kurdistan – Comparison of Educational Linguistic Human Rights in Two Situations of Occupation.”
Perhaps it is not surprising that a champion of the Kurds might be drawn into conflict with champions of the Iraqis? The Hawai’ians, meanwhile, made identifications with the Iraqis on terms of literal occupation while recognizing the “legal brief” being constructed by Tove to present a case for the violation of Kurdish linguistic human rights. These political scientists, Kuhio, Keanu, Kalawai’a, and Stephen (I think he’s honorary, and an actual lawyer, of some kind, not above bribery), kept my pen flying as they discussed international law’s definitions of insurgency, occupation, sovereignty, genocide, and human rights.
I'm not satisfied with the presentation; it was too shallow. The one question I received basically asked, What’s the point? Specifically (paraphrased), “what is the connection between the media artifacts analyzed by your multinational, multilingual team and the reflexive summary of group process?” I had thought (albeit vaguely) that I was enacting “polycentricity” by folding two presentations (two "centers") into one, tacking back and forth between both. The question confirmed my ‘read’ of the energy in the room. The 'depth' of meaningfulness I perceived while brainstorming with my colleagues and constructing the powerpoint slides was not translated into full potential by my delivery.
Dang.
This situation is an example of me doing my best to ‘fly by the seat of my pants’, with less than optimal results. However the experience itself is doublesided (at least). On the one hand, I’m embarrassed to have let down my colleagues by not appearing at my best on our behalf. :-( On the other hand, I’ve stretched myself into an extended zone of being, reaching for something I cannot quite yet grasp. In this act of seeking, I understood better what it was I attempted to do. I actively resisted the monocentric desire of theoretical academic discourse by refusing to provide only a definitive description of an abstract ‘external’ object (the interaction that we constructed among four accounts of the Israeli military’s forcible removal of settlers from Neve Dekalim, a town in the Gaza Strip surrendered in August 2005 to Palestine). To the extent that I did provide selected details of our media analysis, I enacted polycentricity by ‘bouncing’ among the layered and diverse “centers” evident in the intersection of
a) a sociopolitical event,
b) media texts (four) about this event,
c) subjectivities (four) engaging in mutual knowledge construction about the event and its associated media,
d) within a particular epistemology (critical discourse analysis),
e) comparing and contrasting written text in four languages,
f) combining online textual interaction (online versions of the four newspaper articles, a socialtext webspace, email, skype)
g) with face-to-face verbal interaction using a lingua franca (English).
In other words, (and this came clear to me while listening/watching Simon Faulkner present “Re-viewing Occupation: Art, Photojournalism and Israel”), I attempted to perform a work of discursive art within (under) the occupation of the form of academic discourse - “conference paper presentation” - whose “proper” focus is theory, not practice; abstract analysis not application.
Ironically, I had intuited the (potential) performance quality of this presentation last week. I had not, however, clarified its purpose. Or, even more precisely, even as I articulated certain purposes – negotiating parameters with my colleagues, confirming understandings, and coordinating intentions – I still did not comprehend the meaning of what we set out to do.
Taking the best possible interpretation of outcome, I wonder if a learning might be that the enactment of polycentricity is a state-of-being of just this kind of uncertainty? What I found myself doing throughout this presentation (and the entire process with my colleagues) is continually turning Bakhtin’s notions of centrifugality against centripetality and centripetality against centrifugality in counter-movements to those expected from sheer momentum (tradition, expectation, dialectics). If I can become more conscious and deliberate regarding when to flag this for audiences and interlocutors, and when to let such turnings be what they are, perhaps I can enhance the performance of this art in everyday dialogue. Ultimately (!), such practices may lead to more theoretical clarity, bringing “the point” of Decentering Conflictual Discourse into focus.
I recently remembered working as a ballot-counter in Indianapolis, IN over a decade ago. It was a great experience in accountable democracy. There were a dozen of us, most experienced, a few - like me and my partner - verifying the vote for the first time. There was comfort and camraderie not only among the respective Republicans and Democrats, but also between us. The shared citizenship mattered even as anxieties rose and fell with the ongoing tallies and palpable disappointment/thrill of losing/winning the precinct.
Oh how times change, especially with communication technology. Hacking Democracy details concerns with electronic voting. Mark Crispin Miller spoke about election fraud last spring at a conference hosted by the Communication Department at UMass Amherst, Communication in Crisis. Miller was in town for an updated presentation last week. I bumped into him and Viveca at The Black Sheep; he was predicting we will be 'fooled again' today. I hope he is wrong, but no one has done more than him in documenting the evidence.
I posted some resources from Tom Atlee regarding the potential for problems with electronic voting machines back in July 2003.
I wouldn't go so far as to say what happens this election proves or disproves any claims. I do think we need to be watching carefully and bracing ourselves to recognize, admit, and challenge the integrity of our voting system. What's wrong with having proof? Of course there are critiques of the cases made in the materials I've linked - fine and dandy. Let's debate! Still - what's wrong with having proof?
I was an "honorary Eastern European" only for the 1 hour and 24 minutes it took Borat to run. Then I resumed my accustomed role :-) as the earnest, pious, and self-righteous American who is mercilously mocked by Sacha Baron Cohen. This movie is funny, but only if you can step outside of the truly narrow frame in which most Americans live. Here we see ourselves - racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-semitic (Jewish and Muslim) - in all our high-faluting hypocrisy. This Review covers many of the highlights.
The humor is overly-crass in a few places, and falls flat in others, but when Cohen's 'straight man' draws out the extent of white supremacist and classist hubris one cringes behind the laughter. Or ought to. The situation that personally disturbed me the most was with the three college students and their degradation of women. Yes, the desire for slavery was/is sick but in the scene it came across (to me) as a mechanism to operationalize pathological violence against women. I enjoy the young men I teach and can only hope they aren't living such double lives.
I saw the film with two Romanians and a Hungarian, seated in front of a Russian and an Australian. I know at least two Brazilians were in the soldout audience as well. How many of the rest of the crowd were internationals, celebrating the publicization of discriminations they might themselves often experience? I don't know. There were many young people there, and frequent, loud laughter.
One of the sweetest scenes occurs with a group of young African-American men, who are among the very few able to accept a foreigner with apparently weak English language skills as a fellow human being. Underneath and behind Cohen's humor are some sharp lessons about how we could all get along. (See how earnest I am?!!)
The counter-terrorism agent, a.k.a. 1/2 of Drunk-with-Power, owns this book, Trouble in Transylvania. A certain weasel I know might quote it in her dissertation. "I don't understand all this ethnic squabbling in Europe," Strong Minor Bridge read outloud with indignation (p. 62). Isgro wondered "what the hell" we were up to in the hallway (two Romanians and me). This following Art's passage "back and forth, and forth and back" for beer. Did I mention the birthday grrl was wearing an ugly doll t-shirt?
There was the moment when Cautiously Concerned about Confidentiality thought I was expressing my undying love to her. Not to mention the colleague who's desperate to take me clothes shopping. The other half of Drunk-with-Power keeps threatening to show up in priest's gear but it is obviously a bluff, "blackout" or not.
My plants are in (more-or-less) good hands except that one is apparently morphing into an alien from outer space. Dunno what's up with that. Although it might go along with the late-deafened character on someone's "story" who's gonna get a cochlear implant and perpetuate linguistic genocide. I definitely spoiled a pro-Deval discussion in the kitchen...(although I admit to disappointment that websites do not identify authors, hence lacking credibility), and then continued with talk of election fraud via electronic vote fixing. (Go Steph Go!) :-/
Parental zombification was a topic of conversation in some quarters, designated driving in others. An age competition was handily won by yours truly. The deviled eggs were awesome.
fyi, there was not enough focaccia to go around.
Proposal:
Utilizing critical discourse analysis, this paper examines the discourse of transaction in headline stories in four different languages – Finnish, Swedish, Persian (Iran) and US English – regarding the 2005 Israeli pullout from Neve Dekalim in which Jewish settlers resisted relocation. A textual analysis yields themes (indexes and icons) that are intertextual.
Intertextuality, as conceptualized by Fairclough and Foucault, refers to the way that statements always reactualize other statements. Each newspaper account generates its centering effect (Threadgold) in both horizontal and vertical ways (Bahktin) along the dimensions of time, space, place, and motion. For instance, aggression is attributed to different actors and along opposing trajectories in the Persian text than among the three western versions – which also have some significant distinctions from each other. The stories reported in these four online newspapers thus work interdiscursively to replicate and perpetuate a global, monocentric discourse of perpetual conflict. According to Irvine, interdiscursivity is “a specific semiotic effect [that] must be created in practice” (2005, p. 72). Most interesting, the examination of these media accounts reproduced similar interlinguistic dynamics among the four researchers, whose national identities align with the languages and newspapers chosen.
Such social metonymy highlights the challenge of decentering dominant discourses: the same referents can be treated differently in various national and/or media discourses yet still work to generate an overarching monocentric discourse. We argue that simultaneous attention to the workings of ideology at all levels - including our microsocial interactions with each other - enables the recognition of polycentricity and the interruption of interdiscursively monocentric repetitions. Such analyses and the linguistic options they support can contribute to the decentering of present discursive hegemonies of conflict and occupation.
I'll (attempt ! to) present on behalf of Ehya, Jussi, and Karin, of Dexus Nexus 3.0 (August 2005), on Wednesday Nov 8 at 3 pm in the "transaction" thread of Dialogue Under Occupation: The Discourse of Enactment, Transaction, Reaction, and Resolution, hosted by Northeastern Illinois University.
Tom Atlee reviews Conversations That Shape the Future: A Review of THE WORLD CAFE, describing this book as "an exploration of the power of conversations that matter -- ALL conversations that matter. It is also an exploration of the conditions under which questions that matter can be deeply and productively explored."
I've always been intrigued by the collective intelligence movement, even as it's unimodality rubs me wrong. The language is often inspiring:
the advice and suggestions are practical:
and phraseology that invokes synchrony with other events in my life:
The mode, however, is so earnest (whither irony?) and so pious that my pleasure cringes. It leans toward the tragic as a frame of acceptance (read this against the dialectic).
Some of my students may choose this essay structure for their fourth and final project of the semester. I've had periodic conversations among friends about creating a group blog as an experiment in public writing (discourse), community-building, and dissensus-for-social-change (I just invented this term, smile). As an outgrowth of these conversations, Ambarish posted a quote from Arundhati Roy concerning the role of writers and artists in society? I responded at his site, but the notion of writers as artists intrigues me. In particular, I've been thinking about the performance aspect of writing in a public space where people who know me can measure my way in the world, face-to-face, with what I write about and how I write it.
The public display of writing as myself (not with an alias, not to an audience exclusively of strangers) has been of interest to me since I began the blog under Leda's clear perception five years ago. Five freaking years!! It seems impossible. I've fielded questions about "why" many times (hopefully becoming more clear each time, at least for myself if not satisfactorily so for readers), and blundered through more instances of social inetiquette than I care to recount. :-/
The one class I'm sitting in on (now that I'm DONE WITH COMPS!!!) is on Performance and Public Culture. It's the first course of its kind here at UMass and is filled with an eclectic and hilarious bunch of brilliant characters. I'm honored to be there, squeezed into a corner seated on a nested pair of upended recycling bins. :-)
As a marginal performer in the class (meaning I am under no requirement to perform - eat your heart out!), I've become more selective about what I say, when, etc. (Some of my peers may wish I'd had such discretion when I did have to perform. Self-tease, HA!) The class has exchanged some intense email (a partial response awaits in my draft file) about gender, when/where/how the performative can be questioned/challenged (formally - as in when expected, and/or informally - everyday, when not necessarily expected), and the extent to which politics must conform to what appears to be the dominant norm or strike out more radically in a different direction.
[Tangent: Grad Lounge. Glass of red wine. Miguel. "I was born at night but not last night." Dan tried to convince me that Einstein accomplished a lot on his own. Yes, but he was also stopped by his own limitations! "God does not play dice with the universe." Einstein saw relativity but could not go there by himself. We're only going to get beyond our limitations with each other. These guys are setting up the stage for karaoke, piano, poetry recitation, etc. Show starts at 7. So does my class.]
The point? Life is real. It happens now. I could have dissed these guys but they appeared. Gotta honor 'em. That's the risk zone. Allow myself (my plans, intentions) to be changed by their presence.
I'm thinking I'll write a "This I Believe" essay too. I've been getting closer to my own sense/definition of agency. Briankle complimented a sentence I wrote in a comps answer, something to the effect of "Agency requires freedom." Last week I wrote: "This I believe: the only transgressive zone in our de-authorized world is personal risk."
Time to make the case.
"How can you do that, meet a stranger and be friends right now?" A five-year-old voice piped up behind the woman asking me for directions. "It's the way people are supposed to be with each other," his grandmother responded, "Doesn't it feel good to see?" I smiled at him, "It's a pretty cool thing, huh man?" He grinned back.
She was looking for her daughter in the Worcester Dining Commons and was worried about leaving her car parked next to the Campus Center. I told her there was a parking lot over there. "Is it free?" "No," I said, "but what's the difference between breaking the rules here and breaking them over there?" We shared a great laugh and that was that.
I wonder at that little boy's wonder. Was it our ethnic difference that made the connection so implausible or the immediate recognition between kindred spirits? Or, maybe he is just shy. :-)
[excerpts from Obituary, Institute for Advanced Study]
Geertz acknowledged and explored the innate desire of humanity to "make sense out of experience, to give it form and order." In Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (1988), Geertz stated, "The next necessary thing...is neither the construction of a universal Esperanto-like culture...nor the invention of some vast technology of human management. It is to enlarge the possibility of intelligible discourse between people quite different from one another in interest, outlook, wealth, and power, and yet contained in a world where tumbled as they are into endless connection, it is increasingly difficult to get out of each other's way."
Geertz recounted that he was exposed to a form of anthropology "then called, rather awkwardly, 'pattern theory' or configurationalism.' In this dispensation, stemming from work before and during the war by the comparative linguist Edward Sapir at Yale and the cultural holist Ruth Benedict at Columbia, it was the interrelation of elements, the gestalt they formed, not their particular atomistic character that was taken to be the heart of the matter."
Back in the day when I attended several Tavistock conferences (note new book) I met folks who were into Gestalt Theory, which - I wonder? - may trace some of its roots back to Geertz. Still tempts me as something to look into someday. The analogy of a soap bubble used at the site linked is akin to the imagery I've had concerning gravity...
Theory: voice is a theoretical construct from discourse analysis that articulates power. Power is always present in discourse. While thinking well is the most important skill to be gained from writing well, learning how to negotiate authority is the most important task of all teaching. "Negotiating authority" means learning when it is necessary to self-authorize and when it is prudent to acquiesce in order to accomplish longer term goals. Self-authorization includes a range of actions from resistance to collaboration; above all, it means exercising voice in the practical tasks of everyday life.
Being unfamiliar with a particular department means I would approach the material fresh, bringing the challenges and questions of an outsider. Additionally, a certain "lack of knowing" can balance the knowledge bases among students and myself: we would all bring content, I would facilitate our engagement with it. The art of teaching is enabling the balance of labor - it is less that I am there "to teach" as students are there "to learn". I have to find a way, with each new group of students, to create an environment in which students want to learn. Under such conditions I can stop policing and be less concerned with discipline because the goal is no longer coercion but growth.
I probably relaxed overmuch in the interview for junior writing teacher. I blended with the mood and vibe of the interviewing team. I provided anecdotes as illustrations without explaining why or how the example served as an answer to the question. I assumed transparency of ontology: I am not afraid to live on the edge of intellectual, emotional, and professional risk. If there is a primary task of liberal arts education, I believe it is to cultivate the capacity to engage vigorously yet sensitively in discourses of disagreement. We must learn to recognize and embrace difference as difference, and from that basis, without needing to change it, co-construct commonality.
Meanwhile, we have to hone our perceptive acuity to recognize ways that structures, systems, practices, and taken-for-granted elements of daily interactions move us toward homogeneity, the same dull tones of consumerist and survivalist so-called individuality.
Ah well. I had hoped to "turn" some of the questions critically back on their sources. I may have succeeded in some instances but certainly not in others. Theory is static: nonetheless, theory has heuristic value and can be extremely useful for structuring and deconstructing perceptions and knowledges. I definitely could have prepped better for responding to the elements in the job description that privilege theory.
We laughed often; that made the interview an hour well-spent. :-)
(And, even if the evidence of their learning didn't carry me over the top, my current students are still the rockin' best.)
