Reflexivity

In the absence/loss of my own home, I turn in circles to preserve my identity as a lesbian (resisting being positioned by others as a heterosexual woman), and for some years now I have tried to tell the story of my life being lived. This is the other side of de-centering fragmentation: “Not out of nostalgia, but because it is on the site of loss that hopes are born” (55). “The very sense of loss keeps alive an expectation” (63). Berger argues romantic love is one of the things that can grow from this soil. Meanwhile, “we live not just our own lives but the longings of our century” (67): “the century of banishment” (67).

I embody these longings, as do many of my friends. It is evident in their/our words. What shall we together make of them? Berger is optimistic:

“Eventually perhaps the promise, of which Marx was the great prophet, will be fulfilled, and then the substitute for the shelter of a home will not just be our personal names, but our collective conscious presence in history, and we will live again at the heart of the real. Despite everything, I can imagine it” (67).

Posted by Steph at 6:37 AM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2006

“But there’s more!”

Özcan challenged me over the phone. “I like what you wrote, it is very good. But the story stopped. Maybe you will write more tomorrow? Keep it up. I like the comments too.”

There is always more! :-)

There was the list of movies I never saw: Hiroshima, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, more. Eventually you asked if I wasn’t much of a movie person. “I’m not much of a popular culture person,” I replied. “That’s too strong,” you exclaimed, “I give you something and you kill it!” I could only nod in resignation, settling that bit of knowledge (as you illustrated) into its place of permanent recognition in my head.

There was the story of your name, “can” meaning “spirit,” Özcan meaning “the real spirit.” (Which I quite like, grin.) A note about “nonalignment” – hmmm….I don’t remember what that was about? :-/ Something about people’s different subjectivities, I think?

There was a rather serious exchange about me having “closed all the doors and windows” to my own self, because I grew up “living in a lot of noise.” You were distraught that 25 years passed before I even started to find the latches and locks to burrow my way out: “That’s too long!” But it is what it was. :-)

The periodic bursts into song: “One enchanted evening, you may meet a stranger…” (I did make eye contact this afternoon, twice, with a beautiful woman who grinned back at me, both times.) There is that. I have had at least four conversations of “coming out” to date, all of them follow the same pattern. I say “she” in reference to a partner or lover or desired mate and my interlocuter replies “he.” You/they are sure you’ve misheard, or that I’ve confused the pronouns: it just couldn’t possibly be. And yet it is. This is one reason I could not convert to Islam. One, I am too US American with learned cultural and ethical attitudes about equality and integration; two, I am too lesbian.

Meanwhile, they would not let me take pictures at the museum today (inside, I got a few outside).

I got a hot tip that today was free. I made notes about some of the paintings I especially enjoyed. There was also an iron sculpture, abstract, called Composition, by Kuzgan Acar, that resembled (to my imagination) several birds in flight, or an American Indian dancer simulating a bird of prey. The architecture of the building is neat, with plexiglass shattered as if by bullets surrounding one flight of stairs and heavy link chain the next. There is a "False Ceiling" of paperback books, created by Richard Wentworth, of works from the East and West to show connections and distances and convert the physical space of the museum into an area of conceptual and aesthetic debate.

I loved the black and white photos by Francois-Marie Banier, arranged in an exhibit called “true stories.” Famous personages are interspersed with anonymous folks from the street. Some of the images have been embellished by the photographer’s handwriting. There was also a computer graphic of a tree in motion, Eye Catching, including the trunk, undulating in constant sinuous fashion, by Jennifer Steinkamp. I purchased a few mementos with the work of Fahrelnissa Zeid (Mother and Child, 1987, and Struggle Against the Abstract, 1947). She wrote a stunning poem about the art of painting: “I mean you, you…”

Posted by Steph at 1:28 PM | Comments (0)

Lebanon

This conversation and critique has not left my mind the past several days. I posted an initial engagement with Yasser, to which both he and Jeff thoughtfully responded (their full comments follow my original posting).

I am in new territory. I do not consider myself to have ‘the right view’ (whatever that might be); rather, I believe that engaging in such a conversation publicly is a way for me (and hopefully others as well) to learn more, perhaps even to grow and change in our own selves. I go so far, sometimes, as to envision change in the world situation based upon discourses we create and spread.

Perhaps over time, or via specific invitation, it will make sense for me to pull particular quotes from our writings to illustrate (mis)understanding and/or deconstruct meanings, but for now I want to reply more broadly to the tone or quality of both responses. If I over-infer or blatantly misinterpret I hope no one will let it slide. This conversation is much too important to let even the small annoyances go (indeed, perhaps it is in addressing the seemingly small that we can build to the larger and more obviously pressing?)

First, both seemed to feel the need to protect me. I read this as a signal that I am ‘out-of-step’ with this particular intellectual community, or at least at risk of being perceived in this way, of suddenly being counted as among the enemy. I appreciate the engagement and am grateful for – and relieved by – the gestures of inclusion. Thanks. :-)

Second, there is a concern, in both Jeff and Yasser’s responses, that I learn or otherwise come to know certain facts (of history, of media representation, of politics, of language, of precedent…) I agree that this kind of knowledge is important (and I hope various folks will continue to contribute such facts as they seem relevant to the conversation), but I’m not convinced of their utility in generating an actual change in conditions. This is what I mean by pressing against a dialectical framing of the situation: the repetition of the same arguments serves to keep the argument alive. I do not see how this can lead to resolution.

This is slippery, however, because I understand (as Yasser explained) that the framing of this as an argument with sides is a problem, and also that if it is conceived in this way, only one side has been widely ‘heard’ in the West (especially in the US). So there is a place for repetition, but I am raising the question of which place, as well as when. The timing matters as much as the content.

The next level of complication is the sheer urgency of the situation for the people who are in it. It is horrifying to imagine the literal suffering in its physical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. Such pain inspires polemics. So now – today – I have just read the introduction to a small new book by Tariq Ali, Conversations with Edward Said (2006). I read during lunch at the café of Istanbul Modern art museum, where, as I entered the grounds, my eye was immediately drawn to what I thought were angels. My interpretation didn’t change, even as I got closer, although I started to think they didn’t look very happy. Then I saw the title, “Europeans.”

Here is what I have learned from Ali and Said that seems relevant to this discussion:

Said critiqued the West for orientalism and the Palestinian leadership for lack of strategic vision. Called to politics by the 1967 war, many of Said’s heroes were Zionists in what he describes as a fanatical sense: “Not just pro-Israeli: they said the most awful things about the Arabs, in print” (7). [I note this to mark that I am not alone in recognizing at least two kinds of Zionism.] The combination of admirable and hateful qualities in men (?) Said personally admired was one of the crucial contradictions he critiqued and brought to intellectual/public conscience.

Ali bemoans the fact that Foucault’s notion of discourse “was, alas, an important influence” (8). I am not sure what Ali means, here. Is he saying Foucault was an unfortunate influence upon Said? Or that Foucault himself contributed to orientalist discourse? As a matter for critical discourse analysis, it may be proper that a polemic be brought against the “portray[al of] imperialist suppositions as a universal truth” (8), because a polemic gathers and concentrates a forceful voice in a claim for a discursive space of (self) representation. But to be great, according to Ali, a polemic “eschews balance” (8). Of course there is a point of pride to be held in any offensive which reveals an enemy’s flaws and weakness, but at some point one must recognize and act on the potential to change the discourse if one wants to change the constitutive conditions on the ground. Otherwise a dialectical monologic persists.

That Said apparently took it as necessary to maintain pure hatred (indicated by his refusal to engage a reconciliation with Ernest Gellner) concerns me. Ali states it this way: “hatred must be pure to be effective” (11). I do not know the details of what Ali describes as “a celebrated exchange” between Gellner and Said (10), but the characterization that “Said was unforgiving” makes me wonder about his own sense of comfort (identity?) in the polemic zone (11). Please don’t read me wrong! I am not trying to argue that Said “ought” to have done anything differently. I am trying to argue that just because Said’s polemics were effective and necessary at the time doesn’t automatically prove that such polemics remain the best way.

Oy, I feel myself sinking into a mire! I don’t think Yasser, myself, or Jeff have written in an polemic way, rather, that our perspectives have been shaped, to varying degrees, by our exposure to certain polemics. It is true that I have been more exposed to Jewish accounts of 6000 years of attempted genocide than I am to the ways in which “The Palestinians had become the indirect victims of the European Judeocide of the Second World War” (11). I am not convinced that there is a moral equation of “worse” or “better,” “acceptable” or “unforgivable” when comparing the militaristic actions of the Israeli state with, for instance, Said’s characterization of Hamas: “I see them as creatures of the moment, for whom Islam is an opportunity to protest against the current stalemate, the mediocrity and bankruptcy of the ruling [Palestinian] party” (14, all quotes are from interviews in June, 1994).

Learning the details of a particular set of injustices does not negate the details of any other set of injustices. Hierarchies of the oppressed only serve to protect the genuine elites – of which there are Arabs as well as Jews, along with Christians (keeping a restricted focus on the West and Near East). I do wonder what happened to Moustapha Barghuti? Said had high hopes of him as the leader of the National Political Initiative.

My hope in Said is restored (after the disappointment of his embrace of hatred), or perhaps I should say balanced, by the critiques he leveled at certain post-modern critics “for their stress on identity on hostility to narrative” (9). If we agree (Said and me, grin) that narrative matters more than identity, then how far a leap is it from narrative (the telling of a story – a dialectic?) to dialogical discourse: the talking of a story into being?

[FYI - in seeking links I came across a blog entry which links to an audiorecording of an interview with Said in April, 2000.]

Posted by Steph at 12:53 PM | Comments (2)

August 9, 2006

Air like velvet

A voice addressed me in Turkish. “Sorry?” I looked up from the August edition of Time Out Istanbul. An older (than me, grin) man addressed me again, “May I share this table?” he asked, explaining, “It’s hard to find a place for one person.” “Certainly,” I replied, not wanting to hog the 4-person table I occupied. “I arrived early.” I’d already devoured half a pizza (pear, walnuts, cheese) and a great glass of fresh-brewed ice tea. I wasn’t ready to abandon the table; I hadn’t decided how to spend the rest of the evening. I had been weary all day – a reaction to the volume and intensity of recent days’ stimulation.

While he settled in I wondered about etiquette. I recalled my first trip to Germany, some 20 years ago, where people often shared tables and rarely spoke. Should I continue reading? We made eye contact. “Where are you from?” he asked. Twenty hours later (!) I returned to my room at the World House Café and Hostel.

Özcan is gregarious, curious, and happy to be alive. He writes. His first book is on Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national/rebel poet of Bangladesh.

Özcan loves his hometown, and had just completed a meeting with his publisher and several reviewers in which they approved the publication of his next book about its history. Bostanci has grown from a village of 1000 when Özcan was growing up, to a densely populated suburb of Istanbul. Eventually we ended up there, but not until after a second pizza (spinach, cheese), fresh walnuts (they taste different and have a softer texture than the dried variety we get in the States), a bottle of wine, music, flowers (we had to talk, wink), and some sightseeing.

First, the Rumi Mehmet Pasa Camii.

I can't recall if the famous architect Sinan (who built the Suleymaniye Mosque) built this one as well as the next mescit (small mosque) that we saw, nestled right on the shore of the Bosphorus.

This one has the most decorated public water fountain I've seen, and a sweet small library. There were still worshipers in the mosque at 11 pm.

Did I mention that last night there was a full moon?

We took our last cay of the evening at Özcan 's sport club, where he exercises and takes sauna. (He's a champion ping-pong player; I entertained the far-fetched fantasy of him coming to Amherst to take on George.) In the morning, I was treated to a delicious full spread mediterranean breakfast.

From passing the time alone with such activities as admiring an anonymous electrician's work-a-day frog at The House Cafe to a companionable tour of two mosques and beautiful views of Istanbul from the Asian side, Özcan lived up to promise implied in his self-tease: "It's not every night you meet an ambassador on the street!"

Tell me about it! :-)

Posted by Steph at 10:37 AM | Comments (1)

oops!

I posted a few days ago about a new trove of data for internet researchers, with accompanying debates regarding the ethics of using it.

It seems AOL released the data in error.

Meanwhile, it is suggested that the release violates the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. (A law everyone affecting everyone who uses email.)

Posted by Wojciech to the air-l listserv, air-l Digest, Vol 25, Issue 8, August 8, 2006.

Posted by Steph at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

am I missing

the best parties in Amherst?

It would seem so: Mr. Motown fronts Anuj serving bira.

I recognize my own singing peers in the background: flat tenors. I would have fit right in!

I'm not really jealous. Istanbul is pretty cool. :-)

Posted by Steph at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)

August 8, 2006

Sema

It is impossible to convey the sounds and images of Sufi ritual through words. The most I can attempt is to describe my experience. I am a sucker for mysticism. :-) [Sucker: (2b) "One that is indiscriminately attracted to something specified."]

[Painting by Ayten Mungen Polat.]

The visit to Mevlevihanesi began with a gift. (Later, as I checked into my hotel for the evening, I received a compliment: “That is a beautiful scarf. Very Turkish.”) Beautiful tiling and religious inscription adorn the entry, a long hallway with four windows opening onto several richly-embellished coffins: the lineage of teachers at this particular temple (architecturally it is not a mosque). Adherents pause at each window to offer greetings and respect.

The hall opens onto a small courtyard with trees and the obligatory public water spigots. Among the various decorative tiling is a symbol I have not seen before.

We remove our shoes and pass through two rooms before entering the place of worship. The singers have already begun. I am gestured to sit with a few women at the far end of the space. I settle down and observe the surroundings. The walls are dense with script.

Immediately in front of where I sit is a large open space. The man who welcomed me with his eyes, indicating where I should sit, is spreading small fuzzy carpets around the edges of the wooden floor. The singers are clustered at the other end, squeezed into another room separated from the dance space by pillars and a low wall. They face the same direction as I do, so their backs are toward the dance space. They sing in unison, striking the same notes but at various pitches: a melodic blend of tenor, bass, and baritone.

The sound is low and quiet yet it fills the space. It is pleasing, rhythmic, soothing. I continue to look around and realize there are onlookers in the balcony, women and children. They have the best seats in the house. :-)

More people enter. I am distracted by two women who sit in front of me (their male companion sits with them at first, then is directed to the men’s section). They talk. Is it instructional? Perhaps, but it interferes with the singing. The woman doing most of the talking checks her cell phone. I am annoyed by the disrespect to the service and the auditory interference. But people move continually in to and out of the worship space. Late arrivals filter in throughout the service: some join the singers, others the audience. Some people depart at irregular intervals. The annoyance is only mine. I let it go.

Suddenly the dancers enter. After the first three I am surprised when the fourth steps into the room, then realize I’ve seen many depictions of five…yet they keep coming. I count nine. The dance space seems small to me now: how will they manage? They line up in front of the audience space; I can’t see much. The singers are in their third or fourth song now. A very few times a single voice has deviated from the chorus, usually in a sharp or punctuated manner: obviously deliberate. Upon occasion a soloist would sing a prayer. These seem to have been short and subtle because I had not noticed when they began: my consciousness would gradually register their presence as “having been there for awhile.” I was oddly alert while simultaneously being lulled.

The dancers, individually, bow. There is no rhyme to it, no pattern. If there is a cue as to who should bow when, I cannot discern it. Are they being visually directed? My view is obscured. Some time passes. When will they begin? How will they start? The singing provides me no clue: the chants seem to vary yet the overall sound remains more or less the same. A dancer moves into view to my right. Ah, there has been a leader, someone whom (I assume) the dancers have been facing.

Now the line of dancers bow in unison and remove their black robes. Except the first one in line does not remove his. I count again, ten plus the leader, eleven in all. Two in black, nine in white. They kneel, prostrating themselves in the typical Muslim prayer position. Suddenly they strike the floor forcefully with their hands, startling a young woman near me. The volume of the singing also rises simultaneously, an accentuated coordination of the singers and dancers.

The friend who brought me had encouraged me to take pictures but I was uneasy about it. This was real worship, not a show. Still, I took some surreptitiously. Then, the first man in line - who had not removed his black robe - greeted the leader and moved to a more central place some two-three meters away from the leader, yet facing him (and me). I took a picture of them but our eye contact dissuaded me from taking many more.

The white-skirted and jacketed dancers now proceed in a line to greet the leader and begin. The gesture of greeting involves a bow, a nod and kiss to the chest of the leader (his heart?) who responds by a nod/kiss to each dancer's head, another bow, and then a slow step away into the first twirls. Each dancer follows in turn and they unravel their straight line into a graceful constellation across the floor.

The singing continues. I am surprised that the singers do not turn to watch the dancing. The coordination is managed on some other plane of sensation. The second leader walks the dance floor, presumably checking on each dancer. Satisfied, he stops near the leader and they watch. The dancers twirl for a long time. There is still only slight variation from the singers. Perhaps the content of the chant has changed, but the effect of the sound, its quality, remains steady, constant.

After what seems like both a long and a short time, a loud beat occurs and all singers and dancers stop. They are all prepared for it: there is no perceptible delay. Time has ceased to matter much, except I am hoping there will be more. :-)

Two more songs/dances ensue. For the second round there is a change of two dancers but the movement of the dance varies little. I notice more details: the slow raising of the arms with hands brushing one's own face before extension into uplifted, open arches. There is a rotation...I think it increases from dance to dance. One can't really see it happen, at least not from my angle. One just realizes the faces are different, in different positions than they were originally. The singing is more robust; the singers have begun to sway. Volume increases; the soloist is more marked. When it's over I am let down, but it is gentle. I have been privy to something quite special.

I linger, but am gestured to leave. They are preparing for the next service! I want to stay, but am told there is someone who speaks English who can explain and respond to questions. In a small room with half-a-dozen other English speakers, I realize I'm in a devotional group. I remember the feel of this - bible study! - from my Nazarene days. :-) They really are trying to convert me! (More on this later, smile.)

I meet Edip, Alistair and Cyndee, Nureddin, Gulliame (sp?), and others. We are quite a collection of nationalities and language competencies! We introduce ourselves casually, only in response to questions about background and/or what has brought us to Istanbul. The air is strong with comraderie (and cigarette smoke!); I am comfortable. Relaxed. A question: "How does one find god if one does not believe in god?" I want to say, "Look elsewhere! 'god' is not to be found as 'god.' 'god' is in whatever moves you, feeds your passion, nurtures your desires. Pay attention to what turns you on! Therein you will find 'god'." But I hold my tongue, wondering at myself. :-) Edip answers. There is some back-and-forth. I'm unsure of the sequence of conversaton now, at some point Alistair provides a beautifully-gestured description of how he and Edip had met earlier that day and Alistair realized, "Here is a man I can talk to."

At some point I say, "It is a matter of belief. You're here because of a random set of events. You can consider them simply random. If you weren't here, you'd be somewhere else, but that would also be because of how you interacted with those random events."

Edip, turning to me, gestures to a stained print on the wall, "What does it say?" he asks me. I read it out loud. "There is your random. That is your field."

Cyndee, Alistair and I maintain a conversation that ambles around, sometimes merging with others in the group, sometimes diverging to a pair or engaging us as a trio. What brought you here, she asks. "An academic conference," I respond, "A good opportunity to share my interest in language and the European Union. The conference is over now and I'm still here." It is an answer open to many possible hearings, as I discover when she responds with a comment about me becoming Sufi. I let that go, but there is another implication that I've decided to stay long-term in Istanbul. Have I? ;-) Or has it decided me? (I ponder.)

Posted by Steph at 6:25 AM | Comments (0)

Turkish-English translation

It hasn't been so easy finding good software for my Mac OS X (version 10.3.9).

Some online resources:

Seslisozluk, which also has a discussion forum.

Someone's list of word-phrase translations.

Hmm...this could be useful, an explanation of adding Turkish fonts to a Mac.

Some widgits for my dashboard:

Elmasuyunet [which does not seem to be available for download? :-( wah!] and Ligpuan, which shows the current weekly standings from the Turkish Premier Soccer League. (I'm interested, but it's not much help with the language!)

I can track the Turkish financial market but I can't translate to and from English! (Should I be frustrated?)

((nah. just keep looking.))

((((Too bad I can't read French!))))

Harumph! I'll look again later. :-/

Posted by Steph at 5:30 AM | Comments (0)

Your private search history on the web?

Yesterday's air-l Digest, Vol 25, Issue 7, includes discussion of private information made publicly available by AOL for a short window of time. A summary is here. The discussion has begun with questions of ethical use. I also wonder about the squeeze of surveillance technologies on the academy: certainly industry and government will feel no such compunction against mining this data for their own purposes.

Posted by Steph at 5:16 AM | Comments (0)

August 7, 2006

more from the Pera

In addition to the special exhibit, El/le, there were a couple of other exhibits on display.

An exhibit of "Portraits from the Empire" includes this classic, which is seen all over Istanbul:

And many others; I posted an excerpt of five hands from one already, and took this one of a pal.

There's an even older series of paintings, called "Mehmed The Hunter's Imperial Procession."

I bought some replicas of the Kütahya ceramics. These come from a particular province that became famous during the Ottoman period for ceramics, tiles, and faience.

One of my favorite parts relates to the Anatolian weights and measures. I just think this stuff is cool. :-) Many of the same tools are still in daily use.

Finally, there's a fancy little cafe inside the museum, which seems to double as a performance space. It contains the actual piano which inspired the movie, The Piano.

Posted by Steph at 7:30 AM | Comments (0)

Crossroads (Day 4)

I really enjoyed Sudeep Dasgupta’s talk on “Space, Time and the Political: The EU Constitution and the Partition of History.” This was part of the panel (4.19) on “Time, Space and the Unfolding of Culture.” The hinge of his argument, as I understood it, is that Jacques Rancière provides a conception of the democratic that presupposes an equality that the law has already institutionalized. This is a radically different premise than arguments based on alterity, which have to rely on appeals to ethics regarding one’s relations with the Other. Rancière simply declines to engage at that level, as if “Others” are outside the law, trying to get in and be covered it. He argues that the law already has established principles of equality. Period. From this basis one can proceed in quite practical terms to reframe debates about justice – “the coordinates around which democracy is organized” – instead of about difference (which necessarily invokes non-knowledge, invisibility, and a kind of absolute alterity).

Dasgupta contrasts Rancière with Derrida, who he finds “useless in real life,” while still relying on some of Derrida’s conceptual notions, such as “the ‘secret’ history of Europe (Derrida 1994, 1995) and the temporalization of the spatial. The context is the recent (2005) rejection of the EU Constitution by the Dutch and the French. Anti-Turkey and anti-Islamic themes in public discourses were used to localize Europe: as it seeks to extend its space through enlargement it also heightens its borders (Fortress Europe).

Photo: Poster of a sextant from the Rahmi M. Koc Museum.

What is exciting about Rancière is that his notion of the spatialization of the political actually describes how space is created for the presence or position of difference. Sudeep said (possibly quoting Rancière), “politics is that disruption effected by those who do not count as having a legitimate place in the partition of the sensible.” It is this “space of the non-part [the part held by those who do not count] which actualizes dissent … [putting] into action the premise of equality.” Note that equality is taken as given, as a premise, but its condition of possibility is difference. It is this premise, the premise of equality, which “sets up an excess inherent to democracy as dissensus.”

Sudeep (or Rancière, or both, smile) labels the assignment of place (a position in space) “spatial policing.” This reminds me of Bülent Somay's talk, which I reacted to, twice (!), but only partially summarized. His point is that position has replaced identity in the emerging social infrastructure (I hesitate to label it either global or postmodern – both are accurate and neither is enough). In this regard, Condoleeza Rice can fill the position of a white man, and this position has more salience than any other “identities" she may hold. “Meaning is the outcome of positions,” Somay states, referring to mathemathics’ dependence on positionality (first, second, etc). Identity, in contrast, is the outcome of desire. (At some point these must blur….if what I desire is position, then that becomes the reference point for my identity.)

Bülent’s local example generated a peal of laughter: “Any Kurd can be a Turk. In Turkey, a Kurd can be anything: a prime minister, general secretary…..In Turkey a Kurd can be anything except a Kurd.” This is a position, apparently, that cannot be filled by the local spatial policing. Now, here I get confused. Bülent talked of “a gap” that is created when someone of the proletariat passes into a bourgouise position; Sudeep spoke of “an excess.” Sudeep’s excess comes from “the premise of equality which is inherent in democracy as dissensus;” Bülent says the gap can only be filled by another subaltern, but one who is “a speaking subject.” As an example, Bülent recalled a campaign by the German Green Party in which one of their slogans was, “I am a foreigner.” Their non-part-ness is clearly political and emphasized by their identification (!) with the position of non-citizens, but what gap do they fill? It seems to me that they move into a political space of excess by claiming difference.

Yes, the Greens are clearly speaking subjects… and foreigners may or may not have access to the positions that give them legal leverage from which to claim the premise of equality. It seems to me a privileged move, into a space already occupied, rather than a move into a space that has been vacated.

I must be missing something. (Wouldn’t be the first time!) ;-)

Posted by Steph at 5:51 AM | Comments (0)

Diving in headfirst

I wrote the two friends who responded to my plunge into Mideast politics and rhetoric, explaining:

"I have always considered myself as a foil for teaching. In other words, by being willing to display my own errors and ignorance, and do this learning in public, I think others who think like me - or who might be persuaded to think like me - can more readily grow into better, deeper, richer understandings."

Foil, in the sense of "One that by contrast underscores or enhances the distinctive characteristics of another: “I am resolved my husband shall not be a rival, but a foil to me” (Charlotte Brontë)."

The responses are both critiques. I am waiting for permission to post them (either with credit or anonymously). In the meantime, this photo was sent to drive home the point that not all Jewish people believe in Zionism.

The term, Zionism, presents its own problems. By Jews it originally meant the desire to found their own nation, a homeland. By non-Jews, the term has been conflated with deliberate, systematic, and racist oppression. It would behoove us, I think, not to assume there is only one possible meaning for this term. It would be even better if we could use language more precisely - perhaps even avoiding this loaded term - to distinguish between Israeli and Palestinian ambitions. We might even be able to talk commonalities into being.

An aside: A man to watch: Sheik Nasrallah.

Posted by Steph at 5:30 AM | Comments (1)

Vowel harmony

This concept scared me right away. Is the Turkish language like Mandarin (Chinese), which depends on tones? I am so bad with matching pitch. :-(

But no, it seems to do with pronunciation, with phonetics, but not tone. Whew/ (and if I’m wrong oy oy trouble on the way!) Turkish uses suffixes extensively, and has a flexible syntax, words are used in different positions resulting only in differences of style, not meaning. I’ll have to learn the difference between types of clauses better than I know them now. :-(

The author, Hikmet Sebüktekin, of the text I bought describes the content of words and utterances this way: “Turkish is tradition-bound. The mere mention of a single word referring to a cliché, a proverb, or an anecdote, of which there are thousands, often suffices to activate complex meanings stored in the mind of every Turkish speaker” (v).

This is one of the things Marie Gillespie discussed in her presentation at Crossroads 2006 on politics and translation, translating politics, although (I think) her examples were Arabic. It also reminds me very much of Lila Abu-Lughod's anthropological study of the Awlad ‘Ali, a Bedouin culture. Particularly the way women used language. She says the men do this as well but she had more access to the women and their ways of speaking.

Turkish is regular, its “forms are put together with almost mathematical precision and utmost economy” (v). Thank you Atatürk! At least, I’m guessing there is a relationship between the development of the orthographic system and the present-day phonetics – but perhaps I am mistaken. It could be that the language was already auditorily rhythmic and the writing developed (with nearly perfect correspondence, each sound having one specific letter) to match. I’ll require a native informant to straighten me out on this, ácaba?

Turkic languages have a wide distribution and minimal linguistic differences among dialects: 90 million speakers in the Balkans, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq…Azerbaijan, Kazakstan, Kirghizstan, Tadzhikstan, Turmenistan, Uzbekistan…Afghanistan, China, Iran, and Russia. This on top of the 60 million native Turks.

Posted by Steph at 4:59 AM | Comments (1)

Muhammed and the Qur'an

My education progresses.

I have been thinking about Allah’s commandment to read, and the particular power of the words in the Qur'an. I have also been thinking about the life of Muhammed. My substantive introduction to his life is through the eyes of Geraldine Brooks. The overall impression that remains with me is the sense of Muhammed using daily events as the template for Allah’s pronouncements. Imagine what it would be like to be a person who is aware that your words will carry forward?!? There is care in many of the commandments, while some seem uttered in haste. Muhammed is (was) after all, just a man, like the rest of us – subject to human desires and temptations. I imagine that questioning this (the basic fact of Muhammed’s humanness is as controversial for Muslims as arguing for Jesus’ humanity is for Christians (someday I should watch - or read! - The Last Temptation of Christ).

My second look at Muhammed’s life is through Anthony Quinn (playing Hamza) in The Message, a Hollywood movie released in 1976 and approved by three levels of Islamic scholars.

The first command Muhammed receives is: “Read.” Kindof a challenge for an illiterate, eh? It isn’t clear if Muhammed does learn to read himself, but what is clear is that he understands the power of the written word. This is also the advice I am consistently given when I ask questions about Islam. “Read!” I have read some excerpts of the Qur'an in English; those that I have read are similar to parts of the Old Testament (including some parts taken from the Jewish holy book, the Torah) and the New Testament (added by Christians), especially Revelation (about the end times). One confusion: is there a contest between judgment by Allah and judgment by men? "Only Allah can know your heart," says my friend. Yet the Qur'an is full of admonitions to punish and discipline “unbelievers.” How can it be both ways? It is so competitive.

It was competitive at the time Islam came to be. Muhammed was not well-received and his followers were severely persecuted. The idea of one god instead of many gods was threatening to the entire social and political order. “The real god is unseen, not made of clay.” Some of the beliefs stated in this movie (and thereby approved by high Islamic religious sources) are:

“Girls should not be forced into marriage but should be able to choose;” and “God made women to be the companion to man. She is equal.”

“Stop the burial of newborn girls.”

“All men are equal” referring to slaves and free.

“Jews have equal rights as Muslims.”

At one early stage, when the persecution is severe, Muhammed advises some of his followers to go to Abyssinia, where “there is a Christian king, no one is harmed in his country.” The followers who seek sanctuary there have to argue to gain the King’s protection. They convince him by such statements as, “You believe in one god like we do;” “God has said it all before, to Noah, Moses, Jesus, now he says it again, to Muhammed;” and, “At one time all religions were rebellions.” The Qur'an cites the story of Mary, telling it in essentially the same way as the Christian bible does.

The main group stays in Mecca with Muhammed, but eventually they are also forced to flee. I like the story of Muhammed being protected by a spider’s web and a bird’s nest. :-) Spiders are very important in many American Indian religions (scroll down at the link), and birds in some of them.

The “tala el bedru” is the happy call of the women when someone special arrives. I guess it is not only for Muhammed, but also when travelers from the village return home safely? A camel decides the location of Muhammed’s house, a choice that “can offend no one.” Hz. Bilal, a former slave, is the first to sing the call to prayer – the use of a human voice used to distinguish Islam from Christianity (which uses a bell) and against the militarism of a drum: Hamza, one of Muhammed’s uncles, is an important and powerful early convert. He says, “there is too much blood in a drum.” Would that such anti-violent sentiments had carried forth with more force!

I am with the story up until this point. I haven’t been offended, or disagreed with anything. Then Muhammed decides (is told by Allah) to go to war against Mecca. :-(

I have not yet seen the rest of the movie. In the interim, I have been reading John Berger and considering his discussion of time. My speculation is that Muhammed experienced life deeply, in such a way that he accumulated presence. He reinforced his own energy through his perception and insight of relatively mundane daily events. The words he then uttered were received powerfully because listeners felt their “truth” – they realized – and could not deny – the applicability of what was said to their own lives. They could not avoid the logic.

The force of this accumulation, its concentration, penetrates across/through time. It is re-concentrated by believers, who add to the accumulation, preventing dissolution, therefore keeping the power of the words recorded in the Quran alive. Herein lies a specific problem. The words uttered by Muhammed referred to his time, his era, his locality, his place. It is the same challenge Christians face with translating the bible into contemporary times. Literality is dead, it is frozen in time-space, a perennial monologue, an example (?) of the poetry Bakhtin critiques: Poetry "acknowledges only itself, its object (what it represents), and its own unitary and singular language (p. 670a); the word in poetry encounters only the problem of its relation to an object, not its relation to another's word. In other words, words used poetically refer to language itself, to idea of centralized/unitary poetic language, and perhaps to an object represented--but not to non-poetic language, to other languages in the culture."

The problem of literality, then, must be engaged constructively. How does one shift from a monologue to a dialogue? How does one nurture the recognition of two (or more!) logics and participate in a synthesis that leads to something new?

Posted by Steph at 3:36 AM | Comments (0)

August 6, 2006

multilingual publication

Hafez ıs the famous Persian poet from Shiraz, the town I had hoped to visit in Iran.

Contributions are sought from scholars working in Persian studies for a book on "Love and Civility in Hafez" (Mehr va Modara) to be published by Hafez Studies www.hafezstudies.ir and ISESCO http://www.isesco.org.ma/. The papers may be written in Persian, Arabic, English or French.

Length should be in the region of 5000-8000 words,including endnotes.

Inquiries are most welcome, and should be addressed by email to Farideh Pourgiv fpourgiv@rose.shirazu.ac.ir

Deadline has been extended to 25th of September 2006. ISESCO is going to pay US $ 200 to each article accepted for the collection.

Posted by Steph at 6:56 AM | Comments (0)

Berger on philosophy

Berger argues “there has rarely been a more optimistic philosopher” than Hegel because Hegel believed in history as a positive force (38). [I might need to read him!]

Then he goes on to describe Marx’s genius, which was “to prove that this force – the force of history – was subject to man’s actions and choices” (38). [Finally – a concise, pinpoint definition of Marx’s main point!] “The always present drama in Marx’s thinking, the original opposition of his dialectics, stems from the fact that he both accepted the modern transformation of time into the supreme force, and wished to return this supremacy into the hands of man” (38).

[I read this with a flutter of panic. Have I misunderstood, still, and will this destroy the argument I began to make in my comps answer for Briankle? But I think not, because Marx in use, the discourses I’ve heard of Marx, the times and moments when the term “dialectics” or “dialectical” is used, consistently refer only to the former part of his equation. If there is an implication of “returning supremacy” to persons it is buried. And buried so deeply that no one, until Berger, of all the people I’ve had this argument with, has been able to articulate the latter empowering part of the equation. If it is so seminal, why is it not easier to say? Why are there so few examples? Which is why I argue that Bakhtin’s conception of dialogics serves better – it is premised on the future, on possibility. Dialogics acknowledges the past but does not confine itself to it. I would argue, that when Marxist dialectics is invoked as the explanation for some human success over institutionalized systems, it is coopting the more precise and more accurate conceptualization of dialogics, it is trying to colonize it and claim credit for something it has not adequately articulated. In Bakhtin's terms, dialectics ıs monologic. sigh. Do you think I will be ready for my defense?]

Berger continues: Marx’s “thought was – in all senses of the word – gigantic. The size of man – his potential, his coming power – would, Marx believed, replace the timeless” (38). [No wonder he was and is so compelling. But this message is not evident to an outsider, it has been coded within a discourse that takes it for granted. Not only coded, but I would say obscured by the very term, dialectics, clearly coming from dialect, which is a variation of a particular language, a derivative, another version of the same thing (with unique, local modifications).]

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The wikipedia definition (linked above) defines dialectics as "an exchange of proposition (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses) resulting in a synthesis of the opposing assertions, or at least a qualitative transformation in the direction of the dialogue" (emphasis added).

:-) Only a step in the direction of dialogics - which puts logics into a process of exchange, not just ideas.

Posted by Steph at 6:02 AM | Comments (0)

“brief as photos”

John Berger on time, imagination, and love.

“The modern transformation of time from a condition into a force began with Hegel” (38).

Summary: Berger argues there is a phenomenological problem with conceiving of time as a unilinear and uniform flow; this is an unchallenged residue of the 19th century. It is a phenomenological problem because only human consciousness can conceive of time in this way. Such “remorseless time” causes the past to be lost, to fall into nothingness (37). “It follows that one no longer counts what one has, but what one has not. Everything becomes loss” (38).

“That life may be seen as a Fall is intrinsic to the human faculty of imagination. To imagine is to conceive of that height from which the Fall becomes possible” (emphasis added, 39).

It was imagination that enabled the invention of linear time, and imagination that can reclaim a dimension of time that remains intractable to it. Berger explains:

“…hidden within the conceptual system that allows man to measure and conceive of such boundlessness [i.e., the distance which light will travel in one year] is the cyclic and local unit of the year, a unit which can be recognized because of its permanency, its repetition, and its local consistency. The calculation returns from the astronomic to the local, like a prodigal son” (37).

At the local level – of you and me experiencing the passing of time – are “two dynamic processes which are opposed to each other…The deeper the experience of a moment, the greater the accumulation of experience. This is why the moment is lived as longer. The dissipation of the time flow is checked. The lived durée is not a question of length but of depth or density” (all emphases added, 35).

As a natural example (countering artificial limits of “culture” or “subjectivity”), Berger describes the accelerated growth of plants in spring and early summer: “These hours of spectacular growth and accumulation are incommensurate with the winter hours when the seed lies inert in the earth” (emphasis in original, 35).

“If there is a plurality of times, or if time is cyclic, then prophecy and destiny can coexist with a freedom of choice” (34). Berger ties the exercise of choice to language: