A Place in Space: October 2007 Archives

The party that wasn't a halloween party did (sortof) happen last night. I (as usual) weighed my options. Too tired? Such an old fart! Ok, fine, why not see how the other team really lives?

For an hour I was the only woman among a half-dozen or so apparent bachelors. According to a certain logic, I fit right in. :-) Nonetheless, when the conversation turned to talk of mothers from solicitous straight sons, I recognized some limits to mutual identification. Seeds of a horror movie were planted, until we were informed that some people had a list of other movies to make first - of an unspecified genre. Hmmm. We discussed the merits of Fear, the mtv miniseries, and the desire of such a large percentage of people to vicariously "experience" horrific events similar to those some people have actually undergone. Are these doses of self-induced, artificial, safe fear a substitute for the real fears we prefer not to confront? I am thinking of the big ones, global warming, perpetual war, unending poverty, while being aware that there are interpersonal fears as well: having a job/income, friends, a life partner... (ok, maybe this is just projection).

The trip to Israel is coming up, which elicited some questions. Do we hope for hope, or do we act as if there is hope? My somewhat circular conversation with the Cameroonian who is hoping there is hope (!) helped me clarify the core question that the conference seeks to address. Can academics really make a difference?

I have been thinking, off and on, about my upcoming presentation at Dialogue under Occupation II. I'll be talking about my observation that during the first conference, last year in Chicago, most of us as participants and workshop presenters did not engage in dialogue with each other. Actually, I can be more precise, the places where the need for dialogue was most apparent did not materialize. Instead, we privileged "discourse" in our workshop presentations, and we acted along established streams of discourse whenever areas of genuine disagreement arose. At least, this is what I witnessed. No doubt, real dialogue was occurring among at least some of the conference organizers because it is an incredible feat of courage and willpower to have arranged for this second conference to be held in East Jerusalem.

Originally slated for the West Bank, events in the region forced a move to East Jerusalem. A planned pre-conference tour to Ramallah has been cancelled. How can dialogue of any kind possibly develop in a region with such historically deep divisions? In other words, can our being there - meeting and talking from our broad intellectual knowledges and personal passions - make any kind of difference? Who knows.

At any rate, the other seed planted last night, for those attuned to the conspiracy, is for The Linus Foundation. Now, I'm not saying this idea is in competition with breaking into film production, in fact, the two possibilities are already quantumly linked. Of course, there is the matter of follow-through....

U professor watched as Germany reunified

When I read her book on Kella, Germany - "Where the World Ended" - a few years ago, I was inspired by Daphne Berdahl's ethnography of borderlands. She had a tangible, physical boundary but focused on people's orientations to the border as well as their adaptations when the border changed. Her notions apply to the work I hope to do at "the border" of languages, a borderland occupied (physically,materially) by simultaneous interpretation.

I need to read the essays in this book now, Altering States: Ethnographies of Transition in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, which she co-edited.

I'm stunned at her age - roughly mine. So much accomplished: not just the academic contributions, but goodwill in the world. A worthy life, albeit all too short.

Learned via an H-Net List for the Society for the Anthropology of Europe.

In keeping with Kenneth Burke's mission to purify war, the use of social science to shift problem-solving from violence to conversation is a welcome development.

Burke says, "language... [is] the 'critical moment' at which human motives take form" (from GM 318, in Kenneth Burke: Rhetoric, Subjectivity, Postmodernism by Robert Wess).

Army Enlists Anthropology in War Zones, a feature story from the NYTimes, has demonstrated the "ability to understand subtle points of tribal relations," enabling soldiers "to focus more on improving security, health care and education for the population."

This kind of humanitarian army is the cooperation that our world needs. We must learn to eat with our enemies. Liberal leftists (I assume?) are criticizing the experimental military program for institutionalizing yet another way to coerce local peoples to accept occupation. My initial lean, however, is that the military does not "'yet have the skill sets to implement' a coherent nonmilitary strategy," as explained by United Nations' official Tom Gregg (download a Real Audio interview by CBC radio, June 2007). One of the critics, Roberto, J. González, might characterize himself as an empowered critic of western domination. He is of course correct that the military machines have deviously misused social scientists. Are we not, collectively, less naive now than in history? Perpetuating the same old oppressive frameworks through social criticism is as devastating as popular propaganda.

I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things but where edges meet.

Anne Fadiman. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.
1997. (Preface, p. viii.)

The Review linked above does criticize Fadiman for overromanticizing some aspects of Hmong culture, history, and customs; what reviewer Mai Na M. Lee calls "the bigger issues." In particular, she criticizes Fadiman's conclusion that Hmong are "differently ethical." The phrasing itself is curious, requiring some serious parsing. The way I read the phrase, Fadiman is asserting that ethics are as foundational and valued among the Hmong as within any people. The use of "differently" (instead of the starker label of "different") - refers to the ethics being performed or based "in a different manner." It seems to me this opens up comparision on the basis of more, rather then less, similarity. Dr. Lee did not read the phrase this way, interpreting its meaning as more distancing (differencing?) than joining.

Dr. Lee has the benefit of context; I have not yet read that far. There is a Bakhtinian movement discernable here: the counterplay of centripetal and centrifugal forces in the utterances of Fadiman's book and Dr. Lee's review.