research sources: December 2007 Archives

"Senor Martinez fell into my Spanish as passionately as into a beloved's arms. Not that he'd previously been parsimonious (according to Jack) with his ungrammatical English, but his Spanish was a force of nature that now gushed out of his mouth like water from a blocked pipe.

...

'And you're the one who will be my translator?' he said to me in Spanish. 'Then please tell Senora Eva that her eyes are as blue as the Mediterranean.'

'Senior Martinez says he's dying to try some paprika chicken,' I said. 'But I suggested the stuffed carp.'

Eva handed him her menu. 'Please.'

'I speak of love, not food.' He pushed it away and fixed her with a tender look.

'I can't persuade him,' I said. 'It's gotta be the chicken.'

The Gypsy musicians had appeared . . . 'Tell Senor Martinez this is a real Gypsy tune, not for tourists.'

'I translated and Senor Martinez sighed eloquently, his hand at his heart. 'The Spanish and the Hungarians are very much alike. We have the wildness and also the sadness, what we call duende. We have both ben conquored peoples, we have the souls of Gypsies and the heads for business. That is why I think I can sell our beautiful bathroom fixtures here. I believe they will be understood. And now you have democracy. Hungary, I salute you!' He raised his glass. 'Down with fascism!'

'What's he saying?' asked Eva.
'He says he wishes the paprika chicken would hurry up. He's starving!'

But Senor Martinez was a single-minded man when it came to the similarities between Hungary and Spain, and the possibility of a spectacular union, plumbing and otherwise, between them.

'While the Gypsies made wild music over our shoulders, Senor Martinez outlined a theory of history. 'Both Christian Spain and Christian Hungary fought agasint the infidel Arabs,' he said. 'We stopped the Mohammedans from overrunning Europe.'

'But surely you must admit, Senor Martinez,' I corrected him, 'that the Moors in Spain created a brilliant civilization of poetry, philosophy, gardens. Not only did they have the first lighted, paved streets in Europe, they had the first sewage system in the world. Plumbing. Senor, they had plumbing.'

'The Reconquista was Spain's finest moment,' he disagreed.

'What's he saying?' Eva demanded.

'He thinks the Turks have gotten a bad rap,' I said. 'He says, Really, what's so bad about a culture that drinks coffee and sits around in bathtubs all day?'

'The Turkish infidels?' said Eva, shocked.

'What does Eva say?' he asked.

'She says she wishes these Gypsy musicians would take a hike. They're starting to remind her of a Luftwaffe raid, except there are no bomb shelters.'

Senor Martinez stared at me a moment and then spoke in laborious English, with a pleading glance at Eva, 'I am think Senora Reilly is have fun with me.'

'Oh no, Senor Martinez, you're wrong about that. Believe me, I'm not having much fun at all.'

Eva whispered, 'Cassandra, don't tease the poor man s much. He's paying for our meal.'

'Cassandra, you are being just the slightest bit rude, dear.' Jack smiled wickedly. 'See? There's my mother speaking.'

...the difference, according to Heidegger, is pain.

"Diviners," writes Dennis Tedlock, "Stay close to 'the rift of difference,' as Heidegger calls it, even a small difference. They leave us between two points, or at both of them, and sometimes three." (1983:254)

An ambivalent anthem and a quasi-clone?

Zizek's critique of 'Ode to Joy' as the European Union's choice of anthem is on the mark.

The exchange in the comments between dmclaney and elver about the signing of the Lisbon Treaty, United States of Europe finally created, are a mirror (with a different cultural text) to some of the media critiques produced by students this month. In particular, Evan Grabelsky's "The News Media: The War on Journalism" and "com375"'s "The Non-Reality of Reality TV." Most of the news coverage I encountered involved Gordon Brown's avoidance of the ceremony to sign incognito. (Reminds me of Governor Howard Dean signing Vermont's Civil Union Bill in a private, closed door ceremony.)

The question (as always) is what to do about our recognition of the problem? Bela presents an example of organized activism that is making a difference: "If the technology and the heart come together...." ElR6 follows the theme of cyberoptimism with " Communication and Global Consciousness."

Probably there are ways to counteract the shallow coverage of mainstream media, but we can't isolate only the media as the enemy. The cumulative effects of consumerist socialization are dulled awareness and self-absorbed insensitivity. Not to mention the desperate weaknesses of institutionalized education. A radical notion proposed by a friend the other night included not teaching history until the eighth grade. Why? "It's in third grade you learn that blacks used to be slaves. What are you supposed to do with that information?"

This is the central question. What are we 'supposed to do' with all the information we have?

Dell Hymes writes (2003):

"It might be a fair summary to say that Dennis is concerned most of all with the moment of performance, and I am much concerned with the competence that informs it. Dennis trusts most of all the speaking voice, I evidence of recurrent pattern." p. 36

Hymes places the above discrete distinction in opposition with a polemical distortion:

"...the equation Tedlock : Hymes = pause : particle" (p. 37).

Is it too much to read this as a quintessential instance of the dilemma of quantum mechanics? Do these two erudite scholars represent the indeterminate two-sided-ness of language as energy ("moment", "pause") or language as matter ("competence", "particle")?

The other dynamic I'm observing in Hymes' wonderful chapter, "Use All There Is To Use," is a play between "dialectic" and "dialogue." I am not sure if his narration follows an alternation pattern - it may. :-)

• discussing oral and written languages: "Here the dialectic between original and adaptation is acute" (p. 46).
• re. the creativity of given storytellers in a particular historic circumstance: "The resources in such moments are not one's voice and audience, but experience reflected upon, experience and stories acting upon each other" (p. 73).

This puts me in mind of a conversation a few weeks ago in class, about how graduate students can learn the academic system enough to succeed in it (as in finish with a degree) without being coopted by it (i.e., maintain resistance to certain forms of hegemony).

One cannot avoid co-optation. Whatever forms of resistance practiced are absorbed dialectically by the institution by a social version of Newton's Third Law: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." The discrepancy that often prevents recognition of the equality of opposing force, is that there are not equal and opposite effects. The harder we resist, the harder the institution pushes back. Since it is way bigger than us, we usually get squashed.

I say "usually", because there is an art (that can be learned) of switching from the particle-based dialectics of "reaction" to the time/energy-sensitive dialogics of "effect." Social change occurs when the reactions of equal and opposite forces are met with an alternative that breaks the dialectical pattern. Storytellers who adapt their narratives to fit the social circumstances operate in vertical, contiguous time; those who insist on the same narratives (or discourses, as the case may be) operate in metaphors, substituting one dialectic for the next (no dialogue).

Dialogues can become patterned too (just like story narratives), enacting representations of larger discourses, repeating the social dialectic just as effectively as the repetition of unchanged stories. When one recognizes this is happening, it's time to change up again. Institutions are not designed to adapt to such live fluctuations; hence the individuals who practice them are always and forever at risk.