the book club: August 2006 Archives

So Dr. Breuer challenges Nietzsche. I wrote about the first six chapters a few days ago: my enthusiasm hasn’t dimmed. :-)

“We are each composed of many parts, each clamoring for expression. We can be held responsible only for the final compromise, not for the wayward impulses of each of the parts” (300).

“’One must have chaos and frenzy within oneself to give birth to a dancing star.’” (179-180). [oft-quoted, even by the Deaf community!]

This one thinks, let me be the slender bow
of the violin. Another, the body of the instrument,
burnished, the color of amber.

One imagines life as a narrow boat
crossing water,
a light mist of salt on the prow.

And still another – planed down to planks,
then hammered into shelter
toices vibrating through the rafters.

We do not notice their pleasure,
the slight hum of the banister
beneath our palms,

The satisfaction of the desk
as we tap our pens, impatiently,
upon its weathered surface.

They have ferried us
across rough seas
to lands that smelled of cinnamon

housed our senators,
who pace the creaky floors, debating,
carried arrowheads to pierce our enemies.

We have boiled their pulp, pressed it
into thin, white sheets of paper
on which we describe all of the above in great detail.

And when we die
they hold our empty forms
in bare cedar

until the moment – and how they long for this,
when we meet again in the blackened soil
and they take us back

in their embrace, carry us
up the length of their bodies
into the glittery, trembling movement of the leaves.

Danusha Laméris
Atlanta Review: Istanbul and beyond…
Turkish Poetry (2006, p. 18-19)

“I love that which makes [humanity] more than we are!” So Nietzsche proclaims in his first encounter with Dr. Josef Breuer (Freud’s mentor) in Irvin D. Yalom’s absorbing imagination. The protagonists, their characteristics, and the intellectual trends of When Nietzsche Wept are “grounded in fact” and “historically in place”(307, author’s afterword) although in fact “Friedrich Nietzsche and Josef Breuer never met” (307).

Breuer challenges the passion and reverence for ‘the truth’ apparent in Nietzsche’s “holy tone.” “’Truth,’ Nietzsche [had said], ‘is arrived at through disbelief and skepticism, not through a childwishing something were so.” Nietzsche rebuts Breuer’s challenge thus: ”It is not the truth that is holy, but the search for one’s own truth! Can there be a more sacred act than self-inquiry?” (68).

The two intellectuals are reveling in the directness of their discourse: “Usually what is not asked is the important question!” Breuer exclaims (67). They disagree – based on the perspective of their different disciplines? – regarding whether unasked questions ought still to be answered.

Earlier, Breuer chooses not to engage an “ex-cathedra distinction between the realms of illness and being.” Neitzche has proclaimed, “I have black periods. Who has not? But they do not have me. They are not of my illness, but of my being. One might say I have the courage to have them.” These periods are sometimes preceded by a day of “feeling dangerously good” (emphasis in original, 56).

Yalom’s genius is to illustrate the “talking cure” which becomes popularized as psychoanalysis when Breuer and Freud co-publish Studies in Hysteria in 1894. These fictional conversations between Nietzsche and Breuer are situated a dozen years earlier, in 1882. From the description of Breuer’s method, one can perceive the outline of discourse analysis: ‘[listen] carefully to the patient’s free-form description….systematically investigat[e]…..never [omit] any part [of all functional systems] … allow intuition full rein and … make all other inquiries that [the] data thus far suggest[s]” (54-55).

Notes on home: “My whole life has become a journey, and I begin to feel that my only home, the only familiar place to which I will always return, is my illness” (51) and “My home is my steamer trunk. I am a tortoise and carry my home on my back. I place it in the corner of my hotel room and when the weather becomes oppressive, I hoist it and move to higher, drier skies”(61)

on interpreters in general: “Interpreters of texts are always dishonest – not intentionally, of course – but they cannot step outside their own historical frame. Nor, for that matter, out of their autobiographical frame” (52, note: there is more).

on dreaming: “Perhaps dreams can express either wishes or fears. Or maybe both…Will a dream once dreamed change to accommodate changes in the dreamer’s life?” (39).

on neurobiochemistry: “Once the excess cerebral electrical charge responsible for symptoms is discharged through emotional catharsis, then the symptoms behave properly and promptly vanish!” (42) known as “chimneysweeping” (41)

on the labor of the intellectual: “reading…pouring all this knowledge into the brain through a three-millimeter aperture in the iris” (37).

One thing I question, based on Billig’s investigation of Freudian Repression: Conversation Creating the Unconscious, is the openness with which Breuer and Freud discuss anti-semitism. Although this imaginary conversation is many years prior to the Nazi campaign…I suppose it is possible that what was once an acceptable topic (the recognition of anti-semitism and its manifestations) could become less so over time. Billig’s fascinating argument is that Freud himself repressed his own awareness/recognition of anti-semitism, but his conclusion is even more stunning: that Freud’s investigation of the mechanism of repression illustrates that it occurs through talk (not via some imaginary structure in the brain which he invented and gave substance by providing labels – i.e. that he brought into being also through talk). The act of repetition seals what is remembered or forgotten.

The Drummonds are implausible, but not quite. Every strange and random thing Coupland invents for them is evidence of the absurdities made possible by modernity (by which I mean individual consciousnesses – especially the much-revered quick wit – and bizarre social relationships and structures enabled by urban anonymity and all kinds of technology). The story, All Families Are Psychotic, unfolds mainly from the viewpoint of sixty-five year old maternal Janet, self-described as a dumb bunny, who had accepted the simplistic myths passed down by adults and advertisements.

The novel covers terminal illness, illegal drug marketing and manufacture, sadism, babies for sale, and a million schemes for making money. It includes affairs, drugs, alcohol, space flight and Princess Diana. It is also about family, memory, and philosophies of life. Janet's father once explained, “We do so many things and we don’t know why, and if we do find out why, it’s decades later and knowing why doesn’t matter any more’” (51).

Midway through a series of events that most people would consider more-than-plenty for a lifetime, “Janet sensed that her opinion of her life was changing. Two days ago, it had felt like merely a game of connect the dots – a few random dots, spaced widely apart and which produced a picture of a scribble. But now? Now her life was nothing but dots, dots that would connect in the end to create a magnificent picture – Noah’s Ark? A field of cornflowers? A Maui sunset? She didn’t know the exact image, but a picture was indeed happening – her life was now a story. Farewell, random scribbles (2002: 173).

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:

“Life is full of the unexpected” (Orphan of the Sun, p. 146).

Meryt-Re is a dreamer. “It is a gift,” explains the rekhat, the village wise woman, the Knowing One. “You must learn how to harness it, and use it for good” (148). Two tasks, first the harnessing, second the use. Meryt-Re learns how to do both in the span of this book, set in the village of Set Maat (whose ruins are at Deir el Medina) in approximately 1170 BCE.

As Meryt-Re struggles to decide what to do based on a combination of hard facts (that only she knows) and insightful dreams (which only she seems to have), the rekhat advises her to keep busy: “Solutions present themselves in their own way and you cannot always force them” (228). The dreams are a particular challenge. “In time, you will know which way a dream is leading. You must let your mind go. It will lead you to the truth if you allow it to” (200).

Of course it helps if your heart is “big enough to find forgiveness” (227), you persist even when it seems that there is no path ahead, and you act on your decisions when it is time. Meryt-Re spends much of her emotional energy questioning what she thinks she knows, and doubting whether she actually knows anything. And then there are the dreams, which seem scary. It takes a while for Meryt-Re to trust the rekhat’s teaching: “Seeing something does not mean that you caused it. These are two different things. The dream may be yours, but the magic [that you see] has nothing to do with you” (167).

It is a heavy load for a 13 year old girl who is being raised by her aunt and uncle since both her parents have died. It would be a heavy load even for someone from a totally happy and healthy family! “You cannot run away from this, Meryt,” says the rekhat, “It is part of you. Everything will be fine as long as you learn to understand it” (150).

Meryt chooses not to hide. She faces some huge decisions with implications for her entire town and all of the people she loves. I would certainly wish to have her for one of my friends. :-)

“Like most Westerners, I always imagined the future as an inevitably brighter place, where a kind of moral geology will have eroded the cruel edges of past and present wrongs. But in Gaza and Saudi Arabia, what I saw gave me a different view” (166).

Geraldine Brooks’ survey of Islamic women’s lives in a range of countries, including Turkey and Sudan, Palestine, Egypt, Eritrea, United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Iran, with references to India and the diaspora in England, was published in 1995. Reading it now, a decade later, brings much light to subjects about which I’ve known very little. Her writing is seamless, integrating personal anecdote with historical fact and religious analysis. She concludes hopefully, an achievement in and of itself after all she’s witnessed and explains. I was disappointed that the critique I found from a Muslim point-of-view only found faults, I can imagine that as a defensive reading. No doubt there are things in this text that demand redress, but what Brooks pushes against most forcefully is the fundamentalist refusal to permit doubt (289). The experiences, laws, and tendencies she documents must raise the specter of doubt for any rational being – which is not a necessary indictment of faith. Faith can only exist in the presence of doubt; otherwise it is not faith.

There is a mainstream and even an arguably “feminists” scholarship and tradition within Islam. I’m interested to know more about Fatima Mernissi, a Koranic scholar from Morocco who “has made a formidable case for Islam as a religion of equality and human dignity” (282).

This is hardly comprehensive, but I learned some distinctions that matter. If I misrepresent them I hope (as always) that someone will correct me.

The Koran is the text of the literal sayings of Muhammed and are “the direct instruction of God” (37, Nine Parts of Desire, Geraldine Brooks).

Hadith are “anecdotal traditions about the prophet’s life and sayings.” These are “Islam’s second source of religious instruction” and are debated (whereas the Koran is not debatable). The hadith were collected “by the early Muslims in a formidable research effort in the two centuries following Muhammed’s death” (37), and include all sorts of “apparently trivial” (to non-Muslims only?) accounts including “a genealogy that documents the source of the story and exactly how and through whom it was passed on” (38). It turns out that many of the hadith are accounts from Muhammed’s wives.

Haram means forbidden.

Wajib means obligatory.

Makruh are “in-between” haram and wajib, they are “discouraged and unbecoming.”

Sunnat are also in-between haram and wajib, they “are desirable but not obligatory” (38).

The benchmark for these things is the Koran and Muhammed’s personal behavior. It is sunnat to follow as closely as possible (could one say mimic?) Mohammed’s own choices and makruh to do that which Muhammed chose not to do.

Jihad is “holy struggle to spread the faith and defend the Muslim community. Jihad is obligatory on all Muslims but can take many forms…[such as] teaching the faith, or spreading the word through an exemplary life” (emphasis added, 109).

Fatwa is a religious ruling by “a high ranking clerical thinker” (25). It seems this applies only to the Shiite division, not the Sunnis. “While Sunni Muslims assume a direct relationship between believers and God, Shiites believe in the mediation of a highly trained clergy” (25).

Hijab “literally means ‘curtain,’ and it is used in the Koran as an instruction to believers of Muhammed’s day on how they should deal with the prophet’s wives” (20). Quite a novelty for me was to learn that the Ayatollah Khomeini (the one we Americans learned was So Awful when he overthrew the Shah) interpreted this statement literally, as applying only to “the prophet’s wives,” not to all women.” Another absolutely relevant point is that this instruction given by Muhammed was after he was extremely frustrated with visitors who refused to leave so he could “bed” a new wife. Indeed, there are hadith that recount how Muhammed’s wives (among others at the time) noticed a strange peculiarity regarding some of Muhammed’s pronouncements: they often seemed to relate directly to particular conflicts in his own household. I am torn with appreciation (respect) and empathy tinged with frustration. It occurs to me that Muhammed was aware how his words would be taken, and therefore deliberate in what he uttered. In many regards he was clearly ahead of his time (despite fundamentalist “evidence” to the contrary), but in other regards . . . one has to wish he had been able to transcend self-interest just a wee bit more.

Then, there is sigheh or muta, which I’d never heard of before, which is a temporary marriage “agreed between a man and a woman and sanctioned by a cleric, [which] can last as little as a few minutes or as long as ninety-nine years” (43).

Also talaq, in which a man can pronounce – with no grounds – three times, “I divorce you,” and be divorced (60), a procedure Brooks argues “only the most convoluted and misogynistic reading of the Koran can support” (60).

Aqd is the marriage contract signed by groom and the bride’s father. It is legal when signed, and typically “document[s] how much the groom pays the bride on marriage, and how much more he will have to pay her if he later decides on a divorce…a well-written aqd can counter some of the inequalities … [including] “the esma, giving her the right to a divorce if she asks for one” (56). I wonder to what extent this continues – has the practice increased or decreased over the past decade, and what additional items are included (beyond rights to work and further education) or if these gains have been eroded.

Islam - the Submission (75).

Why hijab? Is it simply its visibility that makes it such a target for critique or are people drawn to this debate because of what it symbolizes? Someone told me soon after I arrived how the clothing (here, in Turkey) served as a barrier between non-Muslim and Muslim women, making nonengagement the only option and leading to a kind of invisibility in which veiled women ceased to be seen by other women.

Brooks brings several views to bear on hijab, representing various strains of hadith, tradition, and scholarly thought. Ultimately, she argues that “the paradox between sexual license and repression” (42) is played out here:

“In Muslim societies men’s bodies just weren’t seen as posing the same kind of threat to social stability as women’s. Getting to the truth of hijab was a bit like wearing it: a matter of layers to be stripped away, a piece at a time. In the end, under all the concealing devices – the chador, jalabiya or abaya, the magneh, roosarie or shayla – was the body. And under all the talk about hijab freeing women from commercial or sexual exploitation, all the discussion of hijab’s potency as a political and revolutionary symbol of selfhood, was the body: the dangerous female body that somehow, in Muslim society, had been made to carry the heavy burden of male honor” (32).

As I tend to do, I noted all of the references to interpreting in Nine Parts of Desire.

“I wanted to ask her if she blamed the Iranian government for not showing her son some mercy, but Janet, who was translating, s hook her head slightly and didn’t put the question. Instead, I asked gently if she felt that all her sacrifices had been worth it” (100).

“Even Hamzah [King Hussein’s young son] wasn’t excluded. Although the boy’s command of English was perfect, he preferred to speak Arabic, and would force his father to act as translater” (136).

“One British doctor, on an eighteen-month posting to a Jeddah hospital, thought his interpreter had failed him during an ante-natal checkup on a twenty-eight year old Bedouin. ‘I asked her when she’d had her last period, and she said, “What’s a period?” It turned out she’d never had one. She’d been married at twelve, before her menarche, and had been pregnant or lactating ever since” (172).

“Official translators milled among the athletes, facilitating conversations. Each of them wore the usual Iranian attire – black hood and long tunic – but with a vivid, color-coded athletes’ warmup jacket pulled incongruously on top. Indigo and acid green meant the translator spoke English; pink and chrome yellow, Russian; lime and sky blue, Arabic. As conversations bounced from Farsi to Urdu to English, the hotel lobby filled with a pleasant, feminine buzz…But in one corner a group of men sat self-consciously, murmuring together in Russian, without the aid of the young women translators…” (208).

“When I decided to write a story about the controversy, Sahar looked at the floor and said nothing. ‘Do you want me to find someone else to translate?’ I asked. She nodded. She didn’t want to visit Cairo nightclubs or talk to dancers” (217).

I could add commentary to each of the preceding quotes, but today I will refrain. :-) Each reflects certain decisions that interpreters must make, constantly, during each and every interaction. These are all reminiscent of the examples Marie Gillespie shared in her talk on the politics of translation. Brooks characterizes

“the Arabic language [as being] as tribal as the desert culture which created it. Each word trails a host of relatives with the same three-letter cluster of consonants as its root. Use almost any word in Arabic, and a host of uninvited meanings barge into the conversation. I learned that one of the words for woman, hormah, comes from the same root as the words for both ‘holy, sacrosanct,’ and ‘sinful, forbidden.’ The word for mother, umm, is the root of the words for ‘source, nation, mercy, first principle, rich harvest; stupid, illiterate, parasite, weak of character, without opinion.’ In the beginning was the word, and the word, in Arabic, was magnificently ambiguous” (10-11).

“What Berkeley was to the antiwar movement of the sixties, the Islamic University of Gaza is to the holy-war crowd of the nineties” (153).

“She was watching a small tortoise make its uncertain way through the furrows of plowed earth” (163).

“The king’s deftness lay in containing fundamentalist influence without excluding it from the political process and driving it underground, as had happened in Algeria” (195).

“An Iranian-born friend who lives in London, a gentle, middle-aged woman who practices family medicine, says the only war she would willingly fight would be one to stop Islamic fundamentalism telling her how to live her life. She is a Zoroastrian, a member of the ancient Persian faith in which dark and light, good and evil are forever locked in a struggle for supremacy” (286).

Geraldine Brooks, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women, 1995.