Reflexivity

Science of Team Science
1st annual conference
Chicago

The Cooperative Nature of Communication

As I showered this morning, I considered the incredibly cooperative nature of communication. If there is a center to the object of study that James Cumming and I have made of the Science of Team Science conference, it has to do with the types of cooperation and degrees of understanding demonstrated by participants in figuring out how better to achieve scientific breakthroughs, particularly when working in interdisciplinary teams.

Cooperation takes a wide range of forms. The word usually has a positive connotation, e.g., cooperation is a good thing. Plenty of theory, however, suggests ‘cooperation’ in misunderstanding each other – an outcome generally presumed to be negative. The strife of conflict accompanies constructive conversations; how to interpret disciplinary disagreements, paradigmatic differences, and individual ambitions is the grist of group dynamics.

These typical features of knowledge production can be a source of tremendous insight, provided participants are able to engage them as opportunities rather than barriers or breakdowns.  James theorizes about a special kind of opportunity that arises in groups that he calls problematic moments. Think of “problem” in the way mathematicians do, or in the sense of a core puzzle of existence. Such moments are usually glossed over (an act of cooperation), and are difficult to act into unless several members of the group muster the attention and will to do so.

Getting into Role

A challenge for us in entering the conference with such an ambitious goal of reflecting “live” has been how to negotiate the task, gain authorization to conduct it, delimit our dual role as conference participants and action researchers/participant-observers, and identify appropriate boundaries. As far as we can determine from the outset, we are entering the conference with “all systems go.”

What will begin to happen, indeed, has already been occurring, is a phenomenon called parallel process.  What this concept builds from is the simultaneous happening of events for different people and sub-groups that are somehow related to each other. For instance, today, many conference participants boarded planes to fly to Chicago. We were acting ‘in parallel’ even if not in conscious coordination.

Some of us may be engaged in a flurry of last-minute preparation, while others have been fully prepared for weeks. Our behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions will cohere us into invisible sub-groups. These aggregated groupings may or may not contribute significantly to the conference dynamics, but – supposing for some reason they did – then this would have relevance for the achievements of the conference as a whole.

The main aim of this action research project is to try and identify parallel processes and problematic moments (and other features of emergent group dynamics evidenced by patterns in group discourses) as they occur in the real-time unfolding of this conference event.  We’ve created some mechanisms by which other conference participants can contribute their data (observations, ideas, and feelings as they occur), and we hope they will.

Popularity: 2% [?]

UMass Translation Center

I recently gave my first talk on paradigm consciousness. The ideas have been floating in my mind since the spring of 2003, but only in the last few months has the knowledge come together well enough for me to try teaching them. My own mode of learning is through action research, and there actually is a sub-division called action learning, which is how I labeled my methodology after fending off the attacks of my dissertation committee’s self-appointed “bad cop” faculty member during the defense of my research proposal.

My main objective for the presentation was to test a method for raising “paradigm consciousness,” because this is a pre-requisite for understanding what motivates action research. There is a variety of literature about action research, much of which tends to skirt the really hard stuff: like what to do when someone in an organization really does not want to learn, grow, or otherwise be open to, let alone support, dealing with new knowledge. By being transparent about my method, I am attempting a parallel task with social research as Yonjoo advocated when she said that it is not whether a particular translation is “right or wrong,” but that the translator has been conscious enough of making decisions and choices so that “the translation can stand up.”

Producing Research that Stands Up

Most scholars want their research to stand, but how many of us investigate the foundation on which research is supposed to stand? There is a choice between engaging knowledge as based in terms of philosophy (abstract, without application) or based in terms of practice (grounded, with consequences). Action researchers are engaged in practice, and “practice is messy” (personal communication, Dr. Leda Cooks). Applied research is messy because people are messy. No offense to anyone!

In Assault on Reason, Al Gore (2007) explains, “One of the world’s leading neuroscientists, Dr. Vilaynur S. Ramachadran, has written,

Our mental life is governed mainly by a cauldron of emotions, motives and desires which we are barely conscious of, and what we call our unconscious life is usually an elaborate post hoc rationalization of things we really do for other reasons.”

The tension that action research taps derives from fairly modest claims: that

1. meaning is co-constructed in interaction, and that the
2. meaningfulness of interaction (especially at the microsocial level) is malleable by human consciousness.

(If you disagree, let’s get it on!) I use a distinction between “meaning” and “meaningfulness” that tries to distinguish between definitions for words, phrases, behaviors and such that are relatively fixed in social time (the present) and the relationship between this ‘fixity’ and dynamical processes of understandings, disagreements, and other outcomes of communication that occur over time.

My imagination about how the presentation would go is that I would share new information (specifically Burrell & Morgan’s four paradigms of social theory), and create some activities that would make it possible for participants to find ‘where you fit’ in that scheme. I realize some of you rejected the model outright or found it too simplistic, but I am not convinced that the schema is inadequate…? I am quite interested in further engagement on this point! Cris caught my attention with his observation that translation theory in recent years has moved quite far away from the “objective” end of the horizontal axis toward the “subjective” end. We did not get into the details of Burrell & Morgan’s components, but they include individual views on ontology, epistemology, human nature, and methodology along the horizontal axis. Their vertical axis involves views on social cohesiveness and unity (how societies regulate themselves to stay together) and modes of domination and structural contradictions (how individuals strive to overcome structural limitations by inducing radical change).

At any rate, I’d like to reflect upon the notes I scribbled all over the board while we were talking about the challenges of translating the claim:

“All research is action research”

The diversity of languages was pretty exciting in and of itself: Chinese, French, Galician, German, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese. There are different tools one can bring to the service of action research; my primary tool is discourse analysis. So what interested me the most was not the actual translations, but what was said about making the decisions. (The words and phrases I recorded appear mostly in blue, but sometimes black – I wanted more colors, and a few times I was rushing and didn’t switch colors.) This level of discourse (the descriptions, opinions, and judgments) shows what is normative about translation decisions – and these norms and prescriptions bring paradigms into view. In this ‘on-the-spot’ workshop-like situation, unless you were lucky enough to know the equivalent jargon for “all research is action research” in the target language (as happened with Korean), you had to rely on “literal” or “equivalent” words on a term-by-term basis that everyone recognized was probably inadequate. Maria Jose succinctly summarized this choice: “Be literal or guess!”

We spent the most time talking about the Chinese translation because of its idioms and the special way it treats quantities. Also, I admit that I especially enjoyed its artistic quality because of the combination of precision (at the level of semantic meaning) and accuracy (the general aim of what I am reaching toward: interpretation – and action research – as kinds of art). The French version also captures the definition: it was back-translated as, “All research has an element of action.” But – so what?! Does the content knowledge (the “finding” of an acceptable way of saying “all research is action research” in another language) establish the baseline for what matters most in the work of translating and/or interpreting? Is the bottom line always the “non-risky” translation, the one that is confirmed when two or more translators come up with the exact same diction, grammar, verb tenses, and phrasing in the target language?

Work with me here, okay? Let me extrapolate a little bit. The need to know context, relationship, or ‘what comes next’ is about control. Remember the vertical axis of Burrell & Morgan’s paradigm grid: from the sociology of regulation at the bottom to the sociology of radical change at the top? Now, I am not saying interpreters or translators do not need to know context, or that it does not matter whether we do or do not know the terms of engagement. Several of you said you needed to know the context, that you understood there is an implicit movement, even a kind of changeability that comes about because of interaction, because of the implications of engagement and interaction… and I agree in general, but why do you need to know?

In our example, someone explained that the term “action research” is “loose,” it “tends to the subjective,” and “is charged with possible meanings.” Yes, but is it the range that is so problematical, or is it because, as someone else said, the meaning of action research is “more political”? Let me ask, why is this “meaning” – the meaning of this term, this concept – any more, or less, “political” than any other? While acknowledging that you may consider all translation choices political, let me get really crazy and pose a hypothesis: the stakes are higher because claiming an element of action in all research means NO research is without effect. The German translation boldly went all the way, “scientific-research is action-research.” In other words, any and all kinds of research ACTS upon the world, in this or that direction, for this or that purpose, with effects that have material consequences. Good, bad, sloppy, indifferent….. and so it is with language, too, even conservative choices have an effect. If, for instance, the goal of interpretation is to strive to say the most common thing (the non-risky, that which is verified by others), what happens when the interlocutors are not seeking such banality?

goddag yxskaft

What is “the action” of action research? If I’ve done my job well, you are considering paradigms more carefully. This matters, because the way we talk about translation and interpretation shapes what clients expect. I suspect that Members in the European Parliament, for instance, are motivated to use lingua francas partly because they have been consistently disappointed in the measurement of ‘objectivity’ they were taught to expect. It is as if, in the professional desire to reassure clients that we are sticking true to their text, e.g., not changing anything, we wind up contributing to a structure of regulation that minimizes or discounts our labor. If you are happy with this, no problem! But if you are not, the take-away is not to confuse the current lean toward subjectivity as necessarily having anything to do with societal change. This is precisely the point that Loc Pham asked about: can one tread between paradigms? Finding a meaningful answer to that question requires much more attention to the vertical order-conflict axis. As interpreters and translators, we must be able to conceptualize our work in terms of a ratio between supporting the current regulated order and working toward radical change.

Popularity: 37% [?]

Amherst
(23 January 2010)

One Sunday of an unseasonably warm weekend, I hauled out the bicycle and decided to try my luck on the bike trail. Had it been warm enough, for long enough, for all the ice on the densely tree-shrouded path to melt?  No. I approached the first patch with determination, choosing the path of most visible pavement, where the tracks of others had contributed to wearing down the ice. That was a mistake. I did not fall, but the ruts and grooves grabbed the tires, forcing me along channels contrary to my desired direction, threatening to pitch me into the trees.

What to do?

I rode until the next patch of ice and dismounted, walking its expanse, struck by the parallels with writing the dissertation, and especially with the process of negotiating the action research follow-up.  There are so many typical paths of reaction and response, how can I avoid being sucked along a vortex of assumptions that winds up replicating dynamics that have played out before?

It is the dilemma of agency in the face of organization. There are many cross-cutting forces, occurring at nested levels of interaction….is it possible to retain awareness of an alternative chronotope at the crucial moments? Can one dissent from expected norms while maintaining not only personal integrity but also respect for the motivations of others who are doing their jobs as best they understand them? I decided to experiment. What if I ride where others haven’t?

It was tense! I could make headway on the snowy-ice mixture if I focused hard on relaxing. It seemed counter-intuitive, but I trusted what I’ve been learning about physics. The forward momentum had more inertia than the jerks to the front wheel if I could just manage to trust a casual grip on the handlebars, give a bit with each jolt and allow an intuitive sense of balance to keep me upright. As long as I didn’t overreact, or stop paying attention, I could ride over the slippery terrain without resorting to the established routes. But for how long can one avoid pre-grooved channels? It is much easier to manage the calibration when it was just me and the ground! As soon as I encountered other people I chose to dismount; the congestion was too risky – now a fall wouldn’t just hurt me, it could potentially injure others, too.

Call it a chance encounter….

Walking, I meet a physicist and his wife. We chat about bicycle-riding on ice. I’ve been puzzling over the relatively inaccurate diction of social theorists in describing social phenomena.  For instance, “tension.”  I’m guilty of using this word too, don’t we all?!  My suspicion is that the use of this term by engineers (for instance) is much more precise.  Tension involves at least two forces, not just one. What do social theorist mean when they use this term?  Do they have only elongation in mind?  Only compression?  The combination of the two? Have they located the position of either the strain (of elongation) or the stress (of compression)? Is there a particular conceptualization of the relationship, like engineers have with their stress-strain curves? Why are social theorists so sure that the imagery, the meaning, ascribed to labeling something a “tension” is uniformly shared by all readers and writers using it?  The possible variations seem to me quite significant!

“Why do they do that?” the physicist asked me. The only answer I have is that I think there is a general assume of understanding. English speakers, anyway, assume we all mean the same thing, that we are referring to a singular phenomenon with which we are all familiar and agree is unproblematic (in the sense of its labeling).  His wife, however, shared with me the real gem of the day.  Such are the signs by which I decide I’m on a useful investigation!

Harmonia

The original Greek for tension is harmonia, and – get this! – the original definition is not “harmony” (although my quick googling gives this common sense)  but, rather, harmonia refers to the tuning of a lyre to get it to the right pitch. Calibration, baby! I’ll need to learn more about the mathematical application in geometry, particularly this application: “A famous one line argument shows that calibrated p-submanifolds minimize volume within their homology class.”  Part of the argument I’m developing (in my imagination, if not as much on paper, yet!) is that calibrating to timespace influences the use of space and maybe even the shape of place. I am referring directly to Bakhtin’s chronotope, of which I’m unsatisfied with current available explanations on the web but the notes by Taylor Atkins are a decent beginning if you’re unfamiliar with Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Building on the potential for a paradigm shift is matter of recognition, marketing, and design. These processes can proactively influence each other, interacting and changing through the development of a project. All are contained within the conception and application of strategic planning.
Strategy has to involve conceptualizing the outcome in two different yet complementary ways. First, you must imagine what you want in terms of place. In the case of the next national conference of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID, US-based), the physical location will be some hotel in Atlanta, GA, but the more important issue is how the space of the place will be designed and implemented in order to generate the desired kinds of intercultural interaction. The second dimension that must be considered is time. By time, I do not mean the logistics of scheduling or considerations about the length of the event or even its parts. These are obviously important logistical factors that require detailed attention. However, the most important temporal factor to consider is how the conference contributes to long-term patterning of habits and attitudes for engaging in intercultural social interaction.

Not Even Related to a Deaf Adult: Buffered by Monolingualism
That would be me, and we NERDAs compose the largest percentage of the membership of RID. Most of us do not understand what it means to be Deaf. We want to understand, and we sure try hard, but our reality as native, hearing speakers of English in the United States is one of extreme linguistic privilege. No matter what other oppressions we may experience, we communicate with the same language as nearly everyone one else around us. NERDAs need to understand that we are affected by living in a society that has done more, historically, than any other country to enforce monolingualism. Unless you live or work in a dense urban city, it is quite possible that you never hear another language spoken in day-to-day living. Most Americans are protected from exposure to even tasting what it might be like to not know the language that would enable you to talk with your neighbor, your child’s teacher, shopkeepers and salespeople, peers in your classroom or a club, not to mention the doctor, police officer, realtor, banker, or the waitstaff at a restaurant where you must guarantee that there are no nuts or shellfish in the dish you want because you don’t want to risk anaphylactic shock.
NERDAs certainly cannot conceive of the intrapersonal, deliberate, conscious planning necessary to predict when and where and for how long we’ll need an interpreter, do not know the calculus of deciding why and for what reasons we’ll need an interpreter, and never have to weigh the costs – time, focused mental energy, unpredictable emotional surges – that come along with deciding, “Yes, in this situation I do need an interpreter,” or “No, in this situation I can manage without an interpreter.” Nor do we have to deal with the fallout from misjudging any of these factors: such as discovering an interpreter is necessary when it had not seemed so, or that the need is much longer/shorter than anticipated, or that the whole effort was a complete waste of time.

Atlanta 2011: Experimenting with New Norms
National conferences of professional associations occur for very specific reasons:

• to further the organization’s business and
• to provide members with professional development opportunities that are not available at home.

A critique offered by one of the other participants in the small group DEAF-FRIENDLY brainstorming sessions (described in the August 9 entry, “Embrace Change, Honor Tradition (RID 2009)” was that the conference focuses too much on training. In the immediate moment, I was most aware of the turn-taking dynamic – how her comment did not have any relation to mine – but I soon realized that her observation is significant. Why are we designing the national conference like an extension of an interpreter training program? Granted, many RID members are still in the early phases of their professional careers, but if we design the conference with students in mind, we generate a comfortable and familiar container for learning as usual.

No wonder, then, that many interpreters arrive and proceed to engage in comfortable, familiar, and usual ways! An alternative would be to take MJ Bienvenu’s deconstruction by reversal to the extreme. This would create a professional development experience that would use the capacities of our national organization to the fullest potential. We already have the technology:

• knowledge of Deaf culture
• linguistic fluency in ASL and English
• professionally trained ASL-English interpreters
• extensive experience with interpreter request systems and accommodation services…

What we need is the will to apply the tools in an altered configuration, and a rationale to convince people to come.

A one-time experiment of mutual discovery
Instead of following the dominant, inherently oppressive model (accessibility provided for the Deaf), we reverse it (accessibility provided for the Hearing). This would generate an experience like none other. In some respects it would resemble an ASL Immersion retreat, and in some respects it would resemble the environment at residential schools for the Deaf. What it would offer is the intellectual and empathy-building experience of being the one who has to ask.
There would not need to be any commitment or promise to continue: we can see what happens, evaluate it, and then decide. If the storming phase re-emerges – so be it, that will be an honest, deep indicator of the organization’s developmental status. If we do establish a foundation for new norms, well, that will be incredibly exciting and everyone who attends will have bragging rights for the rest of their life:

Popularity: 2% [?]

Sven thought it appropriate to frame our first meeting with a bio-fact he’d just learned from the local dinosaur museum. I’m not a biologist, so I don’t know the life chances of tadpoles, but I certainly hope the light of our collaboration isn’t so bright that we get eaten by bats!


Things happen.
Things happen and we make up their reasons.
We never know if others perceive phenomena in the same way that we do; all we have are references points of presence, perception, and language. Today, gazing upon the Saw Mill River, I wondered if I hadn’t been alone, if someone was with me, would they have been as immersed in the gentle rumble of these quick shallow rapids as I was? And what of previous shared experiences – do we remember them similarly? If we both/all recall the event, are the same or different features highlighted in memory? How did we interpret it at the time, and has that interpretation become more fixed and rigid, or has it softened, becoming more fluid with the expanded lens of hindsight?

At any junction history stretches back, a biographical momentum that imbues each person with impetus for being in the present moment of shared spacetime. Until the moment of meeting, each person is on an independent course – a course shaped by previous relationships and experiences but as yet unaffected by the now-unfolding encounter. What will come from contact is unpredictable, yet not beyond the ken of knowledge, intuition, and intention. What do we want to result from mutual exposure, from the mixing of our life trajectories?
Upon return to Amherst I stumbled into another beginning – a friend’s dream project, well underway. Could these two beginnings, initiated so close in time albeit on opposite sides of the Atlantic, complement each other? And if they could, what would be my role? I’ve been thinking (metaphorically, as I do) that I want to be part of a pile supporting bridges over deep water. I’m not “a” bridge, myself, and the support I can offer is insufficient of itself to keep any bridge aloft and protected from scour. But, perhaps, from the relative stability of my own perch . . . this web of inter-relations connecting mentors, colleagues, friends, professional contacts . . .
and meanwhile, as always, the river flows on.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Re-reading this entry, “no mother tongue” (inspired by yesterday’s thrilling conversation with Rhona and Katya, grin) what re-jumps out at me, post-fieldwork, is “how language makes human interrelations visible.”
Yes. That is what my dissertation will strive to show. From the basis of choices that Members of the European Parliament make to use or not use the simultaneous interpreters (or, to minimize and under-utilize the system of simultaneous interpretation instead of embracing and maximizing its culture-creating potentials) one can describe the current structural/power relations. From a clear picture of ‘here-and-now,’ and the judicious use of institutional and cultural theories, I suggest one can also project the continuing or resultant outcomes of these power relations into the future.
But – and here is where I continue to experiment with action research – if I spell out the projection, then I contribute to its manifestation. Instead of giving more power to an already established momentum of what seems pre-determined, I aim to present the logic of language choice with a scattering of openings that invite readers (as interlocutors) to choose among alternatives. Rather than writing in such a way that interlocutors are compelled by the (presumed!) power of my voice to accept/resist or otherwise engage only with a single, central, fixed point of argumentation, a variety of modes and unfoldings of communicative interaction should not only be possible, but actually occur.
Then we enter dialogue, and have a chance to reconfigure discourse.

Popularity: 1% [?]

“It was not because of Ah Fatt’s fluency that Neel’s vision of Canton became so vivid as to make it real: in fact, the opposite was true, for the genius of Ah Fatt’s descriptions lay in their elisions, so that to listen to him was a venture of collaboration, in which the things spoken of came gradually to be transformed into artefacts of a shared imagining.”

Index: references to Ghosh in Reflexivity

• talking turkey, making tools (US Thanksgiving with Fulbrighters and other Americans in Brussels, 2008, includes a quote from an essay by Ghosh on the perils of comparing the November terrorist attack in Mumbai to 9/11 in the US)
• Comps (Question #4: “dissertation area”) (already two summers ago!)
• The Hungry Tide (a beautiful and inspiring novel)
• Ghosh on Interpreting (quotations from The Hungry Tide)
• What Saar would teach (a quote from Ghosh that illustrates, by metaphor, the kind of discourse diagnostics that motivates my being)

“I would produce my secret treasure, a present sent to me by a former student – a map of the sea-floor, made by geologists. In the reversed relief of this map [the students] would see with their own eyes that the Ganga does not come to an end after it flows into the Bay of Bengal. It joins with the Brahmaputra in scouring a long, clearly marked channel along the floor of the bay. The map would reveal to them what is otherwise hidden under water: and this is that the course of this underwater river exceeds by far the length of the river’s overland channel.
‘Look, comrades, look,’ I would say. ‘This map shows that in geology, as in myth, there is a visible Ganga and a hidden Ganga: one flows on land and one beneath the water. Put them together and you have what is by hard the greatest of the earth’s rivers’ (181).

Popularity: 1% [?]

I hope Koen was being prophetic and not just descriptive. It is strange, btw, to be me!

There’s no time, now, to properly process the odd collection of blogable bits that I wish to re-compose, suffice a listing with minimal commentary.
Sunday: I missed the concert but caught up with everyone immediately afterwards. “You have nice friends,” said one about another. Yes. Lucky me! Eventually we arrived at Den Draak, only Annmarie was missing (and Vee & Vivaldi) or the symmetry would have been perfect. I had no idea where we were going – having left all responsibility for decision-making to others. They could not have known that this last outing arrived to the same location as the first one last fall.
Monday: I will not miss the Belgian bureaucracy! I’d been told I did not need an appointment to de-scribe my registration as a resident, but the woman at the desk tried to tell me to return at 9 am tomorrow morning. “I can’t,” I said, “I’ll be on a plane to the US.” “Then come at 1:30,” she said. Hello? I had to ask for a manager three times before someone intervened and confirmed that they could, in fact, take care of this right now.
Retrieving the historical translation from French to English was much smoother. The Little Shop of Translations is the best! “Optimism,” the manager informed me, “is misinformed pessimism.” Not only do they provide high quality translations into and out of all European languages, but they never failed to call out my Americanness in our casual conversations. (I’m gonna miss you!)
Then there was Marsi: “You’re older but I’m bigger.” She promises to threaten me over Skype. We’ll see. We waved each other goodbye for half-a-block, and then Topi and I followed suit….
Antwerp ~ thanks for a tremendous year!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Ok, maybe it isn’t quite as exciting as the Large Hadron Collider, but I stood in the very office where Heisenberg worked. I tried to absorb any lingering quantum waves that might collapse as particles (in the form of a brilliant idea) in my mind. I did actually have a new thought about the dissertation today, a title for the chapter on language ideologies: Language as a club. I can’t remember, now, whether I had the idea on the way going there or on the way back… but with relativity perhaps it doesn’t actually make a difference?! I’m also thinking about rearranging the sequence of chapters . . .
The reason I was at the MPI at all was mundane – I had to submit my final report on the grant. “Who still uses Internet Explorer?” Dada asked. Hmmph. I agree! The IIE must have a contract with Microsoft that precludes using other platforms, such as Firefox or even Safari. So I was fortunate that the Institute has a small computer room with terminals for visitors, otherwise I’d be up to a very un-fun scramble to meet tomorrow’s deadline.
I picked up the Excellence Cluster Newsletter (Issue 2 May 2009) and read the Public Outreach Coordinator’s statement on the successful launch of “Herschel” and “Planck” from a European spaceport French Guiana. Herschel’s job, according to POC Barbara Wankert, is ‘to explore the mechanisms of star formation;” and Planck aims to generate “a better understanding of the energy fluctuations…that formed the template for today’s distribution of galaxies.”
Meanwhile, I am returning to The Man Who Knew Too Much, a book I started last November and had to set aside. Until now!

Popularity: 2% [?]

I think that’s what he said.

My memory is sketchy on the exact word, but the principle had something to do with a kind of misrepresentation. I think! It looks cruel written down but in the complexity of the moment I did not feel it unkindly, rather as a caution. We were talking about blogging…. why do I do it? How do I do it? (”Do you ever lie?” he asked.) No. I try to write honestly about whatever was/is the most important thing at the time. Or, more precisely – I write about what seems to me most important relative to the desired/intended audience at a given time. So I write now (Friday morning, a few hours before presenting) to the people attending this conference on Bakhtin. In my mind, also, are the people who attended the conference last week in Antwerp. I hope they are reading but I realize they probably aren’t – everyone is already massively committed to many important efforts and besides, the blog format seems “extra” anyway (doesn’t it?) – definitely less significant than a journal article or book.

A day later (Saturday morning)

“Does it take over your life?” He’s discovered a “horrid fascination” for blogging (not necessarily for bloggers?!) This morning, yes, I am compelled. There is a force of language in me that wants expression. I could ignore it: I have in the past. Nothing happened – no cataclysms or miracles, just another mundane unfolding of a regular day. Usually when I blog it is the same – nothing momentous occurs, no responses forthcome, the day unfolds more-or-less like any other day. Yet I am satisfied that in some small, unfinalizable way I have played my bit part in the human saga.

I made connections with people I want to continue and deepen. Take Lakshmi, for instance:

Usually I’m the one approaching others with that very American overture! What a dinner conversation we had out on some small island in the middle of Only A Few Knew Where, punctuated by the occasional speaker who deigned to drift upstairs to bless us with a lesson in (highly gendered, ahem) Swedish drinking etiquette or a Swedish poem set to song. (Not bad Johan, not bad!)

I’d chased down Daphna because she knows Wilfred Bion – and who the heck knows him?! Lo-and-behold, one of her dear friends is Miriam – who I just met last week at a conference in Antwerp! (Centripetal force, anyone?) Lee Wah secured the most scenic view for the evening repast, and quickly convinced me that I need to take lessons from Che Husna Azhari, who is an expert in the art of telling without saying.
My notes from dinner include:

• concept of rhythm = closure; loophole = opening
• when to invoke history, when not to because it becomes a burden
• necessity of periodic closures or no invention (?) – “periodic” because opens up again
• polyphony
• aesthetic mode of attack
• dialogizing
• crazy theory
• Rabelais‘ body and Manausomeone’s ghost
• the only response is schizophrenia
• the first suicide bombers were Sri Lankans
• Mahabharata, how people ______ the past_____
• the constitution of voices (plural) doesn’t automatically = dialogue
• Tagore’s friendship with Gandhi and their public disagreements

If I had been able to write quickly enough I would have composed a story of these elements alone in an attempt at representing the wonderfully chaotic yet intensely unified stream of our conversation. Already, however, the dinner fades into the experience of the conference as a whole, interweaving in memory with myriad other interactions and stimuli.
After dinner, Lescek introduced me to a lovely toast, “to the health of heartful ladies” and Sissel bought me a jagermeister. (Here’s to you, Nick!) Jan, Margit, and Gunhild taught me that Norwegian is a tonal language (like Chinese!) and pronounced my paternal grandmother’s last name, Tarang. Hopefully I practiced the downward accent and upward lilt enough times to be able to reproduce it for my family! Apparently I also spoke with Steffan about a “social psychological something.” On the way to the bus, Magnus duly informed me, “It’s a little cold.” And someone negotiated permission to bring along his wine glass!
And then it was the last day.
Hopefully I will be able to put my hands on a copy of the paper on collective memory (and the other dozen papers I have reasonable certainty bear, in one way or another, either soon or somewhen, significance to my own endeavors). I need to give credit for a discussion facilitated by Eugenio about the different definitions of dialogue, which inspired me to state the meanings in my mind when I use the terms dialogic and to dialogue. (More accurately, by listening to the debate the meanings that I have been living cohered into a language I could trust to convey the intersubjective sense I hope to stimulate and experience.)
I am eager to read Professor Zinchenko’s paper and was thrilled by his visual representations of the chronotope. I found the last session a nicely-symmetric bookend to Michael’s opening address, one of those centripetal effects of language that cannot be planned – only embraced wholeheartedly when they unfold.

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