Reflexivity

Midterm Video Projects for”Media and Culture” (COM121)
submitted to Michael Wesch’s Digital Ethnography Project:
Visions of Students Today (2011)

Themes:

“It is appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

Six students use this famous quote by Albert Einstein, comparing their experience of today’s technology glut with nuclear disaster.” Why are they so afraid? Einstein is an interesting source of wisdom, especially combined with Kimdelehanty’s quote from another scientist, Carl Sagan:

“We live in a society

exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which

hardly anyone knows anything about

science and technology.”

What was the setting and context of Sagan’s quote? “Hardly anyone” implies a ratio – who are the people included in “everyone”? Whose society is encompassed by “we”?

MrChadb0urne argues that Change Isn’t All Bad: “Technology’s not that bad, if you use it in moderation.” In a soothing voice, he offers this advice: “If it’s too much, take a break. No one’s gonna judge you for it. If they are gonna judge you for it, they’re too involved in technology and they need to calm down.” BrittRoo agrees, offering individual, meditative-type solutions: Balance. Slow down. See. Breathe.  AlPal13 suggests immersion,  “First step… drown out the rest of the world [with music].”  Hannah Cohen asks, “…if you can’t beat them, join them?”

“We no longer search for the news, the news finds us.” Demifo14 hints at narrowcasting and plays with identity as a reflection. Her mirror imagery is partly explained by wbectler3: “Like all structures, [technologies] have been developed by humans and, subsequently, both enable and limit human action” (wbectler3 quoting from the course text).

“Better hope you’re not alone,” sings Jack Johnson-Hope to beccasiminoko’s lament for fifth grade. tashk013 poses the question about choice given the unrelenting advertising bombardment, and kalf917 brings in Karl Marx: “The production of too many useless things results in too many useless people.” But what if it is up to us? “We become what we behold, we shape our tools, and then our tools shape us,” jakehoffman4 quotes Marshall McLuhan. Ktrychon questions and celebrates simultaneously, arguing “You Get What You Give,”and  “Let’s Stay Connected,” while claiming: “We live in a society that lacks passion.” (Where does passion live?)

Does cdanoff’s being “Caught Up In The Media” automatically preclude passion? Or is it only education that fails to inspire? “My teacher was having trouble figuring out the projector in class…but then finally figured it out.” It is unclear what csilv117 thinks about that struggle. Two students picked the same song by Citizen Cope, “Let The Drummer Kick,” to emphasize the war for consciousness. Two students (jakehoffman4 & mamciedupie503) also picked the same quote by Marshall McLuhan: “All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.”

Artificial and Arbitrary?

“How do you spend your time?” asks ddavies315, while hdanfort wonders “What were they thinking?” Both questions are posed literally, but can be extended to apply in wider fashion. Jamar points to rescue from hip hop artists Kid Cudi and Common, and gets a call out from the premier digital ethnographer and creator of the Visions of Students Today video documentation project, Dr Michael Wesch. Dr Wesch also commented on tashk03 and Ktrychon’s videos (previously linked). Air23JordanXXIII, please feel free to tell Ryan, no sweat – I got a spot for him in my next class, you bet. “Ducks!”

Who remembers the course prompt and our transmedia storytelling model? sbaez1440 pulled out a quote from The Matrix that omits a physical sense: “If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” Why might this be of interest?

The most challenging task as we move toward the two final projects will be deciding what articulations to emphasize (ideologically) and how much experimentation to conduct. What could we gain, for instance, by exploring the nationalism of natefoy’s “God Bless America” screenshot with Carlos123Mencia’s dormroom poster of Malcolm X?” Does it come down to a decision about whether or not we believe, as Hunte46 asks, if we can defeat the machine? Is competition the only frame possible? Is “the real danger … not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.” – Harris (quoted by smorlando3). Will we see/perceive differently enough if, as ckmetz suggests, we take the red pill? Sgershlak tells us we must adapt to succeed, but what adaptations are a) necessary, b) realistic, and c) ultimately functional? When simultaneity is the rule of the day, as when Csi describes seeing all three phases of water, “the vapor, the rain, and the ice” at the same time, how do you decide what truly guards you?

In the comments to follow, students will be responding with observations and identifications with various juxtapositions and articulations presented or hinted at in the preceding teacher’s analytical sampling. They’ll be working with the patterns and outliers evident in this collection of our class’s Visions of Students Today to produce two final videos.

Scenes:

Spaces (transportation):

• hallways (also stairs, elevator, doors)
• roads
• walking versus driving, skateboarding
• outdoor shots of campus, esp library
• indoor shots of library, dining hall, dorm rooms, classrooms (large lecture halls, smaller classrooms), dorm entrance (security), gymnasium, campus center, kitchens, Collegian staff office
• computer monitors, cell phones, television/videogame controllers
• music

Time (temporal dimension – where identities are made):

• statistics
• activities: FaceBook, UMail, Spark, Spire, Tumblr, Twitter, UMassWiki, Google, news, iTunes (and other music apps), basketball (viewing and playing), XBoxLive, classwork, eating, texting…

Content Themes

• control
• time
• the Matrix
• pros/cons of technology (some exaggerated claims & stereotypes)
• dread/hope (”key” – from Hymes’ rubric for analyzing an interpersonal situation communication situation; what equivalent analytic for video?)

Popularity: 47% [?]

Sunny’s Birthday Party
Lois’ Place, Amherst MA

Nadezhda authorized me to use her name only if I spelled it correctly. MCO Peabody (”Try not. Do.”), Cautiously Concerned about Confidentiality, and Drunk on Power reminded me to use their pseudonyms. The other veterans of blog fodder tossed it off as old hat. Jeff (”I’m all the way in”), Sudhir and Beata have already topped out in terms of  informed consent. My plan for the evening was to multitask. Although the main goal was to celebrate friendships, I needed a survival strategy for viewing a Thai horror film: it seemed the perfect setting for writing up my pal Hunju’s defense on The New Asian Female Ghost Films.

That was before we began eating, and talking, and eating, and drinking and eating, and teasing (and eating and eating – we left lots of leftovers!) I found my way back to the scene of the Great Indonesian Noodle Feast by kinesthesia, feeling the roads by dint of remembered gustatory pleasure. Between the din of conversation and regular outbreaks of laughter that badly-subtitled film never had a chance!  Sudhir, Pete and I got nerdy: how do you tell someone about yourself – genetically or teleologically? It depends on how you orient yourself in timespace:

green tea cheesecake

are you looking forward to a purpose (”teleological”) or looking back for origins (”genetics”)? Beata’s excitement about differential equations led (later in the evening) to Sudhir’s confession that he takes refuge in numbers, because who understands Homi Bhabha anyway?!

Radhika tried to muscle Sudhir out of dessert but he wasn’t about to let that happen! “No no no!” Liene was distraught by Laras’ pie-cutting technique but didn’t want her to stop: “Continue!” The group was inspired by “the asian pie-cutting thing,” also known as “the politics of pie-cutting.” “How are you supposed to cut a pie,” someone asked. And the inevitable: “How many doctoral students does it take to cut a pie?”

chocolate cake

Not that the cake fared much better! You know that I was ecstatic at the synchrony of having set up a Tumblr blog for this semester’s teaching called – yep, you guessed it: cutting the cake. The title is inspired by Neal Stephenson’s Calca 1 which asks how to get eight equal servings from a square grid.

Also of note: Lois and I connected.

Popularity: 5% [?]

North Star Banquet
Western Massachusetts

“You can choose to read the signs,” my friend Jay mused as he gave me a ride home from a rousing display of human potential. We had both been invited by a local entrepreneur, Bob Lowry, to attend the annual banquet for North Star, an alternative education program for teens. The program had consisted of a series of speakers sharing personal stories about their lives and learning. Jay was referring to a recent spate of serendipity in his life, and I thought about some of the signs in mine. North Star, for instance, has appeared several times in the past three months.

The testimonials were moving. One recurring theme was “the big sign” announcing the metaphorical presence of the north star in its particular physical location. The sign stands prominently on the North Star grounds right along the main thoroughfare connecting a string of small towns in the fertile and temperate Connecticut River valley. People drive by the sign everyday. I have passed it frequently myself!  Yet somehow the meaning of the sign – what it signals as a symbol and guide for the activities of proactive learning – seems to become salient only at certain moments of particular strain.

In mechanics, strain is a measure of deformation when bodies are altered from their normal boundaries due to the application of some force. The speakers at the North Star banquet, current and former students, family members, administrators, and award-winning teachers, all referred – in one way or another – to the natural inclination of human beings to learn. What everyone who spoke understands is that the stress of not being able to learn in one’s best mode indicates an unnecessary tension that can lead to an unpleasant compression of the youthful spirit of discovery.

“Learning is natural”

North Star’s motto frames their mission of creating an environment where kids who chafe under the conditions of traditional schools can successfully learn. In this respect, I imagine that North Star students have some characteristics in common: self-motivated, ambitious, and smart. The emphasis on ’self-directed learning’ reminds me of teaching online courses, where a similar profile matters.  People who do well in online courses are able to manage the balancing of time between obligations (work, study, chores, etc) and recreation (not to mention sleep!)

Noticing signs when you need them is also natural. Signs are everywhere – “sign sign everywhere a sign, blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind” – the fact that we tune them out is no surprise. What is wonderful is when a sign that you haven’t been noticing suddenly appears in awareness, suggesting something new and enabling learning. At some basic level I think this is the gist of consciousness: to notice that there is something else, something more, something mysterious or enticing that you haven’t yet grasped…

…and here’s the chance!

Popularity: 7% [?]

Drew Grande, the State Coordinator for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign in Massachusetts, had some trouble fielding my question. He was saved by Mark Kresowic, the Northeast Regional Director, whose answer – while not completely satisfactory – at least suggests there is thought and movement concerning the international workforce implications of the US eliminating our use of coal by 2030.

Their talk at the UMass Labor Center was more of a mini-rally, aimed at the people who are already on board. Most of the questions and comments covered familiar ground: the organization has a mission and a proven strategy for success. In fact, the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign is already documented in the academic literature – an amazing feat given customary scholarly drag. My question stemmed from an important critique arising from a presentation of that article by its author Professor Robert Cox, a communication scholar who celebrates the Beyond Coal campaign as an exemplar of environmental activism.

Climate Recovery: Managing the Forest and the Trees

The problem of global warming and the urgency of infrastructural change are both real. Carbon emissions from the US must be reduced by 80% by 2050. To achieve this all coal-powered energy production in the US needs to be stopped by 2030. What the Sierra Club has accomplished is a trend that makes this incredible shift in the energy economy possible. The job is not finished yet; we are all truly needed to demonstrate the hard economic fact:

Coal cannot compete with clean energy sources without

• federal subsidies – our tax dollars! and
• non-enforcement of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

Increasing public pressure will build enough momentum for the domestic transition away from coal. This is good and necessary: it must be done!  However, to set the planet on the path to climate recovery requires unprecedented cooperation across borders and among peoples. My friends’ critique was targeted at U.S. unilateralism.  Is Beyond Coal simply a(nother) movement by the (mainly white) middle-class so we can feel good about ourselves without giving regard to the consequences of our good deeds upon others?  (Disclosure: I am white and middle-class.)

Ninety percent of the coal burned in Massachuseetts’ three coal plants is imported from Colombia. These plants employ workers in MA and run because of the labor of Colombian miners (and shippers and other workers along the procurement, production and distribution chain). Of course their working conditions are appalling and they are underpaid.  I am not saying we should keep coal because of the livelihood these jobs afford to real human beings and their families. However, climate recovery is not going to be achieved if we do not also, simultaneously, create new ways for these workers and others like them to live in health and security.

Calibrating Theory and Time

Professor Cox’s presentation, “Communicating Social Change: Challenges of Scale and the Strategic,” presents a challenge to environmental activists and academics about the ways we use theories of communication to stimulate and intervene in processes of social change, particularly regarding the need for climate recovery. I was enthralled by Cox’s application of de Certeau’s distinction between tactics and strategy. Cox deploys de Certeau’s, “practice of everyday life“  to teach activists how to think about mobilizing the civilian populace to push government and business for real, deep, significant restructuring of the energy grid.

During the Q&A after his talk, most questions came from people with direct involvement regarding environmental activism. Theoretical questions were less common, such as the one my Chair wanted to ask, about the importance of place (literal, physical location). Cox had mentioned the need for a movement to create a space from which to exert leverage, but this question about “place”  came from another angle. Can theory generated from a basis in one geographic place, with a specific population and particular sociocultural & political conditions, be legitimately transported to another place, where the population and conditions are different?

If we had not argued so vigorously, I would not have thought so much about the potentials of pursuing this conversation. Other colleagues were critical of Cox’ move to generalize de Certeau’s theoretical explanation of a situated context bound by specific parameters to a generalized application that implies a form of universality across human experience. By choosing de Certeau’s frame, Cox is calibrating social activism with the emergent phenomena of transmedia storytelling. Transmedia storytelling is made possible by digital communication technologies and enables practices of collective intelligence. de Certeau argues that “in the activity of re-use lies an abundance of opportunities for ordinary people to subvert the rituals and representations that institutions seek to impose upon them.”

My friends heard Cox reifying the power hierarchy between the powerful and the weak by valorizing “strategy” as a force firmly in the hands of the powerful, with an accompanying diminishment of power in the potential of “tactics” which are “the only thing” some people have. While I agree that poor and disenfranchised people(s) have less access and resources to generate strategy, I disagree that this lack necessitates an absence of power. The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt demonstrate that tactics can accumulate into unstoppable force. In “History: Science and Fiction,” de Certeau writes of a “dogmatizing tendency” that he calls “‘the institution of the real.’ It consists,” he explains, “of the construction of representations into laws imposed by what is supposed to be the expression of reality” (p. 200, Social Science as Moral Inquiry, 1983).

Choosing “Realities”

Without getting too deep into theoretical nuances, de Certeau describes an “obscure center around which revolve a number of considerations” that combine into “historiography…as something of a mix of science and fiction or as a field of knowledge where questions of time and tense regain a central importance” (emphasis added, p. 203).

In other words, understandings change. Histories are re-written. While those of us alive today (participating and even trying to influence history) are limited by range of perception and and scope of awareness, we can know that relationships exist between what we do now (or fail to do) and what can come to be (or not) in the future. Cox asserts de Certeau’s challenge not to lose touch with ethics:

“It is therefore necessary today to ‘repoliticize’ the sciences, that is to focus their technical apparatus on the fields of force within which they operate and produce their discourse.” (p. 215)

Interconnecting Forests

Cox’s move with de Certeau’s theory is to politicize academics who are all too comfortable sticking within our own trees, even to the point of residing fully along a single thin branch. However, there are serious problems with Cox’s move if it motivates middle-class activists in America to engage in social change campaigns without regard for destroying established labor pools in developing countries.

If coal production for energy is halted, what of the coal worker whose single livelihood feeds dozens?  What is needed is a broader-based effort to win the alliance of coal workers around the world: what industry will be created to replace the one they’ll lose? This is the kind of resiliency-based thinking that our times and the challenges of climate recovery demand: not essentializing one-level solutions focused exclusively on selfish fear, greed, or the desire to retain comfort (motivating or even reasonable as these may be). What industry, indeed? One friend asserted,

“We need

an unprecedented outpouring of human generosity,

a massive leap of imagination,

a kind of creativity that the world has never seen.”

Resilient Creativity

Communication technology may or may not save us. It depends upon how we decide to use it.

I was disappointed at the  Center’s Opening because of a lack of diversity in the audience: it seemed to represent no particular break with contemporary hyper-specialization and narrow discipline-based segregation. It is exciting, now, to see how much the network is growing.

During his introductory remarks to Professor Cox’s talk, UMass Chancellor Holub cast back in UMass’s landgrant history to The Agitation Committee, a group that worked to broaden the University’s original agricultural focus to include larger social concerns. The latent potential of the CSSC to serve as a hub of intellectual activity for generating public will exists, but conversations must be engaged across the institutional complex of differing ideologies and disciplinary knowledges. UMass has a unique mix of traditional, radical and intellectual competence which endows it with an amazing potential to lead in designing and facilitating the implementation of solutions to today’s wicked problems.

Cultivating Public Will

In his introductory remarks, UMass Dean Mullin said he would have loved to have been present when the Center’s name was chosen, noting that each term is “value-laden.” My position is that the most important word is the preposition: Communication for Sustainable Social Change.

Let’s do it.

If you are not yet convinced of the seriousness or the urgency of climate recovery, try this sixty second video on the evolution of life by Claire L. Evans. She describes it as “a video experiment in scale, condensing 4.6 billion years of history into a minute.” Then watch Home by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (sixty minutes you will not regret).

According to the science in Arthus-Bertrand’s film, human institutions have less than ten years to make the deep and substantive changes that are necessary if we are to keep the earth’s atmosphere within the known parameters for supporting life. Watch Evan’s one-minute video, and you should get a feel for the requisite response time. As in now. Research about social change is not adequate – by itself – to accomplish all we need to gain.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Popularity: 1% [?]

The quote above is from a comment by blenCOWe to a blogpost, Theory of International Politics and Zombies, by Daniel W. Drezner. Drezner’s blog entry is an example along the lines of this youtube video, Gay Science Isolates the Christian Gene, and a powerpoint presentation made by MJ Bienvenu at the recent biennial convention of the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, in which she offered deconstructions of audism from the organization’s official website. For example:

The pedagogy of this style of teaching is aptly captured by Erin in her comment to Drezner:

“As Daniel Nexon and Iver Neumann write, “The mirror approach is broader than simply deploying popular culture artifacts as a teaching aid. IR scholars can examine popular culture as a medium for exploring theoretical concepts, dilemmas of foreign policy, and the like.” (12).”

The mirror approach operates on the simple principle of substitution: take an existing discourse, and

a) reverse the key tropes (as in “Gay Science” or unveiling audism in “The Heart of the RID Organization”),

b) replace the key actors with an abstraction, or

c) combine both.

A View from Communication Theory
The engagement spawned (ha) is impressive. A communication theorist has many choices for analysis: as a media text, from the viewpoint of audience, in terms of effects, as a language game (Wittgenstein), as a social use of information and communications technology, not to mention the rich data seeded throughout regarding regional, national, and gendered points of view (classist, ableist, etc), and the production of online identities. It can be critiqued from a variety of viewpoints, including (for instance) political economy, pragmatism, or cultural studies, and at differing levels, such as mass media or interpersonal communication.
My own take is to regard the entry and comments as an instance of discourse: academic, specific to one discipline, and (probably, as goes the zeitgeist) rooted more in space than time. The use of wit (humor) to display breadth, depth, and precision of one’s knowledge in fast repartee is the most valorized contemporary mode of intellectual engagement. Everyone who can find a way in, does, and those who can’t find their way quickly enough, don’t. By the time the entry point clarifies into a path (or the perceptible path finds its entry point), the exchange is over, the event is closed. The instigators and participants have moved on to the next sexy thing. The normative behavior is that the immediate “space” occupied by this interaction has been effectively controlled: everyone (who matters?) has had their say in shining flashes of inspiration.
What strikes me, as an action researcher and a constructivist, is multileveled. First, unadulterated admiration. I envy the lightening comprehension and instant formulation of coherent, contextualized, educative information. Second, awe. We know so much. Ok, so I’m liberally folding myself into the “we,” but seriously: look at the range of knowledge pouring out! It isn’t as if there aren’t tons of “us” out here who understand the historical momentum of the social forces we’re working with – or against, as the case may be. blenCOWe continues:

In terms of his liberal institutionalist and constructivist analyses, Drezner is counting on the fact that the zombies would have the cognitive ability to calculate the benefits and drawbacks to collaborating with other actors. As such, any ideas of building an international organization, including the presence of zombies, to deal with the presence of zombies or to build a world state inclusive of zombies appears to be quite impossible.

Lastly, when he addresses neoconservatism he recognizes that the zombie threat was an existential threat, noting that the threat from zombies is from their jealously over our freedom and not from their desire for our brains. Like the faults with the other theories, this analysis is based on the faulty assumption that zombies have the ability to make cognitive decisions like that. The unavoidable fact is simple, zombies pose a threat to humans because of their desire for brains and for no other reason.

Zombies pose a threat not only because of their desire for eating brains, but – crucially – because that primal desire is coupled with an accompanying lack of brains. The implicit message in the IR discourse about Zombies is that there are, already, zombies among us. I suggest there are three broad types:

• the undead who have accepted a singular social and ideological “programming” as the one and only way to make sense of their lives,
• the undead who have embraced a particular intellectual framework in order to cope with existential anxiety and/or the evolutionary pressures of anarchy, and
• the undead who have selected to master the terms of the zeigeist, “Let’s get cynical!”

Now what?
With the “what” of varying ideological understandings so thoroughly grasped in the space of two days’ interaction, enter the dimension of time. I’m speaking of deep time (esp. deep history), small time (i.e., Bakhtin), and time inclusive of the future. Politically, time is apprehendible in norms of culture and forms of institutions. Simply, what changes and what stays the same? As the Human versus Zombie IR debate unfolds, applications are posed or elaborated, such as two-level game theory and accepting Zombies as a new class to be integrated into the existing global structure. Erin, quoted above, offered

“a brief survey (n=3) I conducted in the last 5 minutes unanimously suggest[ing] that zombies should probably be considered alongside Kosovo to understand IR theory.”

She also adds “an important caveat,” to her random sampling:

“…2/3 of respondents volunteered that they conditioned their response on zombie attacks, unlike extraterrestrial visitations, remaining confined to the realm of hypothetical thought experiments.”

While I agree with the pedagogical impulse, the effect of continuing to deploy only such discrete strategies extends temporally into the future, replicating the same momentum of monological thought that substantively prevents us from finding collective means for creatively managing the diversity of human ways of being. In other words, will the brilliance of insight and potential demonstrated by Drezner & Company be translated into wisdom with a voice?
Engaging intellectual battle in the abstract can be deeply satisfying and even entertaining, the case of Zombies in point. But what about those of us who don’t speak that language? Why must we continue to demarcate the differences in such ways as to reinforce the space of separation between them? This is an illness of extreme disciplinarity. There will always be gaps. Can we ply them creatively? To do so, I suggest we need to consider multilingual models, in particular the potential of interpreted interactions. In The Language Barrier as an Aid to Communication, Rodrigo Ribeiro argues the importance of not understanding in a case study involving the steel industry, technology transfer, and Japanese and Brazilian forms of life

the ‘language barrier’, which is normally thought as a problem, can aid communication by preventing people who hold potentially clashing concepts, beliefs and customs from directly confronting each other.

While I support Ribeiro’s conclusion of value based on non-confrontation and interpreters’ strategies of mediation, I suggest this is only one manifestation of the intercultural communication practice of multilingual/interpreted interaction. The Japanese and Brazilian interlocutors are learning – through this process – how to be with difference. What we academics need to help politicians create are systems that can deal fluidly with difference – ideological, linguistic, cultural, etc – that are, in essence, multilogical rather than monological. Among the strategies that could work are finding ways among ourselves to communicate with each other across, among, and between our fields of expertise.

Popularity: 1% [?]

In addition to the transmission of information, the larger and deepest purpose of simultaneous interpretation is to generate and maintain common culture among people from different cultures.

As hoped, the opportunity to present on my dissertation fieldwork in-progress forced my brain to synthesize the trends and patterns that I have been noticing during this year of research at the European Parliament, as well as find words to express what I think these trends and patterns suggest about mono- and multilingualism. The effort to explain my perceptions moved me far along the analytical path; since returning to fieldwork many of the findings have crystallized further.
A few weeks ago, after more backbrain simmering, I finally uttered the statement highlighted above, distilling the years of talking with interested colleagues (and anyone else who would listen, thanks Arne!) into a single, comprehensible idea.
Purposes are human creations, not physical facts, so there is plenty of room to disagree. I am anticipating a conversation that will take place in Philadelphia in August (”Interpreting as Culture“), and other conversations that I hope grow from there and link from/with other sources (such as Ryan Commerson’s brilliant master’s thesis applying the work of Stuart Hall).
The feedback provided by participants at my presentations at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh is affirming (thanks!) and helpful. For this post, I am only including the comments that relate specifically to my thesis.
1) “Why,” wrote one participant, “do people want [simultaneous interpretation] to be like a mono-lingual exchange? Why are they so uncomfortable with interpreted interaction…[?]”

I am not sure that interlocutors (or interpreters, for that matter) are consciously aware of comparing the process of interpreted interaction to what it is like to talk with someone in the same language. We are so accustomed to the ease of monolingual communication – it is like the fish not being aware of water or the bird, air. It is, for most of us, our typical environment, the way we get along with nearly everybody, practically all of the time. So when the exceptional circumstance of an interpreted interaction occurs . . . on what other basis could we imagine to evaluate it?

Not only that, but we also have the collusion of academic discourse reinforcing the unquestioned common sense. One professional sign language interpreter wrote,

“…reflecting [on] how my practice is so heavily influenced . . . it’s shocking to reflect on how thoroughly ‘old’ theories of interpreter (’translator’?) role of ‘heard and not seen’ (invisible conduit) have become/are becoming so entrenched, particularly in a place where multi-lingual, multi-cultural awareness should be richest.”

2) That “place” is the European Parliament, about which another participant mused, “Do politicians really want to understand each other?”

Based on the interviews with European Parliament interpreters four years ago, I can say that some interpreters think not! Or at least, not all the time, or not within the constraints of particular structures – such as the plenary sessions (which get the most publicity and thus seem to represent SI at the EP, even though I am inclined to argue more real interpreting gets done in every other setting than that one).

3) “Don’t we get ‘third cultures,’ ‘communities of practice,’ all the time, everytime?” asks another researcher?

Of course we do, but the question is whether that “third culture” is substantively different than what we get without interpretation! The discourses about simultaneous interpretation that I’ve been learning privilege the same kind of characteristics that are prominent in monolingual communication. This was reflected in questions from another participant:

4) “How is this speed in communication (even though passive) … effecting our expectations of it? Our response? Interaction between cultures? Dealing with relationships?”

There’s no definitive answer – we are all co-creating the ways we engage the imperative of speed in collaborative/complementary fashion, consciously or not. Which leads directly into another question posed by another researcher:

5) “Will there be a paradigm shift? Would I like it?” And a participant’s observation: “Despite of promotion of language diversity/equality, for practical/political/power reasons, lingua franca will still be the fate.”

In response, I would distinguish, here, between communities of practice and third cultures. Perhaps this is a naive distinction, but culture is a more-or-less passive development of aggregated relational actions into coherent systemic wholes. (At some point there are leaders, religious figures, etc., who justify the parts and defend the whole.) A community of practice is intentional from the outset. While, as one participant/researcher wrote, “The language produced by interpreters – the form – is indeed a message,” I would say this language constitutes discourse but does not necessarily represent a community of practice until we take hold of the form in order to wield it for specific purpose.

I submit that a purpose which could bind simultaneous interpreters into a community of practice across the gamut of “interpreters in triadic interactions and ’stream-of-language’ events like the European Parliament” (quoting from a participant) is the co-construction of intercultural community premised on language difference.

In addition to the transmission of information, the larger and deepest purpose of simultaneous interpretation is to generate and maintain common culture among people from different cultures.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Culture(s) and discourse(s) are among the most unmanageable elements of international business. “You can’t model panic.” Patterns of cultural interaction and, especially, the range of interpretations of these patterns, have profound effects on the design and implementation of business plans. For instance, are differences of language a problem or a benefit? Do the homogenizing effects of using English as the language of international management outweigh the constant adaptation required by working multilingually? Discourses about simultaneous interpretation (SI) at the European Parliament (with its 23 working languages) pit danger and loss against loss and resignation. “Loss” of fluency and clarity worries professional interpreters at the European Parliament (EP) and “loss” of direct contact between interlocutors (users of interpreting services, in this case Members of the EP) seem – counterintuitively – to express anxieties about multilingualism and the possibilities for control. Understood as a practice of intercultural communication, the tensions made evident when simultaneous interpretation is used are a vital source of creativity typically overlooked because of conditioned (monolingual) preferences for using a shared language.

Contemporary social theory can help us understand participation in dialogue interpreting as a cultural form of communication. In addition to transferring information between people who do not share the same language, using an interpreter is a type of communication practice with implications for identity. The roles and norms for participating in simultaneous interpretation constitute social rituals that contribute to the maintenance of linguistic and cultural difference. To the extent that participants are aware of the significance of participation, the stronger a contribution can be made to creating more just and equitable global societies.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Teaching is intertwined with learning: communication theory, sociology, and quantum mechanics all inform us that the interaction produces “reality.” “Meaning” is always a co-production: “teaching goals,” for instance, represents a professional ethic while also reinforcing historical power structures. The phrase conjures an institutionalized ideology of authorization and dispensation. Confronting the implications of language use – our very own talk – is the cumulative (and hopefully on-going) accomplishment of my pedagogic inclinations.
The main task I set for myself when I am teaching is to model agency so that students can learn by example. To act as an agent while teaching is double-edged: I try to maintain balance between

a) the authority of my role and the limits of the institution to constrain my freedom in the role, and
b) the power to unsettle students’ assumptions about the usual structures and expectations of a college classroom.

I want students not only to discern the difference between structural power and individual agency, but also to develop awareness about how to work constructively with this distinction given the peculiarities of their own particular life.

By deliberately embodying agency, I convey an attentiveness to self that elicits heightened self-awareness from students. The personal is thus contextualized as a reflection of the social, bringing the interplay of status and identity into immediate relevancy because the concepts are grounded in our shared social interactions. These maneuvers enable recognition and reflection on the ways features of personal biography interlink with roles granted or imposed by history and circumstance. In other words, I seek to cultivate skills of critical phenomenology, so that students can increase their perception and comprehension of the complex historical forces that bound – and bind – everyone’s supposedly-separate actions with the actions of others.
I justify my ambition along the continuum of time, accepting myself as one among many with the passionate desire to shift humanity away from the vise of violence. Although not a direct curricular component, keeping the complexities of time and timing in mind is a constant practice. Developmental trajectories are unique for each individual: people simply know what they know at any given moment. And, each moment is an opportunity for change. Learning, by definition, is a change in the state of one’s knowledge. The trick of timing is to identify when the potential for change aligns with the contingent conditions that enable realization. Attuning to these subtle juxtapositions is a matter of experimentation. Consequently, I work to reduce the fear of risk. As much as I feel compassion for varying shocks of recognition, I also exercise the conviction that we are capable of finding creative solutions to conflict.
Ultimately, I see my role as a teacher as one of strategic coordination with the learning needs of students projected into the future. College education today must involve much more than topical competence; it must prepare students for intensive competition and increasing interaction with people holding different worldviews and mindsets, premised upon as-yet un-invented technologies and un-diagnosed needs. Depending upon the subject matter, I can be more or less overt concerning the relationship between the content of the course (its specified objectives and subject matter) and the relational process of learning – i.e., working – together. The relationship between content and process, however, is always present, even when undiscussed. Every classroom composes a particular global microcosm. Each lesson conveys messages not only about the subject but also about the normative orientations held concerning the place or position of that subject within large cultural and institutional systems. Success within this participatory paradigm is measured by the extent to which I am able to bring students’ attention to the relationships, rather than conceiving of facts and phenomena in isolation.
Accomplishing such a shift would be a cultural achievement, hence not something I generate on my own. To this end, I recognize the necessity of institutional support and the essential willingness of students to cooperate. The tensions of un-learning inherited habits-of-thought and customary modes-of-interaction in order to enable new ways of relating is an uncertain tightrope from which to launch projects of domestic and transnational social justice and global peace. We need a lot of practice! The small contribution I offer are stimulating courses that sustain dialogue throughout, inclusive of all the dynamics that arise, as a means of instilling respect for the power of discourses that we create together to generate substantial progress on the long road of human life. On the basis of such respect, we can more effectively collaborate to invent and institutionalize economic and political mechanisms that promote the life chances of every person on the planet.

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I found

while prepping the final lecture for the intensive summer course on interpersonal communication.

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