A. Fill this statement into the blanks below: “That wasn’t my intention.”
1. My Wife: “That was a really rude thing to say.” My response: ________________________
2. My brother: “You didn’t call me for like one month.” My Response:___________________
3. My Wife: “Did you just say I was fat?” My response: __________________________
4. My mom (years ago): “I told you to clean your room and you didn’t.” My response: ________________.
B. In all of the above situations, my intentions were misread: saying or doing one thing apparently implied something entirely different. How often do we use the “not-my-intention claim”? I seem to use it increasingly as if once I say something wasn’t my intention I am released from the effects of the situation. My wife however, in all her loving and beautiful kindness, would most likely fervently disagree with me. She might say something like, “I don’t care if it wasn’t your intention, the outcome is the same: you hurt my feelings.”
C. Last week we spoke a lot about the intentions of collecting. Pearce said, collections attempt to construct the world (16) and the excerpted letters to and from Banks, seemed to say that collections were being made for the sake of science and the sake of curiosity. Collections had, and continue to have, intentions, but aside from intentions, collections also have outcomes and consequences. And as my frail examples above may begin to propose, intentions don’t always equate the outcomes. Maybe this is where narrative comes in.
D. What my examples from section A don’t show is what happened before or after the comments were made. In the case of examples 1 and 3, after my wife rebutted my claim of “not-my-intention”, I most likely proceeded to try and explain the context of my words, the back-story to the comment and what I really meant. In other words, because the intention was misconstrued, narrative became necessary. Maybe this is the why narrative often accompanies a collection. The narrative fills in the blanks, it describes the intentions and makes clear the context.
D. Intentions are often different from implications and maybe narrative helps to justify what has been done. In travel and science writing maybe narrative is important as a method of ensuring the collectors are seen in the light of which they choose.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
My First Scientific Traveling Entry (and probably my last)
This is a palm tree (behind us). Location: Jamaica. Scientific name: I don't know. Type: I don't know. Cool: You bet ya.
Turkey and Steamboats
We’ve all had this conversation, I’m sure. You visit your parents or your friends during a vacation, the table is nicely set, the china has no fingerprints on it, the fork is properly laid next to the knife, sitting on top of a linen napkin, folded and starched, the candles are lit, the local jazz radio station is tuned in, everyone sits down, cuts the turkey, passes the cranberries, sips their wine, and then someone, with a mouth full of mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes or green beans or spinach salad or creamed corn, says, “so, so-and-so, what exactly is it that you do, I mean in school? Why English? What good is that?”
In a moment the Thanksgiving ambiance is drained from the room (at least for you) and suddenly you can hear every tooth gnarl on a piece of turkey, you are in tuned to the knives and forks that suddenly stopped scarping their plates and you watch as napkins brush food off mouths and people straighten up, move their eyes to you, clear their throats, and eagerly await an answer to the same question that they had been thinking about asking, but were to busy eating to do so.
“Well,” You begin, gesturing for the crowd to wait a minute as you chew your food, an action that buys you a moment or so to come up with an answer. “I like stories.” You plainly say, holding out the last syllable of stories, letting the profundity of the simplicity set in. But it doesn’t. Instead a polite guffaw is released from the table.
“But,” Someone else replies, “I like stories also, but I need to make a living. Reading is a hobby.”
“It’s more than reading,” You shoot back, “It’s critical thinking, its theoretically approaching social problems, issues and histories, looking for possible ways to interpret what has happened, what is happening and why it is happening. The stories are ways into an understanding—”
Just as you are about to go on, an uncle or an aunt, or a cousin, or someone no one really invited to the party interrupts you and says, “So, crazy weather we’re having, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” the crowd replies. And suddenly, their somewhere else, and you are off the hook and can return to the possibility of L-tryptophan coma.
As academics in the humanities, people are constantly searching for a justification.
Not only do outsiders, like family members and friends, question the validity of our chosen profession, but we academics, at times, also, in frail attempts of searching for self-confidence, conjure up ways to make our work socially important and relevant.
In Stanley Fish’s January 6th New York Times column he discussed what good publicly supported humanity programs did for society. Fish, an academic and an old Milton scholar, contended in the article that at one time, when college was a place for developing character, the humanities were an important facet; but in today’s society, where students seek a certification instead of an education, there, as Fish says, is little tangible reason for a state to fund the arts and humanities. In a moment of snarky poignancy, Fish writes, “You can’t argue that a state’s economy will benefit by a new reading of “Hamlet.” And he has a point. In a capitalist society, it is hard to justify the humanities. I once heard a story from a professor who taught literature in Shanghai in 1989 that illustrates this point. He said that during 1989, the students in his courses would often read the required texts more than once in preparation for the class. They were engaged with the texts, interested in them and put work in to understanding them. In recent years, the professor returned to the same Shanghai University to again teach literature. This time, he told us, it was a different place. The students in the course did not do the reading, they were not engaged, and they were not interested. He attributed this change to the economic change in China and said that with the rise of capitalism, the society looses interest in books and literature. Maybe that is why those dinner table conversations are so awkward and polemic. In a capitalist society, it’s hard for some to reconcile a profession that is more interested in cultural capital than actual capital.
In a section of Geoff Dyer’s book Out of Sheer Rage he criticizes literary criticism, and those who use it, as something that kills anything it touches. In other words, a career in the humanities (because a career in the humanities requires the use of literary criticsm)is like a career as a serial (no pun intended) killer. Dyer, like Fish, might have a point. For example, there is a story, which I don’t have a clue where it comes from and nor can I corroborate it’s authenticity, that says when Mark Twain was growing up he fell in love with the Mississippi River. Later in his life he became a steamboat captain and had to study the river in order to navigate it. His love, the story goes, was ruined, and the beauty and awe that he saw in the river as a child was tainted by knowing it’s every move, dip and bend. The moral of the story is that when you study something, you, in a sense, kill what it once it was: an experience of aesthetics and not academics. In this, I see Dyer’s point, that the theoretical study of a text can, and probably often does, ruin some part of it. (That said, theory is also illuminate a text, albeit in totally different ways that have nothing to do with aesthetics.)
So, why I am here if I, to some point, agree that theory kills books and capitalism leaves very little room for a secular humanitarian education? Because I like stories. I see the power of them, I see the potential they hold and ultimately, I see the beauty that they often manifest. To me, that’s enough.
Now, can we just eat our dinner without talking about work?
In a moment the Thanksgiving ambiance is drained from the room (at least for you) and suddenly you can hear every tooth gnarl on a piece of turkey, you are in tuned to the knives and forks that suddenly stopped scarping their plates and you watch as napkins brush food off mouths and people straighten up, move their eyes to you, clear their throats, and eagerly await an answer to the same question that they had been thinking about asking, but were to busy eating to do so.
“Well,” You begin, gesturing for the crowd to wait a minute as you chew your food, an action that buys you a moment or so to come up with an answer. “I like stories.” You plainly say, holding out the last syllable of stories, letting the profundity of the simplicity set in. But it doesn’t. Instead a polite guffaw is released from the table.
“But,” Someone else replies, “I like stories also, but I need to make a living. Reading is a hobby.”
“It’s more than reading,” You shoot back, “It’s critical thinking, its theoretically approaching social problems, issues and histories, looking for possible ways to interpret what has happened, what is happening and why it is happening. The stories are ways into an understanding—”
Just as you are about to go on, an uncle or an aunt, or a cousin, or someone no one really invited to the party interrupts you and says, “So, crazy weather we’re having, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” the crowd replies. And suddenly, their somewhere else, and you are off the hook and can return to the possibility of L-tryptophan coma.
As academics in the humanities, people are constantly searching for a justification.
Not only do outsiders, like family members and friends, question the validity of our chosen profession, but we academics, at times, also, in frail attempts of searching for self-confidence, conjure up ways to make our work socially important and relevant.
In Stanley Fish’s January 6th New York Times column he discussed what good publicly supported humanity programs did for society. Fish, an academic and an old Milton scholar, contended in the article that at one time, when college was a place for developing character, the humanities were an important facet; but in today’s society, where students seek a certification instead of an education, there, as Fish says, is little tangible reason for a state to fund the arts and humanities. In a moment of snarky poignancy, Fish writes, “You can’t argue that a state’s economy will benefit by a new reading of “Hamlet.” And he has a point. In a capitalist society, it is hard to justify the humanities. I once heard a story from a professor who taught literature in Shanghai in 1989 that illustrates this point. He said that during 1989, the students in his courses would often read the required texts more than once in preparation for the class. They were engaged with the texts, interested in them and put work in to understanding them. In recent years, the professor returned to the same Shanghai University to again teach literature. This time, he told us, it was a different place. The students in the course did not do the reading, they were not engaged, and they were not interested. He attributed this change to the economic change in China and said that with the rise of capitalism, the society looses interest in books and literature. Maybe that is why those dinner table conversations are so awkward and polemic. In a capitalist society, it’s hard for some to reconcile a profession that is more interested in cultural capital than actual capital.
In a section of Geoff Dyer’s book Out of Sheer Rage he criticizes literary criticism, and those who use it, as something that kills anything it touches. In other words, a career in the humanities (because a career in the humanities requires the use of literary criticsm)is like a career as a serial (no pun intended) killer. Dyer, like Fish, might have a point. For example, there is a story, which I don’t have a clue where it comes from and nor can I corroborate it’s authenticity, that says when Mark Twain was growing up he fell in love with the Mississippi River. Later in his life he became a steamboat captain and had to study the river in order to navigate it. His love, the story goes, was ruined, and the beauty and awe that he saw in the river as a child was tainted by knowing it’s every move, dip and bend. The moral of the story is that when you study something, you, in a sense, kill what it once it was: an experience of aesthetics and not academics. In this, I see Dyer’s point, that the theoretical study of a text can, and probably often does, ruin some part of it. (That said, theory is also illuminate a text, albeit in totally different ways that have nothing to do with aesthetics.)
So, why I am here if I, to some point, agree that theory kills books and capitalism leaves very little room for a secular humanitarian education? Because I like stories. I see the power of them, I see the potential they hold and ultimately, I see the beauty that they often manifest. To me, that’s enough.
Now, can we just eat our dinner without talking about work?
Thursday, January 10, 2008
"Come home."
A new graduate student came up to me at the beginning of this year and said that they were going to try and work by the "Tim Hetland" approach to graduate school. While I was well aware that "Tim Hetland" was me, I was unaware of any kind of methodology I had established, practiced, or published regarding graduate studies. The internal frantic attempt to recollect such a method that was at that moment occurring in my head, must have physically manifested itself on my face by either raising one eyebrow above the other, making the corner of my mouth twitch, or the end of my nose scrunch up because the colleague, feeling they had to clarify, said, "you know, you do all your work in the office and none at home."
When the colleague explained what they meant, it then made sense. And while I had not previously thought of the practice as a methodological approach to graduate studies, I had made a conscious attempt to practice it. I went to the office everyday at seven in the morning and would stay until four or five in the evening. Upon leaving the office, I would leave my books, laptop and class notes locked inside, silently awaiting my return the following morning.
"You treat it like a normal job," the colleague continued, "that's what I want to do."
When I first entered the graduate program, I was immediately overwhelmed with the intellectual requirement I was facing. I found that I would go home and over dinner put my wife through a number of explanations of composition theory, literary theory, social theory, film theory, theoretical approaches to literary geopolitical theory and theory of theory. And one night, maybe two weeks into these nightly expositions, my wife, as she took another bite of the meal I had prepared for us, said, "You know Tim, theory doesn't make this food taste any better. I like it the way you make it. It's good as food, you know what I mean?"
I did. I knew exactly what she meant. She wasn't taking a jab at my chosen profession, nor was she discounting the importance of theory, she was simply reminding me that sometimes theory wasn't needed: aesthetics (or in this case taste) were sometimes (and actually, probably most of the time) sufficient. I had become so inundated with theoretical work that it had begun creeping into places it had no right creeping. Then my wife, with tiny droplets of red wine sitting at the corners of her mouth, said, “just come home at night, ok?”
And so I did.
I did my work at the office and I went home. This is not to say that I never talked about my work at home, or on the occasional weekend had to do some last minute reading at home, nor is it to say that my wife was not interested in anything I was doing. Instead, it is simply to say that I made a conscious effort to distinguish home from work, to separate my marriage from my scholarship. And, for the most part it worked and continues to work.
It is as Knobloch writes, “Academics are rewarded for the prestige of their degrees and their fluency in the languages of abstract ‘fields,’ not their full habitation (including work) in places...Whole careers are made routinely from material that has nothing to do with home…” (16). The dislocation might have something to do with the fact that a tower is too high and too far away from home to keep home included, or maybe it has something to with the frail attempt to make all academic work objective. Whatever the case, the truth is that what I was hearing in graduate seminars was that home had very little to do with scholarship and so I purposely separated the two.
Dinnertime was dinnertime.
Theorytime was theorytime.
When the colleague explained what they meant, it then made sense. And while I had not previously thought of the practice as a methodological approach to graduate studies, I had made a conscious attempt to practice it. I went to the office everyday at seven in the morning and would stay until four or five in the evening. Upon leaving the office, I would leave my books, laptop and class notes locked inside, silently awaiting my return the following morning.
"You treat it like a normal job," the colleague continued, "that's what I want to do."
When I first entered the graduate program, I was immediately overwhelmed with the intellectual requirement I was facing. I found that I would go home and over dinner put my wife through a number of explanations of composition theory, literary theory, social theory, film theory, theoretical approaches to literary geopolitical theory and theory of theory. And one night, maybe two weeks into these nightly expositions, my wife, as she took another bite of the meal I had prepared for us, said, "You know Tim, theory doesn't make this food taste any better. I like it the way you make it. It's good as food, you know what I mean?"
I did. I knew exactly what she meant. She wasn't taking a jab at my chosen profession, nor was she discounting the importance of theory, she was simply reminding me that sometimes theory wasn't needed: aesthetics (or in this case taste) were sometimes (and actually, probably most of the time) sufficient. I had become so inundated with theoretical work that it had begun creeping into places it had no right creeping. Then my wife, with tiny droplets of red wine sitting at the corners of her mouth, said, “just come home at night, ok?”
And so I did.
I did my work at the office and I went home. This is not to say that I never talked about my work at home, or on the occasional weekend had to do some last minute reading at home, nor is it to say that my wife was not interested in anything I was doing. Instead, it is simply to say that I made a conscious effort to distinguish home from work, to separate my marriage from my scholarship. And, for the most part it worked and continues to work.
It is as Knobloch writes, “Academics are rewarded for the prestige of their degrees and their fluency in the languages of abstract ‘fields,’ not their full habitation (including work) in places...Whole careers are made routinely from material that has nothing to do with home…” (16). The dislocation might have something to do with the fact that a tower is too high and too far away from home to keep home included, or maybe it has something to with the frail attempt to make all academic work objective. Whatever the case, the truth is that what I was hearing in graduate seminars was that home had very little to do with scholarship and so I purposely separated the two.
Dinnertime was dinnertime.
Theorytime was theorytime.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)