Steady succession of days
I am fully aware of having neglected my blogging duties – it would take much greater a writer than yours truly to produce something even remotely interesting about days spent in a small university town in upstate NY in the middle of the summer. This is not to say that I am bored – not at all. The summer school is great but I feel that trying to describe the discussions that take place here would risk seriously testing the patience of most of my readers. And between the seminars, lectures, reading groups, colloquia, working in library and an odd social event every now and then, I feel kind of like living in a bubble for a third week now. I don’t read newspapers, never see TV and thus it was only the news about the death of Michael Jackson that managed to reach my consciousness recently (which, in all honesty, would be quite impossible to miss here in the US) – apart from that I am pretty much oblivious of what’s going on in the world. I’ll catch up in a couple of weeks.
I went to see roller derby on Saturday night, which was pretty much the peak of non-academic excitement of last two weeks. For my non-American friends, roller derby is a high-octane female contact sport of sorts, where two teams of girls with serious attitude problems skate on a rink and basically try to knock each other silly. After having seen it I fully understand why it is predominately female sport – if you had men competing on this it would inevitably turn into a testosterone-charged bout of pure aggression, carried out when skating at high speeds on a floor of concrete – and I can’t see how this could end any other way than very badly. The matchup of this Saturday wasn’t a very fair one – the Canadian guest team never had a chance and I think that the final score ended up something like 138:30 to the local team. I only watched the first half and left after watching the memorial moonwalk contest for the public that was held during the break.
In the middle of July there are two potentially interesting events coming up though - Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival of Music & Dance and Finger Lakes Wine Festival. I am less excited about the latter, but the music festival features among other artists a very fine Malian singer Oumou Sangaré, so I will certainly go there.
To be or not
The first week of SCT is now over and it has been really rather good. It was to be expected that the level or presenters is high, but what has came as a pleasant surprise is the likewise excellent overall quality of participants. It is very easy to have a spirited and at the same time very informed and competent discussion on a wide range of different topics with fellow students – as well as professors, for that matter. Not only does everyone seem to really know their stuff – they are also intellectually curious about things that do not necessarily fall into the confines of their own research or academic field of expertise. Most of the people seem to share quite a wide theoretical background, comprising of usual suspects what I would have imagined being a sort of canon of literary theory and cultural studies – but where I have had so far been somewhat disappointed in the US when meeting graduate students in humanities. In addition to that, pretty much everyone seems to have their own theoretical bent in terms of in-depth expertise on a particular subject or field – which of course leads to a lot of interesting discussions and new discoveries.
Today we had a public lecture by Simon During on an interesting and certainly controversial subject why would we need literary criticism. As I have mentioned before, this seems to be a kind of shared anxiety in humanities but especially pertinent to literary theory departments in the United States right now. As Simon During described it, it is really not so much of a question of legitimizing the existence of English departments to the administrative wing of academy and to the outside world, rather than a question of identity and sense of purpose internally. In that regard, I suppose the US and UK share a somewhat similar predicament. Literary theory (or English Department, as it is often referred to in the American academy) has experienced a long and constant erosion of its field of expertise with all the different emergent disciplines, such as cultural and media studies, anthropology, history in its cultural and social flavors, political studies and so forth, chipping away on what traditionally used to be its home turf. There are several contingent reasons that have led to this situation, but I won’t get into them right now.
So the question really becomes – what is specific to literary criticism that makes it a worthwhile effort to support for the outside world and a reason to dedicate your own life and professional career to as a scholar? Of course, it does provide one with a certain kind of critical framework for engaging with the world, but so do several other diciplines. What, if anything, would we lose if we simply let it go and split people who currently work in English departments between those of history, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, rhetorics, ethics, political science, economy, philosophy and so on? This was the crux of the question that got the big auditorium filled with grad students and professors of humanities fumbling around for about an hour worth of Q&A session after the lecture. Because I think that Simon During was right – it does not appear that people engaged in the field really know the answer, even for themselves. Or perhaps especially for themselves, as it is not very hard to come up with some kind of a rather silly-sounding utilitarian justifications or kind of a nihilistic point of l’art pour l’art á la Stanley Fish.
I actually quite liked Simon During’s take on the issue. His point (or actually, my take on his point) was that literature provides us with a unique angle to human experience, the kind of subjective mode of being-in-world that, for instance, history or anthropology or even psychology can never offer because of their inherent totalizing claim to certain objectivity; and literary studies (or criticism, or English departments) allow us to make sense of that mode of representation. They allow us to meaningfully ask questions such as “how exactly does literature do that” or “how do we experience the things we do” on an unashamedly personal way. In that sense, a book like “Les Bienveillantes” or a movie like “La vita è bella” can offer us a perspective on holocaust like no historical account can. By doing that, literature also provides us with a potentially powerful means of social and political critique – as it would seem to me that any good piece of literature necessarily thrieves on some kind of a tension against the prevailing mode of social existence – if it didn’t, it would be simply something like The People Magazine or Vanity Fair. I guess that’s the sense in which Frederick Jameson was right – all literature (at least what’s worth reading) is inherently political.
And while I think it wouldn’t be wise to reduce all literature to this single function (which is besides something that again several other disciplines do as well if not better), it is nonetheless true that literature, and literary criticism along with that, does give us a distinctive, personal and subjective way to engage with the world that nothing else can match. At least nothing else that I can think of.
Sotto voce
Sel nädalal möödus pool aastat päevast kui ma Tallinnas lennukisse astusin. Esimese paari kuu jooksul püüdsin – rohkem küll harjumusest kui tõsisest huvist – Eesti uudistel silma peal hoida, kuid mida nädal edasi seda hõredamaks jäid mu külastused koduste päevalehtede netikülgedele. Kuni äkki mõned päevad tagasi täheldasin ootamatut aktiivsust paari tuttava facebook-feedides ühe Riigikogus värskelt vastuvõetud seaduse teemadel.
Tegu on mõistagi karistusseaduse muutmise seadusega, mille ümber tekkis post factum pahameeletorm suures osas Eesti meedia teeklaasist. Indrek Saar avaldas EPL-is kataklüsmilise alltooniga artikli, mille kokkuvõttes ta leiab, et “Kogu seaduse tuum on: kui ma vanaema sünnipäeval valitsust kirun, siis on võimalik mind kinni panna”.
Ma olen nõus, et juhul kui “kirumine” sisaldab üleskutset põhiseadusliku korra kukutamiseks (mis ei ole päris sama asi kui võimulolev valitsus) ning sellele järgneb näiteks kohaliku bussipeatuse vitriini lõhkumine, siis on võimalik kõnealust seadust väga liberaalselt ja pahatahlikult tõlgendades kujutada ette olukorda, kus kellelegi võiks tulla pähe muudatuses sisalduvat pügalat kasutada. Samas, kui me ühel päeval peaksime olema niikaugel, et kellelegi TÕESTI selline asi pähe tuleb teoks teha, on meie probleemid sootuks suuremad ja teist laadi kui see, et meil on selline seadus. Ja nimelt see, et säärane olukord on aina lihtsamalt ettekujutatav, on minu silmis Eesti peamine probleem.
Kirjutada konkreetne muudatusettepanek Vaheri ja Reinsalu diktaatorlike ambitsioonide arvele on pehmelt öeldes naiivne. Sellisele “riigivastaste kuritegude” puhul kohandatavate karistuste karmistamisele ja mõistete laiendamisele on Eestis tugev sotsiaalne tellimus ja seega on käesolev seadus tagajärg ja mitte põhjus. Sisuliselt on tegu ju lihtsalt mõneti viibes knee-jerk reaktsiooniga kahele suhteliselt hiljutisele sündmusele – 1) kahe aasta tagused aprillirahutused ja 2) Herman Simmi juhtum eelmisest aastast. Vaadates kasvõi põgusalt Linterit, Sirõki, Revat ja Klenskit õigeksmõistvale otsusele järgnenud reageeringut (hea näide on leitav siit) on ilmne, et selle kivi all on peidus hulk sini-must-valgeid hääli ja seega hea hulk poliitilist kapitali.
On olnud huvitav tähele panna, kuidas antud teemaga seoses on Eesti meedias tulnud kasutusele hulk fašistlike konnotatsioonidega sõnavara – EPL-i arvamusartikkel viitas koguni otsesõnu “Eesti huntale”. Niisamuti on mitmel korral leidnud mainimist paralleel “vaikiva ajastuga”. Need on olulised hoiatavad näited mida tõesti tasub silmas pidada, kuid samas ei maksa unustada, et ei Hitler ega Mussolini ei tulnud võimule tänu sellele, et Saksamaal või Itaalias oleks olnud kehtimas fašistlikud seadused. Nad tulid võimule – ning püsisid seal – suuresti rahva ja mitte lihtsalt seaduste toel. Teisitimõtlejate represseerimine oli võimalik mitte seepärast, et seadused seda võimaldasid, vaid eeskätt seetõttu, et ka sellel oli lai avalikkuse toetus. Anschlüss oli sündmus mida Saksamaal pühitsesid ka need, kes muidu natside suhtes pigem skeptilised ja kriitilised olid.
Ja see viib meid tagasi “vaikiva ajastu” teema juurde. Vabadus valitsust kritiseerida ilma hirmuta, et see võiks kudagi kriminaalseks kvalifitseeruda on kahtlemata vaba ühiskonna üks olulisi tunnuseid. See annab kodanikele n.ö. “negatiivse vabaduse” raami. Samas on Eestis täna hulk teemasid (mis ühel või teisel moel tiirlevad ümber Eesti lähimineviku või vene vähemusse puutuva), mille üle on avalikkuses võimalik esitada ainult teatud tüüpi seisukohti – kõik muu saab kiirelt sildistatud kui rumalus, vaenulikkus, reeturlus või kombinatsioon kõigist kolmest.
Selliselt ei ole “vaikiv ajastu” sugugi mitte mingi ajalooline kontseptsioon millega praegu kodanikele kolli teha, vaid osa Eesti igapäevasest elust – meie fortissimo karistusseaduse osas taandub sotto voce-ks või hääbub sootuks niipea kui tuleb juttu teemadest mis tegelikult vajaks ühiskonna tasemel selgeks rääkimist – selleks, et meil sääraseid seadusemuudatusi üldse päevakorrale ei kerkiks.
RT: You shall not pass!
There is a good article at salon.com about the recent twitter craze over the events in Teheran. Of course, it is great that we care – that we tweet and re-tweet on demonstrations in Iran or that we join Facebook groups such as “I ♥ Iran”, “Palestine..you’re not alone..”, “Russia get your hands off of Georgia”, “For Every 1,000 that join this group I will donate $1 for Darfur” and so on. Nothing wrong with all of that.
I fully appreciate that for people caught in a plight such as refugees at Darfur, Palestinians during the Israeli bombing or Iranians now, such gestures of support can mean a lot – if they are among those lucky few who do have the language skills and technical means to actually see them. I am however rather skeptical about how useful such things ultimately can be. Is there anyone who REALLY believes that twitter will deter tanks? Or that, for instance, if there had been Facebook around in 1994 that this would have helped to avoid the Rwanda genocide? Or that those things (FB and twitter) even register on the scale of problems that those who send an army against their own people would consider?
As such, Facebook groups and other similar things are simply a digital part of the broader “ribbon culture” – a movement of awareness ribbons that got started in early years of the 20th century and really took off in 1990 with the red AIDS-awareness ribbon that Jeremy Irons wore during the Tony Awards. Since then, ribbons have become ubiquitous. Of course, the problem is not with “being aware” – which in itself is only laudable. The problem is with the fact that, for many people, putting on a ribbon or joining a group at Facebook pretty much settles the issue and lets them to go on about their own lives feeling that they’ve done their part. In her brilliant and important book about the awareness ribbon culture titled, appropriately, “Ribbon Culture”, Sarah Moore writes:
Both a kitsch fashion accessory, as well as an emblem that expresses empathy; it is a symbol that represents awareness, yet requires no knowledge of a cause; it appears to signal concern for others, but in fact priorities self-expression.
And this is where the issue gets thorny. Clicking “Join group” is very easy and, even more importantly, free. And not necessarily free in terms of money – as awareness ribbons often do cost something – but in terms of sacrifices we would have to make in our own lives. And when it comes to that – i.e. making sacrifices – then our collective will to stand for causes such as “Free Tibet” or “Stop FGM” all but evaporates. We demand resolutely that people in Congo stop killing other people in Congo, but when it comes to a question of relaxing immigration laws we suddenly think that people should stay where they were born – even if they risk getting killed by a stray bullet or would have their children dying to malaria. The occupation of Tibet is conveniently forgotten and put aside at the sublime moment of joy and national pride upon winning an Olympic medal (those who read Estonian can find a very good essay on that particular topic here). We buy Fair Trade coffee but at the same time vote for customs and subsidies that “protect the local agriculture”.
I guess this is what Kant had in mind when he said that generosity is a vice – in the world that is just there simply would be no need for it.
Theoretically speaking
Somewhat surprisingly my Odyssey has taken me to Ithaca only after six months of toil and travels.
Today was the first day of the 2009 School of Criticism and Theory, now in its 33rd year. I am going to stay here for the next six weeks, and it looks that it is going to be some pretty intensive time. There are 3-hour seminars every Monday and Wednesday, plus two public lectures and one colloquium every week, in addition to assorted social events. I will try to squeeze in some time in library as well, but we’ll see how it goes, as there is a lot of reading to do even without it. I am in the seminar on Fascism, Modernity, Politics, Aesthetics by Geoff Eley which sounds promising and, looking at the state of things back home, also very much relevant to the present.
Cornell University has a beautiful campus on top of the hill overlooking a town and the lake below, and it’s a very nice summer weather outside. Looks like it will be another one and half months of modern monastic existence coming up. But now, back to reading.
Bold is beautiful
It is a long known and well documented fact that looking good is very helpful, not only in romantic plane but in life in general. Good-looking people have higher chances of success in their careers, they are more likely to be treated with respect by others, and subsequently stand to earn more at average than those who are less blessed by looks.
Reuters recently reported on the annual People Magazine’s 100 most beautiful people list, pointing out some remarkable newcomers in addition to old hands such as George Clooney, Brangelina, Cindy Crawford and others. Most notable out of the new nominations would be Michelle Obama, but in a separate section titled “Barack’s Beauties” one will also find names such as Timothy Geithner, a Treasury Secretary, and White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel.
Another rookie, Robert Pattinson of the Twilight fame stated his confusion upon the nomination: “I don’t get it. It’s funny, you look the same for years and no one ever mentions it. Then suddenly it’s a big deal.” I think this is a very pertinent observation. Because while I am not saying that Michelle Obama, Timothy Geithner or Rahm Emanuel don’t look good, most beautiful they certainly are not. Or, I guess it depends on how do you define beauty – and this leads us back to the beginning. If beauty is in the eye of beholder then it certainly looks like that not only are beautiful people bound to be more successful, but also that we tend to see successful (powerful, wealthy, talented, what have you) people as more beautiful.
The City of Angels
The skies were sunny yesterday in Los Angeles – which I hear is a rare thing here in June, when most of the days are kind of gloomy and overcast, like it has been today. It also turns out that it is very difficult to find reasonably priced accommodation anywhere in the West Hollywood/UCLA/Santa Monica area. The fact that it is a graduation weekend and a L.A PRIDE 2009 this Friday to Sunday certainly doesn’t help either. So I had a light meal in a place with waiters straight from the cover of the Men’s Health Magazine just a few steps off the rainbow-flag-studded Santa Monica Boulevard and then got me a cab to take me to a hotel on the other side of the hills of Hollywood, in Reseda.
The cab driver had a familiar sounding accent and indeed, it turned out that he was from Armenia. So we immediately switched to russian and he digged out a Raimonds Pauls CD from his glove department and put it on for the rest of the journey, with him telling me about his fond memories of Tallinn 35 years ago when he was visiting his army friends there.
Now that I am staying about 1.5 hour bus-trip away from both UCLA and everything interesting that L.A. has to offer it might be a good time to finish up the reading for the summer school and do some writing finally. I will have my meeting on Thursday and then i have to decide whether to leave immediately for NY. I would actually like to stay for the PRIDE – which should be great fun here (check out this competition for example) – but accommodation will be tough to sort out. I’ll probably take the trip to town tomorrow and evaluate my options then.
Sad to go
Time moves fast in the Aloha State and my six days in Hawaii are over all too soon and tomorrow morning I will fly on to Los Angeles. More than any other place this year I am actually sad to leave Hawaii – I guess this only means that I have to come back one day.
This weekend there was a big celebration of 30th Pan-Pacific Festival, and although there were indeed also some performers from Mexico and Guatemala, it was in all honesty a full-blown Japanese matsuri. On Friday night, the main drag was closed to traffic and there was a taiko (Japanese drumming) group every hundred meters. The whole town was full of old Japanese ladies in kimonos and young Japanese women with small black Chanel paper bags, you can hear Japanese spoken everywhere and in Waikiki most of places seem to accept yens alongside of dollars – in many ways it really does look more like Japan than America. This also had me reconsider what I knew about Pearl Harbour – I now have a feeling that there was quite a bit more behind that attack than simply trying to deter the US Naval Forces interfering with Japanese conquest of Indonesia and Malay. Even though Hawaii has been a US State since 1959, japanese seem to still consider it very much their home turf. So in that sense, having their own country apparently never was an option for hawaiians – it was probably simply a choice between being Japanese or American colony.
The surfing was great fun and apart from one day for my knees to recover a bit I’ve been in waves every morning for several hours. Although pretty tough physically, it was quite a bit easier than I initially thought to get up and riding. However, riding well is another matter. Yesterday I finally caught a wave pure for the first time and it was truly great sensation – if you manage to get on the wave right at the moment when it breaks it almost feels as if somebody is throwing you down and forward.
But just a while later I got taught some respect when I was a little late in my paddling and couldn’t get the board straight, but instead of giving the wave up still decided to try and force my way into it. Before I could realise what just happened I was hurled underwater, a gallon of saltwater being injected through my nostrils down my throat, with my board flying somewhere high above the wave and pulling my right leg on a leash. Six hours later, walking on a street, I was still coughing up salty water. And this was a baby wave, maybe about 1.2-1.5m high. If you want to get an idea of the punishment that people take on REAL waves then check out the clip below:
I will probably stay in LA until the end of the week. This means skipping Las Vegas for this time and going straight back to the East Coast by the weekend – where I will then spend the next six weeks in Cornell Summer School.
20th Century Fox
Today is a centenary of a Latvian born Isaiah Berlin, one of the foremost thinkers and social philosophers of the last century, today probably most famous for his 1958 Oxford lecture Two Concepts of Liberty which proved immensely influential and has since been printed several times in different collections of essays.
Often referred to as a “philosopher”, Berlin was actually pretty much sui generis. In his own words, he gave up philosophy for the history of ideas, ‘a field in which one could hope to know more at the end of one’s life than when one had begun’.
Another well-known piece from his prolific output is The Hedgehog and the Fox, which actually was a long essay on Tolstoy’s view of history. The title refers to a line thought to belong to a 7th century BC Greek poet Archilochus that goes ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing’. For Berlin, this meant a distinction between seeing the world as a function of one single big idea (as for example Plato, Dante, Hegel and Nietzsche did) or believing that no such single idea exists (like Aristotle, Montaigne, Molière, Goethe or Joyce) and that the world consists of a wide variety of different thoughts and experiences. According to this division, Berlin himself would certainly have to qualify as a fox.
If there is a central theory that can be attributed to Berlin then this would be so-called value pluralism – often confused with relativism which Berlin explicitly rejected. The problem with absolute values, as Berlin argued, is that they often conflict – complete freedom and complete equality, while both perfectly noble ultimate ends, are incompatible. For Berlin, human values were entirely of human origin, rather than universal truths that have to be somehow discovered, so there is no transcendent criteria for deciding between them. It is impossible to know which value is ultimately “right” – what this means is that one simply has to choose in the end.
Berlin always insisted it should be possible to express any idea, no matter how complex, in simple terms and direct language. This was no doubt one of the big reasons why there were long queues to his lectures and why he is such a widely read and influential thinker – and probably remains so for at least another century or two.
Stroke of genius
Yesterday I finished The Loser – a story of devastating consequences of meeting with perfection by an Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. I must say it was one of the most impressive books I’ve read recently. Bernhard has a very peculiar style of writing that some readers find very much disturbing. For one thing the whole 180 page book is written as a single paragraph. But this is not all – translator’s note at the beginning of the book warns readers as follows:
Bernhard’s sentences are very long, even for a German reader accustomed to extended, complex sentence constructions. Further, the logical transitions between clauses (“but,”, “although”, “whereas”) are often missing or contradictory, and the verb tenses are rarely in agreement. Bernhard’s frequent and unpredictable underlining also defies conventional usage. Sometimes he italicizes the title of Bach’s compositions, sometimes he treats them like a common noun. On the other hand, he often gives the names of restaurants, towns, pianos, and people an emphasis that conventional German or English ortography exclude.
This all has a very peculiar effect and in a suprising way it all makes perfect sense. It is almost as if Bernhard deliberately writes badly – in that sense The Loser reminded me of a movie by Aki Kaurismäki titled Mies vailla menneisyyttä where the actors perform as if they were in front of the camera for the first time in their life. The effect of it, however, is that characters appear somehow very vulnerable and surprisingly… real – with their insecurities, anxiousness and distinctive lack of witty punchlines. And same goes for Bernhard’s Loser – it has a level of intensity and intimacy quite unlike anything else that I’ve read.
Bernhard has been compared, among others by George Steiner, to Kafka, Canetti and Musil as one of the most unique voices in 20th century German-language literature – or in European literature in general, for that matter. Bernhard had a very complicated relationship with Austria – being referred to as Nestbeschmutzer during his lifetime because of his less than flattering descriptions and critical views of his home country. However, this all was trumped by Bernhard’s very last text – his will – in which he prohibited the publication, performance or recital of any of his works within the borders of Austria for as long as the legal copyrights remain in force – a kind of a posthumous literary exile by one of the nation’s greatest writers.
