A friend asked me to give her a list of my writings on documentary. So I made the following list:
1. Survey article on Chinese independent documentary on the New Left Review: http://newleftreview.org/II/74/ying-qian-power-in-the-frame
2. Essay on Documentary Ethics: http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/scholarship.php?searchterm=029_qian.inc&issue=029
3. Surviving in Shadows: on the survival of indie film in Songzhuang: http://www.thechinastory.org/2012/09/surviving-in-the-shadows/
4. Twelve articles in Chinese on Open Times (it was a monthly column written in 2010): I have posted them on my Chinese website, together with other notes (in Chinese) I wrote on film: http://yinikanotebook.blogbus.com/c2882407/
5. Interview with dGenerate: http://dgeneratefilms.com/academia/cinematalk-interview-with-ying-qian-of-harvard
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Aestheticizing life?
I was reading a book review by Gao Ertai on Xu Xiao's new book "Half a Life" (半生为人). In the review, I read:
“有朋友曾说，”作者写道，“我的写作美化了生活。为此，我曾想给这本书命名为‘美化，直至死’。与其说是想回应这善意的批评，不如说是无可奈何的孤绝。作为人，作为女人，作为母亲，当你在任何角色中都面临困境的时候，你怎样论证活着的正当性？作为历史的参与者，作为悲剧的见证者，你怎样能够保持内心的高傲和宁静？然而我们终于还是活着。所以我写作——正如史铁生所说，写作是为活着寻找理由。”
"A friend commented that my writing has aestheticized life." Writes the author, "For this, I thought of naming my book, 'Aestheticize, Until Death.' Rather than responding to this kind criticism, I rejected it, because I had no choice. As a human, as a woman, a mother, when you face crisis in every role you play, how can you argue for the legitimacy of life? As a participant in history, as a witness to tragedies, how can you maintain pride and peace in your heart? But we have to live on. So I write -- just like Shi Tiesheng said, 'writing is to find reasons to live.'"
I understand the wish to "aestheticize life," to make things more sensible and meaningful, especially when the world around us does not care about beauty and meaning. The ability of humans to create a better world with their artistic expressions is a very precious ability. It gives us a glimpse of what the world can be, instead of what it is.
Yet aestheticizing life also has costs. By valuing only the beautiful, one loses some ability in confronting real life, investigating its rules and powers, and then fighting with them. The beautiful is only one facet in life. Life has many other "adjectives" -- the absurd, the funny, the sarcastic, the fake, the cruel... Seeking beauty might lead us to overlook all the other facets of life that are equally true, and that can lead us to different engagements with the world.
I remember the biggest lesson I had to learn in my college years was to write less "beautifully." In elementary and high school, my teachers told us to copy "beautiful sentences" from the literature we read. I used to have a pretty notebook where I kept all the "beautiful" words and sentences I collected from reading novels and poems. When I had to write an essay for a class, I would open up this notebook, and find beautiful expressions to speak about the banal. Only after entering college, I began to understand that writing doesn't mean to unleash fully the power of words. In fact, in many cases, the power of words has to be restrained. I began to see what beauty could silence.
For some, writing may be a struggle for survival; but I believe it is foremost an ethical act -- one is not only writing for oneself. One is also writing to leave something true to others. Hence aestheticizing life may not be wrong, but this cannot be the only thing one does with one's writing.
“有朋友曾说，”作者写道，“我的写作美化了生活。为此，我曾想给这本书命名为‘美化，直至死’。与其说是想回应这善意的批评，不如说是无可奈何的孤绝。作为人，作为女人，作为母亲，当你在任何角色中都面临困境的时候，你怎样论证活着的正当性？作为历史的参与者，作为悲剧的见证者，你怎样能够保持内心的高傲和宁静？然而我们终于还是活着。所以我写作——正如史铁生所说，写作是为活着寻找理由。”
"A friend commented that my writing has aestheticized life." Writes the author, "For this, I thought of naming my book, 'Aestheticize, Until Death.' Rather than responding to this kind criticism, I rejected it, because I had no choice. As a human, as a woman, a mother, when you face crisis in every role you play, how can you argue for the legitimacy of life? As a participant in history, as a witness to tragedies, how can you maintain pride and peace in your heart? But we have to live on. So I write -- just like Shi Tiesheng said, 'writing is to find reasons to live.'"
I understand the wish to "aestheticize life," to make things more sensible and meaningful, especially when the world around us does not care about beauty and meaning. The ability of humans to create a better world with their artistic expressions is a very precious ability. It gives us a glimpse of what the world can be, instead of what it is.
Yet aestheticizing life also has costs. By valuing only the beautiful, one loses some ability in confronting real life, investigating its rules and powers, and then fighting with them. The beautiful is only one facet in life. Life has many other "adjectives" -- the absurd, the funny, the sarcastic, the fake, the cruel... Seeking beauty might lead us to overlook all the other facets of life that are equally true, and that can lead us to different engagements with the world.
I remember the biggest lesson I had to learn in my college years was to write less "beautifully." In elementary and high school, my teachers told us to copy "beautiful sentences" from the literature we read. I used to have a pretty notebook where I kept all the "beautiful" words and sentences I collected from reading novels and poems. When I had to write an essay for a class, I would open up this notebook, and find beautiful expressions to speak about the banal. Only after entering college, I began to understand that writing doesn't mean to unleash fully the power of words. In fact, in many cases, the power of words has to be restrained. I began to see what beauty could silence.
For some, writing may be a struggle for survival; but I believe it is foremost an ethical act -- one is not only writing for oneself. One is also writing to leave something true to others. Hence aestheticizing life may not be wrong, but this cannot be the only thing one does with one's writing.
Monday, March 28, 2011
the difficulty of writing
In the end, academic writing is an art. The art of creating structures of ideas, and placing ideas in relation to each other. Sometimes, the structure works, and everything falls into place. Other times, the structure fails, ideas overflow, and all become extremely messy and unsatisfying.
Thinking back to the play I saw a few days ago, I imagine the computer screen in front of me as a stage. How can one build a structure of words on a page that can be most expressive and illuminating? How does one deal with one's own limits (materials, knowledge, time), and still create something interesting and worthwhile?
Writing is a genuine struggle between seeking information and searching for art. This struggle is a collective one--the writer thinks with a collective of other writers past and present. It is a struggle against banality, fixed formulas, lies...
I can hardly imagine what I am doing everyday in my windowless office is indeed this kind of "noble" struggle. Most of the time I feel banal, disconnected, tired.
But on second thought, it must be a struggle of such a nature. Otherwise, it would not have been so damn difficult!
Thinking back to the play I saw a few days ago, I imagine the computer screen in front of me as a stage. How can one build a structure of words on a page that can be most expressive and illuminating? How does one deal with one's own limits (materials, knowledge, time), and still create something interesting and worthwhile?
Writing is a genuine struggle between seeking information and searching for art. This struggle is a collective one--the writer thinks with a collective of other writers past and present. It is a struggle against banality, fixed formulas, lies...
I can hardly imagine what I am doing everyday in my windowless office is indeed this kind of "noble" struggle. Most of the time I feel banal, disconnected, tired.
But on second thought, it must be a struggle of such a nature. Otherwise, it would not have been so damn difficult!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Skinwalking
On Friday evening, I went to see a play called "Skinwalking," written, directed, and stage-designed by Cecelia Raker, a Harvard College senior who is pursuing a cool special concentration in "the conception and direction of socially impactful theater and opera." Despite her young age, Cecelia has been involved in theater and opera direction for many years, has a special interest in Yiddish theater and interned at London's Shakespeare company.
The play tells the story of the return of Mari, a young woman working at her father's law office in the city, to her hometown to inherit her grandmother's house. There she stays with her uncle, who is the only person left in the house that used to be home to her traditional Jewish family. She sees again her elementary school classmate David, who was and is in love with her and would do anything to protect her. And she meets strangers too -- a homeless couple at the Dunkin Doughnuts who turn out to be the biblical figure of Mary and Joseph; and a 12-year-old girl Miriam, who turns out to be Moses' sister, and has lived through three millennia wandering in the desert listening and retelling countless stories. Mari is also haunted by two ghosts--the ghost of her own mother, who committed suicide after being abandoned by her lover, Mari's father; and a skinwalker, a creature without mouth who can nevertheless take people's skin and suck people's soul. It is a story about one's relation to religion and tradition in today's secular world where connections to the past and to traditional mythologies are severed or repressed. The play treats this serious topic with humor and lightheartedness, gently poking fun both at the jadedness and banality of everyday life.
This complex story unfolds in the play very intelligently, as the audience is given bits and pieces of references and symbolism that require patient piecing-together. Meanwhile, each character is fully developed--they are vibrant and consistent, simultaneously strange and familiar, and their language is the most delicious kind of colloquial English--understated, funny, working-class. Every line of the dialogue is written so seamlessly and with great care.
The stage design, done by the director and writer herself, is very effective. The stage is broken into six parts. Three parts on the stage (Uncle's home, the desert, and Dunkin Doughnuts), two balconies (a bed where Mari was born and now sleeps, and a bridge where Mari's mother committed suicide), and some actors also sit in the audience. There is no change of scenes. Just a single set covers every need in the play. With multiple actions happening in its different compartments, the stage is so interesting to look at, yet not too overwhelming, leaving enough space for the viewers to ponder.
Adding to the play's expressiveness are many outstanding moments of choreographed dancing and fighting, meticulous sound design, and amazing performance from a cast composed of mostly freshman and sophomores. It's, simply, a work made with great care. And because of this, it has a dazzling expressive power.
It is such a treat to encounter a piece of art conceived and executed so well in all aspects. The fact that it is a low-budget, collective work by such a young group of dramatists adds to its power to inspire. I have much to learn from these 19-year-olds.
The play tells the story of the return of Mari, a young woman working at her father's law office in the city, to her hometown to inherit her grandmother's house. There she stays with her uncle, who is the only person left in the house that used to be home to her traditional Jewish family. She sees again her elementary school classmate David, who was and is in love with her and would do anything to protect her. And she meets strangers too -- a homeless couple at the Dunkin Doughnuts who turn out to be the biblical figure of Mary and Joseph; and a 12-year-old girl Miriam, who turns out to be Moses' sister, and has lived through three millennia wandering in the desert listening and retelling countless stories. Mari is also haunted by two ghosts--the ghost of her own mother, who committed suicide after being abandoned by her lover, Mari's father; and a skinwalker, a creature without mouth who can nevertheless take people's skin and suck people's soul. It is a story about one's relation to religion and tradition in today's secular world where connections to the past and to traditional mythologies are severed or repressed. The play treats this serious topic with humor and lightheartedness, gently poking fun both at the jadedness and banality of everyday life.
This complex story unfolds in the play very intelligently, as the audience is given bits and pieces of references and symbolism that require patient piecing-together. Meanwhile, each character is fully developed--they are vibrant and consistent, simultaneously strange and familiar, and their language is the most delicious kind of colloquial English--understated, funny, working-class. Every line of the dialogue is written so seamlessly and with great care.
The stage design, done by the director and writer herself, is very effective. The stage is broken into six parts. Three parts on the stage (Uncle's home, the desert, and Dunkin Doughnuts), two balconies (a bed where Mari was born and now sleeps, and a bridge where Mari's mother committed suicide), and some actors also sit in the audience. There is no change of scenes. Just a single set covers every need in the play. With multiple actions happening in its different compartments, the stage is so interesting to look at, yet not too overwhelming, leaving enough space for the viewers to ponder.
Adding to the play's expressiveness are many outstanding moments of choreographed dancing and fighting, meticulous sound design, and amazing performance from a cast composed of mostly freshman and sophomores. It's, simply, a work made with great care. And because of this, it has a dazzling expressive power.
It is such a treat to encounter a piece of art conceived and executed so well in all aspects. The fact that it is a low-budget, collective work by such a young group of dramatists adds to its power to inspire. I have much to learn from these 19-year-olds.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Writing
You have been writing everyday. You think about what to write when you go to sleep and the minute you wake up. You eat breakfast and lunch. You drink coffee and eat a plate of strawberries. You hug each other. You write.
We feel the same way as our pages when we write. When our writing is crappy and incoherent, we feel thin, incomplete, mis-spelt, like a basket of waste paper. When our writing flows, runs and jumps, we feel breathless, tipsy, light, as if sitting on a hot-air balloon.
And why do I write? What's the purpose of it all?
It's a job, a challenge, a freedom, a duty, a record, an escape, an affliction, a pretense, an identity, a mask, a choice, a habit, a drag, a dance.
We feel the same way as our pages when we write. When our writing is crappy and incoherent, we feel thin, incomplete, mis-spelt, like a basket of waste paper. When our writing flows, runs and jumps, we feel breathless, tipsy, light, as if sitting on a hot-air balloon.
And why do I write? What's the purpose of it all?
It's a job, a challenge, a freedom, a duty, a record, an escape, an affliction, a pretense, an identity, a mask, a choice, a habit, a drag, a dance.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Film, Risk, Contingency
This evening at the Film Studies Workshop, Mette Hjort from the Lingnan University of Hong Kong, will be speaking on "Film and Risk," based on a book of the same title she is editing. Just a cursory read of her introduction chapter drew me in considerably. Film-making involves many risks: economic, political, environmental and personal. The book project she and others are working on aims to understand how this risk is perceived and experienced by individuals involved in filmmaking and viewing, and how it is managed (or ill-managed) in the film industries and in the wider society. Their methodology is a combination of ethnography (of the film industry), oral history, textual analysis, and sociological study.
The choice of "risk" as the organizing concept is an interesting one. On the one hand, "risk" dialogues with the much older concept of "contingency" in film studies, yet treats "chance-happenings" with more human agency and responsibility than how "contingency" is traditionally treated. On the other hand, "risk" is a term used often in the context of politics and economics, therefore it allows us to speak about film experiences in relation to other social experiences. Further more, while risk involves personal rationality, calculation, and responsibility, it also involves the power structures that distribute the risk. (In Hollywood cinema, for example, stunt actors have to perform risky activities in place of real actors; In China, certain film projects damage environment, and the risk is shouldered by the residents who live there). Therefore, thinking about risk and cinema raises questions not only with regard to "ethical accounting" in filmmaking, but regarding all our cultural activities and how they interact with real-life politics and society.
For me, this is a particular attractive line of thinking about cinema. I think of cinema, theater and literature as laboratories for us to experiment with ideas about ourselves and about the world. The film studies I have read seems to deal much with trauma, suffering, memory, history, but not enough with other operative ideas such as risk. There is so much more to be done in this field--what a happy reminder from Mette Hjort's visit!
The choice of "risk" as the organizing concept is an interesting one. On the one hand, "risk" dialogues with the much older concept of "contingency" in film studies, yet treats "chance-happenings" with more human agency and responsibility than how "contingency" is traditionally treated. On the other hand, "risk" is a term used often in the context of politics and economics, therefore it allows us to speak about film experiences in relation to other social experiences. Further more, while risk involves personal rationality, calculation, and responsibility, it also involves the power structures that distribute the risk. (In Hollywood cinema, for example, stunt actors have to perform risky activities in place of real actors; In China, certain film projects damage environment, and the risk is shouldered by the residents who live there). Therefore, thinking about risk and cinema raises questions not only with regard to "ethical accounting" in filmmaking, but regarding all our cultural activities and how they interact with real-life politics and society.
For me, this is a particular attractive line of thinking about cinema. I think of cinema, theater and literature as laboratories for us to experiment with ideas about ourselves and about the world. The film studies I have read seems to deal much with trauma, suffering, memory, history, but not enough with other operative ideas such as risk. There is so much more to be done in this field--what a happy reminder from Mette Hjort's visit!
Saturday, March 19, 2011
biographies vs photographs
My headache in the past week has been an irresistable impulse to write biographically. Somehow I was obsessed with establishing the people behind the story of social change I was telling, to the point that I began to include totally irrelevant details that began to dilute my arguments altogether.
Today as I moved paragraphs around, deleted irrelevant details and attempted at a coherent thesis, I started to see where my own impulse for biography came from, and why it might be detrimental to good academic writing.
My impulse for biography came from a love for strange tales of the individual life. I am fascinated by the turns and twists of fates, by personal losses and gains, by deep experiences and feelings. When I have such materials in my hands, I relish them and cannot stop wondering and writing about them.
This fascination is a good beginning -- it makes the events I am describing palpably real for me. Yet this fascination brings me too close to my materials and makes me perceive things out of proportion. In fact, the most important parameters in my story are things impersonal and structural, things that are lifeless but control life. Therefore, in order to truly understand and be responsible to those whose stories I will retell, I have to pay much more attention to those structures around them, to move from melodramatic writing to analytical writing.
A second fallacy in biographical writing is a kind of historical determinism on a personal level. By recounting a person's life history, I implicitly make the argument that since he or she went through these experiences, therefore, he and she thought about things in this way, and therefore made such and such decision. However, this kind of determinism is often teleological and wrong. In fact, people are very contextual. They say and do things differently according to different contexts. It's impossible to recover who they really are. Furthermore, people are not static--they are perpetually revising themselves in an never-ending process of becoming. Focusing too much on biography, especially a personal instead of an inter-personal one, will result in a narrow understanding of who that person is.
Historical moments are much better conceived as photographs. In a photograph, one sees a slice in time, where all kinds of forces are present. Writing a short history might be analogous to selecting a series of photographs and writing about the linkages between various salient elements in these photographs. Maybe this metaphor is one way to help me keep my eyes on more things than those that feel dear and near.
Today as I moved paragraphs around, deleted irrelevant details and attempted at a coherent thesis, I started to see where my own impulse for biography came from, and why it might be detrimental to good academic writing.
My impulse for biography came from a love for strange tales of the individual life. I am fascinated by the turns and twists of fates, by personal losses and gains, by deep experiences and feelings. When I have such materials in my hands, I relish them and cannot stop wondering and writing about them.
This fascination is a good beginning -- it makes the events I am describing palpably real for me. Yet this fascination brings me too close to my materials and makes me perceive things out of proportion. In fact, the most important parameters in my story are things impersonal and structural, things that are lifeless but control life. Therefore, in order to truly understand and be responsible to those whose stories I will retell, I have to pay much more attention to those structures around them, to move from melodramatic writing to analytical writing.
A second fallacy in biographical writing is a kind of historical determinism on a personal level. By recounting a person's life history, I implicitly make the argument that since he or she went through these experiences, therefore, he and she thought about things in this way, and therefore made such and such decision. However, this kind of determinism is often teleological and wrong. In fact, people are very contextual. They say and do things differently according to different contexts. It's impossible to recover who they really are. Furthermore, people are not static--they are perpetually revising themselves in an never-ending process of becoming. Focusing too much on biography, especially a personal instead of an inter-personal one, will result in a narrow understanding of who that person is.
Historical moments are much better conceived as photographs. In a photograph, one sees a slice in time, where all kinds of forces are present. Writing a short history might be analogous to selecting a series of photographs and writing about the linkages between various salient elements in these photographs. Maybe this metaphor is one way to help me keep my eyes on more things than those that feel dear and near.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
the stake of indie film exhibition
In the past week, I have been struggling with an article I have to write for a conference in mid-April. The conference is on Chinese cinema, and I was assigned the topic of "independent cinema circuits."
Compared to American indie films, Chinese indie cinema is doubly disadvantaged. In the U.S., indie cinema must establish itself as an alternative to the capital-intensive Hollywood. In China, besides having to compete with blockbuster productions, indie cinema has to deal with the fact that it cannot be shown in any official cinematic space, whether in cinemas, or on television. With little capital and no official cinematic space, it is a miracle that this cinema has survived and grown. My paper is to recount this story of survival and growth. What have been the strategies of survival? Who have been the crucial supporters? How has this particular history of survival affect the forms and concerns of this cinema? How has this cinema opened new spaces, and how has it adapted to suit the old ones? How does this survival story serve as a legacy for filmmakers and audiences?
Thinking about my own daily experiences, I must confess that on this campus, the place that brings me the most happiness has been the Harvard Film Archive. If HFA, Coolidge Corner Theater, Brattle Street Theater, and Kendall Square Cinema were to close down within the next years, this place would become for me infinitely impoverished. Of course, I could shun film altogether and read, but the loss would not be simply the loss of good cinema. The loss would be this: facing dominance, the society failed to produce alternative, failed to issue its counter-act. If in cinema, alternatives were gone; then very quickly, the same thing would happen in other fields as well. Each field is a battleground that the society can't afford to lose.
The Chinese indie cinema has been a success story so far. Yet the success may not continue if lessons were not learned from its history. From new indie films made in China, I can see how hard it is to master the cinematic art and to find one's own voice. It takes years to build that intuitive sensibility that can lead to best directorial decisions on the spot. If making a film is already so difficult, then making viable a cinema is just equally if not more difficult. One needs to learn to adapt, insist, follow and invent--and do all of these at the right time, with the right people. Learning about how to make this cinematic alternative viable in China is one way of learning how to make many good things viable in that country, in this world.
Film studies may not be the most practical field that contributes to livelihood. Yet it is one of the fields that try to make sure there are nice things in the world. If HFA, Brattle Street Theater, Coolidge Corner and Kendall Square are so indispensable for me, then I shall renew my faith in this discipline, and go back to my writing!
Compared to American indie films, Chinese indie cinema is doubly disadvantaged. In the U.S., indie cinema must establish itself as an alternative to the capital-intensive Hollywood. In China, besides having to compete with blockbuster productions, indie cinema has to deal with the fact that it cannot be shown in any official cinematic space, whether in cinemas, or on television. With little capital and no official cinematic space, it is a miracle that this cinema has survived and grown. My paper is to recount this story of survival and growth. What have been the strategies of survival? Who have been the crucial supporters? How has this particular history of survival affect the forms and concerns of this cinema? How has this cinema opened new spaces, and how has it adapted to suit the old ones? How does this survival story serve as a legacy for filmmakers and audiences?
Thinking about my own daily experiences, I must confess that on this campus, the place that brings me the most happiness has been the Harvard Film Archive. If HFA, Coolidge Corner Theater, Brattle Street Theater, and Kendall Square Cinema were to close down within the next years, this place would become for me infinitely impoverished. Of course, I could shun film altogether and read, but the loss would not be simply the loss of good cinema. The loss would be this: facing dominance, the society failed to produce alternative, failed to issue its counter-act. If in cinema, alternatives were gone; then very quickly, the same thing would happen in other fields as well. Each field is a battleground that the society can't afford to lose.
The Chinese indie cinema has been a success story so far. Yet the success may not continue if lessons were not learned from its history. From new indie films made in China, I can see how hard it is to master the cinematic art and to find one's own voice. It takes years to build that intuitive sensibility that can lead to best directorial decisions on the spot. If making a film is already so difficult, then making viable a cinema is just equally if not more difficult. One needs to learn to adapt, insist, follow and invent--and do all of these at the right time, with the right people. Learning about how to make this cinematic alternative viable in China is one way of learning how to make many good things viable in that country, in this world.
Film studies may not be the most practical field that contributes to livelihood. Yet it is one of the fields that try to make sure there are nice things in the world. If HFA, Brattle Street Theater, Coolidge Corner and Kendall Square are so indispensable for me, then I shall renew my faith in this discipline, and go back to my writing!
blogging again
Sofie, a good friend from California, wrote me and asked why I hadn't been writing on my Chinese blog site (http://yinikanotebook.blogbus.com/). When I was blogging a year ago, Sofie was one of the loyal readers.
Getting her email made me realize that I haven't visited her blogs for quite some time. So I went to her page, and found she had written many new entries. A cultural hybrid like me, an enterprising scientist who is timid and risk-loving at the same time, and a mother to a boy who's just learning to speak, Sofie shares her daily observations, fantastical thinking, and ethical reasoning with these short pieces. Reading these entries I feel close to her again, as if she were living just next door. I no longer need to write in my email to her, "I hope you are well." I know she is well.
So here I am, updating this site for the first time after a long hiatus, a hiatus caused not by a lack of writing but by too much of it. Academic writing has taken over and replaced personal writing. And I for some time lost that conviction that bloggers share -- that how we live our everyday life is important, that we must fight against automatism and reclaim spaces for contemplation, choices, and sharing.
Getting her email made me realize that I haven't visited her blogs for quite some time. So I went to her page, and found she had written many new entries. A cultural hybrid like me, an enterprising scientist who is timid and risk-loving at the same time, and a mother to a boy who's just learning to speak, Sofie shares her daily observations, fantastical thinking, and ethical reasoning with these short pieces. Reading these entries I feel close to her again, as if she were living just next door. I no longer need to write in my email to her, "I hope you are well." I know she is well.
So here I am, updating this site for the first time after a long hiatus, a hiatus caused not by a lack of writing but by too much of it. Academic writing has taken over and replaced personal writing. And I for some time lost that conviction that bloggers share -- that how we live our everyday life is important, that we must fight against automatism and reclaim spaces for contemplation, choices, and sharing.
Monday, July 19, 2010
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson: Metaphors We Live By
Since the last blog, I have been thinking about the nature of metaphorical thinking. Agamben, after all, is using the Camp as a metaphor to think through contemporary politics. What does it mean to think metaphorically? When is it valid? When is it not? To think through these questions, I read George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By, by now a classic in linguistics and philosophy.
The aim of the book is to bring understanding to the human conceptual system: how do we conceive the world around us, understand it, and make inferences about it.
In order to get a handle on the human conceptual system, which is usually hidden from our full view, the two authors rely on analyses of language: since we build our conceptual systems with language, it provides a source of evidence for what our conceptual system is like. With examples from the English language, the authors illustrate that the human conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical.
What is a metaphor:
The essence of metaphor is to conceive one kind of thing in terms of another. In the English language, metaphorical speech abound.
For example, consider the following statements about “arguments” and the act of “arguing.” What do you discern?
Your claims are indefensible.
He attacked every weak point in my argument.
His criticisms were right on target.
I demolished his argument.
I've never won an argument with him.
If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out.
He shot down all of my arguments.
When we talk about “arguing” in the English language, we argue with an “opponent”, plan strategies, attack his positions and defend our own. In the end, we “win or lose” arguments. These expressions suggest that our concept of an “argument” is partially structured by the concept of war, i.e. “war” is a metaphor for the act of arguing.
This is just one example among many more metaphorical speeches in the English language. For example, we often say: I am fed up; he is up there; she feels very down today; my heart is not in it; this matter is out of my mind; we are very close to each other… When we use these propositions, we may not realize that we are using metaphors, but these expressions are metaphorical nonetheless. They involve spatialization metaphors (up-down, front-back, on-off, center-periphery, near-far), ontological metaphors (i.e. picturing some abstract thing as an entity), container metaphors (i.e. picturing one abstract idea to be inside of another), etc.
Using examples from everyday speech, the authors argue that metaphorical thinking is built into our language and modes of comprehension. Metaphorical thinking happens when we ground our understanding of non-physical and more abstract concepts in the less abstract concepts relating to our direct physical and sensory experiences with the world.
Further traits of metaphors:
Metaphorical thinking is systematic. For example, when “war” serves as a metaphor for an argument, it offers a systematic and multi-dimensional way to structure our understanding of the act of arguing, bringing us to consider elements such as rivalry, attacks and counter-attacks, strategy, etc. The most effective metaphors can be further elaborated. They allow us to use one highly structured and clearly delineated concept to structure another.
Metaphors help us understand and categorize because they highlight the “important” aspects of an experience.
Metaphorical thinking is always partial, because if one concept could totally cover all aspects of another concept, then the two concepts would be identical to each other. A metaphor always highlights certain aspects of an experience, while hiding some other aspects.
When a concept is structured by more than one metaphor, the different metaphorical structurings usually fit together in a coherent fashion. It’s not likely that one would use metaphors of totally opposite meanings to structure the same experience.
Metaphorical concepts are extensive—they help extending the concept beyond the range of literal thinking, into the range of figurative, poetic, or fanciful thought and language. Metaphor happens with a leap of imagination (to associate one thing with another), and it leads to further imaginative acts.
Almost all emotional concepts must be comprehended indirectly, via metaphor.
Why do metaphors matter?
The author’s investigation into the metaphorical nature of human conception leads them to believe that there is a false dichotomy between Objectivism (there is absolute truth) and Subjectivism (one can make the world in one’s own image). They propose an Experiential Theory of Truth as a third option.
The Myths of Objectivism and Subjectivism
According to the authors, Objectivism is a belief that the world is made up of objects with inherent properties. People understand these objects by creating categories and concepts, which correspond to the inherent properties of the objects and to the relations among them. Objectivists believe that people can be objective and can speak objectively, but they can do so only if they use clearly and precisely defined language, and speak directly and straightforwardly--only by speaking this way can people communicate precisely about the external world and make statements that can be judged objectively to be true or false. Objectivists consider metaphors and other kinds of figurative language unclear, imprecise and subjective. Some further equate objectivity with rationality, and subjectivity with irrationality and emotionalism.
The authors believe that the myth of Objectivism runs deep in western philosophy: Plato viewed poetry and rhetoric with suspicion and banned poetry from his utopian Republic, because it gives no truth of its own, stirs up the emotions, and thereby blinds mankind to the real truth. Hobbes believes that metaphors are absurd and misleadingly emotional. Locke, continuing the empiricist tradition, shows a similar contempt for figurative speech, which he views as a tool of rhetoric. Among the classical philosophers, the authors single out Aristotle as someone who sees positive value in metaphorical speech. In his Poetics, he argues that “ordinary words only convey what we know already, it is from metaphor that we can best get ahold of something fresh.”
On the other hand, Subjectivists believe that meaning is private and individualistic, and experience is purely holistic and has no structure. The authors attribute Subjectivism to the Romantic tradition (which, historically, was a reaction to the rise of Objectivism) and to certain “contemporary (mis)comprehensions of recent Continental philosophy, especially traditions of phenomenology and existentialism.”
Metaphor as Imaginative Rationality
The authors argue that Objectivism misses the fact that human conceptual systems are metaphorical in nature and involve an imaginative understanding of one kind of thing in terms of another.
Since the foundation of thinking is metaphorical, even an objectivist model is a set of metaphors. So what makes it objectivist? The authors argue that an objectist model is a consistent set of metaphors. Consistency follows stricter logic than coherence. Consistency allows us to make non-conflicting inferences and suggestions for behavior.
While it’s ok to impose a single objectivist model in some restricted situations, this model cannot be an accurate reflection of reality, because there is a reason why our conceptual systems have inconsistent metaphors for a single concept. Any consistent set of metaphors will most likely hide indefinitely many aspects of reality – aspects that can be highlighted only by other metaphors that are inconsistent with it. Therefore, successful functioning in our daily lives requires a constant shifting of metaphors. Inconsistent but coherent metaphors seem necessary for us to comprehend the details of our daily existence.
Subjectivism, on the other hand, misses the fact that our understanding relies on a systematic and sharable conceptual system grounded in our physical and cultural environments. Though there is no absolute objectivity, there can be a kind of objectivity relative to one conceptual system. Impartiality and fairness can be achieved within one conceptual system.
If Reason involves categorization, systematic entailment, and inference, and Imagination involves seeing one kind of thing in terms of another kind of thing, then Metaphor unites reason and imagination. The authors believe that metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport and in communicating the nature of unshared experience. This skill consists of the ability to bend one’s world view and adjust the way one categorizes one’s experience.
The Experiential Theory of Truth
The authors’ proposed “experiential theory of truth” includes the following understanding:
Meaning is not disembodied and is always attached to a conceptual system.
Properties as interactional rather than inherent.
Truth depends on categorization. True statements that we make are based on the way we categorize things and on what is highlighted by the natural dimensions of the categories. Every true statement necessarily leaves out what is downplayed or hidden by the categories used in it.
Since we understand situations and statements in terms of our conceptual system, truth for us is always relative to that conceptual system. However, people who share the same conceptual system can verify and share the truth relative to the common conceptual system. Meanwhile, the conceptual system is not fixed and always changes, as new experiences would create new metaphors that would modify the conceptual system.
What to think about metaphorical thinking?
I remember reading Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor; and, AIDS and its metaphors a few years ago. So I revisited the beginning of her book. Here is an interesting excerpt:
"Illness is the nightside of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of the other place.
I want to describe, not what it is really like to emigrate to the kingdom of the ill and live there, but the punitive or sentimental fantasies concocted about that situation: not real geography, but stereotypes of national character. My subject is not illness itself, but the use of illness as a figure or metaphor. I argue that illness is not a metaphor, and that the most truthful way of regarding illness—and the healthiest way of being ill—is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphorical thinking. Yet it is hardly possible to take up one’s residence in the kingdom of the ill unprejudiced by the lurid metaphors with which it has been landscaped. It is towards an elucidation of those metaphors, and a liberation from them, that I dedicate this inquiry."
Sontag was fighting against a set of metaphors that people commonly used to think about illness such as cancer and AIDS, a mystifying set of metaphors that resulted in suspicion of moral characters of the patients and social exclusion of them. Yet what an illuminating passage this is. One sees that Sontag is creating a set of new metaphors in her arguments against an old set of metaphors. The use of “citizenship” provides an essential structure to her advocacy for the demystification of illness.
Therefore, the unending task for artists, scientists, and anyone who tries to be creative and responsible, seems to be harboring a discernment for the blind spots of common metaphorical thinking, and an imagination to create new metaphors to highlight previously ignored experiences, modify conceptual systems, and aid dialogues between different systems.
The aim of the book is to bring understanding to the human conceptual system: how do we conceive the world around us, understand it, and make inferences about it.
In order to get a handle on the human conceptual system, which is usually hidden from our full view, the two authors rely on analyses of language: since we build our conceptual systems with language, it provides a source of evidence for what our conceptual system is like. With examples from the English language, the authors illustrate that the human conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical.
What is a metaphor:
The essence of metaphor is to conceive one kind of thing in terms of another. In the English language, metaphorical speech abound.
For example, consider the following statements about “arguments” and the act of “arguing.” What do you discern?
Your claims are indefensible.
He attacked every weak point in my argument.
His criticisms were right on target.
I demolished his argument.
I've never won an argument with him.
If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out.
He shot down all of my arguments.
When we talk about “arguing” in the English language, we argue with an “opponent”, plan strategies, attack his positions and defend our own. In the end, we “win or lose” arguments. These expressions suggest that our concept of an “argument” is partially structured by the concept of war, i.e. “war” is a metaphor for the act of arguing.
This is just one example among many more metaphorical speeches in the English language. For example, we often say: I am fed up; he is up there; she feels very down today; my heart is not in it; this matter is out of my mind; we are very close to each other… When we use these propositions, we may not realize that we are using metaphors, but these expressions are metaphorical nonetheless. They involve spatialization metaphors (up-down, front-back, on-off, center-periphery, near-far), ontological metaphors (i.e. picturing some abstract thing as an entity), container metaphors (i.e. picturing one abstract idea to be inside of another), etc.
Using examples from everyday speech, the authors argue that metaphorical thinking is built into our language and modes of comprehension. Metaphorical thinking happens when we ground our understanding of non-physical and more abstract concepts in the less abstract concepts relating to our direct physical and sensory experiences with the world.
Further traits of metaphors:
Metaphorical thinking is systematic. For example, when “war” serves as a metaphor for an argument, it offers a systematic and multi-dimensional way to structure our understanding of the act of arguing, bringing us to consider elements such as rivalry, attacks and counter-attacks, strategy, etc. The most effective metaphors can be further elaborated. They allow us to use one highly structured and clearly delineated concept to structure another.
Metaphors help us understand and categorize because they highlight the “important” aspects of an experience.
Metaphorical thinking is always partial, because if one concept could totally cover all aspects of another concept, then the two concepts would be identical to each other. A metaphor always highlights certain aspects of an experience, while hiding some other aspects.
When a concept is structured by more than one metaphor, the different metaphorical structurings usually fit together in a coherent fashion. It’s not likely that one would use metaphors of totally opposite meanings to structure the same experience.
Metaphorical concepts are extensive—they help extending the concept beyond the range of literal thinking, into the range of figurative, poetic, or fanciful thought and language. Metaphor happens with a leap of imagination (to associate one thing with another), and it leads to further imaginative acts.
Almost all emotional concepts must be comprehended indirectly, via metaphor.
Why do metaphors matter?
The author’s investigation into the metaphorical nature of human conception leads them to believe that there is a false dichotomy between Objectivism (there is absolute truth) and Subjectivism (one can make the world in one’s own image). They propose an Experiential Theory of Truth as a third option.
The Myths of Objectivism and Subjectivism
According to the authors, Objectivism is a belief that the world is made up of objects with inherent properties. People understand these objects by creating categories and concepts, which correspond to the inherent properties of the objects and to the relations among them. Objectivists believe that people can be objective and can speak objectively, but they can do so only if they use clearly and precisely defined language, and speak directly and straightforwardly--only by speaking this way can people communicate precisely about the external world and make statements that can be judged objectively to be true or false. Objectivists consider metaphors and other kinds of figurative language unclear, imprecise and subjective. Some further equate objectivity with rationality, and subjectivity with irrationality and emotionalism.
The authors believe that the myth of Objectivism runs deep in western philosophy: Plato viewed poetry and rhetoric with suspicion and banned poetry from his utopian Republic, because it gives no truth of its own, stirs up the emotions, and thereby blinds mankind to the real truth. Hobbes believes that metaphors are absurd and misleadingly emotional. Locke, continuing the empiricist tradition, shows a similar contempt for figurative speech, which he views as a tool of rhetoric. Among the classical philosophers, the authors single out Aristotle as someone who sees positive value in metaphorical speech. In his Poetics, he argues that “ordinary words only convey what we know already, it is from metaphor that we can best get ahold of something fresh.”
On the other hand, Subjectivists believe that meaning is private and individualistic, and experience is purely holistic and has no structure. The authors attribute Subjectivism to the Romantic tradition (which, historically, was a reaction to the rise of Objectivism) and to certain “contemporary (mis)comprehensions of recent Continental philosophy, especially traditions of phenomenology and existentialism.”
Metaphor as Imaginative Rationality
The authors argue that Objectivism misses the fact that human conceptual systems are metaphorical in nature and involve an imaginative understanding of one kind of thing in terms of another.
Since the foundation of thinking is metaphorical, even an objectivist model is a set of metaphors. So what makes it objectivist? The authors argue that an objectist model is a consistent set of metaphors. Consistency follows stricter logic than coherence. Consistency allows us to make non-conflicting inferences and suggestions for behavior.
While it’s ok to impose a single objectivist model in some restricted situations, this model cannot be an accurate reflection of reality, because there is a reason why our conceptual systems have inconsistent metaphors for a single concept. Any consistent set of metaphors will most likely hide indefinitely many aspects of reality – aspects that can be highlighted only by other metaphors that are inconsistent with it. Therefore, successful functioning in our daily lives requires a constant shifting of metaphors. Inconsistent but coherent metaphors seem necessary for us to comprehend the details of our daily existence.
Subjectivism, on the other hand, misses the fact that our understanding relies on a systematic and sharable conceptual system grounded in our physical and cultural environments. Though there is no absolute objectivity, there can be a kind of objectivity relative to one conceptual system. Impartiality and fairness can be achieved within one conceptual system.
If Reason involves categorization, systematic entailment, and inference, and Imagination involves seeing one kind of thing in terms of another kind of thing, then Metaphor unites reason and imagination. The authors believe that metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport and in communicating the nature of unshared experience. This skill consists of the ability to bend one’s world view and adjust the way one categorizes one’s experience.
The Experiential Theory of Truth
The authors’ proposed “experiential theory of truth” includes the following understanding:
Meaning is not disembodied and is always attached to a conceptual system.
Properties as interactional rather than inherent.
Truth depends on categorization. True statements that we make are based on the way we categorize things and on what is highlighted by the natural dimensions of the categories. Every true statement necessarily leaves out what is downplayed or hidden by the categories used in it.
Since we understand situations and statements in terms of our conceptual system, truth for us is always relative to that conceptual system. However, people who share the same conceptual system can verify and share the truth relative to the common conceptual system. Meanwhile, the conceptual system is not fixed and always changes, as new experiences would create new metaphors that would modify the conceptual system.
What to think about metaphorical thinking?
I remember reading Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor; and, AIDS and its metaphors a few years ago. So I revisited the beginning of her book. Here is an interesting excerpt:
"Illness is the nightside of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of the other place.
I want to describe, not what it is really like to emigrate to the kingdom of the ill and live there, but the punitive or sentimental fantasies concocted about that situation: not real geography, but stereotypes of national character. My subject is not illness itself, but the use of illness as a figure or metaphor. I argue that illness is not a metaphor, and that the most truthful way of regarding illness—and the healthiest way of being ill—is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphorical thinking. Yet it is hardly possible to take up one’s residence in the kingdom of the ill unprejudiced by the lurid metaphors with which it has been landscaped. It is towards an elucidation of those metaphors, and a liberation from them, that I dedicate this inquiry."
Sontag was fighting against a set of metaphors that people commonly used to think about illness such as cancer and AIDS, a mystifying set of metaphors that resulted in suspicion of moral characters of the patients and social exclusion of them. Yet what an illuminating passage this is. One sees that Sontag is creating a set of new metaphors in her arguments against an old set of metaphors. The use of “citizenship” provides an essential structure to her advocacy for the demystification of illness.
Therefore, the unending task for artists, scientists, and anyone who tries to be creative and responsible, seems to be harboring a discernment for the blind spots of common metaphorical thinking, and an imagination to create new metaphors to highlight previously ignored experiences, modify conceptual systems, and aid dialogues between different systems.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Mysticism or History? Agamben's "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life"
Taking a fossil from history and believe that it contains the secret to our contemporary world—this is sheer mysticism and irresponsible scholarship.
A lesson I learned from reading Giorgio Agamben's "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life" is that I should not start talking about a book before I finish it. If after reading part 1 and 2, I still could defend Agamben before others, I am no longer willing to do that after reading part 3. Agamben's conclusion in part 3 that concentration camps are the paradigm of our age alarmed me and brought me to question and reject the whole chain of arguments he had put together in the book.
In this book, Agamben aims to establish the thesis that “the original political relation in the Western world is the state of exception, i.e. a zone of indistinction between outside and inside, exclusion and inclusion.” By doing this, Agamben argues against the contractual origin of state power. Politics, according to Agamben, is not grounded on a community of “belonging”, founded on commonalities whether they are identities or contracts. Instead, he argues from investigation of Roman legal codes that since the Roman times, politics has been grounded on the logic of exception. From this concept of “exception” Agamben jumps to the conclusion in Part 3: since the concentration camp is a supreme example of “exception”, and since western politics has “originated” from the state of exception, then the concentration camp is simply a manifestation of this fundamental fact of politics. In other words, from ancient Roman legal codes, one can already anticipate the concentration camps of the modern times. This is, I believe, an extremely faulty claim.
Agamben establishes the idea of “exception” by sifting through ancient Roman legal codes and characterizing the legal provisions for two figures of “exception” in a state: the sovereign and the “homo sacer.” The sovereign is within law and above law at the same time. The “homo sacer” is someone who has committed a certain kind of crime, and as a consequence is striped of all protections from the city. Anyone could kill him without being punished. He is outside the law but within the law at the same time: outside it in the sense that he is not protected by it; within it because the law permits killing of him by anyone. Therefore, this “bare life” – another name Agamben calls the Homo Sacer--is stripped of all political protection yet remains political. Agamben uses the figures of the Sovereign and “Homo Sacer” to lay down his idea of the logic of “exception” in politics, and argues that “the originary political element” in the West is “the production of bare life.”
Ok, it is an interesting intellectual acrobatics to place the “homo sacer” and the Sovereign in a joint-reading, using one as a mirror to the other. This reading is illuminating as it shows some similarity in political logic for the two opposite ends of the society. Agamben further extends the reading of “homo sacer” to reflect on other “borderline” people in a given society. The underlying premise is: some of the society’s most essential political logic could be found in how “borderline” people are created and maintained. This is, I believe, a fair premise, though it is nothing new. Agamben was simply doing genealogy work like Foucault, only that Agamben’s genealogy of the “outlaw” went back to the ancient Roman times, with a much longer time horizon than Foucault’s.
Indeed Agamben was speaking to Foucault quite directly. Having extended the time horizon to ancient Roman times, he argued that what Foucault thought to be “modern” phenomenon actually had existed since the “origin” of Western politics. Agamben also wanted to revise Foucault’s notion of “biopolitics”. While Foucault used the Panopticon as a paradigm to talk about modern politics’ intrusion and surveillance of private lives (i.e. politics’ regulation of the biological life), Agamben went further to use the concentration camp to revise on Foucault. For Agamben, it’s not a matter of political power penetrating biological life; instead, the political power would create a space (the camp) for “bare life”—where biological life and political life are indistinguishable, and where people are included in the polity by their exclusion from it.
My problem with Agamben’s arguments is his extensive postulations from very limited genealogy work. While it is interesting for me to learn about ancient Roman law, I absolutely disagree that just in the figure of “Homo Sacer”, one can find the “originary political element in the western world,” and then from this “originary” element, one can postulate the appearance of the concentration camp. This is an extremely mechanical and deterministic way to look at history. I have always found this kind of master-narrative built on singular paradigms (whether Foucault’s panopticon, or Agamben’s concentration camps) very unhelpful: these images are almost like political slogans--visual and visceral, they persuade not by evidence but by the power of image.
I would propose to read Agamben’s book as historical fiction, rather than proper history or philosophy. There is certainly a place for historical fiction. We learn a lot from historical times, just as we learn from fossils: we learn how things had been different and could be different. However, taking a fossil from history and believe that it contains the secret to our contemporary world—this is sheer mysticism and irresponsible scholarship.
A lesson I learned from reading Giorgio Agamben's "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life" is that I should not start talking about a book before I finish it. If after reading part 1 and 2, I still could defend Agamben before others, I am no longer willing to do that after reading part 3. Agamben's conclusion in part 3 that concentration camps are the paradigm of our age alarmed me and brought me to question and reject the whole chain of arguments he had put together in the book.
In this book, Agamben aims to establish the thesis that “the original political relation in the Western world is the state of exception, i.e. a zone of indistinction between outside and inside, exclusion and inclusion.” By doing this, Agamben argues against the contractual origin of state power. Politics, according to Agamben, is not grounded on a community of “belonging”, founded on commonalities whether they are identities or contracts. Instead, he argues from investigation of Roman legal codes that since the Roman times, politics has been grounded on the logic of exception. From this concept of “exception” Agamben jumps to the conclusion in Part 3: since the concentration camp is a supreme example of “exception”, and since western politics has “originated” from the state of exception, then the concentration camp is simply a manifestation of this fundamental fact of politics. In other words, from ancient Roman legal codes, one can already anticipate the concentration camps of the modern times. This is, I believe, an extremely faulty claim.
Agamben establishes the idea of “exception” by sifting through ancient Roman legal codes and characterizing the legal provisions for two figures of “exception” in a state: the sovereign and the “homo sacer.” The sovereign is within law and above law at the same time. The “homo sacer” is someone who has committed a certain kind of crime, and as a consequence is striped of all protections from the city. Anyone could kill him without being punished. He is outside the law but within the law at the same time: outside it in the sense that he is not protected by it; within it because the law permits killing of him by anyone. Therefore, this “bare life” – another name Agamben calls the Homo Sacer--is stripped of all political protection yet remains political. Agamben uses the figures of the Sovereign and “Homo Sacer” to lay down his idea of the logic of “exception” in politics, and argues that “the originary political element” in the West is “the production of bare life.”
Ok, it is an interesting intellectual acrobatics to place the “homo sacer” and the Sovereign in a joint-reading, using one as a mirror to the other. This reading is illuminating as it shows some similarity in political logic for the two opposite ends of the society. Agamben further extends the reading of “homo sacer” to reflect on other “borderline” people in a given society. The underlying premise is: some of the society’s most essential political logic could be found in how “borderline” people are created and maintained. This is, I believe, a fair premise, though it is nothing new. Agamben was simply doing genealogy work like Foucault, only that Agamben’s genealogy of the “outlaw” went back to the ancient Roman times, with a much longer time horizon than Foucault’s.
Indeed Agamben was speaking to Foucault quite directly. Having extended the time horizon to ancient Roman times, he argued that what Foucault thought to be “modern” phenomenon actually had existed since the “origin” of Western politics. Agamben also wanted to revise Foucault’s notion of “biopolitics”. While Foucault used the Panopticon as a paradigm to talk about modern politics’ intrusion and surveillance of private lives (i.e. politics’ regulation of the biological life), Agamben went further to use the concentration camp to revise on Foucault. For Agamben, it’s not a matter of political power penetrating biological life; instead, the political power would create a space (the camp) for “bare life”—where biological life and political life are indistinguishable, and where people are included in the polity by their exclusion from it.
My problem with Agamben’s arguments is his extensive postulations from very limited genealogy work. While it is interesting for me to learn about ancient Roman law, I absolutely disagree that just in the figure of “Homo Sacer”, one can find the “originary political element in the western world,” and then from this “originary” element, one can postulate the appearance of the concentration camp. This is an extremely mechanical and deterministic way to look at history. I have always found this kind of master-narrative built on singular paradigms (whether Foucault’s panopticon, or Agamben’s concentration camps) very unhelpful: these images are almost like political slogans--visual and visceral, they persuade not by evidence but by the power of image.
I would propose to read Agamben’s book as historical fiction, rather than proper history or philosophy. There is certainly a place for historical fiction. We learn a lot from historical times, just as we learn from fossils: we learn how things had been different and could be different. However, taking a fossil from history and believe that it contains the secret to our contemporary world—this is sheer mysticism and irresponsible scholarship.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Small Czech Man (malý Český člověk)
So after I wrote the blog about Karel Čapek, I received some response from Czech readers. "I don't like Karel Čapek," one said, "his writing feeds the Small Czech Man mentality."
Yes, I am familiar with the notion, "malý Český člověk." Presently, this figure is known as a nobody-man from a small land, with little ambition, lots of conformity, sweet, soft, clumsy and indifferent. An embodiment of mediocrity and complacency, he is indeed a nightmare for people, myself included, who want to make a difference, to have an edge, to make an imprint and to exist in the world.
However, "small Czech man" is not a permanent concept, it has its own history. In different times, the small Czech man meant different things. Švejk, who, in Hašek's famous tales of the Good Soldier Švejk, fought for the Austrian-Hungarian empire in the WWI, was a supreme example of an intriguing small Czech man. Nothing in the novel could inform us whether Švejk was idiotic or craftily subversive. As a subject to the Empire and a soldier in the army, he took orders literally, followed them to the extreme, until the orders became so absurd that they broke down. An anti-hero of sorts, Švejk was opaque, had no apparent psychological depth of his own, yet his opacity turned out to be the best survival tactic and most effective way of sabotage: since he could not be seen through, therefore he could not be effectively ruled. He was, without doubt, a radical figure at the time of his creation in the 1920s, and continued to provide a model of passive resistance for the Czech lands during various occupations the country experienced in the 20th century.
In Czech literature, the figure of "small Czech man" appears again and again. He is used as a mirror to reflect the absurdities of the world around him (such as in Havel's absurdist plays); he can also go on different paths of adventures, where he gets knocked about until he gains self-awareness (in Bohumil Hrabal's novels such as "Closely Watched Trains", and "I served the King of England"). The small man is not so simple and disgusting—he has morals and rationality. He doesn’t master-mind but he feels, thinks and adapts. More importantly, because he is pushed around and adapts, he reflects the social system around him. He is the social median, the average voter, the indicator for the extent of social welfare.
I agree that Karel Čapek did have a particular weakness for this common-man. A firm believer in democracy, and writing after the devastating total war of WWI, he believed that the state should be ruled by and serve the ambitions of the common-men, instead of tailoring to the aspirations of the Great Men, as the latter would turn out much more dangerous than the former. Passing away in 1938, just when the German troops entered Prague, Čapek had no chance to experience and reflect on the WWII and on the mundane evils of totalitarianism (which would have no doubt shattered his belief in the innocence of the common-man, as it did to many other writers). His age was still that of high modernism, with a new optimism, and a lingering romanticism. And plus, Čapek stayed true to his temperament when he wrote: he savored life, and reveled in small things. He was not particularly political, but put his focus on the "irrelevant" knowledges, textures and joys of daily life in peace.
Of course, Karel Čapek, Jaroslav Hašek, Bohumil Hrabal--they are all in the past tense now. One cannot ask them to fulfill what the readers need today. Watching Czech politics today, I see that a “small man mentality” figures into anti-elitism, anti-intellectuality, and conservative politics. Whether reading Čapek (and for that matter, Hašek and Hrabal) might feed this mentality or not, however, depends entirely on how they are read. They might as well historicize and complicate the figure. I have a suspicion that political parties are mis-using this idea of "common-man", simplifying it, imposing on him ready-made political views that do not belong. Looking at how the common man figures in literature could help demystify the small Czech man in today's politics, to show that in fact, this small Czech man is not that stupid, and can take political power smartly in his own hands, when the option is there.
Yes, I am familiar with the notion, "malý Český člověk." Presently, this figure is known as a nobody-man from a small land, with little ambition, lots of conformity, sweet, soft, clumsy and indifferent. An embodiment of mediocrity and complacency, he is indeed a nightmare for people, myself included, who want to make a difference, to have an edge, to make an imprint and to exist in the world.
However, "small Czech man" is not a permanent concept, it has its own history. In different times, the small Czech man meant different things. Švejk, who, in Hašek's famous tales of the Good Soldier Švejk, fought for the Austrian-Hungarian empire in the WWI, was a supreme example of an intriguing small Czech man. Nothing in the novel could inform us whether Švejk was idiotic or craftily subversive. As a subject to the Empire and a soldier in the army, he took orders literally, followed them to the extreme, until the orders became so absurd that they broke down. An anti-hero of sorts, Švejk was opaque, had no apparent psychological depth of his own, yet his opacity turned out to be the best survival tactic and most effective way of sabotage: since he could not be seen through, therefore he could not be effectively ruled. He was, without doubt, a radical figure at the time of his creation in the 1920s, and continued to provide a model of passive resistance for the Czech lands during various occupations the country experienced in the 20th century.
In Czech literature, the figure of "small Czech man" appears again and again. He is used as a mirror to reflect the absurdities of the world around him (such as in Havel's absurdist plays); he can also go on different paths of adventures, where he gets knocked about until he gains self-awareness (in Bohumil Hrabal's novels such as "Closely Watched Trains", and "I served the King of England"). The small man is not so simple and disgusting—he has morals and rationality. He doesn’t master-mind but he feels, thinks and adapts. More importantly, because he is pushed around and adapts, he reflects the social system around him. He is the social median, the average voter, the indicator for the extent of social welfare.
I agree that Karel Čapek did have a particular weakness for this common-man. A firm believer in democracy, and writing after the devastating total war of WWI, he believed that the state should be ruled by and serve the ambitions of the common-men, instead of tailoring to the aspirations of the Great Men, as the latter would turn out much more dangerous than the former. Passing away in 1938, just when the German troops entered Prague, Čapek had no chance to experience and reflect on the WWII and on the mundane evils of totalitarianism (which would have no doubt shattered his belief in the innocence of the common-man, as it did to many other writers). His age was still that of high modernism, with a new optimism, and a lingering romanticism. And plus, Čapek stayed true to his temperament when he wrote: he savored life, and reveled in small things. He was not particularly political, but put his focus on the "irrelevant" knowledges, textures and joys of daily life in peace.
Of course, Karel Čapek, Jaroslav Hašek, Bohumil Hrabal--they are all in the past tense now. One cannot ask them to fulfill what the readers need today. Watching Czech politics today, I see that a “small man mentality” figures into anti-elitism, anti-intellectuality, and conservative politics. Whether reading Čapek (and for that matter, Hašek and Hrabal) might feed this mentality or not, however, depends entirely on how they are read. They might as well historicize and complicate the figure. I have a suspicion that political parties are mis-using this idea of "common-man", simplifying it, imposing on him ready-made political views that do not belong. Looking at how the common man figures in literature could help demystify the small Czech man in today's politics, to show that in fact, this small Czech man is not that stupid, and can take political power smartly in his own hands, when the option is there.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
In Praise of Clumsy People
Perhaps it's because I have been required so often to be dexterous in life -- to handle things, persons, and situations with competence and clear grasp--tonight I got sick of it, and thought of Karel Čapek and his "In Praise of Clumsy People," a short essay written originally in 1935, collected in "Towards the Radical Center: A Karel Čapek reader."
This essay speaks about how inanimate things come alive in the hands of clumsy people. Dishes slip between fingers, wires wiggle out of grasp, inanimate objects assume life and will of their own. The world feels so differently for the dexterous and the clumsy. For the former, the world is within their firm grasp; for the latter, even the most everyday objects retain a measure of mystery.
Of course, by no means does Karel Čapek advocate for incompetence, nor does he idealize clumsiness as a virtue. Instead, he is like a forgiving and tender friend, who would stand there, smile, and make us feel better after we clumsily break something. "Oh, this dish looked as if it were alive," he would joke with us as we nervously gather the debris, bringing a relieved smile onto our faces.
Easily one of my top three favourite Czech writers, Karel Čapek is humorous and subtle, common-sensical and intelligent, sharp in human observation yet tender and merciful. He doesn't write with extraordinary language, nor do his stories have amazing characters or plot (his dexterous science fictions are exceptions, he invented the word "robot" in his sci-fi play R.U.R). What his writing has is a personal sense of mystery that is opposed to collective mythology. In a short story "Footprint", a single footprint is seen printed on a snow-covered path. There is nothing before it and nothing after. As people pass-by, they stop, ponder, and talk among themselves. It's a story about the unsolvable, the riddle in life, and the warm glow of fascination it brings to a cold, wintery journey.
In another short essay "A Cold", he writes about what one would read when having a cold.
"A man with a cold hesitates in front of his many-colored bookcase, shivering with chills and self-pity. Where can he find something ... something really good... Something that doesn't wound in any way... doesn't hurt a man in smallness and humiliation...(with a wet handkerchief on his face)?"
The man went through all literary genres-detective story, epics, romance, psychological novels... and rejected each for their excess, pretentiousness, hurtfulness. Until finally, he reaches for a small book in his bookcase, a book he has read many times when he is "depressed by the sufferings of body and mind". So "he snuggles down in his arm chair, takes a dry handkerchief, and heaves a sigh of relief before he starts to read."
As I felt something akin to a cold on my chest tonight, I searched at my colorful bookcase for Čapek. And here he is, never fail to comfort yet never to lie, the writer of a radical humanism -- love -- at the center.
This essay speaks about how inanimate things come alive in the hands of clumsy people. Dishes slip between fingers, wires wiggle out of grasp, inanimate objects assume life and will of their own. The world feels so differently for the dexterous and the clumsy. For the former, the world is within their firm grasp; for the latter, even the most everyday objects retain a measure of mystery.
Of course, by no means does Karel Čapek advocate for incompetence, nor does he idealize clumsiness as a virtue. Instead, he is like a forgiving and tender friend, who would stand there, smile, and make us feel better after we clumsily break something. "Oh, this dish looked as if it were alive," he would joke with us as we nervously gather the debris, bringing a relieved smile onto our faces.
Easily one of my top three favourite Czech writers, Karel Čapek is humorous and subtle, common-sensical and intelligent, sharp in human observation yet tender and merciful. He doesn't write with extraordinary language, nor do his stories have amazing characters or plot (his dexterous science fictions are exceptions, he invented the word "robot" in his sci-fi play R.U.R). What his writing has is a personal sense of mystery that is opposed to collective mythology. In a short story "Footprint", a single footprint is seen printed on a snow-covered path. There is nothing before it and nothing after. As people pass-by, they stop, ponder, and talk among themselves. It's a story about the unsolvable, the riddle in life, and the warm glow of fascination it brings to a cold, wintery journey.
In another short essay "A Cold", he writes about what one would read when having a cold.
"A man with a cold hesitates in front of his many-colored bookcase, shivering with chills and self-pity. Where can he find something ... something really good... Something that doesn't wound in any way... doesn't hurt a man in smallness and humiliation...(with a wet handkerchief on his face)?"
The man went through all literary genres-detective story, epics, romance, psychological novels... and rejected each for their excess, pretentiousness, hurtfulness. Until finally, he reaches for a small book in his bookcase, a book he has read many times when he is "depressed by the sufferings of body and mind". So "he snuggles down in his arm chair, takes a dry handkerchief, and heaves a sigh of relief before he starts to read."
As I felt something akin to a cold on my chest tonight, I searched at my colorful bookcase for Čapek. And here he is, never fail to comfort yet never to lie, the writer of a radical humanism -- love -- at the center.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Sombras de los ojos
"I am intrigued by late Wittgenstein, by what he wrote about reading a face," a philosopher friend told me as we sat on a bench on Cambridge Street, watching trucks passing by, and munching on sandwiches called "Dutch Rules", celebrative of this morning's soccer match.
I am bound to wrongly paraphrase any philosopher, but I will try anyway, as I like this little example so much. So let's say if two people are watching the face of a third person, and one of them recognizes sadness in that face, while the other doesn't. The one who recognizes would have a hard time conveying to the other person why he perceives the face to be sad. He can, of course, describe the shapes of the downcast eyes, the lines around the lips, the hardened cheek, the hollow expression, ... but he can never really prove that these are indeed indications of sadness. One either sees it or not: such knowledge has an incommunicable vagueness about it: it is direct, visceral, revelatory, nuanced, and private.
And this vagueness--how fitting it is to the title of this blog (sombras de los ojos)--is what we experience when we read literature, watch films, experience heart-breaks, and live our daily lives. We experience that motion inside of us, that motion we call emotion. And would I be forgiven, if I take an impulsive leap of word-play, to imagine "emotion" as an "electron in motion", whose delicate trajectory cannot be pinned down by any measurement, and whose instability provides us with a quantum experience in our bodies?
I am bound to wrongly paraphrase any philosopher, but I will try anyway, as I like this little example so much. So let's say if two people are watching the face of a third person, and one of them recognizes sadness in that face, while the other doesn't. The one who recognizes would have a hard time conveying to the other person why he perceives the face to be sad. He can, of course, describe the shapes of the downcast eyes, the lines around the lips, the hardened cheek, the hollow expression, ... but he can never really prove that these are indeed indications of sadness. One either sees it or not: such knowledge has an incommunicable vagueness about it: it is direct, visceral, revelatory, nuanced, and private.
And this vagueness--how fitting it is to the title of this blog (sombras de los ojos)--is what we experience when we read literature, watch films, experience heart-breaks, and live our daily lives. We experience that motion inside of us, that motion we call emotion. And would I be forgiven, if I take an impulsive leap of word-play, to imagine "emotion" as an "electron in motion", whose delicate trajectory cannot be pinned down by any measurement, and whose instability provides us with a quantum experience in our bodies?
Viewing Positions to a War: Restrepo
In Restrepo, the new documentary film on the war in Afghanistan, the camera assumes a variety of stylistic performances. Rocking with young soldiers on a train to the battle front, the camera feels as intimate and autobiographic as a webcam or a cell-phone camera engaged in home video-making. Positioned behind machine guns, mounted on fighter planes, flying over valleys and zooming onto targets, the camera resembles a weapon's accurate and long-range view finder. Imparting gleams of abstract beauty to bullet chains and machine guns, the camera follows the aesthetic vision of veteran war photographers. Finally, framing veterans' faces in extreme close-up in interview settings, the camera assumes the attentive eyes of the "folks" back home as it closely surveys for traces of both trauma and heroism on these young faces--in their watery eyes,between slight stirs of their lips.
These four viewing positions make up this film of a daring undertaking, and I must first applaud the filmmakers' bravery for making repeated visits to the deadly Korengal Valley, staying with the soldiers even on their most dangerous missions (Rock Avalanche), carrying their cameras in lieu of weapons. This insistence of being present at the battle scenes must have come from a stubborn belief in the power of the visual: this is a film that aims to let us see what the soldiers see. The implication is: first, if we see what the soldiers see, then we would know how they have felt and would understand their experiences more; second, seeing what the soldiers see would make us understand the war better. But do these two implications work?
First, seeing what the soldiers see does not necessarily bring us closer to their mentalities. Despite the multiple viewing positions, and the filmmakers' determination to make an "emotional portrayal" of everyday lives at war, the film is disappointingly homogeneous. With only a few exceptions, for the majority part of the film, individual voices and gestures are overwhelmed by a comformist collective ethos. Almost all soldiers are portrayed as sympathetic and agreeable home-boys, experiencing homesickness, enjoying male-bounding, and overcoming sadness of losing their team members. The reactions to the realities of war are incredibly uniform among them, and the veterans' reminiscences, filmed from hindsight, are hardly more reflective. What we see, then, is a ready-made script of mundane heroism, a performance of military ethics and discipline, an on-going everyday ritual of war that confirms the collective and erases the individual. This is, of course, interesting, but it is an insight into the nature of military life, rather than insights into the distinctly individual emotional experiences of the soldiers.
Second, does it help us understand the war if we see what the soldiers see? I am afraid not. In the film, one soldier commented, "I wish it were closer so I could see the enemy as he was killed." In this case, the soldier himself does not see the war; his weapon sees the target but he is spared from seeing the consequences of his attack. This applies to any attack carried out in distance. Therefore, the devastation of war cannot be revealed to us in these cases, unless we try to see beyond what the soldiers see.
On a few occasions, Restrepo brings new understanding regarding guerrilla fighting in a foreign terrain. I have in mind several sequences where the soldiers interacted with the villagers in the valley, searching in houses filled with incomprehensible objects (a divorce paper, for example, hidden in a woman's sewing jar). However, such disorienting interactions are not prioritized by the filmmaker, whose viewing positions tend to return repeatedly to what is familiar and endearing: guitar-playing, dancing, drawing, wresting--to what orients rather than disturbs the audience.
These four viewing positions make up this film of a daring undertaking, and I must first applaud the filmmakers' bravery for making repeated visits to the deadly Korengal Valley, staying with the soldiers even on their most dangerous missions (Rock Avalanche), carrying their cameras in lieu of weapons. This insistence of being present at the battle scenes must have come from a stubborn belief in the power of the visual: this is a film that aims to let us see what the soldiers see. The implication is: first, if we see what the soldiers see, then we would know how they have felt and would understand their experiences more; second, seeing what the soldiers see would make us understand the war better. But do these two implications work?
First, seeing what the soldiers see does not necessarily bring us closer to their mentalities. Despite the multiple viewing positions, and the filmmakers' determination to make an "emotional portrayal" of everyday lives at war, the film is disappointingly homogeneous. With only a few exceptions, for the majority part of the film, individual voices and gestures are overwhelmed by a comformist collective ethos. Almost all soldiers are portrayed as sympathetic and agreeable home-boys, experiencing homesickness, enjoying male-bounding, and overcoming sadness of losing their team members. The reactions to the realities of war are incredibly uniform among them, and the veterans' reminiscences, filmed from hindsight, are hardly more reflective. What we see, then, is a ready-made script of mundane heroism, a performance of military ethics and discipline, an on-going everyday ritual of war that confirms the collective and erases the individual. This is, of course, interesting, but it is an insight into the nature of military life, rather than insights into the distinctly individual emotional experiences of the soldiers.
Second, does it help us understand the war if we see what the soldiers see? I am afraid not. In the film, one soldier commented, "I wish it were closer so I could see the enemy as he was killed." In this case, the soldier himself does not see the war; his weapon sees the target but he is spared from seeing the consequences of his attack. This applies to any attack carried out in distance. Therefore, the devastation of war cannot be revealed to us in these cases, unless we try to see beyond what the soldiers see.
On a few occasions, Restrepo brings new understanding regarding guerrilla fighting in a foreign terrain. I have in mind several sequences where the soldiers interacted with the villagers in the valley, searching in houses filled with incomprehensible objects (a divorce paper, for example, hidden in a woman's sewing jar). However, such disorienting interactions are not prioritized by the filmmaker, whose viewing positions tend to return repeatedly to what is familiar and endearing: guitar-playing, dancing, drawing, wresting--to what orients rather than disturbs the audience.
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