tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post3805373330924059741..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: pierreuxCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-48521305323151347222011-12-06T05:44:44.662-05:002011-12-06T05:44:44.662-05:00Thanks, Irina, for your moving comments here. I th...Thanks, Irina, for your moving comments here. I think that the preoccupation with materialism has two origins in the anglophone world: one is our own materialism and obsession with possessions (which is reflected in the conversion of museums into shops) and the other is revulsion against that materialism, the plea not to distinguish people from the planet they consume. <br /><br />Those two roots are both intertwined and in conflict with each other - not least evident in the reliance of a certain kind of ecocriticsm on material consumption and presence (for example of computer networks) and if I were Jeffrey, (which I am not (!) I would make that problem central to my writing.<br /><br />I think for our discipline the prediliction for materialism can depersonalise the past - compare the funding and energy that goes in to displaying artefacts with that which goes in to making archives accessible - we get the stuff but not the records of the people who engaged with the stuff (making, using, being used by). A counter assertion of the peopleness of stuff (of the importance of their History) would be a radical and maybe even ethical step. I shy away from claiming ethical impact - but I do feel what you say.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-74074256190175432422011-12-01T18:16:32.497-05:002011-12-01T18:16:32.497-05:00By the way, I wrote the above comment knowing well...By the way, I wrote the above comment knowing well that I might come across as the paranoid, joy-killing East European, perhaps also as a bit of a luddite. And frankly, I'm fine with that. Sometimes a little paranoia-based-on-historical-trauma mixed with questioning of "progress" is a good thing. Yesterday's Fresh Air had an interview about privacy rights in the US with GWU law prof Jeffrey Rosen. I didn't hear the whole program, but the gist of what I did catch is that there are practically no restrictions on what corporations can do to invade individuals' privacy in the US. (Actually, the kinds of examples he gave were terrifying.) The front runner in this area has been Germany, where people and businesses can now opt out of Street View, and where Facebook has been heavily challenged for its privacy violations. Germany is sensitive to this issue, as Rosen pointed out, because of its political past. And sure, it's more fun if we can surf Google Street View and see everything, not with blurred-out houses and storefronts, and it's a pain if Facebook's face recognition software can't happily do its thing, but sometimes the scarred, rather wary Old World way of looking at progress and what is done to human beings is pretty valuable too.Irinanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-12388361658208749792011-12-01T18:07:36.153-05:002011-12-01T18:07:36.153-05:00Jeffrey, I loved both your post and Steve's co...Jeffrey, I loved both your post and Steve's comment. The place where I stumble is:<br /><br />"if I am partly anthropomorphize stone it is because I am attempting to partly de-anthropomorphize the human."<br /><br />Let me confess a few things: first, I often have trouble with the broad -- let's say capacious -- way "ethics" is used in scholarly discourse. This is probably the result of my own lack of understanding. Second, when I read about the importance of attempts to break down the "human," or as you put it here, to "de-anthropomorphize the human," I worry more than I rejoice. I tried to address this a bit in my paper at the Austin Babel conference, since the CFP really spoke to this issue, but I'm not sure any bit of what I was saying came across. So let me try it again:<br /><br />If I subscribe to anything like an ethics of literature, it is deeply and irrevocably tied to the place of my birth. And that place was one where, besides lots of interesting events, a tyrannical government carried out a secret, experimental program in wiping away prisoners' humanity. Not coincidentally, the individuals targeted were predominantly educated in the humanities. I'm not talking about deaths or prison camps or general harsh conditions or even physical torture, though these were part of the political constellation -- I'm talking about careful and targeted destruction of prisoners' identity, social bonds, ability to trust, memory, use of language, and so on.<br /><br />And also not coincidentally, the people who survived (more or less) this experience, did so through the humanities. <br /><br />So you see, for me the "humanities" is not just a mode of institutional organization or some treasured canon that needs to be questioned. I would certainly define it more broadly than we often do, but to me, it's about as close to truth as it gets in this world. And as seductively beautiful as your writing is -- I've had the pleasure of encountering it both in writing and even more movingly, when you spoke at NYU -- I am so deeply worried about the project of deanthropomorphizing the human. Because sometimes this actually happens -- not virtually, through words or ideas, but really and truly, and in a way that scars people and societies forever.<br /><br />This may be due to the scars of history that can't be erased, at least when your background is in as embattled a place as Europe. However, I'm not convinced -- as many North Americans are -- that the horrors of the past can't happen again. <br /><br /><br />And, from a much more trivial perspective, I can't walk to my classroom without seeing dozens of students walking aimlessly, looking down, hypnotized by their phones. It has gotten to the point where I almost never see a student walking outside and looking ahead or around -- even when he or she is with a friend. Frankly, it's creepy. From where I sit, the human is quite happily being deanthropomorphized, entering a radical hybrid human-technological state with no urging at all from us critics, and I'm not wholly convinced it's a positive development. Yes, we have always used technologies -- stone is one too, after all -- but I wonder what those of my students who pay more attention to Facebook and their iPhones than they do to ideas will have to fall back on when someone tries to deanthropomorphize them. <br /><br />Signed,<br /><br />Your Neighbourhood Fuddy Duddy...Irinanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-16222238652109763852011-12-01T09:18:28.449-05:002011-12-01T09:18:28.449-05:00Steve: Or, why shouldn't we allow that human a...Steve: Or, why shouldn't we allow that human and in-human are not really the best categories for dividing the world, that a companionship of the organic and inorganic invites us to consider a world where various elements don't always go about their business in different to each other but sometimes insinuate themselves into networks and create hybridities that can't be well captured by examining matters and beings in their supposed solitudes?<br /><br />I would say: it is stone we love, and the marks we make upon us, and the marks it makes upon us. And I really want to ask the question of what stone loves -- where love is desire, and desire is movement, and all of this is made evident only over great expanses of time. And more qualifiers: where causality is emergent and impersonal. That is, if I am partly anthropomorphize stone it is because I am attempting to partly de-anthropomorphize the human.<br /><br />Gory details of family travel to come, perhaps in a post of its own next week.<br /><br />Anne: Pygmalions all around, indeed! Except artists indifferent to human form, artists who love what Galatea-like about rock.<br /><br />Eileen, thanks!Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-23245992813656464392011-11-30T15:56:47.101-05:002011-11-30T15:56:47.101-05:00A beautiful and moving post; I like especially the...A beautiful and moving post; I like especially the idea of the temporary and semi-frozen alliances between stone and humans.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-77476044198107377122011-11-29T09:55:31.811-05:002011-11-29T09:55:31.811-05:00How wonderful to walk in your footsteps and discov...How wonderful to walk in your footsteps and discover yet stranger sites in France. I don't know Bordeaux at all, but think of the stone circle's distant Breton cousins calling forth. I'm trying to figure out the terminology for this moment of transformation: how much human touch makes a stone a sculpture? upending it? carving it? or is it human belief about stone - that it's alive? that it embodies a force? that it's flesh? Pygmalions all around.<br /><br />About academic trips with kids - two words: scavenger hunt. (and pastries, and being willing to translate comic books for sale at the Tabac).Annehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02067391488336878220noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-21690795645250587732011-11-29T07:37:41.781-05:002011-11-29T07:37:41.781-05:00A very lively virtual tour. I do wonder about the...A very lively virtual tour. I do wonder about the imputation of sociability to stone as stone. Why shouldn't the bare matter only "desire eternally to be stone," which might mean being entirely in-human, non-attached, despite our deepest artistic/cultural efforts to attach it? Or, to put it another way, is it the stone we love, or the marks we make on it? (There's a great Ikkyu poem I posted on Tim Morton's blog that gets at this point: "I love bamboo how it looks / And because men carve it into flutes.")<br /><br />I'm also deeply interested in the gory details of how you managed the family-cum-academic trip to France, which is on our radar for this coming summer. Even though my obsession is beaches rather than stones, I'm not sure my kids would last as long or be as guideable as your seem to have been. The lure of French pastries, perhaps?Steve Mentzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02927244468764583378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-41224545445627251392011-11-28T16:20:56.339-05:002011-11-28T16:20:56.339-05:00On further reflection perhaps the last word of thi...On further reflection perhaps the last word of this post should be "companionship" rather than "love." But maybe these are the same thing.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com