Clifford Geertz's "Blurred Genres"

It's a work that I responded to and struggled to understand. While I delighted in the possibilities of interdisciplinarity, or mixing anthropological knowledge with fictional writing, Geertz asks us to reasses what the aim of all these reconfigured genres might be. If it is no longer expertise (for the social scientist), nor moral judgements (for the humanists), then we need to be clear about whatever else it is we aim to do. Because it's interesting that so many academics (deconstructionists or their enemies, or marxists or their enemies) who want to be leaders of new fields (like cultural studies) have some pretty prescriptive ideas about what these new fields or genres need to be doing (Denzin comes to mind). Some pass some very broad judgements about the whole enterprise (Trencher).

It seems to me that each of us attempting interdisciplinarity has to find and combine the influences that work for us as we try to reach our aim. I've been ambivalent about postmodernism at times, but the total rejection of postmodern thought that so many attempt is foolish. Whether you try to reject it point by logical point , like Trencher, or with wholesale hysteria like John M. Ellis, or more ignorantly in the manner of Congressmember Michelle Bachman, that simple rejection can only take thought so far. The problems and condition that postmodernism grew in response to still exist. Our philosophy must take them on in some way and simple rejection avoids this and sends you back to a more embryonic and thoughtless position.

I had to find a path through these ideas. I had to take a more personal and experimental approach to the terrain. What I found is both tentative and artistic.

Dr. Biobrain is trying to talk sense about Ron Paul on his site. Paul took in some big bucks, and people are both impressed and curious.

I have a personal perspective on Paul.

I voted for the guy in 1988 when he was the Libertarian candidate for President.

He got much less than one percentage point of the vote in the general. The Libertarian party was arguably stronger then than it is now, and that's what he got. If he were to run a third party challenge next year, as someone in Biobrain's comments suggests he might, he's bound to double his numbers over '88. If anyone wants to argue that a third party can win a presidential election at this point in time, knock yourself out, but know that you are arguing a fantasy based on your dreams with no supporting evidence.

I know why I voted for him in '88. He argued for the legalization of Mary Jane. He argued for reducing the military. He was good on the stump when I saw him in a debate at UT. I was able to vote for a clean candidate not sullied by the compromises of actually governing or passing laws. I thought votes for him would get the other parties to listen to his positions (hah). I didn't know that he agreed with the philosophical positions of the John Birch Society because he brought none of that stuff up in front of college students, and I never thought to look into it. I voted for him because he told me what I wanted to hear, and I didn't belong to a political party yet. He pandered to me when I was ready to buy it.

He's not some lonely pillar of integrity. He ran as a Republican to get elected to the Congress, when it was convenient to do so. He did this after condemning Republicans in '88 as corrupt war-mongering opponents of personal freedom and the constitution. Politics makes hypocrites of us all, I suppose. Hypocrisy isn't a federal offence.

Paul supporters now need to face two facts: that he can't win this republican party's nomination, and that a third party (except for Unity08, of course) can do no better than be a spoiler. Insulting the messenger won't change those facts.

Susan Straight was in New Orleans this week. Close to year later, it's like this:

"We have no electricity, no water," others told me. "They just opened a store last week in my neighborhood, and a lady was holding a bag of chips and crying. People were just walking around her and nodding, because they understood. We haven't been able to buy food."

Dorothea Salo, writing in Caveat Lector (http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/):

Some people speak about themselves and their families in clichés and polite fictions for many of the same reasons corporations speak in empty, sonorous PR, not least among them desperate fear of the truth. Some people, submerged in the family fictions, lose their real voices in part or wholly. Blogging threatens such families for the same reasons it threatens PR-dependent corporations. It threatens the fiction, the public façade of perfection, the private walls around anger and pain and disagreement and error. The “public” nature of blogging is only an excuse, really, for those who want the façades maintained. Public or private is not the issue; the issue is talking truthfully, or writing truthfully, at all. To anyone.

I don't post often because I don't fit my writing into the standard blogging form very often. There are some great bloggers, I'm not one of them yadda, yadda.

But you get a sense now and then about how different the medium could be (as I did reading Theoria on DailyKos a few years ago), and how it rarely gets there. I think anonymous nails it in the comment I've pasted in below. And how appropriate that he should think no one will listen to him for saying such a thing (as he says in a part left out), when he's actually very interesting:

Anonymous said...
I can't wait for the day when blogs are more than hypertextual diaries. I read this and I saw this and hear's a picture of me with my wife. I'm sure there are sites that aspire to be more than what we have, something more abstract, creative, and maybe even a little poetic in terms of how they are laid out. I've been reading these movie blogs for a couple of years now and they're stale. It's the orthodoxy of punk all over again. We're going to create a new world and it has to look exactly like this. It's time to rip it up and start again. These blogs are like cocktail parties: I'm reading Mark Crispin Miller and oh, have you seen the new Malick, and isn't it a shame about Spielberg, and Hey, let's play a game! Everyone name their top five...blah, blah, blah, and who is this man and why is he saying this, he shouldn't be allowed to speak, that's not what we're here for, now everyone be civil.

By Anonymous' standards this post is stale, but it is so in a way that considers how it could be otherwise. Thanks, Anonymous, whoever you may be. If I could do something different I would, and I'd do it more often.

Defining this blog

I'm putting some thought into what this blog should focus on. For me it comes down to how writing gets done, what it means to me, and trying to find out where it comes from in a time with so much anxiety about the future of the written word. I'm interested in new writing, but just understanding what the present of writing is difficult enough. For the most part, literary study covers the past of writing well enough.

I know I want to process some of the unspoken, unwritten and unpublished thinking I've done on anthropology and fiction. I think both of those genres of writing and thinking are relevant to where we are as a culture right now. Anthropological thinking is helpful as we become less isolationist and more involved in the diverse world, and as American society begins to process the existing diversity. I see fiction as the most flexible and complicated form of writing that we have available to us now. I think the two genres are headed toward an understanding and admixture.

Writers are strongly influenced by what they read, and I've been reading a lot of journalism because of the drama of current events. I'll never be a journalist, but reading the form obviously affects how I'm writing fiction these days, and I want to figure out what that means. My next post will be about the effect of reading journalism on my writing.

How do characters begin?

Department meetings inspire my self-loathing in a way few things do anymore, since I tend to avoid events and places that make me feel bad. Our department is fourteen people, and the meeting consists of us going around the table discussing what is going on with our job that others should know about. Some of us go on for 10 to 20 minutes hitting all the highpoints of our fortnightly accomplishments. Others are mercifully short. I tend to keep it short, but realize that people may actually think I do little if I say little. The work litany becomes a strange genre of defensive self-aggrandizement always in danger of slipping into onanisticly subjective minutiae.
Sometimes it helps to spend meeting time watching my co-workers speak or react to others speaking, and to think about how they might be characterized. I can see how it’s possible to take any small group with intense dynamics and mold it into a little drama with heroes and villains. Who the heroes are switches out from week to week. Is the assistant who scowls at half of the comments the rest of us make simply petty and envious with no self-control or does she harbor the burden of upholding standards the rest of us have forgotten?

Lunch: Homemade chicken mole and rice. It could be a lot saucier. It needs something but still communicates the idea of what it could have been.

Joyce recently wrote:

At 80, when a film about Ruth Duckworth (a German Jew who fled to England to become an artist) was done, she said, "If you're still afraid at 80, that's bad luck."

I would add that if you're still afraid at 80, you probably just haven't been paying a whole lot of attention as life has rolled by.

Which made me write this:

In 1922, one of the first British expeditions to climb Everest approached the mountain from the Tibetan aside. The climbers brought hundreds of porters and twice as many pack animals. The Rimpoche of the monastery up in the hills below Everest did not want to meet with the climbers, but was pressured to do so by the Tibetan government. He claimed that the very idea of meeting the Europeans made him physically ill. But he did agree to meet them and allow them to stay in the area around the monastery. Many contemplative people resided in shelters and caves in and around the valley of the monastary, meditating for months and years on end. Many of them were aged people meditating on their fate. Once a day monks would carry water and barley gruel to the caves, and the climbers would see nothing more of these people than their pale hands reaching humbly out for their rations, trying to avoid even the sun. The Rimpoche demanded that the Gurkha general accompanying the expedition refrain from hunting in the valley, for, as the visitors saw, all of the animals were absolutely without fear of humans. The mountain goats and wild birds calmly wandered and flew among the expedition during their stay.

John F.

Haymaker

You are one of life’s enjoyers, determined to get the most you can out of your brief spell on Earth. Probably what first attracted you to atheism was the prospect of liberation from the Ten Commandments, few of which are compatible with a life of pleasure. You play hard and work quite hard, have a strong sense of loyalty and a relaxed but consistent approach to your philosophy.

You can’t see the point of abstract principles and probably wouldn’t lay down your life for a concept though you might for a friend. Something of a champagne humanist, you admire George Bernard Shaw for his cheerful agnosticism and pursuit of sensual rewards and your Hollywood hero is Marlon Brando, who was beautiful, irascible and aimed for goodness in his own tortured way.

Sometimes you might be tempted to allow your own pleasures to take precedence over your ethics. But everyone is striving for that elusive balance between the good and the happy life. You’d probably open another bottle and say there’s no contest.
What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.

Theresa suggested a motivational post, so I'll try one and see where it goes.

Would compliments help? When I hear the quality of each of your writing, I'm continualy impressed and always want to hear more. I'm aware that you all have impediments to writing as often as you would like, but I hope you are all aware that the quality of your writing isn't something you need to worry about. When I look at so many published writers, I see talent, but I also see persistence: these writers have somehow risen above self-doubt and finished their pieces. I know that many of us could be published, were we to continue to work to be published. I continues to believe, given moderate talent, that publishing is mainly a matter of persistance.

Now of course, not all of us aspire to publish. Publishing is just short hand for attaining what you what from your writing. It isn't always that satisfying anyway to publish. But I think we could all reach further toward what we want from our writing without too much trouble, and we should.

I've been reading a lot of journalism in the past months. I've been infected by the sense that huge events are occuring before our eyes, and that I need to pay attention. But I'm not a journalist, and so I spend a lot of reading a model of writing that doesn't do much to help me write short stories. Of course after spending several years practising a very academic approach to short stories, I'm faced with deciding again just what form of writing I want to spend my time on. Perhaps we are all always faced with this decision, as we move from sentence to sentence. Every form is bound to fall short of what we want to use to present what we think and feel, but the attempt always seems worthwhile.

5 am Journal
5 a.m.
Restless
sleep is evasive
so i fret away the early a.m. hours
hoping to fall into a deep sleep state
no dreams, please no dreams
of running to something,
trying to find something
always moving towards
"something"
never arriving
i wake up exhausted
5 a.m.
time to greet the day
dragging the night behind me

TB

The hardest of all arts (to create and appreciate) in my opinion is poetry. The poet must acquire a near supernatural proficiency in the what I consider the most important aspect of artmaking: perception. In addition to being perceptive, however, the poet must possess the rarest of human gifts, the ability to connect, to see, and then of course to translate so that we can. This makes true poetry ridiculously difficult and explains why most of what's offered up as poetry really sucks. When it doesn't suck, however, poetry has the potential to surpass all other efforts mankind dares attempt in creating something sublime.

Recently, on a trip to a certain American city which shall remain nameless, my friend drove me around pointing to new housing developments and commenting on areas of "new money" versus that of "old money". I responded politely, politically and socially correctly, as one would do with a friend, as I noticed how she distinguished the new money neighborhoods from the old. The smaller yet more than adequate dwellings were the new money communities. I suppose upwardly mobile and in some cases just plain working class folks who want the amenities of great schools and safe, clean neighborhoods live there. Then there's the old money hoods distinguished by huge garish houses sitting side by side, side by flippin' side. My friend quoted the cost of some of these homes and I thought to myself, because I want to be socially accepted and I wouldn't want to offend her having been so kind as to pick me up from the airport, if I pay a gazillion dollars for my home I no more want to see my neighbors as to have to listen to them take piss or shower. Who pays that much money for a house in spitting distance to the next? Better yet, the socially conscious voice in my head is calculating, new money, old money, well where the hell do the no money people live? That's a no
brainer. The no money people live in the city. The rapidly deteriorating inner sanctums of most cities, like New Orleans. I've never been there. But I know about all the convention and tourism money that is spent in the French Quarter. I know about the parties and drunken slovenliness of the folks who to there to celebrate Mardi Gras. I know about the history of the gulf, the intermingling of so many cultures resulting in an intoxicating flavor of Americana that one would ask why not visit New Orleans-- the birth place of jazz, the home of the French Quarter, the land of good food and drink; the best place to party? I don't want to go to New Orleans. Even if they rebuild it and pave the French Quarter with gold. I don't want to go there because the secret is out, America hates its poor, old and heaven forbid you're old, poor, and black. In the surrounding areas of this tourist Metropolis lived a segment of society that is generally hidden or other wise rendered invisible. They're not invisible anymore. We know they exist and now they're coming, through no force or motivation of their own, to our cities across the nation. Where will they live? Where do “no-money” people live when they have no place to go?

Blog 2

My friends argue as we eat lunch, munching on vegetarian middle eastern
wraps from the local coffeehouse and homemade banana nut muffins with
chocolate chips and extra wheat germ added for healthy measure. "It's not
racism; it's classism!" says Kevin, who agrees with Colin Powell that the
crisis in New Orleans exposes how people earning under $10,000 a year
live, and that just so happens to disproportionately affect people of
color. "And that is racism!" Jen retorts as we sit around the lunch table
overlooking the courtyard that is starting to show signs of the shifting
seasons. The grape vine crawling up the brick faE7ade of the old
building is beginning to turn from a lush green hue to tones of gold,
brown and red.

"Does it matter?" I ask. "Why do we need to compartmentalize?"
Oppression is oppression. They're all intertwined. It is no coincidence
that those making under $10,000 a year are the people from the margins of
society. Those with the least opportunity afforded them. Look at who was
left. Primarily black, yes. But many other features as well. Sick
people. People who could not walk. People on oxygen. People with mental
illness. People with addictions. People with little privilege. But
people.

I agree that it is helpful to critically analyze what went wrong, to point
the finger at those to blame, to demand changes. But we must do this in
the name of all people. It does not help our cause to separate ourselves
from each other. To name ourselves as more oppressed than the other. To
argue racism versus classism. We must uphold one priority: the eradication
of oppression of all people.

But I wonder, can someone eating couscous, tofu and wheat germ understand,
I mean truly understand, oppression and survival? Can we sit in an ivory
tower and do anything more than pontificate the politics of oppression? I
don't think the people I saw standing on the bridge waiting for water and
food to arrive would hold a conversation about racism versus classism.
Not during their moment of crisis; not in the more secure confines of a
shelter; and not even in the sanctuary of their rebuilt lives. Only
privilege allows for such discussion.

Blog 3

Wendell Butler and I met in his office on the 8th floor of the 3M building in East St. Paul. I was there to ask him for money. I helped run a small social service agency that believed and knew (people research these things)that the distance between teen mothers and healthy, happy children can be bridged if they: 1) aren’t isolated, 2) know what to realistically expect from a 6 month old, a nine month ld, a 14 month old, etc.; 3) had the life skills that got them thinking about their future. Wendell was in the private sector, helping our cause along in a time when welfare reform was telling him that much of the work of being a safety net for poor families should be provided by the private sector as welfare reform moved folks from welfare to work. Wendell was a black man with a kind and straight-forward disposition. From my vantage point – a person begging him for money; a person who was paid probably four times less to beg him for money than he was to give it – I couldn’t tell whether he had ever been an oppressed black man; whether he was conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican. Even, rather he was rich or just middle class. But the conversation showed me what I really needed to know about him. The man had common sense. “I am,” he said during our conversation about how nonprofits would fare in a time of government cutbacks, “the biggest private social service funder in St. Paul. And no one has made a meeting with me to say, ‘we’re taking away the safety net from a couple tens of thousands poor people in St. Paul. What are you in for?” “Now,” he said. “I believe in the private sector taking responsibility for the public good. Of course I do. Why else would I do this? But until they show me that they have done the math about the private sector taking on the problems, I don’t believe them when they talk about the private sector stepping in.” Wendell Butler’s words have come back to me often in the years that I’ve examined the conservative and liberal approaches to the public good. I thought about Wendell Butler when a prof at the Humphrey Institute questioned whether the ultimate goal of the Bush administration was to have “faith-based air traffic control.” But I never thought about Wendell more than during Katrina. Watching the poor left behind, I thought to myself, “No one did the math. We have ___ million people in the delta. ___ million have cars. That leaves ___ million. Who’ll fill in the blank?” And, swear to God, I’m a liberal democrat, but private bus, public bus,Lutheran bus, born-again Christian bus, federal bus, state bus… I really wouldn’t have cared who picked them up. As long as someone had a plan. And we’ve all seen what sort of repercussions move through our conscience when no one does. Isn’t doing the math the least we can ask from our federal government? From their vantage point, where the public good can be seen? If it is an administration that believes in faith-based initiatives – and the people vote them in – isn’t the least we can ask is that that faith-based government do the math to understand how the whole job will get done under their model? If it’s a socialist government that gets elected, I’d ask the same thing. What % gets done from taxpayers’ dollars? What percentage from corporate philanthropy? From private wealth? From the donations of the citizenry? Isn’t that the least we can ask?

Blog 4
The blind woman on t.v. said it best. She was being interviewed in her living room, her seeing eye dog trotting in a circle around her. When the rescue workers reached her house, it was half submerged in water. She was pretty hungry, too, and so was the dog. But they would only take her, they said – no pets – so she’d decided to stay. Now another week had gone by, and the rescue workers had come back. This time they’d take both of them, Ida May and Rick.

The reporter asked, “Where do you think you’re headed, now that you’re finally getting out of here?”

And Ida May replied, “ I have no idea where I’m going…. nothing is certain.”

Then she stopped. The milky whites of her eyes and their unmoving centers seemed fixed on some invisible point in the high distance.

“Let me say that a little bit differently,” she resumed. “I have no idea where I’m going, but I am absolutely certain that God knows where I’m going.”

She stopped then, looking triumphant. And I thought, yeah, Ida May, I’m with you.

Blog 5:

The on-rush of significant catastrophes is getting overwhelming, and the professional media throws out the term compassion fatigue before the details of what is happening in Iraq, New Orleans and Mississippi are even clear. How could I be tired of caring before I’m even clear what I care about?

In the week of Katrina, I couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about the disappointment that my barber, the policeman whose hair he cut, the nurses I met with and all of my in-laws felt about the national response to people trapped in New Orleans. Eating a quick meal out, I’d hear the people at the neighboring table expressing their shock over the racist neglect that the victims faced. All sorts of people were talking about why people were abandoned in the outer parishes, and they were all outraged. The winds of the hurricane were historically destructive, but there was something in the response and the lack of preparation for it by political cronies that was criminal.

How would we begin to understand the nature of the crime, if only to prevent it reoccurring? We needed to talk among ourselves. And the discussions veered into basic questions of class and race. The discussions weren’t always perfect, but they were nearly universal and seemed heartfelt to me. A friend speculated that only the privilege of some allows for these discussions, and that those experiencing the most suffering wouldn’t look at things in term of race or class.

I know the impatience with polite discussion of suffering. It’s common among my peers. Sometimes it seems like we haven’t earned the right to empathize with lives we’ve never lived. We become frustrated with all the complicated rationalizations and politics of theories, and we yearn for simple and direct action. A thirsty child wants water, not a lecture.

But the nurses and the in-laws, the policeman and the barber who all joined me in trying to understand what went wrong, cared about the injustice of man and nature. What they say about the realities of racism and class difference as they protest these injustices seems like the best conversation to me. They care but feel powerless to help. They try to understand grand social forces and bad societal behavior because they don’t want victims to suffer further. They want to understand so that they can help. What better cause should we address with our privilege? We may fall into abstractions as we try to understand, but not even the least among us can slip the bonds of abstraction.

And I know that people, mostly black and poor, trapped on a bridge, under fire from sheriffs who block their escape from tragedy, know about racism and class oppression. And I know they had some long conversations, on a night caught between floodwaters and men with guns, about injustice. It seems to me that we who aren’t faced with abject suffering everyday (or today) have been slowly taught to understand race and class by those who are. Racism and the words that describe it weren’t solely invented in an ivory tower.

Hello to everyone in the MLS associated writer's group. I've set this blog up for us to do our bloggy best. I'll add the e-mailed blogging we did last week, and we can take it from there. I'll try to set it up so that everyone can post, and we can figure out over time how, and how often, we want to use this venue.

Most obviously we can use it to schedule the next meeting:

October 29th, 10 am

We can use it to post any of our writing that we would like to get feedback on. The comment function for each post would easily allow quick responses to any writing posted.

We can use the blog to comment on events, things we've read, or whatever else is on our minds.

Nice meeting this morning. Everyone who read is on to something, and needs to keep going.