So I voted in CT where I live this morning, then drove to Pennsylvania -- the swing state where I actually spend most of my time during the semester. Everything went fine. I even remembered to bring a passport, in case anyone there wanted to challenge my right to be there (it wasn't a problem).
But this afternoon I spoke to two people (in Pennsylvania) who went to vote and found the line so long they had to leave before they got to pull the lever. They're both employees of Lehigh's food service, and a) have such long shifts that they'll miss the evening voting hours and b) can't get their bosses to let them come in a little late.
You see the class issues here. A lot of people work in jobs where they can't be late because they wanted to vote; they'll be fired. The same people often live in the areas of highest population density, which are also the areas that are most dependent on social and governmental services that the Republicans like to cut. And needless to say, on a day like today, those are also the areas with the longest lines to vote.
It's a vicious cycle.
[UPDATE: I'm told that it's against the law for employers to punish or fire employees who take time off to vote. I've also been given this link, with state-by-state provisions for 'time off to vote.' Notably, Pennsylvania doesn't have a law on the books on this subject.]
"Just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else." --Toni Morrison
Election night dilemma
Am I the only one wondering what to do tomorrow night? I've been invited to an "election results party," but I'm thinking of skipping, because I might be too tense to enjoy the company of others. And since I started blogging -- and reading RSS feeds of blogs as well as official news feeds -- I am usually brimming with an insane amount of current political information (too much reading of realclearpolitics.com, slate.com, dailykos,com...). In the quiet of Bethlehem, PA, detailed knowledge about the demographic shifts in Ohio, security problems in the software that many states are using for electronic voting (Diebold), the surprise disaffection with Bush in the suburban counties around Dallas ... well, it comes across as pretty wonky.
The latest election gossip is that Kerry might be in trouble in Pennsylvania after all, but some polls are suddenly giving him an advantage in Florida! And also -- the early voters in Iowa are voting overwhelmingly (60-40) for Kerry, so much so that the Iowa polls (which have favored Bush slightly in recent days) might end up being irrelevant. And then there's Ohio, which has been leaning Kerry, and Wisconsin, which Slate keeps calling for Kerry despite the presence of numerous polls with Bush on top! And Minnesota... Michigan... New Hampshire...
Aside from the election results party jitters, my biggest concern is that the evening will go on and on. The networks will be so cautious calling close races for either candidate that (unless there are some big surprises), no clear picture will probably emerge about anything until Wednesday. So Tuesday night might just turn out to be a long, stressful night with lots of Jeff Greenfield pontificating, and no resolution. Perhaps better just to turn the TV off and try and think about something else.
I have a talk to give at Swarthmore College on Wednesday afternoon (topic: "Women's Rights in India: Issues of Law and Religion"), so maybe I'll just spend the night in my office with strictly timed/limited internet checks (2 minutes online/every half hour).
The latest election gossip is that Kerry might be in trouble in Pennsylvania after all, but some polls are suddenly giving him an advantage in Florida! And also -- the early voters in Iowa are voting overwhelmingly (60-40) for Kerry, so much so that the Iowa polls (which have favored Bush slightly in recent days) might end up being irrelevant. And then there's Ohio, which has been leaning Kerry, and Wisconsin, which Slate keeps calling for Kerry despite the presence of numerous polls with Bush on top! And Minnesota... Michigan... New Hampshire...
Aside from the election results party jitters, my biggest concern is that the evening will go on and on. The networks will be so cautious calling close races for either candidate that (unless there are some big surprises), no clear picture will probably emerge about anything until Wednesday. So Tuesday night might just turn out to be a long, stressful night with lots of Jeff Greenfield pontificating, and no resolution. Perhaps better just to turn the TV off and try and think about something else.
I have a talk to give at Swarthmore College on Wednesday afternoon (topic: "Women's Rights in India: Issues of Law and Religion"), so maybe I'll just spend the night in my office with strictly timed/limited internet checks (2 minutes online/every half hour).
Bollywood Terror Masala Election Video
Shashwati has put together an ironic/subversive Bollywood collage, and posted it directly on her website as a quicktime movie.
It's so surreal, it might just work.
It's so surreal, it might just work.
Republicans against Bush
This column in the Nation has been making the rounds. It has a sitting senator from Rhode Island (Lincoln Chafee), the former governor of Minnesota (Elmer Anderson), and many others. All are Republicans who have turned against Bush, mainly on the issue of Iraq.
Dalrymple reviews Pankaj Mishra's New Book on Buddha
William Dalrymple, heroic historian of British/Mughal India, gives a generally positive review to Pankaj Mishra's new book on Buddhism in Outlook India. Mishra's book is called An End to Suffering is The Buddha in the World, and it seems to be about anything and everything under the subcontinental sun:
Such overwhelming breadth doesn't make me want to run out and buy the book. If I want to read about Hobbes or Schopenhauer, I am probably not looking for it in a book on Buddhism.
But passages like the following, which is from Mishra himself, do pique my curiosity:
Mishra's take on the early Buddhists seems to resemble a little my general sense of the Bhakti movement.
The book covers an intimidatingly wide sweep of territory and moves rapidly from the period of the Vedas to that of the Enlightenment, then onto to the world of Osama bin Laden, stopping en route in the company of such diverse figures as Mahavira, Hieun Tsang, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Marx, Schopenhauer, Borges, Sayyid Qutb, Swami Vivekananda, various Buddhist missionaries and a mixed bag of Naga sadhus and gun-wielding Islamists.
Such overwhelming breadth doesn't make me want to run out and buy the book. If I want to read about Hobbes or Schopenhauer, I am probably not looking for it in a book on Buddhism.
But passages like the following, which is from Mishra himself, do pique my curiosity:
"Like the Beats and hippies of a recent era, people left their homes and professions, dissatisfied with their regimented lives of work, and moved from one sramana sect to another. The men who led them were India’s first cosmopolitan thinkers, unhindered by caste boundaries or other parochial considerations, who became aware that human beings are united by certain shared dilemmas.These early dissenters...began the process, which the Buddha advanced greatly, of taking Indian thought from the speculative—the Vedas and Upanishads—to the ethical level."
Mishra's take on the early Buddhists seems to resemble a little my general sense of the Bhakti movement.
Small hybridity cuisine point: Pao-Bhaji + Pasta
Anyone out there ever tried Pao-Bhaji with pasta? I'm having leftover Pao-Bhaji (sometimes spelled Pav-Bhaji) with whole wheat pasta for lunch today, and it's delightful. Pao-Bhaji is normally eaten with bread rolls, but sometimes (as now) rolls are not available.
In case you have no idea what Pao-Bhaji is, go here. Butter can probably be substituted for ghee.
(I also need to credit the person who made the Pao-Bhaji to begin with... she knows who she is)
In case you have no idea what Pao-Bhaji is, go here. Butter can probably be substituted for ghee.
(I also need to credit the person who made the Pao-Bhaji to begin with... she knows who she is)
Specialization? Daniel Barenboim on Edward Said's Musicianship
Daniel Barenboim in the Guardian writes about his friendship with Edward Said, who was (as is well known) an accomplished pianist as well as a world-class intellectual.
The best thought in this essay is also one that raises questions for me:
Again, the enemy is specialization. Within literary theory -- and particularly, in Foucault -- the enemy has in recent years come to be "discipline."
The fact that I do a blog where I write about such a disparate array of topics suggests (I hope) that I myself am opposed to the plague of specialization. But at the same time, I wonder about whether Said isn't being too idealistic: isn't it only possible to make a successful critique of specialization from the vantage point of professional accomplishment? Aren't strong technical fundamentals required in order to play Beethoven -- or write a paper on Joyce -- in a manner that others will find compelling, and correct?
Practically speaking, how does one teach technical basics and universal meanings at the same time? Earlier in the semester I attempted to teach formal and technical aspects of poetics (rhyme, meter, poetic form) in my "Intro to the English Major" undergraduate course. The subject is difficult enough for me that it took nearly all of my concentration just to ensure that I was correctly scanning the poems that I was asking my students to scan. There wasn't room left, after noting the metrical deviations in Browning's "The Last Ride Together," for what the poem means, and why they should read it to begin with. (I should say I do find the balance easier to achieve when teaching prose.)
I think the critique of specialization works best when students already know all these basics -- either because someone else taught it to them, or because they learned it on their own out of a natural proficiency and enthusiasm for the subject.
In effect, the kinds of knowledge that are often derided as mere specialization are every bit as necessary as the general humanist competency that makes someone seem like a serious musician or literary critic. The two pull away from each other -- and seemingly contradict one another -- but both are essential to success.
(Of course, I haven't said anything about how the demands of the market -- which are often compelled by delusion -- skew even the most modest attempt to talk about ideals and practicalities in pedagogy)
The best thought in this essay is also one that raises questions for me:
His fierce anti-specialisation led him to criticise very strongly, and very fairly, the fact that musical education was becoming increasingly poor, not only in the United States - which, after all, had imported the music of old Europe - but also in the very countries that had produced music's greatest figures: for example, in Germany, which had produced Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Schumann and many others; or in France, which had produced Debussy and Ravel. Furthermore, he perceived a sign that bothered him exceedingly, a perception that was to unite us very quickly: even when there was musical education, it was carried out in a very specialised way. In the best of cases, young people were offered the opportunity to practice an instrument, to acquire necessary knowledge of theory, of musicology, and of everything that a musician needs professionally.
But, at the same time, there existed a widespread and growing incomprehension of the impossibility of articulating the content of a musical work. After all, if it were possible to express in words the content of one of Beethoven's symphonies, we would no longer have a need for that symphony. But the fact that it is impossible to express in words the music's content does not mean that there is no content.
Again, the enemy is specialization. Within literary theory -- and particularly, in Foucault -- the enemy has in recent years come to be "discipline."
The fact that I do a blog where I write about such a disparate array of topics suggests (I hope) that I myself am opposed to the plague of specialization. But at the same time, I wonder about whether Said isn't being too idealistic: isn't it only possible to make a successful critique of specialization from the vantage point of professional accomplishment? Aren't strong technical fundamentals required in order to play Beethoven -- or write a paper on Joyce -- in a manner that others will find compelling, and correct?
Practically speaking, how does one teach technical basics and universal meanings at the same time? Earlier in the semester I attempted to teach formal and technical aspects of poetics (rhyme, meter, poetic form) in my "Intro to the English Major" undergraduate course. The subject is difficult enough for me that it took nearly all of my concentration just to ensure that I was correctly scanning the poems that I was asking my students to scan. There wasn't room left, after noting the metrical deviations in Browning's "The Last Ride Together," for what the poem means, and why they should read it to begin with. (I should say I do find the balance easier to achieve when teaching prose.)
I think the critique of specialization works best when students already know all these basics -- either because someone else taught it to them, or because they learned it on their own out of a natural proficiency and enthusiasm for the subject.
In effect, the kinds of knowledge that are often derided as mere specialization are every bit as necessary as the general humanist competency that makes someone seem like a serious musician or literary critic. The two pull away from each other -- and seemingly contradict one another -- but both are essential to success.
(Of course, I haven't said anything about how the demands of the market -- which are often compelled by delusion -- skew even the most modest attempt to talk about ideals and practicalities in pedagogy)
The Mysterious Jargon of Baseball
This is for my readers abroad, and for readers here in the U.S. who find the metaphors of baseball a little mystifying.
I should say that I've been a bit of a baseball fan since high school, when my family sometimes went to Baltimore to watch the Baltimore Orioles play in their old stadium. Imagine a Sikh family timidly hanging out at one of these events with all the tobacco-chewing, beer-drinking fans. Parents look confused, kids are trying to act like all of the random events actually make any sense. Well, that was us, eating hot dogs up in the cheap seats.
I even briefly played baseball in high school. It was just for a year, on the Junior Varsity, and I was so bad that the Quaker coach -- who normally espoused a philosophy of "everyone gets to play, even if we lose to St. Albans by 20 runs" -- barely ever let me do anything. I later went on to do sports like Cross-Country, where my badness was a non-factor.
I've been listening to some of these playoff games on WCBS radio, partly because I've been driving a lot, but also because I get pretty poor reception at the place where I stay in Bethlehem. The experience of just listening to the game is interesting. The fact that you can't see means you have to pay more attention to how the game is narrated. It's renewed my interest in the language, especially since radio announcers are allowed to get a little more carried away with jargon than the TV guys. It also probably doesn't hurt that the same guys have apparently been announcing these teams for decades, so their announcing patterns are reflexive, like the chanting of veteran Buddhist monks or American academics reading scholarly papers.
Some interesting jargon (and the rules that make the terms meaningful):
Sac fly: Sacrifice fly. The batter is out on a fly ball, but if there are fewer than two outs, runners may advance after tagging the base.
(Batter) takes: The batter refuses to swing. This is oddly intransitive.
(Pitcher) deals: Again, intransitive. An odd turn of phrase; it suggests that pitching is a little like playing cards.
Breaking ball: As far as I can tell, this is the same thing as a curve ball. "Breaking" is a little more descriptive than "curve," as it tells you a little about the nature (and shape) of the curve.
Slider: I never really knew what this was, so I looked it up, and found the following fascinating (but vague) definition):
Getting behind (a batter): If the pitcher throws more strikes than balls to an individual batter, he is "ahead" of the batter. If not, he is "behind" in the count. Sometimes the announcers simply say "The pitcher has to watch out about getting behind this guy."
Action in the bullpen: If the pitcher is doing poorly and is likely to be replaced, the back-up pitcher needs to warm up for 20-30 minutes in the "bullpen." Action in the bullpen is thus a sure sign that the current pitcher is soon going to be replaced.
2-hole: The second spot in the batting line-up. I don't know why this is (sometimes) called a "hole."
Contact hitter: A hitter who often connects with the ball, even if he doesn't always get on base.
(Hitter is) jammed: The pitcher gets the batter to hit a pitch off-center. Usually leads to a fly ball and an easy out.
Fielder's Choice: The act of a fielder who handles a fair grounder and, instead of throwing to first base to put out the batter runner, throws to another base in an attempt to put out a preceding runner.
So there you have it, some strange baseball phrases for your entertainment. Go Red Sox!
I should say that I've been a bit of a baseball fan since high school, when my family sometimes went to Baltimore to watch the Baltimore Orioles play in their old stadium. Imagine a Sikh family timidly hanging out at one of these events with all the tobacco-chewing, beer-drinking fans. Parents look confused, kids are trying to act like all of the random events actually make any sense. Well, that was us, eating hot dogs up in the cheap seats.
I even briefly played baseball in high school. It was just for a year, on the Junior Varsity, and I was so bad that the Quaker coach -- who normally espoused a philosophy of "everyone gets to play, even if we lose to St. Albans by 20 runs" -- barely ever let me do anything. I later went on to do sports like Cross-Country, where my badness was a non-factor.
I've been listening to some of these playoff games on WCBS radio, partly because I've been driving a lot, but also because I get pretty poor reception at the place where I stay in Bethlehem. The experience of just listening to the game is interesting. The fact that you can't see means you have to pay more attention to how the game is narrated. It's renewed my interest in the language, especially since radio announcers are allowed to get a little more carried away with jargon than the TV guys. It also probably doesn't hurt that the same guys have apparently been announcing these teams for decades, so their announcing patterns are reflexive, like the chanting of veteran Buddhist monks or American academics reading scholarly papers.
Some interesting jargon (and the rules that make the terms meaningful):
Sac fly: Sacrifice fly. The batter is out on a fly ball, but if there are fewer than two outs, runners may advance after tagging the base.
(Batter) takes: The batter refuses to swing. This is oddly intransitive.
(Pitcher) deals: Again, intransitive. An odd turn of phrase; it suggests that pitching is a little like playing cards.
Breaking ball: As far as I can tell, this is the same thing as a curve ball. "Breaking" is a little more descriptive than "curve," as it tells you a little about the nature (and shape) of the curve.
Slider: I never really knew what this was, so I looked it up, and found the following fascinating (but vague) definition):
A slider is a pitch in baseball, sort of halfway between a curveball and a fastball, with less break but more speed than the curve. It will tend to drop less and move toward or away from the batter more than a curve. The extra speed can fool the hitter into thinking it is a fastball, until too late. Some pitchers also use a cut fastball (or cutter) which is one step closer than the slider to the fastball on the spectrum between fastballs and curves. A pitch that has movement similar to both a slider and a curveball is sometimes called a slurve.
The slider is also sometimes called "the great equalizer", as its development caused pitchers to regain some dominance over hitters. The slider also causes great stress and wear on a pitcher's arm.
Getting behind (a batter): If the pitcher throws more strikes than balls to an individual batter, he is "ahead" of the batter. If not, he is "behind" in the count. Sometimes the announcers simply say "The pitcher has to watch out about getting behind this guy."
Action in the bullpen: If the pitcher is doing poorly and is likely to be replaced, the back-up pitcher needs to warm up for 20-30 minutes in the "bullpen." Action in the bullpen is thus a sure sign that the current pitcher is soon going to be replaced.
2-hole: The second spot in the batting line-up. I don't know why this is (sometimes) called a "hole."
Contact hitter: A hitter who often connects with the ball, even if he doesn't always get on base.
(Hitter is) jammed: The pitcher gets the batter to hit a pitch off-center. Usually leads to a fly ball and an easy out.
Fielder's Choice: The act of a fielder who handles a fair grounder and, instead of throwing to first base to put out the batter runner, throws to another base in an attempt to put out a preceding runner.
So there you have it, some strange baseball phrases for your entertainment. Go Red Sox!
Manjul Bhargava, genius
On NPR. Small quibble: the reference to The Da Vinci Code I could have done without.
Eminem goes ballistic for a good reason
Check out Eminem's latest music video, Mosh -- it's something else. And while Wonkette brings it back to earth with a characteristic snark, this is still a pretty dramatic entry into politics from someone who had seemingly washed up on shoals of redundancy. (She also has links to some other mirror sites where you can view the video)
I had written this guy off as effectively a clown from hell after his other recent single, "Lose It." I found the latter to be at once: boring, annoying, dangerously exploitative of children, gratuitously homophobic (no surprise, but it still needs to be said), redundant, poorly produced, tacky, and overly derivative of his other chart-topping hits.
Since when did Clown from Hell become so politically righteous? And do we believe he's sincere? (Isn't it perhaps a little opportunistic?)
I had written this guy off as effectively a clown from hell after his other recent single, "Lose It." I found the latter to be at once: boring, annoying, dangerously exploitative of children, gratuitously homophobic (no surprise, but it still needs to be said), redundant, poorly produced, tacky, and overly derivative of his other chart-topping hits.
Since when did Clown from Hell become so politically righteous? And do we believe he's sincere? (Isn't it perhaps a little opportunistic?)
What is an "extreme" case of Murder?
BBC reports that the honor killings code in Pakistan has been reformed so that the defendent actually goes to jail, but only in "extreme" cases. As it stands now, usually it is the tribal custom that a payment to the victim's family is given in lieu of punishment.
Ok, I know this is supposed to be an improvement. But remind me -- what is an extreme case of murder? Are there any non-extreme murders?
Ok, I know this is supposed to be an improvement. But remind me -- what is an extreme case of murder? Are there any non-extreme murders?
Back from Vancouver: the raven who freed the sun from a box
Vancouver: a pretty town. And the conference was fun, though I always come away from MSA feeling like a bit of a half-wit. Favorite papers were on topics like Ginger Rogers ("Ginger Rogers in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"), the Caribbean writers coterie who all wrote for the BBC "Caribbean Voices" program in the 1940s and 50s, and a paper on ethics in Jacob's Room.
While I was really impressed by most of what I heard, I did have the unpleasure of some very jargony papers that weren't about much of anything at all (most useless word: "intersectionalities"). Folks who criticize English academics for using too much jargon are usually over-simplifying what it is we do and why we do it. But sometimes I do get the urge to 1) Take to the streets to Fight Oversyllabification (i.e., intersectionalities --> intersections), 2) Remind people that not everything can be about race, gender, class, sexuality, and empire, all at once, 3) Reintroduce the profoundly underrated phrase "I don't know" to academic discourse, and 4) Institute a total ban on neologisms for a trial period of 4 years. And those are just some starting provisions.
And did I mention that Vancouver is pretty? Maybe I'll post some pictures soon...
Other Vancouver nicety: it's polyglot and multicultural, as much or moreso than New York City. I met some interesting Punjabi and Ethiopian cab drivers, and a Chinese lady who told me one of the main Native American myths from that part of Canada: of the demon that locked up the sun in a box, and of the raven who disguised himself as a little boy in order to trick the demon and return the sun to its rightful place. (Figures that the most prevalent ethnic icon in Vancouver pertains to the absence of the sun!)
Meanwhile, Sepia Mutiny has had some great posts on India stuff.
While I was really impressed by most of what I heard, I did have the unpleasure of some very jargony papers that weren't about much of anything at all (most useless word: "intersectionalities"). Folks who criticize English academics for using too much jargon are usually over-simplifying what it is we do and why we do it. But sometimes I do get the urge to 1) Take to the streets to Fight Oversyllabification (i.e., intersectionalities --> intersections), 2) Remind people that not everything can be about race, gender, class, sexuality, and empire, all at once, 3) Reintroduce the profoundly underrated phrase "I don't know" to academic discourse, and 4) Institute a total ban on neologisms for a trial period of 4 years. And those are just some starting provisions.
And did I mention that Vancouver is pretty? Maybe I'll post some pictures soon...
Other Vancouver nicety: it's polyglot and multicultural, as much or moreso than New York City. I met some interesting Punjabi and Ethiopian cab drivers, and a Chinese lady who told me one of the main Native American myths from that part of Canada: of the demon that locked up the sun in a box, and of the raven who disguised himself as a little boy in order to trick the demon and return the sun to its rightful place. (Figures that the most prevalent ethnic icon in Vancouver pertains to the absence of the sun!)
Meanwhile, Sepia Mutiny has had some great posts on India stuff.
Sikhs in France: Cultural vs. Religious Symbols
I promised I wouldn't blog til Tuesday, but I'm sitting in Newark Airport, so what the hey. (What is wi-fi for except for me to use it?)
Sikhs in France are taking the ban on turbans to court. Three Sikh boys in France are arguing that their 'keski' (or under-turban) is not a religious but a cultural symbol.
In the initial ruling, the French court has sent the matter back to the school. Under the current law, schools are required to hold public hearings and also meet with parents before expelling students ("explore all disciplinary options").
After a couple of weeks, however, I think this will be back in court.
On BBC radio, they were interviewing a guy named Kudrat Singh, who is a Frenchman who converted to Sikhism, and who is representing a Sikh advocacy group in France. The weird thing was, when asked "is it really true that the turban is a cultural rather than a religious symbol?" his answer was, "well, for me, it's religious, but we still have a right to wear it."
Now, it's not as if the current argument being put forward by French Sikhs really makes any sense (it's cultural, not religious), but it is the only way to get around the current religious symbol ban. Unfortunately, the chief representative for French Sikhs seems not to be aware of what he's supposed to be arguing!
Oh well. To the anthropologists reading this -- is there really a difference between symbols that are cultural and those that are religious? (I don't think it's possible to say, since religious communities must always in some sense be 'cultural' as well) And to the French litigators reading this -- shouldn't this be a question for anthropologists to resolve?
Ok, now to board my plane.
Sikhs in France are taking the ban on turbans to court. Three Sikh boys in France are arguing that their 'keski' (or under-turban) is not a religious but a cultural symbol.
In the initial ruling, the French court has sent the matter back to the school. Under the current law, schools are required to hold public hearings and also meet with parents before expelling students ("explore all disciplinary options").
After a couple of weeks, however, I think this will be back in court.
On BBC radio, they were interviewing a guy named Kudrat Singh, who is a Frenchman who converted to Sikhism, and who is representing a Sikh advocacy group in France. The weird thing was, when asked "is it really true that the turban is a cultural rather than a religious symbol?" his answer was, "well, for me, it's religious, but we still have a right to wear it."
Now, it's not as if the current argument being put forward by French Sikhs really makes any sense (it's cultural, not religious), but it is the only way to get around the current religious symbol ban. Unfortunately, the chief representative for French Sikhs seems not to be aware of what he's supposed to be arguing!
Oh well. To the anthropologists reading this -- is there really a difference between symbols that are cultural and those that are religious? (I don't think it's possible to say, since religious communities must always in some sense be 'cultural' as well) And to the French litigators reading this -- shouldn't this be a question for anthropologists to resolve?
Ok, now to board my plane.
Karen Armstrong at Lehigh; off to a conference
Tonight I had the great privilege to introduce Karen Armstrong with 300-400 people in the room. And tomorrow I'm off to Vancouver for the Modernist Studies Association. My paper: "E.M. Forster's Orientation to Islam." (If any readers are in Vancouver and would like to meet up on Sunday afternoon, drop me an email.)
Karen Armstrong: Charming lady, and a wonderful lecturer (I blogged about her most recent book over the summer). She lectures old school, Ox-Bridge style -- from notes, off the cuff -- and yet it all makes sense in the end. Again, I was impressed by the number of local Bethlehem-ites that came to the south side for a 7:30 talk.
An academic intro is also a strange document to write; I mean, what do you do with it when you're done? It basically sits in "My Documents" in the "great, congratulations, but of no future use" folder. I remember slaving over intros to Michael Hardt (2002) and Susan Stanford Friedman (also 2002), but then -- after the event -- I threw them out.
Unlike the conference talk, the academic intro is still essentially an occasional document, single use only.
Or maybe... I can also blog it? Perhaps it will be of some interest to readers...
Thoughts? Likes, dislikes?
See you Tuesday.
Karen Armstrong: Charming lady, and a wonderful lecturer (I blogged about her most recent book over the summer). She lectures old school, Ox-Bridge style -- from notes, off the cuff -- and yet it all makes sense in the end. Again, I was impressed by the number of local Bethlehem-ites that came to the south side for a 7:30 talk.
An academic intro is also a strange document to write; I mean, what do you do with it when you're done? It basically sits in "My Documents" in the "great, congratulations, but of no future use" folder. I remember slaving over intros to Michael Hardt (2002) and Susan Stanford Friedman (also 2002), but then -- after the event -- I threw them out.
Unlike the conference talk, the academic intro is still essentially an occasional document, single use only.
Or maybe... I can also blog it? Perhaps it will be of some interest to readers...
Let me start with a short quote from the renowned religious studies scholar Diana Eck, who once described our speaker tonight in the following way:
“She has the discipline of someone schooled for years in a convent and she has the freedom of mind of someone who left it. She is deeply rooted in the soil of a particular religious tradition, but she has set herself free like a bird."
Karen Armstrong was raised in Stourbridge, a small town in the industrial midlands region of England, not too far from Birmingham. In 1962 she decided to enter the convent of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. She studied to be a nun for seven years, when, after an extremely painful process of self-discovery, she decided it wasn’t for her. The convent was an extraordinarily difficult regimen – one which she has documented in books like Through the Narrow Gate and, just this year, The Spiral Staircase .
But she didn’t leave the convent just because of the difficulty, or just because of the repressive policies of the Catholic Church at that time (this was before the big liberalizing reforms of Vatican II). She left because she personally didn’t feel strongly connected to faith, or to God. And like James Joyce and George Eliot, great writers who left their religious upbringings behind to enter the secular world, Karen Armstrong decided to pursue a different track.
For several years, Armstrong aimed to have nothing whatsoever to do with organized religion. She pursued a Ph.D. in literature at Oxford, and taught literature for a time at universities and private schools around London. But soon she felt a need to come to terms with her early experiences. In 1980, she wrote a book called Through the Narrow Gate about her convent life. It was very successful for a first book, and it started her -– perhaps a little reluctantly -– down a path which would lead to a prodigious amount of scholarship about religion, albeit written from a critical and intellectual point of view, by a person who is herself thoroughly secular (or at most, as she puts it, a "freelance monotheist").
After the success of the first book, Armstrong was invited to work on British television programs on religion. This in turn led to a new kind of interest in religion, especially in Judaism and Islam, which were both new to her. She also became interested in figures like Paul, and in the uneasy coexistence between the three Abrahamic faiths one finds in present-day Jerusalem. She started to write book after book, each on a different aspect or problem associated with the three faiths. There’s a long series of titles: A History of God; Holy War; Jersalem: One History Three Faiths; The Battle For God; and the list goes on. Each book is different, and each is clear and straightforward in its presentation of ideas, information, and history. To the students in the audience, I would say this about Karen Armstrong’s books: you don’t need to have a strong background in religion to understand them, and if you sit down with just about anything she’s written you will probably find your knowledge of the subject completely transformed.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, Armstrong became one of the most sought-after authorities on the subject of Islam. Her book on the subject (Islam: A Short History) became a best-seller, as did many of her earlier books. Armstrong became a trusted and credible authority on the relations between different religious communities at a time when it seemed most commentators on television and in the print-media were only capable of a kind of high hysteria about the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism.
Karen Armstrong’s a hero to me partly because she brought a dose of calm and sanity at a time when it was much needed in the U.S. and England, as well as many other places around the world. (She is internationally known) I also deeply admire her scholarly commitment -– all the more impressive because her formal training at Oxford was in literature, and her unparalleled knowledge of Judaism and Islam is self-taught. And finally, I admire her as a person who has overcome a repressive religious system, and has courageously turned her scholarly lens to the very system that was the source of so much early suffering.
Thoughts? Likes, dislikes?
See you Tuesday.
Fareed Zakaria, Postcolonial intellectual
I linked to Fareed Zakaria's NewsweekEditorial last month.
That piece shares something quite significant with his latest, and that is a consciousness of the follies of empire.
Though I think his book The Future of Freedom is perhaps a bit too sunny (I actually published a review of it in The Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies), and Zakaria positions himself somewhere to the right of where I place myself politically, I like the drift of his thought.
In this case, I also appreciate the literary reference -- Somerset Maugham's criticism of Henry James:
Then again, this is a piece about America's obliviousness to the rise of Asia. And he has a point that the reduction of all foreign policy issues to Iraq is turning us all into Cyclopeans; we fail to see the substantive structural and attitudinal shift that is to accompany the incipient rise of the Asian economies.
But is Asia-->America today analogous to America-->Europe a century ago? I'm not sure I believe it.
That piece shares something quite significant with his latest, and that is a consciousness of the follies of empire.
Though I think his book The Future of Freedom is perhaps a bit too sunny (I actually published a review of it in The Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies), and Zakaria positions himself somewhere to the right of where I place myself politically, I like the drift of his thought.
In this case, I also appreciate the literary reference -- Somerset Maugham's criticism of Henry James:
In his novel "Cakes and Ale," Somerset Maugham derided the celebrated American expatriate Henry James for focusing his writings on upper-class life in Europe in the early 20th century. Maugham complained that James had "turned his back on one of the great events of the world's history, the rise of the United States, in order to report tittle-tattle at tea parties in English country houses."
The analogy is not exact. The war on terror is crucial, winning in Iraq is necessary, Middle East peace is important. But I wonder whether as we furiously debate these matters in America, we resemble Englishmen in the waning days of the British Empire. They vigorously debated the political and military situation in remote areas, such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan (some things don't change). They tried mightily, and at great cost, to stabilize disorderly parts of the globe. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the United States of America was building its vast economic, technological and cultural might, which would soon dominate the world.
Then again, this is a piece about America's obliviousness to the rise of Asia. And he has a point that the reduction of all foreign policy issues to Iraq is turning us all into Cyclopeans; we fail to see the substantive structural and attitudinal shift that is to accompany the incipient rise of the Asian economies.
But is Asia-->America today analogous to America-->Europe a century ago? I'm not sure I believe it.
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