Not Recognizing the invisibility of the Real

After finishing his doctorate my father accepted a six month position with the United Nations Development Program in New York City – a decision that routed us to Flushing, Queens instead of back to Pakistan. In the middle of a dozen or so 20 story apartment buildings was a playing area where the boys’ hierarchy was acted out. At the top was Donald, the son of an airline pilot, whose hero was General George Armstrong Custer. Surprisingly, I was not at the bottom, at least not immediately. That position was occupied by A, who, while being many inches taller and many pounds heavier than me, had been branded a coward prior to my arrival on Kessena Boulevard. The rest of the boys – Polish, Czech, Italian – mocked A for suffering his position below me. When one day the older boys outside our group realized this disorder in rank, they placed A in an impossible situation. Either he would have to fight me or endure their beating. I seemed to have no say in this, carried as I was by flows that seemed to me as incomprehensible as they were inevitable. As I struggled inside another circle, the fight itself was again inconclusive. Then A stepped back five feet and spit in my direction bellowing, "Anyway, you are nothing but a filthy Pakistani." My symmetrical response required no thought whatsoever, "Oh yeah, and you are nothing but a filthy American." And then came what I have come to see as a kind of Mobius twist. With rising posture he gloated, "Damn right I am an American, and proud of it." Laughter and snickering from the boys, silence from me. I stood there, befuddled. I had fought to a draw, the circle had not closed in on me, and still I had lost. Badly. Decades later I still want to account for his effortless comeback and for my frozen speechlessness.

Sitting there...

At the top of a hill, under a shade tree, I recall sitting and eating a military issue MRE. The tree grew at the hill crest, giving me a view of either slope. To my left, less than a hundred meters away, the structure that would soon be a clinic was taking shape. Twelve to fifteen hours per day for two months, you could sit there and see US soldiers at work. Further down the hill a bit, I recall seeing the baseball field that Sammy Sosa paid for and maintained. Every once in a while you would see some organized teams come out and play. Thinking of the baseball field reminds me of the merchandise that Sammy’s PR guy gave us on our arrival. In thanks for our humanitarian effort, every soldier got a t-shirt, a baseball cap, and a miniature baseball bat. Near the work site gate, the tent we set up for the guard was always occupied. Night and day, a soldier from the Dominican Republic would sit there, cradling his M-16. He secured the stacks of lumber, cinderblocks and construction equipment from locals. I would occasionally see locals gather in groups outside the fence near the tent. I suppose they would watch and talk about what those strangers were doing on the hilltop. Sometimes the guard-soldier would talk to the locals. I never spoke to the locals who lived there; I just watched them watch me. To my right, with my back turned toward the clinic, I could see thin tendrils of smoke drifting into the air, as cook fires burned among the rows of one-room, wood and tin shacks that stretched down into the valley below. That was the view that mesmerized me. The way the small houses were perched there, bending precariously with the contours of the hillside, hanging in poverty together. It was such a powerful sight. On the edge, they were so beautiful, so alive, so exotic, so scary, so sad, so infuriating, so confusing, so many things all at once. I took in that view each day I was there. That view has shaped me; it continues to shape me; it continues to occupy a part of me. It is part of my biography, part of my experiences, and somehow it is part of why I study what I study the way I study it.

Dancer Nous Trois (correction hoped for)

While conscious that too many of the posts originate from me, I am grateful to KP that at least I no longer can claim the longest post.

To take up the spirit of KP’s last post (but not to respond to it, for which I would like to wait a bit both for clarification and for creating some space) I want to say what is at stake for me in this project. My concerns can be described as aesthetic, relational/pedagogic, and political (political neither in the explicit or implicit sense but something in between.).

1. Aesthetic: What brought me to the dance of academic pursuits is an outrage I felt and feel at the condition of the world. Politics brought me to the dance. But while at the dance I have been dancing with a new partner – oddly enough my old traveling partner seems mostly not to be jealous because as a trio each of us has become a more intimate and better dancer. Once at the dance itself, I was and am amazed at how complex, nuanced, mysterious, and fully alive the world is. When I learn about each of your lives, I feel not only that I come to know the world better, but I am also awed by the concrete details through which abstractions come alive. To paraphrase Trouillot, the sources of my/our study are ALIVE.

This awe has become the primary and dominant desire I seem to seek to fill in this project. And it explains partially why I am partially and momentarily frustrated with what I take to be xaf’s (temporary?) evacuation from the field of autobiography as a primary living source. If I/we lose him, we lose a part of our living archive and a part of ourselves.

2. Relational/pedagogic: After my proposal defense I had a full year of writer’s block before getting on with the dissertation writing. The block was coupled with other issues having to do with the health of various family members – my brother had attempted to take his life at about the same time, for example. Nevertheless, my family’s health was not, I think, the sufficient cause for my block. Rather, I think it had to do with having fallen for my new partner at the dance (awe of nuance and complexity) and forgetting who brought me to the dance and why I came.

The professionalizing aspect of graduate school is alienating, isn’t it? So alienating that the body rejects it and resists it. The body demands an acknowledgement of the political aspects of the academic dancing. So it blocks any easy continuation into awe for awe’s sake, professionalization as its own end. What struck me as a paralysis was really a sign of health!

When I was sitting on dissertation committees at Syracuse (19 of them), part of my unselfconscious plan was to make sure that the tension and balance between awe and politics/ethics was sustained rather than purged. Mostly faculty mentors acted out professionalization and therefore alienation. As an antidote, I asked students to answer in written form the following question: “What is in it for you in all this?” The posing of the question and the student’s effort to answer it had many positive consequences (and sometimes not so positive) of which one was that it led, or rather often led, to an “unblocking,” a “de-alienation” and a partial return to a balance that comes from the “dance-a-trios.” (Why shouldn’t I have a bit of fun writing this, yes?)

I no longer have graduate students. But when I meet them (and anyone whom might not smite me merely for asking) at gigs or at conferences, I feel a certain desire not only to get to know them but also to pose my question. Or, getting to know them through my question. I don’t think I was trying to perform a service or a mission. Rather, I am moved to ask the question on behalf of both my dancing partners – outrage and awe; politics and infinite curiosity.

Sometimes the question stumps people (for a while). When this happens I feel no remorse for my role in this part of their “stuck-ness.” On the contrary a partial paralysis in the face of this question seems a good thing to me. (For more on this please refer to my tape #14 C, take 9 – “on the use and abuse of the surpluses generated by capitalism at universities.”)

3. Political:

A) I noticed years ago that the “white” students would sail through graduate school while the “brown” and sometimes the “women” students would often have blocks. I took this to be systematic and structural. When this pattern seemed to repeat itself at our second panel in S.D.– whites supporting agency and contingency, others supporting determinacy -- again I took this to be systematic and structural. Both my dance partners are keen to explore this bifurcation – I am keen on it both politically and aesthetically.

B) Part of my politics is about solidarity. I want to be part of community of people who can love/support each other and engage in these issues.

I want to end here for the moment. The overlap between our needs doesn’t have to total for us to engage each other, yes? But it might be worth it to know if there is an overlap and what constitutes it.