Ah, That Freedom of Speech
An appropriate subject matter for July 4th!
I recently decided to take the rest of the summer off and start up my college work again in the Fall. I found the idea of returning so soon depressing in the extreme. (And I've got a family reunion coming up.) Whether distance from the academic environment has made me more objective or, rather, hardened my response to my experience there is difficult to say. Probably a mixture of both. But I can now recognize patterns that escaped me when I was attending class day in and day out, getting reading done, writing papers and fiercely disagreeing with various opinions and approaches.
One pattern is the problem of moving from the "how" and "what-for" of history to the "why." It goes something like this:
The average class begins with a discussion of a text. The issue of narrative is raised. I personally find this a pointless issue; my personal feeling is that grad students should know, by the time they enter grad school, that narrative, reality and belief are not seamless threads that match in every particular. At the risk of sounding incredibly arrogant, I knew this before I left high school but then, hey, I'm interested in theology (see below for why I think that matters).
Nevertheless, during the class the difference between the narrative and the reality (or rather, the facts as we know them) is remarked on and some students are shocked and some are appalled and others are offended and ever so surprised because presumably they were born in a bubble on Mars without any human contact until the last fifteen minutes. Then we move on to discussing what the narrative says and things are fine until the difficult question of "why" is broached.
"Why is the narrative different from the reality?" for instance. Or "Why has this particular narrative been perpetuated?"
Now, I have a problem with this question because I think the only way you can know the answer is to ask the writer or ask the "perpetrators" or ask the publishers or ask the supporters of the narrative. The idea that a bunch of grad students sitting in a room postulating theories will arrive at THE cause of this rather ordinary day-to-day handling of history is, to my mind, rather silly. That kind of speculation is fine for late night conversations with one's friends (or e-mails with one's family, or blogs, for that matter) but a waste of money otherwise especially since the modus operandi in these cases seems to be to completely ignore the writer's perspective and biography. Not to mention, an awesome, and guileless, lack of recognition that we are doing exactly the same thing even as we speak.
Economics is often proposed as THE cause as well as class (hello, Marx), religion, race, gender; just about anything except for choice and free-will is tossed into the vague postulatory cesspool, and in the way of such discussions, it can be fun and interesting if non-productive. Yet at some point, the conversation shifts, no matter how much the professors move to rein it in (and to their credit, they often do), towards "Who can we blame?"
It is inevitable, I suppose. Marx, in particular, is an ideology that demands a leveling of blame, and it's so easy to blame the rich since precious few of us consider ourselves rich to begin with. So the wealthy are blamed and capitalists and Christians and the fundamentalist Right, if anyone can maneuver them in there. And by the end of the class, the students are split into three factions.
The first faction is hell bent for leather on blaming somebody. Perhaps if gives them a sense of satisfaction to have the enemy pinpointed. Perhaps they think it solves some contemporary problem (since most contemporary problems are as complicated as historical ones, this is wishful thinking). Or they have an axe to grind. Or, quite often, they have mistaken blame and debunking for learning, which it isn't. (I call it The Shock Method of Teaching, and I think it is the single stupidest teaching method ever invented, not to mention the laziest.)
The second faction doesn't want to blame anyone. However, they're not sure how to move the conversation away from the issue of blame, partly because they think the issue of "why" is important (and the only way to truly move the conversation is to stop fussing about "why") and partly out of fear or respect or wariness of the first group. Words hover but are never spoken: "censorship," "bigotry," "prejudice." It is just as well, I think, that these words are avoided.
While the third faction keeps silent, either from boredom, disinterest, shyness or a wish to avoid the desultory crossfire.
I normally side with the second faction until the complete pointlessness of the exercise hits me and then I relapse into a brown study. The language of blame never varies, and yet, as I grow older, it begins to unsettle me how easily this language is used to demonized flawed conservatives at the same time as justifying terrorists as if the sins of both were equal in severity.
But it is not political correctness which is the object of this post. I am not addressing "freedom of speech" in the sense of "the freedom to say what one wishes without reprisals" but "freedom of speech" in the sense of how much language can say but so often doesn't. It seems to me (granted, in retrospect) that the relatively conservative, Christian environment of my undergrad school, BYU, had more to say about more things than the supposedly liberal, agnostic environment in which I now participate, and I think the "why" resides in this business of narrative: how text, reality and belief don't always match up. One of the assets of a theological training (however superficial) is that one learns this basic fact of life fairly early on and fairly aggressively. Granted, there are plenty of people who ignore it. But religious training is, to a point, an attempt to handle the paradox of faith and materialism, the problem of textual truth against the problem of historical veracity. (All of this dealt with through the mindfield of personal experience.)
Once it is accepted, however, once one acknowledges that the narrative may or may not adequately reflect the historical reality, once one overcomes the adolescent desire to assume that all narratives--because of their distance from the facts--are lies, the questions and issues become so much more interesting. For instance, what is the author trying to say? (Personally, I think just trying to figure out what the author intends is enough for a whole class.) Why does the the author say he wrote it? Why do other people say she wrote it? (This is not about why we grad students think the author wrote the narrative, it's about us learning everything we can about the narrative.) What kind of symbolism is operating in the work? What motifs? How do those motifs speak to the human spirit? (And do they speak differently to different cultures or similarly?) What long-term impact has the narrative had? How is it reflected in our culture? How are our own narratives similiar? What have we learned? Has our understanding, our compassion, our love been increased? Helped? Aided? Enhanced? What other authors have used this work? How did they respond to it? How did they disagree with it? Does the work capture any aspect of historical reality? What aspects of historical reality does it get right? (A much more interesting question than "What does it get wrong?") If it gets the "facts" wrong, does it get the "feeling" right? (A really difficult question; ask yourself, Which Harry Potter movie captures the "feel" of the books the best?) What research went into the work? If society has "debunked" the narrative, have they gone too far?
There is no need for shock, for debunking, for alarm, for offense. Those high-profile emotions have little to do with understanding, compassion, love, tolerance. They do not lead to a larger view of the world, of history, of people, of life. They encourage rutted reactions: the clasped heart, the head-clutched swoon. Learning is lost in the epiphanies of reaction. And possibilities of speech are lost in overused paths of speculation and blame.
May the true freedom of speech never be lost.
July 4, 2005
I recently decided to take the rest of the summer off and start up my college work again in the Fall. I found the idea of returning so soon depressing in the extreme. (And I've got a family reunion coming up.) Whether distance from the academic environment has made me more objective or, rather, hardened my response to my experience there is difficult to say. Probably a mixture of both. But I can now recognize patterns that escaped me when I was attending class day in and day out, getting reading done, writing papers and fiercely disagreeing with various opinions and approaches.
One pattern is the problem of moving from the "how" and "what-for" of history to the "why." It goes something like this:
The average class begins with a discussion of a text. The issue of narrative is raised. I personally find this a pointless issue; my personal feeling is that grad students should know, by the time they enter grad school, that narrative, reality and belief are not seamless threads that match in every particular. At the risk of sounding incredibly arrogant, I knew this before I left high school but then, hey, I'm interested in theology (see below for why I think that matters).
Nevertheless, during the class the difference between the narrative and the reality (or rather, the facts as we know them) is remarked on and some students are shocked and some are appalled and others are offended and ever so surprised because presumably they were born in a bubble on Mars without any human contact until the last fifteen minutes. Then we move on to discussing what the narrative says and things are fine until the difficult question of "why" is broached.
"Why is the narrative different from the reality?" for instance. Or "Why has this particular narrative been perpetuated?"
Now, I have a problem with this question because I think the only way you can know the answer is to ask the writer or ask the "perpetrators" or ask the publishers or ask the supporters of the narrative. The idea that a bunch of grad students sitting in a room postulating theories will arrive at THE cause of this rather ordinary day-to-day handling of history is, to my mind, rather silly. That kind of speculation is fine for late night conversations with one's friends (or e-mails with one's family, or blogs, for that matter) but a waste of money otherwise especially since the modus operandi in these cases seems to be to completely ignore the writer's perspective and biography. Not to mention, an awesome, and guileless, lack of recognition that we are doing exactly the same thing even as we speak.
Economics is often proposed as THE cause as well as class (hello, Marx), religion, race, gender; just about anything except for choice and free-will is tossed into the vague postulatory cesspool, and in the way of such discussions, it can be fun and interesting if non-productive. Yet at some point, the conversation shifts, no matter how much the professors move to rein it in (and to their credit, they often do), towards "Who can we blame?"
It is inevitable, I suppose. Marx, in particular, is an ideology that demands a leveling of blame, and it's so easy to blame the rich since precious few of us consider ourselves rich to begin with. So the wealthy are blamed and capitalists and Christians and the fundamentalist Right, if anyone can maneuver them in there. And by the end of the class, the students are split into three factions.
The first faction is hell bent for leather on blaming somebody. Perhaps if gives them a sense of satisfaction to have the enemy pinpointed. Perhaps they think it solves some contemporary problem (since most contemporary problems are as complicated as historical ones, this is wishful thinking). Or they have an axe to grind. Or, quite often, they have mistaken blame and debunking for learning, which it isn't. (I call it The Shock Method of Teaching, and I think it is the single stupidest teaching method ever invented, not to mention the laziest.)
The second faction doesn't want to blame anyone. However, they're not sure how to move the conversation away from the issue of blame, partly because they think the issue of "why" is important (and the only way to truly move the conversation is to stop fussing about "why") and partly out of fear or respect or wariness of the first group. Words hover but are never spoken: "censorship," "bigotry," "prejudice." It is just as well, I think, that these words are avoided.
While the third faction keeps silent, either from boredom, disinterest, shyness or a wish to avoid the desultory crossfire.
I normally side with the second faction until the complete pointlessness of the exercise hits me and then I relapse into a brown study. The language of blame never varies, and yet, as I grow older, it begins to unsettle me how easily this language is used to demonized flawed conservatives at the same time as justifying terrorists as if the sins of both were equal in severity.
But it is not political correctness which is the object of this post. I am not addressing "freedom of speech" in the sense of "the freedom to say what one wishes without reprisals" but "freedom of speech" in the sense of how much language can say but so often doesn't. It seems to me (granted, in retrospect) that the relatively conservative, Christian environment of my undergrad school, BYU, had more to say about more things than the supposedly liberal, agnostic environment in which I now participate, and I think the "why" resides in this business of narrative: how text, reality and belief don't always match up. One of the assets of a theological training (however superficial) is that one learns this basic fact of life fairly early on and fairly aggressively. Granted, there are plenty of people who ignore it. But religious training is, to a point, an attempt to handle the paradox of faith and materialism, the problem of textual truth against the problem of historical veracity. (All of this dealt with through the mindfield of personal experience.)
Once it is accepted, however, once one acknowledges that the narrative may or may not adequately reflect the historical reality, once one overcomes the adolescent desire to assume that all narratives--because of their distance from the facts--are lies, the questions and issues become so much more interesting. For instance, what is the author trying to say? (Personally, I think just trying to figure out what the author intends is enough for a whole class.) Why does the the author say he wrote it? Why do other people say she wrote it? (This is not about why we grad students think the author wrote the narrative, it's about us learning everything we can about the narrative.) What kind of symbolism is operating in the work? What motifs? How do those motifs speak to the human spirit? (And do they speak differently to different cultures or similarly?) What long-term impact has the narrative had? How is it reflected in our culture? How are our own narratives similiar? What have we learned? Has our understanding, our compassion, our love been increased? Helped? Aided? Enhanced? What other authors have used this work? How did they respond to it? How did they disagree with it? Does the work capture any aspect of historical reality? What aspects of historical reality does it get right? (A much more interesting question than "What does it get wrong?") If it gets the "facts" wrong, does it get the "feeling" right? (A really difficult question; ask yourself, Which Harry Potter movie captures the "feel" of the books the best?) What research went into the work? If society has "debunked" the narrative, have they gone too far?
There is no need for shock, for debunking, for alarm, for offense. Those high-profile emotions have little to do with understanding, compassion, love, tolerance. They do not lead to a larger view of the world, of history, of people, of life. They encourage rutted reactions: the clasped heart, the head-clutched swoon. Learning is lost in the epiphanies of reaction. And possibilities of speech are lost in overused paths of speculation and blame.
May the true freedom of speech never be lost.
July 4, 2005
posted by Kate Woodbury at 08:06
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