Memory work, arcades and montage
May 22, 2007
Cupboards, drawers, boxes and storage bins are open and private everyday objects are strewn about, turned into something public in preparation for the moving sale. Personal histories related to each item are re-examined. Will they survive without the physical archives? Do they need to?
Le Carré describes this tortuous upending of a home in A Perfect Spy as agents tramp through every cranny and cupboard of her house. Mary’s husband, gifted in the spy tradecraft, has gone missing. He’s taken a ‘retirement’ and is writing his autobiography. I am intrigued by his process because he wants his story to read like a fiction and he wants his hero, himself to be lovable. In her interrogation with the agents, she said,
He’s not writing yet. He’s preparing.
He calls it a matrix.
When he retires, he’ll write.
He’s still finding the line. He likes to keep it to himself.
Listen to this: ‘ When the most horrible gloom was over the household; when Edward himself was in agony and behaving as prettily as he knew how. ‘
It’s from something he read. When he reads a book he underlines things in pencil. Then when he’s finished it he writes out his favourite bits (Le Carré 1986:51).
I think of a mise-en-abime, the hypodiegetic and diegetic framing narratology but this is only a spy mystery. But I also think of the collage-montage and I remember Benjamin. It seems to be what I am doing with my blog. I underline with digg or deli.cio.us. I cut and paste using Flickr, Youtube, Google docs or WordPress itself. But unlike Benjamin or the perfect spy, I scrupulously hot link the most reliable url I can find to every image, citation, idea. The blog itself may seem fragmented or may link the images with new juxtapositions but the sources can be followed by the reader. So my blog is more like a collage-montage than writing.
Before being driven to suicide through physical and mental exhaustion while fleeing the Nazis at the French border in 1940, German cultural theorist, Walter Benjamin was working on a consuming project to educate his own generation and awaken a new political consciousness (Buck-Morss 1991: 336, 47 in Holtorf 2001) . Using the Paris arcades as his prime metaphor, through his passion for collecting fragments of everyday urban experience he wanted his contemporaries to engage in a cleansing memory work, history with an ethical dimension, to revisit 19th century Parisian social and cultural history. He introduced a new form of ‘writing’ which consisted of cutting-and-pasting original citations without citation marks.
Benjamin’s fragmented direct, literal quotations, images and things were purposefully taken out of context. In this way they were deliberately not reduced to generally accepted theoretical or methodological frameworks or categories. He wanted his contemporaries to question unchallenged assumptions about anthropological nihilism, iron construction, the flâneur, the collector and capitalism itself. Something new was created from the old by constructed these fragmented, de-racinated elements into a collage-montage by juxtaposing them in a new way. In this way Benjamin questioned commonly held notions of ‘representation as finding some correspondence with an exterior reality’ (Shanks 1992: 188-90 Holtorf 2001).
Webliography and Bibliography
Benjamin, Walter. 1991. Trans. Buck-Morss. Das Passagen-Werk. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. V [1982]. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. [English edition 1996]
Buck-Morss, Susan (1991) The Dialectics of Seeing. Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project [1989]. Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press.
Holtorf, Cornelius. 2001. Walter Benjamin’s Passagenwerk.
Le Carré, John. 1986. The Perfect Spy. New York: Penguin.
Shanks, Michael (1992) Experiencing the Past. On the Character of Archaeology. London: Routledge.
If our minds are what our brains do (Dennett 2003:i) and changing entrenched brain pathways may be harder than we think (Merkl 2007) is the logical conclusion of an entirely naturalistic Darwinian human evolution a more just, humane world or a dystopia? Or you tried to change your mind but your brain wouldn’t let you.
Dennett (2003) argues that the evolution of the human brain over deep time has followed the laws of natural science and that human free will is an emergent phenomena of that same physical process. He forcefully argues that biological determinism does not limit human behaviour to predictable, inevitable outcomes.
Dennett contends that recognition of the true nature of man as an exclusively physical body proscribed by the laws of nature will provide a stronger, wiser doctrine of freedom (Dennett 2003:22) than the belief that the reality of man resides in her immaterial, immortal human soul capable of defying the laws of nature (Dennett 2003:1).
Man’s evolution towards moral thinking and existential interpretations is constituted by higher levels of evolution, more advanced outcomes of the natural evolution of entities towards emergent changes that allowed them to avoid harm and reproduce themselves (Dennett 2003:22).
While Dennett draws on arguments from biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics and philosophy proposing provocative and original arguments, there is a lack of the psychological or sociological2 imaginations in his work. It is in the area of habits (particularly those that are institutionalized or community-sanctioned) that flaws may be revealed in Dennett’s arguments of a logical evolutionary conclusion of an emergent salutary human nature incapable of overriding its material brain yet somehow managing to move beyond its own autopoietic system. Would human nature not follow evolutionary pathways towards conservation of the familiar while eliminating that which is uncomfortably unfamiliar from everyday life? What are the ethical implications for sustaining an authentic pluralism, diversity of cultures? It is in this area of an expanded Derridian hospitality towards the stranger, the unknown that Dennett’s secular humanism fails to respond.
Like Dennett, William James1 (1986:369 cited in Tursi 1999) perceived the same evolutionary principles at work in inorganic matter that have been applied to organic matter. In the same year that James developed his ideas on the relationship between the birth of human consciousness, habit and knowing, Freud explored the concept of habit formation as simple agents of conservation that are instinctual reaching deeply back through consciousness, through organic and even organic compulsions. James seemed to perceive the evolutionary changes in human consciousness as radical agents of variance and development. He aligned habit and knowing so that free human agents develop habits by force of will and character. James regretfully admits that habits are difficult to change after the age of thirty (1890). Freud’s theorized that an organism, including a human being, is disposed towards repeating its own lived experience while protecting itself against unsafe levels of stimulation from the unknown, the unheimlich or the uncanny. Freud argued that the cerebral cortex as the seat of consciousness, recorded negative past experiences of unfamiliar stimuli protected itself by constructed hardened defensive shields against outer stimuli. James acknowledges the way in which habitual sequences and customary feelings provide us with an agreeable feeling of being at home with oneself, whereas unsafe levels of excitation from uncustomary, unfamiliar, incongruous representations evoke distress, doubt, misunderstanding and irrationality (Essays in Philosophy 345). For a more in-depth thoughtful discussion see Tursi (1999).
James “advocates idiosyncrasy, spontaneity, and originality as enrichments to a malleable world, he always returns to habit (Tursi 1999). We reconfigure the unfamiliar or uncanny, the unheimlich to a more welcome pattern (Pragmatism 122).
Just as rivers can be reconfigured so too can our neural networks but deep entrenchment of fast flowing rivers in their time-worn river beds are less flexible, less plastic and more embedded.
It may seem easy to change your mind, but if it’s your brain we’re talking about, maybe it’s harder than we think. A University of Houston professor is looking into this with research into something called ‘brain plasticity (Merkl 2007 ).’
Key Words: brain plasticity, free will, entrenched core beliefs, reconfiguring entrenched brain pathways, habits, character, morality and meaning,
Notes
1 The work of William James, considered by his followers as canonical, has been derided by his critics as classist and elitist. I consider it fortunate that his work has again found a legitimate place even with these critics. James began or contributed to so many debates that have been recently resuscitated.
2 Pierre Boudieu’s studies on the reproduction of social values through cultural institutions through schools and museums, for example, reveal the degree to which entrenched societal values continue to be reinforced in a hidden curriculum that benefits exclusive, powerful social strata. In Modernity and the Holocaust (1989) sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argued that genocide was the logical conclusion of the Enlightenment project with its promise of a better society based on shared western values. The Other who refused modernity would be eradicated through a process of natural selection that ensured a safer world for those with more power to reproduce themselves.
Not just for radicals, but for many mainstream liberals too, the road that began in the Enlightenment ends in savagery, even genocide. As the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argues: ‘Every ingredient of the Holocaust… was normal… in the sense of being fully in keeping with everything we know about our civilisation, its guiding spirits, its priorities, its immanent vision of the world – and of the proper ways to pursue human happiness together with a perfect society (Bauman 1989:8).
Bibliography
Zygmunt Bauman. 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p8
Dennett, Daniel C. 2003. Freedom Evolves. New York: Penguin.
Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. “You tried to change your mind but your brain wouldn’t let you.” >> papergirls. May 3. http://papergirls.wordpress.com/2007/05/04/you-tried-to-change-your-mind-but-your-brain-wouldnt-let-you /
Freud, Sigmund. 1953-75 [1919]. “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works. Trans. and Gen. Ed. James Strachey. 24 vols. London: Hogarth, 1953-75.
James, William. 1890. “Habit.” The Principles of Psychology. http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin4.htm
James, William. 1986 [1919]. Essays in Psychical Research. Ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge: Harvard UP.
Merkl, Lisa. 2007. “How Plastic Is Your Brain? UH Engineer Seeks Answers.” Medical News Today. May 3. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=69263&nfid=crss
Tursi, Renee. 1999. “William James’ Narrative of Habit.” Style. Spring. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2342/is_1_33/ai_58055905/print
© Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. “If our minds are what our brains do (Dennett 2003:i) and changing our brain’s habits may be harder than we think (Merkl 2007) can we achieve a wiser, stronger freer society through a process of purely natural selection as Dennett predicts?” >> Speechless
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddp3qxmz_227c46gc3
Remembering Jennifer Naglingniq (1989-2002)
December 8, 2006
I don’t remember when it started. But I know that after this it got worse. A few days after Jennifer was killed my class was canceled because the RCMP had shut down the entire capital of Nunavut — well, they told the taxi service to no longer take calls. Later we found out that someone with a rifle on a snowmobile was riding around town shooting randomly in the air. We were told there was no danger. Jennifer’s murderer was not found during my entire stay that term. When taxis were back in service we would sometimes drive close to her home surrounded by the police yellow tape. An RCMP officer came over to chat with the taxi driver. My route was no where near but taxis are shared in Iqaluit so you never know where you might find yourself. I was not afraid for myself since the violence in Nunavut is Inuit against Inuit. But I was afraid. The death as described by so many people was so violent. It was more like an unpaid drug dealer’s cruel and cowardly threat to someone else. Jennifer was chosen as the victim. There was no explanation. I began to understand why Inuit youth from Iqaluit listened to Tupak and related to the violence described in his rap music from the Hood.
We all sat there in the overcrowded auditorium in Inukshuk High School. We held candles, remembered the women victims of violence in Montreal but everyone thought of Jennifer. In the background was a stretched seal skin, a cultural symbol of the community. Paututiit, the Inuit Women’s association used this as a symbol of unity where each peg serves the purpose of stretching the skin evenly. Each is needed. each has equal value.
If Jennifer had not been so violently killed she would probably not be part of my everyday life years later. There are some images you cannot forget, at least I cannot.
Meda coverage:
For multiple media bookmarks see here. This Globe and Mail article is particularly moving.
On Friday, Dec. 6, 2002, 13-year-old Jennifer Naglingniq, of Iqaluit, Nunavut, helped her teacher hang Christmas decorations. A few hours later she was dead, xxx murdered in her home. Her mother, CBC Iqaluit program clerk Nicotye Naglingniq, found her body when she returned home shortly after midnight.
Wende Tulk, Jennifer’s home room teacher at Inuksuk high school, says Jennifer was a special student – bright, with high marks and a natural leader. “People listened to her. You know when she graduated she would be doing great things.”; She was an enthusiastic soccer player and just bought new soccer shoes the day before she was killed. Tulk will be haunted by Jennifer’s dyed-orange ponytail, her beautiful voice and her positive attitude. “She was always singing, always happy.” She said that Jennifer – and her final act of helpfulness – won’t be soon forgotten. ” We’re going to leave those Christmas decorations up all year now.”
xxxx, 24, was charged with Jennifer’s murder but was released from Baffin Correctional Centre a few days later, when the charge of first degree murder was stayed.. The Crown decided the case against xxxx wasn’t strong enough to proceed at this time. The Crown has one year to reactivate the case. The RCMP say they are continuing the investigation. Police are not revealing how Jennifer was murdered, saying that only them and the murderer know how she died.
Please support the Jennifer Naglingniq Memorial Fund. A memorial fund has been set up to create an annual award in Jennifer’s name for a student at Inukshuk high school who contributes to making Iqaluit a better place. Donations can be made at the CBC Toronto Credit Union in the Jennifer Naglingniq Memorial Fund account 9879 or through the Bank of Montreal in Iqaluit, account 3635 8040 108. You can also send your donation to: The Jennifer Naglingniq Memorial Fund, P.O. Box 490, Iqaluit, NU X0A 0H0. Please give generously. The deadline for donations at the CBC Toronto Credit Union may be expired (Source 2002?).”
Allison Brewer. 2003. “Troubled ghosts of our sisters.” The Globe & Mail. Saturday, December 6: A19
A year ago, as we in Iqaluit prepared to commemorate the Montreal Massacre, one of our own was added to the list of victims of violence against women. Dec. 6, 2002, dawned cold and clear in Iqaluit. A community not unfamiliar with the subject, it had for years recognized and honoured the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. Last year, the 13th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, was no different. As I made my way down the hill on a morning walk to work with Maureen Doherty, the event organizer, there were the usual worries. Had enough coffee and tea been ordered for the expected 50 or so people who usually show up for the event? Would the change of venue from the Arctic College campus to Inuksuk High School work? All matters that seemed of great importance that morning (Brewer 2003:A19).