Thursday, April 21, 2011

Babel Backwards

The story of Babel is usually told backwards, the many languages spoken around the tower were not a punishment, they were a delight.  Any construction site in the world is filled with men who speak differently from one another, yet they always manage to understand each other after a few days together.  So if a  great emperor calls a large workforce together, they will surely include men from different corners of his kingdom.  Upon first hearing them speak, an outsider might imagine that they had no means of understanding each other, but this is clearly the opinion of someone immersed in just one language, someone like a priest who spends all his days reading the scriptures of his one holy language.  In the practical world of moving heavy stones and raising broad foundations, all languages are understood by everyone.  In a flash the man lifting a wide awkward bundle into a cart understands what the driver is telling him.  The crane operator knows what the laborers below him need lifted.  He hears them speaking and without worry picks up the right object.  The words rise up to him like a song he understands but cannot write down.  Only the priest who comes to visit the site, to judge the tower and the king who commands its construction, is confused.  Only he hears chaos.  And so when the king dies, and the work is left undone, the priest tells the story backwards as if the many languages flowing into each other were a sin, rather than a wonder.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Research as Work


Here is another weird twist in the debate over state funding for universities: academic research is what professors do for themselves and not for the university.  Increasingly this strange claim has seeped into the public discussion.  In today's local paper, a dean is quoted as saying that some faculty have adapted their schedules "to their own needs rather than the needs of the university."  As I read this I was waiting for the other shoe to drop--did we have a scandal in the making, another shot across the bow of the great ship decadence?  What have those faculty members been doing with their personalized schedules?!

I held my breath and read onwards...they have been "freeing up days for their research."   Shocking news.  I thought that research was one of the primary jobs of professors.  Publish or perish, remember that familiar refrain?

For the sake of collegial decorum, and on the off chance the quote was in error, I won't belabor the statement and instead offer you the link to read for yourselves:


In all the political posturing, let no one imagine or insinuate that research is personal free time, a time to watch old movies and eat bon-bons on the sofa.

Research is one of the things we do here at the university.  We read books and articles, we listen to lectures, we scour the world for new ideas.  It serves the university and society at large.  We are the grunts who pump out articles and books.  Research is not a perk, some special privilege that academics get to indulge in.

Just ask the assistant professor who has been denied tenure because their book came out too slowly, or the middle aged professor who has not produced a research agenda in the last decade.  They are judged first and foremostly by their research productivity.  Research is not contrary to the university's needs, it is one of the university's primary functions, along with teaching and public service.

So let us not create the illusion that intellectual endeavor in its most intense form is just personal time, it is work.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Standing up for your medicine, or facing the music?


When push come to shove, you can learn the meaning and use of a new word.  In this case, I was intrigued by the headlines in two respectable German language newspapers describing the referendum in Iceland where the population decided by a clear majority that the country at large, i.e. the population, would not cover the default of Iceland's largest banks.  The United Kingdom and the Netherlands had covered the losses that their citizens suffered by investing in Iceland's banks. The expectation from Europe had been that the Icelanders would and should cover these costs.

The vote went against that expectation and the common phrase is the Icelanders do not want to "stand up for" these debts.  "Face the music" is the usual translation, but
geradestehen" really means something like stand at attention while the "music" plays, i.e. you receive your punishment.   Does standing straight for your punishment mean take a beating or does it simply mean "stand at attention" while you listen to a criticizing lecture.

So do you think Iceland will be allowed to join the European Union anytime soon?  

Isländer wollen nicht für Bankenpleite geradestehen



Isländer wollen nicht für Bankschulden geradestehen

Yoko Tawada and translators

If you missed Yoko Tawada's recent swing through Pennsylvania as she performed with her translators, you can just zip over to Berlin for an encore


International
Lesung/Gespräch in der Mori-Ôgai-Gedenkstätte, Yoko Tawada im Gespräch mit ihrer Übersetzerin Bettina Brandt

  
17.05.2011, 10117 Berlin, Luisenstr. 39, zum Stadtplan 
Kostenlos, Einschränkung: 18:00 Uhr c.t.

zu Dejima, die Begegnung der Japaner mit der holländischen Sprache und der Neuerscheinung "Abenteuer der deutschen Grammatik"

Dienstag, 17. Mai 2011, 18:00 Uhr c.t.

Mori-Ôgai-Gedenkstätte, Luisenstr. 39, 10117 Berlin, 1.OG.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Pretty German Politicians


German politicians have gotten better looking.


The new FDP chairman, Philipp Rösler, has a striking similarity with the CSU's fallen star Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg.  Both are smart, well-spoken politicians who have risen quickly and dramatically from regional offices to national prominence.  Not only are they charismatic, both rely on their faces to project their political messages.  Guttenberg has been compared to a more rugged Roger Moore, not a bad thing for a Defense Minister.  When people predict that he will eventually return to the national political stage, they base their argument on the fact that many voters enjoyed his performance-- even in his recent  resignation speech, he had a swagger in front of the camera that was held in check only by his need to appear chastened and oppressed by the scandal over his plagiarized dissertation.  

Rösler has just arrived at the top of the FDP, but his handsome face has been included in group pictures for the last year.  His visage attracts the camera not only because of his earnest, clean, boyish "soft Tom Cruise with glasses" appearance, but also because he was born in Vietnam, then raised in Germany.  He has the Obama-quality of an interesting family story, coupled with academic hard-work (his medical degree is unchallenged).  Television viewers are invited to ponder his face as he speaks flawless academic German.  "Look at this thoroughly German sounding Asian," says the camera.  Rösler enhances the boutique appeal of a small party like the Free Democrats.  His face provides a means for the FDP to distinguish itself as sophisticated, free-thinking, hard-working.  These messages and more will swirl around his photo.

A far cry from Helmut Kohl and Franz-Josef Strauss, these new faces suggest that German political parties have an entirely new media strategy.  The first rule of being a handsome politician is to pretend that good-looks are unimportant.  No need for the ironic self-effacement of Marcello Mastrioanni, no need to sound like a French actress trapped by her beauty, but certainly the new handsome Germans will insist that they are there to discuss policy, nothing else.  "Read my lips" may have taken on a less macho meaning, but sticking to a political message while looking coquettish is crucial in order to not generate the envy of male voters.  Charismatic politicians have to work both sides of the room, without irritating either sex.  They don't want to become the pretty boys whom all the men despise.  Kohl and Strauss certainly never had that problem.   

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Art without Enlightenment



There is a striking disparity in news reports coming from China about the treatment and presentation of art.  On the one hand, the German government sponsored a long-term exhibit at the Beijing National Museum entitled Art of the Enlightenment which cobbles together an assortment of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German paintings all under the rubric "Enlightenment," a term no art historian would use to classify styles or movements.   There is no "art of the Enlightenment" per se, yet such a classification has been created in order to address the larger question of reason, science, progress and (maybe) political rights.  Paintings from Berlin, Dresden and Munich were brought together in Beijing with the German foreign office spending 10 million Euros and the foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, speaking at the opening.  Seems like a traditional form of cultural exchange in the name of high diplomacy. 


In the same week the very prominent contemporary artist Ai Weiwei, who has exhibited at the Tate in London and at Dokumenta in Kassel, mentions in an interview that he will set up a studio in Berlin.  He also speaks out in other interviews against the government's tendency to "disappear" outspoken critics, i.e. people who post on blogs and social media against official policy.   That very same week in which the Art of the Enlightenment exhibit opens, Ai Weiwei is stopped by police from travelling to Hong Kong, and then disappears.  Lisson Gallery in London announced last week that they would exhibit a new work by Ai Weiwei: marble versions of the security cameras that the government had placed around his studio.   

Enlightenment has its sinister sides, as anyone who has read Adorno/Horkheimer and Foucault knows.  It also has the particular meaning in Chinese political history as a term used describe the corrections taken against people who did not conform to the Communist Party's official position.  Ai Weiwei's arrest, the government shut down of his studio and its interrogation of his circle all directly demonstrate that this harsh form of Enlightenment is far more alive than any cosmopolitan eighteenth-century version.   Two years ago he had been arrested and beaten so severally that an emergency operation had to be undertaken on his head in a Munich hospital.  Where he has been taken now is anyone's guess.  The contrast between the officially sanctioned exhibit and the treatment of contemporary artists is brutal.



Here  are a bunch of English language links:


Saturday, April 2, 2011

Book Burning

So I want to formulate a new rule of thumb.  If you want to burn a book, go to where the people who really care about it live, people who read it, treasure it.  Let them see what kind of a person you are with your lighter fluid and paper back copies.  If you want to burn the Koran, then do it in Kandahar.  Why hide in Florida?  Why not go to where the believers are?  Then you can get a much more immediate response to your performance.  And your audience will show you directly what they think of your statement.  All those young men in Afghanistan, surely they will want to explain why they object to your burning their sacred text.

The Nazis burned books in Berlin on Unter der Linden.  They should have sent a few of their own to New York, to London, to Palestine or Marseilles, to carry out their bonfire. Why hide in the security of your own comrades?  Far more daring to burn a book in the company of those who care about it most. 

I admit this rule reflects my own childhood, it is a rule that comes from growing up in an ethnically diverse place. Don't insult Italians because they live over there.  Your neighbors are Jewish, so don't ramble on anti-semitically.  You don't like black people, well go to the next neighborhood over and explain it there.  It's really just a matter of getting along with other people.   

So if some fool burns the Koran in Florida, let's send him over to Afghanistan, free of charge, and invite him to repeat his actions, in public with as many of his hometown friends as are willing to make the trip in support.  That way poor Scandinavian idealists won't suffer the consequences for his rabid nonsense.