A call for Interdiciplinarity

“A specialist is somebody who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing”

This is a saying which I have always found humorous because unfortunately it can very easily become true. I doubt any of us have reached this level of academia, and I really hope we can all avoid it. One article which I was reading last week mentions the American Heritage Dictionary definition of ‘academic’ as “scholarly to the point of being unaware of the outside world”. I found this rather hilarious, and of course scary. Is this seriously the definition of academic? I looked up the word at dictionary.com:

1. pertaining to areas of study that are not primarily vocational or applied, as the humanities or pure mathematics.
2. theoretical or hypothetical; not practical, realistic, or directly useful: an academic question; an academic discussion of a matter already decided.
3. learned or scholarly but lacking in worldliness, common sense, or practicality.

So apparently we are going to school to become “not directly useful” and learning how to be “lacking in worldliness”... great.

I know we have all heard this joke before, most likely from our parents/grandparents or crazy people on the bus who tell you that you are wasting your life because you study religion (ok, and you’re a crazy bus person, I wouldn’t talk!). But it actually being the definition in a dictionary? Well, unfortunately, that gives the issue a little more weight!

Do we really have to be so detached from the world? Isn’t this dangerous? Yes we can be as up to date on all the information in our own field. But shouldn’t’ we also be aware of what is going on in the world OUTSIDE of our specialized area of study? Does this not provide a little more *context* in order for us to make our studies relevant to a world outside of academia? My parents are very supportive of me and tell people I am saving the world because I study trees (they’re environmentally conscious products of Vancouver in the ‘60s/’70s...) But according to the definitions I will fail both them and my dearly beloved earth.

This is why I think interdiciplinarity is important to our studies in this world of academia. It’s important to step outside of our little box we create for ourselves with our “specialization”. It gets us talking to other scholars, other academics, creating discourse in which our ideas will expand and grow. I liked the quote by Mikhail Bakhtin which Callanan used to preface her article. To paraphrase: ideas become real only once they come into contact with other ideas. This conversation between disciplines is important as it expands ones comfort zone and forces people to think critically about how their work can be applied to other fields, how can non-specialists understand, and hopefully, use the work.

I think with the increasing utilization of interdisciplinary techniques a new understanding of the academic is starting to be formed. In Callanan’s article she mentions how Edward Said “argues that to be an intellectual is to actively embrace the role of amateur and exile” . Intellectuals are not distanced from the “real” world, but instead in order to be a good intellectual, we must remain an informed and engaged watcher of the world, the line between academic and public needs to be broken down. (3)

In the same article it is mentioned how Giroux discusses “leaving behind the concept of “academic” as a disengaged and esoteric category” How it is our “responsibility to foster hope, the belief in the possibility of relevance and change” (11).

These definitions and understandings of what an academic or intellectual is are much better than the previous ones, which made us completely irrelevant. In the world in which we live in today it is important to leave behind the stuffy image of the useless academic, the specialist who knows everything about nothing. Instead we should be engaged in our world, in our surroundings.

I especially believe taking an interdisciplinary approach is imperative when studying cultures other than one’s own. How can one (who is not of South Asian decent, for example) study the politics of South Asian without knowing about the religion? How can one study the religion without understanding the geography and social conditions of the people? Etc. etc. And this goes for everyone studying a culture that they are not living in, be it ancient or foreign.

We all study different cultures, different religions. This cross-cultural knowledge is important in today’s globalized world, where discourse between different groups of people is becoming more and more prevalent and is now an important part of understanding the reality in which we live.

Hopefully we will all be useful in our own way.

“Save the cheerleader, save the world”

(con)TEXT(ualism)

The reading these weeks were quite difficult and dense, but I don’t know if it is because I am in a fairly good academic mental state the last couple days, or what... but I kinda *secretly* enjoyed them (? I know...?). Maybe it is because the topic is really interesting and more relevant to my own work. I think I may actually go over the readings again when I have more time to focus on them, which, unfortunately, is not now. November will always be known to me in my heart as “hell month”.

I think it is largely my biased nostalgic love for Derrida, which as I have mentioned at an earlier time stems from my first year as an undergrad, that made me enjoy his argument against contextualism. “Contexts, Derrida argues, can never be absolutely determined or “saturated”; the “arbitrariness of the sign” disrupts this certainty.” (142)

I beleive determening the context of an ancient text will always be influenced by the context during the time it is being determined. If you search hard enough you will most likely find what you are looking for. Do I want to prove that ancient Indians were environmentalists? I probably could if I tried hard enough (and many have suceeded). This is cool and all, but I am always warry of such a modern reading of something. Indians living in pre-modern times did not protect their environment because they were thinking of global warming and reducing their carbon emissions. They protected their environment to protect themselves right here right now. They needed unpolluted water, forrest cover around the water source provided them with this. They needed protection against flooding, tree roots kept the ground stable and the forest floor soaked up a lot of excess water.

Yet Derrida saying the there is “no outside-the-text” might be going a little too far for me. Context does exist, the author existed in a world outside of his text. Similarily, Spiegle “insists that context be kept separate from text, that the social not be absorbed into “textuality” that politics and social practices not be treated as “cultural scripts” (164)

Even though I do not think context is everything, nor is is easily isolatable, I think it is important to keep the context in mind when reading a text. It determines the language and ideas used. But an author’s own personal ideas are not TOTALLY reflexive of their time.

Clark’s point that “Christian writings from late antiquity should be read first and foremost as literary productions before they are read as sources of social data.” (159). This is a good point and can be applied to more than just Christian writings. This is how I look at texts. Yes, one must attempt to reconstruct the past by any means possible. But such heavy weight and importance should not be placed on literature. Sometimes they are just stories, entertainment. Hidden moral meanings can be found in most stories, but hidden meanings are not tucked away behind everything.

“As Foucauldian theory might suggest, there is here no natural object “history”. Ancient historians, unlike our contemporaries, wrote for nonprofessional audiences for whom epic poetry was the only other narrative genre” (166)

Historians were story tellers. Some of the funniest “history” is supplied to us by Herodotus. Giant gold digging ants? Hairy giant men as the inhabitants of India? Man this stuff is good! This is supposed to be a historical factual account. I believe this provides us with a perfect example of how even histories are not 100% trustworthy sources (after all history is written by the winners). Therefore stories should be looked at with even more scepticism... but of course some people believe in gold digging ants, or at least marmots...

Even though satellite images tell me that there is/once was a land bridge from India to Sri Lanka, I do not believe Rama made it with the help of squirrels, monkeys, and bears. Yet we can take this idea, that whoever, whatever, composed the Ramayana with the knowledge that this structure existed without Satellites. Therefore maybe at the time/over the years that it was composed this bridge was possibly above water. That is the kind of context I would impose.

Or you know maybe they had satellite images back then.... how else would Kalidasa be able to describe what Indian looked like from the view point of a cloud so well?? I say aliens...definitely aliens!

As I brought up in last class I find it very difficult to believe in an accurate dating of the epics, such as the Ramayana. This is usually attempted through investigating the possible context of the time. Ok MAYBE Valmiki, the legendary bandit turned composer of the first metered verse (sloka) ACTUALLY sat down beside his anthill and wrote the entire epic after seeing a lovebird be killed by a hunter while in the throes of passion with his partner love bird. MAYBE Vyasa dictated the Mahabharata to Ganesha, who tore off his own elephant trunk to continue to write when his writing quill broke.

I find it much more believable that these traditions originated out of old bardic traditions, and changed over time to incorporate the issues of the time. Some of these contexts remained, some disappeared. Then maybe at one time they were written down (maybe by Valmiki or dictated to Ganesha by Vyasa). But they did not remain static after being written for the first time on palm leafs. Other authors came along and added chapters containing their own hierarchies, philosophies, and yes, context of the time. What has been passed down to us is the work of many authors and many times. Therefore the context is not straight forward, it is not of one time.

P.S. I love how Clark refers to the “warm embrace of theory” (164)... possibly the best quote and explains the rest of her many pages!

P.P.S I always intend to write a short blog post so you guys don’t have to go through all my randomness... I failed again this week, sorry guys!

I made this one myself after doing the readings!!

(Derrida's is taken from the lolprofs facebook group)

Getting Emotional about Emotions

Regarding last week’s discussion of relativism and universalism in the context of this weeks readings on emotion I would have to side more with the relativist argument. I think emotions and their interpretations and level of ubiquity depends on the cultural context.”Not only ideas, but emotions too, are cultural artefacts” (Corrigan 14) One example from an old class of mine that really stood out for me was from my Japanese Court Literature class. I forget the Japanese term for this emotion but it was sort of like pity. If a girl is so pathetic and useless, the pity that men feel for her is a desirable form of attraction. Women want to produce that pity feeling in men in order to attract them. I think it is pretty messed up but that is because I am not a 10th century Japanese woman. I also thought of the rasas in Indian theatre, these are emotions evoked by certain theatrical conventions, there is a lot of literature written on the subject and it is mildly interesting to me. But a lot of the time I think “hmm why would THAT emotion be evoked at this particular circumstance” It’s FOREIGN to me.

But I would also argue the same way I argued with pure experience (as I think they are all very similar and connected) I believe there is a pure emotion that we have no true way of expressing and use language to express it. And it is that language which is culturally relative.

OK so I guess I am somewhere in between... or like the cognitive theorists mentioned on pg 14 of Corrigan’s introduction.

So I was thinking about how emotion could apply to my own topic, which is turning out to pretty much be totally textually based, or so I propose, because honestly I have no idea what I am actually doing... I have time right??? RIGHT??? I’m in a bit of an academic existential crisis at the moment so you have to excuse me!! But I do Sanskrit, which is pretty much all my life consists of at the moment, so I better make use of it and actually use it for my paper, right?? And well, I’m not into the philosophy aspect of religion, and I am not a huge historiographer, I like stories, I like myths. That is what got me into this field and that is what I enjoy the most. And so that is the approach I am taking. I am right now attempting to find my primary source... hmm why is there soooo much Sanskrit literature to sift through?!?

So I was thinking and thinking, and honestly a lot of the time I have no idea how to apply these concepts to my very loosely formed idea of what exactly my Major Research Paper topic will actually be. The discussion of emotion and language which is present on pages 16 and 17 of Corrigan’s introduction could be tied into my work... But then I was thinking about emotion and literature. A lot of the literature I look at is poetic in nature. It’s called Kavya. In translation the “Hindu” Epics are generally rendered as prose, but in Sanskrit they are in verse following a very strict meter called sloka. They also make use of many poetic conventions.

Poetry is a writing style that evokes emotion. Therefore to truly understand the literature one must attempt to be as proficient in the original language as possible. Ultimately one must begin to FEEL in another language. As I mentioned earlier I side with the relativist side on emotion. Things are expressed very differently in different languages, it’s like how jokes are lost in translation, some things are just not funny to people who think in different languages. Once we can FEEL in a language we can have better insight to that culture. We must figure out how the writer felt in, say, the courts of third century India, to truly understand what is going on. We must also think how the original readers felt while reading the poetry. The emotional element of poetry houses a large part of the content, in order for poetry to be relevant there must be a shared emotion present. The readers must somehow feel connected to the literary work, or else it will not become popular and preserved, being passed down through time, as the literature I will hopefully be looking at has been.

Ahh must get back to the books (or in my case the random unintelligible scribbles on loose leaf paper) as I have two crazy Sanskrit Midterm this week... ahhhhhhhhh

After writing all the above I didn’t feel like translating and decided to come up with random project titles (you know, it’s midnight on a Saturday that is the coolest thing to do, no doubt). One I came up with which I like very much is “Tree to Temple: the Evolution of Worship Space”. If I were to do this title, which sounds pretty cool based on the title alone (and I only have the title so far!) emotional connection to the space would be one way in which emotion could be tied into my project. How did people feel about their natural surroundings when they once worshipped in forests and sacred groves, now how do they feel about the temples they worship in (buildings that were constructed on the sacred land using the sacred trees)?

A second title I came up with (which really sounds more like a book... maybe a book I will write someday!) is “The Sacred Tree: Sylvan Symbolism in South Asian Mythologies”. How would emotion come into play with this? Symbolism is a literary device that evokes emotion, what does one think of when the symbol of a tree is used, how are they emotionally connected to this?
There is quite a strong symbiotic relationship in South Asian between women and trees (one of the many proposals I have gone through in the past year) there is definitely an emotional connection between the two. There is this one festival where the women in a village tie a string around their favourite tree, I think this is very cute, but it shows that there is an emotional attachment. Marriage of a woman to a tree is also not uncommon. Actually just last year the Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai married a mango tree because she was told by an astrologist that something bad would happen to her first husband and she wanted to marry Abhishek Bachchan, another Bollywood actor. This move actually brought much criticism, saying it was derogatory for women or something, but again I think it is cute... I like trees, OK?

There is also the Chipko movement from North India. In this movement from the ’80 the trees of a village were going to be cut down and the women took a stand against the tree cutters and literally hugged the trees (chipko literally means “to hug” in Hindi)! It is fascinating for me because the symbol of women embracing trees (called shalabhanjika in sanskrit) is very very ancient. It can be found on reliefs from the stupa at Sanchi. Yet it is a much older tradition than this Buddhist monument, as it was used to draw in the attention of lay people who were ignorant about the esoteric ways of Buddhism and who were familiar with indigenous folk beliefs, in which the image of a woman and tree is included.

So much Sanskrit poetry also involves the close emotional relationship between women and trees. Kalidasa’s Shakuntala is one famous example. The trees and plants were Shakuntala’s children and she lovingly looked after them. The scene in which she is leaving behind her beloved forest is full of emotion.

Wow! So now I am feeling much better about myself and my project (or at least now I have many to choose from), thanks method and theory!

PS. don’t even think about stealing my titles!!!

Shalabhanjika at Sanchi