The True Confessions of a Teacher's Pet

The most Notebookish of my Index columns so far considers the possible causes of lackluster class discussions and students' reluctance to answer certain questions. I also wrote but did not draw the notebook-scribble info-graphic below the column, which I feel like I should have made either more simple or more obnoxiously complicated. (It's a Catch 22!)

What's So Funny 'bout Literary Theory?

The next time I try to explain, apologize for, defend, rationalize, criticize, or otherwise talk about literary theory (that often misunderstood boogie man of academia) with someone less familiar with its goals, I plan on repeating more or less word-for-word Louis Menand's introduction to his piece on Paul de Man. At any rate, it's better than mumbling something along the lines of:  "Derrida ... class struggle ... subaltern ... objet petit a! Anyway, it's something we should all care about."

"The idea that there is literature, and then there is something that professors do with literature called “theory,” is a little strange. To think about literature is to think theoretically. If you believe that literature is different from other kinds of writing (like philosophy and self-help books), if you have ideas about what’s relevant and what isn’t for understanding it (which class had ownership of the means of production, whether it gives you goose bumps, what color the author painted his toenails), and if you have standards for judging whether it’s great or not so great (a pleasing style or a displeasing politics), then you have a theory of literature. You can’t make much sense of it without one.

It’s the job of people in literature departments to think about these questions, to debate them, and to disseminate their views. This is not arid academicism. It affects the way students will respond to literature for the rest of their lives. But it’s also part of an inquiry into the role of art in human life, the effort to figure out why we make this stuff, what it means, and why we care so much about it. If this is not the most important thing in the world to understand, it is certainly not the least."

Active Nonviolence in Crimea

For those seeking a look at Crimea that considers the situation in relatable human terms, I highly recommend Patrick Reevell’s article, “No Bloodshed in a Standoff at an Airfield in Ukraine,” published in the New York Times this morning. It demonstrates Ukrainian soldiers using active nonviolence to protest the Russian soldiers’ occupation of their airfield Tuesday.

The Ukrainian soldiers' leader, Col. Yuli Mamchur, was acting against orders from the Ukrainian naval command, “who had ordered them to hand over their weapons to other Ukrainian units” that had defected to the pro-Russian government of Crimea. (The leader of the Ukrainian navy himself had defected.) Col. Mamchur chose to oppose the Russians’ occupation and the Crimean government’s cooperation by “order[ing] his men to meet the Russians unarmed, hoping to force a peaceful resolution.”

This is exactly the method of nonviolent protest: forcing a peaceful resolution by demonstrating dissent while refusing to use violence. By challenging the goodwill of the oppressor, the tactic denies the oppressors any excuse to use violence and gives them no option but to either become the wrongdoer through illegitimate violence or to give in to the protesters’ demands, which is what happened here. I will let you find the rest of the thrilling and bizarre details in the article (at one point during the standoff, a soccer game erupts). My point is that this action demonstrates the effectiveness of active nonviolence, a method of dissent that continues to have a low reputation and understanding. I’ve been met with giggles for using the phrase in the past, which is somewhat disturbing. However, this event shows how it is ultimately the most effective response to violent oppression. Furthermore, it shows how media attention can take an incident far from our view and whose participants may have never expected to gain recognition and bring it to the forefront of public discussion. International attention enforces the consequences of the use of violence by either side.

For more on active nonviolence, the technique pioneered by Gandhi and other 20th century protest leaders, you should check out at least the introduction of A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict by Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall. The chapters contain more fascinating stories much like what happened at the Crimean airfield yesterday.

Unraveling Ukraine and Complicating Soccer

Militant Ukrainian protesters, which include both far-right
ideologues and moderate pragmatists. Photo:
Sergey Ponomarev, New York Times.

My last two Index columns have been a bit more political than past ones. In the first, I address the protests in Ukraine as an example of a complex news item that needs research and discussion to unravel. This piece received a very generous letter ("Response to Conor Gearin," middle-right) the next week from a Ukrainian former journalist living in Kirksville (who would have thought?) He cleared up a confusion in the way that I was understanding  the political left in Ukraine: I was using it to mean Ukrainian liberals, those wanting closer ties with the European Union and greater civil liberties, but according to him, to Ukrainians the left means communists more exclusively.

The info about the situation in Kiev is generally still accurate, but check out your favorite international news outlet for updates about what has happened over the past two days. Things are coming to a head, and nonviolent voices are getting edged out on the front lines, though according to the New York Times, nonviolent activists are still in the majority.

In the second piece (bottom of the page), a speech from Fred Gray, Rosa Park's lawyer and longtime activist, caused me to reflect on a place of both diversity and prejudice near me: pickup soccer games at the Student Rec center. Thanks for reading.

Gray Wolves and Black Coffee

The New York Times printed this memorable
image of Ukrainian protesters in Kiev.

I try to vary my columns between trends in the news and personal experience. My first column of the year considered our future with Gray wolves, which are expanding their ranges south as reintroduced populations rebound. This morning's column is one in my unofficial series, Advocacy for Unlovely Causes. The cause this time was rising early in college, which may just get me stoned to death for cultural heresy. Oh well. Next week: making sense of Ukraine from 5,000 miles away.

Beaten to the Case

Some time ago I had the idea of writing an essay--like, a real essay--about my fascination with the world of fanfiction. I would talk about its modern flowering, its  lingo (complex as Cockney slang) and the way in which I participated: in it the first story I tried to write, in sixth grade, was an undisguised Sherlock Holmes knockoff. "I'm writing a Sherlock Holmes knockoff," I would explain to classmates proudly. In the essay I would try to connect my love for Holmes' London, seedy, huge, and umanageable, and my appreciation of the overgrown city of fan fiction as a comparably messy but still worthwhile human creation. However, by way of Emily Nussbaum's review of the third season of BBC's TV miniseries Sherlock, my current favorite TV show, I found that the game was on, and I missed it: Anne Jamison's book Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking over the World pointed out that when Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Holmes to escape from the crushing popularity, his readers were so distraught that they wore black armbands and wrote what can be considered the very first fanfiction. It's the connection that would have made my essay make sense. I had the clues in my hands, Watson, and I let them go!

On the other hand, I've found a new book to read, and I can't complain about that. And perhaps I can figure out something a little different that would still work. Anyway, if you are a fan of Sherlock, or perhaps a fan of the books that thinks you will never watch the series, read Nussbaum's excellent review, which includes some insights that get us a little further into the mystery of why we still love these characters and their world enough to write new stories for them a century later.

The Humanities and Sciences Depend on Each Other

My Index column from last week is my small addition to all that's been written about why we should not install medical and neuroscience research labs in all of our Humanities buildings just yet. To me, the debate of whether there is a major that is better, or more necessary for our society to study right now, often misses the point that we need many different ways of thinking to get any task done in any one discipline--be it a paper analyzing the motives of characters in O Pioneers! or a social psychology study on prejudicial attitudes towards a certain ethnic or cultural group. In all fields, we need data and insights from many different sources in order to say anything meaningful about the world. But for a less apologetic take on the need for English majors, and one that I like better than mine, read Adam Gopnik's "Why Teach English?" from the New Yorker this August. We need English students and teachers because people like to read, and to talk about what they read. Why would we need any more defense for the major than that?