Dear David-
You wrote, "My personal opinion is that in things like these there are not
"rules". We can invent them, of course. But at the end of the day, decisions
are always idiosyncratic. In the case of Eugene it saved a life. In the case
of my family saga, it may have done an inevitable death less psychologically
painful and making the stay of the person even longer, Whatever the case, it
is in the extreme situations of sickness and death where the hands of
culture are the most evident. We don't die alone."
Thanks a lot for your personal sharing - it is really helpful. I agree with
your several points: 1) there should not be "rules" but, unfortunately,
there are very rigid rules here (in US) and there (in Russia) and 2) we do
not die alone. I think often there is very little dialog about how to die in
society in general and in families in specific (although I can't judge that
for sure because I have very limited info). The matter is too "rulized" .
What do you think?
Eugene
_____
From: David Preiss [mailto:davidpreiss@puc.cl]
Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 4:48 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: RE: Culture as dialogic relation
I also experienced a similar chain of events in Chile. The Doctors left in
the family the decision of telling or not telling. Quite different from the
USA where the doctor-patient relationship is not so intensively mediated by
social relations (as it is in Russia) and where doctors have a bigger
authority than relatives. The person in question died without being told. I
disagree but kept myself apart as I was not close enough to the person
involved and respected the decision of their immediate relatives. Still, her
physical decay was so evident that I always wondered if telling her the
"truth" would not be redundant. What strikes me of Eugene example and my
experience in this case is that in some contexts the family seem to have
rights over a relative's body. In Chile is the same thing, specially when
people is old. Decision making over our bodies is socially processed. And
the feelings of responsibility and guiltiness for doing or not doing are
also socially or family distributed. One thing is the family shared truth,
the other is the physical one. Sometimes they go together, some others they
don't. For some, dying without making both coherent may be a lie, for some
others, may be a softened way to go. Is that good? Don't know. It's just
different. (What should we do with the cultures that practice female
circumcision? Charge them as barbaric or practice cultural tolerance?) My
personal opinion is that in things like these there are not "rules". We can
invent them, of course. But at the end of the day, decisions are always
idiosyncratic. In the case of Eugene it saved a life. In the case of my
family saga, it may have done an inevitable death less psychologically
painful and making the stay of the person even longer, Whatever the case, it
is in the extreme situations of sickness and death where the hands of
culture are the most evident. We don't die alone
David
David D. Preiss
home page: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~ddp6/
-----Original Message-----
From: Eugene Matusov [mailto:ematusov@udel.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 4:07 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Culture as dialogic relation
Dear everybody-
Warning: This message is very long.
Mike wrote in his attached message,
"I strongly sympathize with Eugene's point about the relational nature of
friendship and Clifford's way of thinking about culture. But how to I think
about a thingless world, personless, no body there, just relations? Not how
even to talk about the absence of
an inside of culture being absent the duality inside-outside is invoked, or
in denying a
separation between inside and outside, inside and outside are invoked.
When I contract cancer, there is something rather inside about what is
happening to me. My wife, to be certain, is affected in many ways that
follow the objective laws of
the external world, our life-long friendship, her introspections about her
past, present,
and future. She also "feels for me" in a very literal, not psycho-babble
sense. But is
she not there? Could I have a relationship with her if I had never met her?
(Certainly
I cannot not have a relationship with her, even if she were to disappear
from where she is reading on the couch this moment, never to return).
.
A rock appears solid and unchanging, but is not. As Eugene says, its all
relational, but relations with out "things" relating are more than my tiny
mind can deal with except by using all the tools at my disposal to parse
reality differently, for the purposes at hand."
Mike, I wonder where you read in my message that I argue for "a thingless
world, personless, no body there, just relations"? It is NOT what I meant.
Relationships are not possible without bodies and things. Relationships are
mediated and embedded. And so on.
Let me illustrate the idea that culture does not have "internal territory".
Ironically my example also involves a case of cancer.
About seven years ago, my uncle, who still lives in Russia, was diagnosed
with stomach cancer. However, he was not told about that -- rather he was
told that he had curable ulcer. It is quit a typical practice in Russia (and
before in the Soviet Union) not tell a patient about his or her terminal
illness. The doctor usually lies to the patient but tells the truth to the
closest relatives. They lie to the patient to save his or her feelings, to
keep hope, and prevent depression.
When my father, who immigrated to US and lived in California, told my wife
and me about his brother's cancer and that his family and his doctor kept
the truth about cancer from my uncle we were very angry. The situation was
aggravated by the fact that the doctor recommended an immediate surgery for
cancer before it could spread, while my uncle thinking that he had ulcer was
planning less radical treatment for his ulcer of going to a southern Russia
resort to drink mineral water. According to the doctor, going to mineral
water resort not only would have postponed the surgery and let the cancer
spread but this particular mineral water in addition to other medicine
against ulcer that my uncle planned to take could have facilitated growth of
the cancer tumor. My wife and I were angry because under this serious
threat, neither my uncle's wife nor his daughter (my cousin) did not want to
tell him truth. They tried to convince my uncle to undergo "ulcer surgery"
and not to go to mineral water resort. In part, they called my father to
elicit his support in convincing my uncle to undergo the required surgery
without telling him the truth.
My father and my mother were ambivalent. They acknowledged that it was
"stupid" not to tell the truth but they were not willing to call my uncle
and tell it. When I pushed my father, he said that they were about 70 years
old and they did not have time enough for breakdown their relations. He said
that he did not want to lose his brother because by going against his wife
and daughter's will he would become enemy number 1. My counterargument was
that it would be better to be enemy number 1 with alive brother than "a good
relative" with a dead brother. But neither I nor my wife could convince my
father. So, I told him that I was going to call myself. My father was
reluctantly negative to this idea.
Meanwhile, during these few days of the debates, my parents got visitors
from East Coast of the US. My dad's college friend and his wife came to
visit them. My dad's friend was also a very close friend of my uncle since
their college time. His wife was a retired medical doctor also from Russia.
His friend was as ambivalent as my parents but his wife, as a doctor,
strongly took our position that my uncle had to be told the truth. Finally,
she decided to call herself as a compromise with my parents.
She called and told the truth to my uncle. My uncle immediately agreed to
undergo the surgery, which was very successful. He lives now without cancer
but. His wife and daughter have stopped talking with their friend and his
wife. But even more, my uncle has stopped talking with them as well - they
became enemy#1 as my father predicted. Two years ago when I visited my uncle
and his family in Russia I talked with him (and other relatives) about that.
I also talked with my parents, my brother, and other relatives in US. Here
is the summary of my conversations:
My US relatives (all immigrants from the Soviet Union): Russia is an
irrational, barbaric, and backward country. People there are stupid and
selfish.
My Russian relatives: "You [i.e., immigrants from Russia] are Americanized"
(they did not use the term "internalization" although :-)). "You become very
cold, calculative, and arrogant. You calculate everything. You lost your
soul and spirituality ("duchovnost'"). You do not understand us anymore."
Talking to my uncle, I said that I had been planning to call him myself. He
said, "I think that you would have done it differently than my friend's
wife." I replied that I doubted that I have done it differently.
But I would like to find an approach to do it differently! I'm not searching
for how to win an argument or convinced my Russian relatives or make my
American relatives and myself more understanding. I just want to make a
circle, a community again. Maybe it is a utopia but maybe not.
I like Latour's idea of "ready made science/truth" in contrast to
"science/truth-in-action." I think my US and Russian relatives referred to
"ready made cultures" while I'm searching for "culture-in-action." I'm not
saying that my US and Russian relatives are wrong but I think it is more
useful in the given conditions to find ways of disrupting and redrawing the
socially constructed boundary between our communities than to spend time on
accurate description of the already constructed and stable boundary
constituting these cultures. I also think that Latour's notion of
interobjectivity can be useful for this purpose.
What do you think?
Eugene
PS I just talked with my very close Russian friend on the phone. His mother
is very-very sick - she had a lung and heart problem (I do not know how this
disease is called in English). However, his mother does not know the true
diagnosis and prognosis. And my friend is not going to tell the truth to
her. After long debates with me, my friend replied by almost repeating an
old peasant from Luria's experiment (about Russian tzar). He said that my
truth works well in America and his truth works well in Russia.
My wife's aunt died of cancer last March without knowing her true diagnosis.
So many of my other Russian relatives.
-----------------------
Eugene Matusov, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Education
School of Education
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716, USA
Office: 1-302-831-1266
Fax: 1-302-831-4110
-----------------------
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