Here it is!
Title: The loneliness of the dying / Norbert Elias ; translated by
Edmund Jephcott.
Published: Oxford, UK ; New York, NY, USA : B. Blackwell, 1985.
David D. Preiss
home page: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~ddp6/
-----Original Message-----
From: David Preiss [mailto:davidpreiss@puc.cl]
Sent: Monday, July 12, 2004 12:01 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: RE: Culture as dialogic relation
Hi Eugene,
Concerning death in contemporary society, German Sociologist Norbert Elias
wrote a splendid monograph. Unfortunately, I only have the Spanish
reference, but I am sure there should be an English translation.
David
David D. Preiss
home page: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~ddp6/
-----Original Message-----
From: Eugene Matusov [mailto:ematusov@udel.edu]
Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 10:42 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: RE: Culture as dialogic relation
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
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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 J). "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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