-----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
http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu
Office:
1-302-831-1266
Fax:
1-302-831-4110
-----------------------