If a Western scholar does not understand colonial affairs, he will never understand the world.

-House of Glass

There is almost no place on earth that has not been touched or shaped by colonialism. Despite the [to say it generously] liberation of many colonized societies, colonialism, or the philosophies and attitudes of difference that sanction dominance and subordination, has not died. And to put it more radically, colonization has not died. Because colonialism is about power based on illusory differences, and because illusory differences continue to be nurtured in our day-to-day life, understanding the relationship between the two is pertinent to understanding how our own political and social encounters operate on that relationship, so that ultimately, hopefully, individually and collectively, we can challenge those illusions and their consequences.

A crash course can be found in The Buru Quartet, set in Dutch-governed Indonesia at the beginning of the 20th century. It was told orally by Pramoedya Ananta Toer during his political imprisonment in the 1950s in Indonesia, and put in writing with the help of his fellow prisoners once he was allowed pen and paper. The story is nothing short of exposure, from the inside out, of everything you didn’t get out of middle school about colonizers and colonized, which is why the books were banned in Indonesia until 1999. Over the course of the quartet, the author profiles nearly every imaginable character in the colonial setting, from the mixed-blood children of Native concubines, their fathering Dutch officials, to the most educated Natives. Toer chooses two special cases to narrate the rise of Indonesian nationalism. The first is Minke, a privileged, educated Native Javanese man, who rejects the career path of a government doctor to open the first Native newspaper. The second, who continues Minke’s story in the fourth book, is Jacques Pangemanann, a Native police officer, born and educated in France, who is hired as a colonial government researcher and shadow policy writer assigned with the task of keeping Indonesia’s organizations and nationalism in check, by whatever means necessary. The comparison is clear: both are Natives, educated with the same European values of equality and empirical knowledge, but they consciously choose different paths. One challenges the hegemonic structures around him, and the other works for it. The reader is left to judge each character for how they handle their burden of knowledge, in light of the exposed hypocrisy of Western civilization of which they both become conscious - that the values of education and equality are only good for some people, and not for others.

And the reader is left to contend with relativistic idea #1, that maybe Indonesia and other pre-colonial societies would have been better off without “European values,” colonization aside. This is highlighted more by Minke’s comparisons of the brutality of Dutch colonialism to that of the kings of his Native ancestors. Self-determination is not simply a European value, but a human value, that simply happened to be most articulated in history by the French Revolution. It is not the dream of lofty intellectuals, but a living struggle, and you can choose to be on either side of it, educated or not, as long as you have some semblance of morals, like Surati, who intentionally inoculates herself with smallpox so that she would infect the Dutch official taking her as a concubine (see Chapter 2 of Footsteps for a beautiful, though sad, story of hegemony and resistance). And so there is no excuse for relativistic idea #2, that Pangemanann might be forgiven for his choices, even though they contradicted everything he had ever learned, despite being a student at the Sorbonne, because he ultimately felt guilty. It is not enough to be educated, and it is not enough to know that your actions are wrong and feel sorry for them. Was he a good man? It seems he asserts for himself, that, despite his self-abasement, history, or the world outside of his own conscience, would ultimately be his judge.

In novel form, the Buru Quartet is a study in the psychological and social workings of hegemony and resistance. Psychological because it reads like personal notes or a journal, internal and reflective throughout the actions of the narrators and the characters around them. Social because each character, and his/her actions, is positioned in the context of the colonial setting - how they adopt it, speak it, take advantage of it, or resist it. What is also unique is that it feels so close to real life. Minke does not climactically “awaken.” Rather, he learns slowly (for a book), through a series of events, conversations, and personal reflections, in the same way that we really do learn new ways of thinking. Pangemanann struggles continuously through his choices, as a morally conscious person would, but distinguishes between what he thinks and what he does. The reading is thick, but the exposure of our cultural history and human character is highly relevant as long as there is anyone who is oppressed by other human beings.

Phillies vs. Obama

If it comes between watching the Phillies win tonight and being disenchanted by a third presidential debate, I think I'll take the former. I'm banking on my team knowing how to play baseball better than my candidate knowing how to debate.

In Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman explains how the format of political debates (among other things) has been cut into a visually-oriented presentation that takes away the intellectual spar that characterizes a debate, due to the medium on which it is presented: television. Because television has a certain program schedule, the debate cannot under any circumstance run any longer than the time slot allowed by the network, no matter how important anything that anyone has to say. In the debates this year, each candidate has been allowed about 2 minutes to answer a question asked by the presider, and say, a one-minute follow-up per candidate. These time restraints limit the substance of their responses, so rather than constructing well-supported arguments that might require more time, they are forced to economize their answers in a way that will elicit the most response from a general audience in a short period of time. No time for in-depth responses, nothing that will challenge the status quo of values, no follow-up questions from the audience even in the faux "town-hall format." In other words, a 75 minute series of commercials.

Postman goes on to talk about the how medium of television has watered down the general expectation of intellectual substance in both politics and education. Because it is not interactive, because it presents no opportunity for dialogue, it is not a medium for democracy. And because television, as a visual medium, must constantly be visually stimulating. Otherwise, no one will pay attention. The big networks believe this. Compare the flashy icons, bells-and-whistles programming on CNN and Fox to cut-and-dry style of PBS. Which network is being watched more?

Even watching this game on Fox gives me a headache. Almost half the screen is blotched with icons. And every other play is interceded by some playback sponsored by some fast food or SUV corporation.

I've compromised and decided to watch the debate between the Phillies at the plate. Or I could just watch the campaign ads during commercial breaks....

If you want to be a good archaeologist, you've got to get out of the library.

-Indiana Jones

Or how about the university?

Or this stupid laptop, with which I am cultivating this love-hate relationship day to day. While it is indispensible for writing, storing, and organizing information, more time in front of it than is necessary for these things just represents to me how much I am not doing something else.

On the other hand, what archaeology of human thought can be found as readily as it can be right here on the webpages of abandoned blogs? Do these qualify as artifacts?

I leave that to someone else, because inevitably useful as it is, my life is bent on trying to understand everything outside this box.

grown-ups need playgrounds

"You look like a bat hanging there," a little black girl said to me, no older than 9 or 10 years, as I hung upside down on the monkey bars at the playground today.

I helped Soraya, temporarily in my care on the good faith of her parents a short walk away, as she tried to grab on to the next bar while she hung on the first one. "I can't do it!" She jumped down. The black girl tried after her. After a few bars she also gave up.

"I used to be able to do it," she said. "But now I'm fat."

"Me, too, I'm fat," repeated Soraya.

Where did they learn to say such a thing?

It seemed like the United Nations called a picnic day at Marsh Creek. There were people of all colors, ages, religions, and my white skin was practically a minority. Not really tempered to being around children, it was so refreshing to see how open they were with each other to take turns or help (or ask for help) regardless of any racial or gender differences.

A pat on my leg turned out to be a tiny Asian girl pointing to a low platform that was still too high for her to reach herself. No words. A clear, simple message.

"Is that your daughter? Is that your son?" said the first girl, referring to those knee-highs that had enlisted my help. What a great way to feel useful in a short period of time.

"No. I am only attached to that one." I pointed to Soraya.

I have no idea who these kids are, I wanted to say.

I think grown-ups need playgrounds.

The BA is the most overrated product in America.

- Marty Nemko in his article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.


And while I couldn't agree more, along with some other assessments that he makes, I took a slight issue with the overtones of Nemko's rhetoric, which seemed to emphasize the disparity between "college material" and "not college material," or stellar/nonstellar student, without acknowledging other qualities a person might have about himself. This kind of language only perpetuates the problem of kids being ashamed not to attend college.

He also encouraged releasing more accurate statistics on college success and providing certain guarantees as you would any other commodity. One of higher education's greatest flaws is that it has become a commodity, and that is what makes it an overrated one. As Nemko said, colleges are there to make money, but he doesn't tackle this as a problem. His solutions only call for standards which other manufacturers are expected to hold, rather than revamping the whole system as an institution in the service of the public and greater knowledge.

Going to his blog explained my reservations. He is a staunch libertarian who definitely sees one's lot in life as deserved according to the hard work or laziness of the individual. Nemko is dismayed at the idea of a universal healthcare system that would force "people with good health care (because they were good enough of an employee to be hired for a job with health insurance, had saved up enough money to buy their own, or on Medicare) having to give up that good health care and pay for health care for others', including, for example, lazy heroin addicts and illegal aliens."

Now I understand the source of the language and how it may extend to what I heard on NPR. To say "elitist" may still be a gut reaction, but the free market talk struck an appropriately dissonant chord. Libertarians have to see why the free market cannot and will not exist, and in this case, that education should be an investment by the society in itself. People who think that they got to a certain place exclusively due to their own hard work are deluding themselves. No one can make it alone, and no one has absolute control over circumstance.

Outsourcing Thoughts

I must:

Explain what I saw.
Explain what I think about what I saw.
Explain why I think what I think about what I saw.
Use what others think about what they saw to explain why I think what I think about what I saw.

So much for my own interpretations. They are useless without other people's ideas to support them. I thought I should get some credit for having come up with them on my own, but there is apparently no merit in saying something that someone else has already said.

On I go, burrowing deeper into JSTOR to pick up the pieces of my thoughts from other writers.

Pig farming in Morocco

This morning the BBC reported on the growing pork industry in Morocco, despite the Islamic prohibitions of pork consumption. They interviewed a pig farmer outside of Casablanca, who seemed quite satisfied and without qualm with his occupation. Others express their opposition that pork farming is forbidden as well as pork eating.

Pork-serving restaurants are popping up in the big cities like Rabat, Casablanca, Marrakech, although they will certainly meet significantly more resistance outside those boundaries. Demand stems from foreign tourists, expatriates, and, according to the farmer, young Moroccan bourgeouise who are eating more pork. When asked if he thought it was a problem, the farmer said people also drink wine, which of course is also forbidden. The everything-but-pork paradox he alluded to is something to be fathomed, but then again, who is to judge where is the beam or the splinter?

Which one religious leader seemed to echo when he said, "It is up to them," for his thoughts on the pig farmers. They will be held responsible before God.

Assertive enough for the religious side, but there might be a more earthly consequence for cultural identity. This certainly must be one piece of that paradox. Two things I am sure of: One is that a few weeks in a foreign country without pork never killed anyone. The other is that this is one more example of the changes and challenges that tourism brings to Morocco.