Withdrawal symptoms

This morning someone held the door open for me while I was going into office building here on campus. Unbidden, the first thing that jumped into my mind was "jenquia," which is a kind of phonetic spelling for the Polish word for "thank-you." (Actually, what jumped into my head started with a D, but I have no idea how to spell it properly and at the moment I am too lazy to look it up.)

I have discovered, since getting back to the US a few days ago, that I miss Krakow. I miss the cheap but good food, I miss having the Rynek right nearby as a place to go and sit and read, I miss running down by the banks of the Visła and around the Wavel Castle (suburbs are not as pretty). But I especially miss the total immersion teaching -- the fact that for the last month I have been able to use every waking moment as a teachable example, and continue conversations in one context that began in quite another one. Everything was so compressed over the course of the month that I felt like we were able to get to a very profound level of discussion by the end; it takes much longer to get there under "normal" semester conditions. We hit the ground running and hardly stopped, but I think that helped the experience along.

The problem, of course, comes when you then have to readjust to the rhythms of everyday life in another context entirely. As Jen put it in a conversation, there is a kind of feeling that one wants to go home and show off the "new clothes" and new facets of identity that one has acquired, but there is also the gravitational pull of older social arrangements that has to be resisted in order to keep a space for that new understanding and new mode of being oneself. Combine that with the withdrawal pangs -- the sudden, inexplicable longing for a pierogi or one of those Polish bagel-things that everyone sells on the street corners -- and the whole experience of coming home is somewhat bittersweet.

Fortunately, teaching is therapy (among other things), and I suspect that later classes will be enriched by my public working-through of these issues. That's how social bounding processes work, after all: if no one acknowledges a boundary, whether explicitly or in the orientation of their meaningful actions, there is no analytical sense in identifying a boundary at all. (There may be a normative or political sense, but that's another matter.) Withdrawal is all about boundaries, about settling into some kind of habit of life that integrates various facets in such a way that they are liveable for all concerned. And at the moment I find myself in the thick of it, which is probably where I am supposed to be at the moment.

Two things that I do know: there will be a Polish case in my next book, and I will run a study abroad program like this one again in the not-too-distant future.

[Posted with ecto]

Loud Americans

The scene: a very good Hungarian restaurant, just off the Rynek in downtown Krakow. Myself and three students having dinner, laughing and generally having a good time -- not overly dramatically, although we were perhaps being a little causally rowdy. Nothing too extreme. Then an older woman dressed in some kind of purple outfit (for some reason the color of it, including the color of her hat, sticks in my mind), walked over and began to berate us in English: those people at the next table are making comments about how uncivilized and unruly Americans are, and how loud and disrespectful we were being; at this point in time, she went on, when "they" are looking for excuses to hate "us" (her English was heavily accented, as though she had been an expat for a long time), we had to be more careful. Then she went to sit down, leaving us all stunned. We paid the bill and exited rather quickly.

Several striking things for me about this encounter. First of all, how easily we were hailed into the very subject-position -- obnoxious, disrespectful tourists -- that we had previously criticized others (the British stag parties in Prague, for example) for occupying. When she activated the script, we were all chastened. Speaking for myself, I felt a kind of tightness in my chest and throat, a fear that maybe in fact we were in fact enacting the role that we despised. It was as though that possibility had simply been lurking around us in a cloud of potentiality, and when she spoke to us it crystallized and became actual. (Indeed, this is probably a good account of what happened: her admonition wouldn't have been as powerful, or as effective, had it not already been "objectively" [in the specific, Weberian sense of the term: the potentiality was apparently there whether we knew it or not, but the only way that we could come to know that was through the historically contingent course of events that produced this specific outcome] present in our social context, and present at several levels of nesting -- our own specific histories in critiquing others, our self-images as sensitive travelers as opposed to obnoxious tourists, and so on.) She couldn't have known -- we never completely grasp the results of our interventions, whether in advance or in retrospect -- but she invoked something and, as Andrew Abbott describes it, the tumblers turned and spat out an outcome. A psychologically crushing one.

Second, the anger. Walking out of the restaurant (after we had several minutes of sputtering silence) we began to process the experience, and I was somewhat surprised to find that I was deeply angry at her. Angry that she might be right, even though I remain convinced that we were not being loud and obnoxious at all. Angry that she took it upon her self to act in loco parentis, as though we were a group of naive teenagers intruding into a formal dinner party. Angry that we might in fact have been setting people off without knowing it. And finally, angry that we didn't use the best comeback line ever, the one that we came up with afterwards: "um, we're Canadian."

Third, the subsequent analysis. We talked it out and generally agreed that we might have fallen into a situation where we couldn't have done much differently, since the muttering diners seemed to already be predisposed to criticize Americans, and were only looking for an excuse or for some "evidence" to use in supporting their case. We ran several counterfactual situations (what if we had all been speaking Polish, or German? What if it had been later in the evening, or earlier, or another restaurant?) and also noted the fact that "they have no manners" is one of those floating condemnations that is traditionally used against outgroups, and is closely related to "they smell bad because of their inferior hygiene." So in a sense we shouldn't take it personally.

But we did, and I now feel a little chastened. I don't want to be thought of as a loud American, even by disgruntled expats in odd purple outfits. Here we see the delivery of the "other transcript" provoking identity effects, as we struggle to determine whether or not we do or should fit into it -- and what the proper response ought to be to the declaration that we do fit.

Still working on a decent response.

[Posted with ecto]

Encountering Warsaw

I have to admit that I did not like Warsaw when we first arrived. I think that there were several reasons for this:

1) it was raining. Weather is significant in a way that it shouldn't be, I think; it only rained that first day in Warsaw but I do think of it as a grey city. Weather is like "mood" in that respect; if the world of the happy man is different from the world of the sad man, how much more is the raining world different from the sunny world? (Especially since "weather" presents itself as though it were a-socially objective, a "fact of nature" with which we mere individual humans have to struggle -- even in our language, as we say "it is raining" without ever clearly specifying what the "it" refers to. And we can't really specify what the referent is, except for "the world" as a whole -- furthering the connection between weather and mood.)

2) Laura's foot. There was a little accident a few days ago in which Laura fell and sprained her ankle (but we didn't know that it was only sprained until mid-day Saturday), so abruptly the travel plans had to change: Jenny and Laura remained in Krakow while the rest of us went to Warsaw. So I found myself trying to occupy two places at the same time -- two cities, Warsaw and Krakow -- and two sets of concerns, each specific to a different group of students. Thank goodness for SMS technology, which allowed us to stay in touch. It's not fair to Warsaw to blame my initial experiences on it when they so clearly have nothing to do with the city, but those initial experiences did color the city for me.

3) architecture. Warsaw remains dominated by solid grey blocks designed for the New Soviet Man, together with the fascinatingly hideous Palace of Culture and Industry. This adds to a more formal and forbidding atmosphere, certainly in contrast with Krakow. (Wartime devastation is obviously to blame for this, but the causation of the architecture is less interesting to me at the moment than the effect of that architecture.)

4) there is a German word -- Gemütlichkeit -- which indicates a certain kind of homey-ness, comfort, richness of communal feeling; it also has connotations of provincialism, small-town-ness, and the like. Köln has it, at least in the suburbs. München has it pretty much all over the place. So does Krakow. Warsaw doesn't. Warsaw is a city in a way that Krakow isn't. Maybe it's the architecture, maybe it's the wider streets and extensive mass transportation network, maybe it's the sheer number of people. Maybe all of the above. But Warsaw is -- or was, at least to me -- less comfortable than Krakow was.

As we spent a little more time there this weekend, I began to be able to let go of my expectations -- my expectation of seeing Krakow, I think -- and see Warsaw differently. The grey architecture looked more like an unfortunate legacy after a while, and the monumental Soviet carvings on the buildings started to take on a less ominous character. And we found good places to eat, even if they were a little more expensive than in Krakow. Plus, we went to see memorials and monuments and the like over the next two days, which also gave an access point into what was at first a somewhat forbidding edifice. Running Saturday morning also helped.

I am under no illusions that my experience of Warsaw remains a highly idiosyncratic one. But from looking over other people's notes, I see continuities. Undoubtedly these arise largely from our collective process of making meaning, and will continue to do so. Is Warsaw really a grey and forbidding city? Is it really like Berlin, especially East Berlin, which was the parallel that kept coming to mind for me throughout the weekend? What might "really" mean here?

Did we actually encounter Warsaw? How would we know?

[Posted with ecto]

"And now I also know what it is to be charged with mass guilt"

I think one of the most important questions posed by Milosz and discussed by Fiut is the question of what somone living in an oppressive state is obligated to do. Are we obligated to become martyrs, to stand up for the Good, the Right, and the True even though we know it's suicidal? Ought we mimic Fiut's own professor, focusing on our own , uncontroversial work, using the language of the oppressors when necessary? Perhaps we should take the route of Milosz, and defect, or follow the example of Agnieszka's family and contribute what we can to the underground opposition while speaking the Truth at home as well. Should we "[keep] one hand on Marx's writings, [reading] the Bible in private"? Is there a best way, or a moral way to live in these circumstances? What would I have chosen in the place of those who had to make these decisions?

I don't think these are idle questions. Even if, God willing, I never live in a totalitarian state, there are still (many) times when I feel my government is acting immorally, and I question what my obligation to stand up for what I believe in is. There's a Pete Seeger song, taken from a woman's testimony before Congress during the time of the Vietnam War, that touches on a lot of these questions. Since I suspect this crowd is at least slightly less folky than I am, I've included the lyrics below:

LISA KALVELAGE

My name is Lisa Kalvelage, I was born in Nuremberg
And when the trials were held there nineteen years ago
It seemed to me ridiculous to hold a nation all to blame
For the horrors that the world did undergo
A short while later when I applied to be a G. I. bride
An American consular official questioned me
He refused my exit permit, said my answers did not show
I'd learned my lesson about responsibility.

Thus suddenly I was forced to start thinking on this theme
And when later I was permitted to emigrate
I must have been asked a hundred times where I was and what I did
In those years when Hitler ruled our state
I said I was a child or at most a teen-ager
But that only extended the questioning
They'd ask, where were my parents, my father, my mother
And to this I could answer not a thing.

The seed planted there at Nuremberg in 1947
Started to sprout and to grow
Gradually I understood what that verdict meant to me
When there are crimes that I can see and I can know
And now I also know what it is to be charged with mass guilt
Once in a lifetime is enough for me
No, I could not take it for a second time
And that is why I am here today.

The events of May 25th, the day of our protest,
Put a small balance weight on the other side
Hopefully, someday my contribution to peace
Will help just a bit to turn the tide
And perhaps I can tell my children six
And later on their own children
That at least in the future they need not be silent
When they are asked, "Where was your mother, when?"

Words adapted and Music by Pete Seeger (1972)
(c) 1966 by Sanga Music Inc.

"Identity" in the news

Chirac on gay marriage

Here's an interesting look at how an issue also divisive in the US is playing into French concerns about identity.

Refrigerator, again

I spoke to the gentleman who owns the apartment that I am renting, and he clued me in to the secret of the fridge: kick it closed, and occasionally kick it to make sure that it stays closed. I did and now it appears to be working, to some extent.

I wonder how many other little tricks like this were required to make the Soviet system keep functioning.

[Posted with ecto]

Soviet manufacturing

Midnight, Krakow time. I am now finally getting to bed after an hour of mopping and using towels and rags to clean up the mess left by the demise of the Soviet-era refrigerator that used to serve my apartment. (It really is Soviet; the dials were all in Cyrillic script and it looked like something out of the 1950s.) The fridge started leaking this morning, and by this afternoon we had to turn it off for defrosting because it had apparently become so waterlogged that it couldn't take any more. Then, after cleaning up most of the water on the kitchen floor, I chanced to nudge the pan under the unit with my foot…producing a new cascading torrent. Lovely. I think it's under control now, although this does leave me quite without any way to store most food. So I either have to a) eat out; b) use one of the students' refrigerators or the common one at CES temporarily; or c) only buy enough for one meal and toss whatever I don't eat. None of these are particularly appealing.

The Soviet system's inability to produce consumer goods is legendary; until now I had never actually been on the receiving end of it. Now I can check that one off of my list -- after I change my socks.

[Posted with ecto]

National day in another nation

Our first visit to Nowy Kleparz (New Market) was entertaining for all involved, particularly the proprieters of the small produce stall at which we spent roughly half the GDP of Borneo. It's been over a year since I've been in the position to regularly speak Polish, and so asking for vegetables and fruits whose names I couldn't remember involved much charades, clumsy approximations (watermelon as "the big, green, round thing behind the cabbage"), and audience participation. Laura, Jen, and I explained that we were shopping for a party, but the male proprieter insisted we were simply having Polish class :). We have plans to return to the market often.

The Wroblewskiego Triumverate (that would be Laura, Jen, and me, as opposed to the four Girls in Kasimierz, the other half of the group) hosted a Fourth of July party for the program, and it went better than any of us could have hoped. I had felt torn about celebrating the US's "national day", as Europeans understand it, in another country, but I went with the assumption that groups of travellers are allowed to celebrate national holidays together as long as they aren't obnoxious about it. Besides, the process of buying all of the food, attempting to make hamburgers (and berry shortcake, and sangria, and crudite, and...) with the options and limitations found in a foreign country was an educational experience in itself. I think I can safely say a fun time was had by all.