Whither

who are you
and who are we
do i read you right
and can u see thru me

i want to be close
but run back when i am
do i fear you
too near to you
or i cant remove my skin for you?

or do i really see
that this cant be
and this closeness i feel
cannot thus reveal

if that is so
again, who are we
can i come so close
and remain unchanged

How natural will be a return to nature?

Can we really live among nature, and yet remain exactly the modern, free thinking and liberal people that we as those who live in cities. This is not to say that there are not already a lot of people living with nature - either because they traditionally do or because they choose to.
Even so, I wonder at the sutble changes such  shift of venue will bring and even demand.

There must be a reason for instance why civilisations spread in the plains and why the mountains, world-over remain ways of escaping civilisation for a while. And why further, that those mountain dwellers who get exposed to the life of the plains, are transmuted forever, unable perhaps then to share the same vibrations with their hills that they hitherto did.

The plains then, seem to be the site of the establisment of cities. Cities, primarily, are spaces of visual sensousness. it can be argued that man, who seeks sensous pleasure in varied forms, finds the city to be one such place that leaves him secure, satisfied and yet safely seeking more, thus making cities the ever burgeouning grounds of opulence or or enterprise. This may explain further why the metro or the mall are conducive to the city. It may explain why, when i escape the city and begin to miss it after a while, I find solace in the mall.

If by going back to nature, man must forgo these means of directing his desireful energy, then will these mean that man will need to mutate into a different kind of being. No more will such a life give out a flaneur or art critic. The sense of distance from one's object of pleasure, seems to be central to city life. Wit such closeness to the land, how does man maintain the individualistic and free sense of humanness?

We may recognise what violence lies in this sensousness of city life and we may thus proceed to discover different ways of living and being. But, if we really sincerely take these step ahead, do we really know what mutations we are going to undergo?

Being free, thinking free, theorising free

Is sociology an inherently conservative discipline? Nisbet argues how its very inception is flavoured by the nostalgia for community and sacredity. Ranciere's book i am reading indicates that the new sociology emerges in France after the setbacks faced by the left. In this backdrop, argues Ranciere, does Bourdieu's work emerge - presenting to us a cynical explanation of inequality, leaving us almost trapped in its very existence. Of course, both these kinds of conservatisms are quite different, but perhaps share a common spirit.
I wonder (and this may appear cynical too, but i hope does not remain so) whether most grand theories and perspectives in the discipline are marked by a kind of conservatism. Rather, i think this word is insufficient, even misleading. I want to indicate a seeking of comfort in theories, categories that give us as intellectuals a means to explain the world around us. It makes us believe that we have access to a more exalted, a more secret understanding of the world. In this sense, is sociology, psychologically wanting? Is it driven less often by the higher emotions of wonder, humility and openness and more often by judgement and a missionary zeal? What do we know after all about non-sociological ways of explaining the world? What place can we give them? Are we not often in the business of indoctrination? What for instance does a term like 'patriarchy' do for us? Have we perhaps got stuck with the category, and not moved further on the paths of inquiry? Have we shaped our world on the basis of the very categories we formulated to explain it?
The attempt to explain the word around us, is a profound need for us. Most of our knowledges, our sciences, natural or social are attempts to do so. While, they could perhaps be empowering, they seem to be double edged. You never know when they begin to offer comforts, illusions. Taking us away from the real questions, leaving us fighting with misleading shadows...

A humble allowing...

Can a teacher teach? Can anything be taught? Is there anything to teach?

These are genuine questions. Even so I cannot think that this would lead us to a 'let us not teach' stand. And thus arises the question, what then is a position one can place oneself in, while being in an educative process? Of course, all this is perhaps only, theoretical dreaming, because the challenge of the classroom completely throws you open and leaves you vulnerable. That is perhaps one reason that teachers choose the strict posture. Vulnerability can be difficult to maintain and at times also counter productive. There are only few people I have read about who can be so, and mostly they seem to be people who are also very self-assured personalities and clear about their tasks for instance K or DH. Can we all be so? Ironically, these kind of people are sometimes quite stuck in their own ways.

Mostly those who are in doubt seem to be more open. And this perhaps gives us a pathway of a possible stand. That one not be very certain of one's certainties. For instance, don't we all know about patriarchy, about religious regressiveness versus modern ideas. About proper behaviour etc. Now I recall that in a school i spent time in, gender or ideas about gender issues in society were never taught. Of course, gender differentiation was minimal and the educative content was from a liberal standpoint. The school and the teachers however, never explicitly inculcated it and in fact true to the spirit of the school, questioned a simple activist kind of position - not to question it as such, but to ask students to understand what drove them to it. Even so, a girl, who saw very gendered behaviour among her neighbours was aware and disturbed by it and raised a question in a conversation at school. Now a teacher in this context can immediately tell her about how some families are not broad minded, well educated, modern or plain silly. Or the teacher can say, beta have an open mind, maybe we are judging her too harshly. Or perhaps the 'teacher' can simply stay with the student on that inquiry, share her wonder and ask questions with her... to open up the question in a way that assumptions and expectations within it, if any, reveal themselves automatically, and the student can see the situation as closely to the truth of its entirety. in that situation, the student may choose to judge, deride or sympathize with that girl - and who are we to know what is correct. Is it a correct conclusion that she dismisses her behaviour as resulting from patriarchy? Do we know that for sure! And even if it is the right answer - must she arrive at it by the teacher's intervention. Need she arrive at it at all? If we truly believe that minds must be free, we cannot have the hidden rider that only liberal minds are truly free.Can we then live comfortably with our 'regressive' students or even friends? I think more than in school education, this is a challenge in higher education, esp. the social sciences. Can the social sciences move beyond being instructors of modernity? How do we all pas out of premier social science institutes all speaking the same language? Yet we think we are more 'open minded' than say technically educated students. Is that really so? s

And yet, such a teaching is all well to talk about. Can we have the required energy to sustain it.

Finding Ground

Who am I, this person engaging with sociological, philosophical research? I cant seem to get a hold on myself.

Sometimes I feel like a blank receptor to all the wonderful perspectives I am exposed to, unable to react meaningfully to anything (of course much of this is because of being severally backward on reading). I cannot form even a temporary opinion. On what grounds does one find one approach/thinker more valid then the other? When there are no grounds for truth, except the truth of lived reality perhaps, then all we can do is read a lot and broaden the field. But then as the mind opens to more and more things, its seems to loose ground. All and none seems valid.

And so in my life in general I find there are too many of me to reconcile! And perhaps the more I broaden my education and interests, the more lost i seem to feel? Yet another split inside me? I want academics to fulfill a part of me and when that increases I want to watch trash TV. when that overcomes me I want a spree of fitness and walking and then perhaps some indulgences to relax all those frayed nerves. Within ideas i want poetry and rationality, science and speculation. On a tangent, what does this mean for the practice of life and of research. Are we perhaps only acting out the temporary 'drives' that awaken in phases of our lives? Is there anything like a well rounded personality? Or only a more and more fragmented one...

The suspending of  mental thought, is yes somewhat relieving in a pub, but especially so in non intellectual work - cleaning, cooking, drawing, even singing loudly. And yet i find funnily that it is only after the mental engagement, that my songs have the depth i like, the intuition in my drawing is layered and emotive, because without that, what would my expression express? Having said that, after a point of mental engagement, there seems an adventure in the very movement into deep manual work - craft, gardening, singing. Perhaps what the mind sees, after a point it needs eventually to act out - else I find that it re-forms into something odd, something restless.

The ground-lessness of the mind can be celebrated as its release from all prior assumptions. True. A freedom from the known, to steal only the term from Krishnamurti. But then it is like standing on the path, not knowing where to turn, how to act. Even temporary grounds needs to be built to act, but then one seems to know that one is playing a game with oneself, a masquerade, an act for the time being.

Another strand. Our personalities shift as we do research. Experiences of the 'field' open certain doors for us. Experiences that can only be expressed as affect, as revelations. True we must problematize them in our research, question our romanticisms. Break their sacredity. Can I do that? Must I do that? I feel almost that I close the path to a  journey when I choose to academize it. Is an academics that allows for the affect possible, even valid, when it is almost a deliberate a-politic? Well, perhaps then, silly Me(s), do your academics while you can, and when not, flee to life!