-----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
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