-----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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