Wonder or Wander

Feb. 16th. Dr. Ghosh and Dr. Hoechsmann Feb. 19th. Dr. Ghosh and Dr. Mitchell When I said, "I am again humbled," Dr. Ghosh responded I should be and even later on. Dr. Ghosh is very professional in a gentle way. Dr. Mitchell is always encouraging and full of energy. I do not know well enough to say about Dr. Hoechsmann, but he seems supportive and modest. In particular, today's meeting was more productive and ideas became clearer. I will remain humbled. Dr. Ghosh urges me to define the advantage of using video other than other methodologies. I should make a connection to feminism methodology and be able to answer this question thoroughly. Start from demographic overview based on Statistics in 2006. Then, scan studies about Korean, then women. Then, look for newspaper or other sources. Contact two faculty members. Contact Korean local community. In April, based on the survey, write up a proposal (questions and rationals, methodology and research questions, 3-5 pages) Look ...

Laurent Cantet (2008). This claustrophobic classroom is full of tensions between a teacher and his students and among students. But they are only visible tensions. Other teachers come into play and the seemingly fair and prudent principal keeps invisible tension to the end of the film. There are neither evils nor angels. Every teacher tries to keep their feet on an acrobat string suspended several feet above a dangerously dormant war, which stems from a long history of political disfranchisement and colonial-minded purposeful alienation. A documentary-like taste of this film is not just coming from the fact that multiple cameras were used to shoot the classroom. None of the actors are actually professionals. Students' actions are so spontaneous that I tend to forget it was specially staged. So immersed in the film, I painfully read an uncompromising distance between François (the teacher) and his students. I believe he is rather a good teacher although not ideal. He has to endure a...

Dear Kay, In response to your 4th journal ... Those are good questions and I don't have an answer for you. You will have to decide. I know it's not easy to decide. Why don't you try putting your present topic on the backburner and writing through your self-chosen "exile" (if I can put it that way)? If you were to produce some more journal entries on this, what would you say? Valerie Walkerdine says that it is important to pay attention to niggling things. In her case, it was the tendency in the discourse to talk about social class (a la Raymond Williams) without talking about the lived experience of social class, in this case, lower social class. So, she found herself in situations of being in people's homes that resembled her own upbringing, but she couldn't say that because it wasn't admissible in the academic discourse at the time. It niggled at her and niggled at her until finally, she decided to acknowledge where she came from and who she was and ...

Teresa wrote whether the informal learning that I took based on my initiative has been a structured experience. By and large, I question myself whether informal learning in her meaning has been just additional to my formal learning if formal learning meant only learning from the classes that I registered for. Last semester I took only two classes and even one of those was Pro-seminar, which is not directly related to my study. The other class was of a seminar type, not a lecture. In the end, I wrote a final paper, which was supposed to be an application of the methodologies we had talked about in class. Using some of the learned methodologies, I was expected to conduct research on a topic. It was rather exciting in a sense, feeling like a scholar on my own way, and was a synergistic combination between formal and informal learning. But, did it become my structured experience?

Hesse. (1920; 1972 in English). James Wright (Trans). NY: Farrar Straus & Giroux This book I wish to possess, saturated with lovely loneliness and simple yet sharp meditation, is composed of Hesse's watercolor paintings, proses and poems. (On the left, Gogh's oil painting, The Old Tower in the Field ) He appreciates the joy of life allotted to him. The dream of death is only the dark smoke Under which the fires of life are burning. He looks for motherhood as he seeks God. Heart, how torn you are, How blessed to plow down blindly, To think nothing, to know nothing, Only to breathe, only to feel. He learns from trees, Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life it not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God Speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all. ...

Herman Hesse (1932) Hesse's oriental mysticism and his perspicacious insight to human natures--their gifted talent for forgetting and their ever capricious soul--culminate in this novel divided into two parts. Meticulously interwoven plots brings this short piece to a concise unity although it was hard to grasp at the first glance. Probably its narrative style, built on the flow of mystical religious mind and subtle actions, makes the understanding the theme more difficult. I will have another time to read it over.

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) 1927 in German / 1929 first translated in English My inexplicable affinity to Hesse reoccurred in a dread time and I grabbed Steppenwolf again--I failed to read some years ago. While reading the first half of the story, a crispy-sharp icy chill penetrated my skin because of its needle-like high precision in describing human nature and striking resemblance to my own. Harry, who describes himself as half a man and half a wolf, a savage animal, suffers from the cacophony of the two kinds in himself. He, helpless bourgeois, longs for the innocent indulgence in bourgeoisie life in his youth, simultaneously detesting its unbearable lightness and vanity. Besides humanities that Hesse wished to preserve, his abomination of war appears to lie beneath the entire story grounded from the author's desperate exhortation to the world for self-reflection beyond politics. Harry's life makes a sharp turn when he gets to know an mysterious woman and his dark time climax...

3700 McTavish. December 15, 2008

Hamish Hamilton Pub. (1946). Camus' first novel, L'étranger shares the same breath on absurdity with Reflection on the Guillotine , which appears twofold in this novel: the first is his murder and the second the background of his accusation. Meursault only murmurs at the court that he murdered the Arab because of the sun, which is not persuasive in every sense. But the mise-en-scene of the story, laid out on a nearly unilateral evolution of the stifling power of the sun, as if all happened in one day, gives much excuse for his unintentional crime. His mothers' mortuary, a bright and spotlessly clean room with whitewashed walls, was flooded with skylight. While the undertakers were working, 'the sky was already a blaze of light and the air stoking up rapidly.' That Sunday morning, when Meursault walks out, 'the glare of the morning sun hit me in the eyes like a clenched fist.' Then, the light became almost vertical and the flare from the water seared one...

Camus, A. (1957). In Resistance, Rebellion and Death (1961). This research essay is worth a special note. As the title suggests, it is based on a historical analysis but nevertheless full of reflections and reasoning. He refuses purely sentimental confusion because it is made up of cowardice and eventually stands on the worst side. Every paragraph is written with his conviction. The supporting documents which described moments at the guillotine are as chilly as excoriating one's own. He argues that if the capital punishment is a regrettable necessity as its advocates say and an example in the effort of preventing another crime, the execution should be performed publicly and described vividly so that all others know. But the State hides it because such punishments paradoxically would blame the state for letting such crimes happen. Statistically those who faced capital punishment in fact had seen its execution in their life. So, criminals who commit such crimes are less likely to be...

Resistance, Rebellion and Death (1961). NY: Knopf. My inexplicable affection toward Camus reoccurred while reading Darkness Invisible. Death seems a reoccurring theme throughout his career. Understandably he was born one year before the WW I, lost his father during the war and fought under the German occupation. Thus, as McCarthy (1988) suggests, absurdity becomes a resolution in his view with religious first of all--it is man's capacity to be aware of the divine--and political connotations. Meursault's happiness is after all his domination on his body and fate. Within this context, the dividing line between murder and suicide becomes blurred. Here is some quotes from his essays or speeches. Man's greatness lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition --The Night of Truth, 8/25/1944, around the time Paris was taken back from Nazis. When that intelligence is snuffed out, the black night of dictatorship begins --Defense of Intelligence, 3/15/1945, against the new F...

A memoir of Madness. William Styron. (1990). He said he found the repose, assuagement of the tempest in his brain only after being hospitalized. Anonymity free from occupation in a startling solitude and a feeling of disconnectedness may bring one sanity back. Then, I wonder whether my long-term travels actually kept my sanity on track for the past few years. Didn't I feel so fresh among strangers who were unlikely to come to the edge of my life? And yet, I pay more attention to this episode: the author found the problem with his tranquilizer by accident before being admitted to the hospital. After changing it, his reoccurring suicidal obsession disappeared. It was that simple! He actually warns people of what they take for their mental health and slightly scorns habitual irresponsible tasks given by doctors. He also mentions his childhood with a memory of loss of his mother when he was thirteen. So-called, "incomplete morning" may preoccupy certain people especially a su...

Three months have passed at McGill. The time was not boring. Even though there were certain difficult moments where my spirit got low, one thing I do not regret is to come back to academia. New ideas and new thought have entered my mind and made my life coherent. EV at her graduation said that they had not come to the Odyssey Project with an empty vessel but with desire to reach higher complexity. What a great insight! Now, I invite five people in my dinner table. Who's going to be there? First my adviser, no question. But important is to be able to delineate what she could do for my dissertation work and what I should take away before I leave this school. Her ethnic background that allowed her to see a different world is strong and she made her career. I should learn her insightful ideas. Next, one from neoliberal globalization and education. I just got a message about REF series. Carlos Alberto Torres. I want to know more about him.

The term of journey is often encountered while describing the process of doctoral studies. Then, one may reach the point to compare doctoral students with tourists or travelers. First of all my instinct response to this questions is that doctoral students are travelers rather than tourists because travelers, in a general sense, are more independent to the ritual process that sticks around tourists, who hardly go about without a guide to look around or a prearranged planning. On the other hand, travelers are ready to meet new settings and new people on the road and be more flexible to change their routes on occasions. A plan is in their mind, but doesn't dominate the path absolutely. It is rather loose. Definitely looser than that of the tourists. Moreover, tourists usually spend a very short period of time, but travelers do more, although they may not embark on the traveling that often. Yeah, now I think that I am very morally comparing doctoral students with travelers. I mean, the...

The speaker talked mainly about work conditions for migrant manual workers. Among the topics he mentions, I note about domestic workers. Domestic workers, the majority of whom are Philippines, had been excluded from health/safety access because house was not considered as a work place. Through a campaign, health/safety regulations for the workers became legitimatized. I asked about skilled workers: Skilled workers may have work conditions as good as Canadians, but they may face similar situations that jeopardize their jobs. Where can these people go for help? Usually there are only a handful migrant skilled workers in an entire company and isolated from each other. When something comes up, it tends to be treated as a special case, relatively not-so-serious, and thus there are hardly collective resources where they can refer. I remember an online forum that skilled workers who are on the process of immigration share individual information in a pool to accumulate cases. A problem I see i...

Dear Dr. Kincheloe, I have encountered your emphasis on multiperspectivism several times, but I am not quite sure whether I understood the essence. I might include some other perspectives strategically as a vehicle to argue deficits of each perspective and assert my own. But I guess this is not what you meant. In addition, I wonder how I can maneuver this cubism as I limited on my subjectivity and won't give equal, or near equal emphasis to those perspectives. Don't I have my own questions and angles even before conducting research? Would you phrase your insight to this dilemma that I feel? Also, it seems that I am undertaking historiographical research for my term paper, not history itself, strictly speaking. Is it correct? Best regards, Kay ------------------ Bricolage comes across multiple levels from theoretical grounds to methodological strategies. For instance, interpreting a phenomenon without social theories will impoverish research and taking perspectives from critical...

Hannah Arendt. (1968). NY: Harcourt, Brace & World. "People remembered everything, but forgot what mattered," the author wrote somewhere in her essays about Rosa Luxemburg or Bretolt Brecht. I also like a quote from Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), "I have a cursed longing for happiness and am ready to haggle for my daily portion of happiness with all the stubbornness of a mule," in a letter designated to Jogiches, her cursed husband, which shows her natural force of a temperament, according to Arendt. Luxemburg, non-orthodox Marxist, was not so dogmatic to see the world based upon the dialectic theory and saw torture of negros in South Africa, the author argues. Arendt differentiates Luxemburg from Bolsheviks in that she preferred an unsuccessful revolution to a deformed one, where the people hold neither power nor voice. Arendt brings Sartre's shockingly precise description of after-WW II into the context where Bretolt Brecht (1898-1956), "gifted with a ...

There are six chairs in the dining table. Whom I will invite? Make up a list. Stay awakened at night and link about it.

When I know what I do and em expected to do, I am in charge. I think of the Video-Telling workshop, where I gathered all the resources I could possibly reach. Some succeeded and some didn't. When being in charge has a counterpart or anti-thesis that intends to empower others, one get empowered. It is a mutual process that two parts grow symbiotically. The beginning of the workshop was a meager attempt without envisioning its consequences, but once embarked, I simply could not let it happen. As philosophical journey brings about questions that researchers need to ask and leads to methodology to undertake, the outline of the workshop just came to the bottom of my mind and I simply answered without being tired.

by Bertold Brecht(translated from German by H. R. Hays) (Retrived from http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~flouris/docs/brecht1.html) 1. Indeed I live in the dark ages! A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens A hard heart. He who laughs Has not yet heard The terrible tidings. Ah, what an age it is When to speak of trees is almost a crime For it is a kind of silence about injustice! And he who walks calmly across the street, Is he not out of reach of his friends In trouble? It is true: I earn my living But, believe me, it is only an accident. Nothing that I do entitles me to eat my fill. By chance I was spared. (If my luck leaves me I am lost.) They tell me: eat and drink. Be glad you have it! But how can I eat and drink When my food is snatched from the hungry And my glass of water belongs to the thirsty? And yet I eat and drink. I would gladly be wise. The old books tell us what wisdom is: Avoid the strife of the world Live out your little time Fearing no on...