Just a short note in relation to my previous post (Roundhouses...). The BBC just reported on comments by two Latin American presidents on the effect of biofuels on food supply: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7359880.stm
Both Bolivian President Evo Morales and Peruvian President Alan Garcia stressed the negative effects of biofuels upon food supply and prices, harming vulnerable groups. The inflation of food prices and food supply issues have been repeatedly highlighted in the press over the last few months, I can recall reports on comments by major development agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on the critical issue of growing hunger in the world.
Now I'm not saying that biofuels are responsible for the overall rise in food prices, although I am sure that increased production of biofuels has played a part in this situation. These articles and continuing conversation, however, highlight the importance of caution in our strides towards alternative energy sources. We cannot focus upon a single product or mechanism for the production of energy and significant pre-application evaluation needs to be conducted on any energy source to understand the ramifications that follow its usage. Haste has not served us well in the past and given the havoc created by greenhouse gases, it is better to proceed with care.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Who am I?
In the fall of 2001, I was suffering from what seemed like the worst kind of writer's block, the kind where you have no words for your college entrance essay. There was nothing, I felt, interesting about the subject of "me", nothing worthy of penning down and sending to colleges across the world. There I was, a girl from a regular upper middle class family who could not see why there was anything about her that was remotely captivating. I didn't pity myself, I was perfectly content in my mundane lifestyle, I simply couldn't find anything to say.
And then, I picked up my pocketbook version of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I was hoping for some words of wisdom that would also resonate with me. Of course there was, the great Gibran never fails:
And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom."
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their won pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
--
Therein lay the key to my essay. I read the words and began thinking that true freedom didn't exist because we prevented its existence through our many worldly shackles. The reason I was unable to come up with anything to write about myself was because of all the labels I had imposed upon myself: "somewhat intelligent" "middle class" "average" and on and on and on. What I wanted was to write an essay about how those labels didn't mean anything in the end because they said nothing about me. Sounds rather trite, and appropriately dramatic for a teenager, seven years hence but there was and is truth in these words. Those labels, that part of my existence was abundantly clear through any college application. So I wrote instead something along the lines of: "I am not just a Muslim, not just a Pakistani, not just a women..." etc. I don't think I added in the phrase that "I am greater than the sum of my parts" though now I wish I had!
I didn't want some admissions officer to only see those things in me, I wanted them to see a person, an individual who didn't know quite yet what she wanted to be or how she wanted to get there because the journey was only just beginning. Good thing I got accepted into college on the basis of that "finding myself" essay...
And then, I picked up my pocketbook version of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I was hoping for some words of wisdom that would also resonate with me. Of course there was, the great Gibran never fails:
Freedom
And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom."
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their won pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
--
Therein lay the key to my essay. I read the words and began thinking that true freedom didn't exist because we prevented its existence through our many worldly shackles. The reason I was unable to come up with anything to write about myself was because of all the labels I had imposed upon myself: "somewhat intelligent" "middle class" "average" and on and on and on. What I wanted was to write an essay about how those labels didn't mean anything in the end because they said nothing about me. Sounds rather trite, and appropriately dramatic for a teenager, seven years hence but there was and is truth in these words. Those labels, that part of my existence was abundantly clear through any college application. So I wrote instead something along the lines of: "I am not just a Muslim, not just a Pakistani, not just a women..." etc. I don't think I added in the phrase that "I am greater than the sum of my parts" though now I wish I had!
I didn't want some admissions officer to only see those things in me, I wanted them to see a person, an individual who didn't know quite yet what she wanted to be or how she wanted to get there because the journey was only just beginning. Good thing I got accepted into college on the basis of that "finding myself" essay...
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Art History & World Consciousness
In 1982, the great art historian Oleg Grabar wrote an article titled: "On the Universality of the History of Art". The article is a short piece about how the discipline has progressed over the years to its present state (or rather, in the 80s), and what future progression may look like. As with any Grabar writing, it is spot on even in 2008, though this may be due to the slow mechanics of changing a discipline's methodology. The central crux of the paper is that art history has advanced beyond simply covering the canon of art as was put together, primarily, by Vasari in his Vitae, to include more artworks and regions than ever before. The problem remains, however, that despite this shift, the field remains stuck in a Eurocentric mode. One need only step into an introductory art history course and be reminded of this fact. Grabar says: "The day would come, some of us thought, when introductions to the history of art would be based on any artistic tradition and when African sculpture or Persian miniatures would help us to understand Bernini and Titian." (Grabar, p. 33)
This hope remains unrealised. Sure, in an introduction to the history of art and architecture, students will be taught about art from around the world, but Europe and, in the modern period, the United States, take a central role in this history with other histories acting as footnotes to this main body of knowledge. This is partly because the initial years of the field allowed for an extensive history to be drawn up of Western art, whereas the process is still in its infancy for most non-Western art histories. But there is also a deeper, more troubling (at least to my mind) reason why Euro-centrism continues to haunt us: The fact that many art historians believe that this is what students, no matter what their speciality or interest, should be taught, that because this is a Western field in Western universities, the West should be the focus. I find this very upsetting, both as a non-Western specialist, and as a non-Westerner.
I'm going to segway here into providing a little bit of background to how this blog, and more specifically, this last statement came about: Recently, I have expressed my dismay at the fact that the university's intro course spent its second half squarely in Europe and North America the entire time. As such, the department head, who is a lovely woman, occasionally chats with me about how the course can be changed. In this process, I stumbled across a book while at a bookstore (of course I went to the art history section, it's how I measure a store's worth!), that did not follow the canon per se. Instead, the author wrote a chronological history of art where, during every time period, he talked about art production the world over side by side. Not necessarily linking them all together, but presenting their simultaneous production so that a reader would come away knowing what went on the world over in, say the 12th century. It's still heavily Western, but its a start in moving away from the canon and similar troublesome things.
I showed the instructor the text as something for next year and it has been taken up well. Our conversation, however, did not go so well. I think this might have been my fault because I wasn't very tactful. Anyways, what happened was that the instructor mentioned that another possibility for next year's class had been to make up a coursepack with selected texts that would cover each period/region for the class. Now that is relatively easy to do with something like Impressionism which is a single philosophy, not so easy with others like African art which covers not simply an entire continent (save North Africa, which is shoved into Islamic art) but also an impossibly large timeline (prehistoric to today). Her solution was that for the places where a short summary could not be found/proved inadequate, instead a single issue would be the focus for that unit. The art shown in class would work in conjunction with this reading. Here was where I began my tactless statement by the way.
What I couldn't explain to her was that I found that ridiculous because to cover a single issue within a vast genre while managing to cover every little Western art movement was the reason why the course needed to be overhauled in the first place. It didn't change a thing! Why didn't we continue using Marilyn Stokstad or Gardener because they were doing that in their overpriced text books. What was more insulting was that she thinks that because there is more scholarship is available on Western art movements, its okay to teach more of it. The fact of the matter is, art historians are unwilling to spend less time on Europe. They'll happily spend more time on non-Western as long as it doesn't take away from them spending an entire lecture on Georges Seurat and pointillism for example. An entire lecture!
There's more than enough art historical information out there on non-Western art history to adequately inform an introductory course, the space needs to be taken away from Western art to make way for this information to be included. I don't think art history departments are willing to compromise here and that is the problem. Right now, I am unsure of how or even whether to continue with my complaints with the structure of the course because it tends to make me feel defensive, being that I am both a non-Western specialist and non-white on top of that, and leaves me seething in irritation. I also dislike being not nice to people, it's not my usual modus operandi and my last bit of tactlessness was not pleasant for me. I suspect that I will continue to be frustrated by this, since there seems to be no resolution in sight. Sorry to end on such a note but when I have happy things to say, I won't write on my blog! It's my form of therapy...cheap and unable to reply.
P.S. I use non-Western in this blog even though I rather dislike the term because I have no substitute that covers the same meaning.
This hope remains unrealised. Sure, in an introduction to the history of art and architecture, students will be taught about art from around the world, but Europe and, in the modern period, the United States, take a central role in this history with other histories acting as footnotes to this main body of knowledge. This is partly because the initial years of the field allowed for an extensive history to be drawn up of Western art, whereas the process is still in its infancy for most non-Western art histories. But there is also a deeper, more troubling (at least to my mind) reason why Euro-centrism continues to haunt us: The fact that many art historians believe that this is what students, no matter what their speciality or interest, should be taught, that because this is a Western field in Western universities, the West should be the focus. I find this very upsetting, both as a non-Western specialist, and as a non-Westerner.
I'm going to segway here into providing a little bit of background to how this blog, and more specifically, this last statement came about: Recently, I have expressed my dismay at the fact that the university's intro course spent its second half squarely in Europe and North America the entire time. As such, the department head, who is a lovely woman, occasionally chats with me about how the course can be changed. In this process, I stumbled across a book while at a bookstore (of course I went to the art history section, it's how I measure a store's worth!), that did not follow the canon per se. Instead, the author wrote a chronological history of art where, during every time period, he talked about art production the world over side by side. Not necessarily linking them all together, but presenting their simultaneous production so that a reader would come away knowing what went on the world over in, say the 12th century. It's still heavily Western, but its a start in moving away from the canon and similar troublesome things.
I showed the instructor the text as something for next year and it has been taken up well. Our conversation, however, did not go so well. I think this might have been my fault because I wasn't very tactful. Anyways, what happened was that the instructor mentioned that another possibility for next year's class had been to make up a coursepack with selected texts that would cover each period/region for the class. Now that is relatively easy to do with something like Impressionism which is a single philosophy, not so easy with others like African art which covers not simply an entire continent (save North Africa, which is shoved into Islamic art) but also an impossibly large timeline (prehistoric to today). Her solution was that for the places where a short summary could not be found/proved inadequate, instead a single issue would be the focus for that unit. The art shown in class would work in conjunction with this reading. Here was where I began my tactless statement by the way.
What I couldn't explain to her was that I found that ridiculous because to cover a single issue within a vast genre while managing to cover every little Western art movement was the reason why the course needed to be overhauled in the first place. It didn't change a thing! Why didn't we continue using Marilyn Stokstad or Gardener because they were doing that in their overpriced text books. What was more insulting was that she thinks that because there is more scholarship is available on Western art movements, its okay to teach more of it. The fact of the matter is, art historians are unwilling to spend less time on Europe. They'll happily spend more time on non-Western as long as it doesn't take away from them spending an entire lecture on Georges Seurat and pointillism for example. An entire lecture!
There's more than enough art historical information out there on non-Western art history to adequately inform an introductory course, the space needs to be taken away from Western art to make way for this information to be included. I don't think art history departments are willing to compromise here and that is the problem. Right now, I am unsure of how or even whether to continue with my complaints with the structure of the course because it tends to make me feel defensive, being that I am both a non-Western specialist and non-white on top of that, and leaves me seething in irritation. I also dislike being not nice to people, it's not my usual modus operandi and my last bit of tactlessness was not pleasant for me. I suspect that I will continue to be frustrated by this, since there seems to be no resolution in sight. Sorry to end on such a note but when I have happy things to say, I won't write on my blog! It's my form of therapy...cheap and unable to reply.
P.S. I use non-Western in this blog even though I rather dislike the term because I have no substitute that covers the same meaning.
Cult of the stupid
Apparently, I'm not the only one worried about the growing fashion of portraying non-intelligence. I just read an article (thanks to Claire's gchat msg :) which had the link) which has the same subject, albeit not relating to American Idol (see a few posts below for said topic):
http://blog.brevardyoungdemocrats.org/2008/03/obama-tests-americas-cult-of-ignorance.html
26 minutes a day reading, what a waste of all those Barnes & Noble and Borders. Books are cheaper than ever, you can even buy them at Costco...
http://blog.brevardyoungdemocrats.org/2008/03/obama-tests-americas-cult-of-ignorance.html
26 minutes a day reading, what a waste of all those Barnes & Noble and Borders. Books are cheaper than ever, you can even buy them at Costco...
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