The Current Tragedies

[Kate Riley]

Thank you, Richard, for the chance to broach 'this' both personally and
intellectually.  And thanks to Paul and Kerim for their intelligent
responses.

I was standing in front of my undergraduate intro to lang, culture, and
society class last night (U of Vermont), trying to think how to help channel
the shock, anger, sadness, and helplessness.  I felt a sense of heavy
responsibility  and a great vulnerability.  I'm one of  the 6% (is it?) in
the US who would not presently condone a military response and increased
military spending -- an attempt to seal the metonymic container and reify
"our" significance as the all-powerful leader of "liberty" -- despite my
very, very heavy heart.

We were scheduled to discuss the formal properties of language...  I
scuttled it and went to the notion that talk IS action  -- that it can
create cultural ideologies of destruction (via iconic/indexical/symbolic
semiosis, news "reporting", religious socialization, and political oratory),
but that it can also mediate cross-cultural understanding (via the
intersubjective experience of polyvocal and heteroglossic dialogue).  But
mostly I let these forty 20-year-olds talk about how they had used language
(and silence) to process the events.  This talk helped me process too, but
not enough.

I am still puzzling about my own sense of metonymic violation (do I actually
have patriotic sentiments? or is it closer to 'home', my identification with
the city, its skyline and people?).  How does one both deal with that and
keep an eye on all the larger frames?  I understand that this sense of
paradox must be beyond familiar to anyone committed to non-violent
resistance who lives in Iraq, Palestine, Belfast, etc.  But, of course, it's
all new to most Americans, of which I am, at least by indexical
idenitification, a token.

My metaphor of the moment is that this may be one of those moments when the
fabric of American social life begins to unravel, as it did for the Aztecs
when the Conquistadors landed (or when the Germanic "barbarians" overran
Roman "civilization").  But rather than polarizing these events via imagery
of chaos and darkness overtaking order and light, I hope to use the fraying
tatters to weave connections to others both without and within the US who
share the desire to embrace peace instead of violence.

Kate Riley
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard J. Senghas" <Richard.Senghas at sonoma.edu>
To: "Linganth List" <linganth at cc.rochester.edu>
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 1:28 AM
Subject: The Current Tragedies


> Hello Linganth Folk,
>
> No doubt many of you are still dealing with a wave of complex reactions to
> the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. To our colleagues
in
> New York City: I imagine this has been an horrific experience. I hope you
> all are safe and sound.
>
> I believe we anthropologists have an opportunity to make a very positive
> contribution right now. I'm interested in hearing about what analyses that
> some of you might be doing on the current crisis involving the terrorist
> attacks on US targets. Anything worth sharing? Has anyone got pointers to
> good materials to use to help (lay) folk make sense of this whole thing?
I'm
> particularly interested in resources anyone might be using for
undergraduate
> coursework.
>
> I'm finding one of my biggest challenges this week is getting people to
> recognize that these actions can't be simultaneously well-coordinated and
> executed attacks AND be merely senseless violence. The trick is how to
> present the various positions as understandable (I'm saying nothing about
> excusable at this point) so that we can work for structural changes that
> could prevent the likelihood that anyone would resort to    such brutal
> forms of "communication". Also, I find myself worrying about the
possibility
> of misdirected backlash against minority groups and positions. How do we
> prevent escalation of the violence? The stakes have been far too high for
> far too long; we must circumvent this feedback loop.
>
> To our many subscribers outside of the US: what's the view of all this
from
> where you are?
>
> And finally, as list administrator, I take the liberty of offering this
list
> as a channel of support for any of you directly affected by the these
> tragedies. Feel free to put out calls for assistance, especially if your
> needs might draw on subscribers professional expertise in cross-cultural
and
> communicative.
>
> Peace,
>
> -Richard
> ======================================================================
> Richard J Senghas, Assoc Professor       | Sonoma State University
> Department of Anthropology/Linguistics   | 1801 East Cotati Avenue
> Coordinator, Linguistics & TESL Programs | Rohnert Park, CA 94928-3609
> Richard.Senghas at sonoma.edu               | 707-664-3920 (fax)