Honors III

Prof. Harvey

Next Semester Project

--maybe we will construct a course website with map of locales of individual projects

--some projects will be websites; for others I would create links to standard essay pages

--perhaps would or would not be accessible by the public

--you write for the “public” not for me

--read feedback but don’t think about it, let your subconscious think about it

Theory of Otherness and Subjectivity/Objectivity (read this in conjunction with earlier course summary sheet)

--when cultural otherness is presented totally objectively, in some reference-book like fashion, you learn about but don’t feel the culture

--if there is too much of you (“I saw… I felt”), however, “you” can get in the way of seeing the culture.   The reader becomes interested in you--or distracted by you—rather than the cultural otherness!

--so, almost paradoxically, there seems to be needed a residual amount (but not too much) of you in a description of otherness to make the otherness come across to the reader

--to put it differently: the “other” cannot exist unless there is a perspective “seeing” it

--that is why I get to know, for instance, the Holocaust Memorial better by a report written from a thoughtful tourist perspective than by whatever guidebook the Memorial curators themselves provide

--but you have to be careful not to get too much “you” into the project conveying otherness

--in fact, the only purpose the “you” serves is to get us corporeally situated within the realm of otherness

Films and Otherness

--the reason film is so powerful: unlike virtually any other art form, it situates “us” within the depicted realm.   We almost, as it were, respond physiologically to the experience of being in that “other” realm because we are corporeally (at least thru the visual sense) within the other realm

--but: the reason we remain detached, is that the “otherness” of the filmic world, the “others” in the film do not look back at us.  Our gaze is in the film world, but in another sense not in it.  Thus the passage in the article:  “The world and space of the cinema screen is something that is physically inaccessible to me. There exists an irreconcilable physical gap between what is there on the screen (where I am not) and what is here with me. The recognition of such distance largely manifests itself, presumably, in the state of disengagement or detachment that the audience assumes with respect to what is projected onto the screen. They look upon a world whose physical details are similar to those of the world we are ordinarily familiar with, but also enjoy a kind of unreality that leaves them safe in the thought that the inhabitants of the world and space they peer in on cannot reciprocate that gaze.”

--now the curious thing: reality differs in that we assume there is subjectivity within the gaze of those who are “other” to us in the “real” world

--but as we know from the earlier “Bat” essay: how can you really contact the “me” experience of what is outside of you? 

--Thus from the film essay: “One's having a mind, thus, is essentially private. However, how can I be certain of the existence of other minds, if I cannot directly access their immediate thoughts or mental life? At best, according to Descartes, I can only indirectly access other minds on the basis of behavioral criteria. (The implication here is that another's having a mind is modeled on my own mind and mental activity.)  There are also implications for the idea of cinema itself. If, for instance, literature--through the use of language--is able to access to, or provide us with insight into, the inner thoughts and lives of its characters, does this confine cinema to endlessly raising or being involved in the problem of other Cartesian minds? That is to say, if the photographic medium of cinema is said to capture the physical details of physical bodies in a material world, does this, in turning to human beings as cinematic objects, emphasize the inaccessibility of the private inner life of others? It would follow from this supposition that cinema only provides us with access to the behavioral manifestations of what is private and hidden. Perhaps more: that it commits us to a physicalist or materialist view of minds and the world.”

--please ponder all of the above: I write it so you can make connections about what we’ve been reading this semester and the teaching logic behind your projects

--for a last discussion-thread I will post a question about “otherness” and/or the film we are about to watch

The Film: “The Decalogue” by Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski (Part 1)

--10 50-minute films using (very, very loosely) the Ten Commandments for thematic cores

--all characters live in a Warsaw apartment complex

--a minor character in one will be emphasized in another segment

--I chose because stories are about middle-class life elsewhere… ourselves as “others” as it were

--I chose because the particular story foregrounds the behavior/interiority questions we’ve seen in respect to our anthropology readings, the “Bat” essay, and the film e-text essay: the father’s computer simulates will (remember his line about computers making aesthetic decisions); the TV image of the little boy simulates the little boy, who is dead (but the TV image has no interiority, no soul, etc.)