The East and the Orient

In a stressful mood I ventured down to the tobacco store (No!) to buy some classy cigarettes (to make my smoking an exclusive event). The guy at the cash register was a fat bullshitter type who ended asking me what I do. I told him I studied geography and he did the usual not-familiar-with-academic-geography thing - he started asking me capital trivia. What is the capital of South Africa? (FYI, this is trick question - multiple capitals) Australia? Canada? And then another geographical question: What are the furthest north, south, west, and east states? His answer for north, west and east was Alaska. "Alaska is where the East begins!"

On Ken Rockwell's (the photographer-reviewer-self-promoter) website he has an entry on "Oriental" cameras. He considers cameras made in East Asia "Oriental," as he argues that the term only applies to the eastern part of the continent - Russia is not part of it.

I thought about writing him some hatemail to persuade him to drop the terminology, but decided that he would probably disregard it in his narcissism. Maybe I still should, though...

So what is my beef with the tobacco store guy and Ken Rockwell? Conceptions of the "East" and "Oriental" are both grossly misapplied terms. The "The Myth of Continents," a book by Martin Lewis and Karen Wigen, goes in depth about the contradictory nature of metageographical terms. The two terms I have picked out for this blog entry have come to be almost empty terms in regards to actual places. They are, however, loaded with essentialist ideas. The following is an excerpt from a precis I wrote earlier this quarter about "The Myth of Continents." I highly recommend this book:

"Said’s 'Orientalism' is to be commended for its exposure of the West’s construction of an illusional Orient. From this deconstructionist viewpoint, we can see the varying borders of the historical Orient. The Orient began mostly as the Near East studied by philologists. It was later used for the Middle East and North Africa, sort of an indicator for Islamic lands. As more contact was made with South and East Asia, those lands came to typify the Orient. Hegel discussed four Oriental zones, and two of them Persia and Egypt were 'historical buffers,' points were purely Oriental ideas were diffused into more civilized forms (due to their proximity to Europe). Japan itself adopted the label of the East (an idea tied to the Orient) and saw itself as a special exception to its sluggish progress and as a leader to the region. Western culture has shifted its conceptual borders with the East constantly since the Middle Ages. At times, the West seems to be little more than Anglo-America. Events like the Great Schism divided Europe religiously, and this event has been used to compare the Cold War division of Western and Eastern Europe. Russia has always been on the cusp of continents, and Communism is often seen as an anti-Western doctrine. In the last fifty years, battles in the defense of Western freedom and democracy have been waged on these grounds (Huntington Thesis). Further, due to Central Europe’s role in the Second World War, how could places like Germany be truly Western? Something Asiatic is perceived in the uncivilized events of Nazi Germany and the war’s eastern front. In the globalized world, there is still a curious notion as Globalization as nothing more than Westernization. If this is true, labeling Japan as Eastern would be as hard as putting it in the West.
Since the Enlightenment, the East evolved as a place ever more stagnant and barbaric. The technological and colonial advance of Europe marked the Orient as a land of irrational and aesthetically minded peoples without humor or freedom. Rationality was seen as a uniquely Western ideal. Weber saw notions of salvation in Eastern religions as the cul-de-sac of contemplation – Asian people had simply given up on rational and progressive thinking. The West itself has never been fully rational. Technological advancement and capitalism are not unique to Europe. Many Enlightenment thinkers operated on Deist and teleological schemes, embracing a mystical framework to be rational within. Many theories that label the East as irrational are irrational themselves, such as Asiatic despotism and hydraulic despotism."

For all these reasons, I think the terms should be thrown out of our daily discourse!!

Clifford Geertz and "Deep Play"

This is essay is oft-cited in the works of both sociologists and anthropologists. Geertz uses Jeremy Benthams concept of "deep play," or high stakes games, to examine why someone might engage in betting game where they are in over their heads. By the end of the essay, the Balinese cockfight comes across as a sociological reflection of status, kinship, inter-personal conflict, and affirmations, denials, and explorations of masculinity, animality, and the seedy underbelly of human existance. The "deeper" the play, the more engaged the Balinese are with the conflict, and the higher the stakes, the more meaning is attached to the fight. A "shallow" game arouses little interest and is explemplified by two out of towners pitting their cocks against eachother. The audience cares little about the outcome. When family is involved, the Balinese are much more engaged. Betting together on a cock seems to reaffirm ties, to resolve petty conflicts that have emerged outside, and to wage a symbolic war on another clan. The greatest fights are high-bet, well matched fights, and the winners get to revel in their symbolic triumph. Geertz stresses that there are not "real world" consequences to these fights. A poor cockfighter from far away can't come to the city and rise himself to wealth and riches by cockfight victories. The fight is a story the Balinese "tell themselves about themselves" and reflects more the emotions and desires of people and day-to-day realities of class.

I like this style of "thick description" that Geertz engages in. When I am reading anthropological texts, these are the kinds of works I favor. Bruce Kapferer's "Celebration of Demons" read along similar lines, but without the theoretical insight. The context of the fight and accompanying explanation of symbols and society make the text seem solid. Today, I can imagine that such texts are frowned upon within anthropology for the assumptions they make when connecting people and their actions so clearly to stated cultural "realities." Is the cock truly an extension of the man? This would seem a slam dunk, as the accompanying language (cock jokes) and fights (bloodthirsty spasms of violence) seem tenable evidence of the masculine. Is this too easy of an assumption, playing into categories defined by Western culture? Perhaps the whole recognizableness and understandability of the cockfight is simple misinterpretation of a culture specific event. I'm not so convinced.

In American society, is the sportscar no more than the Balinese cock? Or the boxing match no more than a cockfight? At a boxing match we see two men duking it out until one of them figuratively dies - a total knockout. People may win money this way, and some could gain fortunes, though many more are labelled "compulsive gamblers" (like the social outcasts in Geertz's analysis). These sports, in their advertising, their cast make-up, and their allusions, are all very masculine. One only has to look at American pro-sports to see how male-dominated these sorts of sports are.

Looking back at the social symbolism and kin level cohesiveness that stem from the Balinese cockfight, I couldn't help but think of a Milwaukee Brewers baseball game. A Brewers game can be read in many different ways - through a child enjoying a sport with his family, through inattentive executives economically bonding over the distant game below, or, as it seems in Milwaukee, through drunken devotion to the home team. The latter resembles kinship bonding, it builds a sense of community. The enemy is the opposing team, and nearby rivals pose the most exciting foes. For Milwaukee, Chicago and Minnesota games are the most exciting, a sort of regional rivalry plays itself out. In standings, the divisions are regional, and being above the Cubs is a palpable goal. Outsider teams get less attention, and one can imagine that an Astros-Cubs game at Miller Park will draw little local enthusiasm. Well-matched games against rivals (the other local clan?) are the most exciting, and the ones that seem to foster the most local identity. What really defines blue-collar Brewers fans from Cubs fans? Probably not a whole lot, but these games serve as occasions to drum up some sort of hatred - conveyed through insults and possible fan altercations. Blood really starts to flow. The players on the teams are interchangeable. Though heroes may come and go, the teams persist through the decades, and though they get better or worse depending on the players and management, these facts are washed over with the power of the time-honored institution of Major League Baseball.

So how is this baseball game a story we tell ourselves about ourselves. First, it is that we are different from our Other, our rival. Insults based on stereotypical Chicagoans will surface, and laudable traits of Milwaukeeans will be created and reinforced during the game. Colors and symbols easily mark who is with you and who is not. Does the game say anything about social structure? In Geertz's ethnography, children, women, the disabled, and the outcast all engage in minor games at the periphery of the cockfight, engaging indirectly with the main festival of proud violence and social justification. At a baseball game we see elements of societal structure within the setup of the ballpark itself. The bleachers and nose-bleeders are the cheapest sections, followed by the upper deck, the lower deck, and finally, the skyboxes. For a geographer, this is interesting to ruminate on. The closer to the field the better, unless you have the chance of getting hit with a ball or you can't see anything. The further away you are the worse the seats, unless you are in a skybox. But those in skyboxes are hardly engaged in the play by play experience of the game anyway. For all, the game is probably a bonding experience of some sort. But those that would enjoy the game the most for its community-reinforcement and "deep play" are in the cheaper seats. Money is seldom at stake, but pride is, and like in Geertz's cockfights, when the game is said and done, nothing will actually change in social-economic structure of two major cities. Milwaukee won't be as important and respected as Chicago if they sweep the Cubs, but to some of the crowd, a symbolic victory will have been won, and pride will run deeper.

Schopenhauer and Love

Looking at The Metaphysics of Love today, it is easy to cast it aside as out-of-date ruminations from a bygone era. Schopenhauer claims the will to live and the will of the species are linked to biological instincts that instill in us a compulsion to mate. Love is reduced to the biological tendency to find a mate. A man (who is Schopenhauer's subject) and a woman will come together to reform the Platonic Ideal of the human species. Passionate love is more or less humans flouting their individual selves and taking on the heroic role of species-first reproduction. A man will run climb the tallest mountain, dodge bullets and endure cultural ostracism to fulfill his passionate desire to meld with the object of his desire (and compulsion). In popular literature of the times, such a man was honorable in his sacrifices for obtaining this love. Honor is a value that exists for the greater good of the species; the child that results from the strenuous courtship is the ultimate goal.

"The will of a man of this kind has become engulfed in that of the species, or the will of the species has obtained so great an ascendency over the will of the individual that if such a man cannot be effective in the manifestation of the first, he disdains to be so in the last. The individual in this case is too weak a vessel to bear the infinite longing of the will of the species concentrated upon a definite object. When this is the case suicide is the result, and
sometimes suicide of the two lovers; unless nature, to prevent this, causes insanity, which then enshrouds with its veil the consciousness of so hopeless a condition..."

Romeo and Juliet are but weak vessels for the continuity of the species, losing sight of the species in their extreme passion.

All of the talk of will of species and our inherent desire for biological satisfaction really seems to cheapen love, but maintaining its mystery is not Schopenhauer's goal. He does not discuss homosexual love and only mentions pedastry in passing and as a simple deprivation. One must wonder if love can exist outside of reproduction, Schopenhauer doesn't seem to allow it. Even marriage - the ultimate symbol of enduring love seems a bit of a sham.The most successful marriages come out of arrangement or friendship - passionate lovers are doomed to misery and hatred for each other.

Schopenhauer's laws of attraction seem quite absurd. That those who deviate from the Ideal (most of us) mate with our bodily and dispositional opposite in order to reform the Ideal. Two fat people are doomed to have fat children, while a fat person and a boney person are likely to have normal child. A bit too simple, isn't it?

How does Schopenhauer's argument hold up in our increasingly post-modern society?

I couldn't help but agree with some his ideas about the stereotypically most attractive mates. If anything, this shows how little our culture has changed from that of the early 19th century in some regards. Men are to be kind of heart and muscular. Their intelligence is not the most important aspect for women, who are drawn mainly to strength and courage. Indeed, in contemporary American media, the courageous and heavily armed warrior still wins out over the scrawny book learner, no matter how astute he is (much to the dismay of budding scholars such as I). For women, the mainstream ideal seems to be witty and sexy woman. Driving through Los Angeles I can't help but be bombarded with billboards of buxom women every time I go out. Advertisements for breast augmentations and plastic surgery abound. Schopenhauer's take on attraction and the physical characteristics of the female still holds in today's culture, the "upward or downward turn of the nose" can still make or break a female in Hollywood.

For Schopenhauer, men look for in women "a certain plumpness, in other words, a superabundance of the vegetative function, plasticity," adding "excessive thinness strikingly repels us." At first this seems to be a break with the times: in an age of mega-obesity - thin is in. But on further thought, a peculiar breed of fashion models are striking for their attenuated limbs, sunken cheeks, and jarringly inhuman features. In recent years there has been a public outcry to ban bone-thin models for their own health and out of fear that they may spur others to anorexia and bulimia in emulation of their supposedly glamorous identities.
























So it would seem to me that the door isn't shut on all of Schopenhauer's musings. Though many today eschew any sort of intrinsic biological desire for species perpetuation in explanations for human behavior, it does not seem completely absurd to me. This work (like most of its era) is limited by restricting most of love's agency to the heterosexual man and by scientifically obsolete ideas about heredity, biology and sex.

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