PTSD

On being here and there...or on the many ways of saying hello

A couple of weeks ago (it is probably mentioned in the emails we posted) my supervisor here recommended a read of Being and Time. Having heard of Heidegger (henceforth referred to as Mr H) in the past (Georgetown political theory class where Mr H was linked to Aldous Huxley) but never having read his work, I took the opportunity, during this time when the Danes hibernate/migrate/play genteel sports like Badminton (the Uni is closed for a week due to Easter), to try to do so. After attempting to read the first few chapters and finding I was having to make notes about what Mr H was trying to say, I decided on taking a temporary break and waiting until the weather was better (as if somehow that would help me interpret Mr H).

Why was reading Mr H so difficult? After all, I am not entirely unused to books which are better off used as paperweights or weapons (my sisters know of my penchant for murdering cockroaches in our room in Nepal with heavy hardcover editions of Shakespeare and Dickens). Ulysses was part of our high-school curriculum (no, I didn’t much like that either but I never thought it was painful to read. After all, Joyce’s people have a way with words). The thing about Mr H’s book was that it was very deceptive. It was small and in paperback, it looked innocuous. It had no sign of the horrors lurking within—the convoluted language, the difficulty in trying to understand what it was that he was saying, and also, once understood, it was like trying to see how this could work. Call it a remnant of a youth (mis)spent among various “agricultural growth areas” listening to an increasingly worried father wonder how anything could be made to grow among lands often flooded by the nearest big river (There are lots of them in Nepal), but I have been used to the problem-solving type of theory, not the “critical” approach. Did it really make much difference whether Dasein is here or there in time and history? (also, for those interested in connections and namings, there is a Japanese pop group called Dasein. I guess it would matter where THEY were in time. But then time itself acts wonky for Mr H). And, also, really, why do people keep writing things, which for the most part are rather obvious? Of course, there is Dasein, if you mean we see things around us as how it relates to us (and to each other). That is fairly obvious. So then I think there must have been more. But I missed it.

Thinking about that, I remembered what my Polish housemate (and fellow PhD Fellow) had pointed out a few weeks back—that her experience with Americans (two blokes in our Danish language class and another PhD fellow who left soon after) was that they always asked you how you were but never waited for the answer. Don’t they want to know? I thought about it. To me, it was fairly natural that you asked “How are you?” when you met someone and then moved on. Or waited for the stock answer(s) of “fine”, “okay”, “good”. After all, you don’t expect to hear someone’s life history at this time. And, since coming here in February, I have been asking people that question too. The response is usually “ok” but preceded by a brief hesitation. I had never paid attention to the hesitation until my housemate asked me this question.

But why do I ask people how THEY were—How are YOU?. I don’t say, “How’s it going?” (I used to but changed to the earlier version after being in the USA for some time). After all, in Nepali, the greeting (preceded by a gesture made by two hands together—we really don’t go in for touching each other!) is in the form of “how is it/to be” and the “to be” form changes according to whom you are addressing (“Kasto chha” to friends and younger people; “Kasto hunuhunchha” i.e. how to be+is to older people, etc). The pronoun is not necessary, especially as the verb would then change with the pronoun too. The answer, too, is similar. People don’t usually “I/WE are fine” but say “fine to be/is” (“Thik chha”). So each time, the status of being is being reiterated and also related to the things around you. This is similar in Thai with the question (the hand gesture remains the same—no wonder, I find the whole “let’s hug each other” concept in America rather disturbing) being “Sabai di?” (“Life/being well?”) and the answer being “Sabai” (Life/Being) or “Mai Sabai” (Not Life/being). Similarly, in Australian (yes, there is “Australian”, or at least Aussie terms), the question is “How’s it going?” or, among younger people or colleagues and mates, “All right?”. The answer to the latter question is just “right” and mainly “not too bad”. After all, excessive enthusiasm (“she’s a beaut!”) is reserved mostly for sporting occasions not for telling people how life is. In French, “ca va?” doesn’t have the pronoun either. Actually, when I thought about it, neither does Danish. The Danish greeting is apparently “Hvordan går det?” (How goes it?).

During all my recent reading of works on social construction (and even Mr H), I wonder—how can I, even if I think it is “natural” that we have different selves in different occasions and that selves are historically and socially-constituted and contingent, explain this when my world is constructed in such a way that emphasises the primacy of “I”? In my daily greetings, I reiterate this. I make myself exist and I make the other(s) whom I am asking about their being(s) exist. And I repeat this each day. Often several times a day. Elizabeth talks about pink paisley as a gesture of protest. Maybe it is a gesture of othering (btw, Elizabeth, check this out: paisley). By talking about you in my daily greetings, I am also othering. I am not asking how things are (around us, related to us both) but how that self is. If this were a football match, the score would be relationalism (I still have to come up with a good term for this) 0, self/individualism 1 each time.

The point remains that I still have to read Mr H. And, five days of closed shops and windy, cold weather await. So, if yous reading this know of any easy-to-read Mr H sites, pass them on. Maybe with that and with the (much appreciated) help of the Pythons, I can make it through Mr H. Maybe. In the meantime, I am sure there is someone else to other.

posted by Priya @ 8:35 AM