the naked gaze 肉眼

The Spirit of Money

In his well-known essay on rail travel, Michel de Certeau compares travel to “'traveling incarceration,” the condition of being “immobile inside the train, seeing immobile things slip by.” It is a very similar sense of incarceration or entrapment which the Hong Kong journalist Yuen Yongding (Alex Man) feels, in Stanley Kwan’s 关锦鹏 1988 film Rouge 胭脂扣, as he gradually realizes that the mysterious woman who has been following him and now is nostalgically recalling her trips to the now-defunct theatre, is in actuality a ghost. Terrified, Yuen rushes to a window at the back of the bus and starts shaking it violently, as if the bus actually were his prison.

In fact, the two of them had been just sitting by the window, “seeing immobile things go by.” Simultaneously “immobile” and extraordinarily “slip[pery],” these “things” which they were observing were historical sites which Fleur (Anita Mui), the ghostly courtesan, remembered from her youthful days. The old brothel, she notes with wry amusement, has been converted into a kindergarten. The old Tai-ping theatre, meanwhile, has been replaced with a 7-11, and it is precisely Fleur’s baroque descriptions of visiting the theatre every weekend with her fellow courtesans.

As Fleur narrates these vivid memories—and as the camera itself is momentarily drawn into that nostalgic space as well—Yuen becomes increasingly anxious and distressed, ultimately standing up and asking her in horror, “What are you? You’re not human.” She is, in fact, a trace of the city itself, a splinter of nostalgic investment which had succeeded in inserting itself under his skin, invading the prison-like sanctity of the public tram.

Nature vs. Nurture

(Many thanks to Abbas Raza for a couple of reposts at 3 Quarks Daily. 3QD is an excellent filter blog which brings together a daily collection of articles "in the areas       of science, design, literature, current affairs, art, and anything else       we deem inherently fascinating". In the spirit of this sort of cross-disciplinary eclecticism, in the following post I consider some of the social implications of current debates over evolution.)

A recent lengthy article by Gina Kolata in the Times on anatomical and physical differences between the average American a century ago and today cited the University of Chicago economist Robert W. Fogel to the effect that

Over the past 100 years … humans in the industrialized world have undergone a form of evolution that is unique not only to humankind, but unique among the 7,000 or so generations of humans who have ever inhabited the earth.

Of course, the article hurries to explain, the “evolution” being referred to here involves not “changes in genes, as far as is known, but changes in the human form.” Instead, it is argued that these “changes in the human form,” are actually due to environmental factors such as nutrition, etc. (and particularly, it is argued, conditions during fetal gestation).

Fogel’s non-Darwinian use of the term “evolution” here is actually quite timely, given current debates in Kansas and elsewhere over whether “intelligent design” should be considered a valid alternative to evolution in schools. Even beyond the design vs. evolution “debate,” however, Fogel’s discussion of a “form of evolution” to describe changes due to environmental conditions rather than genetic mutations underscores a series of controversies with the scientific community, as well as within society at large .

Strangers in a Strange Land

(Some friendly links have introduced me to a couple of blogs I was not previously aware of. First, there is the fascinating blog Supernaut by an occasionally China-based choreographer who also appears to be a double (redoubled?) transsexual, who posted  (reposted) my recent blog on Shi Shuqing’s Her Name is Butterfly. Second, the French-language blog Poxx: Un aire de déjà vu cites
my recent post on Never Let Me Go in the context of a more general discussion of Ishigura’s novels. Speaking of discovering blogs, the following post is about a fascinating Spanish-language blog I recently discovered, and the network of Sino-Spanish blogs which he himself recently discovered).

While living in self-imposed exile in Italy following the June 4th Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, Zhang Dali 张大力 found himself feeling lonely and alienated in this foreign culture. As a result, Zhang created what was essentially a graphic "signature" of his own self-image—a minimalist profile with an accentuated brow-line and thick lips drawn with a single stroke of black spray paint—and then started painting this image on public walls throughout the city. In a recent biographical sketch of the artist, the art critic Wen Pulin 溫普林 recalls his old friend's own description of how he originally began to practice this graffiti:

[Zhang resolved, a]t the very least I was determined to have this city remember me. Upon reflection, he decided that his most Asian feature was the "Northeastern" shape of his skull—a large head without a "spoon-like" protrusion in the back. Therefore, he started leaving graffiti images of his profile in streets and alleys throughout the city. "Next to my [Zhang Dali's] drawings, I would also write Chinese characters, to let people know that this had been drawn by a Chinese. I simply wrote anything that came to mind, because in Italy, the significance of a Chinese character is simply to denote the Orient, and my intention was to initiate a dialogue. Two days later I went back to take a look, and found that people had written in Italian over my drawing. Therefore, I took a photograph of the sketched head, and that was how I came up with this idea." The first person had written, "Who are you?" Zhang Dali was very excited. When he went back the next day, he found that someone had written, "Fuck your mother," and "You fucking fascist." Some people thought that he was a skin-head, while others painted a Communist hammer and sickle over his sketch (江湖飄：中國前衛藝術家外傳 (上), p. 17).

As Wen concludes ironically, “It can be said that Zhang Dali's dialogue in Italy was a success.” This initial response to his work, therefore, encouraged Zhang to continue his graffiti, which over the following decade (including after returning to Beijing) not only developed into a highly distinctive and nuanced art-form, but also came to function as a powerful emblem of Zhang's own public identity.

Last week, the expatriate author of the blog Chinochano wrote about some obscene graffiti some children had written on a wall in Beijing, and then segues into an interesting discussion of public wall-writing in China—mentioning, of course, Zhang Dali, among other examples.

The next day, Chinochano published another post on athletics in China, the first comment to which (written by a certain Jorge/Jason Rap) had no direct relevance to the post itself:

你好.我是西班牙出生的中国人.很想跟其它的华人聊天.
我很高兴发现这个网络

［Hello, I am a Spanish-born Chinese, and am very interested in chatting with other Chinese. I am very happy to have found this web-site.]

Coincidentally, perhaps, the sentiment expressed in this comment echoes quite directly Zhang Dali’s sense of cultural alienation while living in Italy, with Chinochano’s blog being used as a sort of virtual “wall” for public expression.

Advocacy and Analysis

In an Op-ed column in this past Sunday’s NY Times, Stanley Fish discussed the case of Kevin Barrett, the University of Wisconsin Ph.D. and coordinator for the “Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth,” who is scheduled to teach a course on “Islam: Religion and Culture” this fall, but who has argued that the US government was directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks. After he discussed these views on a conservative talk show, State Representative Stephen Nass (R) lead calls for Barrett’s dismissal from the university.

In his editorial, Fish argues that much of the ensuing controversy over whether or not  Barrett’s political opinions should be protected misses the point of what “academic freedom” does and does not cover. The point of academic freedom, Fish argues, “has nothing to do with content,” but rather “is the freedom of academics to study anything they like; the freedom, that is, to subject any body of material, however unpromising it might seem, to academic interrogation and analysis.”  Therefore, he concludes,

Any idea can be brought into the classroom if the point is to inquire into its structure, history, influence and so forth. But no idea belongs in the classroom if the point of introducing it is to recruit your students for the political agenda it may be thought to imply.

Ironically, Fish’s essay advocating a clear distinction between advocacy and analysis has been roundly criticized for its implicit ideological agenda (for some of these discussions, see Long Sunday and Sherman Don).

I, too, will consider Fish’s editorial and the issues it raises, but will approach them somewhat indirectly, by turning first to two other recent incidents which underscore the power of speech and its implicit limits. On July 9th, Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt of Marco Materazzi was in response to verbal taunting. Although FIFA states that both parties denied that the taunting was racist in nature, they nevertheless gave Materazzi a surprisingly harsh two-game suspension. More recently, on July 28 Mel Gibson was pulled over for drunken driving, and proceeded to launch into a profanity laced, anti-Semitic tirade, saying among other things, "F------ Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."

Although there are numerous important distinctions between the Materazzi, Gibson and Barrett controversies, there are nevertheless suggestive points of convergence between the three incidents, ones which inevitably complicate any simple response to the Barrett matter.