Joker wrote:

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Need to Know wrote: ...Respond in full....in detail....and without any typos. I was with you, Need to Know, until I read this last sentence.  You ask too much of professor Judd.

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Thank you, although I feel these days as though much of what I would have to say would only be redundant -- restatements of what others have already said quite well. So I've been content to listen in. Truth is, I have also been very busy -- like so many people either dealing with the physcial aftermath of Katrina or the emotions that I'm only now beginning to understand.

In the face of disaster and the destruction of so much of our community and the disruption of so many lives, I'm struggling to find a language that is adequate to the task of reminding such a community why it should, in its pain, still care about the university as a physical site and as an idea. The language of the recent past -- encompassing all of our definitions, all of our declarations, assertions and arguments -- is still true. But it no longer seems sufficient. And the anger that quite rightly informed so much of our discussion and rhetoric is no less justified now than it was then -- but I find myself trying to find a different way to express it -- a way that manages to acknowlege that the anger continues, while at the same time recognizing that in the presence of those who have lost so much, that anger now has to be placed within a spectrum of other feelings that have now necssarily and irrevocably appeared on the scene.

I hope all of that isn't too obtuse.

I do have some thoughts about the "State of the University" presentation  but it is a bit late to start them tonight. Of course, lots of folks out there must have some very strong feelings about it so . . . . since Need to Know has solicited direct reactions, have at it.

Until tomorrow.

Thanks to all of you who continue to keep the conversation alive . . . even when it must seem as though it is awfully silent these days. I believe I'm not the only one struggling to find a way to reengage. So don't stop.

 

stephen judd wrote:

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I believe I'm not the only one struggling to find a way to reengage. So don't stop.  

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No quarter!

Thanks for your post, Stephen. We are all indeed trying to negotiate our realities after the hurricane. Because of all the fast-forward confusion, I'm not sure that I ever posted here something I sent my colleagues in English. Even if I did post it on this message board, it seems relevant enough here to post it again. It's part of a talk C. S. Lewis presented during WW2 (please just filter out the "men" vs. "people," etc.):

"Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infititely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun . . . .

"Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of crises, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes. Periclean Athens leaves us not only the Parthenon but, significantly, the Funeral Oration. The insects have chosen a different line: they have sought first the material welfare and security of the hive, and presumably they have their reward. Men are different. They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our nature."

From "Learning in War-Time," The Weight of Glory (Macmillan, 1949, repr. 1980), 21-22.

Panache exists not only in the quote.

Thank you Dr. Lares! I too made a copy for my desk.

Best, Rachel Quinlivan

Victims R Us
I think you are misunderstanding what is being said here--particularly the quote from
C. S. Lewis that Dr. Lares posted. Everyone is working. Everyone is doing his/her job while sorting out the damage, both to home, to community, to state, to nation. But it is the mark of humankind to think about what has happened--be it happy or tragic.

There is a difference between thinking in "victim mode" -- I'm so pitiful, please feel sorry for me and absolve me from responsibility -- and being the victim of a terrible event which will cause emotional fallout. When I was a young military wife, I lived two blocks from the beach in Biloxi. When Camille threatened, we went to shelter at Keesler. We were not afraid, we were not in danger. However, the next day when we went home, we found what many on the coast now are finding -- ruination. Everything we had, not that it was much, was gone. But more than losing sheets, towels, pictures, books, treasures, was the terror of knowing what would have happened had we stayed. Bodies were found near our house. In those days, little was known of "post-traumatic stress" and its effects. We did as you say, we just went back to work and kept on keeping on. However, I will tell you again that PTS is real, its effects can be delayed and they can be serious.
Many of us experienced real terror and real loss in this storm. We will have effects from this experience. My friends in Chalmette will have a much, much harder time than me. They are going to work every day, rebuilding their lives and going forward. But do not minimize or trivialize the real pain that people will experience for a long time to come, even while they refuse to operate in "victim mode."

Victims R Us wrote:

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Thinking and working wrote: Victims R Us I think you are misunderstanding what is being said here--particularly the quote from C. S. Lewis that Dr. Lares posted. Everyone is working. Everyone is doing his/her job while sorting out the damage, both to home, to community, to state, to nation. But it is the mark of humankind to think about what has happened--be it happy or tragic. I understand that quite well. I also understand that there is an awful lot of "poor me" going on at USM. I hear it in the hallways daily.

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Your concluding sentence may be true -- I wouldn't know since there is very little of that going on in the hallways I walk through among whether faculty or students. However, I think it was entirely inappropriate to bring up in the context of this particular discussion in which the context was not "emotions" but priorities . . . . and how the present circumstances of our community may affect not only how we think about those priorities, but how we express them.

Jameela's very lovely citation of C.S. Lewis expresses the exact opposite of victimhood. It celebrates the fact that human beings not only continue to struggle for survival but they will also, inevitably, look for more than mere survival.  

Looking back on the entries, I see very little self pity among the discussants. So I will assume that you unintentionally conflated your own concerns about those whom you identify as allowing themselves to be vicitimized with a group of people who are doing what intellectuals, academics and generally thoughtful people do -- using their collective brainpower to put new shared, experience into some kind of meaningful (and perhaps useful) context. 

Discussion does not rule out action, as you seem to imply. Most of the people on this board spend a big chunk of their days "getting off their asses" -- so to speak -- so to come together on a message board to share thoughts about what has and is happening is hardly an indication of any of the qualties of victimization you cite. I completely fail to understand what the raising of the issue was intended to add to the conversation.