Socially (Re)Constructed

Pondering Stickingness

2006-10-15T07:43:00.000-04:00

I subscribe to an e-service through which I get inspirational quotes everyday. This one, I thought, merited sharing:

"Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing until it gets there." – Josh Billings

This made me think about dissertating. Over the last 3 years my dissertation has been My Main Job. I've oscillated between times when I do nothing else but my dissertation - much easier to accomplish when it's field research since that doesn't require extended periods of isolation. Alas, writing is another story. Not that I don't like being myself or that I'm one of the folks who constantly craves company. But yes, what I do find difficult is sitting down by myself for hours at a stretch to write. Some suggest working from a coffee shop but I metamorphose into Bitchenstein because people talking completely derails my train of thought. So I do have to hole myself up.

Where am I going with this? I'm unsure about where I could take the postage stamp analogy. Does "sticking to one thing" mean working pulling a DNBD (Doing Nothing But Dissertating) so that you hide out in the proverbial ABD cave for months on end and resurface for light only when you finish a chapter perhaps? Or could it mean working consistently so that your life is divided into different segments - work a little, sleep a little, play a little? My accounting teacher in grades 10-13 (O Levels and A Levels for those of you familiar with the British schooling system) always told us to divide our days up in 3 equal segments of 8 hours so that a third was devoted to sleep, another third to playing, and the last third to working. Let's call this the "3 X 8" model.

To me, the latter makes sense although there are times when I have to go into ABD cave mode. I think I generally oscillate between these two but I can't really stay in the cave for longer than 3 days at a stretch. On the other hand, the "segmented" model is one with which I also have a tough time - when I start playing the id inside me just doesn't want to stop at times and then things get thrown way out of whack. That also translates into "cave time" because I feel the need to make it up.

But what if I could stick to the "3 X 8" model? After all doesn't a postage stamp see the rest of the world even when it's affixed to the same envelope?

I'm going to give that shot starting tomorrow....of course some of the third devoted to work will have to be spent on teaching prep rather than dissertating. Yup both qualify as work but the former doesn't quite get me anywhere with The Main Job - at least not directly. Either way I'm going to make a concerted effort to stick with this for a week - I'd like to be able to do this because I generally haven't been able to find a rhythm that'll last a month (which is what I think I really need to feel like I've gotten somewhere)...maybe this a momentum I can sustain for a longer period of time. Check back with me in a week if you're interested in an update.

Adieu O Pencil Ticker!

2006-10-15T07:38:00.000-04:00

Like I said to another colleague earlier this week, looking at that ticker on my blog was making me fairly apprehensive about coming round my own e-environs. I seriously thought it would disappear on its own after we reached the 00:00:00 point. That I didn't reach the finish line right then and that the ticker kept running to tell me how many days it had been since X was due was really bringing me down.

So it's gone.

Nopes the chapter didn't get done; but in its place I've been working on revisions since I got some great feedback from my chair on the first two chapters. They seem to be shaping up surely even if slowly.

Thought I'd share the little update. Now back to regularly scheduled programming aka Grading and then a break...after all I need to take at least a day off to recharge my batteries.

And yes I'll be posting more regularly now that the Intimidating Pencil isn't freaking me out!

Whew!

2006-08-25T08:42:00.000-04:00

The chapter that had become the bane of my (Ph.Ding) existence was (finally!) completed and submitted to my chair a little over a week ago. Needless to say celebrations and taking time off followed. I knew that I'd be relieved but I was surprised to find myself breathing easier. It's nice to have that weight lifted off my shoulder.

I've started working on one of the empirical chapters....so far most of it has been planning and reviewing of field notes that I jotted down in response to both interviews and other texts I'll be analyzing. There might even have been a specific epiphany. Stay tuned!

Seven Days, Six Nights: August 8-14

2006-08-08T12:37:00.000-04:00

I thought I'd put this out there so that I can't back out of any of this stuff, specifically submitting the chapter I'm working on currently to my chair and the writing group of which I am a part.

Submission Deadline for chapter: August 10, actually August 9 but I might (might) need the extra day.
Friday, August 11: Start working on the syllabus for the class I'll be teaching in the fall. Catch up on other logistical stuff that I've let slide. Read to prep for the next chapter
Saturday, August 12: Continue working on the syllabus + review reading notes relevant to the chapter I've started working on. An evening event I committed to eons ago that I don't think I can get out of....even though I would strongly prefer to do anything else other than be surrounded by family friends with narrow minds (ouch!) who will either ask me why I'm "still not married?" or avoid the question altogether and simply make a viciously worded statement along lines that imply I'm a man-hating feminist who is opposed to the idea of marriage. Of course there will be one other woman, besides me, whom I know who is also single. However, the fact that she isn't pursuing a Ph.D., has had two broken engagements, and is making money rather than student-ing usually exempts her from all of this. (I probably forgot to mention that this is an event at this family friends' house that happens every year so it's kind of expected that we show up). I don't know if the whole "marriage" discussion is worse than the "well why don't you solve The Problem?" referring to The Problem (although I like to call it a puzzle) which my dissertation is about or its cousin "shouldn't you be a diplomat or journalist by now?".
Sunday, August 13: Reward self for surviving "The Event" and submitting chapter by going to the movies. There is a new Bollywood movie out that I h-a-v-e to watch. Nopes I don't think it could qualify for inclusion in the dissertation but it is sheer indulgence on my part to please the "pop culture addict" and the "girly-girl" in me who wouldn't mind meeting "Mr. Good-Enough-Is-Perfect" sometime soon and has been foregoing a much-needed haircut to continue working on her dissertation.
Monday, August 14: Work resumes again; going to try out the new schedule (see previous post) that combines regular reading + note-taking in the AM with writing in the PM as I officially begin writing the next chapter.

The Challenge These Days....

2006-08-08T11:55:00.000-04:00

Now that I've developed a rhythm where I, at the very least, write during a pre-designated time on a daily basis, I've found that the biggest challenge I face everyday is opening the file for the chapter that I'm currently working on. I do feel restless if I haven't written on a particular day. Still, that doesn't make starting the task any easier. I think it also gets progressively intimidating the more time I've spent on a chapter. Or, to be more precise, this happens when I keep shifting deadlines for a particular chapter because I'm just not happy with the way it's turning out and know that something is missing but haven't quite gotten there yet.

There are days when I can just write the basic stuff that I know has to be in there. Other days I indulge the perfectionist in me and obsess like an ABD student possessed! Either way, it's a constant battle everyday to open the latest file in-progress.

Generally this is how a typical day is for me now that I've put myself on a social hiatus for the most part barring Sundays - yes I am doing the ABD to Ph.D. cave" thing 6 days a week + Sunday nights or mornings through the month of August:

Early morning to morning: wake up, eat breakfast, clean. Yes I try to get all distractions out of the way.
10ish am: sit in front of computer in an attempt to write but end up reading blogs and checking e-mail while mustering up the courage to open the file coded in red (Macs are cool like that) on my desktop - on some days I'll open the file and only manage a quick scan.
11:30 am circa: give up, go workout instead (yoga classes, gym, or if I'm pressed for time then treadmill time and a DVD it is!)
1 pm: shower, sit in front of the computer and re-check e-mail + respond, feel hungry, eat lunch while catching a re-run of a show I enjoy, quick prayer break.
2 pm: Back to work! Still can't open the file but manage to read an article or a book on most days to get myself in the groove. Or perhaps a quick phone chat with a colleague/friend to talk about chapter ideas or, if the day is going particularly horrendously, whine about PhDing.
4ish pm: Finally I muster the courage to open the file. Try to resist the urge to review what I have written if I already have an outline that will let me just plug in content. After another prayer break in between (5-10 minutes) I continue writing.
8ish pm: Since I've forgotten to consume so much as a glass of water for the last 4 hours I'm usually too thirsty and also ravenous to go any further. Call it a day even though I promised to start at 3 pm and end at 7 pm it's usually just after 8 pm that I tire myself out. Dinner with the family. Step outside to preserve my sanity; I'm glad it's summer btw! TV watching later to relax my brain plus catch up on the news.
11:30ish pm: Get ready to go to sleep.

And the cycle starts all over again the next day. What's the pattern here? That I can't seem to write before 4 pm no matter how hard I try.

Not that it isn't good that I've disciplined myself to write but I think I end up feeling somewhat scattered and overwhelmed for 2 reasons:
1. I keep trying to start earlier than I can which means I beat myself up the first half of the day.
2. There's no real systematic or regular time for planning built in. Okay sometimes in the 2 pm slot but that's not always the case. What happens then is that the referring to other books part of the deal happens in between writing - not that it's a bad thing but I think if I were to take some time out for planning and note-taking earlier in the morning rather than forcing myself to write in the mornings I'd be better off. How? I feel that reading helps jog "green points" aka good ideas/substantive points that I think of in response to an argument written by someone else. So instead of forcing myself to write during a time of day when I seem largely unable to perhaps reading at that time will help my writing tremendously by

a) Give me green points to incorporate into my writing when I do sit down in the afternoon. That'll probably add authority to my writing voice - not that I have a problem with that but it takes me a while to get there. Like all ABDs, I feel like I have to read everything to say something.
b) Currently, I tend to stop my writing in-between to refer to stuff. That can't be avoided completely but if I've read something relevant to the section(s) I plan to work on then perhaps the writing process will be smoother IMHO.
c) That I've read what I feel I need to will also minimize how overwhelmed I feel. Taking notes earlier in the day to prep for the section(s) I'll be writing will mean the stuff is fresh in my mind. Again, I won't be scrambling to find something I might have read months ago. I'll avoid feeling like I have to go into another cycle "re-reading" to be able to write and make claims which I think will probably save me a lot of time.
d) If I've read what I need to, more of those 4 hours that I write everyday will be devoted to putting down words on (virtual) paper. It sure would be nice to be done sooner than I anticipate :-).
e) If I feel prepared, perhaps opening that file won't feel quite as intimidating.

So, in that spirit, starting Monday morning (because today is a bit shot plus I didn't want to try to find a new rhythm to complete the chapter I'm working on currently which I think I'll be able to submit to my chair day after tomorrow if not tomorrow) when I begin working actively on the new chapter I'm going to commit to a schedule that incorporates regular reading/note-taking in the mornings and writing in the afternoons.

Now back to the dissertation.

The Abyss of Procrastination

2006-07-11T11:33:00.000-04:00

Check out the link above - it'll take you to a video on procrastination in the life of an ABD Ph.D. candidate. [In case the link is broken or not working for some reason the URL is http://www.ingredientx.com/watch/tales/procrast.htm]

Change the figure and the narrative of the day's events in this clip and it could be my day yesterday aka The Dissertation Day From Hell. For some bizarre reason, I couldn't get anything done yesterday. Not because I didn't have anything to say/write but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Of course the house is presently spic and span but that completely threw off what I had planned for yesterday.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that today will be a better day. Update tomorrow dear blogosphere....

From ABD to Ph.D: 7 Rules that I think seem to work.

2006-06-30T13:18:00.000-04:00

I've spent some time this morning hunting down and reading (quite closely, might I add) blogs of folks who have gone successfully from ABD to Ph.D. and blogged about the last leg of their journey since that's kind of where I'm at right now. [This exercise has been largely prompted by the realization that the chapter I was scheduled to finish today is not going to get done for no other reason than me being unable to get my butt in action for the last 3 days - not sure why but I think it has something to do with me telling folks that writing is going well and then it just comes to screeching halt...I think I'm jinxing it myself! Or to be more precise and not just shorthand it down to superstition, when I share with others the process that has been working well for me I think it sounds so much neater in the retelling that I end up setting ludicrous expectations for myself. So I'm back to square 1 - somewhat intimidated but largely overwhelmed as I wonder whether or not repeating this process will result in similar rewards. Of course it will but the neat story makes me wonder how I accomplished it in the first place i.e. I become trapped in my own neat narrative and forget how difficult and messy the actual experience was and expect myself to produce almost robotically and as effortlessly as the retelling makes it sound but isn't really the case.]

I'm happy to report that the tips and nuggets these ABD [All But Dissertation, for those of you wondering what the acronym stands for] bloggers shared that helped them just write "The-Darn-Thing" are all steps I've recently started taking and they seem to be working more often than not (when they don't it's entirely my fault for shying away and not making the effort...nopes I'm not lazy, just a bit intimidated every now and then). I'll admit that it feels kind of good to know that I've instinctively figured out some of this stuff from just doing it....of course I've probably also nagged my chair a great deal so the knowledge is not technically emanating just from yours truly.

The 7 most important realizations that have helped me gain some perspective and momentum (knock on wood) which is why I'm holding myself to them even when I don't want to. Thought I'd share with the blogosphere the rules I'm making myself obey henceforth till I defend after which I'll take a momentary break and then get back to it :-):

1. The "Good Enough" Rule:
As my chair put it in a recent e-mail exchange "letting good enough be good enough" is key. That doesn't mean I get it now - the perfectionist in me continues to want to go back and rework an existing draft multiple times. Still I remind myself of this when I notice my own obsessiveness getting the better of me. There needs to be an ongoing flow of "black words on white screen/paper".

2. The "Momentum Doesn't Just Happen, It Needs To Be Generated" Rule:
Allowing myself to stop when I still have "green points" in me has been very helpful. I was nervous initially about doing that since it is such a Herculean effort to get myself to sit down to write (as opposed to reading or taking notes for what I want to write eventually) and I was afraid I wouldn't remember the next day (my memory is awful when it comes to names or remembering all the intricacies of a thought). But if I kept going writing would almost always feel like I was punishing myself. Now I sit down each day and look at my outline to see which sections I can realistically tackle that day and just plod along. Sometimes I get it all done, sometimes it's less and sometimes more but there's stuff happening everyday.

3. "The Sky Doesn't Have To Be T-H-E Limit" Rule:
Part of the problem, especially if one has a tendency to procrastinate, is the notion that if no work got done on day X we'll make up for it tomorrow. It never works and the guilt continues to mount. So even if you know you're insanely behind draw up a new schedule that's actually realistic and stick to it. Once there's momentum I think one ends up working more than originally budgeted for but if we're setting ourselves up for failure writer's blocks will be fairly frequent and the vicious cycle of being stuck in ABDland will persist. Whenever I plan these marathon writing sessions I fall further behind because a) they're unrealistic, b) not conducive to good or, for that matter, any kind of writing, c) invitations to screw up so dissertating feels like even more of a pain. And so the vicious cycle spirals even further out of control. On the other hand, setting modest goals seems to work. If I finish what I've done for the day I look forward to the next writing session. Perhaps even get ahead. And eventually it starts to pile up so at the end of the week I feel like I've actually accomplished something. In other words, baby steps. For example, an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon might not seem like much but that's definitely 2 hours more than what I would do if I plan to write for 8 hours. In the latter instance, nothing really happens. But 2 hours does happen and at the end of the week I've put in 12 hours, tackled the chapter section by section, and have a whole lot more to show for it.

4. The "There's Life Outside The Dissertating Cave" Rule:
Some folks can live and breathe their dissertation. I am not one of them and shouldn't aspire to go that route because I can sustain it for a couple of days after which I need to be "bad" in a manner of speaking. I should just stick to #3 above...I also think that works for most ABDers much better than the "retreat to the dissertating cave" strategy and resurface only when it's done. I say hiding in the cave a few hours a day is a good thing but that's about it. So do other things on a daily basis that make you feel good, that are fun, and have nothing to do with your Ph.Ding existence. In fact I think this is key because writing, unlike field research, is a very solitary endeavor. Staying in that state for prolonged periods of time at a stretch is, IMHO, unhealthy. Adding other activities to one's daily routine will make the dissertation feel less like punishment, especially if you happen to enjoy human contact. That could be chilling out with loved ones, cooking for your family, exercising, going for a walk, going to the gym, a spa visit, watching TV, going to the movies, calling your pals, going to the museum....whatever you like so long as you do something else during the day besides eat, sleep, and dissertate.

5. The "Sorry But I Can't" Rule:
Even though hiding in the cave for what might seem like an eternity isn't a good idea, saying 'no' to loved ones, friends, colleagues, acquaintances every now and then is necessary if it's getting in the way of writing. I'd say again that balance is key. So becoming a hermit isn't the solution but avoiding contact [read: distractions] during one's most productive hours is definitely a good idea. In that vein, I'm going to go on a daily social hiatus between the hours of 1 pm - 7:30 pm (EST). I've noticed that I work best during those times so I need to dedicate those hours to my dissertation during the week.

6. The "Small Steps" Rule:
Thinking about an entire dissertation or chapter is important when planning the argument. But when you're writing, I've seen that making an outline and then breaking it up into sub-sections is much more manageable when it comes to trying to make sure a certain amount of progress is made everyday. Of course it's extremely time-consuming to make an outline in such painstaking detail but I say this based on personal experience - it makes the actual writing of the chapter a gazillion times easier. Plus getting it done bit by bit, or let's say word by word or section by section, does wonders....it keeps you focused on what you've accomplished rather than what remains.

7. The "Don't Stop, Just Keep Going" Rule:
Yup things come undone. In fact, you can bet on it every time you figure out the neat version of your argument. Don't be afraid. If you need to start any part of it over, do it. If you need to walk away because you're confused, do that. Just remember to come back to tame "the beast" even if it seems uncontrollable.

As I review the 7 rules, the realization that hits me even harder is that while getting from MA to ABD requires more ability than discipline getting to the Ph.D. is a completely different animal. As far as ABD to Ph.D. is concerned, I think each candidate has already proven by the time he/she defends his/her prospectus defense that the project is worthwhile and that they're smart enough. All that remains is starting and finishing it. So the 'road to Ph.D dom' definitely requires substantive amounts of discipline in the vicinity of 99% discipline: 1% ability.

On that note, I'm going to plod along this chapter for the next few hours and see where I'm at. I have a social obligation that I probably shouldn't have committed to since it's bang in the middle of my "productive time" and the deadline to submit my first completed draft to my committee is imminent. But now that I have I'm just going to enjoy it....plus I'll get to celebrate a birthday, reconnect with friends I haven't seen in a while, and also meet up with some even older school friends whom I haven't seen since I graduated in 1992. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to enjoy some time off during the long Independence Day week-end as we're going away. When I come back I'm going to make sure I keep these 7 rules in mind. So to readers whom I know "In Real Life", if I disappear Mondays-Saturdays between the hours of 1-7:30 pm (EST) don't panic or get mad - I just really need to do this. Of course exceptions will be made if you need me for some reason and/or if you're visiting me :-). Overall, I'm dedicating July to the beginning of the end of ABD-hood. [Note to chair and committee members: this means that the chapters I've promised to e-mail you this month will be making their way to your inboxes for sure].

And so, in that spirit, here's to a productive July. And of course, Happy Independence Day in advance to those of you celebrating. Cheers!

Saturday Dissertation Thoughts

2006-06-10T10:26:00.001-04:00

I'm trying to be more conscientious than usual this week-end for two reasons:

1. I had mild conjunctivitis last week and lost 3 days of dissertation work :-(.
2. Very dear friends of mine from school and undergrad will be in town from varying distances across-the-pond starting this week-end and through all of next week including my bestest friend on this planet and I'd like to have time to spend with them without falling too far behind. I would have tried to forge ahead if it hadn't been for #1 above.

Since I wasn't particularly feeling like I want to work - the gym at this point sounds like something I want to do more than sit at my desk or go for a walk outside since it finally (!) stopped raining after being grey and well this past week - I started reading online dissertation advice. Two things I came across that I wanted to post:

1. Someone out there provides the following quotation by Dag Hammarskjold who was a UN Secretary-General sometime in the early or late 50s if I'm not mistaken: "Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was." Chances are that he might have been talking about achieving world peace but my dissertation currently feels like an equally Herculean task. The writer using this quotation recommends breaking the dissertation up into tiny tasks and not thinking of it like a project till the first draft is complete to avoid being overwhelmed by it. Ok cool. Sounds good in theory but I can't seem to stop thinking of my dissertation like a dissertation - how else would you write it as such? I think it's important to remember that it'll get done chapter-by-chapter or even sub-section-of-chapter by sub-section-of chapter. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day. But I think seeing the broader picture is also helpful especially with working towards a consistent argument. I know it won't be perfect the first time round but I think remaining cognizant of that is inevitable and probably helpful.

2. "What do you call a graduate student who barely squeaks a lousy dissertation past her committee? Doctor!" Funny but puh-leez! I've heard the "a good dissertation is a done dissertation" bit but if taken literally it also makes me think that the end result would be something so lousy that even the minimal effort put into Ph.Ding was probably not even worth it. IMHO, you've got to have some passion to be here in the first place - why not dedicate oneself to the process as much as possible? Okay perhaps I'm being too harsh. I agree that a quest for perfection shouldn't get in the way of finishing because it can be debilitating but adages that seem to me to hint towards the other extreme seem just as useless. After all if I've given something so many years of my life and taken time out for it shouldn't I try to be produce something I know I'll be proud of and that will be respected?! On the other hand, the "good dissertation is done dissertation" bit can also be taken to mean "why don't you just concentrate on doing it?". If my advisor said this to me, I'm guessing it'd probably be an attempt to get me to focus on finishing rather than anything else - he probably has enough faith to know that I wouldn't submit something that wasn't substantive and worthy (of course all that keeping in mind my own capabilities). If that's what the whole "good dissertation = done dissertation" is taken to mean I'm all for it. I guess I ranted there for nothing ::sheepish smile::. Still, I see enough folks treating the whole Ph.Ding deal fairly cavalierly which is probably why I went off the deep-end for a bit. Why is it my problem what they do you ask? That's a whole other post for some other time :-).

Onwards to writing -only another 3-4 hours that I can afford to work today and I'm determined to exploit those to the fullest so that I'm closer to both a "done" and a "good" dissertation :-).

Envisioning The Finish Line

2006-06-07T09:40:00.000-04:00

The two questions I get asked most:

1. When will you finish this Ph.D?
2. When will you get married? Do you even want to?

More on question 2 some other time but yes I want to but I'm not prepared to get married for the sake of crossing it off some to-do list that I'm convinced society-at-large maintains...or at least the one I find myself in. One quick note - it's intriguing how most people around me see the two as connected especially when I'm not so sure if going down one of those routes precludes the other. Having said that, the short answer is - I'll get married when I find the person I'd like to spend the rest of my life with. I'm n-o-t looking for Mr. Right/Perfect but there are certain things I don't think I can compromise on given that I tried it that way and it was sheer misery. I find it fairly amusing when female friends (not sure if men do that - maybe they do but no-one I know has ever made such a statement in my presence) of mine declare that year X or age X is when they'll "settle down" (a phrase I find bizarre because it has fairly depressing connotations if you ask me - why down? why settle?)

But back to question #1. I think that's the one I get asked most of late.

I'll be the first to admit that it bothers me when it is attached to "well why can't you just write it and be done?" Umm if I could do it that way don't you think I would have done it, or at least attempted to do it?! Of course when it's people who take an interest in what I do - be it my parents, extended family, or friends - I don't mind primarily because the question comes from me having expressed my desire to them to be done or having declared I'd be done at an earlier time but feeling like I have to explain myself to people I meet once a year or who aren't really connected to my life in any significant way (irrespective of the actual frequency) or with whom I haven't really shared any Ph.D-related conversations it seems to me like an intrusion.

I read an article in The Chronicle today titled "Death and Dissertation" written by a husband whose wife was on the last stages of her Ph.D. It was quite amusing, and maybe somewhat disconcerting given the bleakness of the metaphor, to see the comparisons drawn between death and dissertating. But it did resonate for sure.

So, in that spirit, some quick rambling thoughts about where I'm at and hope to be by the end of this year.

1. I want to - and even need to for my own sanity - graduate in time to make the December deadline. This might seem a bit frivolous but I'd originally thought that I'd manage to finishing Ph.Ding by 30. Since I turn 31 in January 2007 if I can make it during my 30th year I won't feel like I'm completely off of meeting my own expectations. Having been a student for almost 28 years now I'm ready to switch roles. I did teach in undergraduate courses in between but I was still student-ing so it's not quite the same thing.

2. I'm working feverishly on my dissertation. For better or for worse, I'm saddled with some other work commitments right now that give me very little time to work on it Tue-Fri but if I can keep at it the way I have the past 2 weeks i.e. work my butt off during nights and week-ends I know how far the finish line is, give or take a few days here and there if I get stuck moving forward with the argument.

3. I'll be the first to admit that part of me is fearful of finishing. Dissertating can be strange in that you might not always have your dream job lined up when you're done depending on which point during an academic year you can actually manage to finish. [There are certain types of dissertations and dissertating styles that I think can be more predictable I don't seem to fit either of the two well which can be a downer at times but I honestly like what I'm producing despite the fact that it is fairly time-consuming. However, at this stage, I can see the finish line and so can my chair which is definitely encouraging.] Given that we tend to associate accomplishment with reward it's scary to think that I will most likely not have more than a degree-in-hand when I'm done. The fact that I won't have something concrete to do that I know of in advance is definitely one that induces a certain amount of procrastination on my part. But I'm determined to not let that hold me back. Still, it is scary. Luckily I do have some options in my back-pocket to help me move forward but since none of them are written in stone there are times I feel scared of having nothing to do. After all, having worked for so long and so hard you kind of expect some kind of job that is financially and personally (emotionally and intellectually) satisfying; not knowing what and where you're headed once this is over with seems to release an urge to hang on to it if only for the sake of some certainty which is definitely a precious commodity when you're ABD because the entire ride seems fraught with low-level persistent stress with no end in sight until you actually get to The End (which is really just A Beginning so it shouldn't become The Big Bad Wolf but it does).

4. The quest for perfection can be fairly elusive. I'm not sure where it is on most days. Some days it feels like I'm on that path. Of course one of the most-repeated phrases by faculty to ABD students is "don't get it right, just get it written". I still want to do both....maybe not right because who knows what that might look like but I need to be satisfied with what I've produced. Unless it feels substantive, I do have trouble moving on.

5. The thought of waking up and having nothing to do seems blissful yet bizarre, even daunting at times. What will I do with myself? Will it become a reminder of everything else I've had to ignore to get to this point? What does the future look like? What does it hold for me? All questions to which having some answers, even if provisional, would be comforting especially since I seem to have become increasingly incapable of having uncertainty during the Ph.D. process -not that the two are necessarily directly related. Or maybe, without the constant stress of having to dissertate life will seem to present itself as more manageable.

6. In some respects, Ph.Ding became a safe haven for me especially when I went through some personal challenges. That was a good thing in that it provided something for me to focus on when times were rough. The bad thing - I'm not quite sure what lies ahead and the at-times-remote-at-times-distinct possibility of facing demons again that I thought were buried a long time ago makes me somewhat apprehensive. Then again, maybe the thrill and pride of having actually finished is more likely to take over so perhaps I ought not to worry about it.

7. Till a few days ago, I was struggling with trying to locate my own voice within an argument in the chapter on which I'm currently working. Since it's the chapter that will set the tone for the ones to follow I've had this insatiable urge to get it right despite knowing that it's probably going to have to be rewritten once I write the conclusion because that's how it goes for pretty much everyone I know and respect who has a Ph.D. Luckily, I found a way to do it now that allows me to move on. But I've got the opposite dilemma now - there's so much of me to put in there and fashion a nuanced and substantive argument that I can be proud of that I'm having trouble wading through all of it. It would be nice if I could just write but obsessing over perfection is apparently quintessentially, possibly genetically and even astrologically (so I've been told), me. I'm definitely not complaining about this problem because knowing what to refine and fashion is more familiar territory for me. Still, I wish I had a magic wand to wave because I've been working on this chapter for eons and it would be nice to have it behind me.

Speaking of which I better get back to plodding through it. Have a small window of time at my current work commitment and I'd really like to exploit it to the fullest.

I'm sure there is more on finishing the dissertation that I could/should write about but for now this is what seemed pressing. I'd post my actual timeline that I'm working with but I just don't want to jinx it. That my chair, parents, and a dear friend/colleague have it on file is probably enough to ensure that I have enough folks on my case to push me closer to The Finish Line.

Still, I'd like to announce on the blogosphere that I hope to have made it from ABD to Ph.D. by the time the upcoming fall semester is over.

A Post About Not Blogging....

2006-06-05T17:38:00.000-04:00

Just curious if fellow bloggers working on major writing/research projects find any of this familiar....

I keep promising myself that I'll blog more regularly. Sometimes I make that promise more publicly via a post. But, throughout the last year and a half, My Main Job aka The Dissertation has kept me from blogging with any kind of regularity that might be remotely referred to as some kind of posting frequency. Unfortunately, not always because I'm so busy being productive and writing out fascinating ideas one page after the other but mostly because I don't want to put any steam in any kind of writing exercise lest it take energy away from The Main Job which sometimes isn't easy to keep plodding along at.

I could of course start posting sections of dissertation chapters completed at a particular time but I feel protective towards the (quasi?) anonymity I have. I've also had frustrating experiences in the last 5 years with having had my work plagiarized to varying degrees so the Internet doesn't seem like a space where I want to post my chapters anytime soon unless of course The Dissertation becomes The Book. Given that I started this blog with the intention of talking about intellectual debates I grapple with and that most of my thinking has been very dissertation-focused we get back to the anonymity and plagiarism hang-ups I have. I could always post about my triumphs, trials, and tribulations re: dissertating - that takes the blog in a slightly different direction which is where I've been at with my last few posts but since I've been stuck working on my methodology chapter for what might seem longer than necessary it wasn't a particularly thrilling prospect to post about that.

So in other words, I don't blog because I don't have anything to blog about - or, mostly, because blogging is akin to writing and if I am going to write I should really channel all of that effort into The Dissertation.

Or maybe, just maybe, I could think of this as practice for writing multiple things simultaneously and staying on a schedule in which I write down what I think (how else will I evolve as a scholar?) which is probably the way life will be when I find my Shiny-New-Main-Job (touchwood, from this blog to the ears of search committees, Inshallah, God willing - what am I missing here in terms of rituals?).

I want to blog more frequently, I really do. Because it's one way that I can allow myself to write about things other than the dissertation and maybe keep my brain/mind happy and stimulated. I also like the idea that blogging is a way to put one's ideas out there for anyone with an Internet connection to see. Even more so, it's a space in which I'm forced to press thoughts I otherwise might not....something which certain classes I took throughout my college career especially a core seminar I took with my now-Dissertation-Chair always provided but now that I'm ABD and working long-distance from my institution I don't quite have regular access to. Plus it'll force me to get into the habit of getting things written without holding myself back from finishing because it isn't p-e-r-f-e-c-t!

Hmm guess I should get over this whole not-blogging-regularly deal? Maybe I'll get back into it now, maybe I'll end up waiting till the first complete draft of the entire dissertation is submitted to all committee members - an event that is imminent. We'll see - I do know that I started blogging because I enjoyed it and I want to make more time for it starting today.

Re-working

2006-04-11T15:09:00.000-04:00

Okay I've been through what seems like a million dissertations and I have yet to find a substantial number that exceeds 6 chapters. Mine totals 8 once I'm done with it all. Yikes?

I spent the morning re-working chapter 2 - for some reason, I'm still glacially slow at this. Even then, if it's not done by my April 16 deadline it's going to be done by April 23 even if it means forsaking some sleep here and there. Yikes again? Okay let's be realistic - I'll probably end up sacrificing my gym or workout outdoors time but not so much the zzz's...I'm too much of a cranky bitch not to mention a lazy bum without the latter so it really doesn't save me any time in the not-so-long-run.

Now I'm going to sit down and write out a map (narrative style of course) of my dissertation including dates by which I need to finish a first draft, perfect (!) or otherwise, by - the final chapter count will depend on three things:
1. If what I have for the chapters based on my primary research is enough to write a solid chapter.
2. Whether all of the empirical chapters I've envisioned are "necessary" to make the argument and write a solid dissertation - presuming of course that #1 above has been met. If not then I'm saving it for the book and moving on for now....I need to stop being ABD.
3. What my chair thinks of this narrative map - I'm deferring to him for the final decision since I trust his judgment completely.

Will this thing stay at the motherload that is 8 chapters - yikes! - or am I going to scale it back a bit? Stay tuned.....

Something to ponder....

2006-04-08T14:12:00.000-04:00

I rediscovered this citation in one of my earlier prospectus drafts as I was doing a little laptop spring-cleaning. Caught my attention and so I thought I'd post it and see if any of you bite...yup this is a cop-out from a "real" (read: substantive) post for now but I'll get back to it soon....

Foucault, "Questions on Geography" in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972-1977, (66).

"I hesitate to reply only by means of factual arguments, but I think that there again is a will to essentiality which one should mistrust, which consists in saying, 'If you don't talk about something it must be because you are impeded by some major obstacle which we shall proceed to uncover'. One can perfectly well not talk about something because one doesn't know about it, not because one has a knowledge which is unconscious and therefore inaccessible...."

I think I can keep these balls up in the air! Maybe even add a couple more...

2006-04-03T17:17:00.000-04:00

I'm baaa-aack! What have I been up to since I've been gone all this while?

Ever since early-Feb my life has been so nomadic that I felt like I was on a whirlwind tour - kind of like a rock star on tour without groupies and music...okay can I count participants as groupies if they *loved* the dissertation topic to the point where they're still in touch with me?

So what exactly have I been up to? As I mentioned briefly in my previous post, I was traveling in the South Asian region finishing up field research. I wouldn't say it's finished because the snowball gathered its own momentum and there are so many new folks to talk to or those I've spoken with at least once but could revisit - however, I'm putting a temporary stop to it since I know have enough to hopefully write some kick-ass chapters, precisely chapters 3, 5, and 6 (+ maybe 7 if I split this one up into two - time will tell). I'll definitely go back once I start working on the book manuscript - in fact I'm very excited about the prospect of doing that. Came back to the North American side of the Atlantic and went to the Big Disciplinary Conference - I'm sure there will be a post or two about that in the coming weeks and days. Last week I (finally!) started catching my breath and spent some quality time with my parents and friends outside my academic/Ph.D. existence. Till yesterday I felt like I was playing catch up but this morning I feel less dislocated and ready to tackle unfinished projects. I feel human again - how come?

1. Slept in till really late this morning. It was much needed to not feel like my body was in another time zone. I think I could have achieved it yesterday had it not been for Daylight Savings time!

2. Now that I've had some distance from it, I'm beginning to get some clarity re: the stuff that came in all of the interviews I've done over the last couple of years. I can see the dissertation taking some kind of concrete shape - although I'll admit I have no clue what directions I'll end up going in as I resume writing.

3. A colleague (whom I really respect intellectually and value as a friend) - let's call him "Sweet Potato" so that he knows who he is - and I sat down on Saturday and committed to a deadline for the first completed draft of 'The Dissertation' and ongoing dates to exchange each chapter as we work our way there. With the field research done and the postdoc applications cycle behind me (that wasn't very successful but I'm over it without being overwhelmingly under it in the first place!) I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel...I know I can finish and perhaps take gradual/in-between stabs at that little thing called life while I'm working my way there.

4. I'm determined to be the person I want to be but am sometimes to lazy to live up to. Over the last couple of years, thanks to even the most trying of life experiences, I've in a sense rediscovered myself and feel rejuvenated in a strange way...like I'm back to who I was but definitely wiser and the happier, optimistic person I'm more used to being. Of course that sounds much more magical and free-floating than that whole thing was....let me rephrase: I figured out that life wasn't really kicking my ass, I was...and I found a way to stop it all. Don't ask me what the turning point was - it was a whole bunch of them. Let's just say I'm not carrying any excess baggage (and those unwanted pounds symbolic of that time will be gone soon too!).

All in all it feels like the calm after the storm - nothing clamoring for attention in ways that I feel I want to tear my hair out (of course got a fancier haircut that makes me feel like there is more to me than an ABD working feverishly towards Ph.D!) and re-energized by the stuff that emerged from my interviews and archival research this time round. Umm knock on wood people?!

Time to get back to work but I did want to post an update so that my MIA status from this blog was no more. Stay tuned - I'll be posting with a fair amount of regularity as I resume the writing part of dissertating.

Current deadline: April 16 for a chapter on films relevant to my dissertation topic.
Reward for finishing: hopefully attending a conference on my dissertation topic across the pond later this month and spending time with a very dear friend whom I haven't seen for I think 4 years now (fingers crossed).

Rediscovering my dissertation...

2006-02-19T03:58:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm "getting my hands dirty" I've rediscovered the enthusiasm for my dissertation that I feel generally wanes if you're in fellowship application hell...yup I realize that I've given in to the cliche that seems to suggest that field research is somehow more real - if that means empirical then yes, in a manner of speaking.

I'm currently traveling in South Asia finishing up my interviews for my dissertation. After being holed up in front of my desk for months on end between chapters (of which only 1 was completed before I left - oh well can't win them all!) and fellowship applications this seems like the perfect reward.

The self-doubts and anxiety about my dissertation - whether it's interesting enough, unique enough, and all those other thoughts that plague us PhDers - have been alleviated since perfect strangers who are participating in my study have been showering praise very generously.

So, out of the abyss of applications, this Ph.D. is back to being fun after all. And for any readers who might be struggling with the Ph.D. process I say forget it all and go do some interviews or have some informal conversations with your chair or anyone else who will talk to you both inside and outside academia - in my experience, these are the best ways to reconnect with old ideas and get inspired by new challenges.

Onwards!

Calculating away....

2005-11-28T18:47:00.000-05:00

I guess the Visa ads continue to stay in my head...so extending the formula to today's events:

1. Money paid to reserve a room for myself at one of the university librarys nearby because I'm sick of working out of my regular space: $25.00
2. Money spent on overpriced gourmet cups of coffee to keep myself awake in the wake of post-Thanksgiving fatigue: $18.00 [and you may not consider this admission to be your opportunity to point out that I, at least for today, was suffering from some kind of bizarre caffeine addiction].
3. Absolutely awesome articulation of one of my ideas that resulted 7 hours and 4 coffees later...let's all say it out loud: PRICELESS :-)!

I could - and maybe should - have blogged about the idea instead but that would have taken time away from working it into the chapter I was working on and I'd really like to get that done first.

Stay tuned! Tons of stuff brewing...will return to some substantive posting in a couple of weeks!

So not a postmodernist....!

2005-11-13T11:08:00.000-05:00

Finally...someone gets "it"! The question is if an online quiz "gets" that I'm not a postmodernist why won't some folks in my department and at conferences? I'm ignoring the whole modernist morality bit in the brief quiz results write-up...I'll worry about modernity in Book # 2. Funny how writing a dissertation gives you ideas for books 2, 3, and even 4....yes anything to stop thinking about finishing the current project...procrastination on the rocks anyone (read: fellow ABDers)?

FYI: IMHO Foucault was not a postmodernist thus my use of Foucault doesn't translate into po-mo scholarship.

My quiz results: "Whether you harbor some vestige of modernist morality or simply fail to see the irony in Reality TV, one thing is clear. You are just Not Postmodern."

What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla

I'm off...this is pretty much the posting I can manage with a broken elbow...don't ask :-(!!!!

PS: I modified this post because the picture in the original/first one from October 30 was just too much of an eyesore and the thought of it in my cyber-domain was getting to me! A separate post some other time on why I think I'm not a postmodernist - although that will probably be a while from now...dissertating takes top priority (it's my Main Job as my chair puts it and I concur) and musings about postmodernism just won't fit right now...maybe when I'm writing the conclusion....

Dissertation Update: Still Revising

2005-10-18T11:30:00.000-04:00

A brief update on what I accomplished - or didn't - during my blogosphere-hiatus. In two words, still revising....

I'd love to report that chapters 1 and 2 are finished as well as the book review for a South Asia journal. Also that I've revised a chapter for an edited volume and finished, at the very least, a first draft of a journal length article that I hope will double as a writing sample for post-doc positions that I intend to apply for. Sadly that isn't the case.

Till about three days ago, I was beating myself up over the fact that I'd planned to be done with the first two chapters of the dissertation by September 14, if not September 5. Add to that fact that I began reworking the (almost complete) chapter for the edited volume, the book review is pending, and I have yet to actually start the journal-length article/writing sample.

But I've stopped beating myself up about failing to cross these things off my to-do list and move on to the next one for two reasons:

1. Had I blown off dissertaing/academicking, I'd be disappointed but I've been working hard..... writing, rewriting, reworking, and rethinking. This has resulted in major epiphanies re: structuring chapters 1 and 2. The argument, as I now anticipate it, is going to be much more precise, clear, and sharp. I've also revamped the chapter for the edited volume - while the previous iteration was somewhat complacent in its attempt to wrestle with the issue I was writing about, this one seems to me to be both complex and crisp...I'm enjoying, in a weird way, confronting issues that I either avoided or took for granted in thinking through the notion of 'difference' and my own conceptualization of it in my work.
2. Chapter 2 has finally been edited down from rambling for 117 pages to a more decent length. One of my mentors at my previous school used to say - if you've gone on for that long you've said nothing. So the decent length means I'm closer to actually making an argument, to saying something that is hopefully worth saying.

Hmm I should add # 3: fasting during Ramzan means I'm generally less productive since I tend to drink lots and lots of water and feast on sometimes-nutritious-and-other-times-sinful-but gratifying snacks while reading and writing. But since it's day 14 of Ramzan I should be used to it by now. Okay maybe I'm better adjusted on some days than others! But then again is my desire to include reason # 3 because it 'is' the case or should I chalk it up to a habitual residue from my days of teaching where everything had to have 3 points....?

I'll admit that I continue to wish I had something finished to show for what I've been working on since this past July. However, as of 3 (hmm... and so it reappears!) days ago, it is no longer stopping me from celebrating and being proud of all I've wrestled with and where I've gotten. Where I'm at with my arguments is by no means perfect but it is definitely more thoughtful and a place that I like....and I'm committing myself to getting all of this done over the next 3 weeks.

Back to work!

Incredible Sadness: Earthquake in Pakistan

2005-10-10T17:30:00.000-04:00

I know I've been absent from the blogosphere longer than I anticipated/promised. The dissertation chapters are taking l-o-n-g-e-r than I anticipated...more on the going-ons in my Ph.D. life some other time. All of that pales in comparison to what happened this week-end.

Ever since Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc (that's putting it mildly!) in New Orleans it seems that the world has been hit by one disaster after another. The latest is the earthquake that hit Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan. Pakistan, where I was born and raised, is badly hit. It has been termed Pakistan's largest national tragedy. The latest estimates of the death toll exceed 30,000 and are expected to reach the 40,000 mark with tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands injured.

My first reaction - along with that of my parents - was to ensure that our family and friends in both Pakistan and India were okay. They were - most of the individuals we know in Pakistan live in the south (the earthquake hit north) and those whom we know in India live primarily in and around Mumbai or Delhi or Hyderabad. While the aftershocks have been felt in some of the areas these cities escaped the wrath of the earthquake. However, we were particularly concerned about individuals we know who live in Islamabad as well as Azad (Independent) Kashmir and adjacent areas like Rawalakot, Abbottabad, etc. As news reports poured in with footage coming in from areas beyond Islamabad the devastation was both overwhelming and heart-breaking. However, the focus remained on aerial shots of towns and villages.

Through Saturday, I'd presumed that everyone I/we knew was well. However, come Sunday more names started coming to mind of acquaintances, colleagues, and the like whom we aren't in touch with regularly but have been a part of our lives, no matter how small, at one time or another. As we tried to gain more information we discovered that a peon in my grandmother's office who as far as I can remember has worked there for longer than I've been alive has lost his entire family. Some folks we know who live in Karachi have families in Muzaffarabad which is one of the worst-hit towns in Azad Kashmir. Either individuals are missing or dead. Some folks we know have already left or are leaving shortly to try and find their families.

News footage that came in Sunday morning suddenly became more human as aerial views gave way to faces of individuals, badly injured children, dead bodies, and relatives in mourning. The helplessness being felt by folks at home is so apparent. There are stories and images that stick out in my mind. I can't help thinking about those parents who saw their children die in front of them; parents who could only save one or two of their children; the girls and boys in schools who probably had gone inside their classrooms minutes ago; the child who lost his/her entire family and is lying in a wheelchair trembling; the injured child being taken to a helicopter to be transported to a hospital for medical attention only to be turned back at the door because there is just no more space inside the helicopter; the tens of thousands of people who have no home, no life, no family to go back to and who can't even begin to imagine how to pick up the pieces of a life that was already frail because of poverty, separation (many Kashmiri families have been split following the rift between India and Pakistan and have gone through losing loved ones in fights between militants in the Kashmiri region), and an ongoing dispute between two rival nations.

What do I make of this? I don't know. Images of people struggling for survival in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are definitely fresh in all of our minds. And now this. The absence of rescue and relief efforts seemed conspicuous in Pakistan yet I wouldn't like to criticize the government - what can one really say when a country just doesn't have the resources to even conduct rescue missions? For a moment though I'm forced to think of the disparity between urban and rural areas in Pakistan. It's sad to think that in a country where lavish weddings in which 3500 people are invited there aren't resources to even reach so many towns and villages where dead bodies and injured survivors lie under the rubble. It was depressing to hear the President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, admit that Pakistan just doesn't have enough helicopters to be able to conduct a more efficient relief effort. Critics might add that we've devoted all our resources to defense and nuclear weapons; that might very well be true but I can't help but say that things are much more complicated than an individual can begin to fathom. It's easy to lay blame and criticize but that isn't what is needed at this hour.

To me, watching the victims of Hurricane Katrina on the news was saddening. Despite living in a country with resources, these people just couldn't get help soon enough. Watching the victims of the earthquake in South Asia, particularly Pakistan, was saddening in a different way - with roads having become inaccessible and aftershocks continuing (one of the fears I hear is that River Jhelum in Pakistan has changed course due to landslides caused by the earthquake and there is now a danger of flooding in Punjab...although I'm not sure whether this is true or a rumor) Pakistan doesn't have the equipment to reach those areas which were in or near the epicenter of the earthquake. With this reality in mind, I can't help but think about those folks who live in the towns and villages where help is on the way but it just might be too late. It's even more overwhelming when one learns that these people don't even have enough supplies to bury the dead nor enough equipment to transport those that have been lying injured in the outdoors since Saturday night! It continues to break my heart to know that millions of victims of this earthquake have no shelters to go to and have been outdoors for 3 nights now in the cold and, in some areas, torrential rains. Unlike other natural disasters where footage of people eating food can be seen no such video has emerged out of Pakistan as yet - all I see is a sea of faces in shock and mourning. I wish I could do more than send relief supplies (including medicines) and monetary contributions but I'm sadly lacking in skills that would be required for a relief/rescue effort at this stage. Perhaps when I'm in Pakistan next month there might be something I can do.

That the earthquake hit a region already devastated by an ongoing dispute makes one wonder how the people in both Pakistani/Azad Kashmir and Indian Kashmir are even coming to terms with what's happening to them. I'll admit that I haven't been able to focus on how badly or otherwise Afghanistan has been hit but the same sentiment/thought comes to mind - once again a region torn by war is facing another challenge. It definitely seems unfair....some folks I know have gone down the religious route i.e. God paying these individuals back for their sins....that's a bitter pill to swallow because I'd like to think of God as Merciful, not pissed off.

In the midst of all this sadness, it's encouraging to see so much help pouring in from those within or from Pakistan as well as all over the world. As a Pakistani-American, I'm particularly touched by the support extended to Pakistan by the US government and my fellow-citizens in the US. I'm also touched by the support and help offered by India...perhaps Pakistan can't afford to reciprocate the offer given its magnanimous losses and lack of resources but I hope the military and other individuals from the Pakistani side will extend the help needed in those parts of Indian-Kashmir where the death toll also continues to mount. This might sound silly but I really would like to thank all nations, institutions, and individuals without whose generosity and spirit this difficult time would most likely seem impossible for those in my first home as it were - I know "the world" isn't reading this blog but I'd just like to put that out there. I also want to thank friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who called and/or e-mailed to inquire about the well-being of folks I know in Pakistan and India. I hope the victims of the quake in South Asia know that the support and prayers of billions of people in this world are with them and that they can find strength and patience in this fact.

Sad times for sure but even though it's cliche I'll continue believing in the saying that it's often darkest before dawn. Perhaps tomorrow will bring with it news about the chauffer who drove me around in Islamabad (and some outlying towns) when I was there for field research this past winter...I remember that he was from Muzaffarabad. He worked in Islamabad but his family was still there. Perhaps I'll hear good news about another lady I spoke with about her experience migrating from India to Pakistan who lives near Rawalakot for most of the year - right now I have no way of finding out how she is since I've been unsuccessful in reaching her at her home phone number. Perhaps the peon and driver/chauffer in my grandmother's office will report back with good news about their family. Perhaps in the coming weeks homes will be rebuilt and the people there will not be afraid to go back inside them. Perhaps the news footage will soon show peoples' despair give way to smiles and happiness as reconstruction begins.

What book am I?

2005-09-01T09:48:00.000-04:00

Yes I'm sort of cheating on my self-imposed hiatus but during my 15 minutes of procrastination this morning I took an online quiz and felt good about the results. This is a total ego-boost considering that I'm now (re)writing the same darn section for the second day in a row, five overall. While the description of the book they've included is a bit depressing I'm focusing on two things: a) their description does point in the direction of resilience; and b) that this is a book that is probably unanimously considered as noteworthy. So what does this mean? Well, I'm interpreting it as a sign that I will actually finish what I'm working on today and it'll kick some serious ass all over the place...after all it isn't everyday I get to 'be' a classic :-). Back to work!

You're One Hundred Years of Solitude!

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Lonely and struggling, you've been around for a very long time.
Conflict has filled most of your life and torn apart nearly everyone you know. Yet there
is something majestic and even epic about your presence in the world. You love life all
the more for having seen its decimation. After all, it takes a village.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Dissertating, and so the hiatus continues....

2005-08-09T12:35:00.000-04:00

I've been a bad blogospherist/blogospherian (who says only Heidegger is allowed to make up words?) for over a month now....been MIA from this blog and have barely frequented those I read regularly.

Extended forecast for Genealogy Spice's musings in blogistan: The 'dry spell', as it were, will persist for a little longer as I try to finish dissertation chapters 1 and 2 and get them to my chair (note to chair: the policing seems to have worked :-)!) by the first week of September. Thanks for your e-mails and/or comments on other posts and in response to my comments on your blogs....unfinished blog-posts and responses are clamoring for attention from my computer screen but between the blogosphere and my mailbox I seem to exhaust most of my enthusiasm for writing hence the hiatus from the virtual world for a few more weeks while I try to accomplish something substantive on the dissertation front....I'll be back!

ETA for resurfacing in the virtual world and the blogosphere: early-mid September 2005.

Dissertation Cravings!

2005-07-01T10:12:00.000-04:00

"They" (and no I don't know anything about all of them) tell me writing a dissertation is like having a baby. In that case, color me pregnant and craving.

Assembling instructions - can't really call this a recipe - for my latest (and, according to my mother, somewhat gross and unpalatable) indulgence: a bowl of sweet-salty (add sugar and salt to taste) yoghurt diluted with some water, add yummy Terra veggie chips, and sprinkle chat masala (you can get this at any Pakistani or Indian grocery store or halal meat shop if you live in the US, Canada, or UK).

I call this magic food because every time I eat it I've felt inspired enough to write - or is it that I felt inspired independently of the snack and just happened to be pigging out on it at the time...either way...I don't care if I'm fooling myself into thinking it works so long as long something is working and I have green-points that are dissertation-chapter-worthy. Had three bowls throughout the day yesterday and wrote and thought a storm....

To the kitchen and then back to the laptop!

"Do you believe there is gold in South Africa?"

2005-06-30T16:15:00.000-04:00

Nopes I haven't developed a sudden interest in minerals - South African or otherwise. It’s just one of the dots I started connecting today while dissertating, thinking about social construction, and the academic environment in general.

But first a little bit of background so that you know how the question about gold and South Africa fits here.

At the end of the first year, all doctoral students enrolled in the Ph.D. program in my school sit for an OQE (Oral Qualifying Exam). When I took it in 2002, the format was as follows. Examinee is given about 15 minutes to make a concise presentation on a topic usually related to his/her research interests. S/he is then examined by a committee of 3 faculty members (the configuration: current director of the Ph.D. program plus any 2 faculty members who taught one of the then 5 required core classes during the current academic year) on this presentation each of whom have about 15-20 minutes to ask questions of the examinee.

When I took this exam I presented what in retrospect seems like an uninformed and underdeveloped explication of conceptualizing national identity as socially constructed ‘all the way down’ i.e. from a thick or relational social constructionist perspective. What do I mean by that? To be overly simplistic (since this is a post on my blog rather than a chapter in my dissertation) for a second, what I tried to make a case for was that national identity should be conceptualized as always emerging in processes of social interaction rather than as a product of transcendental forces of nature. From a thick social constructionist perspective, national identity is not a noun but a verb. To elaborate, instead of being conceptualized as a variable attribute whose existence is the result of realizing naturally occurring divisions of some kind, national identity is understood to be emergent in social interactions as differences between ‘self’ and ‘other’ are legitimized.

The decidedly-structuralist examiner, during his 15 minutes, caught me somewhat off guard but not surprised when he asked me “Do you believe there is gold in South Africa?” I remember asking him to clarify where he was going with his question. To be somewhat glib, I should have – and did – expect that kind of question from a die-hard structuralist. My ‘everything is socially constructed’ position didn’t quite agree with his ‘there’s stuff in the world that is Real damn it!’. I recall trying to find the patience in me to not fly off the handle there because his question seemed a bit obnoxiously worded for a first-year student’s oral exam. (Add to that the fact that he and I had been struggling with this difference in our analytical commitments throughout the semester while I was taking his class. Confession incoming: I wish I’d made more of an effort to defend my position rather than try to find a middle ground to get through the class with this professor – that would have been much more productive and useful. Chalk it up to being sick of fighting while I was trying to get comfortable in a major I had no prior experience with whatsoever, to recovering from being assigned to professor-from-hell the first semester, and to major issues in my personal life. No use crying over spilt milk. Plus I’m happy to report that I eventually worked my way there so no permanent damage done!) I will give myself a pat on the back for remaining largely calm but not one for defending my position well. I don’t remember exactly what I muttered in response but I recall saying something along the lines that we don’t recognize or value gold because of any transcendental Gold-ness that this material possesses (which it might or might not but is not something knowable to humans) but because we have decided to call this metallic, yellow, shiny substance ‘gold’ and because we, for various reasons, agree that it is something to which we assign high monetary value. Similarly, national identity isn’t a realization of “Nation-ness” but rather a social construction of a ‘nation’ that continues to delineate those within its boundaries and those it considers falling outside.

When I think about this today I have more precise and thoughtful answers to offer – answers that not only defend my position but can take the accusation two steps further to talk about social theory and what’s at stake in this discussion. I’m saving that for the dissertation – at least for now. That and it’ll take time to write out cogently and I’d like to not be on an extended blogging break.

What I would like to talk about are two thoughts and/or questions about and/or around the idea of ‘social construction’, specifically relational social construction, that came to my mind today as I re-read some stuff and recalled this question from my OQE.

1. Why is it that the claim “socially constructed all the way down” meets with vehement accusation on the part of those who think that there are material realities in the world? The claim socially constructed all the way down doesn’t mean that there is no “Truth” or “Reality”; just that we, as imperfect human beings, can’t comprehend what “It” is so we, as Wittgenstein would suggest, pass over all of that in silence. Claiming that there is no “Reality” is very different from claiming that we can’t know it. To me, the first is a matter of theology, the second is an ontological claim.

2. Relational social constructionism is often viewed by those on the other side of the fence as apocalyptically relativistic. Did any of us relational folks ever say anything and everything goes? Please pardon my ranty accusation, but I find that there are several ‘nutty-hermeneuticians’ or those with a ‘multiple interpretations’ fetish (these are the kind who don’t bother to explore whether it would be useful for them to use hermeneutics to answer the questions they’re interested in but simply latch on to the idea of multiple interpretations because the aspect or part of the world they’re interested in that they think needs saving from someone or something can only work if they can convince everyone else that there are many ways of being – aka multiple interpretation, the current way of being is screwed up, theirs is a better/Truer option so let’s jump on the bandwagon of Equality and Justice and all will be well with the world) who are much more guilty of this charge than us. As a card-carrying relational social constructionist, I don’t recall ever having suggested or argued that anything goes. On the contrary, I – like other social constructionists of my ilk – would claim that outcomes might be contingent but they’re certainly not arbitrary. What does that mean? It means that past ways of making sense form the landscape, if you will, of how that entity has been and will be narrated. Therefore, for example, the India-Pakistan conflict is sustained not as a matter of transcendental fact but because particular ways of relating to each other, of imagining difference (whether that is based on Hindu-Muslim differences, trauma or unfinished business of partition, or something else is inconsequential – what matters is that certain factors are woven together to make meaning in particular ways) such that the other is viewed as an enemy (albeit to different degrees at different times), are re-deployed. If at all relative, I’d say a relational stance is about social relativity (such that outcomes are connected to the logical possibilities that social actors have constructed) which is not the same thing as the overarching relativism (here outcomes are generally viewed as the product of rationality and reason such that agency plays a minimal role in such accounts) we’re traditionally accused of by conservative structuralists.

Having shared these two thoughts I'd like to head down a different, but related, tangent before I sign off for today.

What I’m still wondering about is not the fact that relational social constructionists like myself have to defend our positions and arguments or that there are differences that elicit contention. What I continue to find perplexing is the character of these kinds of exchanges. To me these interactions have become increasingly useless because they hover around the same misunderstandings in a more or less circular fashion. I’d like to think we have more substantive stuff to talk about. Unfortunately, these discussions tend to obsess with (in largely passive-aggressive ways) arguments over value-commitments rather than the phenomena being studied or talked about. I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and decide that my question would be better answered from, let’s say, a structural Marxist perspective. It’s just not going to happen – not because I believe Marxism is undeniably useless but because it doesn’t help me answer the questions I’ve been interested in.

So is the problem that we relational folks have yet to explicate our positions clearly and more convincingly (although I can name several folks in the relational camp who have, IMHO, done so)? Or perhaps what I view as misunderstandings are really substantive debates about theoretical commitments that are poles apart and I, as the student in most of these interactions with individuals much more qualified than I am at present am painfully aware of my position on that totem pole, feel compelled to explain myself rather than argue the way I should to take advantage of that exchange? Or perhaps it’s just that the theoretical commitments of positions are usually so opposed that hell would have to freeze over or pigs would have to fly to let me have the kind of non-circular, more interesting conversation with non-relational folks?

Whatever it is I wish we could have discussions with those outside the choir in more productive ways. It just seems to me that if we agreed to disagree and acknowledged that our interactions are not exercises in conversion that we might get somewhere. To me, this war-of-the-worlds kind of environment that prevails most of the time in academic settings overlooks one important thing – the positions we take come are connected to the kinds of questions we answer…so perhaps our conversations ought to be more focused on the questions or, to be more precise, the puzzles we’re trying to solve, on elaborating our value-commitments, and the soundness of the accounts we offer in an attempt to answer the questions that bewilder us. I think that would get us someplace much more interesting.

Professors & Dissertating

2005-06-22T15:25:00.000-04:00

Since I enrolled as a doctoral student 4 years ago, I’ve been part of various conversations with other Ph.D. students in my program and elsewhere that have to do with dissertating obstacles in general but keep circling back somehow to how professors and doctoral students relate to each other. That is, how the mentor/mentee relationship works as well as how faculty and students who do not work together interact with each other. The conversation in this vein varies from being specific to an institution (including horror stories about certain professors ranging from plagiarism to harassment to discrimination that make me wonder why these people haven’t been kicked out of their institutions as yet) to a different, more general level of abstraction to talk about interacting with professors in general.

[Side note: these conversations tend to increase in frequency as more doctoral students I know enter the stage when prospectuses (or is the correct word ‘prospecti’?) must be written and dissertation committees must be assembled. I do enjoy the bonding experience that takes place when Ph.D. elders pass on the wisdom of their experiences in a given environment but am also aware that this advice needs to be taken with a grain of salt since the configuration in which each student finds himself/herself is unique in its own particular way. Hmm how redundant was that statement?!]

I get the feeling that I’m being inexplicitly, mostly in passive-aggressive ways, pronounced as the ‘black sheep’ when it comes to my interactions with faculty members in some Ph.D. student networks/circles. Or, the bad comrade, as it were. Why?

Apparently I’m betraying some (unwritten) code of ethics of which I’m unaware by spending the bulk of my time on-campus (which is in any case rare since I now live about a 3 hours train-ride away from the institution at which I’m enrolled) or at conferences in conversations with professors (aka – according to the circles in which I’m the black sheep or, at best, distant relative, of the family – those who already have Ph.Ds and have been put on this planet for the sole purpose of converting us to think the way they do or to make our lives miserable somehow). To be honest, I hadn’t noticed this till it was pointed out to me. I’m not at all convinced that this is a problem. Granted that I should probably make an effort to talk to other students other than the ones I regularly discuss stuff and generally keep in touch with. But what I fail to understand is the notion of the doctoral experience in which faculty members are only meant to be engaged in conversation with if one is taking a class with them, bumps into them in the hallways or departmental hub/office, at conferences for the duration that a panel is officially in-session, at workshops if supplemented by free food afterwards, or in purely instrumental ways (signing off on independent study forms, just before defending one’s prospectus or dissertation, during a prospectus or dissertation defense, etc.). I just don’t think that faculty should be ‘othered’ (in the conventional use of the term…damn relational theory for making me more linguistically anal than I was…and even that iteration doesn’t sound right but you know what I mean?) right out of the journey such that their presence is deemed necessary only when an important hurdle needs to be jumped.

What I’m trying to say, but probably failing miserably at, is that I don’t agree with the notion of thinking of the faculty as an entity to be avoided or as the evil on the other side of the fence making your life miserable whose only use is to approve the dissertation once its finished. [If that is the situation in which you find yourself then I suggest changing committee members or institutions as the case may be or trying to engineer a situation in which your needs and expectations can be met.]

What has sustained me to a large extent through this process is talking to faculty members (whether or not we share the same intellectual commitments but, like others, I usually end up in continued exchanges with individuals where there is some kind of overlap to be found), both at my institution and elsewhere, about my project throughout the process thus far. I like being pushed to think with greater precision and clarity and articulate a sounder argument by folks who seem to know their way about this process and the ones after this (job searches, tenure, publishing, surviving academia) – this is something I find severely lacking in those circles where I am the black sheep. I also enjoy simply the exhilaration that I derive from a thoughtful conversation about ideas…post-panel conference conversations with a good mix of Ph.D. candidates and faculty with similar-yet-different commitments who respect each other are good examples of this kind of talk. This is not to say that I don’t value talking to my peers – there are some colleagues/friends on whom I rely extensively and am grateful for their critiques of my work, the opportunity to read books and articles of mutual interest with, to talk with more generally about ideas and theories, as well as for support through the long, seemingly unending journey that is a Ph.D. But I don’t agree with the strategy of avoiding faculty till one has finished drafts of a prospectus or a dissertation or whatever project one is working on. That makes no sense to me.

So I’m going to continue sending all my green-points, convoluted thoughts, and chapter drafts to my chair, other committee members, and other folks I consider part of my (hopefully ever-growing) epistemic community. These are people for whom I have immense respect. I value their support and am encouraged by it. Their critiques and suggestions help me think of ways to sharpen my argument and make it more precise. And even if this was not the case, the satisfaction of a meaningful conversation would be inspiration enough. As I stated earlier, these are all things that the networks in which I’m considered the black sheep fail to provide.

So my apologies to those circles in which I’m considered a bad comrade. Count me in every single time you want to talk about your ideas or mine or that of some butt-kicking, mind-blowing philosopher (Nietzsche comes to mind; I’m trying to get through Heidegger at the moment so please join me if you feel so inclined and we can talk about “Being and Time” together) but please don’t expect me to participate in endless whining sessions sans any constructive action that can lead to a solution of those problems because I have neither the energy nor the capacity nor the patience. This does not mean that I won’t be there for you as a fellow-colleague; I’ve just made a decision to avoid interactions that don’t go beyond whining so as long as you are also willing to find ways to overcome the predicament you’re in please feel free to knock on my door, inbox, what have you.

I have to add that I don’t particularly relish the thought of being seen as the aberration in some cases. But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for that label to go away. Nor am I particularly interested if it means sitting out all the fun and thinking of faculty as evil. All I’d like to say to these folks who do think faculty have no role in the process of dissertating: don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!

And on that note, I better make a move or else I’ll be late for a meeting with one of my dissertation committee members.

Ciao for now!

The dreaded lit review....

2005-06-17T10:01:00.000-04:00

So now that my life outside academia seems to be less out of control than it has been I'm using the time to try and write. Rather than returning to the chapter I was working on before I went on a dissertation hiatus of sorts I've started a new one - the dreaded lit review.

A lit review chapter brings with it various doubts and concerns, at least for me. In no particular order, these are:
1. There is so much more to read and re-read that it'll take me months to write this one. Am I going to run out of steam during this period?
2. Am I saying something that is worth saying? Or...the gleeful pleasure at having found a topic that folks just haven't written about (foolhardy optimism can lead to days where these folks are viewed as classic morons for having missed something this obvious) even though preliminary field research has led me, the dissertator, to believe that there is definitely some there there seems to dissipate into odd anxieties: Did I miss a source? Has this been done somewhat differently but not enough to warrant me waxing poetic about it for 500 pages?
3. Related to # 2 above, what I'm trying to say is so obvious and self-evident that it's just not possible that it hasn't been said.

Am I plagued with an odd obsession about the value-addedness of the enterprise I have undertaken? Might seem that way but I suspect that it is probably a roundabout way of procrastinating to make sure that the perfectionist in me isn't let down when I don't write the fantastic, with Pulitzery-flair (not that I want to write a piece of journalism but that was the only prize that came to mind that has to do with writing) dissertation that I want to.

Either way - it just needs to get written....so back to that. Even if starting at the very beginning leaves me vulnerable to some insecurities I kind of like the logic of starting at the beginning and the certainty of having spent time articulating the contours of my argument before I get into making it. Once this is behind me I can get to the fun stuff - films, oral histories, etc :-) .... plus since I'm more than enthused about my dissertation hiatus ending it might be the best time to work on something I find not as exciting as the rest of this endeavor.

And yes I know I'll be re-writing this a few months from now when I've finished the rest of the work...I learnt that lesson when writing my M.A. thesis...stayed up for 2 or 3 nights (I forget now so I guess it's kind of like child-birth...you forget the unpleasant pains from the first-time round to have the next one...or so I've been told) prior to submitting my thesis when it dawned upon me that the lit review I wrote a year ago made no sense...

Dare I say onwards :-)?

Three questions that I've been obsessing about:

2005-06-03T17:06:00.000-04:00

1. Why is it that most folks who do interpretive or hermeneutic research think that my relational "inclinations" (and I quote) mean gravitating towards some arbitrary stuff that I can make up to describe social phenomena? I don't know whether I get more annoyed when "they" make stuff up in the name of textual hermeneutics or any other such "qualitative research label". I'm going to say it one last time (or so I think)....social construction does not mean that one can interpret anything one wants to based on one's personal politics and/or vision of how the world should work. Neither is the notion of 'multiple interpretations' the excuse to do the same i.e. declare existing interpretations invalid and instill one's own as "Authentic" and, therefore, "Right". Understanding reality as socially constructed is to recognize and acknowledge that we act in certain ways and make our lives meaning-full in particular ways at particular times by re-deploying ways of making sense we associate with the past.

2. Why is it that most folks I meet as part of my Ph.D life or are interested in the fact that I've chosen to walk down that road are insistent upon me somehow finding my political activist hat to wear? (This tends to happen more often in South Asian gatherings of the intellectual kind of which I've been a part. Somehow my lack of enthusiasm for Marx is both shocking for these individuals and proof of some kind of inauthenticity that I possess - yes it is essentialized for the most part! - as a South Asian, at least a good one. What baffles me about the latter in particular is that I grew up amongst South Asians who were hardly Marxist but nearly nowhere elite enough to be "the enemy" that "comrades" must take arms up againt...yes I'm being deliberately hyperbolic . So why South Asian-ness comes to be equated by a fascination with Marx is something I have yet to discover). I'm similarly intrigued by the increase in this insistence by folks who know that I'm involved in a project on biographies and international relations (more on that in a subsequent post). Why do some of these folks - generally outside academia - assume I must be some man-hating feminist because I use my brains, don't shy away from expressing my thoughts albeit politely, and am single? Apparently that my parents have taught me to believe in my dreams and have tried to make sure that I always had a high level of self-respect hasn't crossed their minds. That I must be single is also of course because I hate men --- not because I have yet to meet the person I'd live a lifetime with because I love him and not because God (yes I'm going with that) has decided that it isn't time yet (though it would be nice for that blessed moment to arrive soon!) Let me just say this one last time. I have political commitments - we all do. All of life is political in the Nietzschean sense, or so I think. I do happen to have respect for some politicians or those who would be considered part of the political realm because they seem to possess skills I don't. I have a general distaste for political activism because I would prefer not to step on the toes of others and shove my personal preferences down their throats because I'm convinced that I have some transcendentally right answer to the problems that plague our world. So what I'm saying/singing to the tune of the really bad and cheesy 80s song "Hey teacher! Leave the kids alone" is "Hey political activists! Please leave me alone." I'm completely fine with being thought of as the inactive, useless philosopher who's too bourgeois or whatever for your tastes. If my Nietzschean sensibilities bother you find some way to get over it without asking me to go all Marxist on myself.

3. Why is it that when I describe the new baby smell I think of it as a pink smell? This one might seem awkward thrown in with the two above but I didn't want to break the tradition of expressing oneself in 3s. Plus with the insane number of baby showers and "go visit because couple X has newborn baby" events in my life the oddity of the metaphor struck me. So it seemed like a good fit for # 3 :-).

Maternal instincts or (please let it be borderline and no more) insanity?

2005-04-27T19:23:00.000-04:00

Spent the afternoon working from our dining table for a change of scenery since my desk is now beginning to get boring. No green thoughts happening in that space as of this morning which is why we need to part company for at least a week. Maybe that'll bring back the mystery in that relationship! Speaking of which, I really need to do something new to my bedroom walls. But this post is not about that.

So I make my way back upstairs around 7 pm. Plan of action: put laptop away on my desk and call it a day as far as the little thing - aka dissertation chapter 3 or is it 4? – I’m working on goes. So as I’m about to enter my room I bang the top left corner of my laptop against the door's frame. And it doesn’t even take me a split second for me to say right away “poor baby” as I gently caress the corner that I banged as I would if I bumped the head of a baby I was carrying. Complete with sympathetic pout and a tone pregnant with concern. And as I checked for damages my reaction (finally!) struck me. I said “poor baby” to a laptop and meant it!!!!! Hello? Earth to me?

Okay I’ll admit I’ve been thinking about making it to motherhood someday in hopefully the not very distant future (gotta find Mr. Right/Perfect or, to be slightly more realistic, Mr. Not Perfect-But-I-Love-You-Anyway; men with the phonetic sound "sh" anywhere in their name please do not bother to apply though because I have a theory about this) but this was a tad ridiculous. Then again I have a gorgeous, pretty, still shiny powerbook that might need TLC to keep it that way. After all, with my various plane trips, my machine has been through enough. What with having to go through all that screening in those dirty, plastic, scratch-happy containers without so much as its sleeve? I mean is that really necessary? After all, my laptop doesn’t have to be subjected to this cruelty at airports outside of North America.

Hmm….am I just going insane? I think I am. It’s like I’m having a “Gilmore Girls” (drama/comedy about a mom and her daughter living in suburban Connecticut that has become my shamefully bad habit/indulgence for the past month) moment. I declare tomorrow as an official writing hiatus. Writing this post I'm convinced that I need it desperately to say the least. Maybe I’ll just read something so I don’t feel as guilty! Or I'll watch a film related to the India-Pakistan conflict that I haven't included in my dissertation.

So was this behavior maternal instinct or (borderline) insanity? Apparently my own embarrassment at my reflex response to this wasn’t sufficient so I’ve decided to share it with all passers-by of this blog.

PS – For anyone who is wondering, the powerbook is fine. Just woke up from its sleep a bit wonky and I’m really hoping it isn’t scratched because I hate that and will obsess, albeit in varying degrees and less frequently as time passes, about it till I can purchase a new machine. This is not looking good people! But I will survive. Okay now that horrendous song (“I will survive”) is soooo staying in my head till tomorrow – yikes!

Yesterday rocked -no pun intended!

2005-04-21T18:29:00.000-04:00

In between all the social commitments that seem to have turned my life into a bonanza of the super-hectic kind, I’ve been striving to be productive in terms of my research and writing. On my to-do-list for this month: a chapter for a book project on biographies and International Relations. I’m happy to report that the first non-nonsensical draft where I express myself in complete prose was completed yesterday. Even happier to report that it literally rocked my world, specifically the world that I inhabit as a(n) “(aspiring) scholar”. (Relevant aside: when exactly can I start claiming that I am one of these i.e. a scholar as opposed to one of the aspiring kind? Is being one tied to finishing the Ph.D. or something more or perhaps something less where something along the lines of treading down the ABD path will do?). But a little more background before I talk about how my world was rocked.

The book project for which I’m writing this chapter brings a bunch of infinitely cool (read: brilliant and fun) professors and grad students interested in exploring the question of how our biographies are relevant to the construction of knowledge, specifically in the field of international relations (broadly defined). Why is this an important question to raise and spend time on? Well, the rationale, at least for me, is that the field of international relations as a whole might benefit (read: learn to be somewhat humble about both its aspirations and achievements) from exploring how knowledge is constructed from the positions that each scholar occupies. The way I see it, these positions emerge from how scholars have worlded in a Heideggerian sense; or, simply, traces how each of us understands our (collective) experiences since they have an influence on the questions we ask and, subsequently, how we go about answering them. Sounds simple enough right? Hardly the kind of stuff of which epiphanies that could rock our worlds are usually made of. After all, one is simply narrating/articulating what has influenced oneself. No surprise there – we know how the story ends and how it begins in a lot of respects. But it isn’t that simple – or, at least, it wasn’t that simple for me…and I loved every second of it.

In my chapter, I use four different experiences in which others have reacted to my name in distinct ways. I elaborate then how this has influenced the way I approach my dissertation project. (For those of you who haven’t heard me talk about it to death I’m looking at how the India-Pakistan conflict has been sustained by focusing on a genealogy of boundaries/bounding practices/difference.) Let me also tack a disclaimer here before I go any further: I do not believe that my life thus far has been some kind of teleologically determined forward movement culminating in this particular dissertation project. Far from it. It’s more of a “particular time” feeling for me. That is to say, for now, I look to certain experiences and interpret them in particular ways as tied to who I am as a scholar – aspiring or otherwise. It’s entirely possible that these stories will point me in a different direction another day or when I’m thinking about them in a different context at a different time. It’s also possible that I might look to different stories, to different experiences when I think at another time about the questions this book project on biographies raises. But what matters in the here and now is that this is the story I like to tell myself about one aspect of my-self.

Now let’s go back to the world-rocking thing….

As I started working my way towards a conclusion for the chapter I felt uncomfortably overwhelmed. Not the kind of overwhelmed where I felt I had to just walk away from this for a while. Rather, the kind where I knew that to get somewhere I had to forget thinking about what I was writing/typing and just type away without trying to first formulate and evaluate the argument in my head. That feeling when you know so many thoughts are percolating their way up – thoughts that are so intimate to who one is – that it’d be like trying to struggle against a monsoon current if one tried to think through it first. Of course, like anyone who has ever been caught in a monsoon current knows from experience, one usually tries to move against it to break free. I did the same with these thoughts at first. But there came a point when I knew I had to let the wave take me where it wanted to rather than figuring out my direction beforehand. (Of course the wave was not external to me but you know what I mean?)

And so I typed. And typed, And then I typed some more. And then some more typing happened.

What I ended up with when I felt ready to stop were 4 or so pages of stuff I obviously knew about myself but that felt new or surprising to me in that I’d never put these ideas together in quite the same way before. Kind of like what you intend the “you know?” to stand in place of when you’re talking to someone whom you’ve known for eons so you sort of expect them to understand what you’re talking about without having even finished the thought. Similarly, these thoughts that I could now see on my screen were not alien to me but they were new to me in that it was the first time I’d seriously forced myself to push them through.

And then it happened. I’d finally articulated my personal beliefs and values as a scholar for the first time that I knew of. Scholar-virgin was, so to speak, no more. This stuff that stared back at me from my laptop’s screen was no longer a funny-in-my-tummy or an idea in my mind for me to grapple with and process some more. It was “out there” in a strange way. Out there for the world to see. And, more importantly, out there for me to see. It was then that my world rocked.

It felt incredibly surreal. It was just so strangely powerful to see my identity as a scholar extended outside my body, my mind, my tummy, my gut, and just about any part of me that is connected with me in any physical or quasi-physical way. It suddenly had a different kind of reality for me – one with a different texture if that makes any sense. All these thoughts had percolated up as coherent and connected prose for the first time and it felt kind of unbelievable. It was like I was reading someone else’s biography and perhaps feeling that it could be my story too but it distinctly felt like someone else’s because it was no longer inside me.

For a few hours I felt as if everything had come tumbling down and I just didn’t know how to deal with seeing what felt somewhat alien yet all-too-familiar because I’d never extended all of it beyond myself per se. In other words, I felt that so much of me – so much that was intimate to me – had come tumbling down. But this tumbling down wasn’t the kind you experience when, for example, you lose your first love. Instead, this felt good. Damn good! In fact, the more time I spent digesting the words that appeared on my screen the more I felt like I was on top of the world.

So what I’m trying to say is this was one of those unsettling experiences when you feel like you’re stuck in the eye of a hurricane but are enjoying the wind (understatement for a tornado I know but that’s the feeling I’m trying to convey here – an unbelievable, can’t-put-into-words-kind-of-enjoyment of what feels life-threatening because it could end your world but when all is said and done you’re standing in the shining sun unaffected by ruins and rubble that might be surrounding you in the aftermath of the hurricane) in your hair.

Simply stated, this felt undoubtedly unsettling but unusually gratifying.

Now that I’ve had time to sleep this feels even better. Trust me - a mind-fuck like the one I went through, though enjoyable, requires serious rest to be completely digested.

It feels incredible to have gotten all of that outside my system as it were and into my other system – my beautiful, year-old but still shiny PowerBook. It feels good to have allowed the monsoon current take me in directions I didn’t quite anticipate. And I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the hurricane winds blowing through my hair….actually, to be precise, through almost every fiber of my being!

So now that I can articulate my beliefs and values as a scholar can I take the “aspiring” out and call myself a “scholar” even though that Ph.D. is still at least a year away? After all, if I can explain to you what being a scholar is all about for me shouldn’t I (finally) be able to claim that identity?

Either way – hi ho hi ho, onwards I go. Until next time :-)....

What's in a name you ask?

2005-04-19T17:00:00.000-04:00

I discovered today that there is an another person in North America with the e-x-a-c-t same name as mine. Not only does she have the same first name and last name as I do but she spells her last name exactly the s-a-m-e way I do. Now of course my name isn't copyrighted or anything but I seem to have gone through my entire life thus far without meeting someone with the exact same first and last name as mine. And I don't know anyone personally with the same last name as mine who spells their last name the same way that I do. Go figure!

So now I'm totally curious about this person but have yet to google her. Just wondering though if there are any other overlaps between us. Do we share the same birthday? Is she also getting a PhD? Does she try to have the flowers on her bed-linens facing the head of the bed? Is she also doing laundry this minute?

Speaking of which, the dryer beckons and the cake in the oven that I'm baking for my parents 30th wedding anniversary needs checking. Cake first!

A different side of bilingual

2005-04-13T18:51:00.000-04:00

I’d planned on posting something related to a chapter I’m working on finishing but a different experience seems to have taken center-stage today.

I happened to meet a couple visiting from Aligarh, India on my train ride back home to suburban town, NJ from Manhattan earlier this afternoon. To make a long story short, the train stalled on the tracks minutes away from the Newark Airport stop for about 20 or so minutes. Noting that the three of us were the only South Asian looking faces amidst seats occupied by faces belonging to other nations we exchanged looks of annoyance about the delay which then evolved into a full-fledged conversation about my dissertation. (I’m writing about boundaries and the India-Pakistan conflict and, among other things, one of my foci includes immigrants who picked either country at the time of partition/independence.) It was then that I discovered that this couple had migrated to India from Pakistan merely days before August 14, 1947. (August 14, 1947 is the day Pakistan came into being as an independent nation.) As they shared their experiences with me I continued to ask them one question after another. At one point during our tête-à-tête, both husband and wife added that they were enjoying our conversation thoroughly not only because they were reliving experiences that hardly anyone asks them about but more so because we were chatting in Urdu – something they hadn’t done since the two weeks they had been here and were already missing. I guess that might have jinxed it because in asking my next question I stumbled trying to remember the word for “guilt” in Urdu/Hindi. Of course I remembered “guilt” but really wanted to recall the Urdu version since our conversation thus far had been completely in the latter and it seemed to be going so well. At first I blamed myself (mostly in my head) for being a bit rusty; I’m more accustomed to an English-Urdu combination that I speak with my parents and friends so speaking purely in Urdu doesn’t come too easily to me in that I have to make a conscious effort to do so (Speaking purely in English I’ve gotten tons of practice at ever since I moved to the US about 11 years ago). I eased up on myself however when neither of us managed to come up with the “right” word. I figured if the folks from Aligarh (one of the main centers in British India for Urdu learning) couldn’t think of it then I need not beat myself up! Tired of searching, the couple came to the somewhat Whorfian conclusion that the equivalent of guilty doesn’t exist in Urdu because it’s a sentiment we don’t really feel. They explained that while we have words in Urdu for “guilty” used in a legal context we don’t have one for the everyday emotion referring to the bad feeling one might have when not doing something they feel they ought to have done. Now, the couple insisted this is because “we in the East don’t shirk from our responsibilities so we never have to worry about this emotion” but I don’t buy that one. Although I didn’t disagree with them either because we were about to pull into my stop plus we’d exchanged numbers so I could talk to them some more about their experiences migrating from Pakistan to India in 1947.

What this did get me thinking about though was that being bilingual could be startling in a way I’d never thought of before. Not in the obvious “ESL” kind of way where English teachers automatically assume that students think in their native tongues when attempting to write in English but more so along the lines of today’s experience.

I for one do not have the kind of expertise to know whether or not there is some kind of fancy-shmancy, if not commonly spoken, word for “feeling guilty” in the Urdu language but assuming that there isn’t one for the time being – since I don’t know otherwise – I started thinking about how I’d responded to this situation in which I felt at a loss of words in one language but not in another. To continue speaking in Urdu, I’d tried finding an elaborate sentence to substitute for the word to explain the emotion to which I was referring. However since I didn’t have a word for it when I thought I should I found myself a bit frustrated with this communicative gap of sorts. The more I thought about this the more convinced I became that this was a sign that I shouldn’t be moving back to Pakistan any time soon. How did I get there? Not a far cry if I was thinking about how frustrated and out of place I’d felt on certain occasions during my trip to Pakistan this past winter. Hence, not knowing a word was translated by yours truly into a metaphor for my general unfitness to live in the same space I was born and grew up in!

However, now that the drama queen moment has come and gone and I’m no longer blowing this all out of proportion I find myself thinking somewhat differently about being bilingual. In this process, I recognized that I’ve never given any thought to not being able to find the equivalent of an English word in Urdu. After all, I was born and bred in Pakistan which makes me a Pakistani – speaking Urdu is what we supposedly do. (Let’s leave aside the fact that I learnt English as my first language for now). So how could I not know or figure it out? Add to that the fact that the last time I studied Urdu formally was when I was preparing for my ‘A’ Level exams in which one’s proficiency in the language is measured to a large extent by one’s ability to translate Urdu words into English. And so the realization dawned upon me --- no-one I know who speaks both Urdu and English has ever mentioned a situation in which they weren’t able to find the equivalent of an English word in Urdu. It’s like we take for granted that we could never stumble or feel like strangers in what we refer to as our “native language”.

So having pondered over this experience for the better part of today I’m reminded of a passage from a book (Meatless Days by Sara Suleri) that I’d like to share with you by way of ending this post:
“Coming second to me, Urdu opens in my mind a passageway between the sea of possibility and what I cannot say in English: when those waters part, they seem to promise some solidity of surface, but then like speech they glide away to reconfirm the brigandry of utterance. … Speaking two languages may seem a relative affluence, but more often it entails the problems of maintaining a second establishment even though your body can be in only one place at a time. When I return to Urdu, I feel shocked at my own neglect of a space so intimate to me: like relearning the proportions of a once-familiar room, it takes me by surprise…”(177).

Guess I’m not the only one then - whew :-)!

10 ABD must-haves!

2005-04-10T23:26:00.000-04:00

In case your life doesn't revolve in some manner around academia, ABD is the (largely North American?) acronym for "All But Dissertation". Here's my take along the lines of a top-10 list:

1. A supportive family who both talk to you about dissertating and are part of the passion that brought you to this journey in the first place. Most importantly, they know and remember that you need to be loved no matter how cranky and depressed you get in the process.
2. A dissertation project that starts from the funny-in-your-tummy and that you don't mind living and breathing from now until whenever. Unless it's an idea, a commitment to which you want to give your heart and soul it just isn't worth it.
3. A chair who gets as excited as you do about your green-points (my phrase for those thoughts that fall into my head about school/research stuff that make me go "woohoo!") and cares about your general well-being and sanity.
4. A larger dissertation committee in addition to your chair that is also extremely supportive and enthusiastic.
5. A larger, but not too large, epistemic community full of brilliant minds and fantastic people.
6. A network of close friends, irrespective of their geographic location in relation to yours, who you know will always be there to remind you of your life outside the PhD realm and drop themselves inside it without their arms being twisted.
7. A good book to read every night that has nothing to do with anything you're researching - well, at least not explicitly!
8. A source of funding other than loans that will let you write/field/dissertate uninterrupted, undistracted...unless you're one of those polychronic folks who can schedule every second of their waking existence and won't be depressed about the massive debt surmounted in your name before you've even turned 30.
9. The ability to survive without instant gratification....it's definitely a long-haul thing.
10. Faith, courage, perseverance, and, most importantly, passion.

Resolution for spring....

2005-03-30T13:32:00.000-05:00

A month has passed and of course I haven't stuck to the promise I made myself of trying to post on my blog at least once a week. So here's the resolution for spring 2005: Instead of setting up unrealistic goals for myself I'm going to embrace the fact that I, as a person who is both a perfectionist and very monochronic, can only juggle so many balls at one time. So rather than figure out a way to juggle them all I'm just going to play with each one when I can. So in a roundabout way the resolution for spring, more broadly stated, is that I'm going to enjoy the journey that is life rather than stress about reaching the destination....something I realize I haven't done for the last 5 years and feel it's about time I did.

So a message for all who wander by my blog - I won't promise new posts at a certain frequency but do stop by whenever you can. (I almost said that I probably will be posting more often now that I know I don't "have" to but if I say that I'm sure I'll be falling back into the old, vicious cycle so I'll take it right back).

Now it's time to go outside and enjoy the warm sunshine and gentle breeze....happy spring everyone (unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere I guess).

In Writing Hell; kindred souls, please consider this an SOS...

2005-02-24T12:46:00.000-05:00

Not that good writing (for me that means clarity and an intelligible as well as an intelligent argument) as an exercise is effortless for anyone I know or have come across but no-one ever told me that writing when you're still in the earlier stages of being ABD would be this torturous and intimidating.

I wanted to send this paper to my discussant last week since the panel is scheduled for March 2 (it's already the 24th of Feb!) but have continued working on it because I didn't want to turn in something dull and uninspired. The problem: I'm still in field research mode and to switch gears from that into "i have analytical capabilities" seems extremely overwhelming, if not impossible.

I've definitely made progress in that forcing myself to write this is helping me find and articulate my own voice in this mammoth thing called "my dissertation". However, it's also a reminder that I have such a long way to go in terms of being able to make intelligent arguments that I'd like to and would be proud enough to call "mine" and that the perfectionist in me would be relatively satisfied with (of course it still probably wouldn't be finished since these things end when you end them, not because you've learnt everything there might be to know and that you have it all figured out). That isn't such a bad thing except the desire to make a good impression on people whom I respect tremendously seems to be getting in the way of me remembering the whole "in-process" part. My present state of mind, as well as the paper, is akin to having a song stuck in your head but not being able to hum it out for another individual so that you can start figuring things out.

On the bright side: I still have the passion going so that's gotta come in handy...no?

But enough procrastination; back to work. Advice, suggestions, and encouragement are all very welcome!!!!

Two in a row!

2005-02-22T17:42:00.000-05:00

Completely unprecedented for me but here's an excerpt I've been itching to share...and why put off till tomorrow what one can do today (unless it's a revise and resubmit that should have been sent back to a journal!)?!

From Foucault's "Power/Knowledge", page 62:
" The intellectual no longer has to play the role of an advisor. The project, tactics and goals to be adopted are a matter for those who do the fighting. What the intellectual can do is to provide instruments of analysis, and at present this is the historian's essential role. What's effectively needed is a ramified, penetrative perception of the present, one that makes it possible to locate lines of weakness, strong points, positions where the instances of power have secured and implanted themselves...In other words, a topological and geological survey of the battlefield - that is the intellectual's role. But as for saying, 'Here is what you must do!', certainly not."

And that's why I do what I do as well as how I do it :-) Till next time...

No longer MIA...

2005-02-21T17:35:00.000-05:00

I was going to say it seems like ages since I've posted anything on this blog but then again it seems that way because it is (!) that way. Where on earth was I? Traipsing all over Pakistan trying to pack in some field research while I actually have a grant to do so (I love thinking about that!). Anyhow, it's high time I make my way back to the world of blogging and although I'll be conferencing next week in Hawaii :-) and returning for field research later in March I've promised myself to post something at least once a week. So for those folks who tuned out I'm hoping you'll tune back in periodically.

Of course a lot has happened in the last three months...so much that it'd be impossible to talk about everything yet I feel like I've been MIA so long that I somehow need to share it all. I'm sure most of us who have been away from our daily/regular routines for extended periods of time have experienced that feeling - you try to tell your friend whom you haven't spoken to in months but exchanged one-line e-mails every now and then to let them know you are thinking about them EVERYTHING that has happened in your life in 28 minutes...chaotic but fun. So in that spirit, I'm going to do the same and share just some of the more important things that I can think about that have happened to me since I've been absent from this blog. In no particular order (temporal or importance) here goes:

1. Most important realization...New Year's Eve 2004, Karachi, Pakistan: I'm so glad and incredibly lucky that relationships that are very important to me and that came under varying degrees of strain two years ago now feel healed. About three years ago, I knew deep down that I was in a relationship that I shouldn't be in and that this person is not my "grow old with" guy but for whatever bizarre reason I decided to ignore my instincts which meant that the realization hit me much later. During that time, everyone I loved and who I'm close to warned me in various ways that I shouldn't be with this person. Of course all that did was make me identify, not completely might I add, with every 80s Bollywood flick about forbidden love...cheesy huh! To my credit, at no point did I mope around a tree breaking out in perfectly rhymed and choreographed songs but it wasn't easy getting out of a relationship when two people are thinking about a life-time commitment. What made it more difficult: "almost-schizophrenic guy" would talk about Wittgenstein and Nietzsche with me which is a rare find in most cases, especially in mine. Anyhow, so the poor loved ones bore not only the brunt of my sadness and frustration from relationship with "almost-schizophrenic guy" but it subsequently hurt, albeit in varying degrees, my relationships with them. But I guess the cliche proves true yet again - time does have a way of healing things. "Almost-schizophrenic guy" and I parted ways two years ago (wasn't pretty sadly) and although I'm sure I've been moving towards the feeling it was shortly after midnight this past new year's eve when it hit me (yes I percolate slower than most folks) - I'm not just okay I'm fabulous (touchwood) and those who I love and care about more than anyone else on this planet are still in my life and very much a part of it. What else can one ask for? Okay a few things come to mind but I'm sure there's a time and place for me to be thankful for those that isn't right here and right now.

2. I'm finally beginning to feel like I'm getting the hang of my dissertation in ways that I hadn't before. I like to think of it as the switch from being the one trying to make sense of a Monet painting and becoming Monet myself...yes modesty is not my strongest virtue :-)!

3. Call it green point (this is what I call ideas I have after reading stuff or experiencing stuff literally because I'll type them up in green) # 104 - an emerging rant on hybridity as it has been conceptualized thus far in scholarship. I returned to Pakistan (where I was born and gew up) for the first time after having being "naturalized" as a US citizen and it was a new experience that I have yet to make sense of. What stands out amongst the stream of confused thoughts is how most criticisms that I shared about stuff happening in Pakistan were largely written off by some folks with the thoughtless statement "you've become too American!". I don't know about anyone else but being upset by the sheer hypocrisy of claims of economic progress while simultaneously seeing more people on the street, especially children, because they can't afford to eat or even rent a living space is not an emotion one experiences because they've become "American"! It was one of the most depressing trips I've made back home ever since I left 10 years ago in that respect. To be fair, I can understand that one can become desensitized to certain things around them. However, what upsets me is that it also means that there is less passion amongst a large majority of people to change things around..or at least make an effort to do so. The apathy that I observed/experienced between my visit last winter and this one was both overwhelming and suffocating.

4. I do not consider myself a feminist but I guess some of my critiques might be labeled as such by some folks (largely outside the "non-West" in my experience)...I like Nandy's response to such boxing - he doesn't consider himself a post-colonial scholar but admits that people read him that way...in the same vein, I'm not a feminist, scholar or activist or any other kind, but can be labeled that way at times. (That rant when the mood strikes me). I discovered that for whatever reason a certain segment of the population was incredibly nosey about my single status (read: 29 and still not married!). I don't mind having these conversations with, for example, my best friend and his wife (also now one of my closest friends) because I know they genuinely care about me and ask only because they know that I would like to settle down and enjoy "happily ever after" with someone. However, I do draw the line when it's a participant I'm interviewing for my dissertation or when it's my mother's sister's husband's sister...as far as I am concerned it's none of their business and they need to be reminded that :-). I'm extremely fortunate that my parents back me up like 400% on this; however, it's difficult when you're staying with your mom's sister who thinks otherwise and such telling off needs to be done in her presence and is directed at her sister-in-law. Point of the story you ask? Well there's a few here and most of them are probably relevant to Pakistan but perhaps they might resonate with people from elsewhere, especially women: A) Why is it that the majority of people assume that a woman trying to achieve something "professionally" is completely uninterested in all things "conventional/traditional"? (I don't know about others but I also find it weird that our lives are segmented that way especially when what we do in "one sphere" is linked with the other!!! For example, the way my dissertation is organized is very much influenced by what I have read as well as from stories my grandfather would tell me...in that sense I see what we do "professionally", for example, very much a part of what is "personal" - together yet separate.) B) Why is it that most noses in Pakistan stay in other peoples' business? C) Why are women still denied satisfaction in spheres of life other than the "home"? Why do people make such women feel guilty or retarded if they try to use their brains and time engaged in an activity other than gossipping or cooking?
Can I just say that this &^%&^& infuriates me to no end? But then again, I'm also intrigued by the exceptions to this rule...how is it that some people don't feel the need to indulge in this bizarre behavior? I'm talking about folks other than my parents, certain family members, best friend and his wife, a couple of other close friends at this point and thinking of a handful of other acquaintances, random lady on flight to Pakistan who also fought in the struggle for independence from the British prior to 1947, distant relatives like two of my mother's cousins, my school principals...and the list goes on - but not for very long.

5. Ostentatious displays/exhibitions of religiosity also made me feel like I was visiting a country I had never been in before. During Eid-ul-Azha (this is the one where Muslims offer sacrifice) it seemed that most discussions centered around which animal was going to be sacrificed...nothing wrong with that...except it seemed like an occasion to show off - as if sacrificing an Australian cow that cost more was infinitely superior (in what way I don't know but I would imagine socially, economically, and - by extension, spiritually) to a desi (local) cow. No-one could be outdone....somehow what's supposed to be a ritual that connects you to God seems to have become all about keeping up with the Joneses. Bizarre!

6. Perhaps I was feeling patriotic but it's immensely frustrating when a certain elite class (popularly called "drawing-room critics" by local Marxist types) dismisses and criticizes a whole group of people who migrated from Pakistan to the United States in search of greener pastures....this criticism is often linked with harsh denigration of America and everything "American". I know this will sound vicious and I know that I'm more sensitive to this than others given my own situation of having migrated but here goes any way. First, America is NOT the cause of Pakistan's problems - I don't know if there is any one cause either but even if America can somehow be implicated in making things worse for Pakistan in certain arenas it is way down on the list of sinners. Second, it's very easy to be a member of the top 1% of the upper class of the country and look down on having others for having left --- I for one know very few people who left because they wanted to but probably did so because they had to. Over the years, Pakistan has found more ways to reward those with wealth more consistently than it has created opportunities for the less-fortunate - and the situation, sadly, does not seem to be improving. As part of the middle-class and in a personal family situation where the only option was to leave, I don't think of myself as a traitor or ungrateful wretch...I'm grateful to my Pakistani life for giving me values and skills (for lack of a better word) that have helped me succeed elsewhere and to my American life for giving me opportunities that a middle-class girl in Karachi would probably never have been able to enjoy. If I'm hesitant about returning it's primarily because I wouldn't want my children to be stuck in a vicious cycle that my parents had the good sense to protect me from...in other words, I want to give my children even better opportunities than I had and without a certain amount of wealth I don't think it seems doable in Pakistan the way things currently are. Third, it's easy to find someone else to blame but very difficult to reflect on oneself. It seems a decent percentage of Pakistanis do exactly that and then proceed to send their kids to study in America and buy all of the fixtures for their homes in the "good old US of A". What I'm trying to say is exactly what Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview in December 2004: pointing to the efforts to raise funds for victims of the tsunami disaster, President Musharraf pointed out that this was one of those instances where we had to praise the West for its efforts....he added that we in the non-West, especially the Muslim world, are too eager to lodge our complaints against the West which might be a fair criticism for some to mount but that at the same time we must, in all fairness, also learn to acknowledge their contributions and their humanity. I don't think that's too much to ask.

7. Another thing that saddened me a great deal was the general lack of commitment that seems to have become quite normal. That also connects with a certain loss in terms of respect and consideration for someone other than yourself and a certain selflessness (by which I don't mean everyone needs to become a doormat but that folks need to think about something beyond themselves).

8. Even as I complain - endlessly perhaps - I'd still like to say that spending time in Pakistan for this long and not just for a vacation but for work was extremely rewarding in other ways. So many people shared such incredible stories with me - all of which were relevant to my dissertation as well as personally rewarding. Despite upsets along the way, so many folks renewed my faith that the home I had grown up in, still love, and remember fondly is not lost but still lives on through/in people who still value the traditions and passions I grew up with and learned to identify as 'being Pakistani'. Yes I know I'm romanticizing but I think we all look for ways to connect with our ancestors....and I was both grateful and encouraged that this trip was not devoid of those moments. Some of these people who I met for the first time I've now formed life-long relationships with; some were people I'd always known but got to spend more time with; the memories and stories of others who I probably will never meet again but will always be with me- all these remind me that while lots has changed it's still home.

The Unbearable Silliness of Presumptiveness.

2004-11-17T17:36:00.000-05:00

I've neglected to post anything on this blog for several days now - life took several unexpected turns during this period and I think it was easier to not write anything during this time since that would have required me to pay attention to how I was dealing with all of these events. Hence, the extended absence. I do that sometimes - not as an escape from problems and obstacles because there is no way that they can be bracketed for that long but I try to avoid dwelling over such stuff so that I can ride the storm out. I think the distance helps me to deal with the situation in a better fashion if I think about the longer run. It also is a way in which I give myself the time I need to percolate to be able to get a clearer perspective on things.

But last night I had a bizarre dream that forced me to change gears and start thinking a bit more actively about everything that has happened rather than just dealing with stuff to get through the moment...so here I am.

I don’t know whether or not the symbolism of the dream is important or relevant or, for that matter, what it might be but I’ll share anyway. I was in my grandmother's dining room, lying on the carpet sleeping quite peacefully underneath a massive brown blanket. I wake up startled but am unable to move. I realize it was because someone was putting a heavy suitcase on top of me. It wasn’t necessarily crushing me as such but I do remember feeling like I was being held down. From the conversations that I could hear I was able to discern that there were other people waiting to pile more suitcases in the same space. I started yelling out to my aunt to let her know I was under there feeling incredibly suffocated but no one could hear me or see me move. I struggled to get out from underneath the blanket but failed. And suddenly I stopped trying - and I distinctly remember why. Because I was tired of struggling when it seemed so futile. I lay there motionless for a bit and suddenly it occured to me that I just have to fight back irrespective. I recall getting ready to make the effort in my dream. The next minute I knew I was sitting straight up in bed and wide awake!

Now I'm not a big fan of dream interpretation per se but I've been thinking about this dream since about 4ish this morning and haven't been able to go back to sleep after that. Damn! However 8 hours later the interpretation I ended up with was that the feeling of being almost buried under these suitcases meant that I clearly need to work through the baggage I seem to have accumulated…the baggage of various experiences over the last couple of years that have had a great impact on my life - some of which I think I'm still reeling from and that will probably make their way into subsequent entries.

Among those is a recent and considerably explosive conversation with my grandfather.

But before I go on let me add that in my family we have what some might call seamless relationships - it seems like we're always in each others' business which can be overwhelming and frustrating on certain occasions but I wouldn't want that to change because it's also an incredible feeling to know that these people love me just because....and vice versa. I enjoy this closeness despite the challenges I face negotiating it in certain instances when I feel a bit helpless in terms of garnering support for a particular decision I’m about to make or defend an opinion I hold. But back to the story I started above…

It was my grandfather’s 75th birthday a few weeks ago and I figured I'd call him at the stroke of midnight Pakistan Standard Time – that’s where my mother’s family lives. I was kind of excited about surprising him because I knew he wouldn't be expecting me to call just then. Little did I know what was about to happen. After I wished him we got to talking about other stuff. One thing led to another and so our conversation veered from the US elections to his “serious doubts” about my qualifications to say anything about India-Pakistan relations (that's my area of interest re: my dissertation project) because I will never have the kind of knowledge that some idiot journalist who hosts a news program produced by BBC Pakistan has to a statement that I have yet to figure out the logic of - apparently just "because" I'm working on my PhD and in my late 20s my grandfather *knows* that I'm *obviously* not interested in having a family and am too old to get married and have kids. (The most baffling statement in this last stream of thoughts was something about how I was too old to have those dreams any longer.) Not that the second statement doesn't bother me (I’ll wax poetic about age discrimination and legitimacy in Pakistan some other time; clearly the other dude who is 60+ has the “right” to say stuff but little puny me – well, not so much!) but the third one leaves me stark raving mad....it's not the first time I've heard someone jump to such conclusions about me but definitely the first time that someone in my family has expressed this opinion - and that too in quite a relentless manner.

Sadly, I feel that my relationship with my grandfather has changed forever - for me things will never be the same...or it seems that way right now. I continue to feel a certain sense of obligation and respect towards him but I just don't feel the same love for him. It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that my grandfather, who claims to know me so well, misunderstood my being, my identity. I can be quite forgiving in general but this is not one of those things I can forget about and put behind me – even if my grandmother would like me to …. I can tell that she’d like things to go back to the way they were but hasn’t said so explicitly as yet. The silver lining in this cloud though is that both my parents were probably more furious with my grandfather than I was; that vote of confidence felt really great. As for myself - I've transitioned from livid to incredibly hurt to okay with it and trying to be indifferent but it still bothers me.

For some bizarre reason, my “existence” seems to have come under much scrutiny amongst relatives and acquaintances belonging to the South Asian contingent ever since I decided to pursue a Ph.D. The consensus operates according to the following logic:

1. Women getting PhDs are man-hating feminists who have no respect for tradition – i.e. getting married and having children.
2. Kiran is getting a PhD and is still single.
3. Therefore, Kiran is a male-bashing feminist who will never have a family because she isn’t interested in one. Heinous! Sacrilege!
Implied in this logic is a certain disdain for the life-path these folks think I seem to have chosen. Of course you also have to throw in some pity for my so-called empty vision with respect to how life ought to be led. Apparently I didn’t pay enough attention to the memo that I was put on this planet to please and serve a chauvinist asshole and bear 2.5 children!

Seriously though I don’t know what perplexes me more: those people who feel so enormously concerned about the fact that I’m still single (I think a certain contingent among this population might be less vexed if I’d been married once and divorced which sounds sufficiently scary to me) or that they feel compelled to chalk it up to some male-bashing feminist they assume exists inside me who obviously doesn’t want to have a family because if I did I would have had one before I turned 28.

As much as I’ve tried to figure this one out I fail to come up with an answer – satisfactory or otherwise. Why is getting a Ph.D. assumed as the be-all-and-end- all of my existence? Even worse, why do people assume that this is the only thing that I consider to be of consequence? Just as bad, why do they feel compelled to share these thoughts? Hello – Earth to Butt-inskys…Think it, DON’T say it! These folks tend to paint this picture of me as if I’m some “post-modern woman” who isn’t interested in “tradition.”

Of course it’d be easier to modify my own attitude and stop caring about what these people say but the only problem is that I do….well more on some days than on others…most likely, more when people I care sufficiently about express these thoughts than others do. It just upsets me too much to be able to bracket it and move on. So as an answer to this contingent’s asinine assumptions I offer the following thoughts in the hope that they’ll get off my case and find other uses for their free time – a luxury most of them seem to have in abundance…

First, I don’t consider myself a feminist for several reasons of which the most important one is I just don’t feel inspired by that narrative. It doesn’t piss me off sufficiently. It doesn’t speak to me the way, for example, Nietzsche does. This doesn’t mean that my experiences of being a woman aren’t relevant; I just don’t want that to be what defines the fact that I’ve achieved anything in life. I’m getting a PhD because I’ve always wanted to teach and I enjoy the process of making the effort to think better thoughts – I don’t want to prove that a woman can do anything and everything. Of course we can and I have no problems with people who go down that road but it isn’t the point for me.

Second, I’m not getting a Ph.D. to avoid “settling down” and “having a family”. I believe things happen when they are meant to happen. Like most other women I know, I’d love to have someone to share my life with but the fact that it hasn’t happened as yet isn’t because I’m a picky bitch but because it just hasn’t happened as yet – that’s all! I too, like most women my age, have a strong maternal instinct but I have my doubts about being able to write a dissertation and be a good parent at the same time. I believe that if one does something one must put their heart and soul in it. I’m aware of my own limitations and do not think that for me to attempt kids and a dissertation in the same breath would allow me to meet either of those commitments in the best way possible. Why? Because I’m just way too monochromic and I’d suck at doing them together. I value the fact that my mother stayed at home with me through my early years and then my father worked from home during my not-so-early years all the way through most of my adolescence. I think it’s that undivided attention I got from my parents that has been the single most important influence in my life – and I happen to like the way that I turned out :-). I’d like to provide my kids with the same – but I don’t think I am quite capable of it right now. And I refuse to turn into the kind of stay-at-home mom that some of my friends have transformed into – these women claim to stay home because they want to raise their kids in a nurturing environment but seem to spend more time on the phone exchanging gossip while their kids’ baby-sitter in effect are Bollywood films – that to me is purely appalling and unacceptable. I don’t want to turn into one of them either. So these are precisely the reasons why I don’t see myself having babies in the next couple of years. Of course if God has other plans for me then I’ll figure things out as and when my situation changes but for now this is how I feel.

Aaah that felt good to get out of my system :-). Although an interesting question that comes to my mind now is whether or not similar presumptions will come into play as I proceed to Pakistan and India to do field research. And if so, what might be the best way of dealing with them? Time will tell…so stay tuned :-)!

Hurdles/Distractions along the way....

2004-10-27T11:32:00.000-04:00

I just realized that I haven't posted anything on this blog for days now....that bothers me because it's not like I haven't had thoughts that I would have enjoyed thinking through further and sharing with anyone who wanders by. But because over the last week my life seems to have been consumed with logistics over which I do not have complete control: airline reservations since I'm planning to leave for field research shortly (weird issue with mileage points and multiple stops!); the university which I attend requiring me to prove my existence and/or the legitimacy of my claim to a particular kind of existence time and again to complete processing of financial aid documents, unfreeze my school e-mail account, issue transcripts and the like; fellowship applications - decidedly the biggest bane of my existence right now...just when I thought I could sit back and just enjoy writing my dissertation there comes the matter of next year's living expenses since I will still clearly be ABD (All But Dissertation) and would like the freedom of being able to focus on my dissertation rather than worrying about 60 first-year students simultaneously.

So today's entry is kind of like a list that relates to this issue of 'freedom to focus'....a list of what I think gets in the way of other Ph.D students like myself as we dissertate....the hurdles/distractions along the way....

1. Fellowship applications: Coming from a temporal mindset (others might call it "culture" but I find that label imprecise not to mention suffocating) where one does almost everything even beyond the last minute it's been somewhat challenging to bring myself in tune with American temporalities. So just by crossing the Atlantic I went from being super-organized to struggling to keep up with my to-do list. Still that's not the biggest problem. Just seems like even though I got a fellowship to do research this year I am unable to devote myself to my dissertation and have to keep descending into a world where I have to worry about the following year. Not that I mind (but not necessarily enjoy) the process of applying for grants; it's just that it seems like I'm stuck in a grant application spiral and fear that it will end up consuming more of my time than I care to devote every fall..at least until I finish :-). And then post-doc searches begin!

2. Listening: Sometimes it's just plain disheartening, even frustrating, to engage in conversations with academics or aspiring scholars who simply don't bother to listen but have an uncontrollable urge to critique one's argument. Unfortunately it rarely amounts to more than "I wouldn't do this research this way". Precisely....you aren't doing it, I am!!! I find myself wondering in the wake of such interactions whether I'm just not being clear or whether we don't engage in conversations but rather in weird debates where fist-banging can pass off as a sound argument. Since some people happen to get what I say I worry more about the latter. But I don't know how long I can go on defining the word 'nations' as I conceptualize it....in certain contexts I find that most of us often remain trapped in our own agendas which prevents us from having interesting discussions. Easy fix: stop having conversations....however it's a completely unappealing option for someone like me because I cling to the belief that intellectual growth and curiosity come from sharing instead of isolation.

3. Professors with hang-ups: Apparently the M.A program I was enrolled in was pretty much as good as it gets in terms of the "ideal scholarly environment"....the Ph.D environ to which I belong has come with some unanticipated bumps in this regard. But I consider myself extremely fortunate to have ended up with a committee that is extremely supportive - particularly my chair who seems to be on call 24/7/365 and 366 every leap year :-) and actually cares very deeply about letting me learn and explore. Equally lucky that I've ended up, through attending workshops and conferences and e-mails, forming what others often refer to as an "epistemic community" but I sometimes cringe at because it seems a bit impersonal for the kind of bonds that have emerged from these interactions....either way the "epistemic community" or what I like to refer to as my "I and I" (where the 'and I' refers to others besides myself in the strict physiological sense) keeps me inspired and reflecting...both as someone who is dissertating and as "simply" a human being.
However, these conversations are sometimes marred by professors who fall on the following spectrum: ideologues to brilliant but with issues. At this stage the ideologues rarely disrupt my normal state of 'being'....it's nice how having defended your prospectus and having a committee in place protects you from that. But the latter half of the spectrum is one that still throws things helter-skelter every now and then...in my experience, these are folks whom one would have liked to work more closely with but sometimes things just don't click primarily because their parenting personality doesn't click with one's own...it isn't easy to share custody rights of one's baby (i.e. the dissertation). ....so one has to figure out how to play the "I'm the biological parent" card appropriately. Still all well but the problem emerges when such interactions seem never-ending and resurface out of the blue...a bit draining especially when you've had an exceptionally hard time negotiating the earlier decision to draw certain boundaries around the relationship at a given point.

4. Playing: And in between emerge the friends and family who feel neglected, sometimes irritated, when you seem to appear to them to be sitting at home (which usually translates for them into doing nothing) but won't come out and play every time they want to. Of course the people who matter tend to understand but the others, in their persistence and whining, do become something of a nuisance. Combine that with my own desire, some say obsession, to not displease others and it makes for some trying circumstances....often exacerbated by the fact that this experience can't be put into words all the time....kind of like those funny moments for which "you had to be there" to appreciate it.

5. Not just a Ph.D: Finally there are those relatives and friends who assume I've become some kind of feminist or am not interested in "traditional values" primarily because I'm from Pakistan, 28-going-on-to-29, and unmarried. To them I'd like to say for the umpteenth time - it'll happen when it's meant to happen and has NOTHING to do with the fact that I decided to get a Ph.D and that the two aren't mutually exclusive.
Related to this, just because I'm getting a Ph.D doesn't mean I don't have other facets to me....so if there was ever a statue going to be dedicated to me we wouldn't have just the great thinker on the lawn but it would have to be a whole line of statues doing various things and passionate about each and every one of them...or perhaps one with many balls up in the air each of which might be transparent and that show me doing something else that I love. I kind of like that last option where none of the various hats I wear define me in neatly designated categories but come together in a logic that is best described as contingent to "define" me at a particular moment at a particular time.

As my parents remind me at times - I need to not let these things get to me. And I agree that an attitude adjustment might be the best way to deal with this kind of stuff. I'll add that it doesn't debilitate my green-pointing (this is my name for the funky thoughts that fall into my head as I read, write, talk with others) but yes sometimes it is depressing and consuming. I need to remember that getting a Ph.D is an emotionally charged process that often overflows into other aspects of my "being"....and that despite all these hurdles/distractions I continue to believe that it's totally worth it. What other vocation comes with the freedom and excitement of 'green-pointing' as one's job description :-)?

“In-between”?!

2004-10-12T11:24:00.000-04:00

Following my previous post (Ph.D’ing as a vocation), I found myself immersed in a number of interesting conversations. Of course there’s tons to talk/write about but for now I’m going with a similar theme as last time…well sort of anyway.

I want to talk about the notion of “in-between”. Let me say right up front that my reaction, admittedly quite visceral, to this idea is that those who think they inhabit this space just haven’t pushed their own thoughts far enough. Even if this sounds dismissive, I'll admit that I find folks who describe their respective positions and/or vocations as “in-between” simply too lazy or uncommitted.

What do I mean? Let me refer to a conversation I was involved in earlier last week to explain why “in-between” doesn’t make any logical sense, at least to me….

After my last post on the difference between being a scholar and doing politics, a colleague pressed me to share my views on the example of feminist IR scholarship as a way to combine and collapse ‘feminist politics’ and ‘international relations scholarship’ into one neat package. I’m glad she did or else I would probably not have realized that I needed to further clarify the point I was making.

As an individual, I think one can be both a feminist and a scholar and anything else….we wear many hats during the course of our lives… I’m guessing it’s somehow relevant after that too – or so I’ve managed to convince myself but I’d like to think there is some ‘there’ there :-).

But back to the point I’m trying to make….

I find that the idea of wearing a ‘feminist’ hat at the same time as a ‘scholar’ one leaves me feeling suffocated. Why? Because I think of scholarship as a journey separate from politics – one that inspires an exploration of possibilities (always negotiated within the boundaries of what has been imagined thus far which is why these are never infinite) without predetermined results or fixed notions about the destination that must be reached. [Please note that I’m not making a case for classical objectivity here but, rather, drawing a distinction between prosthetics and politics that will hopefully become clearer in a minute.]

Feminism & Politics: Adopting a feminist agenda as the basis from which to “do” scholarship would mean that one doing so has already decided what the world looks like at any given point in time and should probably transform into at another. Any “research” I produce as this kind of “scholar” would necessarily offer a prescription for the change I want to see in the world – if I were a good feminist this would have to be the case.

Feminist IR seems to me to be the perfect example of an “in-between” position where, IMHO, feminist politics are what such “scholars” work their way back to in their research…an exercise often referred to as a marriage between “theory” and “praxis”! In this case, the norms held by such scholars determine the fruit of their intellectual labors. To me this is an uninteresting exercise to engage in as a scholar. What’s the point if you are so committed to a position already that you miss other stuff relevant to it along the way?

‘Being a woman’ as Prosthetic: On the other hand, incorporating or using one’s voice as a ‘woman’ (which I see as emerging and stabilized within ongoing negotiations about identity rather than a realization of what it means to “be” one; in this sense it’s a discursive practice rather than objectively defined category of existence) while engaging in ‘scholarship’ makes perfect sense if one thinks about political in the Foucauldian sense or “objective” in the sense that Weber uses this word in his 1949 essay.

I see my position as ‘woman’ articulated and emerging in what I do as a prosthetic rather than politics. I.e. it doesn’t determine my vision of what the world should look like and it certainly doesn’t put me in some ill-conceived “in-between” space where theory and praxis meet but it does influence the questions I raise and how I explore them in particular ways at particular times. From this perspective, ‘being a woman’ is a wound among many others that spur a scholar such as myself to engage in research…not a wound in the sense of implying an oppressed and tortured mode of existence but in the sense of perhaps being pissed off at certain stuff which I understand and, simultaneously, reconstruct as part of ‘being a woman’ as I interact with others and then use this ‘being pissed off’ as the starting point (of course I’d probably be able to legitimize it as such in retrospect) of a particular journey. This journey that I speak of is the kind where one is free to think things through without feeling encumbered by other stuff which is precisely the kind of intellectual freedom I think being a scholar affords and perhaps even a luxury that I would like to see preserved.

Point being that scholarship and politics are very different activities; an individual can certainly do both but I have reservations about combining the two activities as if it was merely a convenience of killing two birds with one stone.

Speaking from a position is a different activity than speaking for one. It’s the former that I think scholarship ought to be concerned about primarily because I think being a scholar means being committed to making an effort to confront what Nietzsche refers to as “uncomfortable facts” that then paves the way towards better thinking (which becomes evident in our articulations whether written or spoken). Being ‘in-between’ scholarship and politics gets in the way of that because it requires an obsession with the latter that leaves no room to sit back and reflect (which is, IMHO, a good thing since politics is intimately connected with empirical transformation…something one can’t quite do if one is always questioning the change one wants to see in the world). My hunch is that if you’re busy changing the world you’re likely to miss out interesting stuff about it – I think most folks would agree that these are precisely the kind of insights (i.e. the interesting stuff we wouldn't notice otherwise) we demand from our scholars. Therefore, given that both activities are inspired by different commitments and bring with them different expectations I’d say that being a scholar at any given time means that one cannot make a good political activist simultaneously and vice versa….so why bother if you’re not going to do either one of them well? I’m all for ‘eclectic’ food options at a restaurant but using that logic to do scholarship and politics in the same breath worries me.

So if you ask me (you might not but this is my blog so I’ll proceed as if you did :-)!!!) I’ll opt for doing things well and taking my commitments more seriously rather than inhabiting any kind of “in-between” space. If you’re still wondering why…well the only example that comes to my mind right now is my dissertation….I’d rather explore how difference is imagined in the India-Pakistan context than continue to make a largely unreflective stink about the fact that difference is why the India-Pakistan conflict thrives. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think imagining the ‘other’ as ‘neighbor’ or ‘friend’ is still a statement of difference….a point I’d surely miss if my sole concern as a “scholar/political activist” was to provide a recipe for peace that made use of activities such as people-to-people contact and high-level diplomatic talks. I relish being a scholar as it leaves me free to indulge my present focus on how what we refer to as the ‘India-Pakistan conflict’ becomes meaning-full in bounding practices…that’s where the interesting stories lie anyway :-)!!!!

Ph.D'ing as a vocation....

2004-10-01T20:16:00.000-04:00

Anyone who is working on their Ph.D or has already gone through this process will most likely have attempted to answer this question several times along this journey to say the least: Why am I getting a Ph.D?

A colleague of mine once said he was "in it for the stipend!" Of course $11,000/year takes one very far in DC (!), contrary to popular beliefs...or realistic cost-of-living estimates ;-). Add the thrills of ill-conceived comprehensive exams, having to take classes with professors who have yet to learn of the word 'pedagogy' let alone what it means, and colleagues who might be too busy complaining to do much else and it all adds up to the experience of a lifetime.

But I digress....and perhaps too cynically?

What's my answer to this question? How did I want to go from wanting to be a creative director in an ad agency at age 14 to wanting to become an academic at age 20?

My parents often point out that my answer to this question can be found in a photograph they used to have of me (we lost all our photographs in a fire in our home not too long ago) as a 7 year old teaching a classroom composed of my grandfather, great grandmother, and my grandmother's brother....something I did almost every week-day afternoon from ages 5-11 (gasp!). We even had a huge black-board with a pink frame in my bedroom - the ambience had to be perfect! Maybe there is something there....but that's another story, another post maybe :-).

What do I care about that makes me want to do this? What pisses me off? Or perhaps bewilders me, bothers me, irks me?

Two kinds of conversations that I have been engaged in over recent years have helped me articulate my answer to this question:

Conversation Type # 1: These exchanges occur typically when I'm asked for an elaboration of my dissertation project. A common response to my explanation often goes along the following lines: "Oh wow! Your topic is so timely! Peace between these two nations is so important. You're going to be so famous. What a worthy cause!"

Conversation Type # 2: These exchanges normally happen between myself and other Ph.D students. My resistance towards participating in protests, signing online petitions, and attending meetings of any organization with an "activist" stance coupled with my insistence that I am not writing a policy dissertation that suggests some kind of recipe for peace between India and Pakistan has earned me the reputation of being "apolitical" among peers and in encounters at conferences.

My response....

I guess I didn't get the memo where getting a Ph.D was the equivalent of signing up to change the world!

I'm getting a Ph.D because I want to become a scholar/professor. What do I mean when I say that?

I have no false pretensions that anything I write is motivated by changing things in the region I'm studying for the better somehow; that's a bit too presumptuous for my taste. I'm a scholar, specifically a social theorist; not a journalist and not a politician. My job is to think better and to tell better stories about social reality.

Of course I am not denying that any arguments I present can then be deployed in a particular spatio-temporal context of interactions between the countries I'm studying. It is likely that peaceful, or less conflictual, relations might emerge as a consequence of these exchanges. But that has nothing to do with my being a scholar and a professor (in-process at the moment and many more moments to come!!) and everything to do with how my argument is used once it becomes a part of the rhetorical topography in which relations between these two nations emerge. (Of course things could go the opposite way but that is also another post - on Theory/Praxis --- forthcoming!)

My "wounds" - or to go back to what I wrote earlier - what pisses me off or bewilders me is much more simple. I enjoy the process of thinking better and find I like to do so by writing better...it could be a screenplay, journal article, a research paper, novel, poem, or even a short story. What bothers me are accounts of social reality (whether biographies, poetry, or a social science-y book) that fail to push a thought to the point where it becomes dismally flattened.

In the case of my dissertation, I find that existing accounts of the conflict that I am analyzing flatten the imagination of difference (assuming of course that identity claims are the most important ones in this context). Briefly, the stories of 'self-other' that I grew up listening or reading in partition literature juxtaposed against accounts in history books or in the news highlight how inadequate the latter are. The India-Pakistan conflict of history textbooks or news programs is a simple matter of hating the other; stories and memories, on the other hand, reveal that this relationship is much more complex and that it cannot be understood by being reduced to mere hatred for the "other" but, rather, we need to pay attention to how this boundary or how difference between 'India' and 'Pakistan' emerges and is legitimized in complex negotiations where the "other" is simultaneously friend, enemy, neighbor, etc.

Similarly, in my MA thesis I attempted to present a better account of the processes in which three different generations of women in Pakistan have negotiated their identities as 'women' during their adolesecent years in response to televisual texts broadcast on TV during prime-time. Had a feminist cause been at the heart of my thesis I would have written something about the oppressive messages broadcast on Pakistani television; but, as a scholar, my job was simply to better understand how Pakistani women negotiated being women at a particular time and place. (Of course my criteria for "better" will vary from that of another person's/scholar's --- more on better, adequate accounts some other time).

To get back to the question I referenced earlier....

I didn't come to get a Ph.D and write about the India-Pakistan conflict because I thought I could bring both Vajpayee and Musharraf to some odd table to talk things through and settle the Kashmir issue or because I want to spearhead people-to-people contact efforts. If that was what I had wanted to do I would have become a civil servant, journalist, or even an activist like Arundhati Roy. There is of course nothing wrong with being any one of those things....the point is that I don't think achieving these goals requires getting a Ph.D and becoming a scholar/professor.

Heidegger wrote somewhere that being a teacher required understanding how to "let learn". Coming pre-packaged with political commitments gets in the way of that - one is too busy converting to listen and to let learn....a political activist can't help but teach what s/he already knows. However a scholar who knows her/his "wounds" and realizes their value as prosthetics rather than as politics is a different animal altogether.

My parents have always taught me to do whatever I did well. Similarly, I would argue that if I am to do my job as a scholar/professor well I need to do precisely what Heidegger recommended - let myself and others learn. And that's why I'm getting a Ph.D!