Perspective

In class, we have just begun reading the book Reading Lolita in Tehran (quick summary) by Azar Nafisi. Initially, I was not too excited about reading this one. A memoir about an Iranian woman professor holding secret book club discussions about literature is generally not my cup of tea. To my surprise, it has held my interest for the most part thus far. I am only 77 pages in, but Nafisi is doing a great job keeping me engaged and thinking about some of the insights she and her class have made and parallels they've drawn.
Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran (haha reading x2) is different from reading other novels. In the book, the women are analyzing literature and making connections and tracking themes and all that good stuff. However, as I read the novel, I am making annotations and drawing conclusions of my own. So, I find that a lot of the time I am analyzing the analyses of all the different women. DOUBLE ANALYSIS! Yeah, pretty crazy. All of these unique perspectives, as well as some of the literary analysis in Reading Lolita in Tehran (RLiT) have inspired me to write this post.

The first section of RLiT is entitled Lolita and discusses the reaction of the women to reading works of literature by Vladimir Nabokov. The two they focus on are Lolita (obvi) and Invitation to a Beheading. One of the themes throughout the section focuses on imprisonment and identity. In Lolita, a twelve-year-old girl (Lolita) is seduced by a middle aged man named Humbert Humbert. He turns Lolita into his fantasy and in that process, confiscates her life. Her identity is relient upon him. She is his prisoner. The book is written from Humbert's perspective, so the readers image of Lolita is inextricably linked to that of Humbert. Quoting Nafisi, "Lolita on her own has no meaning; she can only come to life through her prison bars." Her own self image and perspective is through the lens of Humbert, which is incredibly sad (at least I think so).

Craft-wise, Nabokov has triumphed in choosing Humbert as his narrator. By, seeing the story through his eyes, we are able to understand the degree of Lolita's imprisonment and its implications. A while ago in class, we briefly discussed "personal narratives," identity and the way we view ourselves. In terms of Lolita, it is almost as if Humbert has robbed her of the ability to formulate her own personal narrative and he is writing it for her, where she is his mistress in his sick fantasy. And that's all she is. Here, we can see how the choice of perspective gives some quality insight into the relationship between the characters. In the case of Lolita, it shows the twisted intimacy between victim and jailer.

Link

Last Friday, I went to see three presenters from the organization LiNK (Liberty in North Korea) come and speak at school. While I was not able to stay for the entire presentation, I got to see their latest documentary film, Hiding. It followed this man and his team who went to China to rescue North Korean refugees that were constantly living in hiding for fear of being repatriated to North Korea. The film was really well done and extremely powerful. It did an excellent job showing the difficulty of leaving behind your family, your home, your country. Still, it is hard to imagine what it is really like to be forced to break the links you have with your homeland and loved ones.
Link is the word I want to focus on in my blog today. Our links - our relationships, our thoughts, our connections - are essential pieces of our humanity. Links to other people, especially family and close friends, can have a huge impact on a person's identity. Who we associate with, who we admire, who we love shapes who we are and how we view the world. In the realm of lanuage, links have a profound impact on our worldview as well. The way we see things is greatly dependent on our thought linkage. A big method of linking our ideas and thoughts is through metaphor. We have been discussing this recently in English class and it is becoming more and more evident that a large part of our conceptual system is metaphorical. Some quick evidence includes the convential metaphors linking Argument + War, Love + Flame and Immigration + Dangerous Waters. These metaphors are vehicles that do not only affect the way we describe their tenors, but affect the way we act and percieve them as well.

For example, illegal immigration is often described as as a flood of people coming into our country. By describing the phenomenon in this manner, we are...
#1 denying the immigrants human status
#2 emphasizing the danger of possible negative effects they may or may not have on our livelihoods
#3 overlooking the possible benefits of immigration
Another example of a metaphor affecting the way we think is the Argument as War metaphor.
When we say things like "defend your position," "attack his argument" and deem an argument as something that can be won or lost, our idea of arguing takes on a specific shape. Linking argument and war in our minds has big implications where we percieve argument as a battle, a competition.

The power of links is not something to be underestimated.

*This is actually a really interesting topic and you can read more about it in the section written by Otto Santa Anna in the book http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Language-Got-Keith-Walters/dp/0393978842 (actually a great book about language that brings up some other very good issues as well, perhaps I'll discuss them another time).

Muzams

We have recently been discussing the significance of museums in English class and how they impact us and our perceptions of humanity. During our discussions, one of my classmates (who will go unnamed) refuses to pronounce the word "museum" correctly. He pronounces it "muzams." Whenever he refers to MUSEUMS, I find that not only do I want to inflict minor physical pain upon him, but the idea of museums takes on a very negative connotation, which brings me to the actual purpose of this blog: to discuss how the manner in which we describe museums impacts our perceptions and actual experience with them.

In our society, we describe museums in many different ways. Stephen E. Weil notes the particular metaphors we use to describe museums in his book, A Cabinet of Curiosities: Inquiries into Museums and Their Prospects. Common metaphors portray museums as temples, schools, laboratories, forums or even mausoleums. Each of these metaphors suggests certain things about a museum and affects the way we experience the museum as well. For example, Weil discusses how a museum that is thought of or described as a temple generally warrants reverent visitors and houses objects regarded as sacred. On the contrary, the objects on display in a museum that is seen as a school are there to educate, not simply to be admired. People who visit a museum like this will be expecting to learn during their time there and will act very different from people visiting a museum viewed as temple. These metaphors do not only vary from museum to museum, but from person to person as well. How a visitor acts and how they experiece a museum is very much a consequence of how they view/describe the museum.
To give this idea some context, look at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Depending on the visitor, the Field Museum can be viewed many different ways. Looking at the current exhibits, if a visitor is planning on visiting the Inside Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Americas exhibit, they might be more likely to revere the artifacts there, viewing the museum as a temple. However, a visitor that is excited to see the exhibits on climate change or natural disasters might be hoping to learn something about the modern world and would treat the museum as more of a school. The Field Museum could also be considered a laboratory. According to the museum website, it is "an international leader [of research in] evolutionary biology and paleontology, and archaeology and ethnography."

My personal experience with the Field Museum is largely composed of class field trips. Thus, the idea of the museum as a school is the metaphor I am particularly familiar with. However, in order for me and my classmates to really benefit from the museum, it had to be entertaining as well. There are definitely aspects of the Field Museum (perhaps even more so with the Museum of Science and Industry) that try to make the experience fun and exciting. For example, there's a new exhibit dedicated to chocolate. For children in particular, there is the Crown Family PlayLab for "your child's explorations and creative play." In this way, the museum is trying not only to be regarded as a school, but as a cool/interesting/fun place to go as well. Here we can see that even the museums themselves recognize the significance of our perceptions, which are the result of the language we use to describe museums.