Routes

My running routes have names. They always have. Sometimes they have been private names- for those routes that only I run and share only briefly with strangers on a weekend morning. Other times they have been shared names used to communicate with others the places we should pass in sync. But my routes have always had names. I suppose it is part of the deep familiarity I suspect most runners build with the simple act of running. At a certain point your cadence is natural, coming simply and purely on any given day. Breath achieves a simple rhythm and the mind can finally wander. And routes receive names. The turns, rises, and falls all become part of the landscape upon which the run is written. It is beautiful. It is familiar.

This year my parents finally sold their home in suburban Chicago. With the sale of that house I felt that I would perhaps never run the river front trail or neighborhood loops I worked hard to forge. When I began running in high school a four mile run was strenuous and hard won. But as the years went on I began to run further from school, sharing the various routes with my team mates. And I also began to carve out familiar paths from my home for those summer runs or weekend recovery jogs. "31 and back" became my post-meet shake out. "Otto" was my tempo route for a good 6 mile workout. And when I left for college those routes were always waiting for my return on a holiday break. But now there is nowhere for me to return to. I wonder if those routes will ever belong to anyone else. Will someone give them a different name? Sure, there were plenty of people I would see on any given stretch, but the totality of the entire route was really mine and mine alone. On those frigid days in late January the entire world felt like mine out there. That last stretch down Charles at the end of the Haegers Bend Loop was always waiting for me. Maybe it still waits, but for someone else now.

It takes time for routes to become intimate friends. All those routes from my home, high school, or college began as strangers whose miles seemed to drag out (Where would we turn around? Was it this block or the next for five miles? It's hot today, I wonder if there will be any good shade out there). But over time, as the runs stack up upon one another, the path becomes certain and reliable (It's hot today, I should go North on Lake to make sure there's water if I need it. My lags are pretty sapped today, I'll keep it flat with an easy Boat Launch run). And I've now had to leave behind many of those familiar routes and ways because that's what happens in life. From time to time I get to return to those old friends and I can recapture, however briefly, that deep, bodily memory that comes with re-running an old route. But more importantly, I now am asked to forge new bonds with new places.

Part of what made my childhood home feel like home was that I had those familiar routes. At each juncture of my life since I began running I have developed deep relationships with my surroundings through running. My hometown belonged to me because I could cross any space I wanted to through well-known avenues. The Chicago landscape felt truly intimate when I knew the streets and paths I would cross over- accelerating or trotting along as I so chose. When I lived in Princeton my relationship with running eroded, and I had a harder time establishing a sense of belonging as I had in the past. And now that I'm in Madison, familiar routes are beginning to emerge as I settle in to a sense of being and belonging. 

Memory and running aren't far from one another, in my world. Everywhere I have had a route I have embedded parts of myself in the landscape. Routes have names. They are the names I gave them. They are mine even when they are shared.

Sometimes we Just Wanna Hurt

In the process of mindlessly wandering the Internet, I stumbled back across a few websites and posts regarding Grad school that I first encountered last summer. As I was then, I am struck by how bleak students and survivors of graduate school are and the way they are able to so effectively convey a profound sense of dread. The blog 100 Reasons Not to Go to Grad School, for example, provides detailed and lengthy reasons why grad school is a counter-intuitive and ultimately futile endeavor. Now, though I have only been in graduate school a year now, I do think that I have gained some insight that makes me read these posts differently than intended.

First of all, I have found that grad school is often a daily game of waiting for destruction. Friends and colleagues often recount their breakdowns and defeats with their victories being flashes in the cold, unrelenting torture of the academic cosmos. A grant gained is but a respite. The passage of one's generals is cause for a momentary celebration quickly followed by the hang over of reality. But perhaps the one thing I have seen every graduate school program engage in is the degree in which misery is monopolized. I have friends who have done well in graduate school, only to be told by their older peers that they have not yet weathered the true storm. But what did anyone expect when they joined graduate school? That it is a unique place where despair is born and bred? We graduate students suffer from a glut of self-indulgence that often makes us forget a key survival mechanism; humble yourself daily. Graduate school is a strange dance of vanity and deprecation (self-inflicted or otherwise) and our impatience and sense of self-worth often get us into trouble. I think the biggest lesson I learned this past year is, in the words of a colleague of mine, "professors don't care about us as much as we think they do." Its absolutely true. My moments of anxiety were brought on by the fear that I was trapped in a panoptic nightmare where professors scrutinize and examine every misstep I take as well as cheer and admire my accomplishments. That is utter nonsense. Nothing I do is really worth very much, and if I didn't learn that lesson I may have fared far worse during my first year.

For anyone considering a PhD, of course the advice holds that you shouldn't do it if you think it will land you a better paying job or any such nonsense. That's not what this is about, and I don't think anyone should go into with such expectations. I went to graduate school because the prospect of just finding a job rather than engaging in debate, defeat, victory, research, and teaching seemed really terrible to me. I see my own decision as betting a horse with 50 to 1 odds. The pay out is not likely, but it sure is high. It's not the financial position that is the pay out though, its the romantic idea of the life of the mind. Of course, the "life of the mind" is the idea forever corrupted by the reality of politics, power, and vanity. But I'd much rather deal with that than the alternative. And in the likely event that I don't get the payout, I will have at least made the effort and will live with the consequences happily. All these websites seem to point in the direction of breaking the illusion that graduate school will win you prestige and great wealth. Fine. But the idea that PhD work is just a terrible decision misses the point pretty seriously. If you don't see the real rewards, then PhD work is not for you, and I can totally accept that.

I also willingly accept that I do not yet know pain. Like everyone tells me, I have yet to "take real generals" and do not yet know the meaning of suffering. Good. Sometimes I just want to hurt a little bit. At least on the other side I will be able to make my peace with what transpired, and on this side I can throw myself completely into the endeavor. I think one thing that may get under my skin from time to time is the notion that any kind of eagerness or joy in graduate school is misplaced. If I couldn't enjoy what I am doing, despite it being a painful experience, then I wouldn't be here. Again, I say this fully aware that the worst is yet to come. There will be god-awful days where I drag myself home, defeated, and just want to quit. But to have the opportunity to suffer those days in pursuit of something I really do believe in is a joy in and of itself.

Ultimately, these "reasons not to go to grad school" are both right and wrong. They are right in that they do dispel the romanticism of the academic job market and may help people avoid a very costly mistake. But they are wrong in that they don't also look at the other rewards people are after when they take the trip back to the hell of the academic trenches.

My teenage idol, Blake Schwarzenbach, perhaps put it best when he said “I feel like I’m dragging a refrigerator down a dirt road in hell right now, but I will take beauty and wonder just the same, I guess i’m hoping the low road will deliver some elevated sadness. Be well.”

Stalling, Falling, and Flying

When I decided to take up anthropology as a discipline I had a vague notion that long periods of travel were going to be part of the job. Actually, it was one of the parts of the job that really excited me. I was never under the illusion that fieldwork was a really comfortable process, but neither did I think I would ever have a right to complain about how hard it is. After all, it is in difficulty that I find reward. It is in the confrontation of my limits that I am able to really challenge the world around me. When I realize I lack the ability or experience to move forward, I am forced to ask how I can possibly move forward while also asking why this particular instance should prove difficult. So now I think I should maybe write a little about what has begun to take shape now that I am here. I'm not going to start with some sort of high-flying theoretical claim about fieldwork. I want to instead talk about the personal experience of seeing the weakness in my approach and the excitement of trying to overcome these points.

Since arriving here I have made fast friends with one of my room mates, and as such have had a wonderful introduction to living in Germany. But almost immediately I discovered, with great horror, just how limited my German has become from years of not practicing. Part of the problem is naturally that my vocabulary has become remarkably small and I have great difficulty phrasing things. While I can read German rather well, when it comes to speaking, conversing, and listening it as though I have forgotten everything I have ever learned. This is certainly an obstacle on its own, but not one that is insurmountable. Part of learning a language is surrounding oneself with native speakers, getting used to the cadence of the language as it's spoken, and slowly building up functional competency. But the real difficulty actually comes from my own, illogical reservations. I lose confidence. I fear making a fool of myself and I trip up over my words. I become painfully aware of my Anglophone accent and I just fail. This has manifested itself, partly, in my avoiding new social situations. This is, I believe, a critical fault if I am to continue my research. To be sure, I have spoken to a few people, listened intently, and understood what they were saying to me. But when I want to express something and engage, I find that I simply don't have the language competency to express my thoughts the way I would like to. And this is where the frustration sets in. I genuinely want to approach and engage people in a meaningful and thoughtful way, but what instead comes out is something akin to a German speaker who has been kicked in the head by a horse after a night of heavy drinking.

This is not some way to say that fieldwork is difficult in Germany. Of course I am not learning a new language previously unrecorded by Western civilization. To say that it could be worse misses the point entirely. The point is I am reminded how fieldwork is so incredibly human. It's not that I have lost language competency, it's that this loss affects me specifically. Almost every anthropologist goes through a sense of alienation in the field, either because of their language or because of interpersonal difficulties. Like me, there are periods where the anthropologist retreats to his tent/room/shelter and seeks the comforts of home. Where Malinowski sought refuge in novels, anthropologists today can run from the difficulties of fieldwork by delving into cyberspace. They can write blogs about how weird fieldwork is. But the process of seeking refuge is specific to one's own circumstances. Refuge may be sought out of anger, frustration, depression, loneliness, or desperation. And once refuge is found, maybe all anthropologists have the sense that they are not accomplishing anything. The anthropologist may resolve himself to pushing the matter and getting something done. But that's the really wonderful part about fieldwork, it happens even when you aren't taking notes (actually, it happens especially while you aren't taking notes). There have already been instance where, while trying to sleep, it will dawn on me that I had had a real, ethnographic encounter that I didn't even bother to jot down. Essentially, I think fieldwork (at least in my case) will be about getting out of my own way. Let failure and embarrassment be what it is- I can always take more German classes.

I have now taken to going to a café in the vicinity and reading others' reflections on their fieldwork in order to draw up some confidence, courage, and excitement. And I sit outside and hear spoken German on the street, I am drawn to the need to get over my own, personal hang ups, and confront the limits that are real and fabricated alike. Had I chosen to be a textualist, I never would have had to confront myself in this way. Fieldwork has value not only in the production of anthropology in the academy, but in the production of a self that is capable of moving outside itself and finding comfort in whatever may face it.

Of Fieldwork, Germany, and the Process of Being Alone

One of the defining features of Anthropology, and one of the reasons I was so drawn to the discipline, is the process of fieldwork. Fieldwork has the mythical image of being a time where the anthropologist disappears into his or her site of study, learning the natives' ways, and analyzing everything he or she comes across. I think more realistically, fieldwork will just prove to be a constant process of trying to disappear into the field and being shocked, amazed, and baffled by all the ways these efforts are thwarted. While I have only been here for a week, I have already witnessed some of the ways this trip differs from my last transatlantic trip in 2009.

I have no real "agenda" here in the field. Certainly I am to gather notes, explore the possibilities of various projects for further study, and I am to meet people and improve my language. But those goals are rather nebulous and make fieldwork seem rather languid. On a day to day basis I have this itching feeling that I should be out where things are happening. And yet, if I knew where things were happening I think I would already know the field quite well. Instead, my days are filled with the mundane elevated to the point of interest (to myself at least). Often times I wonder if I am engaged in sloth or research yet to be recognized. I do ordinary things most days. I take the U-Bahn to the city center and walk around. I ask people questions before they quickly scurry away leaving me to puzzle over what linguistic faux pas I may have made. I go to the store and try to crack the logic of German grocery shopping and I come home to cook. But despite this flooding of mundane, daily activities, I have filled pages of my fieldnotes. Where does this level of productivity come from? Is it a false productivity? Am I doing enough? In many ways I have resolved to leave these questions unanswered while I am in the field. The moment I begin to treat these questions seriously, I believe, is the moment I begin to lie to myself about the nature of fieldwork.

I have discovered, however, that there is a process to being alone. This is both true in the fact that I now have to get cozy with my internal dialogue with little recourse to an outside voice. At night I sit in my room and dwindle away the last few hours of my day on the computer. I make some casual notes, read a section from the books I brought alone, and I listen to nothing. And in the course of the week I have found that these behaviors have slowly moved towards making me something else. This loneliness is what makes the field, well, the field. There are no comforting distractions big enough to ever take my mind off of itself. The Internet is only so familiar before I realize that it lacks the kind of comfort it has back home. I am out of context, and its wonderful. For so long I thought that fieldwork must suffer negatively from the fact that the anthropologist can simply log on, read in his native language, and communicate back home. But I was wrong. What I thought was a loophole to the act of being in the field has in fact proven to (thankfully) be a false promise. There is no going back. I am here, even when I get these small windows to look through. And I am here because the small, mundane acts I wrap my life with are now different. They are in German. They are kind of weird to me.

So what have I learned in a week? Well, I can see how people can say the field is a difficult place to be emotionally, mentally, and physically. From adjusting to time zones to realizing that my German isn't where it should be, I can see all the difficulties that are going to befall me (ok, not all the difficulties, but a good handful of the ones most pressing at the moment). But I'm excited about it! I wanted to do anthropology because I could get out of the library and talk to people. And for all the cynicism about what we do, I do believe there is tremendous value in fieldwork. I'll leave all the skepticism and complaining for when I get home. While I'm here, I may as well fake like I know what I'm doing. And at some point, I'm fairly certain I actually will know what I'm doing.

Runners in the Dark

I've taken three days off from running as I have rounded out my first year of PhD work here in Princeton. The mental exhaustion has presented itself as a prolonged case of apathy. But now that things are wrapping up, I feel like I may be in a position to finally gear up for better training and a reinvention of my training plans. The ultimate goal is to run my first half-marathon (though I ran at least 13.1 miles on a weekly basis during college long-runs) this fall. Now keep in mind that two months of that training will have to take place in Stuttgart, Germany where I will be undergoing my first summer of field research (of which I will write later).

What I wanted to share in this entry, however, is something pretty fleeting and precious (to me). This evening I was taking my dog out for a walk through the nicer parts (they really are nicer) of Princeton. There was a thin layer of fog settling in and silent flashes of lightning off in the distance as we made it back to the main road. It was then that I saw two runners passing by on the other side of the road. I saw them first, but it was as though the moment I recognized them was also the moment I really could notice them. The steady sound of rubber soles on pavement- faint but unmistakable- and a slightly labored breathing that spoke about miles traveled. They passed out of my sight quickly, but I felt an intense jealousy. Though I had agreed to give myself the time I needed to recover off of the last ten days of work, I couldn't help but feel like I had fundamentally disappointed myself again.

Before college I had become somewhat of a nocturnal runner. This was partly out of necessity as training during the day in the middle of July was nothing short of a desire to suffer endlessly, and partly out of a really pervasive case of morning sloth. I haven't been a morning runner since High School summers, and even then these were particularly the most painful runs I would do. So, after work (or after Scrubs was over) I'd lace up my shoes and head out on the roads at night. Perhaps to my mother's horror. But once I was out there I would fall in love with the run completely. The air would still be warm, but the sun's oppressive and brutal regime would be at its end. Shadows would be long and that dark blue sky would just start to form in the east. And the remarkable wave of quiet would start to build. That was the sweet spot. Traffic would dwindle away as people returned home and I would be out there with but a few wandering pedestrians or kindred spirits left. The trees along the bike path or roadsides would fill in with shade and suddenly everything more than three feet from me would be heavy and unreachable. I would hear my own breathing and foot steps without the din of the world around me. And if I chose to draw my attention away from my task, all I'd hear are those ambient night sounds that really don't require describing. After the runs I would walk around in ever shrinking circles on my street in front of my house. While I would have accumulated a small insect graveyard on my chest, I wasn't particularly troubled at that point. Instead I'd just take deep breaths and enjoy the fact that I was done.

Night running really represented something pure about the act of running. While I had always been in it to race, night running was that time when I came closest to loving running only for the simple act of running. I'd race past shadows and façades familiar only during the daytime. I'd be in the world without regard for my surroundings (don't worry, I was always safe) and instead really focus on my runs. As I get back to running, I often find myself doing evening runs out of procrastination more than anything else- but once I'm out there and the light dims a little, I think I get a little taste of that feeling I'm after. I think back on night runs in the Parisian parks or back home in Algonquin, and I really do think it all looks a lot alike in the dark. It all looks like me.

"When You Become A Stranger Again"

At some point or another I think most of us experience moments when we feel like a stranger to ourselves. Some of us wake up and realize that we have gone down a path we never thought we would chose. Others feel as though the words they speak are not their own. But for me, the moment when I felt like I could no longer recognize myself was when I started running again. On that first run back I felt like this body was not mine, that it no longer submitted to my desires.

To contextualize this moment of existential (non)crisis, let me just say that running has been critical in my life for the better part of a decade now. I started running Cross Country in Middle School as an alternative to competitive swimming (and to get some social time with my friends at the time). Those early years of running were nothing spectacular, and I regularly lost to girls. But I stuck with it for some reason or another. By my freshman year of high school I had a break out year and I became a fairly competitive high school athlete. I was never a top competitor, but I was also pretty serious about what I was doing. I'd stand on the starting line and empty my body of everything but the shuddering of my heart and that cold burst of anticipation before the sound of the gun. My summers were 6 am runs and a feeling of accomplishment.

The summer before college was one of the best summers for running I had ever had. I finally started logging miles, my training runs were rejuvenated by a new sense of purpose. Now, I had never had high hopes for running beyond college, but I had always thought that I could be a competitive DIII runner. There was no career in it for me. Just the joy of competition. But college didn't pan out that way. After a promising start to my college career, I languished. And with each disappointing month, perhaps interrupted by an occasional PR, I found myself laden with a growing sense of anxiety. By my second year I found myself filled not with the shudder of a heart or the rush of cold anticipation, but a tied knot where my stomach should be. I would lose sleep wondering if the next race would finally bring me out of mediocrity and elevate me to the level I had always thought I should be. But it never happened. Running lost its innocence and it became, instead, a new stressor in my life. Though I'm glad I ran in college as it added tremendously to my life in many, many ways, I can't help but feel that by the last year competitive running had finally siphoned off the joy. The only problem with that thinking is that it was competing that made running fun for me. I didn't want to head out the door without a purpose. What good was a 9 mile run if not to improve and to test myself continuously?

After my last (and most disappointing) collegiate race I promised myself that I'd begin competing for myself. I purchased a new jersey top to serve as a new uniform for my next phase. And yet the motivation was gone. I just couldnt bring myself to get up and out the door. I watched all summer as my girlfriend rekindled her love for running and improved with each passing week. And inside I stayed. By the time grad school started up I just didn't care about running. It brought me no pleasure and I saw no reason to do it.

Then, in the last few months I began to miss that post-run feeling. That sensation of being completely awake and light. So I started to run. And that's when I felt like a stranger.

My rhythm was off. My arm swing felt awkward and my strides felt like plodding. Everything seemed completely out of sync. That unity of mind and body I had grown so accustomed to was gone. For the past month I have struggled to put together more than 2 days of running in a row. And while my motivation has gotten better, I think what's keeping me back most right now is the fear that I'll never come back to the way it used to feel. While I had never been a top athlete, I always knew I could run well when I needed to. If I lost a race, it was because the other guys were just better than me at that moment, and I had faith that I could improve through training. But after four years of languishing in the middle of the pack, and now a year of gradual decay, I have to find my way back to running again. I want nothing more than to be able to turn back out sub-5 minute miles on runs when I feel like it. I want that turn over to come back. I want to feel like I own my body again.

Viral Humanitarianism?

The Yotube film Kony 2012 has erupted over the last few weeks in a highly viral campaign intended, ostensibly, at raising the profile of Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony. I noticed the film first as a trickle on my own Facebook minifeed- and then as a flood. I want to write about the film now not because it is so contemporary, but because it came out at a time when I was thinking about humanitarianism for a number of my courses. What I wanted to examine, specifically, was how Kony 2012 is the perfect instantiation of what Liisa Malkki drew attention to in her article Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism and Dehistoricization back in 1996.

What is so striking to me about Kony 2012 is its immediate reliance upon pathos to make its claim. I use pathos here specifically to include emotional argumentation rather than affect, which is itself more complicated than emotional pure and simple. The film is unequivocally attempting to draw the viewers into an emotional response so that, by the end, they feel inclined to participate in the campaign to "make Kony infamous." This, however, is a highly dangerous tactic for two key reasons. Firstly, appeals to pathos precipitate the dehistoricization Liisa Malkki identified in 1996. In her article on Hutu refugees and the humanitarian interventions into the Rwandan genocide, Malkki notes that media representations of refugees is predicated not upon the speech of the victims, but on their image. Viewers and consumers of media are intended to relate to the refugees on the basis of their shared humanity, not to understand the historical or particular characteristics of what they had experienced. The dehistoricization of events disables our ability to think critically and accurately about the exact situations and circumstances involved. In Kony 2012, for example, the filmmakers only mention that Joseph Kony is no longer in Uganda in passing. They rely on a narrative now nearly six years old in order to highlight the worst of the LRA's atrocities. And this dehistoricization is not without even more immediate consequences. Showings of the film in Uganda have been met with outrage, demonstrating that those people whom the film claims to represent are, in fact, not at all happy with the ways in which they are represented.

This brings me to the first characteristic of what I think of as "viral humanitarianism." Viral videos have the unique ability of being truly global very rapidly, and as such the circulation of images and words can now transcend what was even available when Malkki first wrote her article in 1996. Uganda's shown as a suffering people is now no longer a representation falling only before Western eyes. The sufferers can now see how they look to the West; and they are not necessarily thankful. One can of course understand what is so offensive to a Ugandan audience about the film. The last 5 years do not factor into the film, and instead it is the suffering and barbarity that become the central characterization of Ugandan history. This moment of time is meant, now, to be the moment around which the filmmakers want the world to orient their interactions towards Uganda. What is more, the marketing of Kony 2012 merchandise, designed to make Joseph Kony "infamous," hardly seems like genuine humanitarianism in their eyes. Instead, it appears like a commercial answer to a human problem. What Kony 2012 does demonstrate, however, is the potential for the represented to enter into dialogue with humanitarian organizations and Western publics.

But as soon as these kinds of arguments are made we are immediately in a trap, of sorts. Arguments against humanitarianism as it exists today are classified as callous, intellectual exercises that contribute nothing to alleviate the suffering of people in the here and now. This is an argument Didier Fassin works to undo in his recent book Humanitarian Reason. Malkki also argues that we cannot be content with humanitarian models as they exist today because they are "not the best of all possible worlds."The common retort may simply be "at least they are doing something" and "if it were up to academics, nothing would get done." These claims, however, miss the point, I think. First, I truly believe that better understanding rather than more understanding is the key to effective humanitarian actions. And secondly, I think we may be firmly beyond the point at which something is better than nothing. There is no shortage of cases in which doing something has resulted in ill-advised humanitarian actions. This is, of course, not to mention the ways in which humanitarian governments, as Fassin defines them, have been able to mobilize our moral sentiments to engage in military interventions that often result in even more civilian casualties.

And here is a distinct danger I see in viral humanitarianism. Kony 2012 made the rounds quickly via social media networks before any kind of careful analysis could be done. This is, unfortunately, a reality with which we must face. The story always gets out ahead of the analysis. However, what is so troubling is the ways in which debate about the film are essentially silenced both by a strict adherence to the "something is better than nothing" argument as well as the sheer volume of internet traffic around the film.  The speed with which the film made its way around greatly enhanced its efficacy on audiences. It became a hot issue, and by virtue of being talked about more people went to see the film. This is of course not an entirely new phenomenon, but I would argue that it is greatly exaggerated in the age of social media and internet sharing. Viral campaigns have the unique character of escaping a central, localized stage. Instead, they fan out and become impossible to really get a complete handle on.

What would I like to see instead? As an academic-in-training I am not immune to the kinds of criticism mentioned above. After all, aren't I content thinking about problems rather than doing something to fix them? I take a direct issue with this, however. First of all, as I mentioned, better understanding is more important than more understanding. And as such, I believe that by rehistoricizing issues and balancing pathos with logos we may be able to form much more cohesive humanitarian responses. I personally believe that an argument based in logos is completely capable of invoking an emotional response. But when pathos is the only rhetorical strategy employed, rational discussions and accurate representations become harder to come by. I also believe that smarter campaigns done in partnership with people who lived in Uganda during the last 6 years may have been a better way to approach this particular issue. I understand the sense of urgency which may drive the kind of filmmaking that went behind Kony 2012, but I also believe it was unduly reckless. It continues to ensnare well-meaning individuals in the weaker aspects of our humanitarian model. I firmly believe in making better models, finding and forging partnerships, and in at least attempting to accurately represent the facts when it comes to humanitarian causes.


EDIT: I understand I didn't even try to deal with the question of "ethos" in this short blog- but that's totally a perspective I think merits discussion!