Happy Trails or Keep on Keepin' on...

Well blog family, it's come time for me to say goodbye.... for now. As our class ends and we are no longer required to post, I feel compelled to say something to the extent that you won't be hearing from me for awhile on this blog and that our blog experience has been real. I enjoyed reading all your blogs as I'm sure you've all enjoyed mine.. but in the words of the late Hunter Stockon Thompson, "All hallucinations, no matter how good or how bad, must end." In closing I want to leave you all with a few words from Anthony Bourdain as we all leave the class room set out to travel in our own right...
"Don't tell me what a man says, don't tell me what a man knows, tell me where he's travelled."
and
"The older I get, the more I travel, the less I know."

So long and thanks for all the strange memories!

Response to Early Travel: Emily, Amir.

Emily: Another long title -- is this a genre distinction or a time period distinction?! I found your presentation pretty interesting -- white slave narratives tend to be a little provocative. Thanks for the pork nod by the way, I tend to like pork. As we discussed after your presentation, the fact that he admits to publishing for money and the timeliness of the white slave narrative seems suspicious.. especially when you consider he claims to have been captive for 17 months but the captain of his ship was only a prisoner for 2 months. As you mentioned he loved to quote the bible .. perhaps there's a connection. The bible is all about metaphors and allegorical meanings .. maybe 'your guy' did the allegory thing?

Amir: Thanks to the handout I 'remember' the name of 'your guy.' Bowring seemed like kind of an intelligent douche bag, especially if he started a war. Maybe/probably he stood to make lots of money from the war? Anyway, you set him up as attempting to be fairly objective .. but then you tell us things like how Bowring used metaphors for chinese people like vultures and carrion ants. Scientific racism? Perhaps he should have stuck with translating Scandinavian poetry instead of politics...

I think this or something like this will be the first paragraph or two .....

Understanding the relationship between author and text has long been a topic of critical examination. And whilst I do not wish to enter a discussion with the prominent scholars, like Foucault, Barthes, and Ong (to list a few), who dominate(d) the issue of authors and writers, works and texts, and how we move between each of these, the metaphysics of authorial presence intrigues me. As I see it, understanding authorial representation is a fundamental aspect of the larger picture, i.e., understanding the relationship between author and work on the whole. Specifically, the manner in which authors represent themselves, fictionally or otherwise as a literary device, implore certain questions. Questions much older than Foucault, Barthes, and Ong. Questions that (unfortunately) go all the way back to Plato and to some extent dictate how we have continued to frame and consider the place of the author in a work. Is authorial presence more than just a literary device or means of persuasion? Is a work with a present author more persuasive/believable than a work that lacks authorial presence? Is it problematic to place value judgments on the presence or absence of an author in his/her work? Does authorial presence function differently throughout the various genres of writing? When authors represent themselves somehow in a text, is it always a fictitious representation?
Whether or not these questions have definitive answers is irrelevant. They are relevant insofar as to function as a frame for my examination of ancient and contemporary travel narratives, the presence of their respective authors, and how this tradition has persisted over the ages.

Response to Early Travel: Hillary and Toria and Kellan

Hillary: My initial reaction to your presentation was unfortunately along the lines of what Debbie has told us is old hat. But surely there weren't a whole lot of plants and species of animals frolicking amongst the ice flows. Ostensibly, the search for the NW passage was about finding better trade routes before other countries, and I do not think your presentation really suggested otherwise. Scientific discovery and ethnography seemed to yield significance compared to your larger discussion of the dangerous voyage itself. Unfortunately (for me I think) again the amount of danger involved in arctic voyages seems to bulwark a more imperial/colonial underpinning. Who sends ships through mercilessly devastating ice flows that can stop and/or crush a vessel just to investigate new plants and animals -- would that really be worth the risk? It seems more likely to me that better/faster ways to get things from point A to point B would be of more strategic economic and military value than knowing what kind of vegetation can grow on a glacier or what kinds of unicorn-whales swim with penguins and etc.

Toria: My initial reaction to your presentation was fortunately more in line with the kinds of travel ideas like Hufford's Geertz questions... namely what (if anything) else matters but criticisms of power in scientific / travel writing, and how does the author's placement in his own text speak to these various issues of narrative authority. In my remedial experience and time spent reading scientific texts, I tend to generalize most of them as authorless insofar as scientific fact does not rely on the presence or absence of an author .. the science will speak for itself.. and therefore the author, if located at all, seems and inconsequential. And so, Dr. Lecter, this brings us to Dicey. The humor and attention Dicey draws to himself with regards to his 'science' seems strange, and forces me to consider that 'scientific' travel authors who made a game and wrote about themselves trying to ride a donkey, could have spent better time filling that space with numbers and measurements about jackass dimensions. The only reason I can think of why someone would want to develop such a grand ethos in a scientific travel text is that of material gain.

Kellan: Good game. Your presentation was the best -- keep reaching for those rainbows!

Truth and/in Narrative Power

~Can we use ethics, value, truth and power to provide criticism of scientific travel writing? Or does only power matter?~

~Is writing that explicitly makes the author present more powerful/truthful/vaulable/ethical than writing where the author makes himself less visibly present?~

Damberger - Thompson

To what extent is all travel writing a fiction? What role does fiction play in travel writing? How does technology of travel reinforce (falsely?) truth/objectivity?
Damberger's fake travel had to be prompted/inspired by real events -- we know he didn't do to Africa, but can any parts of his story be true? (could have been true?)
Can fiction as a literary device ever convey fact? How/When?
Technology/power often provide a trustworthy authority even in ficticious moments. Modern examples demonstrate how this practice is still around today. (HST and OZA)

The Six States of Swine

The Six States of Swine: Legend

Head: Adventure

Shoulder: Rural metropolis

Loin: Casual elegance

Side: Comfort zone

Leg: Special occasion

Parts Unknown: Foot, Tail, Intestine


It has recently come to my attention that I have built some sort of reputation as a writer and chef based entirely on pork. Please permit me to respond: It is with great honor that I accept this esteemed title and reputation and on behalf of all the writers and cooks / aspiring chefs in the English department. Thank you.

The only logical next step in defending my reputation is to further describe my special relationship to the mighty swine and perhaps explain my obsession in terms of a conceptual map. While the map locates cuts of pork with regards to the entire pig, it simultaneously locates the circumstances under which I cook or eat each given cut-location. I admit, while there is almost an infinite amount of useable/cookable pig parts, I had to narrow them down to six based on my limited experience with this majestic beast. That being said, please do not mistake the following pork narrative as a complete representation of the entire pig, or of all pigs everywhere. The intent of this map is to locate my limited cooking and eating practices with my favorite cooking and eating animal.

Moving from left to right and starting with the head, I labeled this part ‘adventure,’ because the only eating relationship I have with this region is one with head-cheese. Basically, all edible parts are stripped from the head then boiled down, seasoned and suspended with various vegetables in a savory gelatin. This stuff can scare people if they know what it is, perhaps because the idea of eating tongue and cheek seem somehow less appealing than belly fat (bacon) or ass meat (rump roast/ham). I like to say, “Eat it all and let god sort it out.” I do not eat head-cheese very often compared to other cuts, so the adventure stems from a sense of eating the uncanny – something I usually only eat when I travel or crave something comfortingly exotic and strange(ly delicious).

Technically the pig has two shoulder cuts (Boston and Picnic/Hand), but I lumped them together because aside from the occasional spare rib chop, the only thing I eat from either shoulders is sausage in one form or another. So many varieties of ways to season and prepare sausage: cooked or cured, blood or meat, and of course spice variants. But the basics remain the same: grind shoulder meat (or blood), fat, and spices then simply stuff into a casing (traditionally intestine). Sausage is not a fancy way to prepare meat by any stretch of the imagination (though it can be used in fancy dishes), but since there are so many different kinds sausage it can be very overwhelming. Be sure not to confuse a Spanish chorizo (salt cured) with a Mexican chorizo (comes raw). You’ll destroy any recipe that calls for one if you get the other – trust me.

The loin is about as fancy as it can get when it comes to service and preparations. The cuts of meat tend to resemble various steak cuts of beef (t-bone : pork chops and the filet). I rarely cook from this region unless I’m trying to impress with pig as the focal ingredient. Sure I wrap a lot of food in bacon and put bacon bits in almost everything, but this merely enhances other ingredients like vegetables. While all things pork tend to be relatively easy to cook and prepare, good cuts of meat require a certain finesse in execution in order to turn out edible. You can cook the shit out of bacon and I’ll still eat it, but a good pork chop must be treated delicately. This is exactly why I don’t tend to go for the higher quality cuts of meat – most of the time I’m too lazy to devote that much attention to my meats (by quality I mean less fat content).

If, as my map suggests, the pig was a country, I would live in the Side state. At the very least, I probably go through one package of bacon every week. Side or belly fat is the form under which my generous love for swine has been objectified. Pork ribs aside, who but a vegetarian can resist bacon, pancetta and/or proscuitto? I am very comfortable with cuts from the belly and all things lard, so comfortable in fact that (as mentioned above) I am compelled to wrap most of my vegetables and other meats with bacon or at the very least add bacon bits to my salads. I contend that some manner of pork fat can be added to any food and made better for it.

Giant hams and rump roasts lend themselves well to large social gatherings and/or special occasions. Where I grew up for example, we always had a ham for Easter (raised catholic but I do not personally endorse any religion). Tradition dictates my applications of the leg region. Even the illustrious eggs and ham seldom appears but on a certain author’s birthday, and even then it’s green. The ass-meat stands proudly for tradition and traditional executions of the glorious pig.

The tail, hocks, and feet I hear are very edible, but I would not know from experience. The proper opportunity has not presented itself for me to cook and/or eat these unique regions. I hear, that is to say, rumors suggest that compared to other regions, these parts unknown are much more limited when it comes to the diversity of possible executions. Verily, this is a result of systemic cultural ideologies which oppress some regions of pig while elevating others. Therefore I cannot be faulted for supposing myself rather nationalistic about my preferred state of swine in practice and ideology – bacon at all costs.

My Journey to 'A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream'

Did someone mention partially fictionalized travel narratives? What about collectors and the narratives their collections weave? "...Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can," (4) -- Or any collection for that matter, as our friends Blumenbach and Banks would have us believe. Perfect! I call dibs on writing about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas!

At the moment, I'm thinking I should look at how early travel narratives can be fiction, then look at how New-Journalism is necessarily fictionalized. A quick critical examination there then I think its off to close read a few passages from the Damberger (or others? I'll take suggestions) and draw compelling parallels between various Thompson passages about how fiction works in all narratives. I plan to work something in about fiction and collections as well -- as in the fiction of how various collections are represented. Aside from drug collections, F/L deals with collections of cars, hotel rooms, hotel services/food, and collections of technological devices used by Thompson to constantly type his news articles and stay in touch with Rolling Stone while on the road ( i.e., The Mojo wire -- like a primitive portable fax machine). This section could lead into various other technologies of travel/collection -- more stuff we've visited from the really old guys.

Mainly, I want to explore (by our classroom definitions) ideas of fiction and collection in travel narratives and various technological elements that helped along the way. Thompson needed to stay in touch with his center of calculation (Rolling Stone HQ). On some level I want to compare technology that Thompson used to stay in touch to navigation devices like sextents and maps used by Cook, Banks, etc. Finally, I think I want to note something about how Thompson and Acosta travelled to very culturally foreign locations, despite the fact they never left America. Examining the cultural other and its environment. Thompson attempted this and still ultimately (probably) failed in similar ways that the Royal Society failed to portray foreign cultures -- but I want to examine this curiosity and want to explore the cultural other. At least Thompson's misrepresentations of Americans did not lead to scientific racism ....... (like many of those old guys) ...

Dear mystery student, From your special friend.

You are so great. If everyone was as cool as you, this class would be the best class ever. You are easily way cooler than Blumenbach and Banks put together! I know this may be a little cliche, but I'm reminded of that crappy 80's song, "You're so Vain," -- I bet you think this blog is about you. But for the real you there can be no confusion. Haha. I highly doubt any opinion I convey or new idea I introduce here will surprise you -- you're so great that way. I also believe that you'll be a little sad about a certain degree of lacking photos this time around -- I know you'll forgive me.

The above is an example of the kind of rhetorics data can carry. I know things (data) about my very specific audience here, and therefore I use the kind of rhetoric I know will be received well. My audience likes sarcasm and likes other people to stroke their ego. So when explaining ideas to this person, it's good to make them feel important and sort of educated (not too much). This is kind of a weak example -- I bet you were thinking the same thing -- you're ever so smart! The point (aside from how cool and smart you are and how no one understands you or how cool and smart you are) is that all data carries rhetoric and further all 'centers of calculation' (however you define them) convey national and cultural bias. Blumenbach is perhaps the most obvious example (I bet you were about to say that too) insofar as he never actually left his center of calculation (to a large extent Goettingen, some amount of Jena) and insofar as his theories of race were/are the nascent form of the scientific racism that Nazis would later use to justify killing everyone who was not white/straight/christian. You know what I mean, I don't have to explain a lot of this to you because we worked *very* intimately with one another on the material, so you know how science tries to carry rhetorics of objectivity but ultimately fails because we simply do not believe anything is objective ever.

This is how science gets racist, or sexist, or ableist, and/or etc., by assuming objectivity as a way to negate cultural bias. Blumenbach thought that being civilized and indoors kept you white and therefore beautiful. He also thought that continued exposure to just being outside made carbon in your body rise to the top of your skin and make you dark. He needed some way to explain gradations in skin pigment, and tried to use a bunch of hilariously stupid science talk to prove this based on other scientific work. The problem is that this indoor/outdoor, white/black binary is utter bullshit. Blumenbach associated whiteness with civility and darkness with savage outdoor barbary. Objective science or scientific racism based on national/cultural bias? I had a feeling you'd say scientific racism. XD

Others might suggest that it's anachronistic to say that 200 years ago people couldn't be racist because 'racism as an ism' perhaps did not exist. This sounds to us like people need to realize that racism is not confined to individual acts of meanness but that it is systemic in systems of power -- whether people choose to be aware of it or not. Just because there was no word for racism 200 years ago, does that mean slave owners, Charles White, and to some extent Blumenbach were not racist? That doesn't even make sense to me. I have little patience for talks of whether or not cultures acknowledge their privilege over other cultures and how they can possibly not be considered racist or nationalist or sexist or etc -- especially when they have scientists generate 'objective data' in order to corroborate these systems of privilege. Just because a culture believes what it does is correct does not make it so. (Examples: Nazi Germany, U.S. foreign policy in Cuba, Nicaragua, Iraq, etc forever) Ignoring cultural bias with regards to scientific research leads to what many people may consider, for lack of a better word, terrorist activities or the use of violence or the threat of violence to acheive political, social, or religious ends. (Again, same examples). The U.S. says that we cannot respect other nations' sovereignty unless their governments do as we say and play ball. Somewhere, no doubt, someone has tried to justify all this with some sort of science, political or otherwise.

Kant has big problems here. All I need to say to you is 'Kant sucks and is perhaps responsible for a lot of this racist bullshit,' and you instantly know what I mean -- The categorical Imperative, the Universal Maxim, and Virtue. Remember the Nietzsche quote from Antichrist "...that which does not constitute a condition of our life is dangerous to it. To respect that term 'virtue' .. as Kant would have us do .. is pernicious." Kant really invented this horrible thing that Christians know as 'The Golden Rule' -- treat others as you would be treated. Kant's categorical imperative states that you should "never use people as means to an end but always as an end in themselves." This is basically the same thing, only Kant had it just a few years before the Christians. Big problem here -- don't assume everyone wants to be treated like you do. I can imagine a bigot who doesn't like women's rights. By putting women down and stunting their career at every chance -- the bigot is treating people how he'd like to be treated AND he's using women as ends not means. The bigot wants other people to not give women equal rights and so when he treats women as inferior, he is accomplishing his desired end goal -- that women not be treated equally. The golden rule and Kant all suck ass, because not everyone wants to be treated the same way. I hate mayonaisse -- a more pedestrian example -- but if someone who loved mayonaisse wanted everyone to be treated as they wanted to be treated, then I would end up eating a lot of mayo and.. again I hate mayonaisse. Data carries rhetorics -- always.

Sky-Mall Susurrations

Yes, as McDonalds and Starbucks grow to be truly ubiquitous, this symptom of placelessness (ushered forth by the onset of late capitalism) has grown to pandemic proportions. I agree with the author of the Place and Placelessness article, but I look forward to the day where I can go to the mall, buy a bunch of crap, then walk to the food-court / security-check and board my flight to Prague -- Big Mac in hand, (honestly, I abhor fast-food, but allow me to enjoy it metaphorically).


To a large extent, this is already possible. If you catch an international flight, once you go through security, the airport opens up into a sprawl of lounges (airline specific) and duty-free stores. Sea-tac already looks like a giant mall in this respect, and if I may continue my rhetorics of honesty, I'm a little surprised the author left out talks of all things duty-free. Duty-free stores are better than malls because there's no tax and prices are lower than anywhere outside the security check/waiting area. Perhaps in the future, people will buy international plane tickets just so they can go to Duty-free areas and save money on Christmas presents.

(Does this look like a picture from inside a mall or an airport? The answer could be considered both. Dutyfree mall in Bangkok airport)

As if having to walk through a mall before boarding your flight wasn't bad/tempting enough, (I ended up buying a shit-ton of Sake at the duty-free shops during my 4 hour lay over in Tokyo, along with generic souveniers for friends back home -- like the white teeshirt that only has the big black kanji for "Japan" on it) the temptation to shop does not end once you get into the air.

If these malls in airports aren't enough to confuse notions of place, then verily the Sky Mall catalogue and the Sky Mall announcements over the in-flight intercom are. I'll be honest, I don't do well on airplanes, especially flights of 10+ hours. As a result of my inability to cope in a flying coffin made of thin metal travelling at 300+ mph some 4 or 5 miles above ground, I am always doped up and about to sleep or totally passed out before the plane leaves the ground. I assure you this is all legal, and if you suffer like I do, talk to your doctor -- lorazepam + scotch = sleep x 13 hr.

Having said all that, when I'm on an airplane, I'm already rather placeless -- no need for the stewardess to hand me a skymall catalogue and try to solicite money for strange devices. The point here, as it regards to place and placelessness is that you never stop playing the part of consumer. Even on airplanes they try to constantly make you buy the stuff you can get anywhere -- and by anywhere I mean the internet. Skymall stuff is weird, and in a highly suggestable state, poor tourists like me can easily be conned into buying the latest Vilcus Plug Dactyloadapter. (Seen here in the photo, this thing is supposed to use electricity to promote health and well-being -- funny I was always told not to stick my fingers in electrical sockets. You can actually buy this thing in the Skymall catalogue -- I did not actually get tricked into buying one, but it was close.) If the Sandra Bullock movies about her always-dying husband weren't bad enough to remind me how little I was traveling regardless of distance, all these attempts to make me buy stuff and pay for drinks brings it all home. The Stewardesses actually walk up and down the aisles and take credit card orders after allowing the passengers a good thirty minutes to peruse skymall catalogues -- kind of like collecting your trash after 30 minutes of getting to eat the trash they give you. Even if the plane --the vehicle of travel itself -- has become a place for placeness (I think it has), at least the food will always remind you where you are. Even crappy restaurants like Denny's or Shari's, while they may come close, can't quite do it as bad as the airlines.

col-lec-tion [kuh-lek-shuh n] -noun:~alle gegen alle~

I enjoy gathering and collecting, but had never thought critically about these practices prior to our group's discussions. As a result of all these talks about how collections do some sort of damage to original context, whether or not original context matters, and who collects with what intention, I had some difficulty in deciding on which collection I could use to make some sort of point about these issues. For the most part, I consider my library a(n) (incomplete) collection because I like grouping my books by author. I have no author's completed works on my book shelves so I've decided not to portray that collection but in passing fashionable talk about how an incomplete collection of books demonstrates a manipulated context from that of a collection of works by an author. This manipulated context allows for competing naratives whereby the audience or collector would construct meaning based on an incomplete data set. This is troubling, because as I've mentioned in prior blogs, I don't like other people trying to create a narrative about my shit. You can have my narrative about my collections, but I don't like the idea of "everyone vs. everyone" when it comes to talks of my personal belongings.

My next idea for a collection to display was no better than the first for very similar reasons -- context destroyed. However this time, said collection is already on display and people have already constructed narratives. I speak of my myspace page. I'm not ashamed to admit I'm on myspace. It's not like I'm on facebook also -- one is bad enough. But I digress, the point is that for all the prompts on the myspace profile I simply copy and pasted a myriad of philosophy quotes ranging from Chairman Mao to Nietzsche to Godwin. Talk about taken out of context, all these guys come together in a gross compilation without even a mention of the books they actually came from!

Then one fateful Tuesday evening (last tuesday), whilst driving about and taking pictures of random Pullman crap, the idea came to me. Or perhaps it had always been with me. I had packed my fridge hours before full of packages of sausage and bacon as well as the many previous blogs which further profess my love for all things swine. Perhaps the idea to present a single pig as a collection really came to me after my colleague and I stopped at Minh's Asian Bakery, on the corner of Stadium and Grand, for pork buns. Inspired by Emily's wonderful food pictures, I prepped my pork buns for their photo-op and then the wonderful pig idea came to me in a mediocre mouthful of warm dough and sweet pork.


The following is my attempt to find and take pictures of various cuts of pork along with a picture of my favorite aisle in the grocery store, which as a thing in itself, serves as a collection of porks. For starters, I decided it best to use a cut chart as a frontispiece of sorts, but I couldn't decide which of these two was more informative:

Two shoulders? This is my least favorite pig place because aside from feet and head/jowls, the shoulder offers the leaner pork meats. The upper or Boston shoulder includes part of the back and hasmore fat than the picnic shoulder which is situated lower on the front leg. The Boston shoulder is commonly cubbed or roasted, as per the chart, whereas the lower shoulder is chiefly sausage meat. The picture to the left is a cut from the lower/picnic shoulder -- sausage time!

Our next stop on the pig tour is arguably the most popular and used area, the loin. Covering most of the pig's back, the loin includes the best cuts like the sirloin (near the rear of the back) and the infamous pork chop (seen on the right). Also included in the loin are the top ribs. Not to be confused with spare ribs, the top ribs commonly contain more meat but also more muscle and less fat than the spare ribs (located in the belly area).

Rump roasts and ham come from the leg/butt section of the pig. Popular on holidays, (spiral cut) ham is a traditional feast usually coated in brown sugar or pineapple. I have not included a ham picture, but (on the bottom right) the rump roast is a deliciously fatty alternative.

My favorite location on the pig is the belly. Famous for its fatty cuts like bacon and spare ribs, the belly includes, by far, the most fat. The belly also contains tripe, but I've got a section devoted later on to all the nasty bits and uncommonly used parts still to come. Spare ribs dominate baby back ribs in my opinion -- again the fattier the better when it comes to my cuts of pork.

Tripe, head cheese, and feet are the most common of the uncommon. Coined, "The Nasty Bits," by famous chef and author, Anthony Bourdain, these three cuts are often made into dog food. By and large, dishes that rely on the Nasty Bits are usually indicative of any given culture's reliance on the pig. Chitlins, a southern American dish, is pig intestine usually boiled at length or put in a pressure cooker to tone down the rubbery texture and embolden the deliciousness of pig fat. Tripe is generally divided into two different parts of the pig's stomach, intestines and stomach lining. On the left, intestine and chili oil, to the right is a cooked dish of honeycomb tripe, or stomach lining. Finally, pig's feet are strangely common in pickled form. My grandparents loved the stuff but I could never keep any of it down. I have nothing else to say about pig's feet, despite the fact that I have a picture here of them -- not a huge fan of feet, but stomach parts are okay in my book. Along with the feet, worth mentioning is the shank or hock. More or less, the shank is an ankle cut from the foreleg. Again, eating the feet of any animal makes me a little suspicious. Usually animals walk around in poop, and while I know things are cooked thoroughly, its a hard image to overcome.

You can find most of these pig parts in various sections of your nearest grocery store. My favorite, the belly section, is generally not found in close vicinity to the sausages and the loin cuts. Each section in the store is a microcosm of what I propose to be a collection of swine, insofar as each different pig section in the grocery store has a variety of different cuts from the same area of the pig. Belly section photos brought to you from Pullman Safeway. Thus concludes my mapping of how a single pig counts as a pork collection -- my favorite kind of collection.

(Note: Many of these images are stock photos found on a google image search: "Pork")

India? Travels!

March 25, 1799: I've booked passage with captain Woodcock to the East Indies. We're set to depart London at the start of the next month on a mighty galleon called The Whale. While gathering supplies for the voyage, I ran into a street urchin out of luck and in need of work. He claimed to have traveled on many ships as a crewman, and had run out of money while waiting for the next ship requiring crew replenishment to port. He told me his name was Amir and that he, of Belgian heritage, had travelled to India and back once before on another expedition. I decided to hire him on as an inland guide for India after he mentioned that he had family back in Mangalor, India, and that he had not seen his wife and two children for several months.

April 1, 1799: We've set sail for India! Be merciful oh great Poseidon!

April 2, 1799: The purpose of this expedition is to help colonize foreign lands and inhabitants by stealing a bunch of stuff to bring back to London. I need to improve my social status in England because of my partial Irish ancestory. Banks and the Royal Society promised my riches and land if I bring enough distant and exotic loot back to the center of calculation.

April 5, 1799: Arrival in India. We're reading to start collecting, I hope the locals don't mind.Upon arriving in Surat, we had to buy provisions and transportation to move inland toward Mangalor. Amir told me that many royal families in Mangalor had new spices (curry and cardamom) and treasures we could easily take back to England. I know these spices are hard to find in England and therefore I could make a ton of money if I brought a lot of it back. These kinds of spice-discoveries can fund entire expeditions.. I imagine. Also, Amir, the street urchin says cardamom is delicious and expensive back in Britain. I tend to believe his savage tales about spices because of his familiarity with this distant land.

April 6, 1799: Gathering supplies for our journey inland has taken longer than expected when we learned that a camel shortage had recently ravaged the industry. We had to resort to back-alley dealings with seedy characters in the run down areas of Surat for hours before finding an old man who offered to sell his camel due to his inability to commute between work and home after losing his job to the crippled camel industry. I admit I kept my carbine close in hand while searching the black markets for transportation. Many of these independent merchants employed very large body guards. Basically once the old man saw my tattered clothes he must have decided I had not a lot of money, because we had no trouble from his body guards. Once we got the camel we were ready to venture inland to Mangalor for spice!

April 8, 1799: Two days of camel travel through the desert. We stopped at a temple half way to Mangalor because our camel and Amir needed rest from the sun. The locals supplied us with pickled fruits (similar to how us English pickle our olives) and fresh water. It is strange to note that we discovered the locals see cows as holy creatures and therefore no one eats them. I believe this is similar to the Mohametan belief that the world is held by the horns of a bull and thus the cow is scared. Also, we get no cow's milk. Thus far, aside from water we've only had almond milk to drink. And, as of yet we have not been able to find much flesh to eat, only nuts, pickled fruits and rice with butter. I assume the butter comes from goats, but I have not seen any goats yet. Amir promises goats once we meet up with Indian gentiles in Mangalor.

April 14, 1799: We've arrived in Mangalor! Very hospitable Indian gentiles offered us a large feast of goats and rice along with butter, ginger, curry and figs. The goats here are delicious! The locals roast the goats on spits all across the estate. It is a wonderful sight to see -- all this meat roasting on open flame. This vision of cooking meat makes it hard for me to feel bad for the cute baby goats that the gentiles have cooked everyday. Quite the contrary in fact, Amir and I were both quite excited for this little guy!

April 15, 1799: I've loaded several camels with the exotic spices and gathered supplies for the journey back to Surat where we are scheduled to catch a boat headed for Rome. After securing the small fortune in spices I attempt to locate my guide, Amir, but the local gentiles told me that he fled in the night with a camel, a store of gun powder, ammunition, and half my supply of british cigarettes. Apparently he ran off to find his family in one of the nearby northern villages. Good riddance I thought at the time, though I also remember anxiety about finding the way back to Surat. I bought one of the gentiles' slaves to guide me back to Surat who I also plan to bring back to England as a foreign specimen of some sort -- perhaps the Royal Society will pay extra.

April 21 1799: Made it to the boat and heading to Rome first then back to England with my treasures!

March 25 1799: Back in England and I'm rich now so I've decided to stop writing journals.

Alles ist mein

Reimagine a trip you took where you collected nothing. Without any objects, and (possibly) no photos, what remains?

At first glance, there seems many ways to answer this question of what remains of a journey, if you collect no physical objects (if this is literally possible), when you return home. Literally speaking, all those places and people you see on a trip, journey or adventure stay/remain there after you leave. Along lines of the literal trace of presence, I always come home with a bunch of dirty clothes, jet lag and often times a stomach virus of sorts from eating disagreeable but delectable foreign morsels. (Mmmm crazy German Head Cheese -- excuse the gratuitous pork product pictures). Does a withered bank account count as a presence in absence? I always have one of those after a long, healthy journey / adventure.

Pork and sarcasm aside, what most obviously remains after a trip where you collected no objects or souvenirs, are the memories of where what happened to who. More specifically, you retain a personal narrative of events regardless of material possessions that may or may not travel with you. In this personal sense, the narrator collects objects from the field for themself and not for some audience, viewer or voyeur come and usurp the context by creating their own narrative based on someone else's collection. When I go on a trip and gather objects while on said trip, I do so under the premise that these things will remind me of my experiences and I have little concern for the feelings of others in this matter. I am not sure how I feel about other people (friends and family) attempting to construct a narrative of my trip based on the crap I brought back (which is almost always foreign bottles of alcohol anyway). Of course, I am refering to the JM/Tim discussion about how many narratives a collection gets and who gets to define or interpret these different narratives. I particularly found JM's comment about how there shouldn't necessarily be only one narrative for a given collection interesting (I hope I'm not twisting JM's.. taking them out of context is another issue) because it seems to beg a question of context. Me going on a trip to Thailand and bring back crazy rice booze is no where near the same context of someone like Banks going out and collecting plants to put in a museum. The museum piece is a cultural artifact on display for everyone to wander by and participate in generating some sort of narrative or story about what kind of place on earth could possibly be home to strange looking lizards and shrubbery.

Ultimately, I suppose the context or purpose of the trip limits a collection's number of possible narratives not only by limiting the size of its viewing audience thereby restricting interpretation, but also by creating a public, cultural space reserved strictly for the purposes of generating interpretive narratives. My bottles of crazy rice booze, unfortunately have no such public space reserved for their glory, spare this artist's rendition I found somewhere on the internet, and now this blog space. Finally, the context of the trip also defines whether or not the collection will be public or private, and in both cases the collector's narrative or intention (if I may dare to use such a term) changes with respect to anticipation of audience. Please do not contruct a narrative of my rice booze collection.(My "collection" of sake is in Olympia and looks very similar in size and colors to this guy).

In nomine Collector: Context manipulated

In Part II. The Collection, Paradise of Consumption, Susan Stewart says that "the archetypal collection .. [is] a world which is representative yet which erases its context of origin," (152). Her example, Noah's ark, illuminates her idea of a collection in so far as Noah's ark was allegedly the only trace left of all earth's animals after God smote every thing else off the planet. I don't think Susan's point is that a collection can only be a collection if it's original context is destroyed or irrevocably lost, but that the oblivion to which the collection piece's original context is consigned, derives from the whims of the collector. I guess then, the collector defines the new context of a collection, but how does a collector reconcile this idea that the original context must be lost in order to call it a collection? Perhaps by virtue of the collector him/herself, a collection must be something at least separated in space from where it came from. One can speculate further as to what "original context" means exactly, but I'm finding it difficult to come up with an example of an original context that has been destroyed and from which we have artifacts that could be called a collection of sorts. I know! What about in Star Wars, when the first death star destroy's princess Leia's home-planet? Would the destruction of an entire planet satisfy Stewart's definition of a "Context Destroyed"? Yes, Star Wars is really the best I can do.

I think context, especially original context, with regards to the collection is a tough area in which to obtain much traction. In other words, I'm not sure how much significance original context bears on a given collection or collector. Verily, the first thing that comes to my mind when someone says, "collection," is some sort of collected works of some author bound in volumes. But what about collections of farm animals and livestock, or collections of pokemon playing cards? Whence cometh the original context for pokemon cards? Further, can you call it a collection if it's nothing more than a barn full of pigs you plan to butcher and eat over several months?

As scientific and technical as a barn full of pigs and some playing cards may seem, I'm not quite ready for my point to be lost in what may soon degrade into how you might be able to collect various cuts of pork. If someone has a collection of pigs (and likely many people do) what is the original context of the pig? Arguably, the original context of bacon is the pig, but I return to the pig, because I'm having difficulties reconciling my idea of Stewart's idea of the definition of a collection with common place (or my lack of access to common place) ideas of collection. Why does context (destroyed, restored, or manipulated) matter if you're just going to eat the collection anyway? Noah probably wanted to eat all those animals he put on his ark, naturally he couldn't because they had divine purpose. Strangely enough, that brings up another good question about this Noah's Ark analogy: namely, who is the collector? God or Noah? And under whose context began this new series? Perhaps this Noah's Ark example isn't such a great example of the archetypal collection after all? This might be a decent place to end and invite speculate from other colleagues. For some strange reason I have an uncontrollable urge to go fry a package of bacon.. out of my collection of packages of bacon....




(Suckling Pig photo courtesy of Pico De Gallo's restaurant, Philadelphia)

"You hate this, I feel great."

My understanding of perhaps the largest criticism of literary theory is that it lacks praxis. Critics of the kinds of theory that professors of Literature tend to engage in tend to say things like, "This essay lacks any sort of action or practical application beyond philosophizing about life, the universe and everything." These critics usually do not go so far as Dyre in saying that these professors actually "kill" the literature they devote their lives and careers to studying and reading. What does it mean to kill literature or even an author that for all intents, purposes, and accordances are already dead? I'm not exactly sure how you can kill ideas, so I apologize for asking a question without really speculating answers. Maybe others have opinions on this subject?

I suppose then my reluctant task is to defend theory against this strange charge of murder. I'm not sure I want to defend theory, but if I think back to my earlier theory days, I recall Paul DeMann writing somewhere that the "resistance to theory is the resistance to language," and Derrida saying something (much more eloquently than I can paraphrase) to the effect of "Well, people who think that deconstruction means destroying a text by pulling apart all the pieces, simply do not understand what I'm really talking about." The crowned-prince of Theory, Derrida, suggests that in deconstruction some meaning is always constructed simultaneously with this often misunderstood act of 'deconstruction.' Deconstruction afterall, is not the same as Destruction. Truth be told however, I get skeptical and a little suspicious when I see words of 4+ syllables and the presentation of ideas that could not be explained to and made sense of by, say, a 15 year old of average intelligence. In other words, I like it when things make sense. Killing Literature (when I think of writing as already, in some ways, dead) makes no sense. How many theory books must become an effigy before Dyer's pyromaniacal appetite for denying people's will to philosophize is sated? May I humbly suggest Mr. Dyer that you leave Foucault alone and go after people like Paris Hilton, Brian Bozworth, Donald Trump and others who are really killing literature by publishing their thoughts in any form of written print.

A defense of theory must also be defense of philosophy and in this case, with respect to Dyer, also a defense of how important it is to foreground and examine the sustaining postulates of the "literature" we read, rhetorics we encounter, and cultural ideologies that influence and form the human condition. Finally, Dyer uses a literary theory to denounce literary theories. This hypocritical move is not surprising though. After all, Dyer is not an uneducated man. He is familiar with literary theory and seems to have created a non-theory, which as a thing in itself, is a theory. So ultimately he is guilty of representing the very things he sees as oppressive of Literature, i.e., people telling other people how to read books and what to think about them.

An Inquiry into Ex-Patriatism and Scientific Work/Travel

Filled with thoughts and dreams of one day escaping the American continent(s), I've often naively contemplated on the lives of ex-patriates and on perhaps becoming one myself. My first real attempt to escape was in the summer of 2006 when I went to Bangkok, Thailand with the intention of becoming an ESL teacher. Job connections arranged, tickets purchased, a taxi called, and a plane boarded. Long story short, after a month or so I decided it would be best not to establish residence what with all the militant Muslim incursions from the South, an ailing King (who died shortly after I left), and open sewers in the nation's capital. Once I quit the job I hadn't actually started, it turned out that I couldn't book a return flight for another three weeks and therefore I would have plenty of time to travel in Thailand and attempt to steer clear of touristy activities like see the world's third oldest venomous snake farm, and focus on documenting my interaction with an extremely foreign culture.
The only sciency part of this interaction was that I decided to visit during the Summer monsoon season. Growing up in Western Washington, I've always considered myself used to and even a fan of the rain, but the amount of rain monsoon season in Thailand brings exceeded far beyond beyond any realistic expectation I had of what it meant when someone says "a lot of rain." I could ramble on about how low and fast the clouds moved in and out over my humid hotel room or how the seemingly 50mph winds turned the rain completely sideways, but I don't want to digress from how I think ex-patriates may potentially cope with notions of home, work, and the field (having seriously considered ex-patriatism myself by this point).
Usually, the scientific or intellectual field expedition ends and people go back home. But when people make field and home the same place, how might their work, or perhaps more specifically, their politics of identity, change as a result? I can only speculate about how a white male, for example, could move from America or Europe to Singapore, take up residence for some 15 plus years and consider himself a local -- especially when scientific / intellectual work continues throughout those years using field now home as a data set. I do not feel entirely qualified to answer this inquiry with any certainty, but I think that ex-patriatism is the extreme case when work and travel influence home and indentity.