Fear and Trembling Revisited

This thing happens when I read Kierkegaard. I realize that there is something lurking in the corner that I haven't addressed. There are things that need to change about myself, and they are the things that I am most scared to change. Then, I pretend that I didn't realize that, and everything is fine. This is followed by a period where I wrestle with myself (?) before deciding to do the riskiest thing: imagine that my life could be different.

These things are quite hard to write about because they are usually somewhat abstract, but sometimes they end in concrete changes. The last time I was in Denmark, and I was forced to read A LOT of Kierkegaard in a class, I broke up with my boyfriend, abandoned my theological perspectives, added a new major, and insisted that I would be happy. Strangely, it all worked out rather well.

So, here I am, in Copenhagen, reading Fear and Trembling. Again.*

At first I thought that it was something about Kierkegaard that made me want to change everything. Maybe he has some magical power that makes one dissatisfied with everything and ready to make a leap, but as I got to page 5 tonight, I realized something.

Maybe it isn't that Kierkegaard convinces me to change everything. Instead, it might be that once I have decided to pick up that book, somehow I have already committed to taking the risk. I listened to a friend of mine explain that self-help books do help her. She read this one book and ended up really applying these principles and reshaping her life. I don't want to compare Kierkegaard to self-help (though I wouldn't be the first to do so), but I imagine that it is the same for her. When she bought that book at the store, she had already decided to open herself up to the world. I think that I just need a concrete action every now and again to push me over the edge.

It's not that I want to change my life direction this time, but I am open to the possibility. Post-graduation is a vulnerable time for someone who has defined themselves academically, and applying to graduate school can feel a bit like one's whole identity is being evaluated (in a defensive move, I wrote this sentence in the third person--can't quite own that one yet). Not to mention, I moved half-way across the world.

So, I have felt myself close off, pull in, and hide from myself and others. I already knew that on one level, but I also read it on page 5 of Fear and Trembling. I imagine I will be reading that same sentence for the next 142 pages. Then maybe I will actually be ready to open myself up to the possibility of radical change.

You know, you could lose everything taking a risk like that.

*Please do not assume that I will take all of the above actions again. I just wanted to convey the importance of reading Kierkegaard to the direction of my whole life. Really, it is a bit more abstract this time around.

Pictures

Pictures are memory devices. That is why they are so comforting. I just loaded God-knows-how-many pictures of my trip to the Czech Republic onto my facebook page. It was strangely therapeutic, especially in the melancholy mood I was/am in.

Sometimes I am melancholy because I cannot place myself in the context I am in. What am I doing here? Is this where is should be? Why did I decide this would be meaningful? These questions are so much more obvious when I have left the familiar for a foreign country with high taxes and no open container laws, but these questions are always lurking around the edges of my thoughts, just beyond articulation in my antsy mind.

Pictures, however, remind me that indeed my story has progressed as I remember. I was just in Prague. My memory is reliable, and thus the story that I have told about myself is reliable. I can load these pictures onto my own little identity representation device with little captions to explain why I went where I did, and to show, sometimes all too overtly, why these images make me who I am. It is almost as if I am trying to convince everyone (myself) that I am that person who loves philosophy and is curious, smart, creative, and thoughtful. (Maybe this blog is another attempt...)

Either way, I articulate a story about myself: I am a world traveler. I lead students through academic tours of foreign countries because art, history, identity and politics matter to me. They matter because they are so important, and furthermore, I have beautiful pictures to prove how important they are!

All of this is to say, sometimes we need some confirmation of our own self-story. It is not that I doubt that I was in Prague, but somehow these pictures tell my own story of purpose and organizing telos (the goals and ends I direct myself toward as I live) back to me. Pictures are one of the little tools that I use to remember the right things and in the right ways. Perhaps it is a bit solipsistic to tell myself my own story with the photos I have taken and captioned, but I think it is all I have to start with.*


* I know too well, based on a 75 page honors thesis, that really, I have others. Facebook facilitates the ability of others to confirm my story, to call it into question, or to merely act as a "look of the other" kind of check. There is this other element though of the weight of the responsibility of my own story that can become a bit detached from the confirmation of others because perhaps I can always find someone to confirm whatever story that I create.

Memory and Identity, Forgetting and Oppression

The theme of the tour I am leading to the Czech Republic is memory and identity. It corresponds to the name of the academic program that I work in at DIS: European Culture and History. The basic idea is that, through a class and this trip, the students are supposed to tie history as the collective memory of a nation, to current culture, politics, lifestyle, national identity.

The concept seems a bit vague at first, but the idea is that our identity, or how we think of who we are, is tied to the stories that we tell about ourselves, especially our past. So, when you ask me who I am, I will likely think through the various situations in my life that have led me to live in Copenhagen, love philosophy, and lead a group of possibly asinine students to Prague.

Now, expand this same concept to a nation, and you can see how the history, or collective memory of a nation, can tell a lot about how that nation collectively imagines itself to be. For instance, the United States rests on a solid narrative around the Revolutionary War, the war for independence, the breaking away from an oppressor. This story shapes how we see ourselves today, as independent, strong, and individualistic people who value liberty, who fight for what is right, etc.

Who we are is strongly tied to what we remember about ourselves, but there is also the possibility for pathology, because we can be so wrong about ourselves. We can fool ourselves and undermine ourselves, and because our memories are so spotty, so unreliable, our identity is often built on something that is anything but sturdy.

So, if nationalism is built on a possibly flawed memory, nationalism is an identity plagued by the possibility of pathology. I have tried a half dozen times to distill the history of the Czech Republic into a blog-sized explanation of the frailty of nationalism, but I simply am not able. Because the Czech Republic is built on the illusion of ethnic unity, its pathology shows its face in ethnic tension and identity crisis. The reality is that the interests of nationalism have only divided this nation. The quest for a unified Czech identity has led to the attempted extermination of not only Jews, but Germans and Czechs at different times and in different places, and an identity could only be forged by forgetting some of these events while highlighting others . Even the Czechs, who were oppressed by German empires and nations for years, turned to expulsion and genocide as forms of ethnic cleansing when they held the power in this region, the long proclaimed as the heart of Europe. In the Czech obsession with rejecting German-ness, it has embraced one empire after another, from the Soviets to Corporate Capitalism.

But the stories that we tell ourselves, that Czechs might tell themselves, are the justification of our actions, or, maybe more often, the denial of them. So, we can pretend to be nations of a unified people, while forgetting that we killed those who we could not unify, that we expelled those who disagreed, and the storytellers edit their identity as they forget the past.

This was not a coherent or well-written post, and believe me, I have edited it a lot, but I am practicing explaining these ideas because I am still working out what I think, and not to publish or include in any thesis, but just so I can reconcile what I see. I want to be able to tell a story about Europe and my time here that doesn't forget, and I want to tell a story about myself that doesn't forget either, if it is possible.

international intersubjectivity and the other as other (aka I don't understand Europeans)

I dropped my Danish class today.

I am trying to study for my GRE so that I can get into Stony Brook, study philosophy for God knows how much longer, and have the life that I dream of. In other words, the GRE is kinda important. So the shock is not that I dropped the course, but that I had deluded myself into thinking that Danish class was a good idea for so long. When someone finally asked me why I was taking Danish, I realized that, despite all my belief in immersion, loving languages, and being genuinely curious, I was really taking Danish because I feel guilty.

Why guilty? Well, aside from feeling like I contribute to the stereotype about Americans going around expecting the world to conform to their English-speaking view of it, I feel like a failure in the school of multiculturalism. I feel like I have lost some kind of initial curiosity about the world that I once had. I had beers with a visiting faculty from Whittier College last night. He will only be here for 4 months, he already specializes in Welsh literature, and therefore has no real reason to learn Danish. Still, this guy (who has spent a total of one month here) already knows way more Danish than me. He asks waiters and sales people how to say things in Danish, he marvels at little tidbits of cultural trivia (like Danes always look one another in the eye while toasting, are pretty passive-aggressive when it comes to interpersonal interaction, but strangely confrontational on issues of politics and religion).

When I was watching him stumble through ordering a beer in Danish, something I gave up trying long ago, I remembered myself when I was 17 and in Ukraine for the first time. I couldn't stop asking questions, trying to pronounce new words, and with each new tidbit, I was delighted all over again.

I haven't felt that way in Denmark this time around. Perhaps it is because I am no longer a visitor, but a semi-permanent resident. Either way, I wanted to take Danish to prove to myself that I still have that curiosity or spark that David the Welsh literature professor has.

My concern runs deeper, however. I listen to speeches about what the study abroad experience is supposed to be: immersion in a new culture, "getting to know the Danes" (good fucking luck on that one), preparing for an even more globalized future. Yet, I find myself wondering what the real purpose is. Beyond learning those fun facts that end up irritating everyone you know ("In Denmark, they..."), what is it that I am supposed to be doing here? What is it that my students are supposed to be doing?

I don't really know. I do know that coming to Denmark shook me up enough the first time that I was able to radically change my life, being really happy for the first time in my short adult life. I know that coming back here is hard but rewarding. Despite all this emphasis on culture and internationality, I think there is something about the mere physicality of living in a new country that makes you grow and be more flexible. John Dewey talks about how habits help us live our lives, but at the same time confine us. His solution is that we should build habits that are themselves habit-breaking. That is what Denmark does for me. I am forced everyday to negotiate situations that are completely new. (Example: How do you operate a work out machine in Danish? Push a lot of buttons until it works. Now, instead of ever having to learn a new language, I can merely operate a variety of machines, kitchen utensils, atms, and websites without knowing a word of the language they operate in.)

What is even more interesting is that in the experience of blundering my way through life (and the gym), I find out what works for me and what doesn't. When everything around me is new, I dare to imagine that I could be new as well. Last time I was here, I realized that I could study philosophy myself instead of merely admiring those who were smart enough to do so. I am not sure if that discovery had anything to do with Danish culture, immersion, or Copenhagen at all.

In the end, I am not sure if immersion is really it. The goal isn't to walk around Copenhagen and make everyone think you are a Dane. The goal is to walk around knowing everyone knows you are different, and to not give a damn

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Home

I am pretty familiar with most of the city of Copenhagen now. I know the main thoroughfares and landmarks. I can bike home without thinking about the directions too much. Familiarity, however, is not tantamount to homeyness.

About 5 nights ago, I was back into the city after taking 18 students to rural western Denmark for 3 days with my work, DIS. I was walking from my office in the city center to my apartment just barely into Østerbro. I walked home with a different perspective, the kind that only raw exhaustion can give you. Since I was walking instead of biking for the first time in a month, I saw the streets a bit differently. I had time to notice the way the street lights catch all the beautiful little details on the neo-classical buildings and the eerie feeling of the bushes on the edges of the botanical gardens.

My reflection was interrupted two young Danish men. It always takes me a second to realize when someone addresses me in Danish. It still sounds like white noise.

"Sorry?" I said, which is how I simultaneously demonstrate that 1. I don't speak Danish, 2. I feel pretty bad about it, and 3. I might be British.

"We just bought some beers, but we don't have time to drink them all, and we are supposed to meet some friends at a bar. Here, take one, it hasn't been opened." (There are no open container laws in DK, you can drink pretty much ANYWHERE.)

"Oh, no thanks, I am really tired, and I am just heading home."

"Where are you from?" they ask (clearly having fallen for my non-American parlance). I answer with some hesitation that I am from the States, but that I live in Copenhagen now. The words sound funny to me, and I almost don't believe myself.

"Where are you coming from," one asks, gesturing toward my giant hiking backpack.

"I just got back from a trip into Jylland," (Jutland, or the peninsula of western Denmark).

"Oh, then you really need a beer!" He pops the bottle open and hands me the beer. If this were the first time that I had been offered beer by complete strangers in Copenhagen, I might not have taken it, but I must say, this is somewhat of a common occurrence.

After a quick cheers, I continued home, sipping my badly tasting Danish beer. I live near the Statens Museum for Kunst, an imposing but beautiful state art museum with a huge grounds complete with lilly-padded ponds and rolling green hills. As I was walking past, I realized the insanity of my life. I live here, in Denmark, in a city that most people from my hometown know virtually nothing about, a city that three years ago I myself knew little about. But it is this charming little city full of quirky Danish people and imposing buildings older than my own nation that I now call home, at least outloud.

Copenhagen felt very foreign for a few minutes, staring at this giant European museum, but as I started to think about my room, with its Danish looking light fixtures and western european electrical outlets (which I still do not always understand), my shoulders relaxed. In my room, no one addresses me in Danish, and I sleep in the bed each night. Though no one would mistake it for an American apartment, at the same time, when I am in my room, I could be in any city anywhere in the world.

I felt a little guilty that I still imagine my home to be a place where I don't have to think about Danish or deal with anything super unfamiliar (damn electrical outlets), but I think we all need somewhere to go that feels that way. The more homey the rest of Copenhagen becomes, the less time I spend at home in my apartment, but for now, I need some time here.