Monday, September 24, 2007
Linda Lai's first response to YY
Dear YY and all,
Accidentally checking mail when I should be fully retreating for the sake of restoring some peace of mind and recovering from the many wounds of being part of the institution... I felt it's just not right to keep silent.
YY, I wouldn't want to be defensive. I, too, wish there had been more dialogue among us. If it didn't happen, we can still make it, like you have written and raised those questions that are burning issues for you... I am not sure if we can always address every single member of the audience. Perhaps you wanted to come to hear a dialogue, others may just want to hear something... So I assume that I'm now in dialogue with you because now one member of the audience is eager to re-open the conversation.
(BTW, you addressed Leungpo a few times, but her name is not on your mailing list.)
I agree there was not enough dialogue within the session, but personally I knew everything I said was in response and relevant to the 1st rount-table discussion: the need for smaller histories, and more and more histories on different levels, as well as the necessity, at least for the time being, to break down the many big terms we've been throwing around to secure a stronger ground on the factual level. (Please don't take this as naive subscription to facts nor the neutrality of facts...)
In yesterday's event, these voices -- pointing to the more micro-level of contemplating/writing/living/making history -- just came out very clear to me. Actually, before attending the event, I was rather uncertain about whether the thoughts in my mind I've put into a presentation were relevant to the event until I sat through the 1st round-table session, and were glad that there was connection here and there among us.
NOW A RSPONSE TO YOUR QUESTION FOR ME.
"Linda, you positioned yourself as pro-interdisciplinarity. Rigorous interdisciplinarity requires the contributions of truly multiple disciplines of definitions, and comparing them. How does it fall into / negotiate with the fact that at least four times (from Jaspar, Leung Po, Linda yourself, Koon), speakers in the symposium felt obliged, and to communicate that obligation, that he/she is or is not a historian? I don't get it."
Yes, I'm truly pro-interdisciplinarity. When I said this, I have in mind pictures and memeories of some lousy, fashionable claims for interdisciplinarity in Cultural Studies...-- pure narrativity, with jargons from different disciplines, and games of rhetorics by which terms from one discipline slip into those of another, from one paragraph to another, one sentence to the next, and sometimes within a sentence. Yes, rigorous interdisciplinarity requires the contributions of truly multiple disciplines of definitions. Are you suggesting I'm cheating? What do you expect me to do within 10 minutes when I could barely make some intimate thoughts of mine accessible and articulable? All I can tell you is: when working through my interdisciplinary position in my Ph.D. thesis,
I almost killed myself by working through many basic concepts in urban geography, cartography, philosophy, literary theory, and so on to gain sufficient understanding to the many aspects of questions arising from my research. At one point, I wanted so much to have someone in law in to help me read through a long set of regulations on theatre security discussed in the Legco, which I later on gave up for lack of time...
I don't know whether I'm answering your question or not. But I don't get why you tie this to the fact of different people hesitating to claim themselves historian. I'm not an art historian simply because I'm not by profession. But I'm trained in historiography and therefore I was not so ashamed that I wouldn't participate in this event. I believe a more constructive way to address your question is to open up the activity of historiography. It is more important that we break down the job of creating digestible stories with clean-cut positions to a multi-faceted set of tasks that involve people from different disciplines. The issue is how[type-mistake???] is a historian and who is not; it's who and how and at what moment we prove ourselves to to practicing the writing of history. Of course, one other issue would be to talk about the locations / sites in which art history is produced -- any assumed location,
official/legitimate locations? what other locations? any unnoticeable and explorable locations?
YOU ALSO MENTIONED THIS...
"There was still some kind of underlying message in the symposium that
tried to protect art from its social political economic (blah blah)
conditions..."
-- This is not my position. I am with you. The problem of the
understanding and writing of art history in HK has been jeopardized by the
attempt to defend the sacred-ness of art...
ONE LAST POINT YOU MENTIONED I'M CITING HERE...
"I was disappointed because once again, I found myself in a situation
where I wanted to learn from the speakers, not by way of their giving
something to me, but simply in terms of how they TALK TO EACH OTHER,
staging the possibility of conversation. I didn't find much conversation
doing on between speakers, how they connect. Or maybe I just missed
something."
-- I cannot speak for the others. But I did come with a sincere attempt to throw out some organized thinking I've worked on (and still working on) for many years. I wanted to throw it out to see what people think, and to see if someone can dialogue with me. I had the feeling that Victor Lai and I have some common concern because we're both asking what to do. I think Leungpo and I in a sense both point to something similar (not everything similar) but with very different rhetoric and language. I felt that when Jaspar kept saying that he wanted to go back to more theoretical issues, he didn't think grounded and reasoned methodologies could be the most rigorous theoretical issues. I felt that when Andrew Lam brought in those questions of authenticity, he's turning a scenario just made a bit more lucid back to a muddy, fussy state...
Lastly, I want to thank you, YY, for re-kindling the fire for conversations. I hope we can talk more. Actually, I left in peace yesterday at end of the round-table because quite a few people came to tell me they wanted to talk more and to have more conversations. I guess that's what I wanted.
Can't write more now. I need to rest.
Best,
Linda
Accidentally checking mail when I should be fully retreating for the sake of restoring some peace of mind and recovering from the many wounds of being part of the institution... I felt it's just not right to keep silent.
YY, I wouldn't want to be defensive. I, too, wish there had been more dialogue among us. If it didn't happen, we can still make it, like you have written and raised those questions that are burning issues for you... I am not sure if we can always address every single member of the audience. Perhaps you wanted to come to hear a dialogue, others may just want to hear something... So I assume that I'm now in dialogue with you because now one member of the audience is eager to re-open the conversation.
(BTW, you addressed Leungpo a few times, but her name is not on your mailing list.)
I agree there was not enough dialogue within the session, but personally I knew everything I said was in response and relevant to the 1st rount-table discussion: the need for smaller histories, and more and more histories on different levels, as well as the necessity, at least for the time being, to break down the many big terms we've been throwing around to secure a stronger ground on the factual level. (Please don't take this as naive subscription to facts nor the neutrality of facts...)
In yesterday's event, these voices -- pointing to the more micro-level of contemplating/writing/living/making history -- just came out very clear to me. Actually, before attending the event, I was rather uncertain about whether the thoughts in my mind I've put into a presentation were relevant to the event until I sat through the 1st round-table session, and were glad that there was connection here and there among us.
NOW A RSPONSE TO YOUR QUESTION FOR ME.
"Linda, you positioned yourself as pro-interdisciplinarity. Rigorous interdisciplinarity requires the contributions of truly multiple disciplines of definitions, and comparing them. How does it fall into / negotiate with the fact that at least four times (from Jaspar, Leung Po, Linda yourself, Koon), speakers in the symposium felt obliged, and to communicate that obligation, that he/she is or is not a historian? I don't get it."
Yes, I'm truly pro-interdisciplinarity. When I said this, I have in mind pictures and memeories of some lousy, fashionable claims for interdisciplinarity in Cultural Studies...-- pure narrativity, with jargons from different disciplines, and games of rhetorics by which terms from one discipline slip into those of another, from one paragraph to another, one sentence to the next, and sometimes within a sentence. Yes, rigorous interdisciplinarity requires the contributions of truly multiple disciplines of definitions. Are you suggesting I'm cheating? What do you expect me to do within 10 minutes when I could barely make some intimate thoughts of mine accessible and articulable? All I can tell you is: when working through my interdisciplinary position in my Ph.D. thesis,
I almost killed myself by working through many basic concepts in urban geography, cartography, philosophy, literary theory, and so on to gain sufficient understanding to the many aspects of questions arising from my research. At one point, I wanted so much to have someone in law in to help me read through a long set of regulations on theatre security discussed in the Legco, which I later on gave up for lack of time...
I don't know whether I'm answering your question or not. But I don't get why you tie this to the fact of different people hesitating to claim themselves historian. I'm not an art historian simply because I'm not by profession. But I'm trained in historiography and therefore I was not so ashamed that I wouldn't participate in this event. I believe a more constructive way to address your question is to open up the activity of historiography. It is more important that we break down the job of creating digestible stories with clean-cut positions to a multi-faceted set of tasks that involve people from different disciplines. The issue is how[type-mistake???] is a historian and who is not; it's who and how and at what moment we prove ourselves to to practicing the writing of history. Of course, one other issue would be to talk about the locations / sites in which art history is produced -- any assumed location,
official/legitimate locations? what other locations? any unnoticeable and explorable locations?
YOU ALSO MENTIONED THIS...
"There was still some kind of underlying message in the symposium that
tried to protect art from its social political economic (blah blah)
conditions..."
-- This is not my position. I am with you. The problem of the
understanding and writing of art history in HK has been jeopardized by the
attempt to defend the sacred-ness of art...
ONE LAST POINT YOU MENTIONED I'M CITING HERE...
"I was disappointed because once again, I found myself in a situation
where I wanted to learn from the speakers, not by way of their giving
something to me, but simply in terms of how they TALK TO EACH OTHER,
staging the possibility of conversation. I didn't find much conversation
doing on between speakers, how they connect. Or maybe I just missed
something."
-- I cannot speak for the others. But I did come with a sincere attempt to throw out some organized thinking I've worked on (and still working on) for many years. I wanted to throw it out to see what people think, and to see if someone can dialogue with me. I had the feeling that Victor Lai and I have some common concern because we're both asking what to do. I think Leungpo and I in a sense both point to something similar (not everything similar) but with very different rhetoric and language. I felt that when Jaspar kept saying that he wanted to go back to more theoretical issues, he didn't think grounded and reasoned methodologies could be the most rigorous theoretical issues. I felt that when Andrew Lam brought in those questions of authenticity, he's turning a scenario just made a bit more lucid back to a muddy, fussy state...
Lastly, I want to thank you, YY, for re-kindling the fire for conversations. I hope we can talk more. Actually, I left in peace yesterday at end of the round-table because quite a few people came to tell me they wanted to talk more and to have more conversations. I guess that's what I wanted.
Can't write more now. I need to rest.
Best,
Linda
Comments:
<< Home
gucci outlet, christian louboutin, longchamp outlet, ugg outlet, ray ban sunglasses, cheap uggs, burberry outlet, prada outlet, oakley sunglasses, michael kors outlet, ray ban sunglasses, michael kors outlet, oakley sunglasses, louis vuitton, jordan shoes, longchamp handbags, louboutin shoes, tory burch outlet, michael kors outlet, replica watches, michael kors outlet, louis vuitton handbags, nike free, rolex watches, louboutin outlet, polo ralph lauren, michael kors outlet, nike shoes, tiffany and co, air max, kate spade outlet, michael kors outlet online sale, chanel handbags, prada handbags, louboutin, polo ralph lauren outlet, ray ban sunglasses, uggs, ugg boots clearance, air max, oakley sunglasses, cheap oakley sunglasses, oakley sunglasses cheap, louis vuitton outlet, louis vuitton outlet
air max pas cher, polo lacoste, oakley pas cher, michael kors, michael kors outlet, nike air force, nike free pas cher, converse pas cher, true religion outlet, nike tn, polo ralph lauren, sac hermes, replica handbags, nike roshe run pas cher, coach outlet store online, air max, north face, sac longchamp pas cher, nike blazer, mulberry, new balance pas cher, sac burberry, hogan outlet, louboutin, longchamp, michael kors uk, nike air max, true religion jeans, lululemon outlet online, hollister, ray ban pas cher, ralph lauren, ray ban sunglasses, north face, nike roshe, true religion jeans, vanessa bruno, air jordan, kate spade handbags, nike free, coach outlet, true religion outlet, hollister, michael kors pas cher, air max, coach purses, timberland, abercrombie and fitch, sac guess, vans pas cher
ray ban, toms shoes, moncler, pandora jewelry, barbour, converse, canada goose, moncler, doke gabbana, ugg, canada goose, moncler, sac louis vuitton, sac lancel, canada goose, canada goose, barbour, moncler, ugg, louis vuitton, thomas sabo, canada goose uk, pandora jewelry, gucci, moncler outlet, moncler, louis vuitton, juicy couture outlet, wedding dresses, supra shoes, canada goose outlet, swarovski, karen millen, air max, marc jacobs, rolex watches, pandora charms, juicy couture, ugg boots, hollister, louis vuitton uk, sac louis vuitton, abercrombie, converse shoes, vans, montre homme, moncler, links of london, coach outlet store online, canada goose jackets, moncler
Post a Comment
<< Home
