It's Called A Stereotype for a Reason

Given that I should have graduated maybe two years ago, but haven’t due to various reasons, I can say that I am an expert at sitting in class and noticing the same patterns which re-appear every semester regarding my fellow classmates’ usual discourses.
Every major must have its stereotypical characters: Computer Science people have to live up to their geek status, Business people are also expected to be in sororities and fraternities, and I was assuming that for us Philosophy majors, it was the stigma of being a stoner hippie. Until I declared an English minor that is, and realized that this stereotype was more adequate for students in the English department, poets specially. What might be the stereotype of the Philosophy major then? I guess most would say that it’s the typical guy who talks about Sartre at parties with the ulterior motive of picking up chicks. But I decided to be more charitable and explore further stereotypical options within the Philosophy department, so these are some:


1) The Nihilist

This is the most common stereotype given to the Philosophy major and usually it corresponds to the anguished, black eye-liner, black leather wearing student who holds the “God is Dead” claim and thinks that whoever believes in any sort of religion is a moron. Also, alcoholism helps them get through life and they are usually musicians too. I am against this stereotype given that I love Camus and believe that Sartre’s ethics was humanistic to the point that it puts responsibility back into the hands of human beings. But I have to say, I have seen this stereotype embodied plenty of times, especially at hipster parties, and those who advertise Nietzsche too much and too loudly have to bear the burden of getting laughed the most.

2) The Pragmatist

Common in the United States, students who have read any James Dewey, William James or Richard Rorty, tend to ignore whatever any Ancient, Medieval or Modern philosopher has to say to us about substance, essence, universals and grand narratives in general. Instead they argue that the quest for certainty has led us in the wrong path, and that whatever we think is essentially stable might always change, thus, Truth is only a social construction.
This is how they tend to argue:

I am sitting in my Modern Philosophy class and my professor is explaining Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. We get to the categories of the mind and one of my fellow classmates, also a Dewey fan raises his hand.
“I think that you can still have experience WITHOUT those categories. WHY ARE THERE CATEGORIES I DON’T BUY KANT’S CATEGORIES.”
Etc.
Pragmatism has always interested me for applied Ethics, but the fact that its metaphysics becomes frail and fallible scares a lot of thinkers. Because metaphysics would only be sustained either by “the pragmatic rule” which is what James defended, or based on its usefulness which was Dewey’s approach, it becomes unimportant and this brings consequences to philosophy in general, duh.


3) The Feminist

Female usually, who took plenty of women’s studies classes and tends to submit every western white male in the history of philosophy through the looking glass of feminist theory. This is not always an easy task, but once learnt, it has proved effective in achieving good grades specially when the teacher is a white male and has to respond well to the minority and diversity policies of the college. Example: I have done this a few times when pressed with deadlines. Instead of writing my paper on the different degrees of reality or substance posed by rationalists and empiricists thinkers in Modern Philosophy, I did a feminist reading of Kantian Ethics. Instead of writing a paper on Habermmas’ Universality Principle for my Contemporary Philosophy class, I switched it, asking: “Does Habermmas’ Universality Principle Coincide with Feminist Thought?” This, although interesting can become monotonous when abused, and has kept me from investigating other issues in the history of Philosophy that might have been useful too.
Also, out of experience and following the stereotype, students tend to assume that the feminist is also a lesbian, especially if she dresses somewhat conservative.


4) The Analytic Philosophy student against the Continental Philosophy student

To portray another stereotypical from of arguing between two stereotypes of students I will beforehand explain a few things.

Most of us know about the contemporary Heidegger/ Carnap controversy over here but I’ll still tell you about it. While one was a Continental philosopher, the other was an Analytic. Carnap’s analytic method of verification intended to eliminate metaphysics through the logical analysis of language. He took plenty of shots at Heidegger who supported a unique metaphysics, by stating that Heidegger’s system was convoluted with pseudo-statements, so it meant nothing mainly because it couldn’t be verified in the world etc. At the same time, Heidegger responded back by explaining how metaphysical terms such as his idea of Dasein reveal themselves to us only when we cease to think rationally and when we cease to impose out thinking on the world. This was obviously something Carnap instantly rejected, and none of them managed to find even a common ground to argue given that the method of logical analysis which Carnap defended was as unworthy to Heidegger as his metaphysics was meaningless to Carnap.

This is to say that although plenty of times I have heard how both the Continental and Analytic branches of Philosophy tend to coincide and meet at certain points (Pragmatism.) I haven’t seen it happen yet in class. The few times we students even know what side it is that we are taking, this is what happens:

When one classmate argues for something, the other will find a logical fallacy in their argument. When one makes a claim, the other makes sure this claim has a correspondence in reality. If it doesn’t then it is meaningless and the other argument is fallacious and wrong, etc.

Contemporary philosophers in my experience tend to be more interested in literature, aesthetics and ethics, while Analytic philosophers are amazing logicians, good at math, music etc. I am not taking sides, but being aware that there is something called poetry which is what Heidegger used to explain Dasein when he exceeded the limits of rationality, and that there is something called “metaphor” which is not supposed to be taken literally, might be good advice for analytic philosophers. Then again, if you cannot even tell a modus ponens from a modus tollens, or what a double negation is, then what are you doing in a philosophy program and, yes, how are you even planning to support your claim? (I am asking this to myself.)


5) The Stoner

Not as bad as English majors, but we have them too. I am not planning to describe this obvious stereotype except with a brief example:
I am sitting in my Modern Philosophy class as my professor finishes explaining Hume’s empiricism. He asks us what we think about it and stoner guy raises his hand.
“It’s cool. I think Hume was on grass when he wrote it. Huh. Ha.”
Another example:
“Spinoza must have been on LSD. Huh. Haaaa”
Etc.

6) The Marxist

To the Marxist, everything becomes part of the history of class struggles. Every thinker can be judged from a Marxist perspective and who ever isn’t a Marxist is an Imperialistic capitalistic jerk, basically. I am a Marxist, so I am probably a good example of the stereotype. The problem with the Marxist is that at some point they might have to find a job in an Insurance office or work as secretaries in corporate America, and they might need medical insurance which is not socialist at all in this country, so they might have to sell out a little only for these reasons while keeping up with the Marxist analysis in other areas of their life.


7) The English major who takes a Philosophy class

Here we have the student who reads philosophy as if it were literature. I still do this when I give up trying to understand Heidegger’s arguments and decide to read him like he were Proust. But certain essays by Quine, Davidson or Carnap to state a few are not meant to be read as literary masterpieces nor are they meant to be deconstructed or critiqued using literary approaches. Here, the English major who takes a philosophy class for the first time falls victim of the stereotype. Common responses to philosophy by English majors tend to go like this:

“This is really WELL written. But I don’t understand Rorty’s claim at all, but he does good comparisons between philosophers, and he’s a good writer, so he must be good.”
“I think Dewey’s style is very clear. It was easy to read. He is a good writer”
Etc.

Art Does Not Imitate Reality

The studio on Broadway which I usually attend has open Ballet classes. This means that depending on your level, you can join any class available and do some barre and center work every day of the week. As convenient as this might be, the competitive level of the dancers can get intimidating. Although most dancers who take those classes aren't professionals, some of them are. Those who are belong to the American ballet Theater, or dance for companies such as the New York City ballet. Some of them take classes at Broadway as a break from their other, more exhausting Ballet classes at their own companies. Dancing, like any other art form, only becomes art when one is extremely good at it. At least with Classical Ballet there are no intermediates, there is no getting away with being a bad dancer because the flaws would be too evident in the movements of the body (unlike plenty of contemporary artists who seem to get away with bad installations or dull paintings, etc.) The division is easy then: there are those who dance and try to make the best of it and there are those who dance so extremely well, so flawlessly that they are able to use their bodies as instruments for artistic creation.

This is all to say that I sucked at my Ballet class today on the Broadway Studio. Not because I couldn't follow the center work or because the jumps were too hard, like it sometimes happens, but only because there was one boy who was so amazing it just killed me. Compared to his saint-like steps, his flight, everybody in that studio was a fallen creature. This boy was of Asian decent and must have been younger than sixteen. He was probably a future dancer for the American Ballet theater. I kept having to stop what I was doing to watch him jump in the air and suspend his body away from gravity, like a small king.

This boy stood in front of the mirror and turned four pirouettes, he jumped, finishing his allegro solemnly, without much thought and then he retired to his corner of the studio, walking humbly after having moved like a fire bird. I saw him standing quietly, his soldier eyes, and wanted to whisper: " Your life will be solitary and difficult, but you have something that nobody else does." Dancers like him are the ones who keep proving me wrong. You see, I keep saying that there are no Ideals of Beauty in Art, that Platonic perfection does not exist. Then I go to a Ballet Studio and there, among the other limb bodies in tights and leg warmers, among the city smoke, I see a boy dancing like he is a small king. And I realize that there is perfection and that human beings can achieve it. Art does not imitate reality, it imitates universals. And I witness so much genius and beauty in less than one minute of movement, and it is all embodied in the figure of this child who has tricked us all, who has carried us away from reality.

This child has proved me wrong, he will be the next Nijinsky, the next great artist. Meanwhile after class, all of us, average dancers, will go back home and continue with our lives. We will try to convince ourselves like others do, that there are no ideals of perfection, that the most one can do is strive for the best Forms and be happy with that, convince ourselves about our fall and our imperfect nature. But we will be lying to ourselves. As dancers, we have seen Beauty embodied, we have witnessed it as it grew thirsty and out of breath in the slippery studio floor, and no imitation theory will be able to live up to, to justify its perfection anymore.

Cortazar and The Minotaur

I have wanted to translate this ever since yesterday afternoon, when my sister and I watched an old interview done to the Argentine writer Julio Cortazar. The program was in black and white and had been filmed in the sixties. This is when Cortazar was publishing his best works in Spanish such as “Bestiario” (“Bestiary”), “Todos Los Fuegos, el Fuego” (“All Fires, the Fires” 1966) and “Rayuela”( “Hopscotch” 1963). The interviewer was from Spain and asked Cortazar questions about his childhood, his first works, about other writers who influenced him, about death. Cortazar answered everything with stories, the way any writer would have answered. Most of the interview was centered on Cortazar’s amazing way to view reality through the fantastic, and the intertwining of both genres in his literature.

There was one certain observation that Cortazar made about one of his works titled “The Exam.” I wanted to transcribe it over here for Tony, who might understand:

According to Cortazar, before writing “The Exam” he began to explore Mythology, specially the story of Theseus. Theseus was a Greek hero, national hero of Athens; slayer of the Minotaur. The Minotaur was a monster, half-man, half-bull, that lived in the center of a maze called the Labyrinth. It had been born to Minos's wife Pasiphae as a punishment from the gods. The Minotaur inhabited the labyrinth but the paradox is that he was also a prisoner of this impossible maze. In the story Theseus manages to find his way through the labyrinth and he kills this monster. This is what makes him a hero of Athens.

Cortazar partially deconstructs this myth and re-narrates it from a different perspective. In his version, the Minotaur is not a monster but rather a victim of the maze, who lives a tragic and solitary life separated from human beings, trapped inside the labyrinth which is his prison. King Minos in this version comes to be some type of fascist dictator who enslaves him for being different, and so the life of this creature becomes a grave life. When Theseus arrives with his sword in hand, the Minotaur is happy at first. Longing for some type of human contact ever since he was a child, when he encounters humans lost in the labyrinth his only desire is for their company. But once he realizes what Theseus’ objective is, the Minotaur does not stand against him. The Minotaur does not fight because he realizes that he does not want his life if he will have to spend one more second inside that prison. So he lets Theseus kill him, passively and without pain, without a final battle.
In the end, when Theseus comes out of the labyrinth with the creature’s head, he is made national hero by the King and the city of Athens. But he has a confession to make, and he only whispers it to his beloved Ariadna who takes his secret to her grave: “The Minotaur seemed to want to die Ariadna! He did not fight at all!”

And so, to Cortazar, this figure of the Minotaur is also the figure of the poet, the writer who finds himself sometimes trapped inside a prison. The Minotaur is Cortazar's reflection; it is every thinker. And what is so beautiful is that the reader realizes the flaws in the first tale, told by the winners, and acquires a new understanding and a sort of compassion for the story told from the other side of the labyrinth. By giving the Minotaur a voice, Cortazar manages to bring this lost speech back into the world of mythology. In the interview, Cortazar seemed to stress the point that the labyrinth of this Greek story is a well frequented place for many humans or "half-humans" of his kind. So this secret garden of mazes and solitude, of insane and inescapable introspection and silence, becomes not only the land of the Minotaur but also the land of the writer, the reader, the thinker. Alejandra Pizarnick will write years later, how this land becomes " the place for the poetic bodies."



(Note on the side: My sister and I have a few issues regarding the story in this interview. The tale of the Minotaur as narrated by Cortazar has also been written by Borges, another Argentine writer. Borges titles his story “Theseus and the Minotaur” while Cortazar in the interview claims that his version appears on his work titled “The Exam.” We assumed both writers, equally exceptional, came up with a different version of this Greek myth at the same time. To prove my point, if both Borges and Cortazar were attracted to this tragic story it might only be that there is a Minotaur in every writer.)


( Other note on the side: Just to show off my pompous knowledge on literature. It's interesting to point that other poets and writers have also tried rescuing the voices of the ignored in the manifold of Greek Mythology. By reversing the narratives and writing through the perspective of those who failed, new terrains are revealed. The American poet H.D for example, did the same thing with the legend of Orpheus. In her version, Orpheus' wife Eurydice writes the story of her fall into the depths of hell. All thanks to the fact that her lover, who was supposed to rescue her, turned around to make sure she was behind him instead and lost the opportunity to save her from getting out of the underworld. This underworld then, becomes Eurydice's home just like the labyrinth is the Minotaur's land. So it is in these realms where more stories are created. (For a further reading of this poem go to: " H.D'S Collected Poems, 1914-1944, " The God."))

Marxist Ballet

Here in NYC my Ballet classes are somewhat different from the ones I take in Charlotte. I mean, most things are very similar. All my teachers have wrinkles and love to smoke between breaks, they all have this magnetic, eccentric air to them that I have always been attracted to, and most of my classmates remind me of my classmates in Charlotte. But my teacher Andre is different from anyone I’ve ever known.

Andre is Polish and in his late sixties, he has a white beard and wears sun glasses under the fluorescent lights of the studio. He used to be a dancer back in the days, and now his favorite hobbies are to drink and to talk a lot about Ballet. Sometimes he doesn’t mind actually teaching, but he would rather just talk about Ballet all day if he could get away with it, and drink too. This is fine with me. As much as I enjoy the dancing, I don’t mind hearing a story about a certain choreographer, or how a Ballet like “Giselle” has different endings depending on how tragic you want to make it, or how the Russian dancer Nijinsky committed suicide by jumping out of a window of an insane asylum back in the days.

Andre is also a good pianist, and tends to get carried away playing for the class, instead of teaching the class. He plays Stravinsky like if it were the last time he will ever get to do it, but he also gives us a combination or an adagio we are supposed to repeat until the music stops. Sometimes, the music will go on for fifteen minutes as Andre’s head keeps getting closer to the keyboards, his sweat covering his forehead, and we know we will be dancing for a long time: Oh, the pain of it all. Some evenings, I look around whenever Andre interrupts our work to tell us a story, and we are all boiling in our leotards as Sixth Avenue’s traffic howls through our studio windows. Some dancers listen to him with smiles, while others would rather keep the class moving at a faster pace to avoid cooling off. I have reached the point where I can usually multi-task by doing passes and stretching at the barre while making eye contact with Andre so that he knows I’m listening.

Lately, Andre has tried to get us to improve our battement frappes by applying a Marxist critique to this movement. The Frappe is a simple leg movement that one does at the barre, and it prepares you for jumping. Because it is simple, one’s leg is not supposed to go up higher than 90 degrees, and the emphasis is on the foot brushing the floor. But Andre, like plenty of other people I know, can give a Marxist reading to anything:
“This movement is bourgeois: you need to keep it upper middle class. Don’t go lower than sixty degrees with your leg. Like any bourgeois movement, it is stable and like any bourgeois person it is, well, not very interesting…But that’s how you need to do it. Keep it middle class.”

To this I had to laugh and I’m not always sure how many dancers understood the bad joke, or how many have had to sit through classes on Das Capital or lectures about The Communist Manifesto in their philosophy programs. Even so, what I like about Ballet classes in NYC is that besides getting the eccentric teacher, you also get an eccentric teacher who wants to train his dancers into becoming Marxist dancers. Cheers to that.