A Man in Labour

When the literary editor of The Daily Star suggested that I write about my 'research pains' experienced in the pursuit of my PhD, my response was 'let me endure the pain in its entirety.' Then I remembered the hardworking new-man Lopahkin from Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, who jibed at 'the perpetual student,' Trofimov, saying: "Pushing fifty, still a student, eh?" Trofimov was not fifty. Neither am I! But we share the plight (albeit delight) of being 'perpetual students.' I suppose it is hard for many pragmatic minds and brisk businessmen to understand the pleasure of this type of pain. After all, the rationality that informs the pain/pleasure principle is based on irrationality. So be warned, these are going to be fragmentary thoughts, splintered from a brain preoccupied with polishing a dissertation and preparing to defend it.
We -- intellectuals, academics, pedagogues, writers and the like -- face it all the time, especially from people who in pin-stripes and polished shoes (I hope some of them are still at large)! They laugh at our 'waste' of time in 'meaningless pursuits.' In a post-Darwinian world, the gibe is even stronger for those of us swinging in the branch of arts and humanities.
"History! My dear, what a luxury!" was the response of Premier Margaret Thatcher when she came to know that a student was studying the subject at a red-brick university. I suppose Thatcher never went beyond restricted political economy, and realised the significance of 'general economy.' Indeed, we stand outside the boundaries of quantifiable profit, industrious activity, and utilitarian consumption. So here I am in the West to 'waste' some of my prime years! For nearly five years now, I have been researching on the shamanic and bardic traditions in contemporary British poetry. To be fair though, things beyond my control have prolonged my research, of which I shall spare you the details.
Anyway the lakh-taka question remains: why have I indulged myself in this supposedly 'unproductive consumption'? I take the pleasure in believing that the sole purpose of my chosen vocation is to be productive. Nonetheless, the source of my pain involves people failing to see its productivity. At this point, my sole aim is to produce a dissertation that will explore the dialogue between myth and modernity, between the consciousness of the past and of the present. My gestation period is not over yet. Indeed I am a man in labour, hoping the dissertation that has been growing in the 'motherboard' of my computer will come out one day, and declare me as its sire. Pain in labour is universal: it hurts to give birth. Since this is such a common experience it could be seen as comforting, a bond among 'scholars', a fundamental truth that confirms our special 'intellectual' role and affirms the importance of our contribution to society. More often, however, it is seen as a blight, an unnecessary imposition, an affliction we must bear as the price for bearing a 'thesis.'
A touch of kitsch, eh! I just googled to seek something on labour pains, and landed on a pregnancy site, which I've excerpted above -- replacing three words (women, biological, and children) with the ones in single quotes. The idea here is simple: my pain is not unique. It has been felt by many others on the academic trail. But it pains me when people view this 'pain' as an excess on the ground that it does not fit into the productive calculus. I shall try to explore this theme in a rather circumvent manner.
"What have intellectuals ever done for the world?" This quote is from a cynical columnist responding to the news of the inception of the Institute of Humanities at Birkbeck College. I look at the forthcoming series of talks arranged by the institute, which includes Toril Moi, Etienne Balibar, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Jerome Rothenberg, and Slavoj Zizek among many others. What are these intellectuals going to do for the world? I wonder! No, I am not going to answer that. It will take at least another five years for me to do so. I will just share three anecdotes from last Tuesday (which was October 23, 2007).
I went to this barber shop next to my place at Upton Park in East London, wanting to stop looking like a scarecrow before heading for the field of knowledge. The electric trimmer buzzed while the hairdresser and I became chatty. Nuruddin, from Algeria, is the kind of religious person who believes that most of the Muslim countries are not practicing Islam per se. With his pair of scissors hungrily hovering over my head, I dared not pursue that train of thought. I asked him about Algeria instead. He told me that the country was run by a 'government' made up of French agents. "France has left us physically, but not politically." He kept on saying how "the government" did not want its citizens to get "proper education", lest they started demanding their rights, even worse, their place in "the government." He was explaining why most of the Algerians working in England were cleaners, waiters or barbers. Strangely enough, he kept using the term "the government" as an oppositional force, the political 'Other'. I said, "Interesting! Have you heard of Franz Fanon?"
"Fanon?"
"I am sure he is from Algeria!"
"Never heard of him."
"How come you know about all these politics then?"
"Oh, we talk politics all the time!"
I went to the university. I had three hours between revising a chapter, sending it to my professor before my next supervisory meeting and attending a lunch-time lecture by Slavoj Zizek: 'The Two Faces of Humanitarianism.' I have already flagged the e-flyer in my inbox that gives a précis of the lecture:
On September 16, Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister and humanitarian, announced that "we (the world) should prepare for war with Iran." On September 20, a crew of Tunisian fishermen went before a court in Lampedusa, Italy, for saving a group of African refugees from certain death. It is crucial to read the two events together: the 'we' who should prepare for humanitarian war is the same 'we' who enjoins us to let the helpless refugees drown.
In his characteristically animated lecture, Zizek reminded the packed audience of the fallacy of plurality. The all-inclusive 'we' that Europe applies to invade its other on humanitarian ground, yet falls short of embracing Turkey as its own. There is an inherent dichotomy in the plural 'we.' Zizek elaborated his point with reference to the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, where Schiller's 'Ode to Joy' reaches its climax only to be dislodged by the Turkish March. The composition loses its balance with the introduction of the Other, and fails to regain its rhythm. Old Europe takes comfort in putting the Turks outside the celebration of its EU brotherhood; it is the noise that constitutes the boundary. I munched my sandwich and flushed it down with a dash of Coke to stomach Zizek for over an hour before returning to my library desk for another bout with my thesis.
During my tea-break in the evening, I stood in front of a wall-mount displayed at the lobby of the main building of my college. It was the proclamation of the 'Queen's Anniversary Prize, 2006.' So there I was standing in front of the huge photograph of the queen and her royal insignia attached to the certificate. I started reading: "By the grace of the God of the United Kingdom… and of our other realms and territories..."
Wait a second! What does she mean by 'God of the UK'? How many Gods are there? I thought I was the one who did not know the use of preposition. Never mind. I kept on reading; 'Greeting! We being cognisant of the outstanding excellence of the said body…'
Oui, we! The Royal 'We'…the two faces of 'we'! Am I included in the 'we'? Are you? Is Nuruddin? Are they? My signature is not down there! Nor yours…
Let me eat my own words and attempt a five-second answer to the question posed earlier: intellectuals try to make sense of non-sense. They use 'language' to expose the boundary between reality and its representation. They have no problem in weighing the words of the queen or the barber on the same scale! They add voice to the noise of emancipation that you can hear in the boundaries. Their voices trickle down to reach the many and mingle in such a way that the 'intellectual' origin becomes obsolete. Hence Nuruddin 'reproduces' Fanon without even hearing of his 'production.'
I am glad that I have undertaken this labour-intensive research project that has taught me to redefine the relationship between the guy who works around my head and the guys who work inside my head. That is the source of my pleasure and of my pain.
Shamsad Mortuza is Chairperson, Department of English, Jahangirnagar University and a PhD Candidate at Birkbeck College, University of London.