Interest in Others

In recent weeks activity in the offline world has taken so much of my energy that I haven’t had any left over for reflection and writing. I hope that I now have the space in my life for analysis because I’ve been missing it. Writing about current and past events helps me to pull the various directions my thought energy goes into a bouquet of insights. Without the opportunity to make the bouquet, I start to wonder why I studied Russia and the Soviet Union for so long, why I learned enough French to get by, how I ended up in south Texas, what has possessed me to want to learn Persian and investigate development initiatives in the Caucasus republics, or why I've done or plan to do any number of other things.

A colleague asked me (for the first time in the almost four years we have worked together) what research interests I pursue. As her eyes glazed over after the first sentence, I faced a dilemma I often experience: do I shut up or insist that a person who shows signs of conversational discomfort hear me out? I chose to tell her that I’m interested in investigating the effects of international development assistance programs that provide Internet connectivity and computers to the people of the former Soviet republics in the Caucasus Mountains. Since the other person standing in the conversation group with us displayed signs of interest, and even enthusiasm, I went on to say that this assistance is offered in the context of support of democratization. I want to investigate the patterns of use to attempt to discover what the democratization looks like, or if the technology is actually contributing to democratization.

I don’t know whether it’s the geographical remoteness, fear of the languages involved in the sort of thinking I like to do, the political implications of the word “soviet,” or something else that makes some people’s eyes glaze over when I talk about the subjects that interest me. Over the years, I have learned to approach that question with trepidation and have been so relieved to become a reporter. Reporters ask other people to talk about themselves. Interviewees don’t feel compelled to reciprocate interest. I don’t see the eyes glaze over like I would if I was doing the talking.

Today, I am collecting articles that apply the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin to non-literary texts. I found articles that use his theories about language and dialogue to analyze political interviews on television, legal discourse, and second-language learning. I’m hoping that in reading Bakhtin’s theories of dialogue and the necessity of the Other to understanding the Self I will find not only new ways to understand the communication of people who blog in English when their first language is Azeri, Armenian or Persian, but also new avenues to try to understand myself. Why are Others so necessary to me when my fellow Americans seem so oblivious to anything that is Not-me or Not-us?

A Jungian psychologist I know said Jung would say that we understand our Selves through exploration of the Other.

So far as I understand Bakhtin, he argued that we couldn’t constitute our Selves without Others. From our very acquisition of language, we are incorporating elements of the Other by imitation of others’ speech. How are people who glaze over at the very mention of other cultures and languages understanding themselves? Or are they, perhaps, so overwhelmed by the variations within U.S. culture that they shut down at the thought of the vastness of the world beyond our borders?

It's easier for me to understand people who don't come from the same background, ethnic group, social class or country than it is those whom I think I should consider my "own" people. Generally, when I'm encountering people who don't share my background, they do share my curiousity about Not-me things. Otherwise, how would we have encountered each other?