RP4: Reflections

Our discussions in class Thursday about our personal research question made me realize something. As my group members each attempted to identify their own obsessions and interests in order to create their own question, I was busy questioning the question. In order to know what my personal research question is, I have to know myself. Who am I? I found the discussion difficult in that there is a paradox that blocks us from receiving a simple answer. We need to know ourselves to establish a question, but how can we possibly know ourselves when we as individuals are constantly changing? We are under a constant barrage of media and educational topics, and the more we explore the more we expand ourselves. The self is indefinite, so how can we, so early in our lives, be expected to establish a question to pursue? It came to me that we can establish a question as long as we do not expect to receive a definite answer. Over time the question will change, as will the answer. It will adjust to our changing selves. It, like us, will be fluid.

Who am I? I feel like most of us in the class were, in one way or another, asking ourselves the same question. In the past few weeks, I have become so focused on Rabasa's concept of Elsewheres, and that every individual person is different, that I had forgotten that we as a collective humanity are still capable of having commonalities. All of us at this point are still on a mission of self-discovery. We are all learning more and more about topics that interest us in hopes that we might better understand ourselves. We share the common journey of self-discovery, searching for a sense of personal enlightenment. What are we here for? What can we do? It seems to me that we in this class are all searching for the answers to these questions. And although it may be frustrating when we cannot find a definite answer, it is only natural to work through that stress and continue on.

I wanted to write this to remind everyone in our class that even as we knock down social binaries, break through borders of race and culture, and establish that every individual is indeed an individual, that we are not alone. We are all on this journey of self-discovery together, and I have been very pleased to have shared my journey with you for the past 9 weeks. I look forward to seeing what answers we do find, and how our questions all change in the future. Thank you, and always remember you do not journey alone.

RP3 This Elsewheres Business is Not (Always) My Business

I will make it no secret that our Rabasa discussion, the Rabasa reading, Rabasa in general, has me a little overwhelmed. I desperately, desperately want to grasp this discussion of Elsewheres. I'm moving towards it. A step in the journey towards comprehension, I believe, lies in reflecting on a really interesting point that came up in my small group discussion: that all these Elsewheres are not our own, not even our business.
In my understanding, the discussion of Elsewheres encompasses this plurality of worlds that functions in all spaces, irrelevant to both time and space, regardless of acknowledgement. To say this then, is to say that all histories are a present, or to draw even from Vizenor, in a state of perpetual survivance--existing beyond a sense of here or now, past or present, near or far. It is essential in our studies to both acknowledge and 'try on' these Elsewheres in the context of a text, theory, story etc. but it is not, I would argue, our responsibility nor our right to attempt to occupy or define all these worlds we encounter entirely. Our studies lead us toward a lot of Elsewheres that we are unfamiliar with and I personally (and I think humans tend to) want to establish the exact parameters and qualifications of each specific realm we address. I find myself accidentally but very necessarily attempting to define identities for all these worlds of which I may or may not be a part. This creates a lot of problems. The concept of Elsewheres is supposed to help us acknowledge identities, worlds, existences free of dichotomies. One must not be 'here' or 'there' but can be in a plethora of equally functional and significant, uncompromising Elsewheres. But how do we talk about these Elsewheres without naming them? Qualifying them? And thus imposing our own failures of judgement, comprehension and language upon them?
I'm not sure. But I think one thing helps: understanding that it is not really our job to do so. Your Elsewheres are not my business. Attempts at self definition of the Elsewheres we personally function within can be a healthy and valuable exercise in introspection. However, to reach into another's identity and extract their Elsewheres is neither just nor valid. In the same ironic vein of naming the amorphous, heterogeneous Asian Diaspora an Asian Diaspora and thus imposing theory of space, time and otherness onto those who operate within or near that understanding, to call out an Elsewhere is to attempt to assign qualities to something that is intentionally and inherently ambiguous. It's dangerous even, to call out an understanding of an Elsewhere, for to claim to understand it is to rob it of its complexity. Each move represents a human failure of logic and language, bad but necessary habits that we depend on to grapple with the world before us, and our tendency to create dichotomies when they need not exist. Dichotomies seem to make things easier for a lot of people to understand, it's a habit I've been trained in since birth: put things in boxes, you'll know where to keep them, have a quick understanding of its characteristics, and easily find other things to associate with it. Dichotomies, categories, they make things easy. So I'm going to make it my personal business to keep my dichotomies out of Elsewheres, no matter how strongly I'm inclined to impose them. I'm going to be lost, I'm going to be confused. This massive extension of Elsewheres is not a realm I must occupy myself. Instead, I will study as much as I am allotted, trust what I do not know, and let this business of Elsewheres run on without making it my business--they don't demand my acknowledgement anyway.