on the ride back to the poughkeepsie train station from chilling in kingston with some friends, a friend and i had a pretty great conversation. what began as talking about what exactly ecosystem ecology is fluxed into one on documentary photography and a long interesting explanation on susan sontag's "regarding the pain of others", a treatsie on documentary photography, witnessing human rights atrocity, the human reaction to extreme violence and suffering, etc. and sent my mind racing back to anthropology of violence and suffering, and made me feel very excited for taking cultural technologies of memory this semester. it is also making me consider taking a history of photography course seeing as i still havent heard back from the writing professor. but the conversation also looped into some of my thoughts on witnessing atrocity and suffering from my time in brazil, which then went into my own rant on gift theory and my feelings on, after having borne witness to something like america's aluminum involvement in Juruti and the suffering and social unrest it causes, my/our/american's responsibility to change the way that power is distributed. and the difficulty in being faced with someboy asking you, as americans, to tell their story so hopefully something will happen, and the social burden of that responsibility, but the need to act on it. as sontag said, many a times the human reaction when faced with an image of atrocity is to turn away, exclaiming that it is too much to look at and take in. but that this reaction, although understandable and near-universal, is a selfish one that we each on our own need to face and overcome. because the discomfort we feel upon the glimpse is nothing compared to the suffering of those within the frame.

at times i feel overwhelmed by the scope of it all. of having gone to brazil and seen these things with my own eyes, experienced them with my own senses. of coming to terms witht he dichotomy in my brain. do you pursue what makes you happy, or is there a larger signifigance? if i think about obligation to recipricate, if i think about my conversation with maura my host mother about the obligation to give back, a obligacao, what do i do? this whole conversation made me think about the things i know i feel interested in.

documenting, witnessing, representing
resource control and conflicts, and their health impacts
ecosystem change and human health
participatory appraoches to health and ecosystem management
gift theory, i give because you give, the obligation to reciprocate

i want to document. but i dont think that alone is enough. i know what studying human rights and violence did to me freshman year. it was too much. but looking back, a selfish reaction. like anthropology and i, i dont think that documentation and witnessing along might be enough. im not sure yet. ill find out. but i know i think public health is important, that a healthy ecosystem helps our health, whether through direct clean air and water, or whether it guarantees us resources to use, or if it gives us a host of ecosystem services. and then the whole political ecology and resource conflicts and resolution part also get to me. ive never given up my interest in human rights...it just shifted forms. but ethnography and documentary photography really arent all that different. different tools. but both are trying to accurately portray the world, hopefully the way that the people living it see it. both are interested in everyday life as having the most meaning in the end. both can give us glimpses. writing gives you stories, photography gives you the visual image. i like narrative better, i think. a picture tells you a thousand words, perhaps. but a narrative, a story, forces you to confront the atrocity. a story makes you relate it to your own experience and to see the human element. anthropology falters when it uses these stories just to legitimize a theory, because it still sees itself as a science. photography falters when it tries to make art instead of document and witness, and the photograph of suffering or violence turns into something you hang on your wall in a college dorm, no longer a glimpse of memory but an object. hence objectified, it loses the human face. i guess i imagine doing environmental health work while using my tools as pseudo-ethnographer to bear witness, but also to use my desire to do documentary photography as well.

i dont know if that would make me happy or not. im hoping that a few professors can do tutorials with me at bard, im sure it will work out. i want one on ecosystem change and health, one on witnessing and documenting, one on more resource conflicts and political ecology, and one on applying medical anthropology with an environmental perspective, hopefully with looking at participatory approaches. i dont think that should be too hard to arrange. either way, i took my taxi back thinking about all these things, decided to get dropped off at the main building, and took the 25 minute walk through the snow to keep thinking about these things. and then i went back to my room, and read an old article from anthropology of violence and suffering i had saved on my computer about genocide, witnessing, and social conditions that allow groups to massively kill off or separate from society whole groups they deem below human. and now im still laying here, thinking about it all. thinking thinking thinking. im glad i went to brazil. to see the human dimension i neededin order to be forced out of being jaded and feel the impulse to stop just learning theory and social critique to start thinking about how to apply it all and how to change what i can change. but then its also nice to come back to bard and know that there is still this place where it is ok for me to think about the philosophical issues at the heart of this all. and that in reality, i can do both. so far my experiences back with bard people have been nothing but good. i havent felt the sense that i am...reverting back, or anything, around them. but more like...all of what i wanted, the ability to talk about serious things but also be able to joke around, was always there, i was just too afraid and unsure of my own abilities to keep up in conversation to take the chance to engage. but it seems the more i get back there to some sense of where i belong, the more i do feel that maybe that is right, and i do feel more myself, just a myself that maybe i didnt quite feel i was ready to be. if that makes any sense. what im trying to say is, at least i think i feel somewhat at home. in a weird semi-quasi-pseudo-artsy-philosophy-way. it gives me the freedom and environment to think and be ok with that. general economy, right george bataille?

of course all of this makes writing my 2 pg essay for ecosystem ecology a little more difficult. but im also learning a great deal here, and am thankful for the opportunity. living alone more or less is also helpful, w/o internet in the building. lots of reflection, lots of being ok with being alone, and lots of time to read. and it just hit me with an obvious fact, but: one cant learn everything. one cant read everything. i will still read susan sontag because it interests me. but i also just had somebody tell me about what points stuck out the most to them. and i learned a lot, and it hit a chord in me. i cant and wont learn and read everything. i cant take all the classes i will ever want to take. but all i class is is just readings and talking about them. which i can do with whoever, whenever, for as long as i want. all i need to do is talk to people about things they read and learn about and care about. and i will learn so much more than i every could by myself.

oh my ramblings.

im not sure. theres a hunch. and its uncomfortable.