Sydney II

I'm writing this post on my brand new MacBook. Believe me, I didn't want it to happen this way. I stayed with my Powerbook up until her last moments online. I tried to reboot, but after several crashes, I knew that resuscitation was no longer possible. My laptop and I had a good run together, seeing me through the tougher moments of my college career. It was difficult to let go of her and the few files I hadn't had the chance to back-up. Now, she lays dormant on my dresser, along with my one leather glove who's better half is lost to the streets of Christchurch.

Apart from losing my computer and my favorite glove, the past few weeks have been fairly uneventful. I returned from Sydney, where I attended panel sessions, lectures, and met some grad students and scholars working in various fields interested in bodies. Most of the keynote speakers were from the U.S. including one from Buffalo--a woman working in literary theory at UB. Specifically, I befriended two interesting students from the University of Melbourne, introduced myself to some well-known scholars working with bodies and society, and networked with an intersex woman from Wellington, who I hope to run into again over the course of my research.

I was rather disappointed, however, in the presentation of several of the papers. I was expecting, talks given on recent projects or theoretical explorations of these research interests. On the contrary, most people read, in monotone, from papers they had written for the conference. Most of these presentations were littered with philosophical and postmodernist jargon, most of which I found difficult to navigate. Even in the instances where I was familiar with the theoretical underpinnings, I had to work very hard to follow lines of argument presented in a style that, I feel, should be reserved for written articles only. Nevertheless, throughout all of this intense naval-gazing and mental masturbation, I mined out some morsels of wisdom and was introduced to new theorists, scholars, and avenues of thought that I had yet to encounter.

Another surprise was that I was the only anthropologist there. Most came from cultural studies or philosophy or literary theory. And though this was a conference organized around the theoretical term/framework of somatechnics, I found there was an overwhelming lack of the empirical in some of the presentations. I found those papers most satisfying that related field work or interviews to our theoretical themes. Of note: a paper on traditional dress, colonialism, the church, and Greenland national identity; a talk given on the rising fad of designer vagina surgeries and the websites that advertise them; a talk given by two American scholars on disabled bodies and the documentary "A World Without Bodies" related to the systematic extermination of the mentally and physically disabled during the holocaust; a keynote address by Michele Goodwin (DePaul Univeristy) on the trade in organs and human body parts; and a paper given on gait identification technology and the surveillance of (foreign) bodies in the war on terror.

Despite being stuck in a hotel for three days, I did manage to see some of Syndey. I went out for drinks and sushi with the students from Melbourne, explored the harbor and opera house with Jenny and her father, and scoped out some of the more hip neighborhoods of Darlinghurst and Newtown (the Williamsburgs and Lower East Sides of Sydney). On the whole, however, I found Sydney to be strange. It was fairly easy to get around (there's a subway and bus system), but highways crisscross through and above the city, cutting up the space, making it unpleasant to walk around, and displacing any feelings of having a center, neighborhoods, or social space. I found it difficult to get a feel for Sydney's personality, it's spririt--for me, it lacked a palpable energy or soul.

Nevertheless, as we navigated the area, Jenny and I visited a local pub and sampled their excellent home-made brews, had dim sum in the highly Asian suburb in which she lived, were attacked by cockatoos in the botanical gardens, had a bite in Darlinghurst, and explored the book stores and coffee shops of Newtown. All in all, I really enjoyed my time being a tourist with Jenny and seeing a new country and culture so different from the reserved, calm, and provincial Kiwi life in Christchurch.





Cheers,

Dana







Photos courtesy of Jenny Korns . . . (I never saw a Koala; my photos went the way of the
Powerbook)