La Città di Esotica - Past Paper PDF

# 9. La città di Esotica (L'arte di non ascoltare) ## 1. The following narrative is a retelling in Calvino's style of an article titled "On doing 'being ordinary" (which I would translate as "The difficulty of being ordinary") that includes lessons from a brilliant social scientist, Harvey Sacks,...

# 9. La città di Esotica (L'arte di non ascoltare) ## 1. The following narrative is a retelling in Calvino's style of an article titled "On doing 'being ordinary" (which I would translate as "The difficulty of being ordinary") that includes lessons from a brilliant social scientist, Harvey Sacks, who died shortly after in a car accident. These lessons were recorded and the article, although attributed to Harvey Sacks, was actually written by his colleague, Gail Jefferson, and published in 1984 in an anthology. Harvey Sacks, together with Harold Garfinkel, is one of the main founders of "ethnomethodology," a discipline that analyzes the methods, procedures and tricks that members of a society use to describe their daily lives and reproduce the frames of their social lives. In the very language that we use, and the moral and intellectual climate that characterizes our styles of cohabitation, there are implicit – ethnomethodologists argue – systematic indications on the best ways to observe, listen and describe social reality (= methodologies). These methodologies are usually learned informally and taken for granted–their existence and importance only become evident when they are not followed. "We are all, without being aware of it, practical sociologists," argues Garfinkel, echoing his teacher Alfred Schütz, the founder of a sociology with phenomenological bases. In order to make these indications explicit and make people conscious of them, the ethnomethodologists have devised many “experiments of disruption” (“breaching experiments”), designed to facilitate reflection, that is, to enable us to examine how we observe. It is on this ground, of a research practice that aims to make people aware of their poorly cultivated, but present abilities, to make – to borrow Merleau-Ponty’s expression – “the invisible visible," that the journey of ethnomethodologists intertwines and connects not only with that of experimental phenomenology and "practical hermeneutics" (a hermeneutics of daily life…) but also with great literature. ## 2. In the ways of cohabitation that we take for granted today in Western culture – argues Sacks – there are systematic indications that the best way to observe, listen and describe social reality is to put ourselves in a position from which we can deal with what’s happening "from the perspective of its ordinariness." In other words, we’re taught to make good observation dependent on a position that justifies passive listening, entirely internal to the subjective-objective dichotomy. We take for granted that we must be as "little subjective" and "as objective as possible." If in our daily lives we take this attitude for granted, then when we start doing research it will seem natural, if not desirable, that the latter should present itself as a much more rigorous and systematic passive listening; essentially perfect passive listening. ## 3. "What are the characteristics of an ordinary person?", asks Harvey Sacks his students. Their answers show that an ordinary person is not exceptional, banal, predictable, lacking in inventiveness or imagination; someone who lacks nothing in particular, who fits the stereotypes. Sacks asks them to adopt a different perspective. To see ordinariness not as a quality of people, things, environments, but as a result of a series of choices that are made, which in turn produces a series of effects. See the synoptic table “Passive listening, active listening”, chapter 11. ## 4. The idea of associating Sacks and Calvino, as I hope emerges from the story that follows, is not extraneous. Their profound agreements and their differences, at the same time, have led me to translate the language of one into that of the other. The ethnomethodologists use narratives to arrive at “technologies” about ways of connecting, Calvino starts from an interest in ways of connecting to produce effective narratives. The main curiosity that has led me to this peculiar operation is certainly that of “touching” what is lost and what is gained in moving from a concern that is mainly analytic, to one that is mainly literary. Qualitative research must make the most of both and for this purpose must see them not as opposites, but as complementary. In this specific case, very simply, I felt that Calvino was better than Sacks at showing how we are all involved in this order of discourse. And that the content of Sacks’ lessons that did not lend themselves well to inclusion in a story of the genre, could be fruitfully recovered in the subsequent comments. ## 5. I warn you: after reading this story (which I have circulated in photocopies…) we will also perform an exercise in “ordines.” So while you’re reading pay close attention to “how it is done.” Take notes. ## 6. The City of Esotica. The paradox of uneven distribution of experiences. (A tribute to Harvey Sacks and Italo Calvino.) The people of Esotica, like all other peoples of the Earth, are eager for experiences worthy of being recounted. However, for them a “noteworthy experience” is not something that depends on being able to play with the multiple perspectives and frames to which any event lends itself, but only that which is experienced in exceptional situations and with exceptional people. Consequently, their life is a constant effort to define what is remarkable and what is ordinary and to make sure that the ordinary character of ordinary situations is respected. They’re always on the lookout to be careful that no one in a situation considered ordinary enjoys the intensity of emotions to which only exceptional situations give the right. So, for example, the way in which Claudia Schiffer turned around at a certain parade and smiled not only may be recounted, but it will give the right to a degree of excitement and to a wealth of details that would be completely inappropriate in the case of a beggar who turned around and smiled one morning on the corner of the street. Similarly, if a girl were to answer the question “What did you do today?” with “Going to school, I noticed that the grass along the side of the road this season has four different shades of green” she would be met with wary, worried, impatient looks. Why is she telling that? What does she really mean? Is she feeling unwell? This girl will then have to justify herself, that is to cast the light of normalcy on that observation so that it will be accepted. ## 7. They laughed when I suggested they actually answer in all seriousness; “I noticed that the grass along the side of the road this season has four different shades of green” to the question “What did you do today?” and note the reactions. (Then some did and we commented together on the reactions which were mostly witty and “creative.” These parents acquitted themselves well in this small test!) I took the opportunity to broaden the scope: Why, when you intervene in class, do you speak with a voice so low that you force me to repeat what you’re saying for the others to hear? What are the implications of this behavior as opposed to this other one: standing, speaking in a way that everyone can hear and looking around, careful of everyone’s reactions and not just the teacher’s? Answers: “Some are timid,” “We’re not sure that what we’re saying is important.” Does this mean you expect to be better judged by your peers than by your teacher? A student, sarcastically: “We expect them to think we want to show off.” Another: “Speaking in a low voice makes us less conspicuous!” Speaking in a low voice with your eyes fixed on the teacher: 1. you convey to the others here that you don’t consider them to be interlocutors; 2. you consider knowledge and ignorance as something that qualifies you as individuals and not also and above all the fruit of a broader culture of which you are all part. The "true" questions, those of someone who wants to understand, are always on the threshold between us and the broader cultural context. In this sense, they’re always useful to everyone. Let’s imagine a world (a city, a school…) where everyone’s right to question and be questioned is considered precious. The inhabitants of this world would necessarily have to possess a whole repertoire of behaviors, polite ways, to creatively manage the awkwardness of standing up and offering one’s uncertainties and convictions without feelings of inferiority and without arrogance, a repertoire for signaling each other’s interest. It would be one of the first things learned. I invited them to listen to “the voices” (perhaps: “Who do you think you are?” perhaps: “This is disrupting the lesson”) that discourage them from standing. Listen to these voices, which are those of the culture of which you are part and question them, engage in dialogue with them (as Michail Bachtin, the theorist of polyphony, suggests) and then have a dialogue among yourselves about these voices. You don’t have to “do the opposite,” you have to investigate other frames, try other dances. When one “does the opposite” one operates at the level of the frames, not of behaviors, and in reality stays inside the same frame. It takes caution, patience, respect for the frames you are part of, and humor. ## 8. “Opinions” and “Implicit premises.” On the chalkboard I draw a map of the structure of the story. This story leads us to identify with the citizens of Esotica and at the same time makes us see them from outside. The story is effective to the extent that it gets us to live this bisociation, to have an experience of defamiliarization and put us in a state of mind of “explorers of possible worlds” and “intercultural storytellers.” That quiet and disconcerting overlapping of two opposite perceptive-evaluative matrices becomes a cognitive resource, the foundation of a diagnosis. What is this diagnosis? ## 9. From an analytic point of view, Harvey Sacks has argued that the work of presenting oneself as an ordinary person presupposes: * Being informed about what others do, say, think in every situation. What behaviors do they ordinarily put into practice and when? * Being able to do the same ourselves: a. materially; b. morally. (During a short vacation in a mountain hut we might not have a television and spend the evenings looking at the stars, but it’s already unsettling if we don’t have a television at home, are we that poor? And if, having one, we spend the evenings looking at the stars…? That’s “immoral”!) * Adopting the deportment, posture, language of someone who observes-evaluates-reports every event from the perspective of its ordinariness. * Working cooperatively to reproduce constantly the “paradox of uneven distribution of experiences” by putting back on track those who tend to transgress. ## 10. Exercise You have to translate into ordinariness (or Esotica) the following page from Elias Canetti’s book, Voices from Marrakech. ## 11. Your translation must start with these words: “This summer I was in Marrakech.” “Oh, yes? And what did you see?” “Nothing special…” ## 12. This is one of the best translations.16 (A to Z) “Voices from Marrakech” in ordinary language. “This summer I was in Marrakech.” “Oh, yes? And what did you see?” “Nothing special, just the usual African curiosities. So, to give you an example, one day I went to the market. You know how those places are: full of commotion. Men merchandise, animals: well, I saw a group of men around a camel trying to make it kneel down. You know with those big animals you can’t help it, if it doesn’t want to obey you. It’s obvious. At some point a decisive looking guy intervened, who in a flash pierced the camel's nasal septum, passed a rope through the hole and in that way forced the animal to follow him. You can imagine: blood everywhere. But of course, they say, taming a camel is not a job for little girls. Ah, then I found out that that man was a butcher and that the camel didn’t want to follow him because, imagine the smell these animals have, it could smell the blood of the camels it had slaughtered." “And then how did it end?," “How do you want it to end? The butcher managed to bring him away, to the slaughterhouse. After all, that was his job…" ## 13. Let’s try to reflect on these two ways of observing and narrating by using the synoptic table “Passive listening, active listening”, chapter 11. ## 14. Homework. Starting from the seven rules of the art of listening, write the seven rules of the art of not listening. ## CUMULEX ### 1. This game takes inspiration from an exercise called “Cumulex”, named by its creator, also an ethnomethodologist, McHoul (who, as far as I know, lives and teaches in Australia). The instructions are as follows. I will write a short poem on the board, of seven lines. But I will write only the first line and then stop, asking you to copy it on one side of your notebook (I suggest you divide the page into two parts) and write a paraphrase next to it, that is, explain it in your own words as you understand it. When you’ve done that, I’ll write the second line and you have to write both in your notebook, not just the one I add, but also repeat the first one; then read them together and write a paraphrase of their meaning together. Three lines: write all three, read all three and write beside them a paraphrase of their combined meaning.