i was talking to tim the other day about really obvious signs that i’m probably about to hit another cycle of depression. here’s two: 1) i delete all the information on my facebook; 2) i stop blogging. for those of you who have picked up on the second, i figured i should toss an update your way.
i’ve been emersed in the joys of thanksgiving, finishing my one term paper of the semester (one?! i’ve only written 10 constructive pages this semester?! brilliant. i spoil myself sometimes.), and getting my application ready to send off to minnesota. this semester has really reaffirmed my desire to be an historian for the rest of my life. specifically, it’s knocked out my desire to go to grad school in art history and my sneaking suspicion that i might really like anthropology. the truth is, i don’t. and here’s why. i’ve always referred to art history as the mistress to my wife that is my history degree. i love it, i get excited to go see it, and sometimes i imagine how my life would be if i’d chosen it from the beginning instead of history. but this semester i’ve been spending more time in art history than history and it’s turn out as expected… i really love history not art history. the upsides are that i really like cari, and erin and sarah, and the other girls in my art history class who i see regularly. i’ve met new people who are intelligent and help me have conversations that aren’t nearly as abrasive as the ones i have with historians. the downsides are that it turns out i don’t like to write art history term papers. it’s like you read description after description after description and then you write a description. not exactly my cup of tea. i’m sure it would be more exciting if it were a primary interpretation of a work of art and not a secondary one. but we’re left with what we’re assigned…. and that’s basically meant i’ve been staring down Sowei masks for the last three weeks and all i can seem to say about them is “those rings around their neck are just indentations which are thought to be pretty.” The paper’s good though, and I’m proud of it. So that matters.
Anthropology is a whole other set of problems. I think I’ve struggled with the difference between anthropology and history in terms of African history because so much of African history is based on ethnographies and both building on the work of anthropologists and trying to correct errors they made when they asked the wrong questions or looked at the world the wrong way. So I’m finally in an anthro class this semester (well it’s my second go at it, I withdrew last year because the professor was so dumb that she was sucking the life out of my brain). It has a lot of similar experiences as art history. I discuss things a little differently… I’ve met new people on campus. It also has the added benefit of helping me to remember the ideals I had when I started college. I’m much more rallied for the fight against irrational constructions of gender, race, and class. I feel like it’s a good idea to speak up against sweatshops and those sorts of things. I really appreciate anthropology for that reason. But I can now put my finger on why I want to go into African history and not African anthropology. You ready? It’s one word: context. I feel like anthropology just ignores the context of culture. Like what it means to be Ju/wasi is what it meant to be Ju/wasi in 1954. So even though being Ju/wasi now means an entirely different set of circumstances which aren’t nomadic… anthropology just looks at modern Ju/wasi as victims of apartheid. and it ignores all the changes and adaptations of those cultures. Often, I feel like the lone historian in the room who has to contextualize subjects we talk about. Today, we talked about foot binding and one guy compared it to bulimia. Which is a misclassification of bulimia which generally arises from a psychological desire to control which emerges in part but not exclusively from social expectations to be thin. But also. It ignores all of the class elements of foot binding, the trauma of maoist cultural reforms, et cetera.
So I don’t want to be an art historian because I don’t like to describe things and I don’t want to be an anthropologist so I can contextualize things. And that makes me more excited to be an historian.
In other news, I’m surprised by how quickly diet soda became a normal taste for me and how the aspertame just neutralizes out of the flavor very quickly.
Also, Sunday I’m watching all of season six of 24. start to finish at my parents house. not getting out of bed except for food. I’m so damn excited.
