I logged 2400 miles of American roads, 14 hours of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, 3 full Brewers game broadcasts (all the enemy radio feed on XM), and 1 total eclipse as seen from Glendo State Park in Wyoming.
I woke up on Sunday morning and decided to forgo my Midwestern eclipse experience plans because the weather looked uncertain for optimal viewing. En route to Deadwood, SD, I listened through the Preface (very familiar!), the Introduction and the early parts of A. Consciousness.
My copy of Phenomenology was safely at home on my bookshelf, sitting right next to Susan Buck-Morss' excellent Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (which I have read in its entirety!). I bought a used copy (originally Elizabeth Trejack's it seems) at a book shop in Minnesota. It was highlighted and underlined in a few very specific sections (it opens automatically to Lordship and Bondage), and otherwise appears largely untouched.
I first learned of the existence of a fellow called Hegel and his friend "Geist" on my first day of classes at the University of Chicago. I read the greatest hits from Hegel's masterwork, and nodded knowingly when his influence on later theorists was discussed. On arrival to UW-M, I heard less about Hegel (though there was quite a lot more mention of Foucault, who I only heard come up once at UChicago, and that was in a joke from a Zadie Smith reading about introducing someone at an academic party as "... she likes Michel Foucault and costume jewelry"), but dutifully put Phenomenology and Buck-Morss' book on my prelim reading list.
Naturally, like most good reading lists, I did not read most of most of the books on the list, but excel at the academic art of talking about books you have not read. I have also not read that book, though I've held it in my hands, and skimmed through bits, and I know people who have read it.
During my long drives of the last several days, I've read through the first 513 paragraphs of Hegel's work, starting and stopping and occasionally paying more and less attention as one is wont to do when reading or listening or existing at all, I suppose. I think this might be the best way to read Phenomenology, not as one's only or deep reading of the text, but as a way to have read through it all. As I drove, I would make notes of paragraphs I wanted to return to (don't worry, the highways of South Dakota and Wyoming are sparsely populated, even when there's an eclipse on!). When I was first reading Shakespeare (or first reading it in college, I can't remember which), someone (either Jerry Davis or Mary Hull Mohr) gave me the advice to "just keep going" when you're reading it and not sure you're absorbing. It's reading as muscle memory, and the deep read of certain sections can come later (or earlier!).
Hearing "of Lordship and Bondage" after reading through the entirety of Consciousness changes the focus of the passage. It makes the easy reading of Hegel as writing the heroic history of Haiti less easy and fancy free. I've come to trust Buck-Morss, and don't think her reading is at all off the mark. That said, I think it is important to remain aware of our academic practice of the use of texts to suggest meaning and significance.
*. *. *
I first learned of the Great American Eclipse earlier this year, and almost in the same moment committed in my mind that I would be there to see it. I took a few days vacation, but made few other plans, except to choose Beatrice, Nebraska as my viewing sight. Tim & Jen & the kids live in Omaha, and actually lived in Beatrice shortly after they got married. When the day got close, weather across the Midwest started looking dicey, and I headed west.
A total eclipse is an awe-inspiring sight, truly an opportunity to see the most awesome, magnificent vision available on earth. An eclipse is also a random conflation of events - a new moon that aligns with the earth and sun; a sun for a planet that is about 400 times larger than the planet's moon, which is about 400 times closer than that same sun (so they take up about the same amount of sky space). Also, we also happen to be in the small window of time, cosmically speaking, that allows this confluence.
I've been struggling to describe what I saw, or what the experience was like, or why it was worth the trip. Finding significance in the random confluence of hunks of rock hurtling through the galaxy is what we do as humans. Making meaning from bringing texts, histories, moments - that's what humanists do. We live in a strange confluence of psychology, philosophy, astronomy, physics, history, sociology, geology, chronology and on and ology.
My thoughts of late have been turning back toward the super-modern, and the importance of the small. I'm still working at making meaning from the experience of the eclipse, and from reading Hegel on the way to and from seeing the eclipse, and the observations and thoughts I had about Americans and Trump and Mt. Rushmore and history on the way to and from seeing the eclipse. I expect that I will continue to try to build this meaning for quite some time.
What I learned or have built or have decided for now is that my phenomenology of totality has provided me some perspective on our present American experiment. We are a strange and strained people, but I still think this is all just crazy enough to work.
I woke up on Sunday morning and decided to forgo my Midwestern eclipse experience plans because the weather looked uncertain for optimal viewing. En route to Deadwood, SD, I listened through the Preface (very familiar!), the Introduction and the early parts of A. Consciousness.
My copy of Phenomenology was safely at home on my bookshelf, sitting right next to Susan Buck-Morss' excellent Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (which I have read in its entirety!). I bought a used copy (originally Elizabeth Trejack's it seems) at a book shop in Minnesota. It was highlighted and underlined in a few very specific sections (it opens automatically to Lordship and Bondage), and otherwise appears largely untouched.
I first learned of the existence of a fellow called Hegel and his friend "Geist" on my first day of classes at the University of Chicago. I read the greatest hits from Hegel's masterwork, and nodded knowingly when his influence on later theorists was discussed. On arrival to UW-M, I heard less about Hegel (though there was quite a lot more mention of Foucault, who I only heard come up once at UChicago, and that was in a joke from a Zadie Smith reading about introducing someone at an academic party as "... she likes Michel Foucault and costume jewelry"), but dutifully put Phenomenology and Buck-Morss' book on my prelim reading list.Naturally, like most good reading lists, I did not read most of most of the books on the list, but excel at the academic art of talking about books you have not read. I have also not read that book, though I've held it in my hands, and skimmed through bits, and I know people who have read it.
During my long drives of the last several days, I've read through the first 513 paragraphs of Hegel's work, starting and stopping and occasionally paying more and less attention as one is wont to do when reading or listening or existing at all, I suppose. I think this might be the best way to read Phenomenology, not as one's only or deep reading of the text, but as a way to have read through it all. As I drove, I would make notes of paragraphs I wanted to return to (don't worry, the highways of South Dakota and Wyoming are sparsely populated, even when there's an eclipse on!). When I was first reading Shakespeare (or first reading it in college, I can't remember which), someone (either Jerry Davis or Mary Hull Mohr) gave me the advice to "just keep going" when you're reading it and not sure you're absorbing. It's reading as muscle memory, and the deep read of certain sections can come later (or earlier!).
Hearing "of Lordship and Bondage" after reading through the entirety of Consciousness changes the focus of the passage. It makes the easy reading of Hegel as writing the heroic history of Haiti less easy and fancy free. I've come to trust Buck-Morss, and don't think her reading is at all off the mark. That said, I think it is important to remain aware of our academic practice of the use of texts to suggest meaning and significance.
*. *. *
I first learned of the Great American Eclipse earlier this year, and almost in the same moment committed in my mind that I would be there to see it. I took a few days vacation, but made few other plans, except to choose Beatrice, Nebraska as my viewing sight. Tim & Jen & the kids live in Omaha, and actually lived in Beatrice shortly after they got married. When the day got close, weather across the Midwest started looking dicey, and I headed west.
A total eclipse is an awe-inspiring sight, truly an opportunity to see the most awesome, magnificent vision available on earth. An eclipse is also a random conflation of events - a new moon that aligns with the earth and sun; a sun for a planet that is about 400 times larger than the planet's moon, which is about 400 times closer than that same sun (so they take up about the same amount of sky space). Also, we also happen to be in the small window of time, cosmically speaking, that allows this confluence.
I've been struggling to describe what I saw, or what the experience was like, or why it was worth the trip. Finding significance in the random confluence of hunks of rock hurtling through the galaxy is what we do as humans. Making meaning from bringing texts, histories, moments - that's what humanists do. We live in a strange confluence of psychology, philosophy, astronomy, physics, history, sociology, geology, chronology and on and ology.
My thoughts of late have been turning back toward the super-modern, and the importance of the small. I'm still working at making meaning from the experience of the eclipse, and from reading Hegel on the way to and from seeing the eclipse, and the observations and thoughts I had about Americans and Trump and Mt. Rushmore and history on the way to and from seeing the eclipse. I expect that I will continue to try to build this meaning for quite some time.
What I learned or have built or have decided for now is that my phenomenology of totality has provided me some perspective on our present American experiment. We are a strange and strained people, but I still think this is all just crazy enough to work.
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