How I Discovered the Meaning of 'Traveling East'

Abstract This essay exposes the constructed nature of the east/west binary as a means by which westerners (especially) can reinforce their sense of superiority, while easterners can use it as an intellectual stick to criticize their western counterparts. In its place I advocate a more measured approach based on listening to and understanding alternative perspectives, not only in terms of interpersonal relationships but in terms of personal psychology. The importance of mesearch as a concept, uniting scholarly and personal approaches, is proposed as a means to achieve this aim.

Keywords: colonialism, binarisms, mesearch, travel, psychology

Download the article on http://www.degruyter.com/dg/viewjournalissue.articlelist.resultlinks.fullcontentlink:pdfeventlink/$002fj$002flincu.2015.2015.issue-2$002flincu-2015-0033$002flincu-2015-0033.pdf/lincu-2015-0033.pdf?t:ac=j$002flincu.2015.2015.issue-2$002fissue-files$002flincu.2015.2015.issue-2.xml or
http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/lincu.2015.2015.issue-2/issue-files/lincu.2015.2015.issue-2.xml

Wharton in Washington

I recently stayed for six days in Washington DC, partly on holiday and partly to attend (on a part time basis at least, the ‘Wharton in Washington’ conference held near DuPont Circle. This was something of a change, as I had not attended a single-author event since May 2015, when my home institution had devoted two days to Scott Fitzgerald.

The event was held in the library of Anderson House, a mahogany-and-brass room lined with leather-bound books and the heads of Ivory-statued males staring forbiddingly at anyone daring to penetrate their space. It seemed an ideal venue to discuss the oeuvre of someone who grew up in this kind of patriarchal environment and spent a lot of time criticising it both implicitly and explicitly.

As the proceedings unfolded, so I became increasingly uncomfortable, physically as well as literally. The majority of the papers were delivered by speakers with no sense of environment; rather than concentrating of the sociology of Wharton, past or present, or reflecting on how the situation might reshape our understanding of her, they mostly stuck to the kind of character analysis that I though had been abandoned long ago in literary criticism.

I was wrong. Years ago D. H. Lawrence advised his readers not to look in twentieth century novels “for the old stable ego of character.” This dictum could apply equally to Henry James or Edith Wharton. I have found the latter two authors especially in the way they eschew characterisation in favour of psychology: few of us are coherent in our behaviour, and this trait is embodied in many of their characters.

At this conference, however, one or the chief pastimes consisted of reading as many symbols into the text as possible. This sentence had purposely been written this way to emphasise the ancient art of symbol-hunting, a sport beloved of critics since the New Critical era. Even if you believe in the Barthesian notion of the death of the author, you too can show off your wisdom and learning by squeezing every gram of symbolism out of your selected text.

I am not suggesting that authors refrain from resorting to the technique; but I do believe that symbol-hunting actually deflects attention away from texts and authors and onto critics. The ‘best’ at their job are those who uncover the most elaborate symbols that no one has previously thought.

When I began my career, I always used to be in awe of such people whose sensibilities seemed so much further developed than my own. Now I realise that symbol-hunting is at best pleasurable, at worst futile as it detracts from rather than enhances our imaginative engagement with a work.

It does not really matter about the symbols; what should concern us is the need to be drawn into the author’s world and the characters that people it. Their behaviour does not have to be ‘rational’ or ‘stable,’ or even ‘coherent’; it should engage us subliminally.

And it is this quality I found so lacking at the conference, whose participants preferred to challenge one another on their knowledge of the inner highways and by-ways of Wharton’s oeuvre rather than communicating any real sense of joy, passion, or even cultural awareness at being in the Anderson Library. I am not positing any either/or scenario here, but rather suggesting more emphasis on pleasure, on the instinctive and spontaneous thoughts – akin to stream of consciousness- arising every time we open a book.

Three days after the conference ended, I went to the Chicago Institute of Art and browsed among their extensive American art collection. Among the exhibits in the pre-20th collection were several paintings depicting the rarefied world of urban Washington: stylish, mannered, constricting. Looking at the women in their starched crinolines exchanging polite small talk while perched uncomfortably on heavy mahogany chairs offered immediate insight into Wharton's milieu and why she was so preoccupied with it, whether positively or negatively.

I am not in any saying that paintings are doing the work that literary critics should; but I do believe that scholarship has to emerge from its often incestuous ivory tower of ‘specialists’ and become more all-encompassing. In that way Wharton's reputation can be consolidated as well as enhanced.

Difficult Adaptations

Can We “Understand” Adaptations?

 

Sometimes we encounter moments that completely redefine the way we look at adaptation studies, irrespective of which theoretical standpoint we might embrace.  Whether we favor a Piagetian view (relating the self to the adaptation process); a text-based view; or a transmedial view; there are times when we realize that each one of these approaches have their shortcomings.

 

Such was the case for me during the last week.  I was fortunate enough to watch G. W. Pabst’s version of The Threepenny Opera (1931) on television.  Premiered in pre-Nazi Germany only three years previously,  the film contained three of the cast who had been involved in the stage version.  Evidently Brecht himself had been initially involved in the film version, but Pabst eventually dispensed with his services.  The finished product contains few of the original Brecht/ Weill songs, and some critics have noted that the lush recreations of the London underworld detract attention away from the musical’s political overtones.  Nonetheless Pabst’s vision does not shy away from the satiric material, with the actors (Rudolf Forster, Carola Neher, Fritz Rasp, and Lotte Lenya) singing the lyrics in deliberately discordant tones direct to camera.  They function as commentaries on the action, especially the overriding emphasis on self-interest that dominates the characters’ minds.  Sometimes the story seems slightly incoherent (we do not quite understand why Mackie Messer (Forster) is eventually reprieved from a death-sentence by hanging), but the film provides a valuable record of “Brechtian” drama as conceived during his time.

 

Three days later I watched the Berliner Ensemble perform the same work at İstanbul’s Zorlu Center, directed by the American Robert Wilson.  This time the group used the whole text with all of the songs.  Performed on a cavern-like and largely bare stage, Wilson used a variety of visual effects drawn from a cornucopia of traditions – commedia dell’arte, Japanese Noh theater, the circus, cabaret, the Theater of Cruelty, mime – to emphasize the play’s political material.  The effect was quite stunning: a set comprised of a series of metal bars, horizontally and vertically placed, could double up as Macheath’s lair, a prison, a courthouse, or whatever venue was required.  The actors’ use of mime recalled how much Brecht was indebted to early silent film in his drama.  Most of the lines were delivered at the front of the playing area direct to the audience, so as to sustain a Verfremdungseffekt, or a sense of alienation, preventing us from identifying with the characters in any way.  With a live orchestra performing the songs, and displaying a remarkable versatility in the process, the entire production not only challenged our concepts of what “drama” could encompass, but forced us to concentrate on the importance of the words – whether delivered in spoken or singing voices.

 

Some of the packed house of 2,000 did not like what they saw.  The first half lasted just over two hours without a break; when the interval finally arrived, several playgoers walked, complaining that they had been short-changed in their expectations from an organization as prestigious as the Berliner Ensemble.  I do not want to speculate too much on their opinions, but I venture to suggest that these playgoers had expected something more along the lines of a “well-made play,” with a beginning, middle and an end, and a story they could become emotionally involved with.

Throughout the evening, I felt exhausted, as if I had been blown away by an artistic tornado.  I could not judge whether I “liked” or “disliked” what I saw; perhaps it did not matter.  What I did understand, however, is how a performance – whether live on stage or filmed – is a highly complex text sending out a multiplicity of messages, both visual as verbal.  As spectators, we not only have to make sense of the sets and costumes, but we take into account the actors’ movements, the director’s management of space, the music, facial expressions and the use of silence.  And all this on top of trying to understand the words, stresses, intonations, verbal interactions, and so on …

 

What I am trying to say is that watching adaptations is difficult.  Our judgments are continually shaped and reshaped from moment to moment; in a revival like Wilson’s Threepenny Opera this process of development can become overwhelming, rendering us mentally exhausted.  I would venture to suggest that such interpretive issues arise while watching every adaptation, irrespective of the medium for which it has been conceived and/or performed.

I began by making distinctions between three types of standpoint – the textual, Piagetian and intermedial.  My experience of watching The Threepenny Opera prompts me to conclude that all three approaches play an intrinsic part in the experience of every adaptation.  This is what renders them such complex texts to decode and relate to our own experiences as audiences and/or critics.

 

Radical Adaptations

Ever since I became associated with adaptation studies, I have always been led to believe that ‘radical’ versions of a source-text are identified with something positive.  Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) reinterprets Shakespeare for a ‘young’ audience; Michael Winterbottom’s A Cock and Bull Story (2005) uses a film-within-a-film structure to recapture the narrative flexibility of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy; while Luhrmann has another go at rethinking an established classic with The Great Gatsby (2013).  A  course at the University of Minnesota devoted to “Teaching Film, Television, and Media” has a module devoted to adaptation, where the description quotes Louis Giannett’s Understanding Movies (2002), wherein adaptations are divided into a tripartite typology – literal, faithful, and loose (“Different Modes of Adaptation”).

“Radical” adaptations are good.  They help viewers and critics to “rethink” texts by offering new perspectives on familiar material.  They can expand the discourse of adaptation to encompass alternative modes of thinking, visual styles and/or cinematic narrative.  They invite us to re-examine our beliefs in terms such as “fidelity,” or “originality,” and the value-judgements associated with them.  Hence it is hardly surprising that “radical” filmmakers form the subjects for academic articles, books, and other materials produced by colleagues willing to advance the discipline of adaptation studies.

Yet it is frequently the case that “radicalism” is a critically contested term, especially if used in a cross-cultural context.  Peter Brook might have been considered innovative in British terms with his version of Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade (1967), based on his stage production of the same name, but the cinematic style is entirely in keeping with the French-inspired tradition of the Theatre of Cruelty.  Likewise Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby might not seem especially innovative to the connoisseur of Hollywood musicals of the classical period; many of the stylistic conventions owe a lot to Busby Berkeley’s and Vincente Minnelli’s example.

In light of a recent documentary on the life and work of composer Peter Maxwell Davies, recently broadcast on BBC Four in the United Kingdom, I was prompted to deconstruct that term “radicalism” even further.  In his early life as a composer and educator at Cirencester Grammar School, Maxwell Davies was perceived as something of a “radical” in his determination to question established conventions of musical appreciation.  He embodied the spirit of the Sixties in classical music, as he tossed aside notions of harmony that dated back to the eighteenth century and set about retraining listeners to appreciate more discordant forms.  Within three decades, however, Maxwell Davies had become an Establishment figure, whose work was regularly performed at the Proms, and who was regularly featured on BBC Television.  In 2004 he became Master of the Queen’s Music, the equivalent of the Poet Laureate.

His biography suggests that “radicalism” is a term identified with youth (as opposed to age); freshness (as opposed to staleness); and anti-establishment attitudes.  Like John Osborne in the theater, or Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz in British film history, Maxwell Davies underwent a kind of psychological metamorphosis; as they grew older they progressed inexorably towards membership of the Establishment, while younger talents assumed the radical mantle instead – Edward Bond, David Edgar (theater), and Ken Russell and Peter Greenaway (film).

While this is a very schematic mode of looking at media history, we are nonetheless made well aware that “radicalism” is a slippery term; one that might help career advancement during one’s early years but erodes over time.  Mid-career artists who retain that soubriquet are described as “aging radicals,” as if gray hairs and increasing waistlines should separate older from younger individuals.     

Yet perhaps we should not dismiss the term so easily.  The Maxwell Davies tribute program included an archive interview with the composer where he suggested that the inspiration for his so-called “radicalism” was not wholly provoked by the desire to challenge established values, but by a need to “push the notes” in different ways; to “get inside the music” and understand its ebb and flow.  He was as interested in past musical traditions as in contemporary music; he spent much of his life trying to synthesize the two in new ways.

The metaphor of “pushing the notes” is a suggestive one, implying that any creative artist – including adaptors and/or screenplay writers – should try to inhabit their source-texts; to become involved in their nonverbal as well as the verbal nuances and let their products be shaped by their instincts.  “Radicalism” in this formulation means discovering new ways of thinking and feeling, but not necessarily produced by the desire to challenge established conventions.  The past should not be rejected but embraced as a means of understanding the future.

In this formulation every one of us – artists, audiences, critics alike – are “radicals” insofar as we learn how to adapt to new material and new experiences; this process is a lifelong one, not restricted by age and/or reputation.  An understanding of this potential helped to render Maxwell Davies an accessible figure throughout his sixty-year career, and offers encouragement to us all.

Laurence Raw

May Day 2016.

The Shortcomings of Adaptation and The Difficulties of Resolving Them

It’s interesting these days to see how experiences interlock with one another.  I recently published a blog-post on the importance of “love” – based on the importance of everyone trying to cultivate a mindful awareness of one’s surroundings and thereby becoming more adaptive as people.  Through this process we could become more aware of the continuities linking different cultures.  The blog-post can be accessed at http://laurenceraw.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/binarisms-adaptation-and-love.html.

Only a week after I had published this post, I read an assessment by Don Randall of Bilkent University on English Studies in Turkey (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ari/summary/v046/46.1-2.randall.html).  Published in January 2015, the article examines current standards of research and teaching while offering an idiosyncratic solution to these “problems” through the introduction of more foreign-trained local academics into the system.

My initial reaction was an indignant one: the article contains so many errors of fact and misinterpreted ideas that I wondered precisely how it could have passed the peer review process and appeared in the journal.  I do not want to go into too much detail, but perhaps one or two examples might suffice:

a)      Randall claims that English teaching “tends to take shape quite unproductively as the practice of translation.”  The main issue concerning ELT has little or nothing to do with “translation,” but rather focuses on a preoccupation with grammar at the expense of speaking.  Most learners graduate from high schools with a limited knowledge of the way English works, but lacking either the confidence or the competence to communicate in the second language.  Yasemin Kırkgöz’s article, appearing in the RELC Journal (2007) published by Sage, examines this issue in detail.

b)      The author seems to be under the impression that English Studies came to the Republic of Turkey as a quasi-colonialist project akin to that described in 1815 by Thomas Babington Macaulay when referring to a similar project in British India.  In fact English Studies was part of a project introduced in the mid-twentieth century by the Ministry of Education as a means of implementing Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s policies of westernization allied to developing local cultures.  Scholars were certainly encouraged to follow western models, but use them as a basis for constructing their own culture-specific theoretical and methodological approaches.  I published an article on this issue as long ago as 1999 (https://www.academia.edu/395850/Reconstructing_Englishness_1999_)

c)      Randall goes on to claim that English departments in Turkey embrace “an extraordinarily deep and intimate unity of British literature and culture” in their curricula.  This claim surprises me: one of principal methodological aims of most literature departments, especially those with a cultural studies component, has been to problematize the notion of “Britishness” not only by looking at constructions of multiculturalism, but by looking at the whole idea of “culture” and its implications from a cross-cultural perspective.  I explored this issue in a recent presentation based on my own pedagogy http://www.slideshare.net/laurenceraw/intercultural-communication-some-ideas.

d)     Drawing on the work of Spivak, Randall recommends that English Studies should move away from a purely text-based approach and favor instead the “socially transformative values” produced by an “aesthetic education.”  While embracing the idea of “transformation,” it should come about through collaboration between educators and learners, not through the imposition of critical precepts formulated in the west.  To rely purely on Spivak’s precepts represents a contemporary form of colonialism – in other words, the imposition of western-formulated notions in a nonwestern culture.  The ghost of Macaulay haunts Randall’s arguments.

e)      Lastly Randall quotes the example of his institution hiring a western-trained Turkish academic as a possible solution to the “problem” of English Studies.  This strategy has been pursued, to my knowledge at least, for the past seven decades: many of the best scholars in English Departments past and present have received their education abroad.  Moreover, it is not always the case that the best scholars need this form of education: Professor Talât Halman (1931-2014), one of the best-known translators, teachers and cultural ambassadors in the Republic’s history, never even studied for a PhD.

As I read Randall’s article for the second or the third time, my emotions changed; I was no longer angry but profoundly sad, not just for the fact that such an article could have appeared in print, but because it revealed the shortcomings of “adaptation” as a process.  This has nothing to do with research issues, and everything to do with cultural and psychological adjustment.  Where is the empathy?  Where is the willingness to listen to and embrace other people’s arguments?  Where is the love of one’s fellow human beings?

At a time of political and cultural upheaval, the article leaves me with a profound feeling of depression.  If my learners or colleagues read this article, they might be rendered equally depressed; is that what representatives of “the west” (understood as a political and social entity) think of our efforts?  I am still left with the difficult task of proving the value of adaptation as a cultural and psychological process (that we are never the same people today as we were yesterday, or will be tomorrow) as well as trying to sustain communities of purpose dedicated to literature – not as a subject for “aesthetic education” but as a means of discovering something about ourselves and the way we respond so differently to the world around us.

The only way to overcome such reversals as this is to follow the advice of Winston Churchill – KBO (Keep Buggering On).  Do what you believe in to the best of your abilities.

Laurence Raw

28 Mar. 2016

Binarisms, Adaptation, and Love

I was fortunate enough recently to attend the Southwest Popular Culture Association meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  This was the third time I had attended the conference; I find it rather unique in its capacity to embrace academics and graduate learners in a non-threatening ambiance, where participants genuinely try to help each other rather than to try and score cheap scholarly methodological points for their own personal self-gratification.

This visit offered more suggestive ideas as to how we might approach the idea of adaptation and apply it to agendas other than the familiar literature-film-media paradigm.  I visited a thrift shop while I was there, and was fortunate enough to pick up a stack of books at $1 each.  Although my suitcase was weighed down, I was pleased to find a variety of titles ranging from Katharine Hepburn’s autobiography, Neil Simon’s ideas on playwriting, and a polemical work by the American talk show host Rush Limbaugh, whose rightwing views on contemporary life make Donald Trump seem a centrist by comparison.  While Limbaugh might be an extremist, his book offered a salutary explanation as to why binary oppositions form such an essential part of western thought.  They provide an intellectual safety-value, a means by which individuals can distance themselves from phenomena that they find uncomfortable or even disturbing.  I don’t like Obamacare because it’s redolent of “socialism,” and I believe in the free market; this is one of Limbaugh’s favorite refrains.  Likewise: the “Middle East” is full of Muslims, and I am a Christian; I have frequently read that in recent reports on the Turkish Republic.  Or, more prosaically: I am an educator working with learners, and I find it difficult to understand why they are so reluctant to think for themselves (a familiar lament on Facebook).

It seems to me that “adaptation” consists of the ability to be able to transcend such oppositions and acquire more pluralistic viewpoints.  You might be an educator, but you might also try to understand your learners; likewise, you might make the effort to understand the purpose behind President Obama’s health policies.  I was vividly reminded of the importance of this process when I visited the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History.  Situated just outside the Old Town, it is a bustling hive of activity; on the day I went, a local history group listened to a lecture and thronged the museum café afterwards, chattering excitedly about what they had just heard.  As I walked round the exhibits, I became more and more conscious of how the various communities inhabiting the city – Native Indians, Euros, Mexicans – had spent centuries learning how to live with one another.  In particular the Native Indians had had to learn how to accommodate themselves to the experience of white expansion, of having their lands colonized and their rituals policed.  Sometimes their sole means of expressing resistance was through crafts and/or the practice of religion, of maintaining the belief that they could achieve a spiritual state of grace through sustaining their faith in God. 

My perceptions were radically sharpened two days later when I walked round the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center that traced the growth, development and perpetuation of Pueblo Indian Culture, History and Art.  One gallery was entitled “Adaptation,” and used a combination of archival photographs, paintings and explanatory panels to trace how the Pueblos had accommodated themselves to the major socio-economic developments in nineteenth century America.  The myths I had grown up with, of Native Indians perpetually fighting the Euros, were exploded; what I saw was a much more complex story of cultural and religious give-and-take, of cultures trying their utmost to negotiate with one another in an often difficult and dangerous environment.  I am not trying to defend the actions of white settlers here; my experience of the Cultural Center taught me that I did not have to think of nineteenth century New Mexican history in such militarist terms.  Rather I should focus on the ways in which the Pueblos adapted themselves so as to reinterpret their past traditions in light of present-day realities.

Suitably energized, I returned to the conference, and had the good fortune to re-encounter Jarrod Bolin and his group of high school learners and graduates.  In 2015 I had listened to their presentation and had been quite literally bowled over by the coherence and enthusiasm with which they presented their arguments.  Any fears they might have had of talking to an audience of academics was not immediately apparent; what we heard was a marvelous set of arguments attesting to the value of forging a community of purpose in a learning environment.  This year I wanted to interview Jarrod and his learners, with a view to publicizing their efforts worldwide.  They were more than ready to talk about how their entire educational experience had been revolutionized; rather than following a pre-ordained curriculum, they had been encouraged to work on their own and discuss their insights in small groups.  Jarrod did not actively tell them what to do, but offered encouragement and inspiration where necessary.  He also admitted that he had learned a great deal about person management – more so than he had ever expected when he became an educator in the first place.

I was struck by the coherence with which the interviewees recalled their experiences and tried to make sense of them for their futures as educators and university learners.  Like the Pueblo Indians, they had subjected themselves to a process of adaptation, by setting aside their (often negative) recollections of education in the past and committing themselves instead to more collective modes of learning.  There was a considerable amount of risk involved – would the group actually cope with collaborative rather than top-down methods of instruction?  On the other hand the benefits of this mode of education were obvious, not only educationally but personally: all Jared’s learners possessed the kind of self-confidence and sheer naked optimism that us oldies can sometimes only dream about.

Listening to the various presentations given by more established academics, I wondered – rather wistfully – why they could not have taken a leaf out of Jarrod’s learners’ pedagogical books and learned how to talk to rather than at their audiences.  That is, until I heard Jillian Saint Jacques’ presentation, which offered another mind-blowing experience of how established forms of conference communication could be turned on their head (adapted, perhaps?) to produce something highly stimulating and – in this case – emotionally affecting.  Jillian talked at length about his own process of adaptation throughout his life, as he became a transsexual and then decided after a period of time to reassume his masculine identity.  It would be invidious of me to summarize his piece in detail (in case he wants to publish it), but what struck me was the honesty and passion with which he spoke.  He was talking about “adaptation studies” in a psychological sense, but was also using himself as a case-study to prove his points.  We listened, almost stunned, as he talked about how people reacted to his various shifts of identity, and how such shifts forced him to make major personal shifts in values and outlook.  Even today, he admitted, he still wasn’t sure about who he was, and had to undergo considerable periods of “adaptation” to the most mundane things – having a family, being a parent, even going to work.  His presentation vividly underlined what the Pueblos probably experienced over a hundred and fifty years ago, as they struggled to survive in a rapidly changing world.

What did these experiences tell me?  First, that “adaptation” is not only a transdisciplinary concept, but applies to our daily lives.  I have talked about this before, so do not want to belabor the point.  Second, I think that we should treat the world as an anima mundi, in which apparently diverse experiences prompt us to reflect in similar ways.  Through such methods we can understand how the past impacts the present and future, as well as vice versa.  Third, I think that the Albquerque experiences reminded me of just how superficial – yet damaging – the practice of drawing binary oppositions actually is, as it tends to exclude rather than admit the possibility of negotiation or debate.  I was reminded of this only yesterday when I read a Guardian article on the recent troubles in Turkey, which claimed that the country was a “western” nation looking “east.”  Such distinctions might be journalistically permissible, but they also conceal certain prejudices – a dislike for “the other” dating back to the colonial period.

This is not designed as a political piece: far from it.  Rather it is designed to show how a mindful awareness of one’s surroundings and how we respond to them can help us become more “adaptive” as people, as well as making us more aware of the continuities linking different cultures.  Leo Tolstoy once emphasized how the world might become a better place if we learned to love each other more – perhaps these adaptive experiences might play a significant part in helping us to achieve this goal.

Laurence Raw

17 March 2016 

Adaptation and ADAPTATION: Foregrounding the Personal

I have just emerged from a quite remarkable panel at the Southwest Texas PCA Conference in Albuquerque, USA.  Last year I had been blown away by a series of presentations given by high school learners that proved beyond doubt that critical theories could be accessible to everyone so long as they were sufficiently motivated.  I wrote about my experiences in a short essay now available in the latest issue (No. 3) of Dialogue: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy (http://journaldialogue.org/issues/a-pedagogical-journey-albuquerque-2015/).

This year I was part of a panel on adaptation theory.  I delivered a short presentation reworking some of my core beliefs in the future of adaptation studies in light of comments made recently by a publisher acquaintance of mine, interpreted through the prism of a visit made to the Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque where the term “adaptation” was specifically used as a term to describe cultural and spatial adjustment over time.  I summarized my ideas in a presentation now accessible on http://www.slideshare.net/laurenceraw/can-adaptation-studies-survive.

What really blew me away both intellectually and emotionally was a presentation given in the same panel by Jillian St. Jacques of Oregon State University.  I first encountered him last year, when he also shared a panel with me about adaptation theory, and I was intrigued by the freshness of his ideas, even if I did not necessarily agree with them (I did not necessarily need to).  For this year’s panel St. Jacques had chosen to consider “adaptation” through the lens of his own autobiography as someone born into a homophobic family, who had lived life as a trans-sexual, and subsequently chosen to set aside that role and become a family man instead.

With the aid of photographs of his own life at various stages from adolescence through middle age, coupled with incisive critical views mediated through Foucault and Judith Butler, St. Jacques made me acutely aware of just how personal adaptation studies actually is.  Whether we like it or not, that process of coming to terms with our roles imposed on us in the societies we inhabit, and trying to work through them, is fundamental to our existence, and one which inevitably involves adaptation.

This might be a controversial viewpoint to many who are either not involved in adaptation studies, or those who are just beginning on their travels through adaptation.  What can the process of transforming literary into cinematic texts, or other transformative processes variously described as translation, transmediality or remediation have to do with the kind of processes St. Jacques was referring to?  The answer is everything and nothing.  Any process of adaptation, as Jerome Bruner once said, involves the construction of narratives; these narratives are not just designed to be watched or listened to, but are fundamental to the way we think.  As we go throughout life, these narratives are shaped and reshaped, but never fixed.  Adaptation is everything in the sense that the term describes that process of shaping, but nothing in the sense that we are in a perpetual state of uncertainty.  We never know how long the narratives we construct are going to last; and whether they will satisfy us in the present or the future.  This was the main thrust of St. Jacques’s talk.

In more general terms, St. Jacques also problematized some of the terms that are often not sufficiently deconstructed in adaptation studies – for example, the ways in which “masculinity” and “femininity” are perceived.  A recent book written by Shelley Cobb has taken a feminist take on authorship; in light of St. Jacques’s talk, we might wonder what “feminist” authorship actually signifies.  From a more ontological perspective, how do we as individuals understand what being a “man” or “a woman” involves?  Maybe we have to think of adaptation as a complex process as we come to terms with ourselves as well as the worlds we inhabit.  Maybe that process is never-ending: this is what I understood from St. Jacques’s piece.

More than ever I realized how adaptation studies is a process of negotiation and re-negotiation; and that this process takes precedence over all other processes associated with the discipline such as translation, remediation or transmediality.  This negotiation is both transnational and transtextual; it not only determines how we reinterpret texts such as films, books, or material online, but also how we, as personalities, are shaped and reshaped by such texts as well as our encounters with others.

At the end of St. Jacques’s presentation, I felt as if I had been hit by an intellectual train; other participants were clearly emotionally shaken.  As I write this, some three hours after St. Jacques finished, I am still trying to come to terms with the implications of what he proposed.  I believe that adaptive process will take some considerable time.

Laurence Raw

St. Valentine’s Day 2016