Month: March 2017

Dearest Readers!

The day has come. As we enter the last week of classes, our first year is irreversibly coming to an end. How strange it feels. As I reflect back on the year that has passed a wave of relieved uneasiness wash over me. As a First Year International UBC student, the past months have both academically and in general offered me entirely new experiences. When I first arrived at UBC in August, I had everything planned out in my head. I had done my research and I (thought) knew exactly which experiences UBC had to offer that I wanted to seek out. In the end, I did some of the ones I had planned for, yet, so many others. Unexpected ones. These experiences have pushed, stretched, pulled and bent me simultaneously in countless directions. I am tired. Quite frankly I am exhausted and relieved that I soon will be going home. Yet, I am not done.

In the past week of my ASTU course, we have examined the US intervention in Iraq through the lens of American military literature. In particular, we focused on the author and former US Marine Phil Klay’s work “Redeployed”. “Redeployed” is a collection of short stories and we focused on one of them with the same title as the whole collection. In “Redeployment”, Klay tells the story of an American soldier who is returning home after having served the US military overseas. This story depicts the complex sensation of isolation, despair, and regret that can accompany a soldier when returning home. As we have discussed in class, Klay skilfully portrays the soldier’s sensation of detachment and restlessness. For example, Klay illustrates the scene of the “homecoming” as deeply stressful and absurd for the protagonist by emphasizing the soldier’s awkward reunion with his wife. There is no doubt that Klay writes, as he also has emphasized in an essay for the New York Times, in the genre of American war literature and soldier’s experiences of contemporary war. Yet, I would argue that this story does touch upon the universal theme of how difficult it can be to speak about experiences that have been so detached from the life of the people.

Reading this story, I found myself surprised as I recognized some aspects of feeling uneasy about returning home. Professor Luger mentioned in class about soldiers being “redeployed” both refers to go away for service and to go back home and going home often only is a stage of transition. Soldiers experience the homecoming repeatedly, knowing that they soon will be leaving again. Similarly, I have had my own homecomings. Having studied abroad for the past four years, going home has now become a temporary place of transition. Just as Klay depicts the soldier struggling with disconnect between what he thinks that he should feel and what he is actually feeling, I too have experienced a similar sensation when coming home. The construction of “home” having to be connected to a certain set of sensations, such as happiness or comfort, can, in reality, be highly problematic. I know, that when I return home this summer I will not immediately be experiencing these feelings. Most likely I will experience quite the opposite feelings in fact. And that is okay. What I have learned during these four years is that by speaking about how my life away from home has impacted and changed me, I am able to mend the crack between the person I was when I left and the person I am coming back. Thus, just as Klay urges us to break down the preconceived ideas of war being “unimaginable” and “unspeakable” and allow for soldiers to speak up, I want to urge all international students to do the same when returning home.

All the best 🙂

Dearest readers,

This past week I have continuously been thinking about how close we are to the end of this academic year. With anxious excitement, I find myself astonished by how fast this year has gone by. Yet, there is a long path of assignments and work still ahead of us before the end! For this blog post I have decided to explore a slightly different theme related to my ASTU course and well as academics in general. Indeed, being First Year University students undoubtedly require us to gather and accumulate knowledge at a rather rapid speed, and often doing so without necessarily asking why we consider this knowledge as valuable to us.

In our ASTU course, we have carefully explored the importance of and how knowledge is acquired from academic essays and other literary works. Yet, after having read the Ali Behdad essay “Critical Historicism” and his arguments regarding the term “neo-orientalism”, which refers to the Islamophobic literature of the current decade that is reliant on a binary judgment and a Western assumption of moral and cultural superiority over the Oriental other, I realized something. I realized that I struggled to value this particular academic essay. Completely deviant from my position as an objective student and still the sensation hit me. Why is it that I value some of the works more than others? After having spent some time reflecting over this, I came to the conclusion that maybe I did not feel that the examples Behdad used to illustrate his argument were valuable because I did not find them applicable to my own concept of knowledge regarding ethnocentrism and orientalism.

But to what extent can you measure the value of knowledge? Before considering this question, I was convinced that all knowledge had to be applied as a way of confirming its value. However, the deeper I dug into this knowledge question, the less certain I became. Ironically, I believe that as students, when knowledge is the most available to us, we tend to approach its assumed value pragmatically. We have a test on the Neoliberalism, thus knowledge about Reagan and Thatcher is valuable because it can be applied during the exam. Simple. Yet, we overlook the complexity of such a knowledge issue. Indeed, should knowledge be classified after valued at all?

Does this imply that there is no such thing as valuable knowledge or that all knowledge should simply be valued equally? In my opinion, knowledge can be valued in different ways, due to the internal and external application by the individual acquiring the knowledge. One can argue, that application provides some sort of value to knowledge, yet knowledge in itself is not only valuable for this application. When exploring this rather philosophical path of what knowledge means to me, I thought it to be interesting to link it to the themes of Islamic culture and religion we have heavily explored in our ASTU class, and which I believe Behdad’s essay touches on, through a conversation I had with a Muslim friend from Pakistan a couple week ago.

Indeed, whether knowledge is valuable in itself or if it depends on its application in terms of religion is a highly debated subject at the moment. In Islam the main source of knowledge is derived from the Koran, which according to Muslims is a direct recitation of God’s words. The Koran is used as a book of guidance on how to live according to the will of God. Thus, as a practicing Muslim my friend wears the hijab and pray five times a day, as it is said to do so in the Koran. Given that there is no direct evidence that these practices are coming from God, or if God exists, this religious knowledge is perceived through the faith of its followers. This way of acquiring knowledge is important to take into account when analysing its expected religious value, as knowledge through faith is simultaneously shared and personal knowledge. This implies two things. First, one cannot perceive knowledge through faith and not believe that the Koran is God’s words and not internally applying its message in the world perception. Second, as this is also shared knowledge part of a religious group, this cannot be without applying the gained knowledge practically, such as praying and wearing the hijab. This may therefore, suggest that it is in the application of religious knowledge that its value can be found.

But is application always essential of religious knowledge and its value? Certainly, my initial assumption regarding this subject is influenced by my own previous interpretations of religion as a whole. Coming from an atheist family, I have been infiltrated with the idea the those practicing any set of religious principals or practices all value the practical application of the knowledge more than the knowledge itself. Throughout my childhood, authority figures have encouraged me to use my reasoning when addressing religious knowledge, such as viewing the Genesis as a metaphor for something applicable to our “modern paradigm” rather than literal knowledge. By using reasoning instead of faith it is harder for me to see a logical argument for different perspectives of “religious values” that are independent from a direct application. The same Muslim friend described this logical dilemma to me. For instance, in Islam when referring to religious value one must consider a difference between “value” and “application”. She took the example of how homosexuality is portrayed in the Koran. In several Muslim countries, such as Pakistan, homosexuality is forbidden by law based on knowledge from the story of Sodom found in suras 7. My friend, however, does not interpret the story the same way and does therefore not apply this religious knowledge to her own surroundings. Yet, this does not make the story, knowledge, less valuable for her as a Muslim.

Linking this anecdote to academic knowledge, it taught me something important. Knowledge in itself has to be understood and examined from a multitude of perspectives, as it is it is evident that “application” and “value” are both subjective components of knowledge that, although seen to justify the pursuit of knowledge, still are simple creations of our own minds. Maybe I should re-read the Behdad essay with a more open mind!

On that philosophical end note,

Have a good weekend 🙂