I apologize to my readers who were expecting another post yesterday on the ongoing reading and project work but I failed to mention an addendum this initiative; be open to the impromptu. That is, from far too much experience with the guilt and pain attendant in any deviation from a given plan, I have decided to include the unexpected in my plans. Yesterday, although I did not write my intended post, I had a wonderfully helpful, productive and simply fun conversation with Kristine; thus, in the great Western tradition of philosophy, I blame the woman for not being faithful in my promise. But I did get to eat from the knowledge tree.

    While I am aware of my own hyper self-criticism, I notice that my writing has taken a turn for the worse. Actually, it has taken a Wile E. Coyote kind of leap into the canyon. There is a general lack of sophistication but more importantly, writing for the moment is not the aid to cognition it normally is. In lieu of brilliance, let me attempt a moment of transparency with all the idiosyncrasies and clouded insanity that make up my half articulate thoughts.

    I showed Hotel Rwanda to both my classes today, which means that I had a double dose of the film’s beautiful, utopic melancholia. The film will function as a preface for our turn toward the international generally and Africa specifically. I have also narrowed the focus of our attention to language and its role in creating the self/ other binary that implicitly grounds too much violence in the world. These two turns, toward the international and toward language, were the substance of my introduction to the film, along with a brief Wikipedia article situating the 1994 genocide. My real desire was to say unequivocally, “If you don’t shed a tear during this film, you have no soul;” a thought that, for obvious reasons, never found expression.
    The film is profoundly interesting to me for a myriad of reasons: its ability to launch me into a meta awareness of the human condition, to evoke a visceral reaction and the attendant investment from my students, and (perhaps at the intersection of the two prior feelings) its capacity to shift energetically my focus from the day-to-day minutiae to the larger telos of my scholarship. The tears, the empathy, feelings of powerlessness, admiration of human selflessness and the desire to articulate the only phrase that makes sense even as you recognize its utter banality and meaninglessness, “But they are just other human beings like you;” the film forces all this on me. I am thrown into a violent negotiation with my spirituality, attempting to understand the real-unreality of genocide, to engage a universal solidarity with the intensity of human suffering but hold it in tension with disengagement, an aloofness that dismisses it as an ultimate reality or end. I want to slap God and sit in meditation for several hours. The euphoria of seeing “the killers” gunned down by the Hutu army shocks me with my own immature humanity and my Gandhian/ Satyagrahan sensibilities scold me for it. Is that student crying? They better be.
    Last semester, when I first showed this film in a class, I had to spread the viewing over three-days because of the short class period. After each day, I would see my students hurriedly pack up their bags, leaving me alone to dismantle the equipment and wonder if the film had no affect for them. In discussions about the film, many students admitted to tearing up and explained their rapid departure as a defensive move to prevent embarrassment. The conversations were so intense that I could feel the waves of panic, disgust and epiphanies as students discussed policy decisions that must evaluate the relative worth of each human life. Although the quality of papers improved only marginally, often parroting the critiques I offered, the investment in the conversation and the vehemence with which they wrote changed drastically. Teaching the film was, and is, a centering experience that allows an incredible alignment of pedagogy, scholarship and extra-academic idealistic aims.
    
I am running out of energy; writing about these experiences is emotionally taxing.

    Let me say, however, that at the deepest state of melancholia is a profound joy that recognizes, and empathizes with, a core human experience that all have shared. In this joyous sadness is the seed of a renewed awareness of my place and role in the world, a renewed desire to be of some service. Sharing this sadness with my students, glancing through the same rusty frame onto the ever-jarring images of violent, ephemeral humanity to find the beautiful within it, is the most positive thing I can do.