En, keep on writing in English this time.

Living in another cultural environment, it is more likely for me to distance myself from the Chinese culture I was born into and have spent most of my life in and thus get so familiar with. The comparative lens renders special opportunity, which I cannot miss, to perceive and explicate the uniqueness but not ubiquitous ness of Chinese interpretation of lives and experiences, personal or social, which is so intellectually fascinating to me.

But the Chinese interpretation is not one, but many. There are intellectuals in and outside the land of China who have the opportunities and capabilities to live beyond the time and space which the majority of their Chinese fellows are located and embedded with. Though their subjectivities make sense to me personally and artistically inspiring sometimes, nonetheless they are not of my academic concern for the most part. On the contrary, I want my profession to be a social stage for me to participate into my social world, shared by others and in doing my work I could gain self-worth and the sense of achievement and personal pride that are understandable to the majority of others, including my family, at the same time. I want an engaged life, rather than a dislocated or marginalized self and inner construction.

That is part of the reason why I have little interest in literature studies, and other public discourses analysis. I used to think that the public voice arena, though offers relatively accessible data which is good for researchers, is nevertheless more of study of the space of performance of those with intellectual or political power and somewhat blind to commoner’s lives and experiences, no matter how much they have assumed the scope of their impact to the society according to the somewhat narcissistically put “elite” logic which is alien to my personal value. So, I do not like paying attention to the ups and downs of short-term discourses. But, what happened last year in China makes me reflect about the actual importance of discourses in social life for the majority of Chinese who are less concerned about intellectual creativity but more concerned about live a life. It seems that many people do care about what are presented to them through media, and they not only employ discursive vocabulary to organize their own perceptions but also are emotionally aroused by them. For example, when something was reported in the public, many people talk about it in life and take real action on it, no matter it is natural calamities or human fighting. So even short-term discourses matter, to a certain degree, otherwise you cannot explain why people invest money, time, and some kind of psychic energy upon it. On the other hand, however, the problem is how much do they matter and in what way?

From a psychological perspective, I have to say it needs to be studied. We really know little about the exact mechanism between the external social discourses and the individual internal activities. It is possible that longing for security and dignity is universal or people everywhere in the world need an “object” relationship in which personal fantasies could be invested with psychical energy, though the kind of object is changing all the time and can only come into being with historical contingency. But I do not think mere cross-sectional correlation is sufficient to reach reliable conclusion about people’s psychological characteristics. Take a plain example, though many people talk about the earthquake today and some of them offered generous donations to the calamity district, I personally still question the degree of psychological impact of this social issue to those who have not personally experience it, and those whose family are far from being endangered by it. Therefore in order to explore the interaction between culture and psychology, I think a longitudinally conducted research and individual (person) level of analysis would be more useful to further what aspect of discourses or ideologies really penetrates psychology, in which way and under what circumstances. 

Lastly, I am not interested a somewhat lofty study of discourses, academically. But I am really happy that all of the significant others in my life are safe. And Good Luck to All~

So hungry...that is it today...go back home!

Next time I would like to write the problem I am truly curious and care about in my research.