Index: Politics: Oxford including the Coop and the University, Freiburg i.Br. including Freiburg University and Cultural Politics | Physics | Philosophy | Other Interests: Football
Oxford University
My involvement here has ceased now, but you can still read my contributions
to the reports-pages on
Echo.
Freiburg
Freiburg University
Even though I'm very much interested in politics generally, I usually end
up getting involved only in what I really know about (sort of...), i.e.
university politics so far. As you can see from my CV, I was active both inside my department (and Faculty)
and
the students' union in Freiburg. When I began my course in 1988, the
government had started one of their "cuts in higher ed. and more
obstacles to academic freedom"-policies (as far as I remember, it's been
sooo long now) - so I started campaigning: not just against the
government policies, but also against the bad PR of the union, which
failed to reach, or at least to convince, the majority of students...
(One priority: get rid of their awful spelling mistakes and terrible
style and wording, which reinforced all the prejudices against the left!!!) Not that it made much of a difference...
As regards the department, I got elected to the "Fachschaft" - one of
our most interesting innovations over the
next two and half years was, I think, that we set up a seminar series with
both students
and teaching staff as speakers, intended to cover both practical issues
(What is teacher training like??) and topics at the margins of the
subject (Tacitus and German nationalism, the Appendix Vergiliana - and
even discussion of politics and the Aeneid, not very well regarded in
traditional German classics!). The series
was not continued in the end, but we had good turn-outs while it
lasted!
After my year in Oxford, I had to start preparing for my finals and I
therefore retired one by one from the official positions (esp. in the
faculty)
- but there were more demonstrations and more time spent at the
union (have a look at their
new webpages, if you're interested in
finding out what my early university-life was all about!!) in
late 1993, this time protesting mainly against the proposed introduction
of university-fees. It was rather strange, feeling so much more experienced
than everyone
else, - and nice, too, as I was able to throw in casual remarks about how
things had been done in '88...
Freiburg: cultural politics
First, I've got to mention the brilliant "KoKi", a tiny
cinema
in a disused old railway station, which shows arthouse films - really
snug and friendly! Some of the best films I've ever seen have been in
there. They also host a gay
and lesbian film festival every spring, which often
attracts an even more interesting crowd than the usual programme. That
kind of cinema's something I really miss over here in Oxford.
This is to give you a fuller picture of life in
Freiburg in '94, when
people tried to establish their own KTS ("Kultur Treff in
Selbstinitiative") for concerts, exhibitions, parties and even
films, while objecting to the Mayor's pet project, a hugely expensive and
massive KTS ("Kultur und Tagungsstaette") in this
provincial town, to attract lucrative conference business.
It was in one of the buildings of the former French Vauban barracks, only
recently vacated, that a suitable location for this independent project
was found, administered by a collective of interested people. After a
lengthy period of non-interference by the authorities, it was suddenly
decided to
pull down the building - this happened early one morning, and it was quite a
shattering experience to watch, cordoned off by police officers, a
brightly painted house, with bushes and roses in front of it, solidly
built and with plumbing and kitchen equipment still intact, pulled down
slowly by one bulldozer. I hadn't expected that one could feel so sad
just because a house was being destroyed... Anyway, after rather
confrontational demonstrations and some more wrangling, this alternative KTS
was then re-established in another of the Vauban buildings, and is still
going, as far as I know.
Something else, which seems to be going on and which Lothar is very
involved in, is the protest against the proposed re-routing of the B31
(motorway)
through Freiburg
(there already were demonstrations in '94, actually). First people took to
living in treehouses a la Newbury, though the police then intervened and
there are almost no trees left now, so the protesters have had to put up
tents instead - news
here!
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bits of Physics
Despite some interesting explanations from Lothar, I'm not quite in a
position to tell you all those intriguing things about, say, black holes
- my brain just refuses to remember any useful detail, I just know, once
you start getting sucked into one, you stand no chance of getting out
again...
Anyway, I'm trying to get a little into the mysteries of quantum physics
- very helpful for Possible Worlds Theory, too, to follow below under
Philosophy (though it's also to do with language
and literature...). Lothar's and mine book on this is Schroedinger's
Kittens by John Gribbin, which to me seems quite a good introduction
to the subject, starting with a historical overview over developments in
physics over the centuries, esp. with regard to the nature of light. It
also includes, to my delight, a passage on my good friend the myon, whom
I've seen (its watertank, that is!) in the labs at Freiburg. They come
to us from outer space, if anyone's interested...
I've now found another interesting book for the beginner: Euan Squires'
The mysteries of the Quantum World (2nd ed.). It's got some
equations in there, but explains reasonably well what they're doing.
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bits of Philosophy
Some of what I decided to call philosophy has a lot to do with
literature, because that's what I'm quite interested in at the moment.
There's Possible Worlds Theory, as already mentioned - I've written a
very brief
outline of what I think it's useful for. All I've read so far is Eco
(The Role of the Reader), and the most interesting thing about it
seems to be that you can use it for a theory of communication, so to
speak:
how we all live in different worlds, made up of different encyclopedias
(with lots of sub-divisions - it's definitely not a monolithic
encylopedia!) - and with Possible Worlds Theory one can describe in more
detail in which
ways one world is accessible to others etc.
So-called theories of reception and reader response also have a lot to
say about the way people interact with each other and their stories,
about narrative, how we use it and how it works. So despite being labelled
"theory" I find books on these subjects have a relevance beyond
literary studies as such: we all use stories, with various patterns or
plots, to give structure to our lives, in our own minds as well as to
present a
certain picture of ourselves towards others
(these web-pages with its official cv and more private stories about my
various interests are just one obvious example).
There is a very
readable
study of narrative and its functions by Steven Cohan and Linda Shires,
called Telling Stories, which includes analysis of films, comic
strips, ads and of course novels. I also like Seymour Chatman's Story
and Discourse which tries to systematize our knowledge of how
to describe and analyze
narrative (he also discusses one comic strip, and a painting). Wolfgang
Iser's The
Act of Reading is another interesting book; not an easy read but it
includes a
chapter about psychology and the impossibility of fully accessing
another person's mind (which to me only serves to underline the
vital importance of making an effort to communicate with others as
effectively as possible, in private and public life). Actually, there is a
(slightly) longer
bibliography
on narrative I've set up on Echo.
More basic in a way but also
fascinating is John Lyons' Language and Linguistics, which
includes chapters on semantics (how does language, how do sentences
come to mean anything, or rather precisely that what they do mean??), the
importance of
context to meaning, and
on the question of the intriguing similarities and differences between the
various languages. It generally gives one an idea how immensily
complex and in the end hard to fathom a seemingly simple and everyday
thing
like
language is.
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other miscellaneous matters
football
Here are my
favourite club's pages: the club's own, a television channel's (to be boycotted
due to take-over bid!) and unofficial (I've
supported
them since the early 80's, in case anyone objects, and I've now also been
to Old Trafford myself, courtesy of Gordon!). AND WE'VE WON THE
CHAMPIONSHIP AGAIN!! (This must have been in '97, I suppose - but runners-up
isn't too bad either, especially as you still get a chance to enter the
Champions League!)