Kalir, B.

English

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UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl)UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository)Writing as CognitionKalir, B.Publication date2015Document VersionFinal published versionLink to publicationCitation for published version (APA):Kalir, B. (Author). (2015). Writing as Cognition. Web publication or websitehttp://savageminds.org/2015/12/07/writing-as-cognition/General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s)and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an opencontent license (like Creative Commons).Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, pleaselet the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the materialinaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letterto: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Youwill be contacted as soon as possible.Download date:08 Mar 2023Writing as Cognition | Savage Mindshttp://savageminds.org/2015/12/07/writing-as-cognition/[28-10-2016 17:47:42]Savage MindsNotes and Queries in AnthropologyMenuSkip to contentAboutAuthorsOur WritingComments PolicyContactFacebookTwitterSearch for:  Writing as CognitionDecember 7, 2015Carole McGranahan[Savage Minds is pleased to publish this essay by guest author Barak Kalir as part of our Writers’ Workshop series.Barak is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Latino Migrants inthe Jewish State: Undocumented Lives in Israel (Indiana University Press, 2010), and co-editor with Malini Sur ofTransnational Flows and Permissive Policies: Ethnographies of Human Mobilities in Asia (University of ChicagoPress, 2013). Currently he is working on an ERC funded research project on The Social Life of State DeportationRefugees.]I will only know what I precisely want to say in this piece once I finish writing it.This enigmatic sentence is not meant as an alluring opening statement, nor is it a sign for an experimental literarymethod that I will be employing in this blog. For what it’s worth, this sentence captures my principal insight into theprocess of writing. It is an insight that I gained after years of experiencing much frustration with writing, after producingendless drafts of the same text, after nights and days spent on trying ‘to get it right’, after struggling not to lose myfocus, not to get lost in the texts I tried so hard to write.Luckily, I do not feel like that any more. But it has been a long ride.Initially, facing my frustration with writing – when I was struggling with chapters in my doctoral dissertation, or withmy first attempt at publishing an article in a peer-review journal – I was inclined, and even determined, to attribute mypains to the fact that the ideas in my head were not sharp enough at the point of writing. I repeatedly told myself as abeaten mantra: ‘You need to be very clear about what you want to say, before you sit down and start writing’. I feltangrily vindicated after every article or book that I read, thinking it was so obvious that the authors knew exactly whatthey wanted to argue and illustrate.I started to draw my arguments on a blank sheet in preparation for writing. I made tentative tables of content before Ihad written even one chapter. I sketched road maps for the order of sections in an article, I decided on the data to beincluded, and on the theories to be used. Notwithstanding my best efforts at having clarity in my head and being wellprepared for the writing phase, it always ended up pretty much the same. Once the words began to accumulate on theWriting as Cognition | Savage Mindshttp://savageminds.org/2015/12/07/writing-as-cognition/[28-10-2016 17:47:42]screen in front of me, the text seemed to take on its own direction, leaving me halfway, confused about my mainargument, about the debates in which I intervene, about the subtleties I try to get across. Why can I not control my text?Why does it take on a different form from the one I had in mind? After all the preparation I invested in having a clearfocus, why can I not stick to it?Sharing my writing frustrations with peers at the department and in meetings with colleagues at conferences, I quicklydiscovered that my predicament was nothing special. It seemed everyone was suffering from the excruciating process ofwriting. I must admit it made me feel better. It was a relief to realize that it wasn’t only my shortcomings as a writer thatturned this endeavor into a permanent struggle. There appeared to be something about the essence of writing thatchallenged anyone who attempted it.My breakthrough came one day while talking with the late Gerd Baumann, a wonderful anthropologist and a giftedwriter. For many years, Gerd Baumann thought me various ‘tricks of the trade’ for good writing. Helpful as these trickswere, they never really succeeded to elevate, not even to decently mitigate, my writing struggles. One day, complainingto him for the nth time about my latest struggle with an unyielding text, Gerd grinned at me and emitted a rhetoricalquestion that would change my idea about writing forever: ‘When will you realize that writing is a second cognitiveprocess?’I’m sure that for many people this sentence is an obvious one; perhaps even banal or cliché. For me, however, it servedas a crucial eye opener. Not because I could never before think or feel that this was the case about writing, but becausethere are things that you need to hear from someone in order for their full meaning to dawn on you.Writing is not about putting in words the mental ideas you have in your head. Writing is a process in which you digest,make sense and form your mental ideas, in ways that are inevitably different from toying with ideas in your head, ortalking them over with colleagues, or presenting them in a conference. There is something about the externalization ofideas in a textual form that activates and brings with it a particular cognitive process. This is why writing is bydefinition a puzzling and creative process. It is not about transforming thoughts into words; it is about transformingthoughts. Period.It is after we have written about something that we should do our best to make sure that the text we produce captures thethoughts that evolved out of the very writing process.I hope I managed that much in this short piece. If not, I will give it another writing. And then produce some more text.Some text that brings to light thoughts I didn’t know I had.  Share this:TwitterFacebook439EmailPossibly Related PostsWriting as Cognition | Savage Mindshttp://savageminds.org/2015/12/07/writing-as-cognition/[28-10-2016 17:47:42]Unscholarly Confessions on Reading[Savage Minds is pleased to publish this essay by guest author Katerina Teaiwa as part of our Writers’ Workshop series.Katerina is Head of Department of Gender, Media and Cultural Studies, School of Culture, History & Language atAustralia National University, as well as President of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies. Herbook Consuming…November 2, 2015In "Blog post"Writing non-ethnographic non-fictionSavage Minds welcomes guest blogger Matthew Timothy Bradley. I began graduate coursework at the IndianaUniversity (not the University of Indiana!) Department of Anthropology in August of 2004. I learned an enormousamount about anthropology while I lived in Bloomington. The majority of that learning ended up taking place outside…June 30, 2013In "Blog post"My Ten Steps for Writing a Book(Savage Minds is pleased to run this essay by guest author Kristen Ghodsee. Kristen is Director and the John S.Osterweis Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at Bowdoin College. Her prize-winning books include: The RedRiviera: Gender, Tourism and Postsocialism on the Black Sea (Duke University Press, 2005), Muslim Lives…February 24, 2014In "Blog post"Writing as Cognition | Savage Mindshttp://savageminds.org/2015/12/07/writing-as-cognition/[28-10-2016 17:47:42]Blog post, Writers' Workshopacademic writing, anthropology and writing, Barak Kalir, cognition, writers'workshop, writing and cognitionI am an anthropologist and historian of Tibet, and a professor at the University of Colorado. I conduct research, write,lecture, and teach. At any given time, I am probably working on one of the following projects: Tibet, British empire, andthe Pangdatsang family; the CIA as an ethnographic subject; contemporary US empire; the ongoing self-immolations inTibet; the Chushi Gangdrug resistance army; refugee citizenship in the Tibetan diaspora (Canada, India, Nepal, USA);and, anthropology as theoretical storytelling. View all posts by Carole McGranahan →Post navigation← Around the Web Digest: Week of November 29 Displaced Nature: Multispecies landscapes, mushrooms, andthe megapolis →8 thoughts on “Writing as Cognition”1.  John McCreery says:December 7, 2015 at 8:21 pmYes, oh, yes, indeed. For more on this topic see Writing to Learn the classic book by former New YorkereditorWilliam Zinsser: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-To-Learn-William-Zinsser/dp/00627204062.  Caitiln Ryan says:December 7, 2015 at 11:18 pmCarol, I loved reading this piece, thank you! Reminds me of an essay by George Orwell, “On Politics and theEnglish Language,” that has always stuck with me. He makes a related argument about the relationship betweenbad writing and the poverty of creative thinking in academia and politics:https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm3.  Carole McGranahan says:December 7, 2015 at 11:56 pmThanks for the comments. Want to be sure everyone knows that Barak Kalir is the author of this essay. I am theseries editor, but not the author. But yes, yes to the Orwell piece!4.  Jovan Maud says:December 8, 2015 at 10:38 amThank you Barak for that lovely take on the mysterious process of writing. I will use your opening sentence as mynew mantra.5.  johnmccreery says:December 8, 2015 at 6:34 pmThat first sentence is, indeed, a lovely one. A point to ponder may be how much readers should be exposed to theprocess by which conclusions are reached. In the classic academic/ scientific mode we present our results in anWriting as Cognition | Savage Mindshttp://savageminds.org/2015/12/07/writing-as-cognition/[28-10-2016 17:47:42]authoritative voice, concealing the muddle that gave birth to them. In a more self-reflective mode, we may leadthe reader down all the twisting trails we followed, even to dead ends. I wonder what others here think about thepros and cons of these or other approaches.6.  B. Van Aken says:December 8, 2015 at 11:57 pmForgive me for hijacking your provocative post, Barak, but I was so moved to learn that Gerd Baumann passedaway much too soon, that I felt him poking me to comment here. I was but a blip in the course of his life, justbackground noise rather than a beloved Chopin composition, but he left a deep and lasting impression on me.Almost 24 years ago, if I remember correctly, he taught me my first cultural anthropology course, and although Ican’t say I feel he taught me much about writing, he taught me, as you suggest, something critically related: howto think like an anthropologist.I can still see him standing against the blackboard dissecting E.B. Tylor’s definition of culture like a piano teacherdrilling novices; he made us recite it over and over and over again, interjecting his own ethnographic experiencesto give flesh to its bones, until we memorized it and could repeat it to him on our own.He then assigned us our first writing assignment: to choose some contemporary social policy problem and analyzeit from an anthropological perspective, or in terms of Tylor’s culture as a complex whole definition. Just asanthropology was pluralizing and splitting, he insisted we still must understand any social issue from Tylor’sperspective. I surprised myself analyzing foreign aid to address hunger and learning about how key donorsconceive time and space, as if I suddenly found myself in a calculus or physics class. That rationally calculatedpolicies may fail precisely because their calculators are incapable of accurately perceiving the multivalentrelations between relevant parts to a complex whole became visible, something I carried with me in all my futurework. He demanded we dig into our unconscious complexes, analyze them, and then compose aesthetically, in thesense of expressing – or playing out – the momentarily necessary.Yet, as I alluded, he demanded those basics first: one must know one’s instrument to play it, just as one mustunderstand what one is playing to compose. I suspect he’d be rather disappointed that while I learned to think likean anthropologist, I failed to play like one in the academy, and fell out of the profession. He subtly tried to teachus that lesson too, by one day taking us on a field trip to where the anthropology department was housed, givingus a brief tour.Lastly, he taught me something of great personal importance, which perhaps I should not share, but will anywaydespite my better judgment: how to control my temper, for I am ashamed to say, I can often quickly, and muchtoo rashly, lose mine. Whenever I do, I see him vividly in my mind the day he was close to losing his in ourclassroom, for a reason I completely forget. After calmly announcing he was going to do so, he stood there as stillas a tree, closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and counted very, very slowly to ten, exhaling with each count. On mybetter days, in such situations, I do the same.7.  Barak says:December 11, 2015 at 3:33 amThanks so much for the nice comments everyone, and especially to B. van Aken for sharing his memories of thewonderful Gerd Baumann, and for reminding us the creative relation between musicality and anthropologicalteaching and writing.8.  Carole McGranahan says:December 14, 2015 at 9:41 amHello,Thanks for reading and commenting on this post. However, our comments policy(http://savageminds.org/comments-policy/) requires comments to be 500 words or less. Could you please editthis comment so that it meets the policy?Writing as Cognition | Savage Mindshttp://savageminds.org/2015/12/07/writing-as-cognition/[28-10-2016 17:47:42]Many thanks, CaroleComments are closed.Search for:  Recent PostsNew Social Media InternEvangelizing in the Garden: Conservative Christian efforts toConvert Non-Believers via Urban Agriculture in US CitiesThinking about Resonant Materials: Critical heritage meetscontemporary art and design in the UAEAround the Web Digest- October 17Decolonizing archaeological practice in Northeast India:Towards a community-based archaeology at Chungliyimti,Nagaland“I know of Malinowski’s despotism”: Mauss to Radcliffe-BrownThe Taste of Nostalgia: Vanishing Flavors from the AncestralJapanese Village2016 U.S. Presidential Election: Views from BoliviaMalinowski and HatsIs This What Democracy Looks Like?CategoriesCategories Select CategoryTagsAAA Academia anthropology and writing around the web Bibliomania Blog post Books and ArticlesCulture Notes digital media dissemination East Asia Ethics Ethnography experiments Field Reports FieldworkFilm Gender History History of Anthropology In the Press Language media studies Method MethodologyMilitary violence conflict North America open access Pacific Pedagogy political economy Politics, government,power Popular Culture Public Anthropology Race, genetics Regions Sexuality Technology Theory TheOther Three Fields Topics Visual Anthropology war Websites WritingMetaLog inEntries RSSCommen s RSSWordPress.orgWriting as Cognition | Savage Mindshttp://savageminds.org/2015/12/07/writing-as-cognition/[28-10-2016 17:47:42]Savage Minds http://savageminds.org/ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0International License.Site design by P. 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Writing as Cognition

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