Hi, all. This letter is intended to do a few things: first, we hope that it will provoke some initial
thoughts about the work we will do together. To that end, it starts off with a passage from Freud
meant to give some shape to the questions we’ll be asking. Second, it provides you with some
crucial information about our schedule, our summer reading assignment, and orientation week.
Since we put some thought behind the letter, we ask that you please read it carefully…
In his Interpretation of Dreams, Freud describes what sets his method of interpretation off from
all previous approaches:
Every attempt that has hitherto been made to solve the problem of dreams has dealt directly with
their manifest content as it is presented in our memory. All such attempts have endeavoured to
arrive at an interpretation of dreams from their manifest content or (if no interpretation was
attempted) to form a judgment as to their nature on the basis of that same manifest content. We
are alone in taking something else into account. We have introduced a new class of psychical
material between the manifest content of dreams and the conclusions of our enquiry: namely,
their latent content… It is from these dream-thoughts and not from a dream’s manifest content
that we disentangle its meaning. (Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, p. 311)
Unlike us, Freud is engaging the “problem of dreams” rather than the problems of politics, but
there is an important parallel between his treatment of the problem of dreams and the attempts we
will make to understand contemporary issues. Freud is not willing to follow us in our habit of
dismissing our dreams as nonsense, which we do all the time: “After all, it was only a dream.”
His approach requires us to dig deeper than the scattered images and narrative fragments that
seem to make up our dreams, the images which our dreams present us, or, rather, with which we,
in dreaming, present ourselves. He is convinced that there is reason to dreaming, that dreaming
is a way of thinking, but a way of thinking that disguises wishes and thoughts that cannot be
expressed straightforwardly. But since our dream images are related by association to what they
seek to both express and hide all at once, they also provide a thread back to that other layer of
meaning, and so we have to treat them as complex encryptions worthy of serious attention and
analysis. The manifest content of our dreams strikes us as pure irrationality, and that appearance
keeps us from pursuing any other, deeper layer of meaning, what Freud refers to in the above
passage as the latent content of our dreams.
It is around this distinction between manifest and latent meaning that we have organized our
investigation of contemporary issues, so that when we talk about the current marriage debate, for
example, we will try to press beyond the terms in which that debate is currently framed. We will
not take at face value, for example, the claims made in the name of “traditional marriage.” It is a
lazy investigator who digs no deeper than the press releases issued by her suspects themselves.
As we move forward with our investigations, we will be working on many levels of analysis: we
will be looking directly at our contemporary issues, at the elements and traditions and institutions
they involve, at the debates that surround them, but we will also be looking at ways of looking.
What happens when we treat the issues as primarily psychological? As economic? As linguistic?
As cultural? How, we will ask ourselves, do we get to the bottom of things?!
These are not questions to which any of us pretend to possess answers. But we will propose one
thesis, a thesis that hovers somewhere between a threat and a promise: that this question – how do
we get to the bottom of things? – cannot be answered once and for all. This means that we do not
expect a single magical moment in which all of the threads of our common pursuit will be woven
neatly together, even though we do expect a multiplicity of patterns to emerge. Social issues are
complex, involving all sorts of things that range from the institutions that pre-date our births, the
arrangement of individuals in social forms that better and worse suit their needs, the economic
and environmental realities that lie beyond our respective control, the cultural complex that yields
up fashions, arts, and entertainments, and surely many more factors that escape our attention. So
we will be walking a fine line between the determination to take these issues seriously, a
determination that perhaps requires a commitment to getting to the bottom of things, and the
acknowledgement that there is not just one bottom, an acknowledgment that could quickly give
way to pessimism or cynicism if we don’t struggle against that tendency. This is what we will
ask of ourselves, and of all of you.
But we forget our manners, asking anything of anybody before we have even introduced
ourselves. During the fall quarter, the program will be led by Nancy Allen, Rachel Hastings, and
Kathleen Eamon. Nancy is a veteran faculty member with many interests, including Spanish and
Latin American literature and culture. Rachel’s specialties include linguistics and mathematics.
Kathleen, who is new to Evergreen this fall, focuses on social and political philosophy, as well as
psychoanalysis. We have spent the summer putting this program together, a process that has been
both gratifying and, given the scope and nature of the topic, a little overwhelming. But we hope
that what we have come up with approaches and sources that are concrete without sacrificing or
papering over the difficulties facing anyone committed to understanding the contemporary world
of politics and culture. We will not try to face it all, all at once; instead, we have chosen to spend
this quarter looking at two issues that have garnered a lot of public attention recently: the gay
marriage debate and the issue of immigration. The work, as we’ve already promised and
threatened, will be hard, but it will be something we undertake in common, and this will have its
own satisfactions. In terms of the content, we will be working this stuff out right alongside you,
but we are also here to support you all more generally, inside and outside the classroom. Please
do come to us with problems, concerns, questions. As you will hopefully discover, this kind of
collaborative enterprise builds a community unlike many you may have experienced in other
places. Our community has to be organized by responsibility and commitment rather than
authority, and that is something it will take all of our efforts to maintain. We faculty members
will not always have the answers, but we may know others who do, or who are better situated to
help you pursue them yourselves, but you should never be afraid to ask the questions. We are
happy to listen. (Also, we are happy to start our conversations early, so please feel free to contact
us before the fall quarter begins; you will find our e-mail addresses at the end of this letter.)
Okay, on to the nuts and bolts. The program will meet three days a week: Tuesday, Wednesday,
and Friday. On Tuesdays and Fridays, we will meet in our individual seminars from 10-12.
Tuesday afternoons, we will all come together for lecture from 1-4. After lecture, we will meet
informally around tea (4-5). On Wednesdays, we will have workshop from 9:30-12:30, where we
will often work on writing and upcoming projects, work through readings, etc. Fridays, we will
devote the afternoon, from 1-5, to watching and discussing films and other performances.
In putting together our syllabus, we have tried to approach things from many perspectives.
Sometimes, we will be at a great level of remove, discussing texts that try to get at the nature of
things like society, culture, or language without directly addressing any of our contemporary
topics. At other times, we will be zeroing in on questions raised directly by those issues, like:
what is marriage? how did our families get to be organized like this? what is the best way to talk
about the concrete facts? Finally, we will approach these questions by reading novels, short
stories, and poems, and by watching films. Art, at its best, gives us something theory cannot: it
lets us “live” the issues, and when we step back from its products, these can also provide us with
alternative models for working through them.
Our first reading is Losing Matt Shepard, by Beth Loffreda (Columbia University Press, isbn
0231118597), and since it is a summer assignment, you will need to buy it at a bookstore or order
it online. We suggest you try Powells.com or amazon.com. This is a good time to mention also
that while our books will be available in the Evergreen bookstore, you will be able to find most of
them used online at vastly reduced prices. We ask that you try your best to get the editions we
recommend; otherwise, you risk being lost in seminar when we’re reading from the texts. Other
fall quarter readings include: Marriage, a History by Stephanie Coontz (Viking Adult, isbn
067003407X); Stars Down to Earth by Theodor Adorno (Routledge Classics, isbn 0415271002);
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Bantam Classics, isbn 0553213105); The Language War by
Robin Tolmach Lakoff (University of California Press, isbn 0520232070); Civilization and its
Discontents by Sigmund Freud (Norton, isbn 0393301583); The Book of Salt by Monique Truong
(Houghton Mifflin, isbn 0618446885); La Frontera/Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldua (Aunt Lute
Books, isbn 1879960567); The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker (Harper Perennial, isbn
0060958332); The Harvest by Tomas Rivera (Arte Publico Press, isbn 0934770948); Introduction
to the Philosophy of History by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Hackett Publishing Co., isbn
0872200566); and Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros (Vintage, isbn 0679742581). Other readings
will be added, some of which will be available as copies.
Finally, the week before we begin to meet, we ask that you attend all of the Orientation Week
Activities. To find out all of the details, go to the www.evergreen.edu homepage and follow the
links (currently posted bottom-right) to the “New Student Orientation” information and
registration. The three of us, Nancy, Rachel, and Kathleen, are planning on attending the
Community to Community portion of the orientation, which is an afternoon of public service in
connection with Habitat for Humanity, on Wednesday, September 20, meeting at noon at the
clock tower. If you would like to get in touch with us before the quarter starts, our contact
information is as follows:
Nancy Allen: allenn@evergreen.edu
Kathleen Eamon: eamonk@evergreen.edu
Rachel Hastings: hastingr@evergreen.edu
Office: Sem. II E3110, 867-6754
Office: Lab II 3266
Office: Lab II 3268, 867-6151
“The stricter the censorship, the more far-reaching will be the disguise and the more ingenious
too may be the means employed for putting the reader on the scent of the true meaning.” Freud,
Int. of Dreams, p. 176