2009-10: Water
Presentations
Lawrence Driscoll, SMC Department of English: "Eau to Joy(ce): Modernism, Fascism and James Joyce" (3/4/10)
Recommended Reading
A bibliography for this theme can be found at our Goodreads site.
Reflecctions on Water, by Gordon Dossett Last summer as the second group from SMC
prepared to go to Salzburg, Georgia Lorenz hit upon the idea that the college might
embrace a theme to focus discussions of global citizenship. Her notes from last June
are the first reference to what emerged in a Global Council retreat in January and
has now been adopted as an experiment for our college community—trying to encourage
deep and widespread examination of water within disciplines and across disciplines
and connected to global interests and concerns.
Just as the Turkey study tour has proven especially timely—President Obama just recently
traveled there—water seems everywhere lately. Los Angeles will be adopting water rationing
in June.In tandem with the United Nations, the DWP is calling this the Decade of Water
and has commissioned SMC folks to make public service announcements, having international
students speak about water in their home countries.Quotations from Shakespeare drift
through my head, an occupational hazard for English professors (“Thou art false as
water,” cries out Othello—tragically wrong, as it turns out.)Water flows soothingly
in the central quad of our campus.Two recent written references to water stand out.
The first comes from a recent article in the New York Times by Mark C. Taylor, chair
of religion at Columbia. Taylor urges a broad revamping of education. He advocates
that colleges eliminate departments and establish “zones of inquiry.” He writes: Consider,
for example, a Water program. In the coming decades, water will become a more pressing
problem than oil, and the quantity, quality and distribution of water will pose significant
scientific, technological and ecological difficulties as well as serious political
and economic challenges. These vexing practical problems cannot be adequately addressed
without also considering important philosophical, religious and ethical issues. After
all, beliefs shape practices as much as practices shape beliefs
A Water program would bring together people in the humanities, arts, social and natural
sciences with representatives from professional schools like medicine, law, business,
engineering, social work, theology and architecture. Through the intersection of multiple
perspectives and approaches, new theoretical insights will develop and unexpected
practical solutions will emerge (“End the University as We Know It,” A21, April 27, 2009)
I’m not sure I’d go along with Taylor’s idea of abolishing departments (and tenure)
but I’m heartened to see the prediction for his proposed “Water program.” For our
campus the “multiple perspectives” will include a deliberate global perspective, as
well, and I hope further insights will follow
The second reference has been to a graduation speech delivered in 2005 by David Foster
Wallace, whose life sadly ended in his suicide this past September. The graduation
speech has been recently published as a book entitled This Is Water. Wallace uses
water as a metaphor for everyday-ness, anchored in the following little story:
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish
swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?"
And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over
at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
Wallace’s analysis of the story is casually brilliant:
This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic
little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better,
less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present
myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish,
please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely
that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to
see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal
platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal
platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on
this dry and lovely morning. …
Later Wallace returns to the fish story, which is central to his speech.
[T]he real value of a real education … has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and
everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential,
so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding
ourselves over and over:"This is water.""This is water."
Just in those two recent references, then, we have Taylor’s complex associations of
literal water and Wallace’s metaphoric use of water to make a philosophical, really
existential point. With as many brilliant minds as we have around our campus, I look
forward to the myriad ways in which water will reflect thought and in turn urge us
to think further and to act.
Note: An online transcript of David Foster Wallace's commencement address can be found
here: