On Languages and Academic Expertise

Languages are not my direct field of study, but I am regularly facing decisions that involve a choice of a language or another. The linguistic diversity was part of my everyday life as a child and reached complex levels of development later in the day, once faced with life and professional contexts.

My area of expertise has to do with Central and Eastern Europe and for my PhD I had to refresh and improve my knowledge of Hungarian, a language that I used to speak as a child, but that was relatively neglected once I left the linguistic realm where this language was spoken. Although I had the chance to do interviews and field work in another language than the Hungarian, being able to go directly to the sources and being familiar with a certain mindset helped me tremendously to grasp the chore ideas for my research.

For various professional reasons, once I was extremely interested in a specific geographical area, I realize how important it is to have direct access to sources of the everyday life, such as media but also to be able to communicate with people directly in their mother tongue. 

Time is limited and life priorities might be completely other than to spend your time learning a new language every couple of months or so. However, if you want to succeed in your professional assignments, linguistic knowledge is key.

Once upon a time I had for a short time the experience of the diplomatic service. Unfortunatelly, not all of the diplomats I met were able to set a conversation in the language of the country they were assigned to. Those were the worse and the most inefficient parts of the diplomatic corps. Except the information exchanged over a plate with canapés they were unable to understand too much from the complexity of the countries they were working to. They depended on mediated information, on translators and most of their time was spent in offices, reading second hand information.

For the academic research, such a lack of linguistic knowledge creates serious credibility gaps. Big academic centers such as Georgetown University for instance, require as part of the academic preparadness spending a significant amount of time learning a new language, or even more. As many as you need in order to properly understand your topics. 

True is also that the complex academic and political life require permanent adaptations and switches of topics. During the Cold War, the knowledge of Russian was mandatory for most of the political scientists and diplomats dipatched on the red part of the Iron Curtain. The Balkan Wars and the Balkans in general turned into the mainstream topic of actuality, therefore many of the academics were faced with the challenge of learning the local languages in the area. Since 11/9, learning Arabic in order to understand the Middle East is mandatory, as most of the funding is generally directed for researches pertaining to this area. Chinese or Persian are also top linguistic priorities.

During an active academic lifetime, an academic might need nowadays to change more than once his or her area of study. However, if he or she wants really to be considered a reliable academic, taking such a challenge is very important. The capacity of having a direct access to sources, both human and of academic and scientific nature, is a guarantee of credibility. Learning a new language nowadays is so easy, by using various online tools and apps. You can do it at the convenience of your home and with minimal investment. But, if you really want to be considered yourself an expert, you have to do it. It is a guarantee of credibility and respect towards your domain and the people that although they have lesser visibility, might have a much better graps of the reality because they speak the language.

A language means more than the knowlege of a couple of words or grammar structure, but it confers direct access to a mindset and a way  of thinking. No translation could provide this.

Book Review: Children of Paradise. The Struggle for the Soul of Iran, by Laura Secor

What man can do to man for the sake of ideologies, religion or just because he have been given the power to do so it's inimaginable. I've read about the Gulag experiences, about what happened during the Shoah, about the Chinese Revolution or the Latin American dictatorships. Also, extensively about the fate of individuals sent to Evin prison in Iran, especially during the so-called 'Green Revolution' (I would avoid to use the word 'revolution' without brackets as, actually, nothing really changed after those events). Hobbes' 'Homo homini lupus' sounds like a very elegant description of what fellow man can inflict to another creature.

Children of Paradise. The Struggle for the Soul of Iran by Laura Secor is a dramatic bloody account of the post-revolutionary intellectual history of Iran. Very often, the stories about intellectual influences - both local and foreign - are interrupted by accounts of terrible beatings and torture. 

The author gathered the information during around ten years of visits in Iran, extensive study of various local sources and contacts with local intellectuals both in the country and abroad. It is not sure if she speaks Farsi as well. Secor is familiar with post-Yugoslavia which was a complex political and ethnic structure, but I don't think it applies to the complexities and intricacies of the Iranian political and religious system.

A great merit of this book is that it traced admirably the sources of knowledge that made the intellectual history of Iran, as well as the genesis of the ideas and the translations of various Western/European contexts into the local ideological web. This is one of the most facinating part of the history of mentalities, because during the 'longue durée' of the adaptation the original ideas can be completely redefined and acquire a completely new sense. In the cases approached in the book, for instance, Heidegger - a chore atheist - was adapted to some local versions of Islam - particulary the concepts of 'truth' and being', while Popper was very popular among those looking to adapt the 'open society concepts' to a mix of Islam and Marxist (Popper was originally a marxist but his major works were a permanent dispute with this ideology). Hannah Arendt considerations about the French Revolution and the role of terror in the revolutionary practice was used as a compedium of understanding the post-revolutionary Iran. The fact that theological seminaries curricula include extensive study of Plato and Aristotle might offer an interesting topic of research for a further mapping of various interpretations in different centers of religious knowledge, in Qom and in other places. 

Intellectual histories and changes of mind among people that played political roles at certain moments are as well interesting. The perceptions are part of specific contexts. For instance Mir Hossein Mousavi considered a 'reformist' used to be a couple of decades ago a strong supporter of exporting the Islamic revolution abroad.

But the intellectual reception and interpretations are taking place in a landscape bordered by extensive violence and secrecy. 

Proeminent intellectuals continue to be the direct victims of various changes and conflicts of power among the layers of the establishment. Critical voices are made redundant after forced to sign and pronounce public denunciations of their works and of their colleagues. The idea of dissent and intellectual uniqueness, so vital to creating ideas are compromised. I witnessed myself such processes and extensively encountered such terrible stories during my communist childhood and post-communist coming of age. It's terrible for the credibility of intellectuals as such, and it only serves long term the pervert aims of the ideologues. They win on the long term because the intellectuals lost their credibility, by the simple fact that they were put to prison and forced to confess. It's part of the horrible destiny of the dictatorships and especially in a country with such a huge intellectual potential as Iran it definitely diminishes the chances of in-depth, long-term democratic change.

Although the author doesn't discuss extensively the repercursions of the mixture between religious interpretations and political pressure as such, there are a lot of ideas to think about such aspects too, especially from the point of view of the dangers of theocracies. What happened in Iran - and can easily happen everywhere where religious leaders were given the right to decide in political and social matters - is that the everyday relationships and interactions are defined and punished based on a religious code. 'Under the Islamic Republic draconian moral code, nearly every Iranian was guilty of something that could carry a prison  sentence: extramarital sex, drinking, even shaking hands with members of the opposite sex. What had begun as a religious imperative had become little more than a system of universal blackmail. The right information could afford an interrogator a good deal of leverage over a political prisoner'. Therefore, not only the trust in the intellectuals is eroded, but also the normal trust between humans is for ever compromised. 

Change is hard to endeavour and cannot be long-term without the contributions of those people who loved so much the country but were forced to go out. But once those people will be in, most probably they will live the drama of being rejected or the facts that were associated with various episodes of their lives will compromise an eventual political destiny in a new context. 

Children of Paradise. The Struggle for the Soul of Iran is a good start for understanding intellectual journeys as well as some terrible personal histories of both intellectuals and everyday Iranians (after many years when I've read about it from accounts of some of the people mentioned in the book, the stories about stoning continue to haunt me deeply). It has the merit of creating a different level of discussion that doesn't focus on political and international frictions but goes into the deep roots of the post-revolutionary Iran. It is a welcomed spin that requires though more and more discussion and reflection. 

Rating: 4 stars