Focus 580; Black Feminism; Culture and Biology

James Murray in Toronto. Attorney General Janet Reno and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright have given Congress something to think about. They have told lawmakers that the United States continues to be vulnerable to bombing attacks both at home and abroad. Despite progress in combating terrorism. Albright told a Senate hearing that only about 10 percent of the planned work has been performed on upgrading U.S. embassies since last August when bombings in Africa. Reno said that there's been much progress in foiling would be terrorist plots and in improving coordination among agencies but she said there was no way to prevent them all. I'm Carl Kasell. NPR News in Washington. Support for NPR comes from compatible systems Corporation a global company specializing in virtual private network ing for carrying corporate data securely over the Internet on the web on a compatible dot com news from NPR is made possible in part by a grant from Champagne Danville overhead doors serving businesses and families. Since 1959 in Ogden Illinois. Good morning and welcome to focus 580 This is our telephone talk show. My name is David

Inge. We're pleased to have you listening this morning. In this part of focus we will try to talk about a number of a number of terms to explore a number of terms and talk about how it is they can be connected. We'll talk about feminism about what it means to be an African feminist. Perhaps what it means to be an African American feminist and how all these things can come together. And maybe by doing that we can understand a little bit better what all these terms mean particularly feminism which is sometimes I think a difficult thing to talk about. I'm not sure that when people use that term they're all talking about the same thing. Our guest for the program this morning is Abene Brucia. She is a poet a writer a teacher. She was born in Africa and brought up in Ghana. Her father in fact was once the prime minister of Ghana. She was educated at Oxford University in England. She has taught at Yale at the University of California in Los Angeles and at University of Ghana. Currently she is an

associate professor at Rutgers University. She's trained in both literature and feminist theory and teaches courses in English in women's studies and African Studies. She has received many awards for her work and she's here visiting the campus she gave a lecture in the Miller comm Series last night. And the title was the many things I call myself or what does it mean to work out an African feminist identity for the benefit of those who did not attend or could not attend. We have some of the folks in this lecture series here on this program to bring them to a bit wider audience outside of Champaign-Urbana and we're very pleased that she could be here with us today as we talk of course anybody is welcome to join the conversation. We ask only that people are brief so that we can accommodate as many callers as possible and keep things moving along. But everyone is invited in. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Also we have a toll free line quote anywhere that you can hear us that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5

3 3 3 wy yellow and toll free 800 1:58 w whilom. Thanks very much. Well thank you for being with us to be here. I thought maybe one way to start would be to talk about just talk about the term feminism because it is as I said I I'm I'm really not quite sure what it means. And I know that different people use it differently and I suppose it depends upon whether one thinks that feminism is a good thing or not. And so how I mean how do the how do you think of that what does it mean to be a feminist. That is a very very difficult question. And I think part of the reason it's difficult has to do with the conflation of a number of things. I think what it means to me is to learn to think about certain kinds of strategies and practices you know to use the old cliche as if women mattered. But to go beyond

that. I think one of the reasons feminism is. Looked at with caution shall we say by numbers of groups of people around the world is because really I mean there's a sense in which people should be suspicious because I think if we take the project seriously it very often does mean a challenge to the ways in which people assume the world can and should work. And that is always very odd. It's always very hard to actually have to acknowledge the significance of the structures under which we live and were born. And I think that for a number of us. If we stop to reconsider the assumptions about women women's role the way in which the idea of women is constructed and decide that perhaps it should be changed that can

be very problematic. And forget even the change even the questioning is very disturbing to a lot of people. But the reason also I think that as with anything else. For me anyway feminism arises out of the women's movement. The two are not coincident not the word I'm looking for identical. OK. But I think they are interrelated. I say they're not identical because there are a lot of people who are prepared to engage with women's issues who are prepared to say on a basic human rights level to say yes I agree with you I will fight for equal pay for equal work. For instance who would not call themselves feminists and who indeed are not feminist because I think though what happens though is that if you

think of all those specific issues whether it's equal pay for equal work whether it's. You know marriage rituals whether it's a whole host of other things. What happens is when you try to analyze be analytical about the conditions that gave rise and support those systems and try to rethink them that's in a sense another gesture. The only way I could I could make try and explain what I mean is to draw different kinds of analogies like indeed I was born in Ghana I spent a lot of my life in exile because my father was part of the independence movement. If you look at independence movements all over the world not just gonna all over Africa Latin America wherever. You begin to see what you know one of the struggles was the desire for change. The desire for self-determination among the peoples of the individual countries. And

so to begin with there was a great unifying factor we want the French to go or the English to go with the Portuguese to go what takes its place in those countries. Did the systems that replaced the colonial systems fundamentally change the civic order of things. Most of the time the question is No. You see. So we in a sense got some you know we got self-determination but did we really. And I'm not and he doesn't even have to be you know the Europeans came in with were replaced by military dictators which is a second step and which is also an issue. But even in those places where we didn't necessarily have something as devastating as military dictators. If you have one ruling class replacing another. What has changed other than the face of the ruling class. I think that that's that's the kind of distinction I'm trying to make and you can look at those from politics you can look at it

from a racial perspective. One of the things that happened in this country for example with the rise of black feminism for instance is that for black women who were coming out of both though the civil rights movement where you know to use a cliche all the blacks were men and the women's liberation movement were all the women were white. Some of us are brave as the title of the book goes. That is to say if you fight full certain kinds of change and certain kinds of games it is a second and more difficult step to the question. Was it the face of the press that need to change or was it the system that needed to be overturned completely. And the second step is a much more difficult step to take.

Let me ask another question and then perhaps you have touched on it a little bit. I think that it is true to say that in this country within the feminist movement or the women's movement there have have been has been something of a disconnect between white women and black women because their experiences are different. Perhaps the the issues that they're concerned with are are different in the same way I think there has been something sometimes something of a disconnect between feminists who come from industrial countries the United States and Europe and feminist who come from the developing world or for very much the same kind of reason out there again there may be some sort of disconnect around the around color because it it may be more likely that. American European feminists are white and those from Africa and from Latin American from the Middle East are women of color and that's that's also an issue there but it seems that there

are indeed other sorts of issues issues or class of issues of economic centers and so on but there are a number of interrelated issues to begin way you began in the United States that that is part of my point. You see the the feeling for black feminists in this country was that the women's movement took a long time to take race seriously and to deal with the differential factor. We are not all women together. We would like to believe that that is the mythology and that it was the ideology that drove the women's movement that if we deal with issues of women's rights every all the problems for women will be solved and women of color in this country what we're trying to say now wait a minute how do you know one of the things that taught me this in a very simple and striking manner

was a few years ago it's been about five or six years ago now. I was with a group of women some of whom were lawyers who had dealt with civil rights law. And one of them made a very startling comment and they said that generally speaking the way the laws are written in this country. Black women had never won a class action suit on the basis of discrimination individual women had won individual cases. But you bring a class action suit. What happens is and this is putting it crudely but what happens is basically they will say if you say it's discrimination you look at the laws to say OK it either has to be a racial discrimination situation and if men and not if black men are not being discriminated against then it gets thrown out because it's not race. And if you say it's a gender discrimination situation and white women are not being discriminated against it gets thrown up because it's not gender. And you could not get anybody to take into account the Cymbalta

90 and the interrelatedness of being black and female. You don't have to be black and and act as if you were a man. Or if you're a woman you have to behave as if the conditions of your life are the same as being white. And that is simply not true. And they said all kinds of striking things especially for somebody in the humanities where this is not. I mean a simple thing like doing a computer search you know going to search a database. You can indeed go type up black women writers and get a list of black women writers but apparently if you were at that point I mean you may have changed now but at that point if you were interested in say civil rights law gender rights law and you wanted to find cases specifically to do with black women they were not even a classification category in the law. So you looked up all civil rights cases and had to go individually through them to see if any of the plaintiffs or litigants and so on were black women or you look through gender discrimination cases and had to go case by case to see if any of the women were

black. I mean a simple classification anything like that did not exist. And that is really sort of I was dumbfounded. But it's very very telling because it is at the heart of what. The women of color in this country were trying to say that we are trying to get you to look at us because we live in a world in which the failure to recognize the impact of both gender and race means a failure to deal with us on the in the place in which we live. And so you know and the rest I mean as you quite rightly point out then you bring in issues of class and you bring in issues of power differential power relations and and even on the different parts of the African continent you have the rule urban split who ever speaks for whom you know and the

questions get very very complicated. I think the the most important thing for us to do is to recognize this is sort of very strong desire to believe that we are all we can all be the same we're all equal. And without recognizing that for that to be true we have to be honest and take account of the differences. Perhaps I should at this point reintroduce our guest for anybody who might have tuned in the last little bit. I was speaking this morning with Al Benna from departments of English comparative literature and women's studies at Rutgers University where she teaches both the women's studies and African Studies. She is a teacher writer poet. She's here visiting the campus. She gave a talk last night on round these very same questions and we're pleased to have her here to give you an opportunity to hear what she has to say questions of course are welcome. 3 3 3 W I L L toll free 800 1:58 WLM. What

what does it mean to be an African feminist. Well let's do first of all with what it means to be an African. Because that has been I say this a lot and I really mean it. I've known I an African all my life. I didn't know I was black until I started living in the United States. By that I mean I was born in Guyana and I grew up in England and it's true you know I'm not saying England is not a race strip riddled country because it it clearly is. But in the United Kingdom at least in the England in which I grew up it has changed radically I think I want to stress that the 30 year difference has seen some radical changes even in England. But at the time I was growing up there were things that mitigated at least how you were treated I'm talking the

dailiness of living how people treated you on the street. The fact that I grew up in a small village outside Oxford the fact that my father was a university professor etc. etc. all those things meant that at least on a daily basis I could walk through the street and be treated. I felt you know not everybody was necessarily nice but I didn't feel as if the though the way in which I treated was over it was predominantly to do with how I looked in this country. I never ever ever ever forget that I am black. That I'm looked at. I mean it affects even simple things like being lost somewhere and wanting to ask for directions and I sit behind the wheel of my car filtering out who I feel I can and cannot stop and ask. Based on the fact that I'm trying to figure out what it means to them to be looking at a black woman. Second guessing all

of that. Now the burden of that of course springs from the the what it means to be African in the sense that African descent peoples around the world in here including England deal with this have to live with this myth ology of you know what Conrad called the blank spaces on the map of his childhood and what has it be filled with. And it is distressing to me and appalling to me how very little things have changed. You know perhaps this is not the right community to be saying this because this has one of the biggest African list you know in a great African studies community and so on but it's it's still astonishing to me how basic simple lessons have not been learnt about the continent.

I said last night you know people still speak of Africa as if it's the size of the state of New Jersey for example. People show great sensitivity just I'm talking here just about simple language. If you have somebody who's going on vacation to Europe they will say I'm spending the summer in France I'm visiting my aunt in Germany or I want to go to Italy to see the Sistine Chapel roof or whatever and they only say they are going to Europe if they really mean that joke you know if it's those they must be Belgium kind of thing and they are doing the continent. Where is the most sensitive Afrocentric of people will say I'm so happy I finally get to go to Africa. And you say where in Africa. And this is a glazed look comes over the face thinking well what does it matter. I have a I'm working on a new collection of poems. And somewhere inside me I want to call the collection to the aunt in Madagascar because when I was a little girl when we first arrived in England. I remember sitting in the

kitchen know some neighbor's house and they had a friend that and they were talking you know and you know the New Kids On The Block and we've come to see the kids and they were sort of chatting and so this straight this friend visita wanted you know to make conversation and said So you know where are you from. And I said you know we said GONNA. And the user thing that happens oh Uganda no gonna Oh Guy I'm not gonna. Once we got through that we talk about gun in West Africa. This person turned on and said with a perfectly straight face Oh I have an aunt in Madagascar. Do you know I have lived with this in Madagascar. It's quite astonishing. I mean where does that you know that that that sense of we are the world's second largest continent. We are three and a half times the size of the continental

United States the continental United States can fit into the Sahara Desert. Just that simple geography seems to escape people. And I don't understand why. I mean it just baffles me how long that simple this can take. And we can repeat it again going back to our childhood. There was a point when when we first arrived in England my older brother Kofi got so tired of the questions he was asked that whenever he was introduced to somebody he would say Hello my name is Kofi Brucia and I was born speaking English with shoes on. Well I guess that this you know it when you when you ask such a sweeping question about what's I mean I mean African feminist you know it's almost akin to asking question like well what's it mean to be an African. And that really

again doesn't you know doesn't refer you have to reflect on how difficult a question that is to answer given the fact that as you say you know there are people from the Ivory Coast are Africans and people from South Africa Africans and Kenyans. And not to mention Egyptians and Algerians people from Sudan. And that you know they're all it's it's both. Actually you're right but it's a very but it's both a difficult question and a very important question because again we're we're talking at so many levels and unfortunately the real answer that one would like to give to the question can very seldom be heard because before you can answer that question you have to cut through the myths. You know what I'm saying you have to. So in a sense Africa does exist. That is to say unless you deal with the fact that for the most part the general population that has got indeed a narrow limited constricted view of this continent if you pretend that that is not the case.

Your answer is a meaningless anyway so it becomes a question of how do you acknowledge that what I call structuring an overriding mythology. And how do you package it. And then deal with the issues that really are important to you. But there is a dilemma at stake because as with all mythologies this sort of very contradictory. Again I mentioned last night. Yes there's this frustration when you think you know here am I trying to work with women from Egypt and women from South Africa and trying to find a common language. You know when we are amongst ourselves but on the other hand there's always the danger of the other extreme if you start trying to say look I am a gun Nayan and even in Guyana I'm a Bruno or you know from quo or what have you. Then you fall into the other terrible trap about what it means to be African. And that is the the

Balkanization of the continent into tribal warfare. You know but I use the term Balkanization very specifically because I again I said this last night that we forget the place in the world that gave us that word Balkanization is of course the Balkan states which are falling apart in front of our very eyes. And we've had to deal with Kosovo and all the rest of it. But I hope that that might be an object lesson because however terrible Bosnia and Kosovo and all of that has been the Western world the media has found a way of talking about those issues without saying it's tribal warfare. But to me the issues don't look any different from the issues that they insist a tribal warfare on the US on the African continent.

So EVA we have to acknowledge that tribal warfare takes place in Central Europe or we have to change our terminology and start thinking about what's going on on the African continent differently because we know that's not likely to happen but we still make the plea anyway. But you see this is all I'm saying is that the other danger you want is to get out of the trap of being sort of lumped together into this one big continent. But once you start unraveling everything you fall into another trap of being accused of being These divisions of tribalistic. You know we don't want to talk to our neighbors that will put a spear through you type of thing. And it's a very difficult because that's that's what always happens when you deal with stereotypes that become overarching mythologies they're never logical. And this is almost a no win situation. But it's a it's a it's a major challenge if you're a teacher. You can't give up and say this is a battle I cannot win. So I'm not going to undertake it. You just hope that you know the

generations later that something will have changed. We have a caller to talk with. OK let's do that. And I will also for people who are listening reintroduce our guest. We're talking this morning with Abene Brucia. She teaches at Rutgers University. She is associate professor there she teaches courses in English women's studies and African Studies. She's a writer. She is a poet and is here was here to talk give a talk in the Miller com series about these very issues about the African feminist identity she talked last night on campus. We're glad you could be here and talk a little bit with us this morning. Questions of course are welcome 3 3 3 w. while toll free 800 to 2 2 W while we have a caller in Champagne County on our line number one. Yes it's a little bit of a fuse this morning but I'll try anyway. While you were just talking now that the concept of some kind of psychic bee colonization came into my mind and it seems like the colonizers or at least the needing of this

kind of change and attitude that they colonized are but I don't know if you want to go on about there actually was planning on asking you more open and another open ended question about the where international fed feminism is acted out in a large way and that's the UN series of decades and the Conference of the sun in the Copenhagen Robie I guess and then how do you how that sort of a report from that the media doesn't cover it sort of like they you know they report them as a one time event they don't think about the ongoing activities and the implications it seems that whenever there's the internationalization of the of the the situation of African-Americans are Africans. And then and asking people look and in that kind of term that there's a great reaction in this country. I'm thinking of basic civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King. Black liberation this like Malcolm X Y. When they were trying to internationalize the issue

when. Typically they were shut down. That's sort of the prime example but it happens all the time and other than the ROM so I just wanted to get you started talking about how you see the UN process working or not working. Oh hang up and listen thanks OK. Those are two very important questions actually. I'll see if I can answer them both in reverse order beginning with the U.N. process. That's that's a very important one and a difficult one because I think as with all movements we have to work on a multiplicity of levels. The series of you and decades were vitally important. You're right though they get covered as media events then we move on. But that's not surprising you know every day something happens you have to pick and choose. You can't ignore a Beijing so you cover Beijing for the three weeks while it's happening and you go on.

I don't think that's necessarily such a bad thing. I mean we have to there is always news. The significance of those decades I think is that that gestures like that do at least put something on the map. They put the issues as it were on the table when you're talking about a series of things organized by an organization like the U.N. They can't really do much more than that. They can create the platforms which become the international touchstone by which we can all be measured. And as far as is possible made accountable I think that's fine. Also sometimes it isn't always good to be working continuously under a spotlight because the spotlight can change the dynamics of what you're doing. I think the real thing which is at the heart of your question which is perfectly

true is does the work continue and how does the work continue and under what circumstances. And that I think is really where the women who go to places like Beijing and Nairobi and so on. That is their biggest challenge because in the end if you're trying to change any. Social idea you can only work within the communities in which you live and where those ideas have impact on you. But again we have another dilemma because those always are a kind of disjunction as we learned in this country between altering the laws and changing the people. 1963 was a major achievement. Johnson signed the Civil Rights bill into law

within weeks. Four little girls get bombed in a church in Birmingham Alabama. That does not mean the law is not significant. But it means we need to continue working in a sense it relates back to the first part of your question on psychic D-Conn. and isolation if you like. We have to because we live in communities in counties in states in nation states that to some extent regulated and we can decide for the most part how they are regulated. We do have to work on those laws and a number of organizations exist quite rightly to do that. But it is never enough because unless you can really change the hearts and the minds of people

and make them understand that in the long run it is not beneficial for those inequities to continue. You haven't really changed anything. And the problem is that requires a real a real shift because most in the quantities benefit somebody by definition by definition. If I need to hold you and slaved and by doing that I can become extremely wealthy. Then I need to change as a human being to comprehend that the value of by material wealth is not worth the cost to my soul. I mean I can't think of any other way of putting it I guess. I can only take

to speak in sacred terms. But that is a very very big. It is always a major challenge to let to to to to let people understand that their privilege costs a price and that in order for us to have a compassionate world we can none of us afford to carry privileges that dehumanize other people and that is tough. Self interest is a very very difficult thing to teach people to overcome. I personally don't think it can be done without faith. You know compassion is not a measurable quantifiable commodity and very often the inequalities that we're talking about have some quantifiable end result and

it's very hard to put a measurable idea against a quantifiable and result. As we all know when times when we can turn around and say well you know we slay the slave trade ended. Yes but the slave trade ended when it was no longer cost effective. I would like to believe that it was William Wilberforce and John Wesley and Frederick Douglass and and Harriet Jacobs and everybody else whose moral appeals and the slave trade. I'd like to believe you but I don't believe for a minute. So on the question therefore though of the why it is that when things get internationalize seems to be when there is the backlash if you stop to think about it that is only logical

because you see the minute you make an appeal and you say two things one this issue has got ramifications that are other people's suffering. And then too therefore it is possible to make alliances outside local alliances. You then become very dangerous. If I'm you know sitting in Middlesex County New Jersey trying just to deal with. I don't know the homeless in New Jersey and I don't look at anything else systemic. I can probably be contained. I can probably persuade Middlesex County to give me a little bit more money to build one shelter. But if I say this is a state wide problem if you give me a money to build a shelter in Middlesex County. But he's not going to make much difference in the long run. The people I put in the shelter there won't be enough beds and we need to change the laws of the state. I'm never going to talk to people in Somerset County and persay County and

Ocean County that becomes really problematic. And then everybody starts wandering around thinking oh what can we do with this crazy woman she said. It goes back to what I was saying earlier. Certain kinds of gestures look simple but become very complicated because they upset the status quo. And so Martin Luther King he caused enough trouble when he was just President of the Southern Christian Leadership Council and dealing with the whole north south split. You know and let's let's clean up Birmingham Alabama. But when he comes and gives a talk and he's talking about you know poor cities and and the refuse workers rights and and so on and he moves from a different perspective where it goes beyond simple race where we can no longer point to say well the Southerners lost the Civil War but they're still being the bad guys. And you look at something systemic it's problematic. Everybody's

forgotten this but Martin Luther King back in 1963 preached a sermon or 60 to even preach a sermon in Riverside Church. And he was one of the first leaders to come out very strongly against the Vietnam War. Almost a decade before anybody else was thinking about the issue and that is because he was trying to point to certain systemic things and in not only the way the United States organizes itself inside its own borders but outside its own borders and at that point you become very dangerous. Again you I think I love your term psychic decolonization. One of the things that I think is so powerful about the African-American slave narratives is that all of those great slave narratives over and over again make this same point that the point of slavery

was to dehumanize us turn us into beasts talk of us speak of us as if we were beasts. Not only did that not happen but there was another side effect. Frederick Douglass says how did Jacob say they all say it. The effort it takes to make me a beast turns you into a beast because you are the one who has to every day of your life denying. Evidence that is manifestly obvious that I am a human being and that if you insist and habituate yourself to treating me as if I am not human what it does is make you not human. That is another very hard lesson for us to learn. But we the interior eyes

zation of what it takes to keep certain imbalances. If you like. Operative is hot. People on both sides of the equation. And you are very right about that. And it has long long lasting consequences across a number of number of levels. Whether you're talking about all kinds of things whether you talk about even like something like beauty image body image and so on you know I don't know. I could go on. Well let me let me take the opportunity to reintroduce you for for folks who might not have have been with us at the beginning or even the midpoint. Our guest is she's professor of English comparative literature and women's studies at Rutgers University and we've been talking about a number of things we started out talking about feminism and how we've gone in some different directions which is good.

I do I try to think well that's what we do. Not every day here two hours every morning and the world is largely the same place when we finish but I don't know I want to ask you yet another sort of big and difficult question for the question of identity has been a very difficult one to work out for black Americans and just one tiny tiny reflection is that the search force for what do we call ourselves and I which is something that I think other Americans have trivialized and not not understood the significance of. But I wonder how you reflect on on the desire of black Americans to to somehow connect with Africa. And you know perhaps you might have some reflections on I don't know for you necessarily personal reflections were reflections on what it what does it mean when one calls oneself an African

American. It's a very it is a very important question. The reason it has been such paramount importance to the black community in this country is again has to do with the things we started talking about earlier. When you are aware that that. What do you all cold has almost nothing to do with anything you might call yourself. That the portrait of you that people carry is not a self portrait is not has almost nothing to do with how you think of yourself how you see yourself who you are. The reality of the situation though is that you are dealing with people there for who are not looking at you but are responding to an idea of you that you have not created.

It can be life destroying as we know almost literally that people have been killed because of the idea of them and that has nothing to do with who they are. One of the just to digress just a minute I just thought of Toni Morrison's beloved at the end of that novel. Sexy is lying in bed after you know she had a complete breakdown of the women have come and exercise the house and so on. Paul did returns and the very first thing that Sethi says to him is I made the ink and he quote not to replace what ink what what on earth are you talking about. And what has obsessed Sethi for all these decades is that scene that she talks about and the only person she

confesses this to is the spirit of beloved. Of the days she was walking through Sweet Home Farm and her school teacher giving a lesson and the lesson that day the nephews asked to divide a piece of paper and to write said these human characteristics on one side of the page and what animal characteristics on the other. She has them do this. She hears them talk about how she's a cow and the ink they are using to inscribe as a cow. She has made it is her gift so that when they come and take milk. They're not even raping her which is something you do to women. They are a milk which is something you do to cows

and she says. My daughter's not going to live like this. Not now not ever. I will send them to eternity before they have to know what it feels like to be milked like a cow. Toni Morrison is not being simply metaphorical. What she's speaking to is the devastating legacy in this country of the idea of blackness somehow not being human. The consequences of that. We still live with today all over the world. We all know that a young black man walking down the street is more likely to be shot for suspicious behavior

than than a European looking man of the same age. We know that. I mean this does districts clear. The evidence is that the IRA I remember many years ago and I was working with the Riverside Church prison ministries meeting Eddie Ellis who is the former Attica prison and who had done this study when he was in jail. So he now runs a prevention prison prevention program in Harlem. Because when he was in prison he worked for his masters including a masters in theology and he did a study he organizes the organized prisoners in prisons across the state of New York to do a study on receive it received a visit. And they're the people who came up with the statistics that 75 percent of the prisoners in New York state come from five communities in New York City. When you are faced with those kinds of statistics you have to look at something

profoundly systemic that is what is at stake here. Our lives are at stake because of what people think of us. And so the question of self naming is not just a symbolic gesture it is a way of trying to figure out how can we live. How can we live. So the specifics of whether we are cold need girl black colored African etc. it's not that they're beside the point but they're part of a larger point of wrestling back to ourselves. The control of our lives. Now the issue of calling oneself African-American

is therefore a very significant political point because it is it becomes therefore part of a larger movement that says we are no longer prepared to put up. With the denigration of Africa and look at that would need Gration a word that has at the heart of the wood for the Latin word for black. And we have so many terms in which the negative like you know angelfood cake devil's food cake you know which one is black. Although I must confess on this point the mayor of Washington was out of line in accepting the resignation of whatever he did with that man's name who used the word niggardly because I think that's off the wall too because that word has nothing to do with the word Negro. And if we're going to start dismissing people for using language correctly we are really lost.

And I'm afraid that I'm so sorry to have to say it but we've used our time and we're going to have to stop. And I appreciate very much your being with us and sharing some of your thoughts. Thank you for that. I've preceded being here and we could go on and on but I hope I answered some of the questions and we will continue creating and being creative so that we can clone ourselves. Well we choose and everybody will appreciate why and I understand why. Thank you. Our guest Abene Brucia She's professor at Rutgers University. Broadcast of our show focus 580 is made possible in part by a grant from the art mart in the Lincoln Square Mall Urbana the art Mart is pleased to support public radio in east central Illinois. Today's broadcast also made possible by the little theater on the square in Sullivan Illinois a little theater presents. I do I do is there a special Valentines production February 10th through the 14th tickets are available by calling toll free 1 8 8 8 2 6 1 9 6 7 5 we will break we'll be back with more focus. Stay tune.

Thank you very thank you. It's a wonderful day. Thank you pension. Well at least one person was saying well we cast our bread upon the water. That's good. Wow. In fact we're distracted to do so. Oh thank you very much thank you. Are you pretty much going directly back home now or are you going to oh I'm here for the day and I've got you know lunch with graduates and teaching a class on a book I've been reading 20 years with graduate students and stuff like that and poetry reading this and I need to learn. Well I'm really pleased that you could include us on your itinerary Sometimes I feel bad for people who come. Everyone seems to want to rush

you. For him to be wage y y in Philadelphia I'm Terry Gross with FRESH AIR. And today's archive edition of Fresh Air poet Billy Collins has written poems about forgetfulness stopping smoking insomnia canceled vacations and the pictures in the Victoria's Secret catalogue. We'll also hear from Seiko one of the most popular performance poets who often reads accompanied by music and film critic John Powers reviews the new comedy Rushmore starring Bill Murray. That's all coming up on FRESH AIR. Thanks.

Thanks. Thanks. First the news from National Public Radio News in Washington I'm Craig Wyndham. Jordan's King Hussein is reportedly on life support systems in his homeland where he arrived today after his body rejected a bone marrow transplant that was hoped would stem his lymphatic cancer. One official describes his condition as hopeless but other officials say the king is still being treated. Earlier six former Jordanian prime ministers gathered to discuss preparations for the King's funeral and how to break the news to the Jordanian people. Preparations are being finalized in France for tomorrow's start of talks to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict in Kosovo. From Paris Sarah Chayes has more. Support for NPR comes from Borders Books and Music. The 13 member Serbian delegation will be led by Deputy Prime Minister recto Markovitch. It will include the deputy prime minister of the Yugoslav federation of which Serbia is one of two

components the Kosovar is a reportedly sending a 17 member team including five leaders of the armed separatist group the KLA with the Dayton peace talks on Bosnia as a model. These two delegations will be shot inside the 14th century your home will be a palace. It has a variety of differently configured rooms to allow for all types of meetings and discussions. U.S. envoy Christopher Hill and two other facilitators will help move the conversations along. And break deadlocks foreign ministers Robin Cook and you benefit I mean will also be on hand as Will representatives of the six nation contact group and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. For NPR News I'm Sarah Chayes in Paris. Some Republican and Democratic senators are joining forces hoping to open their final deliberations on the impeachment verdict to the public under existing Senate rules next week's deliberations by Senators would be done behind closed doors. Connecticut Democrat Joseph Lieberman calls those rules outdated and he says they are outweighed by what he

called the compelling national interest and values involved. Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchinson says it's vital to let the American people hear the final comments. New York City police are investigating why an unarmed man was killed yesterday by four police officers who shot him 41 times. Beth Fertig of member station WNYC has more. 22 year old Mehdi alo was killed at close range in the foyer of his Bronx apartment. The four police officers involved in the shooting have not yet given their account of the incident which happened shortly after midnight Thursday. A criminal investigation is underway by the Bronx district attorney and the officers so far have invoked their right against self-incrimination. They've all been placed on desk duty. All four were part of an undercover unit investigating a serial rapist. Three of them were involved in previous shootings. The man they killed was a street paddler who immigrated from Guinea Africa and had no criminal record. He was carrying only a wallet and a beeper at the time of the shooting. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani urged the community to be patient saying only quote We have to wait and react to the facts. For NPR

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Washington. BP Amoco expects to cut 15 hundred jobs in the Chicago area within the next year and a half the move is a result of the merger of British Petroleum and Amoco last year. And from the continuing slump in world oil prices company earlier had predicted job gains in Chicago. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has arrived in Saudi Arabia to promote American companies at a time when the kingdom has raised hopes for deeper investment opportunities in its energy sector. Major U.S. oil firms have press Richardson to seek clarification from the Saudis on the sensitive issue of foreign investment on Wall Street at this hour the Dow is up three and a third points in heavy trading but on the Nasdaq the composite index is down 43. I'm Greg Wyndham National Public Radio News in Washington. Support for NPR comes from Borders Books and Music. Putting a world of knowledge within your reach. With over 200 locations across America 800 6 4 4 7 7 3 3.

Good morning and welcome back to the second hour of focus 580 This is our telephone talk program my name is David Ensor our producer is Jack bright and at the controls this morning Brian Wagner in this part of focus will be looking at the relationship between culture and biology and how it determines our experience of illness and probably to begin we should draw a distinction between two words that often we use interchangeably. Those two words being disease and illness. Doctors use these terms and others to mean two rather different things. Illness describes the way that we feel which may or may not indicate the presence of disease. We will be talking this morning with David Morris author of a book titled illness and culture in the post-modern age it's published by the University of California Press. And I think. I could just read you a paragraph from the

introduction of the book that sets up the argument he makes very well. Here's what he writes he writes illness has changed in the last 50 years. During the transition from modern to post modern times we fall sick from unheard of ailments. We passed through and dreamed of treatments. We die in unsettling new ways and places postmodern illness which he writes is his term for our changed and still changing experience of human affliction is as distinctive as the films cars computers and space shuttles that helped define the era following World War 2. It takes shape from specific historical convergences between biology and culture and he says that we must explore these complex relations between biology and culture if we hope to understand the contemporary experience of illness and ultimately ourselves. And he also notes that in the process we may come to look somewhat differently upon the quest to live for ever. Our guest David

Morse's winner of the 1992 pan Prize for his book The culture of pain. He's also the author of the award winning book Alexander Pope the genius of sense. He makes his home in Albuquerque New Mexico and he's talking with us this morning by telephone. And as we talk you should feel free to join the conversation. All we ask of callers is that they're brief so that we can accommodate as many different folks as possible and try to keep the program moving along. Anybody's welcome to join us by calling in if you're in Champaign Urbana where we are the number is 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Also we have a toll free line that's good anywhere that you can hear us and that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 3 3 3 WRAL and toll free 800 2 2 2 AWOL. Mr. Morris Hello. Yes hi David. Thanks for talking with us today. Well pleasure to be with you. Please call me David as well. I have an echoing question.

You will introduce an idea that I think is interesting and one and maybe would be a good place to start because I think it will help. It will give people a good way into this topic and that is with this this idea that as you write at one point that almost every era seems marked by a distinctive illness that defines or deeply influences it. And perhaps the first example you give is the example of the Middle Ages and its distinctive illness being the plague in what way did. Did the the the Black Plague define and or deeply influence Europe at that time. It's hard to have a deeper influence than reducing the population of Europe by 25 percent but that's really what the Black Plague did and just imagine in your own community suddenly carts rumbling through the streets and that 25 percent of your neighbors carried off piled up on these on these carts. People you know racing to get out of the

way of the plague so running to the province is religion having its own particular relation to the understanding of the plague. Any major affliction would be understood in the Middle Ages as God's will so there's the puzzle of understanding why it is that God is. Inflicting this plague on the people of Europe doesn't have to do with you know Sodom and Gomorra kind of activities how's that to be understood even if you yourself were carried off by a plague you knew someone who was probably someone in your family. It's hard not to have your life shaped by that kind of catastrophe. So if you know we may be we may want to go back and talk a little bit about perhaps other eras and other illnesses but maybe we ought to here make the leap to the time where we are the post modern era. Let's ask the same question is there is there a single disease a

single illness that is distinctive or defines the place where we are now. Well I I asked myself that question and then I started looking around at the candidates and it's interesting. Thing that there are a series of illnesses that we talk about that really people in the first half of the century either had no knowledge of or certainly didn't talk about. Anorexia would be one example in that there's a lot of talk about something called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. No one's using that kind of vocabulary in the first half of the 20th century. Depression has a place in the landscape of the post-modern world that seems rather different from its place in the first half of a century began looking around him and there are indeed a number of illnesses that you could say have a particular appearance or

prominence within the last 50 years of the 20th century maybe the most obvious is you start thinking about it would be would be a no win before the 1980s has any knowledge of a disease called AIDS it didn't. It didn't exist as that as in a den to fight disease. So suddenly there are these series of new illnesses that we seem to be struggling with. And part of the post-modern condition it seems to me is a certain kind of uncertainty about whether these diseases even exist at all. Gulf War Syndrome. Is it a disease. Or is it not a reflex sympathetic dystrophy a kind of term for a certain sort of pain syndrome. Some clinics claim there is such an entity. Others don't think it exists so it's very interesting that we do have on the horizon a series of illnesses that let's

say our grandparents and great grandparents didn't see either a den of fire struggle with in the way particular ways that we do. And there are a couple of things here that probably are important points and maybe one is the fact that it does it should tell us something perhaps about our era that there are too probably too many candidates for the postmodern Elice there's not just one. We have this big list of having over pundits and maybe it will be the case that this will sort itself out and there will be maybe a virus we don't know about that would have a prominence in our. Error that the plague get ahead in the Middle Ages. But I came down to thinking that in fact one of the things that defines the post-modern era is in some ways this absence of a single defining illness and the presence of this multiple of sort of new and hard to understand illnesses.

And as I began to think about it more it began to seem to me that one of the things that many of these illnesses had in common was that you could describe them as occurring in a kind of crossroads of biology and culture. And my feeling is that in the first half of the 20th century the medical model for understanding disease an illness that really holds for is the model called biomedical. And if it was an easy way to describe it there's a character in one of Shaw's plays where there's a sort of modern medical figure and his philosophy boils down to six words find the microbe and kill it. And some ways you know one of the things that modernist medicine did so miraculously think of the invention of penicillin was to identify these microbes and find ways to kill them. Where we're in the situation that many of the illnesses that we struggle with now don't have that kind of possibility of resolution.

Let me reintroduce you for a people who might just have tuned in we're talking this morning with writer David Morris and we're talking about some of the ideas that you will find in his book Illness and culture in the post modern age. It is published by the University of California Press and it takes a look at the way that culture and biology come together to make for the experience of illness. And as we have just been talking about how perhaps at it every time in history there is some sort of distinctive illness that really defines that era and that that perhaps one of the problems we have with the time we have now is that there were too many but that by looking at the way people experience illness at particular times it tells you something about about them and that perhaps by looking at the way we think about illness and now at this point in time where we find ourselves maybe tells us something about us should tell us something about how we. Approach the whole question of getting sick and getting well. How we

relate to our health care institutions and perhaps how we don't always relate to them in the most productive kind of way. Questions are welcome three three three W I L L toll free 800 1:58 WLM. Even in one sense I'd like to throw that question in fact out to listeners who may have very good reasons for thinking that there is one specific illness in some ways defines the era that we're living through and I'd be very interested to hear such thoughts. Well you know I think I think I mean maybe this is in a sense a way of trying to answer the question and dodging it at the same time but if you I think if you look at some of the candidates for postmodern illness that that you talk about that if you actually want to define something that maybe pulls them together and also tells you something about how you think about how we get sick is one might almost say that the postmodern

illness is lifestyle because it's something that you know in that perhaps are our you know our parents now use that term but our grandparents are. It came grandparents nobody talked about lifestyle but now it seems that we we talk a lot about the the way that we live our lives and the choices that we make in some cases the choices that we don't and how they contribute to our getting sick and this really seems to be in opposition to the biomedical model the the idea that there are germs to get germs. You get sick you get the pill you get rid of the germs. Now it's much more the idea of why we get sick and what you've got to do to get well it's much fuzzier than it used to be. It's interesting I'd like your term lifestyle is not one I really use. Maybe more than once in the book so it's a good term to that that I have in mind here. Anorexia it seems to me would be a good example of an illness connected with lifestyle and lifestyle of course grows directly

out of the ground of culture in one sense if a modernist motto is find a microbe and kill it. The postmodern motto is identified a lifestyle and change it right. Well we have a couple of callers. Let's bring them into the conversation great. We'll start out with someone in their battle. One number one. Hello. I had a question the first question is why did why would he include Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in the category of say depression or anorexia in terms of a condition that it that is both cultural and biological. Well David what I think is the caller still online. Yes. You know there's a there's I get the sense of the question behind the question. And so I wondered if you wanted to Labrie just a little bit as to as to how you see chronic fatigue syndrome is different from say depression in anorexia.

Well I think from I understand chronic fatigue syndrome they don't understand where it comes from but it has very visible physical consequences whereas depression and anorexia you can see effects of it. But at the same time it's origin. It's more I mean I mean it's a mental condition where chronic fatigue syndrome I don't think it has anything to do with what sort of mental state of mind you're in. OK great I really appreciate the illumination in one sense you know I get the feeling that I should really subtitle my book something like using the term but the 12th century Jewish philosopher Moses maties used for his great work called A Guide to the perplexed because I think in some ways again one of the characteristics of postmodern illness is that we tend to be rather perplexed about it. And even the vocabulary that we use is one that we've inherited.

And as you begin to re-examine it you may want to question the distinction between minds and body is one very clear distinction that's made in the by a biomedical model that I'm associating with the first half of the 20th century. So that you know there are diseases of the body that. Certain doctors work with and then they're diseases of a mind that you send the patient to the psychiatrist. And so there's almost this division it seems to me one of the things that characterizes the post-modern situation and what characterizes postmodern illness is that this clear artificial theoretical distinction between Mahdi bodies and minds is beginning to break down. And what we're finding in fact the journals and symposia and college courses that are really talking about mind body relations. My feeling is that if you're

identifying illness as bio cultural in the post-modern era as I am you're almost always assuming a connection between mind and body. And so I would say that as you're looking at chronic pacy the tigs syndrome depression anorexia even though in each of those there may be different ratios of the knowledge of the origin of the knowledge of the effects that we're always looking at relations between mind and body. It's quite interesting they'll be some physicians will simply throw out the the category of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Think it in fact doesn't identify a disease category. Depression and anorexia have a different status within medicine than chronic fatigue syndrome. But I think in any case what we're dealing with

in the individuals who are experiencing each of those conditions is this relation between mind and body and I think that to come back to the caller's question. That's why I would put them together that these are all conditions of the post modern age in which we're recognizing relations between mind and body. OK. And then the other question I had is why in that group would you include reflex sympathetic dystrophy because that seems very very different than the other ones. And I do agree with the thesis that you've been talking about this morning but I just I don't see why reflex sympathetic dystrophy would be included in that. My sister has that and I've just seen it. I don't think there's any mental component to that. I mean I think that it's perhaps equally mysterious to treat except Aurora but I don't think it's in any way in her head or she's she's having. And he sort of poor thought that led to the decrease in muscle mass in her legs etc. by 70 percent it's very mysterious. But at the

same time I don't think it's I disagree that there's a mental component I think that it might be a mystery to science as to what sort of chemistry in her body has led to this or. Or for you know other people besides my sister that have reflex sympathetic dystrophy. Again thanks very much David. Can I have a couple of minutes to respond to zero Yeah. It seems to me a really basic and central question as to get the differences between modern and postmodern. What I can say because I've done a certain amount of professional work in the area of pain is that in some clinics recognize reflex sympathetic dystrophy as again a disease category an illness category others reject it. Now this is only to say where the medical community is right now on that particular illness. So that to experience that illness is it seems to me to enter into this post-modern

land where some people think you've got something real and some people say well then I don't I don't know about that. What reflex sympathetic dystrophy is a is a form is a pain syndrome. So I wanted to just talk briefly about changes in thinking about pain. I include in the book a whole chapter on pain because it really is so central. In fact pain is the most common symptom that brings a patient to a doctor. So in the some ways the glue of the patient doctor relationship and what you will find if you look at the current research is that the essentially the modernist notion of pain defines pain as some kind of electric chemical signal that's going over the nerves from the sight of injury to the brain. There's a kind of it's like a telephone line and there's a basically a one to one correspondence between the degree of injury and the degree of pain. It focuses pain essentially on on tissue damage. Now

starting in the 70s there's a severely new area developed called Pain Medicine. And one of the things that pain medicine does that's a little unusual is that it doesn't define pain in this old modernist way as a telephone line running from the site of the injury to the brain. It says this and I this is the definition proposed by the International Association for the Study of pain. It says Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience. Associated with actual or potential tissue damage or describe in terms of such damage. So they're really loosening up this connection between tissue damage and pain. What they're finding is that pain can exist very well in the absence of tissue damage. There's a condition known as phantom limb pain which almost all amputees experience to

some degree. And that is when the limb is cut off. The patient may still experience pain and tangling in the limb that's no longer there. And what that indicates is that you don't need a leg to feel pain in your leg. What you need is a brain and the neurosurgeon who I think is has captured this change in the most comprehensible ways a man named John Loescher at the University of Washington multidisciplinary pain clinic which is really one of the centers of pain medicine in this country. And this will bring. Bring me to what conclusion he says and I'm quoting him. The brain is the organ responsible for all pain. So in some ways pain is always in your head it can't be anywhere else. I mean cut off your head you won't feel any pain. All right. So what we're beginning to understand is that there is almost always a psycho social component to at least the chronic pain

experience. And that's where reflex sympathetic dystrophy would fall into chronic rather than a form of like acute pain. And the danger here is that you think Well OK since there is this psycho social component the temptation is to blame the patient. And that's got to be resisted and another thing that Mosher said that's very important. He said the rehabilitative pain treatment must tread the fine line of not holding the patient responsible for causing the illness but holding him responsible for his recovery. The good news about the understanding that in some ways are the cultural baggage that we bring the pain is part of it is that we we do have with our minds some way of at least modulating the experience of pain.

And that I I would argue very much changed modernist to what I would define as a postmodernist understanding right. OK thank you. Knowing that we are at our midpoint Here let me reintroduce our guest We're talking with writer David Morrison the ideas that we're discussing here can be found in his book Illness and culture in the post modern age it's published by the University of California Press. Our guest won the 1992 Penn Prize for his book The culture of pain. He's also the author of an award winning book about Alexander Pope Alexander Pope the genius of sense that was published in 84 makes his home in Albuquerque New Mexico he's talking with us this morning by telephone. And your questions of course welcome three three three. W I L L or 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line going anywhere that you can hear us. And that is eight hundred two. Two to WLM. Well let's go on here we'll talk with someone else. This next caller is in Champagne and that is line number two.

Hello. Yes good morning. Another illness that's probably on your list in your book is the multiple chemical sensitivity. It's another one that. Some people think is there and some don't and it there but definitely a modern thing. I don't think we heard about that in the 1930s. Right. What's your understanding of multiple chemical sensitivity. There are people who sometimes put are allergic to the 20th century. And even tiny amounts of. Things like natural gas or. Synthetic detergents are a million things seem to cause them problems and there's a branch of medicine called Environmental Medicine where they try to find out what these things are and I'm sure you know it's very controversial. And some doctors say look it's there we can cure another doctor that doesn't even exist.

It's like your phrase allergic to the 20th century and my only possibly mentation would be allergic to the last half of the 20th century which is a time when we start hearing about this multiple chemical sensitivity. But it seems to me another good candidate to to put in that category of in some ways disputed diagnoses of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or reflex sympathetic dystrophy or for another example multiple personality disorder. But let me come back to the to the notion of multiple chemical sensitivity in environmental medicine because I had to have an entire chapter about the relation between illness and environment and this seems to me again something in our understanding of illness that's very much marks the second half of the 20th century as opposed to the to the first half of the 20th century. I just saw in the Discover Magazine very interesting page about an ecologist at

Cornell named David Pym Intel. And he's published conclusions from looking at data from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and the conclusion he comes to is that some 40 percent of all deaths can now be attributed to various environmental factors. And it has some interesting examples of changes in the environment that are directly related to levels of disease in the in the community. I think we're all in some ways very aware of this from a love canal to Lyme disease to to our own experience with carcinogens in the environment. So that here too it would seem to me we got to a good example of the way in which biology and culture are converging and that under the understanding of illness or disease has to be in some ways directed toward that convergence of biology and culture

rather than just a fixation on the biological. You're right and I really like what you and David just before starting to talk to callers about the modern situation might be capsulized. Find alleged problem and change it. Because my main comment was going to be that the various diseases with the possible exception of depression that you've mentioned so far. Really are sort of minor players. If we're looking for the diseases characteristic of the post modern period. Heart disease and those who are just think cancer would seem to be right up there because although they were known earlier they didn't kill off most of the population the way they do now. Exactly the difference in fact in causes of death from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of the 20th century and really quite

interesting. Else in the modern era died of pneumonia influence of influenza tuberculosis typhoid fever dysentery. And today the three major killers are cancer heart disease and stroke. Now again from my point of view although in every case heart disease cancer and stroke we know there's a very clear a biology going on. And yet there are also cultural relations embedded in each of those conditions. All right here is the most obvious and the and I think it's becoming becoming excepted now. You were saying earlier about the others. The mind plays a lot a big role in cancer and heart disease. Here's an interesting way of recasting the notion of mind for each heart. Heart disease cancer and stroke. There are studies that show that recovery from these conditions

is. Influenced measurably and statistically by the kind of social support that's available. So there were they were not dealing so much perhaps with the belief but with the cultural condition if someone is in the condition that they are that there is a loving caregiver close by. Recovery from these illnesses is demonstrably changed so there too it seems to me even though we know absolutely that there is a biology of stroke going on. We also know that the cultural context in which the patient experiences that stroke. Well something to do with the possibility of recovery. Right the great program. Thank you. Thanks for the call and other questions. Welcome three three three W I L L toll free 800 1:58 W while. How much do you think that this this change in the way we think about illness or experience illnesses is in a sense a

result an artifact of our mostly not completely but mostly coming to grips with infectious disease and having that play a less less important role in why we get sick than it did say well we got back before the widespread use of antibiotics. Absolutely yes. It was it was Thomas said that really before the invention of antibiotics doctors really didn't have that much to help you. It's a great change when suddenly you can give someone an antibiotic and they recover from a condition that previously would have killed them. Wow. I mean what an amazing change in in some ways that kind of power was a sort of cement for the biomedical model I mean any way of thinking about illness and disease that wasn't that much better than what we had before must have real truth power to it. And of course it does.

One of the things we're discovering in the post-modern era is now through the overuse of antibiotics for conditions that in many ways don't call for them unfortunately boxen not helpful is creating drug resistant strains of antibiotics. And while we're aware of some of this in the developed world the real powerful area in which multiple drug resistant strains are developing is say in South America in relation to malaria. Now if indeed there's a kind of warming of the planet going on malaria may cease to be simply a southern hemisphere condition and it may be something that we in the northern hemisphere may have to deal with as well. So yes there's that major change that in some ways defines. Modernist medicine is again find a microbe and kill it with a good strong antibiotic. And and our era in which some of these antibiotics are now losing their potency in which

viruses microbes may be on the rebound and which because in some ways lots of the infectious diseases have been controlled and smallpox would be the great victory sign. We're dealing more and more with chronic conditions for which there is no magic bullet. And I guess here that you know sort of brings us to the the question of all of this other than this being an interesting area for conversation and thought that it does seem to be the case that that the nature of illness is changing and that but the nature of medicine has not to the extent that doctors still seem to be operating on the bio medical or biological model. And. That maybe that has something to do with our dissatisfaction with medicine is that doctors and it's

a result of the way that they're trained is that the doctors are focusing on disease but us as patients. Obviously we can do no other than focus on our illness. We focus on is what we feel like and perhaps that the distinction that medicine draws between disease and illness can really push doctors and patients apart and lead to our feeling that. As many people do now that we're just not getting the kind of care that we need. Well I think I'm in great agreement with what you're saying there's an interesting piece. January 7th 1999 New England Journal of Medicine about the economy of health care in the country. And it turns out according to Health Care Finance Administration that. In 1997 we spent 1.1 trillion for national health care expenditures in the US.

It amounts to one seventh of the economy. $4000 per person. And the next closest country was Switzerland with twenty five hundred per person. Yet we have 16 percent of the population with no health insurance at all. And this article in the in the New England Journal of Medicine concludes this is the last sentence in spite of all the money spent for medical care education and research. No one whether a patient provider or purchaser seems satisfied with the status quo. Maybe comes back to my notion of the guide to the Perplexed in some ways I think patients are perplexed and physicians are perplexed too. So I'm very careful to be respectful of the difficulties that the medical profession finds itself in in this kind of changing landscape where in fact the old training about pain no longer holds in the best modern pain clinics for example. So it's a difficult period of

transition. We have several other callers here now. We had a folk bunch of folks here lined up and as sometimes happens we're moving into a bar last 10 minutes so I don't know if we'll be able to get everybody. Will try will get as many folks as we can. Well we'll get back here to someone in Champaign and that's the first caller here in landline number one. Hello. Yes thank you. I've always thought of culture in kind of a biological sense. You know like a Petri dish and an optimal medium for a particular organism. Tell me OK. And so it's not surprising to me that if you have an optimal medium for a certain type of organism you're going to be detrimental to the lifecycle of others. You now and it seems to me that's kind of what culture really is and sociological terms to. And but it operates kind of like at a psychological level. And there was another guest on this program awhile ago just

relatively recently who suggested that all of our evolution in human evolution is now based on a psychological level. And you might want to comment on that but my question is like you to explain how it is that depression which is kind of related has changed over the years. You say it's different now. Our attitude toward it. You know hang up thank you. OK. Well let's see. It's a wonderful collection of thoughts for the kid mind it. For interesting ideas for a long time. I love the notion of culture is a Petri dish because it suggests a metaphor in which the interests of people like me who are mainly focused on culture and the interests of physicians who are scientifically trained in the interested in treating illness actually may converge and one of the main hopes behind my book is that we can move away from kind of doctor bashing and begin to open a

dialogue about what in fact illness has in common with both culture and books and biology. I think the reference was to evolutionary psychology and people like Steven Pinker are. And Wilson are important in my own thinking about about illness. What if I can respond to the question about the difference. Experience I could tell an anecdote about very briefly about a talk I recently gave at a cancer center in Michigan and I gave a talk describing the most recent medical scientific literature on pain in my own particular approach to and how to relate it. And after everyone listened very politely to my talk I got the first question I got was from a physician and it was what do you think about complimentary therapy.

And suddenly I realized it was a test question that I was being asked what they wanted to find out very quickly with that question was did I believe that you could cure cancer with crystals or pyramid power. So it's very interesting so I had to answer it in such a way that I indicated I didn't think in general you could cure cancer with crystals and that wasn't where I thought complimentary therapies had a role to play. And then the dialogue in fact got very interesting because it turned out that these cancer specialists really were interested in what this whole world of complimentary therapies had to offer them. And so in some ways they wanted to make sure they weren't letting in the door somebody who had had in effect no respect for scientific training and studies. But on the other hand there was this great curiosity about what this all about these complimentary therapies and hear to it seems to me patients are in some ways ahead of physicians

in willingness to sue. Take a recognition of the possibilities of medical value in therapies that don't fit the biomedical model. Now how has depression changed. Well I mean you could use depression as an example of one of those illnesses that define an era in the Renaissance it was called melancholy and melancholy was in some ways the defining illness of the British and English Renaissance. Depression changed a whole lot it seemed to me in the post-modern era when it was discovered that there were actually very effective medications for and all of a sudden the disease that let's say 25 years earlier had been treated as pretty much an occasion for psychotherapy was now an occasion for chemotherapy so that the biological revolution in a sense. What drove the the psychotherapy therapies of the earlier 20th

century almost out of the out avidly for but one of the reasons that the psychotherapy. I mean the big chemotherapies are so popular is because of medical economics which is fundamentally a cultural issue. Well but again that's I think that's a really interesting though example of how ideas we have and maybe this is again post-modern But you know how it is we have come around to an understanding that is more complex that says that yes we understand that this is this psychological and psychological condition has some kind of underlying biology and that we can provide some relief to some people with medication but that we also have to acknowledge that in an awful lot of cases just giving somebody a pill just doesn't cut it. You know that there's more to it than that. It's like you know the the the psychiatrists who back in the 60s some of

the famous ones who argued that you know you can you can take a person out of the out of their life situation and you can put them in another place and you can work with them and you can do therapy and you can make them whole again but if you then take that person and stick them right back where they were before they're going to get sick again because it's not. You know it's not just it's not just about what's going on inside their head it's that interaction between what's going on inside their head and what's going on in the Petri dish where they live. Well I think you and I are in really fundamental agreement that if you want to talk about depression you need to talk about it from a bio cultural point of view in which you're acknowledging both the biology that's there and may in many cases be treatable with with the right medication but also the cultural triggers the cultural context in which that occurs. And in some ways the medicine itself contributes to

our culture in a way that I think it never has before this would be again another post modern phenomenon that we have you know Internet support groups we every television major television network you know gets the New England Journal of Medicine early and runs out to interview the person who's published the latest study. My most of the most recent example that struck me was an indication that federal officials are worried about a survey in San Francisco showing dramatic increases in unsafe sex since 1994. B the existence of these new drug cocktails for treating AIDS is in some way it seems according to this article caused at least a younger generation to to view age differently. They see that people or are living for a long time in relatively normal lives with HIV and so suddenly the big cultural component now

of AIDS is in some ways reflects NG back on the on the the biological and medical component often the only way to understand this I think is for is for a model that's comprehensible enough to let you acknowledge both the interrelations between biology and culture. Let's take another caller this is also champagne line number two. Hello. Yeah. I'm interested in the wellness rather than the illness. And I understand our own community college here has a lot of courses offered in acupuncture. The alternative type of medicine or home you often think would just be can the alternative methods and why they're cropping up in our community colleges. Is this a good time for me to respond. Oh yeah yeah. I wasn't quite positive about the question but I think the context of ideas is

fascinating. The whole emphasis on wellness It seems to me again has to be understood as a kind of post-modern phenomenon. And as I understand most approaches to wellness they're very much opposed to a strict reading of the biomedical model the biomedical model as angle in 1977 described it has three features it's reductive as it takes something complicated and reduces it to a language of chemistry and physics. It's dualistic in that this connects body from mind and it's mechanistic in that it's major model for understanding what's happening in our bodies is the breakdown of a machine. This bio cultural model has is by contrast inclusive. If we're start talking about relations between biology and culture It's holistic or monistic in the sense that we it's interested in mind body connections in here and that seems to be central to wellness and as opposed to

the image of the machine is the reigning metaphor for the body in illness. I I would say maybe we're thinking of of a metaphor of the ecology of the community of interacting organisms. So I think wellness is in some ways an important piece of the of the perplexity because it suggests the kind of change that's going on in moving people away from simply a reactive relation to to illness. You go to a doctor when there's something wrong. So now a kind of proactive sense to discover and come back to that David that you proposed to discover a kind of lifestyle that turns out to be maximally healthy for the individual. Does that get at your question going. Well I guess basically I wanted him to know that the community college is thinking of the classes where they're offering this. So

evidently there's a need for it to request storms. Here again it seems to me an example where change is being really patient driven rather fanatical driven than a medical response to alternative therapies is a kind of grudging Well if patients want it let's give it a whirl. There is now at the NIH an office of alternative medicine. It was started in 1992 so again we get another indication of changes that I would consider to be basically post-modern. But I can tell you from trying to get a study of alternative therapies through the local university. The hospital that you run into a great deal of institutional resistance when it comes to these therapies and their their use and what is basically a scientific medical environment. So patients the same to me here in the community college may

be one area in which the community itself is expressing what it wants. Exactly head of Doctors. We're a Appreciate the call and we're at the point we're going to have to stop and you know my apologies we have a couple of people we can't take. There are many many fascinating ideas in the book that we've been talking about so you might want to take a look at it and explore them a little further on your own the book that we've mentioned is titled illness and culture in the post-modern age. It is published by the University of California Press. And David Morris Iemma our ass is the author so it's out there in the bookstores and you can look at it and. Thank you very much. Time with us David thank you and thanks to the caller's wonderful comments. Question before we leave it here on focus one thing we just like to remind you is that all next week you can show your support of W while by shopping at pages for all ages bookstore in their new location at the corner of Route 45 south and Curtis road in Savoy. For a week beginning Monday February 8th 20 percent of your

purchase will benefit WRAL radio and TV. Just mention the cashier that you would like your purchase to be credited to W I L L and we think pages for all ages for their continued support public radio. That's it for us here on focus but we want you to stay tuned because there is much more news features weather sports a lot of other things coming up as part of the afternoon magazine starting right now with host Celeste Quinn thank you. David good morning. Coming up today in the 1:00 o'clock hour of the afternoon magazine we will talk with dog trainers Carolyn Hall and he'll be happy to answer your questions on dog training and dog behavior. Also this afternoon in the noon hour of the program Ed Keizer will join zip 12:35 to bring us up to date on the forecast and following the forecast. We'll take your calls for Ed so I've got plans to travel this weekend or early next week you can give us a call. And Ed will do his best to give you a forecast for your destination. Let's find out now what's happening on the Chicago Board of Trade in Mercantile Exchange Here's Matt Hagman.

Thank you Celeste on the board of trade contracts and we now one to one and three quarter cents higher. March we did 269 up one and one quarter may to 80 up one and one half of July to 90 up one and three quarters. September three dollars and one quarter up one and three quarters and December wheat at 3 12 is up 1. And a core unfair contracts now fractionally higher with March up 1 1/2 to 217 and three quarters maybe to 23 and three quarters at three quarters of three quarters.