My Year With Proust - Day 4

"But then, even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is crated by the thoughts of other people.  Even the simple act which we describe as 'seeing someone we know' is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principle place.  In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognize and to which we listen."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 19

One of the reason why I like teaching in the Core division is that it allows (I'm afraid too many folks might say "forces") me to explore books and disciplines and concepts that I'd almost certainly never examine if left to my own devices.  This particular passage reminds me of so many of the topics that we discuss in COR 110, Concepts of the Self.  There is a line from Cynthia Freeland's Portraits & Persons, and I'm paraphrasing wildly here, which proposes that the hero of your autobiography is a fictional character.  Essentially, it touches upon the concept of the constructed self, which always wigs out the students - and occasionally their professor.  When we talk about the masks we create and wear in class I will often say, "You don't think this is actually me, do you?  Do you know how exhausting it would be to be this all the time?"  The point is that SCUDDER is a fabrication, a passion play, a performance piece, albeit a long-running one.  It was created to protect an insecure, introverted kid from the hills of southern Indiana who had crooked teeth and a speech impediment. That said, Freeland brings in another scholar who opines that even if the self is fictive, it eventually becomes reality; meaning that, SCUDDER the one man show in the end became my true self.  And I guess that's OK because, all things considered, it has taken pretty good care of me.  However, I think it does inspire a couple substantial problems: 1) too many people can't see - or don't care to see - beyond the performance piece, and, more importantly, 2) sometimes I wonder if I can still see beyond the performance piece, or if there is still anyone living inside.  Another thing to work on this year.