La vie en rose

La vie en rose

Qu'est-ce que c'est mignon!

A History of an Education in Image and Word

指 鹿 为 马

A significant line was crossed:

  

Crushing the human spirit happens every

 day to the many, but there comes a time when a cry for our humanity mus--and does--come to the fore.

A boundary.  Inviolable, en principe.   Comme la ligne Maginot qui se veut inviolable (mais qui a ete q tout de meme aisement contournee).

For those who were also emotionally attacked by Marsha Weidner Haufler, I would like to tell you  this:   You did nothing to provoke the attack and you did not deserve it.  I share the pain.  This "history" means that we collectively remember, even as others  attempt to forget, deny, or minimized what occurred.

This is our history.

There is no history without individuals, and history is composed of smaller entities that requires conscious acts to recall and articulate what is often buried deep beneath the surface.

The Role of Remembering in History

ou Le devoir de se souvenir du passe

历史

的

阴影

La meilleure defense contre la calomnie et le mensonge, c'est la verite et celle-la exige des actes de se rappeller ce que l'on n'en veut pas...ce qui est dur, parfois tres dur.  J'y vais le demontrer comment s'y prendre et pourquoi.

Do not forget the past.

The paths of truth, beauty, and courage are

intertwined, and they

have been

the history of the human race.

We are history, 

it flows into us indivisibly as we flow in it.

遗 民

隐 居

Le debat y a ete effectivement ecrase comme ses partisans intrinsigents l'etaient:

Detruit le 4 juin 1989 a Beijing.

C'est de l'art ou non?  Qui dit ca?  Et pourquoi?

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. (Newton)

Non, moi j'oublie pas.

Survivre mais a quel prix?   

(Pour moi?   Pour l'humanite?)

I.   October 4, 2014

October 1, 1949

June 4, 1989

What was the real reason the tanks rolled down  长 安 大 街  ?

Et moi, j'y ai ete, a Pekin, le 3 juin 1989 dams le quartier nord-est.  Je n'ai pas ose defie le pouvoir en place. Je l'ai echappe belle.

A plea that this never be allowed to happen again.

 Freedom to speak and feel without fear of punishment is what it is about.

I do this for myself.  I do this for others.  This story has to be told and the full extent of the truth shared with others.

II.  This other history:

  20 years of soul searching

Et moi, j'y ai ete, 1993,a Kansas.    Et je n'ai pas ose defie le pouvoir en place.  Et j'ai paye tres cher. 

 Et j'ai survecu en somme deux fois pour aller vous raconter une seule histoire, pour vous apprendre ce que j'ai appris.

I have pondered the following questions over the past 20 years:

What did I do wrong?  Why did it happen to me?   How could I have prevented it?  Why can't I just bury it?  Why is it important (or not important) for me to continue to think about what happened?  Isn't this really just trivial rehashing of memories and feelings?  How can I ever rip the memories from my mind?   Will the nightmares ever end?   Will I ever able to, or want to, write on art again?  

What is the value of writing "art history"?  Who benefits and how?  Is there a driving personal, political, social, psychological, or other agenda at work?   Is the work of art history only to reconstruct the historical, social, and cultural circumstances surrounding works of art?  Does art history have to imitate the hard sciences and should it?   In what sense is it a humanistic rather than scientific discipline?   Who decides, and how, what is true when it comes to theories or hypotheses about art produced a millennium ago?  What role does (an aggressive) personality have in deciding what passes for "a stronger case"?   Is there a quasi-cult of personality in departments of art history?   How does that bias ostensible objectivity?  Can there be greater transparency?    For whom, or for what, does an art historian write?   What is the role of personal interpretation, and if the answer is "nil," can one really or should one (try to) escape it?  How can art history be made relevant (if that is judged desirable)?

Why would anyone be so interested in the transmission of Zen Buddhist teachings from one patriarch to the next when they cannot even perceive the actual transmission that is going on in front of their own eyes and heard with their own ears?

There was one answer (to the question "What is Respect?") I did come up with before I left the University of Kansas was that there are two kinds:  one based on fear, the other on trust.  For the indispensable help provided, I am indebted to Professor.Marsha Weidner.

N.B., I take the risk, but this time, I know I may very well have a very bad fall.  This blog post is not intended to be art history in the traditional sense.

Though some may believe that I "should  have moved on," I believe that what happened to me should be made part of the public record.

If this post appears to be a personal attack, I respond that everything I state here is in relation to her the conduct of one who repeatedly committed what I consider major ethical lapses and crossed personal boundaries.  Unfortunately, she possesses what I consider personal traits that had a direct bearing on her teaching. 

I know next to nothing about her personal life,  so I cannot be accused of making any comments that cross into the private sphere.    Ms. Haufler seems to have amnesia, or is in denial, about this.  It is, in fact, her character and fitness to be an instructor that is in question.

She needs to be reminded and held accountable for her conduct 20 years ago.

Whether or not other former students (and/or colleagues) choose to disclose the nature of their interactions with Ms. Weidner cannot and does not affect my decision to bring the truth as best as I can describe it to light.

For the psychologically fragile or impressionable, the conduct, and circumstances, recounted here could be potentially devastating, as was true in my case.

She left something that belongs to her that I must return to her now.   It is contained in this blog post.

The Good Teacher

Identify the subject of this painting.  The painter.   The approximate date of its execution.  The media.  The social context and its meaning for its intended audience.

[Answer:  孔丘 Confucius, 马 远 Ma Yuan 北京 故宫博物院, ink on silk].

[Note:  The University of Kansas, where I attended graduate school in the early 1990's, tolerated  misuse of power and/or abuse of students by faculty.*] 

Reves de serenite et bonheur, 

pas de honte et terreur.

Camille Corot (1796-1875), Solitude, Souvenir de Vigen (1866)  Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

郑 思肖 Zheng Sixiao, 元 代 Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), 栏 花 Orchids 

 "Parfois on oublie les noms de certaines personnes mais on n'oublie jamais les visages, les paroles."   -le Dalai Lama

The final art history examination:

Rossetti, "Ecce Ancilla Domini"

Art and Belief

 

Fra Angelico, "Coronation of the Virgin," early/mid-15th century

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. (Newton)



A letter to Marsha Haufler, professor of art history at the University of Kansas 

Dear Ms. Haufler:

I have something to share with you.

The famous painting of "The Scream" by Edward Munch does not portray a scream so much as it does the person who has heard the scream.  The effect of the scream on the person is what is so vividly portrayed.  The face expresses shock and terror, a gaping mouth, bulging eyes, and hands covering the face and clasping his head as if to say, "I can't get over what I heard.  My ears are still ringing from the scream."

The transmission from this teacher to her student was a Scream.

The scream is embedded in my consciousness today.

Sky, land, and water swirl in response.too.  The scream has set in motion, like waves, the entire lurid landscape. For the scream is not his, though it has gone through him like a tsunami.

The scream has become the whole picture and it seems that the person is locked into the scream for eternity.

This is precisely the effect your screaming at me had on my soul. I suspect it has had a similar effect on others, too, weaker than you, those whom you  scarred for life.

"The horror!  The horror!"

spoken by Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

History:  A history.  

The truth will "out."  Even 20 years later.

People often speak of sexual misconduct in academia but rarely about psychological abuse or misconduct of students by professors.

I think the time has come...for me to come out of the closet and tell what happened between you and me.

The truth is that I was psychologically battered by Ms. Weidner that day I walked into her office about some innocuous matter and was screamed at, just a few inches from my face, for what seemed like an eternity but was probably around 10-15 minutes of unabated fury.  Her face was a crimson red, her facial features contorted, her voice relentlessly harsh, angry, and punishing, and her words a torrent of blame and accusation.

The truth was, as she had accused me of saying to another professor, that she was indeed as hard as nails.  She gave me the impression that she was as much pounding words into brains and that for all intents and purposes she could have been driving nails into flesh.

In no time I was accused of a five-point program of  "You did this to me" with the implied "You've got to change this or or else..."

The unspecified threat was delivered in a half crazed, half raging tone of voice:  it was as if she had grabbed me not just the collar but the flesh of my neck and would not let go until she had smacked me over and over again.  The threat was, though never named, must have been that of the academic equivalent of the Gulag.

I was too much in a state of shock--no one in my life had spoken to me this way--that I could not even nod my head, at the end.  I sat there the whole time without even a whimper of protest,, listening to every word and phrase she uttered, submitting to the wildest of what, for lack of a better term, I have to refer to as "emotional abuse."

No, people generally do not submit to that kind of treatment because it will usually elicit a powerful response, as in an instantaneous slap in the face or yelling terrible invective back.  I was frozen, not knowing what to do, as a deer caught in the headlights of an upcoming motor vehicle.  It is of the immediacy that one would expect in a case of domestic (couple) violence.

I think that I simply disassociated while she emotionally and verbally flogged me.  I was overwhelmed, unable to defend myself.  A boundary had clearly been crossed.  I had never experienced an emotional battering of this intensity and color.

I was not just shaken but also badly damaged primarily by that encounter.  It is difficult to describe what happened or to put into words, but it was akin, psychologically speaking, to have scalding water poured over one's face.  The hurt was all on the the inside.  I was the person covering his ears in Edward Munch's "The Scream," silently wailing and bent out of shape.

But the suppressed screams came out at night: They were of one being pummeled and falling to the floor, submitting to punishment but not daring to utter a cry:  ME, not some other person.

And even though I spoke with many people about what had happened, most people commiserated by saying something to the effect, "How unfortunate.  And you've got to move on."  Saying that the selection process had been rigged was superfluous, in their eyes.  Privately they expressed their sympathy.

And she had either lied or been insincere when she avowed that she would "forget" the things that I "had done to her" if I "mended my ways."  In the end, she still booted me out of the program, even though I maintained a very low profile the rest of the semester.

No one suggested speaking to the Dean of the Graduate School, campus police, student heath center, or the Ombudsman's Office.   What had happened was...well, part of "les regles du jeu" of graduate school.

Challenge The System?   Out of the question.  "You are powerless."

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. (Newton)

Clearly, I could not get over it.  And people listened but minimized what had happened.  I am not sure if anyone really understand that I had traumatized.  I have scolded before, as an adult.  That unpleasantness is not easy to deal with, but what had occurred in Marsha Weidner's office was of a very singular sort.  If anyone else had had to submit to similar punishment, I was not aware of this.  At least I would have had someone to commiserate with.

This was a train-wreck and I was a survivor who could not possibly convey to others what I had experienced without re-experiencing the trauma itself or regurgitating something I was unable to face..  So I spent a lot of time simply repeating in a flat voice that "she screamed at me."   I  surely must have tested the patience of those I recounted the incident to.  But I was simply, in fact, only trying to indicate, however unsuccessfully, the trauma endured.  A click-of-the-tongue sort of sympathy I did get, real understanding was less forthcoming.   

(The unreality was reinforced by Marsha Weidner's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde persona, with the Hyde seeming up to gain the upper hand most of the time, though she seemed often to be taking pains to suppress that component.. Equally, in hindsight, one could see through as a seemingly effortless but in fact graceless imposture, the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing).

As for the reaction of other students, I can state that even the Taiwanese students would start trembling uncontrollably in her presence, and in her seminars, their voices would, when they could not, apparently, control themselves, do very odd alto-to-soprano-and-back sinusoidal demonstrations, faltering, unfortunately, at points.    Among these visibly and audibly and emotionally affected included her own protege.

This is equally odd in view of the fact that one would have thought them somewhat used to harsh pedagogic treatment.

I suspect that they, like myself, had never been met such a formidable person, and that they, too, felt sheer terror, even--I am assuming--that she had never "[just] screamed" at them.

In any case, I witnessed Ms. Weidner frequently cross over the usual or normal boundaries separating human beings into their own autonomous space.   This never ceased to shock me how she got away with it.  Well, obviously, I realized it was a matter of unequal power relations.  Still, no one in my own past had exercised their power in so egregious a manner.

It didn't matter how many people she bulldozed or steamrollered that she felt were in her way, and no one seemed willing or capable of taking her on.

How much of academia is like this, I do not really know.  Very few people, even those who left it or did not finish, write about their experiences.

"Might is right.  I can slap you around at will."  "Got it, Professor." 

    What is honor?
N'est-ce qu'un concept abstrait?

"In academia, even among personalities that don't get along, we surmount these personal differences and concentrate, instead, on a discussion of the ideas that are being brought forth."

-paraphrase of a statement made by Professor Marsha Weidner to this former graduate student in the fall of 1993.

The rest of the semester I was reduced to nothing but abject silent misery and an overwhelming desire just to flee as soon as possible Lawrence, Kansas.   The cost of this encounter was not being able to concentrate on my studies and a foolish decision to take the Ph.D. qualifying examination a month or so later.

The late Dr. Chu-tsing Li confided in me that the real reason I was not going into the Ph.D. program was that Marsha Weidner did not want me to continue.  In fact, she wanted me to leave immediately, i.e., at the end of the term and not be allowed to take any courses whatsoever, even in a different area unrelated to her own and with a different professor.  (The department is divided into "Asian-ists" and "European-ists."  Apparently, she was adamant that I "disappear."

Yet the official reason was that I had not passed the pre-qualifying Ph.D. exam.  (I had taken the exam mistakenly believing that I was taking it only as an M.A. exam. No one had disabused me of this notion, so I walked into, or rather slipped into the guet-apens).

In any case, out of the entire group of graduate students who Dr. Li transferred over to Marsha Weidner, I don't know of a single one that did not pass the qualifying Ph.D. examination. with sufficient time, guidance, and preparation and did not go on.  I will not elaborate on how I did on the GRE examination (verbal) section a few weeks before I learned that I would no longer be able to enroll in courses in the Department of Art History at KU despite straight A grades, except for the one "B" that Marsha Weidner gave me.

At the time, I should have and wish now I had demanded that the Department of Art History stand on principle and gone to the Dean of the Graduate School.  But I was afraid of the consequences. And traumatized by the one and only meeting I ever had in her office.

 In the days, weeks, months, and years, I have continued to suffer:  I still get nightmares in which I struggle to stand up for myself and yell back at her:  "Stop it!  No more!  I am not going to take anymore of this.  You're a horrible horrible...horrible."  Silently, dumbly enduring the red-hot lashing was something I will never forgive myself for..  I had a duty to protect myself, and I failed.

It is my hunch that physical punishment and verbal abuse are, in essence, the same thing, and re-wire the brain in similar pathways:   Panic, disassociation, anxiety, depression, fear and then back again to the beginning.

What is equally disturbing to me now is that I realize it was the die that was cast in 1993 for a pattern and series of personal attacks to which I meekly, silently submitted as well.  I have an intuition now why rape victims may be greatly at risk for repeated rape, being predisposed after the first assault to falling into the same role and attracting the same sort of predator.

In any case, shortly after I left Kansas, I developed serious chronic health issues, ones with no identifiable etiology, ones which I have been dealing with since then to the present-day.  The symptoms of the trauma have gone underground and become psychosomatic.

I wonder why there are people who succeed in academia who are failures as human beings.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. (Newton)

In my experience, academia, even in the humanities, does not necessarily produce better people.  Often, it is quite the contrary, although I did meet some wonderful people who presumably became fine teachers.

My second-grade teacher who wrote on my report card that "[he [I] always tries his best" had a more positive influence on my education than anyone else, including Ms. Weidner.  She did not instill fear or inflict pain.

A teacher's job is not simply to transmit knowledge to students and evaluate their progress.  Instilling an atmosphere of trust in the classroom, especially between instructor and student,--without which freedom of inquiry is impossible--is as more important.

In the classroom or seminar room, students--especially adults in theirs 20s, 30s, 40s, and older--should not be cowering in far of being harshly scolded, punished, or humiliated.  And yet Professor Weidner outlandishly allowed her own personal insecurities and paranoia to override any sense of better judgment or discernment.  

A one-on-one student-teacher meeting, should not, metaphorically speaking, be an opportunity for psychological date rape.  Nor should, in the classroom or outside, ostracism, selective grading (confirmed by two neutral observers), favoritism, rude interrupting of others, harsh scolding, sarcasm, and the tacit encouragement of innuendo and attacks on disliked students--all of which Professor Weidner regularly engaged in while I was her student--take place.

These behaviors are as degrading to the person humiliated as it is to the person who humiliates.

Yes, Professor Weidner set a terrible example of how destructive a person can be in making fear the principle and primary tool of her teaching methodology instead of a love of learning.

My definition of integrity is that one leaves those people whose paths one has crossed in better shape than before that, not worse.

And you, Ms. Haufler (Marsha Weidner in her latest, apparently more benign incarnation) cannot threaten me or cause any more pain than you already have.

You were never able or willing to see the pain and  terror you meted out to yoru students, much less heard my own inner cries.  You may have noticed but probably not acknowledged to yourself that some of your students shook uncontrollably, their voices wavering, in your presence.  If that is not failure, I don't what is.

If I were to go through this again, I would never allow you to beat me up.  No sentient being deserves this treatment.  I do not do this to my two cats no matter how annoyed I might be at their behavior.

   

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. (Newton)

A person so in control of her own feelings that she when she "loses it [her control]," all Hell breaks loose.  And woe be to the victim of her wrath. 

And she gets away with it for most of a lifetime.  In the hallowed halls of truth seekers, no one demurs. You'd have to be made of iron not to hear, see, feel...the truth.

Pay it forward.

Queen of Bullies

What would happen if Medusa looked at herself in the mirror?*

Michelangelo Merisi (Caravaggio), 1597.  Oil on leather shield.  Uffizi Gallery. 

More terrified than terrifying (?)

* sans masque, nouvelle coiffure, maquillage, lifting...

Méduse symboliserait « la perversion de la pulsion spirituelle » qu'est « la stagnation vaniteuse » et sa chevelure de serpents manifesterait « le tourment de la culpabilité refoulée ». La quête de Persée est universelle en tant qu'elle consiste pour tout homme à affronter sa propre vérité intérieure en reconnaissant sa vanité coupable et refoulée : « Méduse symbolise l'image déformée de soi […] La pétrification par l'horreur (par la tête de Méduse, miroir déformant) est due à l'incapacité de supporter objectivement la vérité à l'égard de soi-même. Une seule attitude, une seule arme, peut protéger contre Méduse : ne pas la regarder afin de ne pas être pétrifié d'horreur, mais capter son image dans le miroir de vérité.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9duse_(mythologie)

I hurt people?   I don't know what you're talking about.

  

A child who is being abused may not have the word or concept of "abuse" to communicate what he has undergone, but he does know that something is very wrong.  The only thing I could muster to tell others was "She screamed at me."  It was only seeing Munch's "The Scream" with fresh eyes that I found the visual equivalent or language for what I had not been able to express very well before.
And as a (female) college classmate of mine and now a university professor has confided in me, "the worst perpetrators of bullying in her department are often or even usually women."

I was forced out of a graduate program by the very woman who had abused me.  Not only that, she had demanded that I no longer be allowed henceforth to take any courses in the department.  Up to this point I had received nothing but A's as grades.

  I kept the shame secret for 20 years.

In the years following, I found myself being victimized again and again by aggressive personalities.  It seems as though I had become stamped in some way with the mark not of Cain but something equally indelible.

And in a state of medically diagnosed depression for over a decade.

Jean Genet (1910-1986), ecrivain francais
Pourquoi ces yeux si apeures, si fixes?  Qu'attendent-ils?  Qu'est-ce qu'ils ont vu au passe?



Through what series of events or karma had I become what I was now?  How had Actaeon become changed into a stag?

How do I unlearn the fear now?
A jamais encore une fois n'entrer dans la gueule de bete.
Take the mask, it's yours, your true unvarnished self.


I guess when you've knocked someone down to the ground an then punched them repeatedly in the face., you certainly don't want see that same swollen, bloody, bruised face again and again in the hallways... for the next four months.

La peinture chinoise pour moi c'est toujours tache de blessures pas closes, invisible a l'oeil nu pour les gens qui ne savent pas voir, a tout jamais.

Mais

• "Je suis petit mais je ne suis bas." 
• 
  
• Julien Sorel dans Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir 

Caravaggio, St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness. 1604.   Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Lifting the veil of sham, shame, and secrecy.

Le Titien, Diane et Actaeon (1556-59), National Gallery of Scotland.

But I never said she was a total fraud.

  

En cet instant la reine ne porte plus rien que son courroux.

  

Le sort d'Actaeon, decrit par Diane, sera d'etre transforme en cerf et ensuite de se faire devorer par ses propres chiens de chasse.

Shukongojin, guardian deity, dry clay sculpture, ca. 733, Japan.

We are told to forgive and forget.  And the karmic cycle of sham, shame, and secrecy continues on and on, generation after generation, teacher after teacher.

Charles Demuth, "I saw the figure 5 in Gold" (1929).  Metropolitan Museum of Art

Oui, madame, n'oubliez pas, vous faites partie integrale de mon histoire, d'ici la

Kshitigarbha with the Ten Kings of Hell, ink and colors on silk.  from Dunhuang, 10th century.  British Museum.

Seated Guanyin, Jin dynasty (1115-1234 CE).  Shanghai Art Museum

观 世 音 literally, "the one who hears the cries of the world"

Mu Qi, White-robed Guanyin (center), 13th c., Daitokuji

Il a enseigne tout le long de sa vie que la force brute n'etait ni vertu, ni verite.

孔丘 Confucius, 马 远 Ma Yuan 北京 故宫博物院

  

   

  

The Good Master
and
The Turning of the Wheel

Seated Buddha Preaching the First Sermon or The Turning of the Wheel 法輪 in Dharma-charkra-pravertana mudra (Teaching Mudra)  धर्मचक्र. Archaeological Museum in Sarnath, India.  Fifth century C.E. (475).

Seated Buddha 

*     I could site other cases, including one where I was shoved, without provocation, by another student who became the protege of the individual whose conduct left such a deep, lasting. searing impression on me. 

See  also

http://lillian2.blogspot.com/2014/10/girl-interrupted.html

References:

1. Hannah Arendt, The Banality of Evil

2. Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware
3. Laurence Schneider, A Madman of Ch'u

* * * * *

I never said, "a cesspool of a human being."

A bitch of the highest order.

In popular parlace, such a person is usually described succinctly as "the bitch from Hell."

There I said it.   After 25 years of carrying it around as a secret wound, I have said it at last.

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