Transcript: I think it’s too late to do that, you know? It’s a similar kind of thing. I don’t think . . . I’m not sure what I think about pulling out of . . . troops out of Iraq now, you know? You can’t go in and stuff up a country. And then when the going gets tough and the pressure is on, leave and pretend it didn’t happen, and you know leave this country in a mess. I mean I don’t know if staying helps either. But I think it’s a similar sort of thing with the West’s relationship with Africa. They are too closely intertwined at this point, and the West is too closely implicated in where Africa is at now thanks to colonialism. You know the West got rich off of it and is still rich off of it. And so I don’t think it’s something the West can just walk away from and say, “Okay, well you guys figure it out,” because yeah, it’s just . . . it’s too late. How you go about structuring that relationship so it’s not paternalistic or it’s not opportunistic I don’t . . . I’m not quite sure. But I definitely think there should be still doing something. And this whole shift to focusing on the Middle East has meant that Africa has suffered in the sense of foreign aid and, you know, just general interest in, you know, funding projects in Africa. And again it’s sort of evident of the West kind of ___________ just drop something and move on to the next sort of disaster area. And I don’t think that’s ethical.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: Well I can’t speak for all academia; but for anthropology as a discipline within academia, I think there’s this tension right now where there’s a desire for anthropologists to be more engaged and sort of a kind of activist to anthropology that overcomes the distancing effect of sort of observing ____________ observation and theoretical understandings of human life. But this. . . There was this recent, you know, story in the New York Times about anthropologists now being imbedded in combat units in Afghanistan. I’m not sure if they’re also doing it in Iraq, but it was in Afghanistan. And it was a strategy to try and imbed an anthropologist in every combat unit. And it raised all these debates for the academy, because on the one hand people were saying, “Well finally someone is saying that this knowledge that we generate is useful in these very practical ways.” And conflict had often been reduced 60 percent when an anthropologist had been with the combat unit and sort of just known what was going on in terms of those sort of local, tribal dynamics. But on the other hand, you know, if anthropologists are so dependent on the good will of people and letting a complete stranger, often, come into the community and live there and observe their lives – that if there’s even a shadow of a doubt that anthropologists are somehow, you know, linked to the U.S. government in certain areas of the world, I think that undermines the anthropological project anywhere. So I think for the . . . for the academy it is. I think it’s this tendency to both, you know, stick in the ivory tower and justify that by saying, you know, “We can’t get involved, because the moment we get involved we implicate in these things.” And then this tendency to say, “Well how do we make this knowledge that we generate relevant and useful to people in their lives?” And as a graduate student it’s just, you know . . . This phase of graduate school, I’m doing coursework. I haven’t yet started my own research. I’m very much at the theoretical distance level before actually going to sort of get my hands dirty. And I think it’s really in that field where experience a lot of these things ____________. So anthropology is unusual in that sense within the academy, because it does have that field work . . . two years of field work sort of built into your academic experience. It forces you to grapple, you know, and go out there and engage with people. So it’s . . . Unlike sociology which is, you know, much more sort of statistical and sort of quantitative based social science. So it’s very unusual in that sense, but it still struggles with finding a balance between those two positions.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: I don’t think it is. I think it’s an incredible moment that we have now because it’s a . . . it’s a chance to really refocus on our joint plight as humans, which I think we’ve lost sight of and we are constantly in denial about. And it’s a . . . It’s a reminder of this idea of a kind of global environmental commons . . . you know a kind of covenantal culture of these resources that are actually by their very nature indivisible. So you know we’ve parceled out the land, but we struggle with a joint or shared resource, for example, like the sea. I mean we’ve sort of managed to work our way around that, but now we’re looking at the atmosphere. And I just think . . . I understand that a carbon trading system is an immediate solution that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But it troubles me because I think it’s . . . it’s . . . it’s denying the fact that this is a shared resource; that we can’t parcel out and sell of the right to pollute it. And again to me it’s a way of us sidestepping the real issue with climate change; is that it’s not just practical change that we need, but it’s philosophical change. And until we realize that this face of late capitalism that we live in is fundamentally incompatible with reducing greenhouse gas emissions, then we’re not gonna get through this, you know? And it’s gonna take incredibly creative and courageous global leadership to get us to make those kinds of philosophical changes. But I think another issue here is that ethical change always lags behind technological change. And I don’t know how we get them to move hand in hand. So what I think is happening is that the technological issues have overcome us, and that’s all about the technology __________. But we’re not actually ___________ ethical changes that need to go along with this kind of huge shift in the way we live our lives. That’s not happening, and it’s really that that’s gonna allow us to make the kind of changes we need to make. And just anthropologically it’s just such an interesting moment, because it’s changing the way we live more than anything since the industrial revolution. And we do have a moment now before the major sort of crises have hit where we can . . . we can turn it around and, you know, remember that we are all in this together, and we’re on this piece of rock in the middle of nowhere. And we’re all gonna die anyway. And it’s, you know . . . I think Evil Knievel said before he attempted one of his canyon jumps, “None of us is gonna get out of this alive.” So we just . . . It is this incredible moment, and so I just appreciate what people like Gore have done because they’ve . . . I think what needed to happen is we did need to capture people’s imagination, you know? And I think that’s happened. And so I don’t think it’s a . . . I don’t think it’s a fad or a phase. And even if . . . You know who knows? Maybe in 10 years the scientists will say, “Oh, we’re all wrong.” And even if that’s the case, I still think this is a kind of useful global accounting or reckoning with where we’ve come so far, and in getting us to investigate like philosophically how we wanna go ahead as a species.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: I mean you gotta hand it to, like, Angelina Jolie. You know she could just sit at home in a nice house. I sort of appreciate that she tries. I mean I’m not sure what I think about her adoption addiction, but you know. And Natalie Portman now, for example, is now really involved in African micro financing organizations. And I think that’s great, you know? I think . . . I think all African countries need as much help as . . . as they can get. And I’m not sure . . . You know, Bono and what he does . . . You know certainly there’s, you know, people who use it in ways that are just about a kind of ego boosting for themselves. But yeah.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: Botswana, I think, by many accounts has been very successful in terms of managing, for example, AIDS . . . HIV/AIDS. They sort of very early on __________ public acknowledgment of the disease and early public health measures ___________ and made it much more manageable. I mean the regions are just so different and so politically different that it’s . . . it’s almost impossible to say. But I’ll tell you ____________ West Africa certain countries there, you know, have . . . have, you know, a kind of richness of life that isn’t destroyed by a kind of political . . . absolute political corruption or ___________ leadership. I mean South Africa is complicated because on the one hand it’s like ___________ story of the continent. But on the other hand it has the highest rate of rape and murder in the world. It might be second after Iraq now in terms of the highest number of violent deaths, but it’s first or second. So I don’t know how you reconcile that picture of success story with the kind of realities that people live with day-to-day.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: It’s so different in every country and in Africa, you know depending on who was the colonial power. There’s a lot sort of written about the Portuguese colonies, the British colonies, and the French colonies. So I can only really speak for South Africa, but I mean unfortunately it’s . . . the . . . even the phenomenon of Jacob Zuma, it’s a legacy of the kind of damage that was done under a colonial system and a system of apartheid which I wouldn’t call colonial because it was indigenous and then it was Afrikaaner-based. But the rise of nationalism in . . . African nationalism in the ‘40s in South Africa which then led to a system of apartheid came directly out of a colonial system where, you know, the British were just absolutely . . . actually treated the White Afrikaanas as second class citizens. And as a result I think of that humiliation, sort of similar to, you know, Hitler and Germany and the humiliation of the First World War; then leading to the rise of this kind of fascism I think was a very similar situation in South Africa. So colonialism actually led to this rise of African nationalism, which then created apartheid. And now, you know, for decades and decades and generations the kind of . . . the way that apartheid just pulled apart the fabric of South African society, that kind of damage I don’t know if you ever overcome that. And if we now after, you know, being so close to really trying to just make it as a country and keep it together, that’s why this phenomenon of Zuma sort of bothers me so much. Because I actually think it’s the beginning of the . . . of the end for South Africa as we know it as a democratic institution.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: I mean South Africa is a really interesting case right now, because I think politically what’s happening is that in the next couple . . . In the next __________ a new African National Congress president will be elected. And whoever becomes president of the ANC effectively becomes president of the country, because they get sort of 65 percent of the vote in any national election. And the front runner at the runner at the moment is this guy Jacob Zuma, who was Deputy President and then got fired because he . . . he was charged with both rape and corruption. He got acquitted on the rape charge, but said the more horrific, misogynistic things during the trial. And (45:44) the corruption charge has been sort of put off, and put off, and put off, and there’s some funny business going on there. But the reason he is interesting is he has massive popular support among low, low, low class South Africans who I think feel that, you know, it’s been too long now since ’94, and they’re not seeing the kind of practical, material change in their lives – houses, running water, electricity. And so there’s a kind of radicalism that’s sort of being fostered at that level. And for some reason Zuma has captured the imagination of these people, and he is now being seen as the antidote to the kind of politicians like Mbeki who is the current president; or a lot of the extreme Iraqi Black businessmen like __________ who is basically a mining magnate. So I think what’s coming to a head now in South Africa is this thing of, you know . . . What’s happened is a lot of the wealth was just sort of transferred from this __________ of elite Whites to elite Blacks, and the people on the ground saw nothing change in their lives. And so there’s a . . . there’s a kind of backlash against that, and so it’s playing out more along class lines now than it is along race lines. Race is still used as a galvanizing factor politically. So you know Zuma will often, I think, use Whites as scapegoats to sort of get people, you know, riled up. But really it’s an issue of feeling like not enough has happened to kind of change the economics of the country in a way that benefits ordinary South Africans. That makes him sound like a much better person than he is. I mean I think this is one of the things that worries me a lot at the moment. It’s like watching a train smash about to happen. And the global community doesn’t really seem to see how terrible it would be if he were to become president. I mean there’s nothing you can do, but I think if he became president South Africa would go the way of Zimbabwe within five to 10 years. I think he would do a land grab. I think he would nationalize all sorts of things. But I think he’s a leader who has absolutely no . . . no qualms about, you know, doing what is best for him. And it scares me actually a lot.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript:  That’s such a tricky one because I do feel as a White South African no matter what my political beliefs, I need to be very careful to, you know, throw any stones.  Because I certainly lived in a glass house for . . . for a while.  So I mean it’s been interesting to me to . . .  You know obviously there’s a lot of hypocrisy involved, and a lot of kind of blame game that’s played.  But I think to me it’s a more interesting thing in America of imagining . . .  America likes to think of itself as being a classless society, and I think you know race and class really intersect in America.  And so I think it’s less about race that I think the problem is, but more about an elite class in America who have been . . . whose needs have been privileged for too long.  And that has sort of led the country into, you know, a difficult . . . difficult times.

But I did notice at . . . As an undergraduate I was a member of the African Students Association, and there was a very strange relationship between the African-American Student Associations and the African Student Associations.  And this strange kind of . . .  I think each was threatened by the other.  I think the African-Americans feel threatened by this questioning of their own authenticity by the African Students Association; and you know sort of vice versa.  So it was just an interesting sort of dynamic that I saw played out firsthand.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: Absolutely, yeah. And it’s . . . It’s fundamental to who we are. It’s one of the things that sets us apart as a species – you know our ability to, you know, have a symbolic life. And it’s a major source of meaning and purpose, I think, for all human . . . human beings. And if you look, you know, what anthropology can give us is a sort of . . . both a universal perspective; and it’s always ___________ the sort of father of American anthropology always emphasized what he called the “psychic unity” of mankind. So it’s the sort of, you know, acknowledgment and, you know, reassurance that we are all human; and that we are all the same; which unfortunately at certain times in human history, you know that hasn’t always been taken for granted. But it also gives us the kind of specificity of life in this incredible diversity and variety of the ways that humans think; or about finding meaning and purpose in their lives sort of on the ground. And there’s a tension, I think, between that. I’m not sure how you ever really resolve that tension. Because the moment you start to universalize, you start to generalize. And it doesn’t really do justice to us as a species and the diversity on the ground. But the moment you start to hone in too closely on any particular ritual, you risk sort of exoticizing that behavior and not having it be a standard for kind of general human need.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: Yeah. I was actually born and raised agnostic, which I am quite proud of because we lived in a very conservative Christian community in South Africa. And so you know everyone thought that it was totally weird that we were agnostic. But I’ve always found that kind of interesting. I think it’s a tradition that’s as rich as any religious tradition. And certainly for my family we have rituals and events that are about being agnostic that, you know . . . they’re not about worshiping a text, or a god, or a prophet; but they’re actually just about being together and sort of in the moment. And so I think at the core of this sort of . . . You could call it a faith or a belief, is a sense of humility that, you know, we can’t deny this human condition that we find ourselves in, where none of us really knows why we’re here. And as a species that’s our . . . it’s our curse and it’s our blessing. And I think instead of allowing that uncertainty to freak us out, I think agnostics embrace it and see in it incredibly creative possibilities for how to live a fulfilling life that is never about doing things for some sort of future pleasure or future reward, but a kind of immediacy in living. And in my family’s incarnation of that, that means sort of a kind of taking a sort of joy in being together that’s the best kind of religion.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: I would say “Waiting for the Barbarians” by Coetzee. I would say . . . It’s not fiction, but I would say “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” by Joan Didion. I would say . . . I don’t know if it’s a great . . . but “My Life as a Man” by Phillip Roth. I would put that in my canon. And anything by Margaret Atwood maybe. I’m trying to think of a fifth one. Maybe ____________ the periodic table. I’d put that in there.

I guess there’s nothing really in common with all of them except that they all, to me, succeeded in making the novel what it is meant to be, which is an objective form of communication that I think, when done really well, actually builds empathy in the world, and a kind of compassion, and a sort of imaginative compassion. And there’s a kind of humility to them as well in the sense that they accept their own limitations as works of art that, as again, sort of honest about the . . . this weird creative process.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: Well Coetzee, the South African writer has been a kind of gold standard of writing always for my family. My mom was a literary critic, and she sort of wrote about him in the ‘80s when he was only well known in South Africa. So he’s always had this kind of mythic status for me as a writer. And the ways that he has steered quite, you know . . . quite purposefully away from autobiography. I mean obviously there’s elements of that; but that he’s working always at a theoretical level and really unpacking or deconstructing different discourses from within. And so I . . . That kind of writing that’s working on all these different levels, I think, is just amazing. And I don’t know how you do it but . . . (chuckles) you know.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: I just leave it for a while. So I often actually find it’s pretty predictable if I’m writing regularly, every fourth day I hit a wall. And it just really . . . There’s nothing I can do. I just have to leave it for a couple of days and then crawl back to it after that. And then it doesn’t seem as bad as you thought it was. And the same thing starts again. And then day four you hit a wall and you think you should jump off the roof and go back to it. And then there’s months sometimes I just leave it and don’t do anything. So I guess my approach is to kind of be kind to myself and listen to that feeling. There must be something going on that’s, you know . . . that’s necessary to be worked out at a sort of subconscious level.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Question: What is your creative process?

Transcript: Mine is so boring actually. I mean I just . . . This novel I wrote on my roommate’s computer in a flat in Cape Town. And I was too scared to take the computer out of the flat because I was scared it would get stolen. And it was her computer, so I would just sit at the computer in the mornings the same place every day. And I was tutoring high school kids. I had flexible sort of time. And now I’m really struggling to find a routine. I don’t have one at the moment actually with the graduate school and the teaching. It seems to be more the kind of thing that I would need to do over the summer break as sort of a chunk of time that you can get your teeth into something. But I also find that it’s . . . I couldn’t, you know . . . I could only do sort of two to three hours a day, and that’s a good day, so . . .

Question: Do you need a routine?

Transcript: I probably do, yeah. I mean there must be a reason why I haven’t figured one out. And I’m sure it’s all about self-protection and fear that you can’t do it again. So you rather just pretend that you don’t have the time to do it than actually sit down and do it, because then you can keep pretending that you can’t do it. You just can’t find the time. (Chuckles)

Question: Where do you go to be your most creative?

Transcript: I eat breakfast. And I, you know, sit down and have second breakfast like a hobbit. And third breakfast, and all these procrastination techniques. Yeah, I guess the inspiration part is really just at the very beginning. And then you’re never to be sort of never, you know, meet your own expectations because as soon as the idea is put down, it becomes muddied and never really is as pristine as it was in your initial excitement about it. So the inspiration parts have all become sort of front loaded for me. And then it’s just a matter of slugging it out until that spark is actually transformed into something more meaningful and lengthy.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: I guess just that it’s always a kind of work. I mean I know that’s sort of self-evident, but there is a kind of myth, I think, surrounding all artists that it’s this kind of hallowed form of creation; that somehow something is parting through you, the way inspiration is talked about in general – almost as a sort of external force that, you know, manifests itself. And it’s never felt like that for me. It’s always felt like hard work. And maybe it means I shouldn’t be doing it. But mostly the pleasure is in the relief of just having got your quota of words for the day; and a kind of long term pleasure of the slow, crawl of something that turns into something. But I guess yeah, not to get . . . not to get disheartened by the slog . . . the everyday slog of the process.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Question: What pressures do young writers in New York face?

Transcript: I guess there’s a sense of pressure perhaps that I avoided because it really was unexpected. And perhaps you know for writers who have taken on in New York, and you know . . . who have agents, it’s just a much more sort of stressful environment. And the stakes are much higher, it seems, and it sort of places a kind pressure on young writers where it’s almost like they kill the goose that lays the golden egg. And they put so much pressure on this writer to perform in certain ways, but also to be framed in certain ways. And there is this sort of obsession with . . . with youth and with young authors in America that’s quite . . . quite dangerous I think. Because it’s . . . It sort of takes the . . . I think it can often make young writers forget why they’re doing it, or why they started writing in the first place and start doing it for the wrong . . . the wrong reason.

Question: Do they have a chance of maturing within the industry?

Transcript: I don’t know. I mean I guess it’s case by case, but I think you’ve gotta have a strong sense of self and your own . . . what you’re prepared to do. But in the long run it’s like, you know, do you love it enough to keep doing it your whole life? And so perhaps that’s it. It’s the sense of these, you know . . . a phenomenon that’s slightly problematic. Because instead of seeing it as a kind of lifelong learning curve that you’re on – like you’re learning the whole time – as opposed to this, you know, precocious individual who has got it right in their twenties, which I think is impossible; instead of seeing it in this long term perspective as something . . . a craft that you’re gonna learn about your whole life.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: I think my experience has probably been very different from a lot of other young writers because I actually initially was published in South Africa. Penguin South Africa took it on, and the publishing industry in South Africa is tiny. You don’t have agents. I mean I literally called them up on the phone and was like, “I’ve got a manuscript. Would you read it?” And they were like, “Sure. Send it in.” And so it was a very sort of localized, personal experience there. And when they took it on I was like, “Oh that’s great. It’ll be published in South Africa. You know maybe 10 people will read it,” because there’s such a small reading public there who can actually afford to buy books as well, and then who read in English. And then they actually sold it on to the UK and to America, and that’s the only reason then that I got an agent or anything. So I sort of feel like I came into this in quite a sort of safe environment. Because I felt, you know, the Penguin South Africa people were very . . . just very good to me. So I feel mostly just very privileged, I guess.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Transcript: What is power?

Question: Well I suppose I would go on __________ that we are all caught in webs of . . . of power that we are perhaps not even aware of; and that whether we like it or not, we are always in a hierarchy of power where we are both sort of being . . . submitting to it and enforcing it ourselves. And I was interested in this . . . the nebulous nature of power and complicity, in a sense that guilt is never one dimensional; and that you know I think in this day and age it’s . . . the concept of evil is talked about in these sort of black and white terms. But there’s a lot of, you know, very interesting theorists who have looked at the concept of evil; and how the banality of evil ___________ would say; or the sense that, you know, ordinary people are capable of extraordinary evil things. So it’s that sense of the kind of the leading of power __________. Yeah we all are . . . In every single act that we do, we are somehow complicit in all sorts of things. And I guess that brings up the issue of whether we are more accountable for the sins of commission or omission. And I’m not sure anyone really answers that question . . .

Question: What does complicity say about us?

Transcript: I guess it’s part . . . It’s part of the human condition that we go through life hurting people; and that, you know, we can’t get away from it. But you know I think it particularly comes to a head in this age of globalization where we are really connected in all these myriad ways that are often invisible to us. And so we’ve, in many ways, I think lost sense and lost sight of the structures within which we live. And that’s the . . . You know that’s truly the . . . It’s a dangerous road to go down I think where we’ve lost touch, you know, not just from . . . We’ve become alienated certainly from the means of production, but I think also from . . . As a result we’ve become less and less accountable for the things we do, because they are more and more hidden from us. And I feel this a lot in America because, you know, having sort of lived here now through this . . . this war in Iraq, and having seen really nothing change at a day-to-day level living your life in a country that’s at war . . . And that’s a particularly American thing, right? There’s never been conflict on this piece of land except for the Civil War. But it’s that sense that these things can be done in our names, and yet so invisible to us and makes you seek them out so that we get lulled into a sense of complacency and our true . . . the blood that’s on our hands is, you know . . . we don’t see it. But I do think it still has a corrupting effect; and that we can’t help but have your moral compass start to go awry when these sorts of things are being done in your name, whether you know it or not.

Question: What is reasonable to expect of an individual?

Transcript: I wouldn’t presume to say that for anyone else. I think it truly is an individual decision where, you know, we all are placed on a spectrum of wrongdoing. And we’ve got to figure out our own set of individual limits along that spectrum. And that’s the difficulty, because the moment you have anybody else assert the right to make that kind of decision for another human being, you’re disregarding a kind of autonomy of decision making that is, you know, a fundamental human right I think. So I would be very suspicious of anyone who would presume to make those decisions for . . . for other people. But I do think there are institutions in a society that help us make the right kinds of decisions. So having a healthy, and robust, and independent media, for example, is crucial to allowing people to really have the tools to make those kinds of decisions; and have the information about these decisions that are being made in their name; and then make an informed choice as to where our next spectrum of ___________ may prepare to place themselves; and how far they’re prepared to go. And I think when you start losing that, then we’re really . . . we’re really in trouble. Because then we’ve got no other way to gauge our impact on the world.

Recorded on: 12/6/07

Question: What is “Blood Kin”?

Transcript: So “Blood Kin” is . . . I would call it a fable of power. And it’s . . . It tracks a president of an unknown country’s depose. And his chef, and barber, and portraitist are imprisoned after the coup and are forced to sort of account for what they’ve done, and how they’ve inadvertently propped up his regime even though they worked for him in a kind of non-political capacity. They still, just by sort of nourishing him or rendering his . . . his portrait, or by grooming him have . . . have lent him a kind of legitimacy. And then the significant women in their lives speak in turn. And they are meant to sort of signal the kind of moral and psychological fallout in a political situation where there’s a corrupt leader, and how that’s sort of trickled down to the general population.

Question: Why is there a gender split?

Transcript: I think I wanted to get at this issue of women not simply being victims. So I started out with the male voices and then realized that they needed a counter balancing force where these women are not sitting in the shadows waiting for their men. They are just as implicated in the cycles of abuse that are set in motion, whether they are personal or political. And so it’s meant to kind of show, I guess, the pain and the hurt that’s inflicted by the men that ___________ has also been __________ by them at the hands of the women.

Recorded on: 12/6/07