I will explore, not conquer

I will explore, not conquer!

I have some habits of thought I know really aren't good for me. Some months ago I managed to summarize for myself the nature of my ill thoughts: I am as a conqueror, or I feel pressured to be as a conqueror, when I would be happier, healthier, more curious, more truly loving and able to share with others, if I were as an explorer instead.

I don't remember where I saw the graffito
but here is another street of Edinburgh's
city center—also, there is something written
in chalk in runes somewhere around here! I
should try to decipher them sometime.

Recently I passed a mysterious graffito; couldn't tell what the drawing was supposed to represent. In a 'conquering' frame of mind, I entertained some insecurity, some feeling of isolation; I envied the people who were in on its meaning. I defensively jumped to a little comforting daydream about being in on some cool secret symbol myself.

But why should I do that? It would be nice if I could perceive strange things as curiosities, exciting things, not get scared of them and see competition in them, objects of conquest. What a nasty pattern I'd fallen into, where I'd fancy one-upping some weird graffiti instead of speculating about what it meant or something.

That is just the sort of situation I'd had in mind when I first came up with "exploring, not conquering," but now I've noticed just how much deeper the idea goes to explain where my defect is— Some days ago I came across the museum news website Culture24 and its children-aimed counterpart, Show Me. These websites feel nice. Instead of jealously guarding their elite knowledge, these scholarly people are trying to spread it to the general public. They want the general public to be educated and curious, leaving their figurative 'territory' for the enjoyment of all rather than claiming it for themselves, and I can feel comfortable and unintimidated by them. Show Me particularly reminds me of being a child and reading lots of kids' books about different things in the world, not worrying about claiming any topics for my identity, not breaking knowledge down into my official interests versus things I wasn't interested in, not expecting to gain anything from it but pleasure and a couple of facts to impress people with. These days I've bound pleasure and knowledge so tightly to ego and pride to the point I feel out of place and even very embarrassed in a social way trying to learn something I don't know much about, especially if there's someone in my life who has that topic in their own domain.

The problem I have with conquering does a little more than make me insecure, competitive, and envious, then. It also makes me less able to appreciate the world with sensitivity and curiosity. If I explore instead of conquer—if I can walk into new 'territories' without being preoccupied with whether they're mine or not and whether I belong—I will be able to appreciate many more new lands, and my focus will be not on myself, but on the fascinating things around me.

I've also been working on fiction writing more than usual recently. I've gotten in the habit of idly looking through potential places to submit my writing to procrastinate doing homework. In doing so, I started several stories, a greater rate than I'd started projects at for a long time, simply on whims, and of types and on topics sometimes quite distant from what I'd expect myself to write. It was the most free and pleasurable experience I'd had writing in a while. I attribute it to browsing those literary markets so extensively and finding standards so different in kind from my own restrictive tastes, and finding them a good 'excuse' for deviating from my usual. Or, my chosen writing style and sort of content will continue to be what I like best, but choosing them is not conquering them. There is more to see outside of my own territory, and even within what I consider my own territory, I am still an explorer.

I hope that makes sense.

Genre and freedom in writing and people

When my professor first mentioned genre analysis, I found it a rather revolting idea. It seemed like it was trying to turn writing into something that could be studied scientifically and described with rules. I expected that any deviations from the customs of the genre would be a sign that we needed to come up with a better-fitting scientific model of the genre or something, instead of being a good thing, an expression of creativity.

But as it turned out, that's not what genre analysis says! It seems like most of the people who work in the field think of it more as learning the rules in order to creatively exploit or break them in order to make an effective piece of writing (Bhatia, to be proper). Looking at literary genres in particular, Hepburn (cited in Swales) says knowing about genre can actually be important to understanding a text; even if the text is rebelling against established genres, the reader has to know about genres to be able to appreciate that. It's part of context.

And I like this quote by Fowler (also cited in Swales): "Genre also offers a challenge by provoking a free spirit to transcend the limitations of previous examples." He says genre gives a writer something to work within, forms to match with their ideas, without writing the piece for them. That rather reminds me of Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Stern, a text one of my undergrad fiction writing courses used, which describes the different narrative structures and encourages writers to 'fill' them with their own stories. Those structures aren't quite genres, but the idea's similar enough. It's a satisfying idea, everyone adding their own content to an existing shape.

But then, genre isn't just a good model for texts, but for people as well, right? I think of times I've tried to judge where I fit in some category of behavior or action: into personality types, which interested me a lot as a teenager; and into field of study, which concerns me now as I wonder quite what academic department, if any, I'll want to end up in. I think fitting myself into those things feels nice for some of the same reasons writers benefit from awareness of genre: it helps to have a basic idea of myself and a knowledge of how other people will see me based on their past experience with those categories, while leaving room to "transcend the limitations of previous examples."

It's also the traditional social sciences concept of structure and agency—or what society makes you do, and your own choices and uniqueness—with even kind of literal 'structure' if you imagine filling up a shape like in Making Shapely Fiction.

Then, why do scholars apply genre to texts but not people? It would be so nice should the social sciences celebrate the potential for rule-breaking creativity too. In genre analysis, linguistics is scientifically making rules and describing the world— towards the goal of showing people how to make more interesting and unique decisions. But it seems like the social sciences only make rules and describe the world in an attempt to explain and apprehend people, and to lament the shortcomings of the discipline if people don't behave as expected. Ugh.