Channel hopping my way through a difficult patch on Sunday evening I found what I was looking for. A scientific programme investigating the essence of music. There they were. Charicaturing themselves better than ever I could manage (or dare) if it were left to me to ‘ethnograph’ them. In their definitive scientific laboratory - it’s hard to imagine anyone who would fail to recognise the semiotics of science that were represented here - in their white coats. They had a Real Musician (apparently) lying on his back, his head surrounded by some ‘scanner’, and a keyboard lowered from the ceiling to where his hands could comfortably reach. A lap top computer was wheeled in on an instrument trolley, the two scientists stood back at a discreet distance. The object of this experiment was to record the brain activity of the subject as he played ordinary scales, and compare this to the activity when he played a piece by Bach. The two white-coated men stared in silence at the computer screen, then one spoke in a hushed voice ‘we could be looking at the essence of music’, he said.

All at once, in a sudden unmistakable rush, I was filled with an energy, not entirely positive in its disposition, but which was curiously comforting. For a few moments longer than I would admit here, I stomped around my kitchen ranting against the crass stupidity of ANYONE who could think they were looking at the essence of music ANYWHERE let alone in that ridiculous charade. Hurrah for sociology of science I congratulated myself. If it weren’t for that I might have no defence against this lunacy. Suddenly I had the reason for finishing that conference paper that was resisting all attempts at conclusion, I knew there was a purpose for doing the stuff we do. Hrmph. etc…

And then I remembered. Well… what about all that talk about celebrating difference? about the diplomacy of interdisciplinarity? respecting the Other? Just a couple of weeks ago I had been moved in the other direction by ‘Dead Man Walking’ - a Tim Robbins film (as they say). This only came out in the UK recently - we don’t like to rush into things over here - so perhaps you saw it a long time ago. A nun takes up the challenge of understanding a man on death row. He has been sentenced to death for his part in a rape and murder of a young couple out on a date. It is for the nun to … what? well, try this: to find a way to make sense of this man from his own point of view. She finds herself trying two ways to bring him to terms with his sentence. She tries to rearticulate the sentence (through the appeal procedure) to bring it into terms with the man’s version of events. And she tries to rearticulate him - to find a way of joining him to the description which propels him to his death. This latter provides the bulk of the business as the law proved more stubborn than the man, and something had to give as a result.

As you sit in the dark and watch the film, perhaps you follow her surges of rage and revulsion as she faces a creature whose world is organised according to an alien set of principles. The question is, can she (you) stick with it long enough to make him make sense as a person? If you can, then we have a Man that is brought to life at the point of death. If you can’t then we have a sub-human about whom we need lose no sleep. You might think it in bad taste to draw a comparison between a film which follows the path of a rapist and murderer to his own death penalty, and two Scientists tracking the essence of music in a man’s brain. I would agree. Except that this isn’t the level of comparison I’m attracted to. What stuck in my mind was a line in the film. One of the parents of the murdered couple (who were fully occupied with their grief and not at all ambiguous about the fate of the sentenced man) said to the nun ‘I admire your faith’ to which she replied: ‘I wish it were that easy.’

So, if Susan Sarandon’s serene character stumbles at the prospect of achieving a relationship with difference, I can at least identify my mundane struggle with a subject of significant proportions and take heart in the knowledge that what I do is difficult, and even worth the effort. The extra dimensions I take from the film, though, which I struggle to find in our subject’s texts is the hard bloody work of translating anger, contempt, revenge (strong words, but are you going to say you’ve never felt them?) into the possibility of a sustainable relationship. What the film forbids me to overlook are the implications of Right and Wrong (not absolute, but decided upon) that make sense of this work. And finally, the film is good to think with when it comes to the desire to understand and be understood through difference: it underlines the fact that transformation is required somewhere in the equation. We can’t all stay in the same position as a result.