Journeying Towards America: An Anthropological Inquiry Into What We Think is Real

You have in your hands a thing: a discrete, bounded entity. You see paper, which you identify as a thing, and you see some concept, \u27thesis\u27, less directly than paper, but still as a thing. But as much as you have a thing, you engage in a process, the interaction of my mind and yours, a time-delayed conversation. A thesis (or article or book) performs the role of an intellectual launching pad, a catalyst for thought. Both \u27realities\u27, the slices of a dead tree and the process-engagement, confront you through experience. And yet, as Americans we are more likely to think of even the process elements of a thesis as a thing: a bounded, complete set of thoughts ready for dissection. Unless reminded, we allow the process to slip into the background. We forget the engagement and concentrate on the analysis. I call this paper Journeying Towards America to emphasize what we sometimes forget: that any written work is both a journey shared and a place reached, a process of exploring the intricacies of the foreign terrain, and a recounting of the things found there