Blain Auer (aka Blain H. Auer), Part IV

While I still don't have time to discuss my old friend in any limited detail afforded by memory, he is an accomplished scholar, and was one of the few people I met while studying at UC Berkeley in whom I found a resonant streak of rebellious intellectual integrity.

We shared common interests in music and parallel aspects in our studies, albeit with respect to different regions. I wrote a thesis that attempted to set forth a theoretical construct related to "Modernity and Identity", which subsequently gained a degree of currency in academia through the writings of scholars like Amarty Sen (e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Identity-Violence-Illusion-Destiny-Issues-ebook/dp/B00EQ019U0/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=amartya+sen&qid=1562598849&s=gateway&sr=8-6). I believe that reading my thesis (incomplete and unintelligible to most though it was), perhaps had an influence on Blain's later work with respect to religion and politics in his sphere of speciality, etc.

One issue is the fact that Blain knew, having read my thesis applying the above theoretical framework to the history Korean peninsula in the 20th century, etc., that I had been writing about what were basically covert policies implemented through the CIA. Cognitive dissonance?

Anyway, there were a couple of videos on Youtube I'd noticed of Blain H. delivering lectures when I happened to look him up to see what he was doing. The earlier one is gone (I have it archived somewhere), and his name shows no such hits on the Internet (in either spelling) at present, but one talk he gave at Harvard is available on Vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/54024845