What we're doing here: more than just an exercise
Last fall, I taught the best class in the world. You can see the whole thing on the online document we created and used as learners, http://vulgaranalysis.blogspot.com.
In a time when the loudest voices of academic change and reform are shouting about the weaknesses of old institutions, like tenure and the MLA conferences, the purpose of this project is to effect change by creation. We have the greatest force of change when, in an environment of pluralistic dialog, we, little by little, person by person, participate in experiences that mix old and new, forms and ideas, high and low, near and far.
For me, the course I taught last fall was a grand opus to all I have learned about learning over the past twenty years, and its success proved the worth of the principles and structures of participatory culture creation as a structure. The point of that project and this project is to explore alternative power structures. Structural power looms heavy with negative connotations for myself and for many others who have been inflicted by the cruelty of an institution, a discourse, a bureaucracy, or any number of societal structures. Cruelty permeates the structures that make up society, even when these structures were originated in order to combat cruelty, which they did successfully--in certain areas. Let's not stop with the rooting out cruelty in only a limited number of ways. Let's keep going.
One thing I have found as I have spent over a decade studying cruelty in discourse, is that you can change things by simply pointing out the bad, and you don't change things simply by changing the message. This is why disruption is important. A popular business writer and speaker has presented the concept of disruptive innovation. While I am skeptical of any naming system as a means for change (it often seems to trivialize, or jargonize a concept), I appreciate everyone's efforts to talk about the importance of being okay with difference, change, and the individual's inability to control and define his existence. Maurice Blanchot, a post-Holocaust writer, spoke about this more lyrically in his text "On Writing the Disaster". The theoretical prose makes an effort at giving a face and a name to the disaster, or as I have previously named it, the individual's inability to control and define his existence. It is with the acceptance of this fact that both the individual and society benefit, as they have a proper sense of identity.
Systems, structures that have a bad name (fascism, imperialism, neoliberalism), have such because they are based on absolute principles of control. These are the systems that teach us values, values that our predecessors benefitted from over millennia: taking care of the individual, reason, faith, managing resources. However, any time a system defines itself absolutely by anything other than concern for the individual, that system allows for the opportunity for cruelty to take place.
In the course I taught last fall, I told the students that we would structure the class differently because content reflects form, meaning, that if we structured the class the same as every other class we know, no matter what we discussed, we wouldn't learn any more about decreasing cruelty in our lives and in our behavior. The point is, form and structure carry rhetorical meaning which is just as powerful, if not more powerful, as the meaning and value of content.
For the same reason (you can't change things if your only change your message), I want to conduct my own projects differently from how I see others in my scholarly circle. I want to conduct my projects the way a master craftsman or artist conducts his workshop. I want to conduct my work the way I carried out operations when I was associate director at the World Policy Institute for the Cuba Project. I want to conduct my work the way the architecture firms in Switzerland work. These sites demand participatory, dialogic, self-defining, responsible, consistent work. It's how I gave life to the community garden on campus at Stony Brook several years ago.
As we change the structures by which we perform our daily activities, we change the meaning behind them as well.
For this reason, I do not want to simply speak against an old and reified concepts of academia, canons, and scholarly work by creating a new canon, that includes people who weren't in the old canon. Some of the most powerful thinkers of the past and present do not work within professional or scholarly lines at all (I think there was a TED talk about this by a ten year-old math genius). While it is important to focus (consistency and diligence), it is also important to leave yourself open to ideas from different people who inhabit different spaces--emotionally, politically, physical, intellectually, socially. (This is where we can start talking about the difference between tolerance and diversity, as they are trivially touted, when compared to the actual concept of pluralism.)
If people are going to be invested in what I do as a writer, in it's most productive form, it will not be simply because they want to hear what I have to say. Largely, my success as a writer comes from my efforts to involve others in my thinking (the Lord says, "Let us reason together" ), and even moreso, from my efforts to engage others in behaviors, activities--work!--with regards to the thinking we explore together. That engagement from others will come most purely and most meaningfully when the project itself requests their individual talents, interests and personal pursuits, which I can't know if I spend all of my time tied up in a bubble, cloistered with my own books. You have to have a balance; just ask Descartes (at least in terms of his content he agrees, in "Discourse on the Method".)
The language of a generation will not be defined because a couple of people stuff themselves into little boxes and perform feats of academics. The only value we can have as we write and reflect is by making our work and our language accessible to others, to people who matter. And, this is not done by simply emptying our thoughts and words of content and substance, trying to be glitzy, sexy, and marketable. Telling yourself and your likeminded peers that people are stupid because they aren't capable of seeing what you see and understanding what you understand and subsequently don't deserve to be happy or participate in the daily function of society, is as contemptuous and cruel a thought that one could allow to exist as an operating premise in how one understands the people for whom he or she seeks to engage with their work.
Only as we invest ourselves in others, entirely embracing difference without concern for changing or controlling the outcome, do we become to reflect a healthy pluralistic democracy with the resiliency and hope that can move forward as a world. It is as I stated in my post "Interdependence", when we make relationships with others our primary focus, the logistical and operational concerns that cause us so much hurt and stress begin to resolve themselves almost naturally as a secondary consequence of creating healthy relationships. No matter how difficult the differences between us may seem, as long as we have a healthy relationship of communication and work as our long term, patience-teaching goal, concerns with physical, material, and structural problems will work themselves out.
"I have taken off my mask. Now, it's time for you to take off yours."
In a time when the loudest voices of academic change and reform are shouting about the weaknesses of old institutions, like tenure and the MLA conferences, the purpose of this project is to effect change by creation. We have the greatest force of change when, in an environment of pluralistic dialog, we, little by little, person by person, participate in experiences that mix old and new, forms and ideas, high and low, near and far.
For me, the course I taught last fall was a grand opus to all I have learned about learning over the past twenty years, and its success proved the worth of the principles and structures of participatory culture creation as a structure. The point of that project and this project is to explore alternative power structures. Structural power looms heavy with negative connotations for myself and for many others who have been inflicted by the cruelty of an institution, a discourse, a bureaucracy, or any number of societal structures. Cruelty permeates the structures that make up society, even when these structures were originated in order to combat cruelty, which they did successfully--in certain areas. Let's not stop with the rooting out cruelty in only a limited number of ways. Let's keep going.
One thing I have found as I have spent over a decade studying cruelty in discourse, is that you can change things by simply pointing out the bad, and you don't change things simply by changing the message. This is why disruption is important. A popular business writer and speaker has presented the concept of disruptive innovation. While I am skeptical of any naming system as a means for change (it often seems to trivialize, or jargonize a concept), I appreciate everyone's efforts to talk about the importance of being okay with difference, change, and the individual's inability to control and define his existence. Maurice Blanchot, a post-Holocaust writer, spoke about this more lyrically in his text "On Writing the Disaster". The theoretical prose makes an effort at giving a face and a name to the disaster, or as I have previously named it, the individual's inability to control and define his existence. It is with the acceptance of this fact that both the individual and society benefit, as they have a proper sense of identity.
Systems, structures that have a bad name (fascism, imperialism, neoliberalism), have such because they are based on absolute principles of control. These are the systems that teach us values, values that our predecessors benefitted from over millennia: taking care of the individual, reason, faith, managing resources. However, any time a system defines itself absolutely by anything other than concern for the individual, that system allows for the opportunity for cruelty to take place.
In the course I taught last fall, I told the students that we would structure the class differently because content reflects form, meaning, that if we structured the class the same as every other class we know, no matter what we discussed, we wouldn't learn any more about decreasing cruelty in our lives and in our behavior. The point is, form and structure carry rhetorical meaning which is just as powerful, if not more powerful, as the meaning and value of content.
For the same reason (you can't change things if your only change your message), I want to conduct my own projects differently from how I see others in my scholarly circle. I want to conduct my projects the way a master craftsman or artist conducts his workshop. I want to conduct my work the way I carried out operations when I was associate director at the World Policy Institute for the Cuba Project. I want to conduct my work the way the architecture firms in Switzerland work. These sites demand participatory, dialogic, self-defining, responsible, consistent work. It's how I gave life to the community garden on campus at Stony Brook several years ago.
As we change the structures by which we perform our daily activities, we change the meaning behind them as well.
For this reason, I do not want to simply speak against an old and reified concepts of academia, canons, and scholarly work by creating a new canon, that includes people who weren't in the old canon. Some of the most powerful thinkers of the past and present do not work within professional or scholarly lines at all (I think there was a TED talk about this by a ten year-old math genius). While it is important to focus (consistency and diligence), it is also important to leave yourself open to ideas from different people who inhabit different spaces--emotionally, politically, physical, intellectually, socially. (This is where we can start talking about the difference between tolerance and diversity, as they are trivially touted, when compared to the actual concept of pluralism.)
If people are going to be invested in what I do as a writer, in it's most productive form, it will not be simply because they want to hear what I have to say. Largely, my success as a writer comes from my efforts to involve others in my thinking (the Lord says, "Let us reason together" ), and even moreso, from my efforts to engage others in behaviors, activities--work!--with regards to the thinking we explore together. That engagement from others will come most purely and most meaningfully when the project itself requests their individual talents, interests and personal pursuits, which I can't know if I spend all of my time tied up in a bubble, cloistered with my own books. You have to have a balance; just ask Descartes (at least in terms of his content he agrees, in "Discourse on the Method".)
The language of a generation will not be defined because a couple of people stuff themselves into little boxes and perform feats of academics. The only value we can have as we write and reflect is by making our work and our language accessible to others, to people who matter. And, this is not done by simply emptying our thoughts and words of content and substance, trying to be glitzy, sexy, and marketable. Telling yourself and your likeminded peers that people are stupid because they aren't capable of seeing what you see and understanding what you understand and subsequently don't deserve to be happy or participate in the daily function of society, is as contemptuous and cruel a thought that one could allow to exist as an operating premise in how one understands the people for whom he or she seeks to engage with their work.
Only as we invest ourselves in others, entirely embracing difference without concern for changing or controlling the outcome, do we become to reflect a healthy pluralistic democracy with the resiliency and hope that can move forward as a world. It is as I stated in my post "Interdependence", when we make relationships with others our primary focus, the logistical and operational concerns that cause us so much hurt and stress begin to resolve themselves almost naturally as a secondary consequence of creating healthy relationships. No matter how difficult the differences between us may seem, as long as we have a healthy relationship of communication and work as our long term, patience-teaching goal, concerns with physical, material, and structural problems will work themselves out.
"I have taken off my mask. Now, it's time for you to take off yours."
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