PPM44 picks up on Heidegger’s framing of Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ as the opportunity to explore the “essential relation” between the ‘truth’ and ‘education’ as happening via the disclosure (offering) made by Being via presencing. The effacement with this disclosure aka the offering of freedom is the kairological moment when Learning is initiated. This is the origin or originary moment of Learning, and from here arises the crisis/opportunity for learning, for doing/making/forming something, which is another way of naming the emergence of personhood, or, more specifically, the formation of a person --- [jumping in on 3/28/19: the term I have been using for the past few years is persona.] --- Here, too, we see the progression I have identified that takes us from Learning to learning to the formation of a learning community and thus into the political sphere where the practice of freedom is a response to the question of justice. I made this link in PPM43 post-reading commentary, noting that the project’s link to politics and the question of justice emerges at this juncture when we move underground into Plato’s cave, which is another way of saying, move into his attempt to link education, truth and justice. In terms of contemporary transformative practice and research in education, the Formative Justice project guided by Robbie McClintock Formative Justice Blog (& my post on the University of Bologna and Derrida as an example).
That brings us to the slow and steady reading of Plato’s ‘Allegory,’ which is the focus of PPM44.
The meditation from this date, March 28, begins as it must begin aka at the beginning, the point of origin, what I call the twofold play of Being and Learning: “If we understand that the ‘Allegory’ is situated within this evocative and mysterious question, Who are ‘we’?, then our listening of this story enables us to recognize why the link between the essence of ‘truth’ and the essence of ‘education’ is always transformative, or situated within the twofold play, and thereby expressing the fundamental relationality of our experience as unfolding within a mysterious, unknowable, nameless other, a ‘no-where’ from which we arrive and appear together, and a ‘not-yet’ toward which we are pulled, drawn to as a destinal destination, a destiny. How is it that this story tells us about this destiny?”
The writing at this point is decidedly historical in the sense that is happening under the signature of the question of justice, the one that moves Plato’s Republic, where
the ‘Allegory’ is situated. In turn, the trope of ‘passage’ (passageway, pas-Sage, threshold, path, path-breaking) takes on a significant historical denotation within the ‘Allegory,’ especially as the
setting is set: “The ‘Allegory’ begins with a description of a people living within a ‘cavernous chamber underground, with an entrance open to the light and a long passage all down the cave.’ This ‘long passage’ is significant for us, as it symbolizes the ‘journey’ or ‘passage’ of the Sage, the ‘way’ – both as manner of the movement and its direction, the breaking of ground and paths – as well as the ‘out-come,’ the destination or destiny, which we have anticipated as the cultivation of community, friendship. This is the mindfulness produced in the wandering along the passage-way.” But we have to remember that the passage-way from the cave that gets the philosophical sojourn under-way, that is the ground for the philosophical movement of/for the learning community, is where the are moved, or pushed onto, after they have been turned around, transformed (experienced paideia, put on the way of learning). Where are they before learning begins? In chains,prisoners: “The prisoners in this story are limited to a ‘forward looking’ gaze, and unable to move about. What are we to make of this scenario where people are chained at their necks and feet? It is difficult not to
have these images conjure up images of the cross-Atlantic slave trade and the horrific Middle Passage, the horror of being take from one’s people, stripped naked, chained and thrown into the
bowels of a ship. Plato’s story conjures up this and other horror stories of bondage and oppression inflicted by humans upon humans. Although we will have the opportunity to hear the liberatory poetics and the story’s mood of hope and optimism, the tale is one initiated by and culminating with dread and tragedy. Here, in the bowels of this prison, we encounter the real source of the deep foreboding that appears with the grounding attunement, the evocative saying.
If the story is an authentic saying of a Sage (Socrates), then we must receive it with its mix of wonder, awe and deep foreboding.” Put otherwise, we must hear the register of the Sage’s evocative saying -- the one that we encountered at the onset in the saying of wu-i-wu, and the question, “How is it with the Nothing?” – as in a minor key. That is, Plato’s ‘Allegory’ (a story told by Socrates) reminds us that the Sage’s music-making is the blues. As I write in the conclusion of PPM44:”This is a tale in the tradition of the blues, that intends to re-collect our memory of trial and tribulation, of struggle against forces of oppression, and the hope of overcoming this through the ever expanding gathering of others in the cultivation of community.”
setting is set: “The ‘Allegory’ begins with a description of a people living within a ‘cavernous chamber underground, with an entrance open to the light and a long passage all down the cave.’ This ‘long passage’ is significant for us, as it symbolizes the ‘journey’ or ‘passage’ of the Sage, the ‘way’ – both as manner of the movement and its direction, the breaking of ground and paths – as well as the ‘out-come,’ the destination or destiny, which we have anticipated as the cultivation of community, friendship. This is the mindfulness produced in the wandering along the passage-way.” But we have to remember that the passage-way from the cave that gets the philosophical sojourn under-way, that is the ground for the philosophical movement of/for the learning community, is where the are moved, or pushed onto, after they have been turned around, transformed (experienced paideia, put on the way of learning). Where are they before learning begins? In chains,prisoners: “The prisoners in this story are limited to a ‘forward looking’ gaze, and unable to move about. What are we to make of this scenario where people are chained at their necks and feet? It is difficult not to
have these images conjure up images of the cross-Atlantic slave trade and the horrific Middle Passage, the horror of being take from one’s people, stripped naked, chained and thrown into the
bowels of a ship. Plato’s story conjures up this and other horror stories of bondage and oppression inflicted by humans upon humans. Although we will have the opportunity to hear the liberatory poetics and the story’s mood of hope and optimism, the tale is one initiated by and culminating with dread and tragedy. Here, in the bowels of this prison, we encounter the real source of the deep foreboding that appears with the grounding attunement, the evocative saying.
If the story is an authentic saying of a Sage (Socrates), then we must receive it with its mix of wonder, awe and deep foreboding.” Put otherwise, we must hear the register of the Sage’s evocative saying -- the one that we encountered at the onset in the saying of wu-i-wu, and the question, “How is it with the Nothing?” – as in a minor key. That is, Plato’s ‘Allegory’ (a story told by Socrates) reminds us that the Sage’s music-making is the blues. As I write in the conclusion of PPM44:”This is a tale in the tradition of the blues, that intends to re-collect our memory of trial and tribulation, of struggle against forces of oppression, and the hope of overcoming this through the ever expanding gathering of others in the cultivation of community.”
3.0- On the LIRR, eastbound, heading to Hofstra, listening to the DZ from June 25, 2023 (12th wedding anniversary), GD & Allman Bros fro DC, June '73, extended soulful-blues performance of "Not Fade Away." Have to mention that in light of the coincidence of the final line from PPM44 and the class session planned for today that will feature my students (Georgia and Makenzie) and I reënacting our Ma Rainey presentation. The Allegory of the Cave as a "tale in the tradition of the blues" indeed! I will certainly be sharing the coincidence when I introduce our presentation. And now I have inspiration for the third part of this semester's course, once more returning to the Allegory. How is it a tale of the blues? On the one hand it is a story about breaking from from a false or pseudo reality, and getting to the truth. The blues is a reckoning with the truth of the lie of racial oppression, with the facticity of racism. But the blues is also a tale of the journey towards freedom, or towards liberation through freedom. That's it! The Allegory is a tale of the one who is freed from the chains of ignorance and compelled to move upwards and onward from the "darkness" of ignorance, from the occlusion of the truth. I'm not entirely comfortable with the classic trope that depicts the "false" with darkness, and light with "truth". Perhaps that's why Hegel's Owl of Minerva is compelling to me! She spreads her wings at dusk! The winged creature who can see at night! The blues resonates with movement of the Owl of Minerva, especially when we recall the origin of the blues in the spirituals that sing of the flight to freedom in the dead of night, i.e, those spirituals with their secret coded poetic language that both documents and directs the movement of the Underground Railroad! "Going down the road feeling bad, don't wanna be treated this a way!" What is important, I think, and this I learned from Heidegger's reading of the Allegory, is focusing on the movement, the turning round and round of the freed but not yet liberated cave-dweller. This circular movement and what is happening with it -- the repeated encounter with the new and strange, the new as strange, the struggle with the alienation of encountering what is wholly different -- is also characteristic of the movement of blues traveller, and also of the blues as a music form. Here borrowing from Adam Gussow's "Blues Expressiveness and the Blues Ethos" (Study of the South, Jan 24, 2018): "One of the things that characterizes early blues music is an unusual amount of repetition...The AAB verse form, when performed by blues singers, is characterized by a specific sort of repetition-with-variation...The repetition-with-variation-as-intensification dynamic, so crucial to the language and formal structure of the blues." Gussow goes on to describe the blues as "the victory over the bad things." August Wilson wasn't so optimistic, and perhaps this is where the hope saturated spirituals depart from the human all too human blues, which are not cynical, nor pessimistic, but intensely honest. Wilson reminds us that because the blues is an itinerant music, the tales of an ongoing journey towards liberation, perhaps, but certainly moving in freedom. This is an important distinction, between freedom (as a horizontal movement, even transcendence) and liberation (as a vertical ascendence, transcendence). Plato was aware that liberation might be a momentary experience, but not something that can be sustained during our mortal stay. The freed cave-dweller must return to the cave, after all. This is the fundamental reckoning of the blues, with finitude, mortality, with the fact that through song, music, we can experience a momentary liberation, and, with apologies to the GD, the music does indeed stop, or, if the music does indeed never stops, even after the band is packed and gone, we can not keep on dancing. There have to be moments of rest. The blues helps us to explore the question: is the itinerant movement prosaic or poetic?
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