OPM 96 continues exploring the "poet's renunciation," which stands in for the encounter with the ineffable, the boundary for the written word. For Heidegger the 'poetic' of the poet is measured by their perception of that boundary. Being 'more poetic' means being 'more open and ready for the unforeseen,' and this is also a measure of how 'free' they are. In OPM 95 I suggest that this freedom is linked to renunciation insofar as one frees oneself from one's self, from the self-imposed limits that are found in the words we use. This is why I say that learning begins with hearing, or the moment when we renounce our claim on language (the ego), and move into a modality of reception, the listening that happens from silence. In the wake of the echoing aphorism, 'to teach is to let learning happen,' in OPM 96 offers: "If teaching is letting learning happen, then the one who has 'attained' the proper comportment of hearing, who has caught sight of the ineffable, is the one most capable of teaching because she is far less sure of her capacity to speak, far less sure of the 'finality' of her saying."
In OPM 95 I traced the root of renuniciation to renuntiare 'to bring back word.' Here, with the claim that the teacher is the silent partner who clears the space by renouncing speaking and announcing listening, 'brings back the word' or the voice of the students. For those familiar with the work of Paulo Freire this all sounds familiar, and it should be because there is no question that his influence is felt at this moment. The key difference between Freire's process and the one I am describing (from afar, because this is all a description of an imagined and ideal figure; yes, an ideal type!) is the character or kind of dialogic learning that is happening. On the one hand, Freire's problem-posing education that includes codification is a specific practice of literacy education that is rooted in the concrete historical reality of the students. His teacher is a historical figure, while mine is a 'literary' figure, much like the character of Socrates for Plato, the figures in Plato's 'allegory of the cave,' and even the figure of Heraclitus in Aristotle's story. They are all literary figures who resemble 'real people' and 'real practices.' My sage, precisely because he is an ideal type, does not exist in the way Paulo Freire's liberatory educator existed and produced Pedagogy of the Oppressed and other books.
Of course, even though it is an ideal type or 'literary figure,' there is a sense in which the sage is also an existential modality, or a way of being that we can find ourselves in from time to time. We can aspire to locate that modality, and so I often write of 'the one who..." which is a way of indicating who we are when we take up this or that practice. For example, in OPM 96 I describe the teacher as "the one who renounces the inherited depiction of the instructor...to renounce this kid of authority is to abandon the location that positions the teacher 'above and beyond' the student..." If the modality arises from a particular location or position (posture?) then we can attempt to map out and search for that location, or practice the position (posture?), which seems quite plausible in the example I've just offered if the matter is one of abandoning the script or narrative of teacher authority we have inherited. This would follow from taking inspiration from the character of the sage who has renounced speaking and announcing listening.
In OPM 95 I traced the root of renuniciation to renuntiare 'to bring back word.' Here, with the claim that the teacher is the silent partner who clears the space by renouncing speaking and announcing listening, 'brings back the word' or the voice of the students. For those familiar with the work of Paulo Freire this all sounds familiar, and it should be because there is no question that his influence is felt at this moment. The key difference between Freire's process and the one I am describing (from afar, because this is all a description of an imagined and ideal figure; yes, an ideal type!) is the character or kind of dialogic learning that is happening. On the one hand, Freire's problem-posing education that includes codification is a specific practice of literacy education that is rooted in the concrete historical reality of the students. His teacher is a historical figure, while mine is a 'literary' figure, much like the character of Socrates for Plato, the figures in Plato's 'allegory of the cave,' and even the figure of Heraclitus in Aristotle's story. They are all literary figures who resemble 'real people' and 'real practices.' My sage, precisely because he is an ideal type, does not exist in the way Paulo Freire's liberatory educator existed and produced Pedagogy of the Oppressed and other books.
Of course, even though it is an ideal type or 'literary figure,' there is a sense in which the sage is also an existential modality, or a way of being that we can find ourselves in from time to time. We can aspire to locate that modality, and so I often write of 'the one who..." which is a way of indicating who we are when we take up this or that practice. For example, in OPM 96 I describe the teacher as "the one who renounces the inherited depiction of the instructor...to renounce this kid of authority is to abandon the location that positions the teacher 'above and beyond' the student..." If the modality arises from a particular location or position (posture?) then we can attempt to map out and search for that location, or practice the position (posture?), which seems quite plausible in the example I've just offered if the matter is one of abandoning the script or narrative of teacher authority we have inherited. This would follow from taking inspiration from the character of the sage who has renounced speaking and announcing listening.
3.0 - Learning begins with listening. If the forthcoming book will begin with "I teach in a circular building," then chapter 1 might begin with "learning begins with listening." The first moment of the dialectic is a version of the way it is initiated by Hegel in the "Science of Logic": the Nothing. While this project was initiated by Plato's challenge to "turn the student around" (periagogē), the dialectic of the philosophical education that I am describing in the OPMs and the 2.0 and 3.0 commentary was evoked by the question, How is it with the Nothing? If we place emphasis on "with" then the question is asking, How does it feel to be located in the Open region? What is happening to you when you are with emptiness, in the solitude that is rendered when your ego is displaced? When our will is suspended and put aside what remains, what is possible, what can we do? Perhaps all that is possible is receiving. The one who is with/in the Nothing experiences the ego-less modality of what the Zen Buddhist call the wu-nien: "the experience of an instantaneous severing of thought that occurs in the course of a thoroughgoing pursuit of a Buddhist meditative exercise." The emptying of the ego (mind) -- to be with/in the Nothing. The location assembles the existential modality - the place constructs the 'face' (the mask). Here the link between "persona" and "persono" -- the mask worn by performers in the ancient tragedy. I have made that connection many times before, and emphasized it my work on Nancy, who refers to it in his essay on music. The resonant subject, the one who resonates with music, is the one who is positioned in the modality of emptiness. To be "emptied" of one's ego (intentionality) is to be capable of listening, to resonate with sound, which could be music, but also the sounds of the morning alongside the forest (as I'm experiencing here on the patio in the back yard of my home in Portland), the echoing of the songs of the birds, the barking of a dog, the murmur of the distant traffic. But this morning I learn more about that mask worn by the performers. I learn from Thano Vovolis (mask/costume/set designer) and Giorgos Zambourlakis (Stage Director, Athens), that the mask rendered "The face is expressionless, in a state of total presence, a state of emptiness. The tragic mask represents this state of mind and this is the state of mind the actor has to assume on stage. We define this state of body/mind as a state of kenosis (emptying, depletion) and the tragic mask as the mask of kenosis." This is a significant lesson and leads to the following description: if learning begins with listening, then becoming the learner begins when one is relocated with/in the Nothing, made empty by putting on the mask and thereby entering the modality of kenosis (an emptying of the ego, a relocation of the will).
ReplyDelete