OPM 133 Day 6 on Mt. Desert Island, Pine Cone Cabin, Hodgon
Pond
The response to Aristotle happens with this
meditation. There’s a sense in which the
confrontation with the analytic form of philosophy that undergirds the
dominant forms of educational theory and
practice comes into clear focus with the arrival of Aristotle and the
subsequent push back against his distinction between the person of experience
and the person of knowledge. For me, the
most problematic aspect of this distinction is the translation of the latter as
‘artist’. While I don’t have the Greek
original in front of me, nor access to the internet to check the term used by
Aristotle, it seems to obvious that he is referring to the master craftsman,
the one who can show or disclose to others the techniques by demonstrating
them. Paradoxically, this figure is the
same one invoked by Heidegger in the much cited first lecture from What is Called Thinking?, when he
compares the master woodworker to the teacher or the one who lets learning be
learned. How so? For Heidegger, the master woodworker
understands how to work with the wood, which is to say, understands how to
perceive what the wood is offering.
It’s not clear that Aristotle’s craftsman operates under the same aspect
of receptivity. What is clear is that he
has mastered the technique of his craft.
He understands expertly the way each of the tools works, and precisely what materials are needed. But is he like Michelangelo the sculptor, and
thereby able to perceive the form inside of the block of marble? I have my doubts, because what Aristotle’s
‘teacher’ can do is demonstrate a process, a technique, that can be learned and
repeated. Thus, the emphasis is clearly
upon the technician and his mastery of technique that can be applied to any
relevant situation.
This is precisely where OPM 133 responds by
returning to the Heideggerian/Lao Tzu hybridized practice of ‘renunciation.’ “Renunciation of the authorial voice is a
yielding to the path of silence…the silencing of the authorial voice is the
original moment in the enactment of painstaking listening, the first position
in the art of poetic dialogue.”
Renunciation of the authorial voice leads to the
modality of receptivity that is not simply a manner of teaching, which
Heidegger calls letting learning be learned, but is way of making art that
dispels with the persona of the ‘creative artist.’ Art making happens by way of allowing a form
to come into to being, and has everything to do with finding the flow. If everything already is, if everything is
already given, then art making is only ever the act of mediating change,
allowing for one set of things to form into another. Art making is assisting in the reforming of
new relations between things. (As I
write this I have a vague feeling that Dewey might have said something quite
similar, but my sense is that he was focused on aesthetic perception rather
than art making. And perhaps the line
between the two is fuzzy for me, because aesthetic perception may be the first
step in the mediation that leads to the formation of a new set of relations
that produces a work of art.
I have all of this prompted by the line at the beginning
of OPM 133 that promises that more exploration will happen on “art as a practice…within experiential
philosophy…one quite unique from Aristotle’s way of naming it.” This sentence within read tonight in the wake
of day of experiences that, like so many of the previous days, literally
unfolded, happening with little or no planning at all. And from this unfolding I encountered some
truly inspiring contemporary Native American artists at the Abbe Museum in Bar
Harbor, followed by yet another awesome hike, this time one that took us up the
sides of the eastern most mountains where we encountered cascading waterfalls
that were flooding from the intense rain that came through all through last
night and most of today. The beauty and
singularity of what we encountered today is what made the experience at the
museum and on the mountain so revealing with respect to the power of the
unexpected, and the virtue of preparing oneself to receive an offering of
something. Learning is all about
reception, about encountering the disclosure of what is in totally novel way.
(As I look back quickly at the reflections from the past days, it seems that on
Nature is capable of showing us the most familiar phenomenon in totally unique
ways. The flow of water is the prime
example for me these past two days!)
3.0 (Wednesday, Portland, ME) - Coincidental to read the musings on hiking in Acadia and visiting the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor. I remember well the first time we visited, and the array of mediums used by the artists. There were several powerful video installations. The coincidence happens with our visiting the PMA last Saturday and seeing the Jeremy Frey exhibit https://www.portlandmuseum.org/woven. Frey is an example of the master craftsman. He is also an example of the way art can weave (pun intended) together culture, history and nature. For Aristotle, the "artist" understands best the proper technique for bring a form into being, but these forms are already present. Aristotle's artist is not the creative artist as we understand it today. The emphasis is on technique and the knowledge of materials. This is why Heidegger's master craftsman is described in the passage noted above as the one who can perceive the form within the wood. The current PMA exhibit features Frey selecting ash tree from the forest, axing off the bark, pealing the soft fiber until he has thin strands that he will use to weave the baskets. The artistry as we would understand happens with the ornamentation. The forms are no different than those that have appeared throughout human history. Form is secondary to process, and what Frey's work highlights is the artistry of the craft of weaving. The usual flow of this project would have me draw an analogy with teaching, and describe teaching and learning as a kind of weaving. What is the material that is being weaved? Ideas, cultural history? Definitely not personal history. This is what is "renounced" by the Sage. This past year I have been using the term "replaced" to describe how the personal is put aside in philosophical learning. For many, that move is out of step with the contemporary flow of theory that places personal identity at the starting point. They call it "positionality." And for others, especially the post-humanists, my replacement doesn't go far enough because it doesn't emphasize enough the role of the non-human, i.e., nature and objects. I suppose I'm a post-humanist humanist. That still emphasizes book learning and the arts, placing emphasis on the object of learning. The outcome is human freedom and autonomy. In essence, a liberal arts education, where the encounter with the arts is understood to be liberating the student from the mundane. But this move isn't necessarily a Modernist one. It can be an effort to reconnect and can emphasize the continuity of tradition. Jeremy Frey is an example, especially when we describe his work as a kind of resistance to the mundane, a decolonial praxis.
ReplyDelete3.0b - Jeremy Frey is "a seventh-generation Passamaquoddy basket maker and one of the most celebrated Indigenous weavers in the country, learned traditional Wabanaki weaving techniques from his mother and apprenticeships through the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance. An important aspect of Frey’s artistic vision is his drive to build upon the past and what was once passed down to him. 'I have refined the teaching of my mother beyond anything I would have considered possible,'Frey states."
ReplyDelete3.0c- I should have noted that the subtitle of the Frey exhibit is "Tradition is ever-changing." That speaks to the balance I am trying to achieve with a post-humanist humanism that affirms the importance of tradition, but understands tradition as dynamic and even dialectic, emerging from the creative tension between past and present. It is not the repetition of the same.
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