The meditation from this day ten
years ago focuses on the “peace of the learning community” as the
“past/present.” As such the learning
community is identified as “the shelter of the revolutionary ‘not yet’.” Using a category from Arendt, the nunc stans, the temporality of the
learning community is also described as “the ‘standing now’ as it is given
and to which the newcomer arrives. This
arrival…marks the entrance of the other, the ‘not yet’ that interrupts the
impending stasis that threatens to establish itself as the regeneration of the
past/present.”
Given yesterday’s commentary, which was organized around the Gospel read at yesterday’s liturgy, it’s impossible for me not to continue to think about the temporality of the encounter recorded by Mark in his testimony. There are some philosophical complexities that need to be addressed, but before I do that, I want to borrow again from Mark and use the figure of the Canaanite woman as a clear cut example of what I am calling the ‘arrival of the other’ who represents the newcomer to the learning community.
In the story recounted by Mark the congregation of the disciples are depicted as remaining within the past/present that defines the temporality of the house of Israel. That is to say, they have yet to make the turn toward the faith that is oriented toward an unknown yet always anticipated future. In turn, their rejection of the Canaanite woman expresses the threatening stasis of past/present, and also the possibility that the radical turn toward a future oriented faith will be delayed if not postponed. Jesus’ ‘withdrawing’ to a region beyond his homeland (‘the house’) is thus necessary so that the radical turn can be taken. Indeed, the radicality of Christ is located in the turn away from the laws that have organized the past, a turn that is not a rejection of those laws per se, but a rejection of their hold on the present, which is to say, a rejection of their denial of a future that is not a redundant replication of the past.
Given yesterday’s commentary, which was organized around the Gospel read at yesterday’s liturgy, it’s impossible for me not to continue to think about the temporality of the encounter recorded by Mark in his testimony. There are some philosophical complexities that need to be addressed, but before I do that, I want to borrow again from Mark and use the figure of the Canaanite woman as a clear cut example of what I am calling the ‘arrival of the other’ who represents the newcomer to the learning community.
In the story recounted by Mark the congregation of the disciples are depicted as remaining within the past/present that defines the temporality of the house of Israel. That is to say, they have yet to make the turn toward the faith that is oriented toward an unknown yet always anticipated future. In turn, their rejection of the Canaanite woman expresses the threatening stasis of past/present, and also the possibility that the radical turn toward a future oriented faith will be delayed if not postponed. Jesus’ ‘withdrawing’ to a region beyond his homeland (‘the house’) is thus necessary so that the radical turn can be taken. Indeed, the radicality of Christ is located in the turn away from the laws that have organized the past, a turn that is not a rejection of those laws per se, but a rejection of their hold on the present, which is to say, a rejection of their denial of a future that is not a redundant replication of the past.
All ontological descriptions of
the learning community made in the original meditations (and Being and Learning) -- ‘openness’ and ‘a
dynamic processural gathering’ and ‘spontaneous’ and ‘improvisational’ -- rely
on the same temporality disclosed by Mark: the temporality of a present that
remains continuous with the present but not determined by it. This is what Arendt calls the miracle of
natality, the unpredictability of freedom.
Put otherwise, while the conditions are always in place the outcome is
never predetermined or known in advance.
And this is why I always refer to the future as the ‘not yet’.
The temporality of the learning community relies on a
complicated logic, one that bends the rules governing the relationship between
the chronological and the kairological.
The rule bending happens with the qualification of the ‘standing now’ as
a ‘moving present’ -- echoing the rendering of time by
Aristotle. To identify the temporality
of the learning as a ‘moving present’ is to describe learning as a poetic event
(poiesis) where something new is made
but not in the sense of creation. The interruption happening with the event of learning is 'creation' in the sense of forming or making something new and distinct yet not ex nihilio. With the poiesis of learning there is continuity with the gathered material but no
redundancy because there is spontaneity and improvisation with the making, the unexpected
arrival of the new into the old or
pre-existing conditions. In this sense, as I have written before, learning is a mimetic expression of Nature's law of birth, growth and decay. The most
obvious example is the regeneration the forest from the seeds that fall from
mature trees, returning to the ground that can claim to be the origin of the
seed. This return is initiated by the
seed, which is not being reclaimed, but breaking the ground anew. The ground breaking is the movement of the
present in the sense that the ground remains always in place and what takes root
in it is always in the process of growth or decay. If growth is the movement then the ground is
the present. And learning is the growth
that is rooted in the ground of human history, the world, but ultimately the
same fecund ground as the wilderness forest.
3.0 (Sunday, Portland, ME). Well, after a very long night that included a 3:30am drive over to the vet emergency clinic in Scarborough where Coco was treated. She's always been a ball of energy and nerves and we call her the explorer because she loves to explore in the wilderness behind our house. But in August the forest is inundated with a small green forest plant that produces tiny green burrs that attach themselves to the exploring Coco's fur. Out other dog, Blaze, also gets them, but she's much less of an explorer and thus gets fewer burrs. All that to say that last night the number of burrs stuck in her fur must have been the breaking point for her nervous system and after 5 hours of restlessness we took her to the vet. Sharing that as a way of documenting the family highlights for posterity, and also to note that I did not write anything new this morning to post and aside from documenting the adventure with Coco, I only have a few comments to make in response the OPM from this day and the 2.0 commentary. There is the obvious coincidence of reading references to Arendt and her description of action, the enactment of natality, as like a miracle. After almost three months of writing this summer yesterday was the first day I cited that important moment from Arendt's "Human Condition," and I posted it in the 3.0 commentary. So that is noteworthy, big time. Within the narrative of the book, the citation will be significant and, I hope, somewhat dramatic. I hope the quotation pops! Speaking of my hopes, yesterday I realized that I have been following or working out what I think it is a unique methodology of working with fragments. The dialectic that I am describing moves from Reading to Writing, but that writing isn't actually composition, but, rather annotation, and, specifically, the citing of highlights or "whatever essentials" capture the student's attention during study/reading. But I myself follow that strategy, more or less, which is to say work with fragments and citations, most of them that I take from the principal readings I am drawing on, which are ones I've used for decades, and others that are my own, the most important being "learning begins and continues with listening," or "learning begins with listening." As I see it, the methodology is a kind of philosophical 'remixing' where I work with fragments, 'sampling' them repeatedly, but also taking them out of context, more often than not. It's not that I deliberately "misread" the fragment, but that I'm not concerned with being "faithful" to the original context. I lift and borrow freely, in the way a hip-hop DJ will create a break in large part by building from a sample. I'm kind of excited by that realization! The other thing I wanted to document is my decision, for now, to title the book "Learn" inspired by a piece of urban wall art that Kelly and I rode by last weekend. And then beneath it I want to have the following: "By Duarte/Professor Iguana." My bio: Eduardo Duarte aka Professor Iguana is a professor and DJ at Hofstra University. He teaches philosophy in the School of Education, and is host of the Dead Zone on WRHU, Radio Hofstra University, which he produces at the Turkey Studios in his hometown of Portland, Maine.
ReplyDelete