Looking back at the conclusion of
yesterday’s commentary offers me a prelude to tomorrow, and the planned hike up
the White Mountains Mt. Jackson in Crawford Notch.
Tonight, after a very long day,
however, I am focused on the writing from this day ten years ago. Before turning to it, however, I have to note
that less than a month before the submissions for PES 2015 start rolling in and
already there is a buzz building with respect to the conference, which is
calling for us to think about philosophy as blues and soul music. Folks are responding to the call, and,
what’s more, they seem to be responding to my longstanding work on
improvisation. There’s reason to be
optimistic.
As for my engagement with
improvisation, both conceptually in my philosophical writing, and
experimentally with my teaching, and also through my radio documentary work on
my weekly show The Dead Zone, the obvious presence of improvisation in this
commemorative blog, which was revealed to me last night. After writing for a second day on the Gospel
of Mark I had a moment of self-criticism, questioning the somewhat haphazard
movement of my commentaries. The
criticism comes from the place I’ve written about before, namely, the deeply
entrenched norms of academic writing, especially the expectation that the
writing is coherent and ‘progressive’, which is to say, consistently moving
forward explicating and developing a premise, and then building on said
premise, etc. The original mediations
were in some ways still caught in that logic, although one does not sense much
‘progression’. There is almost too
much repetition for there to be any kind of ‘progress.’ Nevertheless, the expectations are
internalized and every so often they come out in the form of
self-critique. But my ‘self’ responded
to the critique by recognizing the so-called ‘haphazard’ writing to be a
manifestation of the very poiesis I
have been theorizing; the direction of the writing is unpredictable one day to
the next, and is always situated at the nexus of the writing from a decade ago
and some moment within the day that writing is being revisited. I’m not entirely sure if there is a genre
for this kind of writing, but I believe it isn’t so far from the writing I
found most compelling this summer, insofar as it is attempting to make a
phenomenology of the present, an experiential phenomenology, or phenomenology
of experience that follows its own kind of process: begins with a description
of everyday experience and slowly but surely makes its way to the speculative.
Coincidentally, the writing from
this day describes the narrative quality of meditative thinking, calling the
newcomer’s interruption of the learning community – the arrival that moves the present into the future – the
“poetic narrative…What is novel and new, then, is offered in the telling of a
tale, in the offering up of a narrative.
The narrative is the ‘object’ of learning…the phenomenon ‘taken up’ by
the community of learners…”(8/19/04)
Here for the first time, so far as
I can recall, the meditations describe the materiality of the learning poiesis.
Up to now the focus has been on the process of making. In the meditation from this day ten years
ago, the emphasis is placed on the voice of the newcomer, which is precisely what
I was focused on the past two days with Mark and the story of the Canaanite
woman. The power of her voice moved
Jesus, and this force was conveyed with her story, which expressed her
faith. If faith can move mountains then
it can do so because it is declared and witnessed. In other words, the sonic alone cannot convey
the force. And here I’m reminded of the
commentary writing from August 5th that took up Aristotle’s
definition of rhetoric and applied it to the writing happening in this blog,
but more generally to music-making philosophy and the writing from the
threshold. Aristotle identified a kind
of argumentation that proceeded by way of symbols and probability, which is
another way of describing the parables and revelation of faith in the Gospels,
specifically, the one from Mark I have been referring to these past three
days. The narrative of the newcomer, her
story, offers up a demonstration of faith:
it is an argument via story telling.
In what sense ‘argument’?
In the case of the Gospel I have
been referring to, there is some consensus that the brief exchange is actually
a kind of hybrid of rhetoric and dialectic because there is something of debate
happening between Jesus and the Canaanite woman. It is a debate or argument, but the point is
that arguments are being made via symbolic language and metaphors. But this just begs the question: in what
sense is it a an argument via story telling?
To remain consistent with the move made in the meditation from 8/19/04 I
would have to show that the Canaanite woman is offering a narrative, which I
believe she is doing. And this then
reveals the way I am using the term ‘narrative’: self-disclosure. The narrative of the newcomer is only ever a
demonstration of the self, or self-disclosure, a sharing of ‘who’ they are:
“the newcomer submits him-self in the form of a poetic narrative, a ‘tale’, to
the community.”(8/19/04) The tale can be
long or short, and can involve others:
children, parents, siblings, friends, etc. The more detailed the better in terms of
offering something new, and putting forth an ‘object’ for thinking. But what is essential, it seems, is that the
tale of the newcomer make some kind of challenge to the community. Here is where the argument resides: in the
challenge to the status quo that moves the present. The ‘moving present’ is propelled then by a
challenge, which in the very early meditations I described as the ‘questioning
of the questioning stand’. If those early meditations were all about the
upsetting of the self-certain individual, these meditations from the middle of
the experiment are concerned with the upsetting of the self-certain community.
“The ‘object’ of learning appears with…this break, the interruption occurring
when the stranger’s narrative, his evocative saying, is received ‘objectively’,
that is, as wholly other.”(8/19/04)
Finally, it is crucial to
underline the confidence of the newcomer; the strength of conviction is faith,
but what becomes of the courage of this newcomer’s conviction when they are
received by the community? This is a
question that has just now occurred to me, and one that I completely overlooked
when writing these meditations a decade ago.
Here, at the end of today’s commentary, I can only conjecture that the
figure of the Canaanite woman, like the stranger in Kant’s essay on cosmopolitanism,
who I wrote about in 2008, is a figure whose passing presence makes an
interruption, and who departs the scene leaving yet leaves behind a lasting
impression such that it is becomes an ‘object’ for thinking.
3.0 (Monday, Portland, ME). Coco is much better. And the atmosphere of our home feels like the peace and freedom that is described throughout the original project. I've just completed my morning writing session, and the Gospel of John, not Mark, made an appearance. Arendt's quasi-theological writing make it almost unavoidable. She cites Augustine, and even mentions Jesus to support her description of natality. I had wanted to support my use of the term "kairos" with a citation from a scholarly piece on the theologian Paul Tillich. I've been using "kairos" in my work for years, but it was last year, I believe, or maybe the year before, that Franks casually remarked after reading a paper I shared with him, "I don't understand your use of 'kairos.'" I was surprised more than taken aback, because it always seemed to obvious to me because I assumed folks understood the category. But after that comment I knew I would have to share a citation that would more or less define how I'm using the term. I found an excellent quotation the other day, but wasn't sure if or where it would go. And like with most of my writing sessions, the quote landed unexpectedly along with a citation of Houston Baker, whose book on Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance was one of the best I've read in the past 3 years! Here's what I wrote this morning:
ReplyDelete3.0b - Discussion is a form of action. Among the principles that are realized in discussion, the principle of beginning is perhaps the one that designates what is essential with learning. To learn is to begin something new. Discussion is a form of action that enacts the principle of beginning. If learning begins, continues and is cultivated through listening this is because listening is a receptive modality, the reception of an offering or a gift. Listening is a beginning, the start of something new, and with discussion listening is the reception of the new that is offered with the voices of others who share. In this way, discussion is the dialogic enactment of the principle of beginning, the disclosure and reception of the singularity of each student. It is a reenactment of what Arendt describes in the aphorism that expresses in one line her Augustian inspired story of Creation: “With the creation of [humanity], the principle of beginning came into the world itself, which, of course is only another way of saying that the principle of freedom was created when [humanity] was created but not before.”(HC, 177) Here we recognize that “beginning” and “freedom” are two names for the same principle that actualizes what she calls the twin facts of “natality” and “plurality.” To act is to begin, and action is the enactment of the principle of freedom which, when perceived from the perspective of singularity displays the fact of natality, and when perceived from the perspective of collectivity displays the fact of plurality. Discussion is the occasion when both of those perspectives are displayed.
ReplyDelete3.0c - To display is to exhibit, show, demonstrate. Blanchot describes how the community gathered “in their limitless power…accepts doing nothing.”(UC, 32) But the “presence” of the people who form that community, in displaying their “limitless power” in doing nothing is doing something, they are not making or producing but performing, exhibiting, showing and displaying the principle of freedom. They are “spontaneously demonstrating.”(UC, 32) Demonstrating their limitless power that wells up from facts of natality and plurality. Is this a definitely or essentially “human” trait? Arendt insists it is because the display is happening through speech, through the word, and her insistence is an echo of the first line from the Gospel as written by John: “In the beginning was the Word.” But as Houston Baker reminds us, our urge to display our natality, to disclose our singularity, is not unlike the gorilla “display.” Citing Colin Groves: “The full display is extremely impressive and quite terrifying except to another gorilla.”(MHR, 51) Baker adds: “Such displays present the type of allaestheic mask that Cott calls phaneric. Rather than concealing or disguising in the manner of the cryptic mask (a colorful mastery of codes), the phaneric mask is meant to advertise. It distinguishes rather than conceals.” (MHR, 51) The formation of the learning community is thus a disruption of schooling’s herd mentality, what Baker describes as a “deformation of mastery.” And it happens away from the center. The discussion is not quite outside, not yet in exile, and just beyond the threshold. When observed by a “visitor” from the outside (looking in), the learning community appears to be doing something. They observe the teacher who appears attentive, and seems to be conducting the class in the usual manner, and they project onto her the traditional form of authority. But that “something” that is happening is concealing and disguising the discussion as a disruption and deformation of the “mastery” that herds pupils to schooling’s predetermined outcomes. The discussion is a sonic display that demands listening. But the observer looking in does not receive the sound of the improvisational dialogue. They remain outside of the community, and do not share the commonality. They have not studied the book/text, and have nothing to share. But the observer is unaware of their status. The display conceals and disguises the deformation and disruption, and that is made easy by the positionality of the observer. They perceive the periphery from the center, and from that distance what is in fact different appears to be the usual exchange between instructor and pupils. The observer stands on the well trodden ground of the tradition of schooling that, as Irigaray describes it, “is founded on looking-at rather than listening-to.”(LTT, 231) In this “tradition, listening is at the service of looking, especially with regard to teaching…the master has taught the disciple that which he has already perceived; that is, that which he has already seen. All the world is, in a way, transformed into a gathering of objects the master has to perceive -- that is, to see -- in an appropriate way, and to arrange into a parallel world thanks to his language, his linguistic logic, his logos. The discussions, the presumed dialogues, between master and disciple are based on the correct perception of the things or objects of the world and their correct arrangement in a whole.”(LTT, 231)
ReplyDelete3.0d -
ReplyDeleteWhen heard by those who are part of the learning community the discussion is a display of the spontaneous demonstration of singularity and plurality, “the disclosure of ‘who’ in contradistinction to ‘what’ somebody is.”(HC 179) To display, exhibit, manifest is to show and bring to the attention of another or others, to reveal. The discussion is a disclosure, first, of the highlighted fragments that have captured the attention of the students, and, next, of the virtuosity of spontaneity and improvisation. Together these two moments reveal the discussion to be doing nothing beyond the dialogic performance of learning. Each discussion is an enactment of the principle of beginning/freedom. The discussion occurs, and is an event of learning. The kairological quality of discussion denotes the “something” displayed in the dialogue. Robert Ross, a close reader of theologian Paul Tillich, notes “The concept of Kairos is designed to display the meaning of the uniqueness of certain historical events: i.e., to point to their meaning which is a result of their idiosyncratic and unique character…this uniqueness forces us into a personal relation with that event because we are forced to come to a decision based on it, make a response to it.”(KL, 207) The person or persona who is disclosed in the discussion is not a return of the self-certain subject (the “I”). Rather, to borrow from Arendt, as the discussion unfolds and the flow of the dialogue is happening, each student “show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world” with “the sound of the voice.”(HC, 179)
The decision to share, to enter the stage of learning and perform with others, indicates that the performance is not scripted. Improvisation and spontaneity emerge in the void or gap, the space of possibility that opens in the Moment. What the students have initially shared are fragments from the book/text they have each studied. But what they will say in response to those fragments is not predetermined. The discussion enacts the principle of freedom/beginning, and “it is in the nature of beginning that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before. This character of startling unexpectedness is inherent in all beginnings.”(HC, 178) The discussion occurs. It happens. And with the gathering again of the students and their teacher, the unexpected can be expected, anticipated, but never guaranteed. The possibility of discussion is always there, potentially, so long as there is the presence of the people, when personas show up and show out, displaying their natality. “Then speech corresponds to the fact of distinctness and is the actualization of the human condition of plurality, that is, of living as a distinct and unique human being among equals.”(HC, 178) But the disclosure of the persona is not entirely untethered from the display that is also a concealment. The persona is a masking of the “I” who is “certain” of the self they are showing off to others. But, as Arendt reminds us, the persona who is revealed in the discussion “can almost never be achieved as a wilful purpose, as those one possessed and could dispose of this ‘who’ in the same manner he has and can dispose of his qualities. On the contrary, it is more like that the ‘who,’ which appears so clearly and unmistakably to others, remains hidden from the person himself.”(HC, 179)