For some
reason Husserl’s famous declaration, “Back to the things themselves!”, greeted
me this morning as I was reflecting on the direction my commentaries have been taking: the
naturalist, physicalist, and, generally speaking, the experiential. I’m not making a proper inventory at this
moment, but I’d say that the direction the writing took on this summer happened when I started writing in my
commentaries about the movement from the mind to the heart. And it took off in earnest when I was
reading Kerouac, Hemingway and Thoreau.
Again, because I’m not taking a
proper inventory – that will probably have to wait until next year after I’ve completed 2.0 -- I’m not yet ready to claim that the writing
that happened over this summer implies a ‘turn’ or a ‘re-turn’ because
the experiential was always there in
the original meditations from a decade ago, even if the focus of my attention, which is to say, the
focus of the writing was not on
experiences per se, but on the speculative rendering of experience. (Despite the 'messiness' of the work, I was trying to build a system, of sorts; if only a set of categories for thinking about education.) The method, if I can use that term, that I
was following was one of abstracting from experience, and then offering a poetic-philosophic rendering of the
experience of learning, all of it being underwritten by an ontological attitude
aka an attitude that presumes that place (time and space) determines what and how we
undergo experience. So if there is a
‘turn’ that is happening, and I sense it is slowly but surely happening, it is
towards a more ‘ordinary’ or ‘everyday’ form of description that is not any
less philosophical, but decidedly less poetic in the later Heideggerian sense
of poetic philosophy. And if the shift in
form can help me to take up the huacaslogical
question in a satisfying way, then I’m all for it. And I sense that it can and should.
Husserl’s rally cry to return to
things is summarized as the call for the phenomenological attitude, which is,
the call for epoche, a kind of
cleansing of all metaphysical understanding of the world, something akin to
Descartes ‘doubt’ but only in the sense of bracketing or putting aside all
inherited discourses about knowing “in order to focus solely on what shows up as it presents itself in our
experience.”(Robert Dostal, “Time and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger, Cambridge Companion to Heidegger)
Here is not the place to take up
Heidegger’s hermeneutic or interpretative turn, which influenced my approach in
the meditations I am revisiting in this blog.
Although I would say here and now that the so-called ‘physicalist’ move
I have been making this past week seems to indicate some departure from
Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology…but not really…and the reason it does not
indicate a turn from hermeneutics is the following reason that links the writing this summer
with the LAPES writing I was doing in March and April: cultural/geographic historicity. I’ve been pondering that a lot the past two
weeks, especially in the light of the kayaking, hiking and biking. That is, I have been recognizing how much the
focus of my writing this summer has been influenced by the tradition of relating to those
places I've been spending the majority of my experiential time: lakes, bays, mountains, forests.
So there is no doubt that the
‘naturalist’ and ‘physicalist’ turn wouldn't have happened outside of a tradition that
is exemplified by Thoreau, and certainly goes back to Wabanaki ways of
life. (This is what historicity is all about!) And all of it (the traditions) is gathered by these place, this specific part of the earth. Historicity is grounded (literally) in the specificity of place. But for me there are overlapping traditions, a complex historicity. The traditions of my
family, my parents, the Domincanos and the ways of life that were made on Quisqueya,
both the Taino and the post-Columbian.
All that has also influenced the direction of the writing happening this day.
We can and should grant the
hermeneutic situation without making it the center of our attention. Yes, a genealogical chapter (in that
hypothetical book to come!) would be informative and interesting as a way of
understanding what I am embracing, and rejecting, with the naturalist
turn aka where I'm coming from. But more interesting and
philosophical is the writing that describes what happens with the turn, or as a
result of the turn aka a writing/thinking that describes the physical or somatic experiences. This
seems to be what Husserl is at least pointing to, although I’m not convinced
that his phenomenological project involved the documentation of the
‘translation’ of the self that happens when we are covered over by and immersed
in Nature. Husserl’s is still a work of
the mind, or of mind based consciousness or a mostly cognitive perception of the way things show
up as they present themselves in our experience. Now, if this blog is meant, mostly, to be a collection of rough
sketches (relatively unfiltered and unedited writing) aka meditations 2.0, then
I will not apologize for stating my position rather crudely:
the project I’m interested in is one that doesn’t so much kick back passively and
describe what shows up as it presents
itself, but, rather, is a project that describes what it means to show up into the presentation of things
(specifically, wild living things) and then describe what happens when one is
activated by this presentation.
I’m sure, in an intuitional way, that there
is an important distinction to be teased out…much in the way I was teasing out
the difference between Emerson and Thoreau via Porte’s analysis…a difference
that lead me (a bit too quickly) to assume the Gita and the Vedantic tradition in general were incompatible with
Thoreau’s naturalism/realism. Of
course, this is not to suggest Husserl’s project is in any way akin to the
Vedantic. On the contrary, the point
seems to be a bit more nuanced and mostly a matter of the difference in how we
experience experience itself, or what
we mean by ‘experience’. So when someone
like Dostal says “Phenomenology means primarily description – description of
the things presented in our experience and description of our experience of
them,” I take it that we have at least two fundamental issues on the table that
decide how our phenomenology will be
made: the formal one (how we make our
descriptions), and the substantial one, which has two foci (the substance of
experience, and the substance of things…and by substance I mean the being of
each). And I suppose that the first
follows from the second: the revelation of the substance of things (the
disclosure of the being of things) gathers our experience, which, in turn,
gathers our descriptions. Here is where
a lot of further work would begin.
As for the writing completed this
day ten years ago, much of it is a repetition of what I wrote the day before on
the sage as conductor, also incorporating language on forging and the hearth of
peace. This peace is further identified as
originary, as the originary stand in the existential sense of the modality of
the sage when he is taken in by “the primordiality of compassionate
hearing…” This is the hearing that is
linked to healing that is also linked to the spreading of seeds,
cultivation. (cf. OPM 168, 8/1/04) But the metaphors are
quite mixed, and, even if that is not deemed a formal problem – an allowance
given to the raw documentary style of the writing/thinking – it does seem,
however, to be a substantial problem, because the listening that occupies a
primordial place is the one that prepares for and anticipates an effacement
with the presencing of things aka Life qua Nature’s force aka Being’s
Becoming. When that happens the
experience is not one of cultivation,
of spreading and sowing seeds. Indeed,
as I’ve written before, learning is a poiesis
that is a mimetic re-presentation of the presencing of things; it is a manner
of bringing into being short of creating ex
nihilio, which even Nature itself does not do. And so the teaching modality of the sage is
always one that prepares for learning
aka lets learning be learned. And
notice, the claim about the sage is that he ‘lets learning be learned,’ which strikes me as even more preliminary and anticipatory
and preparatory than one might initially understand it to be. Indeed,
it underscores the notion of the learning community being a place that is akin
to an apprentice workshop, or a studio, or even a lab, so long as
experimentation is governs the esprit du corps.
3.0a (Thursday, Portland, ME). Back to the things themselves, indeed! This is what the current phase of the project is all or mostly about in the sense that the "thing" of primary concern is the text, the book, which, I'll have to put in a Foreword, is currently under threat. Book banning has become a crisis and the current project is very much a response to that crisis. But I am not offering a phenomenology of the book, because I am not, or have not yet, identified the study and subsequent discussion of the book (the assigned reading) as "descriptions." Rather, the discussion is an exploration of possible interpretations of the highlighted fragments from the reading. I'm not interested in describing what the thing "is," but rather in responding to what the "thing" (the book) is saying. A description would be a repetition of what is said, rather than a response. But dialogue is about responding, and not repeating. Here's what I wrote this morning:
ReplyDelete3.0b Meaning, Jean-Luc Nancy suggests, emerges in a shared space. He calls this “resonant meaning”(L, 7), and declares “Meaning consists in a reference [renvoi]. In fact, it is made of a totality of referrals: from sign to thing, from a state of things to a quality, from subject to another subject or to itself, all simultaneously.”(L, 7) Resonance denotes the simultaneity of referrals that produce meaning, and he calls the one who resounds with this meaning, the one who is listening, the “resonant subject.” For Nancy the resonant subject is a post-intentional form of subjectivity insofar as he is not constructing meaning or making sense, but rather receiving it through listening. Listening is the reception of the referrals that are sent, like signals or transmissions or even messages if we want to recall the figure of Hermes for whom the practice of close reading and interpretation, hermeneutics, is named. Discussion happens by way of that “totality” of referrals, that include the voices of all who are present and participating but also the arrangement of the room, the circular configuration that allows everyone to face one another. Discussion unfolds as a circulation of referrals.
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3.0c Listening is the foundation of discussion. Learning begins and continues to begin (to arrive) via listening, although technically the discussion begins with the sharing of the fragments, the recitare that presents. Listening is an affirmation of the Moment of learning in the reception of the presence of the reading, the arrival of meaning. Nancy reminds us that “entendre, ‘to hear,’ also means comprendre, “to understand.” (L, 6) And then he says that before hearing, that is, before understanding, there is ecouté, “at the very bottom, a listening.”(L, 6) And this leads him to wonder if this more fundamental and original modality of reception suspends the movement towards the outcome of understanding. Listening is not before understanding. Listening is the modality that enables the student to remain within the dynamic rebounding transmission of meaning, the polyphonic performance of discussion that sounds like an improvisational musical jam session. The fragments provide the groove, while the interpretations are akin to the solos that are traded between the students. There is a joy (joussaince) in the discussion as a performance, in learning for learning’s sake, in the experience that does not attempt to “know” the text, and is content not to make sense, or, from the perspective of schooling, do nothing. Nancy continues: “perhaps it is necessary that sense not be content to make sense (or to be logos), but that it want also to resound. My whole proposal will revolve around such fundamental resonance, even around a resonance as a foundation, as a first or last profundity of ‘sense’ itself (or of truth).”(L, 6)
ReplyDeleteBachelard combines “resonance” with “repercussion.” He calls their relationship a “phenomenological doublet,” but the relation can also be described as a dialectical one. They don’t oppose one another, per se, but designate the dimensions of interiority and exteriority, the spiritual and the worldly. Each denotes a different way that meaning circulates from the work of art (the book/text). “The resonances are dispersed on the different planes of our life in the world, while the repercussions invite us to give greater depth to our own existence.”(PS, xviii) Resonance emerges from the solitude of study (reading), and from the re-reading (recitare) with others. In both cases we are listening to the work. The response, first in writing, with the annotation of highlights, and then in the dialogic interpretations of those highlights, we are “speaking” the work. In the repercussions or “reverberations we speak it, it is our own. The reverberations bring about a change of being. It is as though the [author’s] being were our being. The multiplicity of resonances then issues from the reverberations’ unity of being.”(PS, xviii)
3.0d What Bachelard is suggesting it that the significance of the work takes hold of the student, “possesses us entirely,”(PS, xviii), and in this Moment of captivation there is an occurrence of a ‘unity’ or what Nancy calls “truth” through which the totality of referrals resound and is refracted. The errantry of the discussion, the non-linear jam, is enabled by this refraction that deflects the dialogue from moving in a direct path towards the outcome of “understanding.” Listening is the receptive modality of resonant subjectivity through which the “truth” of the plurality of meaning is mediated. The unity of being is the commonality of learning, the shared experience of exploring the multiplicity of ways of thinking about what the work is saying. When Heidegger says to his students, “most thought-provoking is that we are not yet thinking,” he is indicating that “thinking” is an end in-and-for-itself, a learning for learning’s sake, and the “not yet” is a cipher for the poetics of the discussion that always remains to but can never grasp what remains elusive and mysterious. Discussion is a constant wondering and wandering that is constantly moving. The discussion will always be inconclusive because it moves “into the enigmatic.”(WCT, 17) Heidegger describes the “enigmatic” as what appeals to us, e.g., when the work captivates us. The appeal or address of the text elicits wonder because it holds back, and in holding back opens up the possibility of interpretation. This holding back, this “withdrawal,” has an almost gravitational pull, the kind that places objects in orbit. The force of the text instigates the circulation of meanings that move the discussion. And when the voices in response to the text are circulating, when the dialogic performance is jamming, the students are “thinking” together. The dialogue is moved by the pull or draft of the text, and in response to that draft there is speaking, listening and responding, but nothing is written or recorded that can “capture” the discussion. In this way the discussion remains Socratic, or following in the example of Socrates who, as Heidegger reminds us, stood with others in that location, the Moment receiving the arrival of presence, the circulation of meaning. “All through his life and right into his death, Socrates did nothing else than place himself in this draft, this current, and maintain himself in it. This is why he is the purest thinker.”(WCT, 17
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