This morning I looked up at the
chalkboard that hangs over my desk, and I found my ToDo list a bit
demoralizing, especially in comparison to the confident one that I had erased
in June, after completing the sixth and final project. I half-heartedly replaced that list with the
list of prep work related to the fall semester that I needed to complete by
mid-August. When I looked up at the
list this morning it seemed sad, like a bunch of neglected bananas that had
passed beyond the edible stage and would have to be mixed into pancake or bread
batter…not so bad an alternative, actually.
So the comparison of my list ends there, because the state of that sad
little list had reached the stage where it needed to be tossed in the
compost. In place of the list I wrote
what I take to be the quasi-systemic/Plontinianesque ontological emanation:
Being/Becoming
ê
Life/Nature
ê
Place
[Time/Space]
ê
Huacaslogy
& Phenomenology
That’s more or less how it appears
on the chalkboard above my desk, and I have no plans to rewrite it, although as
I was typing it just now I realize there are alternative ways of diagraming
these categories that would better express the work I’ve completed over this
summer of writing commentaries. First
and foremost a total inversion. What
appears above is precisely what I described it when I invoked the name of Plotinus
and his theory of emanation. And that
means that it is very much a diagram that is more or less faithfully
representing the Platonic tradition of Western metaphysics and its bifurcated,
two-world theory. As I’m not of that
faith, a better diagram would be an inversion
Huacaslogy & Phenomenology
Huacaslogy & Phenomenology
ë ì
place
[space/time]
ë ì
Life/Nature
ë ì
Being/Becoming
The inverted diagram offers a
better expression of the originary logical process of disclosure and unfolding
that I am presuming throughout this project, thereby demonstrating the
rootedness of each moment within a
prior. The splits offer a rough sketch
of the two sidedness that persists throughout, a split that is not necessarily
dialectical but definitely co-incidental, or co-arising, one side relying on
the other.
The inspiration for attempting to
make this diagram, which, admittedly, is
crude, was the last week of writing where a phenomenology of the body emerged
from a place based ontology. The revelation
of truth happens with the intensity of the physical encounter with place. The more intense that physical encounter, the
more intense the understanding of the place.
And I’m tempted to make the following claim: the more intense the
physical location – a wild and demanding place
– offers the more intense possibility of understanding. Understanding
what? Life! Life in its naked, raw, truth. Carne
y huesos.
Back to the half-hearted list that
was erased and replaced by the diagram, and onto the writing from this day ten
years ago. As mentioned the list
delineated the preparatory work for the upcoming semester. Included in that work is the prep work for
the Honors College first year course I am co-teaching with 11 colleagues. We each take two sections of students, and
share the duties of lecturing to the entire first year class. It’s a unique
model for Hofstra, and is a really energizing experience once the semester gets
underway. The theme for this upcoming
semester’s course is ‘friendship’, and it was no small coincidence when I
encountered in the meditation from this day the quotation from Arendt on
friendship that I’m planning to use in my lecture, which will be on
Heraclitus. (No sooner do I erase my
To-Do list when one of the items appears in a meditation! This immediately prompts me to look up at my
book case and realize that the journal with the Arendt piece, as well as the
edition of Heidegger’s Basic Writings
are both here in my study…not in my office back on campus as I had supposed…or
imagined from my modality of productive procrastination.)
The quotation is from Arendt’s
essay on Socrates, “Philosophy and Politics,” which was published in the New
School’s journal Social Research back
in 1990 when I was a grad student. The
issue included a paper by Richard Bernstein that had been tasked to type up
while serving as his research assistant.
Arendt’s essay was a very important one for me when I was writing my
dissertation, and I have a very clear memory of reading it at the Loyola
Marymount library and having a profound breakthrough in my thinking about
dialogue as a way of creating an culture of friendship. At the time I was wrestling with the agonism
of the academic culture wars and wondering if there wasn’t a peace to be made around
a common interest and commitment to learning, which I took to be a mattter of
social justice. In Arendt’s essay she
wrote of Socrates commitment to bring the agonistic Athenians together via
dialogue, and to “make friends” of them.
And so, in the writing from 8/23/04, which was meditating on the peace
of the learning community, I identify that peace as “the actualization of the
doctrine of Diotima, the manifestation of Love in the bonds of fellowship
happening through [what Arendt calls] ‘the equalization of friendship’ where
the many ‘become equal partners in a common world – that they together
constitute a community.’”
This citation must have come from
the recognition that Arendt’s essay had been singularly influential in my
thinking about learning as a dialogic and intersubjective event that was not
only the place for the enactment of freedom (in the making or working out
something new), but also the place for the appearance of a kind of peace, the
peace of fellowship. What is made in this side of learning is what is
forged together, and for Arendt this is the world, or what she calls the common. A community is formed from what is holds in
common, but this common must be made, built.
Of course, there is a kind of circular logic at work here, especially
when we consider that the ‘common’ is also ‘the commons’ or the public sphere
where the community is gathered, and where the freedom of singularity makes its
appearance. In one sense the two, peace
and freedom, co-arise. In another sense,
freedom, the singularity arising from natality, arises from the peace of the
commons. In this latter sense, the peace
is the ground from which freedom is rooted and arises.
A final point: the appearance of the principle/ideal, or, for Arendt, the
fact of equality that is guaranteed by the common -- we
all equally perceive what we hold in common, or we are all equal before the
common, on the commons. Equality may
have appeared at some point, but it did not receive the kind of attention that
other key concepts have received. I’m
not surprised, because the emphasis has been on freedom. Equality is described as “the commonality of
the building, the gathering, the abiding, the foundational accompaniment that
is the peace of the community.”(8/23/04)
It is too powerful a phenomenon – fact – to have received so little
attention, and perhaps I will take it up in the upcoming commentaries…presuming
it remains under discussion alongside peace.
3.0 (Friday, Portland, ME). I couldn't help but laugh to myself when I read about the demoralizing To-Do list that appeared as akin to uneaten bananas that have reached the post-ripe state. Ten years later, by the Grace of God, I'm inspired by my To-Do list because I found a routine that really worked for me this summer. Get up early>coffee, read some fiction> walk the dogs with Kelly> workout (Mondays & Fridays mountain bike, Tuesdays & Thursdays gym, Wednesdays yoga)> write for two hours>brunch>read some fiction, siesta> yardwork. I've more or less repeated this routine the entire summer and, as a result, I have on this day completed the draft of my sabbatical book!!! I wanted to compete the draft before September so that I could go into my sabbatical semester without the stress of a deadline hanging over me. If "sabbatical" indicates the "sabbath" i.e,. the day of rest, then the semester should be an opportunity to recharge, reset, and, yes, rest and relax! And it seems I've set myself up for just that! Reading back to the commentary from 10 years ago, and the OPM from 20 years ago, there is, again, some continuity, especially with Arendt, whose essay "Philosophy and Politics" was one of the central texts for the writing this summer, along with Heidegger's "What is Called Thinking?" While I am not using the word "love" in my writing, there is a way to understand the joy (jouissance) experienced by the members of the learning community as a shared love, or "philia." Here's what I wrote today, on my last day of summer writing 2024!!!
ReplyDelete3.0b The refraction that pluralizes the meaning of the fragments occurs by way of a return to the original encounter with the book/text, with that moment of reading when the reader experiences the provecho de estar solo and in the solitude is captivated. When that original captivation is repeated in the company of others the discussion is put underway. That repetition of the original captivation is the arrival of the presence of the text, a return of the original inspiration that was experienced by the author. This is why Bachelard can describe the multiplicity of resonances and reverberations as placing us in a new existential modality, “a change of being…as though the poet’s being were our being.”(PS, xviii) The return of the original moment of inspiration is a repercussion of the poetic imagination that struck the author. When the reader is “blown away” by a moment in the text he is struck by the spirit of creativity, by the poetics of making. There is what Foucault describes as the retour, the rebound effect that happens in the encounter with the “truth” (the reality of the work as an authentic expression of the human capacity to initiate something new). This is learning as the existential formative effect, but in the sense of “building up” or forming, but, rather as a recollection of natality. To be “blown away” or seized or captivated by the reading is to receive the breath of inspiration and also to be struck in the sense that Arendt describes Socrates as being awestruck, captivated by wonder (thaumadzein). The wandering that happens with the discussion begins with that state of wonder, with being struck by the repercussion of the original moment of inspiration. The repercussion is a repercutere (a rebound), the inspiration is re- ‘back again’ and it ‘strikes’ percutere the reader and then again the members of the learning community. The poetics of the discussion unfold from that retour.
ReplyDelete3.0c Bachelard describes this moment’s reverberation as “bringing about a veritable awakening of poetic creation…in the soul of the reader.” (PS, xix) The fragment, what Bachelard calls the “poetic image” returns the students to the original moment of inspiration, “at the origin of the speaking being.”(PS, xix)
ReplyDeleteThe repercussion happens by way of the repetition of the moment of reading that experienced captivation. With the re-reading of the highlights, the recitare, the commonality emerges from sharing of the text. In the “simple experience of reading” the reading “becomes really our own. It takes root in us.”(PS, xix) When the students are returned to the original moment of inspiration the find themselves at the original of speech, in the existential modality where presence is arriving, where something new is initiated, namely, a new path of interpretation into the possible meanings offered by the text. The “truth” (reality and authenticity) of the discussion is the birth of what is said and heard in the discussion. The discussion is the birth to presence, the experience with the arrival of the new. The interpretations, which are expressions of the resonant subject, are an echo of the poetic moment that inspired the author. That moment returns and is repeated in the discussion. The spirit that moved the author circulates in the learning community, the muse Improvisation breathing life into the gathering. But it is not the author’s voice that returns. When the highlight is shared the students return back to the moment before the author has written, which is to say, to the moment when the writing is happening. This is why the fragments can be taken up on their own, outside the finality of the book. The fragments present the principle of incompleteness and the illegibility of the text that will never yield a “final” conclusive analysis. The text remains open. There is a negation of the author’s voice. The author appears “dead” but for Bachelard the repercussion is a kind of rebirth of the text that includes a resurrection of the spirit of the author in the return to the original moment of inspiration. The jouissance of the discussion is a reverberation of the “joy of reading” that was experienced by each student, el provecho of study. In the discussion the recitare is a repetition of the “joy of reading” that now “appears to be the reflection of the joy of writing, as though the reader were the writer’s ghost.”(PS, xxii) The fata of the libelli has freed the work from the author, and it is now free to circulate and emerge anew. The work is “born again” in the repercussion, in the sharing of the fragments. With the recitare the fragments become “a new being in our language, expressing us by making us what it expresses; in other words, it is at once a becoming of expression, and a becoming of our being. Here expression creates being.”(PS, xix) The poetics of dialogic learning (the interpretations) are a repercussion of the “joy of creation,” a “sign of creation.” (PS, xix) The fragment mediates the poetic moment, “creation takes place on the tenuous thread of the sentence, in the fleeting life of an expression.” (PS, xix)
The principle of incompleteness that renders the text illegible, returns the students to the Moment when work emerges through the reception of inspiration, the moment when the writer responds. This response, which is repeated with the performance of discussion (the improvisation of interpretation), is a disclosure of meaning. Bachelard calls this disclosure an act of emergence. Each interpretation is an occurrence of the process of meaning coming into view or becoming exposed after being concealed, hidden in the unread text and in its illegibility.
3.0d - With the jouissance of discussion we have “the salutary experience of emerging.”(PS, xxiii) The fragments place the discussion “in a state of emergence, in which life becomes manifest through its vivacity.”(PS, xxiii) The life of language expresses itself through the discussion. What has remained concealed arrives, is present. New meaning arrives. Bachelard uses the visual metaphor “unforeseeable” to denote the hidden meaning that arrives spontaneously. But better is the sonic metaphor of “unheard” to describe what listening anticipates. While interpretation in discussion is a spontaneous response, there is anticipation with improvisation, the sense of possibility. What is “unheard” is what has not yet been spoken, and this is what listening anticipates, the arrival of the new that will initiate a novel response. The unheard, “is this not an apprenticeship to freedom?”(PS, xxiii) The fragment is heard “as a phenomenon of freedom.” (PS, xxiii) This listening for the unheard remains outside the teleology of schooling, away from predictable “outcome.” One cannot predict the fragment “in its newness.”(PS, xxvii) The possible meanings explored in the discussion “are therefore unpredictable.”(PS, xxvii) In turn, without despair or sorrow, the resonance of the words of Pierre-Jean Jouve echo with significance: “La poésie est rare.”(PS, xxvii) The poetics of an improvisational discussion are rare (est rare).
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