The prompt
for today is a book I pulled off the shelf in the Bates library yesterday, when
I went in for some reading time while my daughter took a siesta before Parents
Weekend dinner. I only had time to get
into one chapter, but Lin Ma’s Heidegger
on East/West Dialogue generated lots to think about, and is easily the most
carefully composed and thoughtful book I’ve encountered on Heidegger outside of Schürmann’s. In the short
time I had with this book I took up the chapter that focused on Auseinandersetzung, which means ‘confrontation’, but also ‘discussion’ and ‘engagement’. Auseinandersetzung
is crucial to my project for two reasons: because it has everything to do with originary thinking, and, in that regard,
helps me to think further the ‘collision zone’ where the work of LAPE is
arising. The forward thinking that
happens with the movement into the ‘other beginning’ is prepared by Auseinandersetzung with the ‘first
beginning’ happening with the ancients, specifically Heraclitus, who has been
the subject of my attention, among others.
Another beginning by way of a critical engagement, a confrontation with
the first beginning generated by the ‘force’ [Gewalt] of reading, the
exegetical force that unveils what has be left ‘unsaid’ by the first
thinkers. Auseinandersetzung denotes too the exegetical ‘discussion’ with
what remains unsaid by those first thinkers, left unwritten by the fragments handed down to us. Close reading of the fragments is a close listening enabling us to hear the unsaid. Our disclosure of what we read and hear -- our phenomenological documentation -- is precisely what
prepares the new beginning of a ‘future thinking.’
With Auseinandersetzung we un-bind ourselves
from the fatalistic hold of a present that seeks to ‘freeze’ us. “To ‘un-bind’ is to place in the condition of
the essential swaying of freedom.”(10/11/04 BL
235) The confrontation with the
present is not a direct assault, but an insurgency: the gathering of the learning community as a
counter-cultural force. The learning
community arises within, or in, the dominant culture and surges toward the
future. The learning community is the
unconcealment of the new beginning and future thinking. [‘Insurgency’ comes to us via French and
earlier from the Latin insurgent –
‘arising’ from the verb insurgere,
from in – ‘into, toward,’ + surgere ‘to rise’]. The insurgency is the rising (surging) of ta panta (the many): “the un-binding
encompasses beings and invests them equally with distinction, thereby
recognizing the novelty of
each.”(10/12/04 BL 236)
The un-binding is the granting of distinction happening with
unconcealment “that offers a confirmation
of beings by Being, the investiture
of each being with Being’s vestige.” (10/12/04 BL 236) [‘Vestige’ is an
indexical reference to St. Francis by way Bonaventure.] Vestige is a confirmation, a granting and
offering of the novelty that is
‘re-called’ in the confrontational up-rising of distinction. The learning
community is the event where this “gift of natality, the birthright
of…existence” is “confirmed…recognized and thereby heard. This hearing
is offered…in the close proximity of compassionate listening.” (10/12/04 BL 236)
When compassionate listening is described as offering a
‘hearing’ this indicates that it is happening in the Open, in the place
granting the possibility of the up-rising of singularity and the
intersubjective gathering between. Today
I would emphasize how the intersubjective gathering (dialogic interplay) is an Auseinandersetzung, an ‘engagement’
‘discussion’ and most certainly a ‘confrontation’ not simply because it is a
counter-cultural force surging up within the dominant discursive economy, but
also because this surging up is happening with-in the learning community as such.
On
10/12/04 (BL 237) the rising up of
each being -- the disclosure of ta panta
-- is received in the ‘hearing’ that
bears witness to singularity. Can this
be the Auseinandersetzung of that prepares the way for
another beginning and future thinking?
Only if the reception (‘hearing’) of the singularity of each being
‘hears’ what remains unsaid by each being.
Dialogic close listening is both the letting-be of the up-rising of
each being and the confirmation that
affirms singularity. But this
affirmation is the recognition of difference,
or the distinction of each from the
other. The ‘hearing’ that bears witness
to singularity is also one that offers a testimony of difference.
“Compassionate listening is the hearing of the testimonial that bears witness and attest to the gift of existence,
the vestige of Being.” (10/12/04 BL 237)
Un-binding
is both the counter-cultural up-rising with the hegemonic (as a historical
event) but also the releasement from the present, a temporal transcendent leap
into the future. In this sense the “un-binding is the designation of the ‘trace’
of Being, the sign of that which withdraws, which appears yet remains concealed
or hidden. To be drawn into that draft
of Being’s withdrawal is to venture into the ad-venture of exploring the
outermost boundaries of this protective precinct, this ‘province’ of
Being. Learners are those who take up
this ad-venture.” Indeed, learners are
those who venture into the future propelled by the force of unconcealment. In this sense the adventure of learning is
the advent of learning community.
3.0 (Saturday, Portland, ME) - Really enjoyed reading the chronicle of this day ten years ago, Bates family weekend. I remember that day, being in the library and reading that book on Heidegger, and then meeting up with Sofie, her roommates and their parents for dinner. We had dinner in the old Bates mill and I toasted the old Baptist himself for founding a college that was co-ed and open to all from its inception. I also find it somewhat unsettling how casually I moved within the language game of critical pedagogy and used the term "insurgency." After Jan 6, 2021, that term no longer has carries any theoretical jouissance for me. And generally I'm not in a confrontational mood, my critique a bit more nuanced and cloaked. Today I wouldn't write the following, which appears above and was written ten years ago: "Today I would emphasize how the intersubjective gathering (dialogic interplay) is an Auseinandersetzung, an ‘engagement’ ‘discussion’ and most certainly a ‘confrontation’ not simply because it is a counter-cultural force surging up within the dominant discursive economy, but also because this surging up is happening with-in the learning community as such." Of course, I haven't in any way disowned the position. I'm still using the "learning community," and still describing the discussion happening in it as an enactment of freedom which is at the same time an interruption of the teleology of "outcomes" organized education. But I'm also less influenced by Heidegger, although, as I mentioned yesterday, he got the last word in "LEARN." Today I'm not describing the discussion that organizes the learning community as “compassionate listening." My description is much more neutral, and is limited to saying the listening is, like reading, phenomenological, which is to say, receptive and pre-judgmental, pre-critical, pre-analytic. "LEARN" is mostly devoid of adjectives!
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