So
much writing/thinking through Arendt on the learning community, especially when
the Open is given the name ‘the political’.
On 10/24/04 Arendt definition of the political was cited: ‘to establish and keep in
existence a space where freedom and virtuosity can appear. This is the realm where freedom is a worldly
reality, tangible in words which can be heard, in deeds which can be
seen…’(Arendt)”(OPM 252(253), BL pp. 251-252) At the end
of this long day that I’ve spent reviewing the 108 paper submissions to PES
Memphis, I’m left wondering about the plurality of the learning community;
specifically, the plurality of this plurality.
To what extent is the learning community, especially the one I have been
thinking/writing about since the visit to Memphis three weeks ago a gathering
of a many (panta)? To what extent is difference in play in the
learning community? What kind of
difference is in play in the dialogical event of learning? How does the other
manifest and appear within the congregation?
When Arendt identifies the political as the space where freedom and
virtuosity can appear, where freedom becomes a tangible reality, I have read
this to be referring to the manifestation of distinction, in the sense that
each member of community is able to be seen and heard, as she puts it. And virtuosity refers each member
distinguishing themselves. But this is
all very much an idealization of the ideals of the Hellenic polis, and, today,
this seems far from the collection or gathering of the learning community as a community, a collective that moves
together, a movement. The question is
about the plurality or difference within the learning community organized via
the communion of κοινωνία,
koinonia?
The
preceding question was always in play in the original meditations; indeed, the question arises from ontological situation
where the project finds itself. In this
sense it is not a question of ‘making room for’ or ‘acknowledging’ difference,
because it is always bursting on to the scene.
This is why on 11/5/04 I focus on the anticipated arrival of freedom as
the strange and stranger, the uncanny.
The place where “freedom rises up” is “the clearing that shelters an
abode for the emergence of the ‘not yet’.”
Existentially the abode that is offers the shelter for the stranger is
“the heart.” The heart is the opening,
the space through which freedom appears.
Is ‘the heart’ the political?
No. The heart is originary, the
link between the existential and the ontological.
The
heart resides before the
political. The political is made
possible and arises through the heart.
“The heart, with the openness of compassionate listening, shelters the
re-membering of the many…”(11/5/04) In turn, questions concerning the relation of difference and koinonia must be directed to the heart. And it is a set of questions that conclude
the meditation from 11/5/04: “What kind of ‘community’ is this learning
community that is arranged as a gathering of the many as a many, a plurality? What is this peculiar dialogic encounter
that arranges the co-arising of the one and many?”
3.0 (Tuesday, Portland, ME) I have to smile at the coincidence of the first line from the 2.0 commentary and today in 2024 being election day, one that will be historic, for sure. "So much writing/thinking through Arendt on the learning community, especially when the Open is given the name ‘the political.’" That line was also a bit of a foreshadowing of the small but hostile political response that occurred when PES Memphis 2015 was underway some four months later. The current project has, through the same Arendt, drawn a very clear line between the educational sphere and the political sphere. Here is one of the few fragments from "LEARN" that make this point: "For Arendt, the primary aim of education is to introduce students to the world and to enable them to experience the worldliness of their human condition. This is more than a cultural education (Bildung) because it does more than introduce students to what is “great,” and is not focused on the reproduction of a particular set of virtues (paideia), democratic or otherwise. The “old” world is introduced to the newcomer -- and it must be stated that this introduction is happening in the location, the educational sphere that is “decisively divorce[d] from the others,” both the private sphere of the home and “most of all, from the realm of public, political life.”(CE, 192) And here is another: "Within that system, books are measured and assessed for their pragmatic usefulness. Or they can be permanently removed or banned, deemed as “dangerous” or “corrupting,” and thereby accused of the same charges brought against Socrates. But the banning of books is not only a transgression of the educational sphere’s autonomy from the political, but also a cynical application of market logic of utility. The “divisive” book is considered “useless” because it cultivates anarchy. Book banning, which is always a reordering of the catalog regime, is an attempt to negate the provecho emerging from the solitude of reading in the deconstructed library and the “confusion of these books.”(UL, 60) The learning I'm describing in "LEARN" is happening in an apolitical sphere, and the freedom that is enacted therein is the freedom of creativity, improvisation and spontaneity.
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