OPM 274(275), November 17th (2004 & 2014) Meditation, Being and Learning, pp. 275-276

The experience of revisiting the writing from this day (11/17/04), BL 275-276 was cathartic.  In the wake of last week’s experiment with Augustine’s Confessions, which actually concludes tomorrow with a discussion of the Palabras Entre Nosotros I wrote in between the lyrics of Rocha’s Late to Love album, I’ve felt a certain unease that, in the spirit of Augustine himself, I am compelled to confess.  The unease is not at all related to the experiment itself, which was audacious, and, by all accounts a ‘success’ insofar as happened without a hitch – all student groups were able to get their hands on a copy of the album and the libretto; they met and listened to the album and articulated questions for Rocha; and Rocha responded with a brilliant piece of film making that inspired more discussion.   And I have every reason to suspect tomorrow’s study of the Palabras will also be a successful demonstration of what I identify here, for the first time, the pedagogy of originary thinking.   The unease is thus not from any doubts I have about the experiment, but, rather about my HUHC colleagues' judgments about the experiment.  As I might have mentioned in last week’s commentary, the experiment was one that I undertook with my students who are part of two assigned sections from amongst the HUHC C&E class of 250 or more.   I had no intention of sharing my experiment with the other faculty because, quite frankly, I doubt their capacity to support my experimental undertaking.  But I’m not seeking support from them either.  In fact, the only thing I expect from them is the same liberal indifference that I understand to be the dominant logic of academia, the negative liberty of ‘academic freedom’ that, for better or worse, grants us the space to do as we might within the confines of our classrooms and places of study, our studios of teaching, learning and thinking.  It is in those places that the learning community arises and moves.   Paradoxically, or ironically, or both, the faculty team teaching this semester’s HUHC C&E got wind of the experiment because I shared it with them!  Indeed, I was so enthused and high after last Thursday’s class meetings that I couldn’t control my urge to share it with the group that was attending the bi-weekly luncheon.  I passed around a copy of Late to Love, and explained what we did with the music, Rocha’ film, and what we were planning to do with the Palabras.   The expressions on the faces as the CD jewel case moved around the room was one of restrained incredulity, or what we might call polite disdain.  It would be much too easy to dismiss the feigned enthusiasm as expressions of ressentiment, although that may very well be what it was.  But I rather perceived and felt that the response was generated from a position of privilege and power: good old fashioned snobbery! 

I grew up around snobbery, which is most certainly one of the reasons I have always been attracted to the side of the spectrum that is a bit unkempt, a bit messy, tolerant of malaprops, grammatical miscues, and typos.  Indeed, I take it from Nietzsche that the attempt at honesty is a hallmark of all real thinking, writing, art and music.    And when we imagine that most experiments are failures, it does remind us that behind all of them is only ever an honest attempt, or what used to be called ‘the old college try.’  This is meant to sound quaint and, what’s more, discordant with the tone that has carried most of the writing in this commemorative blog.  Perhaps that’s part of the catharsis I experienced just now after revisiting the writing/thinking from 11/17/04, especially that line that describes the “false premise of radical independence [that] is the basis upon which the agonal spirit is conjured up and ‘welcomed’ as the inspiring source of the contest that will ‘determine’ who is worthy of praise and recognition.”(BL 276)

Upon first glance the preceding seems a janus-faced claim, because it describes as false that exact independence I described and presume to exist when I demand that I be granted my place to teach, learn and think with my students and myself.    Strictly speaking there’s no inherent or performative contradiction happening here, and we can see that for any number of reasons:  the existence of ‘radical independence’ does in fact carry with it the caveat that allows those who grant such freedom the power to rescind it, and, at the very least, demand an account of what one is doing in one's protected work place;  the premise is only false when those who grant academic freedom demand not simply an account but a specific outcome on terms they design.   And so it is not the radical independence that is false, but, rather, on the one hand, the belief that one is not obliged to make an account of one’s work, and, on the other hand, the belief that the obligation to make an account can be supplemented with a set of criteria set in advance or, worse, after the fact in a Kafkaesquean narrative sort of way.    So, in the end, the highlighted sentence mediates a catharsis because it reminds me of the precarious nature of a principle that finds form in the mask that depicts Janus.  Indeed, the principle of academic freedom is a granting that simultaneously looks towards an independent place of teaching, learning and thinking, while looking away from that place; looks forward to the account made by those who inhabit said places, while looking away from itself and its own power to adjudicate the value of what is made in said places.  In the end, perhaps, I have grossly misrepresented my teammates' response to my experiment with Augustine.  Indeed, perhaps what they offered was precisely the kind of phenomenological reception that reserves judgment and can only acknowledge the fact of the experiment without assessing the results?   And with that I believe the catharsis has run its course!

Stepping back to 11/17/04, I should note the context of the excerpt I borrowed to reflect on my colleagues’ response to my pedagogical experiment.  The excerpt appears half way through the mediation from this day a decade ago, midway on BL 276 when the writing/thinking has been taken away by the very agonal spirit it is denouncing! (Talk about a performative contradiction).   The writing from 11/17 starts off by responding the final lines from 11/16, the quotation from Arendt that expresses what I sometimes call the an-archic, and Agamben has been known to call ‘the state of exception’: “the dialogic community of a ‘common world, built on the understanding of friendship, in which no ruler is needed.’[Arendt]” (BL 275)   11/17 begins by trying to probe the kind of ‘justice’ emerging with the an-archic, or counter-cultural learning community.  In recent weeks I have called the learning community a movement towards justice, and also described its work as the making of justice, a demonstration of the technē  of the justice that is specific to education (teaching and learning).  And my inspiration for this description is DuBois, who identified the path of justice to be paved not by the State (law) nor the economy but through education.  I then turned to Paul and the congregational spirit of koinonia to describe the what I take to be the most promising manner in which the work of justice via education is realized (made real).  

So I recognize the attempt on 11/17 was to make a probe via Arendt who “moves our exploration toward an inquiry regarding the ‘justice’ of peace and freedom co-arising with the learning community.”(BL 275)  But like someone who resists leaping into cold water even on the hottest of days, I held back, such that the meditation quickly became a recitation of all that the learning community is opposing.  Missed was the call to describe further what the learning community is generating in its gathering.  Of course the reason I missed the opportunity has to do with the selection of an additional citation from Arendt, who borrowed “from Aristotle [the claim] that ‘friendship is higher than justice, because justice is no longer necessary between friends.’”(BL 275)  Back to ‘comfort’ of sun-bathing, I suppose, to continue the analogy.  What I mean here is that rather than think through the justice made in the learning community, or the justice appearing through the learning community, I merely accepted Arendt’s Aristotelian rendering of philosophical dialogue as ‘beyond’ justice!   Really?  Only if, as the meditation shows (problematically),  one reduces justice to what is necessary between adversaries; hence, the agonal spirit calls forth justice, or a process of deciding between competitors who have no vested interest in working together.  This only begs the question: Can and should community members compete with one another?

Given the commentaries that have written about the necessity of strife and struggle (polemos), coupled together with those that have taken up reconciliation, it seems on 11/17/14 that I am prepared to say that justice is disclosed as the polemos that happens within the community as learning; justice as strife is the renewal of  the community, which is to say it is guided by an agonal spirit insofar as this is a quality of the gathering spirit; the quality that maintains the necessary creative tension within dialogue (the dynamic movement).   The learning community is a place where dialogue happens,  and not an echo chamber.  Tension is necessary.  Moreover, if it the learning community is a movement and a struggle vis-à-vis the larger and dominant logics (State and market sponsored ‘schooling’), then the counter-force emerging is only ever as strong as the strength of those who are at work  generating it.  Put simply, friendship allows  for the most generative form of competition to emerge, because friends, empowered by agape, support each other in playing hard with each other such that from the outside perspective it may appear they are playing hard against each other.  And by playing I am not describing games, but the playing of music.  To describe dialogic learning a moved by a creative tension is  to extend what on 11/15/14 I emphasized with the performance art analogy that enables us to understand learning as a τέχνη (technē) that is both action (freedom) and work (necessity).  The syncretic dynamic I am described finds its reduction in the dialectic of τέχνη (technē).

The logic of justice is organized by the agonistic play disclosed in the dialectic of dialogue…