This morning, during the
early hour of coffee and ancient Greek exercises, I happened to glance at my
kitchen desk, which has become a bit of a mess in the past few weeks. The standard stacks of books are accompanied
by random pieces of unopened mail, and a few magazines that will ultimately go
from my desk to the recycling bin. One
of those magazines that was destined for an undistinguished reckoning with the
bin is, sadly, the January-February 2015
issue of Academe
(magazine of the American Association of
University Professors). The issue is
headlined “AAUP: The First One Hundred Years.”
So, naturally, I rescued this ‘special’ issue, and brought it up to my
study, where it has been placed at the center of my attention at the beginning
of this days meditation/commentary.
I wanted to begin with
this issue of Academe because the
little bit that I read in the issue immediately reminded me that the project of
originary thinking, which a few days ago I insisted was a project that was
bracketed within a particular (if not esoteric and eccentric) syncretic
combination that is generically organized as a form of first philosophy, is
working itself out under the protection of academic freedom.
Reiterate: the project of originary thinking is Not metaphysics, but before that: first philosophy. Thinking
from and at the beginning; with the recognition that such thinking is involved
in making something, and that something is the process of learning; again,
understanding ‘learning’ in a very particular way (perhaps esoteric and
eccentric), that, in the end has little to do with what is usually talked about when members of my field use words like ‘teaching’ and ‘education.’ Indeed, as I tried to show the other day in
my commentary (1/27/15), what some if not most of my peers [a odd term in this
context, but I have become exceedingly frugal with my use of the word
‘colleague’] in the field mean when they say ‘education’ is almost always
something occurring in a school. The
work that takes that up is, from my perspective, closer to sociology than to
what I am doing, which isn’t to say what they are doing isn’t philosophy; it’s
just not first philosophy. [here I am
reminded of a conversation Frank and I had when we were in Memphis, strolling
down Main Street, and he asked how I enjoyed a paper presentation that one of
our peers had made the week before at Teachers College, Columbia. I hadn’t enjoyed it at all, I responded. And then I added that I was bored by the
whole business, because it just wasn’t what excites me; I find that sort of work draws energy away from
me; it’s not engaged in thinking, and
it’s not philosophy. Frank was astonished
and a bit taken aback by my comment, and then confessed that he had one heard
his work described in that way, which is one reason he had no patience for what
he considers to be the expression of an exclusionary logic. “They said I wasn’t doing philosophy,” and to
that I responded, “well, maybe you weren’t?!”
I then went on to explain that I was perfectly content to carry on with
my own project, and had no interest in setting up a system that would exclude others
from pursing theirs. If PES Memphis
tended to be dominated by the kind of work I considered energy producing, that
is, vital, then no one should be surprised.
And, what’s more, the power of the CFP had insured that we received a
large number of papers that were full of vitality, and the problem I faced (at
that time in late October) was how to make a program that remained within the
usual scale of the yearly gathering.
That excursus brings me
back to Academe and the sense in
which this project’s recurring question, “Freedom for what?” is in fact the
so-called ‘educational’ question of this
project. That is to say, once the
delimitation of the project is recognized then it becomes obvious that
originary thinking is a discipline (technē,
praxis) that is taken up in a particular context. This is now a description of the historicity
of the dedicated commitment to the project:
while it is not exclusively happening within academia, the project
demands the protection of the non-negotiable first principle around which the
AAUP is organized: academic freedom. Of
course, the AAUP did not invent this.
Rather, it is the cornerstone of the founding of the University,
established via decree. Here’s my
account of that moment from a meditation I wrote on May 7, 2012:
THESIS 5.7.12 The faith in the
unconditionality of the university, is a faith in the unconditional status of
academic freedom that must be tested through experimental performative
work/poetic thinking. The faith in the
unconditional status of academic freedom is based on a recollection of the
Habita, which is the original granting of academic freedom, the covenant or
testatment qua dispensation, which exempts the scholar from any and all local
ordinances that would place conditions on his work, limits that would measure
and value it in advance of its performance, or place it within and thereby
limit it to a teleology of production, and outside the energia of its performance.
As noted
above: we might understand this
profession of faith as happening in that temporal location, topos, of the ‘in between,’ the third
space, that time of liberation, which we take up ‘as if’ it were what were granted by the dispensation issued by the
Emperor, i.e., the Habita, the
testament or promise protected by the law, which offers us a certain exemption
from mandatory labor, and frees us to
take up our scholarly work, our studies, to freely study, to enact the right to
academic freedom!
The Habita:
the first or originary right granted to the university, articulated in
the “imperial constitution” of 1158, at the Diet of Raoncaglia, willed by
Frederick Barbarossa, and granted to the students and faculty of the university
of Bologna. As cited in Gabriel Compayre
[Abelard, and the Origin and Early
History of University, Scriber, 1893/1910]: “We will that the students, and
above all, the professors of divine and sacred laws, may be able to establish
themselves and dwell in entire security in the cities where the study of
letters is practiced. It is fitting that we should shelter them from all harm. Who would not have compassion on these men
who exile themselves through love of learning, who expose themselves to a
thousand dangers, and who, far from their kindred and their families, remain
defenseless among persons who are sometimes of the vilest?”(76) [ONLINE edition of Compayré]
Aside from the
potential for misunderstanding whom the dispensation applies too – that is, a
misunderstanding that would believe the Habita
is only applicable to the faculty of theology, when, in fact, the university of
Bologna was grounded in the study of Roman/Imperial/Justinian law, and thus it
must be assumed that in granting this privilege, Barbarossa was, in effect,
legitimizing his claim to the status of Emperor
-- the presentation of the Habita [perhaps following the example
offered by Agamben] is intended to be part of a recollection of the covenant
that establishes the dispensation of the university, specifically, the students
and faculty, from the limits of their speech by local authority, with the
deconstructive move being the exercise of this right in the form of a
performative work that appears as an ‘internal critique’ of the university, as
testing of faith in the Habita. This is where the role or identity of the
critical educational theorist emerges as one who ‘tests’ or ‘examines’ the
university’s ‘tolerance’ for academic freedom.
And about two weeks
prior to that I wrote a set of meditations that needs to be recalled today
April 25, 2012
First and
foremost is constituting power as the name for that power that is generated in
the gathering of the learning community --
which I want to call in the spirit of the Bologna tradition, the
learning commune, or even collective.
NOW, much, very much has been written in Being and Learning on the learning community, so before going too
far down that path it would important to make note of that work, referring to
it, etc. However, here the matter is
being approached from a different angle, under different terms, from different
resources. Here the learning community
comes together in the studio, the studium,
which is the place of collective thinking, the performance of the promise of
questioning.
THESIS 4.25.12 The learning commune is gathered by the
promise of questioning (lead by the threshold scholar who bears the original
covenant to dispense, bestow and present the question), and this gathering both
generates and is generated by constituting power: “the power generated when people gather together and ‘act in concert,’
which disappears the moment they depart.
The force keeps that keeps them together…”(Arendt, HC 244-245)
So what has
appeared is both (a) the importance of time – the ‘in between’ as the present
that conditions opportunity, the break or gap or threshold that opens up the
possibility of natality (and in this sense is a temporality of ‘double’
potentiality…it is a time when natality is possible, and (b) the importance of power, specifically the
ceaseless generative force of constituting power. These two central categories condition the
performative work happening in the three locations of questioning
[study/learning/thinking…all of a sudden I’m wondering if ‘study’ is enough to capture the activity
in all three locations?? Perhaps it would be odd to describe ‘study’
in the study? Thre are characteristics
of what Agamben is describing as ‘study’ in the performative work of
questioning…it is the aesthetic rapture, perhaps, to use
Heideggerian/Nietschean language….but what is happening in this performance
isn’t always ‘study,’ which doesn’t quite capture the dialogic character of the
performance…or does it? To be continued]
NEW MATERIAL FOR April 26, 2012
Yesterday
concluded with the identification of (b) the importance of power, specifically
the ceaseless generative force of constituting power. Constituting power is the central phenomenal
force through which the performative work/activity of the threshold scholar is
unfolding. This performative work as
stated in THESIS 04.23.12 is “the performative activity of thinking...This performative work is the ‘making of
music.’” Further, this
performative work is the indispensable dispensation of an originary questioning
that initiates and sustains thinking as a dialogic practice happening in the
the study, the studio and the studium [the latter is, today, the name given to
the ‘commons’]. Thesis 4.25.12 states
that the learning commune, which is the gathering of those who are working
together in the studio, and is unique identity of those dwelling together in
that location, is gathered by the force of constituting power. This is the same force that is generated in
the eme emauto of scholar in his
study, and which gathers him as a two-in-one.
Following Arendt,
we identify the force that gathers the scholar, the commune, and the community
[now introduced is the name of the larger gathering of the entire university],
and that initiates this gathering’s constituting power, releases the power
generated by ‘acting in concert,’ this ‘prior’ force is the power of the
promise. And here we see the power of
what Derrida calls the ‘profession of faith’ as the philosophiam profiteri: “not simply to be a philosopher, to
practice or teach philosophy in some pertinent fashion, but to pledge oneself,
with a public promise, to devote oneself publicly, to give oneself over to
philosophy, to bear witness, or even to fight for it…this promise, this pledge
of responsibility, which is reducible to neither theory nor practice. To
profess consists always in a performative speech act…because the act of
profession is a performative speech act and because the event that it is or
produces depends only this linguistic promise…”(UWC, 215)
Now this promise,
as Derrida understands it, is performative
as a public oath, “a testimony, a manifestation and attestation” (214) and I
want to add, an annuciation and an enunciation of an original question [in the
form of a theory of cultural difference?].
Derrida says “it is indeed, in the strong sense of the word, an engagement, a commitment,” (UWC 215) a commitment of one’s
responsibility to raise the first question, as articulated in: THESIS
4.4.12: The
indispensable dispensation of the threshold scholar is the promise to question,
to perform parrhesia.
Now, what’s
important to add is the link I want to explore between enacting the promise of
original or first questioning with the testimony of being the stranger, and, further, this testimony as the questioning
that declares one’s responsibility to bear the distress of not knowing, of
taking up the necessity of the question, is also linked to what we might call
the original covenant of the university, as decreed to the University of
Bologna by the Emperor when he gave the scholars independence. This covenant is the basis of the
independence articulated by Kant to the philosophy faculty, and it is, of course,
the basis of what Derrida is calling “the unconditional university or the
university without condition: the principal right to say everything, even if it
be under the heading of fiction and the experimentation of knowledge, and the
right to say it publicly, to publish it.”(UWC
205)
THIS RIGHT of free association, and this right
and responsibility to say everything should be explored through the links
between: testament as testimony as
dispensation: specifically the qualification of it as an “exemption from rule or usual
requirement…permission to be exempted from the laws or observances of a church.” If we couple that with the other denotation
of dispensation, which is has a specific temporal dimension, some interesting
possibilities emerge: “a system of order, government, or organization of a
nation, community, etc., esp. as existing at a particular time.”]
And so we might understand this profession of
faith as happening in that temporal
location, topos, of the ‘in between,’
the third space, that time of liberation, which we take up ‘as if’ it were what
were granted by the dispensation issued by the Emperor, the testament or
promise protected by the law, which offers us a certain exemption from
mandatory labor, and frees us to take up our scholarly work, our studies, to
freely study, to enact the right to academic freedom!
to be continued…..
To
be continued…indeed! I suspect that the
sharing of the preceding is a necessary statement
that positions my project in relation to academic freedom. While ‘freedom’ is one of the central terms of
my lexicon, the category of ‘academic freedom’ never appears in Being and Learning. Rather, Being
and Learning, the original project as well as 2.0, and the whole spirit of
PES Memphis, is a series of tests (experiments) of academic freedom. Does ‘academic freedom’ exist? In what way does it remain a significant
force moving the work in academia? It
seems to me that we can’t begin to answer these questions if we aren’t testing
and experimenting with our work, testing the limits of what and how we do the
work of thinking. But let me be clear:
this project is not designed as an experiment that is testing the existence of
academic freedom. Rather, the project
presumes the existence of academic freedom, and thus works under the same
presumption of the scholars and students at the University of Bologna, those
who were reading the Justinian codex ‘out of bounds.’ The presumed power of the original decree
made in the Habita is always there,
in the background, concealed yet present.
And because of that presumption, the work of originary thinking, which
is moved by another more powerful force, is able to thrive.
Much
of what is written on 1/29/05 expresses itself in a manner that is not far from
the jurisprudential discourse where I was just moving. The link is established between the freedom
from unjust scholarly overseeing and a philosophy of education that is not
bound to the metaphysics that persists in the sociological arena. Here are the sentences distilled from the
writing that was made on this day ten years ago:
1.
Originary
thinking is “unbound from the confines of metaphysics.” (BL 363)
2.
With
originary thinking “a fidelity to the project of philosophy is retained…”(BL 363)
3.
With
originary thinking “the ex-cessive nature of the poetic is liberated…”(BL 363)
4.
With
originary thinking “the ascent to the generalized ‘essence’ and ‘ideal type’ is
inverted with the renouncement,”(BL
363) with the renunciation that announces the coming of music-making philosophy.
5.
The
renunciation is an inversion, a descent into self-overcoming.
6.
“This
descent is the down beating of the
groove that en-opens the space for affirming…the ‘essentiality’ of difference…”(BL 363)
7.
“In
turn, philosophy of education is
itself a (re)presentation of the becoming of Being, a ‘realization’ of freedom
as the becoming ‘real’ of the be-ing of human.(BL 364)
8.
“Philosophy
of education is a poetic phenomenological practice through which the
actualization of freedom as a concrete phenomenon appears, is unveiled,
unconcealed, and disseminated.”(BL
364)
9.
“Under
these terms, philosophy of education remains (de)construccion, of/from
the creative activity.”(BL 364)
10. “Learning is…the
realization of freedom as the essential sway of the work of art that is always already
‘not yet’ completed, or always already ‘beyond’ itself, withdrawing into the
future.”(BL 364)
11. “this becoming of Being
actualized in/with the be-ing of the learner [is] actualized in the
improvisational performance as the realization of difference, the manifestation of the particular as novel, unique, and not simply an
‘accidental’ image of a perfect form.”(BL
364)
12. “The be-ing that is
affirmed is the ceaseless happening of nativity, the continuum of the originary
dispensation.”(BL 365)
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