OPM 237(38), October 9th (2004 & 2014) Meditation, Being and Learning, pp. 232-233

Ten years later (today!), I make a presentation at the Lapiz launch,  issue 1 of the Latin American Philosophy of Education Society’s journal.   The presentation took place at Columbia University’s Center for Study of Ethnicity and Race (Hamilton Hall 420).   Here are excepts from my the comments I wrote and read today for the launch.   My contribution to issue 1 of Lapiz announced my huacaslogical project, my phenomenology of space that unfolds from the specific geographical location of the ‘Americas’, and, specifically, the existential modality gathered into the Latin American  and/or Latino [for sure, not the same] by that ‘collision zone’ thrown up by the collision of the previously co-existing ‘old worlds.’  And because I have made many references to my LAPES work in this blog, especially when relating the material written during the 2004 experiment to Thoreau, I believe it more than appropriate to share excerpts from my commentshere, before returning to the meditation written this day ten years ago.

Donde Estamos?  Where are we?  

Remarks Prepared for the LAPES Lapiz launch

October 9th 2014, Hamilton Hall 420, Columbia U, NYC

Donde Estamos?  Where are we?  This is the question that organizes my contribution to this first issue of Lapiz, and it is the question that allows me to emphasize what I am calling the topographical project  of LAPE.  Why topographical?  

In the sense of topographia:  Topos (place)  &  Graphia (Writing).  Place writing, or writing of the place.  Or better still, to be written by the place, to be inscribed by the location.   

I’m approaching the project of Latin American Philosophy of Education from the topographical perspective because it appears to me as the appropriate way to remain linked to the specificity of the geography where Latin American thinking has emerged and continues to emerge.  In other words, LAPE engages the challenge of thinking the origin from the ground of the Americas, ‘America’ broadly conceived, and distinct historically, culturally and thus philosophically from the European Continent that continues to exert a disproportionate influence on our thinking. 

For me, this is where the ‘educational’ question arises…arises with the question “Donde Estamos? Where are we?”   Thinking this place ‘America’ is to know not simply where we are but who we are, and thus we are faced with the challenge of making ourselves: making Latin American philosophy is a making of ourselves.

Education is the process of learning who we are; and this learning is a making, a techne and a poiesis.  Ours is practical philosophy of learning to become who we are, and, for me, this is what this community, this fellowship, this communidad, this koinonia signifies: the coming together of a ourselves, the gathering of a community unlike any other in academia.   

If the first question is Where are we?, then the question that immediately follows is ¿quiénes somos? Who are we?   

Where are we? and Who are we are? arise together.  Of course, these questions are not unique to LAP, but are amongst those fundamental questions that make up philosophia perennis (perennial philosophy).   What is unique is what they disclose when we raise them as educational questions for ourselves, and they point to the ongoing struggle for recognition within the dominant Anglo-American academic landscape.  In fact, because of our ongoing ‘identity’ crisis – complicated in part because we continue to feel like strangers and outsiders on this landscape where we work --  our ongoing struggle remains one of understanding how to articulate something that is our own.  And this is precisely why Lapiz is so fundamental, so significant, timely and necessary.  For it represents the realization of an organized effort to take up the twin questions Donde Estamos? Where are we? and Who are we? ¿quiénes somos?  

Some Implications for LAPES and Lapiz:

A new direction for the field of philosophy of education, in terms of articulating a new discourse and possibly a new counter-discourse (v. Anglo academy…gringodemia & v. internalized over-valuation of Continental philosophy [see comments below]).   And it is an opening to collaborate ‘outside’ of ‘education’ which seems always and everywhere a euphemism for ‘schooling’ aka K-12, with philosophy of education always and everywhere focusing on the labor of teachers.   Does the work of philosophy of  ‘education’ conclude at the HS commencement ceremony  I am deeply suspicious of this equated of ‘education’ with ‘schooling’ and see the inclusion of philosophers Alcoff and Mendieta in the first issue of Lapiz as a clear indication that the work of LAPES via Lapiz has from the beginning expanded what it means to do philosophy of education.

A new practical turn is also announced in the first issue of Lapiz, new directions in practical philosophy…specifically, what Rocha calls ‘folk phenomenology’.   Taking up the questions of Where?, and Who?,  requires that we attend to and draw upon the resources that are ready-to-hand and, yet, have up to now remained unused.  The gathering of a library of resources and the experimental reading laboratories are two of the initiatives this community has mounted in its ongoing archeological  effort to uncover the philosophical works of the past, such as that by Simon Rodriguez.   But it is also necessary for us to attend to what is  already always with us: the music, art, and cultural practices that have formed and continue to form who we are.  

A new hemispheric initiative: and this brings me to a third implication, and that is the implication of intra-hemispheric collaborations, or what we might call North/South coalitions. For me, this intra-hemispheric North/South coalition not has the potential to cultivate new synergy but is also where I see the fundamental questions of Where? & Who?, unfolding with critical force.   That is to say, I see the need to push our colleagues from the ‘South’ toward a reflection regarding our dependence on the European Continent to legitimize our work.   If there is a history of Latin American philosophy, and there most certainly is, its genealogy is defined in part by the ongoing struggle to distinguish (dare I say liberate) itself from European thinking.   Here, again, an opportunity to make something uniquely ‘American’ (broadly conceived) but also something ‘Latin’ (broadly conceived).    There are many precedents and resources for this, so it is not a matter of matter de novo.   But it does entail a kind a willingness to examine where we turn to gather resources for our work, and also to legitimize it.

The futural always seems to be the temporal force moving my work, and the prospective side of originary thinking often strikes me as retaining priority if not an almost privileged status.   The original print-out of the material written on 10/09/04 received during the editorial stage a penciled in heading ‘The Call of the Future.’  [There are no such sub-section headings in Being and Learning].   On 10/09/04 attention is grabbed by the “the voices of the seventh generation” who are perceived or heard from the elevated place afforded by the experience with the sublime.  “To receive and respond to these voices is to organize the gatherings of ‘today’ in relation to the beckoning of  ‘tomorrow’.”  How appropriate ten years later to dwell today with a community of learning who is attending to and making tomorrow.  “To prepare the way of the seventh generation is to conserve and preserve the condition for the possibility of learning.  This identifies the response of the learning community as the gift of sparing, of keeping in reserve, preserving or conserving the conditions for the actuality of possibility, the conditions for the arrival of the new.  To preserve these conditions is to maintain the openness of the open region…” 

Ten years later this claim needs to be tempered and placed within the region documented by a topographical phenomenology of place.   From this place where we are ‘translated,’ and inscribed by place, ‘preserving’ the conditions of learning, ‘for the actuality of possibility,’ is to let be the openness of the open region.  We don’t so much maintain the openness of the open region as allow ourselves to be inscribed, written on by this location.   When we hear the call of the seventh generation to come we are being inscribed by the open region.  A kind of dignity arises from this reception: “an ‘investiture’”.    This investiture is “the ‘noble rank’ of mindfulness.  Mindfulness…extended beyond…immediacy…and into the distant ‘beyond’ where the other remains shrouded and concealed.”(10/09/04)   Reception of this ‘noble rank’ happens, so it seems, when we dwell in the dark porch where Socrates moved before entering the home of Agathon.