And that brings me back to
yesterday’s commentary and to the writing/thinking that happened on this day
ten years ago, specifically the moment in my commentary when the fragment on
writing appeared. To recall that moment
from 1/25/15:
The self is subjected to
the force of writing.
All descriptions of the teacher’s
silence must be read within the context of self-overcoming and the force of
writing, which is to say, the force of becoming. The teacher’s delegation of “the force of her
authority to learning and the learning” (BL
359) is already a sign that he has been placed under the force of learning,
which is to say, placed under the force of the actualization of Being via
becoming. If first philosophy places a
demand on us, it is the demand that we relinquish the will to power as the will
to control the movement of thinking, and thus to relinquish the will to
determine the production of meaning. All
writing must in this sense be ‘automatic’.
And here is where the risk-taking Leap arises, which shows us that the
Leap is not a ‘forward jump’ but a turn, a conversion to a faith in the power
of thinking untethered from the will.
All
writing must in this sense be ‘automatic’.
Learning
is the poetical actuality of Being.
To describe writing as ‘automatic’
is to recall yet another formative influence on the project of originary
thinking: the Surrealist. At about the
same time I was beginning to write about the pedagogy of gelessanheit, I was also writing about the pedagogy of
estrangement, a category I had been working out since I the writing of a paper
for PES, titled “Effecting V,” which was written under the influence of
Brecht. But the influence of the
Surrealists goes back much further, and can be traced to my semester of study
in Madrid during my third year at Fordham.
It was in Spain that studied the films of Luis Buñuel with Sanz de
Soto, a close confident and collaborator
of Buñuel. And Madrid was also where I
discovered the strange world of Dalí.
It all seemed oddly linked to the peculiar late paintings of Goya, and
even to El Greco. I can not say they
shared anything but a common suffering of the strange, the irrational, and even
the pathos of insanity. A pedagogy of estrangement is a much more
intentional effort on the part of the teacher to prompt the
improvisational. In fact, insofar as I’m
talking ‘process’ I would have to say that Brecht’s V-effect can only happen in
a particular kind of learning place (the Open). And if letting-be takes students in that
place of learning, then the pedagogy of gelessanheit
precedes the pedagogy of estrangement.
Estrangement entails
defamiliarization: make a familiar setting strange. It’s all quite simply and yet awfully
complicated, and slightly unpredictable, because it imploring spontaneity and
improvisation. I say that it is simple
because the original and fundamental gesture is quite easily identified, but
not so easily accomplished: the relinquishment of power. The familiar setting of teaching and
learning is the following: the gathering
of a many (students) and a one (teacher); power is deemed to be held by the
one. And this remains in place until
the teacher renounces his power, which is to say, disseminates it by releasing
his will to power. The familiar scene
immediately become unfamiliar and strange, and it often only registers gradually
and at the end that the students have been in a place of thinking. That is, when then come to realize that
they have been placed under the force of thinking, which is to say, subjected
to the force of becoming. Most identify this with a sense of freedom. For example, here fragments from two
unsolicited emails I received from students who have just completed my Jan
session grad seminar:
“I
really felt like I was able to express myself not only through the seminar
papers but throughout the seminar discussions.”
“This
class has made me realize that I’ve taken very few courses during my academic
career where I was able to freely express my ideas…”
A
small sampling, for sure, but the point is made: what was initially written ten
years ago and published in Being and
Learning, and what continues to be described ten years later in this
commemorative blog is only
phenomenological description that is attempting to express and
communicate the situation and process that is happening in the courses of
philosophy that I have been teaching for the past 23 years.
Learning, as I am describing it,
as the poetical actuality of Being, is put underway by the force of becoming, but there is no question that
the teacher retains the will to power, that is, retains the capacity to block
the flow of becoming. Nietzsche was a genius, for sure, and not
better example can be found in the category of will to power. It is properly stated as will to power that is drives the didactic
instructor, the one who blocks the force of becoming. I suppose this is why the category of
‘reactionary’ describes the exercise of a force that attempts to block
revolutionary change, a change that is inevitable because it is fundamental,
and is, as Arendt reminded us, rooted in the fact of our existence as
manifested via natality.
On 1/26/05 I continue with what I am today
describing the simple act: renunciation.
The meditation between by recalling that “…‘renounce is derived from the
Latin ‘renuntiare to bring back
word.’”(BL 359) Renunciation is the simple act of bringing
back the force of Logos, which is to
say, the simple act of silence, of listening, first and foremost, to the force
of the Word. The actuality of the
poetical is only ever the realization of the living spirit through each and
every person whose humanity is recognized; the actualization of the dignity of
the human person. There is something
deeply paradoxical at work here, because, ultimately, the ‘reality’ of each
real person is only ever an expression of Spirit via the Word. “This ‘bringing back’ is the re-collection of
the poetic that is announced in the letting go of the posture of the
judge….Thus the re-membering of the poetic and the creative is announced with
the silence that conveys the that conveys…the be-ing of human as becoming.”(BL 359)
The simple act of bringing back Logos is the one and only act of
teaching.
Learning
is the poetical actuality of Being.
Teaching
is recollection of becoming.
Recollection of becoming happens
by way of renunciation, which is the calling back of the word. This is what is happening in the simple
gesture of teaching: the call to learning via the question prompting evocation
of thinking. Thinking is released
through questioning. Here are the
Sentences on renunciation and recollection that appear on 1/26/05:
1. “When
the poet says ‘So I renounced’…this is the re-signation of the teacher who
openness clears the space for the arrival of the ineffable, ‘where words break
off.’”(BL 359)
2. “When
the juridical voice of the authoritative teacher is silenced…the words of this ‘know-it-all’ are broken off…”(BL
359)
3. “The
emptiness that is cleared by this silence re-collects and brings back the
poetic word, the saying that is received as always pointing beyond itself.”(BL 359)
4. “Learning
(re)presents the becoming of Being, and teaching is the attunement toward and
reception of this process.” (BL 360)
5. “Teaching
is thus the letting-be of freedom, the be-ing of human that… (re)presents the
becoming of Being as the letting be of difference…”(BL 360)
6. “Teaching
(re)collects the originary dispensation of Being’s becoming that always remains
concealed and hidden in the gap, the Open…”(BL
360)
7. “Being
remains wholly Other, distinct and different…Empty.” (BL 360)
8. “Being
holds back, appearing in the nothingness and emptiness that preserves the
possibility…expressed in the becoming of be-ing human.” (BL 360)
9. “Being
‘appears’ in the Open.” (BL 360)
10. “To
teach is to remain attuned to the be-ing of truth appearing with the natality
of the learner.” (BL 360)
11. “This ‘truth’ is not the correctness (veritas) of the work that ‘gets it right’
but the truth of aletheia, the truth
of freedom that happens with the happening of Being…”(BL 360)
12. “This
truth ‘sets itself to work’ with learning…”(BL
360)
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