A BLOG – Page 6

Beside/s: Big Questions

Some questions make us curious and invite us to engage or compel us to act while others assume answers, shut down discussion and evade responsibility. How can we develop and pose questions that do the former instead of the latter? As one answer to that question, I want to put an example of the latter (a question that assumes, accuses, evades) beside an example of the former (a set of questions that inspires, invites, compels).

Is There a Right Way to Protest?

During my daily scroll through Facebook this morning I encountered an open letter from DO! (Differences Organized!) about the University of Minnesota’s first event for their new “Big Questions” series: Is There a Right Way to Protest? The open letter, which is addressed to the “complicit, complacent, and the comfortable,” argues that such a question is “fundamentally flawed” because it places “the responsibility of effecting positive social justice squarely on the backs of organizers, while ignoring the role of systems of power and domination that create socially unjust conditions making protest imperative.” It “makes a value judgment,” functions as an “excuse to neglect student protestors demands,” substitutes conversation for actual change, absolves responsibility for creating conditions that necessitate protest, and creates divisions between protestors with different approaches and tactics.

In place of this question, DO! offers some questions of their own:

Why is dissent criminalized?
Why do we only ask whether the actions of victims and survivors of oppression are “right” when the causes of such protests are so blatantly wrong?
Why are the Ethnic Studies departments perpetually underfunded and understaffed?
Why do Black and Brown students rarely feel comfortable, safe, and supported on this campus?
What message is the University trying to convey to its student body and surrounding community [by the posing of their question]?

As a strong proponent of asking and “feeling the force” of questions that make us curious, unsettle us, and provoke/inspire us to act, I find the questions posed by DO! to be far more compelling and helpful than the U of M’s singular (and designed-to-be-divisive) question.

As a final note, I love DO!’s last line:

we will remain #UMNDrivenToUncover the racist, sexist, classist, heteronormative practices of the University and disrupt said practices until they cease to exist.

#UMNDrivenToUncover Yes!

Follow-up: Here’s an article about the event and DO!’s protest. The article also has a link to a recording of the event.

And here’s an article that discusses the DO! protest and larger concerns about “commodifying diversity” at the U of Minnesota.

The Troubling Hour, Recap

At the beginning of January, I wrote about my daily habit of waking up early and scrolling through my Facebook and Twitter feeds in order to get into “a critically reflective (troubling/troubled) space.” I’m calling this practice, “the troubling hour.” I’m still doing this almost every day, but I haven’t been posting about it.

I’d like to do a better job of documenting this habit. But how? I’m not sure yet; for now, I’ll just offer up a few past ideas, articles, and quotations that have made me curious and critically reflective.

25 January 2016

On January 25th, I found Fear of Screens by Nathan Jurgenson. He offers a great critique of Sherry Turkle’s latest book, Reclaiming Conversation. I read/skimmed her book not too long ago and tried to write about it, but I felt such an overwhelming sense that it was riling me up in unhelpful ways, that I abandoned my post—it’s festering as a draft on the dashboard of this blog as I write these words.

Speaking of drafts, I found the following quotation from Jurgenson’s article in another draft post:

This oversimplification pre-empts her critique, so that she asks not what technology (including language itself) affords or discourages, and how and under what circumstances, but “what do we forget when we talk through machines?” This slanted question elides the issue of how communication is always mediated by power, space, bodies, language, architecture, and other factors as well as by the particular medium through which it occurs. To prescribe one form of media — to privilege speaking over writing over texting — would require deep description and analysis of the context: who is speaking, to what ends, and why. Turkle too often assumes screen-mediated communication comes in only one flavor, which cannot grasp the complexities of our always augmented sociality, to say nothing of how screens are differently used by those with different abilities.

Yes! I’m so glad that Jurgenson wrote this…especially so I didn’t have to. This above quotation articulates a lot of why I am bothered by Turkle. And so does this passage that challenges the privileging of IRL (in real life) conversations:

Each time we say “IRL,” “face-to-face,” or “in person” to mean connection without screens, we frame what is “real” or who is a person in terms of their geographic proximity rather than other aspects of closeness — variables like attention, empathy, affect, erotics, all of which can be experienced at a distance. We should not conceptually preclude or discount all the ways intimacy, passion, love, joy, pleasure, closeness, pain, suffering, evil and all the visceral actualities of existence pass through the screen. “Face to face” should mean more than breathing the same air.

And this passage that troubles our need to be mindful of how/when we are connected:

The false sense that your health and humanity are at stake in when and how you look at your screen suggests that we are already too “mindful” about how we are connected. We have too many self-conscious rituals of disconnection. If being mindful means being preoccupied with a phony sense of balance and moderation, anchoring oneself to a fictitious “real” identity, and judging constantly who is normal and who is broken, then we may need something more mindless.

I want to spend some more time with this idea of being too mindful of our practices and of over-scrutinizing them. Even as I promote documenting habits and paying attention to/critically reflecting on them, I’m aware of how unhealthy over-scrutiny can be. I’ve experienced it in my own life and I’m currently bearing witness to its painful effects on my daughter.

9 February 2016

Yesterday, I read The Self-Obliterating Professor by Doug Anderson. In it, Anderson argues that the best teachers train and inspire students in ways that make them (the teacher) no longer necessary. Early on in the essay, Anderson quotes Thomas Davidson who once famously remarked:

The sooner a teacher makes himself useless the better. It is a great fault with some teachers that they may remain always necessary. I do not wish to count among these, but hope to be obliterated.

I like this idea of inspiring/training students to not need the teacher (it’s a nice contrast to Mark Bauerlein’s arrogant argument for students as disciplines in What’s the Point of a Professor?), but I’m extremely wary of calling for the obliteration of the professor.

Obliterate? To remove or destroy all traces. To efface. Expunge. This violent language may be useful for combatting the arrogance of some professors, especially those who fit Lorde’s mythical norm—white, male, tenured, heterosexual, Christian—and who are guaranteed status because of their ability to fit that norm, but what does obliteration do to many (now the majority?) professors whose status (and authority in the classroom and job security in the academy) is tenuous?

I have more to say about these questions. Perhaps I’ll incorporate my thoughts into my undisciplined teaching portfolio?

What I am not giving

I’m working on a book project about my teaching life (past, present and future). Most of my processing for this is happening in a green notebook and on my story blog. Occasionally, like right now, I’m posting about it here.

What does a book about my teaching life in which I attempt to offer up some of my ideas about teaching and learning and living an undisciplined life look like? How do I structure it in ways that avoid offering “advice” as an “Expert”? How do I share insight and knowledge without being arrogant or didactic?

These questions haunt me as I reflect on what sort of teaching book I want to write–what can I offer? who am I writing it for? who cares? Lately I’ve found that constructing pithy lists is helpful for sorting out my ideas and engaging in conversations with the ghosts that haunt me. So I decided to make a list of what I’m NOT giving (or least trying not to give) when I’m offering up my ideas about teaching and being undisciplined.

I am NOT Giving…

Advice
Permission
a Lecture
a Sales Pitch

ASIDE: In addition to engaging with persistent questions about authority, expertise and being the Teacher, this list is also a direct response to a recent suggestion by Elizabeth Gilbert that she was the hall monitor, giving out permission slips to women who needed them to be creative (she’s said this in many different interviews. Here’s one source).

I meet people who want to be doing interesting and creative things and they’re stuck,” she says. “Women especially seem to feel they need a permission slip from the principal’s office before they’re allowed to do anything, and I’m so happy to just be constantly writing those permission slips for everybody.

I’m the hall monitor: You have a pass and you have a pass and you have a pass,” she says, handing out imaginary passes. I’m very happy to have that be my job, or one of my jobs.

Yuck. As a teacher/guide/mentor, I’m not interested in granting permission. Why reinforce the power structure of an Authority figure who must say it’s okay? Why have a hall monitor? I’m probably not being entirely fair (or generous) to Gilbert here. In my defense, I did listen to a lengthy interview with her and I tried really, really hard to be open to her ideas. Repeatedly I found that her arrogance creeped in to her comments even (or especially) when she was attempting to be humble.

If the above list indicates what I am NOT giving, what is it that I AM giving? Here are some preliminary thoughts:

I AM Giving…

an Account of a teacher/person/thinker/troublemaker who is passionate about education
Proof that other ways of being/engaging/teaching are possible (not always successful or recommended, but possible)
an Invitation to engage, experiment, resist and unlearn unhealthy habits

More on Gratitude

Tonight I decided to scroll through my tumblr site, Staying in Trouble. I haven’t posted on it for years. Maybe I’ll start again? Anyway, I found an image that I reblogged 3 years ago and was reminded of Barbara Ehrenreich’s article that I posted about a few days ago. She writes:

Saying grace to an abstract God is an evasion; there are crowds, whole communities of actual people, many of them with aching backs and tenuous finances, who made the meal possible.